Pooh Don't Moralize

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At Kohl’s, they have a program called Kohl’s Cares for Kids, and you can purchase Winnie the Pooh characters and books, the proceeds of which go to kids’ charities.  That’s pretty cool.

However, in classic “me” fashion, I’ve found something to complain about, so here it is:

The books are not A.A. Milne’s classic stories.  They are new stories, written by whoever the fuck, and they all have a heavy-handed moral about trees, or nature, and they’re completely NOT the simple little stories about childlike wonder and gentleness that generations have grown up on.

Winnie the Pooh is rarely about “lessons”.  It’s about, “Oh, Pooh’s so fat he got stuck in his cave!” or “That crazy Tigger needs to calm the hell down” or “Let’s all go hunting for heffalumps!” (Which, by the way, regardless of what that greedy fucking merchandising whore called Disney would have you believe, do not fucking exist.  That’s the whole damn point of the story.)

If there is a lesson in a Pooh story, it’s simple: don’t be so selfish; give people a chance before you judge them; don’t be so pessimistic, life isn’t that bad.  Simple lessons, told simply.  Milne didn’t beat you over the head with this shit, and just as many of the stories were about the denizens of the 100-Acre Wood just being the absurd little goofballs they were.

Of course, Heaven Forbid if our precious little snowflakes were ever exposed to something that was being silly for the sake of being silly.  No, it’s got to have a fucking agenda, now.  So now we have a whole generation of kids that will never know Winnie the Pooh and gang as anything else but a bunch of moral-spouting blowhards, and that really upsets me.

This is Pooh:

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This is Disneyfied upchuck:

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What I’m saying is: if you really care for kids, you’ll seek out a good reprinting of the original stories to read to your children and donate 20 bucks to your local children’s hospital or something.  There’s no reason why you should need an enormous corporation to be any part of this process.

Hiding in Plain Sight

Every now and then you spot something in a photo that just doesn’t seem “right”.  For instance, take this front-page photo of the economic downturn from Huffington Post:

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Nothing too out of the ordinary, right?  I mean, these are just normal people trying to find work, right?  WRONG.  Have you seen it yet?  Do you need a hint?  Okay, here’s a hint:

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It’s gotten so bad that people are even reanimating corpses to wait for them in line for interviews!  Something’s got to be done, folks, and not just about all these fucking zombies everywhere.

Anti-Pussification Medicine

At work, there is a song that plays in heavy rotation on the store music that I actually own and like.  This is the second time in a year that this has happened.  The first song was Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger”, which was short-lived, and currently it is “Fire with Fire” by Scissor Sisters.  It’s a great song, but I can’t say that a disco ballad approved by corporate America is really the sort of thing I feel particularly great about listening to.

So, I downloaded these guys:

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I feel so much better about myself right now.

Don’t get me wrong: I still love Scissor Sisters.  I also love Skeletonwitch.  My musical heart has a lot of room.

It's Official: Robert Rodriguez Is a Terrible Film-Maker

His two best films are arguably From Dusk ‘til Dawn and Sin City.  One is based on a Quentin Tarantino script and practically co-directed by him.  The second tries as hard as it can to mimic another artist’s vision.  Left to his own devices, Rodriguez gives us sloppy, confused bullshit like Machete.  I told myself a long time ago that I was going to stop seeing his movies for exactly these reasons, but I was suckered in by promises of Danny Trejo being a badass, and a bunch of solid character actors slumming it in a Mexploitation flick.

Ugh.  It’s fucking terrible.  For somebody who loves action movies so much, Rodriguez has learned nothing from watching and making them, because his action scenes are consistently the worst by a “name” director.  No geography, no continuity, just a bunch of scary looking guys shooting their guns toward the side of the screen.

I’ve said it before: I’ll say it again.  Sloppy.  Amateurish.  High school kids do better than this all the fucking time.

I saw Machete this afternoon, and its fleeting charms have already dissipated from my memory, leaving the same old Rodriguez stink I’ve encountered so many times before.

Somebody stop this guy from making movies, please.  There are more talented guys out there missing their chance because money is going to this fucking clown.