Watchmen Fans: Debbie Schlussel Hates You

I had no plans to see this movie. I might have even put it on my “actively ignore” list. But now that Schlussel has panned it, I have to see it. I might not even wait for the DVD!

She wears clothes like that and criticizes other people for idiocy and indecency?

Girl, glass houses.

Seriously, though, I read something like that and all I really feel is pity.

@Put a Tommmcatt in your tank!: I know. I went searching hoping to find a jarring picture of her – and didn’t have to look past the first page of images. I mean, really.

You would think that conservatives would like a book that depicts Richard Nixon being a five term president and us winning the Vietnam War.

Hell, a subplot of the thing is that Woodward and Berstein are killed by G. Gordon Liddy – and this is portrayed as a good thing!

“the puerile filth coming to a theater ciniplex near you.” Fixed.

Though perhaps somewhat too dogmatic in its language I’d have to say she makes some very good points. Even if she has come as Halloween Faye Dunaway. BTW. It’s never a good idea to extend lipstick past the lipline unless you can really trust the lighting cameraman or you’re singing Tosca. Making pouty face only draws unwanted attention to the fact that one is not as young as one once was.

However, that being said, she makes some very good points.

@bart_calendar: It seems to me these comic-book ‘superheroes’ are always fascists. Bollywood excepted.

@Benedick: Have you read Watchmen. They are not exactly comic book superheros.

What good points does she make?

@Benedick: The Hulk would be an anarchist. Batman is more driven by revenge than fascism.

Check this out

“Superman was a New Deal creation: steeped in the liberal idealism of Franklin Roosevelt, he was initially cast as a champion of the oppressed. In his first outing, he saved a falsely accused prisoner from a lynch mob and freed an innocent woman on death row.

“The war further galvanised the superhero, as comic books became a staple of wartime propaganda. One in four magazines shipped to troops overseas was a comic, and 35,000 copies of Superman alone went abroad each month. Often the product of liberal, Jewish creators, comic books pushed a progressive agenda – Captain America, for instance, inspired isolationist outrage by denouncing Nazism before the US had even entered the war.”

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/303d5db6-c264-11dd-a350-000077b07658.html

@redmanlaw: Thank you.

I suspect Benedict has little idea what he’s talking about.

@bart_calendar: @Benedick: Now, boys. De gustibus non disputandem.

@bart_calendar: Black Eagle on the cover of Wizard, a monthly magazine covering the world of comics.

http://www.wizarduniverse.com/dec088031.html

@redmanlaw: Awesome.

Her look is SO smallish town country gay bar Faith Hill drag queen.

I also love how she totally insults all of the people who disagree with her in the comments in ALL CAPS like a frothing lunatic. I mean, we all check I guess to see if anyone responded to us, but to obsessively check and then post rants like that to every single one is I am pretty sure the sign of a ego-maniacal psychopath. I guess she is angling for a spot on The O’Reilly Factor this week.

@homofascist: “Her look is SO smallish town country gay bar Faith Hill drag queen.” BWWAHAHAHAAHAHA. (Sorry for all caps.) You totally nailed it. She is the hottest ticket at the Giggles Cabaret, located between the Arby’s and the Jiffy Lube. Tip your waitress.

@bart_calendar: “I suspect Benedict has little idea what he’s talking about.”

I have never let that stop me in the past.

@homofascist: @Benedick: @Put a Tommmcatt in your tank!:

I love to hear the gheyz critique white trash clothes and makeup. Totally makes an EEEE-Leeet girl’s day.

@RomeGirl: Small town gay bars have the worst names. Like ‘Expressions’ or ‘The Kloset’. If I ever move back to my small town I am totally opening ‘The Buttfuckery’.

@homofascist:

One of my faves is Rumorz in Bellingham, WA. Stupid name, awesome people. Same with Trax in Kent.

UPDATE: Oh snap, I’m looking online and it looks like they changed it to Rumors with a “s;” I guess they gave in after local grammar extremists had a meltdown and accused them of crimes against spelling.

Here is another blogger attacking Debbie.

http://blozor.livejournal.com/2009/03/08/

@homofascist: Not “The Klassi Kountry Kloset”?

@Original Andrew: I once went to a bar called Phazez in West Virginia. Ohhh boy. That was something.

@SanFranLefty: The high point of my day was going out to the warehouse club (BJ’s, its one of the smallest, I understand its relatively local) and quietly snarking on the attire of the ladies present. It was 70 degrees today, a nice, and sudden, change from 3 days below freezing at the beginning of the week.

But it made for comedy, because the construction worker, biker, and Piney folks, well, they are just too quick to switch over to their summer, tube-top, tattoo-revealing attire. Oh My, what I did see today.

@SanFranLefty: I had a friend who lived in Atlanta back in the late 80s, and I went to visit for a weekend, and we went bar-crawling, and at one point we popped into this country dance place, Have you ever seen one of these, where they have a dance-track, its not a dance floor, its like a racetrack, a big oval, and the country dancing peoples parade around and around. Quiet amusing.

I witnessed the greatest thing ever in this place. We were sitting at the bar, and there were two young women in their country dancing finery, sitting just beside us, and the one I am talking about could have been this schlussel, down to the outfit she was wearing. And as I was sitting there, drinking a beer, this woman, she kinda hiccuped, and I looked over, and there, not 2 feet from me, she just opened up and puked all over the bar right in front of her.

Klassi.

Is this Schlussel the one who acquired her D-list fame because she was on that airplane with the Muslim music group that was touring the country, and when it became kinda a scandal that the airline put them all off the plane just for being muslim and acting muslim, she defended it? Is that the one?

@Promnight:

Once, after slamming a six-pack and smoking a j, I passed out face first into a bowl of salsa, then woke up in an unfamiliar bed wearing someone else’s clothes.

After that incident, I can no longer laugh at others’ party misfortunes, only commiserate.

Is this place in decline? I miss something.

“Sigur Ros at MOMA” is on the Current channel on the Dish right now.

Chillin by the fire after dinner. Still gotta work but I had a bit too much wine. May as well have another one.

Goddamn alarm went off at 5 am old time. At least the iPod was set to play “Down by the River” and “Cowgirl in the Sand” as I thought about how much I did not want to get up and go to church.

Worked on academic camp application stuff with the boy all day long. He did say that his favorite part of the day was having dinner together and talking for half an hour afterward. We both sacrificed our outdoor fun today to get it done.

Oh, and little Wolverine was discharged today.

@Promnight: No way. I can barely hang with the crowd anymore it’s so good with all the economy stuff and new people.

@Original Andrew: Thats something, huh? I once woke up on a saturday morning on the front lawn of a neat little house in a neat little suburban neighborhood, you know, the nice sidewalk, the neat little houses with their neat little lawns, not a poor neighborhood, not a hoity toity neighborhood, just a clean, neat working class lower middle class neighborhood, I was laying their on the lawn, horrendously hung-over, the bright sun starting to hurt, and to drive a raging thirst.

But I woke up because a little kid was poking me with a stick. And there was this little crowd of little kids gathered around me. They had parked their big wheels on the sidewalk and walked onto the lawn, and were poking me with a stick, to see if I was alive.

Now thats some way to wake up, to 15 10-year olds peering down at you and chattering “is he alive?”

@Promnight: Decline? No. We got a lot of bright people with stuff to say. I can barely hang with the economic talk.

Also, it’s spring. I think a lot of people were away from their computers today. It just got dark here 45 mins ago with the time change. Traffic looked petty light at FB today too.

@redmanlaw: Ummm, time change? Some geek needs to reset the site clock…

@Promnight:

No one ever said that college would be easy.

@redmanlaw: I’m just feeling lonely.

@Promnight: Weekends have slowed down since the election. Without the pressing matter of what Psychogeezer did this time to hold our attention, folks have been finding more pleasant distractions during their time off.

@nojo: I know, adversity forces people together. I have never been adept at forming and keeping freindships. Even those I have made some connection with here, I can’t keep the connection. I am a loner, its not by choice, but learned from years of loneliness. My son’s aspergers makes me aware that I am probably that way, too. I love people, but don’t know how to love them.

Talking to people here has opened me up to the joy of having friends, that you can actually talk to, but I still don’t know how to do it. Its tantalizing, in the original sense of the word, its torture. I am more aware than I have ever been of what I am missing.

@Promnight: Did I ever see one of those C&W bars? Honey, I grew up in Texas. There was the Bluebonnet in Schertz, between San Antonio and New Braunfels. There was the Gruene bars. There was the Rainbow Exchange in Austin, which frankly was my favorite C&W place, because it was a GHEY C&W place. I had seen lots of freaky shit in my time but when I went to Rainbow Exchange and saw the total shit-kicker, Wrangler-wearing cowboys two-stepping with one another, and the kountry dykes in their yellow Wrangler/yellow Ropers, I was blown away.

Brokeback Mountain out of the closet.

Don’t feel lonely. Soccer season started today, I had photos to caption on Ofoto, had to go to Target out in the suburbs, and Mr. SFL put in the new garden in the back yard (I supervised and read the Sunday NYT).

@homofascist: “Expressions.” Exactly! Vague 70s E.S.T. words ending in “s.” The Buttfuckery is like an olde-tyme gay bar out West, right next to the haberdashery. LOVE.

@Original Andrew: They should make it “Rumours” to have it be continentally ghey.

@nojo: @Promnight: Also, it’s warmer now and people are getting outside on the weekends, blinking into the light of a new administration. I certainly hope it was not a veiled comment to my (admittedly brilliant) post!

Watchmen = $55m first weekend. Schlussel just got served, yo.

@redmanlaw: Neil Young’s catalog is an approved alternative-worship service for early-morning hangovers during a time-change Sunday morning. Refer to Ruling #124 of The Order of the Blessed Labia, July 2005. We had forgotten to change the time forward the previous March.

Congratulations on son and Wolverine’s progress.

@Promnight: Re: friendship. You’re okay by my take, Prommie, not damaged. Don’t push the river; it flows by itself.

@SanFranLefty: Its like the Nascar of dancing, they just go around and around, with this pittle herky hiccup step, which they seem inordinately proud of, and their big hats.

“Rumours?” That would be Fleetwood-Mac-ian, not european. There was a law in 1977, it was illegal to listen to anything else, except Boston.

My own mock on how much money this film is bringing despite/because of people condemning it.

http://bart-calendar.livejournal.com/1301786.html

@chicago bureau: Know what other recent movie overcame strident criticism to take the number one spot at the box office? Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Just sayin’.

Looks like she’s wearing a knockoff of my friend’s costume designs for the X-Men movie.

@redmanlaw: I think she’s really Silk Spectre III and is using this column as disinformation.

@redmanlaw: She definitely has the look of a mutant. We can call her Nude Lipstick.

mellbell: And, of course, Eddie Murphy movies other than Dreamgirls. (Although, one must appreciate the fact that Eddie is unpretentious. He could do a searing portrayal of a Civil Rights Era hero. Or he could make serious bank making pre-fabricated crap. He chooses the latter with no apologies. Kudos. Ish.)

But point taken, in re U.S. Americans’ taste in cinema.

@Promnight: Woke up New Year’s Day one year, side of my face planted in vomit and cat litter. I was in the litter box, and there was one curious feline staring me down. True story.

@Nabisco: The litterbox, I have awakened feeling as if I have eaten the litterbox, but never actually in the litterbox, that is bad stuff there.

@mellbell: Don’t forget Medea Goes to Jail.

lumpenproletariat lowlifes at the Coliseum
Uh, like at a Day On The Green?

I actually am impressed that this harpy understands that the lumpenproletariat existed long before the rise of capitalism.

@Ewalda:
Hey, she’s not stupid. Just utterly contemptibly whacko.

@Ewalda: Yeah, but the temporal confusion, its so jarring my mind is still boggling, “lumpenproletariat,” a marxist term from the late 19th, early to mid-twentieth century, applied to the Roman crowds in the Coliseum? These two things don’t belong together.

I can see the ignorant reasoning. This person has no information, knowledge, whatsoever about the political, economic, and social systems existing at the time of the Roman Empire. And no understanding of the meaning of the term “lumpenproletariat.” But she has heard that “bread and circuses” destroyed the Roman Empire, and to her, this means liberal socialism destroyed the Roman Empire (what an interesting way to view a despotic authoritarian state, as a liberal, socialist system, wow!). And I guess she simply assumes, because of the disdain inherent in the term “lumpenproletariat,” that it means “the kind of people who take welfare and thus bring about the downfall of liberal socialist despotic empires. Wow, again. I mean, have you ever seen so many contradictions, meaningless juxtapositions of conceptually incompatible concepts?

Its almost as if the writer were only quasi-literate, and threw out words without knowledge of their meaning, so long as they sound good together.

There are people, you know, who don’t know how to think, and yet, they are totally unaware of this severe limitation they suffer from, and in fact, believe that their defective reasoning is in fact genius, and yes, they even believe that when everyone in the world looks at them as if they have two heads, when presented with their theories, they believe this is proof that their genius is so great as to be incomprehensible to others. Really, this is no exageration of their mental state, their are many many idiots out their convinced that they are geniuses.

Sarah Palin. W. Hannity.

Whats really ironic, now that I actually try to learn the definition of “lumpenproletariet” myself, is that the class that Marx, or at least Trotsky, would regard as the “lumpenproletariat” of today, is Schclusser’s audience, the angry, disempowered, displaced white pigfuckers. Observe, from Wiki:

“According to Marx, the lumpenproletariat had no real motive for participating in revolution, and might in fact have an interest in preserving the current class structure, because the members of the lumpenproletariat usually depend on the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy for their day-to-day existence. In that sense, Marx saw the lumpenproletariat as a counter-revolutionary force[5].

Leon Trotsky elaborated this view, perceiving the lumpenproletariat as especially vulnerable to reactionary thought. In his collection of essays Fascism: What it is and how to fight it, he describes Benito Mussolini’s capture of power: “Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.”[6]”

@Promnight: It is jarring to have 19th-century terms applied to Imperial Rome, but the odd thing is, she’s correct in her usage. Marx and Engels both discuss the Lumpenproletariat in ways that are not tied to Capitalism and the Urban Proletariat.
Manchu is correct in saying that she is not stupid, just contemptibly whacko.
I, on the other hand, see her is just another self-promoting charlatan, trying to stay on the gravy train continue to make a living.

@Ewalda: OK, but look at this, its wonderful:

“Bloody Tragedy in Lexington Park
LEXIINGTON PARK – 3/8/2009

Printer friendly

At approximately 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, March 8, units from Bay District Fire Department and Lexington Park Rescue Squad responded to a call for a woman bleeding in Lexington Park.

A man told authorities that he had placed a sex toy on a saber saw blade and that the blade had sawed through the plastic and severely wounded the woman. Trooper 7 transported the woman to PG Hospital. The case remains under investigation at this time. No word on the condition of the woman at this time.”

Here’s the link: http://www.thebaynet.com/news/index.cfm/fa/viewstory/story_ID/12368

@Promnight: Hey, keep Trotsky out of this.
There is a difference between a fucking theoretician (Marx/Engels) and a committed revolutionary who had the balls to act, and the brains to be right (Trotsky).

@Trotsky: Yeah, but its true, “the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.” That describes the angry white male pigfucking Limbaugh-listening fundie base of the republican party. Now I start to see why Trotsky was the smartest of them all. These are the ones he said would be the fascists.

@Trotsky: They laughed at Marx’s beard.

beardjack/Chris Adler, drummer, Lamb of God

http://www.moderndrummer.com/rsrc/updates/1006_ChrisAdler1.jpg

@Promnight: Brother, now you understand why I am proud to invoke the name of Trotsky.

Silent Creative Partner/target-market fanboy reviews The Watchmen: “It sucks.”

@redmanlaw: See, now that is a respectable beard, the beardo I posted in the other thread is a total abomination however.

@nojo: Wait it sucks compared to the comic, or just plain sucks? I haven’t seen it yet, I love the comic, but am totally prepared to have the movie derail into just mindless action cuz that’s how hollywood rolls.

hey y’all! my computer is fixed thanks to FSM and moishe.
laughing at lefty’s desciption of ghey C&W, and yes bisco and prommie, i too have awakened to find myself face down on the lawn. worse than having 10 year olds poke you is having sprinklers shoot into your ears.

and happy purim! old jerusalem is in a festive spirit. all the kids are dressed up like halloween and are parading through the narrow streets and singing. joyful! all i know about purim is it has something to do with a hateful king, and for some reason, jews make pastries called humantash, in the shape of his hat. for further explanation, i turn the floor over to our talmudic scholars, bloggie, dodger, reds and prommie.
i wish i had my camera last night. you would be looking at quite a sight right now. a group of peirced rainbow headed bongo players circled around a young hassid, breakdancing with the pais flying. post worthy entertainment! and tonight we’re going to a concert. the lead singer/geetar player? my new bf? yeah his band! the rat is jealous, i’m delighted…AND my 4 furchildren will be at my door on MONDAY!!!!!!

@baked: Purim celebrates Queen Esther saving her people when the wicked counselor Haman wanted the King (Esther’s husband) to kill or banish or do something bad to all the Jews. This is how my niece explained it when she told me she was playing Esther in the Purim play.

Well that ought to learn me. I believed the lumpenproletariat were the Gammas and the Deltas from “Brave New World”.

Something to do with lupus and being working stiff.

@drinkyclown: Sucks as a movie, and he’s the one who convinces me to attend midnight Transformers showings. I’m pretty sure he liked Sin City, for comparison.

Don’t know how well he knows the Watchmen comic graphic novel (I still can’t say that straight), but I liked it a lot when it came out.

@Benedick:
i loved your retort to that bart character, proving you are trading wits with an unarmed man.

we don’t insult people here in a sophmoric unfunny way, such as your comment to our beloved benedick, mr. bart.
i’m watching you. you are more than welcome to add to the discourse, but if you are unable to not be stupid, please slither back to gawker.
and you have caused me to prefer jamming knitting needles in my eyes, rather than read your blaahhg.

@Mistress Cynica:
well that explains much. at least half the little girls were dressed as queen esther. i still want to know why we eat his hat!

@nojo: Nary a mention of the blue penis?

@baked: “Taschen” means “bags” or “pockets” in German (and, hence, I believe, also Yiddish), and with various prefixes refers to any manner of turnover.

@baked: Darling, you must know by now that I never allow facts to interfere with my opinions. I have been shat on by professionals.

Hope you’re well. Is everyone there? Our illegal immigrant dog has gone to the vet to have big tooth surgery. It would have been cheaper to have had braces fitted. But what can you do? Boxery dog is outside on goose patrol. He hates anything larger than a crow in his airspace and the geese are flying overhead on their way north. So he’s charging up and down, all bristled up, barking at the sky.

I’m interested to read comments about Watchmen. I simply don’t get comic books. And I can’t bring myself to use the G.. N.. term. But that’s just me. I have tried. I even read some tarradiddle greatly praised by the Times et al about being a lesbian and stuff that seemed to me to have all the emotional heft of a New Yorker story one reads while waiting for root canal – to continue the dental motif. What distresses me is that I read some jackass like this Debbie person and, while I think her a total philistine, I find myself agreeing with the main thread: that popular entertainment has been completely debased. And I reckon movies like this one to be prime examples of said debasement. Their entire purpose is to flatter the audience in the same way that a car commercial flatters the audience: by making them feel powerful and rich and free to fly and live outrageously. And I get bored. Unless, of course, it’s in Hindi.

Then I turn on Judge Judy and know that there is no hope for us.

BTW, @baked: @Promnight: @Nabisco: Entirely impressed by tales of waking in kitty litter/vomit/sprinklers. Brava!

@mellbell: I was utterly lost in admiration for Viggo Mortensen in that rather good Russian Mafia movie in which he filmed a whole long, extremely well-staged and horribly convincing knife fight, stark naked with the three-piece set flying every which way. When one thinks of how many hours/days that must have taken to shoot I can only throw up my astonished hands. Dude is fierce. And none of it’s CG.

@baked: Wait, I’ve been called sophomoric on a thread dedicated to people talking about eating kitty litter and the misspellings of the names of redneck gay bars?

@bart_calendar: Heh.

@mellbell: i09.com has had extensive Blue Wang coverage for weeks, if not months. No word on the IMAX experience thereof that I’ve seen, however.