The Jersey Shore: Now a Worldwide Epidemic

Have you ever seen the movie ‘Outbreak’? It chronicles the exploits of the Center for Disease Control as they attempt to contain the fictitious Mutaba virus within the small town of Cedar Creek, California. Why? Because they did not want the disease to spread to the rest of the country, let alone the entire world.

The Jersey Shore has gone international…and I want to know whose fucking fault it is. I want some accountability goddamnit. A virus, and yes the Jersey Shore is just that, will spread if not contained. And from the get-go, this disease was not contained. Conversely, it was given everything it needed to flourish; ratings, book deals, spin-offs and round the clock media coverage which I myself am contributing to at this very moment.

So kidding aside, who is to blame?

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services? Might a little penicillin have eliminated this bug? Probably not. Could they have released an army of hazmat-clad soldiers to man the borders of the Garden State to keep these morons from spreading and infecting more intelligent members of Americana? They could have at least tried.

Is the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce responsible? I am not sure which governing body determines what products are allowed to bare the proud seal of New Jersey but couldn’t they have intervened and said, ‘NO, THIS ABOMINATION OF A PROGRAM IS SIMPLY NOT WORTHY OF OUR JERSEY HERITAGE!’ Aaahh, who are we kidding. Jersey is an armpit and the very fact that a show proudly boasting of its lineage could be so immensely successful, is proof that a deeper, more systemic problem has taken hold. 

Could MTV be the cause and catalyst? They are responsible for the original green light that began all this. But simply releasing a disease into the population is not enough. It needs to spread. And that is where we come in. Me…my fellow humans. We have all let each other down. I take responsibility. And so should you.

But on the off chance that you will not volunteer your guilt, allow me to castigate you on this page. And some of you are more responsible than others.

Mike Petolino of Gotham Entertainment. You represent The Situation. You should be drawn and quartered for representing such a specimen and plastering his face across the labels of products the world over. It is the social equivalent of releasing Anthrax into the global water supply and you should be ashamed of yourself. 

I don’t care how much money he makes you, how do you sleep at night asshole? While we’re at it, shame on the following companies for choosing him as your poster-boy; Vitamin Water, Nox Edge, Reebok and last but not least, the company that actually created this:

SallyAnn Salsano created the Jersey Shore and her punishment should be death by firing squad followed by an eternity in hell, which, incidentally, is the perfect place to get a good suntan. 

MTV, you were obviously to blame for introducing these nimrods to the world and you could have stopped there. But you didn’t. You went ahead and created spin-offs for Snooki, J-Wow and Paully D. I would say that ‘you’re better than that MTV’ but let’s be honest, you’re really not. You’re trash and you suck so you’re pretty much giving us the best you’ve got. My advice, maybe start aiming a little higher? Sluts and douchebags could be your starting point but you can always strive for more. You just have to dream and then follow your dreams out of the gutter and into the clouds. Just a thought.

Simon and Schuster Publishing and everyone at their subsidiary Gallery Books; you should all be tried as war criminals for aiding, abetting and facilitating the publication of “A Shore Thing.” This “novel” was written by Snooki, who is hardly capable of speaking an intelligible sentence, let alone writing an entire book of them. I realize the e-book has slightly altered the landscape of commerce in literature but there is no need to bring it down to THIS level. Reading was and still is to an extent, a medium for thirsty, malleable intellects looking to expand their minds…who are you to leave them shrunken and atrophied?

Now, I would hate for the responsible parties to escape into the shadows so below are a list of the people who played a large role in the publication of this stain upon American literature. If you see them in public, throw something at them. Tomatoes, dead sewer rats, bricks. Anything.

Lauren McKenna-Executive Editor at Gallery Books

Jeremie Ruby-Strauss-Senior Editor at Gallery Books

Scott Miller-Agent at Trident Media who negotiated WORLD RIGHTS. Save the brick for him.

World rights. That brings us back to the purpose of this post. The Jersey Shore has moved to Florence. Florence…renowned the world over for its breadth of art, architecture and culture. And we sent these orange mongoloids there for the summer. I don’t know who is more to blame; America for sending them…or Italy for receiving them.

Couldn’t someone have stopped this? The Italian Consulate? The United Nations? The FAA? Isn’t knowingly transporting infectious diseases across national borders the equivalent of terrorism via germ warfare? Why didn’t someone, anyone, do anything to prevent this?

You know, for all my pissing and moaning, maybe I am just projecting. Maybe I am to blame. I just spent an hour of my life writing this post. I could have spent that hour reading to blind children or working at a soup kitchen. I could have spent that hour reciting poetry to my penis. That would have been more productive than giving these people more attention and press than they have already.

So who is to blame? We all are. James Madison, you are to blame for formally introducing the Bill of Rights that included the First Amendment. Democracy, you are to blame for denying the existence of American dictatorships that might have suppressed reality programming. Paris Hilton, you are to blame for suggesting that hot, stupid people should be deified, emulated and followed in the press. And anyone who has ever tuned into any reality show of any sort, you are to blame. Lastly, anyone, myself included, who has ever ranted about it in the blogosphere…we are to blame. We are all spreading the disease. And we should all be sterilized.  

A Tie-Dyed Stain Upon the Catholic Church

Those goddamn hippies have done it again. First, they gave us jam bands and never-ending guitar solos that when combined with psilocybin mushrooms, could transport you to another dimension where personal hygiene and brain cell regeneration were afterthoughts. Then their ‘burn your bras and fuck your neighbor’ campaign triggered Regan’s ‘War On Drugs’; which still packs our penitentiaries with anyone who has the audacity to carry more than a dime bag of marijuana on their person. Now, it turns out that they are also responsible for the ‘priests who want to fuck children’ epidemic that swept through the early stages of the 21^st Century, leaving Catholics across the globe on their knees begging for…okay, bad analogy…strike that.

Peace man. Go with God Bro!

A recent study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice concluded, and no I am not making this up, that the rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by priests was not a result of homosexuality or a by-product of the all-male, celibate nature of the priesthood. The real culprit was that “priests who were poorly prepared or monitored, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 70s.” So after the 1.8 million dollars that was spent on the study, we are left to believe that the reason some priests molest children is because they went to Woodstock and had a really good time there.

I naturally found this hard to swallow and upon reading such a preposterous claim, I understandably shat myself. After putting on a clean pair of pantaloons, I continued reading the study’s findings to find that apparently the Catholic Church has been employing this rationale for the last decade.

How fascinating. And as much as I have enjoyed mocking the various tenants of the hippie way of life, I think it harshly unjustified to hold them responsible for priests’ inability to keep their cassocks on and their hands off the altar boys. Having poor taste in clothes and obliviously dragging innocents into never-ending philosophical discussions devoid of anything resembling a point hardly warrant linking these creatures to child molestation.

Bong hits and hemp clothing do not lead to pedophilia, do they? I have pulled many a tube in my life (that’s Hippese for bong smoking). I have partaken in the reefer, imbibed the ganja, danced with Mary Jane and puffed the Magic Dragon yet I have never done what, according to the John Jay Report of 2002, 4% of the world’s priests have done to children under the age of eighteen.

Furthermore, the recent study claimed that the priests that were found guilty of abusing boys were not doing so because they were homosexuals. It also concluded that few of the guilty priests exhibited behavior typical of pedophiles or possessed any particular psychological patterns or disorders. That being said, one could feasibly deduce that celibacy turns 4% of its practitioners, regardless of sexual orientation or psychiatric history, into pedophiles. Will I too start assaulting children if I abstain from sex or eat too many unleavened wafers? Should I be worried?

So who is really to blame here? Could it be, and this is just a fucking stab in the dark, the Catholic Church itself? Could an archaic culture of diametric morality that is hell-bent (nice word choice, eh?!) on celibacy and keeping its followers on their knees, crippled with guilt for even briefly indulging in sexual fantasies, somehow be enabling if not cultivating this trend? There is a kink in the Catholic machinery and it sure as shit ain’t a pair of bell-bottoms.

If you stick a bunch of men in a monastery without a woman in site, wrap a suffocating Roman Collar around their throat and guilt every semblance of a healthy sexuality out of them…guess what. They are going to explode. And who do these holy powder kegs have access to? Children. Boys.

Pope Benedict XVI at Woodstock in 1969 

So what are we to do? Perhaps the Vatican should mandate weekly trips to Hooters for all clergymen. Or Pope Benedict could encourage priests to watch pornography and masturbate at least once a day; perhaps less frequently for the older ones. Maybe the priesthood should finally go co-ed and while they're at it, Catholicism as a whole could come to terms with the fact that having sex will probably not secure one’s place in hell on the off chance that there actually is one. Apparently the real solution to this problem is just to keep priests from attending Phish concerts. Who knew.

Osama bin Laden is Dead

There was no dramatic jet landing on an aircraft carrier. No “Mission Accomplished” banner. No cheering servicemen. No pomp or circumstance of any sort. There was just a slender, solemn Hawaiian man walking down an empty hallway and up to a podium to tell the world, to tell the United States, to tell New York City, to tell me that Osama bin Laden was dead.

It is very rare that life happens at a magnitude that is beyond my capacity to emotionally process it. This was one of those moments; one that transcended immediacy. This moment was over a decade in the making and it needed time to marinate, time to breathe and open up, like an old Bordeaux. This moment was not just now. This was the past…and the future.

I watched as Obama recounted the manner in which bin Laden had been killed and I struggled to keep my attention on the present. ‘This is history asshole, pay attention,’ I told myself. But my mind danced forward and backwards and sideways at the same time.

‘This should insure a second term for Obama’ I thought before nudging myself back to this historic presidential address. ‘Maybe now he’ll have the clout to rally the public behind his health care bill and a long-term fiscal strategy that keeps Medicare and Medicaid in tact.’ Then I would snap back to the now and Obama would be saying something about predator drones. And I’d grin because that term just sounds really fucking cool.

As he veered into a section about how for a decade, bin Laden was the one Al Qaeda leader that kept evading us, I hop-scotched back to the past and my hatred for George W. Bush was fresh again. I could feel it, almost taste it. Motherfucker. All this happened on his watch. And my moronic fucking countrymen re-elected him because the Democratic Party couldn’t come up with a more likable option than John fucking Kerry…with his long face and weird wife. Fuck. Goddamn fucking W. We had bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora but he got away because of W’s ill-conceived Iraqi oil campaign. Stupid Texan born-again Christian cocksmoker.

Then I realized that my self-indulgent festival of rage was causing me to miss history so once again, I returned to the address. I try to stay present. 'Listen to him. Hear him. Take this in. This is closure. This is what you’ve always wanted and needed.'

And I realize the potency of this unequivocal truth. I have always fought for closure in my life whenever it was remotely attainable. I like my issues neatly packaged and wrapped up with a pretty little bow on them. It gives me some semblance of control, of certitude and of comfort in a chaotic and utterly uncontrollable world.

Maybe this night will give me what has always eluded me and the many New Yorkers that woke up on September 12^th 2001 in a very different city in a very frightening world. I didn’t lose anyone on that day. But my world was radically altered and my worldview was profoundly tarnished.

I found myself afraid in a way I had never known; looking quickly upward every time I heard a plane passing overhead. I found my perception of humanity irreparably harmed; having never even fathomed people capable of doing such horrible things right here in my city. I also found myself asking questions I had never asked before. Awful questions.

Have you ever asked yourself what you would do to Osama bin Laden if you were alone with him in a room without windows in a world without consequence? Have you ever really asked yourself and honestly answered yourself? I have. I have for the past decade. And the answers always have and continue to frighten me. But I cannot deny them. 

And New Yorkers cannot deny them. The proof is in the crowds that gathered in Times Square and at Ground Zero late into Sunday night and early into Monday morning. The proof was in the hugs, the high fives, the tears, cheers, singing and chanting. We could not deny what we wanted.

We wanted that motherfucker dead. We needed that motherfucker dead.

So now what? What do we do now? We have permission to move forward, to let go of the past but can we? It’s not always such an easy task, is it? Hatred, anger, despair, a thirst for vengance…these things can get really familiar. They can become a part of us. They can envelop us like a warm blanket. They can start to feel like home.

So maybe we will not close the book on this. Maybe closure is only something that applies to cute little problems like breaking up with a girlfriend or forgiving your parents for not being perfect. Maybe we can just press on and let our anger evolve into whatever it is that we need it to become. Maybe it’ll turn into gratitude or unity. Maybe it’ll help us get our military out of Afganistan and Iraq. Maybe it’ll trigger the disintegration of Al Qaeda. Or maybe it’ll spark a revival.

I don’t know. I really don’t. And as tears stream down my cheeks, I can’t even tell you what I’m feeling. Relief? Hope? Sadness? Joy? I don’t fucking know man. But I like it. And judging by the crowds in the streets, New York likes it. And maybe that’s all that matters.

Maybe that’s all we need right now. A reason to get together. A reason to high-five a stranger. A reason to chant ‘U.S.A.’ A reason to feel just a little bit better about that horrible day. A reason to believe that those 2,996 people did not die in vain. A reason to hope. Maybe that’s it. We needed a reason to hope.

And we fucking got one!

Earth Day: A Retrospective, A Reflection...and A Warning

The year was 1990. It was a happy time. Vanilla Ice was shattering hip-hop’s monochromatic glass ceiling, we were training the Taliban, not hunting them, the A-Team was safely confined to television, not being tragically re-imagined for the big screen and wars in Iraq lasted months, not years.

Sure we had environmental problems but they were solvable, if not quaint problems like acid rain, deforestation, oil spills and holes in the ozone layer. Yet somewhere (maybe in Burlington, Vermont, maybe not) a group of hippies packed the ninth bong of their morning session, inhaled and hatched a plan. The plan was simple…take Earth Day global. And so they did.

Blogger’s Disclaimer: I made that up. The idea to go global was hatched by an environmental activist named Denis Hayes. But my version is much more entertaining...at least I think so.

Earth Day was born in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson (no, I did not make up that name) in an effort to raise awareness about environmental issues in the wake of an oil spill that ravaged the coast of Santa Barbara. It started as a grass-roots effort to increase global consciousness and stimulate change. And what started out as a day celebrated in the United States by 2,000 colleges is now embraced by a majority of the planet.

And as it rolls around once again, I cannot help but reflect on it all. Why it started, the problems we had then, the problems we have now and whether or not this day has made much of a difference.

So here we are, forty-one years later and much has changed; but not necessarily for the better. We still have oil spills but now they occur a mile underwater and go on for three months. Deforestation is no longer something we oppose, just something we accept. Acid rain still occurs but it gets much less press than our new quagmires like resource depletion, radiation contamination and global warming.

So has Earth Day served its purpose? My cynicism not withstanding, strides have certainly been made. Over the last four decades, laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act have been put into place to protect our natural resources and keep the term bio-diversity itself from becoming extinct. Recycling, solar power, the Kyoto Protocol; without the Earth Day movement, they may not have evolved as they have. 

And who knows…without Earth Day, our Floridian waterways may be devoid of sea cows. And where would we be then?

Would you really miss me?

But it just seems like environmentalists are always (and pardon the ecological analogy) swimming against the current. No matter how much evidence presents itself, the government resists taking action…as if irreparable damage to our natural world were some nagging predicament that those damn hippies just wouldn’t stop bitching about. And our elected officials rarely respond to bitching…or hippies for that matter.

But we do have problems and we need to solve them even if, as Al Gore so eloquently pointed out, doing so is somewhat inconvenient.

But is it me or are our problems getting bigger? And the bigger they get, the more complicated and difficult the prospect of changing them becomes. There is one problem in particular that does not get as much press as it should and it is one that is enabling and augmenting the litany of environmental issues that plague us. 

Overpopulation.

China had a population problem. And in a move that was heralded by many as Orwellian and inhumane, they limited a portion of its populous to one child per family. The policy has successfully curbed population growth by preventing approximately 400 million childbirths in the last thirty-two years. And other countries need to start implementing variations of this policy...or at least entertaining the notion. 

Because we have more people than food to feed them and in cities like New York, we have more people than square footage to house them. We’ve got more cars that guzzle more gas than we can drill, barrel, process and sell for anything less than $4 a barrel. And it doesn’t stop there.

With our natural resources diminishing, oil reserves being drained and our environment being continuously polluted while our population skyrockets, you can see the potential for things to get significantly worse.

And on this Earth Day, dare I ask what we are doing about it? Well, the bad news is that the GOP is still operating under the ‘Global Warming is a myth’ precept. They illustrated this during the recent budget showdown when they tried to attach a provision to the budget that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its power to...wait for it...protect the environment by regulating CO2 emissions. And the worse news is that President Obama has been giving the GOP far too much of what it wants these days.

This year, the Earth Day Network is launching 'A Billion Acts of Green', the largest environmental service campaign in the world. Its goal is to register one billion green actions, large and small, before the Earth Summit scheduled for next year in Rio.

To make your pledge, visit  http://www.earthday.org/billion-acts-green-®

This pledge is a good thing. But it’s not enough. Grass roots activism will only go so far. We need bold initiatives from our government, regardless of how ‘inconvenient’ taking action may be in these trying financial times. But what happens if nothing is done? Allow me to paint a few alarmist scenarios for you.

Option A) by 2017, the world’s population rises to eleven billion and in efforts to feed everyone, geneticists engineer a three thousand ton mega-cow that is pumped full of so much Human Growth Hormone that it breaks Barry Bonds homerun record. (the accomplishment is shunned by Coopers Town but to little protest) 

Soon after, the GOP’s belief in the benign nature of global warming is proven wrong when the polar ice caps melt entirely. Those that survive either use the mega-cow as a floating landmass they call home or take to the seas; growing gills and mullets and drinking their own urine to survive.

Option B) The population continues it’s mathematical ascension and as it does, our oil, water and natural food sources evaporate. Poverty and unemployment rates rise and with a fiscally paranoid government in place, nothing is done to invest in clean, renewable energy or even fuel-efficient automobiles for that matter. America continues to fall behind the rest of the world in terms of energy, education and economic growth.

Once this happens, we delve even further into a polarized abyss of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ The ‘have nots’ will die off and the ‘haves’ will survive but not for long. Due to the numerous detriments inclusive in their diets, cancer and diabetes become permanently embedded in homo sapien DNA and within thirty years, the average life expectancy drops to seven. Eventually, it drops to zero.

The rest of the planet won’t fair much better. Third Worlders that don’t die from irradiated spinach will wade through cholera-infested and radically depleted water supplies in search of a disease-free drink but the only way to get one is to buy a bottle of water with money they don’t have in a city they can’t get to. Fertile, farmable land becomes extinct, as do vegetarians. Zen Palate goes out of business but no one cares. And without vegetables to feed on, all carnivores, starting with Texans and undeomesticated felines but spreading to all others, die off soon after.

OR

Option C) We can join the Earth Day Network pledge and take one action in an effort to initiate change one small stride at a time. Then we can demand that our elected officials act NOW to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases and take better measures to insure that something like the BP oil spill NEVER happens again. But we cannot stop there. We need oil and coal taxes that will actually deter their usage and nudge us toward solar, wind and yes, despite Japan, nuclear power. Our classrooms must not only catch up to the rest of the world, but eclipse them so that future generations can lead the way toward a cleaner, sustainable future in a lush, fertile and harvestable planet.

Why? Because I want to drink cholera-free water, not my own urine. I want to eat free-range poultry, not a mega-cow scavenged upon by those fortunate enough to have survived an ecological holocaust. I don’t want to grow gills. I want to grow old with my children who can swim in the ocean and not be flammable afterwards. I want to believe in a better, cleaner tomorrow. And at some point, we have to start securing that for ourselves. Because if we don’t, we will have one pissed off Mother on our hands.

Click on the link below the image to join me. Happy Earth Day.

http://www.earthday.org/billion-acts-green-®  

   

OUR FISCAL FUTURE: A DEAD MAN WALKING GETS A TEMPORARY STAY OF EXECUTION

I realize that most of you have lives and aren’t glued to CNN for hours at a time because you don’t want to miss Harry Reid’s monotonic address about budget negotiations. And I celebrate that. As you raise your children, advance your careers and lavish your spouses with either affection or neglect, I live vicariously through you. Yesterday, my lack of life enabled me to obsessively indulge in the latest piece of political theater and luckily for all of us, it had a happy ending.

The government shut down was averted and both parties rejoiced, lauding the achievement as “historic” and an illustration of “democracy at work.” And I’ll admit, the small victory (avoiding melt downs qualify as such in this Washington climate) made my heart swell and my loins tingle. Once in a while our government acts remotely competent and minimally functional and it makes me smile so.

But yesterday does not negate the fact that we still have a serious problem that needs to be addressed…coming up with a reasonable long-term plan to prevent a fiscal crisis. And let’s face it, we really need to one. Unfortunately, the plan that is getting all the press these days is a fucking awful one.

As a self-professed sidewalk philosopher, I always feel the need to ask questions and on my blog, I encourage my readers to do the same. So here’s a question for you…is it better to have a shitty plan or no plan at all?

I enjoy the op-ed section of the New York Times and it rarely happens but once and a while Paul Krugman and David Brooks sound off on the same page about the same topic. I get a similar thrill watching Paul Begala and David Gergen duke it out on CNN. Yes, I said ‘thrill,’ my life is that sad.

"I've got a plan. It sucks but it's a plan goddamnit!"

But I enjoy these showdowns because even though we all love our pundits to regurgitate and reinforce our own ethos, it is more valuable and stimulating to hear perspectives on both sides. And yesterday’s op-ed issue was House Budget Chairman Paul Allen’s budget proposal. Merely a week old, the proposal is already making headlines and here I am, caught in the middle of the hyperbolic crossfire.

Is it “Bold?” “Ludicrous?” A beacon of fiscal responsibility? A good starting point or the latest Republican attempt at class warfare? Who do I trust? Who do I believe? I’m not a fucking economist so what am I to make of all this?

Well, lets try and get through this together. We can only hope that reason and solidarity will help us navigate these murky waters successfully. So what does the budget propose? To reduce federal spending by $6.2 trillion over the next decade, during which it will also reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion. Well, that doesn’t sound like such a bad thing does it?

Well, no. But unfortunately, trillions of dollars in spending do not magically disappear in the same manner as Charlie Sheen’s integrity. They go somewhere. And Ryan’s proposal, which the GOP is praising copiously, would take that money from very important places. First and foremost, this budget assumes that Obama’s health care overhaul will be repealed. So, that’s Allen’s version of forward thinking; repealing past laws that he isn’t very fond of. Not a good start but let’s not get too discouraged and press on.

After that, he proposes that over a trillion dollars be cut from Medicare and Medicaid spending. Here we go again. The Republican solution…fuck the poor and fuck the old. Fuck ‘em both. They’re a drag no matter how much money we shell out to them so maybe if we just stop paying for their health care, they will die off and we will be left with the Arian Utopia we all crave; a nation of young, rich, white, heterosexual Protestants. Then we can all traverse life with the comfort that Gay-Black-Poor Plague will not kill our babies while they sleep.

But don’t think that Allen is a heartless prick or anything like that. He does not want to entirely abolish Medicare, which, with an 85% approval rating, is one of America’s most liked programs. No, he just wants to replace it with vouchers that citizens can use to buy private policies. Well, that sounds just as good, no?

According to Paul Krugman, who cites the Congressional Budget Office in estimating that these vouchers will only cover one third of senior health costs, that would mean that the other two thirds, they would just have to come up with themselves. Krugman seems to think this is all a bad idea. And since he has a Nobel Prize in Economics on his mantle and I don’t, I’ll go ahead and take his word for it.  

On the flip side we have David Brooks, who is right when he claims that increasing taxes on the rich will not, in and of itself, cover our ever-expanding fiscal waistband. But the answer cannot simply be to cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans, which Ryan’s plan once again suggests in hopes that the magical “trickle down” effect will manifest this time around…which is kind of like betting that the next book Snooky writes will win the Pulitzer.

Brooks is accurate in his claims that Medicare cannot cover the costs of every single new procedure that medical science introduces and that the more affluent cross-section of the populous should shoulder a portion of the burden of paying for our social programs with a slight increase in their tax rates. I agree with both statements.

But most importantly, Brooks is correct in claiming that until Democrats come up with a plan to counter Ryan’s, they cannot be taken seriously in matters concerning fiscal responsibility. David Gergen echoed these sentiments on Anderson Cooper’s program yesterday evening. So what is the Democrats’ plan? Well, that’s the problem. They don’t appear to have one.

And they need one if they want to not only muffle the populist anti-debt outrage that has already begun to spread from Tea Parties to voting booths, but also to avoid the fiscal crisis that will unfold if our debt goes unchecked and we don’t find a responsible way to insure our social programs’ long-term solvency. If anyone is curious about what happens when such measures are not procured, see recent collapses in Greece, Ireland and coming soon to a Euro-bail-out near you…Portugal!

So how are we to resolve this fiscal calamity without sacrificing our most cherished programs? And can we do it without resorting to ideological pissing contests and budgets packed with pork, riders and other gizmos?

The fight goes on. But no one ever wins.

Probably not. As even this budget standoff turned into a battle over party ideals. And is it me or does it seem that every time the Democrats pursue better health care, cleaner air and women’s rights, the Republicans counter with pro-life rhetoric, voodoo economics and tax cuts for rich people and corporations? Am I crazy? I hate to dualistically generalize like this but no matter how much I listen to David Brooks or David Gergen’s intelligent and valid counterpoints, I just keep tacking back to the same questions.

If our taxes pay for a compassionate welfare state we can be proud of, how can Republicans keep championing tax cuts that only make the rich richer and diminish the revenue that pays for our social programs? How can half of America keep voting for a party that wants to abolish Medicare and prevent the protection of our environment while failing to even try to improve the unemployment rate? I just don’t get it. 

What am I missing? Don’t people realize that this whole “trickle down” approach to the economy doesn’t work and that it has already failed us in the past? Don’t people want the government to take care of us by championing affordable health care, clean air and an economic policy that takes care of the average working citizen? Why would the Republicans try to attach provisions to a budget that opposes all these things? Don’t people see that? Don’t they care? And as always, it leads me back to the same question…

REPUBLICAN VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?!?!?!

Sorry. I just…I get a little upset with my fellow Americans sometimes. Anyway, Paul Ryan’s plan is an atrocious one. But right now, it’s the only one on the table and it’s the only one that people are talking about. That needs to change.

Boehner: A Man of the People - Even the Fat, Poor and Lazy Deserve a Voice

The fat, poor and lazy people of this country have been silenced, discarded and left for dead without purpose, direction or a voice to call their own. But they now have a beacon to follow, a leader to shepherd them through these tumultuous financial times, a voice that echoes throughout the halls of Congress, a name for the droves of nameless, faceless citizens that have been cast asunder. And his name is John Boehner.

      

George W. Bush gave America “Compassionate Conservatism.” But apparently G.O.P. leadership felt such an approach was too…well…compassionate. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Boehner accidentally let loose his true thoughts on how to approach Americans who have fallen on tough time. His approach is, well, to not approach them at all. The majority leader of the United States House of Representatives has adopted more of a ‘Fuck them, it’s they’re own fault if they can’t get a good job or an education’ philosophy.

While on a coffee break, Boehner, who apparently is not aware of reporter/subject etiquette, dropped a little English when he thought they were off the record. After the reporter Matt Taibbi asked what he felt about young people, he shared his thoughts on that and more.

"Can't pay your student loan? Face it, your parents were lazy and you couldn't afford college. The world needs ditch diggers and you were born into a family of them. Can't pay your mortgage? Your house was too expensive and you couldn't afford it."

Love. So much love he has for the American working class. I can feel the fuzzy, snuggly affection for the ditch-diggers of America oozing out of his pores. Can’t you? But his love is not limited to the lowly ditch diggers that make up such a large cross-section of the American populous. John, much like myself, believes that the children are our future. And he exemplified this belief when he said, “The kids here [in the U.S.] are too fat, too lazy, too addicted to TV, fast food, cheap credit, and Facebook.”

Hmmmmm. Well, people do watch too much television. Facebook can be addictive and yes, McDonalds is a little more popular than it should be. But I am not so sure that this attitude is altogether helpful. I’m all for constructive criticism but he comes off as a little bit of a, what’s that word, cocksucker. Am I wrong? I have heard the ramblings of a cocksucker before and they sounded very much like that; harsh, apathetic, rooted in truth but completely unaffected by it.

Alarming as his comments were, he unleashed one little verbal nugget that filled me with hope and upon reading it, a light of clarity shone through me. All this time I have been worrying about unemployment in this country. Even though it recently dropped to 8.8%, I was still laboring under the fallacious impression that rampant unemployment was in fact, a problem. You know, something people were not necessarily happy about. ‘People need jobs and they want them’ I’ve always thought. Oh what a silly lad I was to entertain such childish notions.

But Boehner, in a quote of the ages, claimed, “I have news for you- there are plenty of jobs out there- the unemployed don't want them.” Ooooooohhhhhhhhhh, so that’s the problem! Eureka! It’s not that people CAN’T get jobs because the job market has shriveled up due to inferior education and the collapse of housing, banking, automotive and countless other industries. No you silly monkeys, it’s that people simply don’t want the oodles of jobs that are saturating this surplus of a job market.

Well, I don’t know about you but I feel enlightened and filled with an optimism I have not tasted since the summer of 2008; a sunny, happy time when predator lending and sub-prime mortgages only existed in science fiction books. Nobody knew who Fannie Mae or Freddy Mac were and housing bubbles were just something kids liked to play with. Twas a glorious time when automotive industries entrenched in 19^th century technologies thrived and the general public actually believed that overhauling our tragically inefficient health care system was a good idea.

And since then, what has Mr. Boehner learned from a period that most economists herald as the worst recession since the Great Depression? That the unemployed don’t want jobs and that future generations of Americans are too fat and lazy to even deserve them.

So, is this the future of the G.O.P.? Is the G.O.P. the future of America? Is this the leadership this country needs to mend its wounds and repair its limping economy? Is this the attitude that is going to restore America’s dignity and virility in the world?

I hope voters are paying attention. Because our Congressmen exist to serve us, to advance our values and to realize our dreams. They exist to speak for those who cannot be heard. They are our voice. John Boehner is our voice. He is speaking to you and more importantly, he is speaking for you. Are you listening? 

Lights...Camera...Ignorance!!!

Some of you may know this, others may not, but I recently wrapped my feature film; a project that has been nearly three years in the making. And throughout the last three years, although the film was at the forefront of my mind, I always found the time and energy to do a play here, write another screenplay there and of course, contribute my weekly rant on this blog.

But at the conclusion of my last post nearly three months ago, I informed my cadre of loyal followers (all seven of them) that I would be neglecting all other pursuits to focuse exclusively on my film. Then I did what any committed artist with no life to speak of would do…I stopped blogging, suspended my subscription to the New York Times, did the same with my cable and then immersed myself quite blissfully in tunnel-visioned workaholism.

I did this for two months of pre-production and three weeks of principal photography. And since I yelled “That’s a fuckin’ wrap!” a week ago, I have slowly and painfully returned to reality. And the reality that there actually is a reality out there greater than me and my little movie.

Art is important. I believe that. Films matter. I believe that too. And when you’re making a film that is, in and of itself, both the culmination of all your life’s pursuits and the reward for enduring a decade of hopelessness, rejection and dejection, reality becomes an irrelevant if not annoying distraction.

It took an entire day to black out
1,000 square feet of windows

I spent the first two weeks of the shoot at a beach house in Southampton and as a writer, producer, director and actor on the project, I had a lot on my plate and quite a few things to worry about.

I had to worry about all the performances, including my own. I had to worry about whether or not the crew was happy and doing their jobs to the best of their abilities and if not, would I have to fire them. I had to worry about pipes bursting in the dead of winter. I had to worry about forty mile-per-hour winds that made the house shake and recording sound impossible. I had to worry about falling behind schedule and going over budget. I had to worry about whether or not my scrotum popped into frame while filming simulated sex on top of a washing machine. And I had to worry about keeping my penis flacid while having simulated sex with a scorching, twenty-five-year-old Columbian sexpot on top of said washing machine.

I simply did not have time to worry about tsunamis in Japan. 

The tsunami was a blip on my radar. When you are wearing that many hats, your brain is processing a perpetual stream of stimuli that bombard you from a hundred different directions in unison. The tsunami was one of those pieces of stimuli. And it was a distraction I could not afford.

For the briefest of moments, I worried about the safety of my cast and crew because we were in a house that overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. But I quickly got my bearings…Japan…Pacific Ocean…we’ll be fine. Okay, now I can concentrate on setting up this dolly shot. It’s a very important shot. The camera slowly pushes in on one of the leads when he has a moment of clarity about his life. It is VERY important. Far more important than something as trivial as a tsunami that kills thousands of men, women and children.

So we continued shooting and as we did, little nuggets of information would penetrate the set, dirupting my focus. I would hear something about Carmelo Anthony joining the Knicks. I hear about our trading four starters for a locker-room toxin that is allergic to both defense and high percentage shots. I remember being angry for a second or two before realizing I had only twelve minutes to get two shots at the exact moment that the sun sets behind the main character. I have got to position him just right and I want him drinking a glass of wine and I want the good grape juice god damnit! Because the market brand grape juice looks like shit! And why are there fucking bubbles in it?! And someone get me my goddamn Snuggie! Before I know it, I am not thinking about the Knicks any more.

So the shoot progresses and things are going swimmingly. The crew rocks and the performances are top shelf. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it? War looms in Libya? Not my problem. What’s going on in the world of reality television? Who gives a fuck, I’m making a good film. Who won the Oscar for best supporting mime in a musical documentary? Who cares, our movie is the center of the universe and for the first time in my life, I am doing what I’ve always wanted. Wars? Tsunamis? Oscars? Blockbuster trades? Footnotes in the historical event that is my film.

So it’s the last day of shooting in the Hamptons and we are in a rehab clinic. I spend portions of the day joking around with my friends, who were generous enough to come out for the day and serve as extras. I spend other portions gladhanding the employees of the facility and thanking them for all their help. And I mean it. I am very grateful but my appreciation comes out as formulaic, as if it were learned by rote. It’s not my fault, I’m just in too much of a rush to tap into genuine gratitude. I have a lot of things to worry about. My extras have to leave by two o'clock. I have to make sure everyone, myself especially, doesn’t crack any jokes about drug abuse or drinking. I have to worry about whether or not the rehab director is going to shut down the production because unbeknownst to him, two of the four scenes we are shooting there involve my character snorting cocaine (Vitamin B-12 actually) on the premises.

I have all these things to worry about so I don’t have time to look at or talk to all the patients that are milling about, eyeing the production curiously. I don’t have time to worry about them or their unimaginable sob stories. I have an hour left and I still have to light and shoot two scenes. But lighting takes time unfortunately so I have nothing to do but wait.

So I wander over to a few patients and I ask them if we are in the way. They say 'no.' They ask me what the movie is about and I methodically regurgitate my elevator pitch because I don’t have time to explain the plot with any spontaneity or feeling. Sorry but I’m a very busy man. And then after one minute of small talk, they start telling me why they are there. One tells me how many times he has been in jail. The other tells me that his sister ODed two weeks ago. She’s dead…and suddenly my movie doesn’t seem so important any more.

I had told these two men and various employees of the clinic that day that I had passed through Program many years ago but I don’t realize the magnitude of it until this moment. I look at these two strangers who are sharing their lives thirty seconds after meeting me and then I remember. I remember being eighteen and spending three months in a center that looked very much like this one. I remember the shitty coffee. I remember the unbridled honesty. I remember the broken lives.

And when I found myself inconveniently emotionalized between two soda machines, I cursed those two fuckers for making me remember and for making me realize that there was a world beyond this project. I hear someone asking if anyone’s seen the director. So I pull myself together and then go shoot a scene where my character snorts blow in the bathroom of his rehab bedroom. Moments later it occurs to me that I had actually done that and fifteen years later, had recreated the incident in a movie. But I didn’t have time to reflect on the ironic cyclicity of life, I had a film to finish.

DP Gus Sacks shooting, on the verge of regurgitation

It’s the last week of the shoot and we return to New York. I come home and embrace the sleeping bag on my bed. Yes, I use a sleeping bag instead of a blanket, stop judging me. So I wrap myself in it and I whisper sweet nothings into its ear. I tell it how much I missed it and how happy that I was to be back home, enveloped in its goose down embrace.

Then I realize that my producing partner is probably saying the same things to his fiancé after spending two weeks apart. And that my sound man’s wife is in Chicago and they probably miss each other. It occurs to me that this film is probably not the center of the universe for everyone working on it. And instead of being jealous of everyone for actually having lives, I find myself angered at the fact that they might actually place loved ones higher on their priority list than this picutre. How dare they!

And then I quickly see that I am being unreasonable. I apologize to my sleeping bag and caress it lovingly. It then occurs to me that it has been weeks since I have had the time or energy to have sex with myself. And for a moment I think about putting on my Enya CD and busting out my variety pack of exotic massage oils. But then I realize how tired I am and how after dropping twenty pounds for the film, I am no longer attracted to myself. Moments later, I roll over on myself and fall asleep.

So it’s the last few days of the shoot and we are heading into Newark to shoot in a courthouse for three days. We are stuck in traffic and almost an hour late to set because of it. And as we pass an accident, the thought enters my head; ‘Someone better have been seriously injured in that fucking wreck, I’m an hour late because of it.’ And of course, I am immediately disgusted with myself for having thought such a thing.

But nothing else matters when you’re making a movie. At least not for me. The health and safety of some commuter? I don’t have time to worry about strangers, let alone strangers from Jersey, sorry. The director is late to set and so is the entire crew. Clear the fucking road and get me to work. Is this mindset selfish and despicable? Absolutely. But regretably that is just where I was while shooting.

Carolina Ravassa in a pink yetti-skin coat by Donna Karan

We have extras for some of our scenes in Newark and as I do yet another round of gladhanding, I hear them talking. I hear murmers about Muamar el-Qaddafi going bonkers and some sort of escalating situation in Libya but I can’t be bothered with it. I thank my extras for coming, I crack a few jokes to try and elevate their spirits and then I’m off. I don’t know their names and I don’t want to. I have to rehearse my actors. That’s far more important than getting to know people I will probably never see again. Selfishness baby…that’s all I had time for. It wasn’t about them and it sure as shit wasn’t about me. It was all about the film. It had to be. 

When we wrap for the day, I have time to genuinely thank everyone for their time. Since I am no longer battling time, money and depleted coffee rations, it is safe to do so. And it feels good. People worked hard and gave twelve hours of their life to help my film so I enjoy shaking their hands. But the moment is short-lived because tomorrow is another day and we have ten pages to shoot.

The next day, one of the police officers assigned to watch over the film shoot tells me about his experiences in Iraq and for a moment I am reminded that we are still involved in two wars. ‘I wonder how those are going’ I wonder ever so briefly. Then a P.A. comes over and tells me they are ready for a blocking rehearsal. 'Thanks for sharing officer', I think before scurrying off.

The last day in Newark, we are shooting a press conference scene and we have close to thirty extras who are not being paid. How could I get all these people for free? Don’t they have jobs? Then I remember that a lot of people are still unemployed. I am waiting for my crew to set up the jib arm and I recall that I haven’t heard a peep about job creation legislation in months…not from either side of the aisle. I wonder if either party gives a fuck. Then someone says “Mr. Wolfe, they’re ready for you.”

A visionary at work

I laugh because every now and again, someone calls me ‘Mr. Wolfe.’ Then I stop laughing because I realize that in a week, I will be a bartender again. How’s that for reality.

So we complete the film and we are thrilled. We got every shot we wanted and we came in on budget. We made a great film and we are all very much in love with the completion of the process. I am filled with more pride and self-satisfactin than I have ever known and my heart overflows with the love I feel for everybody that helped us get this bitch in the can. Everybody worked their asses off and now, for the first time, I have the opportunity to express genuine gratitude towards the members of my cast and crew…by getting them drunk.

But now that it’s over, I realize that nothing is over. I may have re-assimilated myself into the world but I find that I want nothing to do with it. My first day back at my bartending job was agonizing. As I muddled my first mojito in a month, I found myself spiting the man who ordered it with every fiber of my being. I resisted every attempt my customers made at small talk. Sorry, I can’t be your fucking friend right now, I have to…oh wait…I do have time to be your friend. But I just don’t want to. After all, I still need to find an editor.

The newspapers have returned to my doorstep but I find that I want nothing to do with them either. The casualty toll in Japan is up to two thousand. The next day it is up to four thousand but five thousand are still missing. The next day eight thousand are dead and twice that number are still missing. There is radiation contamination but no one seems to know how much and I find that I don’t really care. I still have to raise more post-production money…somehow.

I was riding the stationary bike at my gym and I see something on the news about the U.S. bombing Libya. Fuck, that can’t be good. Who’s Libya friends with these days? They probably don’t like us very much. Can we afford to get into another war? Isn’t three wars at the same time a bit much? Are republicans still trying to repeal the Health Care Bill? Do I care? I used to. Will I care again? I don’t know. After all, I still have to find a composer to score the film and he has to be willing to work for deferred pay.

I go home to flip on CNN but my cable is still turned off. I wonder if maybe that’s for the best. But then again, I immediately sat down and started writing this post so perhaps I am not content living in blissful ignorance. I am asking questions again so maybe that’s a good sign. But most of my questions still revolve around the film. Will we have to do re-shoots? Will the footage look as good as I think it will? Was my performance up to par? How will everything cut together? Will we get into Sundance? Will we win?

I like those questions. I think I’ll keep asking them. And who knows…maybe I’ll find the time to ask a few more on this blog. My seven followers will be delighted.