Sixteen Stone

Several months ago, the following question was asked on the cover of an issue of Rolling Stone: Is George Bush the worst president ever?

For those of us who lack historical perspective and ideological persuasion (i.e. born during the Gerald Ford presidency), the answer is yes, especially given the debacle in Iraq and his "new strategy" for success over there, which is really just another moniker for "more of the same, plus 21,500."

Sure, George W. Bush is a douche, but he's not the worst president ever. That award goes to William Henry Harrison, the ninth Commander-in-Chief of our nation.

Hell, even the official White House biography only gives Harrison's presidency one paragraph. So, the story goes, he was elected the Whig Party candidate in 1841. He gave his inaugural speech on March 4th in the winter cold of Washington D.C. without wearing a jacket. Did I mention he was 68 years old, then the oldest president to be elected? Yeah. The plot thickens. His inaugural address was nearly 9,000 words long, and took well over two hours to deliver. Needless to say, this dumbass spent the next month dying, and enacting some bullshit legislation.

Harrison died April 4th, 1841. His presidency only lasted one month. But what most people don't know is that on March 28th, Harrison, in an opium delirium, drafted the Robot Futures Act of 2141, which placed the powers of the Presidency, Senate, House and Judiciary in the hands of artificially intelligent "mechanized decisionmakers." He envisioned the world, three hundred years from his own time, as a glorious illustration of pure sublime Enlightenment, where mankind had created all the tools necessary to make life as convenient as possible. This would be a good world. After this "nonsense" was passed by weak politicians just to please a dying old man, Harrison came down hard from his opium high and realized that we could not trust the machines. Harrison then drafted the Decision to Annihilate the Machines Act of 2141, basically sending every American human alive into hand-to-hand combat with the laser-guided borgs. The war he envisioned was worse than the stuff in The Matrix and Terminator combined.

This legislation will affect all of our great-great-great grandchildren. The beyond-the-grave power of this depraved ghost of a dead president must, MUST, be reckoned with, or we will all be batteries for machines or Yorick-like skulls crushed under the feet of cybernetic robots for pure dramatic effect.

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too," my ass. William Henry Harrison ... WORST PRESIDENT EVAH!

It's Easy to See Without Looking Too Far That Not Much Is Really Sacred

Simon Cowell doesn't like the music of Bob Dylan. That doesn't bother me. What does bother me is the fact that he thinks Kelly Clarkson is "a young Aretha Franklin," and that he purportedly thinks she is better than Bob Dylan.

For the record, Kelly Clarkson is no Aretha Franklin, young, old, zygotic or dead. She's an older Debbie Gibson whose producers and A&R people scour the sounds of the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the Minutemen for material. Her music will be forgotten in three years, unlike the "dull" sounds of Bobby Zimmerman.

With sensibilities like these, it's no wonder American Idol-ification has sweeped the globe and lowered the bar for lowest-common-denominator cultural "expre$$ion" (yeeeeaaaah, how punk was that?). To quote an American friend of mine in exile in London, "The masses are asses." Sure, Cowell makes waaaaaay more money than the lumpenproles who watch his shitty show, but he is clearly a reflection and a projection of our tastes in popular entertainment. He is like Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) from the film All About Eve (1950). I wouldn't call him an asshole, because he is not: he is merely a conniving businessman and taste-shaper who knows that by appearing to be an asshole, he will have a greater influence on his show's viewership because he dominates the conversation.

Just look at what I'm doing right now :)

Hair

In some wonderful news, Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell both died today. They were both killed when the hot air coming out of their mouths burnt them to death. The citizens of the mortal universe are glad that they don't have to hear about this non-story between pompous windbags in the news any more.



RIP Donald Trump (1946-2007)




RIP Rosie O'Donnell (1962-2007)

You Can't Judge a Book

... by looking at the cover (unless, to quote Johnny Rotten, "you cover just another") or by comparing it to its film adaptation. Because Holly Go-Heavily has plenty of spare time right now (and P-Cat knows the reason why), I decided to read Robert Bloch's novel Psycho (1959). This is one of those rare instances where the film (1960; dir. Alfred Hitchcock) is superior to the book it adapts. Bloch is a straight-up hack with no knack for suspense, pacing or character depth. There are plenty of key differences between the novel and film. Since more people are familiar with the movie, I'll talk about how the book differs. Norman Bates is a forty year-old virgin who wears glasses, is a Texan (or Oklahoman), and an overweight alcoholic who dabbles in the occult. His interest in taxidermy is only mentioned once: he stuffs a squirrel. Norman Bates and Mary Crane are, basically, both driven to madness (in admittedly vast and varying forms) because they want to get laid, but social forces are working to prevent this from happening. I could go on and on (which I won't) about the subtle changes Hitchcock's screenwriter Joseph Stefano made when he adapted Bloch's novel to improve upon the original, but I will refrain here. The point of this long-winded exercise in bloggorrhea is that yes, indeed, there are some novels/books with film doppelgangers that are much better (this, of course, excludes novelizations of films), though not many. Here are some that come to mind:

++ Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones (1749) --> Tom Jones (1963; dir. Tony Richardson)
++ L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1899) --> The Wizard of Oz (1939; dir. Victor Fleming)
++ Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968) --> 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968; dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Actually, these are all I could think of. Now, to be honest, I've not read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938), James Jones' The Thin Red Line (1962), Mario Puzo's The Godfather (1969), Stephen King's The Shining (1977), Paddy Chayefsky's Altered States (1978), Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy (1985, which was adapted as GoodFellas), Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1990) or Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club (1996), which seem like they'd be better as films, but I could be totally wrong on this.

Can you think of any, Paper Cat? Anybody else out there?