You Don't Have a Daughter

Today I was visiting The Best Page in the Universe and reading an oldy, but goody. Maddox mentions something surprising to me when he writes, "Another crappy movie getting rave reviews. Unbelievable." Yes that is unbelievable since I don't remember Signs being popular at all. So I went to wiki to read the reception and find out that it was generally liked by critics. Learn something new everyday.

From there I continued looking at other M. Night Shyamalan movie wikis and read something most disturbing. A small anecdote noted on the Lady in the Water wiki discusses how one critic panned the movie insisting that Shyamalan needs to stop wasting everyone's time and do films for Nickelodeon. Well, ironically enough he will be directing the Avatar live-action adaptation. I believe it goes without saying that this is the most upsetting entertainment news I've heard since finding out who was playing Goku in the live-action Dragon Ball movie.

Just an aside let's address this Dragonball live-action film for a second. Let's first forget that they've totally miscasted, um, every single main character. Let's also forget that they released a crappy trailer which isn't even worth watching or linking. I think that the most telling sign of this movie's failure is the fact that the big wigs at Fox are ordering some scenes to be redone due to their shoddiness. Someone needs to tell them that they're just wasting money since the entire film is probably shoddy. This movie is riding the FAILbus, on the FAILferry to FAILville and still managed to mess that up.



I know I don't have much to go on, but I feel that the live-action Avatar movie, The Last Airbender, will be on the same ride and it's due to the predictability of the director, M. Night Shyamalan. I have seen only three of Shyamalan's movies because that's how long it took me to identify his formula. In every Shyamalan film there is a "WTF moment" and there is a huge "twist." For example, in Unbreakable the "WTF moment" is Mr. Glass revealing his theory about how comic books actually hide a secret truth about our world long forgotten (that superheroes exist) and the "twist" is that Mr. Glass is a psychopathic Super Villain. In The Village the "WTF moment" is that the villagers actually live in the present day and are just descendants of hippies and the "twist" is that the crazy beast is actually some lamer in a crappy suit who happens to be a fellow villager. You can probably get away with just calling each plot device in a Shyamalan film a "twist," but there is a certain emotion that Shyamalan wants to evoke with the first device that sets the viewer up for the latter. The viewer is supposed to say "WTF" and then at the end say, "whoa," as if we didn't see it coming. The problem is that by now everyone sees it coming because he does the same thing in every movie he makes.

It's unlikely that he will do this with Avatar, but I'm not going to hold my breath. One may argue that he has several episodes of source material to work with so he can't mess it up, but seriously, tell that to the makers of the first Hulk movie, the aforementioned Fox executives, or Uwe Boll. It can be messed up and I'm afraid it will be.

So this is an interesting situation. I am criticizing the director for being too predictable in most of his films, yet saying that his best hope is staying true to the source material that I have already seen. To clarify for the inquisition, I want Mr. Shyamalan to stay true to the source; however, please leave that dreaded formula with his other work.

Will I watch it? Due to my faithfulness to the animated series I will watch the first movie. But just like Star Wars or American Pie I will not hesitate to abandon the sequels if I foresee a downward trend in quality. Unfortunately, I already know that if I'm in for one, then I'm in for at least two since the first movie will be a cliffhanger. How do I know that? If you're asking that question then you didn't comprehend a thing I wrote before this paragraph, did you?

Okay, I'm sure that the title in itself is going to be pretty controversial. I suppose a little disclosure is necessary.

First of all at this time I would definitely not describe myself as "emo," but honestly who would. I did not grow my bangs out long, I do not cut myself to make myself feel better, and I do not curl up in my bed and lament about my parents' lack of understanding. It wasn't always like that though.

I may have first been introduced to emo when a Spider-Man movie's soundtrack included Dashboard Confessional's "Vindicated." I liked the song, it spoke to me. That's probably because I was emo.

That was the period of my life when my girlfriend for 5 years dumped me and quickly moved on with her life. Much quicker than I did. Instead of manning up and moving on I just dug myself into a hole of despair that lasted approximately 1-2 years.

Well, that begs the question, "How did you get out of the gutter?" Being deployed to a foreign land and seeing real people, with real problems really helps one get things into perspective. I mean, it's like when Dave Chappelle fled to Africa to think about the moral issues he was having selling out his people in comedy for the sake of money. Chappelle said after explaining his situation to an African man the man replied with something to the effect of being forced to eat a dog the night prior. Real people, real problems. With my own epiphany in place I saw Dashboard for what they are.

There are still certain emo bands that I listen to and like. My Chemical Romance is a band that a lot of people label as emo even though they themselves reject the label. Their album, The Black Parade, has found itself in my iTunes library. Another ambiguously emo band I'm high on is Evanesance. A man once told me that he imagined the lead singer, Amy Lee, singing to him while he had his head in her lap while she brushed his head with her hand until he fell asleep.

Finally, the band New Years Day is another potentially emo band that I've grown fond of. If you haven't heard of them, then you probably never played Saint's Row. You can catch their song from the game below.



The imagery used in the song was so detailed and clever that I couldn't help but paint pictures in my head of a person ravaging the body of cupid. Also, the line "your love is my heart disease," is incredibly witty and captures a person's tortured love perfectly.

If we're just going to talk about straight up, no arguments about it, card carrying emo bands, such as Jimmy Eat My Ass and Waterboard Confessionals, then yeah, emo sucks. However, if the aforementioned bands are in fact emo then I would argue that emo is alright. Maybe this is especially true of any emo band with a female lead singer.

There was a Chris Rock comedy routine where Rock claims that all he knows about black history is Martin Luther King. So he claims that whenever he's asked a question about black history he would reply "Martin Luther King." This even goes so far as to when he is asked who the woman is that refused to give up her seat on the bus he would say, "MartinA Luther King." It is my opinion that this brings up a real problem with the so-called "Black History Month."

If we are expected to celebrate something as rich as Black History then don't just shove one guy down my throat. There came a point that King was thrown at me so much that I just started ignoring anything more that I heard about him. At this point I feel I know only the bare essentials about King which include the following:

• He's black
• He was a minister
• He had a dream
• He cheated on his wife
• He's OVER RATED

I'm sure those that don't know me will stop reading there and immediately accuse me of being a racist; however, I sardonically snub my nose at those readers and offer the following statement, "I can't be racist because I'm not white." Now that we got that out of the way we may continue.

How many people, black or otherwise, find themselves in the same position as Chris Rock. That is, only being able to recall the name of King when it comes to anything Black American. There is more to Black America than King. Furthermore, there were many who I feel are more intelligent and more influential than King. However, that is sort of outside of the point I'm trying to make here.

The point is that regardless of King's accomplishments that the month of February, Black History Month, has become about as watered down as Christmas. The focus has been lost. Instead of a month to reflect on the accomplishments of Black Americans we have boiled it down to one topic. Martin Luther King. Every single time this month comes about I always hear every single politician quoting something King said. Each February of my life I have seen teachers posting pictures of King in the hallway or in recent days kids posting his image on their website. The second month of the year is much like the last month. "HO HO HO" is replaced with "I have a dream" and an old white guy replaced with a middle aged black guy.

What's the point? King already has a day in January and we're giving him the entirety of February, too? If we're going to have this Black History Month continue, then I propose the emphasis on King be removed and let's concentrate on people that actually mattered liked Frederick Douglass or W. E. B. Dubois. Why limit it to individuals? Why not go with broad topics like freemen as a whole or black activists groups like the NAACP as a whole.

Otherwise, let's just call it what it is. Martin Luther King Month.