Even A-List actors have bad days – or in this case – really sucky films. An actor can be on an enormous roll – hit after hit, blockbuster after blockbuster – and then WHAM!!!

They star in a flop. It’s one of those films that in a retrospective will completely befuddle everyone. The only question that really needs to be asked is: “Why?”

DaRK PaRTY has come up with our list of the worst movies made by Hollywood’s A-list movie stars. Here’s the first part of our two part series:

HARRISON FORD
Six Days, Seven Nights (1998)

Harrison Ford usually packs a Hollywood wallop – although lately he’s had some sucker punches to the jaw. After a streak of mega-blockbusters – the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies being the most prevalent – he’s been like a punch-drunk fighter. It all stemmed from the decision to team up with Anne Heche for “Six Days, Seven Nights.” No chemistry, no plot, and no character development. “Six Days, Seven Nights” is a disaster – “Survivor” before “Survivor” existed. Two unlikely and unlikable people stranded on a desert island. And then pirates show up. Yeah, it's that kind of movie.

BRAD PITT
Legends of the Fall (1994)

Brad Pitt stars as the only cowboy in Montana to have a blow drier in 1911. His hair should have been given its own acting credit. “Legends of the Fall” wants to be a macho cowboy movie, but ends up being sort of “Brokeback Mountain"-ish" (not that there’s anything wrong with that). This could have been the movie to derail Pitt, but the movie was embraced by the mallrats of America and actually made $66 million. The worst part of this movie is watching Anthony Hopkins act after his character has suffered a stroke. Wow, bad.

GEORGE CLOONEY
Batman & Robin (1997)

It’s amazing that George Clooney has a career after starring as Batman – with erect nipples on his costume. The movie is so terrible that it came close to destroying the Batman franchise. This movie may be one of the worst made in the decade of the 90s. Clooney stumbles through this film like a freshman pledge who just lost a five-hour quarters tournament. This movie should have imploded his career – yet amazingly he seemed to avoid getting most of the blame for it. In other words, he lucked out.

JULIA ROBERTS
Hook (1991)

Julia Roberts survived this bloated blockbuster in much the same way – there was so much blame to throw around that not much stuck on her. This film must have sounded great on paper. Robin Williams as Peter Pan! Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook! And Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell! This movie is a cheap stunt. A grotesque manipulation of J.M. Barrie’s classic and director Stephen Spielberg should hide his head in shame. One of the worst roles in it belongs to a joyless Julia Roberts pretending to be a fairy. Oh, what one would do for a fly swapper.

JOHN TRAVOLTA
Battlefield Earth (2000)

Finding John Travolta’s bomb is difficult. The man has so many. But then “Battlefield Earth” plopped into theaters like a giant turd from space and it wasn’t so difficult anymore. That’s because “Battlefield Earth” makes getting a beaten with a shovel seem like a better option. We won’t bore you with the details – just miss this movie at all costs (even if it means stepping in front of a bus). Travolta should be called the “Zombie” because no bomb seems strong enough to kill him. He keeps coming back.

UMA THURMAN
The Avengers (1998)

This was supposed to be a break-out movie for Uma Thurman (that had to wait until 2003 and the first “Kill Bill”). “Avengers” wants to be witty and urbane and instead it’s witless and suburban. While Thurman looks groovy in her leather outfits – her acting is as wooden as co-star Ralph Fiennes facial expressions. We have no chemistry here and a total plundering of the successful “Avengers” TV show. Is it any wonder that Uma only had one movie role in the following year? “Avengers” nearly killed her. Hell, it nearly killed everyone who watched it.

MATT DAMON
The Brothers Grimm (2005)

One or two “Brothers Grimm” in a row could have pushed Matt Damon into Ben Affleck territory (Ben can’t buy a good role). But Damon managed to survive this tiresome, irritating film that insults the collective intelligence of the audience and the filmmakers at the same time. How? Most of the blame landed on director Terry Gilliam (who usually hits it out of the park and should have known better). Matt plays Will Grimm and his usual charm gets beaten like a rug here. He comes across as crass and craven and that’s in first 15 minutes. He’s lucky this film sank fast and he followed it up with stunning roles in “Syriana” (2005) and “The Departed” (2006). Otherwise, he and Ben would be holed up writing "Good Will Hunting: The Second Coming."

Labels: Bombs, Movies

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DaRK PaRTY talked to him about the art of movies reviews and the state of today’s film industry.)

DaRK PaRTY: I've noticed a more aggressive tone to movie reviews in the media in last few years. Reviewers, you included, often seem to get personal about the actors and directors you're reviewing. Why is this?

Ty: I think popular film criticism (as opposed to academic film writing) has been moving in the direction of more colloquialism for quite a while now. Three key developments: Pauline Kael (whose reviews in “The New Yorker” were punchy and confrontational and hugely influential on the current generation of working critics), the rise of rock criticism from the underground press (written in a more direct voice, it also influenced other critical fields), and the internet (let a million movie reviewers bloom). I see a more aggressive tone in much of the criticism online, for a variety of reasons (youthful bravado, the genres under discussion, the lures of anonymity, general decline of civilized discourse, misdirected anger) and I do think it has carried over to the "mainstream press" -- but only a little. The general run of newspaper and magazine reviewers try to balance wit and depth in their critical voice.

Does that mean we may occasionally say mean things about Angelina Jolie? Yes, but public figures are public figures, and you can't review a movie in a pop-culture vacuum. And critics have always used "getting personal" as a rhetorical device, sometimes for cheap effect, sometimes not. It can backfire: Back in the 1930s, when the novelist Graham Greene was reviewing movies for a British publication, he basically said that if you were a grown male fan of Shirley Temple, you were a pedophile. Temple's studio, 20th Century Fox, sued, won, and drove the publication out of business.

DP: As a movie lover, you must have favorite actors and directors and then those you dislike. How do you prepare yourself to review a new movie and base it only on its merits? Or is that even possible?

Ty: It's not possible, but you have to pretend it is. When I go into a film, I often try to go in "cold," sometimes not reading anything about it or even finding out who's in it. That way, I can gauge the movie against the best movie it's trying to be, which is all one can really hope for. Makes no sense to fault a slasher movie for not being a Jim Jarmusch film, and vice versa. On the other hand, knowing I'm going not a Jarmusch film (or a slasher flick) helps me calibrate my critical settings to the best advantage of a movie.

It's a balance. What I don't do is read up on all the available material before going to the screening, because that's not what an average audience member would do. If there's research to be done and background context to be dug up, I'll do it after the screening and before the writing.

DP: The movie "300" was shot almost entirely in a warehouse -- all the backgrounds and most of the props added by computer later. In an increasing number of films, such as the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the characters are created entirely by computers. Are we rapidly reaching a point where actual settings and actors are unnecessary?

Ty: We're reached -- have already reached -- a point where the movies have split into two. There are the circuses, with their CGI sets and digital critters, and, yeah, settings and actors and storyline become deeply secondary to sheer visual impact. On the other hand, you have more and more realistic dramas or comedies, an outgrowth of Sundance, certainly, but also fed from below by developments in TV (reality programming) and on the internet (YouTube).

So "300" is a harbinger of the future, but so are "Little Miss Sunshine" and "Borat." As the cost of making blockbusters grows more and more outlandish, the cost of just getting out there and making a movie is getting lower. (The distribution/exhibition end of things is still bottlenecked. But not for long.)

My only worry is audiences who think "300" and "LOTR" are the only thing that movies can be, because they've grown up on a zillion crappy CGI family movies.

DP: What are the three worst films that you've ever reviewed and why?

Ty: I hate these questions. Mind goes completely blank. If you ever want to reduce a critic to a drooling moron (not that he isn't halfway there already) ask him what his favorite movie is.

Still: Three worst? Okay. 1. "The Cat in the Hat," with Mike Myers: unbelievably crass culture-rape of the single most subversive kids-book author. 2. "Baby Geniuses": The late Bob Clark digitally animates infants' lips so it looks like they're speaking; you could electrify a dead frog for more entertainment. 3. "Christmas with the Kranks," a movie that despises the commercialization of the holidays before completely caving into it. (Docked extra points for Tim Allen.)

DP: What are the three best films that you've ever reviewed and why?

Ty: Random three from my rotating list of 25-30 favorite movies: "Before Sunset" (Talk + regret x Paris = Bliss); "49 Up" (the only time-lapse study of the human species and thus a unique artifact); “Borat” (How to improvise a cultural critique and still be funny, and no, it's not supposed to be fair or evenhanded).

Ask me tomorrow and get three entirely different movies!

Labels: 5 Questions, Movies, Ty Burr

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“What? What did you just say?”

“Have a nice day!”

“Have a nice day? Have a nice day! Really? You want me to have a nice, fucking day, eh? Is there a more ridiculous request you could make of me? Huh? Look outside, pal, its 87 degrees in New England in April. By August we’re going to be frying like eggs. Global warming! The ice caps are melting, hurricanes are battering our coasts, and the temperatures are heading to Mercury like levels. In the next 10 years, we’re going to be living underwater and swimming to work.

Work! Ha! I work 60 hours a week and most weekends. You think you got it tough behind that register? I've got meetings, emails, reports, more meetings, presentations, deadlines, and more goddamn meetings. I’ve got clients who would just as soon as stick a letter opener through my eye than deign to have lunch with me. But they want more, more, more – faster, faster, faster.

I’ve got a cell phone and a Blackberry and IM and a laptop and Web access. I’ve got more shit on my belt than Batman. I’m working all the time – in taxis, on airplanes, in my kitchen. I’m flipping through emails while I’m taking a shit. I’m always on. They should surgically implant a power chord to my ass like a monkey’s tail. Then I can plug in and recharge all the time. I’ll be a Power Spider Monkey hopping from device to device. I’ll even work for bananas.

And for what? They’re taking away my health insurance. I’m paying like 90 percent of it now and I get to see my doctor on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 1:30 and 1:45 on months that begin with the letter “J.” On my last appointment, my doctor stuck his finger up my rectum and had me piss in a jar. Appointment over! Meanwhile, I’m losing my hair, I’ve got chronic diarrhea (I’m spouting off like a Sperm Whale every damn morning!), and my blood pressure is in code red.

I’ve got no dental insurance, I can’t afford to participate in my 401(K), and I’ve got five lousy sick days a year. I need five sick days a month! I could spend five goddamn sick days filling up my toilet bowl. That’s my life! Have a nice day! Have a nice day!

Don’t give me that look, pal. I know, I know, you think I’m a basket case; that I need a little R&R. But I only get two weeks of vacation a year and I don’t even have time to take that. My last vacation was spent in a semi-coma in a mental health institution in New Hampshire that I was forced to pay out of pocket for because I don’t want my company to know that I needed a fucking “rest.” I should have spent it at a bar drinking myself into a real coma. It would have been cheaper.

My wife wants to divorce me. Did I tell you that yet? Who can blame her? Who wants to be married to a failed middle manager with a gut like vanilla pudding and who can’t maintain an erection for more than five minutes? If it wasn’t for internet pornography, I wouldn’t even have a sex life. I’m more intimate with Stephanie the Horny Housewife than with my wife. In fact, I love Stephanie! I adore her for $5.95 a month.

And my kids? They hate me. My 15-year-old daughter thinks I’m a loser. She rolls her eyes so much she may have brain damage. My 13-year-old boy is addicted to PlayStation. I’m not even sure he can speak or walk. All he does is grunt and eat Hot Pockets.

And that’s why I’m here. I’m just here to buy some sausage and pepperoni pizza Hot Pockets. Okay? Is that all right? Can I come in here to buy some fucking food without having a nice, goddamn day? Is that possible?”

“Um, yes, sir.”

“Good. Can I leave now?’

“Yes, sir, and have a nice day.”

Labels: Corporate, Parody

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"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”
- Moby-Dick

Victory!

At 11:45 p.m. on Monday, April 22, I finished “Moby-Dick.” With a deep satisfied sigh, I re-read the last sentence and then closed the volume and leaned back into my pillow.

After two previous failed attempts – I had finally done it. After more than two months, I had completed one of the greatest and most challenging reads in American literature.

The monstrous tome had been conquered; harpooned, if you will.

The last 50 pages of the novel were outstanding. It was – by far – the best part of the book. After one of the most agonizing, tedious build-ups I had ever experienced, Melville delivered. The suspense became nearly agonizing and at times I wanted to scream at the heavens like Ahab.

Yet, there are no surprises in “Moby-Dick.” The novel ends just as it should.

That’s why it’s finally time to discuss Ahab. Mystifying, terrifying, and dangerous Ahab.

He is perhaps the most complicated and compelling figures in literature. Ahab is not likable and, in fact, many consider him a villain. His obsession with killing the White Whale borders on the maniacal, but calling him a villain is too simplistic. Ahab is more the misguided, doomed hero. He is defiant, obstinate, and a brilliant sea captain.

He is the great American. He captures the spirit of the United States in Melville’s pre-Civil War era. He could be a grown up Huckleberry Finn who has let his abusive history finally catch up to him.

In fact, literary critic Harold Bloom writes in his book “Genius” that Ahab joins the characters of Walt Whitman in “Leaves of Grass” and Huckleberry Finn as the three most definitive American literary characters.

Bloom goes on to call Ahab the “American King Lear.” It’s a compelling comparison. Both men are aging masters of their universe. Both men are single-minded and ultimately bring about their own doom.

So what is Ahab’s quest? On the surface, it seems a journey for revenge. Forever marred by his first encounter with the White Whale; an encounter that ripped the lower part of his leg off and left him delirious and near dead. But the White Whale isn’t a whale – he is merely a symbol.

Ahab is hunting his fate – his destiny. He is hunting God. “Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me,” Ahab shouts as he tries to lobby his crew to help him stalk Moby-Dick. This is a man who fears nothing – who will risk everything in his defy God.

There’s a reason why most of the crew on the Pequod are named after Biblical figures. There’s a reason why there are few Christians (or white men) on board. Most of the crew is pagans or atheists. And they all die; every one of them.

Except for Ishmael.

But Ishmael knows he has been spared for one reason; to tell the story to others.

In the end, the Christian God prevails. He rolls over and destroys the free-spirits, the defiant, and the bold American characters. How would Melville react to the fundamentalist explosion happening today in the United States? He would nod sagely and point to his novel: which accurately reflects that movement, which like Moby-Dick tries to drown the unbelievers.

“Moby-Dick” is an enormous book. Huge. But ultimately, Melville let it get away from him. The novel is flawed because of the tiresome passages about whaling, whaling history, and whaling anatomy. It nearly brings down the book and wading through some of the chapters is like sinking into quicksand.

You almost need a maniacal determination to finish.

I’m glad I read it. It has been one of my goals as a reader for a long time. But would I recommend it?

Difficult question. For some readers, I would; for other’s I would not. That sounds like a cop out – but it’s the best answer. If you are willing to read the novel slowly and carefully – to absorb it and patiently fight through the difficult sections – then that reader will find it a worthwhile endeavor.

But readers like that are rare these days.

Progress to date: Page 655 of 655.

Reading Moby-Dick: Part Four

Reading Moby-Dick: Part Three

Reading Moby-Dick: Part Two

Reading Moby-Dick: Part One

Labels: books, Moby-Dick

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So we sought out David Black – who was more difficult to track down that Mr. Bond himself. David is the chairman of the James Bond International Fan Club. Black was born in Scotland in 1968, but lives mostly in York. In 1995, he got bitten by the Bond bug when collecting movie posters from the James Bond films. In 2000, while search for posters, he stumbled upon the fan club, which was in a financial nosedive. After a few meetings, he ended up taking over the club. He is often feature on various radio and TV broadcasts talking about James Bond.)

DaRK PaRTY: Why do you think James Bond is so popular around the world?

David: The Bond films are the most successful and longest running film franchise ever to reach the silver screen. The producers, Eon Productions, must be doing something right!

I think the combination of style and action – attractive men and women, exotic locations, desirable cars, boats, helicopters etc all create a fantasy lifestyle that secretly most of us would like to live. As has been said before – the men want to be Bond and the women want to sleep with Bond.

DP: How did you first get introduced to James Bond and what was the main attraction?

David: Every year at Christmas we were treated to a film at school. The first one I saw was “Live and Let Die” (1973) – it was on the big screen and it had me hooked. The combination of action / adventure, the fight between the suave James Bond and the frightening villains (Tee Hee with his metal hook hand and Baron Samedi charming his snakes in his voodoo rituals) was amazing. The stunts were breathtaking – especially as I was only 10 years old - a double decker bus getting chopped in half under a low bridge – Bond running across the backs of snapping alligators…

As I saw more of the films, the cars and gadgets used in 007’s adventures kept me coming back for more.

DP: Give us a summary of the James Bond International Fan Club -- what does it do? How many members to you have, etc?

David: The James Bond International Fan Club was founded in 1979 and has around 4,000 members at present. We have members from all over the world, particularly the UK, Europe, US, Japan and Australia. We produce the magazine “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” on a quarterly basis with interviews and insights into behind the scenes events from the Bond films.

The club has had conventions in the past at Pinewood Studios and in London – hopefully we will be running more events as membership numbers increase.

DP: In your opinion how does the new James Bond, Daniel Craig, rank among the other actors who have portrayed 007?

David: Many people were skeptical when Daniel was picked as the 6^th James Bond. Following the release of “Casino Royale” (2006), I think Daniel has proved a real success – I personally put him right up with Sean Connery as one of the best Bonds of all.

Timothy Dalton was also great – they are all good interpretations of Ian Fleming's literary Bond.

DP: What are your three favorite James Bond films and why?

David: My favorites are “From Russia With Love” (1963), “Goldfinger” (1964) and now “Casino Royale.” I love the style of the films – action and adventure combined with a good, well thought out story line. Not too many gadgets in any of these but plenty of high-speed action.

I must just add that I love all the Bond films – they all have good points – I can happily sit and watch the Roger Moore films or the Timothy Dalton editions. Hopefully there will be many more still to be produced.

Labels: 007, 5 Questions, David Black, James Bond

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Send a resume that claims you’re a people person. Then go sit in a corner and wait for retirement.

Required Uniform

Polo Shirts: It’s best to have a wide range of colors such as plum, peach, salmon, turquoise, and black. They should all have the logos of defunct technology start-ups that no one has ever heard of such as Intrudec, iThunk, eVert, and Shout Magic.

Khaki pants: Of various shades – preferably to ankle length to show off your amazing array of brown and black socks.

Sneakers: Tennis and running sneakers are the favorites. Make sure they are shiny and worn with your colored socks.

Required Habits

Coffee: You must be a coffee aficionado and drink at least four or five cups daily. You will be required to fall into one of two tribes – Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks. Everyone is allowed to complain about the single-cup servings available in the office kitchen.

Computer Games: Mastering single shooter and Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games is a must. Be ready to describe the adventures of your half-elf mage/thief to any and all co-workers.

Pornography: This will be your only outlet for sex. Try to be discrete.

Candy: Be prepared to be bombarded with sweets. Eat it all. The sugar rush is the only happiness you will receive most days.

Necessary Skill Set

Screen Reduction: The ability to reduce a window quickly and effortlessly is a necessary skill to hide the fact that you aren’t actually working but posting anti-corporate rants on your blog or in a flame war with DevilDwarf on the Worlds of Warcraft message board.

Complaining: Bitch about everything: your salary, your social life, the commute, the weather, your workload, the new vice president, your cubicle, and your life.

Powerpoint: You must be able to communicate your every thought through bullets.

Environment

Office Parks: You will work in flat-roofed office buildings with no functioning windows and overhead fluorescent lighting. The building will be surrounded by a blacktopped parking lot. Sometimes you’ll be close to a strip mall.

Cubicles: You will live in your cubicle. It’s like a monkey cage at the zoo (only there’s nothing to climb on). Be sure to personalize your cube with Dilbert cartoons, toys and balls, vacation photographs, cute animal magnets, a candy dish, various certificates and internal company awards, and graft from the trade shows you’ll be forced to attend.

Conference Rooms: Be sure to pick the most comfortable chair and one with a view of the world outside of the soul-sucking enterprise where you work. Skills to attending long meetings are the abilities to: fart quietly, disguise growling stomachs with coughing, pounce on food first to avoid soggy sandwiches, and to leave the meeting with absolutely no work.

Cafeterias: Most of the cafeteria workers have criminal records and probably spit in the food. They hate you and your relatively fat paycheck.

Aliments

Chapped Lips/Dry Skin: Offices are drier than deserts. If you don’t drink enough water you will suffer.

Hemorrhoids: Scratching your ass discretely is an acquired skill.

Overweight: You will develop a paunch because you spend all day sitting on your ass and not moving. Wear loose clothing to disguise the fact that you’re a fat, out-of-shape slob.

Attention Deficit Disorder: Email, IM, and cell phones will create an addiction for instant data. You will be unable to focus on one task for long periods of time. You will become impatient with conversations because they take too long. Remember: multi-tasking is just a polite way of saying you have ADD.

Muscle Atrophy: You’ll have strong fingers, but the rest of you will become pale and soft.

Welcome to you new career.

Labels: Corporate, Parody

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It’s amazing that in this day and age of allegedly enlightened people that there are still large pockets of the population that believe that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. This is one of the grand lies perpetuated by evolutionists who insist on the silly notion that the earth is several hundred million years old and that dinosaurs once ruled a world without human beings.

Obviously, these scientists – and I use the word lightly – have never read the Holy Bible. A careful study of God’s words in the Bible proves that the earth is only a few thousand years old, most likely just 6,000 years old. We’re a young planet!

That means, of course, that dinosaurs walked the earth with human beings. God created all living creatures on the sixth day, according to the Old Testament. The text is quite clear:

“And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:24-25)

It is amazing how scientists have been duped by the mad ramblings of one man -- Charles Darwin -- and his theory (a theory mind you!) about evolution. The entire concept of natural selection is so ludicrous that it’s amazing that anyone takes it seriously. Yet most schools teach evolution and reject the sound science of creationism. In fact, evolution is the foundation of modern biology!

How bizarre given that we possess the greatest scientific manual on the planet – the Holy Bible. The Bible gives us a matter-of-fact, rational, and wholly undisputed explanation directly from God on the how the world was created. It isn’t complicated. God made the world.

I’m a student of intellect (and have several degrees from unaccredited Christian Universities) so this is easy for me. I’ve studied biology, astrology, chemistry and teratology in college. But even a child can understand the simplicity of creationism compared to the overly complicated and unlikely “science” of evolution. What is more rational in your mind?

1. All the plants and animals in the world were developed through an evolutionary process where individual organisms struggle to survive and those with the best or most favorable characteristics for their environment will be more likely to survive. As a result, those favorable traits will be passed onto their offspring and become the dominant characteristics among organisms.

Or

2. An omnipotent, omnipresent God designed our universe, planets, plants, animals and human beings in six days.

Most rational thinking people automatically choose “B” because it is easier to understand. Remember the phrase your mother used to tell you when you were a kid? KISS. Keep It Simple Stupid.

Evolutionary scientists stumble all over each other like circus clowns trying to make the concept of creation overly complicated. Let them live in their land of delusions! The enlightened know better.

So let’s return to the subject of dinosaurs. Our evolutionary scientists like to claim that human beings and dinosaurs never walked the earth together. False! How do we know this? The Bible, of course!

“Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron.” (Job 40: 15-18)

What is being described here – the behemoth – is a dinosaur! The word “dragon” is also found in the Old Testament and what is a dragon to the ancients is nothing less than a dinosaur in today’s parlance.

So what happened to these mighty reptiles? Most of them were destroyed when God flooded the earth. Noah saved pairs of animals – dinosaurs among them (I know what you’re thinking – how could dinosaurs fit on the ark? But it’s simple really – Noah took pairs of baby dinosaurs with him).

The flood and the mud that came with it buried the other dinosaurs (this is why we discover their bones as fossils). The survivors from Noah's Ark didn’t fare so well and they died out – probably due to the new conditions of the world after the great flood. Extinction is a fact of life – just ask the Woolly Mammoth and the Dodo Bird!

Oops, you can’t! They’re extinct! Just like the dinosaurs.

Non-believers like to point to dinosaurs as evidence that Creationism is wrong. Now you have the facts to argue against the ridiculous notion that dinosaurs once ruled the planet millions of years ago. You can also tell any non-believers that they’re going to go the route of the dinosaur if they don’t begin to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior.

Maybe if the dinosaurs did so they would be around today.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16)

(The Rev. Colson Crosslick is pastor of the Pretty Good Shepherd Church in Ripsaw, Arkansas. In the past, he has called for a boycott of all Barney TV shows and merchandise. He also writes the regularly appearing column Under God's Right Arm for DaRK PaRTY.)

Labels: Dinosaurs, Under God's Right Arm

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The 9 Best Songs by Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin is the greatest rock n’ roll band of all time. They may not be as influential as the namby-pamby Beatles or as popular as the dinosaurs still stalking the stage and calling themselves the Rolling Stones, but make no bones about it.

Led Zeppelin sits on top of the rock altar.

They had it all – a coolness factor that exceeds both Jim Morrison and Pink Floyd, a heavy-metal, blues-infused sound that has yet to be duplicated, and a rock influence that touches nearly every modern band (from Filter to Pearl Jam). Jimmy Page was one of the best guitarists in rock and who could ever mimic the yowls and vocal range of Robert Plant? And no one could bang drums better than John Bonham or pluck a base like John Paul Jones.

The band has some impressive statistics as well. They’ve sold more than 300 million albums (including more than 110 million in the United States). VH1 ranks them as the best heavy metal band of all time (we’d argue that calling their bluesy, often folksy and funk-induced music “heavy metal” is outrageous). They are members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

They also have a damn cool web site. Make sure you have your volume cracked up when you click on the link.

The only sin the band has committed is its stubborn refusal to allow its music catalog to be available online. So you can’t purchase their albums on iTunes or any other music store on the Web. Hopefully, that will change.

Choosing the 9 best songs by Led Zeppelin is a difficult challenge – since you could argue that their 9 worst songs are better than anything topping the charts these days. But we went ahead and tried anyway. Why the number 9? Because they released 8 albums in 10 years – from the self titled debut in 1969 "Through The Out Door" in 1979, but we’re going to include Coda – a collection of B sides and rarities released in 1982 after the death of Bonham in 1980.

That makes 9 albums.

So without further ado – our picks for the 9 Best Songs by Led Zeppelin:

Ramble On (1969)

“Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair.
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her.”

Yeah, geek alert. The lyrics are inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” Is it any wonder that Plant once admitted he was embarrassed by the Tolkien references? Little did he know that that would be damn cool nearly 30 years later.

The song is actually one of four that reference Tolkien (“Bron-Y-Aur Stomp,” “Misty Mountain Hop” and “The Battle of Evermore” are the others). The unique drumming on the song is actually Bonham banging on a plastic bucket.

Dazed and Confused (1968)

This is a cover song originally performed by folk artist Jake Holmes. Many people think it’s about an acid trip gone haywire (probably because Zeppelin’s version sounds like it should be), but, in fact, the song is about a girl. The lyrics are mediocre with the first stanza going like this:

“Been Dazed and Confused for so long it's not true.
Wanted a woman, never bargained for you.
Lots of people talk and few of them know,
soul of a woman was created below.”

Zeppelin never credits Holmes (and Page takes writing credit for the song on Zeppelin’s first album). What makes Zeppelin’s interpretation of the song so good is that Page uses a violin bow on his electric guitar. The result is an eerie, nightmarish sound that makes the song creepy and rocking at the same time. When Zeppelin played the song in concert the middle of it became a monster jam that could last up to 45 minutes.

Nobody’s Fault But Mine (1976)

What is this song about? There are two popular theories:

1. It’s about Plant’s addiction to drugs
2. It’s about Led Zeppelin’s deal with the devil

I prefer the latter explanation – because it just adds to the Zeppelin mystique. Regardless, the song rocks (even though it was stolen from American Bluesman Blind Willie Johnson who died in 1945 and wasn’t around to complain about the theft).

The song was a staple of Zeppelin concerts and featured some amazing blues rifts from Page (the original recording is done with a triple-tracked guitar introduction). We also get a dazzling harmonica solo by Plant.

When the Levee Breaks (1970)

This is the best song from the band’s famous Zofo album. In other words it kicks the ass of “Stairway to Heaven.” And (surprise, surprise) it’s another song stolen from long dead bluesmen – this time from duo Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie.

But to Zeppelin’s credit they rework the song considerably and make it their own. It’s about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the beginning of the song features a booming, thunderous drum beat by Bonham. It was recorded by placing Bonham at the bottom of an empty stairwell.

Plant also has some incredible screeches and screams in this baby.

In My Time of Dying (1974)

Another song ripped-off from Blind Willie Johnson. Poor bastard. It is found on the band’s double album “Physical Graffiti” and holds the distinction of being the longest studio song recorded by Zeppelin (11:06).

Hold on to your ball caps. “In My Time of Dying” is a guitar aficionados dream. Page lets his guitar weep and wail on this one.

Not knowing how to end the song, Plant is heard mumbling “dyin’… dyin’… dyin’” and then someone coughs and Plant ad libs “Cough.” Then you can hear Bonham say: “That’s gonna be the one, hasn’t it?”

The end.

No Quarter (1972)

This song is as lonely and forlorn as a cold wind on a rainy night. For some reason, the song conjures up images from the very spooky short story “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs.

The lyrics drive home the feel:

“Close the door, put out the light.
You know they won't be home tonight.
The snow falls hard and don't you know?
The winds of Thor are blowing cold.”

This song also feels like it could also have been influenced by Tolkien and “Lord of the Rings.” It became the centerpiece of most Zeppelin concerts often accompanied by flashing lights and a fog machine.

In the Light (1975)

Zeppelin never played “In the Light” in concert because the eerie synthesizer introduction played by John Paul Jones could not be replicated in concert. It’s also one of the few songs where Page uses a violin bow on his guitar (this time an acoustic guitar).

To say that “In the Light” is creepy – doesn’t do justice to creepy. If Edgar Allen Poe had been a rock n’ roller – this is the song he would have written. However, many people interpret the song as Zeppelin’s redemption song – that they embrace God and Christianity. Mainly due to lyrics like this:

“And if you feel that you can't go on. And your will's sinkin' low
Just believe and you can't go wrong.
In the light you will find the road. You will find the road.”

But we reject this interpretation because as soon as the song lightens – it then rapidly descends again into gloom and mysticism. “In the Light” feels more like a drug trip than a religious indoctrination.

Kashmir (1975)

In the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” the character Mike Damon tells his buddy Rat that the best way to score with a chick is to play the second side of Zeppelin IV on a date. The movie cuts to Rat and his date in the car with “Kashmir” cracking.

“Kashmir” is on the album Physical Graffiti.

The song has a Middle Eastern flair to it and, in fact, Plant wrote the lyrics while driving through the Sahara Desert (why it’s called Kashmir – a mountainous region in India is unknown). But Plant has cited the song as his favorite.

The song was also played at every Zeppelin concert.

In the Evening (1979)

Zeppelin’s last studio album while Bonham was alive, “In Through the Out Door” is the most disjointed and lighter than the typical Zeppelin album. The one exception is “In the Evening,” which was written by Jones.

The ghostly introduction was originally written for the film “Lucifer Rising,” but Zeppelin had a falling out with the movie’s director. “In the Evening” is a straight rocker and the best song on “In Through the Out Door.”

It’s also another song where Page used a violin bow on his guitar.

Labels: Led Zeppelin, Music

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“Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.”

- Jonah

It has been an uphill battle to finish this monstrous book. I’ve been neck-deep in whale lore for more than a month now and it has come close to drowning me.

My edition of “Moby-Dick” is as battered as a paperback can get. Dinged, dented, creased, and folded over. It’s lived inside my briefcase and computer bag for weeks and joined me on a couple of business trips and on a sub-tropical vacation.

The first trip was to London. I read a good chunk of the first 100 pages on the British Airways overnight flight from Logan to Heathrow. I remember the hum of the jet engines and the dim compartment lighting the color of whale oil. All around me most of my fellow passengers had fallen into that semi-sleep, partial-coma of airline slumber.

I read about Nantucket clam chowder.

From London, I flew on to Tripoli, Libya. I wondered if I owned the only copy of “Moby-Dick” in the country. Was that possible? I didn’t get to read much in Libya – only patches of chapters. Most of the time while ensconced in my hotel room with a view of the Mediterranean Sea.

It seemed an apt setting for the topic of quarter decks on whaling vessels.

I read another whale-sized chunk returning to Boston; again in the silky yellow glow of the airline cabin. But I was exhausted from my work and spent more time watching movies “Stranger Than Fiction” and “Rocky Balboa.”

But I did learn about the Specksynder – which means “chief harpooner.”

Next was a business trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I packed the novel poorly and it ended up with a creased down the back cover – nearly in half. I barely made any inroads on this trip. It was a quick 24-hour jaunt with stretches of long, soul-slaying meetings.

But I did get to experience the Pequod’s first kill as the second mate, Stubb, harpooned a Sperm whale. Except for the first 30 pages, it was the best part of “Moby-Dick” so far in the novel. When Melville focuses on the “story” of “Moby-Dick” his prose is wonderfully rendered. The words sing.

Then it was off on a week-long vacation to Naples, Florida. It was a hot and humid week and the book took major structural damage. One night, I left in on the balcony and the pages warped and folded in the damp air. The pages expanded and made an already enormous volume that much larger (and heavier).

But I made a major dent in the book. I ate up a lot of the story and also hit the most difficult and irritating part (which made the mind-numbingly boring “Cetology” chapter seem refreshing and breezy).

Chapters like “The Fountain” (all about the whale’s spout) and “The Tail” (yes, it’s an entire section on a whale’s tail) were bone-jarringly technical and contained more detail about whaling and whales than anyone in his right mind would want. I nearly tossed the book into the swimming pool.

But I got muddled through it.

It has taken me much longer than I had hoped to get this far along in “Moby-Dick” and despite strong urges to put it down or burn it or start something new (I’ve got a stack of new books on my shelf calling my name), I’ve been doggedly determined not to let Melville beat me this time.

I keep telling myself that the third time will be the charm. So I’m going to finish – even if I have to harpoon myself. The good news is that I see the end now. And the chapters about boiling whale meat and the critical review of what kind of whale may have actually swallowed Jonah appear to be behind me.

Soon Ahab and Moby-Dick will meet.

I’m eagerly awaiting that encounter and praying it lives up to Melville’s frustrating and hyper-detailed build up.

Progress to date: Page 530 of 655.

Reading Moby-Dick: Part Three

Reading Moby-Dick: Part Two

Reading Moby-Dick: Part One

Labels: books, Moby-Dick

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It solidified Cruise as a box office sensation.

Yet, amazingly, “Cocktail” is a terrible film. Woe begotten in nearly every phase of film making: writing, directing, acting and even cinematography (Has Jamaica ever looked so listless on film?). But “Cocktail” somehow manages to transcend its awfulness. It’s so damn bad that it’s difficult to take your eyes off the screen. It reminds you of the limbo: How low can it go?

That’s the beauty of this shattered glass of a film. It wants so badly to say something important about the excesses of the 80s while embracing that mentality at the same time. So it becomes one giant contradiction of itself.

On the surface, the movie is about an ambitious, but impatient young man who doggedly goes through several trials and tribulations before finally becoming a success by staying true to himself. Oh, and here’s the kicker, he’s a bartender.

The plot is a meandering affair. The movie opens with a young Cruise and his Army buddies chasing after his bus after his enlistment is over. It’s unclear why Cruise is former Army because it has no bearing on the plot and nor do his “buddies” ever return. There’s really no middle to the film – just an extended center – and the movie ends with a mixed message about materialism. In that it might be a good thing indeed.

The film badly wants us to love Cruise, playing the character of Brian Flanagan. He’s supposed to be the huggable rapscallion. Unfortunately, the movie fails to deliver and gives us Brian Flanagan – the scumbag.

Really. He’s an asshole with no redeeming qualities whatsoever (with the possible exception of his grin). He’s a lazy, impatient, disloyal, and materialistic braggart. He's also a drunk (yet despite making Flanagan a heavy drinker, the film never gives him a hangover). He’s under the spell of a bigger and louder bastard, Doug Coughlin (played by Bryan Brown).

Coughlin is supposed to be the philosopher king of bartenders spouting off nuggets like “Coughlin's Law: Anything else is always something better” or “Coughlin's Law: Bury the dead, they stink up the place.” But in the end he’s just a cynical hustler.

Flanagan drops out of college because of his late nights of bartending and drinking. He’s bored with it anyway and falls back on his greatest talent – flipping liquor bottles over his shoulder before pouring a drink. His primary goal is now hooking up with a rich woman who will finance his dream of owning a single’s bar.

Flanagan is also a whiner. After a romantic sequence with Elisabeth Shue’s Jordan Mooney where they make love on the beach, swim in a tropical lagoon, shop along the sun-splashed Jamaican coastline, make love a second time next to a bonfire, and then sip rum punch at sunset, Flanagan complains about being unsatisfied with his life. Um. Earth to Flanagan. You’re living in paradise! With Elisabeth Shue!

You learn all you need to know about Flanagan’s character when at the height of his romance with Jordan he cheats on her with a rich, older woman. his romance with Why? Because the mighty Coughlin bets him 50 bucks that he can’t do it. When he later reconciles with the gullible Jordan, Flanagan tells her that when a buddy dares you – you don’t back down.

He says this, mind you, with a straight face.

The best part of the movie is also the worst part. Jordan runs out on him and after spending months in Manhattan as the boy toy of the rich, older woman (rather than introduce Flanagan to her friends, she orders him to go hang up her fur coat), Flanagan finally sees the light and wants Jordan back.

It turns out: Jordan is loaded. And pregnant.

The scene when Flanagan breaks into Jordan’s wealthy father’s penthouse and gets into a fistfight with the doorman and the butler is priceless. It’s so chaotic, ugly, and poorly acted that you end up squirming in your seat with discomfort. In other words, it’s bad cinema at its finest.

Perhaps we can blame the 80s for “Cocktail.” It revels in the excesses of the decade (and even has many of its cheesy hits as a soundtrack. “Addicted to Love” anyone?). The keys to enjoying this wooden, plot-less affair are to let go and just let the ridiculousness take you for a ride.

Marvel at the shlocky dialog (Cruise actually utters this line: “Days get shorter and shorter, nights longer and longer, before you know it, your life is just one long night with a few comatose daylight hours”). Wonder at how Cruise manages to keep a Cheshire Cat grin going through the entire movie (his jaw muscles must have been killing him). Ponder at Elizabeth Shue’s pathetic performance (she has the worst dialog in the film and her character is nothing but a one-dimensional plot device).

But most of all wonder why anyone would go to a bar where the bartenders take more than five minutes to mix one lousy cocktail.

And then celebrate the cop-out ending where “Cocktail” celebrates greed as Brian Flanagan’s lone quality – and the one quality that finally gets him his singles bar.

Labels: Bad-Cinema, Cocktail, Movie Review

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DaRK PaRTY: Dickens allegedly burned most of his important letters and correspondence when he was nearing the end of his writing career. What do we really know about the life of the creator of Scrooge and David Copperfield?

Judith: Whoa! That would have been a conflagration indeed, for this obsessed writer of private and public documents! Dickens did, in one of his periodic attempts to resist his past, burn baskets and baskets of correspondence in the late summer of 1860, mostly letters from others and copies of his own, but the Dickens letters we do have run to twelve volumes in the most recent Oxford UP edition.

Even more important, we have from Dickens’s friend and first biographer John Forster an account of the ‘autobiographical fragment’ Dickens himself wrote about his early years as a neglected and abandoned (by his own lights anyway) child, those months put to work in a London blacking factory while his father was in debtor’s prison, when he feared that he would be sunk forever in menial and unimaginative work – an experience which haunted him with images of his own futility, solitariness and inadequacy even at the height of his success, and which he put directly into “David Copperfield” (1850).

We have a long defensive letter he wrote and showed to friends about the reasons for the breakdown of his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, and a follow up statement about his formal separation from her that he actually insisted on publishing in the “Times”; and from others’ letters and diaries and from hints in his letters, we know he maintained a clandestine and probably erotic, if not necessarily adulterous, correspondence with the actress Ellen Ternan for some years after that separation.

DP: Is Dickens still an important author in 2007? If so, why?

Judith: I’d certainly take his books with me to a desert island; they’re so filled with life at the extremes of joy and despair, so vividly pictorial, so rhetorically unique and memorable. Then too, the Victorians are unmistakably our contemporaries in the attempt to assess the human consequences of everything we think of as “modern” – individualism, industrialism, urbanism, science, and so on. And more even than Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot, Dickens wrote into his characterizations those communications of mind and body, those strange and intimate connections between behavior and thought, which Freud later codified as the beginnings of the science of psychology.

DP: What are the biggest misconceptions about Dickens?

Judith: Two, I think: one emotional and one literary. In the early decades of his career what impressed readers was the vitality, comedy, and consoling durability of Dickens’s people and his attitude towards life, and lots of people still think of his work as some sort of “Christmas Carol,” coming round to “cheer” every year. But there’s a darker Dickens right from the start, a haunted consciousness, and in his later novels he explored with great acuity the sorts of human and social obsessions and mistakes which we can diagnose but can’t seem to cure.

Then too, people understand him as a “popular” writer, one who wrote for money by the inch in the magazines and serializations of his first publishing years, one who addressed, and to some degree created, the “mass market.” True enough, but he was also a man of gigantic ambition and that includes artistic ambition – what may seem at first glance the proverbial “loose baggy monster” of swollen narrative in his 800 pagers actually turns out to be unified around images and themes and paced according to both suspense and thought in ways which we associate, on a different scale, with Browning, and which certainly caught the eye and influenced the likes of Henry James and T. S. Eliot.

DP: In your opinion, what are Dickens’s three greatest works and why?

Judith: “Bleak House” (1853): it has the best balance of private and public concerns in the story of a lost little girl and of a national system of government, medicine and law which fails its people. It’s a narrative tour de force through its creation of two written “speaking” voices – an epic sardonic kind of investigative journalist looking over the whole picture and the lost little girl turned hyper-orderly woman; and it’s got at least two scenes which make me tear up even when I’m reading it in the classroom.

“Our Mutual Friend” (1865): it’s a treasure trove of strange and wonderful character (Mr. Venus, articulator of bones and melancholy artiste!), beautifully turned images (a dull old business house in the gloomy metropolis reflects “a sobbing gaslight in the counting-house window and a burglarious stream of fog creeping in the keyhole”), and a heartbreaking competition for one of the heroines between a languidly handsome dandy and an obsessed upwardly mobile young teacher.

“A Tale of Two Cities” (1859): we know the story in advance, both the male doubles who desire the heroine and the causes and consequences of the French Revolution, and yet this warhorse of a historical novel is still supreme for compulsive pace and quaint Dickensian touches.

DP: Which three Dickens characters are your favorites and what do you find most compelling about them?

Judith: Oh, hard to keep to three. Well then…. Estella in “Great Expectations” (1861): a frightening example of a story Dickens often tells – a parent (figure) who wishes to reconstruct a malleable child into a weapon against the word, in this case, the masculine world which betrayed Miss Havisham is to have its heart eaten out, over and over, by the “femme fatale” she creates Estella to be. The process is so far advanced by the time Estella becomes conscious of this that she can do nothing but warn the innocent men, or try to destroy her guilty self in a car-crash of a marriage to a brute.

Sidney Carton in “A Tale of Two Cities”: “it is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done”… a cliché of a character, and yet Dickens draws us powerfully, and anxiously, into the story of a man of talent and intelligence whose “will” is, for reasons we can only guess at, somehow broken by the conditions of modern professional life, so that he is mysteriously unable to comment cynically on the passing show: he can only take an action when it is for someone else. A male version, in some ways, of Estella’s problem.

And finally, Harold Skimpole of “Bleak House,” the comic figure of a minor artist blithely assuming that the universe, and more specifically his long-suffering friends, will support him. A half conscious Dickensian critique of his own art – and yet, Skimpole makes us all sit up and take notice as he argues that we active and virtuous people would be nowhere without someone of his disabilities and inadequacies to be the object of our charity and our competence. A character worthy of G. B. Shaw.

Labels: 5 Questions, Dickens, Judith Wilt

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The weedy stink of cut grass wafting over the old ball yard...

The spongy taste of an over-boiled hotdog smeared with onions and mustard...

The bark of the beer guy and the stinky touch of his fingers as he hands you a cold plastic cup spilling foam...

The high blue sky and the droning airplane dragging a banner advertising life insurance...

Baseball is back. And with it comes the steroids, enormous egos, wallet-busting salaries, and the heart-ache of rooting for the Kansas City Royals. But there's nothing more enjoyable than sun-drenched visits to the park to watch major league pitching and homeruns over the scoreboard.

So to get prepared for the long season -- DaRK PaRTY has prepared our five favorite baseball movies of all time. These are the films to watch on travel days or when the clouds roll in and rain on your favorite team.

The Single: The Rookie (2002)

“You know what we get to do today, Brooks? We get to play baseball.”

Most sports movies (and baseball movies in particular) are sappy. They grapple too hard for sentiment and those tear-welling poignant moments. “The Rookie” has all of that, yet miraculously avoids the “Sap Trap.” In one of his best roles, Dennis Quaid plays real-life pitcher Jim Morris. Morris, a promising young pitcher, was felled by injuries. Many years later, while coaching his 8-year-old boy’s Little League team, his fastball suddenly has some gas on it. You can guess the rest. This is old-fashioned fun – so don’t let the “G” rating scare you away.

The Double: The Natural (1984)

“People don't start playing ball at your age, they retire!”

“The Natural” is the Gandhi of baseball movies. It gets into all of that smoky, slow motion mystical crap. At times, you half-expect the hand of God to descend from the clouds and push Robert Redford’s baseballs into the stands. If you can get over the fact that Glenn Close is constantly backlit with a creamy, golden glow, you’re in for a good baseball movie. Redford plays Roy Hobbs a natural baseball player who never got his big break. Now middle-aged, Hobbs proceeds to have a rookie year that’s one for the ages.

The Triple: Major League (1989)

“Remember, fans, Tuesday is Die Hard Night. Free admission for anyone who was actually alive the last time the Indians won the pennant.”

“Major League” is a blast – it’s also a mess, but so much damn fun that’s its hard not to enjoy. What we have here is “The Bad News Bears” for raunchy, adolescents posing as adults. We meet a lovable team of misfits and losers who have the misfortune of playing for the never-gonna-do-it Cleveland Indians (this was before the baseball Renaissance in Ohio’s largest city). Yet somehow they end up winning it all. Great comedic performances from a young Charlie Sheen and a delightful Bob Uecker.

The Homerun: Eight Men Out (1988)

“Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so.”

Admittedly, “Eight Men Out” is for baseball lovers only. You need to have an understanding of the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 to really appreciate the nuances of the film. The story is about how the ballplayers of the White Sox threw the World Series for a big pay day. The best performance is by John Cusack who plays Buck Weaver – the lone innocent on a team of corrupt players in cahoots with organized crime. This movie is drama with a capital D – but well worth it.

The Grand Slam: Field of Dreams (1989)

“It's okay, honey. I... I was just talking to the cornfield.”

Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of a cop out to pick “Field of Dreams” for this list, but what can I say? It’s a damn good baseball movie and the scenes between estranged father and his adult son always bring a tear to my eye. One wonders how this movie ever got made. A farmer hears voices and then builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield so that Shoeless Joe Jackson will come to play on it? This film is a love affair for baseball. It pushes all the right buttons and Kevin Costner's performance is one of his best. You can’t claim to be a fan of baseball movies if you haven’t seen this one.

Labels: baseball, Movies

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Labels: Poem, Raymond King Shurtz

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When I was a newspaper reporter many years ago, I joined in on a clandestine operation.

Union organizing.

A large, out-of-state media company bought the mid-size newspaper where I worked. The new owners’ first order of business was scaling back staff, slashing salaries (with a wage freeze) and eliminating or reducing benefits. That’s what corporate buyers do when they want to maximize profits on an investment – they cut the fat.

“Fat” these days equals employees.

So the reporters and editors at my newspaper got smart. We signed cards to join the Newspaper Guild. We needed protection and decided collective bargaining with our new owners was the best way to get it. By the reaction of my friends and family (most of them dye-in-the-wool capitalists), you would have thought I announced my intention to join the communist party.

Corporate America and their enablers on the right have done an excellent job of systemically weakening labor rights in the last 25 years. But their real victory has been in destroying the perception of unions among workers – painting unions as the last outposts for lazy, discontented ramble.

Union members, according to this script, hate to work, sleep on the job, and undermine free market competitiveness. In other words, unions are anti-American.

So it is it any wonder that union membership has plunged from more than 30 percent of the workforce in the last 60 years to less than 8 percent today? And as workers fail to work together to ensure their future is it any wonder that while productivity rates hit all time highs that wages have continued to stagnate?

Labor unions are rarely given credit for workers’ rights we now take for granted (even as some of them are being to be chipped away by the corporate hegemony): the eight-hour work day, the weekend, minimum wage, paid holidays, laws against child labor, and enforcement of laws to make workplaces safe and healthy.

Unions have been good for the United States, but it’s the best kept secret in the country.

But until workers begin to realize the truth, we’ll continue to be met with news like this: the New York Times recently reported that the gap between rich and poor in the United States is the widest since 1928. The articles reported that the economic gains realized in 2005 in the United States went entirely to the top one percent. The bottom 90 percent got nothing.

Here’s the good news: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released a survey that 53 percent of Americans were join a union if they could.

Why?

Because the hellacious push by Corporate America for faster and better productivity is killing us all.

For white collar workers knowledge workers, the eight-hour, 40-hour work week is already a myth from the past. The number of U.S. businesses offering paid vacations dropped in 2004 to 68 percent of companies compared with 87 percent in 2003 – a drop of 19 percent in one year. One in six U.S. workers was unable to use up their vacation time – and we have fewer vacation days than any other industrialized nation (see: Employee Bill of Rights).

Enough is enough.

Robert Kuttner, a columnist for the Boston Globe, reported on several of the stats in this essay as well as on the the efforts by the Democrats to strengthen the Wagner Act, the law that allows workers to freely choose collective bargaining through unions. Since Reagan was in office, the act has been undermined and rendered nearly obsolete. Supporters want a union to be certified as soon as the majority of workers sign union cards. Today, there is a long, protracted period between cards being signed an election.

When I was working for the newspaper, it was during this period when our new owners hired high-priced union busters to come in and eliminate the possibility we would vote yes. Our corporate owners stopped at nothing. We were taken out to expensive dinners; we were rewarded with bonuses and incentives. Executives told us horror stories about unions destroying newspapers – lies about them putting newspapers out of businesses. Employees who were identified as “weak” links were pressured by their managers.

It got ugly. But in the end – we voted for the union. I never had any doubts. When corporations spent huge money to defeat a union, they do it for a reason. The reason is they lose control and money. Union shops get better pay and better benefits. As an employee – why wouldn’t I vote for that?

Yet I had one of my managers tell me that he felt personally betrayed by his staff. I told her she shouldn’t take it personal because it wasn’t about her. It was about us. About workers who voted to watch out for each other.

Senate Republicans have threatened to filibuster the new Wagner Bill enhancements and President Bush has vowed to veto it.

The time might not be now for a resurgence in labor unions. But that time is coming – more quickly than Corporate America might like.

It's about time.

Labels: Essay, labor

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