DON’T DREAM IT, BE IT

Three nights sleeping on the floor = three bizarre yet lucid dreams.

NIGHT 1: I end up back in the US Army (a recurring nightmare of mine) for some reason. It’s ten minutes before first formation and I realize that I haven’t shaved my beard off yet. I bum a razor and shaving ream from someone and start hacking away.

NIGHT 2: I’m helping bedsitter23 move some equipment into a recording studio and somehow end up standing in for Jonny Greenwood in a Radiohead recording session. The producer is not impressed with my guitar playing, nor with my excuse that the only guitar pick I have is covered in cotton balls.

NIGHT 3: I discover a cabaret club next to my office complex and end up in a torrid, obsessive affair with Anita Mui, who it turns out is not dead after all and faked her death to start the club. The bridal unit doesn’t suspect until she finds some suspicious-looking Anita Mui CDs in my backpack.

At this rate, I may have to toss out our bed. This kicks Second Life’s ass all over downtown.

Dream baby,

This is dF

BONUS TRACK: In more or less unrelated news, happy belated birthdays to bedsitter23, stacyjill, wickedsin, jreynolds, and anyone else whose birthday I missed this month. And a happy one in advance to bluesgirly in case I forget later (which I will).

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE COLD WAR (THE REMAKE)

ITEM [via YesButNoButYes]: In the latest sign that Hollywood is so bankrupt for ideas that it’s determined to remake every film ever released in the 1980s that it can’t justify a sequel for, MGM has confirmed plans to remake Robocop and Red Dawn.

Yes, THAT Red Dawn.

There’s been quite a bit of talk about that one, not least just how in the world you could pull off a remake of a movie where the USSR (which doesn’t even exist anymore) invades the US. Maybe they’ll swap the USSR for France? Canada? Mexico? Burma? The Five Percent Nation of Al Qaeda? Damn, Jim, why not? They just made High School Musical 3, for God’s sake.

Anyway, I confess a fascination with Red Dawn at the time it came out. I had it on video and watched it repeatedly. It was controversial at the time for the amount of violence (which I found silly, as it was a war movie) and its jingoistic Cold War paranoia – not to mention the silly notion that high school kids could start guerrilla warfare against the Russkies. And of course, that scene with Harry Dean Stanton yelling “AVENGE ME!”

Still, looking back on it now, I think it’s got more going for it than people give it credit for. It makes an effort to portray the Russians as humans and not the cardboard stereotypes you got in a lot of films from the same era (I’m talking to YOU, Stallone), and it’s strikingly effective at showing how war can transform young people into callous killers. And as alternate histories go, it’s interesting, although I doubt that Europe would have sat on the sidelines and watched, as they imply in the film. Still, not that many flag-waving war movies can generate some decent sociopolitical debate.

I dunno – it’s one of those films you kind of had to grow up in the Cold War to appreciate. “What If”-style non-nuke World War III books were all the rage at the time, imagining what would happen if WW3 was fought conventionally. The assumption was always that They would invade Us, which would mean war on US soil, which hadn’t happened since the Civil War. Lots of ideas to explore there – not just who would win and how, but how American civilians would cope with the realities of war in ways they’d hadn’t had to do for generations. Americans fancy themselves a nation of self-sufficient ass-kickers – “Any damn Commies come round here, I’ll whoop their red vodka drinking ass all the way back to Moscow, goddammit! Fuck YOU, Ivan!” etc – but when the deal goes down, the reality would be far messier and costlier, even assuming America won.

Maybe the Red Dawn remake will focus on that element. Maybe it’ll be High School Musical 4: Army Daze. Either way, I’m not particularly enthusiastic.

As for the Robocop thing, don’t even call me when it’s out. You can’t improve upon something as deliberately OTT as Robocop. I can understand a Robocop 4 (though I wouldn’t want to see it), but a remake? Apart from updating the satire and adding needless CGI, what can they do to improve on it? I have five American dollars that says the project got greenlighted because Iron Man did well.

I’ll buy that for a dollar,

This is dF

SPYING: NOT FOR EVERYONE

Concerned about spying? Yr not alone [via Threat Level]:

Arlen Specter, the Republican leader of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Wednesday demanded an independent investigation into "Spygate."

The announcement came three years after it was first disclosed President Bush had authorized a secret electronic eavesdropping program on Americans without warrants in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks.

But Specter wasn't referring to that.

Instead, the Pennsylvania senator is demanding an inquiry into the New England Patriots' secret videotaping of opposing NFL coaches' signals on the sidelines...

Remember: just because it’s okay for the NSA to spy on everyone doesn’t mean it’s okay for everyone to do it. Because that’s wrong. Besides, yr not qualified. Leave it to the professionals.

See also: House Republican Leader John Boehner, who wants to protect the right of the NSA to tap everyone’s phones – except his.

Leading by example,

This is dF