Jeff Ellis: It's Impossible To Start A Fire If You Have No Desire To Burn

Oral Roberts, R.I.P.

Retired televangelist Oral Roberts died on December 15th.  He was 91 years old.

When I was a child, I knew Oral Roberts as simply the old guy who came on after the cartoons.  Later, in 1987, Roberts contributed to one of the defining moments of my cynical adolescence when he announced that if he didn't raise 8 million dollars by a set date, God would kill him (or "call him home.")

Roberts ended up raising 9.1 million dollars but, in the end, his statement did far more harm than good to the American evangelical community.  His claim that God was blackmailing him managed to discredit every other televangelist in the country, regardless of whether they practiced Roberts' style of ministry or not.  Certainly, it added fuel to a fire that would, later that year, turn into an inferno as both Jimmy Swaggert and Jim Bakker saw their ministries collapse.

It's not for me to say whether or not Roberts sincerely believed he would be killed for failing to raise enough money to please God.  All I can say for sure is that the death threat doesn't sound like something that the God I was raised to worship would have anything to do with. 

Roberts was semi-retired when he died.  To be honest, I was initially surprised to discover that he hadn't died years earlier.  Oddly enough, his death was not greeted with any jokes about being called home.  Then again, Americans always have been a forgetful group of people.

Oral Roberts, R.I.P.

Greetings From The Streets of New York City

To see the entire image, click on it.

Karl Malden, R.I.P.

Actor Karl Malden has died.  He was 97 years old.

For members of my generation, our first real exposure to Karl Malden came when he was president of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and, as a result, always got to deliver the show-stopping "mission statement" at a handful of Oscar ceremonies.  Even in that somewhat colorless role, he always came across as a genuinely decent, blue collar guy.  If nothing else, he was certainly a good deal less pompous than Arthur Hiller.

(Malden later contributed to one of the biggest Oscar controversies in recent years when he spearheaded the effort to award name dropper Elia Kazan an honorary award.)

Malden, however, had a long career an actor.  For much of his career, he was the urban everyman, an often-overlooked, hardworking figure who, more or often than not, ended up becoming a figure of moral authority simply based on the fact that you could simply look at Malden's face and tell that he had spent every day of his life making an honest living.  Indeed, it was this innate sense of decency that made it all the more devastating when his weak-willed Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire finally ended up rejecting Vivian Leigh's Blanche.  This sense of decency actually tempted one to overlook the fact that his crusading priest in On the Waterfront is essentially used to justify "naming names."  Just try to imagine sitting through Patton without Karl Malden's practical-minded Omar Bradley there to balance out the megalomania of George C. Scott's Patton.

Malden was such a reliable actor that he was also quite often a rather underrated actor.  Though it happened very rarely, occasionally he was cast against type and allowed to show that he had a good deal more range than one might suspect.  A prime example of this came in Marlon Brando's sole directorial effort, the western One-Eyed Jacks where Malden was a chilling and believable bad guy. Legend has it that the film's original director -- the legendary Stanley Kubrick -- walked off the film because he felt that Malden's casting was a mistake and that Brando (who also played the film's lead role) would easily dominate Malden.  (Reportedly, Kubrick hoped to cast Spencer Tracy in the villainous role.)  In the end, however, it was Malden's performance that dominated the final film and Brando who often seemed to be miscast.  

Allow me to mention one final underrated Malden performance.  As an unabashed fan of the old school Italian giallo, this one is a personal favorite of mine. In Dario Argento's 3rd film, The Cat O' Nine Tales, Malden is cast as a blind, retired journalist who -- along with James Fransiscus -- is drawn into a rather complex murder mystery.  It is, admittedly, a rather cutesy role but Malden plays it with just the right balance of genuine pathos and enigmatic menace.  Indeed, by the end of the film, the audience can't help but feel rather ambiguous toward Malden's nominal hero.  The film's finale -- in which Malden, incorrectly believing that his granddaughter has been murdered, ruthlessly kills the bad guy just to then hear his granddaughter's anguished scream of "Papa!" -- is a lot more effective than it has any right to be and this is largely because of Malden's performance.

Like many of the great film character actors of the 40s and 50s, Malden eventually ended up turning to television.  His most famous role was as the lead detective in The Streets of San Francisco.  I must confess that, during the rare times that reruns turned up in syndication, I have never been able to sit through an entire episode of The Streets of San Francisco.  This is through no fault of Malden's.  It's just that the show is as resolutely a symbol of its time as the various CSIspin-offs are today.   As a result, the show has not aged well.  Everything from the theme music to the announcer informing us that the show is "A Quinn Martin Production" has taken on an element of camp.  Everything except for Karl Malden.

A few years back, I read an interview with Malden in which he was asked about his role on the Streets of San Francisco.  Malden reflected on the irony of the fact that this by-the-book cop show starred two of the most resolutely liberal actors in Hollywood.  The reason why I remembered Malden's comment is because it was delivered without apology.  He neither apologized for being liberal nor did he apologize for giving a sympathetic portrayal of a conservative.  In these partisan times, there's something comforting about discovering that there actually were accomplished, professional people who were capable of being politically-minded without succumbing to stridency.

(Malden was, for his entire career, an outspoken Democrat.  Though, it should be noted, he was a member of the Democratic Party that gave us Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey and not the Democratic Party that has since produced Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.)

For me, Malden's best television role was in the true-crime miniseries, Fatal Vision.  Playing the antagonistic father-in-law of convicted murderer Jeffrey McDonald (played, in a truly chilling performance, by Gary Cole), Malden once again embodied something that was both uniquely American and uniquely blue collar.  To his efforts to convict that man who killed his daughter, Malden brought a compelling determination and a palpable pathos that distinguished both this movie in specific and Karl Malden's career in general.

Karl Malden, R.I.P.

Update on Roland Burris

Earlier this year, I was among those who found a lot of enjoyment in following the efforts of Roland Burris to take his seat in the U.S. Senate. 

Admittedly, I later lost interest in Burris.  Even as it has subsequently been implied that perhaps Burris wasn't quite the innocent bystander that he was always made out to be, I really didn't see much point in commenting on it.  All politicians -- white, black, or whatever -- are inherently corrupt and why should Roland Burris be any different?

However, as of late, my interest in the sad (or perhaps pathetic would be a better description) story of U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has been revived.

With the latest round of accusations concerning whether or not Burris discussed raising money for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich in return for his current seat in the U.S. Senate, many Democrats are now assuming that Burris is the political equivalent of a dead man walking.  Apparently, he's now got one of Bobby's kids -- Chris Kennedy -- running against him in the 2010 Democratic primary.

Now, before anyone jumps the gun on this, it should be noted that Chris Kennedy is not the one who screwed the babysitter.  (That was Michael.)  And he's not the one who died of a drug overdose in the ghetto.  (That was David.)  He's also not the one who served in the U.S. House and quickly made a reputation for himself as an intellectual lightweight with the personality of a schoolyard bully.  (That was either Joseph or his cousin Patrick.)  Chris also never served as Lt. Governor of Maryland and he never responded to the Ravens scoring a touchdown by exclaiming, "My favorite part was when they scored the football."  (That was Kathleen.)  Also, as far as I know, Chris is not the one who has put his career on hold to spend every waking moment accusing everyone not named Skakel of murdering Martha Moxley in the 70s.  (No, that's Bobby, Jr.)  Speaking of the Skakels, Chris is also not the cousin who was accused -- in 1976 -- of attacking a policeman while hanging out with convicted murderer Michael Skakel.  (That was Max.)

(I know, I know.  It's hard to keep track of them all.)

Chris is apparently the businessman of Bobby's kids.  He runs the Merchandise Mart back in Chicago and has been pretty prominent in civic matters even if he's never actually held elected office before.  As usual, whenever one of Bobby's kids starts talking about running for office, there seems to be a general assumption in the media that this latest cousin will be the cousin who finally lives up the "Kennedy Promise." 

And who knows?  Chris might be the exception to the already established rule concerning the children of Bobby and Ethel Kennedy (i.e., that along with inheriting the least flattering physical features of both parents, the kids also inherited Bobby's abrasive arrogance and Ethel's clueless elitism). 

However, I wouldn't write Burris's obituary just yet.

Consider this story from the drones over at MSNBC:

Burris Shunned In U.S. Senate.

At this point in American history, being shunned by the current members of Congress is probably the best thing that could happen to any politician facing a tough reelection.

That's Why We Call Them Pigs

It's been a rough day and about the only thing that made it worthwhile was the fact that NBC showed two reruns (90 minutes total) of The Office earlier tonight.  This was a day saved by the sight of Melora Hardin singing Son of a Preacherman and Rainn Wilson carefully setting up a fake fire. 

What made this day so crappy?  Well, there's a guy -- a Dallas County Sheriff's Deputy apparently -- who thinks that I somehow dented his car.  Actually, he thinks that the car was dented by me and my best friend at work, Emily.  I don't want to go into too much detail about it since I already spent an hour or so venting my anger on twitter.  Let's just say that neither one of us dented this gentleman's car and that apparently, the man was especially angry at me because I was apparently, while he was jumping up and down and screaming obscenities, "inconsiderate" and "rude" towards him.

Honestly, the man's behavior reminded me of why I usually don't like cops in general.  The whole "I-Am-The-Law" attitude grates on my last nerve.  It reminds me of something that Michael Madsen said way back in either 1993 or 1994.  An interviewer asked Maden about the scene in Reservoir Dogs where he cuts a cop's ear off and Madsen reply was something along the lines of, "Who likes cops?"

Anyway, I was going to offer up another installment in my series on my favorite exploitation movie trailers but I'm simply not in the mood. 

Instead, I'm going to offer up a somewhat average trailer that served as a promo for an above-average film, I, Madman. 

Though you might not guess it from the  trailer, I, Madmanwas actually one of the best horror films of the whole late '80s, early '90s, post-slasher boom, pre-Scream period.  It's a surprisingly intelligent movie about a woman who enjoys reading trashy pulp novels and the faceless killer who appears to have literally stepped out of one of those novels.  The main reason the movie works is because the woman with a taste for the macabre is played by Jenny Wright, an engaging actress with an appealingly off-center vibe to her.  Watching I, Madman, it's hard not to regret that she'll never get to play the lead in an Alfred Hitchcock film.  Her neurotic performance here as a nice girl with bad thoughts occasionally brings to mind Janet Leigh's iconic performance in Psycho.

And just for the Hell of it, let's toss in another trailer. This is for 1990: The Bronx Warriors, which was yet another Italian rip-off of Escape From New York. The movie's actually pretty dull but the trailer has some nostalgia value if nothing else.

Alaska Dodges The Bullet

In a truly shocking twist, the members of the U.S. Senate apparently found the time to review the U.S. Constitution and discovered that they are not required to serve as a rubber stamp for the president (even if that president happens to be Barack Obama).

As a result, the Senate voted 90-6 to not allocate the funds necessary to close Guantanamo Bay until President Obama can actually explain just how exactly he's planning on doing that.

Apparently, the members of the Senate are only willing to put their blind faith in Obama Magic when it comes to such petty concerns as the U.S. economy.  When it comes to finding a new place to house terrorists, they want a detailed plan.

Actually, what they really want is a detailed plan that involves sending the terrorists as far away from potential voters as possible.

What this means, of course, is that the terrorists will ultimately show up in a state that not only has two Republican senators but a 100% Republican delegation to the U.S. House, a Republican governor, and one that will definitely never come close to voting for a Democrat in the 2012 presidential election. 

Good luck finding that in 2009! 

(And before you say it, Utah actually does send 1 Democrat to the U.S. House.  Yes, I was as shocked as anyone to learn this.)

One imagines that, as of right now, Obama's national security team is desperately wishing that Ted Stevens had been reelected last year...

John Edwards Is Being Investigated

Strangely enough, as I wrote yesterday's tribute to Jack F. Kemp, I found myself thinking about John Edwards.  It's difficult not to compare these two politicians.  Both of them were public figures before running for political office.  Kemp threw footballs.  Edwards chased ambulances.  Once they did enter politics, both of them quickly became known as "spokesmen" for their respective parties.  Both of them inspired, at one time, fanatical followings.  Both of them were wealthy men who specialized in populist rhetoric.  Both of them fell flat as presidential candidates.  Both of them ended up as running mates on tickets headed by Washington Insiders.  Both of them watched from the sidelines as their respective ticketmates managed -- through tone-deaf campaigning -- to lose elections that, by all logic, they should have easily won.

Beyond their differing political views, there was (and is) a huge difference between Jack Kemp and John Edwards.  One of them was one of America's last great statesmen and the other one was John Edwards.

Well, John Edwards is back in the news and, to no one's surprise, the news is again related to his affair with Rielle Hunter.

Ever since that story first broke back in 2008, there have been rumors and speculation that Edwards used funds donated to his presidential campaign to essentially pay Hunter to remain silent about her affair with Edwards and the still-disputed paternity of her son.

The federal government is apparently now investigating whether this was indeed the case.

If it is true (and if the pay-offs were conducted with his knowledge and/or approval), John Edwards could face federal charges.

Personally, I have no way of knowing whether John Edwards committed a crime or not.  He truly could be as innocent as he claims himself to be. 

Still, this latest sordid chapter in the history of American politics serves as a potent reminder of just how flawed our leaders -- regardless of ideology -- can be.  

Don't get me wrong.  I am not saying that a politician's private life should disqualify him from holding any office.  There are more than enough reasons why John Edwards would have made a poor president without having to drag up the sordid details of his personal life.

In the end, the fact that he chose to cheat on his terminally ill wife does not prove that Edwards would have been an incompetent leader.

It just proves that he's a total and complete jerk.

It also makes the contrast between Jack Kemp and John Edwards all the more obvious and telling. 

As one looks out over the new American landscape, it's hard not to feel that the citizens of this country will -- very soon -- have to make a decision whether they want to be led by the descendants of Jack Kemp or by the various bastard children of John Edwards.

Hopefully, they will choose wisely.

Why I Am Addicted To The Homepage of the Denton City Jail

I recently discovered that the police department of Denton, Texas (my home from 1992 to 2001) maintains a website for the Denton City Jail.  There are currently two jails in Denton.  The county jail is where people go to serve out a sentence after being convicted of a crime.  The city jail is more of a holding center.  When someone is arrested by a member of the Denton Police Department (as opposed to the Denton County Sheriff's Office), they are usually first booked into the city jail where they either wait to be bonded out or until they are transferred over to county. 

I'm neither proud nor ashamed to admit that, in the very late 90s, I spent a night or two in both of these jails.  Fortunately for me, my youthful run-inswith the law were more of a case of me being young and irresponsible as opposed to me being a criminal.  As such, my infrequent stays in the various holding cells of these two institutions never lasted for more than a couple of hours and never cost me anything more than the occasional fine.  That said, I can still say that, from my limited experience, I was always relieved whenever I found myself being booked into the city jail as opposed to the county jail.  Whereas the county jail was always overcrowded, loud, and was run by a bunch of pot-bellied rednecks, the city jail was almost peaceful.  The guards were always polite and quick to laugh at a good joke.  Since the Denton City Police tend to arrest fewer people than the Denton County Sheriff's office, the city jail was never all that crowded.  One could be sure that, if nothing else, he'd at least get a private holding cell where he could lie down on a fairly comfortable cot and enjoy the quiet. 

Add to that, the food was better in city jail.  Indeed, the only bad thing about the Denton City Jail in the late 1990s was the total lack of television in the cells.  However, it was a small price to pay to avoid the claustrophobia of county jail.

I don't know if that description is still accurate.  It's been a while and, quite frankly, repeating the experience holds little appeal to me.  In fact, I probably would have blocked all that from my mind if not for the fact that I've become rather addicted to visiting the homepage of the Denton City Jail.

On this website, they post the name, age, and latest mugshot of everyone currently being held in the jail, what they're being charged with, and how much it is going to cost to get them out of jail.  This is, of course, a public web site which means that if you're arrested in Denton, the entire world can know about it within a matter of minutes.  The Denton Police Department claims that the reason they're doing this is so that concerned friends or relatives can know if their loved ones are currently in jail and in need of someone to post bond.

Now, I have to admit that, personally, I'm not really comfortable with the idea of putting someone's picture on the Internet just because they've been arrested for a crime.  Quite frankly, it seems like a massive invasion of privacy as well as a blatant violation of the whole concept of innocent until proven guilty.  As a concerned citizen and a Libertarian, I think that the web site should be taken down.

However, as an individual, I'd be sorry to see that happen.  The site, as reprehensible as it may be in the grand scheme of things, is just too addictive to maintain any sort of outrage towards. 

One of the key components of this addiction is the fact that the site is updated in "real time."  What this means is that each time a person is booked into the city jail, that new name is immediately added to the site.  By that same token, whenever someone is finally released (whether by completing a sentence or getting bonded out), that name is removed from the site.  As such, one could spend several hours just continually reloading the page and seeing if any names have disappeared and if any new names have materialized.  Words cannot begin to describe just how entertaining this can truly be. 

Each time the page is reloaded, it's like turning the page on a trashy but involving novel. 

For instance, when I was visited earlier tonight, the first thing I noticed is that the two cute girls who were arrested for shop lifting have apparently either finally been bailed out or else have transferred out to the country jail.  I'm hoping, for their sakes, that they bonded out and are free tonight.  After all, they spent the last three days in the city jail.  During that time, six separate guys were all arrested on DUI charges, booked in the jail, and subsequently released.  With each visit to the web site, I would see their two names remaining even as all around them, new prisoners were being brought in and then released.  I found myself feeling a lot of sympathy for these two strangers as I imagined what it must have been like to be setting in those cells and watching as everyone but them was eventually allowed to leave.  I wondered if those two shoplifters were best friends or were they just casual acquaintances?  Was one of the girl trying to impress the other by stealing?  Were they just two spoiled suburban brats who were stealing because they could get away with and was their subsequent abandonment in jail the punishment of an outraged parent who refused to bond his daughters out?  Or, I wondered, were they two desperate runaways who were shop lifting because they desperately needed something to bargain with?

It was better than a soap opera.  Indeed, I was on the verge of driving to Denton myself just to bail these two out of jail.

The web site's genius is that it gives us just enough specifics to get our attention without giving us any of the details that would serve to limit the imagination.  For example, when I visit the site, I might discover that a 47 year-old individual named Tom Smith has been arrested for public intoxication.  I might click on Tom Smith's name and be presented with a mugshot of a balding, overweight white guy with a grim expression on his face.  However, what the site won't tell me is who Tom Smith is and why he was intoxicated in public.  Those facts are left to me to try to uncover based on the thin evidence provided. 

As a result, I might find myself spending a lot of time examining Tom Smith's mugshot.  I'll look at his grim expression and I'll wonder if the frown is a permanent feature or is it just a result of being arrested.  I'll look at the face in search of any scratches or bruises or scars, any evidence of a struggle.  I'll look at that mugshot and I'll ask myself, "Is Tom Smith a villain or is he a tragic hero?  Is he a man with an addiction or is he a man trying to cope with pain?"  In the end, the only thing that can be said for sure is that the Tom Smith of my imagination will probably turn out to have a far more interesting story than the Tom Smith of reality.

That's why I can't help but visit as reprehensible a site as the homepage of the Denton City Jail.  In its own accidental way, it shows us that the greatest fiction comes from trying to understand the most unknowable of a facts.

Columbine: Ten Years Later

Today is the tenth anniversary of the Columbine Massacre.

In many ways, the violence at Columbine High School pretty much sumsup the entire 1990s for me.  Problems were dismissed, obvious warning signs were ignored, and the end result was a senseless waste of human life. 

It is, of course, popular to claim that we, as a nation, learned something as a result of what happened at Columbine.

I have my doubts.  American society continues to glamorize violence and parents -- who can't be bothered to confront that which doesn't have an easy solution -- continue to try to dismiss the behavior of their children as being evidence of "growing pains," "creativity," or "a need for increased medication."  The latch-key children of the baby boomers have, for quite some time now, been old enough to have children of their own.  It's doubtful that a generation raised without values will find much success in passing anything worthwhile along to their kids.

At some point, the human race has forgotten the importance of respecting life. 

The end result?  Columbine, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Branch Davidian inferno, the shootings at Virginia Tech, and so many other senseless killings that we now find ourselves struggling to keep straight.

It's hard to imagine who Dylan Harris and Eric Klebold would be today if they hadn't made that decision ten years ago.  If they had decided to leave the guns at home, who would they be today?  Would they still be friends?  Would they get together occasionally and laugh about the day when they were so pissed off that they nearly took weapons to school?  Would they have eventually learned to cope as so many former high school outcasts have learned to cope in the adult world?

Or would leaving the guns at home ten years ago have simply delayed the inevitable?  Would they have grown up to eventually act out their bloodlust in some other way?  Would Harris be a serial killer?  Would Klebold be the bitter office manager who delighted in making the people working under him miserable?

Were these guys two forces of evil who were destined to be forces of destruction?  Or were they just two kids who found themselves in a literal-minded, unimaginative society that no longer valued the things that, in the past, would have allowed them to escape from the drudgery of their present reality?

We'll never know and that, regardless of the evil committed by Klebold and Harris, is a tragedy.

However, the true tragedy of the Columbine Massacre is not that Klebold and Harris were too weak to battle their demons,  The true tragedy is that, because of that weakness, 13 people were brutally murdered. 

12 students.

1 teacher.

All of them were murdered ten years ago today.

12 students would be on their way to 30 today if not for the fact that, ten years ago, they showed up for class at Columbine High. 

That is the tragedy of Columbine.

And the tragedy of this anniversary is that, after ten years and so many more senseless deaths, America has yet to find the courage to actually consider the lessons of Columbine. 

Ah, those wacky extremists...

 

In case you were curious, the biggest threat to American security is apparently posed by those pesky right-wing extremists.

This is according to a report issued by the Department of Homeland Security.

The report's logic is that the "economic downturn" and the fact that Barack Obama is believed by the general public to be an African-American will lead to a deluge of newly minted Timothy McVeighs.

I suspect I would probably be grouped in as one of those "extremists" by the current administration.

Of course, I'm a Libertarian and, therefore, the furthest thing from being a right-wing extremist.  If anything I'm the type of fiscally responsible, socially liberal moderate that the mainstream media is always salivating over.  However, it's simply become convenient nowadays to assume that anyone who doesn't support an all-powerful government does so because he hates black people or he thinks that the Rapture is near.

By focusing on "right-wing extremism," the report itself ignores the fact that the "economic downturn" makes extremism in general quite appealing to certain members of the American public.  Indeed, it helped to make left-wing extremism so appealing that Barack Obama easily won an election last November. 

Apparently, however, right-wing extremism is more of a threat than left-wing extremism.

I'm sure the families of the men killed by the Unabomber would be interested in that theory.

For now, however, I imagine that the folks at Homeland Security are more concerned about what to do with all of those dangerous right-wing extremists.

Maybe they could send them all to Guantanamo Bay once the current occupants have all moved out...