KENNY REPLIES

Hey Myte. What’s up? What’s up everyone else who's reading? Imagine my surprise when I checked to see how Myte’s blog is comin’ along.
And I just gotta say this. What the hell is wrong with you, Myte? Who do ya think you are? George “Where does the hand go on the seam again, Dad” Allen? “You old macaca you”??!!!
Well, you no good son of a penguin you!!! Geez, Myte! Now I know it was just a friendly slur, but hey. Watch it! Okay?
And as for you askin’ whether I’m bein’ too harsh in talkin’ about the religious fundamentalists, well. Let me tell ya.
Hard hitting? Ha! Ha, I say! That was like kisses from the Secretary of State compared to what I really feel.
I mean these people are headaches. Pains in the asses.
Back some years ago, folks would say about the religious nuts overseas that, you know, kind of killing them was just playing into their hands.
The ass backwards logic was that they want to die, they want to be martyrs, it’s just what they want.
And just as I was then I still am a world class humanitarian. I think we should always be there to help our fellows in need. Thusly, for all those people that strap explosives to themselves or drive truck bombs for the religiously ecstatic thrill of mindlessly violent death, I say, “Hell. Let’s accommodate as many of ‘em as we can.”
Now that’s the easy part. Yep. It ain’t quite as easy here at home.
As I said, the lulus of rabid sanctimony over here can’t get away with as much shit as the ones abroad.
But a lot of them still have this death fixation thing goin' on. You may not have noticed. But take a look around. Every time some jack ass shoots off an oversized bottle rocket in the Middle East, folks come out of the wood work. “This is it! This is the end! This is the big one!”
Basically their view seems to be this: “We’re all gonna be dead soon. Ain’t it great?”
Okay, that might be oversimplified some what. They’ve got this ‘rapture’ thing. And I guess that’s like 144,000 or some such number of really good people get whisked away to heaven before the death and carnage.
And, hmmm??? Not a word about several dozen virgins waiting for them either. Don’t know about you, but I think I’ll take the suicidal Islamist fantasy over our home grown suicidal religious fantasy.
Another thing. Have these folks ever calculated their odds? 144,000? Out of everyone alive now, everyone that’s ever been alive? Including, whether they like it or not, you know, like Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals, and yes, even those cute lil Australopithecenes? Shit. They might as well be rollin’ on the Power Ball. On the face of it, they just probably aren’t gettin’ in, no matter how smarmily and psycotically sanctimonious they are.
As I was sayin’. Their view, in a nutshell, is this: “We’re all goners. Ain’t it cool?”
In other words they’re suicidally bug house. And while they aren’t wearing money belts of dynamite or anything like that, you kinda get the creepy sneaking suspicion that, if they could, they’d be more than happy to precipitate some sort of apocalyptic cataclysm. I mean, just to say they were right.
Okay. So they're not going around exploding themselves at Pizza Huts and we can’t really, in good conscience, treat ‘em like, you know, Neccos at a plinking range.
But I wish they’d maybe do something. Maybe look through the archives. Kind of pick up on some options. Options like. Okay, maybe a bad example. But just maybe, if it wasn’t for murdering legislators and nasty quirks like that, the Guyana wack jobs, their impulse at least was to really not be a bother to anyone else.
Likewise the more subdued folks out in San Diego a few years ago. You know. The purple shrouds? The seconal and vodka guys? Yea, them.
A little backhanded to say maybe, but, hey, they had the decency and consideration to say basically, “Okay, we’re sorta suicidal, it’s part of our religion, but hey. We don’t really want to be a nuisance or a headache. And, not incidentally (please note, tub thumpers!), we don’t want to drag anybody else into this with us.”
Hint hint. Hint hint. Nudge nudge. Wink wink.
Okay! Now don’t y’all go getting your backs up over my supposed callousness. Think about it. What would we be missing?
Is less need for hypertension treatment and a reduced market for analgesics such a bad thing?
Oh hell! It’s late. Damn, I wish they kept driving ranges open all night.

A BIT HARSH, KENNY?

Well thanks Kenny for posting here to my blog. It's really helped get it off to a good start.
But golly gosh. Yes. It sure was contentful, your hard hitting thoughts and comments. But gee. Don't you think that some of your commentary on religious fundamentalists might have been a wee bit harsh.
I guess though that as someone who wants to run a top flight blog I have to expect edgy, cutting edge type commentary. And also, as a hard hitting film maker I should be able to take it, huh? Ha, ha, ha.
But yea. That was quite the way to start with guest posts here on the blog. You sure don't pull your punches. Kenny. Whew! You old macaca, you.

POST FROM MY FRIEND, KENNY SPROOGLES

Hi. Kenny Sproogles here. I’m a good friend of I. Myte Slam My Ham. And I’m honored to be able to post onto the blog of such a noted personage. I am so lucky to have a friend such as him.
So. Ya wanna know what’s on my mind? Well, I’ve gotta say, something’s been bothering me for a while.
Okay, we’re in the midst of all this war shit on the T.V. and everything.
All right. Let me step back a bit. The war is real. Forgive me. I know it, I feel it. I read about and am, of course, very concerned and upset. And truly saddened by the butchery of innocents on all sides.
So, being concerned, I reached for the T.V. And that’s one of the things. I’m of the first generation to basically have the thing there all the time.
And in so many ways it’s been an incredible blessing. Through television we could see real history in the making. It would bring us all closer in this world. We’d all be witnesses. So it was harder for lies to flourish.
Too many instances to list probably and this isn’t really the point. But look at Murrow-McCarthy. One example of The Big Lie being less possible because of TV.
Or the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviets had to try and peddle their half-assed, half-baked lies to a whole world watching.
Okay, again. This is not really what’s on my mind. Suffice it to say that TV is revolutionary. It enables us, in a healthy democracy, to scrutinize in person what’s going on. It can make possible new types and new depth of analysis and perspective.
Now, of course, as I was quickly reminded when I reached for the TV to help me in knowing and understanding, the people in charge, and obviously there are no ‘grown-ups’ around, have slipped their moorings almost completely.
Television in general, but television news in particular has become a multi-pronged assualt on the mind and spirit. And it is almost totally devoid of analysis, perspective and even simple, logical reasoning and ordering of facts.
Aw, fuck it! Let’s put it like this. It’s close to insane. There is no way that Paddy Chayefsky or Budd Schulberg, at their most jaundiced, could imagine how ‘off the hook’ television has become.
It’s a world populated by vacant-eyed perky automatons. Heads bobbing around oddly, improperly emphasizing words throughout their babbling (and they were taught to do that shit!), they trivialize, almost totally, anything of real import, and try, mindlessly, to elevate the trivial to the important, and the net effect is that our lil, electronic town hall is now not much more than an outhouse of inanity and nonsense. A wonder we’re functioning at all as a culture.
But, again, that’s not why I’m here folks. Here’s what it is.
On the TV the other day. Some guy was talking. And he was like half-way intelligent. He was talking about how he had heard ‘liberals’ talking about how just as there was a threat to our society from religious fundamentalism, there was, also, a threat from within from religious fundamentalism. I.E., he felt they, ‘the liberals’ were equating the real threat to civilization from Islamic fundamentalism with an imagined threat from evangelical Christians within our own society.
Okay. Of course, the first thing wrong with all of this, is that it was cast in those mind-numbed and idiotic terms of talk radio thinking, that whole, totally fucked-up, business of everything is ‘conservative vs. liberal’, ‘good vs. bad’. Or vice-versa, depending on whether you’re benighted enough to indulge in this shit and what side you take.
The second thing is this. It ought to be self-evident that there is an equivalency. It’s just that we have some semblance remaining of civil structure in our society and, thus, the religious wack jobs over here cannot get away with as much as the pathological nut sacks like Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, et. al.
I don’t kid myself for a minute that our home grown tub thumpers would love nothing more than to bury adulterers up to their heads and throw rocks at them. Or kill women and men who have ‘sinned’. Or, hell, lob rockets at people who live their lives differently than they deem appropriate.
And yea, they’re a potential threat because they work hard and are influencing our politics and social life, and, it’s not entirely clear that that fella in the White House is not sympathetic to them.
Okay that’s the first and second things. But third, and here’s my real gripe. I had that idea like five years ago! And even put it out there. Admittedly, just as an impassioned letter to a mail bag of a news analysis show.
But still, I said it. And some time ago. But didn’t think it was like genius or anything. It’s just too self-evident to be a startling or world-shattering insight. At least that’s what I think.
I said, back then, that while we finally were dedicating ourselves to taking on the religious maniacs that have been under our nose since, like, 1970!!! That we ought to also dedicate ourselves to opposing, vociferously and emphatically, the religious psychos in our own midst. I mean what’s the big deal?
And really. It just wears ya down thinking about this crap anyhow. I mean I don’t even begin to understand the phemenon of obsessed, incensed fundamentalism. So …
Hmmm. I just had a thought. Could it be. And this is just a notion passing through. Could it be that our religious coo coos could be more effective if they used some of the same motivational techniques as their religious coo coos.
I mean I don’t want to give them any ideas. I sure don’t want fatwas issued from Lynchburg against the creators of the Teletubbies. Or little baby suicide bombers racing off from Sunday school to the local multi-plex to rain down fire and brimstone on the viewers of R-rated movies.
No. Don’t want that. But that suicide bomber thing? How do they do it? Is it really that 72 virgin in heaven thing?
I guess it makes a perverted sort of sense. They wrap their women up like mummies, blaming them for their own natural, sexual urges, and worse, blaming the women themselves, even to death sometimes, for, you know, even having a scintilla of natural human feeling or passion. So yea, their sexual psycho-pathology with its veneer of straight-lacedness could squirt out something like fully adult psychotic males dreaming of so many naked-and-ready babes lolling about heaven that they wouldn’t even know where to start.
I mean okay. I understand the fantasy. As an adolescent I’d actually dream at night of a James Coburn/In Like Flint world, where there’d be babes every-where ready to do your bidding. Sort of like a sexy babe candy store.
But I got over it. First, I grew up and matured half-way normally. Second, I guess, maybe, because here, well, girls can go around in bikinis, or miniskirts, and you know we can like, occasionally, kiss them or touch their breasts without some Manson-like fiend in religious garb wanting to cut off our tongues and hands. And oh yea, I guess our lips.
Wow. Now how on earth do they get girl suicide bombers to do it? Is it the same sort of rap? When they’re over at the Ramallah Sheraton at the free How To Become A Succesful Suicide Bomber seminar? Do they also tell the girls that they blow up for the cause, there’s gonna be 72 male virgins waiting around to service them when they get to their Pearly Gates?
Hmmm. That Updike fella. He wrote a book about a boy terrorist, what makes him tick and all. I think a book about a girl terrorist might be as interesting. Maybe even more so.
Hell. Maybe I could do that. Write a novel about a girl suicide bomber. I always wanted to be a novelist anyhow. That or an astronaut. Or like Crocodile Dundee maybe.
But shoot. What the hell would ya call a book like that? 72 Dicks in Heaven, The Ballad of Bomber Girl?
Okay. I gotta go hit some golf balls. Thanks Myte. I appreciate the opportunity, buddy, to share my thoughts with folks. Later.

MYTE'S FIRST POST

Here's my first post. Hope it explains everything. I know we'll all miss Sole. I sure do. Heck. Maybe, it'll be like Tinkerbell. If we all just believe, maybe he'll read this, whereever he is, and make a comment or get in touch with a post.
Oh yea. As mentioned in the post, a lot of folks I know will contribute. But this ain't no team blog, what with lettin' those foo ..., er friends be able to post with out my oversite. So all posts'll have my name, cause I want strong edatorial control. Well, here we go:

Hi. I’ve been looking into this blog thing. And it seems like it’d be good for me, you know, professionally and stuff.
Oh. Hold on. I guess I should introduce myself.
Okay then. I’ll do that.
Umm. Hi. I’m I. Myte Slam Myham. And yes. You may have heard of me.
I am indeed a film maker of some repute. And if you haven’t heard of me. Well. I don’t like to brag. But, yea. You may have seen some of my films.
There’s The Seventh Cents. May have seen that. Did okay with that one. Oh. Then came Unbankable. Might remember it, ya might not.
Skids. That was a personal favorite. Liked Skids. Hope you all did too. Then I did The Bilge not long ago.
And my latest flick, opening soon, is Daisy on The Ladder. I wrote, directed, produced, edited, scored. And was also foley artist. I love doin’ the foley art. And in some locations I will actually be selling tickets.
Now, you might be sayin’ to yourself at this juncture. You might say, “I. Myte, it sounds like, you know with the films you listed, that somethin’ kind of, well, derivative is goin’ on.”
And you’d be right. And that’s what I want here on my blog is an astute, film-conscious audience.
Yes indeed. Derivative is the word. And let me tell ya, I don’t begrudge that other fella for takin’ off on my work. It’s like flattery, a compliment even that he is so influenced by my ovar(is that right?).
I mean hey. I’ve been blessed, I know that. Not all can be gifted such as myself. It’s like the sayin’ goes. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, well. Um. They do. Um. Derivative shit, stuff like that.” At least I think that’s how the saying goes.
Okay. So I’ve introduced myself. And at this point, or maybe before even, you might be askin’, “Hey, where’s that Sole fu …, er, dude at; what gives here?”
Well folks. That’s a long sad story. There are many of us who love Sole. And we were all like real happy when he said he was gonna start a blog. Good ta see him with some focus and some structure to his life.
But. Well. Maybe. Okay, you might have noticed a couple of entries and then like ‘poof’, nothin’.
Let’s see. How shall I put this? Hmmm. I guess I’ll put it like this. Sole needs to go to rehab.
And believe me, if we can find that fu …, er, cat. We’re gonna make sure he gets there.
Nope. We can’t find him. He’s ‘blown the scene’ as the hipster lingo goes. We don’t know where he is.
Sort of, that is. I mean we know this. He called my place. But he blocked the call so the Caller ID tells me nothin’. But we know he’s in a shelter. At least he told me that.
But, then on the other hand. When I asked, when I said, “So dude, you mean a shelter like somewhere in town?” His startling and dismaying reply rang like jello through spine of my soul. (See, you’re gonna get some pretty fancy writin’ in this blog now.) He said, “No dude. I’m in a shelter like somewhere in the U.S.”
So, um. We’ve got our work cut out for us if we’re gonna find him. But believe me, as soon as I get my next coupla films in the can, I’m gonna be on it. Oh. Yea. That’s director talk, “ … in the can”.
But one thing is fortunate and this ought to explain the other big question or questions you might have. Before Sole took off, I was able to get him to sell me his blog.
So. It’s my blog now. And things will change. Most important is the changes in quality which will go up extremely noticably.
But of course I’m a writer and director. Much more possessed of talent and ableness than that poor Sole sad sack. Who is my friend don’t get me wrong.
Well. I think this is a good move for me. My advisers agree. I mean like this Internet thing is taking off. And this is a way for me to get in touch with my movie public in a more direct mode.
And really, I love you all. Want to see your replies and thoughts and praise and stuff. But please. Don’t be sendin’ me a bunch of scripts and stuff. LOL. You crazy fans, you.
Also, this will be more than just movies. I want to branch out. I want to like evolve.
So I will write of many things. Of course their will be my rye and whitty observations. But also I will be commenting seriously on serious matters and issues of the day.
Then. Sometimes. I will just sort of say what’s on my mind and entertain you thusly with thoughts on life. And living. And stuff.
Also my advisers tell me I should try to ‘monetize’ my blog. And that’s a hard word, isn’t it? “Monetize”. I think it means to make it like that French painter or something.
Anyhow, I’m supposed to mention that if you see ads here, and I’m lookin’ into getting some, well please. Just click on those bad babies. And okay, yea. Buy some shit from the people. But most important. Click!!! Just click, hit the ‘back’ arrow and then click again. And just keep clickin’. For God’s sake click like one of them chickens that play baseball for feed! I’d be awfully greatful.
Oh!!! One more thing. This. Is also. To be. A forum. One for many to weigh in. With weight and gravyty of course. For this is to be a serious blog.
Now. I will be doin’ most of the writing. And a far sight more than that Sole fella. I mean unless, I suddenly need, like rehab or something. LOL. I kid the emotionally unstable. But seriously folks. There will be appearances by others of my acquaintance with their thoughts and observations and things like that. And these will be labeled clearly of course. So you don’t get confused, etc. Oh yea! In case you’re wonderin’. No. I’m not the one who wrote that movie review that Sole put up. The one about Sling Blade. I mean, how could you even think that? Being an autour my comments would have been pithy and informative. As you will see when I write about film and World events and just about everything.
Well. That’s about it for this time. Here’s to great blogging and livly interaction among us all. And a big salute to my friend, Sole. Requisite en peach. Oh wait. He’s not dead. Just sort of disappeared. My bad. Whew, I’m tired.