MaxBro

Why You Should Never Feel Jealous

These days it’s easy to covet thy neighbors goods. There’s so many cool things to buy. There’s iPods and Hondas and shiny new computers. Everywhere you go someone has something to sell, and all for a low, low price with low, low monthly payments.

But it’s all excess, and usually the people who have all the nice things only have them because the bank allowed them to. I’m not just talking about electronic trinkets and knick-knacks, but about the larger necessities of life. Homes, and furniture, and college tuition.

People buy things they don’t really need and with money that isn’t even theirs. It’s an amazing trend we have here in America—the ability to appear rich when you’re really dirt poor. Someone coined a phrase a while back that fits perfectly. The $30,000 a year millionaire.

Such people are everywhere. They flash their shiny new toys, paid for with the bank’s money. Paid with credit cards they will never be able to pay back.

I had a boss one time who was like that. He always wore name-brand clothing, the latest fashions, the newest shoes. He drove an Acura MDX, a shiny black model with leather interior. He liked to “accidentally” drop a wad of twenties on his desk when he emptied his pockets before sitting down to work.

Then one day I came across payroll, and learned he barely made more than me. I discovered through overhearing concersations that he lived with his parents. In their basement.

And all the time, until I’d learned those things, I’d sat in my office fuming and thinking myself a failure because I didn’t have all those nice things.

And then I realized that my boss was not the only one flaunting his fake wealth. There were others. Many others. And soon everywhere I looked I saw them. It was like I’d developed some new kind of radar. They were everywhere.

Billboards plead with us to buy, standing alongside the highway like lonely beggars with their hands outsretched.

Banks tell us debt is good. But in reality, a man with $100 in his savings account is probably richer than 70% of the population.

Most people, contrary to the image they try to create, survive everyday by the skin of their teeth. Luck and smarts are all that seperate the ones that survive and the ones that don’t.

You see a guy driving down the road in his shiny new car. Does he really own it? Is the gold watch around his wrist really his? Who really paid for all that stuff? Is any of it real, or just figments of an image cobbled together in the vain attempt to appear superior?

The Pointlessness of the Olympics

Over the past few months I’ve enjoyed the unscheduled absence of television from my life. It’s actually difficult to imagine returning to a medium in which I have no control over anything I see whatsoever. I can’t sit down to watch the news knowing it is Lou Dobbs, or Bill O’reilly or even Jon Stewart who is in charge of what is put in front of my eyes. If I’m not able to control what I see and when I see it, I don’t want to see it. Channel surfing does not remedy anything because it does not change the fundamental problem, that is the fact that massive corporations with agendas, in pursuit only of money, are the ones who control what is seen and how and when on TV.

Which brings me to the Olympics. What good are those massive HD screens people plunge themselves into debt nowadays to “own,” what good are all the stereo systems in the world, when you they are not turned on to a series of silly little games people in tights play once every four years? It’s understandable why national sports leagues are popular-the teams are localized to specific geographic regions that tend to have similar demographics. It’s easier to root for your local football team than it is to root for athletes playing for the whole country itself. How can you even root for your country when they’re is no instrinsic benefit to the individual when a U.S. athletes win a gold medal? At least if your baseball team wins the World Series you’ll get a parade down main street, and perhaps a bounce in the local economy. Michael Phelps recently won 8 gold medals. So what? Who does that help other than Michael Phelps? I’m not trying to belittle the accomplishment, but the difference here is Olympics is all about gratifying individual egos. National league sports are about community. I’m no fan of either sports mode, but I at least appreciate the difference.

It’s no wonder they only play the Olympics once ever two years. One can only stand so much concentrated selfishness displayed in one venue at any one time. Anything more and there’d eventually be a boycott of all things Olympic. I don’t buy into the whole “national pride” thing, either. No one not directly connected with the Olympics or Olympic athletes could honestly say they are prouder of their country due to its athletes winning a few metal trinkets in an athletic competition. What kind of a basis is athletic aptitude in determing your respect of your country, or of a country’s respect for another? Will Russia respect America more now that we’ve secured the lead in gold medal count? Hardly, Putin’s Playground is just as likely to attack our allies or us if given the chance, perhaps more so now.

Forget the Olympics. Forget television. Forget, forgo and spurn anything that tries to provide you with an artificial experience of life, or inflate your spirit with any kind of appreciation for things that do not matter.

Time now...

To relaunch Max-Bro.net. I’m tired of sitting on all this potential and being afraid.

The Dark Knight: Best Picture of 2008

The Dark Knight is an exceptionally rare film in a multitude of categories. It is rare because it’s a hyped film that actually lived up to the hype. Rare because it’s broken so many records so quickly. Rare because it represents the last work by a great actor. And rare because it represents not only a milestone in the comic bok genre, but the action/adventure one as well.

It’s a gem. A perfect storm of creative chemicals that, like some kind of prehistoric genetic evolutionary stew, combines the right actors with meaningful writing in a perfectly-timed film about a legendary character that’s taken almost 70 years to develop into the fully fleshed and revered hero known as The Batman.

The Dark Knight will win Best Picture of 2008. Heath Ledger will win Best Supporting Actor for his amazing work as the Joker. And the Academy will bestow a number of technical awards onto this masterpiece in addition. And the whole comic book movie genre will become officially mainstream and etched into the conciousness of Americana.

TDK does for the superhero biz what John Wayne did for the cowboy western. What Kubrick did for the sci-genre, and Hitchcock did for horror. It represents a great leap forward of achievement in practically all fields involved, not to mention viral marketing. It’s one of those films that represent not a blur of photographed images repeating at 24 frames per second, but a transcending experience.

It’s just a shame that it will be years before something comes out in the summer in a similar genre will come close to TDK. Don’t count on Iron Man 2, don’t count on Spider-Man 4, Watchmen, and certainly not Superman if Bryan Singer is directing. The bar has been raised, and it will take superhuman skill to raise it again. How interesting that it’s the film about the hero without any super powers that ends up on top of the hero heap when all’s said and done? If Hollywood stopped making these kinds of films from here on out, TDK would make for a perfect book end to the film that started it all, and still remains the gold standard, Superman: The Movie. It’s taken 30 years, but Bats finally caught up with Supes. Now they stand equal aside one another, perhaps with Batman’s pointy ears just a tad higher that Superman’s spit curl.

Here are the highlights, with obvious spoilers:

-Joker’s “magic pencil” trick. Classic. I admit I had doubts about Ledger playing The Joker. The pencil trick literally did the trick, and instantly I knew this was a Joker above and beyond Jack Nicholson’s goofy potrayal in the 1989 film.

-The timing. Although sublte, the score for TDK balances out perfectly with the action and dialogue on screen. There are momoents when it feels like Christopher Nolan is literally playing the audience like a violin. Moments that plunge like a aformentioned pencil right into your heart, that make you feel fearful for what might happen next. Two scenes in particular jump out at me. The part where Joker is hanging upside down and reveals to Batman his true plot to destroy Harvey Dent. The music swells and Joker swings back into the darkness amidst thundering cellos. It’s right there that you realize how deeply evil the Joker really is, and how unstoppable and omnipresent that evil remains.  That even though Batman has Joker at his mercy at that moment, he’s all the more unstoppable.

There is another frightening scene where Two-Face has Gorman’s son held tight with a gun against his temple, and he’s taunting Gorman to tell his son that everything will be okay. It’s a surreal scene, seeing this corpse-like burn victim who was once Gotham’s District Attorney holding Gordon’s family hostage with a gun pointed at the head of a small boy. It goes so beyond the standard cliche-laden fare of most comic book movie climaxes that its becomes unforgetable.

-The Batman/Joker interrogation scene. What makes it really work is that it’s essentially a very subtle and disturbed joke. Locked up, with half the police force watching, and even with Batman by his side, Joker remains in full control the whole time. He’s the ultimate manipulator, bending others to his will seemingly without real effort. He enrages Batman until he smahses his head into the glass, thus prying loose a piece that functions as a knife later. He plays everyone around him like marionette puppets for the sole purpose of destruction and chaos for their own sake.

-The Batpod. Batman does have the coolest toys, and the Bat motorcycle does not disappoint.

There are so many things I could add to the list, but then I would have to go through just about everything from the film. It’s a true work of art that takes Batman to further heights. And hopefully, like the Dark Knight himself, this film will inspire other creators looking to make tomorrow’s superhero films, to greatness as well.