Nobody Knows Anything

Via Neil Gaiman, here is Raymond Crowe, self-titled “Unusualist,” with his hand puppet show, “What a Wonderful World.” It is amazing.

Via Holden at First Draft, we get a report from The Telegraph that’s the funniest damn thing put in print since… I don’t know. Early 2001, maybe:

Country music has thrived for years as the soundtrack to redneck America, supplying the Republican heartlands with a diet of knee-jerk jingoism that has included flag-waving anthems supporting the war on terror.

Toby Keith has claimed he never supported the war

But as the US death toll rises in Iraq and public patience with the conflict — and with George W. Bush — diminishes, many anti-war songs are emerging from Nashville, Tennessee, home of the genre.

No one has moved further than Toby Keith and Darryl Worley, two of the biggest names in country music.

In 2002, Keith had a huge hit with Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue, which includes the lyric: “You’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A, ’cause we’ll put a boot in your ass — it’s the American Way.”

Worley’s Have You Forgotten in 2003 justified the Iraq invasion as a response to the September 11 attacks. The military liked it so much he was presented with a flag that had flown over the Pentagon.

Now Keith says he is a lifelong Democrat and has claimed he never supported the war, while Worley has had a hit with I Just Came Back from a War, about a soldier returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tim McGraw — the biggest contemporary country star — has a hit single with If You’re Reading This, about a dead soldier’s last letter home, and the Dixie Chicks, boycotted in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London: “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” won five Grammy Awards this year.

Wow. How far down do you have to go to make your supporters deny they were ever behind you? (And no, I don’t think this is quite a Jesus/Peter situation, guys.)

You’ll notice that there’s no public apology to any of the dirty fucking hippies who were against the war from the start.

I think I’ve been in this discussion:

How do I describe this movie? Well…Shoot ‘Em Up is an ultraviolent comic thriller. Is this your kind of movie? Take this quick quiz:

You’re an incredibly agile, fast-thinking, quick shooting assassin. You’ve found the headquarters of the bad guys who’ve sent approximately 258 guys after you, all of whom you’ve killed and they haven’t put a mark on you. And there, right in your sights, are the head honcho and his main assistant, easily within reach of any of the 73 guns you have stashed on your person. Do you:

1. Kill the two main bad guys and take your chances at escaping?
2. Gather evidence to prove how awful these two are and hope to God that you can get your evidence in front of, say, a Congressional inquiry, or
3. Set up elaborate traps all over the headquarters involving automatic weapons operated by pull cords made of twine?

If you answered 3, then Shoot ‘Em Up is the movie for you. It’s a Hong Kong action movie starring white guys in an unnamed North American city, with bags and bags of guns.

I have a visceral reaction to a lot of the sadism in action movies and I wince a lot during the extended scenes of violence. I also can’t stand children in danger. Despite those two things, I thought this movie was hilarious. It is so over the top you can’t take any of it seriously. For example: the old cliché about the good guy hitting every target he aims for and the bad guys not being able to hit the side of a bus with an automatic is taken to new heights in this movie. The main character’s leather jacket never suffers so much as a scratch while he’s leaping through windows and showing us exactly how to ensure you’re thrown clear of a car accident. (Hint: it involves shooting a lot of guns.)

Clive Owen, the thinking man’s Jason Statham¹, lays waste to endless waves of bad guys. He delivers babies while shooting up the place. He lovingly tucks the baby he ends up guarding in a bullet-proof vest while shooting about 75 guys who are after them. In one completely hysterical scene, he manages to dispatch about 15 masked Uzi-wielding gunmen while he’s buck naked and… well, you just kinda have to see it to believe it. As my father-in-law said as we left the theater, the editor on this flick must have had a ball when he had to go to work every day.

I’m not sure you absolutely need to catch this one in the theater, but I think it’s fun and worth at least putting in your Netflix queue. This movie gives you exactly what it promises you in the title. I almost wish it hadn’t worked in so much damn backstory: we don’t care why Clive is the Energizer Bunny of Death. He chomps a lot of carrots (in close-up even) and tosses off a lot of really groan-worthy one-liners. When you have chase scenes like the one at the end of Act Two — trust me, you’ll know the one I mean — you don’t need any freakin’ backstory.

——–
¹ Alas, I can’t take credit for this quip. It’s Darin’s.

The kids’ obsession recently has been World of Warcraft, to the point where they were continuously fighting over who got to play. “You played last! It’s my turn!” “No, you played! It’s mine!” (This is how they play: they start a character, do all the intro quests, lose interest, start another character. Sophia has shown great fortitude in getting a character all the way to level 15.) So, finally I came up with this rule: Sophia was born on an even day, so she plays on even days; Simon was born on an odd day, so he plays on odd days; only Mommy gets to play on the 31st.

And this plan, almost unbelievably, seemed to work out just fine.

My current obsession has been Doctor Who. The third season has been playing here, and I love it so much that, while I can pass on watching anything until a few days have gone by, Friday night I am right there in front of the TV. (Albeit, after it’s TiVo’d—can’t stand commercials.) I have recently become so into it I a)joined NetFlix (nope, hadn’t been a member before) and b)queued the first two seasons to watch at home. I’d never seen any of the Christopher Eccleston ones, and we missed about half of season two.

The day my first NetFlix movies arrived Sophia had a friend over, and they were off playing in her room, while Simon stayed with me. He, of course, wanted to play World of Warcraft, but it wasn’t his day. So I said, “Hey, wanna watch Doctor Who with me?” We snuggled on the couch and I put the first disc in. And it was hilarious—FTW: “If you’re a space alien, how come you sound like you’re from the North?” “Lots of planets have a North!” (Eccleston has a northern British accent you could cut with a chain saw). Simon thought it was the greatest thing ever.

The next day Simon said, “Can we watch another one?” and Sophia said, “Another what?” So she sat down to watch the Doctor and Rose get into various messes.

The day after that, when I got home with the kids, the first thing they asked was, “Can we watch another Doctor Who?” No one mentioned World of Warcraft. It was somewhat blissful. Of course, now my DVDs have run out and I have to get the next set post-haste.

But when the Doctor’s in the house…no Warcraft! Yes!