The Big Death Valley Post: Part 1

Now that finals are over and summer has begun I’m settling into my summer routine. That finally gives me time to fully expound on my five day trip to Death Valley. I’ll go over some of the highlights, giving you the same glimpse that I had into our Earth’s past.

Grab Bag ‘O Booty

So Pirates of The Caribbean: At World’s End comes out this week. I wasn’t a big fan of the second movie. It was 3 hours where people jumped around, buckled their swashes and nothing really happened. That being said, I’m actually looking forward to it (and I don’t mean that in a satirical John Hodgeman President Whisperer way.) Why, you may ask? Why would I get excited about another summer blockbuster from Disney. The key to my excitement Blogonauts is in the first word of the title PIRATES.

Pirates are awesome, there is no disputing that. Anyone who disagrees can swab the poop deck! Pirates sail the high seas calling no one master (only Cap’n) , taking what they want from life, plundering hapless merchant vessels, searching for buried treasure, how fun is that? Plus they get swords, and get to say really cool things like “Shiver me timbers!” “Avast!” “Arrr” and of course “Bring me my Brown Pants.”

Did you know that the pirate Jean Laffite was instrumental in the nacent United States’ victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans? Or that the children’s nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence origniated as recruitment tool for the notorious Blackbeard the Pirate?

So, Dr. Zaius and I will be Pirate-ing it up this weekend. We’ll be drinking vast quantities of rum (in mai tais and banana daiquiris,) bucking swash and having a grand adventure. It should tide us over until Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th. Yaarrr!

My pirate name is:

Iron Jack Bonney

A pirate’s life isn’t easy; it takes a tough person. That’s okay with you, though, since you a tough person. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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Something Important

I created this blog to make my own voice heard. But sometimes someone else says something that needs to be repeated. Joss Whedon posted this on Whedonesque.com because he believed it was important, and I am posting it here because I think so too.

May 20 2007

Let’s Watch A Girl Get Beaten To Death. This is not my blog, but I don’t have a blog, or a space, and I’d like to be heard for a bit.

Last month seventeen year old Dua Khalil was pulled into a crowd of young men, some of them (the instigators) family, who then kicked and stoned her to death. This is an example of the breath-taking oxymoron “honor killing”, in which a family member (almost always female) is murdered for some religious or ethical transgression. Dua Khalil, who was of the Yazidi faith, had been seen in the company of a Sunni Muslim, and possibly suspected of having married him or converted. That she was torturously murdered for this is not, in fact, a particularly uncommon story. But now you can watch the action up close on CNN. Because as the girl was on the ground trying to get up, her face nothing but red, the few in the group of more than twenty men who were not busy kicking her and hurling stones at her were filming the event with their camera-phones.

There were security officers standing outside the area doing nothing, but the footage of the murder was taken – by more than one phone – from the front row. Which means whoever shot it did so not to record the horror of the event, but to commemorate it. To share it. Because it was cool.

I could start a rant about the level to which we have become desensitized to violence, about the evils of the voyeuristic digital world in which everything is shown and everything is game, but honestly, it’s been said. And I certainly have no jingoistic cultural agenda. I like to think that in America this would be considered unbearably appalling, that Kitty Genovese is still remembered, that we are more evolved. But coincidentally, right before I stumbled on this vid I watched the trailer for “Captivity”.

A few of you may know that I took public exception to the billboard campaign for this film, which showed a concise narrative of the kidnapping, torture and murder of a sexy young woman. I wanted to see if the film was perhaps more substantial (especially given the fact that it was directed by “The Killing Fields” Roland Joffe) than the exploitive ad campaign had painted it. The trailer resembles nothing so much as the CNN story on Dua Khalil. Pretty much all you learn is that Elisha Cuthbert is beautiful, then kidnapped, inventively, repeatedly and horrifically tortured, and that the first thing she screams is “I’m sorry”.

“I’m sorry.”

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence — is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

It’s safe to say that I’ve snapped. That something broke, like one of those robots you can conquer with a logical conundrum. All my life I’ve looked at this faulty equation, trying to understand, and I’ve shorted out. I don’t pretend to be a great guy; I know really really well about objectification, trust me. And I’m not for a second going down the “women are saints” route – that just leads to more stone-throwing (and occasional Joan-burning). I just think there is the staggering imbalance in the world that we all just take for granted. If we were all told the sky was evil, or at best a little embarrassing, and we ought not look at it, wouldn’t that tradition eventually fall apart? (I was going to use ‘trees’ as my example, but at the rate we’re getting rid of them I’m pretty sure we really do think they’re evil. See how all rants become one?)

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once. If you can’t think of what to do, there is this handy link. Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now.

I have never had any faith in humanity. But I will give us props on this: if we can evolve, invent and theorize our way into the technologically magical, culturally diverse and artistically magnificent race we are and still get people to buy the idiotic idea that half of us are inferior, we’re pretty amazing. Let our next sleight of hand be to make that myth disappear.

The sky isn’t evil. Try looking up.

Coming next fall…

We are living, according to many TV critics in a golden age of television. Years from now this era will be looked upon like the 1920’s and 30’s were to jazz or the 1970’s were to film making. This week many of my favorite shows are beginning to wind down for the season, and television networks are announcing next fall’s big lineup. We’re finding out which of our favorite shows are returning and what new shows we can look forward to.

First of all Drive was canceled after only four episodes. I can understand that it did very poorly in the ratings, and it is very costly to produce, but it was soooo awesome. Two episodes remain unaired, I really hope I get to see them; I’d even buy the DVD. I’ll just add it to the list of shows FOX has killed along with my faith in humanity. Let’s see: The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., The Lone Gunman, Dark Angel, Wonderfalls, Firefly and now Drive. I’m sure there are more but I am too grief-stricken to remember.

Also the CW has canceled one of my personal faves: Veronica Mars. This show had a week season this year, but I think it could have been retooled. Seasons one and two were so independent from each other one could have easily started things over from scratch with the same great characters.

Moving along to happier news: Lost on ABC and Heroes on NBC were renewed. And perhaps the happiest news of all: CBS’s comedy How I Met Your Mother was also picked up for another season after a nail-biting maybe it is maybe it isn’t period. Another year of awesome will ensue. It’s going to be Legen… wait for it …dary, Legendary!

Besides the usual reality show garbage the are a few cool looking new shows that I’ll definitely be checking out.

There are two new shows about nerdy guys with hot girls. The first is a sitcom from CBS called The Big Bang Theory.

Normally I wouldn’t be interested in this, it looks kinda dumb. But Johnny Galecki is a fantastic actor. Some of you might remember his as David from Roseanne. If you haven’t seen him in the movie Suicide Kings with Christopher Walken, Jay Moor and Dennis Leary I highly recommend you do. The rest of the cast looks pretty solid too, with good writing this show could really rise above it’s premise. The creator of this show, Chuck Lorre brought us CBS’s hit-and-miss (in this reporter’s opinion) comedy Two and a Half Men. He also worked with Galecki on Roseanne.

The other nerdy guy + pretty girl show is from NBC. Chuck is about a nerd/looser guy, a little reminiscent of Steve Correll’s character from The 40-Year Old Virgin. Action comedy would be a nice change of pace for TV. I’m looking forward to this one.

The only other show that really tickled me was NBC’s remake of The Bionic Woman. It is being produced by David Eick, who brought us the remake of Battlestar Galactica.

Looks to be very exciting. It will be interesting to see if this will do well on network television. And am I mistaken or is that Starbuck she’s fighting?

I guess we’ll find out next fall if the wait was worthwhile for any of these shows. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Oh, and if any of you were wondering what the Joss Whedon connection for this post was. Joss got his start in television as a writer for the show Roseanne. And if you watch the video for Chuck closely Firefly fans will notice Adam Baldwin, who played Jayne.