California Dreamin'

I spent today cruising around Tyson's Corner Shopping Mall...and Costco...and Macy's...there may have been a few other joints that I've already repressed the memory of. I went with my mom. I love my mom, but I dislike shopping. If I need something, sure, I'll go out and get it; I can bask in the afterglow of a new purchase just like anyone, but the 'bargain hunting two-step' and 'coupon jig' at the local mall just don't make my yule-tide gay. While I wouldn't necessarily be safe and warm if I was back in L.A., I would sure as hell not have over-eager soccer moms bruising my achilles tendons with their shopping carts.

There was a Build-A-Bear workshop with some poor sucker standing in the doorway trying to lure the unwary mall-walker inside. He looked like he should have been about my age but took a wrong turn at 17 and got on the fast-lane to his middle years -- sort of a Ned Flanders type without the spectacles. He was wearing a Santa hat, a red polo and tight khaki shorts. Remember this is December in McLean, Virginia, so his legs are lookin' like two stalks of elementary school paste rolled around on a barbershop floor. And when I say "shorts" I really mean it in his case. Anyway, I was so embarrassed for this nutsac that I couldn't meet his gaze as I shuffled awkwardly past. I felt him looking at me, but I don't know whether it was a "For God's SAKE man, send help!" look or a "HELLO SIR! Would you like to build a precious personalized Teddy Bear today?!" look. I guess I'll never know.

I then passed this treacherous-looking music store called fye (what the hell kind of a name is that?) with a giant SIGNED poster of Michael Bolton hanging in the front window. Yeah, that's right. Michael Bolton. That bloody fool is still peddling his shit to people who don't know the difference between music and the sound of shrieking chimps. The mullet is gone but his big toothy grin is still there, leering out at the suburbs of D.C. like a beacon of evil. I looked around to see who was going to cry with me over the fate of humanity, but no one else seemed to take notice. Not even my mom. This is why my new theory is that NoVa is the Bizarro-world.

I'm going to try to spend more time with my friends over the next week or two, and less time looking at lambskin leather jackets at Costco. I'm in NYC on the 28th, and I'll probably ring in the New Year up there. We'll see. Xmastime is great, and I get straight-up nostalgic over Virginia when I haven't seen it for awhile. For now, though, I'm wishing I was back in the Good Luck Bar or La Poubelle, pouring out a bit of my forty for that jive-turkey in the Build-A-Bear Workshop.

Livin' Las Vegas Loca

I lived in L.A. for a good four years or so before ever visiting Vegas. To native Angelenos, this is almost sacrilege. After visiting Vegas, I could see their point. A weekend visit is perfect, but any longer than two or three days spent inside this bubble of whimsy and earthly delights and any reasonable human being would contemplate suicide.

Of course Vegas is overdone, overripe to the point that its sweet, sticky stench fills your every pore, but there is a beauty there to be found nowhere else. It exists not in spite of the burlesque and melodrama, but because of it. It resides in the New York skyline, and the South American rainforest, and the Roman collonades, and the obsidian pyramid, and the grand fountain of Bellagio; and in the fact that all of these facades are coexisting in one sphere. It exists in walking from the cobblestones of Paris in the shadow of La Petite Tour Eiffel to the grand illusion of New York's Grand Central station in ten minutes. The proud whores and the immigrants who shove pornography into your hand as you pass them on the Boulevard don't see it, but it is there. You have to look past the lights, up to the wide western sky and the mountains in the distance beyond the desert to bear witness to the purity of it. This place is a mutated candy apple. A huge experiment gone horribly but happily awry. A diorama that the gods built for kicks and then refused to take apart because its striking singularity amused them. People walk through the giant hotels and casinos without seeing it, but it is there. It is a giant theme park for adults. "If you're not having fun (or luck) in Ancient-Egypt-Land, just mosey on over to Camelot-Land, they'll take care of you!" Free booze, cheap buffets, and lots and lots of cleavage. The attraction of Las Vegas lies in its unattractiveness. It is Disneyland on acid. Everyone is friendly (save a few jaded cab drivers and strippers) and feels that sense of camaraderie, that spirit of togetherness in a strange and wonderful land. Many do not see it, but the beauty is there, and they feel it, and that is enough. Angelenos and cowboys, hillbillies and debutantes, all partaking in the glory and decadence of this oasis in the desert, this plastic paradise, this El Dorado of the modern age. There is no other place like it on Earth...and let's hope the Earth keeps it that way.

Viva Las Vegas.

Why "The Last Samurai" Sucks

Perhaps I shouldn't have allowed my expectations to get so high. But I've been awaiting the arrival of a cool modern samurai film for years and I thought that one made with the combined muscle of Hollywood, Tom Cruise, and some respected Japanese actors had fantastic potential.

One issue I have with The Last Samurai is that I found myself laughing out loud at some of the horrible composites and CG extras. I know that this complaint may be a result of my experience with visual effects, but these were some of the worst offenses I've ever seen in such a large-budget Hollywood epic and I find it hard to believe that other people wouldn't be distracted by these things as well.

On a textual level, I found the film was very much like Dances With Wolves, only not as well-made. In some ways that's good: Kevin Costner's western epic was so finely crafted that people often confuse the quality of the picture with the theme of the film.

Both of these movies pretend to say one thing (namely that imperialism, manifest destiny, and "Westernization" are bad and should be regretted and questioned) but are actually reinforcing what they profess to eschew: the white male figure is not only the indomitable hero of these films, but he can also learn from the culture he oppresses/loves to such an extent that he can master their language and "out-Indian" the Indians or become an internal Samurai in spirit and an external one on the battlefield. He is in fact BETTER than his authentic teachers. It is Tarzan redux: forget the ancient indigenous population, it is the white man who can in one lifetime become "Lord of the Jungle" and protector of its treasures against the incursions of his race and the treachery of the stereotyped natives.

In The Last Samurai, as in Dances With Wolves, the White Man is not the real antagonist. That dishonorable role is saved for the "Other": The bloodthirsty Pawnee in the latter film, and Omura in the former. The 19th century American is merely a product of the age that created him and a logical link in the long chain that made America the great nation that it is today. He is only an ignorant force of nature, the natural evolution of human progress. The viewer may lament with nostalgia the cultures that were crushed in his wake, but they save their true spite for the two-dimensional non-white villains that betray and murder their own kind. There was nothing redeeming or real about the character of Omura. His incredibly stupid decisions were obviously story catalysts meant to move the plot along towards its conclusion.

In both pictures the hero with white skin (and gleaming teeth) learns everything he can from his new friends, incorporating their traditional ways with his modern practicality to become the ultimate warrior poet. One danger of this theme is the notion of reductionism: everything these ancient cultures have to offer can be mastered by a handsome white man in a few months. While they sadly but inevitably become extinct he lives on, an ennobled and wiser man for the experience. Another conclusion, even more scurrilous, is that it was mandatory for these cultures organized around honor, community, and heritage to die at some point because they cannot survive intact in the modern westernized world with its focus on the individual. We can look back with a romantic longing at their necessary passing, but we must remember that their "simplistic" mind-set was doomed by the theory of natural selection and that it couldn't have survived. Their rightful progeny, conceived with their more highly evolved Western replacement at the moment of death, is the modern post-war Japanese and the law-abiding, casino-operating Native American, along with the liberal-minded caucasian. What does this attitude say about the fate of the "Other" cultures that share our world today? What of the Australian Aborigine, the Native South American, the Native Andamanese? What of Tibet? Are we, and they, merely waiting for the inevitable moment when, as Ken Watanabe so eloquently puts it in the film, "it is their time?"

A by-product of this conclusion is the equally terrible notion that all the honorable and worthwhile Indians and Japanese were wiped out and that the only ones who survived were collaborators, realizing only too late the cultural apocolypse they helped bring about. The honor that the "good" Japanese lived by was the very trait marking them for certain death. In other words, Philip Sheridan's infamous phrase -- perpetuated countless times by Hollywood -- stating that "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" can now be applied to other westernized/modernized cultures: any samurai worth his salt died fighting for what he believed in. All the "good" Japanese are dead; only the weak leftovers survived. Thus, while pretending to celebrate Japanese culture, the filmmakers' theme belies their good intentions. I'm not saying that the director or even the writers are racist; I am merely stating that they write from the perspective of the oppressor and that a film that is not meant to inform but to make money must inevitably follow the old Hollywood money-making formula, along with its bigoted steretypes.

I lament the missed opportunity for a good big-budget samurai film -- in the meantime I return to my Kurosawa DVDs...and wait.