Smug News: Racist Hunger Games fans

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 4 Comments

Amandla Stenberg as Rue in The Hunger Games

I have not seen The Hunger Games, because it has too many children in it. Granted, my understanding of the film is that those children are killing and possibly eating one another, which is nice, but narrative convention dictates that they will still be alive and talking for several minutes of screen time. That’s no good. But I can still enjoy the many, many internet articles produced in conjunction with the film, not the least of which is the news that racist Hunger Games fans were disappointed to find black actors playing several of the main characters. Never mind that those characters are described as having “dark skin” in the books; they’re characters in books, for Pete’s sake, and books are where you find white people the same way the library is where you find bums. Obviously, the fans foolish enough to tweet their disappointment at such faithful casting are stone-cold racists. The question of why their racism is a news story—and an incredibly popular one, at that—is less clear.

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I don’t know how to feel about Gallagher’s heart attack

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 2 Comments

Gallagher continues his gradual convergence with The Crypt Keeper.

If I asked you what you thought of the prop comedian Gallagher, best known for making audiences sit through an hour of visual puns before his famous sledge-o-matic routine, you would probably say something mean. When I was ten, I loved the sledge-o-matic. I distinctly remember walking more than a mile to the video store to rent Gallagher videos with my brother. Twenty-five years later, that video store is a Subway and I am not laughing uproariously at the gag, “You want that cheeseburger to go? [Crushes cheeseburger with mallet.] It’s gone!” Yet Gallagher is doing the exact same thing. There he is in the photo above, making some sort of racket joke and wearing a t-shirt with a picture of himself on it. He is clearly an object of derision. Also, he just emerged from a medically-induced coma after his second heart attack. Now who’s an asshole?

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Another horrible aspect of the Trayvon Martin shooting

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 1 Comment

Yesterday, the New York Times ran this article about the description George Zimmerman gave to police of what happened just before he shot Trayvon Martin. Not surprisingly, Zimmerman’s version is a desperate act of self-defense. He claims that he returned to his SUV after he lost Martin and was struck from behind, after which Martin “began slamming his head into the sidewalk.” My response to this news was I’ll bet he said that. I have already decided that George Zimmerman is not a reliable witness in the case of his own shooting of an unarmed black kid, which is A) understandable and B) a huge problem, given that I have no way of knowing what actually happened.

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The laziness continues

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

The internet is for cat pictures.

I don’t want to rub it in, Montanans, but it’s supposed to be 72 degrees in New York today. I plan to spend the afternoon in Central Park, although I may be distracted by the Met’s collection of priceless artworks and/or readily available pan-Asian cuisine. Yes, I will probably accidentally see someone masturbating, but that’s a small price to pay for cosmopolis. While I enjoy the world’s greatest city in decline, how about you read this geopolitical analysis of Afghanistan by a woman with three cats? It’s actually by me. That’s a trope!

Indulge my laziness with recycling!

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 0 Comment

May not correspond to actual New York City.

Loyal commenter and patient user of keyboard shortcuts Attempt posed a genius question in yesterday’s Comments section: when I’m away on vacation or otherwise stricken with laziness, why don’t I post links to some of my paid work? The answer is because I am not very bright, but it’s possible he was asking rhetorically. In that spirit, here’s an increasingly dated list of crises Tila Tequila has tried to solve by showing her tits. Now that I have become aware of this possibility, I need only write stuff until I reach a sort of critical mass that gives me enough to recycle for the rest of my life, like John Updike.