Movie 43.

I’ve noticed with some wry amusement that “Movie 43”, – a sort-of gross-out, shock-for-shock’s sake, less-witty Kentucky Fried Movie, – is being called one of worst movies ever made. At the time of this writing, Rotten Tomatoes, an aggregate of total film ratings, gives it a mere 4%. Lest you think I’m some old prudish fuddy-duddy, one of the premises of the sketches is that a young girl gets her period and makes a mess. Hilarious, isn’t it? What? Pointing and laughing at a young girl isn’t funny to you?

Movie 43 is another example of Hollywood being creatively bankrupt. It seems like an industry run by Frat Boys who still think it's cool to wear their baseball caps backwards, whose tastes never grew from Junior High School. (Exhbit A: Transformers, Battleship, etc. etc.)

I should point out that shock humor has a place in comedy. One of my favorite things is South Park, which revels in a cesspool of scatalogical and political incorrectness. The difference is that South Park is speaking in good faith. Its power as cultural Court Jester is that it speaks truth to power and never lies.The shock of South Park is (usually) not from gross-out, although there is plenty of that too, but in the way that South Park exposes the fact that the Emperor Wears No Clothes. Comedy Central has two huge and influential cultural critiques. The Daily Show successfully critiques The Right’s Moral Culture War, and South Park skewers the touchy-feely-inclusive, but unimaginably intolerant, Left Wing Moral Do-Gooders who are decidedly NOT HELPING.

Columbus Day

"You may call me Grand Admiral
of the Oceanic Sea."

Today is Columbus Day, which as far as holidays go, is now a source of some modern embarrassment, as well as irritation that banks and Post Offices are closed. Everyone is quick to point out that Columbus didn't technically discovered America, and Native Americans do have reason to be angry with him, as he was a vanguard of the Conquistadors. He did take natives back as human zoo specimens, an action that one would think would be immoral even through the lens of 1492 European values. The Spanish were okay with this, but the natives started killing themselves in a mass display of suicide after their women and goods were taken.

If Christopher Columbus should be honored as a historical personality, it's because of his personal magnetism, that stood out even in the rampant egotism of courtly noble life. We may not like Columbus today, but the nobles he consorted with, were enchanted by his personality.

Columbus wasn't a noble, but invented an elaborate back-story for himself that he was somehow descended from a certain Count Columbo of the Castle of Cuccaro. He also claimed the Roman general Colonius as direct descendent. He was actually the kid of a successful Italian cheese maker and wine merchant, but his nobility story was plausible enough, that he married up into a prominent Portuguese family. When I was a kid in Elementary School, there was a brief trend with some of my classmates to make the claim to be a direct descendant of the outlaw Jessie James. The impulse to lie about one's ancestry to seem more interesting is still with us.

Through his in-laws, he finagled his way into a meeting with the Portuguese King, Joãl II. Columbus, bold as brass, demanded that the King finance an expedition to Asia, by going West of course, and he wanted the modest and humble title, Grand Admiral of the Oceanic Sea. Columbus also demanded 10% of any loot that he discovered as a binding, ancestral title to his family, which would have made them some of the richest people on the planet.

King Joãl II was impressed with the sheer audacity of Columbus, but ultimately the King said something to the extent of, "Um...let's see. I think rather not."

Columbus would later move to Spain, and repeat this give-me-everything-I-want-because-I-deserve-it schtick to Spanish nobles, who through the force of Columbus' personality were receptive to the idea, but powerless to grant Columbus the titles he craved. This would change with the meeting of Queen Isabella, who did give Columbus everything he wanted, but not the 10% of the booty.

"This is for your own good, and you'll thank us later."

At the same time Columbus' exhibition was being financed, Queen Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand II, started a little something called the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition was institutionalized torture and murder on a mass scale, a movement so awful, that we still feel the pain of it after all these years.  In some respects, they were fundamentalist religious revolutionaries like Oliver Cromwell and the Ayathollah Khomeni, but they didn't take over the Spanish government – they were the government.  Isabella had a redeeming human quality; she disagreed with Columbus plans to enslave natives, but to no avail.

Of course, this is guilt by association. Isabella and Ferdinand were awful people, but one gets the feeling that Columbus would have accepted money from anyone. Columbus wasn't exactly a Conquistador, more like a Conquistador Lite.

Columbus was a megalomanic, but in his defense, he could pull off all the things he dreamt up, much like the late Steve Jobs. Isabella started one of the cruelest terror campaigns ever inflicted in Europe, as well as bloody adventures in the New World. I see no reason to celebrate Columbus Day, unless you work at a bank, and are needing a three-day weekend.

Things Happen When You Wear Eleganza!

Don't laugh, they're comfortable.

Ravenclaw Forever

Every so often I take online Harry Potter Hogwarts Sorting Hat quizzes. I always come up with Ravenclaw. This one claims to be the most scientific of the online Sorting Hats. So, there you go...

The sorting hat says that I belong in Ravenclaw!
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Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose intelligence is surest."

Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron's affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine's editor).

Take the most scientific Harry Potter Quiz ever created.
Get Sorted Now!

I swear I'm not trying to "game the system." I know the questions I could fake to get into the House I wanted, which would be a very Slytherin thing to do.

I know a lot of Slytherins, and get on with them really well. In these online quizzes, House of Slytherin always has a strong showing in my personality. Despite having produced more Dark Wizards than any other House, Slytherin really isn't so bad. Not many people know that most "Mommy Bloggers" are either Muggles or House of Slytherin. It's true.

Roger Scruton on 'Why Beauty Matters.'

This is a provocative polemic on the aesthetics of beauty, and why beauty is essential to civilization. It's quite long, about an hour, but I strongly recommend you allocate some time to watch it. I think this is an important topic, and it would mean a lot to me if my friends and allies watched it.


 You can read Roger Scruton's thoughts on this subject here:

Beauty and Desecration

Time to learn your ABCs, Daddio.

This is an interesting pedagogical strategy, that is pre-hippy, of letting children learn in whatever fashion they want. The kids in this video seem to feel they'll learn more if they constantly smoke cigarettes, ride motorcycles with wild abandon, and dress like members of The Cramps. The matter-of-fact narration describe the students as being, "allowed to find out for themselves whether conventions are good or bad." 




The school is trying to induce autodidacticism in these bee-bopping, leather-jacketed, kiddos. This is an astonishing approach whose only analog is home-schooling.

I would love to see a follow-up to see where these kids featured in the video are now. I suspect that unlike members of other British boarding schools, which are infamous worldwide for psychological cruelty, – if you don't eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?– these motorcycle ridin' kids probably grew up to be innovators in whatever field they chose. Sitting in a desk all day only prepares a kid for future cubicle work.

It seems like in the 1970s there was an educational movement, influenced by the Utopian politics of the hippies, that espoused the notion that the only rule, is there are no rules. The so-called Freedom School from the counter-culture film Billy Jack is an example I can think of, but I've never met anyone in real life who went to a school like that. An early Simpsons episode has Bart conning his way into a school for "gifted students" that allow the kids to set their own agenda. It doesn't work for Bart.

Looking at the educational histories of highly successful people, like Richard Branson and Bill Gates, it's hard not to notice that they took a different educational approach. Of course, I'm not suggesting that if you drop out of high school like Richard Branson, you'll wind up running a billion dollar empire like Virgin Atlantic like he did, you'll probably be destitute. But I like the idea of having kids discover their own path.

Thanks to Disinfo.com for the link!