CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

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This is the 2005 report.

Likes:

Angelica Huston was gorgously wonderful in a simple long black dress with loads of diamond necklaces. It was a great look, sumptuous and very sexy.

Mariska Hargitay once again looked stunning in Vera Wang (also her choice for the Emmys), this time in a medium pink silk column with ring detail at the shoulder.

Glenn Close in a beautiful black Geoffrey Beene, worn to honor him (he recently passed away).

Jennifer Garner was classy in a bright red gown; whether or not she chose that color to synchronize with the release of Elektra is anyone’s guess.

Kim Raver from 24 looked great in a pale yellow chiffon wrap Carmen Marc Valvo (but then again I’m super-partial to this guy, seeing as how every fancy gown I own is Carmen Marc Valvo). She accesorized with a gorgeously long and sparkly triple-looped necklace — very nice.

Emily Rossum looked radiant in a white gown although I never got a good look at it.

Eva Longoria was quite elegant in a black Oscar de la Renta.

Kerry Washington from Ray was just knocked-out in a turquoise Narcisso Rodruiguez. She deserves props for dressing so elegantly at her first awards show.

Dislikes:

Joely Richardson in a too-pale aquamarine column, neck-cutting scarf, and too-severe hair bun.

Halle Berre in a mis-matched breastpiece gown.

‘Oh My God’s:

Melina Kanakaredes in a don’t-you-like-my-flat-stomach revealing gown. I guess her red silk keyhole from the Emmys just wasn’t racy enough for her. I swear, that gown is a reject from the Miss America pageant.

‘Oh My God’ Worst of the Night Special Honorable Mention:

Diane Kruger’s horrific gold lamé … towel wrap? (I’m not sure I can call it a dress). A terrible two-piece nightmare: too tight up top, showing flesh on one side, and in general, looking like she should’ve been tending bar at the Luxor. This is why I give props to Kerry Washington for looking so elegant and pulled together at her first awards show — because this is what happens when you aim to stand out.

The Coverage

As a side note, I of course switched from the E! coverage to the TV Guide channel… red carpet coverage just isn’t red carpet coverage without Joan and Melissa. However, it just wasn’t the same type of coverage as E… you couldn’t really see anyone’s dress — I think maybe they didn’t have enough booth space? The coverage seemed a bit disorganized: you could see less famous stars heading up the stairs and then slinking back down as Joan said, no we’re waiting for so-and-so, so they didn’t have handlers ahead of time making stuff work smoothly. It also seemed like a lot of the big stars didn’t really stop by, it seemed. Plus, because it is still the TV Guide channel, they still had to have a “what on what channel” ticker crawl going the ENTIRE time. Very irritating. Reluctantly, I switched over to E to be able to actually see the dresses and get the bigger stars. Hopefully by the next awards show TV Guide will be able to get their show together, because Joan and Melissa are definitely the ones to watch, but TV Guide as an organization doesn’t have it together yet.

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Mynagirl, the Wolf-Nose

A stand-up comic on David Letterman once told a cute anecdote: He goes shopping with his girlfriend at a candle store (“… because I wanted to buy a candle…,” he notes wryly) and she holds up a candle to him, saying, “Doesn’t this smell like lavender and lilac?” His response: “What are you? A wolf? It smells like a purple candle!!”

Okay, if my husband and daughter are supertasters, then I am a supersmeller. Either that, or American folks, as a general rule, immerse themselves in way too much hair gel, hair serum, hair spray, bath gel, bath splash, bath spritz, body powder, body lotion, body spray, fragranced soap, fragranced makeup, and most of all… cologne and perfume. I think maybe the truth is both a combination me being a wolf-nose and people wearing way too much smelly stuff.

Maybe It Was a Dodge Durango into the ‘Obsession for Men’ Counter

So, I have to say, I am constantly amazed by how unaware (or uncaring) folks are about the amount of heavily fragranced stuff they layer on their bodies, which then places an olfactory assault on those who are unlucky enough to have to be in the cubic footage around them. I hate stepping into an elevator with somebody who’s wearing cologne of any kind — I actually hold my breath as much as I can until I get to leap out on my floor. I don’t mind meeting new people but one of my least favorite archetypes is the extra-cologne-wearer (sales guys seem to fit into the category a lot). I’ve had one co-worker who wore so much I could tell he was in the office before I even saw him — he literally left a smell trail that was about 20 feet long. I mean, you could tell it was nice expensive cologne but oh my god the sheer volume of it was like somebody smashed a Ford Expedition into the Drakkar counter. And it’s not just a few people… the problem is pervasive. At work this week I experienced no less than three instances of severe nasal assault — sometimes I’m not even sure from whom; in one case the scent cloud was so strong that it filled up a whole work area for more than an hour.

When our daughter, aka The G-I-R-L, prepared to get on a flight back to her mom’s house (her boyfriend was also going to be at the airport to pick her up), she said, “hold on, I have to go upstairs to put on body spray”. I cringed, thinking of my own flight two weeks prior back from a business trip next to a seemingly nice woman but who happened to be wearing a particularly pungent perfume. “Sweetie,” I said gently, “try to remember you’re going to be on a flight where you’re sitting right next to other people. Go easy on the scent.” I know she just wanted to be all fixed up to see her boyfriend, but I wanted her to understand what a scent (which quickly becomes the equivalent of background noise to the wearer) can be like to others, especially in close quarters such as a completely-full airplane flight.

The Fragrancing of the American Product Market

The problem is that nearly everything you buy these days is scented, so I think people expect that and then think they should actually smell like that. You have to search and search for something that doesn’t have a massive amount of fragrance added to it. I bought the Nivea body shimmer lotion once… horribly scented; I couldn’t use it. I love Burt’s Bees lip balm (which actually does smell of natural peppermint oil) so I bought Burt’s Bees face moisturizer: it stunk. Unlike the lip balm, which smelled of the peppermint oil because it was an ingredient, they actually added fragrance to the moisturizer to gave it that weird smell. Even Engineerboy hated that smell, I wore the moisturizer for two days and he wouldn’t even kiss me it was so gross. I spent $20 on Sephora for this lip stuff that makes your lips plump out temporarily (it’s called Two Faced, supposedly it has whatever Viagra has in it and that why it works) and while the stuff does indeed make your lips fatter, it has such a strong sticky-sweet smell on it that I won’t use it. Augh! I love how it works but yuck!

And I could write a whole subsection on Aveda stuff — I know aromatherapy is their whole gestalt, but I finally realized the essential oil massages were what was giving me headaches whenever I got my hair cut at an Aveda salon. Just because it’s a natural-based scent doesn’t mean the scent isn’t too strong (at least for me anyway). I’ll give Aveda this, though — the scents in their products don’t usually carry past the person that wears it. If I only smell you when I’m giving you a hug then your fragrance isn’t overdone, by my definition.

But it’s not just makeup and personal care products that have fragrance issues. I used Downy Wrinkle Remover once (you know, that stuff that you spray onto a wrinkled item, let it dry overnight and then miraculously have something without wrinkles in the morning?) The product itself worked GREAT but I spent the next day at work (no lie) being close to gagging from the disgustingly heavy scent coming up from my wrinkle-free slacks. I threw out the bottle and I’ll stick to the dry cleaner or ironing from now on. What a shame — I’d buy the heck outta that stuff if they made a fragrance-free version. Laundry products in general are a very big offender in this category — there is no ‘dark laundry’ detergent that has a fragrance-free version, and all the regular versions have a horrible cloying odor. I like the concept of washing my dark stuff in something meant to keep it from fading, but not at the overly distracting cost of feeling like someone is pushing scented cotton balls up my nose all day.

So What’s a Wolf-Nose to Do?

Slowly, I’ve identified the things I can use that aren’t stinky (to me). Clinique has wonderful fragrance-free moisturizer (I think fragrance- and additive-free is their whole schtick, so I might start looking there for makeup as well rather than Lancôme). Mary Kay’s makeup isn’t fragrance-free but it doesn’t reek or anything, so I use their stuff, too. Aveeno products (available at the drugstore) tend to be fragrance-free; their body lotion is great, as is their hand cream. Lubriderm’s fragrance-free stuff isn’t bad, either. I always buy the “Free” type of laundry detergent (All Free works pretty well) and use Dreft detergent (it’s for baby stuff) and Downy Free for hand washables and lingerie instead of Woolite (boy, does Woolite stink!!). (Actually a lady at a really really uppity lingerie store once told me that Woolite will destroy good lingerie anyway, and that Dreft is the best stuff for washing expensive finery — presumably she had nothing to gain from that recommendation, so I was using that stuff for years before my current distaste for strong smells reached its peak).

I can’t find everything I want in fragrance-free, though. I’m still searching for the right fragrance-free shampoo. You’d think Neutrogena would be the ticket but their shampoo is quite fragranced. Even Dove shampoo has a pretty strong scent. Really your only option for totally smell-free (that I can find at a drugstore, anyway) is Johnson’s baby shampoo and then No More Tears detangler. I’ve done that before but it really is made for kid hair and it’s pretty easy to over-condition your hair with that stuff. Try looking professional at the office with your hair all slicked down with too much detangler. Not pretty. I’ve ended up using L’Oreal stuff — still scented but I can handle it okay. If anyone has any other suggestions I’d love for you to email me.

As for coworkers and acquaintances, I can’t do anything about them. There’s no socially delicate way I can think of to say, “Gee, can you lay off the Obsession for Men there, pal?” I’m just grateful my current situation at work gives me an office of my own and none of my close friends are perfume or cologne overindulgers. I try not to be too obvious in an elevator when I hold my breath or place my hand up toward my nose so that I don’t have to breathe in someone else’s cologne. I really have no idea if the problem is mine or theirs, or how many other people are like me — unwilling ships constantly awash in a sea of others’ perfumes.

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In The Machinist, Christian Bale plays an emaciated machine shop worker who never sleeps and apparently also never eats. Bale is scary-thin here, and it’s not camera trickery. Throughout the movie he becomes thinner and more haggard, and near the end there are flashbacks to previous points in his character’s life when he had a more normal weight. These were filmed sometime before or after Bale’s dramatic weight loss, and the contrast on screen between the thin and normal Bale is almost incomprehensible.

Unfortunately, that dramatic weight change by the lead actor was the most interesting part of this film for me. The picture doesn’t suck, or anything, but it’s really just a trumped-up, big-budget Twilight Zone episode which would have fit nicely in a 60 minute running time. Unfortunately the picture is stretched out longer (and thinner, pun intended) than is necessary, which left me antsy for the damn thing to finish.

The story follows Bale’s character through his life as he doesn’t sleep and finds that stranger and stranger things keep happening to him. Are they hallucinations? Is he dreaming? Is he the victim of conspiracy? What is real and what isn’t? Who is real and who isn’t? The movie flirts with making all of these questions very interesting, but unfortunately settles for making them mildly engaging.

The plot is interesting, however, so I won’t spoil it by talking about it in any more detail. Bale does a good acting job in his role, as does the rest of the cast. The film has a suitably washed-out, foreboding look to it, and the ending was pretty strong when compared to the rest of the film. However, as a package, the whole thing is just slightly above average.

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So, if you know what an exercise ball is (think like what you’d use in Pilates), you can start to picture this chair. It’s best viewed, here, on the manufacturer’s site:

http://www.gaiam.com/retail/product.asp?product%5Fid=95-1004

A coworker suggested this to me last year after I mentioned my back injury from a few years ago (bad disc, never healed) and my constant un-preference for 8 – 12 hours of computer work in a normal office chair. I hemmed and hawed for the past year about maybe buying one of these funky contraptions, and in the past month or two really seriously considered it after regular office chairs just began causing me too much pain during the day. I even managed to snag a spare “exec” office chair at my office to try and abate the back pain, but it was no better after a day of constant work at the computer and then more hours of sitting at home in a similar office chair: my back would ache and I was pretty miserable by the end of the evening.

I did all the research about buying one for a while, trying to figure out if it was going to be tall enough for me. I’m pretty tall (5’11”) but I like my chairs to sit high, and the description of the chair says it’s good for someone 5′ to 6′. That’s a pretty big range, in my book. I did call the manufacturer and they said that the height of the ball is 25″ off the ground when the chair is assembled. I measured that against the height of my regular office chair and, allowing for the squishiness of the ball when a grown human sat on it, figured I could live with that.

My dad, sweetie that he is, got me one for Christmas because I’d talked about it so much. When it arrived, we realized I needn’t have worried about the height — it comes with 3″ extender feet that can be screwed into the casters to give the chair extra height (I’ll point out that this was mentioned nowhere on the website, however). The chair came within just a few days after my dad ordered it from Gaiam, and it took Engineerboy about 10 minutes to set it up. The ball has to be inflated partway and then let sit for a few hours and then inflated the rest of the way.

So now to the important part!! So far the chair is great. Aside from not putting too much pressure on your rear end, part of the major concept of the chair (as I understand it) is that you “actively sit” all the time. First of all, it sort of makes you sit up straight… it’s not impossible to slouch in this thing, but it’s much a more natural posture on the ball to sit up straight. So you’re working your abs and back muscles naturally while you sit which (just like in physical therapy) hopefully leads to a healthier back. Second of all, you kind of bounce while you sit, so you don’t just sit and get rooted into one (painful) place. I haven’t had it very long yet but I really like it so far over my $199 OfficeMax office chair.

Two other functionality notes: (1) the ball is uncovered. It’s that sort of thick texturized rubber. I was a little worried it would pick up pet hair, either through static or texture (so far it hasn’t), and I think it might be funky-feeling next to bare skin. I don’t think it will be a problem for me because I don’t generally wear shorts in the house. (2) the casters have locks on them to prevent the wheels from rolling if you want them to. So far in the two days of functionality testing they’ve proved remarkably easy to accidentally flick downward into the locked position with my heels. Since I work at home on a hardwood floor and constantly roll back and forth between two laptops, this is not my preferred configuration for the chair. Currently I seem to be constantly dragging one wheel that’s in locked position that I didn’t mean to be that way. A small annoyance but I mention it nonetheless.

If you’re interested in obtaining it for yourself, it’s sold on several other sites besides Gaiam.com, including Target / Amazon, Fogdog, and Drugstore.com, although Gaiam sells it for the lowest price from what I’ve seen and the shipping was fast, so might as well get it direct from the source. If you have any back issues or even if you’re just tired of you’re regular office chair, at $70 it’s a pretty darn good solution.

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I absolutely disagree with any offensive actions that purposely target innocent civilians. In America, the loss of an innocent life is perhaps the most tragic occurence imaginable. When a child is abducted, when an enraged husband murders his wife and children, when a drunk driver kills a family, or when a serial killer is on the prowl, we are all filled with great sadness for the victims, pity for their loved ones, anger at the perpetrators, and consumed by the need for swift justice.

One of the reasons that Americans cherish life so much is that life in America is a wonderful thing, for most of the people, most of the time. In general we have good health, long life spans, living wages, personal and religious freedom, humane working conditions, rich culture, freedom to travel, benign government, low crime rates, and are generally free from peril. In America, life is good. In fact, life may be the single most important possession for an American. Staying alive means more happiness, wisdom, joy, love, and fun. And about the only thing that all Americans can agree is worth dying for is preserving our freedom and the American way of life.

So when we experience the callous murder of innocents by terrorists, we can only see them as evil madmen, because only a crazy, evil person would purposely destroy innocent life. Not only destroy innocent life, but then hope to gain something from its destruction. Only a maniac would expect to be rewarded for doing the most unthinkable thing imaginable. Right?

The Worth of a Life

Well, maybe. But stop for a moment and consider that the most recent statistics show that the average life expectancy in Afghanistan is 40. And it’s not much different in the rest of the Middle East. And the lucky(?) 50% who live to be 40 endure 40 hard, cruel years of struggle, strife, poverty, disease, and then an untimely death. For people in this position it is reasonable to assume that their most precious possession is their knowledge that Allah will take them to paradise when they die, if they live and die by the teachings of Islam. And one of the most sure ways to achieve paradise is to die serving Allah while defending Islam and fighting infidels.

Now, that viewpoint may not make sense to the Judeo-Christian masses in the US, who tend to look down their noses at the callous, cowardly, and misguided actions of “terrorists”. However, before we (Americans) go casting stones, let’s take a look back at our own history…at the birth of this very (great) nation…and ponder the view the civilized world had of our forefathers, shall we?

History of the World, Part I

At the time of the Revolutionary War, England strode the Earth as the one and only superpower. Their intentions, while imperialistic, were mostly benign, and they seemed to struggle through the march of history with the intention of doing good, making right, and enforcing justice. Sound familiar?

But then one day a bunch of uppity colonists decided that they had had enough of the yoke of the Crown, and decided to throw it off. Notwithstanding the fact that England had single-handedly taken the risks and made the investments necessary to build “The Americas” into a prosperous little colony, the locals figured that it was time for a change. To hell with loyalty, law, property, and gratitude. Let’s just take this entire continent, and the only reason we don’t view it today as thievery is because we won the Revolutionary War, and history is written by the winners.

But how did we win? How did a raggedy bunch of out-gunned, out-trained, out-numbered, and out-strategized colonists defeat the greatest army in the world? By playing dirty, that’s how. So dirty, in fact, that our actions were labelled as cowardly, evil, misguided, and cruel by the entire civilized world. Again, sound familiar?

And what did we do that was so awful? Well, for one we did not fight the war as we were expected to fight, which was lined up in ranks on the field of battle and slowly killing each other face to face like gentlemen until attrition and superior body count determined the victor. I mean, that was how war was fought at that time. But we didn’t do that, because there is absolutely no way we could have won a conventional war against the greatest conventional war machine of its day.

No, what we (or our forefathers) did was to fight dirty. Hide behind trees. Crouch behind rocks. Snipe from the trees. Attack the flanks. Attack from behind (unheard of)!! Attack at night. Sneak around like cowardly criminals committing murder (in the eyes of the civilized world of the time). To face each other as gentlemen on the field of battle was war, but to sneak around and kill someone was cowardly murder.

Again, sound familiar?

The Slippery Slope

Now, I’m not claiming that the use of un-gentlemanly tactics against soldiers is the same thing as terrorists exploding bombs in (or crashing planes into) areas populated by innocent civilians who are simply going about their daily lives. A soldier knows that he is putting his life in harms way. So do government agency employees and peace officers. Not that this makes it right to target soldiers and peace officers with terrorist acts, but at least we (Americans) could have a glimmer of understanding of the aims and goals of a group that targeted armed and prepared targets rather than unarmed, unprepared innocents.

However, the point at which I’m driving is that tactics employed by our forefathers against the British were about as far outside of the accepted practices of war as are the actions of the terrorists of today. The terrorists of today could never hope to defeat the US armed forces in any sort of conventional warfare, so they are using the tools available to them regardless of how cowardly we perceive them to be.

However, the terrorists have crossed one very clear boundary because of the fact that they target civilians and innocents. For that they are to be condemned, but they should not be dismissed simply as maniacs and/or fanatics. Whatever we think of their actions, we should also be sure to actually take a look at their side of the story, as they certainly have a story to tell.

A Tale of Two Regime Changes

After the events of 9/11, the United States zeroed in on the Taliban of Afghanistan as the harborers of terrorists and the dismantlers of freedom and progress. The Taliban ruled by their strict interpretations of Islamic law, pushed Afghani women into subservience, did away with secular education, and even went so far as to demolish ancient stone carvings that represented gods in whom they did not believe.

And the United States invaded Afghanistan, deposed the Taliban, and have worked to institute freedom and democracy in the country, with what appears to be some success. The Taliban were clearly unfit to join the ranks of world leaders, and there has been no hue and cry surrounding their overthrow, and no resistance of any note from the Afghani people. Also noteworthy is the fact that Afghanistan is a very poor country (no oil) whose major export is heroin. Also noteworthy is the fact that no Western companies can make any legitimate dollars off of heroin.

Contrast that with Iraq. Now, Saddam Hussein was definitely NOT a good guy. However, he did have women and Christians in his government, regardless of how puppet-like it was. He embraced secular Western values and education. However, he was also despotic and evil, but no more so than the leaders of many, many other countries around the world. And he certainly was not among the worst. And, oh, just in case you forgot, the CIA orchestrated his rise to power in Iraq in the first place.

However, the United States determined that he was developing weapons of mass destruction and that he had links to Al Qaeda. And so, for the greater good, we invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein. The deposing seemed easy, but in reality our forces were the victims of a massive judo throw, where our enemy simply stepped aside and then used our own momentum against us. After our “victory” we Americans were jubilant, but it did not last. Over time we realized that the scattered resistance was actually more cohesive than we first thought. And better organized. And smarter. And more persistent. And now, many many months after our “victory”, Iraq is a hostile zone where American troops are in constant peril from the endless stream of well-coordinated attacks by “insurgents”.

Oh, and while this is going on, Halliburton (et al) are making billions and billions of dollars in Iraq. And the country’s oil reserves will certainly be…er…liberated? Protected? Preserved? Plundered, maybe? Also, Saddam Hussein is the guy who tried to take on George Bush Sr. He hated Bush Sr., in fact, so much so that he had a tile mosaic set into the floor at the entrance to Baghdad’s largest hotel. Now, given that fact that showing the bottom of your shoe or touching someone with it are one of the gravest insults in Iraq, you can see what his goal was with the mosaic…and endless stream of people stepping on Bush Sr’s face.

Family Feud

But Bush Jr. took care of all that. In fact, if one were looking for a story that fit the facts it would be hard to find one more fitting than the one that says that we invaded Iraq to both settle a Bush family score and to enrich Cheney’s former(?) company. I am a red-blooded American and it’s hard for me to dismiss this particular story. In fact, given the boondoggle that Iraq has become, coupled with the revelation that all of our “proof” of Iraq’s development of WMDs and involvement with Al Qaeda seems to have been forged, falsified, and/or non-existent, this story seems to me to be the most plausible.

And I am a freedom-loving American. I love this country. I worship the Constitution. I’m a moderate and not a card carrying member of any political party. I think this is the greatest nation in the history of the world. I think that, as a whole, we have gotten it right. Our founding fathers were a bunch of geniuses and put in place a system that works. Almost all the time. Almost.

But not now. Our current administration seems to be going about this all wrong. And if I (as well as nearly 50% of Americans) think that, can you imagine what your average Middle Easterner thinks? We Americans are predisposed to love our country, and half of us think our Middle East policy is wrong, bordering on criminal. Your average Middle Eastern person has no reason at all to even like America, so imagine how our current administrations blundering about in Iraq appear to them?

I think it looks to them about what the actions of England looked like to our founding fathers. A benign but clueless superpower whose main interest appears to be keeping control and keeping the profits flowing.

Oversimplification

And I think we in the US make the mistake of painting all Islamics with the same brush. Can you imagine if the world did that to us? If you think the US government is corrupt, would you like for everyone to judge you based on the actions of the Oklahoma City bombers? If you are Catholic, would you like for everyone to judge you based on the actions of some pedophilic priests? If you are pro-life, would you like to be judged based on the actions of those who set off bombs in clinics? If you’re a Pistons fan would you like to be judged based on the actions of a couple of drunken fans? I know that I, as a Texan, hate being stereotyped as an ignorant, inbred racist every time some ignorant, inbred racist from Texas decides to perpretrate a hate crime.

And guess what? All Islamics are not civilian-killing fanatics, either. Most do not like the US, it’s true, but what have we done that they should? But most also do not engage in cowardly terrorist attacks, either.

The Solution

Do I have the solution for terrorism? Of course not. However, one thing that America is doing right is not negotiating with nor compromising with terrorists. I agree with that strategy 100%. However, what America is doing wrong is completely ignoring the causes of terrorism, and using the criminal acts of terrorists to invalidate the legitimacy of their issues. And that, my friends, is not a workable strategy. We (America) need to take a cold, hard, unemotional look at the very real injustices and exploitations that are creating such a fertile breeding ground for terrorists. We should not take this look in order to appease the terrorists, but to do the right thing. The most noble and productive thing that the United States could do in this terror-ridden world is to face up to the fact that our own greed and corruption have contributed to the problem. Our complicity does not excuse the terrorists in any way, but by the same token their criminal acts do not mean that there are not actual problems that need to be addressed.

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Originally published 9/26/2004, updated 11/11/2004.

Anheuser Busch is back again this football season with its corporate advertising philosophy that Animal Cruelty = Beer Sales. Last year we had the distasteful Bud Light ad where Cedric the Entertainer was wooing a girl in a limo and the girl puts her tiny dog on the lid of the pop-up cooler. The cooler lid pops up, the poor dog sails up through the open moon roof and then hurtles back down, missing the moon roof and landing cruelly on the roof of the limo with a whimper. I emailed Anheuser Busch about the inappropriateness of that ad at the time and received a very tepid email in response about how they felt the ad was humorous to their audience.

Well, perhaps I only encouraged them. I can hear the advertising brainstorm session now: “Gee, if a woman doesn’t like it, maybe we’re doing something right!” Maybe they didn’t believe me when I said Engineerboy hated it, too. Because this year they’re back with more Cruel Animal Ads! Two cases in point, plus an added bonus I just recently discovered:

• A man, without telling his girlfriend*, takes her tiny Pomeranian* to a Frisbee-catching competition. The dog, too tiny to really hold onto the Frisbee, tries anyway and ends up being hurtled spinning through the air by the Frisbee instead of being able to really catch it. Then a large Doberman comes along and catches the poor Pomeranian in its jaws. The poor pitiful Pomeranian whimpers as it’s caught in the Doberman’s mouth. Let me emphasize something here… a Doberman’s jaws could easily kill a dog as small as a Pomeranian. An ad such as this isn’t engaging in funny hyperbole or make-believe, it’s disgusting cruelty… and for what… to sell beer? (*Editor’s notes: I recently re-saw this ad and realized that his girlfriend does know that he entered her dog in the contest, but she doesn’t approve. And for those of you who may have read the earlier version of this article, the dog was originally mis-identified by me as a Pekinese, but I got a write-in that it’s a Pomeranian).
• A football referee has made a bad call during a football game and he’s being mercilessly yelled at by one of the coaches. The commentator describes the event by saying that the referee is being “beaten like a rented mule”. What a horrible, horrible turn of phrase! Who would possibly okay that in the script for this commercial? Aren’t there a million other things they could’ve picked for that there, other than referring to someone horribly beating an animal?! Isn’t that a fabulous phrase for the company that does all those majestic ads with those beautiful Clydesdales? Why not make fun of retarded people, maybe, or the homeless? Maybe we could make jokes about a particular racial group… that could be real fun. I’m thinking that would be a real step forward for Budweiser. And, to top it off, at the end of the commercial, it shows the referee at home being yelled at mercilessly by his wife and she mentions how the cat litter box hasn’t been cleaned out for three weeks. So it’s good to know we’re not only cruel to large animals, we’re callous and uncaring toward our housepets at Anheuser Busch, as well.
• Recent addition!A new Bud Light ad also has a window cleaner making windows so clean that a bird flies into it and knocks himself out. I swear they really can’t come up with anything they consider funny unless it involves hurting an animal.

Well, whether or not Anheuser Busch and the advertising morons at Budweiser believe women are football fans, or whether or not they think they buy beer (I do occasionally, mostly at baseball games but occasionally at dinner or out at a bar), this particular set of consumers is no longer going to buy anything from the Busch companies. If I need to buy a nice cold beer from the vendor at Minute Maid Park, it’ll be a Miller Lite. If I get a beer at a bar, it’ll be a Shiner Bock or a Harp. And since Anheuser Busch owns Sea World, I’ll probably give that place a pass in the future. I sure hope those animals are treated better than the poor animals in the Budweiser ads.

The thing that amazes me is that in this world filled with creative people, Anheuser Busch can’t come up with any better way to sell beer. Miller Lite has some hilarious new commercials out now that don’t involve any casual cruelty to animals — the referees that come into the everyday situations and throw penalties are pretty funny (“Uh oh, definite unibrow. That’s a no second date penalty.”) Those are clever and aren’t hurting anyone besides a little male ego, and that’s fair game during a football commercial, as far as I’m concerned. I think Budweiser could stand to learn a few lessons.

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When I first heard about this film I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the duo behind South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, were making a movie about America’s role as police force to a world terrorized by, well, terror…and they would make it using not animation, not actors, but…marionettes? I figured it had to be a joke, and they were just punking us all. Believe me, they weren’t.

Team America: World Police may be the most subversively intelligent political satire that I have seen since…well…Dr. Strangelove. Part of me is almost embarrassed to make that comparison, but it is nonetheless valid. Strangelove is an undisputed masterpiece, and when viewed today it is very easy to marvel in a clinical way at how groundbreaking, offensive, daring, and dangerous it would have been to the politically naive Ward Cleavers of that day. However, it is not the least bit controversial, offensive, or groundbreaking to the jaded audiences of today, who have seen it all. But we haven’t seen it all, and Team America proves it.

Just as Strangelove shocked the sensibilities of the America of its day, Team America will shock you, if you go see it. And I highly recommend that you do, but leave the kiddies at home (but take the later teens, who might actually learn something amid all the cursing, stereotypes, violence, and puppet sex). In today’s political era where every supposed “news” outlet proudly wears its affiliations on its sleeve (FOX is conservative/Republican, CNN is liberal/Democrat, etc), it’s nice to experience balanced political commentary, which is exactly what Team America is, if you have an open mind.

Parker and Stone attack the hegemonic hubris of America-as-latter-day-Roman-Empire, with our government’s proclivity of presuming to tell the rest of the world how to run its business (to our advantage, of course). But they also attack the rise of celebrity/activists, who presume to tell world leaders how to run the world, presumably using the insight they gleaned from scripts someone else wrote but that they nobly memorized (or read from cue cards).

In both cases, Team America hits the bull’s-eye with laserlike accuracy. One might think that if Parker and Stone are smart enough to see North Korea as a greater threat to world security than Middle-Eastern terrorism that the US government would be, too, but one would be wrong. One might think that celebrities would understand that the even though people listen to and report what they say, their opinions are no more valid or informed than anybody else’s, but one would, again, be wrong. One might think that there are no great truths to be learned by watching a drunken marionette collapse in a pool of his own vomit, but one would, again, be wrong.

The film itself is painfully funny, in that I laughed so hard that it hurt. It’s almost impossible to offend me with creative works, but Team America had me covering my eyes (but peeking through my fingers) more than once. I wasn’t offended in the “morally outraged” sense, but in the “I don’t think I’m old enough to see this” sense (I’m 43).

And the songs…my god, the songs. If you couldn’t understand how Trey Parker’s song Blame Canada from the South Park movie got nominated for an Academy Award (look it up), then prepare for more surprises. I doubt any of the songs from Team America will be nominated, but that’s only because they all contain curse words (and bad ones). Well, and the film skewers Hollywood so deftly that I doubt Hollywood would choose to reward them for it. But the songs may be the best part of the film.

Kim Jong Il’s (singing and spoken voice by Trey Parker) rendition of “I’m So Lonely” is a Cole Porter-esque ballad about the loneliness and misunderstanding that only a ruthless dictator can understand (which is why he’s so lonely). The patriotic, country twang of “Freedom Isn’t Free” probably makes Tobey Keith wish it were his song, because it’s played so straight that it could be a New Country hit, which make its ridiculousness even funnier. And the Team America theme song is pretty funny itself, but that’s really all I can say about it because I can’t even mention the title in this column. And do yourself a favor and stay through the end credits.

Oh, and to top it all off the film is also a dead-on spoof of testosterone-charged, Bruckheimer-esque, mindless action films. And if you thought it would be impossible to have marionettes perform complicated martial arts moves, well, you’d be right. But the aimless flailing and twitching that is used instead is HILARIOUS.

Speaking of the marionettes, intentionally lame puppet-fu notwithstanding, the puppets actually do some great acting. Their surprisingly flexible faces are able to emote, and the masterful string pulling allows them to demonstrate surprisingly convincing body language. Also, I didn’t notice any cheats, and all puppet movement seemed to actually be traditional puppet string pulling. They even left in some mistakes and awkward movements, perhaps because of the tight editing schedule, perhaps just to prove that it was all pure puppetry. The sets are also quite ornate, and the level of detail is overwhelming, if you can manage to tear your eyes away from the main action and peruse the background.

All in all this is an amazing and funny film. I think that Parker and Stone are making it clear that they actually have cogent points to make, but that they are smart enough to know that the first step in being heard is to put butts in the seats. They do this with humor and prurience, but those are not the points of their work. However, many, many (many, many, many, many, many) people are unable to see past the surface of their works and see the actual messages.

My suggestion is to treat their films like you would a piece of sausage. If you were to go through the bits and pieces of sausage and actually identify all the parts that make up the whole, I’m sure you would be disgusted (lips, hooves, and assholes, anyone?). However, if you take a good piece of sausage as a whole, and just savor the flavor of ALL the ingredients, it usually tastes pretty good. Even the disgusting parts add to the delicious flavor. Just like in Team America: World Police.

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The current Kobe Bryant case has highlighted the rape shield laws of Colorado, which protect the identity and sexual history of the accuser in rape trials. Rape shield laws are enacted to protect women from the embarrassment and degradation they might feel if their identity and sexual history, as well as the specifics of their rape charges, were made public. The goal is to make it easier and thus more likely for women to come forward when they have been victimized in this way. In the past, the public nature of our criminal justice system sometimes drove women to decide not to report incidents of sexual assault.

I think these laws have had their intended effect, for the most part, but I feel that they are unfair to the accused, in many instances. For example, in the Kobe Bryant case, my understanding of the facts is that Kobe checked into a hotel, and then invited one of the staff members, a 19 year old young women, to give him a private tour of the facilities. She agreed, and provided the tour. According to the accuser’s own testimony, during the tour Kobe flirted openly with her, and she was flattered by the attention. He then invited her up to her room, and she also agreed, and went willingly alone with him to his room. Up to this point, the facts are clear, undisputed, and publicly known.

Behind Closed Doors

After this point, however, the two were behind closed doors and nobody but them really knows what happened. She says that he raped her, and he says that they had consensual sex. One of them is lying, and either way it is a tragedy. The evidence does show that they had sex, but does not clearly show anything else. She had some minor injuries, but nothing that couldn’t also have resulted simply from an energetic tryst (or from her having other encounters before or after the one with Kobe).

In this particular instance, where it is simply he-said/she-said, I do not agree with the rape shield laws. There is no evidence of a crime other than the young woman’s accusations. Kobe has no history of any behaviors of this kind. Also, there is evidence that the young woman had sexual relations very soon before and very soon after her encounter with Kobe. The evidence was strong enough that the judge permitted it into evidence, even though in most cases a victim’s sexual history is inadmissible.

And now, as the criminal charges seem to be slipping away (editors note: actually have been dropped due to the young woman’s refusal to testify), the young woman has filed a civil suit for monetary damages. In civil cases the burden of proof is lower, as evidenced in the O.J. Simpson saga (where he was acquitted on criminal charges, but lost the civil case). In the O.J. case there were mountains of evidence against him, he had a history of physically abusing the victim, and many (including myself) are convinced that he did it. However, his lawyers managed to win the case, so officially he is innocent of criminal charges. The family of Nicole Brown Simpson then took O.J. to civil court and won a large monetary judgment, and also a small measure of vindication. In the O.J. case, I understand and applaud the use of the civil courts after the failure of the criminal justice system.

But the Kobe Bryant case is completely different. There is no mountain of evidence that he’s wiggling out of via lawyerly tricks. There’s not even convincing evidence that a crime has been committed. There is nothing but the statements of the accuser and some “evidence” that may or may not be relevant. And the accuser is not even waiting for the criminal case to conclude before starting her civil case (for money).

Remember the Constitution?

Obviously, there is no way that I (nor anyone other than Kobe and his accuser) can know what happened in that hotel room. In my opinion, rape shield laws should not be used in cases such as these, as all it takes is the word of an anonymous accuser to forever taint the standing and reputation of the accused. Rape is the only crime of which I am aware where the accuser can remain anonymous. I understand that rape is different from other crimes, and even though the Constitution-lover in me is appalled, intellectually, by the thought of secretive court proceedings, I see that these laws can serve the greater good, if used properly.

Reality Check

In my opinion, rape shield laws should require some sufficiency of evidence at a preliminary hearing in order to be invoked. During the hearing both parties should remain anonymous and the prosecution should have to show:

• Proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed.
• Sufficient evidence that the accused was the perpetrator.

If the prosecution can show the above, then I am tolerant of rape shield laws, as they help to address the horrifying aftermath of a despicable crime. However, in the Kobe Bryant case, it’s clear that while Kobe was certainly involved in the incident, there appears to be little or no evidence that an actual crime has taken place. And in this case, I feel that the accuser should have to abandon her claim to anonymity and publicly stand behind her accusations, particularly if the action is in civil courts in pursuit of monetary damages.

Harsh Punishments

All that being said, I am also very much in favor of the harshest possible penalties for sexual assault and rape convictions. I am not a criminal, but I can visualize dire circumstances where I might rob, steal, hurt, or even kill. These are highly unlikely scenarios and would depend on extreme situations, such as the collapse of civilization, but I can see myself stealing or killing to keep my family alive.

However, there are no situations – extreme, hypothetical, or otherwise – where sexual assault can be justified, or the character of the perpetrator defended. There can be no extenuating or mitigating circumstances. Sexual assault is heinous and evil, and demonstrates something irretrievably wrong with the perpetrator. Most rapists assault multiple victims, and continue their evil ways even after incarceration. There is no treatment or rehabilitation that can “cure” someone that is twisted and evil enough to commit a crime like this. I would support and applaud the treatment of rape as a capital crime, with life imprisonment or even the death penalty as the appropriate responses.

Fair Trials

However, the trials must be fair. Yes, rape shield laws create a situation where more rapists will be taken off the streets. However, it also creates a situation where more falsely accused innocent people will lose their reputations, or be wrongfully incarcerated, due to false charges. The American justice system is built on the foundation that we err on the side of releasing the guilty and strive to never punish the innocent. There are many documented cases where women have lied about the identify of their rapists, or the nature of the events.

For example, Linda Fairstein, head of the New York County District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, says “there are about 4,000 reports of rape each year in Manhattan. Of these, about half simply did not happen.” Also, the FBI’s official statistics say that 9% of all rape accusations are “unfounded”. This only includes cases where the accuser recants or the evidence directly contradicts her story, and does not include cases dismissed for lack of evidence. The most common reasons given for the false accusations are spite or revenge, or to provide an alibi for questionable behavior or a surprise or unwanted pregnancy.

These are not trivial numbers. The zeal to protect victims and convict rapists should be balanced against the fact that people will always attempt to pervert the justice system for their own reasons. Given these facts, I think that rape shield laws should be tempered with the reality checks suggested above. This will provide equal protection under the law to all of us.

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We went into The Forgotten knowing almost nothing about it other than what we saw on the few, brief trailers we had seen on television. We had a day off, headed to the theater, and decided to let fate play a hand by picking the next available, acceptable movie, which turned out to be The Forgotten. The film stars Julianne Moore, Gary Sinise, Anthony Edwards, and Dominic West, and follows the travails of Telly Paretta (Julianne Moore’s character) as she attempts to deal with the grief of losing her son in a plane crash.

One of the other parents at her local park, named Ash Correll (played by Dominic West), also lost his daughter in the same crash, which was of a plane headed to a summer camp that both kids were going to attend. They do a little reserved commiserating, but really only know each other distantly as parents of one of their kids acquaintances.

Telly is undergoing psychotherapy to help with her grief. Her doctor is played by Gary Sinise. She has been fixated on her son’s death for the nearly two years since it happened, spending several hours a day in his room, pulling his belongings out to look at, watching videotapes of him, and generally not getting on with life on the schedule that those around her would consider normal.

But then, one day, she has either a breakthrough or a breakdown, where her husband and doctor tell her that she never had a son, and that all of her memories of him are delusional and were brought about by a miscarriage that caused her to snap. Based on the film up until this point, it seems obvious that they are trying to pull one over on her, and I started to get quite annoyed that she didn’t just go down to her son’s school and ask any of the 200 kids there if they remembered him.

But she doesn’t do anything like that, at least not at first. But over time she does. She eventaully talks to her neighbor, a fairly anonymous lady who we saw interacting with Telly’s son in flashback, but the neighbor appears not to know who she’s talking about. At this point I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, as this neighbor did not appear to be anyone that the husband/doctor could get to and convince her to play along with their charade.

Telly finally heads over to Ash’s apartment, which she had been to once before when her son and his daughter had a play date. At least, that’s what Telly remembers, but the guy has no recollection of her, her son, or his (alleged) daughter. When Telly vigorously attempts to convince him that he had a daughter, Ash surreptitiously calls the cops to come get this crazy lady out of his apartment and into some kind of help.

At this point I was confused enough to be very interested in just where the hell this story was going. The story wasn’t confusing in a sloppy way, but in a very deliberate way, that engaged me in the way that a well-done mystery does. As Telly is being escorted out of Ash’s place by the cops, some official looking feds show up, say they’re from the NSA, and take Telly into custody. That was a real head-spinner, and very unexpected. While this is going on, Ash has realized that Telly lit a slow fuse of recognition in him about his daughter, and suddenly all of his memories of her come flooding back. He races downstairs and manages to wrest Telly from the custody of the feds, and the chase is on.

At this point you may be thinking that I’m giving the whole story away. Believe me, I’m not. In fact, right up until this point in the film I was on the verge of walking out because the story seemed to be so implausible (even given the suspension of disbelief granted to films). But from this point on the movie starts moving in some very unexpected directions that make the story make a whole lot more sense.

These new directions also make this a much better film that it first appears to be. But overall it is ultimately disappointing because while the film is slightly above average, it could have easily been very good, or even great, if the creative forces behind it had just stuck to the artistic principals of the first 2/3 of the film. But the ending falls into the trite, simple, overblown, ridiculous ruts that seem to please studio execs and not scare middle-America, and so the very interesting first parts of the film are wasted. What a shame.

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Combine Sex in the City, the Stepford Wives, and The Gilmore Girls, add a dash of Twin Peaks, and you have the recipe for Desperate Housewives, based on what we saw in the pilot tonight. The story focuses on the ladies of the house along a stretch of Wisteria Lane in an unnamed, but hyper-American, upscale suburb. The primary characters run the gamut of stereotypical suburban American ladies, and include the single mom (replete with wise-beyond-her-years teenage daughter), the Martha Stewart-esque “perfect” housewife (replete with desperately unhappy husband and children), the former model who married for money (and regularly gets her lawn trimmed by the yard boy, if you know what I mean, and I think you do), the former high-powered executive who abandoned corporate life to become a full-time mom (replete with three little boys who make the Tasmanian Devil look like a narcoleptic sloth overdosing on Ritalin), and the divorced slut.

The pilot was entertaining, sly, surprising, and quirky…things that I like. To those of you who understand what this means, you can understand everything you need to know about this show by hearing that the theme music is done by Danny Elfman.

The pilot sets the stage for the series with a voice-over by one of the ladies. She happens to be the one who appears to be the most strong and the most normal of the bunch. Things kick into gear when she promptly commits suicide. Her voice-over persists after her death, and provides running commentary on the goings-on of the neighborhood, while providing only tantalizing clues as to the reasons for her self-off-age. Suffice it to say that it wasn’t because of suburban malaise, or anything else mundane and/or every day. The reasons for her suicide are hinted at by the end of the pilot episode, but nothing is revealed or explained.

There’s also a new guy on the block, a single plumber who is renting one of the houses. He may or may not be more or less than he seems, but I couldn’t quite figure out how a plumber could afford to live on this street (notwithstanding what they charge).

Round things out with one of the wives attempting to kill her husband (maybe accidentally, maybe not, but she does apologize to him), and one of the husbands taking a pickaxe to the bottom of his drained pool to dig up…who knows what…and you have a pretty good idea of what’s going on with this series.

The stories go in unexpected directions, the show is funny (but isn’t a comedy), some of the situations are textbook soap opera (but it isn’t a soap), bizarre things happen (but it’s not The X-Files), and several crimes are committed (but it’s not a police procedural). It’s an interesting mix of all of these things, and more, and the pilot was very interesting and entertaining. Based on buzz, we had set TiVo to record the pilot, and we have now set up a Season Pass to be sure we get all the episodes. If they live up to the standards of the pilot, this should be an excellent show.

The only thing I don’t like about Desperate Housewives is that it’s so quirky, strange, original, and entertaining that it’s almost guaranteed to get cancelled. Unfortunately, and I don’t mean to generalize here, the American network TV viewing public are pretty much a bunch of easily spooked sheep who quiveringly cling to the middle-of-the-road, who just want to get their Survivor on and don’t really want anything that challenges their intellect or sensibilities. This show will do both.

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