This is a new proposal, concocted after California Legislators failed to regulate the size of their  televisions. That one didn’t sit too well in the land that coined the phrase “Size Does Matter.” I would suggest that the more intelligent legislation would be to ration inches. For instance my  (not to brag) 110″ television, would be the same as some people who have a 12″ set in every room of the house. 

But I digress. Buried in the article is this tidbit of information: Apparently television watching contributes to 10% of the entire American electrical requirement. Holy Moly. Ten percent is more than the entire Cap and Trade Bill expects to cut over the next hundred years.

Which leads me to my proposal. If people in Hollywood REALLY wanted to go green, they should just quit making TV shows, and get a real job. All of them. Writers, Directors, and Producers as well. (It wouldn’t be an issue for tech people, they’re quite familiar with work already.) Without television programming, TV would become completely  unwatchable.

Which isn’t a new idea in Hollywood. Networks have already tried other ways to get people to stop watching Television. Last year’s “Kath and Kim” and the more recent “Parks and Recreation” both have been completely unsuccessful in their attempts to get people to turn off the TV before “The Office” came on.

Why should average Americans, the ones who actually provide necessities of life like food and shelter, be forced to pay more for their energy, when there is a solution right in front of us all? You want the rich to pay their fair share? Television stars make more for a single episode than some of us earn in our entire lives. If Al Gore’s apocalyptic predictions are true, certainly the leisure class of Hollywood must do their part to help save the Polar Bears.

It’s time for all of you out in Hollywood to show us all your acting  abilities, and act like Americans. Your motivation is Saving the Planet.

Stop making the Television that is about to destroy us all.

Much has been written about the premiere of the new ABC drama “V” and its relationship to  the election last year of President Barack Obama. As an article from the Chicago Tribune noted:

Nominally a rousing sci-fi space opera about alien invaders bent on the conquest (and digestion) of all humanity, it’s also a barbed commentary on Obamamania that will infuriate the president’s supporters and delight his detractors.

While it’s true there are reasons why comparisons between the candidate of hope and the aliens who want change are plentiful, the show “V” is about much more than a critique of the Obama administration.

“V” begins as a show about aliens who suddenly appear in spaceships around the world and the reaction they receive.  At first, as can be expected, there is a lot of fear and anguish about the visitors (which is what “V” stands for) as the ships show up hovering above different cities. However, when the alien leader appears on a ship’s video screen and talks about the benefits they will bring to the people of this world, audiences applaud (an unrealistic action, but an important one nonetheless in the development of the program). As the show goes on, though, some people learn that the aliens have more in mind than providing “heal centers” and universal health care for people around the world (which they are in favor of).

As I noted above, there are reasons people are so eager to compare the Obama administration to the alien visitors. The Washington Post recently compared an HBO documentary about the election of Obama to the series premiere of “V.” It noted that…

In ‘V’ (a remake of the early-1980s series), the otherworldly ‘visitors’ want to bring us universal health care. They possess a knack for speechwriting and managing the message. In ‘By the People,’ well . . . same thing!

Another comparison between “V” and Obama’s campaign that many people have focused on, is that young people flock to the visitors in “V”  because they find something intriguing and possibly inspiring about them. Unlike many of the adults in the program, adolescents and young people are enticed by the visitors without understanding the consequences of aligning themselves with the alien race without questioning their motives or their intentions.

I do like the political aspect of the show and how it seems timely for many of those who have questioned or disagreed with the Obama administration. Deeper still, though, I think the idea of blind loyalty is a great aspect to the show. With little information known about the aliens upon their arrival, many people embrace this new group without knowing who they really are. The aliens may say the things that people support and they may have all of the right intentions (which they don’t), but people accept them without questioning their true motives. That blind allegiance, which could be compared to any number of people who accept things without asking questions, is a powerful and important aspect of the program.

In addition to that idea, the pilot of the new program introduces a variety of interesting ideas that will likely be explored as the show continues for the next several weeks and in the spring of 2010. One character, played by the boyish Scott Wolf (who has a knack for choosing quality television projects), is torn between being an “actual” reporter and exploring the truth about the visitors or getting attention as the “chosen” reporter who gets the high-profile interviews with the “V” leader (the Barbara Walters for extraterrestrial life forms). Wolf’s character chooses the latter option, at least in the pilot episode, which is the only episode that has aired thus far. 

On the show, as the softball interview airs, the show cuts to a meeting where rebels are talking about the hidden plans of the visitors. In other shows, this scene might have seemed too obvious but the scene works here because it creates a clear delineation between the image of the Vs that their leader is trying to present and the conspiracy theories about them that the visitors are trying to quell.     

Erica, one of the attendees at that meeting, played by Elizabeth Mitchell from “Lost,” is beginning to understand the true motive of the Vs while her son has been drawn, like a cult member, to them. For the sake of her son, she will likely need to convince him that the visitors are not who he hopes and believes they are.

On the show, there is also the story of a recently-engaged visitor, a traitor to his kind, who has to decide if he wants to join a rebellion against them, and if he wants to reveal the truth about himself to those he loves. Additionally, there is also a storyline about how priests and congregants react to these new alien visitors. With all of these interesting stories, “V” is a show that has a lot of potential to build on.

At the end of the program, Erica turns to a potential ally and notes that the visitors are “arming themselves with the most powerful weapon out there.” When asked what it is, she replies with one simple word: “Devotion.” Soon enough, her son is seen in an alien spaceship pledging his support to the alien race as the leader of the “V” looks on. The show has set up a basic premise with its first episode and if it is able to build on it effectively, it could end up being one of the most interesting and addictive programs of the 2009-2010 television season.

In the program, Cox’s character Jules Cobb is a real estate agent who has recently started dating men in their twenties who are only a few years older than her son. Her dalliances with these men and her coming to grips with her age compose the overall plot of the program. In her daily life, Cobb is surrounded by an offbeat set of characters including her neighbor across the street, her young assistant at work and her ex-husband.

Grayson Ellis, Cobb’s neighbor across the street, is a male cougar, who courts women half his age (and presumably younger). In the second episode, he states matter-of-factly that “When women get older, it’s icky. When men get older, it’s adorable. It’s actually my favorite double standard.” The show seems to be exploring that double standard in presenting this male neighbor who is open about his relationships with younger women and Cobb, who is self-conscious about her behavior and who unsuccessfully tries to shield her son, who is more mature than both of his parents, from knowing about her new dating habits.

Although I like Courteney Cox in the lead, her dating adventures and boyfriends are not as amusing or as interesting as the friends and family members she finds herself surrounded with. For example, her recent boyfriend Josh was not developed as well as some of the other characters on the program and seemed to exist only as an accessory to the program’s lead. You could argue that the character was written that way for a reason but compared to the other characters and their eccentricities, he seemed rather boring.

Also, another major weakness of the show is its focus on crassness and vulgarity. While some critics may like that aspect of the program, the coarse jokes are often unfunny and unnecessary. From the overuse of swear words to the jokes about the process that Jules needs to go through in getting ready for her first night sleeping with Josh, the show pushes the boundaries of taste when it doesn’t need to. The show could be much better as an ensemble comedy about an older woman trying to bring fun back into her life without deviating into tasteless jokes.

As I noted earlier, some of the secondary characters on the program are strong and very funny. Cobb’s ex-husband, for instance, plays a goofy golf instructor who lives in a boat in a parking lot and who often drives around in a golf cart, much to the embarrassment of his son. Additionally, Cobb’s “male cougar” neighbor is an interesting side character. He generally dislikes people, even though he works at a bar, and he likes to torment Cobb about everything from the weight of her purse to the fact that she finds him attractive. On the other hand, Cobb zealously considers him her paper buddy (she likes to talk to him when they are both getting their morning newspapers) even though he often tries to avoid her. In the future, the show would be better if it focused more on the side characters in the program and Cobb’s quirky personality traits and it focused less on the crude aspects of her sex life.

Overall, the weak main storyline and the vulgarity hurt the program. Although some characters on the show have potential, the show has not found its solid footing yet. One day, “Cougar Town” may be a nice place for viewers to check out but for now, “Cougar Town” is not yet a place worth visiting.

As BH’s editor-in-chief John Nolte explained:

…tens, if not hundreds of millions of Americans, will be urged through the (ab)use of public airwaves to log on to the EIF iParticipate site and volunteer” this week.

A memo published by Big Hollywood, Big Government and others, clearly shows the propaganda week was orchestrated by the White House and ‘fits into a broader White House plan, including the push to politicize the NEA, to redefine “art” as “service” and engage an all too compliant news, entertainment, and artistic community to start a volunteer army through these online portals.’

Although the EIF-scandal has been covered in depth here, on other blogs and by Fox, a question that has not been asked is how Europe will react to Obama’s massive liberal agenda? How will Europeans react to an obvious attempt to politicize art and the media? Will Europe react?

The last question has to be answered first, of course, and the answer is pretty simple: yes it will. If for nothing else, then because Obama continues to be adored by most of the European MSM. Everything he does is celebrated by our establishment journalists, who, like their American counterparts, pride themselves in being ‘tolerant,’ ‘compassionate’ and ‘reasonable.’ Keywords, of course, for leftists.

Which brings me to the second reason they are sure to cover this: This is a perfect leftist agenda. European Social Democrats have dreamed of doing what Obama does, for decades. It is, if you’ll excuse the language, every progressive’s wet dream. Of course, most European media and artists have a leftist agenda, but down here they have to hide it somewhat. They cannot speak about their biases and their long term goals. Their American ideological allies have no fear, however. They plan and plot all they want, and virtually nobody is doing anything about it. What is there not to love for the average liberal European?

Well, there is this thing about anti-Americanism. Europeans have complained about American hegemony, influence and dominance for decades. Especially under George W. Bush – but also before – European media tried to put the U.S. in as bad a light as possible. America was too powerful, too strong and its ‘culture of corruption and greed’ too pervasive. No matter where you turned, there was American influence.

Obama’s plans are unlikely to decrease American influence worldwide – they will only change its nature.  Where it was always pro-freedom and pr0-capitalism, its aim will now be to redistribute wealth and to transform the world into one happy multicultural community in which equality of outcome, not of opportunity, is considered the ultimate goal. Europe will be confronted with this new vision for the world constantly. We will not be able to escape this new ‘cultural imperialism.’

It is doubtful, however, that all traditional critics of American hegemony in the past, will condemn this new agenda as they did with the old agenda. To a lot of Europeans, the problem with American dominance was never this dominance in itself, but its nature. It was too capitalist, too ‘immoral,’ too American.

The new approach, on the other hand, will be completely different. It will be Social Democratic and therefore distinctly European. Sure, it will be America that tries to ’socialize’ the world, but who cares; the end result will be the same. These international leftists’ – a majority of whom are part of the MSM – problem with American hegemony and ‘pushiness’ was that it was not liberal. Once it is, they will forget all their old criticism, and they will herald Obama as the great liberal Messiah.

On the other hand, there will also be European leftists who will be angered by more proof of ‘America’s arrogance.’ Lest we forget, Socialism and its little brother Social Democracy is a European, not an American invention. These Europeans will be angered by what they perceive to be America stealing their number one issue. They will be more than pleased that the U.S. has finally joined the ranks of what they consider to be the civilized world, but it should realize who’s boss: Europe. America has to follow Europe’s lead, not the other way around; why, oh why can’t Obama understand that?

Of course, there will also be European conservatives – and yes, there are many of us – who will criticize the cultural imperialism Obama envisions. These Europeans have been indoctrinated by the European media, however. They believe that the Democratic Party is the equivalent of most conservatives parties in Europe. This is clearly not correct – many Democrats and especially Obama and his allies are further left than Labor in Europe – but it takes time for Eurocons to wake up. Luckily they have started doing just that, with Brits taking the lead. As usual, we can expect mainland Europe to follow in the Brits’ footsteps within a few months time. Because there is a tremendous lack of relationships between European conservatives and American conservatives, this process takes some time. But come, it will.

It will be fascinating to watch Europe’s reaction to Obama’s extremely ambitious plans to ‘radically transform’ America and the world. The Old Continent’s leftists will be divided over the matter, while its conservatives will find themselves repeating some of the criticism their ideological enemies – Social Democrats – made before Obama came to power.

Sadly, the dead white males who imposed the Constitution on America enumerated only negative rights that limit the power of the government over its citizens.  But if you squint your eyes and look beyond obstacles like the plain text, lurking in there somewhere behind the penumbras and emanations is the positive right of every American to be a TV star.  Those with MAD are not cretins to be shunned but civil rights visionaries at the edge of a new frontier of governmental largess and probably a lot of profitable litigation.

It’s obvious that American society has failed the Heene family.  After he and his brood’s triumphant appearances on Wife Swap, Heene was left media-deficient and was forced to feed his addiction with crude YouTube videos.  In one, he speculated that Hilary Clinton is a shape-shifting space reptile, which would be totally cool if true.  In another, he claimed that he spoke to aliens at a local fast food restaurant, which is actually pretty typical, at least at Southern California fast food joints.

This sad state of affairs was a direct result of the deep, black emptiness in Heene’s life that could never be filled by superficial things like work, religion or family.  Like all MAD-men, he craves, needs, must have the validation that only comes from having his mug flashing across America’s television screens.  He not only wants his MTV, he has to have it.  And we owe it to him.

But, typical of the kind of divided America left behind by the Bush regime, we failed to give it to him.  TLC, that paragon of class television, passed on his reality series proposal.  What is clear is that Heene’s rights have been grossly violated – this likely constitutes a full-fledged hate crime.  So his actions are understandable, even admirable, in light of the oppression visited upon him.  Roping his wife and kids into a project that had cops, pilots and others chasing a glorified Mylar “Happy Birthday” balloon across Colorado was not a giant scam but a cry for help.

–

America – will you answer the challenge?  They certainly would in Europe.  Surely America can spend a few billion dollars to ensure that unfortunate victims like Heene can have their 15 minutes and then some.  Is it too much to ask America’s wealthiest to pay just a bit more so MAD victims can receive the validation that our Constitution clearly holds they are owed?

Our government must address this terrible crisis!  The only real question is the extent of the MAD public option – should the government undertake to directly provide media access in a “single media” system?  Or should it allow – at least for a while – private media to continue, but with a “public media exchanges” designed to provide the competition that is utterly unknown to media companies now.  However, to bend the cost curve down it can cost no more than $900 billion.  Perhaps we can impose a tax on those with a “cadillac” media profile.

And don’t let yourself by distracted by the Right Wing’s lies - this plan will not provide free media coverage to aliens, whether they are illegal, cabinet officials, or hanging out at your local Burger King.

Senator Snowe, I think I hear history calling again.

Or, as an alternative, we could just express our contempt for dumbasses like Richard Heene and stop celebrating the antics of every buffoon without a shame gene.

1. Science Fiction/Thriller/Horror Channel

A short form/short film channel showcasing those genres. Independent producers, writers, creators could submit work to be aired. It wouldn’t have to be, nor should it be at the Sundance level of professionalism delivered on DigiBeta and starring Cameron Diaz doing a favor for the filmmaker because it’s her friend’s cousin, either.

We don’t want that. There’s plenty of that kind of venue and they turn down 99% of the stuff submitted anyway, mainly because it’s not the work of someone’s friend’s cousin. So forget that right away. It has to be underground, guerilla, shoestring and, most important, good. Very good. Damn good. But not expensive. How can you do that, you say? 

With writing.  

Hot.  Muggy.  Sluggish. School approaches; summer vacations are over or nearly so. The new television season is weeks away. And even in a good movie year  – which 2009 has decidedly not been – all the best blockbusters have come and gone by now.

What to do?  You could watch that stupid cat video on YouTube for the 1,000th time, or…you could watch a surfer get a major bite down from a giant man-eating fish.  Sweet!

Yes friends, The Discovery Channel has the answer for our late-summer, entertainment withdrawal doldrums. For twenty-two years now, Discovery has devoted an entire week of August or July programming to real life sea monsters: They called it Shark Week, and lo, it was good.

Shark Week is always fun, but this year’s installment has been especially tasty. ”Blood In The Water” kicked it off, a terrific two-hour documentary about the real-life happenings that inspired Peter Benchley’s Jaws – the 1916 New Jersey shark massacre.

In July of 1916 (a brutally hot summer all over the Northeastern United States), 5 people were attacked, and four killed, by sharks in New Jersey waters. Freakishly, some of the attacks occurred miles upstream in tiny Matawan Creek, a freshwater stream that empties in Raritan Bay just south of Staten Island. Scientists have been debating the identity of the culprit ever since, but a few days after the last attack, a large White Shark was caught in Raritan Bay. The shark’s stomach contained remains identified as human.  Horrifying – but riveting television.

Other great shows on Discovery’s shark menu this year include another installment of “Air Jaws,” featuring astonishing footage of the White Sharks of South Africa who have a unique method of hunting: Having spotted a seal on the surface, they dive to deep waters, then launch themselves into a vertical attack that sends them flinging their entire massive bodies into the air as they snatch their prey. Why do they do this in South Africa, and no where else? Who knows. Who cares, as long as the cameras roll. Sometimes the sharks miss on their first strike, after which an astounding ballet ensues as the seal performs sea/aerial acrobatics to avoid being breakfast. The footage must be seen to be believed.

Also great: “Shark After Dark,” which is not some bizarre amalgam of Discovery and Playboy, but rather a fascinating study of night-time shark behavior. And “Great White Appetite” which tries to pass itself off as a serious study of Great White feeding habits, but is really just a couple of dudes throwing a bunch of shit into the water to see what and how much the shark will eat. Yes, it’s as cool as it sounds.

True, there’s some ‘message moments’ in Shark Week, talk about shark conservation, scientific research, yada yada.  But it’s all just window dressing for the real red meat – watching sharks feed. Discovery, thankfully, knows this, and keeps the message to a tolerable minimum.

The most incredible thing to me about Shark Week has always been the interviews with shark attack survivors, most of whom voice some variation of the, “I don’t blame the shark, I blame myself for being in the water,” rubbish.  Just once I would like to see a survivor go Ahab and say “You know what?  That shark took my arm. I’m going to get that motherfucker if it’s the last thing I do.” Less Oprah, “My shark tried to eat me and I forgive him,” and more of The Onion, “Man vs. Nature: The Road to Victory.”

But these are minor quibbles. Shark Week is great fun, and certainly the best of August television. The fear of the looming water beast must be among our most ancient and deep-felt fears. Benchley and Spielberg certainly understood when they made their respective novel/film masterpieces – there is no invented monster more terrible than that which already lurks beneath the waves.

When Bush and Cheney left office, they became old news. Mocking them now is like making Eisenhower jokes, but that doesn’t stop the occasional hack like Wanda Sykes trotting out tired material. And Obama seems off limits lest anyone wants to look like a buzz kill during the ever-lengthening, forced-fed honeymoon. In fact, the only show that really dared effectively to venture into political mockery consistently this season was South Park.

Mike Judge

And spare me any mention of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. Both shows kiss the Democratic ass (the donkey, I mean) all week until they realize how biased they’ve become. Then they scramble around to make fun of some minor Dem Congressman for 30 seconds and applaud their own objectivity. Meanwhile, Stewart rages at every conservative cause he can find with the furor (not the wit) of Murrow until he’s called on it. Then he scrambles back into his hole screaming, “I’m only a comic!”

Fortunately, The Goode Family levels the satirical skills of Judge (creator of Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill) at the taboo supporters of global warming, racial hypersensitivity, animal rights and any other cause over-hyped by self-righteous busybodies.

When critics say it’s the wrong time to make such jokes, it’s exactly the time to make such jokes.

The Goodes live an obsessively “green” existence while obsessing over political correctness until they’re tied in knots. In other words, Judge isn’t attacking cleaning up the environment or treating others with respect. That’s all well and “goode.” He’s teasing those who over-think such choices so much and devote themselves to such thinking so blindly they lose sight of their own well-being and why they were doing it all in the first place.

It’ll be interesting to see how well a show does that deliberately ribs people who often lack a sense of humor. If the reviews we’re seeing so far are any indication, the hard left media had its nose turned up with a collective “You dare to offend me, sir…” before they even saw a screener.

Let’s hope this new show is a success because those same smug critics don’t dare touch a show like South Park because it’s too big for such a tussle. Only decent ratings will get the whiny pundits off Judge’s back now.

I’ll get to that somewhat nervy assertion in a bit, but first a little background.

Among the cinematic slew released during those years of cold, are two of my favorite films, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both dealt with strikingly similar themes, unintentional nuclear holocaust, yet in entirely different tones.  But cold war themes weren’t that varied by their very nature, since inevitably the worst case scenario was the best case plot device and nothing brings down the house like bringing down the house.

With that said, still, there’s so much similarity between the two stories that law suits were indeed filed and production schedules slowed. This worked out to Stanley Kubrick’s advantage as his Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released almost a year ahead of Sidney Lumet’s Fail-Safe. In my opinion Kubrick’s is a better film than Lumet’s and not due to slowed schedules, either. But both are magnificent, and because of their approaches to the topic, very different  and essential part of the genre.

Based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert, Dr. Strangelove is, if there’s anyone alive out there who still hasn’t seen it yet, a comedy. The novel, however, is not satire and does not even contain a Strangelove at all, since Terry Southern who worked on the script with Kubrick and George, added that character during pre-production.

Fail-Safe, based on a novel by the same name, was written by two gents who do not have the same name, namely Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. When George Clooney re-enacted this story in LIVE television format, which I personally think was a marvelous idea, he enlisted the help of veteran broadcaster and news legend Walter Kronkite to introduce the landmark teleplay. Kronkite brought weight and nostalgia to the production, he also brought a big flub. As he concluded his up to then flawless introduction of ‘what you are about to see’, he awkwardly stumbled and stammered with the authors’ names. Well, that’s LIVE television, warts and all. Nobody’s perfect, least of all television icons. And it didn’t harm the presentation at all. It probably even made it more enjoyable, if one can use that term with a story about nuclear holocaust. Judging by Dr. Strangelove, that’s exactly what Kubrick wanted us to do.

By a strange coincidence both of these films were foolishly screened one after the other at Harvard Square’s famous Brattle Theater. I had seen them both before several times each, so I knew them backwards and forwards. I also knew one was a comedy and one was decidedly not, though the endings were not all that different, in fact, the comedy turned out a whole lot worse in the end.

The folks that work at the Brattle, probably still to this day, are a smug lot. Using the current vernacular, snarky might even be a way to describe them. Naturally, most are students at Harvard and quite confident in making profound statements they’ve overheard (that one I borrowed from Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, if anyone’s checking). When I saw the lineup with Dr. Strangelove scheduled first, I knew then what many of you who know these films are thinking now, that the staff at Brattle either hadn’t yet seen the films, or they had and were just smug and snarky enough to think it would be cool in this order. For either error, they deserved to be gingerly removed from their employment with the finesse of a General Ripper or a ‘Bat’ Guano, warts and all.

Now, there are very few times when I’ve felt the need to walk out of a movie before the credits finished. Much fewer times due to reasons other than the quality of the film. Well, one such occasion happened here in Japan. At approximately the same time that the quite serious staff of the Tokyo International Film Festival scheduled a screening of Lawrence of Arabia an earthquake was scheduled by the even more serious staff of mother nature. Colonel Lawrence, having just seen the horrors left by the Turks at Tafas was about to echo his famous “No prisoners!” yawp, when the screen went black, then white, then the chandeliers in the theater started swaying like we were on an ocean liner in the wrong part of town. All I could think of was The Poseidon Adventure.  I knew, prisoners or no, it was time to get out of that cavalcade of stars. The last person I would want to be was that guy hanging from an upside down dining room table who ended up in the stained glass. That was one time I left a screening early. The other was at the Brattle. It was during Fail-Safe after Dr. Stranglove had already played.  Their clever lineup. No, there was no earthquake and only one prisoner. Me.  I opted to stay and slog it out. Maybe the overly snarky crowd, I thought, which had laughed way too loudly in classic ‘look at me, I get it’ fashion with the subtle humor of Kubrick’s  would settle down a bit with Lumet. Well, so much for that idea. What followed was constant, again, much-too-loud snickering and feigned muffled laughter by the Ivy proud crowd. I couldn’t take it, so I left. The fools, the mad fools let the comic tone of Dr. Strangelove poison the same serious message that Fail-Safe emitted with fatal solemnity. The horror was negated by the association. I was pissed. And I’m pretty darn sure Henry Fonda – as the President – would’ve been, too.

Dr. Strangelove, enjoyable masterpiece that is it, was of course not intended to frighten. Well, not really. You could say it was intended to frighten about as much as 2001: A Space Odyssey, the most expensive movie about religion ever made, was intended to evoke prayer. The story goes that Kubrick was making Dr. Strangelove as a serious narrative when he felt that it was just so absurd and yet so very possible, that he had to make it a comedy, the irony of it was just too funny.

Fail-Safe was another matter, though. Not filled to the brim with over the top characters with clever names, it very clearly laid out the ease with which a nuclear war could be started, not by purposeful insanity, nor tampering with bodily fluids, but by accident, and even with the best intentions and correct safe guards in place. To human eyes, working flawlessly, by the numbers.

The U.S. Air Force had a disclaimer on the film stating that what you have seen could not happen.  Dr. Strangelove had a similar disclaimer that Kubrick was all too happy to include feeling it lent even more gallows humor to his already hilarious film. He was right. It did.

Well, let me stop for a second. I have a confession to make. I lied. There’s another cold war film that I was fully planning on mentioning and is of particular interest here. In fact, it’s the reason for the whole darn thing. So, I apologize with the sincerity of a Merkin Muffley. This film is not a comedy, nor a drama but rather a TV documentary. It’s called The War Game.  It was made by Peter Watkins and originally scheduled to be released in 1966 on the BBC. It’s what could be described as a docudrama or dramatization. But, we’ll call it a documentary because if [Ray Bradbury's Stolen Title] 9/11 is called a documentary, then this certainly is. And like all documentaries, it’s meant to sway.

For those who haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it. But I will say, what happens to us, to England specifically, isn’t pretty.

In documentary fashion, and using an omnipresent “voice-of-God” narration the film shows what precautions and procedures are in place in the event of a nuclear emergency, in this case, an exchange of hostilities with tactical nuclear weapons between NATO and those forces of communist Soviet Union and China. It interweaves man-in-the-street bits, creating a very realistic portrayal of then contemporary English urban and suburban life as only a Richard Lester could appreciate. These go on to show what the average person was thinking in terms of perceived threat.  Experts are interviewed – civil defense and emergency services workers, politicians and theologians. Many of the ‘expert’ interviews, particularly the ones that keenly show the message of disparity between wishful thinking and reality, do not provide us with real names, but rather titles to match their out-of-place statements such as ‘the war of the just’  by ‘an Anglican Bishop’ or the American nuclear strategist’s belief that both sides in a war would refrain from destroying cities. These staid interviews are contrasted effectively with the fire, flying debris and screams as well as with the narration that shares information with us such as, ‘in this car a family is burning alive’ or ‘these men are dying’, as if we didn’t know already.

There’s a wide range of citizenry shown, rich and poor, educated and not. A lot of opinions are expressed, some sound, others not, and none of them are from experience. The film then goes on to graphically provide that.

The ensuing chaos and horror is remarkably realistic in its incoherence. When Kubrick made Dr. Strangelove, he wanted the defensive missile strike on Major Kong’s B-52 to be incomprehensible, chaotic, out of focus and over modulated. Going against conventional filmmaking, Kubrick didn’t want us to know what was happening. He wanted real.

With exception to the narration, much of The War Game mirrors Kubrick’s approach and philosophy as if he had been lobbing grenades at the cameraman himself.

The film was met with tremendous resistance from within BBC, a thoroughly more responsible outfit in those days, and from the British government itself, keen not to highlight the fact that nuclear war is not something that can be mopped up quickly and that no nation can adequately prepare for war, conventional or nuclear.

The director Watkins resigned over this resistance and the film was not shown on that network until 1985. It is noteworthy that it is during the Reagan and Thatcher years, not the liberal and labour party administrations of the 1960s and 1970s of Britain and the U.S., that the ban was lifted on this harshly critical-of -government, distinctly anti-nuclear film and finally allowed to be shown to the public. However, it did get limited private exposure during the banned years of Liberal party administrations by making the college circuit rounds and being shown to film critics by prints provided by Watkins himself. His work would go on to receive not only accolades but awards by these same critics, most likely enjoying the privilege of seeing something banned by the government and the BBC.

From the outset, the film, like all film, is designed to influence thinking. That it was scheduled for the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima makes this fact no secret at all.

The film’s fictional deadline of when the festivities were to occur if we didn’t disarm in 1966 came and went. So did ‘76, ‘86, ‘96 and 2006. A lot of years has passed since this warning of imminent extinction if we didn’t act immediately to disarm. 43 years in fact, have passed. So have a few other things like the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan had a lot to do with those. A very big heaping ‘a lot’, if you ask me.  But whether you want to debate that or not, like the end of the world, it’ll have to be postponed for another doomsday. What’s important, to paraphrase Reagan himself, is not who takes the credit for preventing nuclear holocaust, but that it was prevented. The super power nuclear exchange did not happen. The film’s message was a misfire. We all know, however, that the new threats we face today are just as possible and just as destructive as the previous ones that The War Game effectively addressed. I’m afraid, as horrible as The War Game suggests, in reality, it will be a whole lot worse.

There is a lot of emotion connected with any discussion of a war more nuclear than conventional. And that’s as it should be, I suppose. Because unlike any other weapon system, nuclear weapons have lingering effects that are unparalleled in our history.

As long as such arsenals exist, the horrors of Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe and The War Game could become reality. Will they? Who knows? No one certainly wants it to happen. No sane person anyway. But the sane aren’t always calling the shots, both government and freelance.

We’ve all seen what much smaller atom bombs were capable of. The fission bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in essence the detonators for the awesome fission/fusion thermonuclear devices in most stockpiles now. We’ve all watched the grainy footage from New Mexico, Bikini atoll, and the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We’ve watched with passing car wreck fascination the horrors of the children maimed, the shadows burned on the walls and the few remaining structures that withstood hell. It’s all unforgettable and very emotional.

But there are some points that get misplaced in all this emotion. Many people are aware of them, but many more are not, it seems. Anyway, let’s see if we can touch on a few right now.

1. The U.S. using atomic weapons targeted two Japanese civilian cities: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Not entirely correct. Certainly the U.S. dropped atom bombs on those two cities, practically destroying them entirely and killing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. But, a point often overlooked is that neither city was strictly ‘civilian’ as we know it. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were industrial, armament, military producing centers that contained both residential and industrial components, often side by side.

Japan was a cottage industry culture at that time. Businesses that you or I might think of as ‘war industry’ firms, such as Ford, GM, Boeing, etc, were unheard of in Japan. Small shops built everything. Well, almost everything. Some large conglomerates, powerful family samurai shogunate holdovers, called Zaibatsu, did exist, welding tremendous influence in shipping, construction, manufacture and practically all of the large scale design and development of war industry business. Mitsubishi, yes, the same one as the car maker, produced the A6M Zero-Sen , Zero or Zeke as it was referred to by many American fighting men who crossed swords with the formidable aircraft. Mitsubishi made many of their aircraft in Hiroshima. From the start of the war, the Mitsubishi shipyards in Nagasaki were heavily involved in contracts for the Imperial Navy. The Japanese military relied on Hiroshima for the supply of its aircraft and on Nagasaki for its ships. The region was used as a center for other industrial construction as well, by other smaller Zaibatsu and the aforementioned cottage industry houses. In other words, both cities could be considered military targets.

2. Only Japanese were killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Wrong again. There were tens to hundreds of thousands of P.O.W.s and foreign slaves in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Many of the slaves were Koreans and Chinese used as labor in these war industry factories. None of those who perished in the atomic bombings are mentioned in the casualty lists for that city, nor on any plaque within Hiroshima Peace Park where all other honored names are displayed. The city and governor consistently refused to permit it. Those killed are considered unmentionables. Like the ‘comfort women’, sex slaves conscripted from other nations such as Korea, China, Philippines, Singapore, to service Japanese military, they simply never existed. Not even in death. Recently, there has been acknowledgment and changes to this official stance, but it has come very slowly and with a long fight.

3. The United States was eager to test the atom bomb on a population.

Still wrong. The use of the then-new atomic bomb on a city, was an absolute last resort for the Americans. To have to use it on two cities was beyond last resort. There is no one living or dead who wished to use it on anything but a weathered steel tower if there was any chance in not having to. Unfortunately, the last resort became an option after the Battle of Okinawa demonstrated that the Japanese would not only fail to surrender, but would execute the civilian population as well, as they did with impunity on Okinawa. It’s worth considering that to this day, the only military the people of Okinawa despise more than the still occupying forces of the U.S. is the Japanese military, and that’s after several high profile rape incidents involving American military against local Okinawan children. Even with that, the Japanese of Okinawa still despise the Japanese military more.

The Battle of Okinawa displayed in stark relief what Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima had earlier hinted at. That it would take Operation Olympic, a total land invasion by Allied forces, planned and readied by hundreds of thousands to millions of veteran and new troops in staging areas across the Pacific, to stop the Asian nation. The astronomical amount of logistics and enormous cost, financial and human, in support and training alone would not have been expelled had the U.S. always intended to use the atomic bombs as many critics suggest.

The total deaths at the Battle of Okinawa have never fully been studied. But estimates show that more died there than in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, including those who died after the initial blast from radiation related illnesses. The figures that are often associated with Hiroshima and Nagasaki are almost always those in the most upper range of the estimates. In any case, many, many people died in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and places like Okinawa. No one can deny that. Yet, do we cringe at the mention of the Battle of Okinawa? No, we do not. Why not? Because it’s conventional war and conventional death. But more importantly, I believe, the primary reason is because there are very few images to evoke our emotion. So, it becomes a mere statistic. Numbers not images. Math not art. Faces move us far more than figures.

4. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved Japanese lives.

It is a sad and strange truth that in the end the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually saved Japanese lives.  This is not an unsupportable claim. For if Operation Olympic was to proceed there is no denying that millions of Japanese would have died, along with millions of Allied soldiers all in the name of getting the Emperor to sign a piece of paper.

Number 4 is a hard pill to swallow. Because of the images of nuclear war, and the effects of it, we tend to regard such an event as the complete and utter end of the world.

But it did not end the world. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, leveled, incinerated. Yet, combined, they don’t add up to the casualties suffered in Okinawa. But many might argue that Okinawa was not leveled, it’s towns were not stamped flat. No, they were not. But this discussion is about life, not things. People, not buildings. Humanity not machinery. So, we must not veer off our humanitarian quest only to pick up broken shields and count structures razed. This is about loss of life, human life. It is the heart targeted message of The War Game and all other anti-nuclear statements that life is what we are fighting for.

In previous wars, whole populations were decimated, entire nations were removed from existence, wiped off the map. In relative terms of populations, it would be like the earth opening up and swallowing all of North America, or Africa, or Europe in one single messy gulp. We’re talking mind numbingly large scale destruction. But the difference is, there were no cameras to record such horrors, no witnesses to give any heart wrenching accounts. No screaming children, no frustrated doctors applying salves to blackened, shiny skin. None of that. Because nothing lived.

Years ago, I had the good fortune to meet one of the last remaining members of the First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Force and the American in charge of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey which went in days after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations to record and film what was left of those former cities. Any footage you have seen is most likely the footage that group and their Japanese counterparts took. He remarked that they had a few armed soldiers with them as they drove into the flattened city. He and his colleagues were scared to death about going in. Not because of the radiation. They were certain that they were going to be torn limb from limb by whatever survivors were remaining and with whatever strength those poor souls had left in them.

But they were not. They were saluted.

Those cities were sacrificed, perhaps we can look at it this way, to save the world from further and almost certain nuclear death. It is their example in the pictures and film which were taken, also with sacrifice, which can remind us what horrors are possible in our own time if we allow them. Images.

Thanks to those men who went in after the bombs, we have that visual legacy to consult. But think for a moment of those images of nuclear war, in footage and in films like The War Game and the power it commands. Certainly, the horror deters us, makes us think. So consider this. Isn’t it possible that we might have had another tragedy like the Nazi Holocaust, for example, if there were no pictures or film of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Buchenwald to shock us, to remind us what we as humans are capable of? Films like The War Game were made for just this purpose. To remind. To fill in what is missing in our visual library of real horrors. Yes, let them be reminders, but not propaganda.

The image is a remarkable thing. None of us would be sharing our thoughts here if images didn’t move us, didn’t sway us. Places like this site exist because images affect us. But we must remind ourselves that there are many horrors, different, but perhaps equally horrible and inconceivable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the events depicted in The War Game, but which we have no image to relate to, to recoil from, to get sick looking upon.

If you have seen someone’s head explode from pressure applied into the ears, or an armless woman stumbling down the street with her forced-birth child dangling behind her legs, still attached by its umbilical chord and dragging on the road looking like a dirty, old shoe, except it’s screaming – or a naked man, standing in sub zero temperatures, having water poured on his arm, freezing it, and then having it intentionally smashed off like delicate glass with the blow of a hammer – or children hung on poles in the sun, being flayed alive, their skin peeled off them slowly as they try to scream but cannot because their vocal chords were cut out – or seen animal limbs sewn onto humans in place of the perfectly healthy ones that were chopped off – or the insertion of germs and disease into patients wide awake during operations – or the cannibalism of prisoners of war, the beheading for amusement, or any of the other myriad of tortures that went far beyond what the Nazis ever did, then you have seen war BEFORE the atom bomb, before the nuclear age. You have seen the Japanese in China.

War is horrible. All forms of it. Whether it is nuclear or non nuclear. It is horrible. Human beings can be the most – let me correct that – are the most horrible creatures on the planet. We have proven this time and again. We are the most dangerous creatures, because, as the Orson Welles’ Zaroff confesses in The Most Dangerous Game, we can reason.

If you ask an older Chinese, Indonesian, Southeast Asian, Singaporean or Filipino about whether or not the A-bomb was necessary to stop the Japanese, you will get a very different answer than the one usually given by most western college students. Very different, indeed. I’ve been to Hiroshima several times. On more than one occasion as a a teacher on a class trip. Visiting the Peace Park Memorial during one of these occasions,  I was accompanied not only by fellow Japanese teachers who were old enough to remember World War II, but by a survivor of the Hiroshima blast, an old Japanese gentleman, who was a small boy when that B-29 made its run, and who has seen things, horrors, none of us could dream up in our worst nightmares. Many of the people who come to visit the Hiroshima Peace Park and other places like it are Japanese school children taken there by their schools. This makes me wonder how many schools in America conduct similar visits to places where Americans perished in war. I can only hope that they do, because I think it would be more worthwhile for them than Disney Land or the Philadelphia Zoo. Foreigners, many of them from the United States, Canada, Europe also visit the memorial in great number. Many of them leave without understanding why the bombs were dropped, though. They see evidence of the horror and destruction, but very little in terms of explanation of what led up to that day. Images. Emotion. Ironically, it is the Japanese school children who are taught in school at least a small measure of the horrors of Nanking, about the gas and germ weapons tested on civilians, about the flaying in Burma and the beheading and torture at Bataan. Westerners are generally not taught this. And yet westerners are the biggest critics of the U.S. for the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aside from those who lived through them of course. But even there, such as my elderly friend pointed out to me, ‘we Japanese brought it upon ourselves’.

Even a single warhead in today’s nuclear arsenal dwarfs the initial three detonations (including Trinity) as a Howitzer would a spitball made and spit by an ant. I think most people agree that total disarmament would be an ideal situation, but, like gun ownership, only if it was unilateral and guaranteed. But neither of those two conditions can be met with the degree of certainty needed for the stakes at hand. Today, it would only take one bullet, so to speak, to stop the world.

So, where does it leave us? Stuck in M.A.D. status until a clever person develops something that can disable nuclear warheads remotely, making them obsolete.

In The War Game man-in-the-street interviews it was quite clear that the filmmaker intended to show exactly how uninformed both the citizenry and experts were. The gap between what they thought they knew and what they actually knew was so great once the chaos started, like the absurdity of Dr. Strangelove, it would have been humorous if it wasn’t so tragic. Looking back on 1965 when The War Game was made, we think we are not uninformed as they were. We look at those people with skeptical eyes, marveling at their naivety. We think our parents and grandparents generations were so gullible, so foolish to think the way they did. Now, we’re certain we’re different. We think we have tons of data because of the internet, because we read this article or that book, follow this podcast or that blog, we think we have reams of inside information. We’re informed. We’re in the know. Like the Brattle audience, we’re savvy, sophisticated and knowledgeable. Nothing can harm us that we’re not prepared for, neither comedy nor horror.  We’ve smugly laughed the danger away. We’ve whistled past the graveyard and we’re fine.

But the reality is it won’t matter if we’re laughing or not. Because relatively speaking, we are those same people who were depicted in The War Game, those foolish folk, bumbling around in the dark, with simpleton plans and childish things. We distance ourselves from that lot.  We think we know as much as is knowable minus only a small fraction, a negligible amount. This is fantasy. It is the inverse that is true. We know very little compared with what can happen. And very few of us have experience beyond the images or emotion, neither of which can prepare us.

But what can happen? We’re making friends around the world, aren’t we? We’re beloved again, right? We’re on the right track, are we not? There’s no U.S.S.R. and no Berlin Wall. The missiles have been out of Cuba for a long time and all is well.

I sincerely hope so. But, in the warm and sometimes wet blanket of good relations we can also misplace other kinds of things, like the historical fact that we were friends, good friends with Japan in the years preceding the attack on Pearl Harbor, that we were allies with the Soviets, even war buddies just prior to the outset of the Cold war, and that we had agreements with China prior to the Korean war.

Only the foolish don’t hope for peace while remaining prepared for war. Even organisms in nature, from bacteria to orangutans, are linked to the concept that the defenseless perish. Period. Except those in captivity, that is.  But of course, as human beings, we believe we have evolved to a stage where ruthlessness and barbarity are no longer useful, no longer needed, and no longer effective. Yet, how many times has Captain Kirk had to confront that issue with powers greater than his Enterprise? Plenty.

In the magnificent film Ben Hur, Hugh Griffith’s character Ilderim disagrees with Balthasar’s plea for pacifism. He voices it to Judah Ben Hur, who will soon fight his nemesis in the arena of the chariots:

ILDERIM: Balthasar is a good man. But until all men are like him, we must keep our swords bright!

JUDAH BEN HUR: And our intentions true!

ILDERIM: One last thought… there is no law in the arena. Many are killed. I hope to see you again, Judah Ben-Hur.

Films like The War Game, Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe were made to sway us, to warn us, not of the Soviets nor the Chinese, but of ourselves, each of us. Of what we are capable of and what we can’t control. They may look antiquated and evoke surly chuckles in all the savvy places but each, in its own way, is no less real now than when they were made.

Though anachronistic, they are also timeless because they speak about our fears, and that never goes out of style. The dangers, now different, do exist and have always existed. Facing the different horrors of war, cold or hot, conventional or nuclear should be done equally and indiscriminately with the same even and steady hand that we choose to hold a candle by.

The atom and hydrogen bombs are not the most powerful weapons ever devised by man. The image is.

Aside from the many frustrating projects making demands on his time Schizoid Mann has begun work on a thriller about the cold war.

The War Game at Google Video.

Fail-Safe at Google Video.

Daniel A. McGovern at IMDB.

Congratulations on the fine work you did with the recent Hollywood hoopla thing.  What are those golden statues called again…Arthurs?  Oscars?  Ollivers?  No matter.  The fine art of idolatry is becoming your forte, my dear nephew.  With the powers of a willing media and the brilliance of commercialism prevalent, it’s no wonder the masses turn to your town for direction and meaning.  I chuckle with delight to see how real meaning and substance is more and more becoming passé, and overlooked for the sizzle and bling of the ephemeral.  You make your uncle proud to see that you are once again the year’s big producer for thirty years running…and gaining even more new customers every month.

Your work on the special interest groups is particularly impressive.  You are keenly aware that, pound for pound of effort, this is where we gain the most purchase in our clawing scramble over the human psyche.  Continue to stress their inherent oppression and victimization, so that our aims may be met.  Nothing makes a poor soul feel more empowered than believing itself to be a part of a large, aggrieved and neglected group.  Build on their individual sense of outrage and anger, along with their helpless sense of futility.  Remind them that they are being victimized, and must demand their rights!  I know you are laughing right now, as am I.  But drive the seriousness of their indignant and violated pride, and demand restitution for the wrongs perpetrated upon them.  (As for the specific nature of these ‘wrongs’, either real or imagined, simply fill in the blank; a group is a group, and we can use any and all of them for our purposes.) And good that you can work the golden idols into so many hands that help legitimize our work. That Penn character is an excellent poster boy.  In fact, increase the irreverence, step up the hatred of our Enemy and brighten the public celebration of him, as his flippant outrageousness masquerades as gravitas.    We can trade on his magnetic popularity, and draw the proverbial moth to the flame.  Continue your brilliant work in framing his disrespect and hatred of Judeo-Christian ethics and traditional values as hip and ‘progressive’.   

I’m laughing again too, my dear nephew, as one muses upon what it is exactly that they are progressing towards.   I join you in salivating over the exquisite moment of discovery as the poor scums awaken to the wretched fate that awaits them.  

In fact, I must commend you in the highest for your skillful sleight-of-hand with regards to the English language.  The catch-phrase taken to high art.  Love those words, and all like it: Hope…Change…Believe….that you have artfully injected into the American lexicon.  And my favorite, ‘Economic Justice’.  Oh, my heart swells with pride over the millions of souls now residing with us, all brought in with that simple, sweet fabrication.   Your dazzling virtuosity at somehow applying honor and dignity to a base concept previously held by murderers and highwaymen has enthralled all of us on the Lower Council.  You’ve done your uncle proud.  Keep it up, as it affects my reputation if you falter.  And trust me, you wouldn’t want that. 

At the endless award shows in your town, I commend you that fewer and fewer award winners are thanking the Enemy for their success.   Your relentless work at making that whole thing appear as a ‘fad’ is paying off.  Fads come into fashion, and they leave just as quickly.  Religion as a fad is one of our greatest tricks, and you seem to be a master at the joystick. 

So kudo’s on your work in Hollywood. And even better, your push on bringing Islam to popularity amongst the minorities is noteworthy.  This is where you should throw most of your energies, as this movement has the greatest possibility of bearing much fruit in the near term.  Placing it on a parity with Christianity is brilliant;  as to the latter, we must be stalwart and obsessive in our drive to make it seem like ‘just another religion’…and it’s center point as ‘just another great prophet’.   Remove the deity and relegate him to just another man with some pretty good ideas.  Like Buddha, and Mohammad and Gandhi and Moses.  I like your innovation in that Kabbalah thing, and the celebrities’ devotion and publicizing.  Let it be seen as the ‘fun’ religion, like (as one comedienne was quoted) a cross between Judaism…and magic!    

And Scientology…well done!  However I fear you’ve let that fall into disrepute of late.  Watch that, as it had been rendering wonderful results.  I would pump up its respectability and emphasize the powerful successes of human achievement and empowerment.  (I mean, it has Cruise and Travolta, how bad could it be?) 

Continue to frame Muslims worldwide as victims, and let that drive their noble respectability.  See how they suffer, and yet their devotion allows them to struggle onward.  Pump the ‘unity’ factor to appeal to more Blacks in America.  Bring Farrakhan back into prominence; see if you can get that new president to hasten that.  Pull in some favors in the Hollywood community; you know Oprah’s good for it. 

In Hollywood, continue to slam the image of our Enemy.  His forbearance must be taken as weakness and ineffectuality.   Even better, as a sign that He isn’t there at all.  A ghost, a phantom, just some dreamed-up apparition of fantasy.  This is our ultimate hope – actualizing a prevalent accepted belief that both His world…and ours…are merely childish inventions of superstitious mystics and cretins; and have no place in the evolved ‘progressive’ world of material technology.

Our master’s flag is firmly planted atop the American media.  With our endless cultural seductions, and our more than willing political and media accomplices, we will drive the Enemy out of that country and out of the world.  Soon it won’t even be a memory…but a bad joke.  A punch line.  Like saying grace before a meal, or a nighttime prayer, the practitioners of such practices will be seen as demented…weak…deluded.  Simpletons who shun reality for fruitless conversations with their invisible and ‘imaginary friend’.  Run this theme around Hollywood enough and it will be the subject of the next Academy-Awarded film.

But most importantly, my dear nephew, congratulations on the wonderful work you are doing in the hearts of the filmmakers themselves.  The themes they are aggrandizing are truly inspired.  Infidelity, murder, incest…yes, all good themes, and our ‘marquis players’…but the new ones you are instilling – masterful.  Child rape.  Torture and sadism.  Psychological torment beyond my wildest dreams!  Oh, nephew, you should see your proud uncle beaming at your inventive resourcefulness.  Our little creatures celebrate such fare with nearly the same gushing gusto as we do.  Little do they know by repeatedly immersing themselves into the Great Darkness they grow closer and closer to it, to us…and eventually are absorbed by it.  Oh!  My heart sings for their painful future…and my laughter is gurgling up from my bowels, as I contemplate our inevitable union and the surprised looks on their poor pathetic little faces as it’s all over and they realize that their new home for eternity…is with us in the Great Black Void. 

Sorry for the delay in sending this, but I was so overcome with rapture that I had to lie down for several days just to calm myself.   But now I’m back, and I must tell you something sincerely…

Your mighty work, done in the interstitial spaces of time and matter, or what the little creatures call ‘the spiritual realm’… is indeed becoming epic.  The inroads you are carving into the society of creatures are staggering.  And you make it seems so easy!   The so called ‘pop culture’ is literally dismantling all the horrid goodness the Enemy has constructed almost faster than we can keep up to facilitate it!  It’s like a runaway train on steroids!  Oh the utter sad and sick, demented joy of it, my nephew…

I have heard that you are in line for promotion to the Supreme Sepulcher of Elders; for the rumors are that the things you are accomplishing down here in the movie capitol of the world…are the things of legend.  Our Dark Father has hinted at great things to come for you…and more importantly, for me.  For you wouldn’t be where you are if it wasn’t for my urging and discipling and counseling.  So don’t think for one second that you will descend without me, you ungrateful bastard, or I’ll cut off your pathetic little… 

Dear me, I apologize, I get so worked up when I muse about such things.  I have the utmost confidence you’ll take my best interests to heart, my dear nephew. 

Or else.

Your affectionate uncle, NEWSRAPE