When Jesus said to love everyone, he didn't mean gays too did he?

Okay, fat forty something guys like me who generally despise everything Disney spews out of it's corporate ass are not the target demographic for Miley Ray Cyrus and her TV show/movie/singing career. And also I really despise the whole Hannah Montana thing and I despise her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, for being so willing to pimp his underage daughter out so that he can try to save his declining career. You need to understand all that up front. I have no love for either of those hicks or for Disney, but if you like them then that's fine by me, to each his or her own.
But now something has happened that makes me loathe her a little less. I'm not sure where or why she spoke out about gay folks. She basically said that she was a Christian who loves all people, gays included. She reminded people that God's greatest commandment is to love one another, and that includes loving gays as well as straights. That's pretty forward thinking for someone like her. And it's thinking that should be applauded and emulated.

Unless you're in Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association that is. They have condemned Miley Ray for being tolerant, loving, and inclusive. They've come out against a teenage girl for having the gall to remind folks that God is supposed to be love. They're hating it that Miley Ray has a better grasp on the Gospel and teachings of Jesus Christ than their bigoted hateful old asses do. I've read the entire New Testament, and most of the Old, and it says repeatedly that we are supposed to love one another and our enemies. To my mind that pretty much encompasses everyone on the planet including, gays, lesbians, blacks, browns, yellows, reds, Roman Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Jews, Zoroastrians, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Wiccans, and everyone else.

But somehow the good "Christians" at Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, which by the way does not represent me or any family I have ever been in, find Miley's love for her fellow men and women somehow wrong and worthy of their scorn. Here's what they had to say about Miley's pronouncement that we are supposed to love everyone whether they are straight or gay:

Such statements will send the wrong message to our children who are influenced by this teenage megastar. Parents need to realize that Cyrus is not the positive role model she was once thought to be.... Clearly she is confused and does not understand the Bible.

Crazy huh? Jesus said to love your neighbor as you love yourself. He said to love your enemies. He said the greatest commandment is love, above all love. And the young Miley gets it. She understands it and is trying to love her life according to the teachings of Jesus. I'm not sure what Bible the AFA is reading but they are the ones who don't understand the Bible most everyone else reads. Nowhere in the New Testament, which supersedes the Old testament if you are a Christian, does it say to hate or demonize or scapegoat gays for all the ills of the world. Nowhere does it say it's okay to hate someone if they love people of their own gender.

Clearly the AFA hates Miley's message of tolerance and inclusion. They must have assumed that because Miley is from the south that she'd be as small minded and hate filled towards gays as they are.

I'm glad Ms. Cyrus proved them wrong. But that doesn't mean I'm about to ever watch her TV show or see the Hannah Montana movie or listen to one of her CD's.

Who's holding our Crunky now?

Not Tanya Espanya, that's for sure. She's not holding it because she's too busy getting smashed, look at that size of that drink would you, it's huge!

Various people speak out about the first one hundred days

"Has it been 100 days already? Holy shit, time flies when you stay drunk."

"All power to the revolutionary cadres who keep time and other bourgeoisie fictions!"

"Come on Monkey, we're hipster chicks, we could care less what that black dude has done, we voted for Ron Paul anyway but our votes for him were strictly ironic."

"I live for two things, seeing Obama be President and keeping a kitteh in my beard."

"I'm kind of surprised that he hasn't let his illegal alien Canadian Communist Fascist crossdressing homosexual Mexican buddies in Acorn take over yet. Maybe they're waiting for the mind control poison in the colored toilet paper they force us all to use to take effect. Glen Beck, 9/11, freedom, baby Jesus!"

It's just how I roll, that's all

If you tell me you are a Christian, then I automatically assume you're a humorless prig until you prove to me you're not. I assume that because of Christians like this, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Michelle Malkin, Mann Coulter, and all the rest of the humorless haters. If you're a Christian who hates being lumped in with the more extreme members of your faith, then you'll have to get over it. When some people find out I'm an atheist they take delight in saying that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were also atheists. But I will throw you Christians a bone, if someone tells me they are a devout Jew or Muslim, then I automatically think the same thing about them that I thought about you, that they are humorless prigs too.

Who's holding our Crunky now?

That chick who who stalked you last year is holding our Crunky now. She told me to tell you she said hello and that she still has more than one mole named after you.

Party of incumbency

Calm down all you Democrats, liberals, and progressives. Arlen Specter switching to the left side of the Senate is good news but don't expect much out of the whole thing. You see my politically naive naifs once elected to a position of power in Washington DC most people abandon all their campaign promises and principles so that they can keep getting re-elected. Now I know there are some exceptions like Dennis Kucinich (my hero!), Russ Feingold, and master of sleaze Saxby Chambliss, the man who never met a corporate lobbyist he didn't want to blow so he could keep taking their money for ever and ever amen. The point is Specter now thinks that seat in the Senate is his because he's been there since the early 1980's and by god he's not going to let a little thing like party affiliation get in his way of hanging on to it until he can appoint his divinely chosen heir.


Yes, if he votes with Democrats on big issues like health care, ending the wars of terror, and the Employee Free Choice Act, which he can now support since he's not got to worry about a Repube-lican primary fight, then it will be a good thing. But if he continues to vote like he has during the Bush years then we're all screwed, blued, and tattooed.


There is one more thing that may happen as a result of Specter's switch. I'm betting that this douchebag
will now join his BFF John McCain and become a Repube-lican. It's something that I would not put past his traitorous ass, because after all we've seen time and again that these slimeballs we keep sending back to the Senate will do anything they can to cling to power.

Congratulations Kathleen!

Kathleen Sebelius was finally confirmed as Sec. Of Health and Human Services. She's got the job just in time to deal with the swine flu outbreak. The staff here at Monkey Muck urge you Madam Sec. to stem the outbreak of the swine flu by euthanizing that porcine hussy Miss Piggy.

Barn of the week

Ten favorite movie characters meme

This meme has been going around on some of the more pop culture conscious blogs so I thought I'd weigh in with some of my favorites:

John Winger from Stripes (Bill Murray)

McCroskey from Airplane! (Lloyd Bridges)

Mary Bland from Eating Raoul (Mary Woronov)

Kenneth Bowden from Wild Things (Bill Murray)

Han Solo from the good Star Wars movies (Harrison Ford)

Dennis from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Michael Palin)

Nurse Alex Price from An American Werewolf in London (Jenny Agutter)

Al Czervik from Caddyshack (Rodney Dangerfield)

Bluto Blutarsky from Animal House (John Belushi)

Tyler Durden from Fight Club (Brad Pitt)

It pained me to leave off Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys, Peter Sellers as Fred Kite in I'm All Right Jack, which is one of my favorite movies, and Sarah Polley's character from the recent Day of the Dead remake and her character from The Claim, but rules are rules so there you go.

Pretty pictures

I just put up a new set of illustrations from some vintage kid's books I bought recently at a library book sale on to one of my many Flickr accounts. I love them both but I'm leaning towards loving the ones from C is for Circus a bit more than the ones from Our Great Northwest.
You can see the complete sets by clicking here.

Someone needs to tell her this is not a good look for her

Holy jeebus, what the hell happened to Joan Van Ark? Is she in some off off off Broadway production of Bent or something? Ladies, I beg you, don't go down this Joan Van Ark/Madonna road, it's not flattering and it's not pretty.

More reviews than you can shake a stick at (although why you'd want to shake a stick at my film and mini series reviews is beyond me)

Auto Focus has been out a while but for some reason I've avoided seeing it until this past Friday night. The short review is it's good, very good. Kinnear, who has fashioned a fine film career for himself since setting the template for snarky hosts of E's Talk Soup. He brings the goods to this performance, his Bob Crane is sleazy and almost pity worthy. Willem Dafoe is beyond creepy in this movie, he plays Crane's friend and murderer. Rita Wilson underplays Crane's first wife nicely and Maria Bello stands out as Crane's second wife. It's fitting that a movie this sexual in nature, for those of you who don't know Bob Crane was a major poon hound and woman chaser and he not only prided himself on having sex with thousands of different women, he had many of the trysts photographed and videotaped, be directed so well by Paul Schrader. Schrader was brought up in a strict Calvinist household and was not allowed to go to the movies during his youth, mush less have sex. I recommend this one but only for mature audiences.

I was hesitant to see Religulous because sometimes I find the comedy stylings of Bill Maher a bit tiresome and didactic. His stand up these days sounds to me more like a harangue than comedy but I've heard such good things about this film I finally relented.

And I'm glad I did. Maher takes on all religions in this film, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and cults like Mormonism, Scientology, and others. He's remarkably fair towards each group, he lets a person from each of the various religious sects hang themselves with their own words and they show with little or no prompting from him why their particular religion is ridiculous. His interviews with humorless Muslims, kooky Christians who believe the end times are nigh, and Jews who are trying to get around the rules about not using electronics on the Sabbath are howlingly funny. My favorite moments are his wrap up at the end of the film and his interview with the priest who clearly is not in line with Roman Catholic teachings in Vatican city.

The deleted scenes and his monologues from around the world in the special features section are hysterical as well. If you are a believer, then see this movie, what have you got to lose? It may strengthen your faith or maybe it will make you less dogmatic and judgemental. If you're a non believer then see this film, it will make you glad you left all that religious nonsense behind you.

Boy howdy, this BBC adaption of Charles Dicken's Little Dorrit was good. I had never heard of the novel and had never seen an adaption of it until they recently ran this one on PBS. It's well worth the hours you'll invest watching it. The three leads, pictured on the DVD cover, are all fantastic and so is the rest of the cast of thousands. You'll recognize many of the actors in it if you watch any British film or TV shows, and you'll see why the same ones tend to always pop up in adaptions like this, it's because all of them are good actors. I highly recommend this DVD and if they run it on PBS again, you need to see it.

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And finally, I saw this film a few weeks back on TCM:It's one of those early 1960's British ultra realistic 'kitchen sink' dramas and it's one of the films in the popular film canon that every one raves about and tells every one else they have to see it or their life will not be complete.

********

I can now say I saw it and that I hated it. No one in this film was remotely likeable. I hated every one in it. Richard harris was a knuckle dragger who reminded me of asshole jocks who used to try to make my life a living hell. The woman who played his land lady/love interest was repugnant, bitter, and unloveable, it was a mystery to me what Harris's character saw in her. She was mean, cold, and quite a huge bitch. I almost cheered when she died at the end of the movie.

********

The only thing I liked about this film were the rugby scenes and I had no idea what was going on in them since I know nothing about rugby. If you like depressing films that are shot in mono enhanced black and white then this movie is for you. If you like films about guys who dig being abused by their land lady's and who then rape their land lady while her kid's play outside, then this is your film. If you like overrated movies about rugby and the British class system, then this is your movie. It sure as hell wasn't mine, I hated, hated, hated it.

Happy Sunday!

Make sure your 'Helmet of Salvation' doesn't clash with that 'Vest of Invincibility' or the 'Underpants of Befuddlement' that you took from that dwarf in the third circle of hell. It should go nicely with your 1500 hit points and your 'Bag of Holding' though.

And then there's Maude

Bea Arthur died today. Cancer got her at age 86. I know most of you know her from The Golden Girls, frankly I never liked that show much, I thought all the characters were too broad (no pun intended). I preferred her in Maude. Her character of Maude was a role model for feminist women in the 1970's.

From what I can tell Ms. Arthur had a great sense of humor and she knew of all the jokes about her having a penis or her actually being a guy because her voice was so deep. So I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind me putting a photo of this John Curin painting in a post about her death:
It's called Bea Arthur Nude and at one time it was in a Tate Gallery show, Tate Gallery for those of you who don't know is the comparable to our Museum of Modern Art in New York city.

Rest in peace Bea.

Thank you, you are too kind

I've recently been given a couple of awards by some fellow bloggers and it's high time I quit being a douchebag and acknowledged them.

John abuzz gave me this award. This award is a dedication for those who love blogging and love to encourage friendships through blogging. I've made many friendships through my blog, most of the friends I have made I have not met face to face yet but some I have and I'm very lucky to have all of you as friends. I love to blog because I get to share what's on my mind, make folks laugh, do a bit of teaching, and be an antidote to the corporate media machine. I love it that everyone in the world can read me if they like and there is no one telling me what I have to write or that I shouldn't write or post something. Blogging is citizen based media, not corporate crap that encourages us all to be the same slaves to the companies who want to control our every thought and movement. Thanks much for this award John, and thanks for all the nice things you say about my blog on your blog.

John struck again when he gave me this award that fellow atheist Lemmy Caution had also recently given me:

Here's the skinny on this award:

1.You must brag about the award. Yay! It's the greatest award ever! It's better than puppies and cotton candy and sunshine!

2.You must include the name of the blogger who bestowed the award on you and link back to the blogger. Done it already.

3.You must choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or you may improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Will do in a moment.

4.Show their names and links and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Or think of it this way--show the seven random victims' names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog Award. Well, there's no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. Ummmm, you'll see why I'm not going to do this one in a second.

5.List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on with the instructions!

1. I will not ever knowingly eat a cooked carrot. Never ever ever.

2. I bitch about the small conservative "Christian" college I went to, but I actually loved all my years there and I would not trade that experience for anything.

3. I forgive but I try to never forget.

4. I loved to play pinball and arcade style video games.

5. In bookstores, when no employees are looking, I will shelve copies of the Bible in the religious fiction section.

6. I knew I was going to be good at improv comedy the first time I ever saw it being done onstage.

7. I think some of the people who have been through the Second City Improv process are some of the most pompous assholes in the world.

8. I was a virgin until my freshman year in college.

9. I turn off televisions in stores like Bed Bath and Beyond and Books a Million.

10. I'd rather get beaten in the kidney's with a sack of oranges than go to Arkansas ever again.

Okay, now I want to pass both awards along to everyone on my blog roll.

The return of 'Pop Culture Friday'

This week's question over at the Onion AV Club blog is:

Which films make you cry?

Okay, I'm not a big crier but there have been a few films that got to me.

• I remember crying at the end of Heidi. And yes, it was the same broadcast of Heidi on NBC that made television history.
• I cried when they shot and killed Billy Jack at the end of The Trial of Billy Jack. Don't judge me too harshly, I was very young and I loved anti establishment movies.
• I get a bit misty and I have a lump in my throat when Hagrid goes to pick up Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

That's all I'll admit to. Now, which ones made you cry?

It's time I asked some burning questions

Why should we be concerned with anything this family of blood thirsty ghouls has to say? They have been wrong on every thing since day one, why does any one put any credence in any of their opinions now?

Is John Madden really retiring? Or will he come back again like he did last time? I only ask because if he's going to make a come back, then I'll be forced to take him out because I've been sick of him for about 15 years now. Same goes for that dude who used to be on Mad TV who does the imitation of him.

Is this not the coolest picture of a toy monkey you have ever seen? I stole it off of TheMom. She said I could, so there. Nah nah nah.

Why does this unfunny douchebag get to keep making movies while this cutie pie doesn't? Life is sooooooooo unfair.

Do you hope like crazy that the right wingers actually do that proposed million armed man march? Because it would be the best thing ever to see a million gun totin' white guys all hopped up PBR, hatred, bologna sandwiches, and Jesus go marching through the streets of Washington DC. Nope, nothing bad would go down if that happened, he said sarcastically.

And finally, why would anyone listen to any priest except Judas Priest and Father Ted? Judas Priest is led by a gay man who is into leather and Father Ted is a fictional Irishman, there's no better twosome to turn to for advice.

Barn of the week

A kind of, sort of, maybe, Monkey movie review

We finally saw this last night: Was it good? Yes.

Was it Best Picture worthy? Eh, for my money Frozen River claims that honor but you also have to factor in the fact that I have not seen the other films that were nominated.

They should have given acting awards to the kids who played the youngest versions of the main characters, I'm telling you they were freakin' great. Not that the others were bad by any means, I'm just saying the youngest of the youngsters were the best.

I liked the mass dance sequence at the end, it was kind of cathartic.

My only quibble with the film was the use of the subtitles. Not the ones we had to turn on because we had a hard time understanding some of the actor's English, although to be fair, their English is waaaaay better than my Hindi will ever be. The subtitles I'm talking about were the ones that came up when the characters spoke Hindi. They used a tiny font and they put them in colored boxes that blended in with the backgrounds. It may have worked on the big screen but on our TV it didn't work at all and it made for frustrating viewing.

All in all Slumdog was a good film that I'm glad I finally saw. Would I see it again and again? Probably not, but it was worth investing a couple of hours in once.

Disgusting

The more we find out about what the Bush/Cheney administration did to get "intelligence" out of detainees in Iraq and at Gitmo, the more disgusted and sick I become. And so should you.

The bottom line is water boarding is torture. We tried and convicted Japanese military personnel for doing it during World War 2, and we called it a war crime when they did it. They want to call it 'enhanced interrogation' when we our CIA and military does it? It suddenly becomes all right when it's done by non Asian people? Bull shit. If it was wrong for the Japanese to do it to our men, it's wrong for our country to do it to 'terrorists.' They fact is they, John Yoo, Bybee, and the rest of the Bush lackeys, changed the definition of torture so their idiot leader George W could parse his hypocritical words and say what we were doing wasn't torture, but it was. Everyone knows it was and the full light of disclosure needs to be shone on the whole mess.

And then what needs to happen is that the Obama administration needs to prosecute all of those involved, that is to say the ones who gave the orders and who came up with the twisted definitions of torture, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This notion of not doing it because we need to look forward and not backward is nonsense. How can we look forward if we remain blind to justice and the rule of law? The previous administration broke the law, they didn't just change a policy as Karl Rove and the rest of the pundit village claim they did, the broke the law, they broke with hundreds of years of precedent, they took a shit on the law and they rubbed our noses in it and they need to be brought to justice for doing that. And thank goodness there are some in Congress who are calling for just that, and here's one of them:

Oh how I wish spitfire Debbie Wasserman Schultz was my Congress person. Or Dennis Kucinich, or Maxine Waters, oh if only I had someone who had the balls (or ovaries as the case may be) to stand up to the banality of evil that was Bush/Cheney/Rove and call for their prosecution.

People like Schultz, Waters and Kucinich almost make up for the craven cowards like Stenny Hoyer and Jane Harman who said that damn it we had to let Bush and company spy on us for our own good. Now when it comes to light that the NSA was listening to Jane Harman's phone conversation's she and Hoyer suddenly find some outrage? Bullshit. If we'd listened to Wasserman Schultz and Kucinich then maybe Bush's illegal spying wouldn't have gotten so out of hand and maybe they could have done something about the torturing too.

It's comical now to see Dick Cheney claim that the torturing he did worked. As usual, the old ghoul is wrong. It didn't work. If it did then they would have had to water board those guys over 180 times. If it had worked then the war on terror would have been over years ago when all that intelligence they got was used to round up Bin Laden and all the members of his terrorist organization. If it had worked then all the terrorist groups in the world would have thrown their hands up in resignation and they would have surrendered and Cheney would have shot them in the face for fun, like he did to his hunting buddy.

The fact is torture doesn't do anything but create more terrorists and more hatred for the USA. It only serves to make us look bad and it made us sink to the same level as the North Koreans and the Serbs. If we want to regain any shred of credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world or if we want to regain a tiny morsel of the high ground we used to live on, then the Obama administration needs to stop pussyfooting around and they need to go after the people in the former administration who committed the war crimes. They've got to stop continuing the Bush era policy of claiming state secrets prevent the fair and open trials of the so called terrorists and they've got to let those men defend themselves in open court. If they don't then they're just as bad as Bush and Cheney, in fact they will be their accomplices in war crimes.

Happy...

...Smurf day?

No.

Happy Surf day?

No.

Happy Turf day?

Almost.

Sparky and I wish all of you a happy Earth Day!

This week in swag

It's been another record breaking week in swag here at Monkey Central. In addition to the great book the blogalicious Flannery Alden gave us, we also got the following things: My friend Keith recently went to Santa Fe, NM with his lovely wife and he bought us that cool Day of the Dead Frieda Kahlo figurine in the painted box, and yes, she is holding a monkey. It sits on a table our friends Todd and Donna gave us.


And one of the contingent of Minnesota babes, Missy to be exact, sent me this keen postcard. It's juicily ironic and so achingly postmodern I nearly wept when I beheld it for the first time.

Thank you all for the great swag you have bestowed on me and Sparky.

Look what I got for my blogaversary

I got an in home visit from the one and only, the semi famous, the soon to be notorious, the lovely and talented Flannery Alden! Yay me! She's in town on business and she had an evening free and she chose to spend it here at Monkey Central. How cool is that? It's way cool. She's the first out of town blog friend that Sparky and I got to meet face to face, so you can say she took our blog friend meeting cherry.

Not only is the lovely Ms. Alden smart, funny, witty, and fun, she's also cute as a button. I was going to use a photo I took of her while she was here but they did not do her justice so I'm using her profile picture from Facebook. Isn't she adorable? Yes, she is. She's the cutest thing evah, the queen of Ohio I tell ya, and she's heading to Chicago on her next work related road trip so maybe you Chicago folks like Bubs, Johnny Yen, Johnny Yen's wife Kim (who still has not friended me on Facebook by the way, what's up with that Kim?), Splotchy, and Grant Miller can meet up with her when she hits your city.

I picked up Flannery at her swanky hotel and I spirited her to our place for supper and a few beers. We sat around talking, laughing, and getting to know one another. She's now like one of the family to us, from a part of the family we like that is. I kept her visit to our house under wraps because once news got out that she was in town and coming over then every poseur, fame whore, and hipster would have been on our front doorstep clamoring for face time with her and we had wanted her sweet sweet Midwestern goodness all to ourselves.

Our visit with her was enhanced by two things. The first was the swag she brought us: It's a cool book that contains all the stuff it says it does on the cover and also has arcane facts about well known products in it as well, which is waaaaaay too to a trivia geek and insufferable know it all like me. The second things that enhanced her visit to our place was we got to chat briefly with her husband Doc. She let me speak with him when she called him to let him know she was all right and that we were normal enough. Sadly Doc couldn't talk too long because he was somewhat indisposed, he was in service to his Oriental master Poo Ping when we called. All in all we loved meeting Flannery and spending time with her.

Flannery, it was a pleasure meeting you and having you over to our place. Maybe one of these days you and Doc and the kids will make that trip to Dollywood and you can all spend the night here while you're in the area again.