"Forgetting Sarah marshall" was easy to remember

Since "Freaks and Geeks", I've been a fan of Judd Apatow's projects. He has a very organic approach to comedy. Sure, there are many contrived situations, but much of the humor and characters are firmly grounded in reality. The way in which characters interact and joke around with each other is eerily true to real life at times. Furthermore, his movies are the closest thing to a brand in today's cinema. I read a review which likened watching an Apatow film to going to a neighborhood bar. What an apt description of the Apatow-watching experience.

Judd's turnaround from earlier in his career has been astounding. "Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared" were excellent shows, especially the former. Unfortunately, they were both canceled after a season. Now Apatow has made it his karmic mission to elevate all of his acolytes into movie stars, producers, and writers. The latest Apatow player to receive this promotion is Jason Segel, best known as that guy from "How I met your Mother".

My expectations were not as high as they were for Knocked Up or 40 Year Old Virgin because I had heard that Judd Apatow did not direct this effort and was only superficially involved with the scriptwriting. This was the same situation with Superbad, which was a funny movie but lacked that certain something Knocked Up and 40yov had.

Was this movie as good as the two aforementioned? Not quite, but very close. The mark of a good comedy is a great stable of funny supporting actors outside of the main actors mentioned on the poster. In this regard, the film did not disappoint. Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Jack McBrayer, Bill Hader, and other unnamed actors do a great job delivering laughs. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Russell Brand, the guy who played the eccentric British rocker. His odd and off-the-wall sense of humor contributes much to the movie, and he has a surprising level of depth for a self-centered, sex-crazed rock star.

This great supporting cast, however, does not overshadow Jason Segel, the guy who gets dumped by the titular Sarah Marshall. His womanly insecurities after getting dumped are simultaneously sad and hilarious. You really feel for this guy because, unlike the stereotypical comedic male lead, he is an actual three-dimensional character with feelings. Mila Kunis, the hot rebound girl, is the chick every guy wants to get with. She's charming, cute, and has an edge to her. She probably gives the best performance in the entire movie. Kristen Bell does the best she can with the role of being the bitch, so I can't rip on her too much.

I think a review of this movie can't go without a mention of the nudity. And most guys would get excited at that prospect with hot girls like Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell, but instead you get Jason Segel's limp dick. The shots aren't really that gratuitious; they fit with the beginning and ending scenes when they happen and add to the humor. The only notable issue with the movie is pacing. At times, the movie lags and becomes long and overdrawn. Some reviewers have said that the film, like any romantic comedy, has a predictable ending. My view is that, first of all, this is NOT your typical Matthew McConnaughey starring romantic comedy and, second, you watch it for the humorous circumstances that get you from point A to point B. And, in this regard, the movie is a rip-roaring good time and a worthy addition to the Apatow canon.

Of Elitism

Obama's remarks have now had ample time to be taken apart and analyzed by the press. Most sources I have consulted have come to the same conclusion: Obama is a suit and tie, big-city liberal whose intrinsic elitist tendencies came through. Such a rudimentary conclusion, in my view, is a bit harsh. In fact, as someone who spent high school in rural, small-town Indiana, I can verify most of what Obama said as sadly true. Obama has been derided for his "act of condescension", but I think writers from the NY Times to the New Yorker are guilty of using a detached, overly academic looking glass into rural life. And, in a way, are relying on stereotypes about the rural American.

To understand what I mean, one has to understand how culturally different small towns are from New York City. I genuinely believe that it is impossible for an editorialist from NYC to truly understand middle America. It's for the same reason I question how much a Western anthropologist can understand tribal Samoans. We are indubitably victims of our schemas and preconceived notions, as hard as we try to purge them with objectivity.

That said, these writers are relying on an outdated view of small town Americans, that of the "romanticized yeoman". Jeb works hard on the farm/plant all day and comes home to a small, but sturdy house. He may not be smart, but he feeds his six children and teaches them the essentials about traditional values of God and country.

What the critics don't realize is that this view hasn't been valid for atleast 50 years or so. Economic realities have shaken the foundation of formerly robust small towns based on agriculture and heavy industry. Most jobs have gone abroad and are never coming back. People who do get a four-year degree do not stay at home and move to the cities. After all, that's where the jobs are. What happens is that small towns stagnate and decline. When young people move out, sense of community and hope goes with it.

So 50 years later, Jeb becomes a distraught, broken man who's desperately trying to make ends meet. His kids got educated at college and became journalists, nurses, or professionals. He is all alone and has no stake in the direction his country is heading. Jeb has been forsaken by a country defined by the cultural and economic vitality of its urban areas.

Economic hardship breeds the frustration Obama talked about. Religion is only a temporary salve, and in my opinion is not the panacea that economic well-being is for the middle American. If rural people turned to religion as fervently as they could wouldn't it be rational to expect them to constantly harbor hope, or to be more enlightened? Isn't that the point of religion?

To further my point, enlightened behavior does not include racist or anti-immigrant beliefs. Now, because the nation has disavowed the economic interests of the yeoman, the only political arena he or she can have a say is with social issues. Republicans have done an excellent job of deflecting and de-emphasizing their role in siphoning away jobs from America, while simultaneously positioning themselves as the staunch guardians of "traditional values". By fanning the flames of discontent with issues such as abortion and immigration, they expertly distract from their embrace of globalization and other injurious policies that have led to the loss of Jeb's job at the factory. In addition, the rhetorical style of conservatives and their tendency to think in black and white terms would have appeal to a blue-collar American. It's a strategy that started in the 1960s and has gradually whittled away the traditional base for Democrats.

The good news for Obama is that these comments, though controversial, is only a minor issue. By November, it will be largely forgotten thanks to the small attention spans of American voters. If McCain does make it an issue, Obama can fire back by painting McCain as a flip-flopper who did what was politically expedient to make it out of the Republican primary. He will have ammunition. Although Hillary Clinton has snatched onto the quotes with vigor, I don't think voters ultimately buy her posturing as a God-fearing, gun-toting beer swiller.

Should Obama have said those comments? No, of course not. However, I genuinely believe there is a kernel of truth in the vaguely elitist remark.

My Sentiments exactly

This op-ed was posted just today, verifying some of the things I've said: (Source: New York Times, 12 April 2008, "Losing Our Will" by Bob Herbert

I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”

While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home.

On the same day that President Bush was announcing an indefinite suspension of troop withdrawals from Iraq, the New York Times columnist David Leonhardt was telling us a sad story about how the middle class has fared during the Bush years.

The economic boom so highly touted by the president and his supporters “was, for most Americans,” said Mr. Leonhardt, “nothing of the sort.” Despite the sustained expansion of the past few years, the middle class — for the first time on record — failed to grow with the economy.

And now, of course, we’re sinking into a nasty recession.

The U.S., once the greatest can-do country on the planet, now can’t seem to do anything right. The great middle class has maxed out its credit cards and drained dangerous amounts of equity from family homes. No one can seem to figure out how to generate the growth in good-paying jobs that is the only legitimate way of putting strapped families back on their feet.

The nation’s infrastructure is aging and in many places decrepit. Rebuilding it would be an important source of job creation, but nothing on the scale that is needed is in sight. To get a sense of how important an issue this is, consider New Orleans.

The historian Douglas Brinkley, who lives in New Orleans, has written: “What people didn’t yet fully comprehend was that the overall disaster, the sinking of New Orleans, was a man-made debacle, resulting from poorly designed levees and floodwalls.”

We could have saved the victims of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, but we didn’t. And now, more than 2 ½ years after the tragedy, we are still unable to lift the stricken city off its knees.

Other nations can provide health care for everyone. The United States cannot. In an era in which a college degree is becoming a prerequisite for a middle-class quality of life, we are having big trouble getting our kids through high school. And despite being the wealthiest of all nations, nearly 10 percent of Americans are resorting to food stamps to maintain an adequate diet, and 4 in every 10 American children are growing up in families that are poor or near-poor.

The U.S. seems almost paralyzed, mesmerized by Iraq and unable to generate the energy or the will to handle the myriad problems festering at home. The war will eventually cost a staggering $3 trillion or more, according to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. When he was asked on “Democracy Now!” about who is profiting from the war, he said the two big gainers were the oil companies and the defense contractors.

This is the pathetic state of affairs in the U.S. as we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century. Whatever happened to the dynamic country that flexed its muscles after World War II and gave us the G.I. Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations (in a quest for peace, not war), the interstate highway system, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the finest higher education system the world has known, and a standard of living that was the envy of all?

America’s commanding general in Iraq, David Petraeus, and our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, went up to Capitol Hill this week but were unable to give any real answers as to when the U.S. might be able to disengage, or when a corner might be turned, or when a faint, flickering hopeful light might be glimpsed at the end of the long, horrific Iraqi tunnel.

A country that used to act like Babe Ruth now swings like a minor-leaguer. The all-American can-do philosophy has been smothered by the hapless can’t-do performances of the people who have been in charge for the past several years. It’s both tragic and embarrassing.

The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.

On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”

Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”

Pessimism is this season's black

There's no denying this truth as we march to the election: people are generally not happy about the direction America is heading. Although the economy will inexorably go through bouts of boom and bust, this recent downturn feels more emblematic of something worse: the beginning of the end of American dominance. It extends beyond a crack in the armor of America's economic dominance; American authority itself is starting to be questioned. The result is a new level of despair in the US, which has yet to reach its nadir.

It all starts with Iraq. How naive does it seem now to believe that we would be welcomed in Iraq with open arms? People genuinely believed that building a democracy would be simple enough under the spectre of America, the world's greatest democracy. Instead, we are sending surges of troops to just tread water. Remember the now ridiculous assertion that Iraq's oil revenues would eventually pay for the war? Remember the promise that WMDs would be found? Instead, we're left with empty promises, Dada-esque rationale from Bush, and billions of dollars in debt.

We all knew sunk costs associated with nation-building on an unwilling nation would eventually catch up with America. Unfortunately for Bush and the nation, the full ramifications of mega-scale deficit spending arrived a year early. What we are dealing with is not a mere crack in the facade, rather the entire foundation is under threat. Here's a laundry list of issues off the top of my head: Chinese control of American financial instruments, housing crisis, credit crisis, record deficit, rising cost of living, rising prices of imported necessities like food, rising gas prices, shrinking paychecks, pitiful dollar, etcetera etcetera etcetera. I'm not an economist and I don't pretend to be, but this sounds like a perfect storm.

Perhaps the worst consequence of these going-ons is the crisis in American confidence. Eternal optimism is as much a part of Americana as apple pie and baseball. It guides our country from a moral standpoint and is the basis of the unique entrepreneurial culture here. Americans can take lumps, but a permanent degeneration in our optimism and confidence in our place in the world would be, by far, the worst consequence of the mess America is currently mired in.

The Era of Partisanship

Sometime around the turn of the decade, it seems that people have become increasingly stubborn with respect to their politics. Being partisan and demonizing the opposition is the initiation into modern politics, not cordially accepting opposing viewpoints and having frank discussions about the issues.

There is no other explanation for the rise in punditry and the fall of (presumably) unbiased journalism. People would rather get their news from Rush Limbaughs and Al Frankens. Nevermind the liberties with truth these pundits take and the screamfests they pass off as guest interviews. People want their news like they want their cheese: processed beyond recognition.

Why are people so angry at each other? Why has the political climate become so hot and uncomfortable? I really yearn for those times when people simply took a viewpoint as just that: a viewpoint. Just because I'm pro-choice and for gun control does not mean I am morally evil or mentally diseased. It's those sorts of attitudes that lead one down the path of dogma and ignorance.

Decay of Rural America

I pride myself on being open-minded and curious about the world around me. As a traveler, I try my best to adapt to the pace or lifestyle around me, as I think it endows me with this better understanding of the place I'm visiting. In addition, I relish "edutainment" opportunities in a city I visit. Learning about the history of a place is the surest way to facilitate the cultural immersion process. Traveling within the United States is no exception to this ethos.

I've traveled all over the United States and I've become keenly aware of one phenomenon: a decay of rural America. America is fast becoming an urban nation. Education is being used as a tool to consolidate populations in urban centers, where industries of the future (tech, health care, pharma, etc.) tend to congregate. What did backwoods areas stake their economic livelihood on? Agriculture and manufacturing mostly. With the decline of those two pillars of rural America, people have moved out.

It's really quite simple. Manufacturing jobs go overseas to take advantage of lower wages. Further, it's not necessary for so many people to be in agriculture anymore. The government has to pay farmers to stop growing crops. Also, the large amount of investment and energy that goes into farming (with small compensation) is not attractive to young people.

I have no qualms about believing the innumerable statistics or vignettes; I've lived in the Midwest my entire life in America. I've lived in the three microcosms of the Midwest: 1) the former manufacturing powerhouse reduced to a shell of its former self (Cleveland) 2) the depressed rural part (Vincennes) and 3) the regional titan with cosmopolitan flair (Chicago).

Vincennes, in my opinion, is emblematic of the many problems the rural Midwest encounters. The population was never very large to begin with, but in the span of a decade nearly 5,000 people have moved out. Young people are moving out while only the older people stay. Consequently, death rates are high.

And really, a town like Vincennes has no chance. I graduated from high school five years ago, and the only people who stayed are the ones who graduated near the bottom of the class. None of the people in the advanced classes who got four year degrees are coming back. Now that people are getting further education beyond the four year degree, the chances of any people like me returning are effectively nil. What results is an efflux of creativity and intelligence from Vincennes. In other words, decay.

This problem is hardly unique. I've seen the same phenomenon all across the Midwest and the South. You don't really see this on the East Coast and the West Coast, because the consolidation process is more or less complete there. As regions like Southern indiana lose out, your Chicagos and Atlantas benefit.

In the past, this wasn't a problem, I think. The United States was smaller, and traveling around was difficult and expensive. People never got an opportunity to see if and where the grass was greener. Nowadays, I can just pull up some statistics on the internet and know exactly what's up. If you're a bright high schooler in bumblefuck, Indiana, you can go to an Ivy school. Distance is not the boundary it once was thanks to the Internet and rising incomes.

It really is lamentable, but at the same time I recognize that I contribute to the problem by essentially eschewing my hometown. My parents, after these ten years, agree with me now on my assessment of home and seem eager to leave now that my brother and I have moved on.

So will watermelon festivals be a thing of the past? No, but attendance will certainly grow smaller year after year.