True Lies

THE WEEK FROM MY VIEW

by James Killough

The Occupy Wall Street movement was declared moribund by almost everyone at the beginning of the week, then it surged forward again, only to peter out by today.   It seems the surge is typical of people who are at the last stages before death, as the body fights the inevitable with whatever energy is left.  I’m still hopeful that the focus of OWS, however unfocused it is, will shift and they will take the show on the road, gain some snowball momentum, and then come back to the point of origin with a proper revolution.

I'm not usually into male models, but when our friends Alek and Steph at Ohlalamag.com posted this pic of MMA fighter von Rothfelder, I almost fell off my chair. PFC Official Pledge: Adam, I will shave five years off my life for a no-holds-barred wild weekend with you.

Despite the fact I Photoshopped a great meme for him, which I had hoped would go viral on Reddit.com and then force him into action, Eliot Spitzer never showed up to save the day by parting Wall Street like the Red Sea and leading the Chosen Children of Discontent to a promised land of stricter financial regulation and accountability.  I haven’t seen anyone with true authority in OWS who can engage the authorities on a peer-to-peer level to get something done—Michael Moore is a buffoon and a whale, a talented whale, but a whale nonetheless.  What I am seeing is a lot of 23-year-old “leaders” of the OWS movement organizing demonstrations, which seem well managed and mobilized, but I’m not seeing the manifestos here, no declarations of rights and intents that can be worked into law and real change.  Revolt is an action. Discontent is just a mood.

In Praise of Rage

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

When it is the fuel for creativity, when it engenders necessary transformation, anger can be a force of good.

I am watching what is going on with the OWS movement with a proud smile.  When I pondered in posts earlier this year if we Americans were ever going to get around to raising our fists and affecting real change, back when the Arab Spring was blooming, I honestly never thought I would see it reach this point.  It’s wonderful to behold, inspiring.

Go on, Eliot. You can do it. They need you.

True, OWS still lacks focus, but it is starting to happen.  The internet commercial for the movement shows a coalescing of consensus.  What we should see soon is the emergence of leaders who can articulate the will of the people and negotiate on their behalf.  If not, the movement will die on the vine.  I fervently hope not.

I’m Too Sexy For My Car

BAKER STREET

 by Eric J Baker

Welcome to Pure Film Creative or, as I like to think of it, Tiger Beat for intellectuals (and perverts; you know which one you are).

Regular readers of these pages will often find us opining on who is sexy (Ashton Kutcher, Duran Duran, Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and who is not (Killough’s former landlady Susan Blais, Russell Crowe, pre-Raphaelite painters). It’s easy to do when you’re talking about movie stars and fashionable pop bands, since good looks are a prerequisite for such roles in society. With political figures, the distinction is murkier. Much like the sewage most of them crawled from.

What's not sexy about an Aussie thug in a tub with a stogie, a brew and phone he's about to brain the hotel maid with?

I don’t find ugly liars attractive, but I seem to be in the minority. Last week, before the shocking truth exploded, I wrote on PFC that Anthony Weiner couldn’t have e-mailed his cock-bulge photo to a 22-year-old woman because he’s not that dumb. What I thought, but didn’t write was, “Who the fuck wants to see Anthony Weiner’s dick, anyway?”

“It’s Just A Governor With A Hard-On”

Research for my hagiography-in-progress of Eliot Spitzer continued last night with a screening of Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, a companion piece to The Inside Job, which I blogged about in an earlier post.  Regardless of its sensational title, Client 9 isn’t really about hookers and the politicians who love them.  It’s about the worms at the heart of the recent financial crisis, which is now clearly as much of a scandal as it is a crisis, and one man’s crusade to try to eradicate those heartworms.

The hero Spitzer. I brook no criticism of him. If I were truly cheesy, or maybe just a bit more meshugana, I'd Photoshop a halo behind his head.

Spitzer ferreted out the corruption at AIG early on, forcing the ouster of the execrable Hank Greenberg. It would seem from Client 9’s narrative and timeline that this began the process of Spitzer’s own demise at the hands of a cabal of venal old Wall Street and Albany Repubes, who are so unbelievably American Gargoyle that if I cast them in a fictional film about themselves, I would be hauled up by critics for not understanding the nuances of performance, for having brought to the screen unbelievably contrived, Silent Era performativity of nefariousness.

I cannot describe in a blog such as this, which aspires to be as light and fluffy as a Galliano tulle ball gown, just how hamfistedly Machiavellian, how egregiously mendacious, how plain physically repulsive these crotchety codgers are.  You just have to see it yourself.  As for their minions … my landlady, the Wicked Blais, would be envious.

The hero himself admits right from the start that it was hubris that brought him down.  He compares himself to Icarus.  This is no delusional Charlie Sheen narcissist, nor does he possess that most nauseating of personality traits, false humility.  For a man like this — brilliant, successful beyond most people’s wildest aspirations, did I mention sexy? — to own his hubris is humility enough.

Mourning the Spineless Penis

According to my personal lexicon, a spineless dick is what I call a good friend who won’t go into overdraft to loan me more money.  According to the Guardian, the scientific community is all a-flutter over the discovery that we men have shed the DNA responsible for allowing us to have spines in our penises like other mammals.  The dickhead creationists will probably cite this lack of penile backbone as incontrovertible proof that we were actually created by God, not descended from apes through evolution.  I say to them, Verily, thou shouldst have more faith in science than fruitloops juju mumbo jumbo, for hath not science replaced the penile backbone with Viagra?  Is Pfizer not therefore divine?

Speaking of spineless dicks, I cannot resist reposting this image with a new caption:

Radical feminist poet and playwright Mama Muamah Gaddafi, author of “For Bedouin Girls, Who Have Considered Homicide When the Sand Dunes Are Too Ruff,” shows her followers that you don’t have to wear trousers to behave like a man.

I was right about the atrocities, they’re trickling out already: apparently Mama Gaddafi has swept out the dungeon and has been sharpening her knives and waxing the rack.  Some BBC journalists she had a stab at are reporting widespread torture by Mama’s minions.  Where does evil like that come from, do you suppose?  I’ve been watching Lady Gaga’s new video over and over for the answers, but her creation myth is just as bat-shit loony as anyone else’s.