Où est Le Boeuf?

Shia LaBeouf.

seriously.

I caught a few minutes of an episode of "Even Stevens" a few weeks ago, and I can say that I get why studios wanted to give him a shot. He was like 11 and had all of this weird, adult bravado and charisma. But why he's been in 15 movies in the 5 years since The Even Stevens Movie is a mystery to me.

That bizarre, premature adultness that we've seen in everyone from McCauley Caulkin to Dakota Fanning comes with the heavy price of age. And that dark mistress has been no less kind to young Shia, yet Hollywood has somehow put on a mother's blinders, and continues to employ him. You can practically hear these tittering sycophants tripping over each other with clumsy praise: "oh! look at my little Shia! just like a young Harrison Ford! He'll be the next Dustin Hoffman! What a talent! Listen to that husky voice!! He sounds just like a little man! Look at his two eyes, brown hair, and average build! He could play a president!"

He has an online fan club. I think that's gotta be worth something. Rider Strong doesn't have one anymore.

Shia, as I like to call him (that's actually not true. I like to call him "shia la-boof," with extra emphasis on the "boof," because it is hilarious to me. Call it childish. I'm comfortable with that), is often compared to the young versions of great actors. He was of course selected by George "the robot who forgot how to love" Lucas and (more so) Steven Spielberg to play Indiana Jones's son in this summer's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and (also by Spielberg) as the human lead in the previous summer's heinous crime against pop culture, Transformers. Spielberg saw in Shia a young Tom Hanks.

Suffice it to say, I don't. I don't see Bachelor Party or Joe Versus the Volcano when I see Shia LaBeouf. At best, I see a young Matthew Modine. I see someone who is for some inexplicable reason continually hired, due to his relative "normalness," or something, while his contemporaries wallow in television and in bit roles in marginally successful comedies. I see someone that I hope with all my might will be out of the national spotlight by the end of this very decade.

Hopefully Y: The Last Man will be Shia's Full Metal Jacket, and Eagle Eye his Vision Quest.

Wow, Apparently I really do hate Shia LeBeouf. Maybe I'm just angry because I hate Matthew Modine (also, apparently). I was going to close this entry with Matthew Modine's April appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, but, believe it or not, even YouTube doesn't have everything. So instead, here's this:

2 things (political things)

I'm going to try to avoid an Andy Rooney-style rant here, but it's going to be tough. 2 things (and to avoid ranting, I'll keep it basic):
1. Postponing the Debate: It's on a Friday night, at 9pm. For 2 hours. Let's even be generous and say that it's 8 hours out of your Friday, with travel & prep included. Congress is not in session on Saturday. John McCain is not going to be burnin' the midnight oil - a one-man congressional wrecking crew - legislatin' an' fillabusterin'. He's going to sit back on his proposal-non-reading ass and prep for a debate which he will assuredly lose.
This whole mess is obviously nothing but a ploy on the part of the McCain campaign to make it look like Obama is only interested in frivolity and public posturing. This undermines the value of the debates. In 2000, and (looking at it after the fact, once Kerry threw this opportunity down the toilet) in 2004, yes, maybe there was little value to these engagements, and yes, 3rd party candidates should have been included. But now more than ever, there are major issues at stake that need clarification and firm stances from both sides of a truly divided aisle. True debate is going to be what saves this country from disaster. Any attempt to forestall is an attempt to undermine the American people, and true Democracy.

2. Financial Bailout: $700 BILLLLLLION. That is more than $2000 to each and every man, woman and child in America.
Do you have $2000? I do not.
I say $2000 to everyone, but I don't know how much that would be to each TAXPAYING American. Let's conservatively (heh.) say it'd be twice that.
I, like most people I know, don't own a house, don't play the stock market, have very little in both my checking and savings accounts, don't own my own business, and have what I consider to be a significant amount of personal debt. My life has been entirely unaffected by the 6th worst day in Wall Street history. I could never afford it.
Now all of a sudden, it's everyone's problem.
This is why we need an Obama White House now more than ever.
We need someone who will even the taxable playing field. We need to make sure that those who make more money need to pay more, and this is case in point: We're all being asked to clean up their mess. And guess what? That's what being a democrat means. We are not fundamentally opposed to bigger government and bailouts and that sort of thing; we're opposed to working class Americans bearing the brunt of the failures of an upper class that can't support its own mistakes, because they've lived off the benefits of tax breaks and loopholes that those of us living paycheck to paycheck are not allowed.
The same people that are supporting this blindly are the same people that say arts education is wasteful spending; that a national railroad is too much government regulation; that allowing the tax benefits of marriage to all is a choice, at best, left up to each state. We all know people who DO own houses, or are trying to buy a house, or maybe have a great deal of savings in a small bank that may be forced to close and offer them 50 cents on the dollar. We are, or we know people who work in banks, or are executive assistants in financial institutions. So it's foolish and shortsighted to oppose this financial bailout.
So the point is simple:
Contact your senators and representatives.
Demand oversight.
Demand an incremental payment plan, not a blank check.
Demand salary caps for Wall Street execs.
You've only got about 24 hours.

...and psst! If Bush hadn't tried twice to earn "please like me" points with refund and economic stimulus checks, we'd already be half way there. If he had ended this war at "Mission Accomplished," we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

OBAMA USB Bracelets!

check this out:

http://www.obama08wristband.com/

actually, the video is far more compelling:



but I'll tell you, I think it's weird that a product with such rad content, and costing $31.00 with shipping, in a time when we're on the brink of economic collapse, does not appear to have any direct/official relationship to the Obama campaign. It doesn't look that way from the pretty janky site, and at this point, I'd rather just donate $31 to the campaign or to MoveOn.org's voter registration drive and then forward them emails showing how awesome 2008-2016 will be if we can just get Barack elected. Anyway, if anyone has further info on the validity/origin of these bracelets, please post!

wild times.

So, there's a larger statement in the works, here, but I think Facebook is silly. I recently found out that I couldn't join a group called "I sang 'Message in a Bottle' with Ms. Nimetz in middle school," because I was already a member.

I seriously don't remember joining this, but I'm sure I did. Clearly I wanted to.

Anyway, you can go there and read my comment, for which I felt it necessary to create this image:

This is not a drill. It is tacos.

...so sign this petition, unless you want to be the poor asshole who's forced to track the Taco Zone truck (currently stationed faithfully outside the Vons in Echo Park at the Alvarado entrance, every night, until 3am or so, and featuring the best tacos in Los Angeles, and quite possibly the world) like the dog you are.


http://petitiononline.com/savetaco/

Once again, this is not a drill, it is tacos.

Still like that old-time neo-soul

So nobody sent me the memo that Haruki Murakami is the most popular writer in the world amongst hip twentysomethings. At this point, not having read him is like still having a cathode-ray television. Apparently, you get kicked off of Goodreads if you haven't read at least 2 of his books, and faked a review of one or more of his short story collections that you never quite finished, by Feb 17, 2009.

He's older than my Dad, and I didn't know. Proving once again that the Internet is smarter than college. How am I supposed to be a twentysomething now?

Anyway, I guess I could "read more," or something, but that's kind of neither here nor there. because it's back in my brain!!!!!! oh, cuteoverload.com, when do you STOP?!

Teenagers are doin' it for themselves

Here it is, duddlepups! DJ BARRY SAGITARIUS is going to fuck you up with mindfarts. Or music. Sweet, sweet beautiful music. Come at 8:30, stay for the whole damned thing. It's Thirsty Thursday, for Heaven's sakes!! and look at those drink specials. Anyway, I owe you all a mix tape from last summer, so this will have to suffice. Also, it's 18+, even though the bar is as full as me on a carnitas run, so bring your age-inappropriate, formerly secretive lovers and sig-o's! see y'alls on Thurs.