In case you’re pretending to not be a nerd, DS9 stands for “draw out the opening credits as long as possible so we can save nine minutes worth of show production costs per episode.” ť What, are Trek fans going to complain about something being ponderous and dull? Yes.

The show is set aboard a space station that is also named Deep Space Nine. The station is partially a Benthamian hellhole, modeled on the utilitarian’s insane plans for building “panopticon” prisons because of his belief that the greatest possible aggregate utility would occur if he could stand in one place and watch dozens of people going to the bathroom at once. Also, it was critical that inmates know that they might be observed at anytime, but never know when they are being observed. True, the walls on DS9 are not transparent from the outside, but they might as well be. Anybody on the station at any time can just be like, “computer, locate Matt Cale.” And the computer will be like, “Lieutenant Cale is in the holsuite, sir. Heart rate is elevated though he seems to be laying still on his back. Probably because he is masturbating.” Nobody ever knocks because it would be a mostly empty gesture. Oh, also there is only one cop, but he can turn into anything and hide anywhere. Like, for example, a piece of furniture in your room or a glass of water in a restaurant could turn out to be a cop at any time. The authorities throw people in jail whenever they want for as long as they want and that jail cell is completely transparent and constantly under intimate observation unless the plot requires otherwise.

Somehow, DS9 is simultaneously an intergalactic bazaar where trafficking in both human beings and weapons of mass destruction is commonplace. There’s lots of drinking, gambling and fighting. Everyone acts like there’s a lot more sex than there really is. Overall it reminds me of the place where one of my favorite movies (Casino) is set, and where about 150 of my least favorite movies are set: Las Vegas. Controlled depravity under total surveillance. I would definitely go there for the holosuites and I would say that I was going to take the opportunity to fire a phaser off into space but then I’d never get around to it and then I would want to go home. In any case, I think it makes for the best premise of the franchise because the action comes to them more organically. Especially because DS9 is a point of strategic importance to various conflicts, so it saves them from having to be like, “for the 89th time, we’ve discovered a planet with a population of less advanced humanoids. The only question remaining is, will some sort of predicament arise where we have to decide if we should aid them with our technology, or will it turn out that they were actually super advanced god like creatures who will never be heard from again?”

Shatner and Mulgrew: Confrontational Sexism from Pudge, Rodriguez on Vimeo.

Captain:
We know what we like in our Star Trek Captains: grandiloquent, swashbuckling geniuses who are overly good at everything and never wrong, played by the most preposterous hams thespianry has to offer. Avery Brooks’ Commander/Captain/Emissary/The Sisko, whose side jobs include heading earth defense and Cajun and Southern cookin’ fits the bill. He’s not the intergalactic booty destroyer that Kirk was, but he does attract some of the finest sisters in the galaxy, all of whom have good hair. And when he’s not doing that, he is creating the entire universe and much of history with his imagination.

Really! At least two episodes put forward the theory that the universe of Star Trek is the story told by the Sisko’s counterpart, also played by Brooks, a frustrated black writer in the 1950s named Benny Russell who dreams of space ships and equality between races. For this, he is thrown into the nuthouse, but he completes the story on the walls of his rubber room, granting life to billions. The evidence for this theory extends beyond the those episodes that posit it. It would also explain why Sisko has a fascination with the long forgotten sport of baseball. Also, the writer in the story is kind of a hack, which explains the show’s dialog and stuff like that and it makes sense that he would think up a protagonist’s name by doing something like, “Well, he’s a master soul food chef… Crisco… Cisco. Better make it Sisko.” Plus, if Benny was wrong, how do you explain his knowledge of the scientific trends of the future? And if the world of DS9 is imagined into existence by by Benny Russell in the 1950s that would mean he also correctly imagined all of the historical events mentioned between the time he lived and the time DS9 is set. Especially those that actually occurred between the time of Benny and the the time the fictional TV show DS9 was filmed, which probably means he even imagined your birth into existence from inside the TV. Therefore, I recommend believing the Benny Russell scenario because there’s kind of a Pascal’s wager thing going on where if he is wrong maybe you would cease to exist. Further discussion of the issue can be seen here, but if I have learned anything at all, it is this: The path of The Sisko is one of madness.

Back to the racial thing. I’m sure that at the time, Fox News types were like “Oh they just HAD to have a black captain!” But to those of us who live in the realm of sanity, Sisko’s blackness isn’t really a big thing. Like, of course a Star Trek captain could be black. We rational, progressive folk reserve our “political corectness gone mad” spiels for Janeway (see video above). However, when you watch episode after episode, while Sisko being black is rarely a major plot point, you can see that a great deal of thought went into presenting Sisko as a role model for Star Trek’s millions of African American fans. His favorite baseball player–Robinson being too on the nose–is Willie Mays. And as a hero, Sisko is of a similar template, representing the best of Afro American culture, but long having shed the aspects that were vestiges of racist oppression. Star Bleks are never proud of ignorance or how many different women they’ve had kids with. If cross walks existed, they would walk through them more quickly if they saw you trying to make a right turn. But they honor the memory of the civil rights struggle and their own formidable cultural achievements. For example, Sisko is reluctant to go to Vic’s Las Vegas Lounge because the holosuite program sanitizes the discrimination of the era it portrays. But Sisko doesn’t name his kid L’Janthony or BMW, but Jake. In short, in a few hundred years everybody will conclude that the truth lies somewhere between Bill Cosby and Chris Rock. Just in case you can’t see through all of the stoned glibness and rambling, a really do believe that all of the racial stuff was handled admirably.

Sisko certainly equals or exceeds his forerunners in terms of bombast, courage, and pretension somehow coexisting with near omniscience and totally unrealistic combat skills for a middle aged administrator. I’m going to reiterate what I said before. Sisko is: 1)A Starfleet Captain 2) Promoted to Commander 3) The Emissary, which is to say the intermediary between man and God and 4) Promoted to just being God, at least insofar as being creator of the entire post-1950′s universe. Also, there’s a side story where they travel back in time and accidentally get a Gandhi-like figure in the 21st centrury killed, so Sisko just fills in for him and takes his pivotal place in history. Because creating the universe was not a big enough feather in his cap. Because of all of this, the worm whole aliens refer to him simply as The Sisko. It’s almost as bad as Jesus.

So, in terms of over the top macho awesomeness, Sisko can stand with any other captain. But what about the acting? Obviously, nobody wants to see great, naturalistic acting here. This is a question of who devours the most scenery. Patrick Stewart might be a famous, old, British, Shakespearean actor but those guys are always gigantic hams who get too much deference because SIR LORD SHAKESPEARE OF ENGLAND. So he was a fine choice for Picard. And in any other franchise, he would be cock of the ham walk. But let’s get real. This is a two ham race, between Shatner and Brooks. I’m not going to argue that Brooks is a grander ham than Shatner because that is a hell of an argument to make. I will suggest, however, that if you view both performances with an open mind, the subject is at least open to discussion. Plus, the Siskos give us three generations of hams. For a kid, Cirroc Lofton is a pretty impresive ham as Jake, the most disappointing son since the retarded Manning brother, while Sisko’s father is played by Brock Peters with every once of the hammyness one would expect from an actor named Brock Peters.

As an aside, one way to differentiate Trek captains is whether they constantly defy logic and jeopardize thousands of lives on the basis of gut or principle. Kirk is all gut, while Picard is more of a principle guy. Archer (the one played by Scott Bacula) is almost all principle. Janeway is… well, honestly I usually kind of tuned out whenever she was talking. For me, Sisko strikes the right balance. He is the Star Trek Captain I would most fear at a poker table. Kirk’s luck would run out at some point because he couldn’t just keep guessing right forever. Picard would be tough, but he would have certain limits that could be tested. Archer would be predictable and kind of an ABC player, though a good one. Janeway is a woman with babies and hormones (see her video above). Sisko is capable of anything at any time. His repertoire of decisions includes all of the good ones and very few bad ones. He is a mad man tethered by reason. The fact that gods whisper into his ear could be a problem too. I bet Avery Brooks really had to reach deep to create this persona:

Shatner and Brooks: Legitimate Mental Illness from Pudge, Rodriguez on Vimeo.

Do not skip that video.

Lamest Alien Race:

The lamest alien race on DS9 is The Dosi, who appear in the episode “The Rules Of Acquisition.” They would be horrible enough looking if they were some race of hapless peasants, but this species is meant to be tough and intimidating. The implication of this is that somebody thought “you know what springs to mind when I think ‘intimidating?’ Well mimes, of course. And LARPers. Wait, wait…. what if I combined mimes AND LARPers into a single entitiy of pure fearsomeness? I’ll even throw in some Umpa Lumpa. Look out Giger!”

Best Alien Race:

The Ferengi. For one thing, they are one of the only races humanity can look down on from a cultural perspective and would also beat at most sports. This exchange sums it up pretty well:

Kira: I don’t understand your attitude about the Ferengi

Jadzia: That’s because you don’t socialize with them like I do. Looking back over seven lifetimes, I can’t think of a single race I’ve enjoyed more….

Kira: They are greedy, untrustworthy misogynistic little trolls and I wouldn’t turn my back on one of them for a second!

Jadzia: Neither would I but once you accept that, you’ll find they can be a lot of fun.

What could be a more powerful endorsement than Jadzia liking them and Kira hating them? That is like if a new movie came out and Gloria Allred was suing the producers while Kreayshawn got baked and attended the premiere. We’re meant to think of the Ferengi as still battling the limitations that humanity outgrows as part of the federation: ignorance, discrimination and lust for money. As those values clash with those of The Federation, we see the first cracks in the Ferengi cultural dam, which will eventually give way to Reason.. This is dangerous territory because the defining element of the “outdated” Ferengi culture is totally unfettered capitalism. In the Ferengi afterlife, you have to bribe your way into heaven. I think a pretty sizable part of the Star Trek audience are power nerd Libertarians and you can’t risk alienating them. So the Ferengi have to make up for everything with spunk, odd charm and guile, much like the humans had to do relative to the Vulcans and this best/worst dynamic makes them the most entertaining race.

Quark is the owner of the station’s bar and casino and the show’s primary Ferengi. In the first couple of seasons they were using pretty broad stokes and about every third or fourth episode, Quark would be involved in some scheme that had implications that were far bigger than they needed to be for any dramatic purpose. When he was found out, Sisko or Odo would chew him out for, say, smuggling biological weapons for use in a genocide and say “if I ever catch you doing that again…”

As the show develops, Quark becomes the center point of clash between Federation and Ferengi cultures and they scale back on the angle of him being a soulless merchant of WMDs, slaves, drugs, child pornography and Axe Body Spray. We learn that Quark underchargered starving Bajorans in the past, and he is riven by unspoken tendencies towards compassion and justice, his adherence to Ferengi values and his personal virtues and failings. His mother is the vanguard, advocating for everything from fair trade to women being allowed to do business. Rom, (below) is the labor progressive. Liquidator Brunt is the reactionary force that initially has some sway with Quark. But his extremism and refusal to compromise ultimately makes Brunt into centrist Quark’s chief nemesis, thereby nudging him towards progress. Like many hard reactionary factions, say the KKK, Brunt eventually becomes an out of control TIE fighter (sorry for crossing streams) of craziness, spinning off into the dark space of irrelevance and compelling everyone else to move in the opposite direction. Wallace Shawn steals the show every time as Grand Negus Zek who obviously represents the elites. All of them. He’s like a business guru/king/religious figure/president, except when the story requires him to answer to some other political apparatus. He too is eventually persuaded towards progress, but that sort of seems like it could have gone either way. If Zek didn’t end up Delonte Westing Quark’s mom, maybe he would have thrown his hat in with Brunt and Ferengi progress would have been more tumultuous.

Rom:

Rom is Quark’s brother and Nog’s father. Early on, he is just sort of a groveling idiot who lets Quark walk all over him, but then it turns out that he is good at fixing stuff and he works with O’Brein, fixing stuff for Starfleet. At first, I thought this was inconsistent because Rom never seemed very smart and now here he is fixing quantum flux fantabulators all of the sudden. Then I realized that it is the future, so fixing a matter transporter then is like some guy fixing an engine now and that Nog really just has what they call “bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.” Because the Ferengi only value wealth, Quark feels like Rom being a skilled laborer makes him useless and Rom feels compelled to go along with him. Contrast that with humans, where you think the guy who fixes your car is an idiot because he religiously listens to Mancow’s Morning Madhouse and he thinks you’re an idiot because you don’t know how to change your own oil. Maybe that is why, after being exposed to Federation culture, Rom winds up being a general progressive, crucial to the movement to make Quark’s a union shop and moderately sympathetic to Ferengi feminism. What can we take away from all this? The working man is only a friend to progressive causes when he has his employer’s boot on his neck. I think this is why Democratic presidents rarely do anything to actually help workers, like quintupling the size of OSHA the minute they take office. Because of Rom.

Nog:

Nog is somewhat disturbing because while Jake sprouts from a tween into UConn recruit, the actor who plays Nog undergoes no physical changes during the show’s seven year run. I wonder if he was one of those child actors whose parents gave him female hormones so that he would have a better chance to get roles and then everyone involved turns a blind eye to this horrible act of child abuse.

As the first Ferengi to enter Star Fleet, and before that, one of the first Ferengi to receive a liberal education in an earth style school, Nog represents the nerdy kid from a backwards culture who is the first in his family to go to college but his family is kind of ambivalent about it rather than proud because they are resentful rubes and then the kid comes home insisting that the earth can not possibly be 6,000 years old, just as his parents had feared. If the show ran longer, they could have further developed Nog to the point where he overcompensated and became a complete knob. Like the kind of kid who decides to stand up and louldy declare his vegetarianism at Thanksgiving Dinner and who gets mad at his dad for liking Larry Bird. So Nog is the one you identify with if you are one of the only smart kids in some hick town or if you are an Antwon Fisher. Look at this scene between Nog and Jake and pretend that instead of being a Ferengi, Nog comes from white trash, but Jake remains a black kid.

Jake: I guess humans and Ferengi don’t have a lot to talk about.

Nog: That’s what my father says

Jake: Yeah, mine too.

Jake (hesitating, but then with conviction): That doesn’t mean they’re right. We always had stuff to talk about before! So what do you say, you still want to be friends?

Nog: Yes. But when my father finds out, he won’t be happy.

It is as if DS9 is reaching out, offering that first ray of light to trapped young minds. Not just by giving them something to relate to, but by forcing them to face the tension of relating to a character that is an amalgamation of extreme stereotypes about Jews and stereotypes about the kind rednecks who believe that extreme stereotypes about Jews are true and whom I believe stereotypes about. Money grubbers/teeth that look like a candy cane you accidentally left in your back pocket; see greed as a virtue/abusive towards women; good with money/love to gamble; manipulate politicians to their interests/manipulated by politicians against their interests, eat disgusting food/eat disgusting food. And in the same way that tube grubs look like spam and mayo sandwiches on wonder bread to us, through the eyes of someone traped in West Memphis, Arkansas they look like Chinese food. And/or Jake and Nog are gay.

I’m pretty pleased about the advent of the “R” rated, popular comedy. Yes, it opens the door to bottomless pools of crass, gross out/sex jokes. But that’s not the only benefit. It also allows for comedy to return to themes chosen with adults in mind, which can make for a reasonably entertaining film even when the film isn’t that funny. Maybe it really was just me, but it feels like there were a couple of lost decades during which I almost never seemed to watch mainstream comedies, even as disposable entertainment. Did Tim Allen ever appear in a remotely watchable movie? Was Chris Rock ever in anything that could beat rewatching Funny Farm? Will Ferrell had a couple of decent ones, but I think we’re far better off when the starting point of a film is being trapped in a job that you hate with scumbag for a boss, than something about one of Santa’s elves going to New York. The latter has to really be hit out of the park, while the former is already clicking with most of us before we set foot in the theater.

Horrible Bosses is remarkably honest about the fact that our society rewards people for being greedy, selfish, dishonest pieces of shit, as long as they know how to color within the lines. Not only can you get to the top by lying and screwing people over. Once you get to the top, you can get away with pretty much whatever you want. If, for example, your boss decides to slander you to other people in the field, as Spacey threatens to do in the film (all of the characters in this film are just the actors, but the actors are good), there’s nothing you can do about it. So much so that we have a cliche for it: You’ll never work in this town again! Another cliche is for senior managers to promote less competent people to the spots bellow them so that they look good by comparison. Nobody ever gets fired for that, because then the people above them would have to admit they made a mistake in giving the position to the senior manager. If you don’t like it, move to Russia.

Decent people get to the top as well, and you can argue that many or most bosses–business owners, successful politicians, corporate executives–are basically decent people. I’m not going to sit here and try to put an asshole percentage on people who make more than $250,000 or something. But what is undeniable, is that our society rewards a disproportionately large percentage of dishonest people who are driven by greed. Maybe that’s even appropriate, as those are the people who “want it the most.” But it still blows. And these tendencies are always becoming more prevalent and entrenched. I think we’ve arrived to the point where we have overtly declared that being a shyster is pretty much permissible.

There was a little blip on the newscycle here in California because the new president of San Diego State “University” was offered, and accepted, a $400,000 salary on the same day that a 12% tuition hike was announced. It’s $100,000 more than his predecessor and it comes with free housing and a $1,000 a month car allowance. It also comes as SDSU lays off lower level employees and cuts services to students. This is in the world of public education, where you’d think that executives would at least have to pretend to care about people other than themselves. Students and taxpayers, for example. One might think that, even if you are going to accept a garish hike in compensation that has a one to one relationship with some of your employees losing their jobs, maybe you shouldn’t do it so openly and shamelessly. But it seems that any such sentiments belong to the past. The virtually anonymous trustees scratched their buddy’s back at the expense of–well, pretty much everybody else in the state, and even the Governor of California couldn’t do anything about it, other than declaring that it stunk. So what are the chances of your boss ever being held accountable for such abuses? We all know that they never will be.

In the movie, Kevin Spacey uses a promotional opportunity to “motivate” his workers then, after several months of extracting extra work from them, declares that he will merge the position, and the salary that comes with it, with his own. Then he sets about turning the office for the position into an expansion of his own office. I don’t think even Spacey gets a $1,000 a month car allowance, but he’s pretty open about what his employees can do if they don’t like it: fuck off and try to find another job, without him as a reference. It’s almost the same story. I’m going to take from you. I know that it hurts you and I don’t care. It’s not criminal, in fact, my greed is rewarded as a virtue. There is nothing you can do about it.

Jason Bateman is considering quitting, when he and his pals meet their old high school classmate, a Yale man who can’t get a job waiting tables and who is trying to make ends meet by dishing out hand jobs in the bathroom of Applebees. Though powerfully erotic, the scene lays out the reality faced by many workers. I’m too embarrassed to say what I make at my shitty job for high school drop outs, where I’ve had co-workers who graduated from Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and dozens from UCLA, USC, UCSB and UCSD. Every time the company announces a new policy designed to screw us, sometimes openly violating labor laws, there’s always the subtext: real unemployment in California is almost 20%, so if you don’t like it, feel free to try your luck on the job market. Hopefully nothing happens during the lapse in your health insurance.

With a jobless economic “recovery” looking more like a new reality, we’d better get used to it. Outsourcing, free trade and illegal immigration mean that capital can always find labor willing to put up with just about anything. Of course, I don’t think Horrible Bosses was written with the words ‘capital’ and ‘labor’ in mind, but I do think it is about the exhausting hopelessness that is faced by an increasing percentage of the decreasing percentage of those who can even find jobs. And our impotence in the face of the escalating misconduct of Horrible Bosses–our actual bosses, or the parade of politicians, bankers and CEOs who take a tiny bit from each of us. Every year, it seems that they ask “I wonder if I can get away with this?” The answer is always “yes,” and then it becomes the norm. Executive salaries multiply. The ratio of wages to profits is the lowest in history, even though Democrats are in power. That’s not the message of the movie, but it is the reality in which the movie is set. In the film, Colin Farrell openly declares that the purpose of the business he inherits is to serve as his personal ATM to fund his coke and whore habits. In real life, I know of a case where the top executives of a public company voted to throw themselves an exclusive,  $1 million Christmas party. That’s not a figure of speech, it actually cost $1 million of shareholder money. It’s a reality many adults face. That is the source of the humor, which is maybe 40% hit and 60% miss, and often a bit tired, but we can instantly relate to it. Sticking somebody’s toothbrush up your asshole? Yawn. Sticking a Horrible Boss’s toothbrush up your asshole? I won’t remember it a week from now, but it did make me smile.

So the obvious fantasy is to just kill the fuckers. One thing the film pulls off well, is being blunt about the fact that these bosses deserve death, without seeming overly bitter or consciously edgy. Jason Sudeikus argues simply that his boss explicitly decided to expose thousands of people to carcinogens in order to save money to buy more cocaine for himself. If someone like that doesn’t deserve a bullet, then who does? The problem is that, while there thousands of people out there who really do deserve to be killed, it doesn’t mitigate the moral stain of murder. There was a good Atlantic article about The Rise of The New Global Elite and it quotes this guy, for example:

I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. innernet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”

In his mind, the normalization of greed bordering on theft has established a new standard of virtue with himself near the top, because he takes a lot thanks to “the market,” which consists of his peers voting on how much to pay each other under the watch of two “business friendly” political parties that they fund. Maybe he’s unpretentious. Maybe he’s even kind to the people in his life, who he believes deserve more while everyone else gets less. I really hope somebody murders him. I’m not joking. If I find out that someone does murder him, I will find the murderer immoral and wrong, but I will be happy. I might send the killer a box of kit kats in prison, but he’d deserve to be in prison. It’s this moral thicket that the film navigates successfully, allowing us to live out exactly such a scenario. And with this background, we can more easily enjoy something in the foreground like the first big movie role for Charlie Day. I figured he’d be the one from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to make the leap to the big screen, and he certainly holds his own. Nothing spectacular, but he has a few signature moments. “You’re a rape-er!”

Horrible Bosses is pretty predictable, so I don’t mind telling you that our protagonists find themselves unwilling to pull the trigger. That is what differentiates them from their Horrible Bosses, which I suppose is a pretty easy calculation for the filmmakers to make. But the less obvious move is that, when the bosses meet with serious misfortune, there is never the slightest suggestion that we should feel any sympathy for them. No babble about how they are recycling abuse that had been dealt to them in the past. They are villains who get what’s coming to them, unlike their real life counterparts. For thinking adults, that’s a more satisfying escapist fantasy than talking gorillas, special powers granted by electrocution or magical remote controls. And I think that’s the other side of the “R” comedy. While the humor itself is broad, sometimes in a good way, the subject matter seems to be moving towards real grown up stuff. Like sticking your boss’s toothbrush up your asshole.

It’s mostly re-tweets of Deepak Chopra. 

But such derision would be misplaced! Bridesmaids is a funny, if disposable movie. Clearly in the top quarter of the Apatow influenced/produced/molested by films I’ve seen and better than the first half of Hot Tub Time Machine. Moreover, it’s the antithesis of the nefarious “Sex And The City” franchise. In addition to the blond, the film is full of the rarest birds of all: funny ones.

That got me thinking as to how all of this was possible. I’m not one of these people who is just willing to join in pretending that Tina Fey or Sarah Silverman is very funny merely for the sake of being fair and balanced. So, why did these women have me laughing out loud? Obviously, women are less funny than men in general. But was it really the case that half a dozen inherently funny women, including the writer, were somehow found for this one film, while maybe a full dozen were found for every other film released this year? I think the reason these ladies suddenly became so funny is that they so freely surrendered their dignity.

One of the many things that makes “Sex and The City” so excruciatingly unfunny, and so appealing to women, I guess, is that it presents a delusional vision of what women are. Sexually care free, emotionally clean, independent, able to have babies at sixty-four and for that to be a responsible decision, particularly when single. But the vast majority of comedy is born out of the real humiliation of who we are, not fantastical projections of better selves. Ralph Kramden was funny because he thought he was an undiscovered business wizard, but was actually a massive pigeon. Homer is funny because he is every foible a man can have, crammed into one man. Laurel and Hardy, Dumb And Dumber, etc. are funny because when you put the two stupidest people on earth together, one of them will regard himself as “the smart one.”

Biology and society conspire to put women in a state of humiliation. They’re supposed to be sleek and clean, so they keep their bodily functions hidden. They want to be independent, but they exist primarily through relationships and that creates a neediness. It seems like we should all be able to have a good laugh at their inescapable plight, but it never seems to work out that way. I think there’s a some sort of sociobiomarketing barrier to realizing this vein of comedy. Women thrive on being idealised, well past the point at which everybody involved knows that lies are afoot. The other reason “The Simpsons” is so good is that it contains every truth of our existence. Observe:

In this case, just imagine that Homer is some sort of media/advertising executive and that, instead of mowing the lawn, he is imagining Marge buying diet microwave dinners and clothes she will never wear. Also, I think there’s an ad for Super 8 glued in there, so I feel like I have a moral obligation to express my opinion that Super 8 looks horrible.

I also thought of this while NPR was telling me about how all the famous female politicians predictably came out against Congressmen Weiner for cheating on his wife. Like, as women, it is their duty to go out of their ways to publicly endorse the pretense that powerful, rich, famous men don’t step out on their wives somewhere between 100% and 100% of the time. Men and women are the same and they should be equally prone to monogamy in all cases, because that’s how women wish things were. Or maybe that’s how they wish they wished things were. And that’s why the pantsuited, female politician is the least funny kind of person there is. Even clergy occasionally get laughs, though they are graded on a curve… A Laffer curve! But it’s impossible to laugh with Pelosi or Bachmann. We can only laugh at them, either directly, or as portrayed by Amy Poeller, another female comic who isn’t afraid to play a boob.

So, if it isn’t obvious, my explanation for most romantic comedies and other crap geared towards women is that marketers figured out that ladies like to be flattered. Even in more broadly marketed stuff, like a typical sitcom, we have come to expect that the female characters will be the smart and reasonable ones. They’re usually better looking than their spouses/neighbors/siblings as well, which is partially so male viewers can ogle them, but not entirely. And this is the story most people tell in their personal lives too. “Oh honey, you’re too good for me.” The only exception is, of course, when that narrative actually obtains. The ugly loser dating the hot girl is the only one telling his woman that she’s a piece of shit whom he might dump at any second. Always, anything but the truth.

In fairness I should add that there’s more social preasure on women to maintain a certain level of propriety at all times. It takes a lot of balls for an actress to participate in a joke about having cum in her hair, and even then it has to be because of some kind of hair gel mix up, not because some guy ejaculated on her. So I guess in bizzaro world, Ericha is writing a review similar to this one, but it’s about the normalization of porn and the desanctification of Gaia. Why can’t there just be a comedy about a woman who has four abortions, then has octuplets and wins the Nobel prize for football? But Ericha probably just on the rag again, so ignore her.

So apart from the two obvious reasons–men being smarter and men having to work harder to impress mates–I think that’s why women have historically sucked at comedy. Comedy is mostly about tearing someone down and women like being built up. Understanding this aspecect of femininity–the need be agrandized to absurd extremes, makes for a lot of the comedy in the film, as the fatuous edifices constructed around the greatest triumph of womanhood are a key subject of ridicule. In other words, this is a womans movie that candidly takes on the stupidity of wedding ceremonies. But it doesn’t ruin the occasion for the characters or viewers. If someone like, say me, had the chance to go after weddings, it would be an unending and quickly boring spree of malice. But the key to success here is understanding and articulating why something you love is idiotic without pulling any punches, but still loving it. Movies like Army of Darkness, Hot Fuzz and The Naked Gun come to mind. So I feel like Bridesmaids is more like Hot Fuzz for women than The Hangover for women.

Further observations:

- The profits will inspire, but the imitators won’t get it. Over the next two years, expect to see ten movies that are just like every Kate Hudson movie, but with diarrhea.

- While I can’t take anything away from particular actors, when I see secondary roles going to the same “Reno 911,” UCB and “The Office” actors over and over, I feel frustrated on behalf of the unknown comedic actors who might have landed the part in a fair competition, but were defeated by networking. It’s like how I feel for some faceless black actor who will have to give up after another good part goes to a rapper. However, I was kind of stoked to see the guy from “The IT Crowd.” It’s an English show. You’ve probably never heard of it.

- Also, I watched some of Kick-Ass. I skipped to about the 85 minute mark and just started from there. I think I was able to piece together what was going on pretty well. Except, why was everybody wearing costumes and attacking criminals? I found it pretty entertaining and almost watched to the end.

Do these stills look like they come from a documentary, or a bad commercial?

Here’s a red flag for you. I became aware of Waiting For Superman because I saw episodes of Oprah and Larry King  about the film when those programs floated up at work. I saw Oprah first and, without audio, it was just this machine processing deep-fried Faberge eggs into tears in a way that seemed to eventually benefit a disadvantaged little girl who had been flown in for the occasion, so I thought that it must be OK. I didn’t completely realize how fortunate I was that the sound was off until I caught the lies and stupidity at full volume, tugging the standards of Larry King Live even further beneath the earth’s crust, which, by the way, is where they found that Piers Morgan guy. It was one of the most disturbing discussions I’ve seen on cable news, and I’ve never seen one that wasn’t at least troubling.

The main panel consisted of Ben Stein, Michelle Rhee, one of the films “stars,” and a reform-minded D.C. Superintendent, singer John Legend and Steve Perry, not the singer, but a “straight talker” who contributes to CNN on the subject of education. Really, they put this on TV. The latter three were there to argue that the plight of the struggling underclass in the United States is due to the greatest device for human cruelty ever conceived: a free public education. Largely to blame were the teachers. I swear to God, Ben Stein found himself in the position of having to defend public education and teachers. Ben Stein. I swear to God. Ben Stein. Ben Stein. I had to dredge up the transcript because I knew you would be skeptical, no matter how many times I said it.

One thing I noticed from this discussion endlessly is we blame the teachers, blame the teachers, blame the teachers, and I’m sure many of them deserve blame, but we don’t ever say, why don’t the kids wake up and smell the coffee and say, look, it’s up to us to do some work?

- Ben Stein

Meanwhile, Perry the lesser, Rhee and Legend presented a reductio ad absurdum of thoughtless pseudo- leftism. As we already know, the poor, especially if they are not white, never have culpability for anything. How did so many of the parents at poorly performing schools get kids they can’t support, for example? Whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it. If some urban schools are graduating less than 50% of their kids, it is entirely the fault of schools and teachers because, obviously, it is a total coincidence that those families happen to be living in a ghetto and that the parents could easily be mistaken for the students’ older siblings. Certainly, cultural or personal shortcomings played no role in creating the situation. If certain classes of poor people are always completely blameless, the only option is the left’s version of blaming the victim, which is blaming the helper. The mechanisms that might help one out of poverty are the reason for poverty. A free education from college trained professionals is the reason for poor education.

Perry made one argument on King that evidenced a special kind of stupidity, even for a mass media chatter-clown. It’s hinted at in the film when a vacuous, wealthy, white mom is unable able to help her daughter with chemistry homework, even after investing almost ten seconds of effort and almost being late for a spa treatment.

Parents have an important role. But the parents are often blamed for that which the school is responsible for.

I have a son. I have two sons and they play the piano. And I don’t know how to play the piano. If my piano teacher ever came to our home and said, you know what, if you were a better pianist, your sons would be better piano — players, I’d fire him so quick he’d forget he ever taught my sons to play.

I paid that man to do this. We are asking parents who in some cases haven’t taken chemistry either in 12, 15, 20 years or if ever, to help a child with chemistry homework.

–Steve Perry The Lesser

So it is unfair of schools to demand that education begin at home, because parents often lack knowledge of the subjects at hand. If you hired a private piano teacher, you wouldn’t expect that they ask you to teach the piano to your kids, right? Well, in reality, they probably would ask you to oversee practice sessions, but never mind reality. Reality has nothing to do with this film and the views it advocates. It’s so much easier to point out that most of us don’t know high school chemistry. So how could parents possibly have a role in educating their children? It is the ever appealing political philosophy of Homer Simpson: Can’t someone else do it?

Anybody who has spent time around public schools should smell the bullshit from miles out. I was a sub in The Los Angeles Unified School District for a couple years, which is long enough to ascertain that the chief obstacle to learning in the home for most students is not the fact that their parents lack a working knowledge of chemistry.

One of the most difficult schools I worked at had 45% of students in foster care. That isn’t the kids’ fault, of course, but it isn’t the fault of the teachers either. In schools like this, it is not uncommon to send a student to the dean or vice principal and have them sent back minutes later because the disciplinary load is so overwhelming that there is physically no room for them. This doesn’t happen because the guardians or parents don’t know chemistry. It’s because they don’t care if their kids get into fights, never mind learn to read properly, never mind do any homework at all, never mind learn chemistry. I know a full time teacher at a LAUSD school that is relatively lower-middle class. Students there often complain of being hungry in class. The school had to implement a “second chance,” free breakfast. Yes, there is a free breakfast in the morning. But it turns out that many of the parents in the area, on top of supposedly being unable to afford generic cereal, bread, beans and rice or eggs, also can’t be bothered to get their kids to school on time to eat for free. This was, of course, determined to be the school’s fault, so it was up to the school to adjust by adding a disruptive “second chance,” free breakfast to the schedule. But realistically, what do you expect a teacher to do with a kid whose parents cannot be bothered to feed their children, even when someone else is paying? Of course, many of these kids have overextended young single mothers, and one might question whether having kids you couldn’t afford to feed was such a great choice, or, since the historically disadvantaged cannot be held responsible for anything, maybe even blame the lack of access to family planning and birth control in certain neighborhoods instead of blaming the teachers, but that would only serve as a distraction from the indisputable fact that a wizard did it.

Here’s the most extreme case I encountered. None of this is exaggerated. I turned a student over to security because he punched another student. He wasn’t horsing around, it was a real, malicious punch in the face. I told the security guy what happened and that I didn’t want to see the kid for the rest of the day. He was back at the door less than five minutes later. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to touch him, so I just played offensive lineman and physically blocked him from walking through the door as he shoved me and threatened to kill me (he was only fourteen, and I am tall and a big fatso, so this was merely annoying) until I was able to flag down another staff member. She got the same security guy and I tried not to yell as I explained again what I meant when I said the student had punched another kid in the face and that there was no circumstance in which he and I would be in the same classroom for the rest of the day. I later learned that the boy’s single father ignored all reports of problems at school. It’s about as hard to expel a kid as it is to fire a tenured teacher. Therefore, the disciplinary apparatus of the school was pretty much helpless until he seriously hurt someone. Thanks to Waiting For Superman, I now realize this was all my fault. The reason this kid thought it was OK to go around punching people is that I expected his parents to teach him advanced chemistry. Maybe a little piano.

The point of the anecdotes is that, while the film blames educators and schools, we’re never given an even vaguely realistic picture of what they face. It’s like watching the CNN coverage of the first Gulf War and wondering why veterans have problems. Didn’t they just push buttons and make those cool smart bomb videos? It was just a big video game, right? In Superman, we meet about half a dozen great kids with active parents. That is 100% of the depiction of the students and parents in poorly performing schools. So teaching in poor, urban areas means dealing with bright, eager students and parents who can’t do enough to help, right?

What about the student who punches kids in the face, but can’t be expelled and doesn’t care if he’s suspended? What are teachers to do when they threaten to call home and a student can truthfully say, “they don’t care.” And yes, I’ve actually heard that exchange more than once. What about kids who are not only sent to school hungry, but arrive too late for the free food? Do you think that they received adequate stimulation in early childhood? Do you think that they received proper nutrition in the womb and early childhood? Do you think their mothers abstained from smoking, drinking and drugs during pregnancy? Do you think kids subjected to that kind of development resemble the kids highlighted in this film? Where were the gang bangers? Where were the parents who are gang bangers? The parents who despise learning? The neglectful foster parents, or overwhelmed grandparents? When dealing with parents who do not value education, don’t make their kids do homework and who don’t respect authority themselves, the teachers are supposed to wave a magic wand and fix it all, but the film never presents any of the actual problems teachers face and it certainly never explains how magic wands work. It just asserts that a free education is not an opportunity of which you take advantage. Rather, it’s an entitlement that should be bestowed upon you, with no effort on your part, even if you actively resist it.

The truth is that teachers aren’t really supposed to deal with many of these issues, but they do anyway. At least in LAUSD, teachers are not theoretically in charge of serious discipline. But in reality, if the student hasn’t committed a felony, the dean is too busy and the everyday teachers, as opposed to subs like me, are expected to call home and talk to parents (or whoever) about behavioral problems. This is not part of their job description, but they do it anyway. It’s quite common that the parent’s reaction will be one of anger towards the teacher. So, put yourself in that position. You teach a class of 30 that is disrupted by a few students. You send them to the dean and they are sent back. You go beyond the call of duty and call the parents (or whoever) to discuss the problem and they say, “why the fuck you calling me about this bullshit?” And here comes some mongoloid with a camera to tell you that it’s all your fault.

The film? I’m not sure what there is to review. The technique is average, if unoriginal. I think the trick of using outdated educational films as a humorous way to make your point is outdated. Though the film is not nearly as thoughtful as Football In The Groin, it leans heavily on “Simpsons” clips. It has original animation and I guess if there was any substance, it would go down smoother than an episode of “Bill Nye The Science Guy.” Instead, the lies and distortions come so fast and thick, I’m not sure how to categorize the film, since, it strains the definition of the word, “documentary.” I can’t believe that intelligent people of any political persuasion found it possible to overlook the direct contradictions, even in the film’s narration. Within the space of a few minutes, the narrator explains that public school funding per student has doubled in recent decades. Then he says the No Child Left Behind Act seemingly signaled the end of “years of empty lip service.” Obviously, he never really thought that No Child Left Behind was the solution. He is just pretending that he thought so, in order to create a narrative in which he is continually disappointed by our efforts at improving education. He never explains how doubling funding to education is “empty lip service.” I think it is possible that he does not know the meaning of that phrase. Mendacity or stupidity: who cares which?

I’m not a parent, and yet I’ve felt like one ever since I started making Waiting for “Superman.” Until now, I don’t think I’ve read sixteen books on any single subject ever…

– Lesley Chilcott, producer of Waiting For Superman blogging for CNN

In the same span, the narrator decries our level test scores in reading and math. On its face, it’s another piece of political thinking from a Simpsons character. Presumably, he believes test scores should always be on the rise because… I don’t know. Are people getting smarter every year? As always when discussing test scores, the fact that white and Asian American students test well compared to students in all other countries, and that our averages are dragged down almost entirely by the scores of black and Hispanic students (as I learned from the noted arch-conservative site Salon.com), is tiptoed around as testing data are chopped and sliced to disguise that truth without mentioning it. For example,the film points out that our top 5% of test results is worse than the top 5% of students in most other rich countries. It’s a way for the film to deflect us from the actual test results of various ethnic groups without dirtying itself by ever mentioning the facts. We are left to assume that our top 5% excludes poor, urban students. So then it must be a direct comparison of our top white and Asian students against the top students in countries that are almost all white or Asian. This leads to the argument that even schools in affluent areas are failing. This is when we meet the affluent housewife who “can’t” help her daughter with chemistry.

Well, why not just skip all of that and present the top scores of white and Asian students? Let’s think it through. Countries like Finland and Japan have more homogeneous populations. We have large black and Hispanic populations and it is among these large groups that we see a dramatic fall off  of test scores. So, while our top 5% will be predominantly white and Asian, it is still the result for the top 5% of the overall pool of students, so the scores are still diluted. The top 5% of just our white and Asian students would certainly test much closer to the top 5% of whites or Asians in predominantly white/Asian countries. I base this, again, on the fact that American whites and Asians, overall, test well compared to their counterparts abroad. If you still have trouble seeing this, imagine that you measured the test scores of the top 5% of Japanese students. Then, you injected a few million economic refugees from Mexico, and their children, into the Japanese system. Then you did a second study that measured the top 5% of the new pool, including the new students. Clearly the second set of test results would be lower, but the actual students included in the first top 5% would be just as smart and educated as they were before. If you consider that, you might wonder if level math and reading scores here in the US with the influx of millions of illegal immigrants and children of illegal immigrants into the system might actually be a pretty respectable result.

Regardless of what you do with the disparate results among American students, if you pretend the gap between racial groups isn’t there, you are not discussing reality. Or in the case of the film, you are trying to hide reality. Are the disparate test results due to white racism? Are they because whites (and Asians) are the master race? Is it the will of Xenu? I don’t propose to solve the problem here, but that is the problem. Education isn’t failing. The education of specific minorities, particularly poor members of those minorities is failing horribly. It is a very real problem. Too bad nobody is interested in discussing it.

Since much of the film is an attempt to misrepresent the problem it is ostensibly discussing, it doesn’t have any value. It’s like a movie about homelessness that treats the occasional instance of mental illness among the homeless as a coincidence. “Why are so many of these homeless people mentally ill?” you might wonder. The film would never address it, but it would include some mentally healthy homeless as subjects and play statistical shell games to conceal the rate of mental illness among the homeless. Well, what would be the point of that? How would it be in anyway helpful in addressing the problem? There would be no legitimate point and the film would be detrimental to the discussion of homelessness.

The hook of Superman is the lottery system by which some students get into exceptional, innovative, and demanding public schools. Mysteriously absent from the film are the parents who sell drugs out of their homes. None yell profanities at teachers who use their free time to call home about discipline. In the world of this film, Hispanic immigrants value higher education above all else, especially for their daughters. These handpicked parents are devoted to their kids’ educations and the absurd reverence this inspires in the filmmakers is condescending and embarrassing. The film kind of shoots itself in the foot here because the unintentional indication is that the norm is something less. Otherwise, why get so misty-eyed about the fact that these parents and students want a good education? One mom says that she will work multiple jobs to see that her daughter has the chance to go to college. Great. That’s called being a reasonably decent parent. But good for her. I can’t say I’d be so committed myself, which is one reason I don’t have kids (also, the wizard never gave me any, thank goodness!). Another mom in the film begs a lazy teacher for a conference. My friend teaches in a mostly minority community, though a more solidly working class one than those in the film. Most of those parents don’t turn up for parent teacher night, never mind PTA meetings. The turnout shrinks every year. I believe the scene in the film happened. I believe that there was one interested parent who could not arrange a conference with one lazy teacher. I also know that parent/teacher night turnouts can be well under 20%. So,which scenario do you think happens more often? By a factor of what? Go ahead and take a guess, because you won’t learn the answer from the film.

Another mom talks about how if the filmmakers were to visit her daughter’s school, they’d be unable to get past the security desk. We’re meant to stroke our chins and go, “wow man. Wow.” But, wait a sec. Particularly if your kid went to school in Harlem, would you want adults to roam in and out of the school at will? Even if your kid went to school in Beverly Hills, would you want the school to allow people to come in off the street and film them? When I was a sub I heard about a recent fight on campus. Two girls had gotten into it and when their moms showed up to take them home, they got into it. The mom fight started with extensions being pulled out and tossed to the ground and culminated with attempted murder by SUV in that parking lot. I know what I was thinking when I heard that story. “This school should really cut back on security.” Also, “well, the obvious problem here is the teachers.”

The pain continues. Who would have guessed that a nation of 300 million people would have complicated school funding and bureaucracy? The film drops facts like, “there are more than 14,000 autonomous school boards.” Yeah… that sounds about right. It uses such “grass is green” observations as “evidence” that the system is broken and that failure becomes unaccountable. Do problems exist? Everyone knows they do to some degree. How is that related to the fact that there are 14,000 school districts? I don’t know. I guess bigger things are harder to manage, but I was already pretty sure that the United States was a large country before the film explained it. Would more charter schools and weaker unions change that? I’m really not sure why this information is in the film. I guess it just makes schools look bad.

Look how terrible this gets. Here is a direct quote from the film.

TAKEN TOGETHER, the TWO biggest teachers unions, the NEA and the AFT are the largest campaign contributors in the country. Over the last 20 years, they’ve given over $55 million to federal candidates and their parties. More than the teamsters, the NRA or any other INDIVIDUAL organization.

Even if you are deluded enough to believe that trade unions bend Washington to the nefarious whims of the working man while corporate interests look on in envy, all you really need to look at here are the phrases “taken together, the two..” and “any other individual organization.” I don’t know how to characterize such a brazen manipulation. Is it even propaganda? If I were to sincerely  argue to you that Los Angeles is superior to New York because, taken together, two Angelinos have twice the IQ of the average New Yorker, taken individually, I sincerely hope that you would murder me on the spot.

Moreover, if you pay attention to these things even a little bit, $55 million in campaign contributions over 20 years probably doesn’t seem like all that much to you. There’s a good explanation for that: it isn’t all that much. Since 1999, the financial sector, for example, has contributed $1.8 billion to federal campaigns and spent about twice that on lobbying. But we are to believe that the real muscle lies with $55 million contributed over twice that amount of time by teachers unions. The extent of misinformation and manipulation here renders the film useless, regardless of your views. It might as well be set in the world of Starship Troopers. It’s the bugs who are undermining education!

Similarly, the film’s discussion of charter schools just has nothing to do with earth, where there is a reasonable debate to be had on the subject. The film presents the top charter schools as models for success. It completely ignores the top traditional schools. It completely ignores the vast majority of charter schools, which don’t perform better than traditional schools. Amazingly enough, it provides no overview of charter school vs. traditional school performance. Not only that, it conceals the extent to which the top public charters depend on heavy private subsidies. We do learn that one school asks parents to contribute $500 a month and the fact that people like Bill Gates contribute to these schools is established, largely for the purpose of squeezing Gates into the film. But to watch the film, you’d never guess that the justly celebrated Harlem Children’s Zone receives two-thirds of its funding from private sources. So they have triple the money to work with. That’s got to come in handy. Do you think there’s a small sampling bias when the top charters have students and parents who are deeply motivated to do well as evidenced by them bothering to enter these lotteries in the first place? Do the charter schools have a big advantage in being able to simply kick out any problem students, whereas their traditional counterparts just have to deal with them? Go ahead and guess again, because the film won’t address these questions either.

I was prepared to grapple with the film’s anti-union stance, but there is almost no substance to take on. There’s nothing here but a horrible movie that will leave you less informed than before you watched it. Cheap shots, emotional condescension, manipulated statistics, fallacies and other bad reasoning, almost non-stop. A lot of narrative techniques are clumsily lifted from Michael Moore, but we’re not meant to take it as a polemic or a satire. Waiting for Superman is meant to be taken seriously, but it can’t be, any more than a Michael Savage book or a teenage anarchist’s fanzine. At its best, it is completely obvious. Wouldn’t we prefer to spend prison money on education? Yes! That’s one of the oldest sales tricks in the book, by the way. Get them agreeing with you off the bat, then slip in your dubious wares. Don’t you hate child molesters? Yes! Do you like cake? Yes! Do you want to buy a dishwasher? Yes, yes, yes! Er… wait a sec.

Do I hope the profiled kids do well in life? Yes. Are there very badly run schools? I know it all too well. Are there terrible, stupid and lazy teachers. Yes (even in wealthy white suburbs). Wouldn’t it be great if every school was like the most outstanding schools and every teacher was a cross between John Wooden and Richard Feynman? Yes! Aren’t bad students entirely the fault of educators? Yes! Er… wait a sec.

Amidst the “don’t you like cake?” questions, here are some questions that the film completely disregards during its two hours, some of which I’m reiterating. Given that their degrees and work experience don’t translate well to other fields, if teachers lose their high job security, what will happen to the pool of applicants? If top charter schools are so rare and difficult to get into, what does that mean in terms of the quality of students and parents they deal with, in contrast to a traditional public school that must take everyone? What disciplinary options, expulsion in particular, are more readily available in charter schools? What general measures are charters allowed to take with their students that parents in a regular school would never allow? What are educators to do with problem students who have indifferent guardians or parents? How much of the difficulty faced by the bright and eager students, or even merely average students, is due to the fact that they have to share a classroom with so many students who are not there to learn? What effect does it have on the motivations of an average kid when the standards for passing are lowered to accommodate students who will barely learn to read, no matter what anybody does with them? How much of their superior resources do these top charter schools expend on autistic, retarded, physically handicapped, psychologically disturbed and/or non-English speaking children?

The film does find several minutes to draw a tremendously strained comparison between the achievement of succeeding with disadvantaged kids and Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier. They are similar, you see, because in both cases some experts said it couldn’t be done. That just goes to show you what so-called experts know, amiright?! One time a mean bully told me I would never be able to have a threesome with Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman, but Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier so I’m gonna go pick up some condoms and lube right now. When the graph of test scores was overlaid with a jet, Waiting For Superman crossed a barrier as well. It clearly became one of the five worst films I’ve ever seen. It might be saved from the very bottom slot by the fact that the drama of the drawings to get into the top schools is powerful, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the filmmakers paid someone off to make sure that that the cutest kid was rejected. Even Oprah should be embarrassed.

We’ve all been had. Spotted as marks and taken advantage of. The salesman saw you a mile away. A woman led you on to make her boyfriend jealous. Your employer promised a raise if you did A, B and C and the moment you completed C, there was a “change in company policy.” It stings because someone harmed you, but it will gnaw at you endlessly because you facilitated it. Hell, you were an active participant and often an enthusiastic one, grinning idiotically as you were picked clean. More often than not, rather than face the humiliation we just live in denial. “Yeah, the bigger engine costs more and uses more gas and I don’t really have any use for it, but I think it was a good value.” We’ve all been there more often than we care to admit, even to ourselves. Especially if we are Dodger fans.

For decades now, the Dodgers have intentionally offered a mediocre product and charged a premium price. That is simply how they do business and with a foolish enough customer base, it’s effective. The Dodger’s fan cost index is $100 more than the Angels, but The Angels have a higher payroll. When they got Vlad we got Furcal. When they had a team that were unlucky to win only one World Series, we were fortunate to win a couple of first round series. The Dodgers see their fans as suckers who will turn up, grinning idiotically because there is a beautiful stadium, a proud tradition, many transplant fans of the opposition and many other fans who just see “A Dodger Game” as a generic outing. The McCourts, as we’ve learned in court documents, bought the team specifically because they saw the opportunity in this. If the Dodger fans will pay for anything, why not cut back team salary even more than usual, up the cost of everything else and really rip off the fans? Lord knows they’ll happily bite the pillow and take it.

It’s as if there was a make of car that was favored by a few million consumers who would buy it no matter what. Let’s call it the Dodgermobile. It breaks down and never gets you where you want to be? You buy another one. It’s slow and powerless, but only takes premium and gets 10 MPG? You buy another one. It’s boring to look at and drive? It’s uncomfortable? You buy another one. And the Dodgermobile is an $80,000 car. Who wouldn’t want to own a dealership?

BBQ at Camden Yards

Look at something as simple as the food. I remember Camden Yards in Baltimore opening nearly 20 years ago. One of the things people loved about it was that it served delicious Barbecue instead of the cheapest crap imaginable. Teams across the country quickly followed suit, offering patrons quality food to enhance fan experience. Yes, the food was overpriced, but at least it was good and often unique to the stadium. Even many minor league teams have jumped on this trend and found it profitable and rewarding for the fans.

Various Stuff At Citi Field

The Dodger’s did come up with an innovation in the spirit of the Dodgermobile. They would let Pizza Hut and Carl’s Junior into the stadium, where they would sell their product for about triple price. What a unique, Dodger fan experience! Of course, the food is not exactly the same stuff you could buy anywhere in LA. An actual Carl’s or Pizza Hut makes food specific to your order, while at the stadium you chose from one of two or three pre-made options and they pull one out of the pile. Also, if the product at a fast food joint outside of the stadium sat drying out under a heat lamp for as long as the food at the stadium, they would throw it out and make something fresher. Even at the normal prices, if a Carl’s or Pizza Hut outside the stadium sold this product, it would go out of business in a month. If it charged the stadium prices, it would be gone in a week. Possibly burned down. The operation can only be pulled off if your customers are sweet, gullible Dodgers fans.

Crap you can buy for a few cents each at Vons

What about Dodger Dogs? I used to believe there was something special about them. Again, I’ve been as big a sucker as anyone. But they’re just grocery store dogs, marked up through the roof. We learned that when Farmer John started, well, selling them in grocery stores. I worked in a small movie theater as a kid and we did the exact same thing. We were adjacent to a Vons where we would send someone over to buy the cheapest hot dogs and buns that they carried. Then we’d pop them in the microwave and sell them for several times what we paid. People loved them. Some even asked where we gott them, so they might enjoy them at home.

Minute Maid Park's Fish Tacos

I can live with the traditional crappy popcorn, “malts” and peanuts. The grumpy old man in me kind of digs it. “We ate rock hard ice cream with a tongue depressor. And we liked it just fine. We loved it!” But it’s hilarious that the Dodgers successfully market the “all you can eat” pavilion as some kind of great value. The actual product costs them almost nothing. Joey Chestnut would have to smuggle Kobayashi into the stadium on a single ticket for them to eat $40 worth of that slop. The point is to extract a maximum amount of money from the fan, and it doesn’t matter that much if they sell you three grocery store hot dogs for the $20 or if they sell you four of them for the same price. Imagine you came across a sucker who really liked pennies and had a $100 dollar penny budget. Would you really care if he gave you the $100 for 20 pennies, or if he got to pay $100 to stick his hand in a jar and pull out as many pennies as he could hold? That’s the idea behind the all you can eat pavilion.

Stuffed Sandwiches at PNC Park

Yes, yes the Garlic Fries are OK. But they still aren’t fresh and it’s still just a marked up chain offering. They just seem great by comparison to the other stuff.

What really matters is the product on the field, right? Unfortunately, yes. I remember being in my car eight years ago and hearing some guy on the radio say the words, “Vladimir Gurerro is coming to Los Angeles!” I was shocked and elated. After years of frustration and boredom, the Dodgers had finally brought an MVP caliber player onto the team. I actually pumped my fist and made some retarded noise, sitting alone in the garage, which is pretty out of character for me. Seconds later, of course, it was clarified that “Los Angeles” meant “Anaheim.” It was just deflating. Like a dunce, I soldiered on through eight more years of second and third tier signings. Having to listen to people on that station claim that guys like Furcal and Ted Lilly are major additions for the Dodgers, while the MVP seasons and championships were enjoyed in New York, Boston, Philadelphia… man, it sure would have been fun to watch Vlad for that stretch. Instead I willfully chose to consume an inferior product and pay more money to do so.

Next time there is a major free agent, listen to the discussions of pundits. You’ll hear that the only major market team consistently omitted is the Dodgers. Carl Crawford was looking at the Yankees, Red Sox and Angels. If Pujols was to leave Saint Louis, pundits figured the Yankees and Red Sox would be uninterested, since they are set at first base. That left the Cubs and The Angels. But the Dodgers, who are weak at first base and who are the second biggest team in the sport? Not even worth mentioning. Not that I think big contracts for superstars are always good moves, but sometimes they are. And wouldn’t it be fun to see a future hall of famer play for your team? Is it too much to expect that it would happen once? There was Piazza, practically born a Dodger, but he’ll go in as a Met. Rest assured, if Kemp or any of the other young Dodgers pan out as hall of fame caliber, much of their primes will be spent somewhere else. Make a list of the most exciting young players in baseball. McCutchen, Votto, Santana, Heyward. That will also be a list of players who will never be Dodgers. Unless, perhaps, their career crashes or they limp into LA in their twighlights, like faded soccer stars playing in the MLS. In other words, if the value of their names can be marketed to dupes, even though the product is inferior, then they will be perfect Dodgers. But if they live up to their potential, contribute to championships and make a run at The Hall, they will come at full market price and play for organizations that give a shit if they win.

Manny? The Dodgers got him for free and were practically forced to bring him back when fans were shocked to discover that baseball can be entertaining. I’m sure they are delighted that it didn’t work out. They got a discount on his salary and can point to the bad contract for another ten years, like they did with Kevin Brown and Darryl Strawberry in the past. “Well, we tried signing a big free agent once, though it was with a guy past his prime. And it didn’t work out that one time, so that proves we shouldn’t ever do it.” But remember how fun Mannywood was, however briefly? Even though the rest of the talent wasn’t on par with what they have in New York, Boston or Philly,  and even though it was obviously the last hurrah of his career, it was exhilarating to have an elite hitter and a superstar smashing the ball all over the park. If you remain a Dodger fan, don’t expect to enjoy another experience like that in the foreseeable future. Again, if Kemp goes off like that, kiss him goodbye. If you think that maybe this time The Dodgers will do the right thing, I’d like to invite you over to my house. I have a jar of pennies and I’ll let you grab as many as you can for only $100.

The most recent shame is the beating of Bryan Stow by a couple of the Dodger’s many gang banging fans. The team has, of course, done nothing to resist its incorporation into gang culture. And forget the “what are they going to do, ban everyone with baggy pants?” straw man. Off the top of my head, they could 1)have knowledgeable, plain clothes security in the stands waiting for fans to “represent” gang affiliations. Do it once, banned for life. 2) Ban any fan who is turned over to the police 3)Aggressively and publicly support anti-gang projects in Los Angeles. If you don’t live here, you might be surprised to learn that fewer than half of Angelinos have gang tattoos on their necks, so yeah. If you present yourself as a gangster, be prepared to show ID to check against the banned list. And no racial profiling. If you show up in a fedora, carrying a violin case, you get checked too.

You might think that, after two similar attacks in recent years, both at games against The Giants, ownership would have taken steps to prevent this entirely predictable tragedy. People have been complaining about gangs in the stadium long before this culmination. It was already a common topic on talk radio. But addressing the problem would have cost money and Frank and Jamie have really been hankering for those ivory back scratchers. That’s why, in the face of an escalating gang problem in the stadium, rather than improving their already shabby security, the Dodgers started the season with no chief of security for the first time ever. Yep, they made a conscious decision to save money at the expense of fan safety by getting rid of their chief of security and not replacing him. A penny saved is a penny earned, and Brian Stow will die, or be a shadow of himself. Either way, his family will be crippled forever. If that’s something you want to actively support with your dollar, I’m glad you’re getting such a shitty product in return.

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Probably, no level of security could have prevented the blindside attack if the perpetrators were determined. Though if a couple of security guards had been within view, maybe the attackers would have withdrawn. Nobody knows. There’s really no excuse for them getting away though. It’s a fucking parking lot. An open, concrete area with only a few exits. It’s difficult to imagine a more easily monitored and policed area. The structure is about the same as that of a prison yard.

There will be more security at the games now, courtesy of the LAPD. They’ll be working over time. Tax dollars will pay for it, if not immediately, after the story dies down. The McCourts can’t be bothered or trusted to offer suffecient security for the patrons they gouge, as LAPD Chief Batch strongly implied, saying “We try to let venues take care of their own security. If they can’t, I step in. I’m going to do what it takes.”

Obviously, ownership’s negligence is not equivalent to the malice of the criminals.  But most media are letting them off the hook far too easily. They chose gamble on fan safety to save a relatively small amount of money. ‘Gamble’ isn’t quite the right word, because they “lost” and the reward money they put up is still far less than they saved pinching pennies. And as a result, they now get to dip into your paycheck to cover their business expenses. So neglecting security while knowing that the stadium was becoming more dangerous was more of a win/win proposition than a gamble, but it was a calculated decision and it’s already paying off. But I’m sure the next owners turn down free security, paid for with tax money.

The Dodgers response to the beating has been an embarrassment to everyone remotely associated with the team. Some guy who hates baseball and accidentally turned into the stadium parking lot during the off season in 1987 is ashamed to be so closely associated with the Dodgers. They finally squeezed out a few grand for the reward money on the case after several other parties had contributed, including LAs taxpayers, again, through the city council. They’ve done nothing to reach out to the family. Remember when they dedicated .00001%of hot dog sales to set up a college fund for Stow’s kids? That’s because it didn’t happen and it won’t happen. Even if Frank and Jamie were actual psychopaths, you’d think that they would understand the necessity of such a gesture from a PR perspective. At the moment, the PR staff must be grappling with the decision. So much time has passed, do we look worse helping out now and keeping the story in the news, or should we just sit tight and hope people forget about it sooner?

I mean, imagine you were a bar owner and someone was beaten into a coma in your parking lot. It might not be your fault, but how would you feel? What would you do to help? Now, imagine the attack happened after you cut back on security. How would you feel then? Now imagine you were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, what would you do to help? When you answer those questions, it’s difficult to escape feeling disgust for Dodgers ownership. After years of frustration and annoyance, finally pure disgust. Are you in the habbit of voluntarily giving money to people you find repugnant? That is what it means to be a Dodger fan.

Other than crying in my e-beer at dodgerblues.com, the only consistently great part of being a Dodgers fan has been Vin Scully.  He could soothingly describe a nuclear Holocaust and make the listener feel warm and comfortable. “And there they go… it looks like missiles have been launched all the way from Russia. They should arrive in only a few minutes, if you can believe that. Of course, our ICBMs should be the first missiles to hit their targets, exterminating all human life for miles around. Funny story about the ICBM…” It wouldn’t be his fault though. In fact, if nuclear war comes, that would be the ideal way to experience it. Vin is the link between fans and the teams of our childhoods, and the intermediary between the current team and its fans. Once he steps down, which should happen after this year, the last vestiges of any nostalgia we feel for the Dodgers can finally be put aside. What remains–a cynical business scheme based on the belief that Dodger fans are an enless well of credulity and a veneer that’s become an embarrassing symbol for gang affiliation–should be discarded by fans of baseball. If you are a baseball fan, there’s nothing there for you. If you want to gang bang and still think the Dodgermobile and the penny jar sound pretty appealing, have a blast.

Otherwise, pick another team. I don’t care which one. A scrappy, small market team that tries to compete with the big boys on a tight budget. Like Oakland. Then you can still hate the Giants. Maybe you’re sick of discussing guys like Orlando Hudson and Andruw Jones as “big signings,” rather than role players. Get on board with The Mets, maybe. At least they try to put together good teams and you still get to watch guys like Wright and Reyes in down years. Plus, you can still hate the Yankees. Save yourself years of being taken for a fool, watching boring baseball and dropping twenties to eat pig shit . Stop acting like one of the biggest sports teams in the world winning the occasional first round playoff series is something to be proud of.

Watch some games in other stadiums this year. Even if you are gullible enough to remain a Dodgers fan, make a special point to take a day trip to see them down in San Diego, where the fan experience is vastly superior, and to see at least one less game at Dodger Stadium. You’ll have a better day and you can think of it as a hit of a few hundred bucks to the Dodgers for cutting back on security and putting your life at risk. It’s not like they’d have used the money to sign Prince Fielder or something. Not to mention the fact that the Padres are one of the cheapest teams in the fan cost index, while the Dodgers are one of the expensive. You’ll save enough to cover your gas and pay for a very nice dinner or a substantial bar tab in San Diego, instead of giving the money to Frank and Jamie or whichever sleazy opportunist follow them in marketing the Dodgermibile.

If you do it once, you’ll probably do it again. If you can make it to SF, catch the Dodgers play there, where the fan experience is also superior and, though expensive, still cheaper than The Dodgers. You can have a conversation about the Stow beating and how ashamed it made you. It’ll be a great opportunity to come up with another piece of perverted logic for not abandoning the Dodgers, who abandoned you so long ago.

I’m not sure who I’ll support after this year. Possibly The Tigers, as my family has roots in Detroit. They have their own problems, but at least they have Cabrerra and Verlander. It’s another team with a higher payroll than the Dodgers, in spite of being located in the third world.  More importantly, I’ll get to wear the same hat as Magnum. In any case, I do hope the Dodgers win it all this year. It will a great way to end my fandom. Plus, if they luck out with a mediocre team like they did in ‘88, I know that they’ll trade on that single, chance victory to justify screwing over the remaining fans for another 25 years and I’ll be somewhere else, laughing at the suckers.

It seems to be a common enough view that this race of pitiless automatons will come to dominate us all. But really, this baroque showcase is evidence of why China isn’t much of threat to become a global hegemon. Yes, the display was impressive, but that’s all it is. The Chinese probably raised everyone who participated in the opening ceremony from birth to complete a simple robot task for the purpose of impressing all of the other countries, then killed them and harvested their organs for military rations the minute the international circus left town. Why is that threatening? Why is that a model for success? It’s like a nerd trying to impress the cool girls by renting a massive limo and blowing a year’s babysitting money.

How would, say, England achieve the same effect? England is a superpower of the past, of course, but they’re still in with the cool crowd and get their fair share of the action. England is McConaughey in Dazed and Confused. And how would they wow the world if they put on such a ceremony? Not by reducing thousands of their citizens to parts in an amusing cuckoo clock that only works once. No need to try so hard. They’d trot out The Stones, Elton John, The Who (nobody would care that the good members are dead) Gary Glitter and Subhumans. And everybody would swoon. That China relies on elaborate contrivances to impress, rather than the natural byproducts of their culture, evidences the fact we don’t need to fear them. Every totalitarian society compels its people to participate in these ridiculous displays. They have no choice because they stifle the individualism and creativity that generates stuff that is actually worthwhile in itself.

Awe of China is rooted almost entirely in the fantasies of bean counters who look at the massive population and just assume that… ????= Profit!!! If China is ever even half as wealthy (per capita) as the U.S., imagine how many pairs of Dockers we would sell there! Billionaires will become multi-billionaires! China is the conduit for the continued growth of capitalism. Therefore China is, THE FUTURE!

But China’s always been enormous, repressive and had great resources and it’s never really been a first team all-pro on the world stage. And Western imperialism doesn’t explain why they’ve been eating Japanese and Korean dust for some time or why the enclaves of Chinese success in Hong Kong and Taiwan happened to occur in segregation from the mainland. Yes, the raw tools are there. But China is Shawn Kemp to Japan’s John Stockton and America’s Magic Johnson. And there’s no real reason to think that will ever change. Even if the big Western economies collapse, that will just mean the whole world turns into the D-League. A lengthy preamble, I know, but I think that is important to understand the baselessness of the robophobia it exploits, before taking a look Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal article, “I Am A Hideous Cunt.”

I’m not going to give this the full Hackwatch treatment because Chua obviously just makes a bunch of shit up and I don’t want to spend too much time commenting on material written to draw comment. Like, in the beginning of her article, she goes through the obligatory song and dance about how moms of any nationality can be “Chinese Moms,” so that she can pretend that she isn’t race bating when she says stuff like, “if a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion.”

But let’s run through the core points, because I do think Chua believes in her underlying message and the response to the piece is embarrassing either way. She does believe that it is acceptable to replace the pleasures of privileged childhood with a program for destroying individuality. She is consumed by impressing other people (perhaps one reason she’s willing to use dishonesty to add “bestselling author” to her CV). And… she is horrible. Let’s just dive in.

Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

Is all of this true? Well, when supporting the book on “The Colbert Report,” Chua clarified. Apparently, when she said “never” she meant “between the ages of nine and thirteen.” Maybe she went back to her original story for Fox News appearances. I don’t know. But I do think that she honestly favors this kind of deprivation and it’s clear that many readers are willing to fall in line with  such a program, or at least admire it from afar as an example of Chinese superiority, real or imagined (it’s imagined).

That leads me to my first Tarantino quote in about twelve years: “Are you such a loser that you can’t tell when you’ve won?” In other words, the fact that your kids can attend sleepovers and play video games as opposed to say, die of malaria or be raped by the soldiers of a local warlord, makes up a large portion of the spoils of victory. To struggle so that your children might one day be in a position to view Shrek with pure pleasure or stay up all night eating candy with their friends, only to gleefully deny them that and turn your home into a boot camp seems not only sadistic, but perhaps self-defeating. They could have practiced the violin for three hours a day if they’d been born in China.

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences.

I know Chua is basically trolling here, but I still think that this has to come from a pretty warped mind. Like, how does one dream up such a twisted notion of fun? Water slides can’t be fun unless you figure out some way of proving you are better at going down them than everybody else? What a great way to go through life.

Here’s an excerpt from her book, I’m An Even Bigger Cunt Than You Thought. It’s about rejecting her child’s birthday card because it wasn’t good enough.

I grabbed the card again and flipped it over. I pulled out a pen from my purse and scrawled ‘Happy Birthday Lulu Whoopee!’ I added a big sour face. “What if I gave you this for your birthday Lulu- would you like that? But I would never do that, Lulu. No — I get you magicians and giant slides that cost me hundreds of dollars. I get you huge ice cream cakes shaped like penguins, and I spend half my salary on stupid sticker and erase party favors that everyone just throws away. I work so hard to give you good birthdays! I deserve better than this. So I reject this.” I threw the card back.

Personally, I don’t mind rejecting the card if it really was half-assed. But the hysterical overreaction is telling. Chua simply cannot be faking the rudeness and imperiousness that drips from every word.  If I woke up in Bill Gates’ body tomorrow, my first order of business would be to be to pay her daughters $1 Billion each to star in a porno. It would be called Chua Chua Train and it would be filmed in a box car with a bunch of hobos.

As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.

Confucius say, follow the path of righteousness and you too can become an obnoxious asshole who takes pride in ruining dinner parties. I’m sure the story is grossly exaggerated, but we still get a clear picture of a woman who delights in imposing herself on others and can’t wait to flaunt her misdeeds to as many as possible. “Hey, guess what, guess what, guess what… I threatened to lock my child outside in the snow once because she didn’t want to practice the piano! Can you believe it? I totally did! Does that upset you? Does it, does it, does it?”

Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn’t get them, the Chinese parent assumes it’s because the child didn’t work hard enough. That’s why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)

…

Third, Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences. That’s why Chinese daughters can’t have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can’t go to sleepaway camp. It’s also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, “I got a part in the school play! I’m Villager Number Six. I’ll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I’ll also need a ride on weekends.” God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

…

Western parents try to respect their children’s individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they’re capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

I just want to go back to the idea that it’s OK to drain childhood of fun and crush the interests of your kids under your combat boot so that one day they reflect the blinding rays of your megalomania… um, I mean so that they can be happy one day in the future. Even if you’re not a utilitarian, some light utilitarian reasoning is a good way to identify really bad ideas. If something creates a gaping deficit in utility, it’s usually not good.

Quite a lot of people who are lucky enough to be working class or higher in the first world and unmolested would identify childhood as their happiest time. This includes many people who are considered successful adults. This is because stuff like sleepovers and getting Mike Tyson’s Punchout might be more fun than you could possibly have as an adult. I’ve been in some pretty great spots since growing up and it seems like I still have to remind myself of how much fun I should be having and not to worry about if I forgot to pay the gas bill and to enjoy the moment and it never completely works. Discovering that my collection of Star Wars toys had doubled on Christmas morning? Unadulterated joy.

So, erasing all of those experiences (to say nothing of the intentional infliction of humiliation and shame) should eventually be outweighed by future gains. Chua doesn’t even really make that argument, because she can’t. Like, suppose her kids could have their own interests, do sleepovers, watch a reasonable amount of TV and still were expected to do their homework and maintain a high GPA. Would they be much worse off in the future? Even if Chua’s sadism meant they got into Harvard instead of Virginia, and that meant they wound up making like 15% more money, it’s not clear that they would see improvements in utility later in life at all, let alone improvements so great that they would make up for a difficult childhood when they could have had a wonderful one.

Plus, you’re talking about expected (hoped for) future gains, as opposed to gains you can realize now. Maybe the inability to grasp this is related to 100% of Chinese being gambling addicts. But obviously, certain utility now is worth more than possible utility in the future because you could go to Harvard and be hit by a bus. Yeah, you could be hit by a bus at community college as well, but even if these tactics tend to make people happy in the future, you have to discount that result because it’s just a possibility. The economy could get worse and you could wind up begging to drive a bus after Harvard. You could become disfigured and never get over it. Or, you could have some windfall of cash and not need to work at a job you hate to obtain status and thus feel like you wasted your childhood preparing to do so.

I think you have to discount whatever future happiness Chua’s methods might create even more because of memories. If you have very happy, unwarped times as a child, you get to look back on them your whole life. If you postpone happiness till you are 40, you’ll be lucky to look back on happiness for half your life. And even that is offset by remembering how your mom used to call you a fat piece of garbage, or when people you know express nostalgia for “The Simpsons” and you flash back to being forced to carve perfect Bernini models out of turnips.

There are all these new books out there portraying Asian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven people indifferent to their kids’ true interests.

Uh…

Second, Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear…

Well, don’t let that stop you. But for the purposes of an editorial, you probably want to avoid stances like, “nobody can really think of a good justification for my position, but it is supported by some fortune cookie garbage that you’d never accept in any other context.

…but it’s probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children. (And it’s true that Chinese mothers get in the trenches, putting in long grueling hours personally tutoring, training, interrogating and spying on their kids.) Anyway, the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.

Wonderful. If you think I’m stretching the totalitarian thing a bit thin, here we have Amy choosing to say that she spies on her kids. And not only that, spying on them is a sacrifice on the part of the authority. The subjects should be grateful that Kim Mom Il is so magnanimous with her resources as to use them for spying on the subjects to facilitate their own personal betterment towards their end purpose: glorifying Kim Mom Il!

Here’s a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-style. Lulu was about 7, still playing two instruments, and working on a piano piece called “The Little White Donkey” by the French composer Jacques Ibert. The piece is really cute—you can just imagine a little donkey ambling along a country road with its master—but it’s also incredibly difficult for young players because the two hands have to keep schizophrenically different rhythms.

You’ve probably read the original article already and if you haven’t you can probably guess where it is going. Chua electrocutes her daughter’s eyeballs until she can play the piece without mistakes. Then, when the daughter is asleep, Chua goes into her room and, while reading through her diary and changing any negative mentions of Tiger Mom to positive ones, gently slides the blade of a knife across the girl’s throat whispering, “you only live because I allow it,” over and over again with different intonations. Also, I was a taught when I was a kid that this use of ‘schizophrenic’ should be avoided because it’s based on a misunderstanding of what schizophrenia is and therefore makes you sound ignorant.

Anyway, here is how the the readers of the Wall Street Journal responded in poll form.

I hate to make too much of an internet poll asking a loaded question, particularly as I hate internet polls and would abolish them from my own totalitarian state. But the appeal of this position to WSJ readers and other “conservatives” hints at the authoritarian heart beneath their superficial love of “liberty,” “freedom” and “individualism.” I realize that children of parents do not hold the same status of citizens of a country, but there should be some consistency between the your views on those relationships. If you really have a fondness for freedom and individualism, it doesn’t make sense that you’d favor blanket censorship, the suffocation of individuality and free will and blind allegiance to authority for children and teens. Like, if you are a Black Panther, you don’t have your kids on a strict diet of Pat Boone and until they are 18 and then suddenly introduce them to James Brown. And I’d raise the same criticism of the WSJ for running the article. It’s pretty amazing that this whole crew can so quickly embrace Chinese authoritarianism, even when represented to a cartoonish extreme. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I can’t imagine the WSJ of the past running, “Weak American Piglets Will Be Crushed By Soviet Superiority,” by Nikolai Volkoff. Maybe they’ll be celebrating the virtues of command economies as extolled by an animated monkey by the end of the decade.

Outside of the WSJ, the article triggered great controversy and everybody weighed in. I considered doing a hackwatch during the 12 pages of discussion of the article on our forum, much of which I have plagiarized here. One reason I didn’t is that, while the article roped me in, I had some sense of that being its goal. And, sure enough in the first wave of commentary and publicity, cracks began to appear in the facade of the article, so by waiting till now to write this, I can act superior to even more people. In this article, Chua discusses how she was happy to be the bad guy while her husband took their daughters to Yankee games and such. Well wait. If it was true that her girls were not allowed any TV, how did they know what the hell was happening at the Yankee games? I mean, yes you can contrive some answer about them listening to games on the radio and reading player biographies, but that doesn’t really mesh. Then, on “The Colbert Report,” Chua claimed that her husband was as strict as she was. What? Oh, I get it. These are just lies. Sometimes I still forget that book and newspaper publishers have no responsibility publish people who put forward the truth as they see it.

For the purposes of the Colbert appearance, Chua tried to convey herself as a relaxed person with a healthy sense of humor. She was clearly lying, however, when expressing surprise that anyone would see the article or the book it was excerpted from as offering advice on raising children and she couldn’t hide her domineering nature. And that’s when it became evident that she was working from Ann Coulter’s playbook. 1) Spout a bunch of sadistic, authoritarian garbage riddled with lies and bound to create controversy. 2) Make public appearances in which you tell whichever story is convenient at the time, disregarding both actual facts and the false claims you made in your book. 3) When before the appropriate audience, shift into an affable character who enjoys a good laugh and who doesn’t understand why all the uptight fuddy duddies were upset when you did step one. And, sickeningly, it works. No matter how thoroughly you are documented as a liar (this is one article; if the book takes off,there will be many more cracks), you’ll be getting respectful treatment all over the media if you pull off the plan well. If Pinochet had been savvy enough to go on “Real Time” with a whoopi cushion, something that show would have happily accommodated, 85% of the 4% of the American population who knew who he was would have declared all forgiven.

As a woman, a mother and a model minority, Chua is even more invincible, enjoying a force field of political correctness that shields from both the left and right. The initial piece successfully trolled every blog in the world, 100% of which used some variation of, “I’m not judging Chua. Her methods worked for her and I’m sure she is a great mom who loves her kids but…” Right up to the New York Times, articles sprouted up everywhere, carefully tiptoeing around calling her out in plain terms. Even though the article made ridiculous, extremist claims, some of which Chua only dreamed up to create attention, nearly all commentators had to frame their criticisms with deference.

Here are some phrases from the various writers in the NYT discussion of “extreme parenting,” that Chua’s piece inspired.

“However, laissez-faire parenting can be too laid back and detrimental to children.” No shit? When you speak about rape, do you feel compelled to point out that extreme repression of sexual urges can be bad too? Maybe rapists have a point.

“That said, a pragmatic philosophy offers some much-needed correctives to a culture of parenting where our children’s every random scribble and shoe box diorama is lauded as pure genius, where trophies are awarded simply for showing up.”  And again. It’s ironic that these people feel compelled to make such remarks. Isn’t mandatory prefacing of criticizing one extreme by saying you don’t support the other extreme either in the same vein as everyone gets a trophy day? Amy Chua is vile and it’s OK to just fucking say so.  Also, I’m not sure that this super-hippie parenting is as prevalent as everyone seems to believe. I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood over the hill from Malibu and I don’t remember seeing it much. One guy had a mom who would provide us with beer, but she was European. It seems to me that commentators dig up anecdotes of murdering hockey dads and crazy stage moms one day and of youth soccer games without score keeping the next day, depending on which one they need at the time.

“It’s true that you don’t enjoy something until you’ve mastered it and practice makes perfect.” Neither of these things are true. Look, even if you aren’t talking about water slides and mindless fun, this whole line of reasoning is loony. What percentage of people who enjoy cooking are master chefs? And if you think you’ve mastered philosophy, you are almost certainly insane. Is it impossible for women to enjoy playing team sports? You know, because they are terrible at all of them.

“Putting aside the debate about stereotypes – be they about Chinese, women, or other groups – which Amy Chua’s essay has plenty, parents everywhere are always looking for tips to help their children thrive.” The guy who wrote the subtitles for NES games in the 90′s weighs in on the matter.

And though I am basically a Chomskybot, I do have a basic respect for the WSJ. At least, I thought it was pretty good ten years ago. But it still seems odd that I am the only one disgusted to see them pass of a PR stunt for a book launch as an editorial and then for the NYT to latch on for the purposes of offering a milquetoast, counter-non-perspective. I know that the state of journalistic integrity is vaporous at best. I know the WSJ and NYT are just arms of a media profit machine. And I already hated every blog but detroitblog.org and the ones where they make fun of sports announcers. I know that it’s vastly more important to get as many heaving mongoloids as possible to follow you on twitter than to see that one of the most venerable papers in the world at least goes through the motions of attempting to present actual points of view, rather than helping to turn the crazy dreams of Eric Cartman into book sales. It still sucks.

Yes.

Episode three: The Children of Jamestown

Hopefully I won’t shatter your faith in artistic integrity by revealing this, but 80′s Action TV sort of, kind of, recycles plots. “Airwolf,” “Knight Rider” and “The A-Team” all have episodes that deal with cults and the cults all wear the same monastic, brown robes, probably from the same props department. Also it seems like there is always at least one van. I miss vans. How are SUV’s better than vans? I don’t think they are at all. Like, according to SUV commercials you can drive them up sand dunes and mountains and shit, though if you actually do use an SUV for that it will break. But even if that crap was real, I’ve never seen an SUV with a boss wizard from a Rush song painted on the side.

You can get with this:

Or you can get with that:

Case closed!

Also, as I’ve grown older, I have come to kind of see the appeal of joining a cult. You grow some vegetables, catch some Z’s and look the other way when the cult leader rapes a twelve year old girl. Hey, that’s an easier life than I lead. But the A-Team is composed of individuals far more scrupulous than myself. The introduction of Dirk Benedict as the new Face Man really does constitute a huge upgrade. The man just oozes a mix of charm and smarm that I like to call schmarm. And he plays a key role in initially duping the cultists and snagging the kidnapped girl the team have been hired to retrieve. This is the first episode in which the plans that come together actually seem thought out instead of created ad hoc to meet the story arc. Like the whole set up with Amy, Face and Hannibal staging a false three way confrontation in the general store to distract the cultist must have taken minutes of forethought. I like this still because of how Hannibal is lurking in the background, masterminding.

Worth noting: Amy is underrated as an 80′s fuckshell. Our own Wax wears the exact same jacket as Face is wearing in this still. I’m not 100% sure but I think this cult leader is based on Jim Jones, and they just changed ‘Jones’ to ‘James.’ I know it seems crazy at first, but mull it over. Masticate.

So after they rescue the girl, the A-Team, minus Murdock are captured by the cultist. The cultists have no idea who they are fucking with and the A-Team smash their shit as though the were Delonte West and the cult was LeBron’s mother. Also, after they are captured the A-Team explain the basis for their courage to Amy in what I found to be a very profound scene. Their basic message was best articulated by Face: “Accept death. It calms you.” It’s like a cross between Mel Gibson’s speech in Braveheart and Gore Vidal’s Messiah.

Best B.A. Line as nearly as I can decipher it: Hannibal why you go busting Face man in the lip for? You know you can’t go ???? making a mess of my meal ticket. Won’t be able to get no good hotel rooms!

By the way, I went with good old Olde English for this installment. Solid alcohol content, rancorous taste. This is the one malt liquor I believe to be deliberately designed to taste horrible. I’ll still take it over King Cobra’s weak ass, but getting it down is not fun. Also, if anyone can come up with a recipe for worse farts than OE and hard boiled eggs, I’d like to hear it. After Mengeling my second floor apartment, I walked about four blocks to the store and when I came back I could still pick up the smell about half way up the steps to the place.

Episode 4: Pros and Cons (that is a very clever title)

So this episode is about is about how one of the many kids who looks up to B.A. has an older brother who is imprisoned on false pretenses in the South, where he is forced into gladiatorial fights. One thing I’ve come to realize about 80′s Action TV is that, although it is right wing in it’s overall tone, it caters to prejudice more than anything. Like, in this case, the South of United States is depicted as a backwards world beyond the rule of law, where hillabillies who have stumbled into money, perhaps earning their fortunes by combing the highways for picture books and bars of soap that have fallen of trucks traveling between the coasts, bet on human cockfights. The A-Team infiltrate the hick prison system by 1) Having Hannibal and B.A. deliberately arrested and 2) having Face come into the prison as a bogus, federal investigator named Doctor Pepper. Of course, B.A. is chosen as a gladiator and the A-Team turn the hillabilly fiefdom upside down and sodomize it. The best part is when Hannibal and B.A. first enter the prison and some fool steps to Hannibal and declares him a fish. Hannibal disagrees. The dude asks if he is a tough guy and Hannibal points to B.A. “No, he’s the tough guy.”

How fantastic would be to have Mr. T covering your back in real life? Because I work in the filth of the California gambling industry, I used to be a friendly acquaintance of this gang of Laotian bloods, headed by a guy who was basically the Asian version of Mr. T. I’m not saying we hung out or anything , but we were on good terms and I always wished someone would cross me so that I could kick Bune a few hundred bucks to correct them. Unfortunately, I’m an easy going and likable person, so it never came to that.

Best B.A. Line: Like them gladiators in Rome, man.

Episode 5: A Small And Deadly War

This one is about about a cop who hires the A-Team to catch a corrupt unit in the LAPD. You heard me right. Crooked cops in the Los Angeles Police Department. Ah, the magical realm of the human imagination: where anything is possible, except for dying in a dream but not in real life. Basically, the captain of the SWAT team has recruited a bunch of guys he has dirt on and blackmailed them into becoming a hit squad. Some random Sarge catches on and hires the A-Team to flush out the only crooked cops in LA. Murdock is conned out of the psych ward for the 38th time in five episodes and the A-Team set about proving themselves against the elite of the LAPD. The best line by a cop who doesn’t really dig the whole operation: “Eight grand to blow away your brother so you can take over his stinking laundry.” Even in ’85, or whenever those seem like pretty low rates for a SWAT team to bump someone off. But in the 80s and through the 90s TV shows would consistently condescend to viewers by regarding any sum of money from the perspective of a homeless person. I remember both “Rosanne” and “Married With Children” having episodes where everyone acted like landing 20 grand would make them “rich.” I mean, my dad made 20 G taking a dump, but that wasn’t what was so annoying about it. It was annoying because even viewers who made $20,000 per year knew all too well that falling into that sum would not make them rich. And indeed, even figuring for inflation, $8,000 dollars seems like a paltry sum to hire a four man SWAT team for a killing. I don’t really know about such things, but I suspect you’d be hard pressed to find a hard core gangster to risk the gas chamber for so little. This episode also contains an explicit reference to The Seven Samurai. Pretty cool, especially since 80% of A-Team episodes rip it off.

Anyway, Face infiltrates the LAPD as a roach killer by planting literal bugs and this allows him to plant figurative bugs, created by B.A. Look out, Bela Tarr! The A-Team catch on to their game and send them up the river, just as the deserve! This also, as nearly as I can remember, marks the first use of , “on the jazz,” the catch phrase that just wouldn’t catch, no matter how many episodes they wedged it into.

Best B.A. Line : Look, we don’t work for no Po-lice!

You do realize that Halloween is long, long over, don’t you? So why are you watching this crap?

Yes, but why not every day? Are you  so afraid? Anyway, I watched like seven movies during a spontaneous horrorgy and I felt I should give a nod to Feast because it was the only one that wasn’t terrible, besides The House of The Devil which doesn’t really count because it’s almost like a legitimate film or something.

So now, “not terrible” is supposed to be compelling?

Well… you haven’t seen Amok Train. Once you’ve been around the block a couple of times, it isn’t so easy to find horror flicks that are not terrible. Masterpieces like Halloween III: Season of the Witch come around only so often.

So what is so un-terrible about Feast?

It is set in a bar where a motley group of characters are under siege by monsters…

Sounds pretty original.

Well, it is only 90% predictable, which is pretty decent. Also, the opening attack by the monsters drew me in for about ten minutes of uninterrupted violence, and it’s cool how you don’t know which cast members are going to die. It’s like The Thin Red Line, except the best known actor is Jason Mewes. The monsters are disgusting and have as many killing techniques as there are short lived characters. There’s no denying that this is another horror film refabricated from Dead Alive, Evil Dead and From Dusk Till Dawn that tries to be clever, but it actually achieves a bit of cleverness and enough originality to keep things rolling. For example, one of the characters trapped in a bar is a motivational speaker, incapable of deviating from his script and so he figures that his pre-loaded platitudes are as suitable for monster attack as they are for house flipping. They aren’t. But, thankfully, this film has way more teeth than something like Zombieland and it never waivers from a mission to deliver the horror film goods. I mean, of course, three of the four women trapped in a rural bar at random look like models and, after being soaked to the skin in blood, what other course of action is there than to change clothes in front of everybody? Predictable can be good.

What else sets it apart?

It was financed by the Maloof brothers, who own the Sacramento Kings, The Palms and some sort of skateboarding competition. I didn’t know they were into movies too. None of this compares, however, to making the most obnoxious of all of the deeply obnoxious Carl’s Jr. commercials. Note: I could only find the mutant, Hardee’s version, but it’s basically the same ad.

Also, after a marathon of crap, it was refreshing to just watch a movie made with such simple attributes as a feeling of control and an understanding of the genre. I also watched The Crazies, which had its moments but just felt like the work of a director who wasn’t a horror guy. There was no suspense, no matter how turned off my brain was and a few, borrowed gimmicks meant to manufacture suspense fell flat. But with Feast, I was drawn in by the simple subtlety of a decapitation reducing a man’s body to an out of control fire hose of gore.

When I say the film is controlled, I just mean that the actors, story and budget all seem to be carefully planned out, almost as though the filmmakers view making a movie as a significant undertaking. Some of the other films I watched, particularly those with Italian roots, like The Church, seem as though somebody woke up one day and decided to make a movie with their friends and the $340 in their checking accounts. I honestly think that they got half way through shooting Amok Train and they were like, “…wait, this doesn’t make any sense. Um, maybe the train could become possessed by a demon, and then have a conversation in which it explains the premise of the film to the protagonist… insofar as there is a premise.”

Having a devil train explain the premise of the movie actually sounds pretty awesome.

That’s because it is, but you have to endure the rest of the movie as well, which is so incoherent that it has to be explained by a train. Anyway, nothing like that is required in Feast. I mean, OK, in the opening of the film there are freeze frames on each character that explain the character to us in simple text, but that’s by design, son. It took days, if not weeks to write this script.

So, Novelty Deaths?

There were a couple. Probably the best is Beer Guy. He’s done for when one of the monsters pukes on him, twice. I was hoping that the puke would transform him somehow, but all it really does is burn his skin and make him sick. Then when he peeks outside for a path to escape, one of the monsters plucks out his eyeball. Finally, he is poised for revenge in the form of a suicide bombing with a Molotov cocktail, but before he can ignite the bomb, the monster does that Hulk Hogan move where it slaps Beer Guy on both sides of the head at once, but instead of “ringing his bell” this causes Beer Guy’s head to explode.

So, one liners?

“”You get puked on by a monster, and you tell me how it feels!”

Where there unexpected twists?

Kind of, but they are done without much fuss. Like the guy established as the leader in the opening is killed immediately. I also liked when one of the hot chicks was sent out to retrieve a truck and help everyone escape, she just hauls ass and leaves everyone behind. Not much is made of it, as this would probably be a pretty common response to the situation. She doesn’t get her comeuppance. She just takes off and ditches everybody and that’s the last we see of the character. The rest of them are quickly too occupied by survival to linger on it.

What did you learn?

The trailer is pretty strange. It asserts that the monsters are some sort of military project with some supporting footage. None of this is mentioned or even hinted at in the movie. It still gives you a reasonable idea of what to expect in the film, but I can’t think of another case where the trailer was so out of sync with the film.

I decided to put away a sixer of King Cobra to get the ball rolling, and for variety’s sake. It was also for nostalgic purposes as King Cobra was the official beverage of my last band in college and when we played, there was some rule where we all had to have killed a 40 by the end of the fourth song or something. Our greatest ambition was to one day have a tour sponsored by King Cobra. It sure is fun to look back on the times when you had hopes, dreams or anything resembling a will to live. However, older and wiser, I realize King Cobra is kind of a rip off and doesn’t live up to the awesome name, logo or fantastic 80′s advertising campaign.

“Don’t let the smooth taste fool you!” What a fucking slogan. “Don’t be fooled by the fact that our product ostensibly doesn’t taste like an asshole, it will still fuck you up!” But like many an ad slogan, it is fundamentally dishonest. The fact of the matter is that King Cobra does not have a smooth taste. Not smooth at all! And to claim that it does have a smooth taste is on par with the holocaust denial so fervently advocated by Earnst Borgnine and “Airwolf.” The “beverage” was first formulated for use by hunters to approximate the taste and odor of deer urine. Really, that there is any kind of malt liquor competition at all is a curiosity. Everybody knows that the whole point of malt liquor is that it’s the cheap beer with an unusually high alcohol content and nobody cares how it tastes. Nice if you are broke and/or want to pretend that you have anything under control because you only drink “beer.” So with it’s terrible taste and puny 6.0% alcohol content, why does King Cobra still have a seat at the table? You know what is also kind of funny? How it was probably some government do-gooder who decided that the % of alcohol content must be printed clearly on each product. This was certainly meant as a protection for the benefit of the poor, predicated on the belief that the working class, college students and alcoholics would theoretically pick up a cheap beer at the gas station and, after careful examination, say “wait… the alcohol content of this product is actually HIGHER even though it costs LESS? Count me out!” Anyway, let’s move on from “Same Old Malt Liquor Street” to “King Cobra Boulevard,” which is to say let’s get to the actual show.

So the first ever episode of “The A-Team.” This is the show that made a pin-on button of Mr. T pretty much the coolest thing you could wear to my third grade class.

The B.A. button supplanted even the seemingly invincible, studded leather jacket with zippers all over it, from second grade. This is serious business. But I think the most important thing about The “A-Team” pilot has to do with the fact that it has a different Face.

Quoth Wikipedia:

Tim Dunigan played this role in the pilot episode, but reputedly he was thought to look too young to be a believable Vietnam veteran,[1], and he was much taller than the rest of the cast. He was replaced by [Dirk] Benedict…

If you are older or younger and want a glimpse into the brain of someone raised in an era dominated by pop culture, who reached maturity during the generation of the internet, here are the things that ran through my head when I watched this and realized that there was another Face. Granted, I’m a bit old for the Batman cartoon but I watched a lot of episodes. The internet barely existed, leaving the sexually frustrate male in his early teens to sadly “fixate” to the animated Poison Ivy and the Pink Power Ranger after school. Anyway, here is what it looks like inside of my head.

I’m neither an anti-semite nor a believer in Jewish conspiracies. I admire many Jews, such as… Krusty the Clown, or Schindler. But I have to admit what flashed into that the remnants of the brain of a once housed reasonable intelligence, is that the height factor was bigger than the age factor. Tim Dunigan was born in 1955. He’d have turned 18 in in 1973. How preposterous that he might have been a ‘Nam vet! So Jews do unarguably dominate Hollywood. Not because of some conspiracy of lizard men, but because they earned it. So, is the whole “successful actors are often really short” thing totally unrelated to the fact that Jews are pretty short? I’m not even saying it’s a bad thing. You can’t argue with Hollywood’s success. I’m just throwing the height thing out there. Another Fun Fact is that Dunigan, who wound up a Real Estate agent or something, instead of a rich and famous person, downplayed it all and claimed to agree with the decision and its ridiculous justifications, but he was probably just trying to… save face.

So the pilot is actually a two parter and kind of the classic Western scenario, borrowed partially from, yes really, The Seven Samurai. This gang of Mexican bandits, led by a man who says things like “come, we will talk! You will see that I am a lover of life! A hunter of Rabbits! A Singer of Songs!” plague a small village and shake them down for all of their money and terrorize their women, like so:

So some journalist is investigating all of this for some reason and they capture him. He works for the same paper as that chick Amy and since nobody else can help, she tracks down the A-Team, even though most people seem to regard them as an urban legend. After that, a whole ton of predictable stuff happens and none of it makes any sense. It turns out that the banditos terrorizing this small town are part of what must be a billion dollar business, smuggling crates of marijuana to The States, where it will no doubt lead to countless overdoses and cases of hard core addiction. So why are these guys, with direct ties to the military (WOOPS, I mean “gorillas” because the real Mexican army would never dabble in narcotics trafficking) call attention to themselves by shaking down a farming village for what must literally be a couple thousand dollars a year? Because, um…

When we meet Hannibal, one of the most wanted men in America he is keeping a low profile working in the movie industry. Granted, he is in a big rubber suit playing a sea monster or something, but that’s never really explained. Murdock is semi-faking his stay in the nut house and the guys get him out. I think Face is just a gigolo, everywhere he goes. B.A. is kicking it in the ‘hood and polishing his van while passing on life lessons to black youth, which at least seems like something that could actually happen. When I lived in Thousand Oaks and had just started with roller hockey I was practicing my shot against the garage and this old Canadian guy roller bladed up out of nowhere and spent five minutes or so coaching me and offered a few pointers that turned my slap shot around pretty much immediately. Then he swooshed off into the late afternoon. For all I know he could have been a fugitive wrongly convicted by the… well, Canada doesn’t actually have a military, so maybe the Royal Mounted Police. A member of the Eh-Team. The point being that at least B.A. was keeping a low profile.

So Amy goes through this whole bullshit routine and brings on the A-Team. They go down, uncover the drug ring, blah, blah, blah. At some point they use a crop duster to kill the pot crops. Amy doesn’t have enough money to pay their full fee, but they do the job anyway. B.A. converts an old school bus into a tank or something. It’s just a mess. A big part of this is Face using pure bullshit to con the staff of a high end resort into believing he is a producer looking to make a big Hollywood movie there to the extent that the concierge gets the national minister of culture or whatever to arrange for them to have a military helicopter. Nobody is ever like, “by the way, what studio do you work for because I’d like to call them.” Or, “I know this is only Mexico, but we’re still not going to give you a military helicopter.” The rest of it is really kind of boring and involves tons of Jeeps. The other really noteworthy thing about this episode is that this massive Mexican dude fights B.A. and kicks his ass! I can’t guarantee anything, but I bet that B.A. doesn’t lose a fight for the whole rest of the series. I wonder if that kind, old Canadian man is dead by now.