But Seriously . . . Health Care, Town Meetings. Movie Bits.

Sunset Finch


After yesterday’s shenanigans about town meetings, let me be straightforward about health care for a moment. I always worry when we try to make everyone equally blameworthy or praiseworthy. In a subject or situation as complex as 300 million human bodies, equal responsibility will never happen. There are smokers and speeders and bungee jumpers and late-night revelers and parents who give their babies red meat or refuse to give them red meat . . . and there are plenty, plenty, plenty of the plain old unlucky. I've been there. Have you? Probably so. Maybe it's time we all drop the hysteria, study the material, do the best we can, forgive each other and pay up. Is that kind of thinking Communist or Christian?

And Mr. Gothpunker, I’m not forgetting you. I predict line-by-line analyses of your shenanigans in the near future (though I think I’m getting something of your drift about poetry, general culture, and elitism). I predict a return to highbrow topics over the weekend or early next week.

To lighten up for now, here are some random thoughts on movies.

I should have hated A Perfect Getaway but thoroughly enjoyed it. The plot violates or stretches all kinds of rules about manipulation and plausibility, but dammit, it's fun. And I'm afraid it badly, badly needs the big screen--some great Hawaii scenery that you don't want to squeeze into a TV, even your fancy flat screen. Don't quit on it after the first 15 minutes or so, where the characters are completely unlikable. Things change--maybe not likability, but just . . . things.

Recently, a friend asked what I thought about Judd Apatow’s movies. They sort of blend together for me, but I've enjoyed them all, at least as an excuse to have popcorn. Ditto The Hangover was a working definition of guilty pleasure. Even more so, Funny People, starring Seth Rogen (who else?) and Adam Sandler, who's usually not my favorite actor. Still, that movie had more substance than most Apatow films, though comedy prevailed most of the time.

Another pleasant surprise was 500 Days of Summer , which had a bit of an Apatow feel.

Go see a movie this weekend. Get out of the heat. Have popcorn. Be a minor sinner. Tell your intellect to shut up for two hours--nobody listens to reason anyway. Go to a matinee, so you don't have to tell so many people to shut up. Well, at least your odds improve. Have popcorn. Get butter. Then you're even with the bungee jumpers and NASCAR drivers in the health care game.

Health Care Nuts and Bolts and Nuts

Left:

Town Hall Bouncer Boxer Attacks Woman Who Calmly Inquired about Health Care Reform

Gothpunkrocker has given us much to consider about the New Criticism, and I intend to get back to it soon. Please continue to comment on that topic if you wish.

However, I just saw this video, sent as innocent horseplay, and I must reply. My response will make more sense if you first watch the video at

http://www.acetj.com/videos/player.php?mediaID=3045

Banjo responds: I hope the town hall militants go after the guys in this video -- as one more group with whom they won't, by god, share health insurance payments, along with smokers, meat eaters, fat people (how fat is too fat?), speeders, drunk drivers, fast drivers, cell phone drivers, make-up applying drivers, drivers whose brakes haven't been checked recently, drivers whose tires haven't been checked recently, drivers whose cars have been bumped in a parking lot in the last 30 years, skate boarders and bikers without helmets, people who put butter on their popcorn, babies born to mothers who smoked tobacco, babies who were not properly fastened into up-to-date-safe car seats, babies who are left-handed, teens who play football, hockey, or lacrosse, people who annoy others into hospitalization in a mental health facility, the patients in the mental health facility, the bricks in the mental health facility, which reminds me of prisons, where no one, or his/her babies, should be insured--let 'em rot, even if they were wrongly convicted (by the way, I want them executed, but I do not want to pay for the electricity to fry them; the government or Donald Trump should pay for that). I do not want to pay for the health insurance of Lance Armstrong; his activity is dangerous, he is clearly obsessive, and by the way, he had cancer--once a cancer, always a cancer. Ditto any NFL or NHL player--and some will need my money because they all go to prison or move to other countries and become illegal immigrants.

And if you disagree with any of the above, contact Charlton Heston, my man at the NRA. Wait -- did he die or something?