The critic is dead. Long live the critic!

Either they don’t know… or don’t show or just don’t care…

about bein’ a menace to South Central

while they drink their juice in the hood.

It was 1996, two men are sitting down talking about the nature of comedy and how it is used to bring to light the issues of race and stereotypes. The movie in question? “Don’t Be A Menace In South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood”. The two men? Siskel and Ebert on their show, “At The Movies”. In four minutes, these two film critics had an intelligent discussion about a satirical film that could have easily been dismissed as just another “ghetto” film. And if that wasn’t enough, Ebert, in a very honest moment says that he’s unsure how he feels about the film. Imagine that? A critic who didn’t “criticize” the film, but rather took the highs and the lows and weighed them for what they were.

I love French films, 

pretentious boring French films!

 I love French Films, two tickets s’il vous plaît!

The role of the critic is a thankless one. These are folks who usually go to school to study the particular field that they are into. They take the history of such-and-such, they read, they partake, they pour themselves all over the medium, yet they don’t create anything but an opinion.

Who chooses to be a critic? No, really, I’m asking. Who purposely decides that they want to look at art and pull apart every aspect of it until nothing remains?

I used to think these people were all frustrated artists, the very epitome of “those who cannot, teach”. But the fact is, a true critic unabashedly loves every aspect of their genre, and will be damned to see it sullied by those who would coast on passable material. At least, that’s how it started.

So, I could go back into the history of the critic, specifically the film critic, but it’s pretty much only interesting to people who are critics. Let’s just say that at one point is was only done by a few people, and that it only got huge when two guys came on TV to share their opinions on films.

There was an explosion of film critics in the ‘80s. And what made them fascinating is the fact that they grew up in a time where “Hollywood Legends” were pretty much accessible. These were journalists who in the ‘60s and ‘70s talked to actors and filmmakers directly. There was a rapport that seems artificial when you watch critics today.

We watched what they had to say and for the most part listened. I know I had my opinions swayed by a critic here and there without giving the film a chance. And why wouldn’t I? These are professionals, right?

In the Summer of 2000, a critic came around by the name of David Manning. David had some great things to say about certain movies. According to David, “A Knight’s Tale”, starring Heath Ledger described him as “this year’s hottest new star!” Now, I personally agree with David, I loved the hell out of this movie and frankly, I think it was Heath’s best performance outside of The Joker.

Yup, David loved a lot of movies, curiously, only films made by Sony, but it would soon come to light why. David wasn’t real. David Manning was a pseudonym used by a marketing executive working for the Sony Corporation. They created a fake critic to give their films positive reviews.

Sony wasn’t the only studio at fault for fake criticism. One critic’s review of “Live Free or Die Hard” was shortened from “hysterically overproduced and surprisingly entertaining” to “hysterically… entertaining.”

And of course, there are the junkets, the free screenings, the food, the accomodations to wherever, the goodies. Studios would do just about everything to get a positive review from these people whom apparently held the keys to the opinions of the common man. But the common man’s (or rather, those who didn’t get kickbacks to watch a movie) voice became the death knell of the critic. Because the internet.

There is no secret that when social media hit, everyone with access became just that little bit louder. And by a little bit louder, I mean everyone felt that their opinion had to be typed in boldfaced fonts and youtubed from their bedrooms, shirtless, sometimes bottomless.

Sites like metacritic became the go-to go-to for what regular folks thought of films. The professional critic slowly became something to be scoffed at, ridiculed, and even mocked. People began to see them as archaic. Even filmmakers began to question why should critics have their opinions held in higher regard than anyone else?

Slowly, the hashtag started to creep onto film posters. The voice of the people was now visible in commercials, in the theaters, and of course online. The professional critic was relegated to blogs and the few websites that still catered to that kind of thing.

The critic was dead. Long live (for better or for worse) the new critic! The very loud, noisy, at times incomprehensible critic!

There is no arguing that the hashtag has become the means in which most people garner opinions. The live-tweet is just a torrent of short one-liners, not unlike the taglines from the movie posters. And although everyone has their opinion, and everyone is entitled to one. A part of me feels that not every opinion is created equal. There is something to be said about a person who studies a particular craft, and can tell you with a learned opinion about what a filmmaker tried to convey; versus someone who went to watch a movie and didn’t understand why the sex scene was filmed in the way it was, but tweeted, #DAT ASS.

I recently posted (in another blog) that I’ve yet to see “Godzilla”. However, I’ve had some friends tell me they loved it, and others tell me it was terrible. I tend to lean to those who I know have a bit of film knowledge. Is it snobbery? I don’t think wanting an opinion from someone who is “in the know” is such a bad thing. But for a lot of people, critics are shit. And at the end of the day, a person is going to enjoy what they enjoy despite of what other people say. Still, I have to say I do miss an educated opinion, not necessarily to sway me, but to start a conversation. And that above all, is what I feel is missing in today’s new critic. Everyone’s yelling, and no one’s listening.

Greetings, Earthlings

If anyone reads my blog; other than the few I know who do, it may seem like I'm pessimistic on my outlook of humanity. Truth is, I love humanity. For all its failings (and let's be honest, there are a shit ton), humanity can do one thing that no other animal on this planet can do. Cross-species empathy. A human who is aware of another species pain has the unique ability to help them in a way that no other animal can do. When we see a bird with an injured wing, we can mend them. When we see a species on the brink of extinction (be it our fault or not), we can use our tools to bring them back. This ability to care about something other than ourselves is probably the sole guiding love I have for our species and that keeps me from giving up on us. It is just a goddamn shame we can't share that empathy with ourselves.

To say that this past year and the beginning of this year have not been our best hour would be an exaggeration. Hell, in the days that I've started and stopped writing this post, there was another person of color killed by police, several terrorist attacks, and even more human tragedy. It's as if we continue to stare into the abyss and the abyss just keeps getting wider and wider, and we're about to fall in at any moment. How is it that we can go on? How is it that we can just overlook the disgusting nature of humanity and pretend to have a good day? Truth is, we can't, and more importantly, we shouldn't.

We should never be blind to the horrors we do. We should never not know about the atrocities, the lies, the betrayal, the murder that one human being does to another. We should feel every injustice, every evil, every disgusting aspect of humanity. We should take them all, and with love, hand-in-hand with each other, we should stand, as one. And in one unified voice say, "No more."

These are things we should do, but we don't. At least not all of us. There will always (and I do mean always) be those who just want to see the world burn. How do you fight something that has nothing but hate in their hearts? You do it, by being the change that you want to be in the world.

And I just don't mean by talking about it. It's easy to say, "Oh, I hate murder." Hating the thing that you would never do because you wouldn't go to those extremes is easy. You have to actively stand for the little things that represent the broader scopes you claim to uphold.

You say you respect women? Then do so, and not only when it suits you. If women have issues with the way they're treated in entertainment, in social media, in life; don't all of a sudden assume that there's something wrong with them because the things you enjoy are being brought into question. Listen to what they have to say. Hear the injustice they feel. Understand the fear they go through on a daily basis even if you're not the direct cause of it but the thing you happen to be into is a factor. Stand with them and say, "No one should live in fear or feel like they are being treated as inferior."

You say you're not racist? Then don't discriminate on the basis of cultures that you don't understand and assume that because someone looks a certain way that he or she must be something that has been negatively stereotyped. Don't get offended when a particular race says you will never understand their plight because you have never been put in that situation. Don't pretend you even know for a second what it feels like to be in a country where the color of your skin defines your importance to a situation. Stand with them and say, "No one should suffer this injustice."

You say you're for freedom? Then don't begrudge others the same freedoms. Don't belittle the protests of those who want to have their voices heard. Don't turn away someone who wants the same freedoms you more than likely take for granted. Stand with them and say, "No one should silence the rights that we claim to uphold."

When we're at our most mediocre, our worst tends to run rampant. We allow fear to dictate what we pick and choose to stand up for. But when we're at our best, when we come together as one, when we solidify as brothers and sisters; there's nothing we can't do together. We are capable of such beauty despite our horrors. I know we can, I have seen glimpses of it, I know it exists. We, all of us, we just need to take a stand. Not only for ourselves, but for the planet. We're all Earthlings here. Let's start acting like it.

The Falling of Man

Pretty sure he's going to blame her for everything

From as far back as I can remember, Man has been falling. Growing up Catholic, I obviously got the goods about all the bads that comes along with being human. Turns out I had sins as soon as I was born!

Seems like a couple thousand years ago, they went on and on about how we screwed up and got ourselves kicked out of God's good graces. Since then, man has been struggling to get their shit together now that the odds were forever not in our favor. But it didn't stop there. The same old song and dance has been carried on from generation to generation and with each telling it seems that humans are getting worse. You'd think at some point someone would get the idea to put a stop to all this falling. We'd get our crap together and as a collective species say, "enough is enough". That is obviously easier said than done. In a world where the collective voices of human beings gets louder and louder, less and less people will be heard and those with something to actually say will be drowned out.

Humanity has made attempts to answer why we are the way we are. Religion likes to act like they got a handle on this. They lay the blame squarely on our shoulders, which is fair. We are to blame for our actions and inactions. The "why" becomes a point of contention. Some feel it's in our nature. Some feel there are external forces at work. Others stick their head in the sand and hope someone will come along to solve the problem with no actual effort from themselves. The scholars and non-scholars have struggled over this question since... ...well, since they looked around and noticed that shit was going south. I believe it's a combination of many things. For example:

• Do I consider myself a good person? - Yes.
• Do I try to do make the world a better place? - Yes.
• Do you do enough? - Probably not.
• Why not? - A combination of means, necessities, and wants that factor into what I can contribute to the world.
• Are you a greedy bastard? - Not at all.
• Then why would you put your needs and wants before the world? - Because I feel that by achieving the thing I want to do in life, I'll be able to better contribute to the world than if I just did any old thing, even if that "thing" would probably benefit the world in the interim.

Now if we generously multiplied that kind of thinking to about half the population, that's three and a half billion people who are trying to do something for themselves in hopes to make the world a better place in the long run rather than going out and building a house for the homeless or signing up for the Peace Corps.

Are we assholes for wanting to do something that'd make us happy and therefore others happy as well? For the sake of rhetoric, I'm gonna say no. But that's one less house for a homeless person, that's one less field that gets planted, that's one less kid who gets vaccinated. Add that up three and a half billion times; that's a whole lot of shit that gets missed, not to mention the other three and a half billion people who are actually assholes (probably not, but bear with me) and really let shit get out of hand. It becomes a recipe for disaster. So here we are. We soared so high with wings made of wax that we screwed ourselves and have been falling, with style, since the dawn of man. I guess my question to those out there flapping their hands along with me is: If we're falling, did we get pushed or did we trip?

Maybe he deserved it?

We are screwing up as a species. All you have to do is stick your head out of your Hobbit hole and take a gander. We are raping and pillaging every natural resource of this planet like, well, like us. We are killing each other for any reason we can find. We are destroying ourselves, our future, and any chance for humanity to continue on. And the crux of it all is that we know it!

Some people lie to themselves, they amass ignorance in forms of money, disinformation, and so-called "goods" then proceed to pretend that the world is just fine. They know they're falling, I haven't run into a single human who thinks the world is absolutely perfect the way it is. But instead of acknowledging it, they point their fingers and blame everyone else for the fall except themselves.

Others see the fall, and try to do what they can for the rest of us. They surround themselves with smart people, those who can make a difference. Like a blanket fort of change, all are welcome and together, we can try to save ourselves. But because these are very smart people, they know that no matter what, we are plummeting, even in our blanket fort of change, we are heading down.

You see, humans have made way too many mistakes, the point of no return was about forty years ago. The world as we know it is and will change, there's no argument about that. The important question is; when we land, will it be on our feet or on our backs?

About seventy thousand years ago, there was a thing called the Toba catastrophe. It was a super-volcanic explosion followed by a volcanic winter that brought the human population down to about ten thousand people. The seven billion people who are alive today are alive because of ten thousand humans who through sheer force of will, managed to land on their feet from a massive fall. They dusted themselves off, and probably managed to take a few steps before they were either pushed or tripped.

I think the one thing we can count on mankind to do is to fall. Whether pushed or tripped, it seems to be our shining grace. When we fall, we do so with such gusto that there's a morbid admiration to it. we are capable of so many amazing things, it's a shame that the horrid reality mars what could be seen as a beautiful fall akin to Douglas Adam's sperm whale.

“Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet.
And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more.
This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it.
Ah … ! What’s happening? it thought.
Er, excuse me, who am I?
Hello?
Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life?
What do I mean by who am I?
Calm down, get a grip now … oh! this is an interesting sensation, what is it? It’s a sort of … yawning, tingling sensation in my … my … well I suppose I’d better start finding names for things if I want to make any headway in what for the sake of what I shall call an argument I shall call the world, so let’s call it my stomach.
Good. Ooooh, it’s getting quite strong. And hey, what’s about this whistling roaring sound going past what I’m suddenly going to call my head? Perhaps I can call that … wind! Is that a good name? It’ll do … perhaps I can find a better name for it later when I’ve found out what it’s for. It must be something very important because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of it. Hey! What’s this thing? This … let’s call it a tail – yeah, tail. Hey! I can can really thrash it about pretty good can’t I? Wow! Wow! That feels great! Doesn’t seem to achieve very much but I’ll probably find out what it’s for later on. Now – have I built up any coherent picture of things yet?
No.
Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I’m quite dizzy with anticipation …
Or is it the wind?
There really is a lot of that now isn’t it?
And wow! Hey! What’s this thing suddenly coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding name like … ow … ound … round … ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?
And the rest, after a sudden wet thud, was silence.
Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”

Here's hoping we meet a better fate.

A Year In A Land Down Unda

On the 22nd of this month, it'll be one year since I left my hometown of 37 years, San Francisco, and moved to Australia to be with my wife.

To say that it has been surreal would be an understatement. I am quite literally on the other side of the planet (I am using "literally" in the informal state making it an emphasis rather than what the word actually means, which is okay now because people have used it wrong for so fucking long that the dictionary just said, "Fuck it, just put it in that way, we give up"). It's November and it's hot. No "Turkey Day" celebrating a buncha ill-prepared white folks who took advantage of an indigenous population; though if I looked hard enough I'm sure I'd find a holiday here just like that. I haven't had a decent burrito that I haven't made myself. And I'm missing out on the McRib! Which, to be fair, is probably a good thing.

Needless to say, my world has been figuratively turned upside down. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I thought when I came here I acclimated well. It wasn't until several months here that a friend of mine mentioned to me that I must be feeling discombobulated. Turns out, I really was! Things are so different here. I miss Mexican food, I miss good Chinese food, I miss the fact that those two options were on the same block for me along with everything else I loved to eat. I miss my neighborhood of Bernal Heights, if you ever get the chance, head on over there. It's the best hood in SF that hasn't been completely hipsterized. I miss the people, I miss the homeless guy who once gave me change when it looked like I had none. I miss my friends whom I saw less and less over the years, but when we actually did get together, it's as if not a day went by since last we hung out; only now there were small children hanging around and no one wakes up in their own (or someone else's) urine, unless it's from one of the small children. I miss my family. My grandfather passed away a couple of months ago. I knew when I kissed him goodbye that it was the last time I'd see him. I miss my nephews, I was with those kids just about every day. I miss movies and television coming out in a timely fashion. I miss cheaper everything. I miss the ocean (currently landlocked).

And even with all those things, I wouldn't trade what I have here for any of that (though a good burrito would be a close call), because not only do I love my wife, and do so more each and every day I'm with her, I love this place.

I love that I'm not afraid that I'll get mugged or shot if I take a walk at night. I love that there are kids who walk home from school like I used to when I was a kid. I love that I'm surrounded by nature. I walk two minutes in any direction and I may walk into a kangaroo, though my chances of getting mugged by a kangaroo jumps to one thousand percent at that point. I love how quaint this town can be. I love that sugar and corn isn't injected into every motherfucking thing I eat. I love the seafood here. I love that my news isn't death and murder and hatred and fear. I love that I'm avoiding the stupidity of my government (though the stupidity of this government is getting right up there). I love that I now have a niece that makes me smile every time I see her. Above all, I love the fact that after six years of long distance phone calls, Skype calls, the few months of being in each other's company; I can finally, and without fear of when will be the next time, reach next to me and hold my sleeping wife.

A year being with the woman I love is the kind of happiness I'd wish for everyone. Of course getting used to life on the flip side is an adjustment, but what in life isn't? I think back to the question my friend asked me; yeah, it took some time getting my head straight, might've taken this whole year to do so. But if he would've asked me if I was happy, I wouldn't have had to think twice on that one.

I am very happy, I look forward to spending the rest of my life with Ruth, be it here or back in the states. Whatever comes, it'll be the both of us together, and I'll never have to doodle something like this from one of the times we were just hanging out on Skype.

Now I just need to learn to make better burritos.

- Too lazy to tout the computer around so this was douched from my iPhone

Remembering Grandpa

My grandfather passed away a couple of hours ago. I'm halfway around the world right now, so I couldn't be there with him at the end. But I was there with him for almost twenty years, I spent more time with him than anyone else other than my grandmother, so sufficed to say, I knew him rather well.

He was a tough old guy. He was made of iron. He had a belly made of iron, forearms that made Hellboy's rock hand look like it was made of silly putty, and his hands were covered in callouses.

And man, was he ever pissed. The guy lived upset of just about everything. I think it fueled him right to the bitter end. He was hard on his kids, but as he got older, man, was he the biggest softy in the world to his grandkids and great grandkids.

If you asked him about his politics or views on society, he'd sound like one of those old fashioned racists that we know some old folks to be. But if you saw him from day to day like I did, the man got along with everyone he met, and everyone he met dug the hell out of him. I remember once filling out his voting form, and of course he wanted me to tick "no" on the gay marriage act. I, of course confused him into voting for "yes" on gay marriage. Not a couple of days later, we were driving around, and we happened across a gay couple on the street. They were holding hands, and he flippantly said, "They should just get married and get it over with." That made me laugh, that's the kind of guy he was.

He may have been one of the most stubborn guys you ever met. But my grandfather was also one of the most giving men I ever knew. He may bitch and moan about doing a particular thing, but he'd do it, cause he loved his family. And we love him.

My grandfather never once refused to help me when I needed it. I hope that I could be as giving to my grandkids one day.

He would've hated the hoopla that's about to go down at his funeral (not sure when that will be), he hated anyone having much ado over him.

So invite you all to take a drink when you get a chance, (which is what he would've done) and help me toast my grandfather.

Papa Oscar, I love you so much you cantankerous, lovable man. I'm glad that when I left, I got to kiss you goodbye and tell you I love you. I'm glad we got the last moment together, and I will be forever grateful for everything you have done for me. I have some of the best memories with you, thank you for being there for me, and thank you for having my back.

Love you forever.

And here's a song I know you loved. Take care old timer.

Oh Captain, My Captain...

A legend in his own right

I have a vivid memory of a man. He’s standing on a stage in front of a crowd. He’s a comedian, and for the last thirty minutes he has made me laugh. This is of no surprise to me, this man has made me laugh my entire life. I can’t remember a time when this man wasn’t around. The tingles that ran down my spine in excitement when he stands up on a railing, squinting with one eye and a pipe in his mouth exclaiming for all to hear, “Who am I?” The time when I was too young to watch this man put his hand between Billy Crystal’s legs and pretended to be his penis. The times I hoped that when Mork from Ork called Orson, Orson would never call him back. The time he granted wishes and wished for freedom. The time he was Pan the man. The time he burned his fake boobs. All these moments and more are riddled in my life, but one stuck out. This one time in particular, the time Robin Williams invited an audience into his mind.

If you've never seen Robin Williams do stand-up, it's like watching a meteor shower; if you blink you'll miss the rapid fire deliverance of a joke that he teased earlier that you had no idea he'd come back to it. I was just a kid watching this stand-up from 1978, Comedy Central used to show old stand-up sets. It was "Robin Williams Live at the Roxy" and Robin motions to open his head so that we could go on a magical journey inside the inner workings of his machinations, and what a journey it was. This was a side of Robin I had never experienced. He was going to-and-fro in his mind, from the intro to the setup. He argued with his own mind and threatened to release the subconscious. When he finally does, he comes out, crotch in hand, flips off the audience and exclaims in a way that was more true than act, "Fuck you! What do you want from me anyway?" And just as methodically, he closes his head and slowly goes into the next part of his act. But I wasn't ready to move on, I did not have the time to process what I saw. I saw brilliance, I saw a genius mind being honest, and quite possibly, I saw a sad man be too honest.

I wanted to grab the people in the audience, I wanted to shake Tony Danza, Henry Winkler, and John Ritter; all these famous people I recognized. I wanted to stop them from laughing and say, "Wait! Did you not see? That wasn't an act! That was real! That was a true soul in its bare and most honest state!

As a kid, I never witnessed comedy like that, if you can actually call it comedy. It was more a  play of Robin Williams experimenting in the playground that was Robin Williams. After that, Robin could do no wrong for me. You could take his greatest films and you can put them up against the not-so-good ones and I will still take "Robin Williams Live at the Roxy" as his greatest performance, one that outshines the good and the bad. One that I can truly say, changed my life.

I'm late to the game of posting about Robin. For the last two weeks, I have been moving house and without internet. When my wife told me that he passed away. I was floored like the rest of the world. And saddened still to find out how he passed away. The internet exploded with posts about Robin. Most in sadness, a few in anger, others who were dismissive of him. I knew right away that I wanted to blog about him. I never had the good fortune to meet Robin (though, being from the same hometown, I always felt a connection to him). What I knew of him I knew through his films, what he shared, and what I always heard from people. Everything that was ever said about the man was that he was sweet, shy, loving, and one of the funniest people you'd ever meet. I liked that a man like that existed, I liked even more that he seemed to be a genuinely good man. I watched his films, not with a grain of salt because "oh this is Robin without the beard, so you know it's going to be over-the-top and silly", but because he was in them, and I loved the man. So the day he passed away, I cried.

There has been only one other time in my life where someone I didn't know had passed away and I cried. That was Christopher Reeve. He was my Superman, how could it not hit me?

Robin wasn't my Superman. Robin was my voice in Vietnam. He was my alien that wanted to learn about Earth. He was my father who loved me so much he pretended to be my nanny. He was my robot who wanted to be human. He was my genie that I set free. He was my doctor who made me laugh. He was captain, my captain. And in that stand-up, the one that changed my life. The one where he let you into his mind and shared a scary journey of him. He was me.

There are people out there much smarter than me who talk about the depression Robin suffered, who remind us that we are not alone and that there's a hand out there in the darkness. I hope that if you ever find yourself down that dark road that you remember you are not alone, that Robin Williams felt just like you did, and that there are those around you that will be there for you to pull you out of that darkness.

I have had trouble trying to convey what I wanted to say in this post. I have stopped and started several times, I didn't know where to go with it. I guess I just wanted to hear myself say how much I loved this man and how dearly I will miss that infectious laugh and that sad smile, you know the one. We have all seen it. And I guess if there are others like me out there that felt like you were kicked in the gut when you found out that he was gone, you're not alone.

Thank you, Robin. Thank you for helping me find my little spark of madness by sharing yours with me. I swear to you, I'll never lose it.

Now here he is, Robin Williams Live at the Roxy, back in 1978.