I took my five-year-old son (Ed) and seven-year-old daughter (Ahmi) to see “Monsters vs. Aliens.” We got our Elvis Costello 3D glasses and wore them at all the wrong times during the television commercials that come on before the movie trailers. My kids didn’t know but I was mostly interested in their response to the 3D imagery. That’s right, I went to “Monsters vs. Aliens” primarily for human experimentation. They reached out to grab objects that appeared to float in front of them, but the greatest of all expressions came to their faces every time I looked over at them: smiles.

Reese Witherspoon voices Ginormica, a 49-foot-tall woman with an awesome figure. More to love. But her fiance is a sleazy weatherman from Modesto, as if there’s any other kind. Ginormica is the straight person in the adventure; she carries the hero’s burden of bringing any kind of depth or drama to a 90 minute farce. Her comedy relief side-kicks are fish man, cockroach man, a big Mothra maggot and the show stealing gelatinous B.O.B. voiced by Seth Rogen. (more…)

Our government dare not promote a national religion that refers to a traditional notion of God. We are collectively trained to avoid pushing our values onto others largely because relativism claims that there are no transcendent moral truths. But where we empty our lives of one religion, we don’t embrace neutrality, we just put some other dogma on the throne and claim “the debate is over.”

The worship and love of materials is our nation’s religion. I’d say it was a new religion, but it’s actually the oldest religion in the world, Paganism.  Judeo-Christian values came from a pagan world with a radical new concept: the Creator, not the creation, should not be worshiped. (more…)

If the trajectory of the Obama administration continues like this we’ll have to make little adjustments to our lifestyle. So here’s a checklist for making it through 2012:

Yes, we’re still obsessed with culture and groupthink so we should try to blend in with the rest of the survivors of the Obamacalypse. Wear football pads, utility boots with optional baseball bat with rusty spikes sticking out. Mohawks or purple hair are all the rage and help others identify you when riding your motorcycle over the desert wasteland that used to be known as the desert wasteland of California. Goggles are a nice touch, too. (more…)

If you just got nailed for doing something stupid or immoral, just find out how your accuser also did something stupid or immoral and you’re off the hook! It doesn’t even have to be for the same indiscretion, just throw everything you’ve got at em’ and hope something sticks. If they did something wrong, then they’re a hypocrite! Hypocrite! Hypocrite!

This is a common tactic I see in modern debate, and it’s closely related to the “who are you to judge” fallout from our post-modern generation. The implication is that if you look for a fault and find it, we collectively lose the ability to call it wrong if we also practice it. If I claim your candidate is a liar, you just Google a quote where my candidate told a lie and suddenly telling a lie is off the table. Stupid, I know. But that’s where we’re at. (more…)

“You can’t go from an is to an ought.” That’s a philosophical consensus from Christians like C.S. Lewis to Atheists like David Hume. Science deals in the realm of the “is.” It looks at a clump of cells and can only make measurements, experiment and fulfill or deny predictions. Those cells may be of a human embryo, a living child, a consenting adult or an adult Jew being experimented upon in Nazi Germany.

The results of science are indifferent to the ethics involved. A scientist can experiment on an unwilling adult and get perfectly scientific results from his work. That’s because science has nothing to say about ethics. Ethics are philosophical, and how we act on what is true is determined by other disciplines like theology, epistemology or philosophy. (more…)

I don’t judge movies by their source material, so I won’t judge “Watchmen” by the amazing graphic novel from which it comes. When we pay our 12 bucks to see a movie, nobody hands us a book to go along with it, so the moral contract between consumer and story-teller is that the story has to hold up on its own.

“Watchmen” works as a dark, post-modern, revisionist middle finger to the icons of our optimistic past. The plot isn’t its strong suit, the characters are what make “Watchmen” an impressive experience. Dr. Manhattan is a being who lost his unique electric field in a lab accident. He didn’t keep his hair, but he kept his blue penis, which is useful in revealing that he’s not Jewish. A Materialist god, Dr. Manhattan is losing his grasp on what it means to be human, even as he gains the ability to see life one molecule at a time. (more…)

If you thought Dana Carvey’s Church Lady died with the 90s she’s back – complete with a shrill intolerance past the point of being funny. Sean Penn contorts his muzzle to the side of his face and asks, “What made you support the definition of marriage being between a man and a woman? Was it…mmm, HATRED?!”

Great, now the blue-haired old lady has been replaced by a finger-wagging liberal industry star using the spotlight to shove religion down the next generation’s throat. There’s no self reflection, only the kind of self-righteous condemnation that comes from a rock solid adherence to a dogma. (more…)

The Writer’s Guild (WGA) is back to doing what it does best, sending unemployed members out to threaten with picket signs before they go back home to create more TV shows about dark, gritty, dramas featuring liberal gay heroes fighting mom and dad’s racist, Bush-like values.

Sheldon Bergstein demands the guild get fair treatment, “This just isn’t fair. Everyone in this country wants to watch American Idol and nobody wants to watch what we write. When did America get so stupid?” (more…)

Octuplets mother Nadya Suleman, is getting death threats, which is to be expected in today’s culture of rational debate. Maybe she’s crazy or irresponsible, I don’t know. Her decision to have 14 children doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the public outcry from all sides against her. But none of the arguments against Suleman are quite as vacuous as the empty bumper-sticker dogmas held by the left. The mother of octuplets exposes how these positions aren’t rooted in logic, but are held in convenience to achieve emotionally preferred ends.

It’s not sick to want to have 14 children. It is sick to wish them aborted, wish harm on the mother or assume she has done some great evil. I don’t know that having 14 children is a mistake, and neither do you. I’ve known plenty of people who were raised in abject poverty and came out just fine. (more…)

I’ve seen the old man make millions of dollars. He was resourceful, clever, thrifty and had the work ethic of an ant colony. This is the rich old man who passes on his life’s earnings to the next generation. The next generation didn’t learn to work, but lived in the comfort of the old man’s palatial estate. Giving the next generation money doesn’t multiply capital, because if they need it in the first place they don’t know how to make it.

That’s President Obama’s stimulus package and it’s also why the money borrowed from our children might as well have been burned…it’s the same tired spending of the last two years, eight years, thirty years, same-o same-o. (more…)

Amadeus is the best movie ever made. It’s not up for debate. Okay, maybe it’s almost as good as Jaws. We’ll throw in Star Wars, Raising Arizona, 300, Aliens and Raiders above it too.

There are good ideas rolling around in Amadeus but none more central than the idea that being a good artist has nothing to do with virtue. Hitler appreciated the arts, Maxfield Parrish screwed his models, and the best writers are drunk, emotional narcissists. I hope I didn’t miss anyone. Anyways, being correct on any position does jack for one’s artistic ability.

F. Murray Abraham plays Salieri, a jealous Vienese court composer convinced that by remaining chaste to God he should be able to write music that will transcend his own death. Salieri knows his own music is just acceptable so that when he hears the music of Mozart he assumes the composer must be a man of great portence and stature. To Salieri’s horror, his anger at God is doubled when he finds Mozart to be a foul twit. (more…)

This is not a discussion on the merits of life or abortion. It doesn’t matter what your opinion is about that issue because I’m talking about divisive politics. The claim of unity and an end to politics that divide is either President Obama’s greatest example of philosophical ignorance or his greatest lie.

There is no more divisive issue than abortion. The nation is torn and it’s not over something trivial like a Coke or Pepsi preference. It’s an argument over the definition of life and liberty itself. So a President who ran on putting partisan politics aside should have a lot of work to do with the other side of the aisle on an issue like abortion. Not with President Obama. (more…)

Johnny Cash was punk rock. The birth of rock came when Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Cash toured small towns and set the youth on fire. Parents were outraged. The long dippity-doo hair atop gyrating men “dancing like the negroes”  before frothing young girls set mainstream culture against this rebellious little movement. It was our first smell of anarchy and it scared the establishment.

Johnny Ramone

The rebellious spirit of rock is dead. No better evidenced than by its formal endorsement of President Obama. Never before has rock been so central to the inauguration of a president. Bono is an ambassador in sunglasses who still knows how to pull a string and get an audience of thousands to put their fist in the air. (more…)

Box-office attendance continues to trend lower and lower each year. It’s on such a downward trajectory you’d think it might be tied to the crashing Republican brand we keep hearing about. But I think the opposite is the case. From an ideology standpoint, the political mono-think of Tinseltown is failing over half the largest audience demographic, and they don’t care.

I hear the excuses from the can-don’ts. People get their entertainment from their phones and YouTubes now. But I sure as hell didn’t watch “Iron Man” on my phone, I have no interest in watching “Gran Torino” on my computer and I won’t be waiting three months for the BluRay to come out. My friends said I had to see those movies today! Yesterday! Do whatever it takes to go see it! (more…)

What most people in media say about Republican Conservatives is stupid and wrong. They don’t know what we believe, what we stand for and why.

In 2005 DNC Chair Howard Dean went on “Meet the Press” and said, “Our moral values, in contradiction to the Republicans’, is we don’t think kids ought to go to bed hungry at night. Our moral values say that people who work hard all their lives ought to be able to retire with dignity.”

That was the first time I heard that Republicans thought kids ought to go to bed hungry at night when we all know that Republicans think they should go to bed hungry in the morning after a night shift in the textile mill because we won’t let them unionize.

I’m told that we’re for defining marriage between a man and a woman because we either hate gays, are afraid of gays or are secretly gay and project our self-loathing on the West Hollywood set. I also understand that we are against abortion because we want the government in women’s wombs, we want to lower taxes because we’re greedy and we defend Israel because we believe it will hurry some apocalypse along that will hasten the return of Jesus who will wipe out the Jews. (more…)

I see in the news where people are flocking to Washington D.C. to celebrate some big event. Bono is going to sing, Rick Warren is going to pray, and there are only 5 port-a-potties for seven million people.

I never knew we would be so excited to celebrate President Bush’s proclamation for the National Sanctity of Life Day:

“All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.

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I once had a meeting with an executive regarding one of my graphic novels that had been optioned. This exec started the writer’s meeting with a few notes to change some rough spots in the story. This is normal procedure with my work. I have no problem with making these changes, since it’s part of the game given where I’m at in my career. They pay me lots of money so I like these execs when I’m sentenced to work with them. I was taken aback by the first round of notes that went something like this, “For starters, we’re gonna get rid of all this Christian shit from the story, right?”

The exec informed me that religious imagery didn’t sell to American audiences, that it was intolerant and it definitely didn’t export. This was before ‘The Passion of the Christ’ so I can forgive his ignorance of the world’s most popular religion, but it was the word intolerant that struck me. How was the inclusion of religion not tolerant while the removal of it was?

This is my baptism into the myopic view of religion by most of my friends in Hollywood. For being multicultural, the lack of humility regarding a religion they didn’t know or understand is…is…well, these days it’s typical.

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