clarkblog

F IS FOR FAT FUCKIN' FAILURE

As someone who stood in the unemployment line for the past five weeks, I can tell you I'm not praying for Obama to fail. Neither are the millions of other job seekers struggling in these hard times, no matter what their political leanings.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I got laid back onto my old job last week, at least for the time being. The hard truth is that my company, a victim of the worldwide recession, could go under at any time. I've absolutely no idea how much longer this job will last.

During the eight years of his disastrous presidency, I never once prayed for George W. Bush to fail. Well, I did want him to lose the 2004 race, but he won that one fair and square so I had to live with it. As much as I opposed his misguided policies, I can honestly say that I wanted Bush to succeed.

I wanted Bush to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and everyone responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I wanted Bush to succeed in eliminating al Qaeda from Afghanistan. I wanted Bush to adopt policies that would make the Middle East and the world a safer, more stable place. Last but certainly not least, I wanted Bush to succeed in maintaining a healthy and vibrant economy so millions of Americans wouldn't lose their jobs while corporate CEOs raided public tax coffers.

And guess what? Despite my hopes, Bush didn't do a damned one of those things. He was a total fuck-up who couldn't succeed at anything if he tried (okay, to be fair, he does deserve props for increasing funds to fight AIDS in Africa, that continent that so befuddled Sarah Palin). But nobody I know was praying for Bush to fail because that meant that we would suffer the consequences. As we are right now.

Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh (and the spineless political cronies who kow-tow to his hateful brand of politics) would rather have Americans suffer and lose their jobs and houses and self-respect than see the political opposition actually solve the problems facing us right now.

I was in line for hours at my local unemployment office. I saw dozens of frightened faces up-close and while we stood together I listened to some of their stories. I spoke with overwhelmed job counselors and managers who said their systems were hopelessly swamped by the masses of layoffs. Aside from their despair, these people all have one thing in common. They want success from this administration. And as we approach the highest unemployment levels in four decades, success can't come soon enough.

So fuck Rush Limbaugh. If I'm gonna pray for failure, it'll be aimed at Limbaugh's hate-blackened heart, his fatty-laden prostate, his cigar-choked lungs, his illegally-obtained Oxycontin-ravaged kidneys and liver, whatever cholesterol-laden organ wants to give up the game and stop keeping that odious bastard upright and barking. I'm talking to you, Mr. Brain Aneurysm: pop some pressure and drop this fat fuck into a hole.

It would be a good thing for America if Limbaugh's brand of cancerous and divisive politics were to vanish from the landscape. And it would be a boon for that shrinking minority of true conservatives who need to wrestle their tattered party back from the callous anti-American neo-cons responsible for so much of the mess we face today.

Can I get an amen?

RADIO CLARK PLAYLIST

Bruce Springsteen - Working on a Dream

The Boss is back. Again. More pop-oriented than his earlier Magic, but just as heartfelt and uplifting.

Various Artists - Love, Peace & Poetry: Turkish Psychedelic Music

A visiting friend heard a track from this and asked, "Oh my God, is this Jimi Hendrix when he was playing with the Isley Brothers?" The track listings revealed that we were listening to "Bir Yagmar Masali" by Nasil, a Turkish garage rocker from the 1960s. Every shimmering track on here is freewheeling, mindblowing fun. Part of a fine series of obscure and far-flung rock and pop gems.

Fever Ray - Fever Ray

Whoa! This is the creepiest little album I've heard in a long while, the kind of thing that would probably freak even David Lynch. Karin Drejier Andersson of Sweden's The Knife creates a forebounding soundtrack to a haunted childhood that both fires the imagination and tweaks the nerve endings. The physical CD doesn't arrive until March but you can purchase the download now at Amazon. Here's the hypnotic video for "If I Had a Heart."

BBC Radio 4 - The Day of the Triffids

A fine, fun 1968 radio production of the classic John Wyndham sci-fi novel wherein man-eating plants take over the planet. The concept sounds silly but trust me, it's a tense and gripping apocalyptic story. H.G. Wells may have been the first British sci-fi writer to threaten the Earth on such a scale, but Wyndham, in just a handful of novels, perfected the plan. Living through World War II probably helped.

ONE WEEK AGO TODAY

Plans to close down Guantanamo. Submitting an AG nominee who stands against torture. Hillary as Secretary of State. Lifting the global gag rule on abortion. Freezing some of the corporate giveaways Bush signed on his way out the door.

Pissing off Rush Limbaugh and other Republicans by gently reminding them of the simple fact: "I won."

We're still facing a lot of challenges. But it's been a damned good week for Obama, America and the world.

FAUX NEWS

Remember when Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and flaming Nazi gasbag Rush Limbaugh told dissenting Americans to shut up if they didn't support the Worst President in the History of Time, Space and Everything In-Between? I do. Here's just some of the video evidence.

I supported free speech then and I support it now. Neo-cons, utterly incompetent during their reign and petty & whimpering in defeat, never cease to amuse me.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

NERD DATE: THE LOVE VOTE

Can a liberal love a conservative? As in, take them out to dinner and later rip off their clothes and ravish them like it's the end of the world?

I guess so. But I'm stumped as to why in the world you'd wanna. Read more about it in my latest Nerd Date column, "The Love Vote," at Fierce and Nerdy.

NOW WATCHING: A BIT FROM THE BRITS

Secret Agent aka Danger Man: Season One

Doctor Who: The Next Doctor

State of Play

YES

DOWN TO EARTH

The best show on TV begins its final run tonight. I'll be watching at a special industry screening in Beverly Hills. Yes, lucky me.

Variety has a great selection of articles about this landmark show: its meaning, its making and its impact. It's good to see the industry finally recognizing the incredible story being told while Battlestar Galactica is still on the air. For too long the show was frowned upon and ignored because that's what you do with genre stories in Hollywood (despite the fact that they make money like crazy).

Everybody on this show -- writers, directors, actors, costumers, etc. -- is firing on all cylinders. Sad to them coming down the home stretch, but I know it's gonna be memorable.

 

BE SEEING YOU

Damn. Following Tuesday's post, this is definitely one obit I didn't wanna see this week. Actor-writer-producer Patrick McGoohan, dead at 80.

Here are photos from two other notable McGoohan films: the troubled Dr. Paul Ruth in David Cronenberg's 1981 psychic sci-fi thriller Scanners, and the evil King Edward Longshanks in Mel Gibson's 1995 hit Braveheart.

 

MISSING VISIONS

Ever browse the sci-fi aisle at your favorite video store and realize you've seen 'em all?

You haven't, not by a long shot. Over at the Internet Review of Science Fiction, Mark Cole presents his list of science fiction movies not yet available on DVD. Most of the films are foreign and sound fascinating. In addition to the many genre titles on DVD Savant's wish list, it's fair to say that there's an entire world of sci-fi, horror and fantasy movies none of us have ever seen. These missing visions might not be critically lauded but they do help us understand how cinema has affected and responded to the genre's trappings over the decades.

To that list, I'd like to add Peter Fonda's little-seen Idaho Transfer, a low-budget film from 1973 that uses time travel to chime in on the emerging eco-crisis of pollution, energy consumption and overpopulation. I found a DVD at Amoeba Music here in Hollywood that I assumed was an illegal bootleg. The crappy box art is straight out of a cheap laser printer and the video transfer is washed out and blurry, as if someone dumped an old VHS copy straight to digital with no tweaking or correction. And yet here's that same DVD available via Amazon, which leads me to think it's an official DVD.

Until we get a better transfer, I still consider Idaho Transfer unreleased, Amazon be damned.

With a slow pace that is best described as "measured" and an attractive, sometimes topless but otherwise very unengaging lead actress, I certainly wouldn't submit Idaho Transfer as a missing classic of any sort. But Fonda's thoughtful story, like that decade's Soylent Green and Silent Running, is a notable reflection of political consciousness at the time.

Idaho Transfer concerns a group of teenagers working as guinea pigs for a secret government project. A time machine has been invented that has one unfortunate side effect: people over the age of 20 suffer severe and often fatal organ damage with each use. These young people are tasked to travel forward in time 54 years when the world has fallen victim to a terrible environmental catastrophe. They scour the barren landscape for samples and clues. When the project is threatened with shutdown, the teens escape into this apocalyptic future (filmed at Idaho's eerie and desolate Craters of the Moon National Monument) and set out to solve its mystery once and for all.

Fonda was obviously working within the confines of a miniscule budget but he makes the most of his resources. The time machine room is silent and bright white, recalling the sterility of the spaceships from 2001: A Space Odyssey. On a literary note, this machine is so reminiscent of the time travel apparatus Wilson Tucker created for  his award-winning 1970 SF novel The Year of the Quiet Sun that I'd be surprised if screenwriter Thomas Mathiessen hadn't read that book. And Fonda's framing of the future wastelands also conjures 2001's opening sequence, where barbaric apes scrabble to survive in an African veldt.

Idaho Transfer, like most time travel stories, has plot holes a-plenty. If we're so concerned with solving a catastrophe that happens 54 years in the future, why not travel forward just 53 years and see if you can determine its cause? Or 52, or 48, until you backtrack to the actual event? We're asked to believe these people care so much about solving the future apocalypse that they willingly send themselves there on a one-way trip? That's a noble cause we just can't swallow because the thin characters feel too self-centered and childish. Not to mention the fact that living in a dead wasteland doesn't sound like my idea of a very good time.

All that aside, Idaho Transfer does have one coup de grace that I love: a nasty bitch-slap of an ending that left my jaw feeling slack for days afterward. I remember wishing that the rest of the movie hadn't been so damned meandering, earnest and touchy-feely because the final scene is as stunning as black satire can get. I had to back up and watch it three times just to make sure I understood its point and then I was laughing in amazement. It almost makes me wish the movie had started with this scene and gone on from there.

Idaho Transfer isn't for everybody's taste. But if you're a fan of SF films and you've already seen everything on the video shelves, it's definitely worth a look.