Steven M. Finkelstein

This past weekend, I had occasion to go to Baltimore with Megan, to help out with our homegrown company, Metropolis Soap. For those of you who aren’t regular readers of the blog, Megan has been pursuing Metropolis as a sole means of income for the past few weeks, and I’ve been doing whatever I can to assist in the promotion and distribution of her products. This time it meant taking the weekend off from work to help put up and take down the displays, help man the booth, and generally try to get the word out. It was a busy weekend, but an enjoyable one, and I think it can be counted as largely successful. I also got a good look at Artscape, which is billed as being the largest independent arts festival in the country. In addition to arts and crafts, it features food, music, performers, and an impressive collection of freaks, geeks, queers, and oddballs. Saturday was my birthday, and I got to see Gov’t Mule, the headliners of the festival; they were great, as always. Warren Haynes is a musical idol of mine. His voice is just so big; regardless of the size of the venue, whether it’s a tiny club or a sprawling mountainside, it just seems to grow and resonate and spread out and out, and the depth and soul in evidence is just an incredibly moving thing. This is a man who feels the music as he sings it, and the audience can’t help but feel it too.

Artscape also gave me an opportunity to get a good look at Baltimore, a city where I’ve had limited past experience. I remember getting lost there once with my friend Tiffany some years back, and sort of driving aimlessly around for a few hours, through neighborhoods that looked increasingly more dicey at every turn. This time we were sort of in downtown, I guess…we were right by Camden Yards, where the Orioles play, and whatever the hell the stadium is called where the Ravens have their home games. As I mentioned, the area where the event itself was taking place seemed to be bustling with life. There were several clubs and restaurants that were still in full swing when we packed up at ten o’clock, and it seemed like even if the festival was officially done for the night, things were just getting started. Of course, we were too exhausted to do much but go back to the hotel and crash. The whole place seemed to be very gay friendly, which I liked. I saw many male and female couples making the rounds with no bother, the same as in New York. But with that being said, I also saw many homeless. Stopping at red lights on the way to and from the event, panhandlers shuffled about among the parked cars, some of them very aggressive, holding their hands out right up against the windows. Though I’ll sometimes give if I’m in the right mood, rolling down a car window in traffic to try and help someone out seems like a bad idea for a variety of reasons. But what really struck me about Baltimore (it’s probably wrong to pigeonhole based on observances of just a couple of neighborhoods, but still, there it is), came as we were driving back to New York Sunday night. We’d made our last few sales, loaded up the car, and the G.P.S. was sending us back to the highway via the most direct route. The route it gave sent us cruising through a neighborhood that I remember thinking at the time looked like images of war-torn Baghdad. There were blocks after blocks after blocks of boarded up tenements, all of them looking condemned, broken glass and piles of trash in vacant lots. There were no businesses open, except, and I’m not even kidding here, a couple of liquor stores and fried chicken restaurants. But even in the buildings where most of the windows were boarded up, there were a few lights on, and there were people sitting on the steps of some of them, in some cases smoking weed right out in the open. I’ve been through some pretty rough neighborhoods in my life, but this was just another level…it was the ghetto, plain and simple, and it was incredibly saddening to me that people had to live in a place like this. What struck me the most was just the lack of commerce. Where there are no businesses neighborhoods can’t really thrive, and that seemed to be the case here. I wondered if things were like this before the economic collapse and the hard times of the past couple of years, or did the condition of this area predate that significantly?

Overall, I had a really nice time over the weekend. I enjoyed my birthday, spending time with Megan, and seeing a new city that I didn’t know a whole lot about. I’d like to go back to Artscape next year, if I get a chance, and there’s no reason to think that we wouldn’t, as it was profitable. There seems to be a lot about Baltimore to recommend it. But I also could hardly turn a blind eye to what, to me, appeared to be a city in financial trouble. I know that economics are cyclical, and what the condition is today may be different in a year, or five years. I just hope that the city can ride out the bad times, because what I saw was sobering. It was not desperation that I saw in some of the faces I passed. Rather, it seemed more like resignation, which is what comes when all hope is truly gone.

The newest sequel with the Predator theme, starring the dredlocked creatures that first appeared in the Schwarzenegger original, is exactly what was advertised: a bloody return to the series’ roots, with much of the same brooding menace that made the first one a success. People discount Predator 2 as being inferior to the original. I thought it was every bit as good, just…different. The unlikely substitution of Danny Glover for the musclebound Governator worked surprisingly well. Then came the Alien vs Predator and Alien vs Predator: Requiem films. They were watchable, but not great. I attribute it to two problems: one, they went with the PG-13 rating for the first one, which eliminated the possibility of most profanity and excessive gore, and pretty much killed it dead before they even got started. Even though the second was R rated, it was a fairly lifeless outing, with the plot seeming phoned in and no name actors to speak of. Two, there was such build-up over the years for the clash between these legendary movie monsters that anything less than Citizen Kane with Aliens and Predators was going to feel like a letdown, and both of these surely did. They were lackluster, and the box office gross reflected that. But this time around, Robert Rodriguez promised to do things right and recapture the spirit of the first installment, and I’ll give the guy credit where it’s due. I would have liked to see him direct, rather than Nimrod Antel, but hey, you can’t have everything.

This time around the hero is Royce (Adrian Brody), a mercenary stolen from Earth and airdropped onto a foreign planet, along with six other assorted combat vet/assassin types, plus That Seventies Show’s Topher Grace, presumably as Predator bait. The most recognizable of the other actors is Danny Trejo, who finally, after putting in twenty years as a Hollywood set piece, will get his long overdue starring role in Machete, due out soon. It doesn’t take long before Royce and the crew figure out that the planet is a game preserve, and they’re being hunted by interstellar baddies. They band together, but human nature being what it is, there’s tension among the group due to different priorities, mindsets, etc. It’s a bit formulaic, borrowing from “The Most Dangerous Game” short story and about two dozen other Hollywood action flicks roughly based on it from the past three decades. Still, what makes things work pretty well here, for the most part, is the sense of anticipation built up before the appearance of the first creatures (they don’t show up for close to an hour), fine cinematography, and the ability to avoid overly cheesy dialogue. Adrian Brody isn’t exactly miscast as Royce…everyone keeps saying he’s “playing against type” in this film, but does Brody really have a type? He’s a chameleon, and he tackled an action role successfully in King Kong, lest we forget. Still, having him growl into the camera and act like a tough guy feels a bit strained at times…I’d like to buy it but I just can’t…and having him take his shirt off in the last few minutes of the movie, presumably to show off his chiseled abs, wasn’t doing me any favors either. Sex symbol this man is not. But aside from these minor gripes, everything progresses swimmingly. There’s a Predator vs yakuza fight sequence that pretty much makes the movie, we get some new insight into Predator mythology, we’re introduced to their canine-like attack critters, and they’re packing some fun new technology. We even get a great cameo from Lawrence “Morpheus” Fishburn, who must not have had anything to do some weekend.

If you’re a fan of the action and sci-fi genres, bottom line, you’re probably going to like this. I felt like the last third of the movie probably suffers most (I especially thought the last twenty minutes could have used a good re-write), but there’s a lot more working here than isn’t. The sense of a human protagonist fighting something that is so alien to us and so frustratingly superior that dominated the Schwarzenegger classic is back again, and taking it back to the jungle, albeit on a different planet, was a wise decision. Is this high art? No, and it wasn’t meant to be. Let’s face it, if you go see a movie like this, you know what you’re getting yourself into. If you don’t think too much, and you’re looking for violent, testosterone-laced entertainment, this is the way to go. My rating: 6/10.

Although it had been eleven years since the release of Toy Story 2, it could be argued that Pixar really needed to do this one right. After all, this was the franchise they pretty much hung their hat on; the original pioneered the sort of animation that would become typical of the studio, and the follow up was just as successful as the first. With that in mind, it was necessary for the creative team to fight through the “franchise exhaustion” that often comes about at the end of a trilogy, making the third the weakest installment. It has happened with so many other trilogies, regardless of genre, and they also were faced with another challenge: coming up with a successful vehicle for Tim Allen, a man who hasn’t had a credible big screen endeavor in several years. But even with the deck stacked against them, Pixar came through. Toy Story 3 is a visually stimulating, thought provoking, and touching film that stays true to the spirit of the original two.

This time around, transition and the finding of one’s place in the world are the over-arching storylines; though these themes were touched on in the first two films also, it avoids feeling redundant. Andy, the owner of the principle toys, Buzz LightYear (Tim Allen) and Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks) is going off to college, and the toys are wondering what’s planned for them. Mistakenly sent to a daycare center when they were intended for the attic, they encounter a sinister toy conspiracy headed by a rotund pink Care Bear lookalike named Lotso. Lotso was lost by his owner years before, but feels that she abandoned him. Bringing some bullying lackeys around to his way of thinking, he uses them to control the daycare center with a fuzzy fist, forcing the new arrivals into playtime with the youngest child denizens, who batter and bash them mercilessly as toddlers are apt to do. Buzz and Woody launch a plan to escape, with help from Mr. Potato Head, Barbie, and the various other principles from the first two. It all leads to a trip to the town dump in the third act, where the wayward playthings come this close to toy purgatory, in a scene that is as frightening and emotionally disturbing as anything the adult “horror” genre has produced lately. This movie is really anything but lighthearted, and although the animation is as bright and shiny as everything Pixar produces, the themes remain as profoundly adult as those in Up and Wall-E. There are some harsh lessons to be taught here: abandonment is a very real possibility, even for innocent, trusting toys, a warped mind is sometimes simply beyond redemption, and sometimes the best of friends can outgrow you. But it all turns out alright in the end, and the rescued toys are given a good home, with a young girl whose sensibilities and creative spirit mimic Andy’s own.

The most important lesson to be learned from these movies is actually an inadvertent one, though. The lesson is, it’s a damn good thing that toys don’t have feelings, and souls, because if they did, then each and every one of us would be doomed to hell for abandoning them and breaking their hearts as we grew up. I found myself thinking longingly of toys long forgotten during the course of this movie, and even though there’s a happy ending, I was left feeling as saddened as I was nostalgic. The only real fault I can find with it is that at times it went just a little too far tugging at the ol’ heartstrings. Pixar is shamelessly manipulative; they even sort of mute the colors at the particularly sappy bits to cue you in on the parts where you’re supposed to be tearing up. But with that being said, this is in every way a successful venture, funny, frightening, and colorful: what every good playtime should be. Not as original as the first of the three, which still gets my nod as one of the better animated kids movies I’ve ever seen, but absolutely worth seeing on the big screen, whatever your age. It’s all the stronger because it comes in a summer that’s been largely devoid of legitimate blockbusters. Recommended. My rating 7/10.

First of all, my apologies for not having posted in a couple of weeks, but I’ve had relatives in town and I’ve been busy visiting with them; in addition to all of that, my computer finally just died, and I got a new one, a Compaq. I’m done with Dell. Their systems are nothing but trouble, and I thoroughly enjoyed smashing mine to bits with a baseball bat before throwing it away, a la the copier in the movie Office Space. Anyway, I’m giving the new Compaq a trial run, and lets hope it holds out longer than the last one.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, and trying not to get too insanely freaked out by the millions of gallons of oil that continue to spill into the Gulf. That’s a matter to be concerned about, certainly, but right now I’ve got problems closer to home that are getting most of my attention. I’ve mentioned here before on the site how the bad economy actually isn’t something that I’ve been too bothered by, since my level of poverty was about the same regardless of how everyone else was doing. No matter how much people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, I was doing approximately the same as I always had for most of my adult life. But now, sorry to say, there are actually some direct changes to my life that are coming about as a result of hard times. The most recent are the so-called “doomsday cuts” that the MTA officially implemented this past weekend. The doomsday cuts mean that several train and bus lines are being discontinued, to try and close a 750 million dollar budgetary gap. I just want to ask, how does one even incur a 750 million dollar budgetary gap? How is it even possible? I’ve spoken before about how I’m less than knowledgeable about how the economy works, or the stock market, or things of that nature, but how is it that the MTA has been so heinously mismanaged that they’ve had to implement the biggest transportation cuts in New York since the 1970’s? It boggles the mind! And yes, I’m personally effected; the V, which I took to my Park Avenue job site on Thursday and Fridays, has been discontinued, meaning that I need to transfer to the F at 34th St, adding another ten minutes at least to my daily commute. And the N, which is basically the only train that stops near my house, has been hit with a triple whammy. It no longer runs express in Manhattan, ever, it isn’t running as often, and some of the passengers from the other trains that have been discontinued are now going to be using the N, meaning it’s going to be more crowded than ever! I was trying to mentally prepare myself since I first heard about this a few months ago, but now that it’s actually in effect, man, does it ever suck. I more or less live my life on the N; I take it everywhere, it seems like a dozen times a week, no exaggerating, and waiting longer for it, stopping more often, and being packed in with even more people, is just flat out awful. I really wish that Meg and I hadn’t come here at a time when things were better, transportation-wise, because now, we’re mourning the passing of something that, in all probability, will never come again. This is just the way things are going to be, from now on.

There’s more. They’re threatening to close our local library down; the library systems are in trouble too, and unless they come up with 20 million, or something like that, our local branch is on the chopping block. It’s not like it’s a huge, well stocked library to begin with, but it’s one of the nicer things about this neighborhood, and it would be a shame to lose that. It kind of makes you wonder, what’s next? The summer heat is upon us, and it seems like it’s just a season of aggravation. Transportation issues, a possible library closing, a disappointing summer movie season, and temperatures that’ll have you sweating buckets the instant you step outside. Where will it end? I can’t claim to know what mother nature, incompetent state agencies, or Hollywood has in store next, but I have to say, strangely enough, I’m still feeling fairly optimistic. Even though we can’t completely afford it, Meg and I just ordered an air conditioner, and it should be here today. As of this afternoon, both my Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees lead their respective divisions. What I’m trying to say is that things aren’t all bad, and that despite the aggravation of possibly having to go farther afield for books and having to be a little more patient waiting on trains and getting to my destinations, I’m still feeling pretty good. I’m going to a Yankee game tonight, a TNA wrestling show on Friday, and there’s still quite a bit to look forward to this summer. So let them close the library, and let the MTA honchos implement the most diabolical cuts their warped little minds can conceive of. I’ll be staying optimistic. Good thoughts come from an internal source, and it’s one that no amount of incompetence or difficulty in the outside world can touch. With that in mind, such minor distractions will continue to remain exactly that.

Well, summer is upon us, and this always seems to be the time of year where I try to pack the most in. Maybe it goes back to when I was in school, where summer meant three months of leisure. It’s not quite the same now. Being a working stiff, I don’t really get all of that time off, but I’m still trying to take advantage of quite a bit going on here in the city. Over the next few weeks, here’s what’s coming up. This Saturday I’ll be checking out a live WWE house show at Madison Square Garden. Four championships will be on the line, though since the event isn’t televised, none of them will be changing hands. Still, WWE always puts on a good show at the Garden, and this will be my first time seeing them there, so I’m quite excited. Next week friends and relatives will be invading, as both my father and sister, along with her significant other, will be in town. See, if you live in New York long enough, eventually everyone will come and visit you, yet another perk. On Friday, July 2nd, I’ll be checking out a TNA wrestling event at the Brooklyn Cyclones Stadium at Coney Island, just a few minutes away from me by train. This is the first live TNA event I’ll be seeing, and I’m also extremely excited for that. July 6th Meg and I will be heading to Citi Field to see the New York Metropolitans take on my Cincinnati Reds, who are currently in a tie for first with the Cardinals atop the National League Central. I was hoping this would be the year the Reds finished above the .500 mark, but having them smack in the middle of the pennant race is a surprise and welcome bonus. Let’s see if they can stay competitive for the rest of the summer. Being at a Mets game and rooting for the Reds probably won’t make me too popular, but what can you do, got to support the team. On July 12th Meg and I will see Iron Maiden at MSG. The aging rockers have a new album coming out in August, and this will be my first time seeing them too. Should be fun. From July 16th through the 18th I’ll be in Baltimore, Maryland, for a craft show with Meg. The 17th is also my birthday, and it so happens that Gov’t Mule are playing there that day…for free, no less! That should be a very fine way to celebrate my 29th. From the 25th through the 28th of July I’ll be back in Cincinnati, my first visit in a year. I’ll have a couple of days to catch up with relatives and friends…it seems like I have less and less time to visit home these days, so that should be nice. In August the biggest event of the summer for me will take place, with my leaving the country for the first time in 20 years; the last time I did so was for a family vacation in Toronto in 1990. This time I’ll be heading to Ireland the last week of the month, along with Meg, my mom and her husband, and my sister. I’m tremendously pumped up about that. This will be my first time visiting Europe, and there’s going to be so much to see and experience. That will pretty much cap off the summer for me, and it’ll almost be a relief when fall gets here and things calm down a little bit.

In addition to everything I mentioned, I also have tickets to nine different Yankee games between now and the end of September, part of the eleven game ticket package I purchased a few weeks ago. Last night I was at The Stadium to see the Yankees thump the Phillies again; it’s really getting to be a habit. That rivalry has heated up considerably as a result of the Series last year, and I saw several fights, ejections, and one guy puking in a urinal. Good times. With the Yankees and Reds  both tied for first in their divisions going into today, my dream of a Reds/Yankees World Series doesn’t seem quite so far fetched. But I’m sure the Reds will collapse in between now and then. Unfortunately, it’s what they do. Still, despite some minor aggravations in my life right now, I’m feeling pretty good. You’ve no doubt noticed, if you’re a regular reader, that I haven’t had anything published recently. That’s because I’m hard at work on the new novel, and I haven’t had time to work on shorter things or send them out. It’s a worthy trade off, I think. The notoriety and small amounts of money I receive from getting published in lit mags is nice, but it would be nothing compared to what it would mean to get a novel picked up…and that, of course, remains my long term goal. When this one’s finished I’ll be shopping it around, and also, God willing, looking for an agent again. Sooner or later I’m simply going to need to get one. The new novel is progressing nicely, though. I’m approaching the 200 page mark, and I’m happy with the pace I’m setting.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s hard to work four days a week and still keep the “summer frame of mind.” At the Park Avenue site, looking out the windows at each beautiful afternoon, adjusting my clip-on tie, it’s easy to get fidgety. But as I mentioned, there’s plenty in the way of leisure activities to look forward to, so that should get me through it. I hope everyone is likewise enjoying their summer. Stay cool, more soon.

Last night I went to see Les Claypool at the Brooklyn Bowl. I’d never been to the venue before, but essentially it’s a combination night club and bowling alley, with sixteen lanes, a full-service bar, some T.V.’s showing the Mets and Yankee games, and a stage with a dance floor in front of it. For those that were bowling, there were monitors up above the lanes so they could see what was happening when the show started. I liked the setup, and I had a great time. Les Claypool is the bass player for Primus, when they’re touring together, and he’s had a very successful solo career as well. In addition to bass, he also plays several less easily identifiable things, and he’s backed up by two percussion guys and a cello player. His band comes out in tuxes, and animal masks that are really pretty grotesque; they remind me of the masks that the ghosts are wearing in The Shining, during the last third of the movie where Nicholson is going insane. Claypool starts out the show dressed in his traditional silk shirt, vest, and bowler hat, but during the show he’ll periodically leave the stage and come back out wearing a pig or a monkey mask. It’s a concert, but it’s also a bit of a burlesque show and a carnival attraction. All in all, it’s a pretty wild ride, and Les and all of his band are undoubtedly great musicians. This is the third time I’d seen him, I think, the previous two times being the High Sierras Festival in ‘05 and Summer Camp in Illinois in ‘08, and he’s never disappointed. He’s a freaky guy, and he always draws a freaky crowd.

I was coming home on the N train when it all went horribly wrong. I’d transferred to the N at 14th Street/Union Square, in Manhattan, and since it was past midnight the N was running local, which means several more stops and at least an additional half hour added to the trip. I had my I-Pod with me, though, so I was listening to some tunes to pass the time. I’d managed to snag one of the handicap accessible seats; they’re two seaters, four of them in each car total, and they’re the best seats to get, since oftentimes you can have the seat to yourself and not be crammed in with a bunch of other passengers. I had my feet up on the seat next to me and was sort of huddled against the wall, dozing, when, at 36th Street, about fifteen minutes from home, I was rudely awakened. I was yanked off the train by a police officer, who demanded my driver’s license, checked to see if I had any warrants out for me, then proceeded to write me a fifty dollar ticket. The charge? “Taking up two seats on the train.” Because I had my feet up on the seat, I was issued a citation.

Now, granted, the officer was perfectly in his legal right. You’re not supposed to have your feet up on the seat. But couldn’t he have let me off with a warning? There were actually a total of four cops there on the platform, and they were doing sweeps of each train as it went by. They were looking for other people who had their feet up on the seats, just like me, and man, the bounty was good. There were people on each and every train with their feet up on the seats…because you know what? That’s just what people do late at night. It’s not like the train was crowded. There were plenty of seats available, if someone had gotten on and wanted to sit down. I was committing a victimless crime, and I’m sure these officers were aware of that. What they were doing, in my opinion, amounted to a flagrant misuse of manpower…especially in light of the fact that more serious subway crimes, like murder, for instance, are up significantly since last year. Just as a suggestion, why could these officers not have been assigned to the areas of the subway where violent crime is up, not busting people because their feet are up on the seat? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.

Worst yet was the fact of how much the officer was clearly enjoying my anger that this was happening. He was fairly grinning the whole time, knowing that he’d caught me red-handed and that he could hit me with the fine or let me go as he so chose. I was entirely at his mercy. And there’s no two ways about it, having that power over others is why the majority of people become cops. They want the rush; they want to be able to swagger around in uniform and count themselves as being above the average citizen. Much as I wanted to mouth off at the guy, I also didn’t want to spend a night in jail. So I was the bigger man; I kept my trap shut, took the ticket, and waited for the next train to come. I sent the check off today. I could have disputed the charge, but what was the point? I’d rather not take the time. It’s easier to pay the fifty dollars and move on, but man, what a lousy end to what had otherwise been a really nice evening. It’s not like I’m using money for toilet paper at this point in my life; this came at a really inopportune time. The only consolation I take is that the M.T.A. is trying to close a huge budgetary gap, and they’re slashing jobs, train lines, and student discount cards left and right. I know I did my part now. I contributed fifty of my hard-earned dollars to the problem. But make no mistake, I hate cops. I’ve never had a good encounter with the police. I see right through them. The only ones they’re ever out to serve and protect are themselves, and last night was just another example of that. Police, know this. You’re going to be on my shit-list, always and forever, every motherless rat-fuck one of you, and I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire…or if you paid me fifty dollars to do it.

Okay, so the oil rig explosion and subsequent spill in the Gulf this past April has been referred to as possibly the single most ecologically damaging event in U.S. history, and that’s probably justified. The impact to multiple ecosystems can’t be underestimated, and it’s only getting worse, what with plans A,B,C, and D not having worked so far…and B.P. now admitting that they might not be able to get a plug on this thing until August. The ramifications of this aren’t certain yet, but one thing’s for sure, it’s not going to be pretty. All forms of life that this cataclysmic cock-up touches…aquatic, land-based, animal and man…we’re all in for a rough go of it. And, as citizens of this country, we deserve to know how this happened, and somebody needs to be held accountable. Is B.P. to blame? There is some talk of cutting corners as it relates to safety, but this has yet to be established conclusively. But you know who’s not to blame? President Obama.

Obama didn’t cut corners; he didn’t scrimp on safety. There are those who said he didn’t act fast enough when news first hit of the disaster. Well, that’s probably because B.P. tried to downplay the significance of the crisis. They said it was only a matter of time before the leak was contained, and they also said that significantly less oil was being released than was actually the case. Obama had other things on his mind…like, oh, I don’t know, ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a controversial new policy regarding illegal aliens in Arizona, and Iran trying to establish nuclear capability, to name a few. It was only when B.P. failed repeatedly to stop the leak that it was revealed how bad the situation actually was, and then he responded accordingly, as he has throughout this entire crisis. But there are many that feel that he should have done more, reacted differently. To them I say, what exactly did you want the man to do? Swim a mile down and plug his body into the pipe, thereby stopping the leak? The only reason Obama is being blamed for this is because he happens to be in power right now. He wants to stop the leak, believe me. It’s just that nothing like this, nothing on this scale, has ever really happened before in human history. That’s why B.P. and every scientist in their employ…and everybody else, for that matter…has been trying to come up with a solution. Hell, Kevin Costner volunteered a suggestion, (though, to be fair, there are few more qualified to speak out about water-related disasters). What bothers me about all this is that people seem to be saying that Obama is just sitting there with his thumb up his ass while all this is going on. I know that everyone is frustrated and angry, but to blame Obama for these technological failures just isn’t fair, or logical. There are those who are even comparing this administration’s actions to Bush’s during Hurricane Katrina, and that’s flat-out absurd. There were about a million things that Bush could have done that he chose not to…not for many weeks, anyway. In Obama’s case, there just isn’t really anything else that he, personally, can do. That’s the difference.

There are those that no longer approve of the job that Obama is doing, at least according to the latest polls. I, for, one, don’t trust those polls too much anyway, but assuming that his popularity and approval rating is dipping, if it really is just because of this, that’s just sad. If you’re going to disapprove of what the guy’s doing, that’s one thing. But if it’s his perceived inaction that bothering you in this particular case, you need to realize that, unfortunately, there’s limits to what the man is capable of. He’s not a scientist. He’s not an engineer, or an oceanographic expert. He’s not Superman. Blaming the guy in charge when something bad happens that he is in no way responsible for is irrational, and I just hope that everyone involved can disassociate themselves from their anger long enough to acknowledge that.

It seems like, when I was a kid, there were a lot of things that I would hear people talk about that sounded particularly “adult” to me…and whenever I heard about them, I didn’t understand exactly what was meant, or how these concepts worked. I didn’t let it bother me. I just figured that when I was old enough I would learn about them and come to understand them. That’s certainly what happened with a lot of things. As you get older you begin to either learn about whatever difficult concept it might happen to be through association, or else you find someone who’s an expert who’s willing to explain it to you. But it seems like, regardless of how old I get, there are certain things that I still just don’t understand, and in some cases, don’t want to. Take the stock market, for instance. For the life of me, I still don’t get exactly how it works, and from what I’ve gathered through my own observations, it seems so absurdly idiotic and the way it fluctuates seems so arbitrary that I would never want to. What, exactly, are stocks, anyway? Well, from what I understand, they’re shares in a company. But they don’t actually “exist,” per say. You can’t hold a stock in your hand. It’s little more or less than an idea…an idea of how much controlling interest you have in a company. But how is it that the value of stocks go up and down? It seems to be in accordance to how much faith people have or don’t have in the company, but here’s where it seems to get so arbitrary to me. You can look in the paper and read about how, since Obama made a speech saying that he was going to impose stricter Wall Street regulations, how the Dow dropped fifty points, and the Index dropped this many…leaving it at some number rather than some other larger number…and oh, what dire ramifications it’s going to have on the country! How the foreign markets crashed because of little faith in the Euro, and how thousands of people are going to become poverty stricken because of it…does anyone else not know what the fuck it all means? Well, I don’t, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I don’t care if it exposes my ignorance, I think there are a lot more people out there than you might think that are in the same boat as me, they’d just prefer that it not be exposed. How is it that stock brokers make millions upon millions of dollars, and are able to afford sports cars, and boats, and luxury condos, when what they seem to be trading in is, well, nothing? They’re trading in ideas, ideas whose value can be determined by people who are continually sticking a finger up in the air to test which way the wind is blowing, and if they think there’s a storm coming, there’s a flurry of activity and millions of more dollars are made…or lost. Stockbrokers seem to me like Chicken Little and his followers. One of them says “Holy Jesus! I just got a reliable tip that the sky is falling!” And one and all they take up the cry “Sell off all our stock! Sell, sell, sell! So-and-so has a reliable tip that the sky is falling!” And then if nothing happens (as is so often the case), the next few days you’ll hear about how the markets are making a gradual recovery, modest gains, until the next crisis, when it all happens again…does anyone else think all of this sounds like complete and utter nonsense? But like I said, these people are making scads of money, so maybe I’m the jackass for not trying to get in with them…if I could ever be made to understand just what exactly it is they’re doing anyway.

Of course, there are some things I don’t know about that have a much more direct impact on me. I still know next to nothing about how computers work, for instance, and, as a writer, not to mention someone living in the modern era who wants to be able to sort of keep up with technology, thereby using email and watching shows online and whatever else it might happen to be, it behooves me to know at least slightly about how they operate. But I hate technology; I’ve always resisted it, and I think I have pretty good reason to. My computer is always crashing because of some worm or virus that I let into it, God only knows how (and its not from watching porn, if that’s what you’re thinking). I might ask someone for advice on how to fix a computer problem I’m having, and I’ll say something like “the thingy at the bottom of the screen won’t light up, and my documents keep disappearing, and it’s making a hissing noise like there’s a nest of vipers curled up inside it!” And then they’ll say, “well, it’s probably because you only have a 2000 volt hard drive, and your CPU motherboard needs more Ram.” And I’ll be at a loss to explain any more clearly what the problem is, and I’ll be equally mystified by what they told me, and I’ll end up just having to pay whatever they ask of me to fix the damn thing.

The bottom line is, some of the things I don’t know don’t bother me, and some of them do. If I never figure out the stock market it’s probably not the end of the world. I’m still not convinced that everybody who has direct dealings with it understands what it is they’re doing either. As far as the other things go, things that I don’t really understand and must continue to ask others about and try my hardest to comprehend their answers, and I usually fail- computers, car maintenance, generally anything to do with banking, etc- I have to just kind of stumble through my life and get by with the limited knowledge that I have. I feel like I was kind of gypped sometimes, like when I got to a certain age the “adult” knowledge that I was supposed to receive was denied me for some reason. But I flatter myself by thinking that just maybe, there are others in a similar situation to myself, and they don’t understand some of these concepts any better than I do, and they’re just nodding their heads and saying “uh-huh” at the appropriate moments…just like I am. I really hope that’s the case. Because if it isn’t, then maybe I’m the only stupid one, and that would be a really disheartening thing to have to accept.

In the age of big-budget Marvel movie releases, the pressure is always on to produce a hit. Some of them have been rousing successes, spawning yet bigger sequels that are then in turn expected to make even more money to justify their over-inflated budgets. Spiderman worked, and the second was better than the first, and then by the third installment they had suffered franchise exhaustion and it was God-awful, forcing the miscast Topher Grace into retirement for three years. The first two X-Men were great, and then they brought on Brett Ratner for the third one and it sucked my ass. Then you’ve got stand alone episodes from the Marvel Knights series that were doomed from the start: Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and both modern Punishers, and Hulks. The formula has been pretty predictable. The first one is good, the second one is better, and the third, which has the highest expectations, is the worst of the three; either that, or the first one is so bad that it doesn’t warrant a second. Where does Iron Man fit in? John Favreau seemed like an odd choice to direct, but the first Iron Man was really a breath of fresh air, due largely to the pithy performance of Robert Downey Jr., a perfect choice to play the wealthy, devil-may-care Tony Stark, and also Oscar winner Jeff Bridges as his nemesis. But with the first one being so unexpectedly excellent, how would the second match up, especially with the knowledge that a third (and possibly fourth) must inevitably follow?

Well, it’s good, but not great. This time around, the plot is a bit more convoluted, as Marvel tried to fit in as many tie-ins as possible. We get more of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, as the “Avenger’s initiative” picks up steam. We get more of the witty-banter-that-eventually-results-in-breathless-kisses between Stark and Pepper Potts. And then we get Stark’s daddy issues…a new villain in the form of Mickey Rourke as Whiplash…yet another generic would be despot in Sam Rockwell…the inclusion of Scarlet Johansen as Black Widow for nothing more or less than sexy window dressing…the emergence of War Machine…it’s all a lot to keep track of, especially crammed into two hours. It feels like a pizza with too many toppings slathered on it. Sooner or later it’s going to get weighed down by all that extra stuff, and lose it’s integrity. While I’m not saying that happened here, what I will say is that perhaps two of the “extra” story lines…the ones that didn’t really feel integral to the plot…could have been done away with, and I think the result would have been much crisper and cleaner. Personally, I would have nixed the Stark with Daddy issues storyline, and also the Pepper Potts romance angle, or at least pared it way down. It’s extraneous, and the “witty” banter between Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow felt really flat. The fact that they kept on saying their lines on top of each other so it was difficult to understand what they were saying didn’t help matters either.

There’s more good than bad here. The “franchise exhaustion” that doomed SpiderMan and X-Men isn’t in evidence yet, but I feel like it’s lurking, not too far from the surface. If there was any leading actor in Hollywood these days that I would have pinned a franchise tag on, it’s Robert Downey Jr. As a guy who’s come back from the brink in his personal life, plagued by very public drug struggles, there’s a kind of eerie sincerity to all his performances these days. He lends a much-needed vulnerability to Tony Stark, and I buy him as a reluctant superhero much more than Toby Mcguire, Nick Cage, Ed Norton, etc…and backup from Don Cheadle and another resurrected youth actor, Mickey Rourke, doesn’t hurt either. This episode (and it is difficult not to view it as an episode, rather than a stand alone film) feels a little cluttered at times, but the action sequences, when they come, are worth the price of admission, particularly the first run-in with Whiplash at the Grand Prix. The first Iron Man was better, but there’s enough energy to power this one too. We’ll see if the magic has died out by 2013 or so when the third one comes out, but in the meantime, I know that Avengers is in the process of casting, so we should have that to tide us over in the meantime…it’s sure to be bigger, longer, louder, and stuffed with five or six times as many heroes, villains, and explosions, in the mighty Marvel way. My rating: 6/10.

And no, I’m not talking about marijuana. Today’s topic…is prostitution. The past week, New York papers were abuzz about L.T. (that’s Lawrence Taylor, not New York Jet Ladanian Tomlinson), supposedly raping a sixteen-year-old prostitute. Now, whether it was actually rape or not has yet to be established, but if sex between L.T. and this girl took place, it would automatically be statutory rape, since she’s a minor. All the facts of this case have yet to be revealed, but it seems like this girl, who was a runaway, was found on the streets by a man who gave her a place to stay, then pimped her out…it’s the same old story. She was delivered to L.T.’s hotel room, and what happened next was anybody’s guess, although I’ve got a fairly good idea.

What happened to this girl was awful, and L.T.’s conduct was irresponsible and reprehensible, though not really surprising. After all, the two-time Superbowl winner and hall of famer has had drug problems going back the past couple of decades. When L.T. isn’t in the news, you know he’s doing okay. If you’re hearing about him, he’s as likely to be tarnishing his reputation some more as Dancing With The Stars. But I don’t want to talk about L.T. I want to talk about this young girl, and so many others like her, who get into these situations because people who want to have sex for money aren’t able to do it legally in this country.

What kind of sense does that make? Prostitution has been referred to as the world’s oldest profession, and with good reason. It’s been around since the dawn of time, and it will never, ever go away. Why should it, when people continue to want sex, and others continue to want money? The point is, prostitution doesn’t hurt anyone, provided it’s consensual. The only reason it’s illegal in this country is because we’re still a bunch of prudes. We allow kids to see excessive violence on television, but not a pair of exposed breasts. What kind of a message does that send? The human body is somehow “taboo” or “bad” and must be covered up, but blowing someone’s brains out is perfectly acceptable? In Europe or Asia, racy ads in papers or on T.V. are fine. Kids are taught that there’s nothing wrong with seeing some skin…as indeed there isn’t. And how about in extremist Muslim society, where women must cover their entire bodies, with only their eyes peeping out? Does anyone think that maybe it’s this kind of psychotic repression that’s leading to suicide bombings?! I mean, without seeing a naked woman every once in a while, I’d probably want to kill myself too!

But to get back to prostitution, trying to “wage war” or “crack down” on something that the general public wants is always doomed to fail, just like the “war on drugs.” People like drugs and want them, just like people like sex and want it. The difference is, some drugs are harmful and dangerous to the point that they should be illegal. But if a grown man (or woman) wants sex but not a relationship or the necessity of going through small talk, then who in their right mind would deny them, if a sex worker is only too willing to supply the service…for money? These are both consenting adults, and there’s simply no good reason that their transaction should be illegal. Making it so causes these situations like what happened with L.T. He’s a troubled man, yes, and misguided. But if he’d been horny one night, and said, well, instead of running the risk of bedding some indigent, underage runaway tonight, I can call any one of the thousands of qualified sex workers  that would be only too happy to fulfill my whims…for money, in a neat, clean business transaction. And think of all the cops that run around, undercover or otherwise, trying to catch hookers; they’d finally be free to solve some real crimes.

There’s a lot that America, great nation that is is, got right. This is something they got wrong, and there’s no logical reason for it. Sometimes to make society better, it is necessary to step back from it and take a long, hard, objective look at what’s working…and what clearly isn’t. This really seems like a no-brainer to me. Let’s take a page from the book of a lot of other sensible nations around the globe, who know that there are always going to be people in need, and others willing to service them. Let’s stop being prudes, and give people like L.T. options, if only so girls like his unfortunate victim stand less chance of  becoming a statistic next time around.