lifestyle: May 2008 Archives
This week's good goes to having both superlative Pensacola pop-rock act Deadly Fists of Kung Fu and Tampa expatriates Joe Popp and Brian McCabe back in town for the weekend. Popp was in Tampa for a friend's wedding, and dragged the rest of the guys in his band The Hornrims down from New York City for a New World Brewery appearance; the Fists did that one too, as well as a Saturday night stint at St. Pete's Emerald Bar that included a Replacements cover, a money shower, and us bouncing some jerkoff in a Hawaiian shirt. (Look, dude, if you're going to threaten a girl, don't point at your cane and plead your limp when her male friends come over for a chat.)
This week's bad goes to bad family news. My mother will be having a fairly serious surgical procedure next week. She's a tough lady, though, and in pretty good health. Plus, they'll be doing that new minimally invasive thing where they just teleport the stuff out of her body through her bones and skin and stuff, or whatever. But if you could spare a thought for Mom Ravis, I'd certainly appreciate it.
This week's ugly goes to, oh, I don't know ... Speed Racer's confirmed flopness, I guess. Or no, wait - let's go with that whole thing about how the price of seeing crappy movies in the theater is going to go up even higher, because all the corn is getting used to make ethanol. Yeah, that's it; corn. Screw you, corn. If I still watched movies in the theater, there'd be trouble.
This week's bad goes to bad family news. My mother will be having a fairly serious surgical procedure next week. She's a tough lady, though, and in pretty good health. Plus, they'll be doing that new minimally invasive thing where they just teleport the stuff out of her body through her bones and skin and stuff, or whatever. But if you could spare a thought for Mom Ravis, I'd certainly appreciate it.
This week's ugly goes to, oh, I don't know ... Speed Racer's confirmed flopness, I guess. Or no, wait - let's go with that whole thing about how the price of seeing crappy movies in the theater is going to go up even higher, because all the corn is getting used to make ethanol. Yeah, that's it; corn. Screw you, corn. If I still watched movies in the theater, there'd be trouble.
So the newest iteration of the Grand Theft Auto gaming franchise is upon us, and it comes with all the violence, immorality and indiscreet bonage we've come to expect. Also expected: The never-ending argument about whether or not fake violence begets real violence.
People like me, who revel in simulated gore, excessive cinematic violence, gratuitous boob action and vulgar one-liners we'd never say in public (as long as they're integral to the plot or character development, naturally), but who would never actually go out to kill, skin and bugger a wino, insist that those things don't negatively influence culture in real life. We call it cathartic. We claim that it actually sublimates our more barbaric lizard-brain instincts; it's a harmless outlet.
On the other side of the argument are a bunch of the people that people like me tend to not like very much anyway - nosy, religious, well-to-do (read: often, white and insufferable) people who are deathly afraid of crimes that are rarely committed against them. They're the sort of people who, when entreating us to think of the children, are rarely thinking of their own children specifically, but are canny enough to know that every once in a while, one or two of those boarding-school kids get their wires crossed and make an awful mess. They say that the culture is eroding family values, that God is the answer, that the movies and the TV shows and the video games are encouraging a culture of selfishness and sociopathy.
And they're right about the last thing. But the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. And if people of all races and social strata would stop producing such easily influenced, selfish, sociopathic, dumb-assed kids to begin with, maybe I could enjoy and then forget a Saw sequel without having to consider its sociological ramifications.
People like me, who revel in simulated gore, excessive cinematic violence, gratuitous boob action and vulgar one-liners we'd never say in public (as long as they're integral to the plot or character development, naturally), but who would never actually go out to kill, skin and bugger a wino, insist that those things don't negatively influence culture in real life. We call it cathartic. We claim that it actually sublimates our more barbaric lizard-brain instincts; it's a harmless outlet.
On the other side of the argument are a bunch of the people that people like me tend to not like very much anyway - nosy, religious, well-to-do (read: often, white and insufferable) people who are deathly afraid of crimes that are rarely committed against them. They're the sort of people who, when entreating us to think of the children, are rarely thinking of their own children specifically, but are canny enough to know that every once in a while, one or two of those boarding-school kids get their wires crossed and make an awful mess. They say that the culture is eroding family values, that God is the answer, that the movies and the TV shows and the video games are encouraging a culture of selfishness and sociopathy.
And they're right about the last thing. But the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the middle. And if people of all races and social strata would stop producing such easily influenced, selfish, sociopathic, dumb-assed kids to begin with, maybe I could enjoy and then forget a Saw sequel without having to consider its sociological ramifications.
Continue reading On The Subject of Grand Theft Auto, and Dumb Kids.
