Do You Want Clean Air, or Cars? You Can't Have Both

Two articles on the same day in the same rightist newspaper. No one could ever accuse them of consistency. One article moans about how pollution is basically killing us, the other whines about traffic jams (mostly caused by cyclists, according to this newspaper). This same paper has fought, tooth and nail, the new mayor's plan to expand bike paths throughout the city, complaining that it will slow down traffic. They never, not once, asked how this might benefit the citizens of the city. 

As it is turning out, the new bikes paths are not causing major traffic delays. I think that most people are in full agreement with the mayor which led to his re-election in May. We are already seeing new bike paths in the city, including a new section that will link the end of Turia Park with the path that goes to the port and the beach. It is almost finished.

How To Fix The United States of America

Step #1

We need to make gun violence at least as much of a taboo as sex is in movies and television. Take a look at this movie poster. Instead of a huge gun, what if he had an enormous penis or a woman’s beast in his hand. Would we allow that? Of course, we wouldn’t. The difference is that most of us have either a penis or breasts. Sex is a normal, healthy part of adult life, yet if you make a film about sex it will receive an X rating which condemns it to failure.

Violence, if you are lucky, isn’t a normal aspect of modern life. You can make horrendously violence movies with people’s brains being blown out and painting walls and the worst rating the movie will get is an R rating. How can this be?

Movies should not be allowed to advertise to the public with images of guns (like the poster for this completely shitty movie). In trailers they should not be able to show scenes of violence.

If we stigmatized violence they way we do sex in movies, perhaps the studios would make fewer of these morally bankrupt horrors.

Why I Hate Game of Thrones

Exactly what you would expect the author to look like.

All of this is in addition to the fact that the show is a tribute to fascism. Leni Riefenstahl must be turning in her grave and kicking herself for kicking the bucket before Game of Thrones first aired.

The intro. The music is stupid, and bombastic, like everything else about the series, so I suppose that it’s perfect. The intro also takes way too long. I would have never made it to a single episode without fast-forward. I was in a little village sitting in a cafe and I heard a kid in an apartment somewhere practicing his trombone. He repeated the four notes of the GOT theme a couple dozen times earning himself justifiable homicide status if you happen to be one of his neighbors.

The acting. It’s impossible for there to be good acting in such a childishly simple melodrama. Most of what passes for acting on the show is close-ups of the queens’ faces looking stern, forlorn, or some other comically melodramatic trope. After the battle, it’s a contest to see who can look the forlornest. Long, long, way too long shots of faces which the directors think is the same as acting. It isn’t.

If any of the cast actually are capable of acting, they were never given the chance in this production that tried to overpower viewers with schmaltz and circumstance in every scene. By the end, I hated everyone, even a couple of the actors I initially liked.

The story. After eight seasons almost nothing has changed in the story. We’ve been hearing about the dead from the North and how terrible they are. Then we get an orgiastic battle in which it’s impossible to keep score one way or the other.  Then their wicked leader is slain in a fairly pedestrian manner: knifed by a child. This will now serve as the new definition of anti-climax. “The zombies don’t win in the end? I never saw that coming.”

The dragon girl carries out The Final Solution.

The hot dragon-on-dragon action. Ugh, just didn’t do it for me. The images of the blond gal flying around on the dragon like the Red Baron made me laugh.

The dialogue. Clichés on top of piles of older, deader clichés. There wasn’t a breath of fresh air in eight seasons.

The groveling to royals. I can almost understand Brits digging all of the “milady” and “milord” and “my queen” and “bend the knee” crap, but it should sicken Americans. GOT needs a good peasant uprising.

The best part. It’s over. Praise YAWEH, it’s over!