Fake News Vol. 1

For a long time I’ve wondered if I have what it takes to write for The Onion. Here are a pair of early attempts at fake news.

_____________________________________________

Pontius Pilate Biopic Flops at Box Office

Critics find no fault in it

HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, Pilate, a biographical film about the life and times of Roman prefect Pontius Pilate, has suffered a disastrous opening weekend, grossing only $879,272 at the box office. Sony Pictures reportedly rushed the film to an early release, hoping to capitalize on the box-office fervor whipped up by Darren Aronofsky’s Noah.

However, Pilate’s poor performance has led to bitter recriminations from many involved in the film’s production. Director Gaspar Noé has claimed that the studio illicitly tampered with the final approved version of the script before it reached his hands – a claim which the studio has denied. Screenwriter Nicolas Winding Refn has refused to offer any public comment on the matter. Meanwhile, the studio claims that Noé obstinately attempted to pack the film with scenes of graphic sex and violence, intentionally flirting – in the studio’s opinion – with the dreaded NC-17 rating.

Barely mentioned in all the backbiting is the nearly unanimous critical acclaim that Pilate has received. Using a kaleidoscopic approach to unravel the life of perhaps the most infamous bureaucrat in history, the film casts no less than seven actors as Pontius Pilate, including Ewan McGregor, Tom Wilkinson, Jeff Goldblum, and Judi Dench, among others. However, in a rambling, profane email sent to Sony Pictures employees, one producer wrote, among other things, “You can’t pay your goddamn creditors with Golden Globes, and sure as hell can’t eat a fucking Oscar” and “One of you go tell the bank you’re paying this month’s mortgage with good reviews, and you tell me what happens.”

This is not the first sign of trouble for Pilate. In what was widely viewed as a publicity stunt at the time, the producers of the film held an unusual ceremony before the initial screening of the film. On a temporary stage erected before the audience, the producers wordlessly faced the audience, then took turns washing their hands with water from a stone basin on the right side of the stage.

 

________________________________________

 

 

White House Easter Egg Roll Turns Up Body of Jimmy Hoffa

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Jubilation turned to horror Sunday, as a participants in the 136^th annual White Hose Easter Egg Roll witnessed the discovery of long-missing union leader Jimmy Hoffa’s decomposed remains.

The event – attended by over 30,000 guests – was well under way on the White House’s South Lawn when an egg rolled by Marcus Jamison, 7, veered from a racecourse and into a nearby shrub. According to Jamison, he attempted to extract the egg, and in the process scraped at some loose soil with his wooden spoon. At that point he discovered “A finger sticking out of the ground”

According to witnesses, President Barack Obama, officiating the race, saw Jamison stray from the course and went over to offer assistance. President Obama reportedly crouched, following the pointing of Jamison’s spoon, before jumping to his feet in a panic. Witnesses reported hearing Obama shout “Oh God! Oh God, Michelle, somebody get Michelle!” At that point, Obama covered the protesting Jamison’s eyes and led him away, at the same time motioning a nearby Secret Service agent over to the shrub in question.

“Block this off. Nothing rolls over here.” Obama reportedly said, his face reportedly ashen and grim. A half-dozen Secret Service agents then materialized and immediately began shepherding curious onlookers away from the area of interest.

A dig conducted under cover of night uncovered the mostly decomposed remains of an adult male. DNA testing and dental records later revealed the body to be Hoffa’s. The discovery has answered one enduring question, but raised countless others. In public, Obama has skirted the implications of the grisly find. In a press conference on Tuesday the president declared “We will do everything in our power to find Marcus’ egg. We will leave no stone unturned, and we will not rest until we find out what happened to it. Marcus and his family have been through a lot, and the least we can do is offer them some measure of closure.”

Potpourrous Miscellanea Vol. 1

Since I have hiatused from the facebooks, I don’t have an avenue for spraying the nibblets of my perspective onto the internet. In a way this is good, as I don’t spread myself thin with a bunch of impulsive yawps. On the other hand, I miss the ability to dash off a quick thought in writing here or there. Since I reserve this blog for longer, more fully-fleshed pieces, I’ll put out my little blurbs in aggregate.

1. Fear of a Black President

Q. What’s the difference between Adam Lanza and Barack Obama?

A. Adam Lanza didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize!

Now that’s an edgy joke! But seriously, I recently finished Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars – or as it could alternately be called, The Big Book of American War Crimes: From 9/11 to Now. Though I may have been disappointed with Obama before, and upset about the drone strikes, reading Scahill’s book changed my feelings to complete disgust. It’s no secret that the Global War on Terror is a quixotic nightmare of death, politics and money, but to read in strenuous detail about how Obama embraced and escalated the creepiest, most cold-blooded elements of Cheney and Bush’s “GWOT” is difficult to swallow. Learning the hideous details of the al Majala airstrike, the Gardez night raid, the curious case of Raymond Davis, the murder of Abdulrahman al Awlaki (the only recognizable piece of him the family could find was the back of his head) and other deadly large-scale policy bunglings in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan made me sick with rage at times. I don’t know how Scahill managed to write such an anthology of injustice, folly and suffering without his very soul shriveling up and cowering in existential panic.

So now I feel like I’ve been had. I voted for Obama in 2008, with high hopes. I would rescind that vote if I could. Obama is a total murderous creep, smiling for cameras and singing Al Green as JSOC raids, air strikes and drones strikes – many of which he signs off on personally – kill whole families daily in regions that are powerless to stop them. Lupe Fiasco was right.

Obama’s not the only one to blame, obviously – but he is the commander-in-chief. He has yet to make any moves to curb the Military Industrial Complex, which has become a cross between an entitlement and a government stimulus plan – for death merchants. All I want for Christmas is a viable anti-war candidate. Kucinich-Paul 2016.

2. Proximity v. Privacy

I flew from Providence to Detroit (in two flights) on Christmas Day. On the first flight, I sat next to a woman who told me she hadn’t flown in 40 years. “The last time I flew, my mother could smoke on the plane.” she said before takeoff. I can’t imagine how strange the new TSA apparatus must look from that perspective, even after its long mellowing out from the lofty panic of the post-9/11 paranoid crackdown.

We were three in the row, and the three-row across the aisle had only one passenger – in the window seat. Early in the flight, the bearded man next to me began ordering his possessions assiduously – I thought he was preparing to use the bathroom – then smartly hopped over to the open aisle seat. This made me ruminate about a social nicety/not nicety that has puzzled be for a long time. That is – the long battle of space v. rudeness in transportation.

I rode the El and buses in Chicago quite often, and often had a same dilemma. Usually one doesn’t sit next to a stranger if there are open rows of seats available. It’s just a part of American culture to offer that space and privacy, at least in the places I’ve been. However, if one is led by crowding to sit with a stranger, and if no conversation takes place, and other seats come open, is it more rude to continue to impinge on their bubble, or to scoot away?

Maybe this is an easy question, but I’ve always seen an intrinsic rudeness in the act of ejecting. It is as if to say simply “You seem perfectly nice, but I’d rather be farther away from you.” As Don Cheadle said immortally in the film Crash – “Something something something, we’re lonely, so we crash into each other. Now give this movie an Oscar.” Still, given my feelings about Mosh Pits, I see a sort of positivity to the acceptance of proximity, and yes, I’ve felt a little rejected when the person next to me ejects. There should be exceptions for general weirdness, unpleasant smells, cell-phone obsession, crudeness of manner, unwanted conversation or, heaven forbid, touching or sexual harassment, but if two reasonable people should have to sit next to each other and give up a little personal space temporarily, what harm of it?

This seems like the kind of thing David Foster Wallace or Larry David would wrestle with. Have they? Either way, I stayed next to the 40-year woman. She was very pleasant and the flight was less than an hour long. I don’t regret my decision.

3. Sports!

Last year I finished second in my fantasy football league. This year I won. Despite my improbable march to victory, I found myself caring less this year than ever before. I still like to vaguely follow pro sports, and watch playoff and other big games, but just don’t love it like I used to. I get bored watching football, and feel angry when commentators don’t acknowledge just how horrible big violent hits are, especially when they are showed over and over again in slow motion (they always go quiet, and never say the word “concussion” without saying “protocol”). I’ve grown weary of the vaguely political, hegemony-enforcing, highly catty gossip mill that is sports journalism. I’ll probably end up watching the Super Bowl and playing along for years to come. I wonder, am I growing out of sports as an intellectual, or am I losing interest because I’m getting old and out of shape – and because the incredible feats of these young supermen remind me of my waxing age and waning potency?

4. Dancing Fool Follow Up #1

I got a girl’s phone number at the dance bar Saturday night. The young lady – we’ll call her Mariposa – and I had what I would judge a good dancing rapport, busting silly moves and making funny faces at each other until we were both covered in sweat. She seemed reasonably into me, sticking with me as her companions tried to stab me to death with eye-daggers. She became visibly crestfallen when her friends (and sister, I later found out) tried to leave. During one of these panics (there were numerous false alarms) I asked Mariposa for her number and she punched it into my phone. Upon texting that number later to try and make a date, I found out that it was a different girl’s number – a “sonja in maine” who thankfully, was cool about getting a fairly bizarre text from me.

Was this deception by accident or design? Mariposa actually went to high school with one (maybe two) of my new friends in PVD – they recognized each other and made nice at the bar. I don’t think I pushed too hard or did anything creepy – I hope. I just want the truth!

The week before I had suffered a crushing defeat at that same bar, gaining the demure but very tangible attentions (my friend Mustafa saw and commented on it at the time) of a few attractive young women, but squandering those opportunities by being shy and weird and not saying anything (it could have been ANYTHING) to them. I was pretty disconsolate back at the apartment that night, loudly beating myself up for hours.

And that’s why Mariposa seemed like a step in the right direction. I was still a little shy, but at least blurted out some inane statements while we were dancing, creating a level of engagement that would have at least partially prevented the previous week’s meltdown. But alas, “level of engagement” or no, I’m back to the drawing board.

5. I’m Yelling Timber

I think I’m pretty good about not being homophobic.

One night after a silly night at Hanley’s (Providence’s danciest downtown bro-bar), Mustafa and Souleymane, my Providence friends, sought to sally forth at 2 am to their nursing pal’s house and keep the night going. As I was deciding whether to go along, Mustafa yelled “We’ll just spend an hour there”. Multicolored alarms went off in my head and I decided to turn in, heading to my customary repose on the pull-out couch in Mustafa’s apartment.

I did not sleep well that night. I heard the boys come home, in the wee hours, perhaps four or five. “Why didn’t we get shit-faced tonight?” Protested Souleymane, as bedding arrangements were made.

Some time later, as I lay in insomniac half-sleep, I heard one of the tracked parlor doors that bicamerate the living room slide open. I felt and peripherally saw someone looming over me. I turned to see Souleymane, who fixed me with a strange and purposeful look, softly singing Pitbull’s “Timber” under his breath. “I’m yelling timberrr.” He sing-songed, as he stepped out of his jeans and crawled into bed with me, taking his portion of his covers. It was a singularly bizarre moment. He was soon asleep, and I lay awake, sort of wondering what the hell was going on. This was the second time I had spent time with Souleymane, the first being Friendsgiving. The Providence fam are a little more open, generous and uninhibited in their friendships than I am used to. I thought this might be part of some tradition, some rich heritage of pranks and f-you’s to traditional uptight ideas about impersonality and social strictures.

I got up the next morning and out of bed. I fooled with the computer for a while – probably working on this blog – as Souleymane slept. When he awoke, he was confused. “How did I get here?” He asked, bewildered. He apparently did not remember clambering into my bedspace. I updated him and we pieced together incident with the rest of the apartment-mates as they arose, all in good humor. The whole thing was a big hoot.

Like I said, I’m glad I’m not homophobic. I might have been belligerent, frightened or otherwise uncool, had some anti-gay defense mechanism kicked in. Not that I’m saying there was any actual advance. I don’t know if Souleymane or I will ever know what his motivations were in that 5 am haze. Now, it’s just water under the bridge – a funny bonding moment that can be used in jokes with Souleymane for years to come.

The Race Files – The Injustice Reservoir

Men of Reason will define a Ghost as nothing more otherworldly than a wrong unrighted, which like an uneasy spirit cannot move on,- needing help we cannot usually give,- nor always find the people it needs to see,- or who need to see it. But here is a Collective Ghost of more than household Scale,- the Wrongs committed Daily against the Slaves, petty and grave ones alike, going unrecorded, charm’d invisible to history, invisible yet possessing Mass and Velocity, able not only to rattle Chains, but to break them as well.

-Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon.

A Confederate Flag hangs in a college dormitory suite. Our hero, the black suitemate, Francisco Cardoza opens the door and walks in, his backpack heavy, fingers and toes cold, numbing from the late fall chill. The semester is in full swing, the brisk and cheerful sounds of progress, of people bettering themselves. First in family-ers laugh and promenade, breaking slowly free of their crude and uneducated parents, creating bonds with the other millennials with whom they will one day collude to take back the pension funds and push the old-timers into the sea. The past seems dead – hilarious and impotent—> AND YET, the Old Stars and Bars, leering, bloodred and commanding, fluttering diabolically in the forced air currents of the dirty white air conditioner. The sterile fluorescent lighting in the suite only enhances the garish discord of the tableau.

The white suitemates are already seated. They grin devilishly, half-circled in desk chairs like a council of high priests, trio of judges, kidnap squadron, family at intervention.

“Do you like our flag? (‘neeeee-gro’ one of them mouths silently)”

Nearly three-hundred years of ancestral memory roil painfully over our hero. It is dark and thick as pitch. It suffocates, cloys, smells and tastes of blood. It shrieks and pounds in his ears. It burns his back, waters his eyes, makes him gag and cough. Our hero Cardoza turns and stumbles outside into insalubrious calm and warm breezes of a violent pre-storm grey. A song is suspended in the saturated air – some shrill, haunting cry, a mixture of a slave song and manifold, reverberated scream.

“Hey, where ya going?” A hooded face popping from the dormitory window, the hand lifts the hood to reveal the ‘neeee-gro’-mouthing suitemate painted in the colors of stubbled and insolent youth. “We were going to watch Birth of a Nation!”

Did a Racist Act take place here? A Hate Crime? They did me no violence, no judgment, not even a tangible discrimination. It was all artifacts, reminders, the violence of history and memory. And yet how it stung… Does racism live in the thought and action, or has it taken deeper root, in the very fabric of American culture, World Culture, Human Culture?

I don’t want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there’s evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels. If that’s how she really feels — that America is a bad country or a flawed nation, whatever — then that’s legit. We’ll track it down.

-The Reverend Bill O’Reilly.

Meaning not “Yes, let us lynch this woman, for she has dark brown skin and therefore her life is below the law.” but rather, a more nuanced, “I don’t wish this woman any physical harm, but let us, White America, take a moment to remember that sixty to eighty years ago, we could indeed ‘go on a lynching party’ against this negro woman, Michelle Obama, to take her from her home in the humid night, bind her and carry her to a floodlit and festive grove – a gathering of friends and neighbors – hang her from a tree, smile for photographs, pass pints of whiskey and gin, go home and never hear of it again, never be punished for these actions. Let’s remember, because it’s a comforting thought, a reminder of our power, White America, and the ease at which we can re-conjure ideas about the inferiority and powerlessness of the ‘African American’ race.”

Yes, that’s racism, thinks our Cardoza, stalking across the campus lawns, a theory growing in his mind. That’s the stuff! Not a set of judgments or actions, but the fast-alloying of negative deposits, a tapping of the mighty Injustice Reservoir, that vast buildup of ‘wrongs unrighted’ that hang molecular in the atmosphere like this very static gathering before the storm, courting lighting from the heavens, to strike, Strike! STRIKE.

He decides to try it.

“Jesse Owens vs. The Aryan Race, 1936 Olympic Games.” He enumerates to a passing white student, a Methuselah Barrow, sallow and thin, with long hair, slicked back. “You guys looked like you were running backwards!”

The sallow freshman appears taken aback. Is this some kind of joke? He stops and tests his hypothesis, tries to play the game, but gently. “Elvis Presley stealing Chuck Berry’s Swagger.”

Our hero grimaces, he wants a fight, not a bull session. He had been glad-handed too many times. “The first OJ Simpson Trial. Ron and Nicole Brown all cut up like Helter Skelter. ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.’”

The sallow freshman is disgusted. “I really don’t want to do this dude. It’s just not fair. What do you need to put this to bed? If I Did It and The second OJ Simpson trial, Amadou Diallo, South Africa until 1994, Fred Hampton, Soul Plane, Code Name: The Cleaner, ‘Get your hand outta my pocket’…”

As Barrow speaks, an army materializes at his back – an army formidable and unrelenting as a glacier, stretching back five hundred years and marching three hundred feet tall. Hooded goliaths march and rub elbows with European slave traders and smiling, waving politicians. Modern-day American police march in step with Confederate soldiers and colonial battalions, guns at the ready. Great dark slave ships creak and groan, black bilge oozing from their timbers. Beneath their feet, wheels and hulls a dark and semi-liquid mass, dark brown and red, faces, white eyes and teeth, partially resolved for discrete instants into blurred sketches of horror – crying out, screaming, pushing in and out of the gush and swirl. A plasma of suffering, early death and despair. The entire collected and cumulative might of white supremacy looms and wheezes, crushes and grinds – the injustice reservoir.

“Medgar Evers, Afroman…” Methuselah trails off, seeing the look of despair and frozen horror on the face of Cardoza, who is looking above and behind Barrow.

“But my roommates… The Stars and Bars…”

Methuselah’s sallow face softens. He steps next to our hero Cardoza and turns.  They regard the reservoir together. Their faces wrinkle, age twenty years – the sheer might and weight of the assemblage – too much for any young and hopeful hearts to countenance. “God, It’s so… Immense. How do you live with it? How can we take it apart?”

“The white power elite scoff at reparations, and ignore any suggestion of apology. Perhaps one or both of these are needed. Otherwise, there will always be resentment and a desire for revenge…”

I’m sorry

For something I didn’t do

Lynched somebody

But I don’t know who

You blame me for slavery

A hundred years before I was born

 

GUILTY OF BEING WHITE

 

I’m a convict

Of a racist crime

I’ve only served

19 years of my time

 

GUILTY OF BEING WHITE

 

-Minor Threat, Guilty of Being White.

Our hero bursts in through the door of the suite. He is in full blackface. He strums a banjo – badly out of tune – and does a soft-shoe dance on the aquamarine carpet. A straw hat wobbles precariously on his head. He purses his violently red lips as if puckering for a kiss. Two of the suitemates freeze and turn red at the naked minstrelsy. They squirm and try to hide in their chairs. The third begins to hoot and slap his knee, stomping in time, a joyous bucolic grin seizing his features.

Our hero bursts in through the door of the suite. He holding, against all physical laws, a stolid tree bough from which dangles a full-grown, partially-burned, lynched black man. He jabs it as his suitemates, as they scramble in terror. “Smell it! Smell the cooking! This is what you want, this is what you miss, right?”

Our hero bursts in through the door of the suite. He is dressed as “Doctor Obama”. He moves briskly in his white doctor’s coat, setting his clipboard down and testing reflexes, taking blood pressures and temperatures, fondling testicles and sticking syringes in a whirlwind of tests and treatment. “Sign up by December 23^rd or be penalized! Remember, it’s the law!”

The suitemates are flustered, overwhelmed, then sullen, angry. Cardoza may be on to something. “Whatsa matter? You don’t like a black man forcing you to do things? Don’t like the feeeeeelings of helplessness? (‘honnnnnn-ky’, Francisco mouths silently)”.

“Man FUCK Obamacare and fuck that fuckin’ Kenyan Nig-”

“Ah ah ah, stress is bad for your health, and getting all riled up won’t change the law.” Cardoza singsongs. But then sensing risk, the motorcycle leaning out too far, he decides not to press his advantage further. “Excuse me.”

Francisco Cardoza bursts in to his suite. He serves his suitemates with hate crime charges as well as school disciplinary forms, silently. He is wearing a black shirt that says in bold white text “I Am A Man”. He has also just heard that Nelson Mandela has died. Will there be truth and reconciliation within the suite? Even if so, it will still abide, large as Jupiter – the Injustice Reservoir, with the blood red (and black) vino on tap.

And looking through his telescope, Cardoza sees a new reservoir forming, an orbiting moon. It is the accrued injustices of the Global War on Terror. He can see the airstrike at al Majala, Guantanamo Bay, The Gardez night raid, Abu Ghraib. Black sites pock the surface and drones circle the young celestial body. He beckons his suitemates over. Two look wonderingly, not thrilled at the implications, but the third-

“What’s that? Planet towelhead?” and indeed, as Cardoza quickly reclaims the eyepiece, he sees a forty-three light-minutes long conduit form and hang, between his suitemate’s hate-curled mouth and the throbbing moon.

“It’s a brave new world.” he mutters to himself, somewhat unhappily. “And yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same.”