November 19, 2008 Heroes, Mad Science

Boozing, when done well, is the welcome opposite of work. Very little effort should go into a good booze-up; the drinker’s main concern should be remaining smilingly ruddy-faced while pouring the nectar down his or her gob and thinking capital thoughts. There are, however, certain minor exertions that interfere with the complete rest that is the drinker’s due when tippling, and it is here that technology has stepped in admirably to help out.

There is, for instance, the automatic beer dispenser, which saves your dedicated drinker the nuisance of having to needlessly trouble the muscles in his legs by leaving the couch to get a beer (Note: This has yet to be mass-produced as far as we know. It will probably take a bit of tinkering as the prototype model does appear to carry the risk of bloodying the nose of an eight-year-old who just happens by while daddy “orders up another.”) Someone has undoubtedly tackled the problem of the other reason why a drinker needs to get up, though we, in the interests of keeping down breakfasts, did no further research into that.

Pictured here is another addition to the beer accessories market and it is one that makes the beer rocket-packs we covered (3-liter beer dispensers strapped to the back of a ball-gown-wearing waitress who may or may not be sporting a pair of giant black wings) seem downright sensible. The remote control beer pager is designed for beer drinkers who may have misplaced their drinks at a party. If your beer is adorned in one of these babies, you need only press a button on a mini-remote that attaches to your belt (presumably, in keeping in mind the target demographic [pictured none too subtly on the cozy itself] this will also clip just as easily on to a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants) and the beer cozy will light up and “let loose a satisfying belch.” Class.

We can appreciate the need for tracking mechanisms on beer: after all who hasn’t swallowed the odd cigarette remainder after picking up the wrong beer at a party? That said, a critic might point out the fact that the loud belch that accompanies the paging is both excessive and potentially confusing since at any party where this sort of thing is present, a loud satisfying belch would not be the distinctive sound the makers of this seem to think it would be, and, not to be a couple of spoilsports, but wouldn’t simply placing your beer into this unsightly thing be enough to distinguish it from all others without the technological intervention?

Such niggling points aside, the price of the remote control beer pager is, depending on how you value money, somewhat reasonable at $20 a pop and an item to keep in mind for the holiday shopping season (provided you do not live with or intend to party with the intended recipient). Features:

• Remote Activation up to 60 feet.
• Unique belt-clip feature on remote.
• Removeable cupholder.
• Keeps your beverage chilled.
• Works through walls!
• Acts as a coaster and a coozie!

November 18, 2008 reviews

“The camera never lies.”
“That’s bullshit.”

To ‘redact’ is a to make multiple texts appear unified by theme, famously in One Thousand and One Nights. More commonly, ‘redacted’ refers to the removal of sensitive information prior to publication, such as in an intelligence dossier or by editing a video so it’s ironic that despite the title, and narrative device of a video diary, nothing is really ‘redacted’ here.

The film follows the exploits of a would-be auteur Angel Salazar (Izzy Diaz, a three time valet on Entourage heads a no-name cast), who chronicles the often banal, yet at times intensely harrowing exploits of his fellow squadron members stationed in Samarra, Iraq, with video footage he hopes will one day get him into film school.

His pals include the usual assortment of war movie stereotypes, the gruff, yet kind African American Sergeant Sweet, the backwoods trigger-happy dimwit, ridiculously named ‘Reno’ (with a sibling ‘Vegas’),  who doesn’t even bother feigning a Cajun accent, the honorable do-gooder McCoy (the real?) and the nervous nebbish, the butt of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ jokes, ‘Blix’, a highly unlikely nickname derived from the Swedish UN weapons inspector.

Without a backstory to engage, they’re all left to react solely on instinct and the southerner and gruff sergeant happily oblige, dispassionately blowing away a pregnant mother and son and warning the “Midget Ali Babas’ tugging at their gear are all spies, respectively.

Blix is interviewed on camera by Salazar reading aloud the Maugham-penned epigraph to ‘The Appointment in Samarra‘,  about meeting your maker in Iraq—not exactly ‘Win one for the Gipper’ reading material on the battlefront and then the young documentarian is fascinated by a large scorpion, which he films succumbing to an attack by numerous tiny ants. With warriors like these, the exit strategy should be a quick exit.

POV camera work interspersed with fake French documentary footage about the extreme dangers of checkpoints, online video clips, blogs and grainy security footage sets the backdrop of the film—intensely claustrophobic and innards-wrenching,  with bomb sniffing dogs and fingers on trigger, split seconds between life and breathing a final breath, eased with comic relief during down time:  ‘You’re so white, you wouldn’t wear yourself after Labor Day’ or ‘Is it wrong to fall in love with the King of Clubs?’ during a poker game with nudie cards.

However before and after the main plot point—a plan to rape a young girl whose home was just raided— is introduced, Salazar’s camera details racism, bigotry, xenophobia, sexism of every stripe that is not only extremely patronizing to soldiers, but the audience as well, expected to believe that a video camera can be casually brought out at every turn and without any recourse through the chains of command.

‘Hajjis’ and ‘Shit-birds’ are used in every day conservation as is ‘Sand Nigger’, casual racism despite their professed admiration for and camaraderie with the black Sergeant Sweet.

When the rape scheme reaches its ugly conclusion, the do-gooder McCoy who took no part in it, yet didn’t tip off any hire ups, confides in his no-nonsense military dad over webcam and is sternly warned against whistle-blowing, yet another bad apple in De Palma’s orchard harvest.

Platitudes like ‘an American life is worth that of 100 Iraqis’, and ‘Welcome to the fuckin’ army!’, are sounded and grim statistics flashed across the screen courtesy of the mock impartial French doc (as if their hands were clean as a major international arms dealer).

The film then reaches a conclusion as inevitable as an exploded IED: McCoy’s testimony discounted, subsequent mental breakdown and justice unserved—not by anything ‘redacted’ mind you, but by good old fashioned threats, lack of video evidence, witness corroboration, and then moral equivalency justice meted out through Jihadist beheading.

As the Puccini score reaches a crescendo, a photo montage of Iraqi victims attempts a poignancy not delivered by the preceding 90 minutes (and even then, their eyes were apparently blacked out for fear they might sue), 90 minutes of flunked cinema verite, uni-dimensional characters and bi-national condescension.

Chris, Toronto

November 17, 2008 celebrities

According to reports, the Beatles’ experimental song Carnival of Light includes gargling, distorted guitar and shouts of ”Are you alright?”, or to put it another way, complaints that would rouse an apartment building superintendent at 4AM.

Apparently, during the Penny Lane sessions when he penned his 14-minute opus, Macca was gleaning inspiration from avant garde composer John Cage, perhaps best known for 4′33, a ‘completely silent composition’, which prompts the question: ‘if you were ever to attend a live performance, when would you applaud?’ Click here for an extraordinarily uninteresting sample, where the piece ‘allows the audience to absorb the sounds around them’, or to put it another way, the most conspicuous time to head to the bathroom.

One thing that can be said about the Cage piece, is that it can be performed by any instrument regardless of whether it’s in tune, or by anyone who can count to ‘273′, has access to throat lozenges and who doesn’t have gas (see the phrase ’silent but deadly’)

Further cementing his legacy as the least interesting Beatle, Sir Paul’s musical direction for these recording sessions included the decidedly un-Cagian: ”just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn’t need to make any sense.”

Speaking of not making sense, getting this song released is going to require legal challenges a la passage of the US bailout bill: approval from the widows Lennon, Harrison as well as Ringo Starr, even if his artistic contribution to the Beatles is comparable to those transients Picasso painted during his ’Blue Period’.

McCartney also expressed an interest recently in working with Bob Dylan, who unlike Paul has put out some of the most vital music of his career during the last decade, in what these days would be an asymmetrical collaboration akin to rolling an organ grinder across the stage during a performance by the Vienna Philharmonic.

In other Beatles news, their back catalog is now available for online purchase in a case of not only shutting the barn door while the horse is already gone, but putting a jockey on it and running it around the track a few times as everyone from Tallahassee to Tuvalu has downloaded everything the Fab Four has ever put out, including Carnival of Light, if and when it does see the light of day.

The dirge also apparently contains lots of organ and shouting ‘Barcelona’, but no word if the Maharishi was kicking a soccer ball around the studio during the recording.

Completists eagerly await the Revolver bass guitar tune-up sessions of 1966.

November 14, 2008 celebrities

Like many of our Canadian compatriots we are pretty ambivalent toward the British Royal Family. Sure, most Canadians have a soft spot for Queen Elizabeth, but that has more to do with her being on the currency and how good it feels to find a forgotten 20 in a pair of jeans you just washed.

We included only one tale involving royalty in our who’s who of drunks, The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery, and that concerned a footman who was adding whiskey to the water bowls of the royal corgis – an offense which, although funny, resulted in his demotion (and terrible canine hangovers during which the corgis wrote some of their best stuff).

Since then, when any royal is in the news we get all misty-eyed and almost regret the fact that this colorful family is no longer cracking the colonial whip and sending the degenerate misfits among their nobility to oversee our affairs.

Prince Harry, the third in line to the throne (the one the kings sit on, not where you can be found the morning after a night at Uncle Chili’s House of Hot), has long impressed us.

Unlike his elder brother, who has of late made a half-hearted effort to paint himself a fun loving guy by piloting RAF helicopters to private functions, Prince Harry has delivered time and again with drunken partying antics that, had they taken place in the 70s, would have caused someone to go wake up Rod Stewart and tell him all about it.

Prince Harry has partied with strippers, been involved in drunken scuffles with paparazzi, snorted vodka (for those interested in substances more traditionally snorted, check out our Top 10 Cocaine Songs of All Time) and… well… dressed up like a Nazi for a bit of a Halloween laugh.

And just now, when royal watchers figured the young man had his Windsor House in order, he’s befriended celebrity product endorser and star of cinema verite Paris Hilton, who recently took a shine to the prince’s girlfriend Chelsy.

According to reports they ‘talked for ages’, a doubtful prospect indeed as the heiress has a vocabulary less than what an adult gorilla can sign.

Recently, the prince’s old man Chuck was the subject of a 60th birthday roast during which Robin Williams regaled the crowd with jokes about Monica Lewinsky which would not have been out of place if it were 1998 and a “Yo, yo, whassup Wales? House of Windsor, keep it real” introduction that no doubt kept the coat check girls busy with a bottleneck to the exit.