Good Riddance To Rotten Rubbish

Susan Atkins is dead.

Good. I hope it was painful. She’s a rare case where redemption and forgiveness was never an option in life and mercy or compassion are completely undeserved upon her death. I don’t care who she leaves behind or any of the phoney charity work she did for when she made appearances before the parole board. At one point during her sentence, she tried to claim she’d never picked up a weapon in her life, when in truth, the only reason she and the other creepazoid Mansonites got caught was because she bragged, in detail, about what she had done to cellmates when she was imprisoned for a different crime. She’s left behind nothing but a legacy of death and terror. It wasn’t just the people she killed. An entire city went into a panic for months because of what her and her cronies did over the course of two August nights in 1969. She laughed her way through her trial as if she were skipping rope in a school yard, in a manner so gruesome, you can’t even write it off as youthful stupidity. Her behavior was monstrous and her subsequent actions in the years that followed never suggested a person who accepted responsibility, except in the hollow words spoon-fed by attornies trying to fool everyone into giving her the life she robbed from others.

Rot in Hell, Atkins. To quote the woman herself, in the final words Sharon Tate probably heard before taking her last breath, I have no mercy for you, bitch.

We Ain’t Come From No Monkeys

I’m getting a little peeved at the number of articles I’ve read in the last week arguing that the film Darwin failing to secure a distributor at the Toronto Film Festival is proof in the puddin’ that Americans are all incurably sick with a case of teh spooky backwards stoopids. Not one of those articles have even entertained another possibility that might explain the lack of interest: the movie is a boring, crappy period drama that nobody anticipates people paying money to watch in theaters.

I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say either way. If it were a good movie otherwise and fear of the Christian right was the reason distributors were wary of picking up the film, surely there would be, at the very least, interest in limited releases in godless urban centers like New York and Los Angeles. Controversial films about religion come out in the US all the time. Sure, there are always a pack of morons who show up with picket signs and moan about it, but all that generally amounts to is a load of free publicity. Distributors like controversy. They court it. If anything, the potential for it would encourage the investment.

I’ve spent most of my life on “the left coast,” so it’s not like I’ve got my finger on the pulse of middle America and could guess how folks there would react to a movie about Charles Darwin. I do, however, doubt the reason that distributors are passing on a film about his life and work is because they worry armies of staunch Christian creationists will show up outside their doors with torches and pitchforks in the dark of night.

I do have to say, there’s something wildly amusing about foreigners decrying Americans as superstitious and backwardly religious to an ignorant fault, while basing their arguments on ignorance of their own that relies on little more than false, bigotted assumptions and stereotypes. Then again, what do I know? I’m an American. I don’t get irony, or so I’ve been told.

Bish, Please

Kanye West should be banned from awards shows? Give me a break. Does anyone really believe that the producers of these things don’t absolutely love it when crap like this happens? It’s not like West doesn’t have a well documented history of showing up at ceremonies and acting like a douche. As if everyone would be standing around the water cooler talking about how awesome it was when Taylor Swift thanked Jesus in her acceptance speech if that hadn’t happened. The VMAs would have been an otherwise uneventful show if West hadn’t done what he did. Was he a dick? You bet. Should he be banned from awards shows forever? Only if the producers aren’t interested in the ratings.

It’s A Big, Blue Watery Road

Of the 33 million-plus views for this video on Youtube, I’m pretty sure I’m responsible for about 10 million of them in the last 48 hours at least. I can’t decide if it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen or the funniest.

First off, I now have a giant, girlie crush on Andy Samberg. What an idiot. I LOVE him.

*”Get your towels ready; it’s about to go down.”

*Akiva Schaffer at the 1:04 mark, arms flung out in the wind because he’s on a boat, muthafucka.

*”Get the fuck up. This boat is REAL.”

*”I’m on a boat, muthafucka. Don’t you ever forget.” Okay. I promise I won’t, being that it’s such a big deal and all.

*The shot of T-Pain at the 2:32 mark, with the helicopter hovering by in slow motion. The mock seriousness of it all is so funny, it’s PAINFUL.

Coming up later, a critical, moment-by-moment analysis of the social and intellectual merits of “Jizz In My Pants.”

I cannot get enough of these guys.