Lessons from Jersey Shore

By Samir | July 28, 2010

I’ve endeavored, on my recent staycation, to be as unproductive as possible. To that end, I’ve decided to watch the entire first (and only) season of MTV’s Jersey Shore series. The show documents the daily lives of four self-proclaimed Guidos from the Northeastern US and four counter-balacing “Guidettes”. Set in Seaside Heights, NJ, and spanning a summer of tanning, boozing, floozing and partying, it’s very promising indeed!

Much has been written about the show, its negative depiction of Italian-Americans, its glamorization of dangerous and artificial tanning practices, its frequent showcasing of physical, if not sexual promiscuity and so on and so forth. But the cartoonish, over-inflated personalities, which are in directly inverse proportion to the intellectual weight that comes with them, are still a part of the human experience. Of course, I couldn’t turn off my brain during the show, and a few interesting life lessons were there to be had, between the fights, hot tub makeouts, and trash-talking.

Believe in yourself- By far the most interesting personality on the show is Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino. Before the Shore, Situation was a 27-year-old gym manager from Staten Island, NY. His biggest achievement was a set of impressive abs. No really. I’d have to wager that there are at least 100,000 Mike Sorrentinos in the US alone. But Mike’s meagre accomplishments never stopped him from developing an uncanny self-confidence (perhaps bolstered by a little compensation for his massive insecurities, but let’s not digress). He’s given himself and his abs the nickname “The Situation”. He believes everyone should like him. From Day 1, he seizes control of the house and runs all the logistics. When the boys go out, he’s Top Gun and Pauly D and Vinny are his wingmen. He never, ever, ever, ever admits he’s wrong until it’s the last resort. And after Season 1, he’s the breakout star of the show. Why? You can achieve great things with confidence, even if the other raw materials aren’t exactly premium.

Stick to what you’re good at- As a corollary to the above - Mike’s a dumbass. He’s not bright. His career prospects are most likely minimal, beyond being a caricature of an Italian subculture on TV. What’s he got? Abs and a big mouth. Always ready to lift up his shirt and bare the washboard, he works his abs constantly and in any situation - with no shame whatsoever. He’ll walk up to girls and say “check out the situation over here” and point to his abs. One of his “rules of life” is to always put on his shirt “at the last minute”. He’s got abs and boy, does he work them. Us normal folks, we’re not so different from Mike. We’ve got maybe 1-2 aptitudes that we excel at, maybe a dozen things we can manage without burning down a house and the rest is what we pay others to do for us. If we indugle in those 1-2 things, if we find careers in fields that let us exercise that which we find excel at and find rewarding, we’re a lot closer to happiness than most people who spend their lives wandering from job to job.

Don’t be afraid to be yourself- The men of Jersey Shore are Guidos and don’t apologize for it. Not only do they not consider it an epithet, they proudly take it on as a mantle. Because Pauly D owns a tanning bed, spend 25 minutes on his hair daily, and has Italian flags on his bag and DJing equipment, he is dubbed “the ultimate Guido” by Ronnie. Don’t think these guys have heard flak from others about their chosen identity group ? Of course they have, but they’re too busy enjoying life to give a s**t! And with everyone around them it, shows - the self-confidence, self-acceptance, and all that comes with it makes them lightning rods for ladies, attention, and controversy.

Champions are made when no one is watching- About 90% of being a “Guido” is looks. Muscles, tan, clothes are all key to rock the mantle. You don’t see it often on the show, but very briefly, it is mentioned that Sam, Pauly and Ronnie spend 2 hours a day, every single morning, at the gym working out, tanning and doing laundry. They dub the practice “GTL” (Gym, tanning, laundry). Aside from one episode, we don’t see them in the gym or tanning salon - EVER. Of course we wouldn’t, it makes for boring television. But just the same, those looks didn’t come from boozing and lounging around at clubs. And though Ronnie’s “patent creep” dance move is assuredly good cardio, it surely doesn’t account for his chiseled physique. When the cameras are not rolling, Sam and Ronnie busily invest in the assets that bring them the benefits they are reaping today. If you want the glory of the spotlight, you have to work for it in the dark.

Aim high, pay the price, sacrifice, succeed- Compared to the average person’s idea, 2 hours in the gym every day is decidedly extreme. For the boys of Jersey shore, it’s basic maintenance. Long ago, they decided they wanted a certain level of results in their training and that came with a certain amount of sacrifice. Most people do not realize this, and continue to assume that, if they put out an average effort, they could possibly one day reap an above-average benefit. This is not how life works. You can’t get the megabucks career without working your ass off. You can’t get “Situation” Abs by working out 3 days a week and eating a typical North American diet. Don’t let others, and their tendency to gravitate towards a comfortable average, dictate how much effort you put forth and how high you want to aim.

In the end, nothing much really matters- Season 1 was loaded with drama of epic proportions. In 9 episodes, there were at least 4 physical altercations. Their relationship statuses changed at the quarter hour. Some cast members made out with 4 other cast members. Some punched other cast members, some fought and some pranked each other. At times, they couldn’t coexist at all, at times they had supper all together. And at the end of the summer, they all wanted to return for Season 2. The takeaway from that is that, if you have a good support group and you’re happy doing what you’re doing, don’t worry too much about the rest - it tends to sort itself out anyway.

Speaking of Season 2, it starts tomorrow. Can’t wait.

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Brawn, by Stuart McRobert (book re-cap)

By Samir | July 17, 2010

As part of my efforts to curtail spending, pay off some debts and living a cleaner, simpler, easier life, I’ve eschewed a lot of socialization in favor of spending some quiet evenings with books. It’s good, from time to time, to withdraw from a lot of society and spend time with oneself - I really think people don’t do it enough.

http://www.amazon.com/Brawn-Stuart-McRobert/dp/9963616089
Brawn, by Stuart McRobert

Bodybuilding, like anything else it seems, is a double-edge sword. At its best, it is a powerful tool in human development. It requires diligence, self-reliance, persistence, self-awareness, honesty, submission to the truth, ruthlessness (to discard methods that don’t work, regardless of how much we like them), openness (to try new methods and take calculated risks) and of course, intense discipline. These are all traits that any man would benefit from having, and a huge reason as to why I enjoy practicing it “the gym”. A man forged in the fire of the “pump” is truly a strong fellow indeed - and I’m not referring to physical strength.

Of course, with the hyper-bloated physiques of today, we’ve seen an ultimate corruption of the beauty of bodybuilding. Champion bodybuilders like Andreas Munzer die mysteriously - yet these deaths are not enough for those with a vested interest in fooling the masses to act. Companies sell steroids, chemicals, “fake food” and an entire lifestyle to the average masses, telling them beach bodies and incredible sex lives are all there for the taking - provided one take the sport to such a ridiculous, self-destructive extreme. Why? Well of course, there’s money to be made!

More to the point, Brawn is an excellent treatise by Stuart McRobert on how genetically average, non-drugged people can enjoy the sport. It doesn’t preach, or philosophize, it just gives the straight dope. To resume:

It’s a sobering look at bodybuilding and a highly recommend it, especially for the young bodybuilders who may be considering “going for it” without having weighed all of the pro’s and con’s of doing so.

As for whether or not the methods Brawn recommend work, the jury’s out. I’ll try them and get back to you.

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World Cup 2010 Thoughts

By Samir | July 11, 2010

Now that it’s over, and Spain has emerged triumphantly, I have to say I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching the 2010 World Cup. FIFA, despite its obvious luddite, technological shortcomings, have put on a great show. Of course being half-Italian, and with Italy being the team I cheer on, it was a disappointing tournament at the beginning, but as you may have seen in a previous post, I really don’t attach much importance to nationality and I was just happy to see a high-calibre game compared to what I’m used to (Montreal Impact…)

That said, I think the 2010 WC will be a seminal one in many ways. Here are things that germinated in 2010 that will be much more prevalent in Brazil 2014:

The end of negative football - The three best teams in this tournament are all the ones who avoided negative football - Germany, Spain and The Netherlands. All three played thoroughly offensive styles and did not just load 9 men in the box, only to relentlessly clear the ball to the other side’s keeper all game long. Whereas in 1994 we saw Italy play super-max defense and let Roberto Baggio carry the offensive load all on his own, defenses today are just to good for the 5-4-1 formation. It’s no coincidence that teams that rely on invididualism for offense got nowhere : to wit, Portugal with Cristiano Ronaldo, Argentina with Lio Messi, Ivory Coast with Didier Drogba; all were knocked out earlier than they’d expected. The best teams were those that played as a team, that understood no man can run faster than a pass travels. To play as a team up front, a cohesive, ball-controlling attacking strategy is needed with very versatile midfields (Fabregas, Podolski, Xavi, Arjen Robben and Mesut Oezil come to mind). Perfect. As other nations will emulate Spain, mostly, I truly hope to see much less negative football in 2014.

Curtailed diving- We still saw some truly shameful diving. Keita and Fernando Torres, in particular, manufactured red cards against their opponents which were a black mark on the entire game. However, I was delighted in many instances to see the referee implore players on the ground to play on. In some instances, he didn’t even bother stopping the play. Each time a player writhes on the ground at a most opportune moment, only to get up due to a miraculous recovery, soccer’s credibility takes a hit. In this edition of the world cup, the referees allowed players to mount legitimate challenges and no important goals were scored as a result of a manufactured foul - as Zidane’s penalty kick was against Italy back in 2006. Keep it up.

The end of the dark ages- Rule enforcement changes are coming to FIFA. Believe it. With hundreds of millions watching, Frank Lampard was deprived of a goal and who knows what might have been for England? Though we had the best officials in the world, it’s easy to make mistakes officiating a game with such fast-paced action on such an expansive field. With the world watching, FIFA got major egg on its face so many times it will have no choice but to capitulate to reality. If it wants the game to grow in America, it will have to place the emphasis on fair outcomes rather than a free-flowing game. In (North) America, we have baseball with constant stoppages and unlimited time-outs. We have football, where coaches can dictate when a play is reviewed. And we have hockey, which pioneered goal-line technology. It’s clear that the mentality on this side of the ocean is fairness first and justly so - these men sacrifice so much to win at any level! Athletes only get 2-3 shots at a World Cup in their playing lifetimes. Frank Lampard won’t be playing for England in 2014. What, oh, what might have been in 2010?

Sadly, one thing won’t be back in 2014:

The Vuvuzela- Almost everyone hated it. I loved it. I felt it gave the games such a unique, African flavor. Let’s face it - chanting is European, cheering is American and nothing is more African than unbridled chaos. I always love watching the ITV feed of Formula 1 because I can feel how much more the British announcer is absorbed by the race. I can’t watch hockey on FOX because they’ll talk about anything but actual hockey - whereas on CBC, they don’t talk about anything else BUT hockey. It’s small touches that we’ll remember and a few years from now, we’ll still be remembering the much-maligned Vuvuzela. Well, at least I’ll remember it fondly, it was nice to have something “different” from the Ole Ole-style stuff this time around.

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Appreciating Canada for what it is

By Samir | July 1, 2010

My last post outlined my view on nationalism, and how much I think it should be kept to a healthy level. Expanding on that, here’s how I celebrate being Canadian. I try to avoid being too extreme about it, but I feel very lucky to have been born in this country. My parents came here from Pakistan and Italy, and Canada afforded them the freedom to make a better life for themselves. Canada is a secular state, which allowed my father to be Muslim, my mother to be Roman Catholic and me to be completely unreligious either way. They both got inexpensive education that allowed them to multiply their earnings potential and live comfortably (at least compared to how my father lived in Karachi and how my mom lived in post-war Italy). And I, with no real “old boys’ network” have started building a career that is (mostly) based on merit, not race or social class. Furthermore, growing up in Quebec, I became fluent in both English and French. Finally, I don’t need to own a gun to feel safe and I don’t need to pay untold Euros to buy fuel for my car. There aren’t many places in the world where all of the above could happen.

Canada’s a great country, we often forget to appreciate it because its advantages aren’t glamorous or exciting. But if we ever lost this country, we’d miss it dearly. Happy Canada Day.

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Nationalism - Just another extremism

By Samir | June 24, 2010

“Il n y aucun lien entre le sang et la terre.”
-Jean Chrétien

The above is one of my favourite quotes from, easily, my favourite Canadian political figure of all time. As both La Fête Nationale du Québec and Canada Day are upon us, I just thought I’d throw it out there again. Chrétien was one of the most fervent defenders of Canada. Even before his instrumental role in the 1982 repatriation of the constitution, and his last-minute heroics in the 1995 referendum, JC was always there for his country. Yet in the wake of 1995’s near-debacle, he found the time to utter a deceptively simple phrase, but with a more profound meaning than meets the eye.

People took it very often to mean that French-Canadians didn’t have some sort of entitlement to the lands of Québec, that before the French-Canadians, the land belonged to the Amerinidians, and that one day, maybe someone else would own the land. To be honest, that’s probably how JC meant it.

But looking on it more deeply, one must realize that it’s not to land that we shouldn’t be attached, it’s to national identity in general. Today, no one pines for the lost cultures of the Sumatrans, or, say, the Phoenicians. Their culture slowly became interwoven with others, which became interwoven again and again until only remnants of those cultures exist today, as threads in the fabrics of today’s modern cultures. The slow evolution is generally unstoppable, it’s just the nature of humanity.

Already, both Quebecois and Canadian cultures are increasingly meshed with American culture, European culture (oddly, where both originated centuries ago). As the world becomes a smaller place, it’s arrogant to expect that these things we hold so dear today will continue to exist as we know them forever.

So rather than define identity with nationalism, it’s always better to enjoy nationalism for what it is - a transient set of values, riches, foods, customs and axioms. It’s always dangerous to be too attached, lest we become extremist. Once Canada’s most ardent defender, even JC knew it (even if he didn’t want to admit it).

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Book Review: The Game by Neil Strauss

By Samir | June 11, 2010

December 4, 2007 - I still remember the date. Having just received the results of the CA exam, and finding out I had passed, I was partying it up with my mentor at a downtown Montreal pub. Passing the exam was huge; it had been a long-time “to-do” of mine, en route to becoming a bona fide chartered accountant.

Except - now that it was off the list, a huge goal vacuum was created. I’d studied for the CA, either in university or through work terms, on or off, since 2001. It had shaped most of my major decisions: the decision to work at an accounting firm, the decision to go to Concordia University, the decision to buy a blue suit instead of a black one, and so on.

I’d mentioned it to my CA mentor, this whole lack of a goal thing, and he gave me words that would eventually change my life : “Go find this book called The Game by Neil Strauss, read it and apply it.” Indeed, the next life lessons I were to learn had nothing to do with ledgers, debits or credits.

I went home and ordered the book at 4 AM that night, and waited impatiently for it to arrive. I’d heard of Strauss, also known as Style back in 2003 when a few of my friends had chanced upon a bunch of websites dedicated to the fast seduction of women. Style was one of the pillars of the community, regularly providing Jedi mind-tricks to subconsciously trigger the urge to mate in females. Of course, I also weighed 250 pounds and had only seriously dated one woman in my entire life. I never bothered to dig deeper.

Fast-forward to that fateful December night, in 2007. I’d lost 45 pounds in the gym. I’d gotten a reputable professional designation (CA). I was a young professional with - I like to think - decent wit and some charm. This time, I was much more receptive to the message.

When the book arrived, I tore through it in 3 days. Then, I read it again. Then I did - nothing. I was too chicken. Then, I lost another 40 pounds, and in January 2009, I read the book a third time and decided to go for it. Here is a summary of that book and what happened after I read it. As a piece of non-fiction (we presume), I won’t bother evaluating the quality of its writing or the worth of its message. It’s not a great treatise - it’s a story of how a nerdy little roadie turned himself into the world’s greatest pick-up artist written in the crassest, simplest English. Therefore, its entire value, as a book, is pedagogical: if Style’s techniques worked for me, inspired me, pushed me to a new level of confidence - then I’d call the book good.

———————–

The story of “Style” is a simple one, really. Neil Strauss was a self-described geek, a short, balding, awkward-looking roadie who’d experienced Urkel-levels of success with the ladies (I wonder if Urkel’s still pining for Laura Winslow…). As he was researching for an article, he came across the Internet seduction community. He signed up for a seduction seminar with “Mystery”, a leading pick-up artist. At the seminar, Mystery recognized Style’s incredible potential and asked him to be his protégé. The two travelled the world picking up women, refining the art of seduction, experiencing life and then crashing. Eventually, they, along with two other pick-up artists, rent a house in Los Angeles and call it “Project Hollywood”. They spend the next year or so sleeping with as many women in LA as possible. People start moving into Project Hollywood, Courtney Love shows up and spills food, some guy gets Paris Hilton’s phone number, and so on. Eventually, too many roosters cause the collapse. At the end, Style hooks up with Courtney Love’s bandmate, decides She’s The One, gives up “The Game” and life goes on. That’s the story in a gist.

But I wasn’t reading for the story - I treated the book like a textbook. I was getting back into the dating game and I needed material, techniques, direction. In the summer of 2009, I decided to approach every woman I was attracted to, and I decided to see what would happen. I didn’t want to be Style, or Mystery, or any other pick-up artists. I wanted to get out there, get my confidence up, get used to looking at a woman in the eye - and then, maybe, just maybe, I’d be ready for The One.

I approached 71 women using Style’s techniques, and managed to get 11 to a first date. It’s a ridiculously high success ratio, to be honest. I’d describe my appearance as awkward at best. I’m 5′11, with about 15 pounds extra, a round, homely face, and a goofy smile - in short, not exactly Brad Pitt. Most of the approaches were direct and in-person in the clubs on St-Laurent or the Old Port of Montreal. Some were girls Facebook suggested I add as friends… instead of doing that, I’d message them asking to meet up for coffee. A few were friend references, which made the job easier. All of them taught me something and confirmed that Style’s approach worked.

Among the more successful things Style preaches, the key principle is non-supplication. I’d noticed all kinds of outrageously hot women in Montreal, and each one had guys fawning over her - they’d have the pick of the litter! These guys were ready to do anything for these girls, in effect, communicating their inferiority and subservience. The best way to get noticed by these girls was to just be yourself. Sure you could be nice, but only if you truly wanted to - not because you thought it might get you laid. Or you could be an utter dick. The idea was to get things going on your terms, not hers. Girls notice these types of things, they translate it as a rare type of self-assurance which they correlate with value, status and in turn, desirability. When they utter “there’s something different about that guy,” but they can’t put their finger on it, this is what they’re subconsciously noticing.

Another great Style principle, which directly dovetails with non-supplication, is the idea of avoiding “one-itis”. According to the book, “one-itis” is a condition of obsession where a man becomes so enamored with a woman it causes him to be too pathetic around her to be considered mating-worthy. The best way to avoid one-itis, according to Style, is to date several women and make this known. This tactic subconsciously tells a girl you’re a high-value mate and she needs to compete for you if she wants you.

I think the idea of avoiding one-itis is sound. A guy should never wrap his world around a woman he’s merely dating (but he should never hesitate to do so for the mother of his children, it must be said). He’s gotta keep doing the things that made him awesome before he met any woman, and if he’s too available, too hot in pursuit, too desperate, it will scare a girl off. The “several women thing”, on the other hand - it was a buzzkill quite often with older girls who were aiming for something serious. I just avoided one-itis by never attributing a major importance to any girl I’d date unless she’d earn it. This idea is later taken up in the great film The Tao of Steve as well, where the main character, Dex, urges his friends to first be excellent in front of a woman, and then, to be “gone”, to retreat. The best expression in the game, that captures the idea is: “Give her the gift of missing you.”

Aside from that, there are various other tactics discussed: how to progressively initiate and escalate physical contact, how to get a kiss, how to “cock block” other males who are competing with you for the same girls, and so on. Some of the better pieces are “patterns”, i.e., rehearsed things you can use to pick-up girls, but I never bothered with those - it seemed a bit too robotic for me. I had confidence in my own infectious personality and my creativity.

In the end, I felt I’d both succeeded and failed. If my original goal had been to seduce as many women as possible and to “run up the score”, I’d call The Game’s a great book - not good, great. However, what I truly wanted was a Sweetheart, and the girls I ended up dating because of tactics and games were rarely long-term prospects. Not one of them was in my life for more than seven weeks.

Eventually, I found myself in a similar conondrum as the author. I met girl a became crazy about, and the Game just pushed her away. When I tried a few Game-type approaches, she hotly re-butted me and told me to leave her alone. When I dropped all the - ahem - games, and just put my cards on the table in front of her, she became my girlfriend. Though we’re no longer together, she was the girl I most saw myself with, once the summer ended.

Strauss talks about this too, in his book, saying that the only utility of The Game, in the end, was to give him the confidence to be himself, to drop the game itself and to use his genuine personality and honestly to score the girl of his dreams. Like all systems, The Game can become a crutch, a life limitation, for those who lean on it without bothering to walk their own. I’ll let Style summarize this paradaox as his words are more apt than anything I could think of: To win the game is to leave it.

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The Truth About Cars

By Samir | December 19, 2009

Recently, most of my focus has been to write about cars for TheTruthAboutCars.com. The subject was something I felt passionate about, and the former editor, Robert Farago, was excellent. Most of the copy I’d send would be morphed into delicious prose by his finger tips. Farago brought a contrarian, independent mind to the internet automotive universe and it stimulated many of us to pick up a keyboard and write!

On November 17, 2009, Robert left TTAC. Without its guiding light, the site has become a lot more tame and uninspiring. While I still love cars and read about them every day, I can’t say I feel the need to write about them anymore. I guess it was an instance of the medium inciting the message - without a medium, I don’t have a message.

So I’m going to return to my blog, writing about whatever I want, whenver I want. If it’s cars, so be it. If it’s dating, religion, literature, movies, concerts, trips, philosophy, politics, etc., so be it. If it’s life in general… so - be - it.

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Movie Review: Invasion U.S.A. (1985)

By Samir | June 2, 2007

invasion usa

I knew this movie was going to be a ridiculous ode to cartoony stereotypes and Reaganism as soon as I picked it out of the $4,99 bin at Blockbuster and read the back cover. It’s so pompous, it deserves to be presented as a quote:

America wasn’t ready… but he was.

Clearly, this movie was going to have to live up to its own tag line, rather than my expectations.

Starring Chuck Norris and released in 1985, the movie demonstrates quite easily why Chuck excelled in roles where he had to play the strong silent type - he can’t act. I never thought I’d say this, but after having seen this movie, I now believe Bruce Lee was the better actor in Way of The Dragon. Wow, and Bruce couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag!

Anyway, the movie starts out with Chuck, a retired “agent”. I only say “agent” because his background is never fully elaborated, but he’s being hassled to get back in the game by the FBI to stop a Russian terrorist named Rostov.

Rostov, teaming up with a drug-dealing Latino named Nico (I see Chuck isn’t the only stereotype we’ll be encountering) collects enough money to buy a small army of mercenaries. Unbeknownst to the USA, he sends his men crashing along the beaches of Florida in an invasion which aims to sow terror into the hearts of Americans. His gang is composed of the typical boogeymen of 1980s-US Conservatism: Russians, Latinos and poor black guys.

Of course, Rostov has to halt his plan because he is a great strategist. He decides his plan can not go ahead until retired agent Chuck Norris is killed. See, you might be asking yourself why the hell the plans to invade an entire country are threatened by the existence of a retired agent who keeps to himself in the Florida Everglades. Clearly you haven’t grasped the power of Chuck Norris, it’s a force that outranks Stallone, Arnold and JCVD - combined.

So Rostov hikes out to the Everglades with his men, and firebomb’s Chuck’s hermit shack. Except Chuck jumps out at the last minute, barely escaping. Rostov thinks he’s polished off Chuck, and heads back to whatever he was doing in his plan to take over USA through terrorist attacks. BAD MOVE, bra. Chuck is now pissed off, and his ego and personal need for vengeance do the trick that his patriotism doesn’t do - It brings him back into the game.

Rostov takes the time to have his men bombard and shell various scenes of whitebread American life: Malls at Christmas, quiet neighborhoods and main streets. It’s all in attempt to breed fear in American hearts, you see! In a moralistic, heavy-handed development, the Army moves in and constitutional rights are suspended. If you’re expecting a deep, profound social commentary on totalitarian states at this point, don’t hold your breath.

Chuck arranges to be arrested in his own hotel room, and arranges to have it covered on the media so Rostov can see it on T.V. While handcuffed, he taunts Rostov on the national airwaves, turning what is a fight for American freedom into what is essentially a cock-wagging contest between Rostov and himself. Are you loving this yet?

Rostov marches his entire army to Atlanta, where Chuck is being held, with the goal of killing Chuck. Yep, right in the middle of the war. The gambit is the military equivalent of the one-at-time-single-file strategy employed by foot soldiers when attacking Ninja turtles. Rostov’s men take the military base in Atlanta, only to find NO ONE INSIDE.

“It’s a trap!” Rostov yells. As they escape, they find themselves surrounded by the US Armed Forces. Ah, that devil Chuck! The Army rains bullets and artillery on Rostov’s men, creating a maelstrom of lead and blood, while Rostov flees back inside the base in desperation - only to find CHUCK NORRIS on the inside. He should have just stayed outside. His chances of surviving 400 bullets fired in his direction were astromonically better than surviving a fight with Chuck Norris in the last ten minutes of the movie.

After a game of cat and mouse, both men end up empty handed. If you’re wondering why Chuck doesn’t just walk away at this point, it’s because it would be the logical thing to do. I mean think about it. Rostov’s men are maggot food outside, the place is surrounded by Land, Sea and Air and neither he nor Rostov have any ammo. What is Rostov going to do? Run after him?

But no - the only solution left is the cock-wagger’s solution: It all must come down to hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, the fight, which is what you’re waiting for the entire movie, comes down to two kicks to the chest which pushes Rostov to the edge of a window. Out of nowhere, Norris picks up an RPG and nails Rostov in the torso, sending his charred remains out the window.

THE END.

This film is underwhelming to say the least. Chuck’s acting skills could probably fit inside a thimble, small as they are. The whole movie consists of him uzi’ing terrorists and ends in quite possibly the lamest fight I’ve ever seen in a movie starring a known martial artist. Even Steven Seagal tries harder. I’m not even talking 1980s, reasonably-decent-shape Seagal, either, I’m taking 2000’s I’m-just-doing-this-because-I’m-contractually-obligated 100 lbs. overweight Seagal!

So the plot makes a transcendental request for you to suspend disbelief: asking you to allow that the U.S.A. could be taken over by a force of a few hundred. For that price, you don’t even get a good Chuck Norris fight at the end, after enduring lines like “If you come back in here, I’ll hit you with so many rights you’ll beg for a left.”

What a disgrace. -138472432 out of 10.

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Book Review: The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbook

By Samir | May 12, 2007

Cover The Progress Paradox

AMAZON page

The Progress Paradox
How Life Gets better while people feel worse
Gregg Easterbook

I’ve always loved Gregg Easterbrook’s writing on ESPN.com. In fact, for a sports writer, his columns have always struck me as some of the more socially engaging ones in the sports universe. It’s rare to find sportswriters that stick their heads out and above the herd and look beyond their fenced-in farm pen of a universe - beyond yards, feet and 40 dash times.

Though a lot of readers probably hate him for using his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column as a platform to criticize the American government, I began to wonder if Easterbrook had actually authored books on subjects outside how the Bush administration lied about Iraq or how Michael Vick needs to dump 70% of his bad influence homeys in order to save his career.

It turns out he has.

The Progress Paradox is a contrarian’s book, one whose essential thesis is that the commonly accepted wisdom that “Life was better in the good old days” is simply not true. Well, it’s a contrarian’s book if you actually believed that.

Easterbrook takes a long time to make his case, but in the end, it is made quite elegantly. He compares almost every facet of life today, to a “golden age” in the past - to point out, quite rightly, that the standard of living on modern society is increasing and has been increasing for the last 100 years.

Obviously, such a book can not help but be tangential to politics, and Easterbrook isn’t shy to express his viewpoints. His positions generally fall between classical liberalism and social democracy - for example, he argues that there is nothing wrong with being insanely rich, but that it is deeply sad that there are insanely rich people in the same country where millions can’t afford to eat. For those who don’t have an appetite for such preachiness, take heart, it’s not very overbearing and it is never really the focus of entire chapters.

For those of you who’ve noticed that seeing a BMW, once a rare event, has become blasé, or that all your friends can afford huge houses, a lot of what Easterbrook says will wring true. His most powerful argument is probably that if one could choose to be born in any century, but could not choose social class or caste, they would choose to be born today. That’s because in the “good old days”, the chance of being poor was much higher - whether as a serf, slave, servant or blue collar worker.

The second part of his thesis, though, addresses why people are feeling worse once he demonstrates them feeling better. Here, there aren’t many hard facts or economic indicators to build a case on, so obviously, he has to fall back on inexact evidence: Clinical studies, psychology studies and anecdotes. This area of the book is not as strong, nor could it be, however it is still an interesting viewpoint. Easterbrook’s discussion of prosperity anxiety, complication of life and over-medicated kids are insightful.

The book is good read over-all, but it does belabor its point at times. Easterbrook is fond of using forty examples to illustrate a point when perhaps one or two will do. It leaves one sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop well past the half-way point. Though it will try your patience at times, it is worth reading if only for its devil’s advocate point and Easterbrook’s great writing style.

Topics: Books / Livres | No Comments »

The devil’s odometer

By Samir | July 2, 2006

Odometer at 66666

Topics: Cars | No Comments »

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