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Sunday, April 30, 2006
V FOR VERACIOUS posted on 4/30/2006 03:37:00 AM by agentCB
posted on 4/10/2006 07:58:00 PM by agentCB
WHERE HAS HE BEEN? posted on 4/01/2006 06:32:00 PM by agentCB
sunshine and i caught the latest wachowski brother movie "v for vendetta" friday night. artsy cinematography and plot aside, my initial reaction was satisfaction, as the movie played on my deep seeded desire for some kind of "revolution."
after discussing the movie with sunshine, i started to rethink the movie. was this movie just a repackaging of my anti-capitalist philosophy? is hollywood starting to realize that there are people out there who romanticize democracy and making films like vendetta to capitalize off of this desire for a "revolution"?
i started to think this because the wachowski siblings made one of my all-time favorite movies: the deep and metaphoric "matrix" and its shitty hollywood sequels. yet again, the wachowski cats are calling for a revolution, perhaps calling out the apathetic couch potato numbnuts that watch TV all day and follow celebrities as if they were royalty. reviewers called vendetta a "commentary on the current administration" admiring the film's political edge.
i'm starting to question the motives behind the film. similar to my ideas on "the passion of the christ" i thought out loud about the unholy amount of money gibson made off of jesus' suffering. of course gibson says he made it to give dap to jesus (paraphrased) and not make money off of a public flogging and execution of the christian messiah figure. i'm thinking vendetta may be doing something similar.
who knows nowadays, when you live in a capitalist system, everything is driven by money. even the people that live within the system. i believe it's gotten so bad that now the powers that be are trying to repackage the struggle and making movies that people like me will go to watch.
or maybe i'm wrong about this movie. maybe the filmmakers are commited to social justice and change. but what will they do with their money? how truthful are they to the struggle?
i guess the easy way to quantify this is to give all 3 of my readers a concrete example. and i have the perfect one: those red ernesto "che" guevara t-shirts that the hipsters wear nowadays. the guy's face is on flags, tshirts and other paraphernalia. people wear that shit as a fashiion statement, almost as if to say "hey i'm down with ya'll!" but how many know who che guevara is or what he stands for? or even worse, the people that do believe in what che stands for are being marketed towards by business who are keen to people that challenge the status quo.
is it all just about money?
Monday, April 10, 2006
REST IN PEACE, BUTCH
it was a warm summer day in june of 1990. I had just received my driver's license and inherited the family car, a 1980 plymouth arrow. on this day, mom, ken-tot and i made the trip to the fairfield spca to get a dog for ken-tot who was in fifth grade at the time. now my dad and i were against getting a dog. not that we didn't like dogs, but we knew that we'd have to take care of it too. the fact that my brother would run upstairs after dinner in hopes of getting out of chores put fear in our hearts that he would do the same everytime the dog crapped in the backyard. but somehow my brother convinced my mom, a marvelous feat in itself given that he was 10 years old. so off we went in the arrow.
the spca search proved futile, with the only possible candidate a cute german shepard puppy that my brother liked, but my mom didn't because he had big paws, which meant in a couple of years he would have big crap to go along with them big paws of his.
we felt defeated... pet store dogs were too expensive. where do we go next?
but on our way back to the car, a young man man with a distinct resemblance to young mc came out of a white ford mustang, followed by a small black and white terrier dog.
his name was butch.
butch ran over to my brother and mom and greeted them. he had that "let's play!" look on his face as he met us, not knowing that young mc had taken him to the pound to be adopted by another family. young mc was dropped of his label, delicious vinyl, and thus had to move.
when my mom found out that butch was up for adoption, she asked the integral question...
"is he going to get any bigger?"
"nope, he's almost at full size" said young mc.
perfect. realizing that opportunity had just came up to us and licked our hands, my mom convinced young mc that we would be a good home for butch.
i didn't think so.
now bear in mind, that i was a teenager. and sometimes teenagers only think of themselves. i didnt' want to take butch home in my car. i had just armor-alled the vinyl seats and i wasn't about to have a dog come in a crap all over the place.
luckily i was outnumbered 2-1 that day and butch came home with us.
after a few days of adjustment (butch was an inside dog, but my mom was not having that) butch became a part of our family. it only took a few days for butch to break down his biggest detractors, my dad and i. we easily succombed to butch's friendly ways.
today signals the end of an era. butch has passed on.
butch was many things to us. he was the guardian of our backyard, scaring away gophers, birds, cats and mailmen and chasing down his nemesis, the possum. (he hated those things). he was our playmate growing up in vallejo, he was a loyal dog and our protector. always happy to see any of us, butch always brought a smile to our faces.
he will be missed.
i will pour out some bottled water for you, dog.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
not that anyone's reading this anymore, but yeh i'm still here. i am in the process of turning a nonprofit around, getting my music career goin. all that other shit i've been tryin 2 do forever. ha.
right now i'm sick as sick can be. nasal drainage, sinus pressure, sneezing and all that shit. irritable. so yeh. that's it.
out.
