What is this new emotion now? It sounds like a rusty gate. It feels like a butterfly wriggling from chrysalis. It tastes like cold beer after hot day of ordeal. I remember once as a child… it’s excitement. I’m excited about music.
And if you can’t see this, it is because you are American. In the perjorative sense. That is, you are fucking idiot.
And if there is one thing that this blog is not about, and that is backing up points with intelligent, well-reasoned debate. That is because if I have reached the point of comment, then I am likely in a blind rage, and am typing on the internet because it brings a deeper appreciation of screaming into a pillow, breaking your old GI Joes with a hammer, or kicking the cat. Because it is even more hopeless than all these things. On the Internets, no-one can hear you scream. It’s the answer to the question of trees falling in the forest: what if an idiot hears it? But he’s too stupid to articulate what happened? Welcome to the Internets.
But anyway, no reasonable debate. This is the Eschaton. If something is expressed here that is because all normal natural processes have failed to contain the pain within. The pain. Within. The Eschaton is Ragnarok and Revelations and that blind stupid catastrophic end. Welcome to The Eschaton.
So Charlie Wilson’s War is evil goddam propaganda. We will examine this systematically. Firstly, it stars Tom Hanks. Please name for me a film in which Hanks has portrayed someone loathsome. I need a villain. A Gary Oldman character. Or like Fiennes in Schindler’s List. Hanks is like Tom Cruise in that he only plays a fictionalised version that is the same as the fictionalised version of himself. Tom Cruise is both a superhero, and a devoted father, and you know, he may be a little untidy, he may be a bit irresponsible, but aren’t we all aye? And when Disaster Strikes, he’s got the cajones to deal with it and save the galaxy. Hanks is a little bit more sophisticated, but this is like preferring a Moritz to a Mr Whippy. Every character he has every played is a charming, egotistical, pretentious wanker. And this is Charlie Wilson. I seriously believe that Hank has a well-worn highlights tape of his career stuck to the inside of his VCR by substances as yet unknown to man, and every night, once candles are lit, he watches a teary scene from Philadelphia, rewinds, watches, rewinds, as gradually the windows steam…
And I’m worried about the casual portrayal of his character as a roguish everyman. He’s an everyman? If he’s a projection of American sentiment, if he’s even a kernel of how they see themselves, then show me the door - he’s a coke-snortin, misogynistic, douchebag. I don’t have a problem with these things. Because it’s Tom Hanks, he’s not a drug-crazed psychotic. We don’t see a red-dripping nose, crossed eyes, vacant stares, hyperactive rants and violent crashes. His hot harem of hired help is charming, not insulting. I am confused by all this. What are we for? What are we against? Next time headlines scream “Clark Does Dope: PM In Sordid P Scandal”, should I just laugh, wave my hand, and say “Oh, that crazy Helen! She does like a good time, doesn’t she!”. I thought I was supposed to gasp, call up Robespierre, txt Torquemada, email Himmler? Or do we now realise that the War on Drugs is just a matter of perspective and perception? It’s ok if Tim Hanks does it. But if you’re Johnny Depp, expect to be betrayed and locked up for the rest of your life. And your daughter will hate you.
What else does Charlie Wilson’s War say? Hmm:
* It’s OK for America to sit on it’s fat arse, so long as it has a conscience. You use this conscience to help people overseas by sitting on your fat arse, generating a fat paycheck by yelling at people until you get your way. Polemical this, yes, but I still see a lot of fat arses, eating donuts. Talking about foreign people with sad faces, yes, but in between mouthfuls. Of donuts.
* Charlie Wilson is the desperate feral crazy white knuckle hope of a doomed and damaged people. He’s the lazy godless dope-fiend who has been put into a godlike position of responsibility by his peers. But squanders it on materiality. But - once thrust into the harsh realities of the world outside their well-lit and air-conditioned supermarket of a nation - they get all teary-eyed and moral and spiritual. They attempt to relate - and nothing is more ridiculous than an elderly well fed senatorial WASP rallying the Mujahdeen, who point at him and yell ALLAH ALLAH - but this is not their world. They have stepped outside the natural. Helping the foreign is like saving wildlife for these people.
My greatest fear is that Americans are going to come out of this movie feeling that their country achieves good in the world. That one man can make a difference. Myths which need to be challenged, not erected like a giant ideological phallus and paraded about. That they can stay at home watching American Gladiators because their tax dollars are going to people like Charlie Wilson who are saving the world… somehow. Did anyone ever question, reasonably, what Wilson was trying to do? And I don’t mean the walls of cynicism various nameless characters who represented entire departments threw up. Did any of the Mujahdeen ask about the opportunity cost of their pact? Whether this bargain was at all Faustian? Did anyone have the foresight to realise that there is a direct fucking correlation between the Mujahdeen and Egyptians getting weapons training, and Al Qaeda? Or maybe why the Soviets were invading Afghanistan in the first place? There’s a scene where the fighter pilots laugh about how much of a cakewalk their bombing run will be. Obviously, I deduce from this, the Soviets don’t have enough room for picnics and frolicking (Siberia is rubbish for that), and need the rock strewn wasteland of Afghanistan for cossack dancing and Vodka Trees. Could I suggest that they were trying to access clear water? Seeing as how their two major ports - Vladivostok and Arkangelsk (Minsk) are covered in ice all the time, wouldn’t it be in their best interests to get a hold of the Indian Ocean? Oh shit. Yeah, that’s right, it was warfare. But not that pretend play warfare, the kind that doesn’t have a point, that kind that just happens. There was self-interest in both sides. Not some fucking sap who had his heart melted by sad-faces. If your heart isn’t melted by that already, then fuck you. And fuck you for being conned into thinking that the world is this simple.
Top 5 albums of all time?
Haud proprius ordo! Yes:
- The Jesus Lizard, “Head/Pure”
- Soundgarden, “Louder than Love”
- Discordance Axis, “Jouhou”
- Opeth, “Damnation/Deliverance”
- Mindless Self Indulgence, “Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangely Sexy”
I wonder if that last will ever end up a classic. I started listening to them years and years ago, when a friend from New York insisted I check out this unknown band, who’d just released this album a couple of months before. I played it, I thought it quite brilliant and unique, and so played it to my friends, who generally regarded it as an abberration against all that is natural and holy. So I’ve kept quiet about them. Now I see that The Kids have found their new album and their single has about 3 Million views on Youtube and I think, seriously, this band should be pop music. I want to see them sponsored by Coke. I want to see them performing at the Grammy’s, and for this to be ubiquitous. I am troubled by the unspoken assumption that they are like an alternative My Chemical Romance. Where the fuck did that come from? Anyways:
If you could be in any band/group, who would it be and why?
The Jesus Lizard, for Maximized Yow Proximity. Or Dimmu Borgir, to exist in a constant state of pure awesome…. and to use that power for evil. Mmm. Or the Mars Volta - they seemed Lost in Vistas when I saw them live. Or Soundgarden, to know what it was like to do everything utterly perfectly at every damn moment. Mindless Self Indulgence, so I’d be “Keepin up with all the Kids”…
What would be your ultimate concert line up?
Dimmu. The Lizard. Mindless Self Indulgence! Discordance Axis. Mastodon. Bleach 03! Princess Army Wedding Combat! Caroliner! The Residents! Melt Banana. Whatever Mike Patton’s up to. Opeth. Les Claypool’s Bucket of Bernie Brains. Bjork. Beck. Soundgarden.
First CD/tape you ever bought?
Kickin’ 5. I also read Stephen King and watched TV. I was young. I was stupid.
Song that most reminds you most of your childhood?
“Seven Seas of Rhye”, Queen. That song was fucking awesome, when I was eight.
All time favourite movie?
Dead Man & Paris, Texas. I saw this poster for AvP: Requiem the other day, and wondered why they’d make a sequel to one of the worst sequels ever made. And I started thinking about a sequel to Paris, Texas. “Paris, Texas: Requiem”. Twenty years in the future. This time, the incalculably old Travis has buggered off across the desert again, and it’s up to his grown up son to find him. Unfortunately, the future is post-apocalyptic, and filled with zombies. Remake of the classic scene: to escape the Zombies, Travis mimics their movements from across the street, and manages to befriend them.
Book you’d be most likely to recommend?
Gravity’s Rainbow. To everyone, even the most inappropriate, like my nine year old cousin.
Do you have any pets?
My cat is named Burt Reynolds.
Best Christmas present you ever got?
Presents from a girl named Dammit. I got: Apocalypse Culture 1 & 2, Art of Seeing Sideways, a bunch of Shirley Jackson, The King in Yellow… half a library filled with love!