Designer's Journal, Book II

Celestial Day #7:
While waiting for life to get its foothold again on Terra after that last wipe out--okay, "extinction" if you must--I've been seeding other rocks over the universe to see if I can get better results. It's not as easy as on Terra. Some rocks don't have as much of the blue liquid stuff so I have to help them adjust to other elements. On one rock I started little critters that just fed on the ground, chewing up little rocks. Boring, in more ways than one. Then there was the gaseous life on a planet I call Mxylptlk. Fun to see through, but much too fragile. The problem is that it's so hard to get life right the first time. Creativity requires revision after revision, trial and error. It's a bitch.

Celestial Day #8:
I stopped worrying about my pet project, life, and decided to smell the galaxies, if you will. Okay, the inanimate stuff doesn't produce a lot of feedback, but it's swell to watch. I've been starting to adorn the rocks, which I'll call planets to distinguish them from the littler rocks that wander about--I'll call them "meteors"--and which are useful for demolition. I took some excess rocks and started twirling them around some of the planets near Terra. Wow, rings after rings after rings. And it's also fun to bounce some smaller planets towards the bigger ones and see what happens. Got too close for one near Terra and it broke off into a zillion pieces; but others got caught around the planets and now swirl like pretty little baubles. Not as intriguing as life, but certainly a lot more durable.

Celestial Day #9:
I noticed that with more and more balls of fire spewing out more and more cooling rock there's maybe a bit too much stray matter littering the universe. Not very aesthetic, so I needed a way to get rid of some of it. I took a deep breath and out of that act came up with a terrific insight--something to suck it up! I discovered that if you twirl the balls of fire fast enough they become exhausted and collapse, and amazingly, turn black and are so dense that they absorb all the matter around them. Don;t know my own strength! Not only is this efficient but it turns all the region of fire balls into swirling pinwheels. Galaxies, if you will, with the dark fireballs in the center. I like these better than life itself.

Celestial Day #10:
After all that busy work redecorating the cosmos I thought I'd check back on Terra to see what was going on. Wow--all those little creatures that went bye-bye with the last extinction have turned into gigantic ugly beasts with sharp teeth, lumbering around and bellowing nonsense at each other. Everything has become giant, in fact, even the flying pests I call insects. They put on a good show, have to admit, but it's all eat-and-be-eaten, without much purpose. Plus they're consuming all the green stuff on terra much too quickly. I'd like to vary my creatures, maybe even find some with real character, who can be sympatheitc to each other and not unendingly selfish. So I'll send them another meteor and try again.

Celestial Day#11:
Now the big creatures have fallen and were buried into terra and turned into black gunk that probably has no use at all. What's left are little beings that are, well, cuter. There's one animal form I have particular hopes for. It's friendly, loyal, plays well with others and doesn't automatically try to kill its neighbors. This could finally be the superior species I've been trying to fashion for all these celestial eras. I'll call it "dog."

Celestial Day# 12:
I still like the "dog" but it doesn't seem to be doing much with its existence. It just lays around and sleeps. So I'm going to try a radical experiment. There's a cousin of the dog, a two-legged hairy creature that looks a little like me, except it doesn't have tusks or a halo. It has developed the ability to use its forepaws to make tools and alter its environment. I like that creativity, so I'm going to give it some extra brain matter and see if it can learn to communicate with others.

Celestial Day# 13:
Wow, this new creature really got it going for a while, and its ability to communicate was something I hadn't seen in any of the other attempts. Problem is, it's just as arrogant as the big toothy beasts that I wiped out two celestial days ago. It does have some thinking ability, but as one of its smarter representatives once said, "A little learning is a dangerous thing." So now it's not only using up the resources I've given it, but is pretending to understand me, and acting superior to other animals as though Terra was its own dominion, and I don't like that attitude. I'm considering another extinction, maybe real soon. And when I begin again, maybe I'll go back into the blue liquid stuff. There's this really cool creature that I designed way down under I call a "tube worm," that eats up volcanic sulfide and doesn't cause a lot of trouble to its neighbors. Sounds promising. Next?

Designer's Journal

Celestial Year Zero:
I've been thinking of using my intelligence to create something entirely different, maybe a universe composed of some spare protons and electrons and mesons. So I crammed them all together and let them explode. Nice effect. Hard to contain, thuogh, everything started expanding and spinning out of control. I'll wait a couple of hundred cosmic seconds, then when things cool down, start rearranging things.

Celestial Year One:
The gassy stuff has cooled into balls of fire and little chunks of something; I'll call it "matter." It's still swirling around, a little hard to contain, but still kind of neat. Just watching the balls of fire is aesthetic, but not very exciting. Need some more drama.

Celestial Year Two:
I got this great idea. Matter that is self-perpetuating and re-creating itself! My friends think I'm loony but I'll show them. Problem is where to try out the idea first, so no one knows in case it's a dud. I've been checking out this obscure little rock in one of those swirling gas rings; it looks pretty comfy. That'll be my lab.

Celestial Year Three:
Thought I'd start off small, so I started zapping the mud on the rock with lightning to see if I could get something going. Mostly came up empty but the lightning is fun to do, and makes a cool noise. Eventually some of the protons and electrons merged together (I like to call them adams) and started moving by themselves. Success! But pretty boring. So I decided to wipe the slate clean. Used some of that molten matter inside the rock to cover it all up.

Celestial Year Four:
I decided the problem was thinking too small. The rock had accumulated some of this blue liquid stuff that was very pretty but mostly for show, so I thought I'd fill it with some of those animated adams and see how they acted with themselves. Success! But they're hard to view under all that liquid stuff. Gotta figure what to do.

Celestial Year Five:
Wow, insight! If I could alter the matter outside the liquid stuff maybe the things underneath would come out and try to exist in that new gassy place. I'll call it "air." And then I can watch the things--I have to come with a better word for them--play with each other.

Celestial Year Six:
Finally thought of something to call the animated adams. How does "life" sound? Pretty catchy. The problem is, the forms just don't last very long. They run around a little, eat each other and then stop and turn into rock again. I'll need to hone that process, it's getting repetitous. But have to get rid of what I did to recalibrate. So I sent some smaller rocks smack into the big one to roil up things. Did a real number on the life, but I have all the time in the universe.

Coming up Next Celestial Week: Bigger and Better

The Frozen Revolution

One of my most amusing college memories was recently evoked by something said by, of all people, Vice President Cheney. I was hanging out in the room of a frat brother, Dan, with some other guys and girls, smoking weed. In that amiable atmosphere Dan decided to read his latest history paper (remember, this was an Ivy League school, we were smart freaks). He began, "Russia was in the throes of a revolution..." At this point one of the girls, a sweet airhead named Joey, piped in. "What's a frozen revolution?" For reasons having mostly to do with THC, we all burst into hysterics. Some of us enjoyed Joey's pre-Emily Litella-ism. Others thought that it really was a frozen revolution, since some of the insurrection took place in the tundra and Siberia. We also enjoyed the pure cornball triteness of the phrase. It actually became a comic catchphrase among us for several years (which is why the memory has endured).

But I can't remember the cliche being repeated by anyone until yesterday, when our Veep, wearing his usual protective blinders, announced stalwartly that the Iraqi insurrection was "In its last throes, if you will." [If we will what? Suppress our projectile vomit?] The poor guy's credibility has long since gone the way of the Pacer and the Betamax, but he proceeds merrily on, hoping that nobody brings up that other less agreeable phrase from my fraternity days, "the light at the end of the tunnel," referring to the Vietnam's war impending victory. Oh yeah, that victory never quite happened, unless you want to acknowledge that our profitable current trade relationship with Vietnam is a nice consequence of our defeat.

[Warning: Michael Jackson alert!] The end of Jacko's trial (he got off! No kidding!... The jokes can go on and on) was most damaging not to the losing plaintiffs, or common sense, or the E network, but the Republican leadership. They were suddenly bereft of one of the great news distractions, forcing the media to promote Iraq back to the front pages and the greater awareness of the public. Okay, Jeb Bush was still doing his damndest for his bro, trying to rekindle a lawsuit against Terri Schiavo's ex-husband for not waking up earlier in the middle of that awful night to find her crumpled body. But that ship has pretty much sailed, and serves only as further proof that Republicans are genetically incapable of admitting they are wrong.

Then Karl Rove chimed in with a schoolyard slur at Democrats and anyone who opposes his policies, saying that Republicans responded with appropriate military vigor to 9/11, while the Democrats wimped out and only worried about trying to understand the enemy. Modern Dems took great umbrage, though in its gross generality it is about as minorly accurate as Howard Dean's characterization of the Reps as the party of white Christians. In fact, we all wanted to kill a lot of Arabs after 9/11; it was a common revenge response that tapped into all our reptilian anger. The difference between the Reps and the Dems was that the Reps got fixated on the kill button, while the Dems retreated and tried to approach the matter rationally. I don't think, in times of national crisis, there's a rat's ass difference between the two parties in their fierce desire to protect America. If Gore had been Prez on 9/11, we would have gone into Afghanistan just as forcefully, and maybe even have gotten Bin Laden. But Iraq would have been a different story.

We don't have access to that parallel universe in the space/time continuum where we did not overthrow Saddam, so we can't tell whether removing him from power was worth the cost of this ongoing struggle. When the Elder Bush, the one with some statesmanlike qualities, decided not to attack Baghdad in 1991, even with the world allied with us, he did so for practical reasons--there was no exit strategy. Such forethought was not inherited by his son Georgie.

Putting aside the WMD issue (and history will not ignore the fact the entire pretext for the invasion was bogus), the value of the Iraqi invasion is seriously in doubt. We have created a power vacuum in that region that will result in years of tumult. Even if there were no insurrection, the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds mix about as well as oil, water, and hydrochloric acid. And the insurrection has drawn to it wayward terrorists happy to kill Americans where and when they can. Basra is so much easier to get to than Times Square.

I really wish the Neocons had been right on this one, but history and logic are not on their side. Our continued occupation, however well-intended, is ineffectual. Life in Baghdad is terrible. Recently there was sabotage that left a third of the city without drinking water. This two years after the "Mission Accomplished" banner was unfurled, and a year after sovereignty was purportedly returned to the Iraqis. Stories of prisoner abuse, both here and in Gitmo, continue to arise. This is not the way to "win the hearts and minds" of the native people, as we tried to do in Vietnam while searching for the light in the tunnel.

And still, there is still no exit strategy. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Five to ten American soldiers die each week trying to maintain order. Practically every day there is a bomb explosion decimating what remains of the Iraqi police and civil service, the folks we're trusting to take over. Neither the Dems nor the Reps really know what to do; Teddy Kennedy dredged up another Vietnam cliche in accurately denoting the whole mess a "quagmire." I am not so clever as to see any solution myself, and worry that quagmire may turn into quicksand.

I can only turn to the wish-fulfillment fantasies our cinema has provided. What we need is for a real-life Superman to fly up as he did in the original movie and turn time backward, so that this war never began. As was said by a megacomputer in the 1980s movie "War Games," the only way to win a war--in that case a nuclear one--was not to wage it at all.

But as long as Cheney is confident, I suppose I shouldn't worry.

Magic

The American Film Institute aired another of its absorbing 100-best surveys last night, this one honoring the greatest lines of dialogue in film history (actually American film history; nothing French or Japanese here, and only a few British entries made it, mostly from Bond flicks). This program was not as splendid as the previous entry, which honored the best film songs and was superbly entertaining. But it did at last honor the contributions of the writer, and without screenplays, what would we have? "Winged Migration" and "Star Wars."

It might have been more felicitous to include more screenwriters in the commentary that accompanied each selection. The only notable ones were Cameron Crowe and William Goldman ("Show me the money!" and "Is it safe?"). The presence of such contributors as Robert Towne, Oliver Stone, or Woody Allen may have helped, and so much admiration was lavished on the brilliant script of "Casablanca" that one wished host Pierce Brosnan could have channeled the Epstein Brothers. Or at least brought on their grand nephew Theo, who otherwise is busy trying to patch up the Red Sox rellief corps. But I quibble. It was still the kind of evocative program that made one consider the wealth of cinematic lore and one's own favorites. Great water cooler material, but since I'm not in an office, I'll open up a Crystal Geyser and proceed.

No criteria was given for what made a line "great," except that it has been etched in our common lexicon. If cleverness in context were the prime factor, Estelle Reiner's line "I'll have what she's having" from the "When Harry Met Sally" deli orgasm scene would win. The top ten as determined by AFI's experts were, in descending order, "You talkin' to me?", "Fasten your seatbelts, we're in for a bumpy ride," "May the Force be with you," "Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up," "Make my day," "Here's lookin at you, kid," "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," "I coulda been a contender," "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse," and "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn." [Anyone who cannot identify the movies from which these originate, had better go to the Interguild Movie Data Base or Netflix and update your film exposure].

I can't argue strongly with these choices. I'd have selected "Frankly my dear" because it broke a language barrier, thumbing its nose at Will Hays and his cretinous censors. I was surprised "Play it (again) Sam," was relegated to the 20s, but that's probably because it has been so oft-misquoted, like "Beam me up Scottie." I didn't get that high from when an unexpected arcane personal favorite emerged; the selections were all so mainstream. But of course the underlying aim of the show's creators was to evoke our private memories of the emotional buttons pushed by that particular line.

Many of my favorite quotes come from comedies. Some are not especially distinguished but tickled the hell out of me when I was young. It's hard to forget Melvin Frank's couplet from "The Court Jester"--"The vestle with the pestle has the pellet with the poison but the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true." Woody Allen provided a cornucopia of great one-liners, expecially from his early funny ones. "Love and Death," for instance, gave us "I goosed that lady," "He left us his letters; you take the vowels, I'll take the consonants," "That is so jejune!" And from "Sleeper" there's "What about deep fat?" and "It's better than Cugat--it's Keene!" Allen's only quote cited by the AFI is from "Annie Hall" ("La-di-dah, lah-di-dah"). Yet to me his best line ever is Mariel Hemingway's final remark in "Manhattan," "You have to have a little faith in people". Simple, elegant, appallingly moving (especially with the welling Gershwin music and Woody's pained smile), it capped the best final five minutes of any movie I've seen.

But if asked about my favorite movie line ever I'll always default to the finale of Arthur Penn's "Little Big Man," when Chief Dan George, as the Sioux leader and spiritual guide to Dustin Hoffman, determines he is going to die, and compels the grieving Hoffman to observe the sacred ritual. He lies down in the rain, intones a few words, and closes his eyes. Raindrops splatter across his lifeless face. After a few unbearable seconds, as the audience absorbs and mourns his demise, his eyes suddenly open. He rises, shakes off some of the rain and shrugs. "Sometimes the magic works," he says, "and sometimes it doesn't." And he and Dustin march off into the rain and my private film archive. I'm not sure why this line so tugged at me, but in context it was profoundly wise, sentimental and emotionally satisfying.

Maybe it reflects the kind of randomness that I believe so totally pervades our existence, and our limited powers to change our fate. I do know that I will never stop quoting it.

Are We There Yet?

Last week's blog contributions were limited to one because I took my semi-annual sojourn to Las Vegas. I used to go more often, but having become both jaded to its gaudy charms and somewhat more risk-averse since the Dotcom Bubble Burst, I limit my trips to occasions when I can encounter novelty, such as the MGM show "KA" or the opening of a major new casino. The latter was this month's case, as Steve Wynn's new plush tower beckoned my curiosity.

The Wynn Casino is a cousin to Wynn's Bellagio and bellweather of a new stream of megacasino/shopping/residential complexes to fill out the high-end of the Strip in the next five years. Unlike the Harrahs and Mandalay Bay Group casinos, it has no geographical theme; its byword is luxury. And sumptuous it is. The Main entrance is recessed and deepened with a verdant hilly surrounding that suggests a country setting. The frenetic architectural menudo of Las Vegas is not apparent, though a bizarrely huge satellite dish that could easily pick up signs of extraterrestrial life from the Magellanic Cloud covers the expanse between Wynn and the upscale shopping center across Las Vegas Boulevard.

Inside it is aptly posh, from the painted tiles that lead to the colorful botanical atrium to the elegant keno room, which resembles nothing less than the highly appointed parlor on the Titanic where they served high tea to the Astors and Strausses. Even the bathrooms exude luxury. Conventional wash basins have been replaced by slanted marble slates with golden faucets. I was half-surprised my shit didn't come out in the form of silver turds.

Yet there was one feature of the casino that was so insistently tacky that I couldn't wait to get out of the place. In the interest of full disclosure I must admit I lost fast and majorly at the first table I visited, so was quickly sapped of any enthusiasm. I grumblingly sl,unk my way to the slot machines where, for quarter bets, I could slow the losses to a trickle while in a spate of negative luck. So I'm sitting there, enduring some unfortunate poker hands, when a perky female voice emerges from the machine saying "If you used your red card you could win valuable comps and prizes!" Okay, I thought, but I wasn't just visiting and was too cheap a bettor to get rated in that high-end casino, so I ignored the urging to register for a casino card. By the end of this thought, though, the machine voice chimed up again" "If you used your red card you could win valuable comps and prizes.! Meanwhile I continued to draw lousy hands and watch my credit disappear. Within a short time the voice reiterated, "If you used your red card you could win valuable comps and prizes!"

Now I am not the world's best sport, and when enduring a losing streak at a slot machine have been known to intone under my breath "Come on, gimme a break," or something equally lame and ineffectual. But after the third urging from the disembodied voice I checked my watch and realized that it was coming on every 100 seconds or so. By the fourth repetition I was much less annoyed by my fruitless poker hands than by this persistent nagging. "If you used your red card you could win valuable compos and prizes! "I KNOW!" I said, much too loud for decorum's sake. "I heard you the first time!" This had suddenly become the equivalent of a country drive with kids in the back intoning "Are we there yet" Are we there yet?" except this voice would not shut up under threats of spankings or starvation.

Eventually the combination of bad luck and the disembodied kvetching sent me away from the slot bank, never to return. I was dumbstruck by how infuriating a small feature like that could be; even had I won I'd have been driven bananas. This was like the pop-up ad that you couldn't eject from the computer screen. And it led me to wonder what psychological purpose it served? Every gaming decision made by a casino has specific intentions, usually aimed at increasing gambler participation and thus, profits. From the ambient music to the color of the carpet, each casino feature is planned meticulously. So what was the point of this Casino Spam? Clearly they want you to sign up and get your name on a mailing list, which I understand. But couldn't this request have been made more tactfully and subtly, perhaps with a visual message rather than a phone-machine voice-over? For those not persuaded to apply the only effect would be to drive them screaming from the casino.

I believe there's a subversive caste system at play here; those at the cheap slots unwilling to register are clearly not the desired clientele. I felt myself being so targeted. In that case, Steve, up yours and your swank johns. Next visit I'll be happy to find some crasser playground to deposit my disposable cash.

Unscripted

The winner this year so far in the Obvious Headline contest is this one I saw on AOL's welcome screen a week ago: "Saddam Reported to Be Depressed." The runner-up is one from a TV trade publication I received in the mail: "Agents Concerned about Writers' Jobs." Although I suppose "Writers' Concerned About Their Own Jobs" would be more obvious. Agents can easily reposition themselves as pimps, who are always in demand.

Well, that's reality. Or rather, Reality, probably the most influential and baneful trend infecting the Boob Tube in six decades. It's now more than a fad; it's become establishment, with networks and studios funding Reality Departments and a whole new class of entrepreneurs furiously pitching reality concepts to any networks who will listen, which is pretty much all of them.

If ever a phenomenon suffered from its own success, it's this one. I was as entertained as anyone by the pioneer "Survivor" (though this was not Mark Burnett's original idea, but an adaptation of a European model). Then there was the intriguing but insidious "Big Brother," which even stretched into the cyberworld with its 24-hour cameras before that overreaching novelty faded. But the twin appeal of cheap production and easily attainable, non-professional talent made this genre irresistible to the bean-counters who were looking for quick profits, back-end rerun royalties be damned. And when you consider the cost of such shows as "Friends," which spent 6 million an episode on actors alone, this is understandable.

All right, novelties like the original "Survivor," should merit some credit, and so should the excellent production and educational value of "The Amazing Race." Both are essentially compounds of travelogues and game shows. "Big Brother" quickly degenerated into a Gen-Y version of a coed fraternity party. One would have thought the species would start to die out with repetitious formats and citizen performers all of whose traits started merging together into one composite character in search of Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes. (Rob and Amber are thinking more like fifteen years; they wouldn't know how to get a real job). But cynics like me wildly underestimated the enduring appeal of unscripted TV fare. So a look at this week's viewing schedule includes all these permutations of the original reality formulas, with more than a dash of cinema verite: "Extreme Makeover," "Fear Factor," (TV's worst show ever, something that makes "Queen for a Day" seem like "I, Claudius,") "America's Most Talented Kids," "Trading Spaces," "America's Top Model," "The Scholar," "Hell's Kitchen," "Nanny 911," "Trading Spouses," "The Simple Life," "Fire Me...Please," "Britney and Kevin," "Supernanny," "Dancing with the Stars," "I Want a Famous Face," "Airline," "Beauty and the Geek," "The Cut," "Animal Cops," "The Contender," "Monster House," "Cops," "Iron Chef," and "Bikini Destinations." This is just a sampling, and just of summer fill-in before the Big Boys return.

It's almost enough to make me want to watch reruns of "Joey." Almost, but I'm not a masochist.

Not all these shows lack merit or enterprise. "The Scholar" actually honors intelligence; "Airline" has a minimalist appeal to anyone who's had to negotiate Southwest waiting lines, and "Fire Me...Please," at least as a concept, is an amusing riff on the self-importance of "The Apprentice." But what's intriguing, and pretty disturbing, about such a satire is that it doesn't really reflect the mood of popular exhaustion that was intended. Historically, literary and dramatic genres have gone through cycles of novelty, great popularity, and decline from overexposure, usually marked by self-parodies which wink at the audiences' familiarity and the genre's stale conventions.

But reality progamming has already seen its "Average Joe" and its bogus "Millionaire" spoofs, These self-indulgent parodies, rather than signalling exhaustion, instead spawned a sub-species of their own. The reality concept is glomming like a wayward microphage onto other standard genres to create bizarre hybrids, as though programming departments have been relocated to the Island of Dr. Moreau. A recent example is the new HBO comedy called "The Comeback," starring Lisa Kudrow and written by Michael Patrick King of "Sex and the City." This Chinese box of a concept combines elements of other premium-cable celebrity self-effacing exposes ("Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Fat Actress") with their inside-showbiz mock documentarian traditions ("Entourage," "Project Greenlight"). In this snicker-but-not-laugh-inducing series, Kudrow plays herself as a less-successful actress named Valerie Cherish whose "comeback" on a "Three's Company"-type jiggle sitcom is simultaneously being documented by a klutzy reality camera crew for another program to air as a companion piece on the same fictional network.

This elaborate conceit allows the writers (Kudrow and King + improv) to lampoon both the reality and the sitcom genres at once. Some of the material is dead-on, such as the open contempt displayed by the imperious showrunners for the actors, and the dispiriting compromises older actors have to make in a youth-oriented medium. Kudrow--with King's urging I'm, sure--is brave enough to zero in on her own shallowness and the obtuseness of her fellow players. The satire of the documentary overlay isn't as biting or as convincing; it comes across more as self-flaying. Last night's episode about a press event slathered an extra layer of reality-bashing by airing two fictional promos for new series, one in which padded spouses would win prizes by bashing each other with blunt weapons, and another that would crown America's next great Porno Queen. Well, like the programs Paddy Chayevsky projected in his visionary "Network," you can bet these'll pop up on FX in time for the November sweeps.

Meanwhile back in Reality we have a former sitcom star trying to make a comeback in a quasi-reality HBO sitcom about a sitcom star making a comeback by starring in a reality show about a sitcom star. Fucking glad I never had to pitch this.

My Friend Clarence

Let's face it--nothing in the American legal system approaches the idiocy and fallaciousness of its indictment of marijuana and those fiends who dare to use it. The marijuana proscription and severity of its penalties make the Iraq War seem like Providential Wisdom and Creationism like profound scientific insight. Once one accepts that it is a recreational drug, and therefore inappropriate for young people, no other argument against its use bears any validity. It does not cost a million deaths a year, as does alcoholism, alcohol abuse and drunken driving; it does not put one on the slippery slope to heroin addiction (if so, then Dubya would be shooting up as we speak). Yet thousands of smokers can be consigned to prison for decades.

When Richard Nixon assigned a committee to investigate the values and detriments of marijuana, he was so displeased by the sanguine findings that he squelched the report. He preferred, I suppose, to use as his source the movie "Reefer Madness," which speaks to the reality of marijuana abuse about as accurately as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" does to the place of Jews in the world. I personally believe that marijuana should be regulated and sold in adult areas of stores much like liquor. But that would cause such a sea change in those horrendously embedded attitudes that really evolved from the efforts of the liquor lobby in the 1930s and anti-Mexican immigration prejudices of that same era.

But putting aside my libertarian views on the legalization of this (as well as other drugs), the use of marijuana as a palliative for suffering cancer and AIDs patients seems a perfectly valid and logical medical alternative. It does alleviate pain, settle the stomach, and enhance appetite. It also cheers you up. What better for a person undergoing chemotherapy? But no, despite massive anecdotal evidence, the Feds can't allow a chink in the armor of their draconian yet impotent War on Drugs. The situation is aggravated by designating marijuana as a Class One dangerous substance, on a par with heroin, and therefore, unlike morphine, unavailable for medical use. (Hey, have you ever been under morphine? Now that's a high; compared to it, pot has about as much kick as bubble gum). Yet despite a public outcry, to which several states responded by legalizing medical marijuana, the Feds won't even deign to finance a study. Hey, ignorance is bliss, especially for Republicans (not that Clinton and his cronies--"didn't inhale" my ass!--were any more helpful).

Then comes the recent Supreme Court ruling that stated that Federal law trumps state law in drug-enforcement policy, so if a cancer-ridden patient tries to get relief from her agony from a sympathetic physician, the Feds can ride right in and escort them both to the penitentiary. This makes the Moslem hand-chopping for theft seem enlightened in comparison. But the Supreme Court decision was not, strictly speaking, about compassion or license or foolish pseudoscience, but about states' rights. And here is where I was stunned--not by the decision, but by who came down on my side of the issue. The dissenters were William Rehnquist, Sandra O'Connor, and Clarence Thomas. Clarence Thomas!

Clarence has always been rather comical to me (in a sad way); I picture him in my mind as a sock puppet waved around by Antonin Scalia. But on this issue he diverged from Mastah Antonin for the sake of principle, though I believe he is also a severe opponent of marijuana's recreational use. So is O'Connor, but she placed the constitutional issue first, seeing a Federal restriction of an arguably effective medical treatment as beyond its intended scope. On the other side of the fence are the liberals (gasp) who believe current Federal policy overrules all, even if, as Stevens suggested, Congress might reconsider the laws. Namby-pamby bullshit, say I. People are going to suffer, and needlessly. The law is an Ass.

Well, eventually something will be done about the law, and frankly, in this world, if someone needs to get pot, they can get it. What confuses me most at the moment is that the Right wing of the Court has engaged, temporarily, my sympathies, and the Left my scorn. (Well, Scalia still has a perfect record of zero useful opinions). And as for the integrity of states-rights idealism as demonstrated by Thomas and O'Connor, where was it during Bush v. Gore in 2000? Didn't the Florida courts have the right to decide ultimately the nature of the state's electoral recount?

Well, we may not have easy access to pot, but there's plenty of hypocrisy still going around.

Thus Sith the Lord

Now that the "final" episode of the "Star Wars" saga has been released, pirated and absorbed by the public, the world as we know it has not been drastically altered, Hayden Christopher probably still has a career (at least one as promising at this stage as Mark Hamill's) and George Lucas's reputation as a screenwriter has likely suffered irremediable damage.

Much too much ink has been spilled in the flak attack of the franchise's publicity machine, but the series has been a cultural touchstone of sorts. "Star Wars," from its inception, reshaped and recreated neo-Arthurian myth for the current generations. I must admit to being totally enthralled by the original, a delightful amalgamation of adventure, whimsy, humor and maybe the most rousing film score ever composed. But with every sequel the story acquired a patina of seriousness that eventually turned to leadenness. The phenomenon became too successful and Lucas responded to the unyielding demands of the fans to fill in the lugubrious back story that set up the machinations of Episodes Four, Five and Six.

The question became whether Lucas was more interested in the potential of his Industrial Light and Magic special effects than that of producing a compelling story or interesting characters. He certainly succeeded technically. The visual look of the most recent editions were increasingly impressive, and in "Revenge of the Sith" they are downright spectacular. The details of the cityscapes are so precise that I could probably enjoy myself a lot more just scanning the movie frame by frame, like investigating a Hieronymous Bosch painting. Unfortunately I was so impressed by the exacting art design that I started picturing all the effects artists slaving away in their little cubicles like frantic elves preparing final gifts on Christmas Eve. But meanwhile I'd lose focus on the corny and portentous dialogue being exchanged in the seats of power of the Senate and the Jedi Council.

The movie is too long by a half-hour, though the final act, in which all the strings are neatly tied up to prepare for the upbeat Chapter Four we all so love and admire, is the most compelling section. The first two hours largely consist of spectacular battle scenes alternating with boring dialogue that either underscores the stagnant relationship of Anakin and Padme or the peevish one between the Jedi and the incipient Emperor Palpatine. That the dialogue is wooden is irrelevant; as painful as it is to our ears, this is the stilted language of myth, and was codified in the earlier films. Contemporary argot and syntax would have been even more jarring, and indeed, when R2D2 explains how Anakin has been "under stress," I felt an inner groan.

The fundamental problem with these last three films is not just the tedious political maneuverings whose complexity would put the Federal Tax Code to shame, but the decision to focus on the character of Anakin, whom every viewer would know from the start was destined for a bad career choice. It put the audience's sympathies in tough terrain to know that their hero was eventually going to do some very very nasty things. It took six years from the still bafflingly titled "Phantom Menace" to follow his decline from cute video-gaming junior pilot to Evil Lord. I will admit that the dialogue sessions in which Palpatine weasels his Dark Force sentiments into Anakin's consciousness are the most effective in Lucas's script. But still, it's not a very good pay-off when he kills off most of the remaining Jedi, even if his face does get melted and he is sentenced to life inside the dark suit with James Earl Jones' voice box. The ending is somewhat satisfying intellectually, but not emotionally. Perhaps a more creative approach to these prequels would have been to write them from the viewpoints of Obi-Wan Kenobe, or Padme, or even Yoda (whose character probably comes off best in these films, even if he's been reduced to a CGI figure).

There has been some added chatter about possible underlying political messages Lucas may have inserted of an anti-Bush nature. The mouthpiece here is Padme, who laments the overreaching militarism of the Senate and wonders if Might truly makes Right. Well, rather than having to endure the wrath of the Empire (SPOILER ALERT) she expires sweetly after naming her children. And, surprise, no screaming Sith-like Senator Frist comes to reinsert her feeding tube. The Sith are, in the final scenes, licking their chops and preparing the Death Star for its debut in Episode Four. But there was one line that sent a chuckle through the crowd as I watched, and which I do believe was intentionally politicized for our modern era. It was this: "Only the Sith believe in absolutes." It is implied that the Rebel Alliance will, in the end, bring back Moral Relativism to create a harmonic galaxy. Force willing.

Hard to Swallow

Usually I am quick to anticipate a suitable blog topic and proceed as a bellweather of the Blogosphere (oh Brave New Lexicon), but I was slow on the uptake when the family of former FBI second-in-command Mark Felt revealed, with his corroboration, that he was the famous Deep Throat who guided Woodstein toward their discoveries of the Watergate webs of deceit. So I'll throw in my two cents.

The revelation was something of a disappointment, since it was the biggest newsworthy mystery since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, and I was hoping for a character of higher public profile to be named. Someone like Martha Mitchell or Charles Colson or David Eisenhower. Felt is pretty bland and being a spy, is too obvious. Apparently he was already suspected by most of the Washington cognescenti. And the nobility of his mission has been somewhat tarnished by the fact that he was upset that Nixon had selected Patrick Grey over him as a successor to that great FBI MegaHypocrite J. Edgar Hoover. That, may have been because Nixon suspected him of being a Jew. Also, he was guilty himself of illegal wiretappings while executing his duties in the early 1980s. So a little Iago (as well as Shylock) plays into this, not just patriotic idealism.

That being said, all law-abiding citizens ought to regard his whistle-blowing concerning the web of lies concocted by All the President's Men as a courageous and moral act. All, except, of course, the knee-jerk Republican apologists like Patrick Buchanan who thought it seedy and irresponsible. Buchanan is still pissed that he was kept out of the loop while serving as Tricky Dick's speechwriter. (He shouldn't be--it kept him clean enough to survive decades and remain a Fox Favorite Pundit). Well, guys, I'm sure you applaud Linda Tripp, otherwise known as That Fat Cunt, whose illegal wiretapping exposed the infidelities (I am shocked! shocked!) of Bill Clinton that led to his impeachment. Well, moral hypocrisy has never particularly bothered the Republicans. Names like Spiro Agnew and Robert Livingston come to mind, though not agreeably.

Hey, the Republicans should be grateful for Watergate. If it weren't for that seminal event they wouldn't be in charge of the White House now. How do I figure? Well, history and politics do not exist as isolated events, but a continuum of give-and-take, action-and-reaction. The Democrats would likely have won the presidency in 1976 even without a lame Gerald Ford, as the economy was tanking. History would likely have proceeded with a Reagan ascendancy. But Watergate gave them a cause celebre, as they waited for payback. That payback came in the form of the ludicrously overhyped Whitewater and Monicagate affairs that tainted Clinton's reputation and kept him on the sidelines during the 2000 campaign. With a stronger presence (like Reagan's in 1988), and a solid record of leading the nation through its most prosperous era ever, Clinton would have helped Veep Al Gore to capture enough votes to overcome the interference of Nader in Florida and other states as well.

Okay, now that this issue has been resolved, it's time to focus on mysteries that really matter, such as the Real Killers of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, what is down that damn pit in "Lost," when Barry Bonds actually stopped taking steroids, and why 60% of California voters elected a fictional character as their governor.