One of many redheads who it would be mighty satisfying to kick.
As the phrase “I will beat you like a red-headed stepchild” makes perfectly clear, carrot tops are despised by pretty much everybody. They can’t step out of the shade for longer than a 10 count without getting a sun burn and among their ranks are the despicable likes of David Caruso, Lindsay Lohan and, of course, Carrot Top. If you go further back and take a look at some historical fire crotches (thank you urban dictionary), it reads like a grocery list of the worst people ever to inflict themselves on our planet: Lizzie Borden, Martin Van Buren, Oliver Cromwell – dirt-bag city, basically.
At last, however, society has dropped its gloves and put gingers, as they are also known, on notice. The TV show South Park sparked it all with an episode in which Cartman gives a class lecture on how red-haired people are basically soulless vampires (see below). Inspired by Cartman’s rant, Facebook groups began to pop up and the anti-Ginger movement was afoot. The largest Facebook group boasted some 4,000 members, testament to the fact that people do not like the red-hairs beyond enjoying the opportunity to ask whether what’s hanging on the windows is color coordinated with an area typically left out of direct sunlight.
The Facebook groups spawned “Kick a Ginger Day”, which apparently was yesterday. Canadians were asked to send their penny loafers in the general direction of a redhead’s arse, and many did — so many that the RCMP got involved and school principals threatened serious punishments for anyone caught attempting to punt a carrot top.
The readers of The Globe and Mail report telling of Kick a Ginger Day must all have been gingers or have had their senses of humor sucked from their heads by them as they suggested banning South Park, jail terms for the kickers, and bellyached about the evils of bullying (for no insight whatsoever into what causes bullying click here). We, on the other hand, are laughing so hard that we may not be able to hold a drink steady this weekend.
To our ginger readers, if there are any of you left at this point, we offer you some solace in the fact that A) Kick a Ginger Day has passed (though we’re shining our steel-toeds in anticipation of next year) and B) Contrary to popular belief and as incredible as it may seem, red heads are the ones who have the most fun (well, except for yesterday). A 2006 study confirmed that red heads are a highly libidinous people and have way more sex than their more fortunately coiffed counterparts. We would put up with a day’s worth of kicking to be swinging in those circles.
Boozing, when done well, is the welcome opposite of work. Very little effort should go into a good booze-up; the drinker’s main concern should be remaining smilingly ruddy-faced while pouring the nectar down his or her gob and thinking capital thoughts. There are, however, certain minor exertions that interfere with the complete rest that is the drinker’s due when tippling, and it is here that technology has stepped in admirably to help out.
There is, for instance, the automatic beer dispenser, which saves your dedicated drinker the nuisance of having to needlessly trouble the muscles in his legs by leaving the couch to get a beer (Note: This has yet to be mass-produced as far as we know. It will probably take a bit of tinkering as the prototype model does appear to carry the risk of bloodying the nose of an eight-year-old who just happens by while daddy “orders up another.”) Someone has undoubtedly tackled the problem of the other reason why a drinker needs to get up, though we, in the interests of keeping down breakfasts, did no further research into that.
Pictured here is another addition to the beer accessories market and it is one that makes the beer rocket-packs we covered (3-liter beer dispensers strapped to the back of a ball-gown-wearing waitress who may or may not be sporting a pair of giant black wings) seem downright sensible. The remote control beer pager is designed for beer drinkers who may have misplaced their drinks at a party. If your beer is adorned in one of these babies, you need only press a button on a mini-remote that attaches to your belt (presumably, in keeping in mind the target demographic [pictured none too subtly on the cozy itself] this will also clip just as easily on to a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants) and the beer cozy will light up and “let loose a satisfying belch.” Class.
We can appreciate the need for tracking mechanisms on beer: after all who hasn’t swallowed the odd cigarette remainder after picking up the wrong beer at a party? That said, a critic might point out the fact that the loud belch that accompanies the paging is both excessive and potentially confusing since at any party where this sort of thing is present, a loud satisfying belch would not be the distinctive sound the makers of this seem to think it would be, and, not to be a couple of spoilsports, but wouldn’t simply placing your beer into this unsightly thing be enough to distinguish it from all others without the technological intervention?
Such niggling points aside, the price of the remote control beer pager is, depending on how you value money, somewhat reasonable at $20 a pop and an item to keep in mind for the holiday shopping season (provided you do not live with or intend to party with the intended recipient). Features:
To ‘redact’ is a to make multiple texts appear unified by theme, famously in One Thousand and One Nights. More commonly, ‘redacted’ refers to the removal of sensitive information prior to publication, such as in an intelligence dossier or by editing a video so it’s ironic that despite the title, and narrative device of a video diary, nothing is really ‘redacted’ here.
The film follows the exploits of a would-be auteur Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz, a three time valet on Entourage heads a no-name cast), who chronicles the often banal, yet at times intensely harrowing exploits of his fellow squadron members stationed in Samarra, Iraq, with video footage he hopes will one day get him into film school.
His pals include the usual assortment of war movie stereotypes, the gruff, yet kind African American Sergeant Sweet, the backwoods trigger-happy dimwit, ridiculously named ‘Reno’ (with a sibling ‘Vegas’), who doesn’t even bother feigning a Cajun accent, the honorable do-gooder McCoy (the real?) and the nervous nebbish, the butt of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ jokes, ‘Blix’, a highly unlikely nickname derived from the Swedish UN weapons inspector.
Without a backstory to engage, they’re all left to react solely on instinct and the southerner and gruff sergeant happily oblige, dispassionately blowing away a pregnant mother and son and warning the “Midget Ali Babas’ tugging at their gear are all spies, respectively.
Blix is interviewed on camera by Salazar reading aloud the Maugham-penned epigraph to ‘The Appointment in Samarra‘, about meeting your maker in Iraq—not exactly ‘Win one for the Gipper’ reading material on the battlefront and then the young documentarian is fascinated by a large scorpion, which he films succumbing to an attack by numerous tiny ants. With warriors like these, the exit strategy should be a quick exit.
POV camera work interspersed with fake French documentary footage about the extreme dangers of checkpoints, online video clips, blogs and grainy security footage sets the backdrop of the film—intensely claustrophobic and innards-wrenching, with bomb sniffing dogs and fingers on trigger, split seconds between life and breathing a final breath, eased with comic relief during down time: ‘You’re so white, you wouldn’t wear yourself after Labor Day’ or ‘Is it wrong to fall in love with the King of Clubs?’ during a poker game with nudie cards.
However before and after the main plot point—a plan to rape a young girl whose home was just raided— is introduced, Salazar’s camera details racism, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism of every stripe that is not only extremely patronizing to soldiers, but the audience as well, expected to believe that a video camera can be casually brought out at every turn and without any recourse through the chains of command.
‘Hajjis’ and ‘Shit-birds’ are used in every day conservation as is ‘Sand Nigger’, casual racism despite their professed admiration for and camaraderie with the black Sergeant Sweet.
When the rape scheme reaches its ugly conclusion, the do-gooder McCoy who took no part in it, yet didn’t tip off any hire ups, confides in his no-nonsense military dad over webcam and is sternly warned against whistle-blowing, yet another bad apple in De Palma’s orchard harvest.
Platitudes like ‘an American life is worth that of 100 Iraqis’, and ‘Welcome to the fuckin’ army!’, are sounded and grim statistics flashed across the screen courtesy of the mock impartial French doc (as if their hands were clean as a major international arms dealer).
The film then reaches a conclusion as inevitable as an exploded IED: McCoy’s testimony discounted, subsequent mental breakdown and justice unserved—not by anything ‘redacted’ mind you, but by good old fashioned threats, lack of video evidence, witness corroboration, and then moral equivalency justice meted out through Jihadist beheading.
As the Puccini score reaches a crescendo, a photo montage of Iraqi victims attempts a poignancy not delivered by the preceding 90 minutes (and even then, their eyes were apparently blacked out for fear they might sue), 90 minutes of flunked cinema verite, uni-dimensional characters and bi-national condescension.
According to reports, the Beatles’ experimental song Carnival of Light includes gargling, distorted guitar and shouts of ”Are you alright?”, or to put it another way, complaints that would rouse an apartment building superintendent at 4AM.
Apparently, during the Penny Lane sessions when he penned his 14-minute opus, Macca was gleaning inspiration from avant garde composer John Cage, perhaps best known for 4′33, a ‘completely silent composition’, which prompts the question: ‘if you were ever to attend a live performance, when would you applaud?’ Click here for an extraordinarily uninteresting sample, where the piece ‘allows the audience to absorb the sounds around them’, or to put it another way, the most conspicuous time to head to the bathroom.
One thing that can be said about the Cage piece, is that it can be performed by any instrument regardless of whether it’s in tune, or by anyone who can count to ‘273′, has access to throat lozenges and who doesn’t have gas (see the phrase ’silent but deadly’)
Further cementing his legacy as the least interesting Beatle, Sir Paul’s musical direction for these recording sessions included the decidedly un-Cagian: ”just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense.”
Speaking of not making sense, getting this song released is going to require legal challenges a la passage of the US bailout bill: approval from the widows Lennon, Harrison as well as Ringo Starr, even if his artistic contribution to the Beatles is comparable to those transients Picasso painted during his ’Blue Period’.
McCartney also expressed an interest recently in working with Bob Dylan, who unlike Paul has put out some of the most vital music of his career during the last decade, in what these days would be an asymmetrical collaboration akin to rolling an organ grinder across the stage during a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic.
In other Beatles news, their back catalog is now available for online purchase in a case of not only shutting the barn door while the horse is already gone, but putting a jockey on it and running it around the track a few times as everyone from Tallahassee to Tuvalu has downloaded everything the Fab Four has ever put out, including Carnival of Light, if and when it does see the light of day.
The dirge also apparently contains lots of organ and shouting ‘Barcelona’, but no word if the Maharishi was kicking a soccer ball around the studio during the recording.
Completists eagerly await the Revolver bass guitar tune-up sessions of 1966.
