As I type this, the South Park episode in which Cartman inherits a million dollars and uses it to buy an amusement park (which causes Kyle to lose his faith in God) is on the 33-inch 16:9 ratio flatscreen LCD television beside my computer. According to Wikipedia, that episode, "Cartmanland," first aired on July 25, 2001. That's almost twenty-three years ago!

I distinctly remember watching the broadcast of the debut episode of South Park ("Cartman Gets an Anal Probe") on Comedy Central on basic cable via our communal 24-inch 4:3 ratio CRT TV in the apartment I shared with friends and former classmates Matt and Randy in unincorporated North Druid Hills. Matt had invited our old high school classmate, Tabitha, over for the evening, and she was absolutely appalled by the course humor, which, of course, only made it funnier. That was August 1997, and I was already in my second college.

To put those dates into perspective, I also distinctly remember watching the 20ish-inch wood-paneled TV in our family's basement as channel 46 (on the UHF dial) weatherman Denny Moore, wearing what we would now call Trekker cosplay, hosted a New Year's Eve 1980-something marathon of original Star Trek episodes. Although I'm not entirely sure of the year, I am sure that whatever year it was was definitely prior to The Next Generation being a thing.

The point of that being that in hindsight, there was less time between the date of that rerun marathon and the original broadcast dates of those Star Trek episodes than there has been between between now and 9/11.

Honestly, I'm starting to think that the real difference between the past and the present is that there were barely 3 seasons of Star Trek and South Park has a contract to keep making episodes into its 30th season. The Good Old Days were a very brief time indeed.

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37/2348. Parasite (2019)
If I had realized that this was written/directed by the same guy (Bong Joon-ho) in charge of Snowpiercer, I wouldn't have bothered ever watching it. I disliked this so much, I had to bail after about an hour, deciding that I had already spent too much time with a bunch of characters whose life decisions constantly turned my stomach. I don't know understand how this won the 2020 Best Picture Oscar over the vastly superior Jojo Rabbit or Little Women or 1917 or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's dull and petty and just fucking awful.

38/2349. Wonka (2023)
A necessary palate cleaner. It's true that the songs aren't greatly memorable after you turn off the TV, but they're fun and colorful in the moment, and you certainly can't fault Timothee Chalamet's enthusiastic effort.

39/2350. The Gay Divorcee (1934)
Fred Astaire is mistaken by Ginger Rogers for a professional marriage-wrecker, but that's not as important as the singing and dancing. Yeah, Astaire and Rogers were both in Flying Down to Rio, but this is the first movie to really couple them for the full runtime. It's easy to see why audiences clamored for more.

40/2351. Inherent Vice (2014)
I'd call this a psychedelic neo-noir, and in the vein of The Big Sleep, I'm not sure it makes any sense. To be fair, it's not as strictly concerned with the big mystery as it is with how Joachim Phoenix's hippy detective fits into a corrupt, over-commercialized 1960s American society. Director Paul Thomas Anderson bakes in a lot of satirical humor (see also: Licorice Pizza and Boogie Nights). I was surprised that liked it as much as I did. (Is it time I finally watched Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood?)

41/2352. Mauvaise Graine (1934)
The English release of this French film retitles it Bad Seed, but Prodigal Son might be more fitting for this story of a spoiled child who runs away from home to steal cars. For the record, it's the first film directed by Billy Wilder, and while it's hard to draw a direct line from this to Some Like It Hot, his natural comedic touch still peeks through occasionally.

More to come.

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"Love is the most important thing on Earth. Especially to a man and a woman."

My Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged has eight different definitions for the noun form of love, chief among them "a strong affection or attachment or devotion to a person or persons." That pretty much matches the good captain's use of the word. (I'm sure Kirk also loves the fifth definition: "sexual passion or its gratification," which, you may note, does not require any "person or persons" on this earth or any other).

Maybe I'm devoid of strong passion, but my personal definition of love has always been a little more concrete. So far as I can tell, anything you love is something that you value more than yourself. For most people, that's not a lot of things, if any. (It's no wonder I'm still single after all these years.)

The word gets thrown around a lot (especially by starship captains on the make), but how often is it accurately employed? It's a common trope of art and literature that one lover would be willing to die for another, and I accept that most parents (usually) place their children's interests before their own. But how often do you meet anyone willing to lay down their lives for property? Or strangers? Or a whole society? Or chocolate? Maybe we don't encounter those people often because they don't have long lives.

Conversely, my definition of hate is disliking something enough that you're willing to destroy yourself to destroy it (also a common trope in literature, usually for villains and anti-heroes). I've used that word a lot in my life, but like my use of the word love, it has usually been an exaggeration when all I really want is a word stronger than dislike or disapprove. (Despise? Detest? Disdain?) Rationally I recognize that anything I might hate is rarely actually worth my being sacrificed for it.

Obviously, human beings are not governed by the Three Laws of Robotics, which place the priority of self-preservation dead last, meaning that by my definition, Asimovian robots have a greater capacity for love (and hate) than human beings. I don't know what Mr. Spock would have to say about that, but I'm reasonably certain that Kirk wouldn't hesitate to love a machine, assuming it had enough I/O interfaces.

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Cecilia update:

Isn't she handsome in her new haircut?

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Today is May 4, which is internationally celebrated as Star Wars Day. I was aware of this, but not consciously aware that's what the date was when I went to bed last night (er, early this morning). I guess my subconscious mind picked up the slack.

I dreamed that I met Mark Hamill, gray hair and gray beard, out at night walking his dog, a smallish, dark-coated mutt. (His dog actually met me first, as it had escaped its leash and ran up the street to greet me beside a blue chrome Dodge Charger parked on the wet street). Mark—we're on a first name basis now— arrived and apologized, and I told him not to worry, I like dogs and I like Mark Hamill. I told him that I was a big fan of his work ever since Star Wars. I was very careful not to tell him that I thought Luke was too whiney ("I care!") and preferred Han. We shook hands and parted ways, each of us continuing our separate journeys walking in separate directions.

That's it. The whole dream. Me telling Mark Hamill that his career has brought me great joy for decades. I sure hope he (and his dog) are as nice in real life as they are in my head.

May the Fourth be with you.

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My father is enthusiastically following all the news stories about American college campus protests against Israel's ongoing campaign against Gaza. I'm not sure what the appeal of that story is for him other than the fact that's what Fox News is broadcasting all day to distract its viewers from the ongoing trial of The People of the State of New York v. some guy who used to be president. (According to Dad, those damn Yankees are being very unfair to that nice, smart man.)

When I think of college protests, the first thing that comes to mind are the protesters who stood just outside The Arch of my (not particularly liberal) college campus decrying Bush Junior's invasion of Iraq in 2003. I seem to recall no one was particularly kind to them at the time, the prevailing general sentiment being "how dare they stand up for those bastards after what they did on 9/11." To hear the locals talk about it, the only rational explanation for the protesters' behavior was that they hated America.

That's my father's stance on pretty much all protests. To hear him complain about Colin Kaepernick kneeling or Occupy Wall Street, there's nothing less American than protesting. (To be fair, he thinks events in, outside, and around the Capitol on January 6 were also wrong; he just thinks that unjustly persecuted fellow facing a kangaroo court in New York didn't have anything directly to do with them.)

I hate to be inconvenienced as much as the next guy, but I respect nonviolent, peaceful acts of civil disobedience in the style of Gandhi and MLK, even when I'm not particularly sympathetic to the protesters' cause, like that guy who stands on Gillis Bridge overlooking Sanford Stadium on game days yelling through a bullhorn that everyone in the crowd is going to Hell for worshipping a football instead of Jesus Christ. Sometimes, you've got to do what it takes to make people aware of your opinion.

It would be great if the kids camping on their college quads could restrain themselves from graffiti and spitting in the faces of the men who have come to arrest them, but it would also be great if Arabs and Jews could find a way to stop indiscriminately killing one another in ever increasing numbers. As Dad tells me a great man once said, "there are very fine people on both sides."

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32/2343. The Last Emperor (1987)
This biographical fiction wants me to believe that poor Puyi was an ordinary victim of circumstance. The historical record is definitively not as forgiving. But I guess if you want China's cooperation so you can film in the actual Forbidden City, some sacrifices to reality have to be made.

33/2344. CrimeTime: Freefall (2024)
An actress from a popular crime drama moves back to her small town and immediately someone dies on her doorstep, driving her to try and solve the crime. The silly premise is not nearly so bad as the chemistry between the actors. The whole thing just feels artificial.

34/2345. La Samourai (1967)
Despite the title, this has nothing to do with samurai. It's really a movie about a day in the life of a French hitman who is betrayed and seeks revenge. And it's pretty darn good.

35/2346. Skin: A History of Nudity in the Movies (2020)
You know how some movies have gratuitous nudity that exists just to lure people into watching them? Well, this is a documentary of the whys and hows of that sort of thing throughout Hollywood's 100-year history... plus plenty of gratuitous nudity to lure people into watching it. How meta.

36/2347. Watch on the Rhine (1943)
This melodrama is clearly intended as a warning for isolationist (or worse) pre-war Americans about how fascism corrupts society. It's a little heavy-handed, but given what we've been going through in the past decade, I'm willing to concede that maybe it needs to be.

More to come.

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See if you can follow along: In 2005, as a college football player, Reggie Bush won the Heisman Trophy for athletic excellence. In 2010, it was determined that Bush accepted illegal payments and a car in 2004 which should have made him an ineligible player, which would have also made him ineligible to be nominated for a Heisman, so the trophy was reclaimed. In 2021, it became legal to pay college football players which means that you can now give a player a car and a Heisman. Today, fourteen years after it was taken away, Bush was given his Heisman Trophy back.

I've never had a very high opinion of the very subjective Heisman award, but now it's impossible for me to have less.

Bush has always decried having his trophy taken away because, well, I guess he thinks he deserved that car. Sure, he was indubitably a great college athlete, and sure, it's legal to pay players now, but it wasn't then. And that's the point.

According to their own website, the Heisman Trophy Trust admits explicitly charges all 928 voting members with the following criteria for their nominations:

"In order that there will be no misunderstanding regarding the eligibility of a candidate, the recipient of the award MUST be a bona fide student of an accredited college or university including the United States Academies. The recipients must be in compliance with the bylaws defining an NCAA student athlete."

Even if the Heisman committee has decided that players always should have been paid, anyone who breaks the rules in place while they are playing, by definition, cannot be "in compliance with [NCAA] bylaws." Therefore, letting him keep the trophy is in explicit violation of the Heisman Trust's own stated rules.

Hey, it's the Heisman Trust's trophy and they can do whatever they hell they want to with it. But if they want us to believe their rules have any more significance than the NCAA's, they should at least stop pretending their award is anything other than a popularity contest.

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