HE'S A FAKE OBI-WAN

After last weekend, when I barely left my bed, I had hoped to catch up with some of the movies that are finally getting a wide release. like Pan's Labyrinth and The Last King Of Scotland. Instead, I saw Eragon.

Well, it was my fault. This was the weekend Tabbatha was going to have her "girl's night out," the night I agreed to babysit Paul. But then Tabbatha's night out fell through, and I had to work Saturday, and was still recovering from the flu and incredibly tired. No problem, I figured. I'm off the hook.

But I'd told Paul we were going out, and he intended to hold me to it. I figured all along we'd go out to eat--his choice of restaurant--maybe hang out at an arcade playing Star Wars-based games, then rent a movie. But I wasn't hungry, didn't feel like hanging out at an arcade, and never got around to renting Raiders Of The Lost Ark. I did, however, notice Eragon was playing at the local second-run theater, and it's only five bucks a person, which includes popcorn and a drink. What's to lose?

Nothing, as it turns out--I had a great time. True, Eragon is a pretty silly movie, and its wholesale borrowings from Star Wars and The Lord Of the Rings couldn't be more obvious (certainly not to Paul, who was constantly saying things like "He's going to turn out to be a fake Obi-Wan" and "He has to go rescue a princess? Is she named Leia?"), and watching actors like Jeremy Irons, Robert Carlyle and especially John Malkovich (looked like his scenes were shot in one fifteen-minute block) try to maintain some sense of dignity while competing with CGI critters and silly dialogue provided some amusement.

But it did seem to realize it was basically aimed at kids, and didn't weigh itself down with hipster irony or painfully prolonged plot complications. It zipped along, had a pretty cool looking dragon and did its job with admirable efficiency. More importantly, Paul loved it, and watching his obvious delight ("Is the dragon okay? They won't kill the dragon, will they?") I couldn't help but remember my enthusiasm as a kid every time I saw a movie in a theater, and how important it was to talk about it and act it out afterward. And sure enough, Paul wanted to talk--"Are they going to make another one? Because the King has an evil dragon, and they didn't do anything about it. They'd better make another one..." And I was happy to listen.

As a lifelong moviegoer, you'd think I'd already know things like this, but apparently I didn't: Sometimes, it really isn't about the movie. Sometimes, it's about the experience.

TIME IS FLEETING

Maybe we should just admit we're a race of fatalists. A final kiss, a shrug, a sigh to indicate it was fun while it lasted, then a leap into the great void. Let's just say goodbye right now.

The UN-funded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--catchy name--issued a report yesterday basically saying that we're frying the planet and we really, really ought to think about stopping. The panels is made up of top scientists from around the world, telling us stuff we all know.

Because, really, aside from a few far-right lunatics, who among us doesn't know we're trashing the planet? We've known this forever. Bad science fiction movies set in an enviromentally ruined future have been around since some producer realized if you shot in Bronson Canyon and said it was once a lush forest, you had production values. MAD magazine used to feature gags about kids going to school wearing gas masks. Silent Spring, people--it's been around since I was a kid, and I'm in my forties.

And the reality of what we're doing to the environment, and what it is doing to us in return, keeps getting worse. And we keep right on doing it. Problem ackowledged, but we've got a lifestyle to maintain. To ask us to change it is just a crazy notion.

So screw it. Let's just admit that we're really bad stewards, that our time here is brief, that the planet's gonna die and there's nothing we can do about it. Let's use all the gas we can while doing the most trivial things. Let's take the Hummer to pick up a pizza. Let's have some good times, so that when the end comes--much sooner than originally though, but hey--we'll at least have some good times to look back and laugh about, or would laugh about if our toneless bodies, too slow to adapt to the new environment, allowed our faces to be anything more than a frozen mask of uncomprehending fear.

Let's party like we just dont care!

OR WE COULD JUST STAY HOME

If you have any interest in going out to see a new movie this weekend, may the Good Lord somehow bless and keep you. Outside of the biggest cities, you have two choices: Because I Said So, a movie that actually deserves the derogatory term "chick flick" or The Messengers, which sounds like a Mormon tract but is actually a supernatural thriller not screened in advance for critics, which is becoming a genre unto itself.

Both of these movies are depressing wastes of talent. Because I Said So features Diane Keaton, Mandy Moore and--forgive while I drool as I type her name--Lauren Graham, and was directed by Michael Lehmann, who in 1989 directed Heathers, and has done absolutely nothing of interest ever since. The Messengers, even more dire, is the latest Hollywood product to be nominally directed by Asian horror specialists, in this case Danny and Oxide Pang, but in fact is the product of so many executive decisions and focus grouped meddlings that the final product is utterly devoid of even the slightest hint of anything discomforting, much less terrifying.

These are movies as time killers, which exist only because there was once a human instinct to go to movies, regardless of what may be playing. But does that instinct even exist anymore? There are so many more options out there; why on earth would anybody pay money to see this sort of thing? The Hollywood machine has been broken for quite some time, but they don't seem to realize it yet. So they'll continue to churn out product to diminishing returns, and wonder why audiences don't show up, and everybody else will be doing something more interesting, at someplace nicer than a multiplex.

RAISE HELL

I feel the need to say something about Molly Ivins, one of the best known and most effective liberal newspaper columnists we've ever had, who finally lost her battle with cancer at 62.

I almost used the term "leftist" instead of "liberal," because I tend to think of liberals as wishy-washy, like most Democrats. And Ivins was, God knows, more commited than that, but I can't quite equate her with the likes of Noam Chomsky. She was a liberal, but her belief in the essential decency of people was perhaps her defining trait.

Her writing style tended to be a little too down home jus' folks for my taste, but that's okay; it appealed to the people it needed to reach. Her voice was friendly (if sardonic), and it sought to remind all who would read it that they were important, their opinions were important, and the terrible injustices in the world, they all mattered, and maybe together, we could make it better.

And unusual for a syndicated columnist, she remained a reporter at heart. She didn't work backwards to make the facts support a preexisting opinion (like, say, Davids Broder or Brooks), she made sure she knew what she was talking about, and could cite chapter and verse, to devastating effect. Her books Shrub and Bushwhacked, written with Lou Dubose, are probably the best starting places for anyone wanting to learn how Our Beloved President somehow came to power.

And though breast cancer had become a recurring, unwelcome presence in her life, she never let that get in the way of fighting the good fight. I'll close with this excerpt from her final column, eloquent words and a wonderful final raspberry blown at the powers that be:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to stop this war...We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

SLIP-SLIDIN' AWAY

The doctor released me to go back to work today, so even though I still feel horrible, I'm obligated to go back to work. This despite a wracking cough from somewhere deep in my chest, sinus drainage that is resulting in runny bowel movements, and after staying in bed for five days straight, my body has very little strength. My job is very physical, and, not being the brightest or most compasionate guy, I doubt that my boss will take any of this into consideration when he hands me my assignment today. This will be, um, fun.

I don't usually get sick like this. A day, maybe two, that's it. From Friday night until now, with no clear end in sight. If I didn't need the money, I'd stay home today, too.

Somewhere during the night, in a literal fever dream, I tried to remember the lst time I'd been this low this long. And I remembered the Christmas season of '77.

December 17th was my brother John's birthday. As part of the festivities, he, my sister Ann and I all headed down to Des Moines to see Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,which had just opened that weekend. It was a wet, foggy day, not Christmas-like at all, not even all that cold, though the temperature started to drop as the day turned to night. I loved the movie, but I had zero energy afterwards, when John and Ann did some Christmas shopping. We ate at Wendy's, the first time I'd ever eaten there, and the food was absolutely dreadful. I could barely chew it. More accurately, I could barely move my mouth to chew it.

Leaving Des Moines, there was still some shopping to do, so we stopped at a department store in Perry on the way home. John and Ann went in; I stayed in the car, listening to top forty radio while I watched streetlights in the fog, Slip-Slidin' Away followed by Boogie Nights followed by Come Sail Away, and mercifully, they appeared, and we went home.

My brother's birthday was the day we officially put up the Christmas tree, always a favorite ritual, but I skipped it and went to my room, where I fell asleep early.

My first perception the next morning was that somewhere Abba was playing, and that my stomach felt like it was going to swallow itself. I ran downstairs to the bathroom and puked my guts out.

And that was it, I was out of school the next few days, the last week before Christmas break. I was in bed the whole time, too miserable to even read, listening to top forty radio. (I was twelve; I didn't know other options existed.) Heaven's just A Sin Away, Desiree, Turn To Stone, How Deep Is Your Love--an endless loop, the same things over and over, the only point of reality I had as I drifted in and out of consciousness, my only comfort as I floated so far out of my body I wondered vaguely if I'd ever return.

AM I HALLUCINATING?

The flu continues, slightly better but still miserable. Sounds are distorted, vision is wobbly, disorientation is business as usual. I haven't felt this horrible since 1985--the first time I saw Gymkata.

Wow. It's hard to believe it's taken so long for this thing to arrive on DVD. There have been some profoundly bad ideas for movies--casting Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees as ersatz Beatles in Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, for instance, or Chesty Morgan as Double Agent 73--but there's never been anything as stupefying as this. I remember when my Mom first saw a trailer for this thing--"The thrill of gymnastics! The kill of karate!"--she insisted we had to see it. Mom was up for any bad movie challenge, and this was no ordinary challenge. This was...Gymkata.

Whisper thin Olympic gymnast Kurt Thomas plays an athlete inexplicably picked by the government to infiltrate a mysterious contest in the mythical Eurotrash nation of Parmistan. But first, his natural abilities for flipping and tumbling must be enhanced by training from a Yoda-like master, who will instruct him in the ways of Eastern martial arts ("The kill of karate!") and spout bad aphorisms by the truckload. Training complete, Thomas still pretty much just flips and tumbles, what with Parmistan having parallel bars and hobbyhorses conveniently located whenever an action scene is necessary.

With a premise like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking Gymkata must have been intended as a joke, or at least was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Sadly, no--it's annoyingly earnest, from its right-wing Reagan-era politics (the U.S. is interested in Parmistan as a site on which to build a Star Wars missile defense system) to its out of nowhere romantic clinches. Director Robert Clouse cut his teeth on seventies martial arts films like Enter The Dragon and Black Belt Jones, which were themselves remarkably stupid, but which at least had kick-ass action scenes. Here, you just get a tiny guy with goofy hair doing backflips.

And what was Mom's verdict when she saw Gymkata? "It wasn't as good as I'd hoped for. It wasn't even entertaining. It was just stupid."

PRETTY, PRETTY COLORS

I've been--and still am--violently sick, skin crawling, head pounding, so dizzy I can barely stand. This is why, faithful readers, I haven't posted anything for awhile. Even the tap, tap tap of the keyboard sounds like a bass drum inside my head. (A heavily miked bass drum.)

Mostly these last few days and nights I've spent sleeping, but I finally crawled my way to the doctor today. He prescribed some meds which he said might cut down the number of days I suffer through this, but he wrote me a note excusing me from work through Thursday! In other words, this isn't going anywhere soon.

Despite all that, the most upsetting part of the whole visit to the doctor's office was the artwork on the walls of the exam room. Prints of works by Rothko and Kandinsky, used as visual Muzak, the works of these great artists reduced to nothing more than wallpaper, soothing colors to comfort the ill.

Kind of bummed me out, and ordinarily I'd go on and on about it, but all I want to do right now is sleep some more...

THE GOODBYE LOOK

I caught part of the movie The Hot Rock the other day on AMC, as much as I could stand before the incessant commercials drove me away. It's a virtually forgotten jewel heist caper from 1972, directed by the underrated Peter Yates and with a fine cast including Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Liebman and Zero Mostel. The plot seemed involving enough, but the main attraction was the lineup of weirdo characters spouting great, quotable dialogue.

The Hot Rock was scripted by William Goldman, a hotshot screenwriter in the seventies, and as the author of The Princess Bride, no stranger to quotable dialogue himself. But this had a funkier feel than what one would expect from Goldman, and I assumed much of the dialogue was taken from the source novel by Donald Westlake. But how to find out?

I've never read any Westlake--well, correction; I've read several of the novels he writes under the name Richard Stark, which are tougher and meaner than what he writes under his own name. Generally, Westlake's books are lighthearted capers--like The Hot Rock--and Stark's are pulpier and noirish. Anyway, the Stark books are great, and it seemed stupid that I'd never read any Westlake, and I knew most of his books (including The Hot Rock) are still in print, so I decided a trip to a local book store was in order.

A stop at Borders revealed only one Westlake book. (No Richard Stark at all.) No better luck at Barnes & Noble or Half Price Books. I checked to see if they had anything by two other favorites, George V. Higgins or Ross Macdonald. Borders and Barnes & Noble had nothing by either, though Half Price Books at least had a lot of Macdonald, including and Sleeping Beauty and The Chill, two of his best.

This situation is just pathetic. Bazillions of copies of crap by the likes of David Baldacci and Mary Higgins Clark, but nothing by the guys who are the architects of the modern crime thriller. Macdonald especially was a writer of serious intent, who used the mystery genre as a prism through which to view a society in decline. He needs to be read now more than ever, but if you shop at a chain book store, you'd never even know he existed.

WORSE THAN YOU THINK

I was--well, not happy, exactly, but grateful that John Kerry oficially decided not to enter the 2008 presidential race. One less obvious loser for the democrats.

Then , while randomly flipping channels this morning, I saw Chuck Schumer interviwed on Today, whoring his new book (in which he promises Democrats can magically reduce cancer deaths, and will "never rule out" pre-emptive war), and swearing that Hilary Clinton will somehow win over the vast majority of Americans.

In other words, the Democratic machine is determined to throw its weight behind her, even though she's guaranteed to lose.

So we might as well submit all free will to the Republican overlords right now.

BUSH TO POOR: DROP DEAD

Ah, no, I didn't watch the State Of The Union speech. But having taken my blood pressure meds, and after a good night's sleep, I think I'm ready to read the text and all the coverage in a calm, rational manner.

AARRGGHH!!!

The usual, so why am I frothing at the mouth? The bullshit plea to continue the war despite all common sense, the attempt to suggest that failure in Iraq will lead to another 9/11, the refusal to acknowledge that failure is what's happening, the halfhearted plea to reduce use of fossil fuels--feh, we've heard all this before.

The truly vile aspect of Bush's new agenda is his proposal to provide health insurance to the poor. Instead of doing something bold--or, to use an archaic term, responsible--like slashing military spending to find money in the budget to pay for universal healthcare, or better yet, overhauling the insurance industry, Bush is proposing tax incentives.

For the poor, that is, ostensibly to help pay for insurance. But the poor don't need tax incentives--they need coverage now, not more forms to fill out. And these initiatives amount to chump change anyway, and to pay for them, the White House proposes to raise taxes on people with decent insurance coverage.

And everyone knows there's no way in hell anybody's going to actually raise taxes. In other words, the proposal is pure, uncut bullshit--words in the air that suggest a concern over a very real problem, but in reality an unworkable non-solution, designed to fail.

Kanye West may have been wrong when he said Bush doesn't care about black people--there's no evidence the man's a racist. But he sure doesn't care about poor people. In fact, Our Beloved President appears to be doing everything he can to make sure they vanish from the earth.

BABY, I DON'T CARE

Lots of great stuff on DVD today, including The Films Of Kenneth Anger, Volume One. (The first film in this volume, Fireworks, essentially invented Queer Cinema, way back in 1947!) and the fascinating (if barely watchable) double feature combo of Rock Around The Clock and Don't Knock The Rock, unbelievable examples of how Hollywood (in the form of schlockmeister producer Sam Katzman) sold rock and roll to thrill-hungry fifties kids, mostly showcasing the white bread stylings of Bill Haley. (Though Don't Knock The Rock does have Dion, looking like he wants to beat the shit out of somebody, and while he's lip synching The Wanderer and Runaround Sue, all is right with the world.)

For me, the most interesting release today is Warner Home Video's Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection, because well, it's Mitchum, a definite contender for Coolest Guy Who Ever Lived. This box set is typical of what Warner and other big studios offer when they collect a set devoted to a single star, one or two essential titles and a lot of lesser-known, frankly inferior stuff, not always of interest even if you're a big fan.

With Mitchum, though, there's always something to watch, regardless of the quality of the film. And despite the grab-bag nature of the collected titles, even the lesser titles here are enjoyable.

The biggest title here, for me, is the long-awaited DVD release of Vincente Minnelli's splendidly lurid, garishly candy-colored melodrama Home From The Hill. With a pulpy script and a supporting cast that includes George Hamilton (though he's actually pretty good here), you can't quite take it seriously, yet Minnelli's delirious direction and Mitchum's commited performance as the hyper-macho patriarch of a severely dysfunctional Texas clan manage to transform the soapy aspects of the story into something more primal. Great stuff, and it's available seperately from this set.

Other highlights include Otto Preminger's oddball noir Angel Face, with Mitchum in full hepster mode, Fred Zinnemann's well-regarded The Sundowners, a Down Under family saga with one of Mitchum's best performances ever (which is really saying something!) and Sydney Pollack's near-miss The Yakuza, which shows how by the seventies younger directors had already started casting Mitchum as a walking icon.

The set is rounded out by two disposable but entertaining items, Macao, a weird relic from Howard Hughes' days as head of RKO, mostly directed by a slumming Josef von Sternberg, and last and probably least, The Good Guys And The Bad Guys, a comedy western I remember enjoying as a kid, with a fun cast including George Kennedy and David Carradine. Director Burt Kennedy, six years before Pollack's worshipful use of Mitchum in The Yakuza, treats him as just another aging actor in need of work, and he responds by walking through this like a guy who wants his paycheck. But it's not bad, an entertaing way to kill a lazy afternoon.

And that's what makes this set so much more than the usual thrown together actor collection: It showcases everything Robert Mitchum was: working actor, dedicated artist, icon. And always, always cool.

DO WHAT IS RIGHT, BECAUSE IT IS RIGHT

Forgive me if this sounds hokey, but I've just seen Clint Eastwood's Letters From Iwo Jima, and frankly, words fail.

It's going to take some time to process this. Time, and the repeated viewings this work simply demands. And time to piece this together with its companion film, Flags Of Our Fathers, which this echoes, repeats and takes off from. They are two seperate films, with similar yet distinct tones, and yet together they form a whole, a canvas on which Eastwood has unquestionably painted his masterpiece.

And yet they are not radical departures for this filmmaker, whose work I've admired literally since I was a kid; before I even knew what a director did, I knew High Plains Drifter, Eastwood's second film as a director, was not like any western I'd ever seen before, even the Sergio Leone westerns it somewhat resembled, the films that made Eastwood a star. Those were baroque, self-consciously stylish affairs. Eastwood, though always underrated as a visual stylist, preferred to depict things--violent things, tragic things, funny things--straightforwardly, to show you and move on, never dwelling for effect, never showboating.

He's still working that way, a master craftsman who only through an astonishing accumulated body of work is now being called an artist. There's nothing self-conscious about Letters from Iwo Jima, no camera set-ups that call attention to themselves, no flashy editing patterns that take you out of the moment. There is only a slow, steady build-up of tiny details, an accumulating sense of dread, and finally there is violence and despair.

But above all there is life, humanity, a sense that all of us everywhere matter, a belief that is embedded in every frame of film.

I AM JACK'S RAGING BILE DUCT

Okay, as near as I can tell from random scans around The Google, everyone everywhere hates that creepy new Orville Redenbacher ad. The CGI resurrection of the dead is wrong on so many levels, but the most astonishing thing about this spot is its technical incompetence: the clumsy lip synch, the dead eyes, the odd little hopping movement Orville does at the end of the spot, which more than one person has compared to Weekend At Bernie's.

The reason I even bring this thing up is because it was directed by David Fincher, who I think has now officially joined the Ridley Scott No Need To Take Him Seriously Hall Of Fame.

Ridley Scott came to a career in filmmaking from the ultraslick world of commercials, but his debut film, The Duellists, promised a new director of skill and vision. Alien and Blade Runner suggested the promise was being fulfilled, but ever since then--ugh. Legend, anyone? Black Rain? GI Jane? It starts to hurt after awhile, and even seemingly promising material like Thelma And Louise and Gladiator devolved into pretty pictures for their own sake, with no directorial voice tying them together.

Which is how I suspect it will go with Fincher's filmmaking career. It's already uneven--nobody really cares about The Game or Panic Room, and though there is still much to admire about Se7en, its jagged stylistics and nihilistic tone have been ripped off by so many subsequent serial killer thrillers, its impact has been lessened.

Still, there's Fight Club, which remains one of the best films of recent years. True, Fincher had great material and an ace cast, but anyone studying the supplemental material on the DVD will quickly realize just how much of the film's impact comes from the choices Fincher made, on the set, in the editing room, even in the lab. This is a stunning, provacative work, possibly even a great one. But is it destined to be a one-off from a director who became more interested in tools than content?

Zombie Redenbacher says yes. Or would, if Fincher got the lip synch right.

YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO BE YOU IN TIME

Inevitable, I suppose: I've been asked to babysit.

Well, Paul's seven, so I don't think of him as a baby. And he and I have had plenty of alone time together, so it's not like this is brand new.

But it will be the first time he's just been dropped on me while Tabbatha's off doing something else. (A "girl's night out," whatever that is--and I probably don't want to know.) She and I have talked about this--if the relationship proceeds to the point of cohabitation (an increasing likelihood), I've made it clear to her that by my nature, I'll still do things alone.

Many of the things I most love in life are solitary experiences, like lingering in book stores or relaxing over breakfast with the Sunday New York Times. That's so much a part of my life, and I don't want to be selfish, but to give it up would seem like killing a part of me.

Oh, you can still do that, Tabbatha said. But. If one of us gets to take off for most of the day and leave the other watching the kid, it should work both ways. If she has stuff she wants to do, I get to hang out with Paul. Okay. Seems fair.

So for now, this should be easy. The kid's never seen Raiders Of The Lost Ark! So we'll watch that, then I'll try to get him into Jonny Quest--what with all the gadgets, jazzy music and volcano-dwelling master criminals, it's like a gateway to James Bond fandom.

Of course, Tabbatha swears Paul is too young for James Bond. But there's time...

I AIN'T GOT IT

Here's an emotion I don't understand: Actor/comedian Ron Carey has died at the age of 71, and it makes me sad.

No reason for this. His obit in The New York Times mentions his most prominent roles, as Levitt on Barney Miller and as a comic foil in several Mel Brooks films. His entry in the IMDb is alarmingly short, indicating he wasn't as much of a constant presence on TV as he seemed.

Neither of these sources, however, mention the credit some of us most remember him by: His stint as the Better Cheddars guy on a string of particularly annoying TV commercials from the early eighties.

And that's it, the sum total of things I know about the guy. So why should I care that this showbiz footnote has shuffled off this mortal coil?

Maybe it's because Carey, who was short and stocky, with a large nose and a lopsided smile, came off as a regular guy, someone who just happened to have wandered in front of the camera and wouldn't leave. I didn't watch Barney Miller when I was a kid, but it was always on, and at the height of its popularity, Carey would pop up on game shows and chatfests, and though I can't remember him saying or doing anything particularly funny, he was always endearing. More to the point, he was there, always around, somehow comforting. A part of the household, in a way. A part of my childhood.

A small, mostly forgotten part of my life, but a part just the same.

BLOW, ILL WIND

Three stories staring out from the front page of The New York Times today:

1) According to an estimate from the United Nations, the number of Iraqis killed in 2006 is 34,452. The Iraqi government, ever eager to put a happy face on the American occupation, disputes those figures, but according to the UN, the numbers come from official sources. Unreported deaths aren't factored in, and not all deaths from all provinces in December had been reported when these numbers were compiled. So the actual number would, inevitably, be higher.

2) The Decider--oh, I'm sorry, now he's The Educator; he's so multi-faceted!--is working overtime to distance himself from the hangings of Saddam Hussein and his two co-defendents. (Finally, an Iraq-based PR disaster he can actually blame on someone else!) Never mind that the executions wouldn't have happened without the U.S. intervention, that the hanged men were in American custody right up to the moment that they walked to the gallows, or that the Iraqi government doesn't make a move without the approval of its Yankee masters. The point is, according to Bush, the whole thing is their fault.

It's certainly understandable why Our Beloved President wants to distance himself from this mess, since the fallout from the hangings continues. They've managed to inflame Sunni-Shia tensions all across the Middle East, not just in Iraq. Uneasy truces have been shattered in the wake of these killings, and--here's a surprise--violence is threatening to erupt.

3) But that's how it is over there, right? That's just the way those people are. This has nothing to do with us. Tell that to Charlene Lovett. Her daughter, Cheryl Green, was shot dead last month. Green had the misfortune of being black, and a Latino gang was out for blood, looking for a black person to kill.

In Los Angeles in 2005, the last year for which statistics were available, the increase in crimes fueled by racial, religious or anti-gay hatred had grown by 34 percent.

Sure, much of that violence is predictable. It's gang-related, it's nothing new, it's the Jets and the Sharks. We've seen Colors, we've seen Boys N The Hood, we know all this.

But look at that list: racial, religious or anti-gay. These aren't crimes just being commited by gang-bangers. Anti-muslim violence, discrimination against Hispanics, gay-bashing--there's enough of this to go around in every neighborhood.

Why not? It's acceptable. Here in Iowa, we have Steve King, our representative in Washington, spouting openly racist rhetoric regarding Hispanic immigrants. He doesn't bother coding it; why bother? He can say all the hateful words he want, knowing he'll be reelected.

Consider how many comedy shows get laughs by having characters call each other gay. None of these characters are gay, of course, but the implication of calling them that is...what? Shame? Humiliation? Why? Unless the assumption is that the audience is homophobic.

And as for the depiction of people of Middle Easter descent in the mass media--where to begin?

This is calling attention to diversity in order to condemn it. The underlying implication is, stick to your own kind. If those people just knew their place, and would stay there, everything would be fine. If only we didn't have to deal with them, look at them, think about them.

But somehow, in America we cling to the belief that we are nothing like those other people. They're just crazy.

MAN'S MOST MAGNIFICENT ACHIEVMENT

You had to be there, but even if you were, it wasn't much. If you were a twelve year old kid in 1977 who'd been totally knocked for a loop by Star Wars, you were so desperate for any form of outer space-based entertainment , you'd settle for anything. Which is why I watched Space Academy every single week.

It was produced by Filmation, the cheapest supplier of Saturday morning product. They'd started out making incredibly ugly cartoons, but they eventually branched into live action, such as the Larry Storch-Forrest Tucker vehicle Ghost Busters, a program noted for settings and camera work so seedy that you expected Johnny Wadd to appear at any moment, and Uncle Croc's Block, a kiddie show parody showcasing duelling queens Charles Nelson Reilly and Jonathan Harris.

Production values never really improved, but the content of Filmation's live action offerings improved slightly by the mid seventies with the appearances of Shazam and Isis, message heavy superhero outings, and the studio's first venture into science fiction, Ark II. Occasionally, these shows rose to the level of competence.

Space Academy was basically more of the same, and at twelve, I was probably too old to fit nto its target audience. But Star Wars had made me a special effects junkie, and the visuals in Space Academy were lavish by TV standards. One episode even featured a cool stop-motion critter animated by James Aupperle...

...Actually, that flash of stop-motion is one of the few things I even remember about the damn thing. It had a standard multi-culti cast, including seventies mainstay Pamelyn Ferdin, presided over by the ubiquitous preening ham Jonathan Harris, and, um...there was a robot, Peepo, who was at least less annoying than Twikki from Buck Rogers, and...they had adventures...I guess, although again, it's not like I can actually remember any of them. Like so many TV shows of the era, if you saw one episode, you pretty much saw every episode.

Space Academy falls into a dead spot of childhood, something remembered with neither affection nor horror. It was there, I made a point of watching it every week, but it in no way fueled my imagination or enhanced my life in any way. The complete run of the series is out today on DVD, and I suspect if I watched it now, it would have the exact same effect.

FEAR LEADS TO ANGER, ANGER LEADS TO HATE, HATE LEADS TO SUFFERING

Even The Decider's friends agree he's in bunker mode now, and the guy interviwed on last night's 6o Minutes was clearly a man suffering from terrifying delusions.

"I think the Iraqis owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude." I"'ve made the decision, and we're going forward." "The minute we found out there were no weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so." "Sometimes you're the educator in chief."

The Sith Lord Cheney was all over the Sunday chatfests, displaying his Joe Goebbels-like charm as he made it clear that the administration is as willing as ever to smear the reputations of all who dare oppose it.

And the Democrats continue to dither like a bunch of Red Hat ladies on their first outing at an Indian restaurant. "Oh, maybe we should try this." "No, that would be unfamiliar to us, let's try something we're comfortable with." "Should we?" "I don't know." Right now they're unified--more or less--in their opposition to Bush's surge, but as to any plans they have to stop him, well, it's pretty much a lot of self-congratulatory huffing and puffing. Never mind that they were elected by the American people to actually, you know, do something.

Despite the midterm elections, despite the president's--sorry, the educator's--plunging poll numbers, despite a growing anger and a sense, even among the most uneducated, that the American Empire is entering its final phase, despite everything, nothing seems to be changing in Washington. The president's not the only one in bunker mode.

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE...OR SOMETHING

This is why playing around on the internet is a dangerous thing: You learn things you never wanted to know, and the knowledge of these things diminishes the quality of your life in tiny but measurable degrees.

For instance, someone, somewhere, for reasons sane people can only imagine, is making an anime-styled direct to video sequel to Highlander. Discovering this, I followed the link to discover that Russel Mulcahy, who not only foisted the original Highlander on us but also such exemplars of suckiness as Duran Duran videos, has been signed on as director of the third (!) Resident Evil movie.

All this is horrible news, but not as horrifying as knowing that I was doing something in the first place that led me to links on Highlander...and God help me, I felt the urge to know more.

This is how we discover the darkness that dwells within us, I guess. There's probably some appropriate quote from Highlander itself, but mercifully, I couldn't say for sure.

DOWNED OUT OF MY HEAD

I'm probably going to be away from this site for a day or two--heartbreaking, I know, for both of you who actually read this thing--but if, by the time I get back, Bush has already sent troops into Iran, don't be surprised. I'm beginning to think all the nutjobs who thought the turning of the new millenium signified the beginning of endtimes might have had a point.

And on that upbeat note...

WE'LL GLADLY PAY FOR ALL WE DESTROY

We own half of the world, oh say can you see
The name for our profits is democracy
So like it or not, you will have to be free
--Phil Ochs

Not only has the American public grown tired of The Decider's Big Adventure, so has the government he installed.

A story in today's New York Times reports that aides to Iraqi Prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki are privately grumbling that they really don't want any additional American troops. They're afraid the continued U.S. presence will get in their way as they try to run the government their way.

In Iraq's Sunni community, running the government Maliki's way is seen as a threat. The Shiite government's handling of Saddam Hussein's execution has scared the Sunnis shitless, leading them to believe that Maliki is more interested in settling old scores against the Sunnis than running a democracy. Which means the Sunnis step up the violence against the government, the Shiites retaliate...you know the drill.

So whether the U.S. sends 20,00 new troops or gets everyone the hell out of there, it really won't make a difference. Whether by accident or design, Bush's invasion brought ancient blood feuds to the surface, and now, like a badly-staged action sequence in a Michael Bay movie, they will continue to play out forever. We didn't create this monster, but we brought it to life, and no matter what Our Beloved president says, it has nothing to do with the War On Terror.

So why are we there? Well, a story in the British newspaper The Independent last Sunday revealed the Iraqi government is about to vote on a new law giving seventy-five percent of that nation's oil profits to Western corporations like Shell and Exxon. This law--surprise!--was drawn up with the active participation of the U.S. government. Knowledge that such a law is even being considered makes everything Bush says about his dirty little war a lie, and yet I can't find a single mention of it in any mainstream American paper.

Not that I find that suspicious or anything...

HIS LIPS MOVE

Forgive me. I'm trying something new here, writing this as I watch The Decider's Iraq speech, trying to react to it as it happens.

It's not going well. For Bush, that is, not for me. His sound keeps cutting out--this is The White House's own feed; if they can't figure out video technology, why should we trust them to run a war?--and he looks...well, I think he's going for contrite and thoughtful, but he looks scared and disoriented.

And the speech...shit. We must win, blah, blah...Fuck, no! He just tied Iraq to 9/11! By innuendo, of course, but still, put it out there. If we lose here, those people died in vain, et cetera. Um, George? Nobody's buying this shit anymore.

It's not Al Queda and "radical Islams" who are stirring up shit in the Middle East, it's us. Even Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public are figuring that out. We're hated because we're there, we keep bumbling along, killing locals in huge numbers while mumbling insincere apologies. It's this little excursion that not only cracked the hornet's nest open, but blew ill winds to scatter the deadly creatures in all directions. (Okay, that was a clumsy turn of phrase, but hey, this is an experiment, remember?)

The proposals are what we expected--"more than" 20,000 troops (don't dare call it an escalation) and shitloads of money to help them rebuild the country. That would be the country we keep bombing, the one that we have been powerless to help rebuild after several years and billions of dollars.

Okay, now he's talking about victory. "It will be a different victory. There'll be no signing of surrender papers." No kidding. In previous wars, there were clearly stated goals. There is no real reason to be in Iraq.

Oh, I'm sorry, yes there is--it's Ground Zero in The War On Terror. Funny how I keep forgetting that, what with Iraq being a country that wasn't threatening us and all, that we just decided to invade for...oh, I almost said oil, but there's no way that could be true. What was I thinking?

Summing up his new policy, Bush is making it clear there are no other options. He didn't use the term "cut and run" but the point was the same--you're either with me, or you're a traitor. Guess the American people, who disagree with him in huge numbers, should just go fuck themselves.

Thanks, Mr. President--you've lived up to my expectations.

JACK, YOU'LL NEVER LACK IF YOU CAN QUACK LIKE A DUCK

Kind of a slow day for new releases today (I assume Mike Judge's Idiocracy is well worth seeing, but since Fox never gave it a decent release, it's an unknown entity to me, and masochists and camp addicts can revel in a wonderfully stupid nudist camp double feature from maladroit auteur Dorish Wishman, Nude On The Moon and Blaze Starr Goes Nudist), so it seems like a good day to pine for one of the movies I'd most like to own on DVD, Vincente Minnelli's peerless The Pirate.

Notorious among devotees of MGM musicals for the bad luck involved in its production, The Pirate might actually have benefitted from the odd circumstances of its creation. MGM bought the rights to a straight farce, went through about a zillion drafts before deciding to turn the whole thing into a musical, and luckily turned the whole thing over to producer Arthur freed and director Minnelli.

This must have seemed like heaven to Minnelli, a chance to create a Carribean purely of the imagination, an opportunity to let his amazing visual sense run wild. But first he had two obstacles to deal with: The studio's choice to write the score was Cole Porter, and the female lead would be his wife, Judy Garland.

Porter was in a down period at that time, and his final contribution to the film consists of only four songs, an awfully small number for a musical. The general opinion over the years has been that the songs aren't up to Porter's usual standards, but Mack The Black (in which Porter, a closeted gay, includes a line about "flaming trails of masculinty") and Be A Clown are terrific, and all the songs fit the movie.

A much bigger problem was Garland, who was just entering her drama queen diva stage. She was dropping pills and boozing like nobody's business, frequently didn't bother showing up for work, and oh, not incidentally, her marriage to Minnelli was starting to unravel. (At one point, she accused her decidedly hetero co-star, Gene Kelly, of having an affair with Minnelli!) The movie had to be shot around her a lot, and even when she was there, she wasn't always there.

Surprisingly, both of these things ultimately work in the movie's favor. Without the obligation to cram a bunch of song numbers in, Minnelli works slowly and creates a dreamy, languid atmosphere. And Garland's neurotic performance contributes a great deal to these early scenes, as her longing for a more exciting, more dramatic life, played out against a riot of Technicolor stylings, becomes genuinely touching. Later, she snaps to life when she plays opposite Kelly, and the film turns into a door-slamming farce, which both actors carry off beautifully. Add in Kelly's splendid choreography, so perfectly aided by Minnelli's expertly judged camera and cutting, and you have a shining example of all that was good about studio filmmaking in the forties.

But you won't find it on DVD. Much of Minnelli's most interesting work (Yolanda And the Thief, Some Came Running) remains unavailable and little known to the general public. Yet special edition discs exist of everything Michael Bay has ever done. Go figure.

I WANT EVERYTHING

This past Christmas, my boss told us we had a few options for a Christmas party. We could have a party in the office, a catered affair, we could rent a limo and hit various hot spots around town, we could reserve a spot at the local casino...

As soon as he said that, most everyone agreed. They wanted to go play the slots.

Well, he said, if we do that, there's a certain amount in the budget we could allow you all to have, although of course the company doesn't advocate gambling. (Wink, wink.) Then we have to choose, do we want to bring spouses or significant others along? Because if we bring them, the expenses of providing enough food for all will cut into the funds available for gambling money...

Again, everyone (well, except for me and one other person) agreed: No guests.

As the day of the party approached, people were notifying the boss that they probably wouldn't be coming. The reason? They were disappointed that they couldn't bring a guest!

I'm only forty-one, so i don't want to seem like a cranky old guy, but I've never seen a time when people were as childishly selfish as they are now. We'll give up our civil liberties at the drop of a hat, but ask us to stop talking on cellphones while we're driving, or contribute an extra penny of every purchase to help pay for desperately needed services? Forget it.

Which brings us to Iraq.

The Decider wants to send 20,000 more troops over, and is requesting an additional one billion dollars on top of the money already being spent, for some kind of program to make Iraqis feel good about themselves.

Where will these additional troops come from? Where will we find this extra money?

Simple! The troops will come from the ranks of the poor, via heavy recruiting and duplicitous promises in economically blighted neighborhoods, and the money will come from the future. Like all good Americans, we'll charge it, and worry about paying for it some day in the far-off future.

What we most certainly won't do is ask anyone to sacrifice. During any previous full-scale war--and keep in mind, America has been at war in Iraq longer than we were actively involved in Worl War II--there was at least some level of sacrifice for most Americans. Even during Vietnam, the previous benchmark for unpopular wars, the draft was in effect. Yeah, children of privelege didn't have to worry about it--kids like Dubya Bush--but most young men of a certain age, and their families, felt the impact. Being from the upper middle class wouldn't necessarily save you.

Now, no matter how many Support The Troops magnets you see on cars, the war's an abstraction to most people. Yeah, we can say we support the troops, but would any of us sacrifice anything for their benefit?

Don't ask me now, I'm playing the slots.

SEMI-OBLIGATORY BEST OF LIST

Oh, how could I have gotten so far into the new year--six whole days!--without writing a Best Of 2006 post? This sort of thing is mandatory for people who write, even nominally, about what most libraries term "performing arts."

Trouble is, I've been busy doing other things this year, so the amount of time spent seeing movies, listening to music, or, to paraphrase Criswell, even watching television--it's all been pretty limited. Life is messy, and tends to get in the way. So I really can't tell you what the best things of 2006 were, only the things that I crossed paths with and loved.

Favorite album: Three choices here. First, Rabbit Fur Coat by Jenny Lewis and The Watson Twins. There's been grumbling in some circles that the countrified sound of this album is a mere affectation, the dabblings of a hipster dilletante. But the sound matches the content here, a warm cushion for Lewis' ironic tales of heartache and despair. Plus, boy she has a purty voice.

Speaking of ironists, as one of the founding geniuses of Steely Dan, Donald Fagen has always struck me as pop music's equivalent to a Coen Brothers film--technically dazzling, brilliantly written, but always a bit cold around the heart, coming close to the precipice of real emotion, then backing off with an ironic aside. But on his third solo album, Morph The Cat, Fagen finally admits to real human emotions, in great songs like Brite Nightgown, The Night Belongs To Mona, and especially Mary Shut The Garden Door, a brilliant evocation of creeping conservatism, both cultural and political. Fagen hasn't lost his sense of humor (Security Joan), and the musicianship is, of course, beyond reproach. The closest thing imaginable to a sentimental Steely Dan album.

And finally, one of my all-time favorite bands, Sparks, had a new album, Hello Young Lovers, and anything new from these guys is always a treat. In a perfect world, Dick Around would have been a smash hit single, but obviously, this isn't a perfect world.

Best TV show: Easy. The final run of Arrested Development. No contest.

Best movie: There were so many movies I didn't see this year, I'm almost embarrassed. L'Enfant played for a week here, and I totally missed it, which is made worse by some of the movies I actually did see this year. Yes, kids, I paid money to see The DaVinci Code. All I can say is, I'm sorry.

There were a lot of movies I enjoyed--Talladega Nights, The Proposition, The Prestige--but only three really stood out. First, Casino Royale, which got mostly good reviews, but I'm convinced would have been better received if it hadn't carried the baggage of being a "Bond film." Then again, for us fans, the last scene plays beautifully precisely because it is a Bond film. A matter of expectations, I guess.

Second, A Prarie Home Companion. Robert Altman's meditation on mortality broke my heart when I saw it in its initial release this summer. I haven't rewatched it since Altman's death--I'm sure it would be emotionally overwhelming. In any event, a perfect final statement from one of America's finest artists, and a long-time hero of mine. Too bad he's gone, but thank God he was here.

And finally, Clint Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers is simply the best film ever made about the effect of war, never questioning its necessity, but simply, profoundly showing how its very existence ruins lives, of the living and the dead, of the survivors and their families. Here in the hinterlands, I haven't had the chance to see Eastwood's companion piece, Letters From Iwo Jima, but it would have a long way to go to top this.

As for the worst in all these categories, they are, of course, legion. Make your own list.

RETURN OF THE SON OF MORE OF THE SAME, PART II

Random thoughts:

1) I was reading a mostly unrelated article in The New York Times, which mentioned in passing a list of likely Democratic presidential nominees for '08. They included Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton, Joseph Biden and John Kerry.

Wait, wait...I couldn't have read that right.

Yep, John Kerry.

Okay, Democrats, if Kerry even talks about the presidency, if he even acts as though he's thinking about forming a committee to comission a study to blah blah blah, get rid of him. I don't care how you do it, but get rid of him. In fact, do it now, just to be safe.

2) Here in Des Moines, there's a dispute between our local cable company, Mediacom, and Sinclair Broadcasting, a media mini-empire that owns the local Fox station, KDSM. It's a finacnial thing, naturally, and if they can't come to terms by the end of today, Mediacom will drop KDSM's programming.

In protest, KDSM runs crawls during its shows to remind you to call Mediacom, to let them know you can't live without the swell programming they provide. But when this crawl appears during 5 AM reruns of Becker, you have to think, wouldn't we be better off without this?

3) The last time we got a new episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip was early in December. It's supposed to return sometime this month. I watched it every week, yet I haven't missed it a bit. Not a good sign.

4) The movie Freedom Writers opens today. It's another charismatic-teacher-inspires-a-group-of-troubled-youth movie, and I have to say, it's way past time to retire this genre. I'd rather sit through a wacky comedy of mistaken identity (Antonio Banderas IS...Two Much) or a Hal Needham redneck extravaganza (Burt Reynolds IS Stroker Ace) or, hell, even a rerun of Becker at 5 AM than sit through another one of these. Music Of The Heart made me want to kill myself, and don't even get me started on Dangerous Minds. (Also, don't ask why I've even seen these things.) Nobody wants to see these things. Nobody. Not even teachers.

5) And of course, I have to mention the cats. Delmar has taken to curling up on my lap. That wouldn't be a big deal with most cats, but this is Delmar. Monika has lately started using the sink as a bed. Dampness must be soothing.

IF YOU WILL NOT BE TURNED, YOU WILL BE DESTROYED

The Iraqi government has now arrested a guard and is looking at other persons of interest in the taunting of Saddam Hussein at his execution, an incident that has been roundly condemned by pretty much every civilized human being on the planet.

But not, of course, by anyone in the Bush administration. The attitude there is pretty much summed up by Tony Snow, press secretary and colossal dick: "There seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein's life, and less about the first sixty-nine years, in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people."

In other words, he got what he deserved, eh, Tony?

Snow's response is typical of official Washington opinion. The State Department and the U.S. military agree, and the press seems all too willing to accept, that whatever you think of the manner in which Saddam was killed, it was all the Iraqi's doing. It's not like we had anything to do with this.

Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's besieged head of national security agrees. Yes, Rubaie was there when Saddam was hanged, and yeah, he saw people with cameras, and yeah, he heard the taunts, and yes--koffkoff--as head of national security, it could be argued that it was his job to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but, you know, Saddam was there to be executed and all, and things were happening so fast, and...and...and...Look, it's unfortunate, but these things happen.

Rumsfeld has taught you well, my son.

Back to the guy actually arrested in this matter: He was on guard duty that night. By most accounts, the taunting was coming from the witnesses, not the guards, a circus atmosphere Rubaie witnessed and allowed. If anyone should be held responsible, he'd be a good place to start, but then he might talk, and who knows where this could lead?

Rubaie is, after all, a tool, like Prime Minister Maliki, a puppet who stays in power only because the U.S. protects him. It seems incomprehensible that the Bushinistas, who had made Saddam their excuse for the whole misbegotten war, would just walk away in the moment of triumph, when the man Bush himself proclaimed Public Enemy Number One paid the ultimate penalty. Incomprehensible? I meant to say unbelievable.

If the United States had nothing to do with how this execution was carried out, if they couldn't have intervened at any time, they're even more incompetent than I thought. That the Iraqi government is so willing to take the fall for this is just further proof of how clueless they are, a delusional bunch of Renfields all too willing to serve their master.

(Incidentally, please note my Dracula metaphor there. I was going to say the Iraqi government is kind of like the Old Republic, foolishly granting unlimited powers to Palpatine, not realizing until too late that he is Sith Lord Darth Sidious...but for once, I decided not to go with a Star Wars reference. You're welcome.)

In any event, outrage over the execution, around the world and particularly in Islamic nations, seems directed more at the U.S. than Iraq. Unlike the American press, most people don't buy the official story for a minute, and with good reason. Not one of Bush's official stories has been remotely true, and this one is utterly transparent.

Not that it matters. Bush is looking to send more troops into the sinkhole, and top Democrat Carl Levin has said he "won't prejudge" Bush's plans. In other words, the president will get his way, thousands more will die and none of it will make a difference. The shiny promise of a new year has already faded. God help us all.

QUIETUDE

A bit of turmoil in my girlfriend's life. Continued anger about Saddam's hanging. The Decider is likely to send more and more troops to Iraq.

Things to fuel my anxiety, or anger, or some other negative emotion. Things to analyze, to rationally take apart, to attempt to understand.

Only for now my emotions are muted, for now my mind is calm. I have no idea why, but I seem to be experiencing a sense of stillness I haven't felt for a long time. My mind isn't racing ahead to imagine a thousand potential terrible things, isn't puzzling over some event I can't control, isn't distracted by things that don't involve me, isn't angry or mournful, isn't worrying or wandering or wondering.

I'm going to try to ride this wave of nothingness, to enjoy the quiet for as long as it lasts.

Probably only until morning, but hey, at least I'll have a good night's sleep.

BEAUTIFUL DREAMS

The post-holiday DVD release schedule is so slow, the only remotely interesting thing coming out today is Million Dollar Mystery.

If you're like most people, you have no memory of this thing whatsoever. When a theatrical release from the eighties toplines the likes of Tom Bosley, it isn't likely to pack theaters, and Million Dollar Mystery certainly didn't. This uninspired Mad, Mad World knockoff is notable only as one of the final credits for veteran director Richard Fleischer, and for the lame gimmick that accompanied its release: some lucky audience member could win a million dollars if they figured out the hidden clues in the movie itself.

Actually, the only reason to even mention this thing is because it was an all-too-typical release from the short-lived production and distribution entity DeLaurentis Entertainment Group. DEG was an effort by Italian megaproducer/shameless hustler Dino DeLaurentis to start a mini-studio of his own. Mostly, it ground out competently-made but utterly pointless drivel like the Judd Nelson vehicle From The Hip, or the Schwarzenegger potboiler Raw Deal, or the stupefying James Clavell adaptation Tai Pan, a movie absolutely no one had been clammoring for.

Yet DEG also produced and released David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Michael Mann's Manhunter, easily two of the best American films of the eighties, and movies that no major studio at the time would have touched. DeLaurentis basically went with his gut, not market research, when he decided which movies to greenlight.

In that sense, DeLaurentis had a lot in common with Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, the heads of Cannon Films, which cranked out so much product in the eighties you could possibly keep track of it all. Between the endless, increasingly desperate Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson vehicles, Cannon occasionally made half-hearted stabs at "quality" product, like Norman Mailer's hapless Tough Guys Don't Dance. Every week would bring some new effort from Golan and Globus, and the only possible rection to most of it was, "What were they thinking?"

American filmmaking now is probably at its lowest ebb ever. Major studios, all divisions of soulless corporations uninterested in risks, control almost everything--most so-called indie distributors are divisions of the majors, and up-and-coming independent filmmakers tend to tailor their efforts to what they think diastributors want. There's a dearth of true visionaries.

True, DeLaurentis and Golan-Globus weren't visionaries. They were hucksters, and most of what they churned out was crap. But a lot of it was fun crap, and you got the feeling they made movies because they loved them. We could use them now.

DO YOU HAVE A PICTURE OF THE PAIN?

I'll be gone for a few days, so this is my last post of the year. I wanted to write about Tabbatha and Paul, and the joy they've brought into my life, and how a year that began so terribly could end so well.

Because it began, of course, with Mom's death, sorrow unimagined, and the event that propelled me forward to writing again, that led to this very site. Whatever it has become over these months, it has been due to Mom, to the gifts she gave me and the heart she always shared. And though it's sad that she will never meet Tabbatha, it's okay, the circle of life, one door closes and another opens, all that sentimental jazz.

Yeah, it'd be nice to go on at some length about all the good things in my life, and I was going to do that. Then they went and hanged Saddam.

Saddam Hussein, loyal friend to the U.S., willing to do whatever dirty work we needed done, somehow became Public Enemy Number One. His capture and trial was opposed by many Iraqis, his execution, coming on the eve of a Muslim holiday, angered many more.

None of that mattered, though, because what the Iraqi people want and what they get are two different things. This is the democracy we've brought them, and if it looks suspiciously like what they lived with under Saddam, with cruel punishments for breaking seemingly arbitrary rules, well, exactly. Life sucks, and the world is ruled by terrible forces we can't begin to understand. Get used to it.

With Saadams's death comes the inevitable words of wisdom from Our Beloved President. (Not that Bush bothered to stay awake when the guy he all but claimed as responsible for 9/11 finally rang the bell. He went to bed, and his aides didn't think it was important enough to wake him. Christ, given all the rhetoric, you'd have figured The Decider would have been there in person.) In a written statement, Bush wrote that Saddam "was executed after receiving a fair trial--the kind of justice he denied victims of his brutal regime."

I'm sure all the detainees at Gitmo appreciate your sense of irony, Mr. President.

And that's the way it is, Saturday, December 30th, 2006. For me, the year ends with guarded optimism. For the bigger world, the same old depressing shit. Whatever your circumstances, wherever you may be, whoever you are, happy new year. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear.

WOULD I LIE TO YOU?

You would think, since the Democratic sweep of congress was largely seen as a negative reaction to the Iraq debacle, those prosecuting the war would see reason for a change in strategy. You'd be wrong, of course.

For instance, U.S. troops raided the city of Najaf and took out Sahib al-Amiri, an aide to Muqtada al-Sadr. This, at least, is the story according to a spokesman for the Iraqi government, that laughably ineffective puppet regime maintained by the Bushinistas. If anybody would have reason to tow the party line and do whatever the U.S. says, it'd be these guys.

Problem is, the U.S. military insists the raid on Najaf was planned and carried out entirely by Iraqi forces. Oh, sure, there might have been a few American "advisors" along, but hey, trust us, this was an Iraqi show all the way.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Someone's not getting their story straight. It's hard to imagine why the Iraqi government official would go out of his way to make his own forces look ineffective, unless he's fearful of reprisal. And as for the American military, this is the sort of thing they used to crow about, another terrorist neutralized, mission accomplished, that sort of thing. Why back off now?

Meanwhile, according to The New York Times, Our Beloved President, whatever his public rhetoric, continues to act in private as though everything is going a-okay in Iraq, and in The Washington Post, Democrat-turned independent-turned Republican dupe Joe Lieberman not only calls for more troops being sent to Iraq, but actually links Iraq to 9/11! Holy crap! Even Bush stopped using that one.

Lieberman's not alone, unfortunately. When the new congress comes to session next week, expect to see lots of backsliding and desperate rationalizing. Just don't expect things to change.

HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE LAZY

Click on Red State Son on my list o' links to read Dennis Perrin's piece "The GAW In Action," a thorough takedown of the mindless bullshit the media is spreading around in the wake of Gerald Ford's death. When I wrote my (rather superficial) bit on Ford yesterday, I somehow assumed a dissenting voice would be heard somewhere in all the coverage.

Why I thought that, I'll never know. I'd already plowed through the coverage at The New York Times--the paper that didn't think U.S. involvement in Pinochet's coup was worth mentioning in his obit--and was listening as I wrote to NPR's Morning Edition, a total Jerry Ford love fest.

Still, surely someone would--maybe, perhaps--offer at least the suggestion that Ford's pardon of Nixon was not a good thing. Someone would see Ford only got to be president because of repeated scummy behavior from the Nixon White House--first from Spiro Agnew, then from Dick himself--and so Ford's pardon could be seen as nothing more than a transparent sop to his benefactors. Someone, somehow, would offer an alternate version of the seventies, in which Nixon was impeached and prosecuted, and congress, under intense pressure from the American people, actually followed the evidence as far as it would lead, and all the transgressions and sins of the presidency would be laid bare, and oh, incidentally, a crook would be brought to justice.

No, no, none of that, just endless National-Nightmare-Is-Over replays and the phrase "healed the nation" used so many times you'd think Ford was Abraham, Martin and John combined.

Two other Jerry-related notes:

1) All the coverage of Ford's merge with the infinite was, shall we say, insubstantial, but the thing that finally pushed me over the edge was Alessandra Stanley's piece in The New York Times on TV coverage of his death. This might actually be the least interesting thing in the history of the world, an astonishing display of nothingness. Arts coverage in The Times has been in a tailspin for years, but Stanley and her fellow TV critic, Virginia Heffernan, are both young, uninformed about the medium they're assigned to cover, and display a total lack of curiosity about recent history. If anyone can find a single thing in Stanley's piece that justifies it seeing print, I'd like to hear about it.

2) Reliable hack Bob Woodward has come forward with an interview with Ford in which The Great Healer makes it clear he "strongly" opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq. The catch is, Ford told Woodward the interview could only be published after his death.

That's Ford in a nutshell--A man with strong convictions he never bothered sharing.

NO, SERIOUSLY, YOU SHOULD CARE...HEY, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?

As you read through the coverage of Gerald Ford's death, wondering why you should really give a rat's ass about this guy, an unelected president who will at best be considered a caretaker, who employed The Sith Lord Cheney as his Chief Of Staff, who, for God's sake, pardoned Nixon, you won't find much.

True, there were two attempts on his life, from former Manson devotee Squeaky Fromme and frumpy FBI fink Sara Jane Moore. Both were portrayed in Stephen Sondheim's great musical play Assassins, so I guess we have Ford to thank for that.

And of course, while justifying his pardon of Nixon, Ford famously used the phrase "Our long national nightmare is over," which can be conveniently deployed as ironic comment on all matter of pop culture detritus, as in "Our long national nightmare is over--Britney and K-Fed finally broke up." So there's that, too.

Otherwise, the main thing to know about Ford's presidency is that, despite his supposed status as a "regular guy" (an aspect being hammered home by most of the coverage this morning), his white house was a haven for far-right lunatics like Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Al Haig. His loss to Jimmy Carter in '76 was as much as anything the cause of the Republican persecution complex, and his staff would, of course, return to power, minus Ford's stabilizing hand.

So no tears for Jerry Ford. He may be gone, but with every death in Iraq, you might say his legacy lives on.

A TRUE STORY

I can't really suggest that you run out and buy a copy of the 1972 fake documentary The Legend Of Boggy Creek, which is being reissued today on DVD, but it's an interesting movie, not for what it is but for what it represents.

Back in the seventies, it was possible for independant producers to make a killing by selling their wares to the masses in a variety of creative ways. The most notorious technique, impossible to do now, was four-walling: The producer or distributor would swoop into an area, buy a ton of ad time on all local media and rent local movie houses outright for a week, and keep all the profits. This was the technique used by the notorious Sunn Classics Pictures, responsible for the likes of In Search Of Noah's Ark and The Mysterious Monsters. (That last one was particularly popular; in the seventies, if a movie promised to tell "the truth" about Bigfoot, it was a must-see. Bigfoot was one of those seventies things, like Evel Knievel and Luke Skywalker's hair, that's impossible to explain to people who weren't there.)

Boggy Creek wasn't four-walled, but it was sold in a similar way: A regional release pattern, mostly in smaller markets, neighborhood theaters and drive-ins, always accompanied by the TV commercial, containing the key line "A True Story." The commercial ran everywhere, during local newscasts, during late-afternoon local kiddie programming, during the late movies, anytime short of prime-time.

This just wouldn't be possible now. In the seventies, VCRs weren't common, cable was more of a luxury, and not always available in small towns. So people watched TV, they watched local channels, whatever they might offer, and everybody, young and old, saw the ads for these things. Everybody had the same Pavlovian reaction to the endless barrage of hoopla, and everybody showed up at the theater.

And everybody enjoyed themselves. The Legend Of Boggy Creek is an awful, awful movie, but seen in a crowded theater with an audience made up of your friends and neighbors, the communal experience kicks in, and it works. Some movies, even good ones, only fully come to life under such circumstances. How often does this happen anymore? Is it even possible?

Even the big studios don't try to reach a mass audience with their advertising anymore. Time is bought on the channels the target audience watches, and the usual suspects arrive in the theaters--teenagers for horror movies, women for romantic comedies, idiots for Rob Schneider vehicles. Indie producers inevitably follow the same model--there's no such thing as a mass audience.

If you're an indie filmmaker, forget it. Charles B. Pierce, director of Boggy Creek, had a surprisingly varied career in the seventies, churning out period thrillers, westerns, even a Viking epic (Lee Majors IS The Norseman), because he could afford to self-finance these things, knowing he could control, to some extent, the distribution, and make a tidy profit himself. The film world these days is full of indie filmmakers who make a big killing with one freak hit (like The Blair Witch Project) and then are never heard of again.

True, young filmmakers can get their work seen on the internet, where more people will probably see it than would ever see it in a theater. But if you want to actually, you know, make money, that's a dead end. Somehow, you'll have to deal with a big corporation to get it seen.

And if you're an audience member longing to see a movie in a packed theater full of people who want to be entertained, who will laugh or cry or gasp on cue simply because it's fun to do, well, you'll just have to remember what that was like. And if you're too young to remember, you'll never know what you missed.

HAPPY XMAS

James Brown died today, so there's that, and the U.S. military is holding four Iranians in Iraq, which is bound to needlessly antagonize a nation that already hates us, so there's that, too. More people killed in Iraq, hell, more people killed everywhere. The world is a cruel place, and bad things happen all the time. But good things happen, too, and even the worst of us is capable of a moment or two of grace. Maybe that's enough.

Merry Christmas, if that's your thing. If not, good tidings of a vaguely holiday-like season. And of course, Happy Crimble.

ANOTHER YEAR OVER

I'm breaking with Christmas tradition this year: I'm not eating Chinese.

For the last three years, my Christmas dinner was spent alone, hunkered down over a newspaper at my neighborhood Chinese restaurant. Sounds depressing, I know, but I was doing this by choice. The first year I did it, I had an offer from a girl I was dating to spend the holiday with her, and I declined, mostly because I wasn't in the mood for Christmas cheer. I had only recently separated from my ex, and I was trying to treat the holiday as just another day, nothing special, nothing interesting.

The next year--well, okay, that one was just depressing. But last year, again, I was doing it because I wanted to. Mom's condition was worsening, and weekend she told me the doctors had determined the cancer was "on the move," and I wondered if it would be her last Christmas, and should I spend it with her. No, she said, she also wanted to be alone. Must be genetic.

And when she died in February, I thought it was a given that I'd be avoiding Christmas with a vengeance, that even thinking of it would remind me of my loss, perpetual, unending sorrow.

Still, life progresses, whether we want it to or not. I kept sorrow away by ignoring it, distancing myself from all emotion, good or bad. It worked; things that I might have expected to send me into crying jags rolled off my back. Of course, things I should have enjoyed had little impact on me, either, but that's a small price to pay for emotional survival.

Of course, in the spirit of a hundred bad TV movies, the story ends with the misanthrope's heart melted by a woman and a kid. Tabbatha and I have had our ups and downs, but we seem to have settled into a relationship of mutual disbelief over the other's foibles. I've never dated a woman who was so into girly stuff, who actually reads romance novels, who likes top forty radio. (When I told my friend Howard she'd never even heard of Marshall Crenshaw, he responded, "Why on earth did you ever go on a second date?") She, of course, is learning to deal with a brooding loner, someone with eccentric but wide-ranging tastes, someone who might force her to listen to classical music.

Even weirder are my feelings for Paul, because I'm never comfortable hanging out with kids. Yet Paul and I hang around watching movies together, go shopping together, play together. I even told Tabbatha I'd take him to swimming lessons, for God's sake. That's not me, I don't do that. When his mom and I went through a bad patch, and were on the verge of breaking up, he wasn't worried. He told me he knew I wasn't going anywhere; who else would watch Star Wars with me?

So this Christmas, the rules have changed. Suddenly I'm forced to engage with life. It's feels strange and unfamiliar, but not bad at all.

I HOPE YOU HAD FUN

I'd gone to bed early that Christmas Eve, for reasons I can't quite recall. Tradition dictated I open a present early, and in this case it was an issue of Marvel Comics' Planet Of The Apes magazine, which featured two (exceptionally long) comics stories and a couple of text pieces. Likely that seemed to me to be a full evening's entertainment, more fun than watching people wrap presents, or gab incessantly, or watch TV, or whatever grownups did as preparation for Christmas.

So I retired to my room. Well, "room" may not be an accurate description--as a child, my brothers and sisters had all the real bedrooms upstairs; I slept on a couch in the living room. As they moved out, people shifted from one room to another. By this time, I'd graduated to upstairs and my own bed--but my room was really just the hall way at the top of the stairs, a point of entry to my sibling's rooms.

Still, I had made it my own, with a dresser (which contained comic books and model kits, not clothes), a desk (the drawers well-stocked with comic books) and some floor space (covered by piles of comic books). It was a perfect space for me to relax and enjoy the first story in Planet Of The Apes, which was written by Doug Moench and illustrated by Tom Sutton--I was a junkie for credits even then, and Sutton was one of my favorites.

When I read, I usually was so far gone I had no concept of my surroundings. But in this case, I was aware--aware that it was Christmas Eve, aware that no snow was falling but there was plenty on the ground, aware, of course of course, that tomorrow was the most important day on any kids' calender.

Aware, too, of the noises from downstairs. A steady murmur, mostly, the sound of my parents' TV mixed with conversation, laughter, the hum of our fuel oil stove. Occasionally, voices sounded agitated and there was some banging, likely the result of one of my presents being assembled, though I couldn't be sure.

And I liked that sound, and I put down the magazine and just listened for awhile, and when I gre bored with that, I turned on the radio, to drown out the sound and help me concentrate on Planet Of The Apes. Oddly, except for this one memory, I cannot recall having a radio in all the time I lived in this room. I had a TV, used mainly for watching James Bond movies, war and science fiction pictures and cartoons. (No, my tastes haven't changed much.) But the radio--it must have just been left there by mistake, or maybe I just didn't use it; I wasn't really into music at all in those days.

The radio was tuned to a local station playing nothing but Christmas music, and it made a nice companion to Moench's story and Sutton's illustrations. I finished the first story, skimmed the text pieces and decided to save the second story for some other time, then shut off the light and snuggled under the covers. The radio stayed on, and the last sound I remember hearing before drifting off was Karen Carpenter's syrupy but oddly melancholy voice singing "Merry Christmas, Darling."

I awoke suddenly, convinced it was Christmas morning. But it was still dark. My clock said it was only 10:30. The light in the stairway illuminated a passing figure, a brother or sister en route to their room, and this shadowy presence paused to shut off my radio. I didn't mind, I never listened to music as I slept. Soon the house was still, and quiet as it could ever be, braches scraping against windows, stove purring, my oldest brother snoring, the whole world slumbering in silent anticipation, the whole world at peace.

THE WORLD IS SO WRONG

This is my first Christmas without Mom.

If you didn't know her, you'd have thought my mom was a cynic. She tended to expect the worst in all situations and she never bought into the conventional wisdom on any topic; she always assumed people were lying. And yet she had such a sentimental streak, and would break down and start crying at the most unexpected things.

Nothing brought this out like Christmas.

When I think of Mom at Christmas time, I think of two things. One is the annual Christmas Eve drive she and I would take to look at Christmas lights. This started when I was a kid, and continued, off and on, until last year. Sometimes other people would be along for the ride, but usually, it was a little ritual that just she and I did.

She'd keep up a sarcastic running commentary as we'd go from hopuse to house. One year I pointed out that a Nativity scene on someone's lawn made it look as though the Wise Men were roasting Baby Jesus, so Mom immediately dubbed it The First Barbecue, the term she used every year thereafter to describe any Nativity scene, and a standard she'd use to describe the relative lameness of anyone's decorations. ("Well, it was okay, but it was no First Barbecue.") Many of her comments were ironic deployment of song lyrics ("Oh look, they hung a shinging star upon the highest bough" or "See the tree, how big it's grown"), all post-modern without realizing it.

Despite the snarkiness, the fact remains that we were driving around on Christmas Eve looking at lights, a holiday tradition, steeped in sentiment. Which brings me to my other favorite Mom-based Christmas memory, again something that would happen every year: The inevitable phone call, Mom weeping uncontrollably, having just watched Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. Every year she'd warble a few lines from the song "A Hand For Each Hand" and start crying all over again, proclaiming, "It's sad." Well, I'd say, you know it's sad, you didn't have to watch it. "No," she'd answer. "I had to."

So she did.

Things are stange this year. It's freakishly warm, not like Christams at all. I feel weirdly detached from the whole season, anyway. There'll be no trip to look at lights this year, no Mr. Magoo-based phone call. Just memories, kept at a distance to keep them from overwhelming me.

THE NEAR AND THE DEAR ONE

Late last year, my divorce became final. Sometime this year, I finally got over it. Maybe.

When Tabbatha and I entered the "serious relationship" phase, she made it clear to me that my relationship with Sue, my ex, needed to be modified, if not eliminated altogether. I bristled at first; who is she to tell me who my friends are?

Not that I didn't understand her feelings, mind you. She felt, understandably, that since Sue and I spent so much time talking, I must still have feelings for her. Of course I have feelings, I told Tabbatha; she's my friend. No, she replied, not feelings of friendship. Feelings of...feelings. You're not over her. You're obsessed with her.

Yikes. Obsessed? Well, I admit I spend a lot of time pondering what might have been. But I do that with everything. I obsess over that girl I went out with once, who laughed at some joke I made. I obsess over that other girl who made a witty remark that suggested we had some common ground even though we never saw each other again. I obsess over every single woman I've ever known, and any person who's ever been nice to me. I obsess over stupid things I've said and done, things I wish I could take back. I obsess over whatever happened to the Johnny West action figure I had as a kid. I obsess over the idiot plot points in Star Trek IV. I obsess over whether that was really Spaulding Gray in Ilsa: Harem-Keeper Of The Oil Shieks. I obsess over what Phil Ochs and John Lennon and Peter Sellers would have done if they'd lived.

Clearly, things don't just pass me by. Everything matters to me, all my accumulated experiences dig in and fester or bloom or do whatever they will. Can I stop my feelings, can I hide them? Do I embrace them or abhor them? Or do I--somehow--try to let them go?

That's what I'm trying to do now, for Tabbatha's sake and for my own. It's nice to have a past, but when it intrudes on the here and now, perhaps it's time to...No, "let it go" is too trite a phrase, and not quite accurate. These are the events that have made up my life, after all. I don't want these things to go anywhere, to vanish like a random thought. They just need to matter less, to diminish like objects in a rearview mirror. The past is the farm where I spent my childhood, or the house where I lived much of my adult life--still there, but I live somewhere else now.

DID YOU SAY WHAT I THOUGHT I HEARD?

Look, I can get as sentimental as anyone. It's the week before Christmas, and believe me, I want to be writing warm, touching pieces straight out of the Hallmark Channel style guide. I'm all for roasting chestnuts, crutches carefully preserved by the fireplace and large, inanimate globs of snow fashioned into a simulacrum of a human being and brought to blashphemous life by a magic hat. I'm like Currier & Ives here. Really.

But then The Decider goes and tells The Washington Post that, in Iraq, "We're not winning. We're not losing."

Oh, okay. So we're in a permanent state of being. There is no goal, there is no purpose, there is only the moment. Or something like that.

And Our President is inching ever closer to authorizing more troops into Iraq. Where on earth they will come from is not explained, but this "surge," as the military calls it (apparently naming it after the failed "extreme" soft drink of the late nineties) would cost approximately 1.2 billion dollars for 10,000 extra troops. Where the money would come from isn't explained, either. Maybe a nation-wide bake sale?

It should be pointed out that the Democrats--who, after all, swept into congress on a wave of anti-war support--are so far offering no meaningful opposition to this insane plan, and in some cases actively support it.

How long does this have to go on? The number of Iraqis killed grows steadily day by day, inching ominously close to a million. Just under 3000 U.S. troops have been killed. All for what? When Republicans or Democrats speak of "victory" in Iraq, they mean only a way to give the U.S. a graceful way out. Nobody gives a damn for the Iraqi people now, if anyone ever did. Now it's all about covering asses. And if a few hundred more Iraqi civilians have to die, or a few thousand, just to make us feel better about ourselves, so be it. No one cares about those towelheaded camel jockeys anyway, right? Lousy savages--we bring them democracy, you'd think they'd at least be grateful.

Merry Christmas. Ho. Ho. Sigh...

SAY, SOMETHING REALLY IS BURNING HERE

It's not, I suppose, tragic that Joseph Barbera died Monday. He was 95, after all, and creatively, his best days were certainly behind him.

But with his death, the Golden Age of animation officially draws to a close. Barbera, with his partner Bill Hanna, created Tom & Jerry, the quintessential hyper-violent cat and mouse duo. Despite winning numerous Oscars, Hanna and Barbera never quite got the critical props awarded to Chuck Jones or Bob Clampett or any of the Warner Bros. crew, or the huge commercial success of Disney's features. Still, the best of Tom & Jerry--Mouse In Manhattan, Solid Serenade, Heavenly Puss, the unbelievably awesome Zoot Cat--are among the finest cartoons ever made, beautifully conceived, designed and animated, and with comic timing that couldn't be beat. These guys were as good as anybody.

Unfortunately--or fortunately, if you're a fan--their names are more frequently associated with the work they did after abandoning theatrical shorts for TV animation. Their initial creations for the medium--Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear--certainly paved the way for the future, with simplified design and limited animation, the plot and gags delivered mostly through dialogue. Later H-B TV shows, like The Flintstones and The Jetsons, were even more plot heavy, essentially standard sitcoms that happened to be animated. (It's no coincidence that Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane trained at H-B.)

As TV demanded more product, H-B continued to grind it out, Scooby-Doo, Help! It's The Hair Bear Bunch, Speed Buggy, The Roman Holidays, Where's Huddles?--quality control became a thing of the past. In the seventies, when I was a kid, most of the H-B product was a must to avoid. (For some reason, I really liked Hong Kong Phooey. I have no idea why.)

Still, some of the TV work Hanna and Barbera did is worthwhile. Early Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear benefits greatly from the elegant designs of Ed Benedict and hilarious voice work from Daws Butler, and individual episodes can be quite funny. H-B's TV masterpiece was undoubtedly the classic adventure series Jonny Quest. Chock full o' monsters and mad scientists, big guns and fantastic gadgets, aerial dogfights and giant robot spiders, this was (is) one of the most purely entertaining TV shows ever. Yeah, the animation was still limited, but excellent design (by Doug Wildey) and terrific scripts made a difference, and Hanna and Barbera proved as adept at staging action and suspense as they were at comedy.

Surprisingly, H-B's TV work has been more influential than their splendid theatrical shorts. Contemporary animation directors like Genndy Tartakofsky are clearly influenced by the visual stylings of their early TV work, and Brad Bird's The Incredibles was, among other things, a series of Jonny Quest riffs.

Hanna and Barbera are well represented on DVD. I'm not a big fan of The Flintstones, but it's always worth a look, and the box set of the complete run of Jonny Quest is simply one of the best purchases you could make. The Tom & Jerry shorts haven't been brought to DVD with the loving care of the Looney Tunes collections, but there are a couple of double disc compilations available that will get you started. Watching Zoot Cat, you will laugh, guaranteed, but for some of us, at least, that laughter will be mixed with longing for a level of comic timing we'll likely never see again.

DO WHAT WE SAY

This morning's New York Times has an important story detailing the case of Donald Vance, who, while working at an Iraqi security firm, became suspicious of his employer and passed info to the FBI. The company was raided--due to information Vance had passed--but since he happened to be at the company at the time, Vance was captured by U.S. forces, imprisoned and tortured--I'm sorry, I meant "interrogated"--for 97 days.

His captors had no clue. Vance was a Navy vet, but this was never discovered. Instead, he was "interrogated" through intimidation, told repeatedly that they had information connecting him to any manner of nefarious but imaginary plots, shown reams of made-up evidence. In other words, they were holding a prisoner for no reason whatsoever--the very thing Our President says is not, could never happen.

And Vance, since his skin is white and he does not pray to Mecca, almost certainly had it better off than the average Iraqi prisoner. (People in charge of these things swear there is no racism in the military, and you almost have to admire their ability to say it with a straight face.) If this is how we treat American citizens working in Iraq, people with names that should have been easily found in a database, imagine how we're treating men, women and children who just happen to be standing by when a raid is conducted, when a roadside bomb goes off, whenever the hell we feel like it.

I say "we" because, let's face it, every day this goes on, all of us our responsible. Obviously, I didn't vote for Bush, but did I do all I could to prevent his reelection? Am I storming the barricades, am I carrying signs, am I marching? Are you? Is anyone?

Or are we doing what most Americans do, ignoring it as best we can, trying to get on with our lives, and wondering why the blood never seems to wash out of our hands?