RSS SPIRIT

Future Best Actress





I was watching UHF the other night, caught a good Partridge Family episode. In it there was a special guest star - an 11 year old (or so) Jodie Foster. When watching Jodie as a girl one immediately realizes, all that is wonderful and terrifying about her was openly on display even as a young woman. She was pretty, but there was something exhausted about her demeanour. She was bright and intelligent, but almost unnaturally so. She was a great actress even back then, yet we are fascinated with the gangly girl behind the actress.

In this episode, Danny Partridge falls madly in love with her. She breaks his heart, but nicely, informs him that she "is just not ready for all that." Guess who plays her dad who has a thing for a Danny's mother? That's right, Bill Bixby.

I mention this by way of thinking about America's best actress. To wonder at the wonder she inspires and perhaps guess at a strategy for her future success.

Because yes we all saw Flight Plan and Panic Room. Not great movies. But one could argue that Ms. Foster gave great performances. I think Jodie is such a freak of nature that in order for her to get into a role, she requires nothing less than playing it German Expressionist style. And yes, she would have been an incredible actor in silent German movies of the 1920's.

She is right now in a movie that got released in March (we all know what that means) and she was also in the French movie The Longest Engagement. She has a supporting role here but is great. She also has a great love scene that should silence all the haters who diss her kissing scenes.

But here is what Jodie Foster teaches us. Great leading ladies need great scripts. Laugh if you want, but Contact was a great script. It had everything a leading lady needs: love, betrayal, obsession, despair and tortured redemption. People will be watching Contact a 100 years from now.

So what does a script require before it is worthy of Jodie Foster? First there better be glamorous locations. I mean we have had enough of Jodie locked in a room or in a plane. She is a beauty, only the perfect light of Southern California is suitable for her.

Second, let us get rid of all this scientist/engineer nonsense. Yes I know she wants to be encouraging to girls, but this is a movie, Jodie, not an educational film strip. She should play a smart character of course, but softer, say an English Professor at USC. So she can show off the freakishly smart while having some emotional strength too.

Essentially, as a proper leading lady, she should be put in situations where life and death hang on her decisions; in situations where she is madly loves, intensely loves and knows heartbreak; in situations where she will conjure awe in her face during a third act confronation on the Santa Monica pier.

To paraphrase a better writer: I come not to bury Jodie, I come to praise her. For she is one of those rare born hopeful monsters who, if she can mate with the right script, can transport millions to wonder in a movie worthy of a DVD collector's edition.

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Add Sun, Air, Water. Wait three billion years. Out Pops Don Knotts.







Those who are committed atheists are flawed in their thinking. For if you were a god and wanted to make manifest life in all its variety, if you wanted to ensure that life would survive regardless of circumstance, evolution would be an excellent system to implement. Evolution employs randomness, a perfectly objective tool, to ensure the maximum amount of types are tried.

Not all random changes are succesful. In fact most mutations are negative in effect. But by trying new possibilities all the time, evolution conceives - monkey blogger like - a munificent menagerie of life forms.

Atheists should be properly categorized with the religionists. They assert faith as fact. A disinterested perspective is that of contented agnostic. For this fact stands between us and a firm answer to the question: as a part of the whole we cannot judge the whole.

Evolution I think would be more terrifying if it was of divine origin. For out of nothing it cobbles together this fantastic cluster of interlocking species converting solar and geothermal energy into organized intelligence and - perhaps an unintended consequence - joy. How can a random mutation machine produce that rare substance, happiness?

This is by way of saying that Intelligent Design is a lie and those who propagate ID are notorious liars. The beginning of life was a random event. It occured in a rapidly changing ecology that had randomly changed to be a medium conducive to the formation of organized, self-replicating molecules. Randomness thus ensures order will be discovered eventually.

We should not trust evolutionists (and religionists) on issues metaphysical. There are too close to the wicket, so to speak. Understandably they possess a myopic perception on the matter of life, death and the creative forces in charge.

Not that evolutionists are useless. Over the next twenty years we are going to see big discoveries in evolution as the genetics field matures.

For now the Intelligent Design liars have been beaten back. This is a victory for us children of the enlightenment. For evolution may be the single most valuable piece of intellectual property created by the enlightenment. It is hard to imagine how much money one would make if it owned the patent for evolution.

Evolution might very well be attributed to some member of the Medici family who in 1493 had a whim to create a botanical collection culled from a newly conquered piece of territory. An impulse that ended up causing a scientist to dream of double helixes. What later was seen to be the key to the code of life's cookbook.

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Your Cheating Heart Bought Me An Island




There are many things the TV show Cheaters teaches us about love. Like, if she says she is a drug addict who should not be left alone, you should probably not leave her alone. This is but one of many homilies on love that we learn on UHF's Cheaters. That this guy on the show had to learn this lesson while his drug addicted slut soon to be ex girlfriend reclines on a deck chair and smokes while the loser mullet dude she is cheating on him with sprays drug addicted insults at him from the pool, well that is just the deep expressions of love that Cheaters provides.

The main love lesson Cheaters teaches is the amount of self-deception involved in the process. Love is visually impaired indeed. At least once an episode we meet some sad ass schlumpf who is so in love s/he does not know what everybody in their generic apartment complex knows. It is so sad to see hope against hope dashed for good against the video evidence host Joey Greco invariably wields against infidelity. Yes it is true, your purported lover has nothing but love for not you, but rather this piece of trash s/he picked up from the job.

Cheaters also teaches us that like life, love frequently ends violently. I am serious, we all need to be watching Cheaters. Turn to UHF around 2:30 in the morning, it should be on shortly. A recent Cheaters chronicled the end of a love affair with a fist fight that spilled out on the street and caused a drunk street riot which attracted about 5 police cars in about thirty seconds.

Cheaters also teaches us: good love can be had with somebody who just broke it off with his/her no good cheating whore of a lover (now ex-lover.) Watch the cheated-on seethe in the Cheaters van with Joey Greco and you can see how hot the love would be. Inspect the intensity of the countenances about to confront cheating lovers and it is easy to picture how angry sex, liberation sex and revenge sex would spiral together into a typhoon of freak that is well worth keeping an eye out for.

Speaking of that, how much love does Joey Greco snare off of Cheaters? Consider this fantasy video: Joey Greco's VIP wrap party DVD featuring the men and women of Cheaters. That one would be nothing but "Too Hot For TV."

Besides informing us on issues of anthropology, human sexuality, ethnography, sociology, human courtship and strip mall night clubs - Cheaters enlightens us with trenchant intelligence on love (and that thin line that separates it from hate.)

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You Hurt My Feelings, Now You Need A Stretcher







Cheap shots are so satisfying, yet so little is spoken of that satisfaction. There is something that simply feels right when you see the ref is not watching and you stick an elbow in the back of that dickweed defender who has been hacking you all game. So memorable is a devasting tackle from the blindside that leaves your opponent twitching and referees reaching for their pockets.

Of course there are two kinds of cheap tackles - the flagrant and the 'get away with it.' The flagrant cheap shot can be recognized by how loud is the collective gasp of appreciation. It is usually done when you are ready to leave the contest in which you are playing for good. Its aim is a bravissmo salvo as you exit stage left. Yes points are awarded for aesthetics. The more excruciating your opponent writhes post-flagrant foul is important. As is the amount of desire the other team displays in wanting to kill you.

"Getting away with it" is an another art altogether. The spectacle of a crime committed but the perpetrator walking away unpunished is also highly coveted. If you can pull this one off you deserve a medal. Try and triangulate yourself between intended victim and the referee. Wait for a suitable diversion, then utilize the old forearm shiver to the spine to send a message.

I got away with it a couple springs back during a co-ed rec-league soccer game. Three of us converged on a bouncing ball. Two bad guys and I. The game had been chippy all the way through, not surprising as it was a championship. Even the girls were cheap shotting, cleats first. So this ball comes bouncing and these guys come hard, they are looking to kill. And all I know is I got my knee up and the next thing I know they are both on the ground and I am still standing, ball safely kicked away. My teammates on the sidelines went nuts. An extremely satisfying cheap shot and the ref did not even whistle me for it. (Of course I ended up with a crabapple sized lump on my shin and walked like a pirate for a week.)

This be but a brief celebration of that often maligned pleasure, the "entrada sans merci." Because what scratches an itch more satisfyingly than taking down face first a wanker who has been bothering you all game with a blindside cutdown that leaves him face first and dazed, hearing only the vague sound of your voice informing him: "What you got to say now bitch?"

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The Exquisite Terror Of "All Is Permitted"





I found an old copy of Brothers Karamazov buried in a beach house shelf. I took it out and like I always do when I thumb through Dostoevsky's last novel, I look in the table of contents for the Grand Inquisitor chapter. This is a great little fable that one of the Karamazov brothers relates. It is a pitch perfect parable for our dark and stormy moment in time.

Translation Alert: Only read Dostoesvsky in a modern translation. The Pevear/Volokhonsky translation I can attest is nice and new.

The Grand Inquisitor story is one that Ivan Karamazov has conceived and hopes to develop into something. It is set in Inquisition era Spain. Christ has returned to earth for a second time. He arrives in Spain and is caught by the authorities making a miracle. The Grand Inquisitor has the Lord imprisoned and then goes and lecture Jesus personally.

Essentially he tells the Son of God, in chains in a filthy prison, that His presence is neither required or desired. The Grand Inquisitor informs Christ that people did not want what He was peddling. They wanted indeed the opposite. The Inquisitor, a humble religious man, provided people with the opposite. He could be considered the opposite's primary representative. He continues to abuse Jesus like this for a while, condemns him to death and the story ends.

This chapter nicely exemplifies Dostoesvky's best aspects as a writer. He aimed for that place where melodrama meets metaphysical and hopefully there can be found within the unbearable a glimpse of the eternal sacred (before all is overwhelmed by madness before dawn.)

He was past 60 when he wrote this book, nearing the end of a life so fraught with torment only a Russian could have survived to write about it. In Brothers Karamazov, FD wrote a great novel and within it a great short story. It is a tale best forgotten quickly after reading it, lest its unspeakable epiphanies deform our souls.

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We keep living, precariously, to honor our God.




I know the Iraqi Shiites do not get a lot of love lately. There is that whole bloody self-flagellation thing, and no beer. But I feel they have not been fully appreciated as a category of people. We might want to take a moment to appreciate them more fully as we have made a substantial investment in their future country.

First thing we should remember, for a long time the Iraqi Shiites have been rotting in god-forsaken urban slums getting ill treated by the Baathists. In this way they are like the Catholics in Belfast, or indigenous South Africans in Soweto. They are deep roots people – they possess that proud indifference to death of those who wage intergenerational battle against oppression.

Take Moqtada Sadr for example. He is a relatively young leader, his dad was a famous cleric. He is a born ghetto politician who plays his politics 'balls to the walls.' He would have made a powerful alderman in Chicago. He understands both the politics of the street and the mosque mat.

Of course he denounces America. We Americans should not feel bad about that. Let us just accept that he expresses the dominant mood of his followers. For better or worse American troops stay in Iraq to ensure the increased prosperity of Shiite theocrat ghetto political parties run by men like Sadr. It does seem odd that this administration would get in bed with these folks, but there it is.

So we Americans should give a little more love to our newest strategic political and trade partners. Odd bedfellows to be sure, but if viewed in the right light, our new allies will seem not unfamiliar to most of us.

Juan Cole, an indispensable resource for understanding events in Iraq, has been quoting from the Koran lately. As patriotic Americans trying to reach out to new partners we should take a few minutes to read from Islamic scripture as a show of good faith. For together we are walking, hand in hand, toward our shared future (hopefully prosperous.)

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Thinking Body, Dancing Mind


Here is what I know so far as per the meaning of life question. We are all spirals of electromagnetic energy. There is no separation between divine and the material world. Everything is all we see, nothing is hidden. For those of who ponder this notion, we eventually reach a philosophical stalemate: how can we judge when all that we would judge with, must be fashioned from what we judge? As Herr Nietzsche teaches the fact that we cannot judge objectively relieves us of responsibility. Since we have no way of apprehending the whole from outside of it, we must resign ourselves to a subjective appreciation, and in doing so we become innocent again – redeemed.

Everything emerges from, as the Tai Chi people call it, a chi. A ball of energy out of which we spiral. To life and (hopefully) love and a nice walk along a forgotten river on light warm day. It is important to feel our center, that ball of energy not surprising located right near our naughty bits. I would recommend learning a couple Tai Chi moves. Tai Chi as one might expect has some good exercises for 'exploring' your chi.

Emotional intelligence is our animal morality. Dreams are visual metaphors written by our emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is rooted in self love and love of life. Out of this love spirals many cockamamie schemes that add up in the end to our so called lives.

We are entering a highly charged era. People need meaning in their lives. These fundamentalist religions teach us how much one will sacrifice for authentic feelings of meaning. Mircea Eliade teaches us that the thirst for meaning, for the answers to fundamental questions, should be properly viewed as biological need, like food and clean water. People were not built to be atheists.

This modern world is fraught with challenges for us who believe in this life, in spontaneous improvisation, we grandchildren of the enlightenment, who know life is holy prima fascia, and go on to exult in an ever growing knowledge of life. We 'hopeful monsters' who must endure the meaning of life in a world of willful ignorance. We wonder in our darker moments if the day will come when we are rounded up Pol Pot style and sent to re-education camps.

At the end of the day, in the twilight of our thoughts, we feel the power in our molten core, but bodhisattva style we postpone eternal bliss in order to help every last soul into nirvana.

[photo credit: http://www.themeaningoflife.org/]

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