I watched The Birdcage last night

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It’d been a while and as always, I laughed through it. 

The Birdcage was released in 1996. Yep almost 20 years ago.

What caught my attention was the reference to Al Sharpton.

I can’t find the exact quote but it’s something like;

“The Reverend Al Sharpton said today that Senator Jackson’s last words ‘Your money’s on the nightstand chocolate,’ was racist…”

I just about choked!

Twenty Years ago Al Sharpton was already worthy of parody and today nothing has changed, he’s still race baiting. I guess the good really do die young and the evil fuckers continue to be a plague on us all.

And lest we forget, the overarching backdrop of the movie is politics.

If you haven’t seen The Birdcage in a while, grab a copy, make some popcorn, and have a nice movie night. 

Every single person in that cast was simply awesome.

Even though Robin is gone, his gift for making us laugh remains.

Peace

What’s a guy to do?

Home Theater

So, you pay a ton of cash for a surround system and you decide that you’d like to enjoy it.


Ya take the dogs out to potty, settle in with your beer and fire up a movie that you’d like to watch.

Then your other half comes in.

They’ve had a long day so you give them time to settle too.

All is quiet again.

Ya press play, (it should be noted that when you’re alone in the house you don’t need the TV sound up to more than 25.) Yet with the other half in the house, you find yourself creaping the volume up, 26, 27, 30, 35, 40, 45 and you’re still missing dialog.

Your other half is reaching into a bag of snacks, over and over and over again and the crinkling of the mylar bag is swamping all the midrange dialog from a beautiful seductive actress, and most of the dialog from the softer spoken men.

Then one dog starts panting, the other dog decides it is time to drink half a bowl of water and does it for the next 3 minutes

MartyMcFly Speakers

slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp, crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, pant, crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,crinkle,crinkle, crinkle, crinkle,crinkle,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp,slurp, slurp.

Maxell Man

Once you push the volume above 60 ya realize you’re fighting a losing battle and the first gunshot or explosion in this movie is going to cause something that looks like the Maxell commercials or Marty McFly hitting that chord on his guitar.

So in complete frustration, ya shut the shit down. Give up.

I actually went and had my hearing checked because of shit like this. Turns out my hearing is fucking fine in fact it’s better than most men my age. The problem is that I live in a noisy environment.

And the moment, the very fucking moment you kill the shit you were trying to relax with, silence reigns again. The dogs shut the hell up, the other half looks at you like you’re a fucking madman and then has the audacity to ask why’d you turn it off?

Zen

You’re still frustrated and you say exactly what’s on your mind “Because I couldn’t fucking hear a damn thing with all the noise. Did it ever occur to you to put that shit in a bowl?

Yeah, I’m sleeping on the couch tonight. So the fuck what?

At least it will be quiet in the living room!

Well this is a first

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For the first time in six years I agree with President Stompy Foot.

It’s either a miracle or the end of days.

The president has been quoted as saying that the world is a messy place and always has been. He’s right. Further, the president has said that our awareness and feeling that things are very bad is due in large part to social media.

Again, I agree. 

I’ve recently come to believe, (recently being a relative term) that our connectedness actually leads to an overall feeling of hopelessness and perhaps even depression.

I’ve written in the past about my reasons for closing my social media accounts and also choosing not to watch the news. I’ve been known to go for weeks at a time not even reading the newspaper or online news sources. Honestly, the saturation of our world with all the evil that people do could make you long for a fifty mile wide meteor, or a plague. 

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Sure, you’re likely to end up just as dead as everyone else but at least you’re likely to be able to witness a bunch of really evil people getting their comeuppance.

Really, would any of us shed too many tears if a meteor obliterated Washington D.C.? I didn’t think so.

I’ve written before that I wouldn’t mind seeing something similar happen to the evil fucks in the Middle East. I could easily picture myself lying on my deathbed seeing the talking heads reporting “The Horror”, and questioning why no-one was able to detect or stop the awful rock from space, then laughing myself to death.

A scenario as I’ve described is however, unlikely to happen.

So we continue to focus on our twitter feeds, and keep up with people we’ve never met on Facebook or LinkedIn, or Instagram, or any of the myriad of other distractions brought to us second by second on our computers, tablets and phones. Some of us are so distracted and focused on our phones that we’ll walk into fountains in shopping centers. Then we’ll try to sue the mall for our public humiliation claiming that there should have been a taller rail… To protect us from our OWN stupidity.

We’re too connected.

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Who hasn’t been on the phone, or at the doctor, or in a dentists chair, then had someone calling repeatedly? I recently had a professional do EXACTLY that. I was in a dentists chair and my phone began ringing every 30 seconds. It was the same person calling again and again refusing to accept that they’d have to leave a message.

Eventually the dentist put the tools down, and told me to answer my phone. I simply turned the damn thing off. I was so angry that had I spoken to the person trying so desperately to contact me… I would have been far less than professional.

 As the dentist smiled and resumed his work, you know, the work I was paying professional wages to have him do, all I could think was “I’m not going to deal with the person or his company in the future.”

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As I read about president stompy foot’s comments this morning, I couldn’t help but think that he’s damn lucky we’re so distracted, fractured, upset and confused by social media and the cacophony of noise in our lives.

If we weren’t, we’d have nothing better to do than pay very close attention to him and his cronies in Washington. 

I doubt any of the people in the government could stand that kind of scrutiny.