Saturday, November 30, 2019

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood


MOVIE TITLE: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
DIRECTOR: Marielle Heller
YEAR: 2019
GENRE: Drama
RATING: PG for violence
GRADE: Extra Credit

After watching this movie and having sore eyeballs as a result, I can say with a hundred percent conviction that the story is completely devoid of Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. On the contrary, imperfections can be found among every character, including Mr. Fred Rogers himself. He may be a kind and gentle soul in public as well as on TV, but even he admits that he makes mistakes every now and then. He too gets angry. He too feels sad. He too had a tumultuous childhood and married life. The only difference is, he’d rather use positivity and creative therapy as a conduit for his emotions, not violence and rage. It takes work to achieve this kind of attitude towards life. And yes, there are many bumps in the road. Tom Hanks, the actor who played Mr. Rogers, openly admitted to being terrified to play his role. He doesn’t have to be anymore, because he knocked it out of the park. He made me believe in the kindness of Mr. Rogers all over again, imperfections and all.

Lloyd Vogel, the journalist who is assigned to interview Mr. Rogers, has his own share of imperfections. He hates his father, he’s questioning himself as a parent, he’s wrapped up in his work and can’t be there for his family, and he’s stubborn about not wanting to interview a “hokey children’s show host”. To put it mildly, he’s got a lot of anger in his heart and won’t let anybody in. After many interviews with Mr. Rogers, his transformation into a loving and forgiving person becomes the basis for his character development. It’s a slow, distrustful, and heartbreaking transformation. He even shows glimpses of the father he hates so much. If you’re a big fan of character development, you’ll easily get behind Lloyd Vogel. When he cries, you cry. When he’s angry, you’re angry. When he triumphs, you’ll cheer for him. He makes awful decisions, but that doesn’t detract from him being a relatable protagonist.

You know who else has a lot of growing up to do? Jerry Vogel, Lloyd’s aforementioned jerk of a father. He mocks his son at the beginning of the movie and the two get physical over it (hence the PG rating for violence). Jerry slept around while the mother of the family was dying. He abandoned the family when they needed him the most. But it’s easy to tell that he’s a sleazebag from the minute he first appears on the screen. The rest of these revelations come naturally. But is he a redeemable character? Can he too go through a transformation and mend fences with his son? Yes, he’s a sleazebag, but if he was perfect and gallant all the time, there’d be no story and there’d be nothing to cheer for as the movie progresses. You like character development, right? You like slow transformations? You like redemption stories? Keep an eye on Jerry Vogel. Will your patience pay off? Watch the movie and find out.

As I mentioned before, my eyes got sore during the more emotional moments of this movie. None of it came across as cheesy. This was genuine emotion and nobody knew more about how to deal with our emotions than Fred Rogers himself. It takes time. It takes patience. But it’s worth it in the end. That’s what this movie means to me. That’s why this movie gets a solid five out of five stars. A perfect grade for a movie about imperfect people. It truly is a beautiful day in the neighborhood. There better be some award victories for this movie.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Crippled


“Where the hell is the goddamn delivery boy?” asked Joe Herzog as she laid in bed with ice on her swollen knee. The ice did a tremendous job of numbing her pain. Getting pissed off over a late breakfast burrito did not, as evidenced by her hissing noise. “Why does the damn tournament have to be a week away? This is horseshit! All that work for nothing!” She pounded her mattress and sent another jolt through her leg. “Damn it!”

Figuring it wasn’t a good idea to wait in bed for the delivery boy, Joe wrapped her knee in a heavy black bandage and hobbled out of the bedroom wearing just a white T-shirt and blue sleeping shorts. Every hop had her mumbling, “Ouch!” in a low, grumpy voice. Anybody who made it to the finals of a martial arts tournament only to go down with an injury would be grumpy as well.

Her tiny gnome body made looking at her hallway of trophies and medals a chore. Twisting her neck backwards just to look at second place accolades made her shake her head in disgust. “This is bullshit…this is fucking bullshit…” She resumed mumbling, “Ouch!” as she hobbled down the hall of shame and into the living room.

Resting across her tree stump table was a blue karate dress, one she wouldn’t be wearing again for a long time. Joe wiped away a singular tear with her finger before hobbling and cursing towards the table. “I should probably just set this damn thing on fire. Besides which, who the hell wears a dress into combat? It ain’t like…” She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror and frowned at what she perceived to be a lack of beauty. Joe sighed and sat down on her eiderdown couch. “I’ll get rid of that damn dress some other time. Goddamn knee injury…”

All Joe wanted to do was close her eyes and relax until her food got here. The throbbing and pulsating of her knee kept her eyes wide open no matter how comfortable she tried to make herself. And then…there was a knock on the door. More like a feverous pounding that got louder every time Joe tried to ignore it. “That better be my food or else I’m jamming this good for nothing leg up someone’s ass.”

The pounding of both Joe’s heart and front door resumed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” She hobbled over to the rune-covered entrance, where the pounding grated on her ears some more. “I said I’m coming, damn it! This better be good!” Reaching for the doorknob on her tippy-toes, she almost fell over as she swung the door wide open. “It’s about damn time! Uh-oh…”

It wasn’t a delivery boy. The only food this man was carrying was in his wide gut, about three hundred pounds worth. The scaly orange skin, the dragon-like face, the rotund frame, and the jeans held up by suspenders. A cold sweat broke out over Joe’s face as she fell backwards, giving her a better view of “The Chiropractor” Bargon Sevili. The moniker was silly to her until she remembered that amateur wrestling was his strong suit. She swallowed a lump and said, “Bargon…wha…what are you doing here? The finals aren’t until next week.”

Bargon leaned his drooling face down and said in a deep, raspy voice, “Yes, I know!” He slathered his tongue across his already slimy lips. “Sweet gee-nee girl! Lovable midget pie! Love muffin! Come here and let me…”

Joe screamed in terror before he could finish his cutesy-wutesy sentence. She scrambled to get back up on one leg, but kept falling over and sending more shockwaves through her crippled knee. Her clutches and whiny screams didn’t earn enough sympathy from Bargon to get him to wipe his smile off of his face. In fact, his deafening footsteps on the stone floor made Joe’s head throb worse than her knee.

Instead of trying to get up, Joe crawled across her filthy stone floor using just her elbows to drag her little body. Bargon took his sweet time in approaching his opponent, though the thudding of his boots didn’t help in giving Joe any comfort. She crawled so quickly that cuts and bruises formed on her arms. She swung her bedroom door open and crawled some more.

With adrenaline flooding her system like a biblical disaster, she endured even more scrapes as she hurried over to her wooden chest. She nearly popped her arm out of her socket reaching for the latch, but open it she did. Joe stood up on both legs, her sense of urgency allowing her to numb out her knee pain. The faster she dug through her belongings, the louder the footsteps pounded. Her hands shook as she fiddled with a metal object and some tiny shells.

She loaded the shells into her single barrel shotgun as fast as she could, though not without having to pick them up after dropping them repeatedly. “Guess who, sugar britches!” Bargon taunted in his saccharine ogre voice. Joe didn’t give a shit about her knee anymore. She stood terra firma in the center of her room locked and loaded, her bruised arms still trembling with fear.

The minute Bargon kicked the door open and said, “Ta-da!”, Joe pulled the trigger. She needed this easy victory over someone who was supposed to wait until next week to fight her. She needed to be in first place for once in her life. But the shotgun jammed and blew her backwards, sending her crashing through her glass window and into the grass. Shards ripped at her flesh. Her arms were embedded with glass. Her knee pain flared up to infernal levels. Little droplets of blood stained the grass beneath her. She whined and cried like the second place loser she was.

Even on soft grass and dirt, Bargon’s footsteps grew more obnoxious the closer he got to his victim. He had to squeeze his wide ass through the broken window, but he arrived at his destination all the same. He held the shotgun over Joe’s blood-covered face and snapped it over his knee. He discarded the broken pieces and dusted his hands off like it was nothing. Leaning his head down so that he could be eye-level with Joe, he said, “Give me your knee, you sweet piece of pumpkin pie!”

“Oh god…Oh my god…Please, just get it over with. Anywhere but the knee. Literally anywhere else!”

Despite Joe’s pathetic begging, Bargon indeed grabbed her by the injured leg, causing her to cry out in agony. After picking off a few pieces of glass and getting even more ocular juices out of Joe, he asked, “Are you ready, little darling?”

“…As ready as I’ll ever be…” whimpered Joe as she covered her face with her scarred arms.

“Good, because this is going to hurt like a bitch!” Bargon made good on his promise. He yanked on the injured leg and had Joe yelling in a high pitched, demonic tone.

It did hurt like a bitch. It was the most agonizing thing Joe had been through. But the best part about it? It only hurt for a few seconds. And then the pain was gone. Was she in heaven? Was St. Peter already opening the pearly gates for her? No, she was still on planet earth outside her home. She uncovered her face and wiggled her leg. No pain. She knew the injury was still there, but she didn’t feel like dying afterwards. “You…you really are a chiropractor? Um…uh…thanks?”

Bargon grabbed Joe by her shirt and leaned in so that they were nose-to-nose. His breath radiated with skunk odors, probably due to him not brushing his fangs in a long time. “I don’t need your thanks, Joey-Bowie. All I need from you is to be one hundred percent in the finals next week. That way, when I beat the living piss out of you, there’ll be no excuses. No knee injuries, no glass shards, no bullshit. If you lose to me and get second place again, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself. You got it?” He threw her against the grass and said, “See you next week, sugar plum” before blowing her a kiss and walking away.

Any gratitude Joe felt for her opponent twisted in the wind when she noticed a foil-wrapped burrito sticking out of his back pocket. “Hey! That’s my breakfast, you asshole!”

Bargon pulled the burrito out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and took a massive bite out of it. With a full mouth, he said, “It’s my breakfast now! Besides, if you want to beat me in the finals and be a winner for the first time in your mediocre career, you’ve got to eat better than this. You’re getting a little chunky around the belly. See you soon!”

As the demonic ogre walked away, Joe clenched her fists and stood up, her knee staying pain free the entire time. She wasn’t thinking about burning her karate dress anymore. She wasn’t looking at her second place accolades with scorn. After a morning like this one, Joe Herzog had all the motivation she could ever want. She would train as hard as she damn well could. She would pump more iron, run more laps, and beat the training bag like it owed her a breakfast burrito.

With her muscles bulging and the shaky adrenaline morphing into raw anger, Joe shouted out, “You should have killed me when you had the chance, you fat pig! I’m not just going to beat you in the finals! I’m going to destroy your career! You hear me, Bargon Sevili?! You’re a dead motherfucker!” Joe raised her fists to the sky and let out a primal scream to anyone who would listen, letting them know that motivation was not an issue anymore.

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Large Groups of Characters


***LARGE GROUPS OF CHARACTERS***

“The Way-Back Machine is all warmed up, Mr. Peabody!”

Good boy, Sherman. Now let’s go back to the late 1990’s in Chehalis, Washington, where I was a pre-teen playing Dungeons & Dragons with a large group of my brother’s friends. Pay close attention to the “large group” part of that last sentence. It didn’t matter if I was a level one human fighter with a true neutral attitude. It didn’t matter if my character was destined to become a badass somewhere down the line. That prophecy never came to fruition in this particular role-play. You want to know what my character did? You want to know what his big contribution to the experience was? Smashing a whiskey barrel over somebody’s head. That’s it. End of story. The rest of the role-playing session was a whole lot of jack shit. Whenever the DM asked me what I wanted to do next, I’d just languidly say, “Go with them.”

From that day forward, I only agreed to D&D sessions with small groups of people or strictly one-on-one with the DM. When too many characters invade one story, there’s not enough room for them to get their shit in. They get shoved to the background in favor of others. There’s no room for development. Or in my case, all I got to do was smash a wooden barrel over somebody’s head…and not a goddamn thing more. Whenever I write novels, I always make sure to keep my protagonists down to a manageable number like two or three. That way, everybody gets a chance at character development in the relatively small space that constitutes the word count benchmark for novellas. Bigger adventuring parties are designed for works that are longer. Me? I don’t have the mental endurance to write something long enough to include an army of three-dimensional characters.

This heavy burden of characters is something often seen in professional wrestling as well, not just with books and movies. It’s one of the reasons why the WWE Divas Revolution was so poorly received in 2015. Nine women had to share X minutes of TV time, which means nobody got developed, nobody had any real motivations, nobody had personality, and there was no real end game to it all. To put it bluntly, it was a cluster fuck that resulted in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter giving it a Worst Feud of the Year award. It also placed second in that year’s list of Most Disgusting Promotional Tactics and third in the list of Worst Gimmicks. There’s only so much TV time to go around, which means smaller groups take priority if there’s ever a chance at character development.

Of course, not all characters have to be three-dimensional. Some characters were designed to be extras and that’s okay. But if you’re going to make a character an extra, be prepared for the lack of emotional investment that comes with it. A mass slaughter of innocent civilians doesn’t hold nearly as much weight in a Marvel or DC movie as the death of a character the audience actually cares about. The more you care, the more it will hurt. Why do you think people in real life get choked up about family members dying, but won’t blink an eye at an elderly celebrity passing the pearly gates? Celebrities are nice, but they’re not as connected to us as our truly loved ones. The same logic applies with stories where there’s a large number of protagonists.

Having said these things, I can still think of a few examples where it’s okay to care about big groups of people. In “The Savior’s Champion” by Jenna Moreci, there are twenty combatants in the Sovereign’s Tournament. You know they will eventually die per the rules of the game, but when they do, it’ll hurt worse than a Kaleo knee to the ribcage. Then again, that novel is at least five hundred pages long, so Ms. Moreci has given herself a lot of space to work with. Same thing with the old SNES videogame Final Fantasy VI. It takes weeks to beat, which means a large group of playable characters can thrive in that environment. You’ll care about Sabin Figaro. You’ll give more than two shits about Mog. You’ll give lots of flying fucks about Cyan Garamonde. Please do play that game if you’re into the classics. What about Lord of the Rings? Well, each movie in the trilogy is three butt-numbing hours long. You think that’s more than enough time to develop a big ass group of characters? Fuck yeah it is!

But if it’s really dependent on the length of the story, then why don’t I just write longer stories? Why can’t Beautiful Monster be 100,000 words instead of 45,000? Because a story’s completion has nothing to do with how long it is. Yes, it’s a shorter novella, but it’s a complete story. Even in its early draft phase, it has a beginning, middle, and end. The two main protagonists, Windham Xavier and Tarja Rikkinen, are only two people, which means they get lots of time to develop and grow as characters. Everybody else can claim the spotlight for themselves because my main character roster isn’t that big. But why not make my story longer and include more characters? Does it really need more characters? Can the few that I have not carry the story on their own? Besides, like I mentioned before, I don’t have the mental endurance to write longer stories. I’d be nice if I had it, but superpowers aren’t really a thing yet, so I’ll have to stick to the short stuff.

So the moral of the story is, if you want people to care about your large group of characters, make sure your medium is long enough for their individual developments. It can be done, but not by me, because I don’t feel the need to stretch myself beyond my means. The same will apply to any Dungeons & Dragons campaigns I run in the future: the smaller the group, the smaller the headaches. Everybody will get their shit in. They’ll mean more to my fictional world than smashing a whiskey barrel over somebody’s head. This isn’t a WWE battle royal with a bloated roster full of tainted characters. This is creative writing. Although, if Vince McMahon (who gets the last word on WWE’s creative processes) wrote a novel of any kind, I’d want to read it just because I can’t avert my eyes from a train wreck. I’m Garrison Kelly! Happy Thanksgiving! Eat lots of turkey! I know I will!


***DOMESTIC DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

(Circa 2013)

JAMES: Hey Garrison, why are you being pissy?

GARRISON: I’m not!

JAMES: You’re being pissy.

GARRISON: I’M NOT!

JAMES: Yes, you are, you’re being very pissy.

GARRISON: I’m not!

JAMES: Come on, Garrison, be happy, get excited.

GARRISON: About what?

JAMES: I don’t know. Life.

GARRISON: Can I be excited about that cardboard box over there?

JAMES: Sure, why not?


***POST-SCRIPT***

True story: I told my Face Book followers that I was going to the Regal Cinemas today to watch A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I backed out at the last minute, because the entire day I was feeling grumpier than usual. I snapped at everything and expended a lot of physical energy screaming at little shit. But that’s okay, because it’ll still play Saturday night when all of the Thanksgiving and Black Friday hoo-ha has died down.

Already Dead


VERSE 1
Your comedic delivery fell on deaf ears
Loyal sheep were the only source of cheers
You exploited death just for a punch line
Shrugged your shoulders like it was all fine
You’re not funny, if you were, I would laugh
You used to be cool in the distant past
Now that my eyes are wide fucking open
I know what the hell a clichéd trope is

CHORUS
He’s already dead
Can he finally rest?
He’s already dead
Enough with the mess!

VERSE 2
You’d commit necrophilia just for a joke
Commit grave robbery to spite the woke
Keep your millionaire ass from going broke
Keep your career from going up in smoke
The ones who loved him want your head
You should be the one on your deathbed
You should be the one who is violated
You’re the only one who is overrated

CHORUS
He’s already dead
Can he finally rest?
He’s already dead
Enough with the mess!

BRIDGE
Heaven forbid we be entertained
Heaven forbid you use your brain
Heaven forbid you get off the hate train
Heaven forbid we’re absolved from shame

VERSE 3
You call us immature for our literary tastes
When it comes to autocracy, we’re to blame
I never knew until now you were full of shit
But you disguise your hatred as a comedy bit
I’m changing the channel to something better
While you’re looking for a safe space protector
You can dish it out, but can’t take the heat
Everybody knows you’re easy to defeat

CHORUS
He’s already dead
Can he finally rest?
He’s already dead
Enough with the mess!

FINAL LINE
Excelsior, motherfuckers!

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Two-Sentence Horror Stories: Third Strike


Bart Simpson laughed his ass off when he spray painted a penis and testicles on the side of Mr. Burns’s mansion. He screamed in terror when Burns caught him in the act, to which the Nuclear Power Plant tycoon unzipped his own fly and said, “You’re the perfect height for what I’m about to make you do, little boy!”

Travis texted his European girlfriend with grinning and heart emojis while calling her a “Beautiful Bulgarian”. He had a kiwi-sized lump in his throat when his phone auto-corrected his message to “Beautiful Bulge Area” before sending it.

Sammy drove cautiously on a winding mountain road with no guard rails while his wife and baby son snoozed in the back together. For some reason, he thought it would be a good idea to start texting on his smart phone.

A hulking ogress with rotting flesh, maggot-infested fingernails, and drill bit fangs burst through Grayson’s front door with a leonine belch and a paternity test in her hands. While Grayson cowered and shivered behind the easy chair, the ogress tossed the test results in his lap and said, “Congratulations, asshole!”

A stacked WWE Wrestlemania pay-per-view featured the main event of “The Monster Among Men” Braun Strowman vs. “The Modern Day Maharaja” Jinder Mahal for the latter’s WWE Championship in a first blood match. The match ended in five seconds when Jinder poked Braun with a sewing needle and drew a tiny drop of blood, causing the ripped-off fans to destroy the arena in a fiery riot.

Middle school sex ed was off to a rowdy start when the children screamed like banshees and threw paper airplanes at each other. They grew silent, shaky, and wide-eyed when the evilly-grinning professor wrote his name on the chalkboard, which was Mr. Ray Pugh.

Melissa clutched her chest and fought for oxygen when she saw that somebody on Face Book with a Pepe the Frog icon posted a countdown clock for her newborn baby’s eighteenth birthday. She nearly had a conniption when somebody else posted underneath it, “Why wait?”

Colton squirmed and ached in his bent over position while Dr. Smith performed a colonoscopy on him. Colton jumped out of his skin when the doctor said in a jolly voice, “Hey look, we’ve got half a million hits on You Tube!”

Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader engaged in an epic light saber battle that saw Vader slice off Luke’s arm. As young Skywalker doubled over in pain, Vader breathed deeply in his ear and said, “Luke…I am your husband!”

Paul logged onto his Porn Hub account in hopes of finding a live teen webcam feed. He nearly lost both his erection and his sanity when he heard a familiar comedian’s voice on the other end of the feed yell, “Hey, hey, hey, come try my king sized pudding pop!”

Shane couldn’t wait to start his new job at Analytical Weaponry, Inc. That was, until he drove up to his workplace and saw the company name on a neon sign, which had all of the letters after the first L in the word Analytical blown out.

George opened his email and found a message demanding fourteen thousand dollars in exchange for keeping quiet about his porn viewing habits. To show there was no playing around, the extortionist put George’s password in the title of the email.

Anderson took a few puffs of his cigarette before coughing up black pudding all over the floor. His stomach ached and his throat soured when he saw that the tar blob had teeth and feces attached to it.

Stacy approached a hotdog cart and asked for a six-inch Polish sausage. Pee-Wee Herman emerged from his crouched position laughing like a madman with his penis sandwiched in a hotdog bun, complete with “mustard, ketchup, and relish” dripping from the tip.

Mary Poppins floated into London with a grimy man on her arm. As she arrived for her babysitting job, she introduced him to the children as Peter File.

“I’m lost without you, my love,” said Prince Charming. He gave his girlfriend a passionate tongue kiss before closing the casket one last time.

“I’d really like to give you a hand job right now,” said Sedona before licking her rosy red lips. Her lover nearly had a heart attack when she pulled off her arm glove and revealed bladed monster fingers underneath.

It is the middle ground between whiny and angry, between involuntary celibacy and a mass shooting, between a toxic romance and full-blown hostility. This is the dimension of pornographic imagination, an area which we call…The Friend Zone!

After Glenn refused to answer the phone, a robotic voice on the answering machine said, “Please return the call to Charles Dahmer at 1-800-666-5150. This is an attempt to collect your blood and any information obtained will be used for that purpose.”

Chase entered his massive pickup truck and blew into the ignition interlock device. After registering a blood alcohol level of 0.87, he was able to start his vehicle and speed off into the busy night.

Marcus shivered in a cold sweat as he paced around his room for hours waiting for his girlfriend to text him back. His tongue and throat dried when she finally sent him a text saying, “We need to talk.”

“Introducing his opponent fighting out of the red corner: a serial killer and totalitarian dictator who holds a spotless record of thirty-two victims, I mean, wins and no losses, stands at 7’3”, weighs in at 500 lbs., and fights out of Charlottesville, Virginia by way of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with a pit stop in North Korea…Bone Saw…McGraw! And when the action begins, our referee in charge of the octagon is Steve Mazzigatti.”

On the morning of Valentine’s Day, a grinning Britney excitedly opened a heart-shaped box from her secret admirer. She screamed and dropped it because instead of chocolates, the box contained the bloody remnants of her aborted son.

Mitchell’s stomach gurgled and growled after eating twenty Carolina Reaper hot wings in a row without even a sip of milk. Fifteen minutes of sweating and tearing up later, when it was his turn to use the toilet, he pulled his pants down and his intestines fell out.

Lexi opened a package hoping it was diapers for her children’s charity drive. Her jaw hit the floor when she found out they were adult diapers with a semen-soaked note saying, “These would look really hot on you, Sexy-Lexi!”

Little Debbie skipped up to a cobweb-covered house dressed as a princess and said, “Trick or Treat!” to the wolf man, who had a pot of candy on his lap. She reached inside and cried buckets when she touched the werewolf’s warm and greasy Snickers bar, which was poking through a hole he cut in the bottom of the pot.

Leonard awakened in the middle of the night to find hundreds of hairy tarantulas crawling all over his naked body and sinking their fangs into his flesh. He tried to scream for help, but one of them crawled inside his mouth and clogged his throat.

Helgor the Barbarian wrapped his massive hands around the goblin’s throat and watched his eyeballs bulge and his face turn bright blue. Helgor whispered seductively into his victim’s ear, “This would be a good time for Autoerotic Asphyxiation!”

After hours of body-shredding labor, Wendy pushed one last time and gave birth to her baby boy. The doctor wrapped the bloody mess in a blanket and said, “Congratulations, it’s a porcupine!”

Bethany and her husband laid naked in bed next to each other while attempting to catch their breath. She smiled at him, licked her fingers, and said, “I haven’t creamed that hard in a long time, Uncle Cletus!”

Tucker browsed through the doggies and kitties at the animal shelter and had a cutesy-wutesy smile on his face the entire time. The adoption agent approached him with a clipboard and said, “Let me know which animal you want and I’ll be sure to send you home with a package of condoms.”

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Joker


MOVIE TITLE: Joker
DIRECTOR: Todd Phillips
YEAR: 2019
GENRE: Psychological Thriller
RATING: R for violence, swearing, and disturbing themes
GRADE: Extra Credit

Humanizing a violent criminal is a tall task in and of itself. Getting sympathy for any kind of character is harder than it looks (trust me, I’ve tried). When you watch this movie, not only will you have sympathy for Arthur Fleck a.k.a. The Joker, but you’ll cheer for him as well. There’s more to building a sympathetic villain than throwing in a tragic back story and calling it a day. This movie went above and beyond in developing the Joker character. He’s mentally ill, he’s rejected by society because of his awkward behavior, he’s impoverished, and he’s the target of violence just as much as he’s the instigator. While people wouldn’t under any circumstances condone his violent behavior, they will at least understand it. They might even learn to treat fellow members of society with respect. Nobody starts out as an evil person. They’re slowly built into one by the forces around them. Again, it doesn’t excuse Joker’s murders nor does it give the incel community an idol to look up to. But the more we see each other as human beings, the more we act like human beings.

Of course, none of this sympathy would have been possible if not for the brilliant acting work of Joaquin Phoenix, who played The Joker. In fact, Mr. Phoenix might be telling Heath Ledger to hold his beer (no disrespect to Mr. Ledger). The pathological laughter, the nervousness around strangers, the poor cadence of his jokes, the sadness when he’s alone, they all looked believable coming from Joaquin Phoenix. Mental illness is a lonely obstacle for someone to overcome. Nobody wanted to be around The Joker when he was at his worst and the actor brought that loneliness to life through his character work. It took a lot of studying and reading in order to get this villain down perfectly. Mr. Phoenix’s passion for what he does is obvious in his roles. If he doesn’t get an Oscar for this performance, I’m going to be very surprised and upset. Granted, I won’t give the Army nervous fits with my level of disappointment and nor should anybody else. You hear that, terrorists? Be nice!

Somewhere in this nature vs. nurture debate, there’s a modern day dystopia happening all around The Joker. Garbage is piling up, rats are infesting the city, the disenfranchised are being bullied, social programs are being cut, and poverty is at an all time high. When politicians and oligarchs use their influence to enrich themselves at the expense of others, distrust starts to build between the social classes. It doesn’t always end in riots and violence, but sitting down and doing nothing doesn’t cross their minds either. In many ways, the dystopian politics of this movie reminds me a lot of what’s going on in the real world under the Trump administration. So we have a realistic Joker and a realistic political system. Superhero movies get a bad rap for being cartoonish and comical, right? You know what Joaquin Phoenix and the rest of the crew says to that? “Hold our beers.”

Everything that could go right with this movie did go right. It’s gritty, it’s real, it’s dark, and nothing was out of place. Keeping a smile on your face all of your life is close to impossible. It’s okay to feel bad sometimes. Toxic positivity did nobody any good. But if you must rage against the machine with a nihilistic point of view, don’t cross the point of no return like The Joker did. An extra credit grade will go to this modern day masterpiece. Now THAT’S something worth smiling about!

Monday, November 18, 2019

Death Bed Sellout


If you don’t like the way I vote
Jam my penis down your throat
If you don’t like the way I eat
Unzip my jeans and beat my meat
If you don’t like the way I write
Be prepared to lose a fistfight
If you don’t like the way I talk
Open wide and suck my cock
If you don’t like the people I love
Put on a pair of boxing gloves
I’ll never be your death bed sellout
If you don’t like it, get the hell out
Sorry not sorry for your precious feels
I promise you your wounds will heal
I’m the only one who chooses my path
It’s not rocket science or three-D math
If you don’t like the way I’m living
You’re the one who needs forgiving