Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

As always, I’m writing about the Oscars because I like movies and I watch them from time to time, and I’m always trying to position Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun within the zeitgeist. I only saw a few of the nominated films, namely Inglorious Basterds and a bootleg copy of Avatar, so as usual, all opinions should be taken with the requisite grains of sodium chloride. And for previous Oscar commentary, go here!

8:32 How about a Harold and Kumar reference in the opening musical number? Fun!

8:33 Also, remember like, ten years ago when Neil Patrick Harris was nobody? Does anyone even refer to him just “the guy that was Doogie Howser” anymore?

8:37 I usually don’t like saying these things, at the risk of sounding like I’m the kind of guy that thinks women are objects, but Helen Mirren = hot. Yeah, I said it.

8:39 In our first movie, we were both born a poor black child. That was kinda funny.

8:43 This George Clooney scowling thing in the opening monologue is supposed to be a gag, right? Am I just not in touch enough to get it? Because I’m pulling my collar like crazy over here! Also, I didn’t see his movie, but I think Jeff Bridges is owed an Oscar after being snubbed for his betrayal as Dude Lebowski.

8:47 Ah ha! An actor nominated from a movie I actually saw! Christoph Waltz for best supporting actor!

8:48 Ding ding ding.

8:50 I don’t like Ryan Reynolds being all solemn and serious, introducing The Blind Side. This is Van Wilder, dammit! Chris Brander! Is this some sort of preparation for us to take him seriously as Hal Jordan?

8:52 Does everyone else have a The Bounty Hunter commercial on right now? And are you all weirded out that King Leonidas is now the go-to guy for soulless, forgettable action flicks and cookie cutter romantic comedies?

8:56 Does this Steve Carrel thing mean that Jude Law won’t be appearing on this broadcast? I’m a huge Jude Law guy : (

8:57 I like what they do with the cartoons. That is all. I gotta go for Coraline here, because it was written by a guy that writes comic books. Like, really writes comic books.

8:58 College Humor says what needs to be said about Pixar.

9:00 Is Miley Cyrus on stilts? Look at how tall she is!

9:02 Reinhart Wagner, nominated for best original song. Is he German?

9:04 Neither of these guys who won look like a “T-Bone Burnett.” I think the guy that said “I love you more than rainbows, baby” should be named T-Bone.

9:06 Why didn’t they make the previews for District 9 as good as that little montage? I probably would have seen it!

9:10 David Carr signed with the 49ers? Who’s our backup now? Sorry, this has nothing to do with the Oscar broadcast. It’s just a reason for concern.

9:13 I, for one, am thrilled with how Robert Downey’s career has panned out.

9:17 Molly Ringwold? Where’d she come from? I haven’t seen her since that episode of Family Guy.

9:17.5 Of course it’s a John Hughes memorial, so now I feel like a big jerk.

9:19 Breakfast Club, Shmreakfast Club, when was anyone gonna tell me that John Hughes wrote Home effing Alone? And Christmas Vacation!

9:25 Margaret Monroe of Washington, DC, has never seen Christmas Vacation. I thought the world should know.

9:34 Yup. Short films.

9:45 Wait a sec, 72 percent of America preferred their toilet paper over the roll? How is that even possible!

9:48 Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire was based on a book? How about that.

9:53 They honored Roger Corman? That’s actually kinda awesome. I know a guy that works for him nowadays.

10:00 This is a make-up Oscar for Mo’nique, after she was snubbed for her portrayal of Cherry in Beerfest.

10:20 Bride of Frankenstein was a pretty good flick. Thoughts?

10:24 I feel like it would be much cooler if they actually like, recorded an actual RPG blowing up an actual cop car in that scene from The Dark Knight.

10:26 Now, does every member of the Academy get an equal vote for every category? What the hell does some writer know about sound mixing?

10:32 I’m glad we don’t have to see those Yaz commercials that are solely about how Yaz is actually deadly poison. Girls falling into bathtubs with their clothes on is much more whimsical than “Our last ad lied to you about how harmful our product is.”

10:35 Is this a glitch? I feel like the cinematography category should have some like, examples of good cinematography. Right?

10:39 I like James Taylor, but they couldn’t get Sir Paul to sing the song he co-wrote?

10:45 Remember when J-Lo used to put out records? “I’m Real” with Ja-Rule is still an awesome song!

10:51 Those guys were spinning on their heads for like, 30 seconds! That was a crazy. Maybe this is a legion of extraordinary dangers. Also, thank you, Alan Moore, for giving us the “Group Noun of Extraordinary Plural Nouns” construction.

11:01 I’m a huge Matt Damon guy. I don’t care who knows it, either. Also, this Burma movie looks wicked heavy. Yikes!

11:02 And then a movie about slaughtering dolphins? WTF?

1103 Seriously, Hollywood. Can we get a documentary with some whimsy? I’m about to cry.

11:05 Awesome awesome awesome. The producer of the winning documentary, The Cove, is the same guy that played Lyle Corman, the critic from the Philadelphia Inquirer who gave Paddy’s Pub a scathing review on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. H/t to my roommate for figuring that one out.

11:10 I’m kinda rooting for Jeremy Renner. Not because I saw The Hurt Locker. But because I saw 28 Weeks Later, and I kinda liked it!

11:12 People might treat this like a joke, but good for the pride of New Jersey, Buzz Aldrin, for appearing on Dancing with the Stars. I’m rooting for him full-throatedly.

11:19 Here’s the thing about Avatar. You’re a human, so when you’re not in your avatar, it’s sleeping. Presumably because you’re awake and doing human things. Don’t you also have to be awake while you’re in the pod and you’re controlling the avatar? Because if you’re actually the mind giving agency to this puppet, don’t you yourself have to be conscious? So when does the human sleep? Did this get established in the movie? And I’m not talking about established in a “we have one scene where Jake is tired in his video diary” way. I mean was this problem actually addressed and resolved in a grown-up way.

11:25 What happened to Michelle Pfeiffer? Is she not a big star any more?

11:26 I don’t know if I’m digging this “co-star yap yap yapping about the nominee” thing. These are Hollywood actors here. They don’t need to be praised any more than they’ve already been praised!

11:32 We all saw this Jeff Bridges win coming, right? The Dude abides, right?

11:34 Oh hey, Julianne Moore was just on stage. She played Maude Lebowski!

11:48 Did the Academy just not want to have to decide between Meryl Streep and the girl from Precious?

11:55 Is it cool or funny or something that the woman that directed Point Break just won best director?

11:58 I guess James Cameron will have to console himself with his millions and millions of dollars. I should probably also get The Hurt Locker on-demand? People seem to think it’s a good movie.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know exactly what I’m talking about.

Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun’s mommy always told me that it’s rude to let someone clean up after me if I’m capable of doing it myself. Sure, she washed my dishes and did my laundry for a good number of years, but the lesson took! Same thing in the Scouts. You bus your own tray, you clean your own tent, yada yada yada. Combine that with my powerful and innate sense of guilt, and you can imagine how I look sideways at the principle of single-stream recycling.

Boston, along with a lot of towns and institutions, have single-stream recycling. The idea is that you treat your recyclable materials just like you treat your garbage: chuck it in one bag or container and let the truck take it away to, I dunno, whatever magic place turns it back into cardboard boxes and beer cans. The actual process of separating the paper from the plastic from the metal is pretty cool, if you like giant machines and flying garbage. Which I do.

Looks legit enough, but I still feel weird about it. One of the primary and most intuitive virtues of single-stream recycling is that it’s so easy, even a monkey could do it. Check out this list of acceptable materials from the City of Boston. Basically, as long as you put it in a clear plastic bag and it’s not a rod of enriched uranium, the recycling truck will pick it up. Which is great. Recycling is obviously more effective if everyone, even the lazy idiots, do it.

However, comma, I personally don’t feel unduly burdened by separating my recyclables. This isn’t rocketry, folks! And it’s not particularly labor-intensive either. You put the bottles in one bucket, you put your paper in another. Boom. Of course, since I live in a single-stream community, my separating skills have atrophied like so much…I dunno, atrophied stuff.

Here’s the problem. Anyone that lives in New York or Massachusetts or Michigan or any of the other bottle deposit states knows that a significant amount of recycling is done by homeless folks returning cans for the five (or 10) cent deposit. No one disputes this. That’s why, even though recycling is only collected on Friday mornings, it’s feasible to put out a bag of cans any night of the week. Someone will pick them up. Happens every time.

So you can imagine my surprise when, on my way to the T this morning, I saw a familiar-looking bag on the street a few blocks from my apartment. Empty handle of Jim Beam: check. Six wine bottles from Tuesday’s book club meeting: check. Juice cartons and Pringles can: check. It was the bag of recyclables I had put out the night before! Except all the beer cans were gone. I can only surmise that some can person grabbed our bag, sorted out the useful stuff from the dregs, and then dumped the bag. The recycling truck was long gone, so this bag would probably just get picked up by a public works functionary this weekend and get mixed in with the regular garbage. You know, hence defeating the purpose of recycling in the first place.

I refuse to believe that this doesn’t happen ALL the time. Why wouldn’t it? Boston is notoriously bad at distributing recycling bins, so most of the people who recycle things at all are putting their junk in bags. Why wouldn’t a bag man just snag a whole block’s worth of recycling sacks, take them to his base of operations, grab all the goodies, and leave the dreck? It makes perfect sense! How many tons of recyclables are lost to the normal garbage every year? I demand statistics. Does the amount of garbage lost to situations like the one I just described offset the amount of recyclables gained by people being drawn in by the ease of single stream? That’s a serious question. One that this blogger is too lazy to investigate himself, but would be overjoyed should some sort of answer drift through the comments section.

In the meantime, single-stream recycling is still off-putting to me. Did you watch that video up there? We’ve outsourced our sorting to the machines? What happens when the machines stop serving us, and we start serving the machines? I’ll tell you what: Skynet.

. . . just posting a love song for Valentine’s Day weekend. Can’t a guy listen to a little Jeff Buckley without people asking a lot of questions?

Also, in other Valentine’s Day–related news, here are some deep cuts from my tenure as the food columnist for the Heights, the independent student newspaper of Boston College. One on the wonders of fondue, the other on Necco Sweethearts. Enjoy.

. . . but I think it’s time to hand the reins over to our dolphin overlords and pray for mercy.

While our elected leaders have trouble even counting to the number 60, these half-fish/half-mammal killing machines have devised a hunting system so intricate that I had to watch the damn video twice to figure out how it worked. And if you’re reading this, dolphin masters (and I have no doubt they’ve already mastered all of the world’s languages), please don’t lump me in with the rest of those devils who have polluted your oceans and ensnared your brethren in tuna nets. I’ll name names!

It used to be that I read this satirical Onion article and laughed. Now, I can only marvel at its prescience, and weep for humanity’s fate.

If you haven’t already heard, Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Senator from Massachusetts, just won the special election to replace the late Ted Kennedy. You heard that right. Massachusetts, which hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972, just voted for a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy. Of the Kennedy family.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun can surmise how I feel about all this. And if you want to read some informed commentary about the implications of this vote for the country, you can check it out here, here, here, here, and here. Suffice it to say, this is a big deal.

And look, I’ll probably be fine tomorrow, and if not then, then the next day. But right now, I have a hard time having any faith in the Democratic party. Which is nuts, right? They still control 59 seats in the Senate, which is a bigger majority than either party has enjoyed in years. This should be a drop in the bucket. But let’s not talk about how arcane and despotic procedural rules in the Senate mandate a 60-vote supermajority to get anything done, except to say that James Madison and Alexander Hamilton are no doubt joining Senator Kennedy in grave-spinning tonight.

My buddy is fond of saying that the voters get what they deserve. I’m not really sure what else to say. After eight years of allowing George Bush to enmesh us in two wars, let financial institutions leverage themselves beyond all logical comprehension based on the seemingly unassailable notion that housing prices would keep going up forever and hence miring us in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, enact unfunded mandates (No Child Left Behind), pass deficit-crippling entitlements (the prescription drug benefit), and drag our country’s good name through the mud (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay), the voters of my beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts were ready to send a message to the Democratic party that, you know what? You guys had all of a year to turn the ship around, and you only sorta kinda started to succeed. We’re ready to put the guys that ran the ship aground in the first place back in charge. Whatever. At the most fundamental level, I’m a believer in representative democracy. I think that the people that just elected Scott Brown are wrong, but this is the system by which we hold our elected leaders accountable. This was clearly an accountability moment for the Democratic party, and they only have themselves to blame.

Paul Krugman wrote about this in a column in the New York Times on Monday, and I’m about to quote liberally from it.

It’s instructive to compare Mr. Obama’s rhetorical stance on the economy with that of Ronald Reagan. It’s often forgotten now, but unemployment actually soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cut. Reagan, however, had a ready answer for critics: everything going wrong was the result of the failed policies of the past. In effect, Reagan spent his first few years in office continuing to run against Jimmy Carter.

Mr. Obama could have done the same — with, I’d argue, considerably more justice. He could have pointed out, repeatedly, that the continuing troubles of America’s economy are the result of a financial crisis that developed under the Bush administration, and was at least in part the result of the Bush administration’s refusal to regulate the banks.

But he didn’t. Maybe he still dreams of bridging the partisan divide; maybe he fears the ire of pundits who consider blaming your predecessor for current problems uncouth — if you’re a Democrat. (It’s O.K. if you’re a Republican.) Whatever the reason, Mr. Obama has allowed the public to forget, with remarkable speed, that the economy’s troubles didn’t start on his watch.

When it comes to low-information voters, narrative is the most important thing. I’m a junkie, so I read about politics every day. I represent a tremendously small fraction of the electorate. I know many, many smart, capable, respectable people who just don’t keep up with politics. Plus, there are scores of just blithering idiots who still happen to vote. For these people, overarching narratives are key. And the sad truth is, the narrative was stacked against Democrats in this election. Massachusetts voted for Barack Obama by a 62 to 36 margin in 2008. Did his brand, objectively, become so odious in a year since his inauguration? Or did the perception change. Deep down, you know the answer.

Which is why I find the scapegoating of the Coakley campaign to be insidious. She was a lousy candidate, for sure. But guess what? Irregardless of Scott Brown’s “People’s Seat” talk, Martha Coakley is a Democrat. In Massachusetts. It’s unseemly to say that a certain party takes a certain seat for granted. But please be honest with yourself. This is Massachusetts we’re talking about here. A Kelly’s roast beef sandwich should be able to get elected if it has a (D) next to its name. So I don’t want to hear anything about Coakley taking her win for granted.

The fact is, she should have been able to take it for granted. The national Democratic Party had as much skin in this game as Coakley herself. We’re talking about President Obama’s agenda here, to say nothing of the votes that various fringe Democrats stuck their necks out for in the hopes of the health care bill passing. So to hear about backbiting and infighting taking place before the polls even closed is sincerely disheartening.

There are two possible scenarios. Either the national party and the White House gave Martha Coakley all the support she needed, and they failed miserably. That would be pretty bad. What would be worse is if they barely gave her any help at all. That would represent a level of arrogance, gall, and incompetence that’s almost unforgivable. Either way, to lay the blame at the feet of Martha Coakley, who had the opportunity to become the first female senator that Massachusetts has ever elected, is to focus on all the wrong sort of details.

I’m reminded of the sad tale of Trey Junkin. Many of you are no doubt perplexed that I’m about to make a long-snapper analogy, but the Giants fans among Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun’s readership should know exactly what I’m talking about. It was the wild card round of the 2002 playoffs, and the Giants were facing the 49ers. The Giants were able to jump to a seemingly insurmountable 38–14 lead with four minutes left in the third quarter. Only one team had ever come back from a bigger deficit in the playoffs: the Buffalo Bills trailed the Houston Oilers 34–3 in 1993, only to come back and win 41–38. You can see where this is going.

San Francisco led 39–38 when New York was about to attempt a 41–yard field goal with seconds left on the clock. But Junkin, who came out of retirement for the sole purpose to long snap for the Giants in this game, botched the snap, leading to an incomplete pass from the kicker as time expired. Game over, Giants lose.

Trey Junkin is a presence of folkloric proportions in the annals of Giants history, but until I just looked up that link up there, I couldn’t remember the name of the kicker who, because it was a third down play, could have spiked the botched snap and bought the Giants another opportunity for points. (Matt Allen, btw.)

Point being, everybody remembers the very memorable Trey Junkin fuckup, but far fewer probably remember the guy that could have made that fuckup moot. And barely anyone cares to pore through the game and look at the myriad different defensive stops that could have been made, offensive plays that could have been executed, or schemes that could have been drawn up that could have prevented San Francisco from scoring just two additional points. Junkin is a convenient patsy, so he gets remembered. Martha Coakley is going to be the Trey Junkin of this election. She bears responsibility at the end of this election, but there are a host of factors that went completely and utterly wrong in order to put her in a position to lose. Whatever.

There’s a special election in Massachusetts tomorrow to fill the Senate seat held by the late Ted Kennedy. As per this blog’s tradition, I’m encouraging all of my Massachusetts readers to get out there and vote tomorrow. It’s an incredibly important election. I’d love nothing more than to tell my more Republican-inclined readers to just stay home and stay dry, but that wouldn’t be very sporting of me, would it?

I’ll be voting for the Democrat, Martha Coakley, and if being represented by someone that opposes perpetual war, believes that people shouldn’t be sentenced to die for want of health insurance, supports women’s reproductive rights, and supports marriage equality is important to you, I suggest you do the same.

I had a job doing layout and ad design for the Boston Haitian Reporter during my senior year of college. It was a small outfit (I also did layout and ad design for sister publications the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston Irish Reporter), but it was valued by Boston’s Haitian immigrants. (Apparently, the Boston area has the third largest Haitian community in America. Who knew?) It was an exciting time to be around, because the first elections since the 2004 rebellion that ousted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were taking place in the beginning of 2006, so there was a lot of news coming out of Haiti that was of great interest to immigrants here in Boston.

I learned a lot at that job, in particular about just how difficult it is to run an election in a country so gripped by poverty, corruption, and violence. And, in general, just how gripped by poverty, corruption, and violence Haiti really is. Eighty percent of its people live in poverty. The literacy rate is around 53 percent. It ranks 149th among 182 countries in the United Nations Human Development Index. It’s cruel and counterproductive to have a pissing match about which country is the worst on earth, but Haiti is certainly in the argument.

It seems like it’s been that way forever. Which is why this latest tragedy to befall Haiti seems so cosmically cruel. Natural disasters on this scale are always bad, of course, but Haiti is a country that was uniquely postured to be affected in an outsize way should a terrible disaster occur. And outsize is probably the most delicate way to put it, with the death toll still indeterminate but with estimates in the tens of thousands, most of the capital city of Port Au Prince in ruins, and barely a semblance of law and order in the streets. You can’t read a description of the devastation without imagining hell on earth. And this was a place that could have been classified as hell on earth already.

It’s all just incredibly sad, especially given Haiti’s history. In 1804, Haiti became only the second state in the Western hemisphere to throw off the yoke of colonial oppression. (Guess which was the first.) That’s a fact which, at least in my limited and tangential experience, Haitians (rightfully) wear like a badge of honor. These people are our sisters and brothers in revolution and independence. And I won’t get into how Western meddling has tipped the scales against the people of Haiti for years.

Suffice it to say, they need our help. My friend Sam, who researches this type of thing far more than I do, recommends giving to Partners in Health, which apparently has a lot of people already on the ground and a fair amount of infrastructure in place (or as much infrastructure as a nonprofit can have in a disaster area.) I’m going to throw a few bucks their way. I won’t twist any arms, but every little bit helps. And if you want to express your own self-determination, the Globe has set up a good fact sheet about various global and local nonprofits that are helping out. And as usual, if prayer is your sort of thing, say some words to the close and holy darkness for the people who have been affected by this disaster.

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun understand my intense love for my home state of New Jersey. But I can’t muster much love, or even civility, after the goddamn farce that occurred in Trenton today.

That’s right, precious readers: the Garden State joins such luminaries as Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Utah, and Mississippi as a state that can’t muster the courage to extend basic civil rights to its citizens.

You all know that this sort of thing fires me up. It bothered me when California voters defeated gay marriage. It bothered me when Maine did the same. But you know what? That was California and Maine. New Jersey should be held to a higher standard. We’re smarter than those people. We’re richer than those people. But now? In the vital metric of extending the most basic human rights to oppressed minority populations, New Jersey is in league with the most backwards, bigoted, fearful, and ignorant states in the Union. I don’t think I’ve ever been more ashamed of the state I love so much.

Here’s a roll call of which New Jersey senators voted yes and no. I’ve had a lot of critical things to say about Bayonne’s senator, Sandra Cunningham, but at least she had the good sense to do the right thing. As for Nick Sacco, I’ll see him in hell.

Then again, at least Sacco is on record with his villainy. How about the three nebbish, callow Democrats who abstained? Like Stephen Sweeney, who is somehow about to become Senate president. “Senator Stephen M. Sweeney . . . said publicly that he thought voters would look unkindly on the Legislature if it pushed for a social issue at a time of economic suffering. Senator Sweeney did not cast a vote on the measure on Thursday.” What the hell does economic suffering have to do with anything? There’s no one in the New Jersey Senate that can look in the mirror and say “New Jersey’s horrific economic condition isn’t my fault.” And now they’re going to blame their own feckless incompetence for further displays of spinelessness? What a joke. And fuck Gloucester County.

I’m honestly having a hard time mustering outrage any more. I’m not going to say I’m good at it, but I at least try to make an attempt to see things from other people’s perspective. But seriously, what does a fat, straight, moron have to fear from two men getting married? What does someone who never has to worry about visiting her spouse in the hospital, or inheriting his wife’s property when she dies, or having her union recognized for what it is, have to worry about two people who love each other enjoying the same civil rights as the rest of their fellow citizens?

And what does a state legislator have to fear from a horde of ignorant bigots? Criticism? A tougher reelection? Give me a break. Do your fucking job. This isn’t a political issue, so I have no fucking patience for political calculations. This is about recognizing the fundamental humanity of gay people. As I said earlier, the line between the right side and the wrong side of history is stark. Dick Codey, (God bless the man, he should be the governor right now) said it best: “One day people will look back and say, ‘What were they thinking?’ And, ‘What were they so afraid of?’”

Who fucking knows, senator. Who knows.

The Washington Monthly, on the Texas textbook approval process.

And if this topic piques your interest enough to compel you to read a book about it, I suggest Diane Ravitch’s excellent The Language Police.