Five Before Chaos

I was waiting for this one to finally show up on YouTube: the ’74 Blaxploitation flick, Black Sampson. I recently saw this, it was quite the hoot. By 1974, the Blaxploitation formula was pretty well established, and when the major studios made one (in this case, Warner Bros.), they pretty much followed the mold: ass-kicking protagonist with an afro takes on the Mafia, who’s trying to muscle their way into the black community to sell drugs or some other illegal activity – hero has a girlfriend who protests his actions, and the film is also peppered with superficial, cliched Black Power-isms. That’s basically this movie in a nutshell. Black Samson owns a titty bar (where he also happens to have a pet lion), is the pillar of the community, and kicks Mafia ass with a big staff/club thing instead of the usual gun. Entertaining just because of the mere silliness, even moreso when you picture a bunch of middle-aged white executives at Warner Bros sitting in a board room planning this thing out.

That Kinski vid a few posts down came from AOL video. Apparently, AOL is still synonymous with lameness, as they limit how many minutes of video one can watch within a period of time (great way to compete with Youtube, eh?). So, many of you probably couldn’t watch the video. And you should. And now you can, because I replaced it with a YouTube version.

Eh, it felt good to finally get y’all some content last week. I was hoping to keep it up this week, but alas, grad school has started up again, ensuring just about every free minute I have that I’m not doing my regular job work is going to school work. I’m actually quite excited about this semester, I’m taking two courses. One is on the rise of big business in the U.S. (robber barrons, etc.). It’s a lot of meat to chew on, but it’s very interesting. Carnegie sure had a set of big ones in between his legs, in terms of the Social Darwinism thing. Just hop on over and read his (in)famous writing Wealth, to see what I mean. If you’re a Republican you’ll probably get a boner. The class goes over the various changes before and after, it’s quite fascinating, and my professor most certainly is an unabashed leftist (yet certainly puts all the info out there for you to make your own analysis and conclusion). Wes, if you’re reading this, remind me to lend you my books for this when I’m done… you’ll love it.

The other class is one about film analysis, something if you’re a regular reader, you know is right up my alley. It gets into the nitty gritty of it all… cinematography, screenplays, the whole thing. For my first paper (which I have to get done tonight), I’m writing a critique of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (focusing on specific elements, such as the cinematography, movement, lighting, etc). I saw it a long time ago and thought it was okay, but I watched it again last night and was absolutely floored. If you’ve never seen it, you most definitely should. Scorsese and DeNiro were at the top of their game:

The 70′s were truly the golden era in film making.

I just stumbled across this really funny short film by a director who had the privilege (or misfortune) to work with the late great actor Klaus Kinski, one of the most difficult actors in the history of motion pictures, it seems (or as the director put it, “that little prick”). For some background on Kinski that I wrote earlier, go here and here. This film is really funny, as the Italian producers of the film were apparently serious about killing Kinski to collect the insurance money, as he was damn near impossible to work with. You don’t have to be a Kinski fan to enjoy this one, just have to appreciate moviemakeing. Have a look:

The man who pretty much invented slap bass playing some in-yo-face, badass mofo funk, at Montreaux Jazz ’97. Perfect.

The Jam, from the ’75 album, Ain’t No Doubt About It.

How’s that for a post title?

I was originally gonna do a blurb here about how Mr. “Change” Obama just picked a former Raytheon lobbyist for his #2 at the Pentagon, but if you’re a regular reader here, you’re probably not in the least bit surprised about that. So instead, I’m gonna tack in a different direction with a bit of rather gruesome, yet fascinating history that I learned last night regarding the Aztecs.

Right now, I’m reading The Mexico Reader, (ed. by Gilbert M. Joseph and Timothy J. Henderson, Duke Univ. Press, 2002) a ginourmous (is that the new buzzword nowadays?) 700+ page tome of various writings about Mexican history… historical documents (such as Cortes’ writings full of the bullshit notion that Montezuma just gave him everything because they were supposed to), modern day commentary and analysis, poetry, anthropological studies… it’s really quite amazing. I plan on doing my upcoming Master’s thesis on something Mexico-related, and so I’m reading this for some ideas, and am being hugely entertained and educated in the process. So let me share…
Continue reading

Ok, here’s the trailer for a paella (Spanish, as opposed to the Italian spaghetti variety) western, the infamous Cutthroats Nine. What’s noteworthy of it is that the trailer is that it’s a typical grindhouse trailer… ominous voice, lots of “warnings”, they even say, “For your protection, you will be given a ‘terror mask’ free at the entrance. We urge you to use it if the violence is more than you can stand,” but the film is hardly that shocking at all.

I actually saw this not too long ago, and it’s not nearly as shocking as the trailer would have you think, which is almost always the case with these films, anyways. It was actually a pretty good, albeit rather sadistic movie, with some rather unnecessary gore scenes that seem to have been thrown in merely for shock (or is it schlock?) value. Spanish actress Emma Cohen is also quite beautiful, a fact that’s not hidden even though her character is in constant torment.

We’ve seen in some recent Obama speeches about how his administration will once again value science, which, of course, is anathema to the the rapture-ready GOP base, as it tends to render most of the fucktard insane things they believe moot. Aside from all the nature stuff (global warming, forest management policy, etc.), hopefully another thing we’ll see change is this “abstinence only sex-ed” bullshit. Study after study has shown it simply doesn’t work. One (and only one) aspect of the abstinence-only nonsense we sometimes see are “virginity pledges”, that kids will promise to wait until marriage until taking the plunge in sharing each other’s bodily fluids from the nether-regions. “Fail” is an understatement, as the research shows:

STD rates were similar among all participants, regardless of whether they had taken a virginity pledge.

That might be partly explained by a few other findings. Condom use was similar among all participants at the most recent interview. But pledge-takers were less likely to have reported using a condom the first time they had sex.

The pledge-takers were also more likely to say they had oral or anal sex, but not vaginal sex. “Amongst those who have only oral sex and/or anal sex, pledgers are overrepresented,” say researchers.

Overall, nearly 3% of respondents reported oral sex with one or more partners but no vaginal sex. “Although just over 2% of nonpledgers fell into this group, 13% of consistent pledgers and 5% of inconsistent pledgers do,” write Bearman and Brückner. Still, that means most pledge-takers didn’t put themselves in those categories.

Similarly less than 1% of nonpledgers report anal but no vaginal sex compared with 1.2% of pledgers.

Apparently, ab-ed has at least convinced some kids you can take it in the ass and still be considered a “virgin”. Okay.

Of course, if you’re a dimwit like Katherine Lopez, you don’t let the facts get in the way, as she equivocates the abstinence-only failure with the failure of virginity pledges, makes a nod that it’s basically human nature to want to screw and then seems to blather on and on about character and the typical moralizing:

Abstinence has to be about saying “yes” to something in order to work. We need to focus on the idea kids can actually think, and should want more from a relationship than sex. We need to be open to programs that aren’t all about copulation, but about character education.

Teens who choose to fuck do not have character flaws for that sole reason, K-Lo. Okay, it’s certainly not the most dimwitted statement out there by a right-winger on the subject, but I’m using it as a jump-of point for discussion: namely that we need to challenge this idea that teen sex is inherently “wrong”. It’s not. Sure, teens do a lot of stupid things… they get pregnant, get others pregnant, do stupid things at parties that tarnish their reputations throughout their school life, but the whole point is there’s nothing “unnatural” about teens having sex. This is all more funny, considering how the right likes to get its panties in a wad about the “unnaturalness” of gay sex. If teens weren’t ever supposed to have sex, they wouldn’t hit puberty until they were in their twenties. I know plenty of gals and guys who had plenty of sex in high school, even the fun not-in-love variety, and they continue to have well-adjusted sex lives. Sure, some kids are not emotionally ready for it… and perhaps where the focus on rational sex-ed should change. Instead of having “no” be a default position, perhaps “are you ready?” should be where the education lies.

I know, I’m living in some sort of fantasy land here, because most parents don’t seem to be comfortable at all about the idea of thier kids having any sex at all. I’mnot a parent, but if I were, I think I’d probably still think what I do, because I don’t think sex has to be this end-all be-all thing that you only share with one person ever. How boring would that be?

K-Lo protests that conservatives don’t hate sex. Perhaps in some cases that may be true, but they certainly have a very narrow view of what circumstances sex is acceptable, namely “adult” and “married”. How unnatural.