So, here it is: Blog About Iran Day, and I find myself with little to say. Except this:

If you run a country, and you put gigantic portraits and statues of yourself throughout that country, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and your political platform invokes the terms “hate” or “death,” YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and you treat women like cattle, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and you operate under the assumption that God wants you to kill civilians, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and you believe you are in possession of The Truth, and that that Truth is so important that you are allowed to imprison, torture, and murder those who don’t share belief in that Truth, YOU WILL FALL.

If you run a country, and your main goal is to fight like hell to keep that country from having anything remotely resembling a healthy, happy, free future, YOU WILL FALL.

This I believe.

For more information on Iran, including the threatened Tiannemen Square-style massacre of studetns that the government has promised in order to quash planned demonstrations today, please visit Jeff Jarvis.

I’m starting to get a handle on fellow comics/politics blogger Franklin Harris–he’s an, I dunno, supralibertarian. I’ll admit that this is something of an… odd concept to me. I’ll plead I.L.I. (Ivy League Ignorance) on this one: At Yale, political belief systems tended towards old-money Republicanism (veering off into advocacy of a reinstated monarchy) or white-guilt liberalism (veering off into People’s Republic of Berkeley communism). Libertarians were few and far between, and though most everyone had libertarian leanings, they tended to be along the lines of “end the drug war, legalize the weed, no censorship, no Big Brother surveillance” etc. That’s certainly my viewpoint at any rate.

Point is, Franklin mildly took me to task over my ripping of Pat Buchanan’s pro-Confederacy stand. Franklin argues that putting the issue of slavery aside, the Confederate states had every right to secede from the Union, and Lincoln’s victory in the Civil War was some sort of might-makes-right blow to the Constitution.

I can see where the argument comes from, but to be honest, it just sounds like so much legalistic nonsense to me. It seems nuts to put “state’s rights,” i.e. the rights of a concept involving boundaries and official birds and flowers and whatnot called a State, before the rights of the people living in them–in this case, the slaves. I know, I know, the Civil War wasn’t started because of slavery, it was because the economy of the North would tank without the South and because advocates of a strong federal government didn’t want to set a precedent for secession, yeah yeah yeah. But in the end, if the South had succeeded in securing its “rights” from the North, you’d have ended up with some creepy militaristic apartheid state occupying the lower half of North America. Blecch. I’m simply not going to get too exercised about the unconstitutionality of an action that freed millions and millions of people and put an end to one of the most appalling practices in human history, particularly when that unconstiutionality only adversely affected the “rights” of an invisible picket fence.

This argument reminds me of Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke’s comments in Spin about the war in Iraq. Regardless of “this particular maniac,” said Thom in reference to Saddam Hussein, the laws and rules of the UN must not be thwarted by the U.S. & the U.K. Putting aside Thom’s ridiculously rose-colored view of the UN (when has it ever solved a conflict? when did it ever operate independently of the vested interests of its member states, in particular the US and the USSR?), he was apparently putting the “rights” of the imaginary entity known as “Iraq” ahead of those of the real live people living inside Iraq. This just seems like a tremendous abdication of responsibility to me–to say nothing of the fact that, from a libertarian perspective, Iraq (and for that matter the Confederacy) was one of the governments most intrusive into the lives of the human beings living therein.

What you’re left with, it seems to me, is the view that everyone else on Earth can go scratch, because my libertarian ideals prevent me from allowing my government to ever do anything to help them in any way. Again, blecch!

I myself believe that the ultimate arbiter of moral AND political rightness or wrongness is the degree to which people are allowed to choose, for themselves, how they want to live. This stems pretty directly from the occult teachings of Aleister Crowley and the pseudophilosophical prank religion of Discordianism, but I’m not as mean-spirited as the former nor as irresponsibly goofy as the latter: I believe that every man and woman was put on this Earth to achieve something, that it’s up to them to puzzle out, and that any time you do something that impedes people from figuring out what to do on their own (from lying and cheating all the way up to murder and totalitarianism) you’re doing something you morally oughtn’t. That’s where my libertarian streak comes from–it isn’t up to the government to decide what God you should worship, for instance–but it’s limited by the fact that, stemming from this belief, I try to take every issue on a case-by-case basis, so I never get hamstrung, as I believe Franklin has, by the kind of thinking that has you arguing for the Confederacy on a technicality.

It’s good to find out, every now and then, that I’m still a liberal at heart.

Hey!

Here’s a nice long interview with writer/artist Erik Larsen about his odds-defying comic book series, Savage Dragon. This exciting, smart, completely unpredictable book has been turning superhero-story conventions and cliches on their ears for about 110 issues at this point. I haven’t been crazy about the last few (a lot of anti-New Marvel injokes–alright, Erik, we get it: You don’t like Brian Bendis!), but the series has given me some of my all-time favorite comics moments, and (along with the sporadic output of Frank Miller) kept my interest in comics alive (if on life support) during several years away from the racks. Do yourself a favor and pick up an issue. It’s delightful!

According to Little Green Footballs, Ted Rall is still writing things every now and then. But, but, shouldn’t he have been disappeared by The Bushite Junta (TM) by now? Perhaps he’s on the lam–or broadcasting from beneath the giant gladitorial complex in which The Bushite Junta forces criminals to compete against colorfully named professional hunter-killers, just like Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa in The Running Man! Go, Ted, Go!

It’s only been a day or two since I wrote the review, but I’m already reconsidering my just-on-this-side-of-negative review of The Hulk. I think it’s a mistake to completely overlook the film’s weaknesses (it’s got plenty), but the strong stuff from it has really stuck with me. The film’s visuals are by far the best part of the whole, and they’re indelible–Hulk vs. the tanks, the explosion that kills the heel scientist in a freeze-frame, the ever-shifting comics panels, the close-ups of the rocks and moss and plants, the bizarre moment-in-time fight through the clouds at the end… it’s haunting.

This is pretty much the exact same thing that happened to me after seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I love long takes, sparse dialogue, and slow-burning plot development as much as the next guy–actually, a whole lot more than the next guy–but something about that movie just didn’t click for me. But before two weeks went by I’d undergone a critical about-face and found myself enthralled by the balletic fight scenes, the passionate desert interlude, the gorgeous music, the intense love… not triangle… pentagon?

But I’ve got more issues with The Hulk than I ever had with CTHD. Just by way of a for instance, nothing remotely resembling the incredible love scene between Ziyi Zhang and Chen Chang in the latter actor’s character’s desert hideout was present in the big guy’s movie. Though Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly are both likeable actors who did fine work with what they had, Ang Lee never took the time to convince us of their feelings for one another the way he did in CTHD, which was an absolutely necessary thing to do given how those feelings are supposed to drive the Hulk’s actions in the entire final half of the film. Plus, unlike the crazy parent figure in CTHD, the Nurse-esque character who’s secretly the Jade Scorpion, Nick Nolte’s Daddy Banner is infuriatingly unjustified and unexplained in his madness. He goes from a loving but too-driven father in flashbacks to a cold-blooded scenery-chewing bastard in the present day. Again, given the heft his relationship to his son the Hulk is given in the film’s final act, he badly needed to be better developed.

But my mental momentum is heading towards the positive. And at any rate, I wholeheartedly agree with Franklin Harris’s assessment that a good deal of the negative hype originates from people who don’t really know what they’re talking about. Much of the hysterical opprobriation heaped upon the movie comes from fanboys who, despite proclaiming for years that superhero stories can be Art, were completely flummoxed when this film proved them right.

…umbrageumbrageumbrage…

I’ve long said that Pat Buchanan, presidential candidate and respected talk show host, is batshit insane, and this article, in which he defends the motherfucking Confederacy, proves it. (Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan: Scourge of the Taliban Wing of American Conservatism! He’s been going after Buchanan, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Antonin Scalia, John Derbyshire, Rick Santorum, Bill Frist et al with all the manic glee of a hungry Leatherface handed a chainsaw and pointed in the direction of a three-legged race at a fat camp.)

While we’re on the subject, could there be a pair of talking heads more irrelevant to the current political climate than isolationst bigot Pat Buchanan and Phil Donawannabe Bill Press? I can’t imagine a less compelling set of viewpoints, and with any luck MSNBC will stick their show on the chopping block next.

Go, Captain, go

Go, Captain, go

Go, Captain Feathersword, Ahoy!

Please email me at sean AT alltooflat DOT COM if that made a lick of sense to you. Thank you.

How much better does Beyonce Knowles look now that she’s gained some weight? She went from “eh” to “damn!” in pretty short order. And as though in response to her sudden Amazon fabulousness, her music is better now too. (Seriously, one more Destiny’s Child song mentioning cell phones and I’d have carcjacked someone.) Uh-oh indeed!

One thing, though: I don’t seem to have gotten the memo in which we were asked to lend our approval to her dropping “Knowles” from her name. Let me see here… memo about Beyonce Knowles joining the mononym club… nope, don’t see it. Must have gotten filed with that “from her very first English-language single Shakira will be an American Superstar” fax that somehow didn’t reach my desk.

Nothing to say here, really–I just want to get onto the Google page for people searching for the phrase “How’s your Donkey Kong?” Or indeed, “How’s your Donkey Kong, baby?”

I like Don Imus, basically.

So I’m sitting down here at the computer to check my email and I see this little note with what looks like a funny quote from a commercial or infomercial written in my wife’s handwriting.

“Amy, what’s [blah blah blah] about?”

“I saw it on TV today and I’m going to write something about it for my site. It’s mine! It’s mine! And you can’t blog about it!”

What a world!

I was just using LimeWire to hunt for Jobriath songs, and I came across a “song” with the title “Nick Drake with Soft Machine (UNRELEASED 1974) – JOBRIATH.” Someone went through a lot of trouble to convince pop obscurists like yours truly to download a dummy file.

Did you know that Latina Pop Sensation (TM) Thalia (aka the latest singer who knows her bread is buttered somewhere in the vicinity of Tommy Motolla’s BVDs) is a Superstar!!!? Looks like I missed that memo too.

Did you know that Prescott Bush sold stuff to Hitler? So obviously his grandson can never, ever be right about anything.

In addition, the war was all about helping the oil industry, which explains why the government of Saudi Arabia, oil magnates one and all, virulently opposed it. Or maybe it doesn’t, I’m not sure. At any rate, the oil companies wanted us to invade the country rather than simply lift the sanctions and begin making sweetheart deals, because a full-scale invasion against a man who’s lit oil fields on fire by the hundreds and dumped crude into the sea willy-nilly is the less risky option. I think.

Also, any attack on a Muslim country sends thousands more rage-filled jihadists over to the terrorists, who otherwise are suffering from a shortage of volunteers and an insufficient level of free-floating anger at the West. If we were to stop fighting they’d leave us alone. Isn’t that obvious to everyone? I mean, just prior to 9/11 we invaded Syria, didn’t we? And after we pulled out of Somalia they said “whoops, sorry, thanks for crying uncle, we won’t pick on you anymore,” didn’t they? Cause and effect, people!

RIPPING UP THE CONSTITUTION! OIL!! 1984!!! COWBOY!!!! HITLER!!!!!

Phew, I feel much better.

Did I mention that oil’s not really worth fighting for? A crazy guy sitting on 9% of the world’s supplies with a full 25% within striking distance? No big whoop. After all, it’s only rich SUV-driving top-hatted Monopoly Men like Ken Lay who use oil. The economy of poor people in the third world runs on Segways and magic beans.

I see from Rich Johnston’s latest, interminable column (scroll waaaaaay down) that Alan Moore, one of the best goddamn writers in comics history, has joined the moonbat brigade.

QUOTE: “Any previously unthinkable political action can be instantly validated by the magic words 9-11….”

Seriously, America–the rest of the world has realized that nothing important really happened that day, so all countries should go on behaving in exactly the same way, since that’s the safe thing to do. What was the big deal? Get over it already!

Daredevil: Liked it better than Spider-Man. There was just something kind of clunky and arbitrary about the way Spider-Man’s plot moved forward. Daredevil, on the other hand, had this weird emotional-turmoil operatic logic for its structure, and damn if it didn’t work like a charm. Like an opera, you don’t see a movie like Daredevil for the realism–you see it for the spectacle, for the emotional immediacy, for the out-of-their-heads-with-anger-and-grief characters, and for the singing, or in this case the fight scenes. The fight scenes serve the same purpose as the singing, of course–as a grandiose, artistic metaphor for the heightened emotional states of the characters. This was something that Daredevil understood quite well, as did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I think I stole that notion from someone, so my apologies to that person) and the Daredevil comic storylines from which the film borrowed the most heavily, Frank Miller’s Elektra saga and (with John Romita Jr.) The Man Without Fear, and (especially) David Mack’s Parts of a Hole. (Mack’s femme fatale, Echo, basically had her backstory grafted onto Elektra’s for the film’s version of the latter character.)

Three final thoughts:

1) Wasn’t nuts about the decision to make Daredevil a killer at first, but they made this decision with an eventual redemption in mind, and (again, to my surprise) it worked.

2) Someone somewhere (once again) pointed out that DD’s alter ego, lawyer Matt Murdock, magically switches from some sort of bizarre private criminal prosecutor (it seems clear we’re not in civil court) to a defense attorney. Arrgh. Didn’t anyone read that part of the script?

3) Did Jon Favreau write his own lines?

The Hulk: God, what a strange, strange, strange film. I think it was a failure, but a noble failure. In a way, what with the expressionistic comics-influenced framing techniques and the emphasis on extradiegetic colors and imagery (all those desert shrubs and rocks and all those cell cultures and microbes), it was like Ang Lee doing King Kong by way of Douglas Sirk. But it was slow, so very slow, and none of the characters were three-dimensional or likeable enough to warrant taking that slow ride with them. Eric Bana, the lead, has soulful eyes that generate sympathy, at least, but he’s so underwritten that it never graduates to empathy. The bulk of The Hulk (nyuk nyuk) seems dedicated to conversations between different pairs of people about how impotent they are to fix whatever it is they’re talking about–this does not a riveting drama make. But when Bana Hulks out, the film comes alive. The big fight scenes were uniformly tremendous, and if you don’t laugh out loud when the Hulk beats one tank with another tank’s gun turret, Mister, you’re a glummer man than I. If as much time had been spent on developing the characters into likeable people as was devoted to creating beautiful imagery, innovatively using comics-style panels as shot-to-shot transitions, and making kick-ass CGI sequences, you’d have had a hell of a film.

Two final thoughts:

1) I didn’t like director Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the first time I saw it either, so maybe this film will grow on me as that one did.

2) Whoever thought this difficult, difficult movie was going to make Spider-Man style bank was probably literally on crack.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Certainly the best of the series thus far. Rowling does “unfair” better than anyone else I can think of. I think the success of the series directly stems from the way she is able to convey the capricious, arbitrary, vindictive exercise of power by adults and bullies over children, something to which all children can relate. And I think what makes the books so quickly-readable is that readers want to plow through the unfairness until they get to the point where the unfairness is exposed and Harry is vindicated.

Two minor gripes about the ending (SPOILER ALERT!!! gosh, that was fun to write):

1) Gee, you mean Harry and Voldemort’s destinies are inextricably linked, and one day they’ll have a duel to the death? Get out of here! I had no idea!!! Seriously, that was the big secret? Talk about a lousy payoff.

2) The last chapter, as I noticed when I first read the Table of Contents, is called “The Second War Begins.” Uh, really? Looked to me like Harry got on a train and went home, just like he did in the last four books. If you’re going to title a chapter “The Second War Begins,” how ’bout, I dunno, beginning the Second War in it?

Hey everyone–don’t forget to thank Al Jazeera for wishing us all a Happy Fourth of July!

(Actually, heaven forbid that I suggest Al Jazeera may have released this Saddam Hussein tape on the 4th of July in order to irritate the United States. Just because the tape was made on June 14th doesn’t mean they sat on it until it would be maximally embarassing to America, heavens no. It probably just happened to take them exactly that long to determine that it was newsworthy. They’re just another unbiased regular-old news network, after all.)

Amy’s been updating her blogs like mad. Go here and here.

The rest of the All Too Flat team pulled off an unbelievably impressive prank last week. It involves the Astor Place Cube and ’80s nostalgia. It’s brilliant. Check it out!

Big Sunny D is really good.