Yule Logrolling
Heck of a Guy 2007 Christmas Season Update #3: Old-fashioned AV Holiday Decor
The traditional (note the 2006 implementation date) One Heck Of A Snowglobe1
Update Available
Classic that it is, the perpetually post-shaken2 snowstorm simulation (see above graphic) we like to call the One Heck Of A Snowglobe requires no upgrading and is offered again this year by the Heck Of A Guy blog for your viewing pleasure and DrHGuy’s (much deserved) aggrandizement as the perfect companion piece to the never-ending Yule Log simulation.
The update for the TV phenomenon, The Yule Log program, featured in last year’s TV’s Yule Log: Hot Or Not? post is courtesy of YouTube.
The Online Yule Log Videos
Of course, the original WPIX repeating-loop Yule Log is available.
In addition, however, a search for “Yule Log” turns up multiple competitors, parodies, take-offs, rip-offs, and some that are just off. A Christmas sampler follows.
- Beware the Yule Log - Hi-Def
- Yule Log in Seattle
- Bizarro Yule Log (adult content)
- Merry Christmas Yule Log
- Fireplace Parody DVD
Best of Show
The official Heck of a Guy Yule Log Video Recommendation, however, goes to the broodingly hilarious “Yule Log - The Directors Cut”
Footnotes
- Requires Flash activation ~back~
- Warning: It is not only unnecessary but potentially counterproductive to lift, shake, or otherwise agitate ones computer to produce the Potemkin snowstorm, which, through the Christmas miracle of Flash animation, is self-sustaining. ~back~
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The New Silicon Valley Meets The Old MTV
What Hath Billy Joel Wrought?
OK, this video presupposes that viewers have at least a superficial knowledge of the Web 2 biz.
And yes, it’s yet another music video style reworking of the venerable Billy Joel tune, We Didn’t Start The Fire (YouTube alone has 638 hits for the search terms, “we didn’t start fire”).
Did I mention it’s based on a Billy Joel song?
Nonetheless, it’s pretty darn funny.
Go figure.
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The Heck Of A Guy Award For Snarky Community Activist Video: “Welcome To Cary, Illinois - It’s The Pits”
The Most Enjoyable Opportunity You’ll Have Today To Do Something Good
Confession
While it’s painful to admit, I’m unable to camouflage the fact that this post falls into the do-good and community-oriented classifications.
One may note that the Heck of a Guy Blog list of categories has no titles even approximating such matters. Historically, grass-roots issues would likely have been (mistakenly, it turns out) included in discussions of pros and cons of stems and seeds.
Nonetheless, sacrifices must, on occasion, be made.
And there is the compensation of that snarky video.
The Community Crisis
It seems that Meyer Material, a Zurich-based1 corporation, has a yen to install a gravel pit2 in Cary, Illinois,3 a town only a few miles from Heck of a House.4
Oddly, the residents of Cary, particularly those with homes near the company-picked site - an area zoned for residential use only - are not unanimously in favor of the proposal. Some, in fact, are perversely opposed to a mine operating across the street.
The Campaign Against The Quarry
The anti-pits folks have set up a web site, Stop The Quarry In Cary with posts about progress in the campaign and issues such as EPA Violations by the Owners of Meyer Material Co., as well as links to:
- A petition against the zoning change
- A contact list with the names and numbers of village officials and local media
- A fact sheet about the pit
- A paper on the effects of dust on health from the Alaska Dept. of Environment Conservation.
They have also produced two brief, effective videos in their campaign against the Meyer Material proposal.
The Documentary
The first, a mini-documentary that can be found at Cary, Illinois: A Gravel Pit Community? is nicely done and clearly lays out the problem, describes the areas that would be affected and the problems the quarry would cause, discusses how to protest against the proposal, etc., with a minimum of histrionics. Viewers living in the affected geopolitical area, those interested in the environment, those interested in grass roots movements, and those who wish to educate themselves to a potential environmental threat will find this video genuinely useful and enlightening.
The Welcome To Cary Video
I am, of course, more taken with the second production, Welcome To Cary.
First, imagine a local booster group, such as a city’s tourism department or a Chamber of Commerce, putting out a promotional film linking their burg to a symbolically significant resource - such as an agricultural product,5 the arts,6 or geography.7
Now, imagine that resource, the heart of soul of the town, to be - Gravel Pits. Once that is established, everything about Welcome To Cary falls into place. Highlights include
- Opening scenes of Cary’s downtown, schools, parks, homes, …
-
… that lead into scenes of Cary’s premiere resource: the gravel pits:
- A proud resident declaring We moved to Cary because it was the best place to raise our kids. It has a small town atmosphere and great schools..but, most of all, it has gravel pits.
- A little girl happily waving her arms and legs, explaining I just love making dust angels
The punchline is the conventional slogan/sound bite at the end of such videos, always intoned in a serious but optimistic voice. Typically, this is along the lines of “Xville - Where we grow rutabaga - and families” or “Heck Village - A Heck of A Village.” The finale of Welcome To Cary, uttered between coughing fits, begins with
A Main Street Gravel Pit USA Community
… followed by the same voice reading in the auditory equivalent of fine print. Cary is owned and operated by Meyer Material Company, which is owned and operated by Aggregate Industries, which is owned and operated by Holcim, Ltd.
[Click to hear closing slogan and disclaimer of Welcome To Cary]
You Can Help - Watch The Welcome To Cary Video
The best hope the anti-quarry group has in stopping what many are calling “a done deal,” is publicity. The Village Board and the corporate sponsors of the quarry proposal are most vulnerable to exposure. One assumes that the Cary Village Board members would prefer some legacy other than “The Board That Made Cary A Quarry.” As of 22 July 2007, however, this video had been viewed less than 500 times.8
So, watch the video - it’s humorous, sarcastic, satirical, and - yes - snarky. Viewers can also visit the web site at Stop The Quarry In Cary, learn about the dangers of particulate matter in the air, buy a T-shirt to support the cause, … if nothing else, at least write a post in your blog.
But do watch the video.
Credit Due Department: I first read about the Cary gravel pit issue and the videos about it at Cal Skinner’s McHenry County Blog, where both videos and, especially, the political issues are covered in detail.
Footnotes
- That would be Zurich, Switzerland, not Zurich, Illinois ~back~
- The gravel pit pictured at the top of this post is only a generic model; the folks in Cary cannot count on their new pit being this cool. ~back~
- Actually, Meyer Material wants to install another gravel pit. They have one nearly adjacent to the proposed site - economies of scale, doncha’ know. ~back~
- As far as I can determine, the proposed mining operation would have no direct effect on me. My involvement is primarily precipitated by the notion that since I use local foibles as material for comedy and ridicule, I suppose I have some moral obligation to speak up when an actual problem arises. Fair is fair, after all. ~back~
- E.g., Peonies - Sarcoxie, Missouri, the entire state of Minnesota, Van Wert, Ohio; Kumquats - St. Joseph, Florida and several other Florida municipalities; milo, AKA grain sorghum, - Beattie, Kansas ~back~
- E.g., “Kentucky’s Country Music Capital” - Renfro Valley, Kentucky ~back~
- E.g., “Mile-High City” - Denver, Colorado; “Half Mile High City” - Quinter, Kansas; “Geographic Center of Connecticut” - Berlin, Connecticut ~back~
- By way of comparison, something called Elevator - Music has been viewed more than a million times. Heck, a sequence I put online about Unboxing Mom’s Gift Of Meat as a joke about the Unboxing videos has been seen more than a 130 times, and it sucks. ~back~
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Better Than A Triple Axel
DrHGuy is not a figure skating aficionado. With the possible exception, in fact, of those few days every four years that are supersaturated with the Winter Olympics telecasts, he is far more likely to be thinking of truck tandem axles, Axl Foley, or even Axl Rose than those axels performed over frozen water.
Nonetheless, the publication two days ago of the rare Heck Of A Guy non-basketball sports post, The Best Of Baseball, and one of the sentences it contained, “As it turns out, pretending to be sleazy and perverse and having sex isn’t a bad way to spend ones birthday,” set off a chain of memory traces that finally led to the recall of one specific Men’s Figure Skating Performance that is altogether worthy of a Saturday blog entry.
The Preliminary Round: Compulsory Figures
The performer is Evgeni Plushenko, a 25 year old Russian figure skater, who is the seven-time National Champion, five-time European Champion, three-time World Champion, 2006 Winter Olympics gold medalist, and four-time Grand Prix Final gold medalist. By consensus of other skaters, experts, and fans, he is, by a significant margin, the best active male figure skater. He has a long list of technical achievements and other accomplishments that can be reviewed at Wikipedia: Evgeni Plushenko .
The man clearly has game.
Still, in the eyes of DrHGuy, the best competitor in Men’s Figure Skating suffers under the significant limitation of – well, of figure skating. Now, if he could execute a lightening speed crossover dribble followed by a spin move toward the basket and a double pump 360 dunk - on skates - maybe then … . [Oops, sorry. This is about figure skating. That will be this post’s last basketball-ward digression. DrHGuy will herewith focus on figure skating, figure skating, figure skating, figure skating, figure skating, figure skating, figure skating. Figure skating.]
The point is (or, at least, the point three paragraphs ago was) that this performance has won a Heck Of A Guy Entertainment In Sports Award precisely because it makes ice skating entertaining. Admittedly, those readers who find figure skating itself an exposition of grace, beauty, and excitement may find this criterion annoying or even insulting. To both of you, I apologize.
You Can Leave Your Skates On
The routine features Plushenko performing a Disney On Ice version of a striptease.1
The music is “Sex bomb” by Tom Jones and Mousse T. The occasion is the 2005 Winter Skating Championships in Lyon, France.
The Scoring
DrHGuy, unburdened by an appreciation of or knowledge about either figure skating or striptease,2 is convinced that Plushenko’s striptease is a clever and funny piece of entertainment that is, as a bonus, a tad sexually provocative for certain audience members. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
There are clues that lead to and support this interpretation of the event. The skater’s fake pectorals and the gold lame G-string, for example, come to mind. The histrionic flair and exaggerated posing are likewise overt cues to the intent of the routine.
DrHGuy, in fact, finds other conclusions about the performance difficult to imagine. Yet, this has been labeled the “strangest skating performance ever,” the “most daring skating routine I have ever seen,” disrespectful, inappropriate, and much, much worse.3
These criticisms, keep in mind, are made in the context of figure skating, a sport in which, it seems to DrHGuy, sexuality has, on occasion, been exploited, flamboyant movements have been choreographed, and provocative gestures and costumes have been rumored to play a role.
The video is available at Media: Better Than A Triple Axel
To maximize enjoyment of the video, the viewer is advised to compare the enthusiastic, good-natured response of the audience to the embarrassed, wonderfully uncomfortable, faltering dialog of the announcers.
Footnotes
- Theoretically, a “Spoiler Alert” should have been placed before the graphic, offering the reader the option of preserving the mystery of the event until the viewing of the performance. DrHGuy, however, has never heard anyone exclaim, “Dude, why did you tell me there will be strippers at the party? You ruined the surprise. There’s no use even showing up now. I’m going home to watch wrestling.” ~back~
- DrHGuy is a big fan of naked, however, and is definitely willing to give striptease the chance to earn his respect. ~back~
- It has also been blamed for the “sex-addict routine” of John Heder’s character in Blades of Glory. ~back~
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Idiocracy: The Best Bad Movie You’ve (Probably) Never Seen
An Allegory For Our Time
Pilgrim’s Progress Rewritten In Future Imperfect Tense
The Warning
If clinical studies indicate that a medication carries a significant risk of serious adverse effects (e.g., death), the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to mandate that the manufacturer include a black box warning, i.e., a summary of those adverse effects, prominently displayed within thick black borders, on that drug’s labeling or in its literature to alert potential users to the danger.
If risky movie recommendations1 came with black box warnings, this post would be required to reveal the following:
Potential viewers of the movie, Idiocracy, are strongly advised to read and take into account the following issues before proceeding:
1. My 18 year old son and his friends, who have been enthralled by every horror and monster screen spectacular, teen-ploitation film, critically lambasted motion picture, and cinematic showcase of humor derived from heroic gastrointestinal functions, gratuitous violence, or sexual misadventures produced in the past decade, voted Idiocracy “The Dumbest Movie Ever Made.”
2. The director, writer, and producer is Mike Judge, the guy responsible for TV’s “Beavis and Butt-head” and “King of the Hill,” the animated feature film, “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America,” and the cult movie, “Office Space.”
3. It’s been reported (but not confirmed) that the final cut was taken out of Judge’s hands and “dumbed down,” which, as will become evident, is itself a funnier concept than the those found in the plots of most comedies on TV or the big screen.
4. The likely reason you may never have heard of Idiocracy, let alone have seen it, is that the movie’s promotional campaign arranged by its distributor, 20th Century Fox, consisted, in toto, of sending posters to theaters. There were no movie trailers, television ads, or press kits for media outlets. Nor was the film screened for critics. The movie’s release was delayed and rumors abounded that it would be put on hold indefinitely. When it did open, Fox placed it in – count them – seven cities where it quickly closed. It went to DVD shortly thereafter (in January 2007).
Idiocracy’s Not-So-Idiotic Premise
The movie’s plot is based on the all too accurate principle that evolution is directionless.2 Consequently, the human species is as likely to move toward dystopia as utopia.
The Idiocracy vehicle has its GPS set, as it turns out, for Dystopiopolis, and is, as long as we’re stuck on the movie-as-automobile metaphor, fueled by the geometric progression of lusty, stupid individuals invariably and enthusiastically reproducing at far greater rates than bright but overly cautious people, resulting in a society that becomes, generation by generation, more dim-witted.
The Story: Sleeper Meets Rip Van Winkle Meets Mad Max Meets Candide
With Cameos By The Three Stooges and The WWF
Luke Wilson plays Joe Bowers, a soldier chosen for an Army hibernation experiment because he is absolutely average. Like most of us average Joes, Private Bowers has spent his adult life avoiding responsibility. When chosen for this assignment, he protests, mounting the defense that Every time [the officer] tells me to “lead, follow, or get out of the way,” I get out of the way.
Click to hear line from movie
Nonetheless, he and his female counterpart, Rita, a distinctly non-military prostitute3 whose pimp has consigned her to the project in return for certain legal considerations, are placed in suspended animation. The army project, however, goes awry because of a scandal revolving around the Project’s military liaison’s fascination with the contrast between the world of squares and that of pimps and hookers.4
Consequently, Joe and Rita snooze through 500 years, during which civilization deteriorates catastrophically because of the afore mentioned diminution in intelligence.
Compounding he problem, the few knowledgeable individuals that remain in the population have been put to work not on solving the crises that face humankind but commercial projects with the logical result that last of these capable people ended their days creating potions and mechanical devices for growing hair and, of course, eliminating erectile dysfunction specifically and penile flaccidity in general. The evidence of their success is a cigar-smoking lab monkey who makes a brief appearance on the screen adorned by a particularly well developed Jheri curl (think Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction) and a similarly well endowed erection (think, if you dare, John Holmes hirsute little brother).
Not surprisingly, the current generation cannot maintain, let alone improve, the machines, infrastructure, and services developed by their predecessors. The immediate impending disaster is a looming famine because of crop failures caused by the use of a sports drink rather than water5 for farmland irrigation.
OK, cue the avalanche.6
The Great Garbage Avalanche of 2505 felicitously awakens Joe (and, a bit later, Rita) to a world best summarized as being – well, an Idiocracy that is characterized by the dominance of the crassest of crass consumerism, the lowest common denominator of a mutant populism, and anti-intellectualism so profound that Wilson’s Everyman is now the most intelligent living person - by two or three standard deviations.
Joe undergoes a series of Candide-like torments at the hands of a society that regards the utterance of a complete sentence as “talking like a fag.” While trying to get help at a hospital that is a macabre mutation of a McDonald’s-HMO hybrid, Joe is discovered to be “unscannable” because he lacks the requisite bar code tattooed on his forearm.
Click to hear line from movie
He is arrested, tattooed with the name “Not Sure” as a result of an all too believable computer glitch,
Click to hear line from movie
and escapes from prison by claiming to be so stupid that he mistakenly got into the “Enter Prison” line rather than the “Leave Prison” line.
Shortly after his elopement from jail, Joe is again arrested - and then appointed Secretary of The Interior by President Camacho,7 who discovered that he was the smartest man living from a prison intelligence test. In an address to his constituents, the President (pictured below in official dress) declares,
That promised solution is – ta da – Joe.
Despite his correct diagnosis of the Brawndo-for-water irrigation problem, the failure of Joe’s plan to provide immediate results combined with the loss of joonlbs at Brawndo results in his impeachment, in large part because Brawndo, a sports drink promoted by the slogan “It has electrolytes, is one of the handful of remaining corporations, along with Carl’s Jr, Costco, Bell, and a few others who have purchased portions of or melded with the government. When Brawndo faced problems with the FDA, for example, its solution was to buy and privatize that agency.
As shown on Fox News, Joe is summarily convicted8 and sentenced to “one night of rehabilitation.” In 2505, “rehabilitation,” which has replaced Monday Night Football, has transformed into a gladiators Vs the condemned sort of spectacle held in a stadium with the Corrections Officers driving huge tank-like vehicles with gigantic phallic extensions to crush or drill the convicts. Joe, still chained to his rock, is given a barely operable sub-compact with a Nerf-dildo duct-taped to the hood.
Joe survives long enough for Rita (who Joe has brought along to the White House) to flash photos of plants beginning to grow.
Joe becomes President and marries Rita. They have three children, who are, of course, the three smartest children living.
The Funny Stuff
Although Idiocracy is satire on an epic scale with no gross-out opportunity, be it sight gag, primal slapstick, or scatological dialog, missed, DrHGuy’s position9 is that the movie’s humor lies in the details. Moreover, the humor is independent of the pertinent scene’s position on the Disgust Index.
But in addition to the details providing the humor, the onslaught of these throwaway lines, vignettes, minutia, observations, and other exemplars of a world gone bad forces the audience to confront the problem. Mike Judge provides the audience with no escape; if one views the movie, one views a continuous stream of society’s malfunctions.
A few of my favorite bits follow as examples:
- The Secretary of State plugs Carl’s Jr. in every conversation because he is paid for the placement. He introduces himself to Joe thusly, “I’m Secretary of State, brought to you by Carl’s Jr.”
-
Costco is approximately the size of Deleware and includes not only merchandise and amusement rides but also a law school. Best of all, it has burly greeters who repeat, like automatons, “Welcome to Costco. I love you.”
Click to hear line from movie - Starbucks still sells lattes but has branched out to offer sexual services with a special on hand jobs.
- The most popular television show, “Ow! My Balls!” features the hero undergoing an unceasing sequence of testicular traumas. The popular actor who plays the lead is similarly battered by his fans when they meet in real life.
- The Oscar winning film is Ass, which consists of 90 minutes of the same set of barely moving, flatulent buttocks filling the silver screen.10
Click to hear line from movie -
Many of the names of individuals are commercial derivatives; we are introduced, for example, to Frito, Velveeta, Formica, and Beef Supreme.
- Rita’s pimp, on the other hand, is named, Upgrayedd, spelled with two D’s for a “double dose of pimping power.”
- Rita points to a TV showing Joe on Monday Night Rehab. Desperate to rescue him, she then asks Frito, “Can you take me there?” Frito, eager to help, picks Rita up in his arms and carries her – to the TV a few feet away.
-
The Fox News reporter provides the summary of Joe’s Trial:
It started off boring and slow with Not Sure trying to bullshit everyone with a bunch of smart talk: ‘Blah blah blah. You gotta believe me!’ That part of the trial sucked! But then the Chief J. just went off. He said, ‘Man, whatever! The guy’s guilty as shit We all know that.’ And he sentenced his ass to one night of rehabilitation. - The reflecting pool of the Washington Monument is now a jet-ski paradise,
- A billboard with a tough looking smoker offers the slogan, If you don’t smoke Tarrylton’s… fuck you. Similarly, a fast food vending machine announces, Carl’s Jr. “Fuck you, I’m eating.“
The Message
With so much energy devoted to jokes, with so much emphasis on the grotesque aspects of life in 2505, and with an almost incomprehensibly disjointed dramatic construction, this flick does not announce itself as a Message Movie.
My contention, in fact, is that the film’s message is delivered so heavy handedly that its significance can be missed because of the distraction caused by all that maneuvering of weighty palms and digits.11
Such is the fate of satire in general, and by pushing satire to the point of burlesque, Idiocracy risks being mistaken for the very thing it is ridiculing – a concern which has much to do with my motivation for producing this dissertation and, especially, this rather pedantic section.
The movement in Idiocracy is Joe’s transformation from someone who “always get(s) out of the way” into chooses to take action, even though that puts him at risk of being beaten for acting “faggy,” imprisoned, and impaled on a rotating steel phallus being propelled by a tricked out tank-SUV.
While it’s nice, one supposes, that Joe saves the world from famine and pestilence, there are few inhabitants of that world capable of establishing even the minimal rapport that will occasion much celebration of their survival among the movie’s audience. The salvation in Idiocracy is Joe’s. He rescues himself from his narcissistic passivity to have an impact on others and to find himself an identity as part of a family with Rita and the kids.
And that’s the message:
Not only is it possible to screw up the future but that is the likely outcome unless we be become active participants in life beyond ourselves and our immediate circle of acquaintances.
To the extent that Idiocracy is indeed a Message Movie, it presents that message in an honest, forthright, challenging manner rather than pandering to the audience. The film confronts not only Joe’s narcissism, but our own. This is not a propaganda piece pitting us (AKA the good guys) against them (AKA the bad guys) in the mode of a Michael Moore production such as Fahrenheit 9/11 or even a documentary such as An Inconvenient Truth. Those folks in Idiocracy’s version of 2505 are the easily recognizable progeny of today’s materialistic, commercial, dumbed-down world.12
Taking a brave and creative artistic stance, Idiocracy is talking to us about us.
So, What Can We Do?
Well, don’t assume that some misconceived notion of Darwinian manifest destiny will rescue us if we just “get out of the way.”
Read a book. See a movie. Don’t be stupid or crass. Be involved.
And a special shout-out to the farmers in the Heck Of A Guy viewing audience - for goodness sake, don’t irrigate your crops with sports drinks.
And word to you smart people – start having lots-o-sex and at least a few kids.
Media
Video players with clips from Idiocracy are available at
~Media: Idiocracy~
Be warned, if you haven’t figured it out already, that scatological language abounds, but there is probably less in these scenes than one would find in, say, an episode of Deadwood. Despite all the talk of sexual deviance, there are no sex scenes, little nudity (and any nudity that does occur is not, I promise, the sort that will be listed among your “Favorite Turn-ons,”) and only cartoon-like violence.
Nonetheless, I have prepared a three-part sensitivity test for readers concerned about viewing gross-out comedy. If you answer “yes” at any point, you will probably be happiest not going further, and that’s fine – if you don’t mind being a wuss.
The DrHGuy Idiocracy Audience Sensitivity Test
- Are you actually concerned about viewing something called “gross-out comedy?” Really?
- Are you mightily offended by this scene from the movie?
Setting: A woman has just been told by the Carl’s Jr. computerized vending kiosk that she should leave because she has no more money in her account for buying food. The machine then announces:Your kids are starving. Carl’s Jr. believes no child should go hungry. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl’s Jr.
- The first video at ~Media: Idiocracy~ is an extended version of the Carl’s Jr. vending kiosk scene. Watch it. Does it upset you?
Just another public service from Heck Of A Guy Blog.
Footnotes
- The primary risk from this movie recommendation, of course, is to my reputation and credibility. ~back~
- The survival of the fittest nonsense didn’t originate with Darwin; one Herbert Spencer, a social scientist, is responsible for that concept. His original quotation was “It cannot but happen… that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces …This survival of the fittest implies multiplication of the fittest.” Survival of the fittest works only if “fittest” is defined not as the one which can run the fastest or furthest but as the one that best fitted to survive. ~back~
- An ongoing joke is that Joe never figures out she is a prostitute, believing instead her off the cuff invention that she is an artist. ~back~
- The nifty set-up for the scandal includes an a businesslike, quasi-academic PowerPoint presentation containing outrageous scenes of the liaison gaining the trust of the inhabitants of this society by participating in their lives a la Margaret Mead ~back~
- Water is used only in toilets, a point invariably mentioned in response when Joe suggests using it for other purposes, such as drinking. ~back~
- Landfill technology is one of the long-long skills. Garbage is simply piled into rising mountains until the tipping point is reached with one can setting off a garbage-slide of refuge flowing through the streets of the city. ~back~
- Full name: Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho ~back~
- Joe’s jailers prevent a reprise of his previous escape by chaining his ankle to a boulder the size of a small car. ~back~
- Mr. Science and Lawanda, intrepid of heart, have not only courageously confessed that they were co-viewers of Idiocracy but have also bravely admitted holding opinions that are more or less congruent with DrHGuy’s. ~back~
- In Joe’s first address to the nation as President, he alludes to a Golden Age: “There was a time when reading wasn’t just for fags. And neither was writing. People wrote books and movies. Movies with stories, that made you care about who’s ass it was and why it was farting. And I believe that time can come again!” ~back~
- Disappointingly left unanswered is the Zen question, “What is the sound of one heavy hand clapping?” ~back~
- It’s especially easy to note the similarity between today’s vernacular and the Hillbilly-Valleyspeak-Ebonics patois spoken by Idiocracites. ~back~
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Women Disrobe While Leonard Cohen Music Plays - Yet, Something Feels Wrong
No one says naked like Leonard Cohen~Tom Robbins
(From liner notes of the Cohen tribute album, Tower of Song)
It’s Not Just Quentin
The reference in the recently posted Leonard Cohen and Quentin Tarantino: Heavy Video to a brief scene in the Dance Me To The End Of Love video in which Tarantino is naked leads, inevitably,1 to the observation that Leonard Cohen’s songs are brilliantly conducive to the shedding of clothes.
While appreciative of and grateful for this phenomenon, I nonetheless find myself disoriented by two films that spotlight individuals explicitly removing their clothes to the beat of tunes from the Leonard Cohen songbook.
The problem is cognitive dissonance arising from the setting of and motivation for the denuding; both movies feature exotic dancers in strip clubs.
I’ll explain.
I’m Your Fan Dancer
I confess that I am neither an aficionado or opponent of strip clubs and, in fact, am sadly deficient in first-hand knowledge of their offerings.
Based, however, on glimpses of such enterprises afforded by movies and TV shows,2 some reading on the topic,3 and data provided by colleagues, I would think that it would be the atypical establishment in this category that would have a Lots-O-Leonard playlist.
My sources indicate that, at least in the good old days, 
unclad dancers4 would writhe on poles and crawl across stages to the blaring accompaniment of songs such as
- Alice Cooper’s Poison
- AC/DC’s The Jack
- Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard
- The Motley Crüe anthem, Girls, Girls, Girls (or or any of a dozen other Motley Crüe hits)
- Any of the numerous versions of You Can Leave Your Hat On5
I’m told that currently the various formats of Hip-Hop are especially popular.
Conspicuously absent from the much longer complete listing of stripper tunes were Rock of Ages Cleft for Me, anything sung by Donovan, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and Leonard Cohen numbers.
One notes some obvious disparities between Leonard Cohen and the notables on the standard strip show music canon. 
Leonard, for example, rarely leaves home wearing significant amounts of mascara or spandex britches.
He has also published precious little in the heavy metal genre (those rumors that he subbed for the lead singer of Megadeth during that group’s Argentina tour simply cannot be verified although there is an ominous absence of any reports of Megadeth and Leonard Cohen being seen simultaneously during that time period).
And there is the matter of tempo. Which Leonard Cohen track does one use as background for gyrations of this sort?
Certainly, selecting songs by Leonard Cohen that are appropriately sensuous and sexual is a trivial task. But the traditional ecdysiastic6 hymns do not ordinarily strive for plaintiveness, sadness, irony, or thoughtfulness, which are among Cohen’s primary tools.
So, what gives? How is it that two movies about strippers employ Leonard Cohen songs?
The answer, I believe, lies in the specific films.
The Films, The Strippers, The Soundtracks
Exotica7
In Atom Egoyan’s Exotica, Mia Kirshner dances to Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows at a Toronto gentleman’s club inhabited by a group of patrons, dancers, and owners who are connected by previous and ongoing relationships. The film, a prize winner at Cannes and the recipient of French and Canadian honors, is a series of mysteries solved by the revelation of more mysteries – and then presented in a chronologically jumbled manner.
It will come as no surprise to anyone acquainted with Mr. Egoyan’s work8 to find that, Exotica, as the redoubtable Wikipedia notes, “deals with issues of loss, grief and isolation.”
Dancing at the Blue Iguana
In Dancing at the Blue Iguana the San Fernando Valley is home to the titular Blue Iguana, a strip club in which the dancers, played by Daryl Hannah, Jennifer Tilly, Sandra Oh, Charlotte Ayanna, perform to, among other songs, Dance Me to the End of Love.
Its theme, if Stephen Holden of the New York Times, is to be believed, is that the Blue Iguana represents “a microcosm of this sad, lonely world and its lost female souls who cater to male lust.”9
The story that forms the basis of Dancing at the Blue Iguana evolved from a five month improvisational workshop led by director Michael Radford in which actors worked with exotic dancers and used that research to develop their own characters.
Let’s Go To The Champagne Room
The central question, in case one has lost track, is how did two Leonard Cohen songs, Everybody Knows and Dance Me to the End of Love, that may never have been played during an actual stripper’s performance end up on the soundtrack of two movies set in strip clubs?
The disappointingly simple answer is that those songs, however wrong they