Thought Of The Day 1

Kim Kardashian has a "career" like mass murders have a "career" by gaining media coverage -- the wrong kind of attention for doing the wrong kind of thing.

Why Bill Cosby Isn't Funny (Op-Ed)

WHY BILL COSBY ISN'T FUNNY

Let's take the recent scandal of well over thirty different, unrelated women who have accused Bill Cosby of inappropriate behaviors over the past four decades or so out of the equation for just a second and look at the performer known as Bill Cosby from the point of view of a professional working comedian, from the vantage of audience members who have supported him and his endeavors with our time and money, and from the aspect of him being labeled a "living show business legend" and modern-day "cultural icon". 

Separating the man from the myths from the allegations gets increasingly harder to do with each passing day, as we come to believe what we see -- good and bad -- repeated in the media without question or context, as the truth, until reality and fiction blend together as one. Perhaps the person who experiences fame and fortune and make-believe as a for-sale commodity eventually comes to not know the differences themselves, as, I believed, was the case of Michael Jackson.

Is Bill Cosby funny?  Was he ever funny? Was he set up to "fail" as an "ideal of perfection" no imperfect human being could fulfill? And, if so, did he set himself up?  Or was he -- and continues to be -- someone who needs serious mental-health help?  Are we enabling him in his illness by holding celebrities to a different standard than "regular people" and by rewarding "outrageous sickness" with celebrity the performers don't deserve?  Has the Cult of Celebrity reached its final saturation point and Mr. Cosby is a prime example of an obsolete, dying breed?  Is he a victim somehow?  Where do we go from here?

Let's look at his messages, values, lifestyle...

1.  Bill Cosby doesn't look "funny".

Bill Cosby used to be good-looking back-in-the-day -- actually, kind of sexy.  When he was starting out, he had a strong sense of fashion style, presented himself as clean-cut, the kind of non-radical Black young man everyone liked, even hard-nosed White people, even when things were bumpy between the races.  His presentation was impeccable.

His once-bankable impishness faded a couple of decades ago.  His poorly-aging body is bloated, sagging -- this is an ex-athlete?  He seems closer to helpless and homeless than to a healthy, active, inspirational senior statesman. He certainly isn't believable playing a doctor any longer.

His gray-coated eyes droop.  These are the same eyes that got a laugh just by rolling them up and pursing his lips to repress a contagious smile.  Those eyes are dead.  He doesn't smile at all anymore. His frowns are frozen, in a seemingly constipated way, agitated, bitter.  His fingernails are long.  His skin is marked by large dark dots and he is unshaven.  He simply looks unhappy and unwell and sad and perplexed and in need of a shower.  He looks as though there is no one around to take care of him to a reasonable standard, he is no longer capable of taking care of himself.

Comedian Joan Rivers also ruined her looks, with a startling amount of plastic surgery in her case, until it was nearly impossible to pay attention to what she was saying.  An elderly woman screaming obscenities through an immobile mask of too-taunt skin is off-putting, similar to when the whole world gasped in shock at an Oscars event at the once stunningly beautiful actress, Kim Novak, whose barely-recognizable face was voluntarily, intentionally, made into grotesque putty for vanity's sake. Pity replaced reverence.

Jerry Lewis had a life-threatening illness (through no fault of his own), took life-saving medication for it, but the steroids involved bloated his face to three times normal size to almost unrecognizable as well.  A pratfall by a twenty-one-year-old fit Jerry Lewis at a nightclub is way funnier than the same pratfall by a seventy-five-year-old near-death Jerry Lewis who looked like Mr. Potato-head (and not in a humorous way), happening shortly after being booted off as host of the Labor Day telethon.  You could neither laugh with him or at him in good conscious because there was nothing funny about his situation whatsoever. Watching a pompous man slip on a banana peel is funny. Watching someone handicapped falling down, struggling to get up, is not funny.

Bill Cosby no longer wears any trace of a "performance outfit" or makeup or has "staging" when performing.  There are plenty of reasons performers dress up in suits, ties, looking as presentable as possible, with good lighting and designed sets.  It's about self-respect and respect for the audience.  It's about putting on a "show", "eye-candy", being "professional".  Cosby gives no indication between being a world-class performer or being his "self", presented as a "nobody-in-particular" who happens to wander in off the streets and on to the stage -- the Common Man -- which is an act, of course, to hide his true ego.  Actress Joan Crawford, on the other hand, said, "If you want to see the Girl Next Door, go next door..."  Perhaps Cosby's attitude toward production values is: "I'm so great I don't have to do anything...I AM the show..."? Funny?  No.

Cosby's signature "sweater" has been replaced with cheap Wal Mart sweat shirts with ironed-on lettering of "Hello Friends" on the front in a kind of child-like, pathetic plea. Wealthy, experienced, educated, DOCTOR Cosby -- actor, producer, writer, comedian, teacher, author -- has the disheveled look of someone with cognitive disabilities/dementia with a day-pass on a bus trip to the mall. Why?

You must empathize with a comedian to some extent in order to find the humor relatable because comedy is already an exaggerated abstraction, a surreal heightening of reality.  You can not find a comedian so horribly repulsive that you feel sick looking at them. That's the opposite of being open to what they have to say and having a good time. 

If the performer doesn't address whatever it is about them that is distracting within the first three seconds of bounding on to the stage, then it is up to the performer to win back the audience's wandering attention -- if they can.  Feeble long-time performers such as Don Rickles, Bob Newhart, and Billy Crystal are currently at that cross-roads, yet, they don't wear lettering across their chests which would add nothing to the comedic proceedings except confusion and distraction.  Where is Cosby's management? 

Bill Cosby must be hysterically funny instantly out of the starting gate and be brilliant each and every time he performs, for as long as he performs, if for no other reason, than to compensate for his current poor, humorless appearance. Genius could bridge the ragged physical hindrances enough to make the audience forget his appearance -- eventually and for a short while.  No reports indicate he is that funny.  What can he possibly say about how he looks?  What can he possibly say about the world without seeming a hypocrite or ironic in a not-so-great way?  Nothing funny there.

2.  Bill Cosby doesn't sound "funny".

In his hey-day, Cosby's jokes were typically punctuated by wonderfully-timed pregnant pauses, rubbery facial expressions and wild gesturing.  He created "Cosby-ism" tag lines that become part of the cultural idiom ("Hey, Hey, Hey...", "Riiiigghhhtttt....What's a cubic?").  His recorded comedy albums were standard fare for every American household, with repeatable, hip jokes that you never grew tired of hearing.  He was a star who had a "recognizable voice" and his material was pure gold.

On stage, he now sits slumped in a folding chair under a harsh "working light", with a microphone planted on his mouth, hiding most of his face, as he telegraphs one trivial "observational humor" pun after another without set-ups or punch-lines, rambling on smarmy non-stories without an arc or point.  He's doing what comedians call "noodling" -- a free-association way of comedy -- nothing written, without structure, and, in this instance, without much intonation or diction, as though too exhausted, too beat down, weighted, to stand and speak to the audience directly with any conviction or vigor.  There are still pauses in his act but they are full of self-consciousness, lingering too long, and the laughs result from audience's fidgety nervousness, rather than lighting wit or a particular insight into the human condition.

Cosby is low-balling to a fanatical die-hard audience who does most of the work for him themselves by expecting him to be funny, whether or not he actually is, who pay a lot of money to see the "Jello Pudding Guy/Dr. Huxtable" of yesteryear, no matter what, and who would laugh at just about anything anyway.  Something similar happens at Rolling Stones and Beach Boys concerts or when Cher shows up. These are the kind of "royalty" performers who could come out on stage, drop their pants, take a crap, and get a standing ovation. Does Cosby deserve that kind of reverence? If you were to look at his "reel of successes", would the materials seem timeless or hopelessly dated?

Just a couple of years ago, Cosby went on several talk shows and repeatedly tanked in a grand manner, while meandering about the studios, seeming lost, making baffling, nonsense statements as though he was either in the throes of a nervous breakdown, on heavy medication, steeped in senility, or all of the above.  A comedian who isn't funny is tragic.

Over the years, Cosby has inched ever nearer Norma Desmond territory, more so than any other comedian of late or in his peer group who were supposedly "great", only to become a quickly tiresome satire of his own faded career and self-importance.  The obvious subtext of his limp, wheezing appearances is: "I used to be big", an old circus elephant, destined to do their routine in a continuous loop, because they have never known any other life.

Any quote you find from Cosby within the last decade is typically curmudgeon in nature -- negative, critical, condescending, self-righteous -- and not the kind of joyful joke he was famous for at all.  Comedians work from a basic personal truth, from inward to outward, and if the performer doesn't have a grasp of what the truth is for himself -- loosing himself -- he no longer has a source in which to draw materials from.  He no longer has funny things to say.  When he speaks, Bill Cosby doesn't sound funny.

3.  Bill Cosby's view of the world isn't "funny".

Cosby, as a stand-up comedian, was never "edgy" like Richard Pryor or "smart" like George Carlin or "political" like Lenny Bruce or "ethnic" like Jackie Mason or "silly" like Steve Martin.  He wasn't pure vaudeville as say, George Burns.  He never had the acting chops of Eddie Murphy or the dramatic depth of Sydney Portier who, at times, could be very funny.  He never worked "blue" (maybe in Vegas?).  He was reliable but never in the show biz stratosphere like Ellen's "Hey, God...It's Me, Ellen" routine or when Roseanne exploded on "The Tonight Show" in full "Domestic Goddess" trashiness.  Cosby was, at best, an easily-digestible light meal -- charm was his greatest asset, like Will Smith.  

His cultural impact in the 1960's was based in large on the fact he was a "person of Color" who made good, got along without rocking the boat, someone White people of a certain mind could see themselves being friends with, in spite his race -- safe, affable. He was like having your riotous cousin cut up during a party but not someone you'd turn to for side-splitting, heavy-lifting comedy, like the joke-machine of Bruce Vilanch's extraordinary gifts.

And he was absolutely not alone in making that impact.  Everyone from Diana Ross to Nichelle Nichols to Diahann Carroll to Sammy Davis, Junior and hundreds of others in all kinds of fields were making strides in social acceptance of African-Americans.  You can not look to a single incident in Mr. Cosby's life and show cause-and-effect of his involvement in social changes, the way you can with so many others.

In the 1980's, Cosby's shtick was pure "family values" -- his stand-up personal observational humor based on what happens at home turned into an extreme right-wing Republican's dream as seen by a narrow-minded populist and propagated to the masses.  That was when people had families and they valued them -- or at least watched the TV version while their lives didn't reflect what was on the screen, as in every era before it.  That's when both parents worked and social repression lead to depression, suicide, high school shootings. Ray Romano did the same thing later with "Everyone Loves Ramon" but closer to how people actually are (but questions arose about responsibility when the boy on his show committed suicide).    I would point to "The Cosby Show" as to one of the many reasons why the words "families values" eventually became a joke itself.

"The Cosby Show's" naive, Black-version "Ozzie and Harriet" family was so squeaky-clean "white bread", so bizarrely un-hip while trying to be mega-hip, that it inspired Roseanne Barr to create a hugely successful counter-programming show with beer-drinking, poor, working people that you actually saw working.  This was at a time when MTV hit the airwaves with Madonna warbling "Like A Virgin".

In my estimation, Cosby's patriarchal character on the Cosby TV show was sick.  His "act", in character and out, was "I'm a highly-intelligent man put-upon by family and friends and everyone else -- who are morons, lesser quality people" and his job was to embarrass and humiliate them into submission and then justify his behavior with "child-like horse-play", making "faces", as if he was too "lovable", too "cute", to reprimand for his harshly judgmental, condescending rudeness. Who, exactly, did he think he was?  In real life I have known people like this, asses who are ignored and shunned, not patronized for even a second.  No one finds this kind of behavior "cute" in my hood.  Why would a grown man with a wife and children behave like this?  Dude, get over yourself.

See a pattern here?  That same pattern extends out from Cosby to the whole of America, as we will come to see...

Cosby was an Executive Producer, as well as star, of his show.  He had ultimate control of the show's content. His "wife" on the show was a lawyer who you never saw at work or clean the house.  Her manipulative, "cunning" character had two purposes -- to telegraph to the audience how "adoringly funny" Cosby was and to be his trite "mother" who "hens" with other silly women about husbands' "bad boy" stunts. This Oedipal-dripping dynamic is so entirely Freudian as to be a joke itself -- not a funny joke, though. Lauded as "feminist" at the time, the Mrs. Huxtable character is unfortunately not a fully-realized person, only a version of what men (including a psychologist hired as the show's consultant) think women are.

"Dr. Huxtable" was a gynecologist who delivered babies.  Uh, creepy... Cosby, once again, stridently wanted the audience to see him as "father-savior", including even being a "father" to other people's newborns by proxy. In other words, out of all the professions the character could have had wherein comedy set-ups abound -- college teacher, social worker, restaurant owner -- Cosby chose the one involving women's vaginas. Wouldn't it have been more believable, more sensible, to have him as a lawyer and his wife as a gynecologist?  This was Cosby's choice.

Older people were treated as though a source for humor on the show, to be made fun of on occasion, and then go home.  No older person on the show had a job, made any contribution, not even as baby-sitter to the kids.  Family -- with no real involvement.  Hmm.

"The Cosby Show" treated children as though stupid and was smug about it, making the children call him "sir".  I recall a scene in which the father had a talk to his son about money. The father gives the kid a handful of cash and then systematically takes the money back as a life-lesson for the bills the kid will have to pay when he is on his own.  I was a teenager at the time of viewing this exchange and recall thinking that if I were that kid, I'd leave home immediately, never to return, never to speak to the father again, since the father took great joy out of methodically making the son feel small and inferior. The proper way to have handled the situation would have been for the father to tell the son he is supportive of whatever decisions he makes, that everyone makes mistakes but it is how and what he learned that really mattered, how he treated himself and others, and, when the son was ready to learn about finances to come see him, keeping the lines of communication open.

There was no self-expression in the Huxtable household, for anyone -- only Dad's Superiority Complex. There was never any discussion about sexuality, never a person running around in their underwear as what happens every minute of every day in households across the world.  Where's the scene where the parents are having sex and the kid bursts into the room?  Where's the scene where a parent is in the bathroom and the kid bursts into the room?  Where's the scene where the kids have a slap fight?  Where was the TV in the living room on a show that was on TV?

There was more than plenty of talk about education, military duty, about money, money, money. You could set your watch by references to the parents having money and the children didn't, how much the children were costing the parents, on and on.  The guilt was laid on as thick as the consumerist value-system.

Gay people were as mysteriously absent from "The Cosby Show" as the lack of ethnicity was on "Friends" -- a perplexing mystery especially since both shows were set in present-day New York City.  None of the kids had gay friends?  A large number of gay people worked on the "Cosby" show behind the scenes, as gay people have to make up as much of show business as people who happened to be Jewish.  If there were anyone who could attest to the low representation of minorities in mass media, it surely would be Mr. Cosby who would want ample opportunity to have as many targets for humor as possible, right?  Uh, no.

"The Cosby Show" pandered to White people's white-washed perceptions of what Black people would be like if Black people were like White people, the opposite of "All In The Family" wherein White people acted like White people in trying to figure out how to respond to Black people who aren't like White people -- recognizing two separate but equal communities, two experiences, exploring through contrast and comparisons. Chris Rock has built a career on that premise.  "The Cosby Show" ended up representing no one except Bill Cosby's limited toleration of others -- including women, children, the aged -- the very people his "allegedly beloved act" is associated with. By never mentioning the words "African-American" or "Black" or even the "N-word" as people do in real life, the characters might as well have been green, for all it mattered. How does that help in understanding "differences" by never mentioning it?

The Cosby-produced kids' TV show, "Fat Albert" would never fly coming on to the air today because the whole basis of the show is about "fat shaming" the main character. Perhaps the cartoon show is more telling than one would suspect.  Is the "ribbing" between the characters actually "bullying" and that alienation, felt by Cosby growing up, the impetus of Cosby's inferiority that drives his need for authority?  Is he trying to be the "father" that he needs for himself who would protect, love, and accept him?

Cosby prefers being called "Doctor", even though he isn't any more or less a doctor than Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura, who also take on an authority about relationships they haven't any cause for either. Cosby has authored the books "Fatherhood," "Time Flies" and "Childhood".  What makes him an expert, the fact he has lots of children and was once a child himself?  He's not selling the books as "first person celebrity anecdotes".  He's prescribing advice as dictated by a for-real doctor.

Each of Cosby's children in real life were given names beginning with the letter "E" to represent "excellence".  (Excellence?  Please refer back to Items #1 and #2.) What kind of pressure does that have on a kid -- to not only live up to a famous parent, but to then having to live up to a strange standard of "excelling"? What's that about?

The murder of his son, Ennis, in 1997, on a Los Angeles freeway in a drug-related robbery/shooting incident in which his son was randomly chosen as a victim marked the end of the era in which Cosby took himself way too seriously, flaunting his doctorate degree as a banner of his imagined superior intelligence, and nose-dived into a complete lack of humor. His intensity was palpable but we will never know if it was fueled by grief, anger, frustration or any other emotion, because, once again, he never spoke about it, nor seemed to take what happened into his work as an artist.  (A familiar scenario -- similar to reactions by former "The Cosby Show" cast members when asked about the recent allegations against Cosby -- "I don't know....I never saw it...I wasn't involved...")

Cosby was front-and-center at the Playboy Jazz Festival for years, fancying himself a musician, though he plays no instrument, can not read or write music, nor sing.  He has been known to frequent the Playboy mansion and Playboy Clubs.  Why would he risk offending his core "family" audience by associating with -- becoming the very face of -- a multi-media empire based on misogyny, sexual freedom and leftist liberalism?  Playboy and Cosby seem at odds in their brands, unless you consider that Cosby has several distinct "lives" -- one on TV and in media which is "wholesome", one at home which is old-school turn-of-the-Century patriarchal, one that is secret and never discussed that is part of the Playboy lifestyle which is so prevalent as to be hard to deny. Ghosts of Michael Jackson loom...

Comedy, at its core, is about suffering, conflict.  Often, comedians become successful, wealthy and happy, and are disconnected from the source of their pain which inspired their comedy in the first place.  How can Cosby be relatable presently when he represents 80s consumerism, pseudo-Christian religious beliefs and tenuous moralities while simultaneously promoting the objectifying and sexualization of women, when he has alienated himself from the African-American community by offending them with aspersions of ignorance and his own intolerant narrow-mindedness? Is this someone you'd invite into your home and listen to?  Probably not.  But you might make fun of them behind their back.

4.  Bill Cosby's future isn't funny.

Cosby announced this week that he has "several ideas" to work on, even though he has been unceremoniously rejected by several producers of on-line original programming and the whole of the world knows this, making his cold-as-ice "brand" even less likely to buy in any format.

One way of of telling Cosby is no longer viable is that he isn't producing himself and translating what he does to the internet insomuch as anyone can tell.  He doesn't have a large internet following or twitter masses hanging on to his every word and the like.  He isn't mentoring anyone noteworthy either. He isn't working with anyone "hot", surrounding himself with ultra-talent who could revitalize his own talents for a new generation.

His low-wattage current career path is to use charities to hog whatever media attention he can muster, while forgoing traditional stand-up comedy circuits and road tours, and while continually soft-balling "truck-stop" colleges and community theaters.  No up-coming small part walk-on nods in a big budget films, no HBO specials or reality series, no one-man Broadway shows, no Las Vegas venues, no insightful film-fest documentaries, no national-level commercial, no up-coming album release, no book mega-deal, no "Cosby Show" reunion -- not even a succession of Indian casino gigs. By doing this, he is his own worst representation imaginable, undermining his "perceived value" and recognition factor, in a time when even non-celebrities are celebrities because they're not celebrities, making someone on "The D List" appear more sought after than this former "A Lister".

The bottom line is always the bottom line, and, Mr. Cosby can not guarantee an across-the-board return (or profit) on anyone's investment with projects to which he is attached, not even by milking what precious little there is to mine from the past in retro-style. If not for the money (which seems like he hasn't had any new big revenue sources since his TV show), what is the motivation to continue on?  That question looms around his head, replacing his halo with a cloud of doubt about what is next. 

The music recording industry is doing a three-sixty, evolving into internet media and cutting out layers of management.  TV is dying fast, replaced by the internet as well.  Stand-up comedians had better figure out a way to stay relevant, to not eat up massive amounts of materials as they had on TV and by now being on the internet, and to diversify their portfolio of talents for different media formats.  There is no reason to pay for a real-live Bill Cosby when digitally downloading him is free.  In fact, him being alive is a hindrance, as Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, and Michael Jackson were.  Bill Cosby's future isn't anything to laugh at because it isn't funny and it is less funny as time passes.

5. Comedians aren't funny anymore anyway.

In a January 2014 study, conducted in the British Journal of Psychiatry, scientists found that comedians tend to have high levels of psychotic personality traits. In the study, researchers analyzed 404 male and 119 female comedians from Australia, Britain, and the United States. The participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. They found that comedians scored "significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs." Gordon Claridge, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford and leader of the study claimed, "the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis - both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."

To find out "Lucy" was acting out from bipolar depression would be depressing in itself and would make her not funny at all.  What is at the core of Bill Cosby's need to seek attention -- healthy outlet or compulsive psychosis?

Perhaps Bill Cosby can not speak to allegations directed against him openly due to the insistence of legal council or court mandates.  But he does have a platform in which speak on many important issues of the day, any day he chooses.  He has the eyes of the world on him, and he has a tool -- humor -- as a way to convey messages.  Even when promoting "social causes" or when he has spoken out in the past about his perceptions of how others in the Black community should behave, for example, the subject matter is him, his wealth, his power, his image as the moral and benevolent "Father Figure", as if he were The Pope.  He over-shoots his authority and self-aggrandizes at every turn.  Being an entertainer -- even a beloved one, even a legendary, historic one -- isn't life-or-death.  You can't eat it, wear it, live in it, drive it or put it in a bank.  Entertainment's value is temporary at best and cheap.  Performers come...and they go.

Even if Bill Cosby is one-hundred-percent innocent of the ALL heinous allegations against him, Bill Cosby is not funny, has not been funny for a long while -- as a person or as a public personae, similar to Bill Clinton, only in his case, Bill Clinton has become a joke.  Perhaps those two men have a lot more in common than one would suspect on the surface.

Cosby has the worn-out aura of a guilty man who has pronounced his innocence for so long, he has become annoyed by the questions, the questions becoming his identity.  Mass murderers, child-molesters, drug addicts -- all justify their acts in order to live with themselves, as when someone who really is "crazy" tries to convince you they are "sane", while the rest of us secretly wonder how crazy we really are -- which is normal.

Whatever Cosby had has been eclipsed by negative connotations connected to his reputation -- as a man, a husband, a father, as an artist, as a businessman, as a representative of his people, as an American -- and not because of the allegations of women he has or hasn't crossed paths with.  He has done this to himself through his deeply personal, massive insecurities -- ego is his undoing, as simple of an answer as that might seem.

The Emperor has no clothes.  He should go home to deal with the triumphs and tragedies of a life-time, retire from public viewing, seek therapy, stop speaking to anyone outside the "inner circle" altogether.  His insistence at remaining high profile will force the whole of the world to judge him in the take-no-prisoners court of public opinion -- including my own harsh opinions -- and he will not win his cause of becoming triumphant at the end of the day, no matter the cost, of having the last laugh.

The "joke", if there is one now, now that we're finally aware, is on us and it isn't funny.

Brother Andy Tells All New Ad (Video)

California Court Jury Duty System Is A Threat To Personal Freedom (Op-Ed)

CALIFORNIA COURT JURY DUTY SYSTEM IS A THREAT TO PERSONAL FREEDOM

If you were minding your own business, going about your life, and someone sent you a threatening letter in the mail -- someone you didn't know and have never met -- detailing imprisonment and/or demanding money if you did not go somewhere (never asking if you wanted to go, were available to go, or if it would be convenient for you to go) and then outlined a procedure of you doing things that were against your moral or ethical or philosophical beliefs once you got to this place, would that be considered a heinous crime to you?  Or would you consider going quietly?

What if you found out the crass entity who wrote the threatening letter learned of your name and address due to a breach of privacy from someone you did business with on unrelated matters, someone trusted who tricked you into signing a written contract with tiny-print clauses that gave full permission on your part to these intrusive, emotionally-upsetting behaviors?  Would that make the violations to you worse in your estimation?

To add insult to injury, what if the letter further insists, in no uncertain terms, that as an American citizen, you should willingly obey this summoning without question as a "duty" and if you "commit perjury" -- lie -- to get out of it (no matter the subsequent hardships involved by going), that "offense" also will be "punished" as though you've been sworn to fulfill an obligation and have violated an oath in a court of law (which you obviously have not done)?

AND, it goes on... If you do NOT respond to the letter in the manner described in a chain of specific details, your name and address will be given to the local police in a "failure to appear" warrant, which can be used at any time, day or night, for up to seven years, as "justifiable cause" to take you from your home, place of business, or from the streets, and detain you until presented to a judge for punishment (the aforementioned jail time or financial citations) -- the very person, at the very place, you didn't want to go and see in the first place.

There is no indication in the letter as to what happens if the letter fails to get to you through no fault of your own. Even if you are completely unaware of the letter's existence, never lay eyes on it, you are still held both responsible and liable.

Almost anyone with any kind of awareness of civil liberties would recognize immediately your rights -- layers of rights -- had been grievously violated, outrageous crimes had been committed against you. You are left feeling justifiably victimized, betrayed, confused, hurt, angry, depressed and panicked.  This is not right.  This happens every day.  This happened to me and I am NOT happy about it.

When you go to the California Department of Motor vehicles to do business of any kind, your personal and private information is given to the local county court system to be included into the potential jury duty pool without your expressed knowledge, without explanation.  The systematic release of your information happens because in the fine print of DMV paperwork such as car registration or renewing a driver's license is a clause allowing them to do as they please with the information gathered, information you gave them yourself. 

County governments figured out people do not register to vote as readily they had in the past, the very source of where juror information was historically gathered from, thereby currently limiting the group of potential jury members.  This covert system was put into place outside voters right to accept or reject the practice.  The government just put the system in place, like it or not -- which I do NOT.  There is no place or position designed to address criticism or correct problems associated with the entire process.

Other governmental agencies are barred from this and similar practices, yet, banks are required to notify the IRS whenever someone makes a deposit of over $5,000 dollars (in a supposed attempt from the government to curtail drug money laundering, which only harasses legit business owners such as building contractors who deal in large amounts of cash for materials, which is not "taxable income" but, rather, a service in which the separate labor profit is later taxable, resulting in contractors feeling as though they are incriminating themselves in some way, treated as potential criminals, and having to ask clients to write checks directly to building suppliers or write multiple checks for under the limit line, which is messy and wholly unnecessary).

After visiting the DMV, you receive a nasty legally-binding court document in the mail demanding you call a phone number with an automated response on specific dates to see if you have to somehow get yourself to a court house -- that day.  They assume you have gotten the letter, read the letter, understand the letter and have a working telephone available.  They assume you will be able to comprehend a lengthy series of instructions and directions, and are willing and capable of complying.  You are threatened jail time and/or fines and/or legal fees if you don't follow instructions. They are kind enough to tell you how to find information elsewhere (on-line on a computer web address) to bus routes (my nearest bus stop is over two miles away and typically over 100 degrees in Palm Springs).  They kindly inform you that you will get a whole seven dollars a day for your efforts -- which could be months on end, if you end up on a murder case.  They assume you are wealthy enough to take time away from work.  They threaten your place of employment if your boss doesn't let you go.  Who does that leave as jurors?

There are boxes in the letter to check for excuses to be released from your duties, excuses which are overly-specific and leave little wiggle room, and, further, the only way to find out if the "excuse" was "granted" after returning there original letter and not hearing if they received it in this looped-letter-sending is to call on the given date provided in the letter, so if turned down, it's too late. The lag time between calling at 7 am to be in court by 9 am is impossible to rectify when taking a bus in the Coachella Valley area.  This means you get up early, get dressed and be prepared, not knowing if you can work that day or not, will be able to eat when you need to, only to find out you have been "excused".

In the Coachella Valley, the courthouse is in the city of Indio, located at the South-East end of the valley, meaning most people who live there will travel at least forty-five minutes to go to the court for any reason. In San Diego county, the courthouse is downtown, where parking, the complex buildings layout, the homeless, and no immediate freeway access make the experience a nightmare of confusion. There was a time when you could simply said you couldn't afford it, sent the letter back, and that was all there was to it -- no threats.

Recently, tele-scammers have been calling unsuspecting citizens at all hours of the day and night, posing as IRS agents, with the message the caller has contacted the police, who are at that moment on their way, as the citizen has failed to pay their full amount of taxes.  The scammers have gotten over five million dollars because people have been brow-beaten by government agencies to the point they are too scared to question authority.  We do what we are told, as we are told, and this is NOT good. The broken jury duty system is a prime example of how little the government thinks of the very people who pay their salaries, the people they were sworn to serve. The present court system assumes we're all wealthy to the same degree, we're all liars, we all respond to the same fears, and we all have to do as they say because they say so.

The fact is, the court is my employee, all our servants -- as are police officers, Congress, and the President -- and, if I were in charge, someone would be fired.

Secondly, no one would EVER want me as their juror.  I know NOTHING about law, about criminology, about court procedure, nor do I care.  I am no one's peer on any damned level. How could I presume someone's guilt or innocence when my own is still in question?

Pulling jurors from the general population defies logic, especially when systematically rejecting them after going through all that hassle to get them there in the first place.  Not only is it a stupid thing to do, it's down-right rude. This might be the greatest country in the world, with the best system there has ever been.  That doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement and anyone who would quibble over that isn't interested in true American justice.

Here's The Solution

According to statistics, the population of America is currently about 350 million people. Not every single adult is capable or willing to be on a jury for a cascades of reason but whatever the reason is, it's irrelevant.  If a person can't or won't be on a jury, then not being on the jury is the best solution for everyone involved.  A person who is accused of a crime is assumed innocent until guilt is proven.  Let's give potential jurors who are forced to participate against their will the same benefit of the doubt with respect and dignity and give them the freedom the system is supposed to defend and leave them be. Let's change the approach.

Let's ask for volunteers from a pool of elderly who have the time, people who have experience and wisdom in which to judge another person's life.  Let's turn the position into a legitimate, paying, professional job with a title.  Let's pay a decent wage, educate through training, thus giving opportunities to the Homeless and unemployed.

Asking is not demanding.  Let's change the Gestapo, Big Brother tactics immediately.  Had the letter I received said, "... a fellow American overwhelmingly needs you to help to make sure they get a fair shake through your much-appreciated participation...", I would be first in line. 

Let's have a box that can be checked at the DMV which asks you whether you'd like your information shared or not, giving your expressed, informed consent.  Let's be treated as adults whose privacy is paramount.

Falling Into A Social Media Vortex (Editorial)

FALLING INTO A SOCIAL MEDIA VORTEX

Ever had something in your eye?  The instance when whatever-it-is gets in there, it becomes the single greatest priority of your life -- getting it out.  The foreign object could be the tiniest speck of flotsam, but to you, that very second, that speck approximates the size of a bolder and you'll do the craziest things to remove it, if it means standing on your head, running garden hose water over raw sockets, or pulling your eyelid over your eyelashes like a cheap window shade in hopes of dislodging it.   It is virtually impossible to think of anything else but the excruciating pain associated with that speck until it is gone.

A little over a year ago, in a temporary moment of extreme mind-numbing boredom, I looked up "Behind The Scenes -- Feature Films" videos on youtube.  In the olden days, we channel surfed television.  Now we randomly Google and watch any flicker that pops up.  I saw some very informative and interesting videos.  Awesome.  I thought, I love the internet.  Then...

I saw a short documentary about the making of the movie version of "Le Miserables" and was instantly taken aback by how ugly the actors looked with rotten teeth and the disgusting filth they wallowed in.  Wow.  Big stars treated like garbage...  Not exactly on the top of my list of "fun things to watch". 

As the video went on, I learned the plot of the feature film they were making centered on a prostitute who dies...and, in a second layer of recognizing and not liking the negativity involved in the film, I was turned off by the idea of possibly watching a hammy-acted hideous hooker slowly die for two hours in the worst kind of soap opera drivel, particularly when involving "actress" Anne Hathaway whose "career" seems unexplainable from the get-go.  Where's the entertainment value in that package? 

As a feminist and anti-human trafficking supporter, this film wasn't winning points with me -- fast.  As a film-maker, even less.  Once more, in a block-buster Hollywood film, for what appeared to be the millionth film outing, the leading characteristic the part of the "hooker" called for was a vagina and not much else, a skanky one as usual, who gets her comeuppance for being sexual by having to die a horrible death by the time the final credits roll.  Ugh.  It's the worst kind of pornography without the graphic sex scenes pay-off.  It was tedious, well-worn, thread-bare story-telling about something not worth repeating.

The "live singing" choice of having the actors recorded while singing on-set instead of in a recording studio was the "all-she-wrote" tipping-point for my overwhelming emotional dislike of what I was seeing, then hearing, which sky-rocketed into pure hatred.  Corny, rambling, cartoon-ish -- I couldn't take the warbling even in small doses in a youtube video, similar to listening to a yelping child in their bedroom, belting out a made-up nonsense song at the top of their lungs that...does...not...stop... only in this case, it was grown-adult, award-winning professionals doing the squawking who expected all of us to pay for the privilege of seeing them at their worst possible and, unfortunately, hearing them as well.

As a fellow film-maker, I can not imagine what the cast and crew of this pathetic film were thinking during the proceedings -- it's not engaging visually, the soundtrack is awash with off-key singing about subjects unworthy of a song, and the plot's cruelty and degradation was unending.  How about some contrasts, some context, some glimmer of a better life, the way real life is?  Nope. This was the movie equivalent of getting poked in the eye with a stick while your eardrums burst from a cacophony of squealing tires just before a car wreck and no one on set, no producer or director or actor, could deduce they were making a film that "did not demand to be made"?

I don't care about the popular Broadway version or the over-two-thousand-page original novel by Victor Hugo (which was panned by critics when first published as being a "rambling mess").  I only know what I saw and what I saw was terrible on many, many levels, beyond comprehension.

Can't anyone besides me tell media's agenda is -- and always has been -- about misogyny?  The only differences between "Le Miserables" and "Fifty Shades of Grey" is 1) "Grey" is the pretty version of the same kind of degradation, 2) "Le Mis" beats up a guy for a while too, as a reminder of who the "alpha" truly is -- old, White, rich, educated, European men who mercilessly rule with their penises while living in perpetual secret fear of castration and anal rape.  Pretty.

I recalled watching the TV show "NYPD Blue" about the horrid lives of cops in New York, filmed with low lighting in a fake cinema-verte style where you couldn't focus on anything because the camera man is swirling the frame indiscriminately about the dark scene with the intention of making it "real", like a documentary. The "show" was gut-wrenching, week after week, with hostility and violence and death, a single piano key repeatedly banged. I wondered why these characters didn't kill themselves to be out of their relentless misery since obviously they had no reason to live (particularly after the bald, over-weight main character -- who had a face full of pock-marks -- had a cheating ugly wife who divorced him in a nasty manner, she dies of cancer, then his ugly kid dies from a different disease, and then his ugly cop-partner is randomly shot to death in front of him, bleeding profusely on the cement as a cliff-hanger before the final commercial break).  After all that ugliness, I was overwhelmed with depression to the point that I saw little to live for myself, being in a world where this kind of crap -- a piss-poor world view -- is passed off as "entertainment".  In actuality, in total, I only saw three episodes of this highly-touted TV downer.  That was enough.  That was too much.

That's why I felt compelled to say something in the comment section of youtube about "Le Mis", about how we need to be uplifted every so often, how so much time, energy, money and creativity (not to mention perfectly good film stock) was wasted on perpetuating the worst parts of the human experience when so much positive is all around us.  That's what I posted my comments on -- about the ugly, awful, offensive movie -- a movie I never intend to see in full in this lifetime and the reasons for that decision -- and what that film's responsibility was to the culture and what was represented within the film to me personally, as man and an artist -- which was hopelessness, particularly if you happen to be a woman. That film's message was: if you are a woman, you are nothing but a kind of human ash tray with no skills, whose only minor value is of a passive receptacle for men's lust and subsequent semen, from which you get pregnant, diseases or death...or all of the above. Yikes.  Good choice, Anne Hathaway.  She followed this glorious role with playing a "princess" in a Disney movie, after playing a ditz who gives up a career to make her man happy in "The Devil Wears Prada". Yes, they got my money -- several times over -- and more time of my life I will never get back.  Please, shoot me before I "movie" again.

The irony -- being called names (cyber-bullying) in response to my posting by a loose-cannon lynch mob who claim to "love the film", were "inspired" by it, yet, didn't seem to understand the intricacies of the film's subtext enough to give ME (a real-live person and not a fictional movie character) a moment's doubt -- was palpable.  The attacks were fast and furious, droning on in surreal twists and turns of logic, half-thoughts and sorry attempts at humiliation humor pointed toward me. No one bothered to talk facts or plot-points or counter with a personal experience with substance -- just angry villagers at the gate with torches, ready to kill in a true mob-mentality emotional mania.

Not liking what I think is one thing, trying to talk me out of the experience I truly have is another.  I know what I saw.  No one can tell me different.  Yet...They did -- on and on.  How I hate -- LOATHE -- the internet.

One of the many criticisms I've faced was about "forgetting", as in "we have to keep making these types of films for a younger generation who may not realize history and therefore might be doomed to repeat it", except, that's exactly what these films do -- repeat the same nauseating story without the slightest variation, without a plan of action for change, without context, without a "why" attached, while simultaneously desensitizing us to the harsh realities the films are trying to evoke.  Movies aren't factual history, folks. Wise up.

If kids grew up in a world without racism, then a film about how awful racism has been, can be, is presently, would be moot. The kids would only know what they know and would instantly see how pointless a film like that would be.  But kids do live in a world of racism -- learned -- starting with the non-stop agenda of media perpetuating poison such as insisting on the reality of stereotypes ala "Le Mis", "Fifty Shades..." and countless others.  Hollywood-made films do not assume an audience's intelligence or ability for change.  Producers assume and pander to an audience's lowest base fears, doubts, guilt and shame and stays there, festering. 

It's our fault -- the consumers -- for not speaking out and I did and now I regret it.  We are the enemy.  We go to movies to "feel something" -- the more tragic the better -- but are relieved to leave it behind once the lights come up and use defensiveness to justify "survivor's guilt", while paying lip service to "empathy" for fictional characters. Movie hookers are beloved.  Real hookers are an invisible public nuisance no one wants to think about.

I am beyond tired of "race" films: everything from "Birth of a Nation", "Roots", "A Raisin In The Sun", "Sounder", "The Help", "Amistad", "The Butler", "Twelve Years A Slave", "The Color Purple" to "She's Gotta Have It" and more.  Okay.  I get it.  Racism is terrible.  Martin Luther King gave us a direction and positive tools to apply.  His words are truths that can not be denied.  He taught love and acceptance.  Big-budget films wallow in self-pity and victimization and do not spend one minute, one penny, on successes, prevention or punishment for those who do harm, therefore, becoming the problem instead of the solution. What did "Selma" really say and to whom did it say it to?

That ass-kissing populist, Oprah, makes one divisive film after another designed to give viewers of all races "White Guilt", only I haven't done anything wrong to feel guilty about.  What does Oprah want from me?

As a woman of Color, well over fifty years of age, wealthy, "successful", Oprah seems to have no insight or wisdom about how to achieve what she calls "living with authenticity" in this era (the only "truth", according to her, being that Black people have been treated badly in the past) as I hold her personally responsible for continuing the cycle of racism by making films which hold us to a standard which no longer applies, while stern-fast ignoring present situations good and bad.  Let's move forward together, Ms. Winfred, not continually look back in anger, pointing fingers while steeped in self-righteousness.  My finger is now pointed at Ms. Winfred and politely ask, "Where's 'The Oprah Winfred Story' or the 'How Obama Became President' documentary?" How is a private girl's school in Africa she supports countering or connecting the dots with the millions world-wide who saw her beaten down in every movie she's been associated with?  How is the OWN network different from other networks when every show it broadcasts assumes something is wrong with you (like Oprah magazine does) that needs to be fixed?

I am sick of "holocaust", "Nazi" and "Hitler" films for similar reasons. Enough already.  I'm intolerant of movies about the Crucifixion of Christ.  How about focusing on the "miracles" of Christ's life, like feeding people, healing the sick, telling off the corrupt churches?  How many times do we really need to see the guy being sliced up and nailed to the Cross?  Look it up.  There's hundreds of Bible-related movies.  There have been over six "Ben Hur" movies alone. Why?  Thank you, Mel Gibson, not only for your perverse body of film works but for the dangerous ranting of a lunatic recorded for the whole world to see and hear as popular culture entertainment.  Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen of the court...

On-line punks (most of whom are not Caucasian and free to speak their minds) tell me I'm "wrong" about all of this when all I've done is shared an honest opinion, as I'm doing this instant.  Their reactions are not an open dialogue with someone you disagree with, a teaching opportunity, as if I've asked anyone to agree or disagree with anything I say, do, or am.

What I believe I experienced was a cultural mini-melt-down which is widening every passing second, a small dose of what is currently happening in this country and around the globe -- a tiny glimpse into the fragile, confused psyches of the masses after a racially-motivated cop killing, a natural disaster or when people realize they've been manipulated by politics, religion, the media or even their own parents, after a repressive lifetime of consuming toxic media and sanitizing political-correctness. Truth hurts as much as it sets you free and maybe freedom, including that of thought itself, isn't a consideration these days.  You can only "like" on facebook.

The on-line trolls who are the most vocal in social media inevitably kill the messenger, overtly through intimidation or through passive "shunning". They live their life in the anonymous shadows, faceless and formless, uselessly toiling on a machine to recreate reality in the image of The System, as aptly described in the novel "1984", so fantastically acted out for them in the movies and repeated in offensive postings aimed at me, but not who I am -- what I represent to them. Life imitating art and vice-versa, survival of the fittest via viral platform formatting.

It has now been over a year later and they're still out there, day and night, on every continent imaginable, picking apart the five sentences I wrote one night on that one posting about one movie out of the hundreds of thousands that have been made, the subject of one video out the millions on the internet, read and responded repeatedly to no particular end.  The commenting is petty and small and, most of all, irritating because there is so little that can be done about it and so much more good things to celebrate -- like something that gets in your eye and you just want it to be gone to get on with your life, happy when it is finally gone.

The Bottom-Feeders (Editorial)

The Bottom-Feeders

Oysters, clams, shrimp, lobsters, mussels, squid, octopus, catfish and the like live in oceans and streams.  As indiscriminate scavengers, they will eat any kind of garbage -- toxins, fecal material, carcasses of animals that died from disease -- which is good because they help keep the natural environment balanced, yet, bad because they are the filters of wastes and should be left alone to do their jobs and not made into the discount lunch menu special at Coco's.  Think of these unique creatures as the colon part of bodies of water.

I do not eat what can not be replaced.  You can eat chicken all day long and there's still zillions of them.  Eat a lobster and you've permanently disrupted the eco system. There are plenty of other things to eat besides tuna or salmon and the aforementioned species, which I think should be on an endangered species list somewhere.  Still, without the "bottom-feeders" as part of the cycle, all water dwellers, great and small, are at risk.  By eating them, you are increasing risk of several consequences to yourself, to human-beings everywhere, to the planet, directly or indirectly. I say, think before you eat. Informed consent...

I do not drink alcohol for a hundred reasons I won't get into presently, but, the fact is alcohol is closer to gasoline than partakers care to admit.  I associate drinking liquor with taking a hammer and smashing it into your forehead full-force because you like the feeling of being disoriented.  I leave drinking to others.

Yesterday, I went to lunch with two elderly women (eighty-nine and ninety-one respectively) who drank wine/margaritas and ordered shrimp cocktails and enthusiastically discussed how well they have eaten their whole lives.  They were quite proud of themselves.  The cocktails, with naked shrimp offered up cold and rubbery in reddish liquid in a cute ice cream parlor glass and accompanying long spoon, were as close to raw sewage as I can image being served in a public restaurant with an "A" rating (which we lovingly refer to as a "dump" -- how appropriate for offering "sewage").

One woman explained she had read a fascinating book years prior, properly entitled, "You Are What You Eat" (how clever!) and that changed her ways of consuming for the better thereafter, although, if you were to bust into her kitchen this minute, you'd find fat-filled, anti-dieters', sugar-addicts', salt connoisseur's delights in an array of food formats brimming on every surface in the room.  Looking at her pear-shaped body, you'd have strong suspicions as to where all that junky food was headed.

The other woman responded with, "I've always taken care of myself", as she slurped the last tiny bits of empty calories the margarita could produce. Yet, she swears off cake 'cause, you know, knowledge is power.

The women tried to convince me that I should try the "heaven-on-earth" cocktails (this being the umpteenth round-robin with no success to get me to do so but that didn't stop them from giving it a shot one more time because they wanted to "look out" for me in a motherly way, even though I am fifty-seven years old).  I politely declined, while gritting my teeth, saying that one spoonful of the toilet logs in diarrhea sauce being passed off as a South-of-the-Border delicacy would produce instant involuntary projectile vomiting, as similar experiments historically have proven, and, as fun as that sounded, we should wait for another occasion.  It's all in my mind, they say.  There and then, I commit to my current diet of the moment of mostly rice and a chicken taco with the chicken taken out.  I look at the two of them and wonder if I am undoubtedly diluting myself into believing my "healthy eating habits" are someday going to come back to bite me in the ass in an unimaginable manner, say, a spleen erupting from my backside like the grisly Chest Bursting scene in "Alien". 

Without so much as a hint of irony during the discussion on health-related matters, a comprehensive laundry list of ailments was tallied between the two irrepressible women, combined with my own recollections of their on-going prognosis: poor eyesight due to macular degeneration, hardness of hearing, various tooth decay issues, hair loss, rashes and other skin disorders, "bad" backs,  sleeplessness, urinary tract dysfunctions, muscle stiffness, lack of energy, on-coming/on-going dementia/Alzheimer's/mental confusion, breast and uterine cancer, stuttering, plus persistent vertigo -- to name but a few symptoms and conditions.  They're medical marvels, really, to continue on as they have -- and driving.  No thought whatsoever was thrown around the room to possible causes-and-effects linked to the specific kinds of food (or the medications) they have had for the entirety of their lives and the results speaking for themselves, instead, blaming "old age" was the blanket culprit. No, damn it.  They owed the act of living so long solely to successful dietary restraint and I should be so lucky.  I'll drink to that! Who knows what condition they'd be in if they weren't doing so well...?

Although, they blathered, their poor friend who sadly died not long prior to the lunch, was an unrepentant smoker and should have known better.  Staying "above the grass" was  -- and continues to be on an hourly basis -- the only mission, come hell or high-jinx. Somehow these women have managed to do just that, keeping one step ahead of the Grim Reaper while slightly pickled on two-buck-chuck and practically taxidermy with nitrate preservatives...so far, so good...except half-way through the course, one lady announced loudly, "I have to go to the bathroom", never moved from her chair, and the subject wasn't brought up again.

I am reminded of the joke: "Did you hear Bob died?" says one guy to another.  "What of?" asks the second guy. "Nothing serious," replies the first man.  Sure, you have to die from something, eventually, and you could die getting hit by a car any time, any day.  A quick, unforeseen death is entirely different from an avoidable painfully-slow food poisoning and the indignity associated with body functions systematically failing that follows. To my estimation, that's worse than death itself and the fear of most of the elderly -- the creeping awareness of loosing control over one's own being. It would be just my luck to have the twin "Grandma Gracias" make me ingest a cut-rate shrimp, wind-pipe bloat up from a previously-unknown allergic reaction, linger in diaper-wearing life-support just long enough for my actual mother to show up and whisper into my semi-conscious ear, "This is what happens when you eat crap..."

Then I thought about the food industry in our country, especially when so many people in the world are starving, and how some food processing, however well-intended for our protection, should be questioned.  Cows are fed meat by-products full of steroids in order to bulk them up.  Avocados from Guatemala are grown with untreated water and pesticides.  Chips are made from modified corn because...I don't know why they do that... Ice is made from water with traces of strychnine to kill bacteria.  How close are we to "Soylent Green?" What is safe?

Perhaps, as the Top of the Food Chain, we've actually become the bottom-feeders ourselves.  You are what you eat, I'm told by people who know.

Should You Make A Sex Tape? (Editorial)

SHOULD YOU MAKE A SEX TAPE?

For a while, EVERYONE seemed to have a sex tape.  Droves of personality-impaired D-list wanna-bes were producing grainy hotel videos that made the lackluster participants look like they needed more than a few basic lessons in creativity in bed.  Then there was the VHS craze of hiding the micro-wave-sized camera in a closet and going at it with any unknowing drunk with a hole as victim.  The reason the sex partner had to be drunk was so they wouldn't question why every light in the house had to be on while screwing.  That was before facebook where the idea of TMI really formulated into a national past-time and degraded celebrity sex tapes to "quaint" status.  Once upon a time, sex scandals could wreck a life and career, creating public embarrassment that the people involved could never live down.  Within the last few years, sex scandals ARE a career.  In this day of enough technology on your phone to ruin you life and career forever in a matter of seconds, should you jump on the sex tape band wagon?

Here are some reasons FOR and AGAINST making a home-made sex tape:

1.  You Only Live Once.

Pro:  Hey, you're young and sexy and having fun (at least that's what you tell yourself).  You want to look back at your life and enjoy the finer moments with someone who knew how to burn with passion.  Appreciating and celebrating and sharing sexuality as part of the natural human experience is a beautiful thing.

Con: You can talk a big line but a sex tape is undeniable evidence you aint all that.

2.  Why Would Anyone Care?

Pro: It is your right as a free-thinking adult to do consensual sex acts with other adults in private and record those acts any way you see fit.  It's no body's business but your own. If doing something like a sex tape is the worse thing you ever do, then good for you. If those around you will judge you for doing a sex tape, you should re-think those relationships. Before doing a sex tape yourself, ask, "What do I really think of the people who have done them?" If you have to talk yourself into it, you probably shouldn't. If you respect sex tape participants for their bravery and candor -- go for it.

Con: Really?  Can't find anything better to do?  The "Amateur Porn" market is filled to the brim with "professional amateurs" so if you think you've got something special that is going to make you rich, think again.  Unless you've got a "name" involved in your video -- someone seriously famous who has signed legal waivers -- chances are no one wants the end product.  In fact, having such material in your procession may be a detriment to you personally in the long run because you can't ask the other person for money to get rid of the video.  That's extortion.  And the other person(s) could sue you, even if the law suit is unfounded.  The most potentially embarrassing part of the whole procedure is that you insist on viewers and no one gives a damn (sort of what happened to a geeky former child television star who made porn to save his house and...nada).

3.  Get Over Yourself.

Pro:  Making a sex tape is about trust, negotiating, following through with a commitment, confronting personal issues and expressing yourself honestly (you can't fake real sex).  Sex tapes take normal sex and heightens the exhibition/voyeur aspects which can be a real turn-on to some people.  Knowing you are being watched in a safe environment may spark you to experiment, act out a fantasy or two, that you wouldn't have otherwise.  Videos give you a reason to perform.

Con: Sex tapes are as trendy as tattoos, piercing yourself, rubber bands as jewelry.  Why be as cheap and crass everyone else?  You've seen one, you've seen them all and now you have no mystery left because you've basically given the milk away without having to be responsible to the cow.  The more you do it, the less impact it has.  Truly, leave sex to the professionals.

4. Curiosity.

Pro:  You should make a sex tape ASAP because I -- like zillions of other freaks like me -- want to see it.  I don't care who's involved.  I don't care what they do.  The kinkier, the better. As long as there are naked people doing anything near acts resembling sex, count me in.

Con:  I'm not paying a dime for anything I can get for free on-line.

Thought Police (Image)

Don't let this happen to you!  The Thought Police are listening and watching! Criminals such as this should be hung from the nearest tree!  A projectionist showing "lewd and indecent movies", no less! And a "sailor's head" tattoo on the forearm -- that's hot!

Pornography Can Be Good For You (Editorial)

It all started innocently enough...

PORNOGRAPHY CAN BE GOOD FOR YOU

Just like anything else in life, pornography can be good in a good way but it can also be bad in a bad way -- a very bad way.  I'm not speaking in terms of morals judgments.  I'm speaking about pornography as entertainment and educational materials, and the pros and cons of watching pornography. Pornography is another one of those things in life that isn't destructive in of itself.  The harm comes in what is around it to produce it such as drugs and pimping and what you do with it once you've got it such as getting addicted or having an overall jaded view of sexuality.  Watching pornography can be a healthy expression of your personal sexuality and a useful tool into understanding yourself, your desires, your dreams and fantasies.

1. Porn Is A Stress Reliever.

Bad porn is ugly, tasteless and makes you impatient. You can actually be appalled, emotionally disturbed and sickened by awful pornography. Nothing is a bigger buzz-kill than watching repulsive, unhealthy (mentally and physically) people participating in maddening, saddening activities such as nailing a penis to a board or slicing a breast's nipple with a razor blade. That's not fun at all. Bad porn can make you feel anxious.

Good porn is like a having a glass of wine, putting on slippers, or a warm bath. It's something to look forward to -- just you, your lube, your hand and any scenario that floats your boat.  Good porn helps you remember the good times of the past and look forward to the good times ahead.

2.  Porn Is Harmless Fun.

Good porn can be realistic in a documentary flavor or a fantasy or a mixture of both -- but always cartoon-ish in style and execution. Pornography is no more real than reality tv or a Soap Opera.  It's an idea, which is why the people having sex are called actors and not "hookers in a movie".  Porn is mostly disposable entertainment for the visually-minded. Porn can make you feel your body awake with arousal and kill time when you are bored, time you'd otherwise be doing something way worse than masturbating in the privacy of your own home.

Bad porn is silly in an immature way. Bad porn can be racist, sexist, misogynist, and irresponsible. Really, really bad porn makes the wonders of sexuality into a crass, repetitive act of desperation that isn't sexy at all.  The worst possible violation porn can do is to give the illusion there are no consequences to irresponsible behavior.

3.  Porn Teaches Boundaries.

Bad porn is disrespectful to the people involved -- and not just because they like it that way.  Bad porn is disrespectful to the audience as well.  Crack whores are NOT porn stars, whether they are being filmed doing their business or otherwise.  Viewers can tell immediately if what they are watching is out of the bounds of tastelessness or if it is hammy kitsch.

Good porn teaches about negotiation, communication, reciprocity, patience, openness, acceptance, and proper adult interaction and positive behaviors. Porn can help you mentally act out scenarios you'd never be able to in real life -- making you feel less alone in your diverse tastes.  Good porn can act as a starting place for intimate discussion among adults and the basis of a "porn party" for good friends to enjoy together, have fun, laugh, share experiences.

4.  Porn Is An Art Form.

Good porn is good film-making: lighting, sound, editing, acting, plot-lines. Just like watching any kind of good movie, good porn is a memorable delight, enriching your psyche.  Porno is a mega-million dollar industry populated with well-paid, highly-educated professionals who know exactly what they are doing.  Countless throngs are grateful for their endeavors.

Bad porn isn't even worth the "Amateur" label put on it. Just because people are having sex, doesn't mean you have to record it or watch it.  Bad porn makes sex boring.  How is that even possible?

5. Porn Is Easier Than Real-Life Relationships.

Bad porn let's you down and can deceive you into thinking it's one thing when it's another.  Bad porn makes you think everyone else is having sex all the time. Porn can make you think things that just aren't true -- such as multiple orgasms mostly occur between a woman with a forty-four inch bust and five hairy men with foot-long schlongs while riding a bus. No matter how you cut it, pornography can never, ever take the place of human interaction (marital aids aside).

Nothing is more exciting than your porn favorite doing a new project and the building anticipation similar to having a blind date that ensues.  Loyal audiences DO have some sort of relationship with their porn-favs, just like Trekkies.  But porn can be so much more than the superficial.  It's free and always ready when you are. You don't have to take porn to a movie, dinner, dancing and long walks on the beach at night. Porn doesn't get pregnant or have a disease. Porn doesn't have to be told you love it -- it already knows that.