Transformers: The movie: The review: The RIDE!

    Let me preface this by saying that I am not a transformers fan. The toys were cool but I had Go-bots instead and preferred the Thundercats cartoon.

    Transformers the movie is the most enjoyable shitty movie in theaters. It is devoid of plot, dialogue, anything that remotely resembles a movie. It is a 2 ½ hour special effects circle jerk. But, you at least get to participate in the circle, so it isn't all that bad.

Spoilers ahoi.

1)    Los Angeles is not 30 minutes from the Hoover Damn by car. Even by transforming alien car. Las Vegas is. But you didn't show Las Vegas.

2)    No, you did not backwards engineer all that technology from Megatron. The car predates the 1930's. Megatron (for some reason) is some alien jet, not a car. The jet engine was developed by the Germans in the 1940's, not America.

3)    You are telling me that you had the technology in the 30's to transport a cagillion ton robot from Antartica to the Nevada/Arizona border all the while keeping him frozen? No.

These are just some of the drool educing holes that a simple trip to wikipedia could solve. (For example, I just verified the local of the Hoover Dam.) Some other things that made no sense.

    The thing with these giant sentient robots is that they are "Robots in Disguise" It is the most memorable thing about them. They pick an object and learn to transform into that object and back into a giant robot. Deception, stealth, they are like three story tall ninja robots. So why is it that we had 15 minutes of five robots fumbling around in the act of sneakery? Did you just miss the sneaking around part of your nature?

    The coolest character is Starscream. He is sniveling. He is a would be usurper. (My first name means 'usurper' so I feel a kinship) And he had one line in the whole movie. That is less than the main characters stupid best friend who played a comical role for all of three minutes on screen.

    This is the biggest problem. There are no characters in this movie. There are CGI sequences and explosions, and dull pedestrians who continue to walk across the street with their shopping bags as Las Vegas/Los Angeles gets blown up around them. Each of the autobots get about one line in the movie: they introduce themselves. Even Optimus Prime can't seem to remember their names either. He is moved to pronouns as his thousands of years old friend's dead body is in his arms. Who are these creatures? I have no idea, and the many, many interesting dynamics that have been fleshed out in the 20 odd years of Transformers could have made a compelling film but instead... shit just blew up for 2 ½ hours.

    2 ½ hours? Ya. That is a long film. There is 20 minutes worth of footage about computer hackers that could be cut out. The films one black character, though not guilty of any crime, tells police officers to stay off the carpet, his grandma doesn't like anyone on the carpet, especially police. Yup, the obese black family is constantly having police over because... you know, they are black and all. I wont get into the sexism either.

Transformers is a great big fat advertisement for GM cars, Sprite, the Xbox. The bad guys are jets and tanks and junk because they are brandless. The good guys are GM because... well, because we are xenophobes.

And for the love of Christ Michael Bay, shaking a camera around like you have Parkinson's does not make the scene more action packed; it makes us unable to see the colossi battling, which is the only redeeming part of the film.

No story, no characters, plot holes and still enjoyable some how. I recommend a drinking game to ease your way through it. Otherwise you better be a fanboy.

Howdy,

The Francis Bacon exhibit opened at the Albright Knox in early May and I was so ridiculously excited to see it. But the heavy burden of careless weekend possibilities would keep my Fridays sacrosanct. Monday would come along and I would drive to work past the gallery and slap myself on the forehead for missing it yet again. But today I got lucky.

If you doubt the relevance or power of painting, waltz on over to the gallery and take a look. My stomach turned, I felt incredible anxiety, I laughed out loud. It was one of the most emotional experiences at an exhibit I had felt in a long time. Even if you don't like art, check it out, you may be a convert.

Another treat though was I got to see my first Albert Ryder. I have been to the gallery a dozen times in my scant three years here and if it is in their collection I have never seen it. The man was insane. He would fire off a painting and be off onto the next thing, never finishing his paintings with a sealant (or whatever it is they use). He was a very prolific man but very few of his paintings remain. The ones that do are all cracked and chipped, having been posthumously finished. Even through cells of paint could be smushed together to form a seamless painting, the quality it lends his work is outstanding. You can see Winslow Homer in his dark, sparse seascapes with waves like overturned storm clouds. Marsden Heartly's landscapes are almost derivative of Ryder.

Please, stop by and see Bacon and the Ryder. You will be glad you did.

A clip from the movie Groove Tube



goodnight

What to do, what to do.

The owners of most of the homes on my block live on those homes. They aren't sleazy slum lords who live on Long Island and rent until the house burns down in a bong-bloomed blaze. There are just a couple of houses filled with obnoxious college students.

Now, I may not be a spring chicken (I am an human worm android infact) but I remember those college days of carefree parties and a foolhardy sense of immortality. Loud parties with Jock-Jams soundtracks are understandable. They are the very stuff of youthful indiscretions we laugh at when older and wiser.

But for the love of dog anus, must you break beer bottles all over the place?

I don't know? Who cleans up broken glass infront of your house. Well, it is close to the curb so the garbage men must pick it up, right? Maybe our slumlords who last visited Buffalo when steel plants were open and 'talkies' were the wonder of motion pictures.

I mean, do you notice that your frat paradise is right next door to a home full of children? Too bad little billy fell off his skateboard and shredded his face on your sidewalk.

Well, accidents happen. They do. But clean it up.


Soon, very soon. There will come a time when I will pick up glass and beer bottles. And it will go to a place you never knew you loved so dearly.

You know what I find super cool about our Independence day?

Other nations celebrate their independence with the day they stormed a Bastille, or lopped off some head, or won some battle. But here in America, it is the day we signed a document a year after the fighting had begun.

Our independence is linked not to the comings and goings of power and the nation state, rather it is indelibly linked to a set of ideas. Ideas that even the founding generations found contentious and are even debated to this day. Women, for example, are not constitutionally made equal to men and an amendment to such has been debated in congress nearly every session since the 1920's. In a sense, this revolution is still going on. Not being made of armies and generals there is not point of 'mission accomplished'.

In terms of how we recognize our nationhood we are a nation of ideas; other nations are those of wars.

So why in the name of fuck's ugly grand daughter are drunken men throwing little colorful explosives in the air?

Or, more importantly, why are they doing it before it is dark out? You can hardly see them and are scaring the neighbors dog.

Have a few more beers, wait a few more hours, and when your alcohol thined blood is dripping on the floor of the local emergency room remember, those bullets fired and lives sacrificed do not make our nation. But the freedom to blow up your beer bottle in your hand does.

Good night, and Hern bless America.