Richard Nixon said a lot of horrible racist things, and horrible non-racist things, but it seems like people are most fond of digging up this treasure of The Tapes: “I have the greatest affection for them [blacks], but I know they’re not going to make it for 500 years. They aren’t. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they’re dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don’t live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like.”

Harsh to be sure, even if he is fond of “them.” But one wonders how far off the mark his prediction really was. You might even argue that the departure of those black people who have overcome stark disadvantage with exceptional talent, intelligence and/or drive to move from the margins and into the mainstream, has pushed the timeline for the rest of them to “make it” back a couple hundred years more, as the most stable members of the community, quite reasonably, launch their escape pods at the first opportunity, leaving the rest of the group structure weakened. Those who have spent a significant amount of time around the poorer black American communities, and who profess to believe that blacks, in general, might obtain a lifestyle on par with whites, in general, within the lifetime of anybody currently drawing breath are either 1) Actually delusional 2) Lying 3) Believe that something really terrible is going to happen to white America or 4) Believe that science will enable us to live to see Nixon’s 500 year forecast come to fruition.

I don’t think this is the message Frederick Wiseman wants us to take away from Public Housing. If you don’t know, he is famously of the old school of non-intrusive documentary filmmaking, so we’re fortunate that no “message” is too obvious. It doesn’t get any more heavy-handed than the recurring footage of a dreary ice cream truck that brings to mind the absence of the joy normally associated with ice cream trucks and the difficult realities of local entrepreneurship, which is touted as the golden path throughout the film. So really, we see nothing more than expertly selected footage from the projects, and the footage is methodically depressing. You can assign any combination of mechanisms to the sad interactions Wiseman captures: poverty traps, cultural breakdown, “black nihilism,” and even some of the tenets of white supremacy, if that’s your bag. The problems and the barriers facing the residents of Chicago public housing in 1997 seem intractable. And while the explanations for the intractability range from the high-minded and compassionate to the vile, they are all posited as explanations of why the problems are intractable, or nearly so. No one even bothers to suggest that a solution is around the corner.

In some ways, the reality faced by poor blacks is even bleaker than the picture Wiseman provides. It isn’t that Wiseman tries to pull the wool over anybody’s eyes. He is focusing on the people working to build up their community in general and a housing project in particular. He is looking at  institutional realities, showing us individuals working hard within institutions and how little fruit their labor produces. We only get a slight glimpse of the depths of the self-destructiveness and ignorance that are commonplace in such communities. The film focuses instead on the disconnect between the programs and systems intended to help and the people they are meant to help. And maybe the unfairness of the expectations placed on those who are in need, or possibly lost.

One scene that stood out as a emblematic comes when the HUD workers hold a meeting with residents to discuss making improvements. Tenants complain that some of the lighting in the projects is frequently out. They seem to initially blame HUD for this. Is it too much to ask that we have some decent lighting at night? The HUD worker agrees that this is a problem, but points out what “we all know.” The reason for the regular loss of lighting is obviously vandalism. The meeting grows silent. The only suggestion is a new system of lights that are essentially unbreakable.  But they are expensive and will take a nice slice out of the budget, which is always shrinking as it is. There isn’t really a good solution to the problem– not to the problem of getting more kids to graduate college– the problem of having reasonable lighting in the projects. Other battles range from the prevalence of vermin to the fact that mere paperwork stands between hundreds of long-vacant government units and members of the growing homeless population, but nothing budges. Well, that’s not entirely true. We do see a confused old man being forced from his old project home. There are no immediate plans on where he is to live now, beyond “a shelter.”  And yes, that is a grape soda he has in the picture.  Don’t pretend that it didn’t occur to you.

At the most basic level, the disconnect seems to be that thoughtful, well-organized people who work for the government establish techniques based on their own M.O.s to aid dysfunctional, unstable people. Lest you conclude that I’m being racist (for the few that haven’t already done so), let me state for the record that I am worthless. I have to ramp up my self-motivation to the maxtreme of self-empowerment to fulfill my will to remember to remind my bride to pay the parking tickets that I accumulate. Had I been born into the projects, I’d never have connected with these programs either.  This is a case of the dictatorship of the responsible in our society: an apartheid privileging those who enjoy having their forms filled out and wiggle their little butts with joy at the chance to present proper insurance and registration. As Travolta in Pulp Fiction thought the chance for retribution would have actually made the vandalism of his car worthwhile, the over-responsible live for the day when their home is broken into or damaged and they can break out their full homeowners insurance with no deductible and their meticulous photographs of everything in the house worth more than $12. But the fact of the matter is that Flanderses cannot just coach Homers into becoming Flanderses.

And in so many cases in Public Housing, it seems like the responsible are setting up systems that make sense to them, meant to guide people like me. But I’d rather die in the gutter than have to attend government meetings and fill out forms just to get decent lighting on my street. Is it reasonable to ask students to take what seem to be extra classes after high school, just so they can graduate with what would be considered a 9th grade education in the middle class? Sure, one in a hundred rises above it all out of exceptional talent and will. But what is to become of the merely average student, crammed into schools that don’t teach because too many students are far below average and despise learning? Then, more extra classes, more programs, more forms… just to find a job. How many of us who coasted through college on suds and wandered into a job at the first place hiring can really say we’d be willing to deal with sign-ups, wait lists, workshops and deadlines based on the hope of scoring a temporary gig at minimum wage plus a buck? Maybe we grow up enough by the time we reach middle age that we can drag the carcasses of our useless kids through the system so that they might one day do the same for theirs (as our parents did for us), but what would most of us have done if we were not part of this middle-class cycle, if we didn’t know our fathers and our mothers were less than 20 years older than us?

The usual threats of murder, prostitution, drugs, gangs, AIDS, teenage pregnancy and prison are present, but are never the centerpiece. Again, Public Housing is more about the institution and the relationship people have with it. Maybe the reality of immobility: that most of us will stay withing throwing distance of the station to which we were born, regardless of if we are Flanderses or Homers. For the thinking viewer, this is even more disheartening than another drive-by. We see people who care begging for simple work orders to be filled out, or explaining sexual responsibility as emphatically as possible to small groups of blank faces. Cops try seemingly random searches and threats. They try reaching out on a personal level. But they always seem resigned. The world of Public Housing is nothing close to hell on earth, like say, City of God, but it certainly doesn’t look like the first world, either. It doesn’t look like anything can really fix it and the only cause for optimism in the film is that some are willing to fight for minor victories. Good luck with that…

Taurino Beer, imported from El Salvador (”Taurino Beer” is Spainish for “Airwolf”), sells for $10 per 18 pack at Fresh and Easy. Good fucking God it is bad. The upside is that if you should overdo it, you’ll already be acclimated to the taste of vomit. I mean, it seriously tastes vaguely of puke. Hold on a second while I open another one.

Oh right, I promised I would get back to other 80s copter shows. As the middle of this season of “Airwolf” is generally pretty shitty, I’ll see if I can distract you with the intro to “Riptide.” Hey! Look at this! It’s the intro to “Riptide!”

Yowzah. So that’s Donald P. Bellisario 1, Stephen J. Cannell 0 in the game of helicopter shows. Fun fact about Bellisario: He served alongside Lee Harvey Oswald during his stint in the Marines. Fun fact about Cannell: His teenage son was tragically suffocated by a giant sand castle.

Episode 10: Once a Hero

Sting and Archangel meet up with some unsavory Asians in a dodgy bar and trade money for what’s in the briefcase: pictures that place St. John in the prison camp of a Laotian warlord, whereupon String returns home and begins to hatch a plan to recover his brother which involves selling one of his many Louvre-quality paintings to finance the mission and rounding up his ‘Nam pals, one of whom is the front runner in the California senate race and the other of whom is a professional dirt bike racer, to man the mission. There are times when “Airwolf” stretches credibility. They go on the mission, the senator guy goes nutsy-koo-koo and… I won’t ruin the episode for you buy revealing if they find St. John or not. You have to admire them all. Most people go to SE Asia to fuck kids. Right?

Best Borgnine Line: Hey! This guy’s hotter than a two dollar pistol on a Saturday night!

Episode 11: Random Target

Another substandard mid-season episode, but at least we can always rely on String’s fly sense of style, even though this cap is probably from another episode. This one contains the line, “looks like some kind of big gathering of people for some reason.” I mean, overly expository dialog should at least provide some information. “We’re going to find the creator of the robot. Maybe he knows how to destroy it!” Not, “let’s go find some guy for some reason.” A guy who has another air company that the String and Borgs work with sometimes is killed after they do some filming in the desert for him. Then the lab where the film was developed is torched. Then it’s discovered that a lady and her jeep were blown up in the same area where the filming took place. Then Santini Air is torched. The police don’t see any connection. Airwolf must intervene. Though nonsensical, this is an impressively violent episode with a double digit corpse count. I can’t think of another network show nearly as violent as “Airwolf.” Like, dead bodies turn up on all of those dumb cop shows, but you never see people blossoming into their glorious becoming of death.

BBL: When they’re flying over the desert they see some chicks in bikinis and Borgnine zooms in and with a bunch of exclamations like “oooooh look at that!” I don’t know if the producers didn’t realize how creepy the image of a salivating Ernest Brognine secretly filming girls from a helicopter would be, or if they did realize how hilarious it would be.

Episode 12: The Condemned

The Rusians have engineered a horrifying bio-weapon that makes people believe that Tina Fey is funny. We’ve acquired the agent, but everyone on the Island of Research, where scienticians have gone to find an antidote with minimal risk of creating an epidemic if something should go wrong, has turned up dead. This sounds like a mission for… not Airwolf. Probably some kind of elite hazmat team that has spent years training on how to deal with bio-weapons. But they send Airwolf. A sub full of Ruskies turns up for reasons that are pretty unclear, especially since they are on U.S. territory. The story becomes a stirring cold war allegory as everyone becomes infected and the Airwolf team (it’s just String and the chick because Ernest Borgnine was having life-saving awesomeness-reduction surgery) and the Russians walk the precarious path between their national interests and prejudices and mutually assured destruction. There’s actually a very clever twist because everyone on the island seems to go insane and kill each other due to the contagion, but as it turns out, several hours of extreme paranoia is a side effect of the life saving antidote. Is the message that Reaganism was indeed the path to cold war victory and, ultimately, peace? Eventually, everyone gets smashed on vodka and does that Russian dancing that is extremely gay, even by the standards of dancing. String and Caitlin come away with the antidote and a great anecdote!

Best Borgnine Line: Look, I’m trying to move my bowels. Don’t I have enough problems as it is without people screaming at me while I’m trying to move my bowels!?

Episode 13: The American Dream

String and Dom are attending a wedding in one of California’s Central Valley Vietnamese communities. As a vet of ‘Nam String has formed many bonds with the Vietnamese people, as is bound to happen when you drop napalm on someone’s children. This is one of the innumerable similarities between me and an 80s action hero. Having worked in the gaming industry, I too have befriended this gentle and annoying people. Yet another vaguely Shakespearean smoked ham plays the criminal mastermind who threatens this small community with a booming voice coupled with an understated and cordial demeanor that scarcely cloaks his deadly intentions. This ultimately leads to a confrontation between Airwolf and a couple of crop-dusters in the worst mismatch since Charles Barkley last grappled with the written word. Finally, the Vietnamese warlord guy swoops in with a fighter jet, but Airwolf shoots him down, forcing him to parachute to the fields. The leader of the farmers proclaims “This is America! Citizens arrest!” Cut to a soaring bald eagle (really). I enjoyed this episode. Just to reiterate how much deathier “Aiwolf” is than other such shows, the bad guys kill people by spraying them with gasoline from a crop duster, then burning them alive.

BBL: (proposing a cabbage cutting race) “I’ll tell ya what! The first one down to the uh… down to that uh… ditch, down there is the winner! Let’s go! Haha!”

Episode 14: In at the End of the Road

More half-assed mid-season drek. Bank Robbers or some other kind of robbers storm into a little town and try to kill everyone by stuffing them in a meat locker with no oxygen. Airwolf intervenes. String and Dom have this big conversation about which kind of disability you’d most want a hot girl to have so that you could get away with raping her because she’d be unable to report it. String was like, whatever makes it impossible for her to report me, but leaves her body most in tact. So his ideal would be a fresh vegetable, I suppose. But Dom felt it was very important that she’d know what was happening, just not be able to report it. That was the main thing that he found erotic about the scenario–he wouldn’t even care that much if she was disfigured, so long as she was conscious of what was happening but powerless to ever tell anyone.  He concedes that he’d probably even do it to a guy if those criteria were met.

“BBL: Hey, look! Look at that family of bears!”

The moviefone article has a little preamble about how Steven Seagal is not as popular as he once was and then consists of nothing more than a list of his direct to DVD movies using the exact same format: release date, DVD cover or poster, tagline, tongue in cheek summary.  To author Kevin Polowy’s credit, however, he doesn’t copy our format any further by continuing with actual writing.  So here’s the moviefone version:

I guess the similarities speak for themselves.  Oh, and yes, we did do a series on the direct to DVD videos of 80’s action stars including four of Seagal’s films. So it’s not like moviefone even came up with that aspect of it.  The format is tweaked slightly in our version of the direct to DVD reviews.  For those, we still have the taglines, but the summaries are longer.  Also, we decided not to use the box covers as much to try to freshen up the format.  I guess freshening up the format is less important if, like Polowy, you are just stealing your format from someone else and hoping nobody will notice so that it will seem fresh.  But, other than that… see for yourself.  Here’s our review of Out For A Kill.

Moviefone's Kevin Polowy

Of course the joy to be found in later Seagal has been explored in several other outlets, like The Film Fiend as well, and everybody fucking knows about these movies and making fun of them is a very common internet past time. Polowy didn’t just stumble upon this incredible discovery, as he tries to represent. He’s dumbing down and regurgitating content from all across the web and pretending to do something original. He is however, specifically ripping off our format to do it.

Obviously, this pisses me off because it involves our site.  But there’s a trend towards very big sites like this one and The Huffington Post simply stealing content from smaller sites and communities and passing it off as original articles.  In the case of moviefone, they actually bothered to rephrase our stuff rather than copying and pasting it.  Kudos to them!

The net is a huge, stupid clusterfuck and one function of the high traffic outlets should be to cull some of the better, but more obscure content out there and bring it to their readers.  But be fucking honest about it and don’t steal.  Maybe include one whole sentence saying “here is some cool shit I found at another web site” or “let’s use the Ruthless 80s Action formula for a quick glance at some of Seagal’s recent work.” Then, everyone is happy. Don’t pretend to have made it up yourself, because then you reveal yourself to be a hack with no integrity.  Or worse still, one day, you might just push the wrong man too far. Polowy, I’m gonna take you to the fone.  The blood fone.

There was also “Airwolf’s” closer cousin, “Blue Thunder,” with Dana Carvey, NFL stars Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith and in the leading role… some guy who wasn’t famous and never would be. In “Blue Thunder” the super chopper is manned by an elite LAPD unit. As far as I can tell from the intro, the crew use Blue Thunder to travel quickly between schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District so that they can give presentations to assemblies of students in which they promote their message of Holocaust denial, another theme “Blue Thunder” shares with “Airwolf.” I don’t want to get too far off track, so I’ll continue this digression at some point in the future. Let’s get back to “Airwolf!”

Episode 5: Sins of the Past

Borgnine’s estranged daughter turns up dead of an overdose. As the story unfolds we learn that Borgnine’s wife is totally psychotic, even for a woman. She absconded with his daughter when she was seven (the daughter, not the wife- it’s Borgnine, not Mohammed) and he sees his girl for the first time since childhood, kneeling before her open casket, only to have the psycho bitch walk up behind him. He doesn’t know how to react. It’s pretty heavy. Seriously, “Airwolf” is tearing me apart inside. In turns out that the town is being run by some crook who is turning it into a marginally legal gambling destination and putting the squeeze on the locals. Airwolf intervenes. I don’t think that most of the people on this show shit their pants sufficiently when String or Dom get involved in some local zoning dispute and then show up in a gun ship. Like, imagine if that actually happened. Two guys are arguing and then,  one of them shows up in the parking lot with a sock full of nickles and you turn to your friend and say, “dis shit ’bout ta get REAL!” Then the other dude shows up with a billion dollar attack helicopter. On the show, the guy with the sock full of nickles might be thrown off somewhat, but he will generally try to attack Airwolf with the sock, rather than literally voiding his bowels and fainting, which I think is the normal reaction. Generally, even the police wind up being like, “well, thanks for the help fellas. We couldn’t have done it without you.” Not “Someone in a fucking military helicopter is blowing up half the fucking city!”

Best Melancholy Borgnine Line: I suppose I should have some kind of feeling for the place that I was born. But I don’t.

Episode 6: Fallen Angel

Weird-eye-patch-but-not-as-as-much-of-a-tool-as-Tom-Wolf guy is kindernapped in East Germany. I fall asleep.

Episode 7: HX-1

Right off the bat, underrated 80s cutey, PJ Soles, the chick who played Riff Randall in Rock n Roll High School, is listed as a guest star and like 20 people are killed in the first scene, so I’m optimistic. The HX-1 is the new helicopter that is arguably better than Airwolf and is stolen by mercenaries. That means the government has developed two, unique, cutting edge helicopters and immediately had both of them stolen from under their noses.  They’ve also gone from the name ‘Airwolf’ to the name ‘HX-1.’ That would never happen on my watch. The M.O. of the mercs is the same as JMV used with his crew back in The Shit, so he wonders if his MIA brother might be involved in the theft and therefore, most likely still alive. As awesome as Michael’s evil twin was in “Knight Rider,” I was hoping for this to be the case. Lamentably, “Airwolf” takes the high road yet again and the mastermind of the attacks turns out to be a different member of the ‘Nam crew. String’s twin remains MIA, which is unfortunate, but on the upside, he is named Sinjin Hawke. Would it be worth it to spend most of your life in a Vietnamese prison camp to be named Sinjin Hawke? I think that’s one of those questions where the answer depends on your own value system. (editor’s note: Erich apparently isn’t familiar with the whole “Saint John” being pronounced as “Sinjin” thing. I can’t say I blame him, since it’s retarded.)

Best non-Borgnine line: I could have used a man like your brother.

This line is given by some toothy Brit who plays the mercenary leader and is addressed to JMV. As written, it is hackneyed at best. The delivery is great though. We could have used a man. Like, your brother. Ouch! Kudos to you, English guy whose name IMDB will not reveal.

Episode 8: Flight #091 is Missing

This one sort of reminded me of a Margaret Atwood short story, “A Travel Piece.” The premise is basically the same: people trapped at sea after an airline crash with no hope of rescue. This version is better because Airwolf intervenes, in one of the stronger episodes of the season. Hijackers land a plane on the water and let it sink, but the way the plane is designed, the water doesn’t leak in. Why doesn’t it float then? You sure ask a lot of questions. The point is that the hijackers have the passengers trapped under water, undetectable, completely at their mercy and with a deadline that cannot be negotiated: the amount of time it will take for the passengers to run out of oxygen. Caitlin is on board, but I think that is largely to make the scenes in the plane more interesting and that Airwolf would have intervened in this situation regardless of who the passengers were, as this is another mission under the direction of The FIRM. Another brutal moment by the standards of network TV comes when the guys who actually hijack and sink the plane emerge from the ocean in scuba gear, see their partners and start celebrating.”We did it!” “Huzzah!”  Their partners whip out the machine guns, open up on their pals and cut them out of the deal.

Things that negotiate with terrorists: East coast, Jewish, cosmopolitan experts.

Things that don’t negotiate with terrorists: Airwolf.

Best Borgnine line: Oh, what the heck? Hooray!

Episode 9: Once A Hero

This episode is one of the worst. I assume they dump all the turds into the middle of the season, so I made note of the Best Borgnine Line (BBL) and googled “Airwolf fan fiction” which led to http://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Airwolf/

A few postcards from the abyss:
Sleeping Beauties» by bookworm

On their first mission since Cait’s death, Dominic and Hawke go undercover to bust a drug ring and take a dangerous drug off the street nicknamed Sleeping Beauty.

Jingle Bell Hawke by Maria Thorne

BBL: Are you kidding? At these prices, I’ll pop for the sweaters!

Somehow I got the notion that The White Ribbon is meant as an explanation of Nazism, probably because I’m an idiot.  It isn’t that, but it does provide some food for thought about the relatively recent roots of authoritarianism and oppression. Set in the Greater Fatherland Area around the turn of the century, our thoughts naturally turn to Hitler, who the kids in the story would likely grow up to support.  With rigid totalitarianism on the brain, we notice nuances of life in German village upon which we might not otherwise immediately focus. Particularly, when authority becomes pernicious in such a setting, there isn’t really anywhere to appeal. Dad is diddling the daughter? She will just have to deal with it. The alternative is to create a modern, liberal social structure, establish a child welfare agency, invent the telephone and use it to call them. And even then, she will still have to deal with it.

At the center of the film is an unsolved mystery as the village is afflicted by several acts of naked cruelty. The mystery remains unsolved and is meshed with other acts of negligence, malice and abuse of power. For variety, there is a charming, old world love story set under the guidance of a kind and benevolent patriarch. Loving Dad, Rapist Dad: it’s all in the luck of the draw. One of Haneke’s big points is that the abusers of power and freelance sadists will almost invariably get away with it, because it is so difficult to produce a suitable response. Without going into detail, several of his films seem to involve the ease with which we can destroy someone and the near impossibility of justice, if justice is action that restores some kind of equilibrium. From the Nazis down to one sexually terrorized daughter, whether some of the perpetrators are hanged or they live to beat off to the memories of their crimes in old age, there isn’t any way to really counterbalance irreparable harm.

We can, however, fuck things up even further by reinvesting in still greater authority, hoping that the newly strengthened social hierarchy will finally protect us or at least make things right again. In this film, that means a culture based on severe Protestantism that comes with more abuse. When the kids grew up, they’d try to double down on dad yet again. The historical context is only one of multiple, conflicting sources of tension in this film that provide the quality of a complex thriller. The cinematography is so impressive that you could use it as a tiebreaker in determining this to be the best Haneke film. Maybe Haneke uses disabled children because they represent the most basic level of injustice, but some of the shots of a retarded boy in this movie just seemed like a cheap way to be unpleasant, which is my only complaint.

#1 Big River Man

Matt has been singing the praises of John Maringouin’s earlier work, Running Stumbled, since he saw it at some festival. But because of legal concerns, it’s very difficult to track down a copy by hook or by crook. I did find Big River Man, however, though I’m not sure if it was by hook or by crook. Whichever the bad one is. It’s lucky that I did so, because even though I haven’t seen all that many of 2009’s films, I can award first prize with total confidence. Willie, you can throw out the other projects.

My first inclination is to just copy down this entire move word for word and post about 150 screen caps. Like this:

Many Slovenians are drunk and drivers. We are top in Europe by statistics. And my father, Martin, is one of them.

But I’m pretty sure that is illegal, and it is certainly unethical and the last thing I want to do is provide you with an excuse for not seeing The Best Film Of The Year (keep an eye out for it on The Discovery Channel). Maybe even The Next Step In Documentaries. The film is about a Slovanian endurance swimmer, Martin Strel, and his attempt to swim the length of The Amazon. Strel has repeatedly shattered his own endurance records, including swims down the polluted Mississippi and the horribly polluted Yantze, where he was sharing the water with corpses. Given that Strel is in his 50s, quite overweight, an alcoholic, subsists largely on horse burgers and has an old country, slavic way of thinking, the entire film is basically one great quotation, abundant in the kind of hilarious idiosyncrasies that recent “independent” films have failed so badly, so frequently to simulate.

“If piranha, for example, start attacking or something like that, we would threw bucket of blood, or whatever, on the other side and the piranhas will just redirect there.”

Comparisons to Herzog are pretty obvious, as this is a doc focusing on an unusual individual, struggling against nature (Grizzly Man) and the Amazon in particular (Aguirre, etc.) and I don’t think there is any disputing His influence. Also, like Herzog, Maringouin intentionally leaves his fingerprints all over the subject and it is anyone’s guess how much of it he has orchestrated.  But this is an Anglo version of Herzog’s approach with a layer of self awareness and and playfulness of which the mirthless German mind is incapable (see The White Ribbon). Martin claims that he is largely motivated by promoting environmental awareness, which leads to one of the film’s masterstrokes. One reason for the destruction of the rain forest is the value of mahogany, often used in musical instruments. As this information is shared, Marnigouin mixes deadpan documentary technique and an ironic juxtaposition of images that could well be rooted in this very same internet, to solemnly accuse rock stars with over-sized guitars of being a major cause of deforestation.

Another stroke of genius has a deeper impact on the film. Rather than narrate the film himself or God fucking forbid, have a celebrity handle the job, Maringouin has Martin’s son, Borut, narrate, a decision that adds tremendously to the film with maximum economy. Instantly, the film also becomes a study of a father son relationship and we have a narrator with extensive, firsthand insight into the other elements of the story. We learn that Borut is the one man PR maven behind his dad’s enormous local fame, which makes him a natural for the role, explaining, for example, how Strel’s status allows him to park on sidewalks, or anywhere else he likes, while driving around hammered, practicing breathing exercises, eating and listening to instructional English tapes without fear of a ticket. Given that Borut’s English, while good for general purposes, is a cut below the normal standard for narrating a 100-minute documentary, there is a whole new level of humor and charm brought to the narration. This is like a great Simpsons episode. It’s so entertaining and it nails all of the glib elements so hard that most people will overlook the fact that this film is enormously sophisticated and that Maringouin as a grand master at this particular game of discourse.

Hello! It is time to watch a lot of “Airwolf” and drink some beer. Let’s start with some fun “Airwolf” facts:

• Airwolf is a kinda-sorta “Magnum P.I.” spin off, in that “Magnum” had helicopters in it and the creator of both shows, Donald P. Bellisario, thought, “we should do a show that has even more helicopters in it” and, for this, was paid millions of dollars. True story.

• Jan-Michael Vincent was the highest paid actor on television, or “TV,” pulling down $200,000 an episode. Even though “…wolf” wasn’t a major hit and wasn’t a JMV star vehicle, this salary was justified because he was so hot.

• The primary reason I’ll be watching “Airwolf” with a few cheap beers instead of with some “Knight Rider” grade vodka is this video.

• The real helicopter used for Airwolf was a Bell 222. After “Airwolf,” it was used as a medical helicopter in Germany, until it crashed and everyone on board died.

• Reid Rondell, Jan-Michael Vincent’s stunt double, was killed during filming when his helicopter crashed.

• Bellisario often gives his characters the same birthday he has!

For starters, I’ll be putting away a couple of bottles of Steel Reserve, which claims to be a “high gravity lager” or something, but is actually malt liquor. While I do enjoy finer beers, I need to save money to buy more rat traps and all of the beers below the dog piss line are pretty much interchangeable. Yeah, Bud tastes better than Steel City, but I don’t actually enjoy the taste of either product, so I look at it like toothpaste. All toothpaste tastes bad, so I buy the one that gets my teeth clean for the least amount of money.

Episode 1: Sweet Britches

Although all of “Airwolf” is readily available online, I skipped season one and will be starting with the second season. Lest you think that I take copping a buzz and watching “Airwolf” lightly, I’ll have you know that I did some preliminary research. Quoth Wikipidia:

To increase ratings the studio wanted to add a female character which happened at the start of the second season in the form of feisty Caitlin O’Shannessy (Jean Bruce Scott) and for the series to move away from its quite dark and moody tales of international espionage into a more domestic and straight action-oriented affair. Airwolf became more streamlined, domestic, and self-contained. The moves by CBS ultimately proved unsuccessful, however, and production cost over-runs remained high.

That sounds pretty damn enticing. And I’ve paused the first episode literally eight seconds in because my decision has already been vindicated. In the first eight seconds of “Airwolf,” season 2 I’ve seen: 1)Airwolf 2) A crooked Southern sheriff 3) A LION and 4) a sniper. Yes, yes, it’s one of those 80s TV preview segments meant to keep you tuned in for the whole show and thus is something of a highlight reel. This does nothing to mitigate the fact that a crooked Southern sheriff and a lion are in the same episode of a show about a deadly helicopter. The intro isn’t even over yet and “Airwolf” has already mopped the floor with its approximate equivalents on contemporary TV, like “CSI.” Or I guess, “JAG.” I’ve only seen “JAG” one time and don’t remember it very well. The story of how I came to actually watch an episode of “Jag” is a fascinating one, deserving of it’s own episode of “Airwolf,” but too personal to share.

So, the hick minions of the corrupt Southern Sheriff try to shoot down Airwolf with a shotgun and, when that fails, conclude that it’s a UFO. “It wuz al-li-ens sherrriff!” And yes, I’m still in the preview section. On to the opening credits.

Episode one is still pretty great at the 15 minute mark. String’s buddy has busted out of the evil Southern sheriff’s jail and summoned String for help. Like any good friend would, String takes his combat helicopter down to Texas, with his partner. In case you’ve forgotten, his partner is Dominic Santini, played by fucking Ernest Borgnine. There’s a scene of some cowboys on an African safari which is totally out of place with everything else so far, but I have a hunch that this is where the Lion comes in.

Best Evil Southern Sheriff line (spoken to a highway patrolwoman): Meter maid, you go sticking your butt in where it’s not wanted and it’ll get kicked, no matter how cute it is.

It’s better for the delivery, which stretches the sentence over about fifteen seconds of screen time. Also, now that I’m seeing it again, the Texan who thinks helicopters are UFOs is played by Tackleberry from Police Academy.

As it turns out, the cowboys are not on Safari in Africa, but on some private hunting preserve in Texas where you get $15,000 for shooting an ocelot. It’s never totally clear who is paying a fortune to illegally import large animals from Africa, then paying other people to shoot them, but Borgnine unwittingly parks Airwolf on the preserve, suddenly finds himself surround by lions, then interacts with them in a humorous fashion.

One thing that is quickly becoming apparent is that “Airwolf” is far darker than its contemporaries. For example a pair of scenes runs like so. The evil sheriff has captured the sassy highway patrol lady and decides to have some of his cronies over to the police station to gang rape her. It’s implied in such a way that a child wouldn’t catch it, but it’s very clear to anybody old enough to know that a group of men taking turns with a woman doesn’t mean they are beating her up.

Sheriff: Bring the boys over, they’ll take that feistiness out of her.

Deputy: Do… you have to do that sheriff?

Sheriff: When you got a pack of hounds, you gotta throw them some meat once in a while.

So true. Subsequently, the guy who runs the hunting ground is chasing JMV with some rube who’s on a hunting trip and Borgnine flies past and flips over their jeep. The tourist breaks his neck and the safari guy gets eaten by a lion. In case you don’t know where the story is going, the Sheriff is firing on the military gunship with his rifle, which prompts String to pause for a minute and mutter, “don’t make me do this sheriff” because he is a good guy and reluctant to kill anybody. But seeing as how the Sheriff is… posing no threat to him whatsoever, what choice does he have? String fires about 1,200 rounds of heavy machine gun fire into the police station in like four seconds and then blows the whole thing up with a rocket.

Episode 2: Firestorm

This one is comparatively low key. Another hapless bumpkin mistakes military aircraft for a UFO (this show is part of the cover up!) although this time, it is Borgnine’s friend, who is a war scarred alcoholic living alone in the desert. It turns out that, as is so often the case in the world of 80’s TV Action, some kook has set up a private army within the borders of the United States for no particular reason and without anybody really noticing. In this case, the kook is a deranged, discharged general who prances around with a riding crop. The crazy army tries to start WWIII by launching a small nuke, at Russia I suppose, while the general spouts about a “first strike,” though he obviously doesn’t grasp the concept (it requires more than one missile [/comic book guy]). The drunk calls attention to the private army because he thinks the helicopters that they fly around the desert for no reason are UFOs. He then helps JMV blow up the nuke and kill everyone in the army. Contrary to expectations, preventing nuclear holocaust does not cure the alcoholic and Borgnine finally gives up on trying to rescue his friend, leaving him to drink himself to death in the dessert. Yikes.

The best Borgnine line comes when he wants to do some maintenance flights with Airwolf because he misses it.

JMV: What the hell do you do with a man who falls in love with a machine?

Borgnine: (widens eyes and laughs maniacally for ten full seconds)

Episode 3: Moffett’s Ghost

Our boys are using Airwolf to ferry some sort of peacemaking guy to secret meetings with Russian scientists and this is somehow slowing down the arms race. This is the first mission of the season to take place under the direction of the FIRM, so it also marks the first appearance of Archangel, that mustachioed weirdo who has the eye patch glasses, the white suit and hat, and the cane. Like Tom Wolfe, but not as much of a tool. If “Airwolf” was a bigger hit and had its rightful place among our cultural furniture, that would be a nice Halloween costume. His assistant looks eerily like a young, female Condi Rice, and is a similar character, except she is working for peace. There’s another super villain, this time of the quasi-Nazi variety, who is trying to get all up in Airwolf from beyond the grave. He is is Moffett, the man who created Airwolf and he is angry about being dead. More people die.

Apart from the darker themes (and remember, I chose season two because it was supposed to be lighter and more mainstream than season one) it’s becoming clear that the basic filmmaking of “Airwolf” is a cut above “The A-Team” or “Knight Rider.” I won’t actually make an argument for this, because it would be fucking boring. Also, the acting is superior–JMV is unquestionably a splendid piece of man ass, but he he is a pretty good actor too, and Borgnine has been voted the greatest man of his generation in every credible poll–and you can see that the vision for the show was a more sophisticated and adult 80’s Action TV program. The creators foolishly bet on the intelligence of the American audience, which explains why the show never caught on to the extent that the others did. I’m not saying “Airwolf” is “The Wire,” of course. I’m just saying it’s not as thoroughly witless as “The Dukes of Hazard,” and so we rejected it. Also, Caitlin wasn’t as hot as Daisy, though looking back, Daisy wasn’t actually hot, so much as sluttily dressed. I know what you are thinking, but I’ve already patented the rights to “Airslut.” Also “Airbeowulf.”

Best Borgnine Line: I feel better with a thumb and four fingers on the stick.

Episode 4: The Truth About Holly

The Texas cop chick (Jean Bruce Scott) is awkwardly reintroduced as the permanent Airwolf chick, Caitlin. Basically, she just shows up and says how hard it was to track String down, as though this were perfectly normal and she just hangs around until Borgnine hires her part-time for Santini Air which leads to her piloting a super-top secret military helicopter on a regular basis. JMV is almost killed “rescuing” Borgnine’s niece, an Argentinean skank who’s grown tired of sucking off some Mexican drug lord she deliberately ran off with and who now wants to go home. The Mexican drug lord’s last name is Aarons. Everyone gets to be helicopto-stuntmen in a movie and JMV dresses up like Indiana Jones! Hawt!

Best Borgnine line: Hey! Sure, a good number of Jews died in the war. A lot of people died in the war. But there weren’t much more than six million Jews living in Europe at the time, let alone killed in so-called concentration camps. The so-called Holocaust is a fabrication of the Jewish media/banking complex.

What is it like to be a rebel? To spend every second on the edge? It’s hard to explain, unless you live it every day. Like me. Joon-ho Bong’s Memories of Murder is considered one of the films of the decade by many, but not by me. I enjoyed it and recommend it, but I did not see anything earth-shattering. Perhaps its trivial similarities to Zodiac take a little bit of the impact from each film, which is totally unfair. But I’m a small man in some ways. A small, petty man. After Memories of Murder, Bong made The Host, which is easily the highest-grossing Korean film of all time, making about $90 million in worldwide box office. Perhaps more surprisingly, it might be the most critically celebrated monster movie since the original King Kong. It was OK, but I say that critics got carried away because the film put a chip in the paint on the armor of Hollywood’s monopoly on such films. Now Bong has released Mother to lukewarm critical response and I think you can make a good argument that it Bong’s best film I’ve seen.

At Ruthless we don’t really concern ourselves with spoilers. Holy shit, Batman doesn’t die. But for maybe the third or forth time, I’ll tell you that my primary recommendation is that you stop reading at this point and just see this thought-provoking, engrossing thriller before I give everything away, then come back so that I can spoonfeed you understanding of the film. Not that I was utterly shocked by the fact that the retard did it, but I hadn’t really considered the possibility until late in the game, after I had sniffed after a couple of classic red herrings like a chump. I was taken in, not only because of my limited intelligence, but because the film blends genres so well that it keeps you unsure of where you are and where you are going. It feels like a mystery here, a morality tale there, and then a revenge saga. But the changes in the film have more to do with the information Bong gradually releases to the viewer, and how that changes our perspective, than with him trying to mash up genres.

The basic premise of the film is that a ‘tard named Do-joon is about to be convicted of the murder of a beautiful schoolgirl on marginal evidence. Most people have assumed that he’s guilty, and at first it seems like his mother is the only one to have faith in his innocence. But Mother is never that simple. The police have pinned the murder on the ‘tard, largely because it was convenient to do so. There is significant evidence against him, plus, he isn’t right in the head. Though they think they have the right guy, I don’t think any of the cops would be willing to bet everything they owned on his guilt. It’s casually revealed that some other people in the area think Do-joon is probably innocent, but don’t really care. The mourning relatives of the girl (all female, described by others as bitches) have also assumed Do-joon’s guilt and lash out viciously at his mother when she attends a memorial service. But they seem like the sort of people who savor being wronged, so that they can righteously be nasty and hateful. If they were American, they would be making the rounds on right wing radio, shrieking for the death penalty, while the hosts verbally fantasized about prison rape. Do-joon’s friend, Ku Jin, eventually expresses belief in Do-joon’s innocence. After all, it was only a day before the murder that Ku jin tricked the ‘tard and his mom into taking the blame and footing the bill for an act of vandalism that he committed. It seems likely that the same thing has happened again. After extorting Do-joon’s mom of all her money, Ku Jin decides to help her find the real killer.

Now, this is a dark film, but I don’t think it’s the exercise in total cynicism that it is beginning to sound like. Ku Jin certainly exploits Do-joon’s retardation, but he also seems to generally look out for him. I mean, who really has a severely retarded person as a close friend on equal terms? Other retarded people and saints. Ku Jin is a greedy thug, but he keeps up his end of the bargain by taking revenge on those who wrong the ‘tard, even when the Do-joon has forgotten what happened to him. Maybe the revenge is, again, just a pretext for lashing out at people, maybe it derives from authentic feelings of friendship and loyalty. That uncertainty touches on the major and fascinating theme of the film which is how moral actions are separated into 1) motivation 2) function and 3) outcome. We see how these elements can mix and match like the reels of a slot machine in one of the film’s secondary relationships. 1) Ku Jin might be motivated by real fealty, he might be looking for a pretext to lash out, might be some of both. 2) The helpless Do-joon has someone to protect him and limit his exploitation (even if that person is the one doing the exploiting) 3) People who wrong the disabled man are punished. Sometimes people who are mistakenly thought to wrong him are punished too. You can see this mixing and matching of intentions, functions and outcomes throughout the film. The reason the moral issues are so well articulated is the same reason the thriller is so effective. The motivations of characters are constantly in question and the apparent facts of the situation are constantly shifting. Just as new clues and suspects in the case keep us locked into the mystery, thuggery can become a pursuit of justice and the pursuit of justice can become the pursuit of injustice. The police half-ass their way into arresting the right man, then are compelled to do just enough additional work to let the right man go and arrest the wrong man.

The main relationship is, of course, that between Do-joon, the perpetual child, and his mother. In recent philosophy, it’s been suggested that the kind of intense subjectivity in moral judgment generally associated with women, most obviously mothers, can be a virtue, in line with the model of Aristotelian virtue ethics. Maybe there is something good about having a person who is always on your side and making decisions out of loyalty and love, meaning the ideal world would not be populated by utilitarians running calculations and Kantians figuring how best to apply universal laws to every situation. There have been several films that have tried to make this case using optimistic scenarios, but Mother is the first I’ve seen to really explore the depths of the proposal, even though I doubt that Bong made the film in response to any academic question. I have no idea if he is interested in moral philosophy at all, but the director and his co-writer’s understanding of human behavior and his willingness to embrace uncertainty makes Mother one of the most interesting films ever made “about” moral philosophy. We see every dimension and outcome of the mother’s total loyalty and devotion. She fucks over other people to help her barely sentient son. If he were in fact innocent, she would surmount sloppy police work to save him from wrongful conviction. Being that he is guilty, her efforts, coupled with still more sloppy police work, free her guilty son and land another disabled boy in prison. We also see how her actions remain consistent as the nature of her motivations shifts, from freeing the innocent to freeing the guilty. Though from her perspective, it’s always freeing her son. In the end, she gets away with it and is able to release all her feelings of guilt about how she did it. Maybe this is another triumph of female subjectivity, but Judah does pretty much the same thing in Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is a good companion piece to Mother. The end result is the same in both movies, but between the two they cover about every possible way to get there, including selfishly calculated killing, thoughtless, almost accidental killing and killing out of love.

And, again, I don’t see the film as a condemnation or totally cynical simply because it explores a wide range of possibilities. It’s certainly dark, particularly when it comes to light that the mother’s greatest regret is that she failed in an effort to poison herself and Do-joon when he was only five. Her motivations, however, were to spare them suffering. The outcome would have been for the best, as they survive only to wind up suffering and seriously harming others on top of that. Only the action is very unpalatable. In any case, the general mechanism of unbending maternal devotion isn’t worthless because it leads to bad results in this case. Any kind of moral decision mechanism will very often lead to bad results because people are so often mistaken or poorly informed. Any system of moral or legal judgment is certain to set many guilty men free and send many innocent men to prison. People will do the right thing for the wrong reasons, the wrong thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons, with good and bad results coming from each scenario. The appeal of “virtue ethics,” then is that they are rooted in permanency, like maternal love. The only absolute certainty is that someone else will be there to pretentiously wank about it all.

From what I’ve read, a lot of people seem to think Chris Smith is advocating the ideas put forward by his film’s subject, Michael Ruppert. I’m don’t really think so. Did he also believe the guy from American Movie was going to be the next big horror director? Why is the movie called “Collapse?”

If the film was intended as a mere platform for Ruppert’s views, it would probably be less entertaining and Ruppert would come across less credibly. But Collapse is not a puff piece, it is a portrait of a madman. Maybe. Ruppert, like so many people today, like so many people since antiquity, believes that the end of the world as we know it is at hand. As I pointed out in my otherwise crappy 2012 review, we like to fantasize that the end is near because it means that we are part of the most important generation (especially if we have a chance to stop it). Also, we like to believe that the world couldn’t possibly go on without us, being too small-minded a species to distinguish between our individual mortality and the course of humanity. Back to Ruppert, who makes smoking look like the single most pleasurable activity on earth and who looks to be on the downside of middle age. If we are in the first stages of collapse, didn’t he just happen to come along at the perfect time? He spent the prime of his life at the very height of human civilization. Now, as he winds down his life, he gets to witness the most important and awesome events in human history. Finally, he’ll pass away knowing that, if humans survive at all, they will spend centuries in desperate and primitive squalor, revering the mythical golden age in which he lived.

From here you can plug in the apocalyptic fantasy of your choosing. 2012, Nostradamus, UFOs, Lizard People, global warming. Well, the record does scratch on that last one, doesn’t it? Because global warming seems to be a reality. That is the flip-side of the end-times fantasy: inevitably one generation of doomsayers will be correct and they might come pretty soon. Ruppert makes a pretty good case for his generation and viewpoint, most importantly the “peak oil” scenario, being the ones to finally hit the mark with their revelations.

Part of his appeal, and the appeal of the film, is that Ruppert is on the borderline of credibility and you can’t dismiss him off the bat, but no intelligent person (this seems to exclude other movie reviewers) would accept his claims at face value. The film’s prologue tells us that the filmmakers were making a film about CIA involvement in domestic drug dealing when they met Ruppert and became sidetracked by him and his worldview. His first foray into the fringe came when he was an LAPD officer in the late seventies and early eighties. Ruppert claims he was approached by the CIA to help move drugs on his beat in South Central. While I know fuck all about peak oil, this is an issue I’ve looked at and take it from me, some random guy on the internet, there is a very strong case to be made that the CIA was indeed involved in the cocaine trade in order to finance their wacky adventures in Latin America. If the smuggling did happen, Ruppert would be a prime subject to recruit into the program because both of his parents worked in the intelligence community at fairly high levels. So much so, he says, that while working for the LAPD he discovered that he had a high security clearance, given to him in childhood as a formality because his dad was so frequently involved in secret activity, and never taken back. Ruppert, who had graduated from UCLA with honors and was valedictorian of a police academy class of 1,100, blew the whistle and saw his career crumble and, he says, his life put in jeopardy.

That was the turning point for Ruppert and is the crux of the film. His story holds decent credibility, as he is obviously not insane, he gained nothing and lost everything by his decision to blow the whistle and his story fits in with other accounts of what was happening in LA at the time. If his story is true, it is evidence that he is an honest guy of substantial integrity. Whether it is true or not, this is the point at which Ruppert made the permanent shift from a highly promising young cop, poised to uphold the status quo, to a fringe critic of the same.

Ruppert’s credibility rests largely on that integrity, along with what he describes as a gift for critical thinking. He is not a PhD, but some of his initial, freelance articles were up to the standards of The LA Times. His credentials, though not overwhelming, support the impression he gives of just being a very sharp minded person. His theories and analysis are rarely esoteric, nor totally original, but they are pretty complex and he hits one of the key markers of someone who knows their shit cold, be it Chomsky or Friedman: the ability to explain viewpoints based on complex theories and realities in plain terms. Finally, we see Ruppert break down emotionally at a couple of points, which I think is also critical. No doubt, part of this due to his personal collapse and the long struggle to be heard. But if you listen to the preponderance of nutjobs, and listening to nutjobs is kind of a hobby of mine, you can sense that they don’t really believe what they are saying. They are living fantasies about lizzard people, aliens and Jesus. But their emotional states don’t correspond to their purported beliefs. If you really believe in an impending alien invasion, you don’t spend most of the day watching “Three’s Company” reruns, hit Burger King, then go online and chat about the how the alien invasion has already begun for 45 minutes before a peaceful nights sleep. If you really think your unsaved friends and relatives will literally be tortured forever, why are you less concerned than you would be if you knew one of them was driving drunk? The inconsistencies are due to the fact that all of these people are role playing, but that does not seem to be the case for Ruppert. He believes what he is saying, and has shaped his life around it.

I guess the substance what Ruppert actually believes must be addressed. The essence of the “peak oil” theory is that, given that oil is a finite resource, we will begin to run out of it at some point. Once we pass the peak of oil production, shit will hit the fan. Ruppert points out that we are dependent on oil for far more than fuel. All plastics are made from oil. It takes 7 gallons of oil to make one tire. All industrial fertilizers are derived from fossil fuels. You get the idea. Someday–arguably yesterday–we are going to begin the process of running out of our most important resource (besides precious children, of course). There are strong indications that this is already underway, including the fact that the Saudis, sitting on top of 25% of the world’s oil supply, refuse to make their reserve estimates public, but have begun cost-intensive off-shore drilling. The actions of a nation with a 50-year supply in their cheap, underground wells? Probably not. Logic dictates that if 25% of the world’s oil supply is starting to run out, the world’s oil supply is starting to run out. Solar and wind are the only viable alternatives for energy, according to Ruppert, but even these are not huge net-producers, once you account for all of the energy that goes into getting energy out of them. I looked up “peak oil” on wikipedia, and the counterarguments to the general tenets of the theory seem to amount to “hopefully it’s not as bad as all that.” Or in the words of philosopher king Homer Simpson, “That can’t be true. If it were, I’d be terrified.”

As an armchair economist I can point out something right away. Even if we are ultimately unable to replace oil in our civilization, the breadth of its use should mean a slower decline than Ruppert figures. There is a ton of shit made out of plastic, for example, that doesn’t really have to be. We should see glass coke bottles and metal laundry hampers long before we see food shortages in Los Angeles. As the price of oil based fertilizer goes up it seems likely that some kind of alternatives will emerge. Given that beef production is hugely inefficient in terms of produce in and produce out, for example, as fertilizer prices multiply, beef could become a luxury item and most of us will have to learn to like tofu.

Not that I really know what I’m talking about. More importantly, the film does not succeed or fail with the details of Ruppert’s ideas, though it must be pointed out that there is film of him discussing the impending collapse of the derivatives markets about a year before it happened. But his most interesting points are the generalities. Why should the sudden explosion in human population, which correlates perfectly with our figuring out how to use oil, end any differently than the explosions animals experience when they discover a massive new food source, devour it and then see a population crash? His economic criticisms are essentially Marxist: capitalism is predicated on infinite growth, but nothing grows infinitely. Certainly the hubris of capitalism’s advocates is unjustified. Assuming you actually read and stuff, how many times have you seen someone write off the Marxist prediction because we survived the depression. Well, shit, anything that lasts 150 years and only comes to the brink of total collapse a couple of times is certain to last forever, right? I’d boil down Ruppert’s general point to the observation that a our population is expanding, and our energy use is expanding even per capita, and our economy is becoming evermore about infinite expansion, largely on paper; while our growth and consumption cannot go on forever and contraction will be jarring at best, and more likely catastrophic.

Equally interesting to me, is the general profile of Ruppert I’ve tried to convey. As I said, I love nutjobs, be they authentic wackos like Holocaust-deniers and UFO people or radical philosophers who I might wind up agreeing with. Mostly, this is because it’s much more fun to read a tenured professor seriously proposing a shift to capitalistic, syndo-anarchism, than to read some shills quibble about the public option. Ruppert is so interesting because he seems to cover all of the bases. Bright, articulate and not crazy, but overly invested in his conclusions. He has unusual ideas, but his fundamental world view is not totally divorced from convention. He seems a bit damaged, but not unhinged. The bottom line is that you can watch him talk for about 90 minutes straight without a moment of boredom.

Whether your holiday festivities will consist of eggnog salted with tears and drifting off with fervent wish that Santa brings you a stocking full of not waking up, family gatherings in which ceremony thinly veils supernovae of loathing, cowardly religious rituals in which you prostrate yourself, begging to be rescued by an especially silly comic book character or being given the cheapest, crappiest chocolate permissible by law because you are a Jew, we have several recommendations to kill the vast stretches of time between football and NBA games. If, however, you need one more nudge, a dash of myrrh to break the camel’s back and launch you into the ranks of holiday suicides, we can help too because few bad movies are as bad as bad Christmas movies. We’re not big on the holidays, but these films have been good or bad enough to inspire us.

This journal will chronicle drunken observations and insights as I make my way through my the Knight Rider, season one DVD set — my Walden if you will. Although I’m sure that by the time I’m finished, you will regard Walden as Thoreau’s Knight Rider.

1. Ever since childhood, the hair of David Hasslehoff as Michael Knight has reminded me of meatballs. After watching most of Disc 1, I am consumed by a desire to consume meatballs and only refrain from making a run to Togo’s, in pursuit of a half way decent but not particularly good Hasslehoff Head Sandwich because A) it is 2:00 am and Togo’s is closed as fuck and B) my blood alcohol level hovers at about four times the legal driving limit. Actually, I don’t really car about “B” that much. I just wish Togo’s was open. Also, this is especially true when Hasslehoff’s back is to the camera. It’s just a human body with a meatball where the head should be. You can’t look at such an image and think of anything other than Ichabod Crane coming home covered in tomato paste.

2. Seeing Patricia Macpherson in her little white jumpsuit for the first time in well over a decade stirred hibernating memories of barely comprehended childhood lust, and I realized that she must have been responsible for my first, thumb sized erections. No wonder I would plead so desperately to delay bed time for a few minutes on Friday Knights. Yoda PJ’s leave little room to hide embarrassing protrusions, even when you’re eight.

3. Maybe it’s a plastic surgery issue, but whenever I watch a show that aired before about 1988, I can’t believe how old all the actors look. In the pilot, I’m pretty sure that the femme fatale who serves as Michael’s nemesis is played by Gloria Swanson. Call me superficial, but if face-lifts and lippo are what it takes to insure that actresses cast in the roll of “sexpot # 1 ” are completely jowl free, then God bless you, Dr. Baumblatt.

4. Is Michael Knight a hero, a hetero, a homo or a pedo? Answer: all of the above. Upon meeting hot single mothers and older sisters, who invariably have ten year old boys in tow, Knight’s first course of action is always to take the boy “for a ride in my car.” Cut to a steamy breeze blowing through curtains, and fade to black. Seriously, none of these women have the mildest qualm about sending little boys off with a stranger from out of town who asks to be left alone with the kid within 90 seconds of first meeting him. The ease with which Knight is able to get young boys alone is like something out of Pedhouse Forum

“Hi, my name is Michael Knight, and what’s you’re name pretty lady?”

“Angela, and this is my son Billy.”

“Hey sport! What do you say I take you for a ride out to the warehouse district! See ya later Andrea.”

“Bye Michael, nice meeting you. Have fun Billy!”

On many an occasion, these women throw themselves at Mike with that delicious, single mom desperation and, when better choices exist, he deflects their moist attentions as readily as KITT deflects howitzer shells. One can only assume that he hits the tang only upon discovering that Jr. doesn’t like to party like that. But this ain’t a George Lucas character. When his options are limited, Knight hits option “b” with enthusiasm. It might be his second choice, but he still loves it and he is perfectly content to wipe the blood from his sword and fence his way to a silver medal.

5. The second episode of the series was directed by Paul Stanley. Was it that Paul Stanley? Nobody knows for certain, because the possibility is too delicious to risk debunking through investigation. “You know, I really needed to take a break from the relentless gravitas of Kiss…”

6. The five best television shows to watch while heavily intoxicated are:

1. Perfect Hair Forever

2. Aqua Teen Hunger Force

3. Knight Rider

4. Family Guy

5.Municipal Roundtable

Note that two of the top three star anthropomorphic meatballs.

7. The five best shows to watch while sober are:

I have no idea. Probably West Wing, or some bullshit like that, which only goes to demonstrate that temperance is no virtue.

In all seriousness, let’s have a hand for the design team on this show. 23 years later, KITT still looks totally rad. Even his high tech interior still looks pretty cool, with the lone exception of when he is tracking people and the display on his monitor looks like Berserker.

Roughly a year ago, a friend pointed out that it would be really funny if their were “little people” whose proportions where opposite those of actual midgets. People with normal sized arms and legs, but with really small torsos and heads. I’ve been sporadically laughing out loud about it ever since.

I’ve hit the roughest patch of Knight Rider so far. The impossibly bad episode called “White Bird.” David Hasslehoff is called on to shed tears on no less than three separate occasions, one of which comes as we see him driving through the desert as a montage of photographs of his ex-fiance drifts over the screen as we hear watery echos her saying, “I love you Michael. Don’t ever leave me Michael.” This continues for a good two minutes. I also like the slyly expository scene where Michael explains the case involving his ex to Bonnie, beginning with, “In my other life before the Foundation, when I had a different face, and a different identity…when I was, Michael Long…” Cue bad funk.

Michael Knight has the worst taste in music ever. I don’t remember this at all, and granted, there wasn’t much to chose from in 1983… but Christ. All he listens to is this terrible, late 70’s easy listening country rock. Bands who were inspired by the Eagles. Inspired to make music — not to murder children. So wrong.