Whizziwig Blogs

I’m trying to resharpen my writing skills:

War Inc is a terrible movie, the only redeeming features of which are Marisa Tomei’s smile, Joan Cusack’s facial contortions, Hillary Duff’s russo-whore getup, and a particularly lovable OnStar system.

In War Inc, John Cusack plays his character from Grosse Point Blank, only this time he’s an assassin for a Halliburton/Blackwater stand-in called Tamerlane. Tamerlane, under the direction of Cheney stand-in Dan Akroyd, has recently completed military operations in the first fully outsourced war in a made up county called Turaqistan. The company is mounting a tradeshow called Brand USA to encourage investment in the region, and Cusack’s character, Brand Hauser, is tapped to assassinate the country’s oil company minister, while directing the tradeshow as his cover. At this expo, Yonica Babyyeah (Duff) will marry her boyfriend, a thuggish middle eastern prince. Along the way, he falls in love with journalist Natalie Hegalhuzen (Tomei), shoots a bunch of people, sentences a man to be buried alive under a mountain of goat shit and finds a family. Oh, and Ben Kingsley shows up, because he’s now required to be in every movie shown at the Angelika.

For a movie that wants so badly to be high-brow satire it’s unclear why the movie spends so much time on needless backstory and uninteresting action sequences. What no one realizes is that the main character in this movie shouldn’t have been Cusack’s recently acquired gray streak, but Tamerlane the heartless corporate behemoth. Yes, every piece of military equipment and personnel in the movie is wearing a bright red Tamerlane patch, and yes, it’s funny that the soldiers are hopped up on Tamerlane brand freeze dried coffee squeeze bottles, but that’s all a backdrop to the story of Hauser’s inner demons, his love interests and his redemption. Towards the end of the film, Hauser gets in a Humvee and drives far outside the “Emerald Zone” to a burnt out city where Natalie is being held hostage. He’s literally running away from the center of the satire, to make the point that the safety and redevelopment of the Emerald Zone is a sham — but we knew that already, as evidenced by the repeated bombings inside the city, even without five minutes of Cusack and Tomei stumbling through rubble.

It’s impossible to care about the characters in this movie — Hauser’s existential doubt is predictable, Yonica’s brooding lost-girl sensitivity is predictable (and predicted by Natalie) and the romance between Hauser and Natalie is inevitable from the minute they meet.

The women do their best to save this movie — if Tomei continues in this role, she’ll be the sexy Julia Roberts in a few years. Hillary Duff is really hot, and plays her caricature as well as one could hope. Joan Cusack does that thing where she contorts her face and throws up her hands and screams, and that will never get old. The woman who thinks she’s been shot while in the implanted journalist experience VR simulation is very convincing as well.

If War Inc. was a slower, more focused movie — Idiocracy meets Wag the Dog, it could have been at the very least, cute, and at best, funny and relevant. But instead the movie moves so quickly and absurdly that the jokes feel tacked on and the plot meaningless. The heavy handed liberal bias of this movie isn’t going to convince anyone who isn’t already an opponent of the privatization of the military, but it’s not letting those of us in on the joke laugh much at it.

The presence of a secret cylon running in the 2008 election has been widely discussed and documented, as seen here:

However, another of our political candidates may be unaware that she is being manipulated by a sinister cylon agent. Or, even worse, perhaps she is in collusion with the cylons and this entire election is a sham to hand control of the white house over to the toasters.

My evidence:
On the left, known cylon agent Tory Foster, adviser to the president of the twelve colonies, and on the right, Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s “body woman.”

Ridiculous things about Zurich:

• As part of most people’s lease agreements, they are prohibited from flushing the toilet after 10pm, and from doing laundry or vacuuming after 10pm or on sundays
• To open the doors on the tram, you need to push an unlabeled red button
• Monthly passes and six-trip tickets for the trams are only sold from a teller, during business hours, at one station
• It’s not a crime here to cheat on your taxes, the government will redo them for you and two years later, tell you how much you owe. Also, if the government says that they will not audit deductions below a certain amount, such as 900 franks for transportation, it is not a crime to report up to that limit, even if you don’t deserve the deduction

• broke the lock on my friend’s apartment’s front door 5 hours before my flight with my luggage locked inside
• the ATMs in the zurich airport only dispensed 50s or higher, the train ticket machine only took 20s or smaller, and it rejected my debit card and wanted a pin number for my credit card (neither zip code nor CVV worked)
• the key to the corporate apartment was not waiting for me at Google (there was a key waiting for someone named Jason, I took that, but it didn’t fit in the lock), the security guard didn’t know who to call, neither of the admins had cell phones listed, the office manager’s two cell phones were disconnected or off. The corporate apartment was supposed to say Google on the door but didn’t.
• Oh, and I forgot to use deodorant today and could smell myself on the plane.

and I have pictures to prove it.

‘Highlights from Berlin: 6 mediocre croissants, a woman at the hostel arguing with me about the legality of the US taxes, the U-Bahn strike, the threatened S-Bahn strike and the contingency plans to get to our airport (take all day tuesday to walk 16km, buy a stolen bike for 15 euros are bike there). Going through a metal detector going into a jewish restaurant (not kosher, though) attached to the new synagogue. Attending a choral concert in the Berliner Dom, falling asleep during a choral concert at the Berliner Dom. Finding a cafe with hundreds of German board games, free to play, and beer and waffles. Wandering around the canal in south-east west berlin on a beautiful sunny day. Trying to see autechre (drill-n-bass) at Berghain only to be told there were no advance tickets and it was sold out (after wandering in the dead of night with no one on the streets through east berlin). A 70s throwback bar in Kreuzberg that our friend Hans Peter said looked exactly like his childhood home in Norway. Infinitely long buildings in east berlin along Karl Marx Avenue. Standing like a tourist in front of the Berlin wall. Top of the reichstag. Germans.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/whizziwig/Berlin (My battery was dying, so I didn’t get to take nearly as many photos as I would have liked. Also, to save battery power, I was using the viewfinder, so the framing is a little off)

• Everything is in German
• Far fewer Fords on the road, far more Renaults
• Dogs: off leashes, on trains
• Eurofood — cheap cafes with week old sandwiches or overpriced mediocre sit-down restaurants.
• Graffiti everywhere
• Run-Lola-Run hair on the girls

All of Germany is going on strike, and we’re flying into a budget airport on the outskirts of Berlin. This
could be awesome. Still have no european currency on me (Denmark isn’t in the EU, so I haven’t picked up Euros yet). The ‘e’ key on my laptop is being unresponsive. My most-recent and as-yet-unranked ex (in the hierarchy of exes) told me my writing is good an I should do it more. Everything is fucked.

The actual story is that the rail workers are on strike — the U-Bahn (subway) is completely shut down, the S-Bahn (urban rail) is set to start striking on monday and the rail company is going to court to block the strike, also the baggage handlers and firefighters in Frankfurt went on strike for a bit last week.

Update 1: The airport is a walkable 10 miles from our hostel. Doug: “More ridiculous things have happened”

The singapore airlines stewardesses are giving me the creeps. they look like nazis — tight fitting but unflattering khaki uniforms with red adornments. They appear to be constantly eating small snacks, dropping humorously oversized packages, and giggling.

A man in the waiting area has a 30 minute conversation about bleach. “Just regular bleach, nothing else — it kills all of that, it’ll stay around for a week or two, — the mice, they dies out.” He does not use clorox on his clothes. However, nowadays, detergent has bleach in it. He advances a few theories on how and why this is possible and moves on.

A German man is caressing his wife’s German bosom next to me.

Th man sitting next to me on the plane looks like the dispirited bachelor German civil-servant anti-hero from every movie I have ever seen. I call him Klaus. Everything is a stereotype.

Klaus hates me. He makes careful movements, he is neat and tidy, he is wearing a light blue shirt an a grey tie an black slacks. He has a blading buzz cut and an assortment of reddish flesh-colored moles. When he is done with his in-flight meal, it almost looks like it was the product of civilization.

“One million kids jump for joy as swisscom brings free internet access to their schools. Simply so.” (advertisement on plane).

I wish they wouldn’t have woken me up to feed me disturbingly microwaved oily croissant, same goes for the “mexican style chicken” which was served at approximately 10pm EST. I do not regret the Chipotle fajita burrito I ate, nor the surprisingly alcoholic $4.50 blended margarita.

Everyone here has a Freitag bag. The fleece I brought does not fit into the peacoat I brought. Everything is fucked. I dropped my sole pen into a puddle of water in the airplane lavatory. I have yet to see a beautiful blond woman — strike that, I have yet to see a blond woman.

If the view from the Zurich airport wasn’t marred by a runway, a highway an a jetway, it would look like the basis for every painting of a dutch protestant work town.

This is the first time in 17 months I have been without a cell phone, an more importantly, without mobile internet access. I am freaking out.

• Best use of ironic footnotes in an otherwise serious novel
• Most lighthearted treatment of incest, rape or nazis in a dramatic work
• Best use of a single-word chapter
• Mr. Penwick meets a curious character and someone is recognized for using long descriptive chapter titles
• Most likely to be endorsed by Oprah, bought by adrift housewives, and donated to library book sales the following year
• Thicker than Infinite Jest