Grass

Introducing: Squarehead Bunny

Whassup sweet babies, just wanted to rap a-choo awhile

"It's hip to be square- proven fact, proven fact- and here I am. Haha, just kidding- say, how you doin' today? Having fun? Having fun just being young, just being yourselves and being young and yeah, yeah. Me too, man, me too- maybe I don't look like I'm on top of the world, but you know, sometimes we have bad days. Sometimes we have good days, too, y'know. The ball bounces our way. The toast hits the ground jelly-up, haha. Haha."

"Hey man, guess what? Well, I was out in the yard this morning just, y'know, doing whatever, and man... You ain't even gonna believe this man, but guess what I found? Grass. Grass, man, grass, just a whole big 'ol lawn full of it. And I'm like, Rock'N'Roll- cool, y'know, just too cool, man, got all this grass, too much to even know what to do with it. So I lwent to town on it, man, just ate the horse snot out of that grass. Man, it was dee-licious and dee-lightful, this grass, and I just got all I could get."

"Man, fuck this carrot"

"See, when I was growing up, we didn't have no grass, man- neighborhood was in the city, but real tight, man, real uptight. Out in the yard, y'know, whatever goes, but man oh man, in my neighborhood you couldn't squeeze out one single little, perfect sphere without everyone in the row of cages knowing 'bout it. Man, if I had had some grass, maybe then... Anyway, didn't get no grass growing up, just trying it for the first time..."

"Imma tell you something- you my friend, and you ain't never need to ask me for any grass- k? 'Cause I'm your friend, you get however much grass you want- hell, got a whole yard full of it. Yessir, just as much grass as you want. None of that hard pellet stuff or that dry, crushed up stuff, just good fresh grass, finest I've ever seen."

"Munch, munch, nawmean? Munch munch, muthafuckas... Fucking munch..."

"So I'm watching this new Woody Allen movie, and I'm like, asides from the big 'ol chest booty on this blond, why am I watching this? I'd had like four and half pounds of grass before this, like for real, because I think I am gonna love this movie, but naw, just some guy who keep getting away with everything. No bunny wanna go watch a movie about some guy not getting chased around or nothin'- just walking around watching him not get caught for stuff he did... Man, all I wanted to do the whole time was just get back home to the lawn, nawmean? Munch munch..."

Southern Cone update: they got his wallet

Nick in Southern Cone 2006. He is in studying abroad in a ritzy part of Old Palermo. Today: "no more excuses:"

so it went down like this: [......] a hopping place, but not really on a monday night. my other buddy lucho never shows up, so i am basically chilling by myself, and i start to get eyed by some argentines, who i now know are fucking busted ass broke no class dirty fucking shithead BITCHES.

I start shooting the shit with them a little bit, not very drunk at all, and they walked with me for the 4-5 blocks to my house. i was stupid enough to take my wallet out to buy a beer, and the only bill i had was 100 pesos. for some reason i put 20 of that in my pocket, after paying 8 for a huge budweiser i fucking shared with these kids. the kid who never said one word but had a chicago bulls hat on grabbed my wallet, i fucking cracked him in the face as hard as i could, just another kid tripped me and another pushed me down from behind. i was wearing sandals so they were fucking gone, plus they were fucking fast. luckily, when i cracked the motherfucker, he was only able to grab the cash out of my wallet and a whole bunch of my ID cards fell out, which was lucky as hell....

.......this country is fucking bogus, yáll. palermo is the third richest neighborhood in the city, behind recoleta and belgrano, and i couldnt even walk alone without getting jacked by a gang of 14-17 year old homeless kids. god bless the u.s. of a. for the first time i felt like going home, but there is no way i am sacrificing a semester´s worth of credits. now i know i cant fucking walk around buenos aires alone at night.

He will soldier on, and solve some local economic contradictions when he can.

Just another Day in the Valley: "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" is officially my favorite movie of 2006

This is what movies are supposed to do.

We can all agree that Hollywood lacks any guts nowadays. Thus, the best "movie" movie of the year would have to shatter all boundaries of taste and convention — make you laugh, cry. Only Gary Busey and Billy Zane have the guts to get us out of this cinema funk. And they have.

Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (Turkish: Kurtlar Vadisi Irak) is hands-down one of the coolest movies I have seen in a long time. It will be a cult classic, it will cause some angry Christian riots in Cleveland. It's that good. According to Wikipedia, it is the most expensive Turkish movie ever. Actual plot details there - mine are purely visual impressions.

It's more cliche than an episode of Knight Rider, more crass than Jerry Bruckheimer, and it owes debts to Full Metal Jacket, Lethal Weapon, Hong Kong, Kurosawa, Ford's westerns, and every late 80's action flick on FX or USA. Check the website for an English trailer (WMV - ok on Mac) – because the version I downloaded was almost totally Turkish.

Set aside the canned "anti-Semitic" reaction. Busey really has no more than ten minutes of screen time as the evil Jewish doctor stealing organs from Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and shipping them to Israel. But someone had to play this unique, absurdly comic villain, finally bringing the unreal Abu Ghraib universe into movie culture through wicked Dr. Frankenstein-style High Camp. (Abu Ghraib really is this pointless & random, I think is Busey's subtext)

Billy Zane is Sam William Marshall, the Coalition Provisional Authority messiah-figure / piano-playing murderous psychotic, usually clad in white. He poses as a "white hat" for the savages: get it? (I think Zane figured he owed the Middle East an outlandish villain after The Mummy - fair's fair)

Zane has an entourage of evil mercenaries – the khaki vests, buzz cuts and machine guns are a fair visual representation of a typical Blackwater Personal Security Detail. In the English teaser he seems to say "When the Turkmen are done, the Arabs are next," and the movie mainly follows the travails of the Turkmen minority in northern Iraq.

I got Valley off a Turkish BitTorrent site (here's the Torrent - it works, be patient). For a little clip hit this link and uncompress it. In that early scene, Zane, his mercenaries and the U.S. soldiers raid the Turkish headquarters in Iraq. He tips over a Turkish flag – cue the dramatic music. They lead the personnel out to the truck with bags over their heads, and in the film version, an officer writes a letter, and puts it and a Turkish flag in a bag, and shoots himself. The raid is true, the suicide, not.

I downloaded a version with poor sound, and extreme flickering (the frames are not synced - it strobes really bad). Also, everything was dubbed into Turkish, including Zane and Busey. No subtitles — though the English-language trailer on the website features their lines in English, so hopefully if when the movie is released in the U.S., it will be a little easier to follow.

This film is awesome, and it would be a huge hit in the states. It reminded me of Reservoir Dogs, Apocalypse Now, the insanity of the news, Bollywood, Rambo, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Natural Born Killers, Lord of the Rings, the Chuck Norris flick Delta Force, a bit of The Matrix (roof escape), anything about Compton. Also reminded me of the book "The Ugly American" - as there is a scene with Zane handing out toys and food to the Iraqis while the media captures it.
(and of course Battle of Algiers and Lawrence of Arabia. And Xbox's "Call of Duty 2": the bazaar levels)

A lot of people die in "Valley of the Wolves." They are killed by a suicide bomber, crazed mercenaries with rocket launchers, jumpy U.S. troops, Zane himself. I took quite a few screenshots and so I will lay out a bit of the action. This movie would be huge in the United States – and it might make Rumsfeld's head explode in anger.

And I'm sorry, it's fun. It's revolting. It's utterly insane and packed with tons of Hollywood cliches, starting with the Noir venetian blind trick in the first minute.

Go look at the IMDB comments for a sampling of reactions. A Turk is pissed because the heroes are gangsters. How many ways could this movie make you angry? That's what makes art fit a certain place and time...

A little more of the cast:

Badass Sheikh Abdurrahman Halis Kerkuki. He intervenes in a beheading-video-in-progress and rides a white horse.

Strikingly similar-looking to the Battle of Algiers guy.

The two-bit Turkish gangsters who save the day in their black suits and white shirts. Tarantino heroes, without a doubt.

Leila, the young woman whose groom is killed in the wedding at the beginning of the movie (see English trailer). She kicks a lot of ass.

I started taking screenshots after the flick started, after the initial raid. Spoiler warning: this outlines a lot of what happens. Don't look at this if you want to be surprised. Including dramatic ending. Although I couldn't fully understand it.

There are a few dozen pictures on the flip. By "Turkish guys" some might actually be Turkmen. Again, I had no dialogue when watching.

Some kind of dedication ceremony. Dear Leader poster in back there.

Prisoners (including those captured from the wedding) are deposited at Abu Ghriab. Busey is furious that the mercenary killed a bunch of the Iraqis in the container. Yes, those are the coolers for Israel.

A dramatic conversation between Zane and the Turkish guy I couldn't understand. There was a bomb under Zane's chair. Zane is essentially holding the crowd of children hostage while the bomb is defused.

The evil mercenaries wasting innocent people. Rambo, anyone?

Sniper & suicide bombing type situation. Lots of wounded soldiers & innocent people.

More of the Abu Ghraib situation. German Shepherd & Lynnie England-style. The beginning of this scene is really shocking.

Public Relations - handing out food and goodies as media watches. Hence the subtle "white hat" metaphor.

Dramatic destruction of a minaret with priest inside.

Ethnic cleansing / forcible displacement of Turkmen, I think, as U.S. soldier watches, confused. There is a monologue of sorts, and I distinctly picked out something like "and then what of the Arabs?" This is pretty much the only place you will hear about the ethnic cleansing of minorities in Iraq – which alarms the Turks.

Sweet religious ceremony. This was really cool.

STAB!

Hostage video in progress. Who is that actor??

Zane has a piano moment.

Widow seeks wisdom from clerics and has a dangerous confrontation, handled calmly

Climactic battle - she is good with a knife. Turkish guys gotta save the day.

Classic Hollywood / Shakespearean ending / Nose ring symbolizes lost love & such.

Just another Day in the Valley.

I am sorry if looking at this spoiled some parts of the movie for you. Who knows how long it will take for this to get onto an American screen? If it never does, we are the poorer for it. This is great Saturday afternoon popcorn fare. I just want to actually understand the dialogue.

Just amazing. Just another day in the valley of the wolves.

Monday Grab Bag...

Woody? Bigfoot? Just Relax™

First, a welcome to Pixeldusted, and may he continue to toil in anonymity for our bemusement.

Last night I went to see Match Point, Woody Allen's alleged comeback film and the first time he has turned his camera away from his home of Manhattan to another city, London. For those of you wondering if the movie does, indeed, represent a return to form- a real Woody Allen movie, one that has some of the same combination of pathos, casual intellectualism and visual cues swiped from much better French directors- let me just say

no. it sucks. do not give Woody ten dollars.

In more important (and exciting!) news, Bigfoot has been sighted! It would seem that the tribesmen of a southern Malaysian state have spotted a

12" hairy man-beast on the outskirts of a national forest. Three fishermen of the tribe started a popular obsession last November when they reported seeing three of the creatures at the edge of the Endau-Rompin reserve. Apparently the tribesmen have less of a credibility gap then might be expected from a people who believe the hairy hominids to be the largest of three mysterious proto-human species living in the forest, as the government has dispatched "an official Bigfoot-tracking team" to the site. Of course, Maylasians are in no way familiar with the Bigfoot of western culture, so every news story you will read will contain a healthy portion of Lost in Translation. Other than it being twelve feet tall and hairy, and possessing a propulsion system capable of making the enormous footprints it apparently left on the river banks, there is little to go off of as far as what the creature might look like, though I have clear picture in my mind:

"Man, do I get off on fucking with Malaysian fishermen!"

Even more elusive and unctuous than Manimal, Man-Boy George took to the floor today to announce that *gasp*

MILWAUKEE - Saying the nation is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that would "startle" most Americans,

[...]
Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people," Bush said. "We're on the edge of some amazing breakthroughs — breakthroughs all aimed at enhancing our national security and our economic security and the quality of life of the folks who live here in the United States.

Source

Shucks, was that ever easy! A month ago we had to do something and now it's almost here, the solution! Hurrah! I can officially accept the opposite of everything you say to be true! Thanks! Seriously, though? Seriously? The State of the Union focussed on energy independence and then our plan is Deus Ex Machina? "Something will come along to fix our problems!" That's the answer!?

Secret wish of mine: to be chosen as a Citypages' MN Blog of the Day. Vote for me or something...