Steven M. Finkelstein

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.

Well, it’s that time again for Hollywood to unload all of its big-budget summer popcorn gobblers on the overfed, overstimulated American public. Let’s take a peek at some of the fare that will be on the menu over the next few months, and I’ll tell you which ones I’ll be attending, which ones I’m still undecided on, and which ones I wouldn’t lower myself to seeing if you paid me.

May 7: Iron Man 2- I’ll be there. The first Iron Man movie was one of the better opening chapters of a Marvel franchise in recent memory, better than the first Spider Man, and certainly better than Punisher, Ghost Rider, Daredevil…basically all of the Marvel Knights. Mickey Rourke has really resurrected his career with The Wrestler, and it’s great to see him land such a high profile role. Robert Downey Jr. has also fought back from drug problems and seems to have a good thing going as Tony Stark. I just still have some vague misgivings that he’ll relapse and spend the gazillion dollars they’re paying him on an aircraft carrier loaded with coke. We’ll see. John Favreau didn’t seem like the most obvious choice to direct the first I.M. but he did a great job…there’s no reason to think he won’t with this one too. This movie has had an absurd amount of advertising dollars thrown at it, but I have no doubt it’ll make it all back and then some. Look for this to top $500 million domestic, easily.

May 14th: Robin Hood- Ridley Scott plus Russel Crowe is usually a good combination. Gladiator was just a great all around action/adventure epic. But Russel Crowe is getting up there in years, and the addition of Kate Blanchett, Academy Award winner though she is, doesn’t do much to sweeten the deal for me. What I keep coming back to is that the previews remind me a lot of ‘King Arthur” from a few years ago, that went a long way toward launching Clive Owen’s career, but overall wasn’t that great. I’ll wait for the reviews.

May 21: Macgruber- even though this movie does feature some of my favorite WWE wrestlers, no. Not a chance in hell.

May 28th: Prince of Persia- this feels miscast. Jake Gyllenhaal has shown me something from time to time, but I don’t think I buy him as an action hero. Also, Ben Kingsley, oh, I’m sorry, sir Ben Kingsley, what the hell are you doing?! Will you just take anything these days? I’m not going to completely write this one off till I see the reviews, but I’m leaning strongly toward no.

May 28: Survival of the Dead- is it time for George Romero, the master of horror, to hang it up? Maybe. I saw Land of the Dead and pronounced it watchable. I mean, who doesn’t want to see John Leguizamo as a zombie? I missed Diary of the Dead, which didn’t get very good reviews, and I’m on the fence with this one. Romero can pretty much be credited with the creation of the zombie genre, one of my horror favorites. The original trilogy still stand out as some of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. But he still seems to going more or less by the old formula, while the genre has moved on. His movies are kind of like the old car that you keep driving for sentimental reasons, despite the fact that it desperately needs a new transmission. I’ll wait for the reviews.

June 11: The A Team- jury’s still out. I never saw the show, but I do like the cast here. Sharlto Copley really showed me something in last year’s sleeper hit District 9. Liam Neeson is always a plus, and Bradly Cooper is an up-and-comer; I liked his performance in The Hangover. I’ll wait for the reviews, but I get the feeling I’ll probably be checking it out.

June 30: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse- what am I, a twelve year old girl? Fuck no.

July 2: The Last Airbender- I’m not sure that giving M. Night. Shyamalan a huge budget and creative control was the best way to fix whatever the hell is wrong with him. I just can’t wait for the twist ending, when it’s revealed that the Airbender is a ghost/alien/Lady in the Water. Never was that one coming, did you! Skip it.

July 9: Predators- sigh. I loved the first two Predator movies, and it’s just gone to hell since then. Alien vs Predator was…not exactly unwatchable, but definitely disappointing. The one after that was a step in the wrong direction, but I still got excited when I heard there was a new one in the works. Then I heard the name Topher Grace, and I died a little inside. They should have called this new one Eric from That 70’s Show vs Predator. Topher Grace ruined Spider Man 3, being poorly cast as Venom, and this isn’t going to go any better. I guarantee it. Adrian Brody isn’t really going to help, in my opinion. I’ve seen the preview, and him talking in a growly voice and trying to be a bad-ass is just funny. He showed his action chops in King Kong, and I wasn’t impressed. I’ll wait for the reviews on this one, but sometimes you just know going in when a movie is going to blow chunks, and this one has all the makings of it.

July 16: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice- the Sorcerer’s Hair Plugs. If I want to see Nick Cage chewing the scenery, I’ll watch Gone in 60 Seconds on TBS. Skip it.

July 23: Salt- I don’t see movies where Angelina Jolie is the headliner. Maybe if she came out with a porno. Five years ago, before all the kids.

August 13: The Expendables- wow.  Sly Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke, and even an appearance by Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger?! This sounds like the blood splattered orgiastic kill frenzy action flick that I had wet dreams about…seventeen years ago, when all these guys were in their prime. Where the hell did this come from? I thought they were kidding three years ago when I heard that new Rocky and Rambo movies were coming out, but this is just getting ridiculous. This line up in 2010 sounds more like a Viagra commercial. I was and will always be a fan of most of these guys, but this is just embarrassing. This was ill-conceived from the start, and no, I will not be there to see these guys limp around the screen. I get the feeling no one else will either.

I have to say, it really seems like I’m skipping the majority of the “blockbusters” on tap for the next few months. There just isn’t anything I’m incredibly excited for…not until The Hobbit hits theaters, and that’s probably not till 2012. Hollywood just doesn’t have a lot of goodness for me at the moment. I’m sure there will be a couple of sleeper hits, though, there always are. That’s it for now, folks. To steal someone else’s catch phrase,  see you at the movies.