The All-American Tragedy (Directed by Robert Zemeckis)

Performance art, at its most base, is categorized as one of two things; tragedy and comedy. The difference is typically discernable, though at times art can get a little edgy and you find tragedy and comedy merging, or simply paying a respectful nod to one-another. Then there are times where we’re just such a bunch of distracted, giggling dummies and we completely misinterpret what it is we’re seeing. It’s rare to encounter a comedy furtively cloaked as a tragedy. In fact, none come to mind.

But just the other day I was dismayed to view performance art so unapologetically, audaciously, half-assedly disguised downer of a tragedy masquerading around as a cute, knee slapping jaunt.

Forrest Gump.

Yes, everyone’s favorite sugar-coated portrait of Americana and the goings-on of a severely mentally challenged man is, in fact, a forlorn tale more hopeless than Macbeth and Hamlet combined.

You don’t believe me. The Gumpman has always given you the warm and fuzzies. I get it. I’d seen it no less than 10 times myself because I don’t like going outside much. But I just can ignore the absolute cascade of misfortune that visits this slice-of-life kneeslapper, starting with Mama Gump. A woman so impossible selfish she doesn’t have the decency to ever tell her son the truth about his father. Instead she feeds him an adolescence full of “your fathers on vacation, honey. Wipe your chin”.

Then there’s the matter of pretty much whoring herself out to get Forrest into a regular school. Instead of accepting that her child was remarkably inept for his age, allowing him to go to a school where he learned basic labor skills, allowing him to forge a couple friendships with people he identified with and was accepted by…she banged the principal. Banged him good too, from the sound of it. Oh right, Forrest sat outside dolefully while he listened to his loud-ass animal of a mother howl blissfully throughout the whole goddamn bayou. Adding insult to injury, the principal gives a him a little “hey, not too shabby” on the way out. Good luck sleeping ever again, Forrest.

After enduring 12 years of what was most assuredly wrought with bullying and teasing from a bunch of Alabaman rocket scientists, Forrest Gump enrolled (somehow) at the University of Alabama, where he doesn’t recall doing anything save for running fast and needlessly injuring countless woodwind players. And get this, the son of a bitch graduates! With a degree in…something! Communications? Who knows, they never say! But before you can say “did you really graduate?” he’s swept up by an army recruiter, drinks a bunch of Dr. Pepper blah blah blah Vietnam now.

Forrest makes a new best friend In Benjamin Bubbaloo (I know) and annoys the living piss out of Lt. Dan (for like, 20 years), and things seem pretty peachy in Vietnam. Not really noticing that he’s liable to get blown to bits any second, Forrest passes the time by finding amusement in people’s names and categorizing all the different kinds of rain he’s experiencing.

Then in a violent rush, nearly his entire platoon is wiped out around him, including the only friend he ever had dies in his arms. Generally, this would be laying the groundwork for some off-the-charts PTSD down the road. Thankfully, at the end of it all Forrest seems to only remember lots of ice cream and ping-pong, so yay!

Some years pass (I dunno, like 6?) and Forrest is called home for the death of his mother, an exceptionally tragic occurrence for anyone. While struggling with the loss, Forrest is visited by his lifelong tormentor Jenny. And look, I don’t care how she’s depicted throughout her life; Jenny is a stone cold loser. Here’s a guy who tries to fall on his sword for her every chance he gets, and instead she’s like “ummm, I think I’ll stick with guy who just tried breaking my teeth. He has heroin and it’s great. But oh my god, thanks though!”

So now that Forrest finally, finally has her, he asks her to marry him, only for her to reject him, assault him in his sleep, and sneak off before the dawn. This results in one of the greatest meltdown in cinema history, only it was depicted as an exceptionally twee, inspirational event.

He didn’t run a marathon. He didn’t run a month or a couple months or really fast or backwards or anything like that. He ran for 3 years, 2 months, and 16 days! This mans brain was put through so much trauma that it flipped completely onto it’s side that his only instinct for three years was to literally run from his problems. If only one of the many bystanders had ever said “Hey! I have a great idea for a bumper sti—holy shit dude, are you ok?”

After undoubtedly thoroughly destroying his knees and back from performing a physical feat no human will ever come close to achieving, Forrest gets a call…from Jenny! She wants to see him. And oooh! She wants to marry him! And oh wait he fathered a child with her she never told him about and of course she’s dying. Great timing, you jerk.

So the tale ends with Forrest, now a recently widowed single father who lacks a general understanding of the world, saddled with a child who likely has a touch of druggy fetal syndrome to him who was probably never going to find out about under different circumstances (i.e., Jenny chasing a little less dragon). And what have you now? A marketable, quotable, profitable Oscar nominee. Yes, just a nominee. They were just a few Nazis away from winning it all.

How a Terrible Commercial is Going to Ruin a lot of Lives.

I have nothing against improving the world. Being the cynic that I am, I would still never disparage a genuine act of altruism. I do, however, take great issue with someone being a clueless numbskull as they do it.

I’ve seen an increasingly skewed perception of what it is to be a humanitarian in my travels. The line between Right and Wrong has blurred progressively, and we’re left with a broad, scattered conception of what it is to be “good”.  Now, a logical adult couldn’t claim to know the exact cause of this transgression, but that doesn’t stop be from being unreasonably confident that I’ve pinned it down.

There’s a group called The Foundation for a Better Life, and I’m not sure exactly what it is they sell other than the warm-fuzzy’s. Their mission is to spread positive values by suggesting doing nice things for people in return for NO MONEY WHATSOEVER. Crazy, right? Their website is even called Values.com, which let me tell you, is a frightful mess wrapped up in flash adobe clusterfuck. These guys have gone all out cornering the market on virtue, thanks mostly to an endless barrage of regrettably stupid adverts each one more preachy than the next. Only one, however stands above the rest.

Open to a hard-fought high school basketball game. The whole season is on the line for both sides. Rebound! The Bears push it down the court for a quick lay-up (I saw the scoreboard, that basket definitely evened them up at 65-65). Only seconds remaining and…oh no! The red team turns it over on the inbound, Bears are going to get the ball back! They’re just one point away from realizing a dream!

Coach calls a timeout to formulate the perfect play. You can almost feel the electricity! But wait, somethings not right with Alex over there, who suddenly blurts out “I touched it. I touched the ball before it went out, coach”. Coach is, for lack of a better word, crestfallen. “You gotta be kidding me, Alex”, “It’s the championship game!” they cried, but it was too late. “I touched it, it’s their ball” Alex insisted, gazing at coach quite preachingly. With a look of defeat, coach breaks huddle and whimpers “just don’t foul them on the inbounds”. Just as there seems to be no point to anything anymore, coach yells out “Hey Alex…good job”. Cue music.

Hey Alex…good job.

Real commercial, I promise.

Alex is a well meaning albeit wildly misguided teen, sure. By now he has consumed so much values.com kool-aid he cant see straight any more, nor does he realize the severe beating waiting for him in the locker room. He essentially forfeited the entire season because of his compulsion to do right whenever, wherever. This is not being a good person, it’s being an asshole teammate. The pursuit of playing gallant hero is taken only by Alex, when there are four other guys who don’t give a shit about values and are here to win! High school titles are a rare and fleeting opportunity, and a dream held by these athletes since their first NERF hoop. They even try to reason with the shmuck in the huddle! “Alex, it’s the championship game! Don’t do this! I may have a scholarship riding on this shit! See Pooky over there? He’s gonna get laid if we win, and just look at him! It’s his only shot! Alex, please!” or something to that effect. However, he was unmoved by their pleas, and pressed on, flipping them all off with both hands just out of frame.

I also cant help but notice, after watching the replay frame-by-frame upwards of 20 times, I honestly don’t think this basket case Alex even touched the ball. I honestly think it was just beyond his fingertips. This sociopath is so out of control he fabricated the whole incident! It would not be surprised at all if Alex were to break his own nose in the locker room to save his teammates the fuss of getting his blood all over their jerseys.

Then there’s coach, poor ole coach. Just imagine what winning the state title would have done for him. He’d be a local hero, eat for free at the Applebee’s downtown whenever he wanted, and even completely renew his faith and love for the game! Maybe a college gig would come calling, where he could develop future talents and definitely never, ever recruit Alex.

Rather, he’ll only have been so close; get stuck at this dead end job in this dead end high school, and be stuck with Alex’s ass for another two years (Alex is a sophomore. That’s a detail that was left open and I had to fill it in).

A lot of heartache. A lot of shattered lives and broken promises left in Alex’s wake. Could have been avoided, too. If only morality and compassion weren’t subject to branding for the sake of capital.  So lets try this, don’t screw up important basketball games or any other athletic competitions thereof. Keep it simple. Change a light bulb for a short person. Don’t know any short people? Then pick up dropped items for your tall friends. I just gave you two ideas that will be very helpful while not alienating any teammates. There’s nothing to it! Go clean some oily pelicans, or even just drive like a civil person. While you’re at it, drive an old person to the store. They often don’t have cars and the ones that do are awful drivers. Awful, awful drivers. Cue music.

Disney is working hard to make hardcore violence palatable for childen

I can recall every detail of the day I watched my first R-rated film with an unparalleled clarity. It was summer, and I was eight. Outside was windy and unpleasant as the fine Colorado dust was being blown fiercely by the harsh June wind. My brother and I were spending the weekend with my father, who was still in the early stages of a separation and struggling to find a way to keep his two utterly bored kids from killing and eating him. But there was no fun to be had on this blustery day, and there isn’t a god damn thing to watch on network TV on a Saturday afternoon.  In an act of sheer desperation and somewhat questionable parenting, my father sat us down and introduced us to the greatest American cinematic achievement, known otherwise as RoboCop.

Up until this point, violence, cursing, and partial-frontal nudity were all foreign concepts to me. Hell, they weren’t even concepts, I had no idea any of those things existed or were so awesome. Fucking especially the cursing.  As much as I thoroughly enjoyed the grotesque nature of it all, I was equally shaken and impacted by the visceral imagery. How I made it past Officer Murphy literally getting blown to bits by a ruthless gang led by Foreman’s Dad, I’ll never know.  But I knew well enough, then and there, that I had seen human nature at its ugliest, and guns and bullets and homicide were serious matters.  On that gusty, inclement Saturday, I learned to enjoy violence and also respect it. And the law. And robots.

Now, I find myself wondering if recognizing the time and place is being overlooked in favor for wider viewership.  Disney, makers of fuzzy sunshine and sympathizers to lawless pirates, decided not too long ago they wanted a slice of the savagery pie.  Traditionally, vehemence has occurred in Disney cinema to serve harsh but crucial life-lessons, like your mom may be hunted and shot in front of you or some awful things may happen to your toys once you forsake them.  Do you have any clue what happened to your toys when you started to ignore them?  Horrible things.  Watch Toy Story 3….don’t, actually….do.  Do watch it, but prepare yourself.

I find myself in this state of distress because I just recently subjected myself to Tron Legacy.  Yeah, all of it.  And look, it was bad, sure.  It did exceed my expectations only slightly, however.  Hell, it wasn’t even the worst movie I’d seen this week (that distinguishment belongs to the 20 minutes of Red that I trudged through).  It’s redeeming qualities are as follows; great visuals, superb score by Daft Punk, Olivia Wilde and her fine self.  The other 135 minutes are something of an incomprehensible mess, due largely in part to the overwhelming body count.  Before I knew it, characters were being cut in half, dismembered, decapitated, impaled, shot, and vehicularly manslaughtered.  Walt Disney himself must still be rolling in his Neo Nazi regalia’d  cryogenic chamber. I know I would be.

Of course, these people are not idiots.  The good folks Of Disney Studios know you can’t just slap a PG rating on indescribable gore.  But if you find loopholes like, say, killing “programs” instead of people. Yes, every entity in the realm of Tron is a mere computer program, meaning no actual blood or attachment. Every program, at the point of “termination” simply crumbles into thousands of little blue cubes.  Finito!  They even had the gall to cut off Olivia Wilde’s arm, making sure to linger on her non-bleeding wound long enough to show the kiddies’ “See! It’s fine! Everthings okay, no blood! Don’t freak out!”

But nothing compared to the films’ climax, in which the good guys are escaping from the bad guys yadda yadda they’re in little airplanes yadda yadda the good guys have a turret gun on theirs.  While staving off their attackers, the character on the turret gun spends a few minutes firing aimlessly and eventually  lands a shot directly on one his attackers…directly on his brain.  No exaggerations. He literally blew a hole right through that guys’ head.  In the theme of good taste, they held the shot long enough for you to say “the definitely just blew a hole through that guys’ fucking head” six or seven times. PG rating, mind you.

I was still aghast as the credits rolled.  What I had just seen was a solid two and half hours of unidentifiable, unrelatable beings get slaughtered in the most moronically stylish ways possible.  And while it was produced specifically not to make the violence resonate any longer than a few seconds, I was deeply perturbed BECAUSE of my familiarity with violence and not in spite of it.  Jesus, they blew a guys face off.  Know how many people lost their face in RoboCop? Exactly zero.

Look, I get it.  Disney is big business, so is blood and guts.  This is a country that loves its violence so long as it’s not terribly realistic, not against women, not against old people or young children, and not extremely messy, thanks.  A violent but approachable oeuvre like Tron Legacy serves only to soften the blow of unspeakably gruesome actions and leads us to forget the causatum of murder.  What’s more is Disney studios has bought the rights to the Seal Team Six capture and assassination of Osama Bin Laden.  How they plan on presenting every caustic emotion and consequence of such an event, I have no idea.  So, if anyone out there has any ideas of how to recreate Bin Laden being shot in the head in a gentle, stylized, PG-friendly manner, Disney would probably love to have you on board.

Rawr Rawr Orton Sucks Rawr!; The ugly state of Bronco Nation

I was something of an odd child.  Painfully bashful, reserved, and what some older folks may have referred to as “obnoxious and completely unrelateable”.  You can’t fault them though; many of these assertions were (and are) dead on.  As socially inept personalities well know, making connections with others can be difficult, due to a universal lack of charisma and/or self-esteem.  Instead of living desolate, unhappy lives, we build associations with other dysfunctional beings through modes of culture.  Some of us bond with others through French cinema, or Spiderman, or even the occasional tough-to-define sexual fetish.

My own attempts to ingratiate myself into society led to a love of the Denver Broncos. Not just a love, but an endlessly abiding devotion that would consume my little ADD-riddled existence.  No doubt, they were as much of an underdog as I.  We mirrored one-another in our constant shortcomings and longwinded, bumbling efforts for marginal success.  I found myself reveling in every victory, and felt inexplicable mirth with every loss.

Beyond the surface, there was something far greater about the culture, something that felt unique and pure.  Fans were loyal, fervent, and shared a love for their fellow fan like no other fan in America.  We packed the stands to capacity every single week, and cheered harder and louder than what could be considered healthy or sensible.  Even through the worst, from Wade Phillips to Dale Carter, we were steadfast fans, and backed our Broncos through the worst.  An awe-inspiring vibe which now feels abstracted and distant.

With age, I’ve learned to handle loss with some maturity, as opposed to the earth-shattering melancholia I once did.  But not everyone grew up.  Bronco Nation now seethes with mean-spirited disconsolation, which often gives way to childish indignation.  So it’s not the loss of the game itself, it’s the loss of the class and dignity of this franchise I’ve held so dear. 

A couple nights ago, we witnessed the nadir of fan decorum.  In what was an inexplicably ugly game, factions of irritated fans began booing our quarterback somewhere around 45 minutes into the season.  The entire soiree was boo-worthy, as was the entire squad was beat soundly in every aspect of the game. And while Denver was never really in it, they were never really out of it either.  Didn’t matter.  Swaths of easily exasperated fans started booing and chanting “WEE WAH TEE-BOW” as our offense scored a touchdown and narrowed the lead to three.

Recap: First game of season, 4^th quarter, down by single digits, acrimonious bleating from truculent jerkfaces.

Being a loyal fan, of any given franchise or individual comes with some inevitable caveats.  Tim Tebow came equipped with a few of his own. One of them being that he is a “developmental project”, which everyone initially very understood of.  Fans knew that he was not pro-ready coming out of a shotgun-heavy option offense.  He was (and still is) in dire need of correcting almost everything from his sloppy footwork to his supine throwing motion.  And his fans said “yeah, yeah, development needed, sure sure”, a notion abandoned about 2 weeks into last season.

More recently, Tebow was caste with yet another hurtful monition that he actually kind of sucked as a quarterback.  Nothing against the guy, but the skills just aren’t their yet.  Irregardless of his burgeoning desire to lead and win, Tebow was, and is, simply not at the capacity to do so just yet.  We have to pinch ourselves and remember that while we drafted an All-American kid, we didn’t draft an All-Star quarterback.

But you people.  You reckless and ruthless kooks, loons, maniacs… You’ve collectively put him on such an ascendant pedestal.  You’ve excised his flaws and relished over his endowments that your judgment is clouded, if not thrust out entirely.  You’ve prioritized his stardom and notability over the development over the team you expect him to schlep around.  And now I hear a handful of you are doling out thousands of dollars (ten of them, to be precise) to muddle my gorgeous Colorado skyline with a billboard disparaging Kyle Orton.  To what end?  To change my mind? Coach Fox’s mind? John Elway’s mind?  Effectively, all they’ve done is forfeit their money and credibility as a fan to be the loudest person in the argument.  This is where your movement is headed, friends.

I remember vaguely when this was a classy institution.  We had the best fans and the best atmosphere, even if our squad was lousy.  We didn’t boo our quarterback when our defensive backs were slipping on nearly every coverage or our front seven was getting trampled.  We took our losses hard, but were always pleased as punch to wait for the next week, or the next season if we had to.  The difference was that our devotion, the common strain that connected us all, remained unyielding through the most difficult of stretches.  So relax, spastic children.  Your boy will have his day; just don’t boo his ass off when the grass seems greener on the other side.

Roy Williams: A Cautionary Fail.

The phrase “I sure miss Detroit” isn’t uttered often.  I’ve seen Robocop. Crime is out of completely out of control, the police force is despondent and worn, and is seemingly on the verge of striking altogether. On top of all that, the Lions have been a total sideshow for like the past 200 years.  However, there seems to be a light looming at the end of the tunnel.  Robocop Murphy is doing a bang-up job ridding the streets of Red Foreman and other scum of the like, and Ndamukong Suh is eating quarterbacks on the field.  Serious, he is literally feasting on these people in front of everyone.  From what I can tell, it is completely league sanctioned.  Remarkable!

Indeed, the clouds are breaking over the perceptively less-gloomy metropolis, but don’t tell that to Roy Williams.  Ever since he scrambled out of town for greener pastures and a un-screw-up-able situation in Dallas, his existence has become a dazzling spectacle of impotence and buffoonery.  In fact, one could directly attribute the much of the recent consternation suffered by the Cowboys’ dynasty to him. 

In 2008, Jerry Jones was looking to compliment his ever-coy superstar Terrell Owens.  He figured the best way to get his team over the hump, and maybe lure T.O. out of his shell just a little, would be to trade for an impactful weapon. Ultimately, they traded for the 6’3, 215 lb. Williams.  It should be noted that he made the Pro Bowl and led the conference in receiving yards just one season prior, so Dallas thought they were getting something of a sure thing….for four draft picks….in the middle of the season.  If those circumstances weren’t baffling enough, they restructured for him a six-year contract worth 53$ milly (almost half of it guaranteed, yo).  In response, he gave them 198 yards and single touchdown on 19 catches in seven games.  In the subsequent draft, the Cowboys didn’t have a pick until #69, wherein they drafted an enormous television which, in all fairness, is the biggest star on the team.

After yet another ho-hum year, in which he was overshadowed by hairless cat Miles Austin, the Cowboys drafted Dez Bryant, who was quickly heralded and touted as definitely not Roy Williams.  Bryant would soon prove to the unraveling of Williams, both as a man and a teammate.  In an unprecedented move, Dez Bryant refused to carry Williams’ shoulder pads, as is custom at some— no, pretty much all training camps.  Its part of the time-tested tradition of hazing, or punishing someone for being younger than you.  Understated torture has been a staple of sports longer than homosexual undertones.  You’re going to have to carry some pads, period.  And then, best case scenario, you maybe get your head shaved and your gym bag pissed on. So be it, welcome to the team.  But not Bryant, no sir.  He straight told Williams, to his pathetic face, that he would not carry his pads.  He then gargled some Gatorade, and skipped away.  Quite jauntily, I’m guessing.

After having his very being tarnished, he slugged through (spoiler) another shabby season, and wasn’t even worthy of carrying Dez Bryants’ jock at that point.  However, he did have one thing going for him.  He was going steady with Brooke Daniels, the former prettiest lady in all the lone star state.  In fact, the unknowingly brazen lover was head-over-heels for her, and he wanted to lock her down for life with a little long-term contract of his own.  In an overwhelming act of sweeping, maudlin romanticism, Williams bent down on one knee, took the ring out of his pocket, put it in an envelope and crammed it into his mailbox.  Just in case that alone didn’t seal the deal, he enclosed of VHS tape to ask for her hand.  Nothing says “devotion” like using two antiquated forms of communication, especially when you’re sitting on 26$ guaranteed.

Now jilted, disrespected, ineffectual and enervated; Roy Williams must long for the cold, humdrum simplicity of Detroit.  Why would a man who gets paid such incomprehensible money to perform poorly at his job sue his ex for a paltry 75k?  Well, he’s desperate to win.  Some stretches of our lives can only be described unmitigated shitstorms where we just can’t buy a break.  It’s daunting trying to turn the tides on bum luck, but things will never change for someone who can’t pull their head out of their ass long enough to propose like an evolved human being.

Watch me Successfully Defend Kanye West

Grandstanding is a perilous route to fame.  When done right, you’ll amass legions of fans who will extol your every fashion statement and dope beat.  When done wrong, you bewilder a cute blonde in front an adoring audience, which never bodes well for flamboyant megastar under the influence of too much Courvoisier.  Enter Kanye West, a polarizing media gargantuan who managed to do both, excellently at that.  In a moment of unabashed megalomania, Mr. West managed to shove away a large majority of his already abated fan base.  Since, he’d been making the rounds (disastrously) to re-establish himself as the flamboyant, peerless hip-hop icon he was just years ago.  Nothing seems to have worked, though.  Former fans have jumped ship for less egregious, albeit less dynamic performers.

If we’ve learned anything about bandwagons, it’s just as easy to jump off as it is to jump on.  And while most everyone seems eager to relegate Kanye to the realm of controversial afterthoughts, I’m prepared to declare him as one of the most important figures of contemporary culture as well as music.  Lousy attitude and selfishness aside, West is this generations’ Jim Morrison, or maybe even Pythagoras.  Hrmm….we’ll stick with Morrison.

Let’s go back to 2008.  Kanye was still riding the wave of incredible popularity garnered by the success of his two prior albums, not to mention the dozens of hits he’d produced.  Without question, he was the face of the industry and was primed to eventually reach a cult status shared by few.  However, he was reeling from the death of his mother, an emotion that would cast a heavy shadow over his new album.  808s and Heartbreak sputtered commercially, and was rejected by listeners who expected the same vibe delivered on his previous two efforts.  Granted, it was heavy on the pop and harmony, and lacked the dick-swinging swagger that became his staple, but he had opened up like never before.  Heavily themed in depression, anxiety, and self-doubt, he dropped his guard and peeled away at his exterior almost entirely and was shown no thanks for it.

Things seemed to fall apart slowly thereafter.  The Swift situation, an utter fiasco at Bonnaroo, a couple of very public breakups; the shine and mystique began to fade.  But that wasn’t going to stop West from doing what he was best at, saying exactly what was on his mind. 

Late last year, he released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.  Most devotees were long gone by then, but the few that remained found themselves being overtaken by a stirring, histrionic opus rarely found in today’s rap.  Sharp, impetuous, and brutally honest, Fantasy delivered unexpected depth, as well as the burgeoning essence of a figure who’d fallen from the crest to the doldrums.  Even more provocative was the overall message; you people don’t know what you want. 

And really, he nailed it.  The general public took a nobody, exalted him to a messiah, and left him as a leper.  They didn’t want the same ole same, but didn’t care for anything odd or antithetical.  Young males adulated him for his misogynistic tones, but turned when he was a big bully to embodiment of the cute, awkward girl whose songs they related to.  So Kanye let go, stopped caring, and told the world “yes, I am that asshole, and you people love it. Without the anger, without the intrigue, I would have been another passing craze soon to be forgotten like so many others. I am that asshole, and even if you’re not okay with it, I am.”

It’s key to realize how many personalities we now view as historic figures were incredibly imperfect.  Albert Einstein has been retroactively diagnosed as having severe autism, as have Thomas Edison for Aspergers syndrome and Martin Luther for OCD, and there’s a good chance they were impossible to tolerate on many occasions during their respective eras.  So it’s easy to say West is a washed-up, brooding jerk with no room in his heart but for himself.  But, as we’ve seen, genius tends to walk hand-in-hand with emotional and chemical imbalance.  Maybe he’s not your favorite.  Maybe you want him to disappear already.  Maybe you’d prefer music that has nothing to explore, or won’t lead you to explore yourself, because one may find they’re not the most savory individual.  Kanye West made that very grim discovery, and used it to create a quietly brilliant album.

How not to institute peace and understanding; The Terry Jones Saga.

Little known fact; upon drafting The Constitution some 220 years ago, the signees of said document had meant for it to be ratified every 20 years.  Really.  Before autographing the original Bill of Rights, they stopped briefly and said to one-another “Say, let’s suggest they update this thing every so often, or these idiots might follow the same old, irrelevant laws forever and ever, yeah?”  A little wordy, I know, but I make no apologies for proper 18^th century dialect.

Anyhow, we never did that.  Amendments protecting us from the de rigeur tyranny of England still stand today, even though we’re pretty good pals now.  However, some of those idiots our forefathers expressed concerns about in my brain began to surface.  But nowadays they’re just coming out of the friggin’ woodwork.  And sure, it’s nice to still be protected from treason for calling your president some pretty crazy stuff, or to tell a union soldier to piss off if you don’t want to give up your futon for the night.  But there’s always going to be a fly in the ointment.  Some jerk will always force you to question the validity of your rights.  Terry Jones is that Jerk….butthead.  Sonofabitch. 

Some quick facts about Terry Jones, Pastor of the Dove World Outreach Cult…I mean, Center.  Mmmm, no, I did mean cult.

• Charged and fined by a German administrative court for falsely representing himself as a doctor.
• Banned from the church he formed in Cologne for reported fear mongering, brainwashing, and beating children with rods-ing.
• Banned from the UK forever and ever and ever.
• Videotaped himself burning a copy of the Quran, an article of faith that nearly two billion people worldwide really, really like.
• Remarkably poor strategist.

Unsavory qualities, each and every one of them, but it’s the last one that has led to this point.  An effervescent zealot, Jones introduced his plan to toast the Muslim holy book in the name of Christians….Americ…insane people everywhere on 9/11, 2010, under the ill-advice that the cliché would help fuel the fire.  As if the mustache wasn’t enough.

The problem was, not a single other person on earth wanted to bolster his assertion, so he conceded his batshit ploy and shelved that Quran he paid at least $15 for (I Amazon’d it).  Things quieted down for a while, most of us forgot about him entirely. 

But it sat there, mocking him.  Mocking him and his God, and his country, and baseball cards and bad mortgages.  Damned if he was going to let that book abrogate everything he believed in.  No longer would he object quietly while a brackish America let these savages run wild.  So he hollered at Sylvia to grab the camera and his good smotin’ boots, and the rest is shameful, shameful history.

But the genius behind Jones’ scheme was that there was neither genius nor scheme.  In fact, he didn’t seem to plan any action further than making sure to have the fire extinguisher nearby.  The man sat back and waited for the truckloads of accolades to pull into his driveway.  Which is odd, considering that in one fell swoop he set off uncontrollable riots, endangered the lives of embedded contractors, diplomats, and tourists, and supplied great recruiting fodder for jihadists, not one single person has yet to send a thank-you card.   Why exactly.  For every uneducated loon, there are at least five crazier personalities willing to find an outlet and congratulate the hell out them.  Terry Jones was really counting on that, seeing as how his congregation consisted of about 50 swamp-people before this fiasco and has likely plummeted since.

When you add it all up, it doesn’t make sense that such an agoraphobic numbskull could wind up being such a consequential force.  But modern existence tends to lack sense, and instead gives way to sensationalism and gestures of egomania, two qualities that can launch any neophyte to unexpected levels of success, because we love that in our freaks.  We love them to drag their brand of absurdity to the brink, to tease our imaginations with just how insane people can be, especially if that insanity can be easily transmitted from one to 2 billion people that exist to us only in our TV’s.  That’s how things managed to get this far.  All that chaos and bloodshed and instability, it wouldn’t hit any closer (for most of us) than the CNN desk.  Most Americans don’t know Islam, they don’t see it at bus stops or schools, and it manages to abide mainly as fleeting notion.  If Terry Jones was some radical fundamentalist who wanted to burn a bible, bill of rights, or even Mickey Mouse, you’d never have heard of him.  There would be no cameras, no Fox News appearances, no coverage whatsoever.  There’s no commercial appeal in attacking something even vaguely American.