House of Eratosthenes

Years ago there was this television commercial about some kind of product that cleaned scum off the inside of a shower stall. It showed a mildly-dirty shower stall, in time lapse, as a screen caption changed from “dirty” to “filthy” to “getting really bad.” Just before the product was discussed, the stall tiles got really, really gross and the screen caption started blinking on and off, “DO SOMETHING!!!”

I think when we discuss what’s going on in the world and what to do about it, our ability to have rational discussions is just about at that point. It hasn’t been “cleaned” in a very long time. It’s polluted, rancid and gross. DO SOMETHING!!! With three exclamation marks after it.

Exhibit A is the commentary by Paul Verhoeven and Nicholas Meyer about why Basic Instinct II did poorly at the Box Office…What the blue f…

Paul Verhoeven, director of the first “Basic Instinct” (which scored $353 million worldwide) as well as the widely ridiculed “Showgirls” (now regarded as something of a camp classic), attributes the genre’s demise to the current American political climate.

“Anything that is erotic has been banned in the United States,” said the Dutch native. “Look at the people at the top (of the government). We are living under a government that is constantly hammering out Christian values. And Christianity and sex have never been good friends.”

Scribe Nicholas Meyer, who was an uncredited writer on 1987’s seminal sex-fueled cautionary tale “Fatal Attraction,” agrees, noting that the genre’s downfall coincides with the ascent of the conservative political movement.

“We’re in a big puritanical mode,” he said. “Now, it’s like the McCarthy era, except it’s not ‘Are you a communist?’ but ‘Have you ever put sex in a movie?'”

Can anyone out there help me make sense of this? Let’s see. I, and millions of people like me, vote in some conservative politicians. Well, I think taking out bad guys, providing school choice and respecting the Second Amendment are moderate values and should require no “political movement” whatsoever, but okay. Let’s call them “conservative.” So we got some “conservative politicians” in there. “Christians,” as Verhoeven says. “Puritanicals,” as Meyer says. Then what?

Well, there it is straight from Nicholas Meyer’s lips. They sit people down and ask them “Have you ever put sex in a movie?”

In what forum do they ask people this? Whom do they ask? What happens to the people they ask, if the answer is “yes”? What…some trap door opens up under the chair in which they’ve been sitting, and they fall down some dark chute, yelling “AIIIEEEEE!” or something?

Nicholas Meyer saved the Star Trek franchise from oblivion. The man’s got talent. If he’s a raging idiot, or crazy, he can’t be completely so, unless he’s lost some of his faculties since his heyday, which I doubt. Something’s affecting his judgment.

Perhaps there’s something in the ether. Something that engages the mouth of Meyer, Veherhoeven, and pretty-boy Ben Affleck before their brains are powered up all the way. You heard about Affleck, didn’t you? Get a load of this…

…on Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, actor Ben Affleck charged that President Bush �probably also leaked� Valerie Plame’s name and so “if he did, you can be hung for that! That’s treason!” In full rant, an apoplectic Affleck asserted: “You could be killed. That’s not a joking around Tom DeLay ‘I’ll do a year, I bribed the state officials with corporate money.’ That’s like they shoot you in the battlefield for doing that.”

Affleck appeared on Maher’s panel with Senator Joe Biden and Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner. A couple of minutes later, after Sammon suggested Tom DeLay’s resignation means the loss of a �poster boy for the left� so they can’t use him anymore to raise funds, Affleck besmirched DeLay as a �criminal� while simultaneously demonstrating his political naivete. Though the Texas redistricting orchestrated by DeLay made his district less Republican, Affleck contended: “Tom DeLay personally gerrymandered that district so severely that it looks like a map of Italy….There won’t be a Democrat elected in that seat for a thousand years. You can’t say he’s the poster boy for the left. He happens to be an incredibly powerful Republican who is a criminal and now you blame Democrats for pointing it out!”

Something is seriously, seriously messed up here. People have been making half-baked, asinine comments about things for several years now. Just generally screwed-up, whacked-out, nonsensical statements about what’s happening, what they think is happening, what it all means, and crazy stupid ideas about what we should be doing.

None of it makes any sense. Very little of it ever has.

But it’s getting worse. It’s like…living in an apartment, and you’ve got your radio on, and someone in the next unit over turns on their hair dryer and suddenly you’re eating static. You put up with it for awhile, because hey, you can still hear half the words, right? Then they power up the projection TV and you can’t hear anything at all. That’s where we are. The static is getting worse. The celebrity comments are getting MORE nonsensical, even though, one week previous, I would have thought they were already as harebrained as they could possibly get.

Something must be done.

Here’s my solution. You remember this cartoon character, right? It’s that old man from The Simpsons, the one obsessed with “paddlin’s,” Jasper Beardly. Wikipedia expounds on Jasper’s eccentricities and other traits…

When called in to help replace teachers (then on strike), he confiscated everything in the room made of tin, two children passed out from the fumes of his ointment and he threatened everyone with “a paddlin'”, as well as dismissing the class early after getting his beard caught in the pencil sharpener…”Thats A Paddlin” has become a minor meme, especialy on internet message boards, often mutating into “Thats a bannin”.

I think Jasper, shown here going through his seemingly endless list of various offenses that can potentially earn “a paddlin’,” is our patron saint here. I’m going to start handing out paddlin’s. Someone’s got to do something. These stupid, boneheaded comments are getting worse and worse, and if nothing’s done, they’re going to leave this plane of reality altogether, taking with them everybody who even thought of giving any respect to these Hollywood airheads. There are more people who take these airheads seriously, than you think. Something must be done. This is as good as anything else.

Paul Verhoeven: This one is for you. You made a ton of money of this genre, a genre people somehow don’t like anymore. You could have taken some responsibility. You could say something like “I thought we were entertaining audiences with something they’d find titillating over the long haul, but it turns out it was just shock value, and I guess people get tired of that. In short, I thought it had staying power that in hindsight, I see it just didn’t have.” Instead, you chose to blame politicians. Even if you were right, what good does that do? What, you want to change the box office receipts for a movie you didn’t even direct, by changing who’s holding a political office? How does that even make sense? Hey, what takes more effort…changing political leaders most of us want to have where they are, or making decent movies? What is this, some kind of raving from “Everything Is Bush’s Fault Land”? I stubbed my toe, it’s Bush’s fault. I spilled my coffee, it’s Bush’s fault. My movie sucks, it’s Bush’s fault. Okay. Outside of that tiny little world, your ravings are complete nonsense, and you would have been better off staying in bed this morning with your mouth TAPED SHUT.

Nicholas Meyer: This one is for you. Oh, where to begin, Nick. Puritans are grilling movie people over whether they’ve put sex in movies? You figured this out because Basic Instinct II can’t make any money? Good heavens, man. What does it mean when you get a flat tire, aliens are taking over? If you open a box of Cheerios and the bag gets messed up with that huge tear down the side, does it mean the earth’s magnetic poles have flipped and we’re all gonna die or something? Oh my God, what are smoking. Maybe they should make a new Star Trek movie about you. “STAR TREK XI: THE MADNESS OF MEYER.” Seriously, dude. Get a grip.

Oh and Pretty Boy Affleck, I haven’t forgotten about you. You think someone should be shot. I just think you should get a well-deserved paddlin’.

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Something Must Be DoneMonday, April 10th, 2006

Something Must Be Done
Monday, April 10th, 2006