Thanksgiving~or~New Rule: We Are Allowed to Punch Strange Kids In The Face If They Bother Us

I've spent the majority of this Thanksgiving at my friend's house in Boston on his couch passed out watching movies, eating turkey, playing some random video games, and watching my back fat develop into a comfortable portable cushion.

The Thanksgiving hangover is starting to settle throughout the household and America at large, millions of gym machines are heard screaming in agony in unison.

(I can smell the bacon for this morning's breakfast, good Dog when does this torture end?)

I've learned something unrelated to food this Thanksgiving though. I don't think a parent should hit their child, but I think we should be allowed to punch a kid real hard in the face provided that you're a stranger and they start hitting you out of the blue.

Look, I understand that children (boy's in particular) have a confused bout of aggression at around age 10, and they might not recognize that I'm significantly older thant hey are due to my cherubic face, but if I'm lying down on the couch and you're kicking me "playfully" I am in the universal right to punch your ribcage real hard.

Back home in Los Angeles some neighborhood kids were "playfully" hounding me as I was doing laundry, please bear in mind that I was around 19 at the time and the kids were maybe 12.

I feel it is an important lesson and should be thanked for kicking the shit out of those kids until they went crying home; do not mess with things bigger than you. Their simpleton mom chose to come to my mom and complain, in which case my mom looked at this woman and told her to "get out of my door, my son is 19 and your kids should know better."

Parents, protect your children against face punching with the same vigor you protect them against diddling, and all will be right with this world.

-Deviant

Gay Sex In Dragon Age: Origins~or~Gay Rights For RPG Avatars

Videogamers have discovered that it is possible to have hot gay sex in the newest Bioware RPG Dragon Age: Origins

The video game isn't something your uncle built for your Dos Program, Dragon Age is the next blockbuster from a developer known to churn out epic games for most major consoles and the PC.

While this is a triumph for fans of the modern RPG, it is also a small victory for me, as I have always maintained that my video game avatar should be able to have sex with virtual male elves.

I don't spend an hour fine-tuning the size of a nose for my avatar only to have him be rejected by all the other males in the story. I want for the main character in a videogame to have awkward sexual encounters the same as heterosexuals do!

This is a monumental step in our culture. We have been banned from having our male game protagonists cavort with other men. Recently games like The Sims or Bully broke new ground with having things resembling males getting on with other things resembling males, but here we have what is clearly hardcore sexual relations between two guys who look like they're on steroids.

And this isn't about identity politics, it is about the opening up a plethora of MORE options for people to have fun within a game. Do you have any idea how many times I've role played as an angry lesbian in a video game.....TWICE (and that is one too many).

The angry lesbian avatars have been able to partake in forbidden romance AND wage war, the only downside to the gay male encounters in Dragon Age is that no wars will be waged because one will be too busy screwing the virtual elf (and all of a sudden I believe "screwing the virtual elf" should be a great euphemism for an action that I have not yet defined).

-Deviant

Missing the Pop Point~or~Superman Learns How To Fly

The video has been analyzed before, and yes it is about the secret powers of women, but I feel like the analysis of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance video has missed one crucial point...



We love it because it is the birth of a Pop Star.

We knew it was in the protagonist all this time, but no one was sure until the one moment.

-Deviant

The Film Industry Is Dying~or~I'm Ready For My Closeup Mr. Demille

The best thing to happen to the music industry was the crushing of its industry. Artists are now being discovered on their merit via myspace and music blogs. We can download an album, share with friends, then go see the band live.

I found a good article about the movie industry that claims it is about to suffer a similar fate

One thing that is curiously not considered is the fact that we (as in this country) are all poor, and I'm going to stream The Watchmen Directors cut on my tv using my xbox rather than pony up the ridiculous cost of the 3 disc collectors cut that will only be superseded 2 months from now by the four disc definitive collection.

So, movie industry, it's not you, it's me (okay maybe it is you a little bit). I still care for you deeply Cinema, you were an early passion of mine, but you are now fat and living on welfare, so thanks, but go fuck yourself.


-Deviant

Who Am I To Judge?~or~L.I.E vs Grand Ecole

There were two films I watched recently that refracted onto each other.

The first was Grand Ecole directed by Robert Salis. It is a french Gossip Girl style film about upper class students struggling with their love lives.

The protagonist is a boy with a girlfriend who is falling in love with his male best friend, his girlfriend challenges him to "get" this boy before she does, meanwhile he is showing lust for a muslim student and boys in general.

I thought the film was disingenuous. We see the protagonist longing for boys, but we also see him making passionate love to women after these scenes. The film seems to conclude that sexual differences, like class differences, are moot.

Well that's a load of horseshit, I thought, because we know what we want on a base biological level! Even the film Grande Ecole has a scene unrelated to the romances where the protagonist watches boys bathing after gym practice, a clear moment of lust in a cloud of romantic confusion.

Then I re-watched L.I.E., a film unfairly caught up in the late 90's youth exploitative age made notorious by Larry Clark and his film Kids

I wanted to rewatch L.I.E because the kid in it is Paul Dano who was amazing as the preacher guy opposite Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood.

On this second viewing I knew that L.I.E. was no Kids.

While Larry Clark's film is intelligent, it is also exploitative, his camera lens seems to lust after the teen and tween body with the passion of a pederast, even when he makes important moral points.

L.I.E is honest with its camera work. We see underage bodies, but not often--and when they are shown they are done so in service of the character attached to them.

L.I.E is the story of a young boy whose mother was killed in an accident on the Long Island Expressway. His best friend is a sexually active homosexual hooker. The young boy's home life is repulsive, his father is almost a nympho in terms of how much sex he has while ignoring his kid. The young boy eventually befriends the neighborhood pedophile (an awesome Brian Cox) and they begin a will-he-or-won't-he-rape-him father/son relationship.

L.I.E is a disturbing work, and I wondered why. Pedophiles in film are shorthand for evil, when they aren't then it bothers us. But I think the creepiness factor in the movie was more than that.

The film is really about something rarely discussed in America, male sexuality, which is why it disturbs. The young boy's father is voracious to the point that it is neglectful to his son. The young boy's best friend is cocky and discovering himself, but also lost to the thrill he gives to others. Brian Cox's character is conniving, but has a foolish hope that the young boy could be an ideal partner for him. And the young man in the movie is pre-pubescent.

This is important, because the film hints he is in love with his gigolo best friend, but the boy is pre-pubescent himself, so how deep does his physical intrigue run?

Not too deep at all! The young boy may be gay, or he may not be, but he's is too young to tell definitively.

It's a different message that Grand Ecole's fluid sexuality provides. L.I.E concerns itself with what we are after puberty, the folly of what we want lustfully, while Grand Ecole argues that what we want is not specific to gender.

That's when I thought, "well the main difference is that L.I.E is an American movie and Grand Ecole is french..."

And how many times have my fellow gay readers found themselves kissing a "straight" European man? "All Englishman are gay!" I tell people, and everyone who has come back from there in America agree.

Shit, maybe European guys really do believe sexuality is that fluid. Maybe we're more wonderfully different between us than I thought.

Who am I to judge?

-Deviant

Dexterama~or~Batman Can Breathe In Space Because He Comes Prepared

I got to thinking about the show Dexter today, wondering specifically why I liked it so much.

For a show about a serial killer who only kills other killers it's pretty non-gory. Don't get me wrong, there's blood and body parts, but it lacks the tastelessness of something like the Saw movies.

I like Dexter because the show is a subversive super hero fantasy. It's the logical conclusion of what Batman has to offer, no super powers, and all the villains are just psychopaths.

There aren't any costumes in Dexter (except for Dexter's all-plastic murder suit) and the only masks worn are social smiles.

Every super hero trope is there, the screwed up childhood, the moral code, the secret identities, the villain who is hero gone wrong, the seductress catwoman.

The drama is played out over lunches and not on rooftops, the seductress catwoman is just a co-dependant pyromaniac, and so forth

Superhero stories are considered modern day Greek God drama, and while Dexter and Batman stories follow the same themes they also make the point that there are no gods, and "super powers" are really the powers we have over others, and evil super powers are just trauma.

(Also The Dark Defender was the greatest Dexter episode!)


-Deviant