Concerning a strange dream I had recently.

Inspirational Quote Of The Day: "I'm drinkin' hot tea bitch. Feel me." -Dwayne Michael Carter

OK, I'm doing this post even though I know nobody gives a shit about anyone else's dreams because they're impossible to relate to, owing to their being an experience only one person will have, once, ever. But whatever. Here's what happened during my 3 hour nap today. First, I had a short dream that I don't recall entirely, I only remember that it involved Michael James Spaulding and Lucas Axel Hilding Granholm. I also know what this dream was Part 1 to the Part 2 of the segment I remember well.

Part 2 begins on a snowy street in downtown Bemidji, Minnesota, in my mother's 1999 Chrysler 300M. I am riding shotgun and my friend Noah Burke is sitting in the back seat. I am not sure what we are driving around for. Conversation begins with my mother, saying "Noah, can I borrow your gun?" He immediately produces a Glock 17 from his jacket, then says "How did you know I have a gun?" My mother seizes it from him and immediately starts cursing. She is probably mad at Noah for having a gun and carrying it around. She hands the gun to me, and I accept it, feeling it in my hand and all that. It has several strange buttons on it that I've never seen before, and instead of having an internal hammer that can't be seen, it has a strange sort of dial on the top. I attribute these strange fixtures to my dreams not being good at accuracy. I wonder idly if the safety is on, then remember that Glocks have internal safeties. My mother begins driving quite erraticly, probably because of her emotional state of being mad at Noah. I decide to press one of the mysterious buttons on the gun. Neon lights all over the pistol's frame begin flashing. A warning mode of some sort, meant to say "HEY I HAVE A GUN?" Perhaps. I discern from this that it also has a laser sight.

I am whipped into a fairly thick forest. Up ahead through the forest is a strange, run-down looking house. My mother is there too. She is holding a small metal rod of some variety. I still have the gun. She informs me that the woods ahead have a fallen barbed wire fence in them, and I should avoid tripping over it. Then she moves in a diagonal fashion into the woods. Clearly she intends to move in zig-zag. It's very dark and I'm not too keen on tripping over that fence, so I decide to turn my gun's laser sight on. It doesn't provide much illumination. I notice then that my mother has moved significantly through the woods, so I start running after her, the dot of the laser sight bobbing on the ground ahead of me. I decide it's probably a good idea to learn to aim with the laser sight, because I still have no idea what we're doing. I aim the gun in front of me, while running. The dot moves wildly, but I get the idea of where to point it. Then I meet the fence. My pants get caught on it, but I don't fall. After detaching myself from the fence, I follow my mother out of the woods. We are going into this house, it seems. She takes a side or back entrance, I'm not sure, but we come to some stairs, whereupon I notice that the house looks even worse on the inside than outside. Holes in the walls, spray paint, broken glass, the usual amenities of run-down houses. It's well-lit though, a relief. My mother and I continue up the stairs, my mother brandishing the metal rod. Eventually we come to a landing on the stairs. Two very dirty, hairy men stand there. They both have trowels. I aim the gun at one of them, clearly putting the laser dot over his forehead, and instruct them to put down the trowels. They look confused at first, then slowly put the little shovels on the ground. I am surprised about how calm and authoritative I was, considering these men could have been threatening my mother with trowels, although I still have no idea what we're doing here. My mother speaks. "You are not having your party tomorrow night." One of the two men, who is balding on top with ratty hair hanging down from the back and sides of his head, a skullet, still holding his hands on the back of his head, says "There's no party tonight." My mom knows that, she's concerned about the party tomorrow night. I decide to emphasise her point by gesticulating with the gun. He consents to throwing no sort of party, and at this point our job is apparently done. I've discerned that these men are probably squatters, and that there are probably a lot more of them, considering the side of the house, perhaps enough to have a whole party.

A montage, images flashing by with great speed, of hundreds of squatters inhabiting a skyscraper, some without shirts, most balding, some skinny, some overweight. The exterior of the skyscraper reveals that it is in some city where it snows significantly, and I somehow know that it is Bemidji, even though there are presently no skyscrapers there.

We are outside the house now, about to leave, when many more squatters begin showing up. They have similarly strange appearances to the men inside, although some seem to be in costume. Two of them begin to approach my retreating mother and myself. One of the encroaching squatters is painted green, and his face has highly unconvincing zombie makeup. A strange appearance for a squatter. I don't recall what the other looked like. The faux-zombie approaches quicker, eventually getting close enough to touch me, and raises his hands. At nearly point-blank range, I shoot him four times, two in the torso, one in the heart and one in the head. He makes a sort of rapper-like "WHAT" hand motion, suggesting that the bullets don't phase him. However he seems to be growing weaker. Eventually he collapses into my arms. All the squatters are looking. I can't see my mother, and I am left wondering what she will think of this shooting. I'm not worried about the legal repercussions- HOMELESS SQUATTER ATTACKS MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE MALE, IS KILLED IN SELF-DEFENSE. But my mom is another story.

Cult of Personality

Last night, or more accurately early this morning, I had one of the strangest experiences of my entire life.

At approximately 1:50 AM I was brushing my teeth and also thinking about that song where the chorus goes "Cult of personalityyyyy." I didn't know whose song it was but I kind of wanted to listen to it, it had something of an interesting guitar riff, however I was just about to go to bed and didn't feel like going to the trouble of looking it up on Youtube and delaying my sleeping. So at about 1:55 I lay down on my bed, iPod in hand. I usually listen to music for a while before going to bed, it helps me go to sleep, music hath charm to soothe the savage breast. (Do I have a savage breast?) Anyhow, while scrolling through my library I noticed a band I didn't recognise, called Living Colour. I assumed it was just one of those artists I had one song by from a mixtape or something. I clicked on the unknown entry, and it revealed to me a song called Cult of Personality. At this point I was confused, maybe it was a different song or a remix or something. But I listened to it out of curiosity. Sure enough, it was that fucking song, the one I thought about while brushing my teeth. I had absolutely no recollection of when or how it got on my iPod. I am still almost certain I didn't put it there, or at least don't remember doing so. I immediately decided this needed further investigation.

The first hypothesis I formed was that I somehow had a mental connection to my iPod and could put songs on it by thinking about them. That would make no sense, but it would be cool. So I thought pretty hard about a different song I don't have on my iPod, Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen. I went to check but it wasn't there, so that hypothesis was defeated. My next idea was that God had something to do with this, putting some kind of Immaculate Song on my iPod, born without the original sin of me stealing it from the internet, because I needed to hear it so I could have a spiritual experience or some kind of conversion maybe. So I listened to it again for clues. The lyrics weren't particularly pertinent to my life or anything, they were just about how people get obsessed with celebrity, and I don't think I'm obsessed with any celebrities nor am I one myself. It wasn't even that good of a song. It's OK I guess, but 80s funk metal really isn't my kind of thing. Faith No More is better. So the God hypothesis was out too. This left but one explanation: Some kind of spectral manifestation. A ghost, a ghost with gay-ass taste in music. I decided today to check on Wikipedia to see if I could figure out anything about the band that would lead to a clue.

None of them are dead or anything. Most of them are still in bands. They are all black. The lead guitarist is from Britain, which explains why they use the British spelling of "colour." The album Cult of Personality is from was their debut album. It went double platinum. Good on them. Apparently they were discovered by Mick Jagger. None of this, however, explained the presence of their damn song on my iPod. I decided I need to take steps to contact one of the band members and see if they could tell me anything. Actually I just think it'd be fun to talk to someone kind of famous, but also ask them about this. Apparently Corey Glover, lead singer, still lives in New York. I looked in the white pages, turns out there are only two Corey Glovers in New York. Called one of them, who denied he was Corey Glover and I think I also woke him up. Oops. The other number was in Manhattan and I'm pretty sure he lives in Brooklyn. So then I looked up Vernon Reid, the guitarist, and I found his email. I sent him an email about this. He's got some explaining to do.

Valkyrie, or, The Most Evil Table Leg In History

I saw the movie Valkyrie. Going in, I admit I was skeptical, because there was a trailer for Gran Torino and I was thinking about how I'd rather be watching Gran Torino, or, Clint Eastwood's Plan To Build Himself A Fucking House Made Of Oscars. No, actually I was skeptical because it was a historical drama, and the problem with historical dramas is always that you know how they end. This was compounded by the fact that it is a spy thriller kind of movie, and those rely heavily on suspense. So I guess my main question was how this film could draw me in and keep my attention even though I knew the plan was doomed to failure. It did. How? By maintaining a fast pace and focusing on detail. This film goes really, really fast, and the pacing works. We travel all over Germany without stopping hardly anywhere for superfluous crap like character development and all that. The movie is pretty much all about Stauffenberg (Cruise), and his character is established pretty much right away: he's a rebellious officer who doesn't like Hitler very much. Good on him, that's all we really need to know. The rest of the cast is basically the same, a bunch of individuals dedicated to bringing down Hitler.

Despite that, the film managed to make me care about the plot and its main character because, well, who wouldn't want to kill Hitler. We're pretty much just as dedicated as Stauffenberg ourselves here. Good job, Bryan Singer. Anyhow, moving on, there are some nice shots in the film of the German countryside, especially all the parts dealing with the Eagle's Nest. For an evil dictator, Hitler knew a thing or two about beautful vistas. The costuming in the film is also excellent; however this has nothing to do with the film's costume staff and everything to do with Hugo Boss and his design of those marvelously theatrical uniforms he made for the Nazis. Say what you will about the whole atrocious morally repugnant genocide thing, motherfuckers had style.

The film's point is pretty simple. Singer wants to show us that there were some people in the German Army that were pretty OK fellas. This isn't terribly ambitious, but thinking about it, I can't recall a single other film that portrayed a few Nazis sympathetically, unless you want to count Stalingrad, a lighthearted little German film about the eastern front concerning 18 year old Germans being sent to crawl around in mud and vomit and their friends' guts while freezing to death and being shot at and pissing their pants and crying. Or The Producers. Anyhow, the point gets across, albeit somewhat didactically. ("We have to show the world that some of us were not like him.") Show don't tell, Bryan Singer, step your game up. The point stands, though, so I can't complain on that front. Another thing done well is the image of the briefcase being moved to the other side of the table leg as the thing that essentially causes the whole plan to fail. That damn table leg being the only thing that condemned the world to keep fighting for another year is quite the thought, and I think just the right amount of focus was placed on it. The futility of man's plans, so fragile as to be thwarted by a well-built table! In addition, Singer does a good job of carrying the film beyond that moment. The film could have ended with the bomb blowing up and then showing Hitler still standing, then cut to Stauffenberg uttering "well, fuck" and being shot. That would have been funny, but not too good as a serious film. But no, it goes on and does a lot more, showing the conspirators' (totally futile) attempts to bring their coup full circle and showing us some more of Stauffenberg's dedication and defiance. If only they could have known Hitler survived, they could have had a pizza party or something while waiting to be executed.

I have some qualms, though. At times, Stauffenberg is just a bit TOO rebellious. This is most evident in the scene in which Frohm (Tom Wilkinson) tells him he must do the German Salute, the Heil Hitler thing. So he turns around and raises his stump where his right hand should be (he lost it in North Africa at the beginning) and shouts "HEIL HITLER!" Jeez, why don't you have him shout "NO, FUCK YOU, DAD" instead? It's kind of corny. Another problem comes in the scene in which Stauffenberg's family hides from the bombing and he realizes his plan. I always hate "epiphany moments" like that in films, especially when they involve stereotypically German music and montages of record players. Also corny. Finally, I had a hard time believing that Hitler, one of the most hyper-paranoid anal retentive nutcases in history, would simply skim over one of his plans (Operation Valkyrie, the film's eponymous military operation involving consolidation of Nazi power in Berlin in the event of Hitler's death) and approve it after saying "nice wagner ref bro." He also looks like a disheveled old man, which is probably intentional.

So, in conclusion, it's a pretty good film with a couple little problems. A lot of critics have said the main problem is Tom Cruise. They call him distracting in the role. In my opinion he was very subdued and efficient in his acting, delivering most of his lines quietly and calmly, like a 1940s German army officer might have. There are a few moments when he slips into Ethan Hunt super dramatic spy mode ("We have to kill Hitler.") but it's mostly a solid performance, not Oscar-worthy but certainly fitting to the film. I don't know what they're talking about. "Oh, he's so distracting!" What are you distracted by, his tight abs or chiseled good looks, you homos? They're all gay for Tom Cruise.

This film gets seven "why is this the first result for tom cruise on google image search and what the fuck is he doing to that shirt" awards out of ten.