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Saturday, February 9, 2008

Steve Buscemi, Hero to Awkward Looking Guys Everywhere

As a film student, you see all different types of people. In each class there's the beefy jock who you're kinda wondering how he ended up here, then there's your average stoner, or one of my personal favorites, inappropriate facial hair guy. However, the fact remains, if I'm already in the practice of summing up people, the lump sum is a bunch of geeks with poor social skills and even worse skin. This isn't to say that they aren't nice guys once you get to know them and get past their own awkward assessments of others. What I find constantly amazes me is how an awkwardness in personality is something tangible, it's something that translates to their facial expressions, their mannerisms, their dress, all of it. As a result, going to my film classes is much like being a little kid and going to the zoo, constantly watching for the monkeys to start flinging poo at each other or whatever. Although, to date, the nerdy guys have never tossed around fecal matter (and that's not to say that it won't happen... I'm expecting any day now) I can't help but observe these nerdy looking guys in their natural habitat.

So far, I think my favorite experience was the day that I walked into class and these 3 guys that always sit together were just sitting back and waiting for class to start. One guy had on a Ghost World t-shirt, another one had a Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs shirt, and the last guy had a Big Lebowski t-shirt that read "The Dude Abides." Now, mind you this is in one of my extremely long film classes so from time to time my mind wanders, but for whatever reason, I couldn't stop thinking about those shirts. About halfway through my own pathetic version of six degrees of Kevin bacon (subbing the students in my class with Kevin bacon) I realized what it was. All of those movies featured Steve Buscemi. Don't get me wrong, great actor, but it dawned on me, Steve Buscemi must be like a freaking God to these guys. I mean, here's a dude who, just realistically, is about as goofy looking as humanly possible, but has that stopped him? Hell no it hasn't. And it shouldn't, but it's just insane to see Steve Buscemi get as far as he has when Hollywood is so strongly image based.

Even more impressive is the fact that he's gotten as far as he has not only without a strong reliance on his looks, but without being reduced to taking roles that play on his unconventional looks. I mean, sure, they make references to it in some of his movies but he's never really limited to these roles whereas you have people like Roseanne Barr who are always forced to play fat, bitchy chicks because in all reality, that's probably what she is. Steve Buscemi has played a variety of roles and even if they made reference to his goofiness in all of those movies, he's still making a helluva lot more movies and a lot more different movies than Roseanne.

Another impressive thing about Steve Buscemi is who he's starred with. I mean, maybe Thora Birch isn't every guy's wet dream (although with her pasty skin it's hard to imagine how she's not...) but he keeps tradin' up. I mean, he's gone from hookers in Fargo to Sienna Miller in Interview who looks like one of those top dollar hookers... all's good in the life of Steve.

Now imagine what this means to the common folk. If Steve can do it, so can awkward facial hair guy or lanky dude. While this logic may be flawed, everyone has the right to dream. So for all those geeky and all together awkward guys who are undoubtedly surfing the net right now, continue your dreams of Steve Buscemi stardom. Who knows maybe one day you'll make it with a chick who only dresses like a hooker, but doesn't require you pay her like the average street walker does... And for Steve Buscemi, I applaud you. You are truly an inspiration to all those Star wars memorabilia loving, Dungeons and Dragons playing, grown men everywhere.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Literacy in the Days of Old

Gutenberg (Johannes, not the much loved Steve of Zeus and Roxanne fame) is hailed as the father of the printing press and consequently, the movement towards literacy. Well, to put it quite simply, let's give God a big hand for striking good ol' Johannes dead before he could see what has become of literacy in modern day America. Myself included, words such as "totz" and intentional ebonics such as the ever popular "fo sho" have steadily begun to creep into the vocabulary of everyday Americans. However, this isn't some plea for common decency and the return to traditional English. I'll leave that to the more noble publications. On the contrary, this is a question about the origins of the written word and the evolution of language.

More specifically it is the question of how the hell did they understand anything that was written? I'm being entirely serious. This was a time that was ruled by the upper class and even more so, the clergy. Now, this isn't an attack on religion, but it has clearly been proven that those who instill as much faith as these men, who were basing laws on the scripture, are pretty damn stupid. But let's forget about that for a moment. Let's entertain the notion that those people back then were just as smart as people are nowadays. Even then, I still don't really get how they understood it... I mean, I'm in my 2nd year of college, graduated from my high school with honors, but could I tell you half of what Shakespeare was saying in his plays? Well, yes, I could but only after reading it, like, 3 times or reading it in one of those No Fear Shakespeare books where one page is Shaespearean text and on the other page is the translation. Now, I'm not saying I'm a genius, but if serfs were gettin' it and I need a couple run throughs, that just says something to me, that's all. And serfs were pretty much recognized as the lowest of the low, given no opportunities for education or advancement, but they're getting this stuff? Doesn't quite do wonders for the self esteem...

But what it does do is make one think. If peasants in the Middle Ages are getting this shit, what happened? I mean, are we really as smart as we think? I know that the language used in older texts was closer to how people spoke back then, but assuming written text is an accurate depiction of the language of a time period, it kinda makes one wonder just what the fuck happened to get us to this stage where "z" is an appropriate substitution for the letter "s"? Okay, maybe that's just something that I do, but still... Are we smarter now just because we can graft a baboon's ass onto a woman's face? At least, I think we can do that... although why you'd want to is a whole nother issue. Somewhere alone the timeline, we lost touch. I don't know what it was or when it happened, but if high school graduates still use Spark Notes (the website of course, because the paperback ones still kinda resemble a book) as a substitution for actual reading, something had to have happened to get us off track.

Another definite possibility is that the whole previous paragraph is irrelevant. Maybe we are just as smart as we say we are. I mean, with all the technical and medical advancements (technical being first and foremost as evidenced by Time naming the iPhone the invention of the year, beating out the medical advancement of the discovery of a bacteria that can convert any blood type to type O aka the universal blood type) we've got to be doing something right. The question is, are we doing it for the right reasons? Gutenberg's printing press was such an advancement because it made knowledge accessible to the masses. It came about in a time when people craved knowledge as much as kids craved Furbies in the 90s and people crave iPhones these days. Now, the inventions that receive the most attention are the ones that offer the quickest route to instant gratification. We've already met our needs, gorged ourselves on knowledge, and now seems to be the time to sit back and let the accessories and trivialities take over.