We wish Schultz wrote more reviews, too…

This was the best movie of this year. Everyone else can just stop making whatever they’re making and give up. DEEP BLUE is INSANE.

If this movie had any flaws whatsoever it was this: not being 6 hours long. Some of the shots are so amazing — like being 50 feet underwater, camera pointing straight up, filming the sun coming directly into the lens, but distorted by the rippling waves — or, shots from inside the half—pipe of a breaking wave, or zooming in from a whole beach to one single grain of sand — that I could have watched them for an hour. If they made those scenes an hour long, there is the danger I would turn into someone who meditates and wears crystals. But still that is a danger I would risk, because that shit is just so amazing. Also there is lots of breathtaking nature footage, kind of KOYANASQUATTSI style, but it’s difficult to write about that using words so I will just write about the violence instead.

I mean, they have whale-on-whale deathmatches filmed in the middle of the ocean. What the fuck?? How do you even FIND that shit? This isn’t some cushy Hollywood director with a big SFX budget who just dials his cell phone and is like;

“Hey, is Gary there? This is David. Can you make me a whale fight? I need it by Tuesday. Let’s do some blow!”

You can’t invent that shit. You can’t buy that shit. It’s the BIGGEST ANIMALS ON EARTH and they are killing each other, and the waves are RED WITH BLOOD. What the FUCK!?!

I love Michael Moore, but does Fahrenheit 9/11 have whales fighting to the death? NO. Wait a minute, now I don’t love Michael Moore.

Not only that, but they have clouds of like 3,000,393,383,387,322 fish swimming in a loop, thus making this like giant living whirlpool of solid bodies a kilometer in diameter. Then like a million dolphins and 2 million sharks all swoop in from 4 dimensions and start eating everything in sight, and these guys are all filming it from the fucking inside. I swear it was like MATRIX THREE but REAL. I kept expecting them to cut to the old general guy inside his tank going “RAHHHHHH!!!” because it was that intense AND not even made up.

It makes me think, jesus, if that shit was the shit they DID film like no problem, all in a day’s work, what kind of shit did they see but COULDN’T film?? that thought fucks with my mind way more than any of the other boggling things that are actually IN the film…

Then after all that, it gets all calm and peaceful and it cuts to some baby seals playing on a beach. It is very nurturing and new age. They are cute and cuddly and have big eyes and they are just about to enter the water for the first time on their own. . .and then LIKE FIFTEEN ORCA WHALES FUCKING JUMP OUT OF THE OCEAN LITERALLY ONTO THE FUCKING BEACH AND JUST EAT THEM IN SLOW MOTION. I was like “Holy shit, they got Bob! NOT BOOOBB!!!!” I was like, “You guys are such fuckers for even filming this,” because they must have known this shit was going down. They must have asked the locals “Where is a good place to shoot orcas totally eating baby seals? Because we need to film that shit.”

Not only that, but –- and I bet you didn’t know this — orcas play with their prey like a cat plays with an injured mouse [Ed Note: I knew that]. All throwing it up in the air and catching it. The last scene in this vignette is this: an orca getting all Harlem Globetrotters on a dead baby seal: fuckin’ USING ITS TAIL to flip the seal up in the air like easily FOUR HUNDRED FEET straight up, just spinning, entrails all coming out. . .just FUCKING INSANE.

The polar bears were lame, though.

But then they do other shit, like go to the deep sea areas and film just unbelievably crazy jellyfish with little pulsing neon lights and stuff. You have to see this to believe it because it looks like nothing you have ever seen before even in a science fiction movie with a billion dollar SFX budget.

Keep in mind that I am only praising the more ordinary, laid-back shit in this film because the REALLY interesting stuff cannot even be described in the English language. Half this film will make you want to jump on the next boat with a camera and some swim fins, and the other half will make you want to move to Kansas and never even bathe for fear of what lurks inside the water.

Best film this year.

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Review Posted: 8.10.04

Slam Us Back Bitches, We Could Use The PR

Ruthless Reviews is, if nothing else, a feast of extreme opinions, hyperbole, and other assorted applications of the fine art of talking shit. So why would we be dissing on the notoriously shocking VICE magazine? Well, short answer is: when it comes to being a loudmouthed asshole, like anything else, there’s a good way to do it and a bad way to do it, and that is why this article is called FUCK VICE rather than, say, WHEE, VICE or even YAY VICE XOXOXO.

Ten Reasons:

1) In case you just clicked on this link by accident, Vice Magazine is this super-subversive magazine for people who are into coke, hookers, partying really hard, being popular and wearing the right clothes. And that is different from the average Wall Street day trader. . . how? Oh, I forgot, they don’t wear suits. They wear clothes that are. . . SO BAD THEY’RE GOOD! Like, IRONY. Wow, thanks for inventing irony, guys. Please tell me which trucker cap to buy, so I can be so un-hip that I am hip again, because that whole style is only like 20 years old and I am not sick of it yet. If I didn’t read VICE I might have bought a trucker cap that was, like just plain BAD, and then I guess I would be a DON’T.

Basically there is no difference between Vice readers and high-powered day-traders besides the degree of pretension.

2) Plus, what is up with The VICE FILTER where every fucking article sounds as if written by the SAME EXACT PERSON? You know; consciously junior-high-school sounding, making shocking statements but always in a deliberately offhand, casual way, and unable to write about anything for more than 400 words because they know hipsters can’t fucking read. While I’m on the subject of the ‘Vice Filter’, let me point out the obvious: ‘fag’ = gimmick. ‘those clothes are good or bad’ = gimmick. ‘the world is going to end, let’s do some heroin’ = gimmick. How many more issues can you keep flogging these dead horses? There is, in fact, a difference between self-awareness and self-parody, and you guys crossed it two-years ago.

3) They try to represent some ‘edgy’ or ‘fringe’ culture, but in fact they are as homogenized as Coca Cola. I mean, the shit was from Quebec but when I first saw it, but I could have sworn it was from LA or NYC Because of the generic hipster layout and sensibility. Way to seize the lowest common denominator, guys! Do you really want every city to be like the same exact place, with the same jaded poseurs taking the same drugs and having the same “I’m so over it I have to get more and more disgusting everyday just to shock myself” attitude? Come to think of it. . . exactly why is being super-jaded so fucking important anyway? Isn’t that like a DRAWBACK of too many drugs, rather than a good thing??? Is joking about child molestation pornos supposed to mean you have had a full and exciting life or something? Exactly how does that work?? If you are really so over-everything, why not get over sex and drugs, too, and actually write something creative? Even if you point out that cocaine and heroin can have bad effects on people, you give the impression that 99% of earth’s population is doing them RIGHT NOW, so basically you are nonetheless glamorizing it. So fuck you.

4) Let’s look more closely at a typical vice statement, because we just have this much time on our hands. I typed 30 words blindfolded with my toes, and it came out like “EWEIiwenieiRI3283jnr23828Wfn238asdfjn 283urQ           32328.” Then I ran it through the VICE FILTER and it turned into: “If you wear Birkenstocks, you are a queer Gaylord because I am high on coke.” Which is weird, because when I ran the following sentence through the VICE FILTER, “Record crowds are expected to protest the Republican National Convention next week in Manhattan, the biggest such demonstrations since the Democratic Convention of 1968,” it came out, “Ass sucking fag-hippies; where’s my coke?”

Now, as far as I can tell, the subtext here is something like this: “Well, OBVIOUSLY not everyone who wears Birkenstocks is a terrible person. We are being DELIBERATELY childish here. Anyone with any brains is IN ON THE JOKE and won’t get mad.” Ditto using the word ‘fag’ in every article.”

But. . . what joke? Where is the joke we are supposedly ‘in on’??

When they say ‘Only gaylords wear Birkenstocks’, are we supposed to say, ‘a ha ha, they are making fun of people who do not like Birkenstocks. They are homophobic, those Birkenstock haters. Good one, vice magazine.’

No. Nobody reading ever thinks that.

Real satire, such as Phillip Roth’s OUR GANG (written over 30 years ago and still the bible of good bloodthirsty mockery), takes the form of a guy saying dumb shit with a straight face . . . But the whole point is THE GUY TALKING IS THE BAD GUY and everyone knows it. But the Vice style of ‘satire’ doesn’t make the reader laugh at the author, it allows the reader to laugh WITH the author at some hapless fool who wears unhip clothes, and laugh at fags, BUT the reader doesn’t feel guilty about it because it sort of vaguely has the appearance of satire.

They just want to have their cake and eat it too; that is, they want to say dumb and shocking things but not be responsible for them. It’s like that Simpsons episode where Krusty is like, “it was a JOKE!! When you give me that look, it was a JOKE.” Well I call BULLSHIT ON YOU.

You CAN’T have your cake and eat it too. If you really hate homosexuals/Birkenstocks, just come out and REALLY MEAN IT. If, on the other hand, you want to make a joke or lay down some satire, you better make sure you are the butt of the joke.

It’s simply not a DO to say, ‘You know, saying nigger just for shock value is kind of weak’ because then you are showing that you are not in on the joke, not elite. Basically being racist or shallow is ok; acting like a junior-high bully is awesome, but the biggest sin is to be sincere or take anything at face value, because that is provincial and unsophisticated. This is the mind-set of the hipster, and this is why I don’t like this magazine.

4.5) Plus, what I said for shock-value stuff, also goes for ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ irony. Basically ‘irony’ is a smokescreen for insecure assholes who are so fashion-conscious that they are scared to have real opinions. Maybe the people who write for VICE are totally balls-out and extreme in their personal lives, but their ‘joking but not’/ ‘it’s so uncool it is therefore cool but maybe I’m joking’ writing style is a TOTAL cop-out and therefore it’s the very opposite of balls-out. Which would be, if I am not mistaken, balls-in.

5) They’re Canadian

6) You only see an Asian face there if it’s a drunk model with her top off or if it’s a lady artist who is ‘quirky’. Have you guys ever interviewed an Asian man about anything ever?

7) A long time ago, ’subversive’ or (sigh) ‘edgy’ publications were political; defining themselves against THE MAN. I mean EVERYONE from hippies to greasers to punks to you-name-it, any subculture worth its salt was at least paying lip service to individuality. But the whole cult of the hipster has done away with this, in favor of openly embracing popularity, fashion, and elitism for its own sake (rather than being elite because of commitment to certain ideals). Again, cokehead wall-street day-traders with trucker hats and far less money. Unless they have a trust fund. Which half of them do. And nowhere is this trend more clear than (sigh) Vice Magazine.

Jonny adds, in a different font:

They opened up a store in my neighborhood, and now people that live on Sanborn think they are special cause they live next to the Vice Shop. So, I don’t know who’s worse. People selling $90 t-shirts, or the morons whose sense of self-worth is elevated by their proximity to a store that sells $90 t-shirts. And then there’s the other fucking morons who buy the $90 t-shirts. None of whom live on Sanborn. Also, if you think employees of the Vice Store are making more money selling the most over-priced clothes in all of Silverlake (an accomplishment all on its own) than the kid next store whose nylon wasn’t torn up enough and had to work at the vintage clothes store, think again.

9) They didn’t open up a shop in Echo Park, (my old neighborhood) like American Apparel, did because Vice has no real balls. Furthermore, the average Vice reader would say, “Sweatshops are like totally rad. Cause, hippies hate sweatshops and I hate hippies and I am too stupid and self-absorbed to care about anything.”

9.5) When Vice first came out I was stoked, cause I learned that I wasn’t weird for taking coked-out Polaroids of girls with my cum on their face. Or at least I wasn’t alone. However, how the fuck could you guys be so one-note? It’s just baffling. I’m thinking it has a lot to do with the fact that when Vice first started, it was pretty groundbreaking in terms of its newness. It shocked a bunch of “writers” who before Vice had been writing even duller shit. So then these writers all completely appropriated the style of the first few issues and now we are left with the VICE FILTER.

And I continue, in my same font:

10) Some guy who wrote for Vice Tokyo tried to rape my best friend. Wow, is that ‘edgy’? or was he ‘just kidding’ and I’m ‘not in on the joke.’ ?

Anyway, guys, please give up or, failing that, charge like $30 dollars an issue so that douche bags will have to choose between the new issue and those ‘smokey and the bear’ mirror sunglasses, and then when they buy the magazine, they will be sad because they are not a DO.

FUCKING ASSHOLES

ALL OF THEM

I love my bike, my bike named BIZZLE. I keep riding it even though I’ve been taken to the police station once and hassled half-a-dozen times. I ride it even when it’s faster to take the train. Even when it’s dangerous as hell. Most importantly, I ride it just for fun.

But I never would have discovered the joys of bicycling if I had stayed in California, and here is the reason : BAY AREA BIKERS ARE FUCKING ASSHOLES. ALL OF THEM.YES, YOU TOO. . .. . . ASSHOLE!!!!!!

Self-righteous, smug, irritating, spandex-girded assholes with gay little helmets and dreadlocks while discoursing at semi-lucid length about the evils of gas, man. NO BLOOD FOR OIL! And so on. Which is, in fact, perfectly valid. But I guess their mama never told them, ‘it’s not what you say, but how you say it.’ And saying it in a holier-than-thou tone that Jerry Falwell himself would covet, is not going to make me want to own a bike (except maybe as a hood ornament).

To understand about the bike-martyr mentality, first you have to understand about Bay Area politics. The problem is not bikes per se, but the insane proliferation of coalitions in the Bay Area. Normal cities have blocs of well-organized voters that politicians have to pander to: irish, Italians, African-Americans, Jews, Catholics. But S.F. (apparently not content with having way more religious and ethnic voter blocs than most cities) also has legions of single-issue groups who act like militant ethnic groups: Non-smokers, smokers, the legendary ‘AIDS-is-a-hoax’ phalange of ACT UP, transsexual postoffice workers, the Allergic To Hair Products, atheist soccer dads, etc. And every single-issue coalition group appropriates not only the organization and militancy of the civil rights groups, but the sense that We Are Righting History’s Greatest Wrongs!

You get off-the-leash-dog-walker-guy who is absolutely convinced he’s the Mahatma Ghandi of off-the-leash-dog-walkers, and the non-smoker who will tell you that Martin Luther King was just a whiner because everyone knows non-smokers are the single most discriminated and voiceless group in earth’s history, and then you have the Bike Martyrs, who go even farther: not only are they the single most discriminated, despised, denied, misunderstood, mal-treated and persecuted group, but they are THE ONE GROUP STANDING BETWEEN US AND THE TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF EARTH. Like the comic-book heroes, X-men, bike guys believe they are singlehandedly saving the planet from the super-villains of environmental gasoline destruction, but instead of thanks, they get abuse. OH, WHY OH WHY?? THE TERRIBLE IRONY! WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!, etc.

Just to clarify, further use of IDIOTIC ALL-CAPS will indicate the shrill, bongwater-smelling voice of a bike asshole, not my own much more calm and dignified voice. You absolutely cannot win an argument with one of these bike people:

“MAN, THIS CITY HATES BIKES! DID YOU KNOW THAT LAST MONTH 2 BIKERS WERE KILLED IN ACCIDENTS?”
“Um, dude, last month 9 car drivers were killed in car accidents.”
“YEAH, THUS PROVING MY POINT: CARS ARE BAD AND EVIL!”

Once a month they have a parade called CRITICAL MASS. The point of the parade is to clog as many downtown streets as possible during rush hour, in an act of civil disobedience.

The rationale is something like this: “WELL, IT WORKED TO STOP APARTHEID.”

No, wait, the rationale is “BY MAKING CAR OWNERS AS PISSED OFF AS POSSIBLE WE’LL BRING THEM ROUND TO OUR SIDE.”

No, wait, the rationale is “BY DOING AN UNLICENSED PARADE, WITH POLICE SUPPORT AND BREAKING ALL THE TRAFFIC LAWS, WE’LL SHOW EVERYONE HOW DISENFRANCHISED WE ARE.”

The other 30 days of the month they spend spray-painting ‘DRIVING‘ below the word ‘STOP‘ on traffic signs, so that the rest of us know their views on driving and the stopping of it.

At first I was pissed off by the self-righteousness of this. But then I realized: bikers, who have never stopped at a stop sign in their lives, honestly don’t know what it’s for. They honestly think it’s some kind of octagonal red billboard. These guys don’t stop for stop signs, or red lights, or pedestrians, or one-way streets, or ANYTHING. They’re free, man. Free like the wind. Free of conformity! Free of the steel-metal-and-plastic death boxes that the rest of us are jailed in, man! Free of dependence on foreign oil (as opposed to Turkish hash, Jamaican hemp, and Afghani opium, which are I guess multicultural and therefore benign?), free of the whole freaking system, man!!

And yet, the minute some biker gets hurt, they’re all shrieking “IT’S THE CAR’S FAULT!! HE WASN’T OBEYING PROPER TRAFFIC SAFETY LAWS! WHY OH WHY MUST WE SUFFER AS SECOND-CLASS-CITIZENS IN THIS BIKE=HATING, GAS-GUZZLING MAZE OF CONTRETE AND STEEL??”

Keep in mind that drivers don’t WANT to be driving. The commutes are notoriously long and there is NO PARKING. None. The only reason that people drive is because the Bay Area has the worst mass-transit systems in the country. BART, the subway that only stops every 3 miles, and MUNI, the bus that is slightly slower than walking. Every election there are only 2 issues in San Francisco, and always the same 2 issues: the homeless and MUNI. Yet you never hear about bikers trying to fix public transportation. That would be too helpful. That would actually give them common ground with the hated car owners, as well as being difficult work. They’d rather just complain about how hard they have it (as opposed to car owners, who everyone knows LOVE to be stuck in traffic for 3 hours everyday, just for the sake of inconveniencing passing bikers!! Ha ha, they’re falling for our evil scam!!).

Does anyone live in the Bay Area that hasn’t heard about the big 3? the 3 Things That Cars Do To Kill Cyclists?

1. Parked cars that open doors into the path of oncoming cyclists (WHERE ARE THE CAR DOOR WARNING LIGHTS? WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!)
2. Cars that turn right without giving the 10 seconds of warning required to register in the pot-fogged brain of the average cyclist, and wind up cutting him/her off.
3. The high price of meth lately (oh sorry, that’s just a bike MESSENGER complaint)
   • Cars that don’t give right-of-way to a biker that’s lane-splitting, running a stop sign, or otherwise totally breaking the law. This is the #1 unsafest thing that cars do to discriminate against Earth’s Selfless Guardians, the bikers.

Believe me, back when I was driving I got an earful of this. . . . almost everytime I had a biker pal riding in my car. A pal who begged me for a ride.

So, is it hazardous to bike in S.F.? Yes! But, let me say, it’s WAY WORSE IN FUCKIN’ TOKYO. It’s total anarchy here, and there is no organized single-issue activist group for me to turn to for ‘validation.’ But you won’t hear me whining and complaining about it. Why? Because, number one, I’m not an ASSHOLE. And number two, I LIKE BIKES. I’m just HAPPY to be able to ride one, not mad that everything isn’t 100% my way. And to think that if I’d stayed in good old bike-friendly S.F. I never would have discovered how much fun bikes are.

And if Schultz is driving the taxi, get out!

Enjoying San Fran is pretty simple. Just get out of the city.

If the weather is good, Ocean Beach fucking kicks ass. Make sure and bring a jacket no matter how hot it is. Wind picks up suddenly and cuts to the bone is why. Also, north of the G.G. Bridge there’s Marin headlands– just insane good hiking there, and north of THAT is Muir Woods, which has kick-ass fucking redwoods and shit. All day hiking is what that is. In the city, the trail which runs from CLIFFHOUSE to the PALACE OF LEGION OF HONOR gives you an excellent view of the bay and the bridge.

Other than hiking, there is eating. HAIGHT STREET: Balazo and Zona Rosa. MISSION: Taqueria Cancun (mission and 18th) and EL FAROLITO (mission and 24th) Record stores: AQUARIUS, on Valancia and like 21st or something. Fucking awesome Indian food is INDIA CLAY OVEN IN the Richmond district … like fuck I forget where. Use a phone book, jerk. Also in the Haight district there’s a medical school where you can go to the library and look up pictures of diseases for free.

Other than food and nature there is nothing. No cool people or culture. Avoid North Beach. Avoid the new library. The Castro is no longer gay. Don’t bother. Avoid all bars and nightclubs. Especially avoid live music. Avoid the tourist traps and Euro-trash hangouts in the marina and that shitty place south of fucking the Presidio.

On the other hand, walking down Market Street for an hour is pretty fun because you get an amazing mix of businessmen, homeless people, ‘the end is nigh’ wingnuts, clueless tourists, and drug dealers and punks.

If you see a meter-maid, yell ‘get a job, fucknuts!’ and then make a ‘jerking off’ motion with your hand and crotch when they look up. What? You don’t have a car, you’re a tourist. What are they going to do? Ticket your CABLE CAR??

Haight Street is unbelievably embarrassing. but there are good burritos there so you kind of have to go once in a while.

Golden Gate park can be awesome. Sunday is rollerblade disco day. Walking around the man-made island in the middle of the park is excellent. The botannical garden is free and should not be trifled with, particularly the section with all the succulents. Free day at the zoo is a great place to see entire families of ghetto people from the projects and shit.

And everywhere you go you’ll see white yuppie dudes with their trophy Asian girlfriends. They outnumber Asian guys with white girls like by 12 to one. Generally you’ll see at least 2 of these kind of couples per block. Just try not to notice it, i dare you. You should carry a stack of laminated badges and hand them out to these couples while saying with a smile, ‘congratulations! You’re the 100th white guy Asian girl couple of the day!’ and give them each a quarter and a swat on the ass. They like that because it makes them feel special.

Speaking of Asians, Chinatown is actually pretty fun. ‘Little Italy’ is bogus. Avoid. MOMA Museum can be good or bad depending on what is showing. Generally it’s a rip. Go to PALACE OF LEGION OF HONOR and fuck with that shit instead. The architecture is spectacular and the medieval pictures are fucking hilarious and it has a very particular smell and is sometimes free also. Also: make sure to yell ‘GET A CAR, FAG!!!’ anytime you see a bike messenger. This is good fun because they are 5 minutes behind on their delivery and can’t stop to kick your ass.

Hope this helps,

Steven

In a June 26 speech today, given at the Knesset, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had this to say:

——-

The Israel/ Palestine situation is one of the biggest moral quagmires of all time. Almost everything is shades of grey: who is responsible for the violence? Is it justifiable to shoot back at guys using kids as human shields? Is suicide bombing worse than helicopter airstrikes that kill civilians? Does Israel’s increased violence suppress the Intifada or increase it further? How much are the neighboring Arab states responsible for the Palestinians’ health and welfare? Which side is G-d on? Is one morally obligated to negotiate with people that one knows one can’t trust? What will we do when there are more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel? But amidst this huge and turbulent fog of unanswerable questions, there is one moral absolute: settlers are assholes.

That’s right. I don’t give a FUCK what it says in the torah about the temple of the rock or about the chosen people. Here’s what it says in MY torah: SETTLERS ARE FUCKING ASSHOLES THAT SMELL, SAYETH THE LORD. AND THEY GOT NO MAMA.

I mean, what else do you call someone who serves no purpose other than to stir up shit with the enemy? flout the law, and destroy any hope of reconciliation and equality. And that’s not ME talking, that’s THEM talking!

We kicked the Palestinians out of Israel and put them on little shanty-towns, and said, “ok, you guys at least can live here.” And then the settlers come in and say, “well, no,. Now that we think about it, we’re going to take THIS land too.”

Not only do they hate arabs, they also hate regular Jews–you know, the 98% of Israelis that AREN’T settlers. They hate us because we’re not a bunch of Moses Freaks and we don’t want to have a race-war by Tuesday. Somehow we’re not JEWISH ENOUGH. To them, we’re only good for one thing: saving their ass when their Palestinian neighbors decide to assassinate them a little. They’re all like, getting up in the arabs’ faces and being all ‘NANNY NANNY NYAH NYAHH!’ and expect US to take the consequences when the arabs get mad? Can you think of another country on Earth where the government would tolerate this bullshit?

Every day we spend like a million bucks, or sheckles or rubles, or whatever it is we use out here, we spend like a million of them guarding these little ungrateful fucks. Not only that but young Israeli army guys on ‘settler babysitting duty’ risk death all the time just so that settlers can yell ethnic slurs at their arab neighbors. Meanwhile, the religious nuts don’t have to put their kids in the army because Yahwey wants their precious little Moishe to study at Yeshiva all day. Suck my circumcised, Prime Ministerial shlong!! So it’s Hellenists dying to protect the fanatics from the conflict they’re trying so desperately to start. Because of the ‘Babysitting Patrol’, Palestinians know they can’t usually fuck with the settlers, so who do they kill instead? Regular Israelis! You know, US. The people who don’t have enough clout to have 4 Mossad agents walk us to school and back every day.

And, as if that weren’t retarded enough, they’re teaching their KIDS to be violent bigots too, AND using their kids as human shields. Let me explain about that: even if we didn’t want to protect the crazy adults, they know we are not going to stand by and let innocent kids get massacred by Palestinians. You cowardly fucks!! you hate Hamas? You’re acting just LIKE Hamas!! Not only the children-as-shields, but the ‘G-d is on our side’ and the ‘we can’t have 2 states or any compromise’ and of course the ‘dying makes me a fucking martyr’ complex. Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah, their shared hatred for the 98% of Jews in Israel.

And what’s up with saying G-d wants all the Palestinians kicked out anyway? Back in the day, the super-orthodox Jews were saying Israel shouldn’t even exist because the torah says ‘yo, you can’t have Israel back until AFTER the messiah.’ Now they’re saying ‘G-d says Israel is SO BADASS we can’t share it with anyone’ well which is it, you cocks? It seems the only constant with you people is, you hate the Israeli government. Why don’t the settlers and the wait-for-the-messiah freaks just go in a little room and argue with EACH OTHER all day and leave the rest of us alone?? That would be so sweet; Professor Griff could be the moderator.

And when we try to take them off the settlements, they get all hectic and start fighting the cops. Fuck it! They don’t like the cops? Fine, we’ll take the cops away and let them do it themselves. Why should they, the Chosen People Squared, have to put up with the mean repressive cops?

That’s why, on Wednesday at exactly 11:38 AM, I’m pulling all the troops out of the Beth Shlamakel settlement on the Gaza Strip.

If you love your kids, send them back to Grandma’s house in Brooklyn, NOW. If you let your kids get martyred, then the whole world will know what a cowardly fuck you are. And to Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and the other wanna-be Al Quaeda motherfuckers out there, let me say this: if you get all trigger-happy and start shooting our soldiers as they’re retreating, or killing kids that are getting sent to Grandma’s, then I won’t pull troops out of any more settlements, and it’s your fault. But if you act nice and save the slaughter until after 11:38, then I’ll keep pulling troops out of other settlements until there are none left. I’m explaining it nice and simple so you can hear it even if you have plastic explosives wedged into your ears.

Settlers want a war; Palestinians want to kill Jews, fine.
You assholes can go smoke each other.
Everyone’s happy.
Peace through violence.
I got news for you guys: you won’t last 5 minutes without us ‘stinking traitor Hellenists.’
Have fun meeting the G-d you love so much.

Hypocritical Christians…Hypocritical Jews…Nutter Popes…Schultz’s Passion…Modernity Sucking…Millionaires Gone Wild…Tons of Anal…

MEL GIBSON’S NEW MOVIE WHICH I HAVEN’T SEEN YET…

…But that’s not going to stop me from having an opinion of it!

Basically I think it’s fucking rad. The principle of the thing. The movie itself…I don’t know. The movie isn’t even important at this point!! Who cares about the movie??? This movie is just a sort of spiritual flashlight which illuminates not only the contradictions of Christianity but the contradictions of our society as well.

It’s not an attack on Jews, it’s an attack on modernity. In the bible times they believed everything in the bible literally. Nowadays, you teach people a little about science or democracy and next thing you know, most Christians are like, “Well I believe in a literal god but I’ll just obey the parts of the bible I agree with and ignore the depressing parts.” Then they’re like, “Well, it says specifically that non believers will burn in hell, and homosexuals, and adulterers. But, man, that’s kind of not p.c. I don’t have the courage to be a serious Christian and go around killing my bhuddist and adulterer and homosexual coworkers. But neither do I have the courage to just quit being Christian either, just because it is a hateful murdering religion… So I’ll just ignore the contradictions, and pretend that God is a nice guy like me, only with a beard. Okely-dokely!” And it sucks!!

Also the movie is interesting because it says something about the importance of CONTEXT. Consider this: a bunch of devout Christians bought blocks of tickets and organized field trips to see the movie on opening weekend, and it became #1 at the box office. And the movie was about what? Their true lord being slowly tortured and murdered while people run around mocking him and laughing at his pain. Could you explain this to someone from mars, should they happen to visit? How would you explain it?? what the hell????

But consider this too: if the EXACT SAME MOVIE had been made (Christ being slowly tortured, mocked, mercilessly and slowly murdered) but Mel Gibson crossed his name off the credits and wrote ‘BY GLENN DANZIG AND SLAYER‘ and changed the title to ‘LET’S ALL KILL JESUS!!!!‘… Christians would be burning down the theatres instead of making the movie #1. Am I right?? I am totally fucking right!! How would you explain THAT to someone from Mars?

And that’s why just the IDEA of this movie is awesome.

About the controversy: I mean, Gibson has got like 1,000 jews and ecumenical (’modern, feel good’) Christians saying, “It’s antisemetic BECAUSE IT IS QUOTING TOO LITERALLY FROM THE BIBLE.”

I am so not making this up.

According to the New Yorker magazine, the original protestors objected to LINES OF BIBLE DIALOGUE being put in the movie, on the grounds that it would make people hate Jews.

Can you see something weird about that? You logically cannot slam Gibson for being antisemetic and not slam the bible! If they were consistent and rational they’d say ‘Well, the BIBLE is antisemetic. And ANYONE who reads it, we will protest them.’ I mean, duh. And if you DID say that, you’d have a damn good point. Of course the bible says some mean things about Jews… for the same reason that you won’t find the Jews, circa 0-100 AD writing lots of nice things about Christians either: at that time in history, early Christians and Jews were fighting over who the real messiah was. So yes, anti-semetic.

But to say Gibson ALONE is an antisemite–-to say he’s an ABBERATION–just for drawing attention to parts of the bible that Good Christians like to sweep under the rug (and Good Jews will likewise turn a blind eye to, rather than antagonize Christians)… that is such bullshit!!

Plus, another critic in the New Yorker was slamming the movie because it ‘turned jesus’ message of love into one of violence and suffering.’ … as if violence and suffering was unchristian? Hello, anyone remember ALL the martyrs? All the super big and realistic statues and paintings all over Europe depicting Christians who were tortured to death by the heathens, in thousands of inventive, painful ways? Remember the crusades and the inquisition?? How can the critics act like Gibson just, out of thin air, INVENTED the connection between Christianity and bloodshed??

What about all the 4,5,6 foot tall statues of Bleeding Jesus, in super detailed crucifixion poses, all over Latin America? What about the Philipine rituals where women channel the ’spirit of baby jesus’ and re-enact the passion of Christ, the whole town watching and clapping, as their neighbors (dressed as romans) crucify the women with big nails?? (ok, maybe this is fake like the Philipine faith healers, but a: it looked real in the video and b: just the fact that the people are INTO this kind of spectacle is enough to prove my point)…

…oh, and what about the fact that EVERY SINGLE CHRISTIAN wears a fucking TORTURE DEVICE around their neck????? Yeah, right, Gibson is crazy for noticing a connection between Christianity and pain and suffering. He’s a wacko all right.

Basically what he has done is taken the contradictions of the bible, the parts that modern day “feel good” Christians want to ignore and sweep under the rug. And for this, I salute him!! So that is why, like I said, this movie illuminates not only the contradictions of Christianity but the contradictions of our society as well. That is what art is supposed to do.

Plus I hope this movie succeeds because if it succeeds it will encourage more rich famous people to just go fucking nuts and start filming whatever crazy shit comes into their heads. Hopefully more people will realize, “Damn, I have twenty million dollars in the bank, I do not have to keep on making boring, predictable movies! Why don’t I make a movie myself, where I play a gay Muhammad who screws Buddha in the ass, while fellating the Michellen Man? This has always been my dream!” … and it turns out that’s the Pope’s new movie! That is the kind of world I want to live in.

50 CENT

Schultz gets the Sch-nizzle from the Sch-source

(Our Tokyo Damaged Reporter caught top-of-the-pops rapper 50 Cent in a jovial mood.)

Steven Schultz: So Fifty Cent, thanks for meeting with us. I know you’re real busy recording your new album.

50 Cent: No problem. I’m just excited about the whole scenario right now. I’m positive this is the best shit I ever did.

SS: Well, that’s what everyone’s been asking about. What’s Fifty going to drop next?

50 Cent: See, I’m going to tell it like this now. I’m going to tell it just how it is. your average rapper, He spend the whole album talking about how tough he is, how many bitches, how many gats, all that stuff. But 50 Cent ? I’ve been shot, I’ve been to jail, I’ve made a hit album, I got ten million dollars, I’ve played shows in all the different continents on the planet, you know. By any definition, I am the real deal. Any way you want to judge a rapper ? money, skills, street knowledge. I’m there, ma. So why should I continue to have to prove myself on my new album? You feel me? A real man doesn’t have anything to prove. Fifty cent is already the top dog in this game.

SS: (laughing) I hear you, man. You got to the top of the mountain.

50 Cent: See, that’s what I’m talking about. Now that I cleared out all the competition at the top of the mountain, I finally got a little elbow room here to speak on what I REALLY concerned with.

SS: Which is . . .?

50 Cent: Unicorns.

SS: Uh…

50 Cent: Unicorns and ponies, man. That’s what I’m into right now. I’m telling you straight, man. I like petting ‘em and hugging ‘em and watching ‘em fly around the rainbow with like little flowers all up in their grill.

SS: Man, that is… that is the most homosexual thing I have ever heard. Are you joking?

50 Cent: Do I look like a joke to you? LOOK IN MY EYES. Look in my eyes and tell me you think I’m a joke.

SS: Hey, I –

50 Cent: LOOK IN MY EYES MOTHERFUCKER. Am I JOKING?

SS: Hey I… I just… Man, I’m… I was just a little surprised. I’m sorry man. I didn’t mean any disrespect by that. I was taken by, by surprise is all.

50 Cent: You’re god damn right. I’m taking everyone by surprise with this new joint. Did I scare you, man?

SS: Well, I thought, you know… I didn’t mean…

50 Cent: Na, na, it’s all good. don’t worry about it. ahahaha– See, that’s my point. I’m the only man in this rap game who could do a whole album about unicorns and herbal tea and shit, and you’re still scared to talk shit about it. that’s my new concept man. . .

SS: OK, now I get it. I think…

50 Cent: . . . while, on the other hand, if I have to keep telling people, “I’m still hard, I’m still hard . .’ THAT would be showing weakness. I already made my bones in this industry, I’m not weak, and that’s what I’m representing on my new album “I WUV UNICORNS AND PONIES.”

SS: Unicorns and ponies?

50 Cent: That’s right, it’s a double concept. I’m giving ‘em both barrels here. Because that’s my way of saying, “Bring it on. You can do some shit about capping 26 niggas in the first verse, and I can do some shit about Mr. Special Bear and the fluffy bunny, and my shit will STILL be harder than yours.”

SS: Oh, now I REALLY get it. so, this is the new SLANG. Like, back in the day a ‘bird’ was a key of cocaine or a ‘mule’ is a drug transporter or. . .ok. Ha, I’m with it now. So what is ‘unicorn’ symbolic of?

50 Cent: What? Who told you I was talking slang? Rappers are always getting misquoted in the press. There’s no media responsibility. Don’t be making me say something that I never said. Consistency is the key to all success. That’s why fifty cent has always kept it real, and I will continue to keep it real. And that’s why, when I say unicorn I mean, ma, I mean a REAL motherfucking unicorn, with soft fluffy fur and big cute eyes and a REAL golden horn with magical powers, that I REALLY like to hug and kiss.

SS: You’re saying they’re real? I’m not trying to disrespect, but no one’s ever seen ? I mean, it’s hard to believe . . .

50 Cent: Oh, you believe it. Not everyone can see them, though. You can only see them when your heart is pure. Or you can just get ‘em from the black market. Whichever, it’s all good. I’ve got two already. My account says they count as a investment.

SS: OK, I can adjust to that. But Fifty, I think your fans will want to, uh, know how you got the idea for your new, um, concept here. can you help us out here?

50 Cent: Yeah, I can do that. It’s really simple. I came up with ‘I WUV UNICORNS AND PONIES” two months ago. It was just a flash of inspiration. I was fed up with rap at that time. I was, “Yo. I’m sick of beating Ja Rule and Puffy and all these other weak little MCs. It’s too easy. The thrill has gone, man.” I was, that was my personal vibe at the time we created this new concept. I was like, “The rap game has gotten too soft. These motherfuckers are so easy to beat, I’m losing my edge. If I want to keep my edge, I have to give these wankstas some handicaps. Straight up golf-style. Get up on some golf shit here, ma. Give ‘em a good 3 or 4 holes head start, and I’m-a play with just a putter, even in the sand trap. Know what I mean?”

SS: So that was your solution to the, uh, rap doldrums.

50 Cent: Heah. just, give the other guys a big advantage, to keep my game tight.

SS: So you’re still on Shady records, a division of Aftermath. How did your partners deal with your new, uh, direction?

50 Cent: Well, it got a little . . Theo, my attorney and Paul Rosenberg, Em’s attorney, had a meeting. I think Theo wasn’t happy about the horn I had him wear, but I was like, “Fuck it. We have to show them we’re serious about the new concept.” Besides, man, that horn was Armani. Tasteful, you know. High class. The whole nine. So they had their meeting, then Rosenberg talked to Em, who talked to Dre. I have to say Em was always supportive. Just 100% down with the whole idea. He’s always got people telling HIM, do this, do that, you know, getting in his mix. And I think this give him more respect for the creativity process of other artists.

SS: And Dre?

50 Cent: Well, Dre was, ahahaha, um, it got a little hectic with the scenario there. At first I thought he had a problem because of the content being, you know, unicorns. Or he had a problem with my new falsetto flow. He was all, “naah, naah,” and all that. But later I found out he was just against it because secretly he’d been working on his OWN unicorn album, you know, and he thought I was going to steal his spotlight!

SS: Um, that, uh–

50 Cent: MOTHERFUCKER DO I LOOK LIKE A JOKE TO YOU?!??

SS: No sir.

50 Cent: Hahahah, don’t worry, ma. I’m straight. Anyway, like I was saying, Dre thought I was trying to cut into his action. But I persuaded him that I was just, like, going to get people accustomed to the magical world of caring, sharing animals. You know, so he wouldn’t take so much heat for it when HIS joint came out. So he cogitated on that for a while, then he was cool with it. He knew he had his place, and I had my place. Actually recently we sat down and listened to the sneak preview of “THE MOTHERFUCKIN DOCTOR PRESENTS: MR. CUDDLEY PONY AND THE CANDY RAINBOW.” And I can say, ma, that Dre’s new shit is just blazing. Both in terms of the production and the cute cuddliness.

SS: So it looks like it’s going to be a summer of hits in 2004. (barely audiable snicker)

50 Cent: Well, I’m dropping “WUV” around 23d of July actually. We already shot the first video, ma. I don’t want to give away too much, but It’s got me playing with some animated forest creatures, and then I give birth to a kitten.

SS: (unable to contain) hee heee… bwa, ha ha ha ha ha ha – HA HA HAAAAHH HAAAA—-

50 Cent: (click) BAM! BAM! BAM! (scarface voice) “Now look at you now!”

SS: (. . . )

50 Cent: (picking up interviewer’s head like puppet) “Thanks for your time, Fifty Cent! I enjoyed interviewing you.” (back to his own voice): You’re welcome, ma. Thanks for having me. Yo, everyone, pick up I WUV UNICORNS AND PONIE$ 23d July.

Working Asian American Men are Pissed

I’m going to start this rant with a very non-controversial, very mainstream observation:

Throughout all human history, society has been structured like a ladder. For some people to be on top, others have to be on the bottom. in America, the whites pick on the blacks, who pick on the jews, who pick on the arabs, who blow themselves up. So naturally, whenever some group wants to move up the ladder, they are always met with stiff resistance from whoever is above them. So far so good, eh? No controversy here.

African-Americans got tear-gassed, sprayed with fire-hoses, and blown up in church bombings, just for trying to be equal to Whitey. Latino migrant workers, (maquiladoras) have been struggling for labor rights for decades – facing violence, poverty and La Migra — and STILL haven’t even got the civil rights that African Americans got. . . .

Meanwhile, Asian American Females, have not only achieved parity with white women, they have totally SURPASSED white women in popularity. . . in California anyway. . with no stuggle, no violence, no effort AT ALL. Besides a little shopping.

Asian American women didn’t have to have big ‘I’M CUTE TOO!’ rallies. There were no ‘MAKE ME FEEL POPULAR’ protest marches, with militant Chinese princesses chanting, ‘1.2.3.4! busty white chicks are all whores!!’ . AAFs didn’t have to be shot with fire hoses or attacked by police dogs or thrown in jail in order to triumph. They didn’t have to even lift a finger. How crazy is that?? It’s as if you woke up and all of a sudden, for the first time in history , Greek guys could fly. . . and all around you, everyone was acting like, ‘Oh yeah, they fly now. Whatever.’ It’s that weird.

As late as the 1980s, AAFs were seen as unpopular, nerdy, and inferior to white women. They didn’t have blonde hair, blue eyes, or big boobies, and they didn’t look like any movie stars, and they never got to be prom queen. But now in places like California, AAFs have jumped right to the top of the ladder, becoming the most sought-after, high-status women in the ‘dating pool.’ When some white guy gets a $100,000-a-year job, and a new apartment and a fancy car, he has to get an Asian girl to go with it.

While this might just seem like another petty and irritating example of yuppie bad taste and materialism, in truth it’s not petty at all! Because, for the first time in all human existence, someone has gotten to the top of the ladder with NO STRUGGLE WHATSOEVER. That’s not petty. That’s amazing. And like all dominant groups, they are becoming drunk with power. Not the hypothetical flying Greco-americans. I mean the AAFs.

Case in point: a prominent AAF celebrity, (whose movies I have never seen but I’m assured she’s quite successful) gave an interview in MAXIM in which the celebrity said, ‘I only date white guys that have never dated Asian women.’ [Ed Note: Even though Schultz motherfucking reviewed Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, he still claims he hasn't seen it. How's that for integrity?]

Normally I’d figure this is just the umpteen-millionth embarrassing thing said by a brainless, shameless Hollywood asshole. But many regular, non-celebrity AAFs feel exactly the same way. If a white guy dates Asians, it’s suspicious. But Asian women dating a whole batch of white guys, (sequentially OR in tandem), well, that’s natural. No one (outside of a half-dozen really hard up asian guys) would ever dream of asking an AAF to justify dating white. It’s her prerogative.

Another example: it’s the Asian Woman’s Prerogative to wear tight black clothes despite having the curveless bodies of 12 year old boys, and not get made fun of. Everyone has to act like that’s totally natural and common sense. But really, what is the logic? ‘Oh, the difference between the inside and the outside of my boobs/butt/thighs is a quarter inch, so I’d better wear something REALLY TIGHT otherwise nobody can see the curve at all’?? Again, if it was just one person doing it you could dismiss this trend as the product of a deranged mind, but actually most AAFs are doing it. That’s not empowerment, that’s just hubris!

But far and away the most flagrant example of the superiority complex is how – and I’m going to switch to the third person here – she takes the whole popularity thing for granted. Just like in the previous two cases, she acts like it’s totally natural and common-sense . . . that she and her group are at the top of the ladder with no effort. As if this doesn’t fly in the face of millions of years of human history. As if she has always belonged there anyway, and thus requires no explanation.

I defy anyone to find me even ONE instance of an Asian-american woman expressing even a SHRED of gratitude that she has ten times as many dates as her mom had when Mom was 20 years old? Or that she is 10 times more popular than Mom was in 1975? Has any AAF ever stopped and said, ‘hey, thanks, larger social and historical forces!’ or : ‘I’m glad I happened to be born –through no effort of my own — in a particular time and place where my kind is regarded as the best thing since custom-made gold fronts?’

I didn’t think so.

If you’re offended by this, don’t write and tell me ‘Well, why should they be grateful? Who are you to say they should be grateful, blah blah blah.’ It’s not a matter of ’should be’ . don’t try to win by changing the subject. If you want to prove me wrong, FUCKING FIND ME SOMEONE WHO IS GRATEFUL. I will need a sworn and notarized affidavit from this person. And a Polaroid would be nice too.

Send Polaroids, phone numbers, etc. to eviloverlord@hellokitty.com And go to www.shitopia.com too, while you’re at it, if you think you’re so smart.

The World would be a much better place is Schultz were running shizzle…

Why are people so predictable?

Why do people against abortion always wind up being against high taxes and welfare and the UN? What the hell do these issues have to do with each other?

Why do people that are ‘liberal’ and pro-abortion always wind up being anti-racism and pro-recycling? Are they going to recycle the fetuses??

Why can’t you be pro-war AND pro-recycling, AND pro-gun-control AND anti-tax? Hasn’t anyone developed a spine since high school?

everyone at my high school who liked THE CURE also had (by some unwritten law) to like BAUHAUS, LOVE AND ROCKETS, and SISTERS OF MERCY?

Why couldn’t they dress in black and have big boots festooned with skulls, and like Merle Haggard? or Javanese Ganelan for that matter???

Why have you never met someone who’s really into astrology and cock-fighting?

Or fly-fishing and Satanism? C’mon it would be fun! You could have a little altar on your rowboat. Bait the hook with blood-soaked communion wafers!

There’s nothing in the Koran specifically forbidding you from playing air-guitar so how come you never see any hardcore Muslim women in burkhas walking down the street doing it?

AIEEEEE!!!! No one is interesting. If anything interesting DID happen to you, you have to cover it up and hide it because it makes you vulnerable.

I don’t want to live in this kind of world!

(I’m sure there are more pressing problems like world peace and hunger, but for the moment let’s leave these issues in the able hands of beauty pageant queens)

I want to live in a world where people don’t WANT to be stereotyped, pigeonholed, where you CAN’T tell a book from its cover. Where everyone you meet is surprising, where all the lemmings finally jumped off the cliff for good and only non-conformist people are left.

I want to go to some diner in Nebraska and sit down next to some 400-pound Teamster and ask him what he’s into, and he’s just as likely to say “bell hooks” or “emily dickenson” as “Soldier of Fortune”.

I want to meet some crack-slanging, underwear-flaunting gangsta guy who would never go to a Snoop Dogggg show because he’s got a bridge tournament to train for.

I want to go to the Snoop Dogggggg show and see some Eskimo in full walrus-hair snowsuit, throwing his set in the air. And I want to see Snoop come on stage and do some sensitive acoustic guitar songs about the environment.

Then I want to go to Lilith Faire and see some fifty-year old Earth Mothers with wool socks and hideous hand-made jewelry doing gangsta rap and calling each other “Nigga.” As in, “Ay-yo, buy my hand-made Venus of Willendorf incense-holder, Nigga!!” (fires shotgun in air)

I want 100,000 to pack the L.A. Colluseum for the First Annual Hells Angels’ Origami-fest.

I want Slayer to star in a Broadway musical like OKLAHOMA or FLOWER DRUM SONG.

I want to walk down Market street and pass a homeless person and a businesswoman impeccably clad in a black Chanel suit, and have no idea which one of them is going to hock up a huge orange loogie on my feet.

I want Ralph Nader to sing for the death metal band Deicide.

I want the singer for Deicide (Glen Benton ,the man famous for branding an upside-down cross into his forehead) to team up with Quincy Jones and record an album of smooooth adult-contemporary Whitney Houston music, but still sing in his usual Cookie Monster voice.

I want Britney Spears to record another hit pop album but have the lyrics be about the Khmer Rouge. With footnotes.

I want to live in a world where everything is mixed up and unpredictable. Where you honestly can’t tell if Garth Brooks’ next album is going to be called ‘GARTH LOVES YOU’ or ‘SMASH THE PATRIARCHY’ or ‘BEELZEBUB RAPES YOUR UNBORN FETUS IN HELL’ or ‘GARTH EXPLAINS STRING THEORY USING SIMPLE QUANTUM TOPOLOGY, VOLUME ONE’.

I want to look in the newspaper Society Pages, and look at the Wedding Announcements and see a bunch of people named Soo-Kim McGillicutty and YokoVazquez and Javier Papodopolous and Sergei Wong-O’Toole and Sinead O’ Ramprakash and Latifah Muhammed-von-Goldstein and Pierre La Mababangloob!!

I want fucking Amy Tan to stop writing books about second-generation US-born Chinese women and their fucking issues with their mothers. I want her to write about third-generation Puerto Rican men who have issues with their uncles. Or first-generation Navajos that immigrate to Bali and have issues with the Puerto Rican’s uncles. Or fourth-generation Armenian trans-sexuals who immigrate to the moon and have issues with MY mother, or anything besides the same fucking novel over and over and over again!! Jesus!!

I want Ninjas to make a real fucking racket when they walk around.

I want you-YES YOU to go to the football game and instead of singing the national anthem, they recite Pi to 200 places. And you can never predict whether the football players will be wearing clothes. Sometimes they just wear helmets and cleats and baby oil. Sometimes they just spend the whole game fucking. Sometimes they just do laundry on the sidelines while the cheerleaders put on spiked gloves and beat the everloving shit out of each other for 40 minutes. Where the half time show is Noam Chomsky. And instead of talking about geo-politics, he’s reading a love poem to Ralph Wiggum. “I bent my wookie!”

Where they get Woody Allen to play Sharon Stone’s role in BASIC INSTINCT. Where they get Stallone to play Yentl. Where Bradddd Pitttt has to go to Craigslist to find a date, but Yo-Yo Ma is trampled to death by estrogen-crazed housefraus. Where the TV footage of Ronald Reagan’s colorectal polyps beats out Michael Myers’ latest movie for an Oscar.

Where MAD magazine runs parodies of the latest articles in NEUROBIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY with tiles like ‘z-psiliciobius protease, shmotease!!’

Where leather daddies at the Folsom Street fair sport designer Stephen Hawking and Kenny G cockrings.

Where Jewel and Tori Amos get in a gunfight at the CMJ awards, 4 dead, 23 injured.

Where there’s some guy cruising in East Oakland with huge speakers in his car, and he’s playing Shoenburg’s 12-tone music for the whole damn neighborhood.

Where a bunch of Navy guys finally get shore leave in Manilla and you honestly can’t tell if they’re going to go to a whorehouse or The Pottery Barn.

Where some angry young, pierced, gay, black kid with polio gets up to the rostrum of the poetry slam and you have not the faintest fucking idea what he’s going to talk about.

Where . . . well, you get the point.

This is the kind of world I want to live in.

Do you agree? If you have any suggestions like the ones I have set forth here, please e-mail them to me!

This article, as well as hundreds of others, appears at the website www.harmful.org/homedespot/

Written and Directed by Shunji Iwai

Starring
- Hayato Ichihara as Yuichi Hasumi
- Shugo Oshinari as Shunsuke Hosino
- Yu Aoi as Shiori Suda – Ayumi Ito as Yoko Kumo

The easiest way to sum this movie up is to say it’s the Japanese version of Harmony Korine’s Kids. And it WILL leave you feeling kind of soiled when it’s done with you.

Normally I am a Ruthless Reviewer who would not think twice about giving away the plot of a film. But I can’t do this about LILY CHOU-CHOU, because I couldn’t figure it out at all. Does it sound racist to say I can’t tell the characters apart?? I swear to god I’ve seen tons of Asian (or even Asian-American movies) and ALWAYS been able to tell people apart.

But when you have around, oh, TWENTYFIVE main characters. . . and they spend the whole film wearing identical school uniforms. . . AND THE MOVIE KEEPS GOING BACKWARD AND FORWARD IN TIME so the characters always look different, maybe I don’t have to be a white-supremacist Nazi to lose track.

Perhaps this will explain the confusion of the film: it’s made by Shunji Iwaii, who is in his late 30’s but is ‘really in tune with youth culture’ (meaning, he used to make music videos). So he’s trying to be hip when he makes the movie go backward and forward in time. Oh, and changes from ‘regular’ cinematography to ‘hand held cheapo videocamera’ style every other scene. Oh, and throws a layer of ‘cyber’ chatroom text over the whole thing for good measure. So even if you can’t understand the damn movie, you have to admit this guy is hip. Which is the important thing. Because only really hip, with-it guys know that kids spend lots of time in chat rooms.

But despite being filmed in an annoying way, most of the scenes ARE tragically beautiful to look at and it’s got a great premise: It’s about how a group of ten or so 7th graders gradually go from being innocent people and good friends to totally psycho, alienated 8th graders who wreak unspeakable havoc on each other. Some of the 7th graders turn into bullies and some of their good pals turn into victims. But they ALL lose their emotions and play their roles like robots. The only way any of them can express emotions is by listening to this totally sensitive-girl singer called LILY CHOU-CHOU. Then they go online and write anonymous letters about how emo she is and how wonderfully she can express their deep sensitive feelings. And then they go to school and FUCK EACH OTHER UP.

I don’t mean bullying in the American sense, where some stoner steals your lunch money or some jock gives you a bloody nose. . . .This is the Japanese-style bullying that causes a lot of teen suicides in real life: kids in this movie just do violence and sexual abuse like LORD OF THE FLIES meets DELIVERANCE or something.

And this is where I found the film really irritating:

1. There’s this really extreme stuff happening on screen, but the plot is so complex I can’t figure out who’s doing what to whom and why,(let alone if this is supposed to send a gangland-style ‘message’ to some third person). So I had all these intense emotions from watching it and yet I didn’t know how to express the emotions. I felt like I was going to explode!!! But maybe that’s just me.
2. Also, it’s really irritating because every time something totally gut-wrenching happens the director mutes the sounds of the victim’s cries of pain and puts Debussy on the soundtrack. Not only is Debussy NEVER a good idea ( he was the Morrisey of classical music), but putting him in this context sends a message to the viewer, ‘Don’t give a shit about what’s happening, just listen to the pretty music.’ Which seems to contradict the rest of the movie. . .

For those of you that still want to watch it, I’ll try to break down the plot so you don’t get as confused as me.

The film starts with Quiet Kid, who is a total space cadet whose hobby is standing in a rice field listening to Lily Chou-Chou. He lives in total poverty but somehow maintains a website about Lily, under the screen-name PHILIA. In the guise of PHILIA he’s helping some new kid named BLUE DOG learn important trivia about the pop star, and they get all cyber-emo and soothe each other. At this point I should mention that Lily is supposed to sound like Bjork. But she doesn’t sound like Bjork, so it’s not a huge problem. See, two wrongs DO make a right.

When Quiet Kid isn’t online or in a rice field, he’s going out with other 8th graders to steal CDs and DVDs so they can give money to the school bully, Beaky-Nose Guy.

(Quiet Kid and Beaky-Nose Guy used to be great pals, back in 7th grade. They both fall in love with Piano Girl, who somehow gets them interested in Lily Chou-Chou. Also in 7th grade, Beaky-Nose and Quiet Kid, and Bowl-Cut Boy and Other Dude went on this camping trip to some island during summer vacation. They ogled bikini girls and saw some freaky LSD burnout get run over by a car. That’s to do with the rest of the plot. . . how? )

Then 8th grade starts, and Beaky-Nose Guy gets in a fight with Mullethead Rockstar guy, the school bully. Mullethead knocks HIMSELF out by jumping off a desk to bodyslam someone and accidentally hitting his head on the concrete floor. . . but despite not actually winning the fight, Beaky-Nose Guy STILL gets promoted to Head Bully and everyone’s scared of him. He never hits anyone else for the rest of the film, either. I’m not sure if that’s the way bullying works over there in Japan, or if this is just TOTALLY STUPID. I mean, in America this kid would get his ass kicked all the time! But somehow Beaky-Nose Guy all of a sudden gets NOT ONLY Chief Bully position, but he also inherits this VAST CRIMINAL EMPIRE ranging from extortion and petty theft to muggings and prostitution. And all he has to do is wear baggy pants and keep everyone from finding out how much he likes to listen to Lily Chou-Chou and cry and write sensitive poetry about it.

Then The Girl Bullies are introduced. They’re led by Bad Perm Girl, and their aim is to destroy Piano Girl because all the boys like Piano Girl better. Somehow Bowlcut-Boy has been promoted to Piano Girl’s teacher, and he tries to broker a deal between Bad Perm Girl, Beaky-Nose Guy and Quiet Kid, but the deal goes horribly, horribly wrong in a deserted warehouse on the outskirts of town. By this time, like fifteen more characters enter the picture, and I have no idea what’s going on.

All I can tell is,

1. Everyone is in over their head,
2. The adults don’t have a clue what’s going on,
3. Piano Girl shaves her skull,
4. Beaky-Nose Guy continues to oversee his criminal empire
5. Cell-Phone Girl becomes a hooker at fourteen years old, and Quiet Kid is assigned to be her bodyguard when she goes out with these dirty businessmen. Again, maybe in Japan it’s standard gang-leader policy to make the weakest, biggest punk-ass in the gang act as a bodyguard. But it just confirms my suspicion that Beaky-Nose Guy would not last long in an American public school.
6. (Back in chat-room-land), PHILIA continues to instruct BLUE DOG on how to be emo,
7. Bad Perm Girl is trying to blackmail the other gang members into killing Beaky-Nose and making her the leader.
8. I’m not sure what Bowl-Cut Boy, Other Guy, and their pals are up to. Maybe they’re running guns out of Uzbekistan and doing hits for the Cosa Nostra. These 8th graders are no joke.
9. The scenery continues to be achingly beautiful

Eventually the director sort of loses interest in most of the plot. All but two characters just sort of vanish, or are dismissed. Normally that’s lazy and sloppy film-making, but the shit was so complicated I was actually glad. See, after 4 hours of movie, Lily Chou-Chou is finally having a concert. There’s this totally predictable plot twist: the internet kids BLUE DOG and PHILIA meet in real life and surprisethey’re actually Beaky-Nose and Quiet kid. So imagine Beaky-Nose Guy’s total embarrassment: he’s this tough-ass gang leader being seen at this totally sissy concert. Imagine if you were in traffic and pulled up beside Suge Knight’s BMW and he was singing ‘My name is luka, I live upstairs from you’ and a tear was rolling down his cheek.

It’s kind of like that.

So of course Beaky-Nose goes berserk with rage and tears up Quiet Kid’s ticket to the show, and Quiet Kid stabs him, the end.