Bitter Koolaid

This blog post was originally going to be a successful attempt by myself to argue against my being a militant atheist. My initial argument was that I can't be a militant anything. I'm a pacifist. I feel guilty swatting flies! How can I be a militant anything? Long before I became an atheist, I refused to accept that war ever resolved anything. How do I know this? I studied history. World War One was to be The War To End All Wars. Didn't do a good job of that, did it? Several wars before and since are proof positive: all war does is allow the winners to rewrite history so that it appears war solved something, and it allows the losers to opt to resent the winners until they can find a way to get the upper hand and kick the winners ass in a rematch. Or just drink more vodka. Personally? I do believe in vodka. It's real. I've seen it. Alcoholics are more right than religious zealots. at least I can prove vodka exists.

Anyway, I wanted this blog post to last more than a paragraph so I went to look up what a militant atheist actually is. Yes I'm perfectly aware that wikipedia is not the most reliable and universally accepted source for information, but I tend to use it because 1) I do not recall ever personally disagreeing dramatically with stuff I find in there and 2) I'm a lazy ass. Over at wiki, militant atheism is described thusly:

Julian Baggini defines militant atheism as "Atheism which is actively hostile to religion", which "requires more than strong disagreement with religion - it requires something verging on hatred and is characterised by a desire to wipe out all forms of religious belief. Militant atheists tend to make one or both of two claims that moderate atheists do not. The first is that religion is demonstrably false or nonsense and the second is that it is usually or always harmful

Apparently the word militant in the phrase "militant atheism" doesn't involve the military. I'm not sure why the word "militant" is combined with "atheism" but there's no actual use of force involved.

I wanted to debate this. However, I can't, really. IF the above description is what it means to be a militant atheist, then I pretty much fit the bill, but with some caveats. For example, I didn't start with a desire to wipe out all forms of religion. I may not be there quite yet but I'm approaching that avenue and all the road signs are pointing that way. I see that humanity will eventually abandon the concept of godhood altogether, or we will destroy one another. I'm not sure which outcome would be an improvement.

When I was a young Born Again Christian (something I now refer to as "having drank the Kool Aid"), I still believed myself religiously tolerant. I still thought jews and muslims and buddhists and hindus etc all were going to burn in the Christian Hell, but that was for God to hammer out and I tried not to think about it too much. While here on Earth, it appeared that most of these people still believed in goodness and these other religions can still coexist with my religion even though they're wrong, because we all inherently want the best for each other and humanity as a whole. As for who'd be my neighbor after Judgment Day, I figured I'd let Peter, Paul and Mary discuss it. Or sing about it.

Then I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid. I stopped going to a Baptist Church every Sunday. I still believed in the Christian God, but I lost faith that any man or woman on this planet could get me any closer to Him than I already was. I went to college and attended college courses that challenged me to look at other people's belief structures with more objective eyes, and also to look at my own with an astute objectivity that eventually led me to uncertainty and ethical vertigo. I walked away realizing that it was all not as cut and dried as I thought. In fact, it was so convoluted and complicated and crazy insane that I didn't really want to dissect it any more than I already had. Pandora's Box had been opened, but I thought if I could just sit on the lid, maybe it wouldn't all escape.

Over time I have been forced to accept that not only is my religion wrong, they are all wrong. Every single last one of them. Somebody somewhere uses these religions toward bad ends. Yes, there are others who use them for good. You can argue that overall the good outweighs the bad. I defended it that way for decades myself.

Televangelists convincing poor people to give to them so they can buy another limousine. A president who promised to do God's Will and then had a man killed in cold blood because he threatened Daddy. Priests having sex with children. Rabbis still enforcing rules that make no sense and hold no bearing on reality today even at the expense of the health and well-being of his flock. Parents refusing to allow their child the best in modern medicine on religious grounds. A man in Utah convincing many women to marry him because its what his god tells him to do. Other people telling that guy he can't do that, because their god tells them what to do. Entire cultures that think of sex as depraved and nudity as ugly, but violence under the right circumstances is completely acceptable. Censorship of light-hearted use of coarse references to reproductive and excretory organs as if children will be somehow mentally harmed by contemplating their own bodily functions. People killing doctors in cold blood because the doctors kill babies who haven't even been born yet because the pregnant girl was too young and scared and who knows what else to want the baby because parents do not properly prepare their children for the consequences of sex because religion has confused the issue, refused to allow proper sex education for our youth, and demanded abstinence be heralded rather than the use of condoms (because whether you like it or not some teenagers are going to fuck each other as it is a biological imperative). A pope that would rather see tens of millions in third world countries die of plague and famine than re-access religious dogma. Closet homosexuals who act out violently towards proudly open homosexuals because their beliefs do not allow them to accept themselves for who they are or the reality around them for what it is. Believers in Allah blowing up buildings with airplanes. ...Kirk Cameron for crying out loud! Can't I just point at Kirk Cameron and you'd believe me?

Am I a militant atheist because I see these examples and countless others and am frustrated at how helpless I am to stop this madness from continuing any further? Then I guess I'm a militant pacifist atheist, because the only way to stop this madness would be to become literally militant and blow up a few churches. Be thankful I'm NOT militant!

I would argue the use of the word "hatred." I don't hate believers. I don't even really hate religion itself per se. Like a gun sitting on a counter unused, religion doesn't kill people. However, people who imagine themselves to operate as The Hand Of God DO kill people, and do so more often that we'd like to admit.

I hate how some use religion to hurt others. I hate how some do that and they don't even know they're doing it. I hate that I'm powerless to stop this harm, because Verse help me I'm still a Constitutionalist, and I believe in the freedoms described therein, including the right to believe however you choose without fear of reprisal. But dammit if you saw a kid stick his fork in the light socket over and over again because he likes the jolt it gives him and he thinks its funny even though it's killing him, WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING? WOULDN'T YOU WANT TO STOP IT?

Mostly I hate that some people KNOW religion hurts other, but they're in a position of influence and they use their place of authority dangerously anyway because they think it serves some higher purpose. Arguably, Mother Theresa was allegedly an atheist near the end of her life, but she continued her work anyway, and there are many critics of her actions especially towards the end of her life where her position as a leader and authority may have caused more harm than good for some, even though she was indeed helping others. Does the end justify the means? Really? Every time?

I do hate people who have figured out, like me, that belief is a lie but they use it to control others, and they're out there. Snake oil salesmen. Con artists. Charlatans who walk into a dry town and promise rain for a price. They're out there, and if you believe in them, they will believe in your pocketbook until it's all gone. Then they'll move on to the next mark.

There are some Mother Theresa like people who honestly sincerely believe in what they're doing and they mean well and nine times out of ten everything works out. However, it's impossible to police. For every one that's successful, there's easily a half dozen or so who meant well but for one reason or another fail and they take a lot of people down with them, and at least as many who do help but also use the place of influence it gives them for occasional or habitual personal gain. There are some who are downright charlatans, and since we're talking about faith, it's impossible to tell the bad from the good, because I honestly can't say that George W Bush was a charlatan. He might have been just incredibly stupid. Either way, he dragged our country's reputation through the mud. It will take generations for America to win over the hearts and minds of many throughout the world. It may never actually be possible. George W Bush claimed to be on a mission from his God to stop the Do-Gooders, but all he did was leave the presidency with the country having more enemies than we had when he started. If you still believe George W Bush's actions were good for this country and humanity as a whole, please please please stop reading. I'm not talking to you. I don't want to save you from your own ignorance. Please continue to believe your petty little lies about reality. Go away. Embrace your imaginary savior.

To the rest of you who are still here, what can I possibly say to make you see where I'm coming from? Let's try this example.

Let's say you like to watch tele-evangelists who lay hands on people and make the lame walk and the blind see. You've seen it yourself. You watch the show. He goes around and heals people. Right there before your eyes. I could argue that this is TELEVISION, and if I had his resources and experience I could probably cook up a similar program that would be just as convincing, but then at the end of the program I could show everyone how I tricked you into thinking I was a healer. Of course, a good magician never reveals his secrets, unless of course you're Penn & Teller.

Let's say your favorite Tele-Evangelist presumes to have the Power of God in his fingertips. Has it ever occurred to you that if this was actually a valid way of healing people, that hospitals wouldn't need to exist? If this was really real, everyone would believe without question, and if anyone got sick they'd call up one of these guys. In fact, if any Christian has the power of God inside them once saved, why can't anyone heal anybody? Why does it have to be that guy in the suit with the microphone standing on the stage asking you to send him more money?

ANY miracle you see can be explained rationally, given enough time and resources to investigate the miraculous claim. There are no miracles. At most, there are physical processes that we don't understand yet, that science has yet to uncover, but there's a rational explanation for anything that happens in the universe.

Maybe you think that conventional medicine just wants to keep their business in check and go out of their way to discredit Men Of Faith with the Power to Heal. I assure you, if Jerry Lewis could hand his kids over to televangelists to heal for him, he woulda done it decades ago. In fact I bet he tried that because Jerry Lewis has been desperate all his adult life to save his Kids. What has he turned to instead? Science. Gene therapy. Research into the Genome Project. Progress is being made, not by putting your hands on a kid with muscular dystrophy, but rigidly strict trials and experimentation and research and testing. Science may not solve the Common Cold in our lifetime, but muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons and other diseases are not out of the realm of possibility for a cure within 20 years. We've also made great progress in combating cancer, again not through the power of any god but by using the scientific method to solve the puzzles of the universe.

Maybe you think the Healing of Hands only works for those who believe. It's a test of faith. No matter what I say, you're gonna see it the way you do. This isn't hate I feel. It's sadness. Cuz I used to think like you. Then I saw facts and science and logic and rational thought, and despite all these things I still clung desperately to my beliefs because I so badly wanted to believe in magic. I wanted to believe in miracles. I wanted to believe in a god that has a plan and yes some people suffer but they must so that they can become better for it. God doesn't hate you when he punishes you. He's molding and shaping you into something better, like you were a piece of clay. I so desperately wanted to believe this just as you do.

I feel like someone who has been drowning, but I just found a place in the maelstrom where I'm relatively secure, and I look back now and reach my hand out to the maelstrom trying to find others who need to be pulled from the dangers of belief and blind faith. Problem is, looks like most of you like drowning. You don't know you're drowning. You have been told the water is air. You think you're perfectly fine. I know. Cuz I used to think that too. And so I'm standing here at the shoreline trying to figure out how I can send you a life preserver that you won't reject, because you think life preservers look like crosses, or stars, or a hammer & sickle, or whatever. You've been lied to for so long, you think lie preservers ARE life preservers.

Again, I've studied history, and the only reason religion looks good in the eyes of some historical texts is cuz the people writing and editing those texts happened to adhere to the popular religion of the time. The Roman Catholic Church downplays things like the Spanish Inquisition, or the burning of 'Saint' Joan of Arc. However, throughout history the Church condoned or quietly allowed a lot of actions and transgressions against heathen in order to defend their own place of power in the hierarchy of society.

And let's face it, they had to if they wanted to stay in power. Anyone who owns a copyright of popular material today would agree. If you don't defend your copyright in the courts, you're going to lose your right to claim ownership. It can get mighty ugly. You may find yourself spending more money to defend your ownership of intellectual property than you can actually make with the intellectual property itself. The entire system sucks, but it's the only way to make an 'idea' valuable, and technically it doesn't really do that. I mean, you can't copyright ideas, just how they're presented. but I digress. That's a whole other blog post.

My point is, The Church in power has to assert its domination over nonbelievers. Otherwise, eventually the nonbelievers will win. Why? Cuz they're always right.

There is no god. Whatever religion you believe in is a lie. Sorry. I'm not gonna pacify you. I'm not going to tell you that your religion is different from all the rest. There are also no fairies, no ghosts, no souls, and no afterlife. It's all a sham, fabricated a very very long time ago by people who wanted to pacify other people who feared the unknown. They filled in the gaps with possibilities, elaborated and embellished on these possibilities, and eventually the really cool sounding ideas were adapted and adopted as real and actual when there's literally zero evidence supporting them whatsoever. It'd be nice if we all had souls. It'd be cool if there was life after death. It's heartwarming to believe those we love and have lost still exist somewhere. I was really looking forward to seeing my Dad again when I die. I won't. I can't. It just doesn't work that way.

However, I'm not a militant anything, so I'm not going to pick up a gun and shoot you for being a believer. You can continue to believe all you want, just as I will continue to KNOW.

I would like to think you'll respond in kind, and allow me to not believe, but history is not on my side. Religious zealots tend to eventually use violence against any influential opposition. Otherwise, The Truth Will Out.

You're not right in your beliefs, but take comfort in the fact that none of the other six and a half billion people on this planet are either. And neither am I. What I currently DO believe? And I now actively look for 'beliefs' I take for granted and challenge them when I find them, what I currently accept as correct about this universe is misinformed. I don't have all the answers any more than you do. However, I know which answers are incorrect. ALL of them.

Maybe someday we'll figure out a way to scientifically measure a soul. Maybe someday I'll be proven wrong and we'll learn that souls actually exist. We'll be able to metaphorically point at it and go "that's a soul." When that happens, I won't believe in a soul. I'll KNOW that souls exist, because I'll be able to replicate the experiment that proved souls exist and I'll be able to see for myself. The thing is, one should not operate outside of what is known. If you don't know something exists, behaving as if it does exist is counterproductive. A tightrope walker would not jump off the tightrope unless he knows there's a net underneath to catch him. He wouldn't just believe the net's there. He'd look down and make sure it is there. In fact if he's smart, he would have personally checked the net before starting his routine to be certain it was secure and would break his fall. That is the difference between believing and knowing.

Science is not the end all be all either. Something can come along later that will cause us to look at everything we take for granted now in an entirely new light. Gravity. Molecular structure. Weather patterns in a global atmosphere. Animal behavior. Pyrotechnics. Everything we think we know about how these things work could be wrong. This is why the scientific method is all about testing and retesting hypotheses. Though science uses words like "Law" they're really just descriptions of the results of tests that have not yet been disproven. They have only been proven repeatedly, and until something better comes along they are called Laws. In fact Sir Issac Newton's Law of Gravity has kinda been disproven by the Theory of Relativity, but Newton's description still works here on Earth, but not when you're looking at the entire breadth of the universe in relation to Earth and other things that are out there. It gets a bit more complicated than Newton postulated, but we still accept Newton's description because why fix a tire that's not flat? It still gets you where you need to go.

Religion fears change because the people in positions of power do not want to be usurped. Science embraces change. If someone could have come up with a valid way of proving the theory of Creationism, then believe me scientists would have dropped Evolution in a heartbeat. However, Creationism is not science. Intelligent design is just an attempt to rewrite religion to make it look like science, because if there's one thing religion is good at doing, it's learning to adapt and change to the needs of humanity, so that it can still appear to be productive and instrumental for the benefit of mankind.

If you can't adapt to the constantly changing landscape, you're gonna get Left Behind. Any con artist will tell you that. In fact, I think some of them already have. Like for example, the guy who wrote the Left Behind series of books.

You can call me militant if you want, but you use the word with about as meaning as Richard Pryor used the word "fucking." I'm not militant about anything. I never attended ROTC. I only spent one day in the boy scouts. I've never joined the armed forces, and had I, it woulda been as conscientious objector. I don't believe personally in wielding a gun, although I believe you have the right to choose to wield a gun. I just don't believe you have the right to fire it at another human being. Like, EVER. I believe you can carry around a thermonuclear warhead if you want, but you better have the safety on, just in case. Guns should only be fired in Chekov plays.

I don't believe religion to be demonstrably false. I know it is. I know it's wrong. I know it's dangerous. I know it hurts people. Yes it helps people too, but the ways it helps people could be done without the religious connotations. You Will Know Them By Their Works. Not by which god they aspire to appease. There's no need for gods to enter into any equation, unless one wants to stop by and order us all a round of drinks. It just better not be Kool Aid.

...

Anyway, all the bullshit above is just my roundabout way of saying I know I'm not a militant atheist, but I also know that's not gonna stop you from calling me one. Just as I know there's not a god, but that's not gonna stop you from choosing to believe in one anyway.

I really wish I was still ignorant. I wish I could still believe in things without proof. Really, the world appears to be much more magical and fanciful and all that, but it's not real. It's a facade. If you have to believe in something without proof, it means you are allowing yourself to know a lie as if it were truth, and why do any of us want that for ourselves, or our children? Why do we lie to our children about Santa Claus, and why do we lie to ourselves about Jesus Christ?

I want to destroy religion, but I don't want to do it with force. I want to use common sense. I don't want to fight fire with fire. I want to combat ignorance with truth. You can call me a militant atheist all you want, but it doesn't make me one. It doesn't make any atheist militant. I may be beligerent. I may be combative. I may be contentious. I may be a fanatic. However, I will never be violent. I will never use what I know to maim or kill believers. I like to think that means we atheists are taking the high road, cuz you zealots out there will draw first blood at the drop of a hat.

If history is any indication however, it also means you will win. Because throughout history, believers have won out over nonbelievers by silencing the opposition with brute force. Cut the tongues from the blasphemers. That's your answer to the argument. You know why? You can't win the argument without cheating.

You can't prove there's a god, so you make sure you're the last one still standing, and then who will there be to oppose you once you've silenced the argument through bloodshed? No one. You will stand alone, with the illusion of a god standing beside you to keep you company. I'm glad I won't be there to see that. But don't think that means I hate you. I pity you, and I pity the future of mankind when it comes to that, because it means the Dark Ages will have returned forever.

Horribly Torn

Before I start, I haven't updated my smoking part of this journal in some time. I still ain't smoking. I still want to. People are always smoking at bus stops and train stations and I love the smell this time of year, cuz it's cold and chilly weather's always the best time to smoke cigarettes. Probably not from a medical standpoint but from aesthetics it's awesome, but I don't. That could change any day cuz the urge is growing. It's the perfect time of year to start up again. However, I get winded walking from my house to the bus stop, so I've probably done enough damage to my lungs during the twenty years of my life I was a smoker. Anyway, haven't smoked a cig since the last time I mentioned this in my blog. Feel free to go look up when that is cuz I'm too lazy to link back to it myself. Okay. Enough of that.

Also, before I begin let me say for the record that I enjoyed Horrible Turn immensely and I think you will too if you haven't already. If you are a fan of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, you are only cheating yourself out of a fun time if you don't also see Horrible Turn.

Why?
1) it's fun.
2) it's silly.
3) it's silly fun.

If you are not a fan of Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible and have never seen it before, I urge you to watch Horrible Turn before reading past this paragraph. Then, after you have seen Horrible Turn, please come back here and leave a comment. Tell me whether or not it actually is objectively good, because I can't tell. Then you can watch Joss Whedon's work upon which Horrible Turn is loosely connected, and maybe it'll make more sense to you. I of course saw Dr. Horrible before seeing Horrible Turn, which may why I'm having so much trouble figuring out whether or not I really objectively enjoyed.. well either of them at this point. You wouldn't be so conflicted. So go watch them both in the wrong order and come back and help me figure this out. Now please stop reading because the rest of this is only for people who have seen both.

...go on. Scoot. Go watch this, and come back and tell me what you think, then watch this, (pay for it if you can afford to so Joss can one day afford to make the sequel) and tell yourself how wonderful life is and that Joss Whedon's pretty fucking cool. And so are those crazy kids from Houston. And so is Australia. ...Okay I'm gonna assume from here on out that if you're reading these words you've seen both. Please don't make a liar out of me.

...

I'm horribly torn by Horrible Turn.

There. I said it. Why? Well. It's complicated. Perhaps if Joss Whedon himself would only come forward publicly and say that it's okay for me to like it, then I wouldn't be so torn. Perhaps he doesn't do that because he knows that if nothing we do matters than the only thing that matters is what we do and therefore he doesn't want to do anything that might adversely jeopardize a fan of his work from appreciating the work of others inspired by him. Or maybe I'm reading too much into his silence. He could also have a gag order by lawyers or something. I dunno. Maybe he's just too busy saying goodbye to Dollhouse to have noticed Horrible Turn. He's a busy guy.


I had been looking forward to seeing it for weeks. Ever since I found out it existed, which was a couple few weeks or maybe a month before it was made publicly available online. I was looking forward to it cuz I was expecting it to suck and I look forward to nitpicking shit like this. It's a form of masochistic entertainment that I allow myself. Sometimes I prefer to see soemthing that sucks cuz it's fun to rip it a new asshole. It's like pulling the wings off frogs or something.

So I must admit when I started watching Horrible Turn, I set the bar very very low. I expected the music to be off key, or make my ears bleed, or not exist at all. I expected the humor to be juvenile and pedantic (I just used that word cuz it felt good typing it). I fully expected it to be another Mary Sue fanfic wank like the many I've seen over the years (and I'm guilty of writing a couple few myself). I expected to watch a handful of fans attempt to recreate the ambiance of their favorite work of Whedon's, without having anything relevant themselves to say. I expected Horrible Turn to be empty and devoid of meaning for anyone beyond those who made it. YouTube has tons of that kinda stuff for every show from Star Trek to Lost. Some I enjoyed despite it being crap. Some I enjoyed because it was crap. On rare occasion one finds a gem in the rough, but those are few and far between. Even then, when I see something that's well performed or well written, I still wince cuz the creativity was too much for their pocketbook and the construction of the work fails to capture the essence of whatever it was imitating. A green screen and a single cheap camera from Best Buy can only do so much. It does help if it's done in Lego, but not by much.

Horrible Turn raises the bar. Parts of it were literally filmed inside someone's garage. You can tell that if you pay attention, but it doesn't matter, cuz parts of Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog were either literally or practically filmed inside someone's garage -- probably Joss's.

On a technical level, while Horrible Turn doesn't quite match Whedon's original work, it far surpasses most other similar fan-based projects, and proves why TV is currently running scared. The very idea that something as good as this can be made outside Television City has Television City very worried. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it'll soon fall and can't get up, with screaming sirens and a crash cart in its near future.

So Horrible Turn doesn't qualify for my Piece Of Crap treatment. It actually was worth watching for its own merit, as well as being a respectable tribute to Whedon's gang of misfit toys. It made me laugh. It gave me goosebumps. It entertained. I was so disappointed. I was all dressed up to lampoon it and had nowhere to go.

So how do I compare it to stuff I actually like? That's where it gets even more complicated. I can't literally dissect it with the same proverbial toolkit I pull out for network television. Shows like Dollhouse and Castle and LOST can withstand my throwing spaghetti at them cuz it actually sticks. Shows like Flash Forward and Defying Gravity fail under my wrath, but it's so fun to watch them BURN.

While Horrible Turn is better than I expected, it's not network television. Millions of dollars per episode weren't riding on it. We're talking a budget akin to that used to make The Blair Witch Project (which I also loved passionately by the way). In many places the editing of Horrible Turn is downright cringeworthy. It's much longer than it should have been. The pacing is not addressed. There's points where as an audience member I wish they'd linger longer, and there's other moments where I'm like okay I get the point lets move on.

Although it wants to aspire to Whedonness, it pales. The humor is not rapid fire and occasionally just the bombs don't go off at all. Many jokes are more intellectually curious than laughter illiciting. In some moments the acting is inspiring and in others it feels like the millionth take (whether it actually was or not) or they didn't have time for millions of takes and had to suffer with the one they actually had w/the fewest errors. Then there's the writing. The plot, while fun, is telegraphed way ahead making the climax of the piece falling action. This is partly The Curse of the Prequel.

We know Anakin becomes Darth Vader. We already saw eps 4-6 so when we watch eps 1-3 it's anticlimactic before the opening fanfare music. The fact it takes three movies for Lucas to dip Anakin in a volcano and encase him in the suit is just downright excrutiating. We finally get there, and the story's already over! So the twenty years of Darth Vader actually being neato evil and pissing off entire solar systems? It all happens between eps 3 & 4 with a dramatic gravitas that equals the messenger telling Hamlet that Rosencrantz & Gildenstern are dead.

With Horrible Turn, we know Billy goes from sweet innocent youth to super-villain wannabe. That's the intrinsic DNA of the piece. Like James Bond not dying, the question is not IF but HOW. Sticking around after the HOW is explained, becomes an exercise in patience for the audience.

We figure it out when we learn that young Billy has named the potion "Love Potion Number Ten." You might as well have dubbed it "McGuffin Potion." We know it's not gonna work cuz we know Billy. We know who's gonna ruin it cuz we know Hammer. Watching it all unfold after the writer has inadvertently told us how it will unfold is fun in much the same way Jay & Silent Bob swinging from the rafters at the end of Mallrats was fun, but Silent Bob's the freaking DIRECTOR! He's not gonna kill himself off in his own film by having his character fall from that great height meaninglessly. The suspense is not only gone - it never shows up.

I can continue to dissect Horrible Turn thusly, but it's no fun. It's totally unfair of me to use the same measuring system on Horrible Turn that I'd use to explain why the last three seasons of Heroes are not worth dog poop (except for some of the acting - I mostly hate the writing and the cheap special effects tricks since they can't actually afford to be a show about super heroes). Horrible Turn is not trying to be better than its predecessor. It's a labor of love by those making it. It was a training ground for people studying the art of filmmaking. It's a college level project. So expecting the Sistine Chapel from people just learning how to paint would be foolhardy. Horrible Turn doesn't have millions riding on it. It may have thousands riding on it, but so far as I know there's no legal way to market it, so whoever invested in it either didn't want that money back or they don't understand copyright law. Either way, that's a dead issue, and I don't understand copyright law either so I could be completely wrong. Something that takes millions to make should hold up under critical review and if it doesn't, it deserves to get wrung up and hung out to dry. Horrible Turn doesn't deserve such heartless treatment, because it really comes from the heart. Still, if I just stopped there I'd lose my reputation as a heartless bastard. Okay. So I don't have any reputation at all, but I'm working on being a heartless bastard. I'm trying here.

While it's not trying to surpass its predecessor, it IS trying to hold a candle to it, and perhaps that's where I'm having trouble. Does it? Really? Is it Whedony enough? Is that how I should measure it? Is that even what the makers of Horrible Turn were going for? I guess any great critic should measure a movie or tv show or web-based viral whatchamacallit not by how it compares to other works but by what it was trying to accomplish and whether or not it truly succeeded.

When I first saw the actors in Horrible Turn playing "Muppet Babies" equivalents of characters in Dr. Horrible, it took me a moment to adjust. I think I was originally expecting them to just mimic and impersonate the actors that portrayed the characters originally. What impressed me was that they didn't. Or IF they did, they did such a bad job at impersonating that it doesn't look like impersonating which is serendipitous.

If you hired Tom Hanks to reprise the role that Jimmy Stewart made famous in Rear Window, you wouldn't get Tom Hanks impersonating Jimmy Stewart playing Jeff Jeffries. You'd get Tom Hanks' take on Jeff Jeffries, and he'd go out of his way to make you forget Jimmy Stewart ever existed.

Rather than try to be Nathan Fillion or Neil Patrick Harris, the leading actors of Horrible Turn inhabited the characters themselves as themselves. Not having Fillion or Harris' years of experience and natural talents, these young gents brought their own toolkits to bare on the roles. They focused on their own strengths and approached the role as best they could. In some areas they seem to be influenced heavily by their predecessors, but only in as much as Moore or Brosnan were influenced by Connery.

This kinda haunts the entire project. Those behind Horrible Turn wanted to tell this story that's touched on in the original work and some of the accompanying canonical side works like the comics. However, they knew they couldn't actually outdo Whedon so rather than try to be something they're not they just did the best they could with what they had. And what they had was some kind of awesome in its own right.

This is a good thing! However, it's also a bad thing.

Is Horrible Turn trying to be a prequel to Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog? Yes.

Is Horrible Turn trying to be Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog itself? No.

Is Horrible Turn trying to BE Whedonishy? I hope not, cuz if that's what it was trying to do, it's an epic fail. The dialogue alone is so not Whedonishy at all, or maybe it's like a good guitarist trying to match Van Halen's guitar solos on a poorly strung stratocaster knockoff.

I guess seeing these talented guys and gals from Houston put so much effort into emulating one of my favorite writer/directors of all time just leaves me frustrated. I'm left not wanting more of them singing Whedon's tune. I'm left wanting to hear what they'd sound like if they sang their own tune. Invented their own characters in their own world and ran rampant over wherever that took them, hopefully far away from Whedon's voice until they really understood that they had their own voice this whole time.

Of course, this is my bane and my curse. I feel like this about local cover bands too. I'll take a pretty lady singer/songwriter alone over a four piece Beatles Tribute band any day. However, guess which one gets more gigs. People already know The Beatles. They don't know if they are gonna like the genius of the lady songwriter.

Same problem here. The talent behind Horrible Turn wouldn't have turned any heads if they announced to the world that they had made their own sing along blog about Turnip Moustache and Eunich Squalid from Porter Junction. I doubt they woulda turned my head. Still, after riding Whedon's coat tails a short distance, maybe in the fantasy world of tomorrow they might..?

Guess we'll just have to tune in Tomorrow and find out.

A Little Late

So I'm reading the Dallas Observer, which is a free publication available offline at every other street corner or eating establishment in downtown. Online, you can go to DallasObserver.com for five seconds, shrug and say I'm right, then surf on. So anyway, I'm reading Jim Schutze's latest article, "The Power of the Table" which is yet another tired attempt by Schutze to be as cool about demonizing local politics as Laura Miller was fifteen years ago. She used to be in the D.O. as often as he is now, and she used to shake her fists at City Hall and tell the people of Dallas why we should be outraged this week. Then she became a member of City Council and later Mayor herself and completely failed to exorcise the demons out of the Dallas City Council. Some might argue that she became a demon herself, but I digress. What I just did there may appear mildly ironic to you later on. I think I'm using that word right.

Whatever. Laura Miller used to write for the Dallas Observer, then she put her money where her mouth is and ran for Mayor, she came and went and according to Jim Schutze, City Hall is still just as evil as it ever was. I guess this is why they give the Dallas Observer away. I wouldn't pay to be told this. I already know. In fact, I find it amusing that I'm currently criticizing the D.O. in much the same way the D.O. criticizes City Hall, Belo Corp, DART, state government, and pretty much everything in Texas that's not hot & spicy or fried. Frankly, the D.O. food critics are not critical enough in my not so humble opinion, but this is why they get paid the big bucks and I can't even give my words away. Who would pay to be told this?

Anyway, so I'm reading Jim Schutze's article as I said before, and he's plodding along eloquently about how some guy I don't know who is named Don Hill has the power to postpone deals between land developers and "buzzing people" who are "friends" of Hill. I'm reading along for the ride, wondering when Schutze is going to get to the point of why I should give a shit about any of this, and for the record I don't. I quit voting some time after Nine Eleven and before Sarah Palin. My voice is less effective than Laura Miller was at fighting City Hall. Schutze makes a good case but at this point I'm reading to pass the time and not be enlightened. It's either this or flip to the back of the Dallas Observer and read the classifieds where lonely desperate people try to shack up with each other. That's always good for a laugh. In his plodding eloquency, Schutze begins illustrating why whatever he's talking about matters by tellling me a story about something that happened five years ago. Newspapers usually stick to things that happened within the past week or so, but the Dallas Observer is, well, let's say "special."

Schutze introduces a character in this true-life narrative drama as "The Late Lynn Flint Shaw." That's curious of him. So okay, not only did this story he's weaving happen before 'teabag' stopped being a euphemism for lewdness & turned into a nomenclature for nonsense, but one of the key players in his drama is already dead. I hate it when stories do this. You already know how it's going to end. In death. How tragic.

Am I suddenly intrigued? Well, yes, but not for the reasons Schutze has been trying to manipulate me into caring about, because he continues on talking about Don Hill and some other guy completely named John Tatum. A couple paragraphs later, Schutze happens to mention while continuing to detail something about John Tatum trying to turn DART property into a museum, that The Late Lynn Flint Shaw "died in March of last year in an apparent murder-suicide with her husband."

Erk! SLAM ON THE BRAKES! Schutze keeps right on going but I feel like I just hit a speed bump the size of a DART bus. I get whiplash looking back at that previous statement as Schutze continues pressing onward about This Other Thing. Something I don't care about. At all. Even though I ride DART every day, the property that was supposed to be a museum by now is on Corinth Street. I've lived in Dallas since before Mississippi ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, but I don't know where Corinth Street is.

This dead lady interests me though. A dead lady who 'apparently' died by killing herself and her husband, or maybe her husband killed her and then himself - I DON'T KNOW - why don't I know? CUZ JIM SCHUTZE JUST SKIPS THAT as unimportant to the point he's trying to make and continues putting Dallas to sleep w/politicians who use their power to put off developers until they cave to whims of special interests.

That's politics as usual. How is this news? That's NOT news. That's dog bites man. The Late Lynn Flint Shaw isn't quite man bites dog because as I find out later it's also old news, but it's slightly more interesting than Schutze moaning about how the Don Hills of the world generate red tape to wrap up the John Tatums of the world because they won't hire friends of The Late Lynn Flint Shaws of the world. Anyone, and I MEAN anyone, who tries to be a politician does so with alterior motives. I KNOW this to be true. This is why I stopped voting.

You may have looked at John McCain and Barack Obama and seen two dramatically different choices. I saw Coke & Pepsi. You may look at Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison who are both currently running for governor of Texas and see two dramatically different choices. I see The New Coke & Coke Classic, only both have been left out in the sun opened and have gone warm and flat. I don't wanna drink any of that. Most recently I've turned to V-8 even tho it's too salty, cuz I'm too lazy to ride a bus to the Farmer's Market every day and get something that might actually be good for me. ...weren't we talking about politics? Well, the metaphor still works so I went with it.

Why did I stop voting? ALL politicians are corrupt. Even and especially the ones who claim not to be. Even and especially the ones who put themselves into a position where they have friends buzzing around developers who want to get something from the gov't. If we really wanted uncorrupt people in office who would get things done, gov't positions would be a random draft, like jury duty. People who didn't want the job would be dragged to an appointed office, given crap to get done, and they'd get it done as fast as possible so they could say they did their duty and go back home to watch Oprah. We don't do that. We like our politicians dirty and corrupt and greedy little bastards. Otherwise, we'd do something about it. Or, like me, we'd give up because the only way to stop this corruption at this point is through a major revolution, and I'm allergic to bullets, so I ain't gonna start one.

But this, right here, is why the media has a problem with its audience. Jim Schutze wants to talk about political corruption. Again. And he thinks he's taken this tired and worn out topic and dressed it up with a new paint job and some decals and he's gonna try to sell it to his audience again. What pops off the page for my eyes? A lady offing herself and her hubby for no immediately forseeable reason whatsoever. That's a mystery to me. That's actually almost interesting. Not political corruption, which I've heard before. How many times can you see the same old card trick over and over? But if Penn & Teller threaten to shoot each other with bullets that are written on by people in the audience, hell that just never gets old does it?

This is why conventional media (unlike unconventional media like the D.O. which as I said before is "special") puts death and destruction front and center in news reports. They tally the dead in headlines where people can see them, and throw out the boring details that make us change the channel. Jim Schutze does what I believe Kevin Pollak might refer to as "burying the lead." He focuses on what he finds interesting, and hides what his audience might actually find interesting.

I went ahead and read the rest of the article. Yes of course this is a terrible thing for a politician to do. People in power positions have friends who want things from the businesses that want politicians to just do their damn jobs without all this wheel greasing and project tabling. It's disgusting and unethical and amoral and horrendous and I'm sure they'll all be smited by their respective deities and burn in whatever hell they deem to believe exists. More importantly this all leads to expensive litigation that the taxpayer will no doubt end up footing the bill for, and is the real reason why everything from potholes to skyscrapers take forever to get done, unless some troll who is blocking the proverbial bridge gets paid to step aside.

The Late Lynn Flint Shaw is only mentioned once more, to remind us that she was one of the trolls. Shaw wanted John Tatum to 'hire' one of her people as a 'consultant' on his project. Tatum didn't do that, so Shaw, then chairman of DART, stopped him cold.

Then, for some reason Schutze fails to explain, Shaw and her husband killed each other a couple years after this happened. Apparently the two events are completely unrelated, which is why Schutze didn't bother spending precious copy inches explaining to me why. Besides, it happened so long ago. Why even mention it?

I've thought about Googling The Late Lynn Flint Shaw and putting the pieces of her sordid drama together for my own edification, but I wrote this instead and now that I'm almost done, I really don't think I care about some complete stranger offing herself and her husband. I mean, why does it matter to me? Why should it? Why do I want to get my facts straight when it serves me no personal satisfaction at all, and won't put food on my table or help me brave the bus line to work tomorrow. Sure, she was the chairman of DART before I started using it, but maybe I should find out how insane and corrupt the current DART chairman is. Maybe that would be slightly more useful to my current situation, given that I'm at DART's mercy when it comes to getting around in this city. Frankly, I don't even know the names of my favorite bus drivers. So why would I bother to figure out who's running the gig?

Fox News keeps their audiences glued to the boob toob with constant reports of dirty dealings and carnage and mayhem. Anything that might make their audiences feel superior to complete strangers of questionable morals and character. Anything that will keep their audiences glued to that screen through the next set of commercials. This isn't news. This is catering to the lowest common denominator. This is giving the people what they want and not what they need. This is unethical and wrong and all kinds of shit. Know what I do to combat that? I don't watch Fox News. Not much more I could do than that. Vote? Rebel? I might as well start praying again, like that ever did any good.

I watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. That's how I like my news. Maybe Jim Schutze should try to be more like Jon Stewart and less like Laura Miller.