Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Full Disclosure
Via Matt Yglesias, we find that those damn feminists are all upset about the Department of Health and Human Services web page that's filled with propaganda rather than any actual facts. The centerpiece is the bit on abortion ...
"Abortions can have complications. There may be emotional consequences, as well: some women say that they feel sad and some use more alcohol or drugs than before."
That is indeed compelling. I have submitted to the government a possible addendum, certainly meeting the same rigorous intellectual standards:
"Childbirth can have complications. There may be emotional consequences as well: some women say that they feel sad and use more alcohol or drugs than before, or sometimes go batshit fucking crazy and kill their own kids."
I'll let you know what they say.
(NOTE: Before the angry comments start, this post is in no way dismissive of post-partum depression (not all the cases cited were post-partum). I'm simply using the same simplistic language and reasoning of the website I'm lampooning. Also, "batshit fucking crazy" is funny.)
(NOTE the SECOND: I have very rarely, after hunting for links for a post, felt so much like puking and hiding in a closet. if you want me, I'll be in my basement, watching Home Movies and rocking back and forth. Christ.)
"Abortions can have complications. There may be emotional consequences, as well: some women say that they feel sad and some use more alcohol or drugs than before."
That is indeed compelling. I have submitted to the government a possible addendum, certainly meeting the same rigorous intellectual standards:
"Childbirth can have complications. There may be emotional consequences as well: some women say that they feel sad and use more alcohol or drugs than before, or sometimes go batshit fucking crazy and kill their own kids."
I'll let you know what they say.
(NOTE: Before the angry comments start, this post is in no way dismissive of post-partum depression (not all the cases cited were post-partum). I'm simply using the same simplistic language and reasoning of the website I'm lampooning. Also, "batshit fucking crazy" is funny.)
(NOTE the SECOND: I have very rarely, after hunting for links for a post, felt so much like puking and hiding in a closet. if you want me, I'll be in my basement, watching Home Movies and rocking back and forth. Christ.)
"Mm-hmm. Mmm-hmm."
The bit I like is the little "mm-hmm" you hear her give near the end. The "I'm already not listening to you" sound one has heard a million times from a pissy co-worker. This woman's just been caught out admitting she doesn't understand her oath of office to the people of the United States and that she's misplaced her priorities in a cult of politicized hero-worship ...and she's treating it like Myra from HR is harassing her about the damn TPS forms again.
So here's a question. Is this Daddy love "politics above all" process specifically linked to the Bush Administration, or has it gotten into the center of the Republican Party Establishment? That is, I'm not saying that there's something inherently authoritarian about American Republicans, I don't agree with that characterization. But has the political party apparatus been essentially shanked because it's been run by these clowns for the last eight years, and once you've just got buckets and buckets of these people in the actual bureaucracy it's impossible to clean out the rot?
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Pravda on the Potomac
Totally grifting off the same post title as John Cole, because it's the best post title. From the testimony of the former Surgeon General:
Anyone with legal training can feel free to enlighten me in comments as to why that is not totally batshit insane. Can you just blow off subpoenas because your boss tells you to? Aces.
This is, to a great degree, why you don't let rich people be criminals. They're bad at it. But that's the nub of another post, so it'll wait.
If the Senate Republicans would stop filibustering literally everything, I'd almost be pleased at this point. Did you know you can't get anything passed in the Senate with a simple 51-49 majority? You need 60 votes, if the other side filibusters. The Senate Republicans have decided to derail the business of the people, and simply, effectively, shut down Congress and the Senate in a really elegant manner which almost no one in America intuitively understands.
Yes, yes, the Senate is there to avoid the tyranny of the majority, and force compromise. What no one seems to have anticipated, however, was a minority party that would simply refuse to compromise, ever. The Founding Fathers never anticipated a party of men for whom simple, childish obstructionism was a perfectly acceptable manner in which to while away the time while collecting a big-ass government paycheck.
Yet another reason I really would like to see the Senate abolished, but it ain't happening.
Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.Oh, and hey, look --The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.
Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.
And administration officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organization’s longtime ties to a “prominent family” that he refused to name.
WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Bush has ordered his former White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to defy a congressional subpoena and refuse to testify Thursday before a House panel investigating...
Anyone with legal training can feel free to enlighten me in comments as to why that is not totally batshit insane. Can you just blow off subpoenas because your boss tells you to? Aces.
This is, to a great degree, why you don't let rich people be criminals. They're bad at it. But that's the nub of another post, so it'll wait.
If the Senate Republicans would stop filibustering literally everything, I'd almost be pleased at this point. Did you know you can't get anything passed in the Senate with a simple 51-49 majority? You need 60 votes, if the other side filibusters. The Senate Republicans have decided to derail the business of the people, and simply, effectively, shut down Congress and the Senate in a really elegant manner which almost no one in America intuitively understands.
Yes, yes, the Senate is there to avoid the tyranny of the majority, and force compromise. What no one seems to have anticipated, however, was a minority party that would simply refuse to compromise, ever. The Founding Fathers never anticipated a party of men for whom simple, childish obstructionism was a perfectly acceptable manner in which to while away the time while collecting a big-ass government paycheck.
Yet another reason I really would like to see the Senate abolished, but it ain't happening.
Waiting Times
Ezra Klein, that dreamy young health care wonk, has an excellent bit on the primary bugaboo thrown at US taxpayers about universal health care coverage. Waiting times! WAITING TIMES!! He quotes a recent study:
He links to several articles and studies honing in on the same thing. This is one of the neatest tricks private health care providers have pulled off in the US. They have fooled people into thinking that just because they have insurance coverage, they are covered.
Usually, the vast number of uninsured in America are used as the moral baton with which to beat the system into a shape resembling every other industrialized nation in the world. This is wrong, because although it is morally laudale it does not tap into the deep, dark heart of the American psyche: "You are being hard done by. You are being ripped off." The universal receptor on the cells of the American body.
Focusing, relentlessly, on how you are not getting the service you think you're getting for the money you're spending is the way to move universal health care forward.
We may discuss some other transmission ideas concerning this issue, as another recent post of Ezra's raised seom questions, but I've got casting calls to make. More later, but in the meantime you could do worse than going to Ezra's joint and reading his health care posts and following the links to his health care articles.
A Commonwealth Fund study of six highly industrialized countries, the U.S., and five nations with national health systems, Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, found waiting times were worse in the U.S. than in all the other countries except Canada. And, most of the Canadian data so widely reported by the U.S. media is out of date, and misleading, according to PNHP and CNA/NNOC.
In Canada, there are no waits for emergency surgeries, and the median time for non-emergency elective surgery has been dropping as a result of public pressure and increased funding so that it is now equal to or better than the U.S. in most areas, the organizations say. Statistics Canada's latest figures show that median wait times for elective surgery in Canada is now three weeks.
"There are significant differences between the U.S. and Canada, too," said Burger. "In Canada, no one is denied care because of cost, because their treatment or test was not 'pre-approved' or because they have a pre-existing condition."
He links to several articles and studies honing in on the same thing. This is one of the neatest tricks private health care providers have pulled off in the US. They have fooled people into thinking that just because they have insurance coverage, they are covered.
Usually, the vast number of uninsured in America are used as the moral baton with which to beat the system into a shape resembling every other industrialized nation in the world. This is wrong, because although it is morally laudale it does not tap into the deep, dark heart of the American psyche: "You are being hard done by. You are being ripped off." The universal receptor on the cells of the American body.
Focusing, relentlessly, on how you are not getting the service you think you're getting for the money you're spending is the way to move universal health care forward.
We may discuss some other transmission ideas concerning this issue, as another recent post of Ezra's raised seom questions, but I've got casting calls to make. More later, but in the meantime you could do worse than going to Ezra's joint and reading his health care posts and following the links to his health care articles.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Cutting Veteran's Health Care and Transmission
From AP, via:
Wow. So rarely do you see a government spokesman actually admit, "Oh, no, we're not going to fuck American war vets. We're only saying we're going to fuck American war vets so we can lie about how the budget's going to be balanced. Isn't that better?"
Yes. Much.
But remember, the Defeatocrats don't support the troops! Only Bush followers support the troops by ... well, not with equipment or protecting their families from bankruptcy or taking care of them after they're wounded, buuuuuut ... even better methods!
Secret methods. Sweeeeet methods.
Deep in their secret patriot place.
You wouldn't understand.
All (weak) joking aside, this leads to a slightly larger issue about the 2008 elections. The next President, Democrat or Republican, is going to have to raise taxes. Period. We're in the shitter, kids, financially. It is crucial that the Democrats list three -- I say three, son, no more no less -- concrete things they are going to do with that money.
"Silly John, tax money goes into a general fund, it can't be directly --"
You, in the back. Shut the fuck up. The point is to work with the metaphors and processes already imprinted on our common experience. In my everyday life, when I spend money, I get some thing. Not "something." "Some thing."
Contrast this:
"We're going to raise taxes."
"Holy SHIT! You're going to raise my taxes?"
"No, we're raising mostly corporate and high-income ..."
"Did you hear that? These sonuvabitches are raising taxes! Like they always do!"
"Actually --"
"What are you going to do with my money?"
"A lot of very good stuff."
"Right."
With:
"We're passing a millionaire's tax, to pay for the care of wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan war."
"What are you going to do with --"
"We said. Take care of wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan War. Problem?"
"Of course not."
Simplistic? Of course. But transmittable. Not just from candidate to voter, but amongst voters. This element of -- here's the word, I know you hate it -- memetics seems to be an afterthought in most progressive political efforts. But the voter as vector for your ideas is far more powerful than 90% of the candidate's presentation of these ideas. Most people see a presidential candidate on their nightly news for maybe two minutes. Sometimes they read the slug headline on their AOL home page or see it one the Yahoo News screen at the local mall. Any substantive discussion of politics is within family and coworker communities.
The point is, yes, we do need to build political communities. But more important, we need to infect existing ones.
You're starting to see with the YouTube campaign video. However, there's a tendency to believe that somehow the technology is creating something new. Of course not. YouTube just makes video more transmittable. We need to do the same things with the ideas themselves to work in the medium of person-to-person interaction. The dizzying bit is that the Web extends our reach; we -- anyone -- can present our ideas to a startlingly large number of people very easily. But unless those ideas then hook into inter-personal communication, they skate off the surface and back out into the ether. I don't care how clever your ad is (it'll quickly be replaced by the next bit of video ephemera), or how pretty your speech is. Or how inspiring. If a listener doesn't come away with concrete ideas he can then transmit to other voters for you, the effort is not effective.
End of the day, stripping all the shiny new tech tools away, it's about crafting big thunky words people can remember in their very busy brains long enough to say with their clumsy old mouths to other people.
Washington - The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now - even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.
Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.
After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly - by more than 10 percent in many years - White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.
The proposed cuts are unrealistic in light of recent VA budget trends - its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office - sowing suspicion that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.
"Either the administration is willingly proposing massive cuts in VA health care," said Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, chairman of the panel overseeing the VA's budget. "Or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions."
Edwards said that a more realistic estimate of veterans costs is $16 billion higher than the Bush estimate for 2012.
In fact, even the White House doesn't seem serious about the numbers. It says the long-term budget numbers don't represent actual administration policies. Similar cuts assumed in earlier budgets have been reversed.
The veterans' cuts, said White House budget office spokesman Sean Kevelighan, "don't reflect any policy decisions. We'll revisit them when we do the (future) budgets."
The number of veterans coming into the VA health care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA's patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.
All told, the VA expects to treat about 5.8 million patients next year, including 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Wow. So rarely do you see a government spokesman actually admit, "Oh, no, we're not going to fuck American war vets. We're only saying we're going to fuck American war vets so we can lie about how the budget's going to be balanced. Isn't that better?"
Yes. Much.
But remember, the Defeatocrats don't support the troops! Only Bush followers support the troops by ... well, not with equipment or protecting their families from bankruptcy or taking care of them after they're wounded, buuuuuut ... even better methods!
Secret methods. Sweeeeet methods.
Deep in their secret patriot place.
You wouldn't understand.
All (weak) joking aside, this leads to a slightly larger issue about the 2008 elections. The next President, Democrat or Republican, is going to have to raise taxes. Period. We're in the shitter, kids, financially. It is crucial that the Democrats list three -- I say three, son, no more no less -- concrete things they are going to do with that money.
"Silly John, tax money goes into a general fund, it can't be directly --"
You, in the back. Shut the fuck up. The point is to work with the metaphors and processes already imprinted on our common experience. In my everyday life, when I spend money, I get some thing. Not "something." "Some thing."
Contrast this:
"We're going to raise taxes."
"Holy SHIT! You're going to raise my taxes?"
"No, we're raising mostly corporate and high-income ..."
"Did you hear that? These sonuvabitches are raising taxes! Like they always do!"
"Actually --"
"What are you going to do with my money?"
"A lot of very good stuff."
"Right."
With:
"We're passing a millionaire's tax, to pay for the care of wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan war."
"What are you going to do with --"
"We said. Take care of wounded veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan War. Problem?"
"Of course not."
Simplistic? Of course. But transmittable. Not just from candidate to voter, but amongst voters. This element of -- here's the word, I know you hate it -- memetics seems to be an afterthought in most progressive political efforts. But the voter as vector for your ideas is far more powerful than 90% of the candidate's presentation of these ideas. Most people see a presidential candidate on their nightly news for maybe two minutes. Sometimes they read the slug headline on their AOL home page or see it one the Yahoo News screen at the local mall. Any substantive discussion of politics is within family and coworker communities.
The point is, yes, we do need to build political communities. But more important, we need to infect existing ones.
You're starting to see with the YouTube campaign video. However, there's a tendency to believe that somehow the technology is creating something new. Of course not. YouTube just makes video more transmittable. We need to do the same things with the ideas themselves to work in the medium of person-to-person interaction. The dizzying bit is that the Web extends our reach; we -- anyone -- can present our ideas to a startlingly large number of people very easily. But unless those ideas then hook into inter-personal communication, they skate off the surface and back out into the ether. I don't care how clever your ad is (it'll quickly be replaced by the next bit of video ephemera), or how pretty your speech is. Or how inspiring. If a listener doesn't come away with concrete ideas he can then transmit to other voters for you, the effort is not effective.
End of the day, stripping all the shiny new tech tools away, it's about crafting big thunky words people can remember in their very busy brains long enough to say with their clumsy old mouths to other people.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Rainy Monday Morning Links
Ottawa or Portland, Oregon? Over the last month, I couldn't tell you the difference.
Reading: Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb and The Black Swan.
John Robb at Global Guerillas leads you to a nice introductory article on swarm theory. Actually, just go to his site and read the last YEAR'S worth of posts. I'm plowing through his amazing book on the evolution of open-source insurgencies for the second time, and it's both informative and an enjoyable read.
The single dumbest editorial I've read in ages. They're doing a thing on Open-Source media, over there at WIRED, too. Listen, what people like Tony Long and Andrew Keen seem to be completely missing is that the open-source information revolution is not being driven by the MySpace Amateurs -- they may as well type "dirty fucking hippies" (h/t Atrios) -- but by other professionals who are seeking more access and volunteering their expertise. These people act as the "knowledge nodes" around which the sheer manpower of interested volunteers can coalesce.
I particularly like how both men dig in on journalism as their test case. So when I read Christy Hardin Smith -- former prosecutor with years of experience -- during the Libby trial, fully knowing her political proclivities, I'm getting worse insight than the major metropolitan newspapers who often reprint White House press releases uncritically, without ever informing their readers of their own political agendas? Worse insight than from a major news show where the host is often friends with the politician he's supposed to be "grilling"? Bullshit. Bloggers at Talking Points Memo uncovered the DoJ attorney firings scandal, and were openly mocked by Time's Richard Cohen while they were developing it. That scandal as led to seven resignations, Congressional hearings, and may well cripple this White House. Yes, they're much worse journalists than Judy "WMD" Miller. Prats.
If it's teachable, it's learnable. A keen mind, a solid understanding of the scientific method and a bit of anger is far more valuable than you may at first imagine.
An interview with William Gibson on how sci fi is really about the present, not predicting the future.
I'm really a bit in love with the storyline Randy's got going over at the webcomic Something Positive. Davan's tracking down the man he's named after, a friend of his grandfather's -- and it turns out the man was a famous underground comic-porn artist in the 40's. That's a genuinely original storyline you'd never see on television.
Currently looking at, for another 4GW article: Sanctuary, with the writer's blog here.
For the pros, Craig Mazin discusses community building (or lack thereof) on a web forum for screenwriters, and the weirdness of the WGA elections.
Denis McGrath writes about the new Canadian content laws, which I really need to understand if I'm going to work up here. They're a bit ... obtuse. I actually had an easier time setting up a meeting with Sky Television in England than I've had nailing down which human to talk to up here, and from friends working right now I understand the insane CBC tradition of having accounting guys making creative decisions has not abated. But onward.
We continue to fund-raise. Info here.
Hmm, I wonder if Warren Ellis is actually contagious, because I feel like having a smoke and crawling back into bed, and I don't even smoke.
Reading: Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb and The Black Swan.
John Robb at Global Guerillas leads you to a nice introductory article on swarm theory. Actually, just go to his site and read the last YEAR'S worth of posts. I'm plowing through his amazing book on the evolution of open-source insurgencies for the second time, and it's both informative and an enjoyable read.
The single dumbest editorial I've read in ages. They're doing a thing on Open-Source media, over there at WIRED, too. Listen, what people like Tony Long and Andrew Keen seem to be completely missing is that the open-source information revolution is not being driven by the MySpace Amateurs -- they may as well type "dirty fucking hippies" (h/t Atrios) -- but by other professionals who are seeking more access and volunteering their expertise. These people act as the "knowledge nodes" around which the sheer manpower of interested volunteers can coalesce.
I particularly like how both men dig in on journalism as their test case. So when I read Christy Hardin Smith -- former prosecutor with years of experience -- during the Libby trial, fully knowing her political proclivities, I'm getting worse insight than the major metropolitan newspapers who often reprint White House press releases uncritically, without ever informing their readers of their own political agendas? Worse insight than from a major news show where the host is often friends with the politician he's supposed to be "grilling"? Bullshit. Bloggers at Talking Points Memo uncovered the DoJ attorney firings scandal, and were openly mocked by Time's Richard Cohen while they were developing it. That scandal as led to seven resignations, Congressional hearings, and may well cripple this White House. Yes, they're much worse journalists than Judy "WMD" Miller. Prats.
If it's teachable, it's learnable. A keen mind, a solid understanding of the scientific method and a bit of anger is far more valuable than you may at first imagine.
An interview with William Gibson on how sci fi is really about the present, not predicting the future.
I'm really a bit in love with the storyline Randy's got going over at the webcomic Something Positive. Davan's tracking down the man he's named after, a friend of his grandfather's -- and it turns out the man was a famous underground comic-porn artist in the 40's. That's a genuinely original storyline you'd never see on television.
Currently looking at, for another 4GW article: Sanctuary, with the writer's blog here.
For the pros, Craig Mazin discusses community building (or lack thereof) on a web forum for screenwriters, and the weirdness of the WGA elections.
Denis McGrath writes about the new Canadian content laws, which I really need to understand if I'm going to work up here. They're a bit ... obtuse. I actually had an easier time setting up a meeting with Sky Television in England than I've had nailing down which human to talk to up here, and from friends working right now I understand the insane CBC tradition of having accounting guys making creative decisions has not abated. But onward.
We continue to fund-raise. Info here.
Hmm, I wonder if Warren Ellis is actually contagious, because I feel like having a smoke and crawling back into bed, and I don't even smoke.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Giant. Frikkin'. Robots.
I noticed some other blogs have picked up the Libertas thing, and I'd like to be a killjoy and ask, politely, that everybody let it go. I'm spraying cold water on the dogfight, right now, before it becomes stupid.
Over at Libertas the reviewer Ridiculous Pseudonym graciously replies to my heads up -- and by the way, all joking aside, that is the best web handle I have seen in years.
Now, there's a (nigh-overwhelming) temptation to get all thoughtful here, and use this as a jumping-off point to talk about the things we looked as back in a "Liberal Hollywood" post last year sometime. My point is that in America there is this enormous cultural Hiroshima Mon Amour -- I prefer that to the Rashomon metaphor, thank you -- in that what we are locked in this ridiculous manufactured culture war and so rewrite our memories to reinforce this mind-lock.
But then I saw the movie again tonight. With a regular theater audience.
Premieres are stressful things, and I spent a great deal of the first time I saw the final cut still mentally processing. "Wow, that's what that scene looks like", "Oh, they cut that bit from the shooting script", and "Jesus, Shia LeBeouf is going to be a frikkin' mega-star." etc.
And I will admit, when I first heard about the little Conservitas thing, I was ticked. On this blog, you guys get an honest look at what it's like being a writer, and sometimes that means seeing me not at my best. Longtime readers know I will sometimes snap at you, often disagree with you, occasionally go out of my way to humiliate you if you try to bring trash into my wee blog house. But I will never lie to you.
So the truth is, I work hard, pay my bills, try to give a little back, and whenever I see people just assume there's no way I can be patriotic, or all "good" things automatically qualify as "conservative", I knee-jerk.
But tonight in that theater, I remembered. Seeing people scream and clap, I remembered that I got into this business because I wanted to write goddam huge images that you never imagined seeing in the real world. If some percentage of the country has to watch a giant frikkin' robot movie with a checklist, well, if that makes them happy, as long as they like the movie, God Bless.
I moved from television into film to write just this sort of big-adventure stuff. And tonight, instead of carrying all the creative disappointments, the vicious studio infighting, the monstrous unravelling of wonderful projects, all the crap of the last twenty years of career with me into the theater...
... I let it go. I realized that yeah, I was in the dark with a hundred strangers, seeing the dream, the heart of the stories I love to watch and try to tell -- heroic soldiers fight against impossible odds while the fate of the world rests on a boy and his car.
Stephen Spielberg and Michael Bay made that happen, up there, on the thirty-foot screen. Tonight I was reminded how grateful I should be for the small, very small, part I play in the Dream Factory. I am the luckiest twelve year old boy in the world.
Oh, and that JJ Abrams project? The one with the kick-ass teaser trailer? I nearly leapt out of my seat when I saw that Drew Goddard wrote it. I've mentioned him before. He's unspeakably talented.
That. Is going to be. Amaaaaazzzzing.
Over at Libertas the reviewer Ridiculous Pseudonym graciously replies to my heads up -- and by the way, all joking aside, that is the best web handle I have seen in years.
First off, my congratulations to John on his success with the film, and for his part in making the first movie in a long time that openly treats our country, military, government, and ideals in a positive, fair, and respectful way. And I must say, it’s good to hear from him that those values are shared by his fellow “progressives.” Hopefully, that means we’ll see more of it on screen than we have in the past.
Now, there's a (nigh-overwhelming) temptation to get all thoughtful here, and use this as a jumping-off point to talk about the things we looked as back in a "Liberal Hollywood" post last year sometime. My point is that in America there is this enormous cultural Hiroshima Mon Amour -- I prefer that to the Rashomon metaphor, thank you -- in that what we are locked in this ridiculous manufactured culture war and so rewrite our memories to reinforce this mind-lock.
But then I saw the movie again tonight. With a regular theater audience.
Premieres are stressful things, and I spent a great deal of the first time I saw the final cut still mentally processing. "Wow, that's what that scene looks like", "Oh, they cut that bit from the shooting script", and "Jesus, Shia LeBeouf is going to be a frikkin' mega-star." etc.
And I will admit, when I first heard about the little Conservitas thing, I was ticked. On this blog, you guys get an honest look at what it's like being a writer, and sometimes that means seeing me not at my best. Longtime readers know I will sometimes snap at you, often disagree with you, occasionally go out of my way to humiliate you if you try to bring trash into my wee blog house. But I will never lie to you.
So the truth is, I work hard, pay my bills, try to give a little back, and whenever I see people just assume there's no way I can be patriotic, or all "good" things automatically qualify as "conservative", I knee-jerk.
But tonight in that theater, I remembered. Seeing people scream and clap, I remembered that I got into this business because I wanted to write goddam huge images that you never imagined seeing in the real world. If some percentage of the country has to watch a giant frikkin' robot movie with a checklist, well, if that makes them happy, as long as they like the movie, God Bless.
I moved from television into film to write just this sort of big-adventure stuff. And tonight, instead of carrying all the creative disappointments, the vicious studio infighting, the monstrous unravelling of wonderful projects, all the crap of the last twenty years of career with me into the theater...
... I let it go. I realized that yeah, I was in the dark with a hundred strangers, seeing the dream, the heart of the stories I love to watch and try to tell -- heroic soldiers fight against impossible odds while the fate of the world rests on a boy and his car.
Stephen Spielberg and Michael Bay made that happen, up there, on the thirty-foot screen. Tonight I was reminded how grateful I should be for the small, very small, part I play in the Dream Factory. I am the luckiest twelve year old boy in the world.
Oh, and that JJ Abrams project? The one with the kick-ass teaser trailer? I nearly leapt out of my seat when I saw that Drew Goddard wrote it. I've mentioned him before. He's unspeakably talented.
That. Is going to be. Amaaaaazzzzing.
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