ginandtacos.com

(At the risk of getting anyone in trouble, forgive me for being slightly vague here)

A close relative of mine works in a government job in the Orland Park, IL area. For those of you unfamiliar with Chicagoland, Orland Park is a completely typical suburb, the kind in which bad rite-de-passage movies are set. Malls, strip malls, more strip malls, subdivisions, gated subdivisions, and more strip malls.

The office in which this person works was informed this morning by the FBI that they have information that leads them to believe that "malls and schools" may be targeted by terrorists and that they have "specific information" stating that the Orland Square Mall on LaGrange Road is being targeted for an attack.

I'll let that sink in for a moment. Re-read that paragraph until it strikes you as the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard, at which point you may proceed.

OK. Let's start with the "schools and malls are targets" premise. Great. Can I ask what categories of structures aren't on the list of potential targets yet? Ridge and the boys have issued warnings about banks, monuments, financial centers, stadiums, skyscrapers, courthouses, government offices, power plants, factories, train stations, airports, parking garages, tourist facilities, military bases, pup tents, mud huts, Pueblos, unmanned weather stations, geodesic domes, and suspiciously large hats. What purpose could an additional specific warning about schools and malls serve except to rachet up the hysteria a little more?

We get it, dipshits. Everything everywhere is a target 24 hours a day, and only George Bush can protect us. We get it. OK.

As for "specific information" concerning the Orland Square Mall. What can I even say except that anyone who is alarmed by this news can take comfort in the tremendous reliability of "specific information" and "sources" over the past 3 years. If the source turned out to be anything more credible than a 12 year old hanging out in Hot Topic, I'd eat my ass.

This sort of thing is a symptom of the advanced stages of complete hysteria. Anyone in their right mind would step back, take an objective look at this situation, and realize that Al Qaeda is not targeting a nondescript mall in an achingly irconsequential suburb. Logic would dictate that their list of targets is not:

1. World Trade Center
2. Pentagon
3. White House
4. Orland Square Mall
5. Olympics

I can't tell if this speaks to a complete breakdown of the nation's ability to think critically or simply a crass need for irrelevant people with boring lives to feel important enough to be targeted for terrorism. But in either case I can think of little to alleviate my dumbfoundedness at the moment.

If you haven't gotten a chance to play OkCupid's Virgin Game follow that link and do so immediately. You no longer need to be a member of the site itself.

OkCupid is a free internet dating/networking site that is actually free, and the guys who created it are pretty entertaining. It's worth checking out just to take their personality quiz (you don't need to register to take this one either). I was "The Boy Next Door."

Anyway, when you sign up for the site you specify whether or not you are a virgin. After collecting that data for about 5 months, they unleash this game – randomly drawn sets of two images from their database, one person a virgin the other not one. You have to guess who is which. At the end they give you your score. I imagine many people had wished they did a better job reading the "terms and agreements." I couldn't beat 60% on it – tell me if you can.

The guys who do the page are Harvard math nerds; they have data-mined the hell out of their stuff to statistically find out weird virgin facts which are available as advice on the game: "Of two men the exact same age, the one with more facial hair is more likely to be a virgin." The only real problem is that it doesn't tell you if you were right or wrong for each specific person, they just give you your overall score (I guess the terms and agreements weren't that flexible).

I think I can let this quote from our functionally illiterate leader speak for itself:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Later in the same speech, he goes on to claim that we are "spreading peace" throughout the Middle East.

I sort of want to die.

Wow. Leave it to the Republicans to keep things interesting in Illinois. Guess what! They have narrowed their choices for their candidate for Senator to two people – both of whom are black! Sorry, but isn't this a little shameless? Since there are no consolation prizes for the 2nd place candidate, why list two people instead of waiting a few more days until you have an actual choice? But anyway, that's not the fun part. The fun part is that likely contender is:

Alan Keyes!

Remember Mr. Keyes during the 2000 primaries? When all the Republicans were trying to be the most compassionate conservatives they could be, Alan Keyes was throwing down bolts of thunder from the top of Mt. I'm-Out-Of-My-Religious-Conservative-Fucking-Mind. Here are some quotes from the man, off his own webpage (no spin needed):

Take comfort America: If you get mugged remember it is the fault of Bill Clinton and post-structuralist moral relativism (are we really expected to believe that the guy who carjacks you is very well-versed in Foucault and Derrida?). You don't get many people calling the idea of free public education something that is rotten at the core of democracy. And I've heard many arguments for the 2nd amendment – the idea that we may be called upon as citizens to defend our borders does not come up very often.

This will be an interesting election if he is chosen. Has the man ever even lived in Illinois? I wonder if he can name 5 Illinois counties off the top of his head. The scary part of this all is what it says about the direction of this country. 4 years ago he was an utter joke. He trolled around the debates like a mirror image of Dennis Kucinich – except on the religious nutjob side of the mirror things are a lot scarier. Does our country actually take his point-of-view seriously now?

Big week for movie stuff here. We now have an open letter to Frederick Wiseman, asking the man to cashout already. And, due to popular demand, a review of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

This is a movie where two men in the early-to-mid 20s get very stoned and try to get White Castle. A lot of humorous things happen on their way that try and stop them, but through determination and luck, they get their wish.

Ok, full disclosure here: I was prepared to enjoy this movie from the first moment I heard this description. This site is, among other things, about the love for the consumption of gin and tacos, and we don't consider them mutually exclusive. Many a night of heavy drinking has been complimented with a epic journey to Flash Taco / Underdogs, Prime Time Pizza, or a Polish sausage stand in Maywood with slightly more protective glass than an embassy in sub-Sahara Africa.

And I don't use the word epic lightly either. People will sing songs and tell tales of these drunken searches for food. There's the time that Ed and I (not drunk) filled a rental car with so many Crave Cases of White Castle sliders on a road trip that the smell left over the next day almost violated the renter's agreement. There was also the time that Erik and I (very drunk) quested to a Perkins just outside of UofW; that trip required Erik to match wits with a extremely drunk visiting German professor over Ludwig Wittgenstein while I had to convince a female body-builder and her swarthy immigrant companion with too much chest hair exposed not to leave us for dead in a Madison ghetto.

So this movie was after my heart from the start. I'm very happy, and even more surprised, to say that it didn't disappoint. Mind you, this is slacker stoner comedy with it's cultural awareness level turned up to 11. Many people compare it to Super Troopers, which I have not seen; the more obvious reference point is "Dude Where's My Car?"

Unlike DWMC, which thumbed it's nose to the idea of having a coherent series of solvable subplots of character development for the leads, the main characters of this movie are the staple "uptight-repressed guy" and "lazy relaxed genius guy." If you've seen any movie from the past 25 years aimed at 13-21 year old men, then you have an idea of how it will progress.

What makes this movie more entertaining is how likable and strong the leads are. That the half of the jokes that work more than balance out the half of the jokes that fall-flat on their face also helps. There is a cameo by Neil Patrick Harris which makes me laugh just thinking about it. There is a scene involving an insane redneck and his attractive wife which is so dumb that it is only saved by how funny the two main characters play it off (that and a gratuitous boob shot of course). The entire movie is worth watching just to see the two main stoners view a "pot kills" drug ad on TV while high, an ad so dumb it has to be taken from real life.

According to the logical system of Principia Mathematica, it is an axiomatic truth that the girl on the right must A: keep on her shirt OR ~A (not A): take off her shirt. I think Mr. Russell would be happy with the results.

You probably know if you want to see this movie or not. You certainly know whether you don't want to see this movie; you come to the movie with an idea of how much you'll let a boob shot serve as a narrative device. If you are in any way on the fence, trust us and run out and see it immediately.

Let's set the scene for the recent remake of The Manchurian Candidate. It is directed by Jonathan Demme, who succeeded in falling off the face of the Earth after Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. He surfaced occasionally to toss a bucket of shit at movie screens (who can forget the Oprah-Glover love story Beloved?) but for the most part has been MIA. Denzel Washington, a man who has endured so many bad action movies and overwrought "thrillers" that Hollywood chose him to receive the patronizing "first black Oscar" in 2003 as a reward, is the leading man. The co-stars include Liev Schrieber – a second banana if there ever was one – and Meryl Streep, who has been in semi-retirement ever since proving herself the greatest living American actress by doing Deer Hunter, Kramer v. Kramer, Sophie's Choice, and Manhattan in the 70s, also stars.

Furthermore, it is a "techno-thriller" remake of an overrated 1962 film whose leading performance by Frank Sinatra (courtesy the Gambino family) is one of the most atrocious things ever heaped with critical praise in the history of film.

So let's be clear: there was no reason to expect this movie would not be atrocious.

That said, this is one of the more stunning movies you could take the time to see this year. If Demme gave up on making good movies for a decade, it was not for lack of ability. The interplay of light and sound, along with consistent use of disturbing way-too-close-up shots on speaking characters, made the movie continuously unsettling for two hours. Meryl Streep may have acted in another Oscar role by playing the single most distasteful, vile character on film in recent memory. Schreiber is robotic and disturbing throughout.

As for Washington….what can you say, he is truly Hollywood's best "leading man". The techno/sci-fi flavor of this remake just begged to be eye-rolled, but he just puts the movie on his shoulders halfway through and says "I will make this plausible" no matter how ludicrous the action on screen became. It was, quite simply, not the best performance ever given but certainly the most impressive in terms of what he accomplished. This is a movie that should have been flat-out ridiculous – the premise was X-Files reject caliber – and by the force of his talent was not merely passable but downright powerful. In comedy, an actor can carry a movie. In the action/drama category it's much more rare.

I highly recommend seeing this movie, and my respect for Washington's performance is akin to how impressed one would be if a musical-comedy remake of A Few Good Men starred The Rock and Chloris Leachman but turned out to be fantastic. To have turned this random, patchwork shitstorm of actors and concepts into a meaningful film is something for which he should be rewarded.