Sunday, February 08, 2004

Sympathy for the Devil and Jonah   As we mentioned a couple of days ago, the story of Jonah Goldberg is much like the story of Damien Thorn of The Omen (parts 1-3 only).  Both came from evil lineage.  Dogs played a prominent role in each of their lifes.  And both interned at the IEA. And you know else interned there?  Harry Potter.  And Harry, like Damien, was raised by foster parents who didn’t understand him, was sent to a weird boarding school, and bore a mark of his magical heritage on his head. Of course, Damien isn’t a good role model for kids, but his movies are a lot easier to find at the video store on a rainy Saturday afternoon. So next time the offspring are driving you crazy, rent Omen III and tell them it’s Harry Potter and the Death of Millions. It should keep them quiet for an hour or two. Or, now that we look at the DVD box carefully, maybe Damien is actually much like  George W. Bush.  Anyway, here's the Subliminal Cinema synopsis of the film:   The Final Conflict: Omen III (1981) Directed by: Graham Baker Written by: Andrew Birkin As a scary-looking machine drills a tunnel beneath Chicago, a worker discovers a dirt clod transfixed by a dagger. He withdraws the blade, and is rightwise declared King of England, or Employee of the Month, or something. A swing choir invades Sotheby’s, and sings upbeat selections from the Satan Big Note Songbook during a cutlery auction. A bald guy delivers a complete set of steak knives to a monastery in Italy, where the utensils are French-kissed by a Friar. Suddenly, we cut to a Bell Laboratories instructional film on the Ice Age. Damien, spawn of the devil, sits in a private screening room, where he bitterly critiques the Ice Age footage because it will not advance his campaign for world domination, and because it reminds him of rainy days in the junior high Cafetorium, and the smell of Tater Tots and Sloppy Joes. Back in his office, Damien predicts the Second Coming, and attempts to conceal his total ignorance of scripture by quoting at length from a previously unknown chapter of the Bible, "the Book of S&H Green Stamps." In London, the United States Ambassador is uneasy, convinced that he’s being followed through Hyde Park by a dwarf with a Handycam. Panicking, he turns the wrong corner and comes face-to-face with a vicious rottweiler. The demon dog hypnotizes the ambassador, promising to help him quit smoking, but instead compels him to commit suicide in a ridiculously baroque manner, involving guns and doorknobs and typewriter ribbons, and the unexpected arrival of Up With People. Back in Washington, the guy who did the voiceovers for those Smuckers jam commercials has been elected President of the United States for some reason, and he appoints Damien ambassador to Great Britain, and president of the Young Republicans for Satan. Meanwhile, somewhere in England, two astronomers discover an amazing—even biblical—convergence of three celestial bodies, which is pretty impressive considering they were just playing "Asteroids." Back at the Italian monastery, the monks distribute the steak knives, the only weapon on Earth that can kill the Anti-Christ, and vow to hunt him down. In Britain, Damien is a huge success as Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and earns kudos from the entire diplomatic community for not killing himself. Determined to win over the press, he seduces a BBC newswoman by giving her son a slavering hell-beast and some valuable tips on how to achieve the Dry Look. The monks begin their holy quest, but as hunters, they turn out to be slightly less effective than Elmer Fudd. ("Be vewwy quiet…I’m hunting Anti-Chwists!"). They track Damien to a television studio, but the assassination goes awry when the killer-monk accidentally sets himself on fire and winds up dangling upside down by one ankle, swinging wildly around the room like a wrecking ball as he knocks over various pieces of the set. Damien immediately deduces that something is amiss. Either a band of incompetent, Ginsu-wielding monks are attempting to assassinate him, or else the Cirque du Soleil auditions were an abysmal failure. Damien goes into his Secret Fort to play with his My Size Jesus, but gets into one of those my-Dad-can-beat-up-your-Dad arguments, and then he cuts his hand on the crown of thorns and has to go in early. Meanwhile, the three stars noticed by the video game-playing astronomers have aligned over London, signaling that England—so often snubbed by the International Olympic Committee--has won the competition to host the Second Coming. With Christ now returned to Earth and time of the essence, the monks make another attempt on Damien’s life, this time by accidentally stabbing one of their own, then locking themselves in a tomb and dying of starvation. To thwart the Second Coming, Damien decrees the death of every male infant born on the day of the harmonic convergence. But first, he goes fox hunting, giving the monks yet another chance to assassinate him. They fail, but do succeed in assassinating the fox. Rallying, a monk on horseback pulls his dagger and charges Damien, but almost immediately falls off the horse, and then off a bridge. The remaining assassin is torn apart by Springer spaniels. In a cave somewhere, the Antichrist conducts an Anthony Robbins-style seminar for a covenful of Satanists, and charges his pale, doughy disciples with the task of slaying "the Nazarene." But first, he makes them walk on hot coals and buy his complete set of self-motivation tapes. The surviving monk pays a visit to the BBC newswoman. He reveals that Damien bears the devil’s mark on the back of his head, which is concealed by the Anti-Christ’s cunning use of a volumizing shampoo. Through a process of elimination, Damien deduces that the Christ child was born to his own private secretary. Irritated that it’s always in the last place you look, Damien orders the disciple to slay his infant son. But the man refuses, defying his demonic master because Damien didn’t get him anything for Secretary’s Day. Meanwhile, the newswoman gets into a battle of wills with Damien over her son, whose Dry Look is now preternatural. In exchange for sole custody, she offers to lead Damien to the Christ child, who is sheltering in a cathedral. Damien starts searching the nave for a baby. Fed up with the whole thing, the newswoman stabs him in the back with the sanctified Ginsu, producing a terrifying shriek as the wound releases Damien’s inner James Brown. There’s a prolonged bit of shaking, jittering, and scenery-chewing, followed by the sad but inevitable death of the Hardest-Working Anti-Christ in show business.   So, The Final Conflict: a film about American diplomacy in action! Like The Omega Code, this movie is loosely based on the book of Revelation, as well as other Christian eschatology about Antichrists and hair-care products. It also is a lesson about the importance of reading the Bible, especially if you’re mentioned in it. See, the Bible (specifically Acts 1:11, as the movie thoughtfully points out), states that Christ will return the same way he left: not by rebirth, but through special effects. But Damien spends all his time looking for a baby in a manger; so, it’s pretty obvious that Our Little Antichrist never bothered to read the Good Book--which is like Hitler having a copy of the plans for the Normandy Invasion, but never getting around to looking at them because he was too busy watching She’s the Sheriff. Clearly, Damien got into college on the strength of his family name, and not his SATs. Learn from his mistakes. What else does this movie teach us? To start with, the importance of having a really good set of cutlery. The monks in our film utilized the Seven Sacred Knives of Megiddo, a set of holy shish kabob skewers that Gregory Peck picked up in the first movie, just in case he ever needed to kill an antichrist. As we learned in that film, you must make a cross formation with the seven daggers in order to kill the son of Satan. However, this was too difficult for the average warrior monk (they really seem to have gone downhill since the days of Kung Fu), so the rules were modified so that you only had to stab Damien with one of the knives in order to defeat ultimate evil and win the game. And these knives are so easy to use that even a TV Weather Girl can kill demonic beings with them! How much would you pay for knives that can cut through a tin can, slice tomatoes paper-thin, and also dispatch the spawn of hell? Don’t answer yet, because these knives are authentic Megiddo® blades, made by the same people who brought you Megiddo: The Omega Code 2. Yes, Michael York is back, and this time Armageddon is personal! It seems Michael only became The Beast because his brother stole his girlfriend, and Satan promised to help him get her back and get to second base with her. Which makes us wonder: just what would the Mark of the Breast be? Oh, and here’s part of the "They Call Me Trinity Broadcasting" description of the film: "From the rise of the Antichrist and false prophet, to his seizure of world power, to that last great confrontation between good and evil—God and satan — MEGIDDO, the movie, will keep you on the edge of your seat! The end will leave you breathless as satan." Which makes us wonder: just how breathless does Satan leave Paul and Jan Crouch? Anyway, buy good knives. 5:18:28 AM     comment [] trackback [] Thought For the Day From a 1999 "Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey" calendar I found in a box of junk: A good way to look smart in a restaurant is to wait until you hear people at the next table talking about something, then suddenly interrupt them by saying, "Excuse me, sir, but I beg to disagree."  And if they say, "Disagree with what?" just smile and say, "I think you know." Who is this mysterious disagreer? 4:53:38 AM     comment [] trackback []   Very Interesting, But Stupid: Weekend Edition   1.  We start our celebration of the wild world of the wacky with Amber Pawlik, who was watching the Super Bowl and "almost fell over dead when Janet Jackson decided to expose her breast on stage."  Presumably, it was just like the Vagina Monologues, in that it almost turned Amber into a lesbian.  So, did Amber pick herself up off the floor, turn off the TV, and phone Kathleen Parker, so the two could whine about how the world was going to hell in a handbasket?  Not exactly. That goes by and a little later another friend walks through the door. “Janet Jackson showed her breast during halftime,” I told him. He offered that in exchange for doing the dishes that I would try to find the image online. This was at most one half hour after it happened. I figured it was pretty quick to have a new picture of Janet up on the internet but there had to be some website out there dedicated to it. It is, afterall, Janet with part of her breast exposed. I looked and looked. Superbowl.com had recent pictures of the halftime show, but no picture of Janet’s exposed breast. Finally I asked myself, “What site would have up-to-the-minute, latebreaking, racy, gossipy news?” Ladies and gentleman, I found it. The only site that had this latebreaking story within, literally minutes: The Drudge Report. This inspired me to discuss something that is distinctly absent from our culture: investigative reporting. “News” is supposed to be just that: new. Those in the industry should pride themselves on one thing: getting the story before everyone else does. What do our current newspapers pride themselves on? Propaganda. So, the lesson Amber derived from the Great Booby Incident of Ought-Four?  That the mainstream media is falling down on the job because they just don't get you those photos of celebrity breasts in a timely fashion -- which is a real issue for women, who frequently need such photos to bribe men to do the dishes.  Oh, and Amber also bemoans the loss of "newsies," who, in bygone days, used to perform the vital function of alerting the world to major boobical incidents. I have to say this is the most original take on the Super Bowl show I've read today, and while not the stupidest, it comes close. 2.  And speaking of Amber, her bestest friend Sadly, No! covers her latest column, which asks the question that's on everyone's mind: which is more evil, "the Ayatollah thugs of Iran" or the "Western media?"  I think you know the answer to that one. 3.  And speaking of Sadly, No!, he also updates us on what old friend (well, 15-year-old friend) Kyle Williams thought of the Super Bowl half-time show: mainly, that for all its sluts and nipples and such, it didn't bring Kyle happiness.  "To what end will this take us?"  Um, to "porn on demand" and the adoption of homosexuality, in a search for "some kind of contentment," per Kyle.  Dr. No! deals the ramifications. 4.  Oh, and while Amber's only gripe with the half-time show was that it took an hour or so for the media to provide her with downloads of Janet's breast, OTHER PEOPLE recognized that this is a matter of grave import.  Even national security is involved!  Our friend Dave E. tipped us off to Terri Carlin's class action lawsuit, in which Ms. Carlin seeks relief for herself and the approximately 80 million other people who saw the boob, and as a result, "were caused to suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment, and serious injury."  (The "serious injury" was presumably one of those 4-hour erections the Super Bowl advertisers warned us about.)  But worst of all, the lewd dancing and exposed breast "defamed" Terri and the members of her class, and they "have suffered injuries and damages to their reputations as Americans."  Indeed, this nasty behavior harmed "the standing and credibility of Americans in the world," and Janet, Justin, CBS, MTV, the NFL, and several other 3-letter organizations should have to regain America's loss of standing by paying everyone a few booby bucks.  Personally, I think this is a matter is so serious is shouldn't be handled in the civil court, but in the FBI/Homeland Security Patriot Act courts.  Janet's boob of mass attraction is obviously dangerous, and is perhaps a biological terror weapon.  I think John Ashcroft will have to investigate this one personally! 5.  The fine folks at the Young America Foundation continue to send me emails alerting me to such programs as a Young Activists conference at the Jesse Helms center, designed to teach me how to blackmail my school into sponsoring campus speakers (it includes free food, so if you're in Jesse's neighborhood, you might want to attend).  But what if my fictitious school is but a poor agricultural college which can't afford the $20,000 (plus expenses) that Ann demands?  Well, there's a plan for that too: The Grassroots Lecture Program, which features generic and factory-second speakers! The Grassroots Lecture Program is a new breakthrough program designed to offer student groups with minimal funding an opportunity to sponsor dynamic conservative speakers. Oftentimes, new student groups wishing to host conservative speakers face a Catch-22. The school refuses to give new organizations significant funding because they haven't hosted a speaker before, but the group cannot demonstrate that they can be effective until they receive funding. The Grassroots Lecture Program removes this roadblock by recruiting speakers who require little or no honoraria and have proven to be effective proponents of conservative ideas.   And who are some of these budget speakers? For starters, the illustrious Sally Pipes.  Sally Pipes!  She's a member of the Federalist society.  She's a board member for the Independent Women's Forum (you know, where Daneille Crittenden and Meghan Cox Gurdon sometimes hang out.  She's "an internationally recognized public policy leader," even if YOU'VE never heard of her.  And she writes columns for MensNewsDaily about Stepford Feminists, so she's apparently last-year's Amber Pawlik.  But she doesn't appear to be Daniel Pipes' wife, proving Amber's theory about women who damage their goods in their twenties. But the main reason I wanted to tell you about this economy speaker program is that, for little or no cost, your university could hear from Hugo Gurdon. the shadowy figure behind Meghan, and kiddies Hecuba, Zirconium, Claris, and Nice (pronounced the French way).  His bio says he speaks on "Environmental Public Policy, but I bet if you asked him nicely during the Q&A session, you could get him to tell charming but moralistic stories about his flighty wife and feral children.  All in all, I'd think it would be very interesting to hear from Hugo.  Although probably stupid too. 4:48:48 AM     comment [] trackback []

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