BlackBerry e-mail service down! REPEAT: BlackBerry e-mail service down! Glad I’m not you!

A writer named Lisa Warren wrote a story yesterday afternoon on the Huffington Post. It was headlined “Two Black Role Models Done In By Hubris.” One of those two “Black Role Models” was the president. (The other one was some athlete.) “It is tragic when an icon falls. When a black icon stumbles the tragedy seems doubly problematic,” she wrote. The responses are apparently not quite what she expected! (Somehow!) Fortunately, she has her Twitter to keep her warm.

Apart from certain MTV-related mishegas, it’s been a relatively mayhem-free week in New Jersey. But there is this: “Police: Ocean Township man threatened motorist with knife for driving too slow.” From the Asbury Park Press: “According to police, [a 19-year-old] pulled alongside a 2009 Hyundai he had initially been unable to pass and threatened the car passenger with a knife. The driver of the car, a 23-year-old woman from Howell, called police as she drove into the parking lot of the Seaview Mall.” When you think about it, this story is really a classic example of Jersey mayhem.

It’s got cars, knives-which, as we recently learned, most state residents keep in their cars-and most importantly, serving as a beacon of hope, a sanctuary, offering safe harbor in a scary world, the mall. [The fellow], who was driving a ’95 Mitsubishi, was alleged to have followed the woman into the mall’s parking lot to threaten her some more (she must have been driving really slow, which, let’s be honest, simply does not fly in Jersey) and that’s where the cops caught up with him and charged him with aggravated assault and weapons possession.

An update: Great news! According to parties informed of the situation, all charges against the motorist were dropped. Hooray!

“”How can they say such things? Me, instigate violence?”
-A baffled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, responding to suggestions that “he had himself created the current climate with his often violent attacks on judges and journalists who he claims are mounting a conspiracy to oust him by exposing corruption allegations and scandals in his sex life.” Berlusconi, who was smacked in the face with a souvenir statuette on Sunday, left the hospital this morning.

“One genetic mutation occurs on average for every 15 cigarettes that a typical lung-cancer patient smokes, according to a study that has identified for the first time all of the mutations acquired during the lifetime of a cancer patient.” GREAT. I’ve already induced half a genetic mutation this morning.

“I am so sorry if people took this silly incident the wrong way. I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago. So much for trying to be incognito,” said Sarah Palin, after being snapped in Hawaii while wearing a visor with her former running mate’s name blacked out across the top. You know, say what you will about Sarah Palin, she has a kind of genius for this sort of thing. I don’t know what type of multiple intelligence you’d categorize this under, but let us admit that she does indeed possess it.

The Brevity of Enthusiasms, or, OMFG ‘Avatar’ FTW!

“’Get ready to get sick of hearing about this band’: it would be difficult to think of a more apt motto for indie rock-or any niche culture, for that matter-in the age of the Internet.” -Bill Wasik, And Then There’s This.

I have a confession to make. Voting closed in the LA Weekly/Village Voice Film Poll on December 9th, and so, because the screenings of Avatar took place in the few days that followed, there followed The Avatar Amendment. An email went out that said that revised ballots would be accepted on the 11th. I read this email immediately upon my return from the Avatar screening. And so: “Um, yeah…,” I wrote back. “Can you just bump all my ten ranked movies down one and put Avatar at number one? *Hangs head in shame*”

A couple of things.

1. Why, I wonder now, did I feel shame about my enthusiasm? (I reject the “guilty pleasure” and all the bullshit that such a bad idea carries with it. You like it? Own it. You enjoy it? ROLL AROUND IN IT.)

Of course I didn’t want to like Avatar. I don’t love this year’s crop of blow-’em-up movies, or really, even this year’s crop of movies. (When Kurt Andersen reported that there were “12 superb new American movies this year,” I had to sit down for half an hour and still I’d only came up with three.)

And as far as James Cameron goes, I hated Titanic, loved Aliens, will watch True Lies or any Terminator any time it crops up on cable and am resolutely neutral on the highly-controversial issue of The Abyss. And so I think that I felt bad, a little bit, even as I knew I shouldn’t, for loving a film that intends to be (AND WILL BE, OH BOY, AND HOW) a huge-money, super-pop blockbuster. Even though, really, Avatar has just a bit more in common with GI Joe: The Rise of Crap than it does with, hmm, I dunno, a nice Evelyn Waugh book.

Still, clearly I was concerned about myself, if I look at what I wrote in that email as if I were my own therapist. (The man who has himself as a therapist has a fool for a patient, obvs, etc.) What if, with my enthusiasm, I was being a very small part of something larger, and something bad? What if I was rewarding a movie that was not as good as I thought it was?

What if my sense of shame actually indicated that I didn’t trust myself? What if I had just been enthralled?

2. So, why did I just pop it in as apparently my #1 favorite movie of the year? There are a couple reasons. One is that the voting took place on some crazy online form so I have no idea how I actually voted. What did I have as the number one film before I saw Avatar? I cannot remember. Was it the spectacular Broken Embraces? All I know is that Drag Me To Hell was in the top five somewhere, which makes me giggle. And so, instead of saying “Put Avatar in at #4, and move x movie to y spot,” I lazily popped it up top.

But there was more to it than that.

The fresh take, unfortunately for these times, is actually not the most trustworthy. For one thing, there is the mammalian brain to consider (memory just isn’t as sexily-colored as the present. Memory is warm and sort of yellow-brown and comfortable; it’s not usually sharp and exciting and certainly its 3D isn’t very good). And, when confronted with spectacle-MASSIVE, RAGING SPECTACLE, in the case of Avatar-one is forced to go all in or not at all.

Leaving Avatar is like leaving a crazy relationship or one of the lesser cults-it’s pretty much all you can think about, or all you want to talk about, if you can handle talking about it at all. But then, so is being at almost anything that is considered “big” now, as you know if you have ever been on Twitter or Tumblr during a Giants game or an episode of that awful new MTV reality show. (Even Roger Ebert hops on his blog ASAP after a screening these days.) It’s all the best, or the most outrageous, or the craziest-but only for 30 minutes. Like you really care, the morning after, what that stranger said on the TV last night?

Five days later, do I really have a firm sense of how much, or how little, I liked Avatar?

Now we really do have a heaving world of mass culture analysis, long-predicted, that takes place so soon after, or even during, the fact, so that everything is always the most. And the most-defining as well. “Choice in respect to trivial matters… assumed an importance that no one could have thought to predict.” For a while now, the things-theproducts-that you love are the things you are. And you will tell us (and I will tell you) all about them, as soon as humanly possible. I also wonder, though, do we find that our thoughts from last week are holding up so well this week?

N.B. The Awl’s Chief Film Critic, Mary HK Choi, will be reviewing Avatar on Friday. Like, maybe all day on Friday.

“When you have a boyfriend, it’s much easier to find a boyfriend. It’s much easier to find a job when you have a job. You talk the talk. You’re more involved in that industry. You’re running into people in the building. You have the internal contacts with human resources. Your confidence level is up.”
–Parents magazine editor-in-chief Chandra Turner, explaining the benefits of continuous internships for recent graduates who cannot find media jobs. There are so many metaphors in here I don’t know where to start. [Via]

I cannot claim to have anything more than a cursory understanding of the political situation in Pakistan, but this strikes me as something to be concerned about: “Pakistan’s top court today struck down a controversial amnesty deal that has protected President Zardari and his allies from corruption charges, deepening country’s political turmoil as it battles Islamic militants.” Yay instability! What a cheering year this has turned out to be.

After a 350-year history, the humble check will be phased out in the United Kingdom toward the end of 2018. Alternate plans for transferring money are currently under consideration, but the traditional British method of extracting cash-at knifepoint-is expected to remain in place.