Forensics

Tonight, at the Philadelphia Civic Center: Green Man vs Green Man!

Oh, how I remember my days on the speech and debate circuit.

Near the end of my 8th grade year, the high school sent a registration packet to my house, and I sat at the kitchen table and poured over all of the upcoming educational opportunities that waited in the hallowed, asbestos coated halls of Sprague High School. The course catalogue, more than any of the preparatory speeches my middle school teachers gave me, convinced me that high school was truly a much bigger deal than I had expected. No more fucking around with homeroom and arts and crafts – in high school, shit was going to get real.

There was a series of classes devoted to teaching the art of auto repair, which took place in the school’s dedicated garage, wherein students used highly dangerous power tools and tinkered with donated cars. The classes were called “MECH TECH”,* because in the fast paced world of auto repair you just don’t have time to say whole words.

*I’m reasonably sure Mech Tech X was the name of a Japanese giant robot fighting schoolgirl porno game.

There were the CAD – or ‘Computer Assisted Drawing’ – classes, wherein, to my knowledge, students just sort of fucked around with computers all day. I had plenty of friends who took these classes, and they all regaled me with stories of the crazy, gross pranks they pulled on each other while spending large amounts of unsupervised time drawing pictures of houses and cars with computers.

There were the Seminary classes, wherein the Mormon kids got to go to the little LDS church next door to the school and do basically the same stuff the CAD people did, only with the Book of Mormon instead of computers.

And then, there was a class called “SPRAGUE FORENSICS”, and for whatever reason, that was the course code that I copied onto my registration sheet.

In retrospect, maybe I was unaware that ‘forensics’ is also the name for speech and debate – perhaps I thought I’d be spending my afternoons crawling through blood spattered tenement murder scenes with a blacklight in search of ever elusive semen. Lord knows that would have been more enjoyable than Algebra II.

Public speaking, much like the Academy Awards and ice dancing, is one of those events that probably shouldn’t be competitive because in most regards the judging is, at best, arbitrary and based on personal taste. Sure, it’s usually clear who won in a debate round, because those are competitions between two people. However, I did not do debate, particularly because I have a lot of difficulty walking into a room knowing I’m going to have a fight with someone.

I competed in the soft-pitch individual events, primarily After Dinner Speaking, which is pretty much six minutes of stand up comedy. So imagine judging that – who’s the better comedian? Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Murray, or Conan O’Brien?

“Oh,” you whine. “They’re all good in different ways!”

Well, competitive public speaking doesn’t work like that. You have to decide which one is best, no matter how hard or completely random that selection may be.*

*Of course, it’s easy to pick the worst: Jay Leno.

Regardless of how I did in the competition, the speech tournaments themselves were always interesting. Many of the skills necessary for success in public speaking were also taught in high school drama programs, the result being a few hundred drama kids crammed into an empty high school on a weekend, along with a roughly equal number of reserved, well read, and usually Asian public policy debaters. There were also a handful of guys like me who were only there because they wanted to win trophies for telling stupid jokes.

The personality clashes were always a lot of fun to watch, as well as the comingling between drama kids from different schools – who, I am convinced, are without a doubt members of one of the randiest high school subcultures. My senior year, one of my friends on the speech team made out with at least one girl at every tournament he went to – in some cases two (but never, apparently, at the same time). Say what you will about speech people being nerds; at least we were nerds who made out with other nerds.

I bring all of this up again because this weekend I judged at the University of Oregon debate tournament, at the request of my high school speech coach. Being at a debate tournament again really brought me back – legions of high schoolers clad hastily appropriated and often mismatched formalwear, drama students pairing off and going in search of dark corners, debaters earnestly reading political science books and trying to forget that they’re in high school.

My school’s speech team now is almost entirely bereft of people I know, save for a few seniors who were freshmen when I graduated. Two of them are Zach Johnston and Kehl Van Winkle, whose name I promise I did not make up. Both of whom made a point of asking for a shout out in my next blog, which is not normally the sort of thing that I do, but my word count was running low and I’m short on ideas at the moment. Let’s just move on to the conclusion, shall we?

I usually make a point of saying that while I hated high school, band and speech team were what made it worthwhile. But taking a second look at speech team, I realize that while it was a great time that supplied me with plenty of experiences I’ll never forget, it’s definitely not something I’d do again. I can’t say I miss spending hours and sometimes days sitting around a high school or community college cafeteria, wearing a $30 blazer (which would later make its television debut on Writers) and waiting for yet another round of sketchily judged competition.

That said, I’m sure that if I had been the one pairing off with overly aggressive drama girls, my opinion on the matter would probably be very different.

Truman Capps sometimes goes into these blog entries thinking they’ll be more relevant than they actually are.

Don't Fuck Up

Doing his one job well.

During football games – yes, football, the wonderful, uber-violent sport that, unlike basketball, Oregon is actually good at – when the opposing team tries for a field goal and misses, the band heckles them pretty hard for it.* “YOU HAVE ONE JOB!” We yell. “AND YOU SUCK AT IT!”

*Of course, we heckle everyone pretty hard about basically everything. During a free throw at the last basketball game against Cal, we yelled at Cal’s shooter that he was the reason his parents got divorced. He missed the shot.

Because that’s the placekicker’s job – somebody holds a ball in front of him, and he runs up and kicks it. The circumstances of what the ball does afterwards might change, but otherwise his entire scholarship is riding on his ability to kick a ball a long distance with some degree of accuracy. The parameters for success and failure are clearly and blatantly defined, and unlike Charlie Brown, you know the person holding the ball isn’t going to psych you out and pull the ball away at the last second, causing you to fall down amidst the sound of a drumroll and a slide whistle. Kicking is your life.

I mean, hell, how sweet of a gig is that? I admit, it’s probably not easy, but you’ve got nothing to concentrate on besides honing that one skill. If I got a full ride scholarship to do one specific thing, you damn bet I’d get incredibly good at it – unless it was math or watching American Idol, in which case all bets would be off.

Like a placekicker during football season, life for college football players after the football season is pretty simple: Don’t fuck up. Pass your classes and don’t fuck up. Basically, do what pretty much every other student on campus does every day of his or her life.

Now listen to me very carefully, Oregon football:

In the off-season, you have one job, and you suck at it worse than basically anyone has ever sucked at anything before.

-Jeremiah Masoli, the quarterback whose name we were all so delighted to rhyme with ravioli and e-coli, along with wide receiver Garrett Embry, whose name doesn’t rhyme with anything, were accused by members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity of stealing two MacBooks. If these allegations are true, it would be a profoundly pointless move on their part, seeing as the athletic department already provides MacBooks to athletes. Nobody’s been charged with anything, but Embry was mysteriously kicked off the team.

-Running back LaMichael James was recently arrested for assaulting and strangling a student who police accused of being his girlfriend. He is now facing domestic violence charges and is prohibited from returning to his Springfield home or setting foot on campus because he is now not allowed within two miles of the victim. He’s currently couch surfing as the athletic department tries to figure out a way for James to pass all of his classes without being able to physically attend them – because if he fails, he’ll be ineligible for his scholarship, ineligible for spring training, and thus ineligible for football next year.

-Backup linebacker Kiko Alonso was arrested for DUII several days ago, for which he was promptly booted off the team.

-In response, wide receiver Jamere Holland posted an inflammatory update on his public Facebook profile attacking Coach Kelly (arguably the last decent man left in Oregon football at this point) for kicking Alonso off the team for “weak shit” – because apparently, driving drunk and endangering the lives of others is ‘weak shit’ in the fast-paced world of Oregon football. He concluded the update by inviting readers to quote him, which they did, all over a series of widely-read sports blogs. Perhaps as damage control, in his next update Holland expressed his desire to “block whites as friends and have only blacks,” because a little racism never hurt anything. He, too, was kicked off of the team.

-Rob Beard, a placekicker, who even during football season only has one job, was recently the recipient of a severe beat-down after he joined a late night brawl in support of a former teammate. In the course of the fighting, he reportedly attacked a 19-year-old girl, for which he has been charged with misdemeanor assault.

-In retaliation for Beard’s beating, defensive end Matt Simms sought out one of the students responsible for the attack on Beard and punched him, knocked him to the ground, and beat him. Simms, also, has been asked to leave the team.

I agree that everyone makes mistakes. I agree that there are plenty of good, responsible young men in the Oregon football program.

But at the same time, come on, guys! What are we, the University of Washington football team in 2000? I mean, thank God we’ve already got the nation’s sympathy after that asshole at Boise State punched LeGarrette Blount, because otherwise everybody would think we were all a bunch of thugs!

[Blount punch gif]

Oh, wait.

Every day, thousands of students fulfill all of their academic and extracurricular obligations without fucking up. Sure, some of them do, and they’re punished for it, and the argument will no doubt be made that student athletes make mistakes, just like everybody else.

But student athletes aren’t like everybody else – they’ve got beefy scholarships and a blinged out, Borg cube-shaped study hall on Franklin Boulevard as incentives to make them come to the University of Oregon and succeed, both on and off the field. Athletics invests all this money in them because student athletes are representatives of the University – they’re supposed to be the best of the best.

Instead, we’ve got drunk driving, domestic abuse, gang fights, and retaliatory beat downs. It’s like the entire football team is Robert Downey Jr. in the late 1990s.

When Jamere Holland publicly wished that white people couldn’t view his profile, he suggested that he was “misunderstood.” I’ve got to say, I find that the most offensive part of this whole situation – that non-athletes or the University or white people just don’t get these football players; that we should cut them some slack.

There’s no room for misunderstanding here. Like the placekicker, your job is simple:

Don’t drive drunk. Don’t choke your girlfriend. Don’t steal stuff. Don’t punch people. Don’t talk shit about Big Balls Chip. Don’t be a racist.

Don’t fuck up.

Truman Capps hopes not to be choked by an Oregon football player in the near future.

United We Stand

Wait... What? That doesn't even... What?

When I was a senior in high school, the teacher of my college writing class attempted to foster intelligent debate among students about hot button political issues of the day. This was a noble goal, but she had apparently forgotten that this was Sprague High School – where, during the 2004 election, I heard a girl say that George W. Bush should win because, “He’s so much better looking than that John Kerry guy.”

For the first few weeks of the semester we would debate about issues like gay marriage and the War in Iraq – a sort of cage match between the conservative, hyperreligious, generally poorly informed students who made up 85% of the class and the liberal, hyperangry, generally poorly informed students who made up the other 15%. The conservatives would state their case and trot out Bible verses for support, while the liberals would fervently and angrily retort, using evidence gathered from a number of liberal blogs. This back and forth would continue until, inevitably, a girl would start crying and everybody would start to feel bad. Eventually, one of the members of the conservative camp had her parents talk to the principal, who made our teacher put an end to the debates, and we spent the rest of the term learning how to write college application essays.

Shortly before our debates came to a close, someone representing the conservative cause trotted out the phrase, “United we stand, divided we fall.”

And all I could think was, Does she know she’s basically quoting Pink Floyd right now?

The general spirit that I remember from 2006 was one of Republican frustration with the Democrats’ unwillingness to cooperate with their highly reasonable, well thought out plans regarding foreign policy, the environment, and taxes. I remember that at one point, Democratic stonewalling got so bad that someone tried to introduce a resolution to weaken or dismantle the filibuster, prompting a liberal-sponsored ad that ran multiple times during The Daily Show, showing a tiny animated megaphone named Phil-A-Buster exhorting viewers to support the sacred right of Congressmen to stall and block democracy for as long as was necessary to get their way. I also have some vague memories of Phil-A-Buster doing battle with a gigantic evil robot, so I might be confusing political activism with Transformers (it would not be the first time).

I remember that my parents and I, as well as our liberal friends, took pleasure in the efforts of the Democrats to block Republican legislation. It felt like a David and Goliath situation at the time, which was cool for us, because Goliath is always the bad guy. I never went to Sunday School, but I doubt that when children were told this story there was ever anyone who was disappointed when the giant didn’t totally squish the little guy. Nobody went to see Rocky and rooted for Apollo Creed. When we watch Star Wars, you never hear anyone cheer when the Empire blows up a planet full of totally innocent people. “Oh yeah! Take that! Fuck you, Alderaan! That’s what you get for being peaceful people who have no weapons!”

Now that the Democrats are Goliath, we’re starting to see that politics is perhaps the only situation in which you want to see the little guy get his ass handed to him. The Democrats, who only a few years ago were vehemently stonewalling, are now struggling to get anything done in a Congress deadlocked by a minority who are really, really good at vehemently stonewalling.

And I can’t help but think, Man, if Democrats were that good at stonewalling, maybe we wouldn’t be in Iraq right now.

Congress is so divided at this point that it can’t really get anything done. Part of this is due to the fact that while the Republican Party is about as cohesive right now as a bunch of trashed international studies majors trying to walk to Burrito Boy at 2:00 AM, the one thing they can organize is vehement opposition. Part of this is also thanks to the fact that the Democratic Party is comprised largely of robots whose sole mission in life is to fuck literally everything up (for reference, see John Kerry in 2004 and the election of Scott Brown).

I’d like to go find the girl from my college writing class who said ‘divided we fall’ and see if she still agrees – that is, if she has time between tea parties. The fact is, unity always sounds like a novel concept to whomever’s in power, because logic dictates that when the time comes for compromise, it’ll probably be on their terms.

That being said, I don’t think this division is going to make us fall. America has always been at odds with itself – that’s kind of how we roll – and this is definitely not the worst it’s ever been. “Divided we suck” is, I think, a far more accurate description of the current state of affairs. Congress being unable to enact any new policies isn’t going to bring about America’s downfall; if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that killing terrorists is good, and that’ll never stop happening. However, so long as Congress stays divided, issues like healthcare, big business, and the economy won’t get solved by either party. They’ll just stay where they are.

They’ll keep sucking.

Truman Capps doesn’t like it when he writes political stuff either – blame my Communication and Democracy book and its message of “THE REPUBLICANS ARE THE SOURCE OF ALL THE WORLD’S EVIL, FOREVER.”

Letters To People

There comes a time in every man’s life when he is too busy studying for an exam to put the necessary thought into writing 1000 words on the same topic. On those days, he writes brief letters to people he’s encountered over the past few days, offering helpful advice or, in some cases, just saying hey.

Dear Unit 4,

What’s up? I’m in Unit 3, right next door to you. You know that wall you pound on, for whatever reason, at times that no human being should be awake and pounding on things? It’s actually my wall too.

I’ve grown quite fond of this wall. It, along with its three brothers, work tirelessly to keep the roof from falling on me. It’s always there when I need something to lean on. And, most importantly, it separates me from you and those undisciplined savages you call roommates, for which I am eternally grateful.

So it pains me to hear the abuse you constantly mete out against my wall – both because it keeps me awake at night and because it’s an awfully mean thing to do to my good friend, the wall. So please stop doing it, or at least do it between 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I won’t be around to hear it happening. Asshole.

This may seem bossy, but I pay good money for that wall and I believe I have some right to decide what happens to it. For example, I even have a poster hanging on it. It’s a reprint of a fake oil painting that shows humans and robots fighting with swords. No, don’t think about it too hard – you wouldn’t understand.

Holla back,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

Dear England,

Hi there – it’s me, Truman. Cheerio, I guess, right? I’m the guy who applied for a visa because he was doing an internship in England, and then decided he didn’t want to do the internship and thus did not need a visa, and as a result asked for his $247 visa fee back.

It’s totally cool if you don’t remember me. I’m sure lots of people apply for visas to come visit you. You’re like the beautiful, cultured girl at the dance with really, really bad teeth.

Anyway, I was just a little dismayed to find out that my $247 visa fee was nonrefundable. You see, in America our economy isn’t doing quite as well as yours right now, and $247 is a lot of money – even if it’s actually my parents’ money. I’m sure that in England, $247 just grows on trees, but in my country, we believe in a hard day’s work (also, credit cards), and money is a little harder to come by.

All I did was go up to Portland and get my biometrics taken – a half hour long process. And, I mean, I would get it if the biometrics appointment had been really thorough – I had prepared for a cavity search, although I’d rather you don’t ask me exactly how I prepared – but all it was was some Asian guy gently taking me by the hand and fingerprinting me. Don’t get me wrong; his hands were soft and he was exceptionally gentle, but it didn’t really feel like $247 worth of biometrics.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I’d like that money back, because in America we believe in payment for services rendered, and right now I paid for a visa and possibly a cavity search and I haven’t got either one. Although, that being said, you’re definitely sticking a finger up my ass in the figurative sense, so… Thanks, I guess? It is the thought that counts, after all.

See you in April,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

Dear Sarah Palin,

God, Mrs. Palin… Thanks so much for just being you. Don’t change a thing. Not a blessed thing. You might think that this is sarcasm, given the things I’ve said about you on here in the past, but you have no idea how serious I am right now.

A lot of people got all riled up when they found out that you’d written notes on your hand with a Sharpie in order to answer soft-pitch, preselected questions at an event populated entirely by your most fervent supporters, who had paid you more than most working families in America make in a year just to show up. I don’t understand it – I feel like those are the same people who are totally blown away when Charlie Sheen says something smutty on Two and a Half Men. I would expect nothing less from you, Mrs. Palin.

Sarah.

Your career has been nothing but a series of bad career moves. Remember how Chevy Chase’s big thing was falling down back in the Saturday Night Live days? That’s kind of what you do now – you fall all over yourself, time and time again, and your stock only rises. You sank McCain’s campaign thanks to your interview with Katie Couric, you crapped out on your state halfway through your term in office, and now, in the leadup to your inevitable candidacy in 2012, you’re aligning yourself with birthers and teabaggers, completely alienating the moderate Republicans and independents who do most of the electing in this country.

Please, please, please, don’t change a thing. I’m telling all my friends to pray that you win the nomination in 2012. Hell, bring on Glenn Beck as your running mate, just for good measure. I feel certain you’ll win a solid 25% of the vote – which I’m sure in your world is a landslide victory.

I like you just the way you are, Sarah Palin.

Love,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity.

Truman Capps hopes that if his British host family happens to read this, that they understand that the comments about bad teeth and work ethic were all satire. Y’know, like Faulty Towers and The Office and stuff.

Lincoln City

Well, thank God we weren't going to camp.

The market for terrible horror movies is, apparently, huge. If you go to one of those websites where they let you watch bootlegged movies for free online and type in a reasonable query, like The Hurt Locker or Afro Sluts IV, you’ll most likely end up with a list of formulaic, bargain basement horror movies produced in the last decade, such as:

The Hurter
Locked In The Trunk II: The Trunkening
Afro Sluts From Hell
BloodDrainer

You know what I mean – movies shot on a camcorder that was on sale at Best Buy and edited with Dad’s copy of Windows Moviemaker. Apparently the cheapest type of movie to make is the teen slasher, perhaps because in most cases it doubles as softcore porn, and thus significantly broadens its audience.

Every genre of film and television has its own set of cannon fodder, a set of stock extras who can be mowed down in droves for dramatic effect but keep coming back for more. Star Wars has Stormtroopers, Star Trek has Redshirts, Battlestar Galactica has Colonial Marines, 24 has everyone at CTU who isn’t Jack Bauer, Seinfeld had all of Jerry’s girlfriends, and What Not To Wear has shy, overweight women from the Midwest with no fashion sense.

It’s like they have cannon fodder recruitment in a warehouse somewhere, and all these unemployed people come in and look at presentations from every genre, like a career fair in which every career will inevitably get you killed before the end of the first act.

Horror movies employ college students, particularly horny ones, as their cannon fodder. At the cannon fodder career fair, I can see the horror movie people advertising free booze, condoms, camping supplies, and tuition at schools like “the prestigious University of Dreyskull” as a means to get sexy young people to come be massacred, preferably while naked.

At the moment, I’m spending Valentine’s Day weekend with nine of my band compadres in a wonderful beach house in Lincoln City belonging to one of my friend Jefe’s relatives. Of the ten of us here, eight are couples sharing bedrooms. We got a great deal on the house, and were left the keys to the liquor cabinet. The potential for hedonism here is endless. The potential for serial killers? Double endless.

In the movies, drinking and sex are always punished, sooner or later, by gruesome and bloody death at the hands of a deranged maniac or, in some cases, amorous trees. The one person to survive is usually the one who doesn’t drink or have sex – hopefully, if a serial killer does find his way into the house, he’ll appreciate how little sex I’m having and be willing to look the other way on all the White Russians I’ve been knocking back.*

*However, I’m also sort of the wiseass of the group, and the wiseass is usually one of the last ones to die, gruesomely, usually at the most unexpected time. “Oh man guys, I can’t believe we made it out of OH SHI-”

College hijinx, which until recently I’d thought I was going to miss out on entirely in college, are only magnified by proximity to a major body of water. The other night, in the midst of revelry, I got a hold of a camcorder and took a couple of the stupid videos that make up roughly 95% of YouTube’s content. The ocean may or may not have been peed in. We have yet to build a pyramid out of beer cans, but the night is young.

The reason I believe the hijinx stand out more in Lincoln City is because once you get out of a college town, it becomes clear just how crazy some of the stuff that gets taken for granted in Eugene actually is. A good example of this was the other night, when I ran down to the local supermarket in search of a ping pong ball so my friends could play beer pong.

“Have you got any ping pong balls here?” I asked the friendly looking man at the checkout counter.

“’fraid not.” He said, with a sympathetic smile. “Guess you’ve got a beach house with a ping pong table, huh?”

“Uh…” I muttered, slowly remembering that outside of the college community ping pong balls have uses other than being thrown at cups of beer. “Actually, we’ve got a bunch of Milwaukee’s Best and some red cups.”

“Oh.” The man said, his smile disappearing. I could practically hear the shards of his destroyed innocence smashing onto the ground. “So I guess you’re going to play some… Games.”

“Uh, yeah.” I muttered. I could tell that I had instantly been written off as yet another hedonistic college student – and perhaps earmarked as a potential target, if this particular supermarket checker moonlighted as a serial killer. “But I guess we can’t play beer pong, though, because we don’t have a ping pong ball.”

“You could play quarters.” He suggested, eager to be helpful.

I thanked him, but what I really wanted to say was, ”Yeah, quarters! Say, do you have any Huey Lewis tapes we could listen to while we play? Oh, hey, did you see that new Spuds McKenzie commercial during Dallas last night? Avoid the Noid, man!”

In the end, though, watching my friends try to create drop shots involving fire, I came to realize that hijinx were far more dangerous than any serial killer.

Truman Capps finds downtown Lincoln City to be one of the least appealing places in the world.

Stiller/Wilson

My philosophy on life is that, on any given day, I am a character in a comedy movie, and depending on my fortunes on that day, the character is either played by Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson.

Admittedly, into each life a little shit must fall, but by and large, in Owen Wilson’s movies his characters are generally lucky and well liked, whereas Ben Stiller has to slog through a few thousand gallons of misery in order to find his happy ending. Observe:

Owen Wilson

Bottle Rocket - Constantly in high spirits, finally realizes his dream of becoming a master thief, goes to prison (which reinforces his self-esteem).

Heat Vision and Jack (TV Pilot) - Is a talking motorcycle. Repeat: HE IS A TALKING MOTORCYCLE.

Shanghai Noon - Digs himself out of the sand with chopsticks, spends time playing cards, drinking, and boning Old West floozies, gets to be best friends with Jackie Chan.

The Royal Tenenbaums - Rich, wildly successful novelist, bones Gwyneth Paltrow.

Zoolander - Wins VH1 Fashion Awards, helps Zoolander save the day, participates in orgy with midgets and bones Christine Taylor, is so hot right now.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou - Acts on his dream of joining Team Zissou, bones Cate Blanchett, is on A Squad.

Starsky and Hutch - Bones Carmen Electra and Amy Smart at the same time.

Wedding Crashers - Bones enough hot bridesmaids to populate a small country, spends hours sweet talking Rachel McAdams at his friend’s expense, hangs out with Christopher Walken.

You, Me, and Dupree - Lives rent free with Matt Dillon, uses his pornography, gets his bone on with a Mormon librarian (female).

Marley and Me - Bones Jennifer Aniston. Apparently owns a dog, as well.

Ben Stiller

There’s Something About Mary - Gets his wang caught in his zipper, loses girl of his dreams, spends life being shit on, caught in gay rest stop orgy.

Mystery Men - Uses impotent rage as a means to cover up severe self-doubt and loathing, disrespected by coworkers, friends, cute waitresses, criminals, and the police, gets hit in the face with a shovel.

Meet The Parents - Misses his chance to propose to his girlfriend, receives nonstop disrespect from her father, is humiliated in front of family and friends, accidentally breaks a family friend’s nose with a volleyball, inadvertently fills backyard with sewage and sets wedding altar on fire, is suspected of being a marijuana user, loses the family cat, is forcibly exiled from the family home, only to later be detained by airport security.

The Royal Tenenbaums - Wife dies in a plane crash.

Duplex - Rents a high priced apartment with an elderly subletter who constantly torments and takes advantage of him and his wife, resulting in physical abuse, arrest, and the destruction of his recently-completed novel.

Envy - Misses the opportunity to invest in a friend’s business and become rich, earning the ire of his wife and sending his life into a downward spiral of slapstick disaster.

Along Came Polly - Catches his new wife having sex with Hank Azaria, has prolific diarrhea while on a date with Jennifer Aniston which results in the destruction of several of her cherished items.

Night At The Museum - Spends an entire night being bullied by cavemen, fossils, miniatures, and Teddy Roosevelt, realizes his agent cast him in a really terrible movie.

Tropic Thunder - Is the laughing stock of the film industry, alienates all personal connections, gets waterboarded by drug dealers and stabbed by a small child, murders a panda, which leads to an existential crisis.

Today was a definite Ben Stiller day. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Avatar

"Hi there. I'm James Cameron, and I'm sorry your girlfriend made you see Titanic. Please enjoy Avatar."

Arguably my least favorite element of science fiction is the presence of aliens. At the outset, this might sound like me saying, “My least favorite thing about fondue is all that cheese,” but in my defense, there’s been a lot of high quality science fiction about humans fighting and trying to coexist with other humans (or, in one case, robots that they designed – but robots are cool with me.) I just have trouble relating to the countless humanoid, bumpy-foreheaded aliens cranked out by the Star Trek franchise. I’m not as interested in their perspectives and their interactions as I am in those of humans. I guess I’m racist against fictional races that we might discover in the future. I’m like Archie Bunker, in space.

There are exceptions to this rule. District 9, while far from perfect in many respects, gets a pass from me because the aliens there are more of a Macguffin to show what huge pricks all humans everywhere are. The most recent Star Trek is okay in my book, thanks largely to Kirk’s buxom, grin skinned fuckbuddy. Most importantly, Alien and Aliens don’t try to make us empathize with a race of nonunion actors in heavy makeup, loving and appreciating every element of their culture. Rather, the aliens in these films are horrifying monsters that unequivocally must be eradicated, providing a means for a lot of interpersonal drama between space truckers and, later, space marines.

Arguably my favorite element of science fiction is the presence of space marines, mainly because they follow my long established equation that if you take something cool and put it in space, it only gets cooler. Space marines are usually psychotic, ‘roided up thugs, with the weapons and the means to commit incredible violence. I don’t have a boner for war or anything, but I know good storytelling when I see it.

So Avatar, then.

On the one hand, half of every trailer was full of space marines running around in giant robot suits with huge guns or flying around in helicopter things, which looked cool. But then, the other half of every trailer was James Cameron trying very hard to get us to empathize with twelve foot tall blue cat people with tails, which was difficult, to say the least.

Initially, my plan was to watch Aliens and Dances With Wolves on two TVs at the same time and save myself $9, but then I wound up coming home for the weekend and Dad bought my ticket instead. Ka-ching!

A major theme in Avatar is the notion of sight – the Na’vi greet one another by saying, “I see you,” metaphorical ‘seeing’ is how they communicate with their world, and the movie is full of so many close up shots of eyes that I felt like James Cameron was trying to teabag us with his thematic nuts.

It was fitting, because this movie is basically one big testament to the ability to see. Everything is fluorescent and vibrantly colorful, and the option exists to see the movie in 3D and IMAX, which I expect is a cheap alternative to heroin. All the hype about the movie was its groundbreaking eye candy – in effect, the movie’s hype became part of its thematic content. Every time one of the beautifully rendered CGI characters would prattle on about sight, I could ‘see’ James Cameron sitting at his computer writing the screenplay and chuckling.

“Heh heh heh. I am so fucking smart. I mean, would a stupid person have been married to Linda Hamilton? Probably not.”

And yeah, the movie was fucking beautiful. It was downright Nobel Prize quality gorgeous, crammed full of lush forests and glowing rivers and some of the absolutely most epic fight scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. There was a lot of great eye candy and there was a living, breathing, thinking story backing all of it up. Not that the story thought that hard, mind you – the way I heard it described was “Dances with Pocohontas in Space” – but light years ahead of something like Transformers 2. The screenplay, also, relied pretty heavily on Captain Voiceover.

Avatar was everything that a summer (er, winter) blockbuster should be – great eye candy with a decent amount of story mixed in. James Cameron has always been good at this sort of thing. I feel as though the founding fathers of cinema, if they saw Avatar, would be pleased that their brainchild had been used to such good purpose, even if it raised thematic questions about their flagrant racism.

But no, Avatar should not be a Best Picture contender. Why? Because it’s not one of the ten best American movies this year, God damn it.*

*Inglourious Basterds was cool, but it wasn’t one of the best movies of the year either. Neither was District 9, although it would definitely win for Best Cinematography had anyone thought to fucking nominate it.

This is yet another reason why there shouldn’t be ten Best Picture nominees – they’re started nominating movies from 2009 that got buzz, rather than the absolute best of the best. There’s a big gap between a good movie, like Avatar or Inglourious Basterds, and a great movie, like The Wrestler, which the Academy time and again refuses to acknowledge.

I want to think that they won’t hand Best Picture of the Year to Avatar, a movie filled with innovative and groundbreaking visual effects and essentially no new creative ideas.

But then I think about Titanic, and I start to get scared.

Truman Capps is perfectly content to let Avatar clean up at the MTV Movie Awards.

Rain

See, Dad, it's funny because this guy is a South Korean superstar named Rain.

Rain in Oregon is just a fact of life which all of us have, over time, learned to deal with. Some people deal with rain by calling it ‘liquid sunshine’. I deal with these people by calling them ‘idiots’.

To live in Oregon, you have to be able to appreciate rain to some extent. It is, after all, the reason spring and summer here are so beautiful – people from other states come here between May and September and think that Oregon is a universally beautiful paradise, oblivious to the fact that between October and April the rain quite literally does not stop, nor does it even take an OSHA mandated fifteen minute coffee break. My high school gained and lost a California-born band director in the space of six months due to this phenomenon, which preys on Sun Belters like a velociraptor with a gun that shoots Rambo.

Some Oregonians, however, take this appreciation of rain and turn it into more of an obsession, to the point that they actively frown upon people with hoods and umbrellas, saying, “What kind of Oregonian are you?” as they stand, hair plastered to their head, sodden clothes clinging to their body, in the middle of a downpour.

For them, please allow me to clarify: Just because I live in a wet climate doesn’t mean that I enjoy being wet. I’m sure that people from Phoenix don’t enjoy dying of dehydration. People from Anchorage probably don’t like being eaten by bears. I doubt that the proud people of Utah particularly relish not seeing 90% of most womens’ skin. People don’t move to places because they have a particular affinity for the local hazards or inconveniences. They move for jobs or good schools or lenient policies on marrying second cousins – hence why the Capps family has been in Oregon for a good half century.

Over the years I’ve adopted various methods of keeping myself dry, a game that became significantly more high-stakes once I adopted my current hairstyle in high school. Laugh all you want, but it’s a well documented fact that I look like a child molester when my hair is wet.* Even when it’s dry I don’t necessarily look like the sort of person you’d want driving a van near a school, but it’s a noticeable improvement.

*For evidence, please see the picture of me that ran with my Oregon Daily Emerald column last year.

Walking to school each morning back in the day, I had pretty limited options for keeping my head dry. I was at the time fundamentally opposed to hooded sweatshirts, as I felt that they made me look emo, as well as umbrellas, because I didn’t need to give people another reason to think I was gay. This left me with a wide brimmed waterproof rain hat, an ugly, misshapen, and potentially special needs cousin to the hat Indiana Jones wore. I freely acknowledged that it made me look stupid, but when my choices were looking emo with a hooded sweatshirt, gay with an umbrella, child molestery with wet hair, or stupid, stupid won every time. At that point, I had already given up on the notion of getting laid in high school, so as far as I was concerned I had pretty much nothing to lose.

Now that I’m in college, the hat is no longer a viable option outside of the occasional rainy marching band rehearsal – because, once again, it’s pretty hard to out-stupid 220 people walking around in the rain. My opposition to hooded sweatshirts has ended, but they still prove somewhat ineffective at keeping me dry as they absorb rather than repel rainwater and stay damp all day, which was the sort of thing I was trying to avoid by putting a hooded sweatshirt on in the first place.

However, college is a very gay-friendly environment (outside of the recent actions of some assclowns with a spraypaint can in the student union), which means I can finally carry an umbrella without fear. As it is, my alcohol preferences are exclusively gay (Smith & Wesson, anyone?), so the umbrella is really the final fabulous piece of the sparkling rainbow puzzle. Best case scenario, I’ll be mobbed by women who think I’m sensitive and nonthreatening. Worst case scenario, a bunch of assclowns will spraypaint a swastika on me.

About a month ago I invested in a $3.99 umbrella at 7-11, one of the ones that shrink down so small that you can almost stick it in your jacket pocket. What I’ve found is that in spite of the umbrella’s low cost and shoddy workmanship, it has the remarkable ability to control weather.

A few days after buying the umbrella, I took it with me on my way to a party, on the off chance that it would rain. It didn’t, and after a few hours at the party I departed, thoroughly hamarettoed, having left my umbrella on the endtable by the door. The next few days were particularly rainy, and I spent a lot of time with the hood of my sweatshirt clinging, soaked, to my scalp. Eager to put an end to this, I went and retrieved my umbrella from the host’s house, just in time for a mild and dry week. That is, up until the day I forgot my umbrella when I left the house for class, resulting in a downpour of biblical proportions.

In The Tempest, Prospero created huge storms by waving a stick around.* It appears that I can do the same thing, only I just have to leave my stick behind.

*Thanks, Wishbone!

And when I say “my stick,” I’m referring to the umbrella, not my penis. Okay, admittedly one of my worst analogies, but it’s a real bitch writing an ending for a blog post.

Truman Capps hopes that his entire readership does not refer to rain as ‘liquid sunshine’.