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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Watched 10/4 - 12.

Lie to Me, House, Dollhouse, SNL, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, The Colbert Report, Bored to Death, TUF, NCIS, Community, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Mentalist, The Office, some old Simpsons episodes.

Rome - watched both seasons of the HBO series. Quite excellent. Highly entertaining and recommended to anyone who thinks they might have the slightest interest. Kevin McKidd and Ray Stevenson were outstanding.

Cathouse - another HBO show. Docu-series of the life at times at the brothel the Bunny Ranch. Equal parts intriguing, fascinating, goofy and ridiculous. Watched both seasons. Gotta admit, the psychology of legal sex workers in a culture like the U.S. is pretty illuminating. And there was lots of nakedness.

Wonder Woman - the recent DCU Animated features are surprisingly awesome. This one had some very mature humor, not to mention crowds of Amazons cheering multiple beheadings and the TOTAL WIN of Nathan Fillion voicing Steve Trevor. Recommended for anybody with the geek gene.

Smallville - you know... I try to like this show. I generally check out the season premieres and finales, and the "special" eps, like last year's Legion ep. The Metallo ep wasn't bad, with Brian Austin Green turning in a nice performance [yes, Brian Austin Green.] But god this season is full of suck. Not only do they have an emo Clark [still] decked out like Neo from the Matrix - 10 years after that design scheme was remotely interesting - but this week's episode was a zombie-28 Day Later riff. Turned it off after 15m. If you're trying to be relevant to the cultural mileu, stop aping stuff from 5-10 years ago. Or at least bring something interesting to it. Jesus.

FlashForward - fascinating concept, but having a hard time investing in the characters. John Cho goes from being maybe the most interesting the first week to the most annoying, whining and in denial moron in the second. 3rd ep was interesting though. I'll keep checking it out for a bit...

The Daily Show - Larry Wilmore doing magic was awesome. And the SECNAV was pretty funny, as far as government types go.

Zach Galifianakis - Comedy Central Presents and Live at the Purple Onion. Galifianakis is hilarious. Zach Galifianakis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Galifianakis performed in episode 15 of season 5 of Comedy Central Presents, first aired 17 September 2001, including stand-up jokes, a segment with a piano, and concluding with an a cappella group (The Night Owls, introduced as his '12 ex-girlfriends') singing 'Eternal Flame' by The Bangles while he made jokes with flip charts and pranced around in tights."
DREAM.11: Feather Weight Grand Prix 2009 Final Round - outstanding fight event. The Tokoro, Kawajiri, Aoki-Hansen matches all rocked. I always enjoy watching Sakuraba fight, even if they put him up against a scrub of a boxer with no shot in hell. But the fight of the night for me was easily Hong Man Choi VS Minowaman. A lot of fans these days decry the "freak show" aspect of fights in Japan, as opposed to the "sport" direction it's taken in the US under the UFC, but you know what? I enjoy the hell out of both. Here you got to watch a normal dude take out a 7 foot, 300 pound behemoth. It was the definition of brilliant.

Camp FEMA: American Lockdown - Hat tipped to me by a buddy, so I felt obligated to check it out. Decent production values for a conspiracy doc, but if you read, seen or watched anything by Alex Jones, this was all pretty much old hat. Jones was actually featured fairly prominently in this one as well, but it wasn't one of his.

It was totally worth it to watch all the way through to watch Jones bitchslap the hell out of Glenn Beck at the end. Beck is a crocodile-tear shedding fear monger who's such an obvious fraud I have no clue how's he caught on. Odd... Jones really believes [I think] some of the same stuff Beck pretends to - and it's all kinda crazy [sometimes] but I have all sorts of respect for Jones and wouldn't piss on Beck if he were on fire.

But as to the documentary itself... here's the thing...

Yes. The US has a history of interning its own citizens [WWII] - and yes, they used census data, so it's not all insano - the government reserves the right to label anyone they want as a "terrorist" including militias, anti-abortionists, animal rights activists, environmentalists and basically anybody they don't like. They will torture as a matter of policy. They will render you to other countries so that you can be tortured while keeping their hands clean. They have implemented laws that basically do away with Posse Comitatus and let them deploy U.S. troops - NorthCom - on American soil in the event of "civil unrest" and they have plans for martial law and "continuance of government" that pretty much uses the Constitution as a dishrag.

But.

Here's the thing... the government has also had Operation CHAOS, secretly brought Nazis to work in America - Operation Paperclip - wanted to pull off Operation Northwoods to attack its own citizens and scammed the whole world with the Gulf of Tonkin. Amongst a lot of other scandalous shit. And things survive. People persevere. Conspiracies never last.

Ultimately, complex conspiracies don't make it because people are too dumb, venal and complicated. Or, I don't know... too good, maybe. And every conspiracy group has at least 5 other conspiracy, uhhh... I mean affinity, ummm... lobbyist groups, working to oppose them.

I don't for a second buy that anybody at FOXNEWS authentically gives a shit about Obama's big government, not after falling in lockstep the last 8 years of the Bush administration, while he exceeded his office's authority almost daily, blew up the budget and blew up the world. But Obama can't sneeze without them making a big deal out of it, so I don't think he's gonna manage a ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT anytime soon.

Here Robert Anton Wilson tells you everything you need to know about conspiracies.

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