GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #2: WHAT WOULD BRUCE WILLIS DO?

When I'm not drinking, I'm an insomniac. This means that I'm usually up until about two in the morning, even if I go to bed at midnight. The only thing that helps me finally give in to the sandman is when I make up stories in my head. Not as a professional writer, mind you. I'm talking about fantasies. One of the big ones is the simple what-if question, and the one I keep going back to is this: what if terrorists took over my workplace? How would I respond? Sometimes, I imagine myself in the role of John McClane, dealing all sorts of psychotically violent deaths to scumbags, and others I feel like a reasonable liaison between the bad guys and the hostages, always trying to negotiate for freedom, or at least more comfort in a very uncomfortable position. But I'm sure you can guess that for the most part, the big question on my mind is, "What would Bruce Willis do?" I can't explain why I always come back to this fantasy, but it goes back a loooooong time. When I was in junior high, I wrote a story in which a group of terrorists take over a school (which closely resembles mine), and a group of kids (led by someone who reminds me a great deal of myself) is the only hope to beat the bad guys. I came up with all kinds of crazy shit, like traps we set up using things we found in the chemistry lab. Bombs we created using the gas ovens in the home economics room. And compass points make for excellent stabbing weapons.

I'd blame it all on the Sean Astin film, TOY SOLDIERS, but I'd already acquired this fantasy by the time I first saw it. It only served to reinforce what I already had in my head. Still haven't started drinking Scope to get fucked up, though, so it's not a complete loss . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1: WRITING AND CUMMING

When it comes to physically growing up, I've always been ahead of the curve. I can't remember a time when I couldn't get an erection, and I clearly recall having orgasms at a very young age. I'm talking third grade, or thereabouts. Nothing came out, obviously, but the sensation is identical to the one I get now. One of my earliest writing memories, however, is when I was eight years old. It was late at night, so I was not supposed to be awake. I was in the living room, using my mother's piano bench as a writing table, and I was scribbling away at an Osco tablet of paper by night light. The story? It was a mystery, one of my Hardy Boys rip-offs that I called the Detective Boys. I even remember the scene, clear as day: the Detective Boys were beating the shit out of the school bully. Nothing sexual at all. I had an erection while writing it, which was a common thing at the time, but this is the one and only time I've ever had an orgasm while writing. I didn't even touch my dick. It just happened. Much later in life, I talked with a friend (who will remain nameless) whose passion was playing guitar. One day, he confessed to me that he'd made himself cum while making music. He didn't even touch himself, it just happened. I didn't have the balls to confess my own incident, but of late, it has made me wonder if this doesn't happen more often than one thinks. I know a lot of creative types, across all artistic forms, and I have to ask: has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had an unbidden orgasm while working at your art of choice?

SAME RULES APPLY: My thoughts on FILTH

I’ve been a fan of Irvine Welsh’s work for a while. My favorite of his books was GLUE . . . until I found FILTH. This book didn’t just blow my mind, it raped it and left it full of its vile cum. To those of you who have read this book, you’ll know what I mean when I was disappointed to learn that it was going to be turned into a movie. It’s next to impossible to adapt the book. A good portion of it is narrated by the protagonist’s tapeworm, for fuck’s sake. I was even more disappointed when I learned that James McAvoy was going to be Bruce Robertson. I like McAvoy, but I didn’t think he could pull something like this off.

But you know . . . the idea of FILTH being a movie somewhere out there kind of appealed to me. The more I thought about it, the more I had to see it. I had to see if they could even come close to the book. Because the main character is an absolute cunt. Maybe “cunt” is too kind a word for him.

Not surprisingly, there was no big screen release in the US. It’s purely a Scottish movie. With a protagonist like Bruce? It would not have done well here. But I’m very thankful that Irvine Welsh took it to the big screen at the Music Box in Chicago on June 20, 2014. You bet your ass I was there.

AND I LOVED THE MOVIE.

I was completely wrong about McAvoy. He put in the performance of his life. No one else could have done it.

To those who don’t know, Bruce Robertson is a cop who has a hard-on for a promotion in his department. There are rivals for the position, and he does his absolute best to torpedo them. He sets them up for disaster after disaster, and he manipulates them against one another, all in his attempt to move up in his career.

And why does he want to be a cop? A “friend,” Bladesy, asks him this very question. He answers “police oppression.” “You wanted to stamp it out from the inside?” his friend asks. “No, I wanted to be a part of it.”

Oh yes, and Bruce is making harassing phone calls to Bladesy’s wife, just so he can pretend to investigate it, all in the name of successfully having phone sex with her by tricking her into playing along with the perpetrator.

There is no level of depravity Bruce won’t fall to. He’s also fucking the wife of one of his rivals on the force, and he pretends to be the shoulder to cry on when the guy says he thinks the ol’ bird is cheating on him. Not to mention the underage girl he finds with an older boy. She’s the daughter of an important man, and he promises not to tell her father . . . if she sucks his dick.

Bruce fills his body with booze and drugs, and he exercises his every sexual whim, including masturbating at work. He hates everyone and sabotages them all. Look up “misanthrope” in the dictionary, and you’ll find a picture of him.

Except . . . he’s not all that bad. If he were, FILTH would be unwatchable. No one wants to watch some asshole shit all over everyone for an hour and a half. Like any fascinating, complex characters, he has reasons for being the way he is. In one pivotal scene, he tells a rival that he was once a good man. She tells him she’d heard that. And then, of course, he has to completely alienate her to drive away any moment of slight kindness.

There is the incident involving his brother in his youth. And then there is his family. Oh, his poor family. Those who read the book know what I’m getting at.

McAvoy understands the character down to his core. He becomes Bruce Robertson, not just the lunatic bastard, but also the broken man, the man who believes he is such utter filth that he needs to make sure the rest of the world understands this and never gives him a break. It’s very easy to think of the end of Robert Browning’s poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came” when thinking of Bruce: “the last of me, a living frame/for one more picture!”

FILTH is a funny movie. Incredibly funny, even in moments where some people would be shocked. For example, earlier in the movie, a kid with a balloon gives Bruce the finger for no reason. So Bruce takes the balloon from the kid’s hand and lets it float away in the wind. Then, to cement the incident, he gives the kid the finger with both hands. No one would ever condone such behavior, but it’s fucking funny.

Another example: Bruce sets up a dick measuring contest at the workplace holiday party. All the guys go to the copier, scan it, and put it up on the board. The ladies then have to match the dick to the dude. When it’s Bruce’s turn, he hits the ENLARGE button over and over again, just so he can trick the office slut into letting him fuck her, which she does. She begs for his monster cock, and when he puts it in, there is a massively disappointed look on her face. Again, it’s a horrifying scene . . . yet incredibly funny.

But FILTH is also an incredibly sad movie. Bruce is deeply damaged, and he can’t help but take it out on the world. Bladesy, who confesses to Bruce that Bruce is his best friend, gets it the worst. They go on vacation together, and Bruce torments him the whole time. He drugs his drinks and sets him loose on the town, but when Bladesy’s trip turns bad, Bruce abandons him to save his own trip from going bad. In another scene, Bladesy gives him a Christmas gift of top-shelf Scotch. Bruce pretends that he’s going to share it; he pours himself a glass, and then in Bladesy’s glass, he pours some of the cheap shit he keeps around. In yet another scene, unprovoked, Bruce steals Bladesy’s glasses and breaks them before throwing them into the river.

It’s hard to empathize with Bruce. But somehow this movie pulls it off. By the end, you will feel very bad for Bruce. While he is indeed a misanthrope, he is also a walking tragedy. He is an unbalanced man, and he knows it. And he knows he can never be cured.

Those who have read the book will probably wonder how well director and co-screenwriter (with Welsh) Jon S. Baird handled certain integral parts of the book. In regards to the twist: Baird did wonderfully. He came up with an interesting cinematic way of taking care of it.

The tapeworm? Honestly, I liked the tapeworm in the book better. Baird went in another direction, but I respect what he did. I wouldn’t have been satisfied with anything anyone tried, but this was the best anyone could have done. The movie is sometimes interrupted by scenes with Bruce visiting a mad psychiatrist played by Jim Broadbent. There are paintings of tapeworms on his office walls, in case you didn’t figure out that he was supposed to represent the tapeworm. Broadbent goes over the top with his performance. One look in his eyes, and you’ll be convinced you’re in the presence of a psychotic.

The ending? It’s basically the same. The last line of the film makes it slightly different, but I don’t have a problem with it.

I can’t recommend this movie enough. I think it’s edged its way into my top ten favorites. When it comes out on DVD, I’ll be among the first to buy it. For those who can’t wait, you can rent it on Amazon for $6.99. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t advise anyone to pay that much for something you’re not going to own, but in this case, I would say it’s worth the money.

If you’re really lucky, though, the Music Box will have another screening. Don’t count on it, though.

ADVENTURES IN THE SEX SHOP (REDUX)

I recently re-posted an old video of me on Facebook in which I sing Elvis Presley’s “I Want You, I Need You, I Love You” at a karaoke show while dancing with a blow-up doll, who I named Mercedes. It brought back memories, and I suddenly recalled that I’d written a blog about me purchasing Mercedes from the local sex shop. I thought it might be worth revisiting the blog, which is so old it originally appeared on MySpace. (www.myspace.com/tabardinn, if you care, but be warned, I’m almost never there.)

I edited it down a bit because there was a lot of stuff in there that wasn’t important to the main story, stuff about work that no one will give a fuck about. I first posted this thing on the morning before I went on stage with Mercedes, so I also cut out my invitation for people to come out to the bar and witness this train wreck in person. I left the rest of it alone, even though I wanted to tinker with it a little.

Without further ado, here’s “Adventures in the Sex Shop,” originally posted on April 23, 2009:

The atmosphere inside a sex shop is always a bit strange. There are all these toys and novelties and such hanging off the walls, and none of the customers can look each other in the eye. They ignore each other as much as possible. They fondle the wares in absolute silence. They furtively crouch to see items on the bottom shelves.

Some of these toys are so large you can’t possibly imagine using them on someone, unless you planned to beat that person to death with them. But clearly there are women who can accommodate these enormous objects, as a nearby magazine demonstrates.

One patron accidentally brushed up against another, and they froze like scarecrows. Neither met the other’s eyes. Everything went silent for a moment, and their mouths worked as if they wanted to say something. But they didn’t. They turned away from each other, not a word spoken, and continued perusing the shop, intent on seeking out their respective pleasures.

I found an entire bookshelf dedicated to blow-up dolls of all kinds. All of them were female except for a lonely John Holmes model. Much to my surprise, almost all were small enough to fit in a box roughly the size of a VHS tape. Could these things be really full-sized? I needed a doll that was at least five feet tall, as I intended to dance with it.

I looked all over one package, but I couldn’t find out how tall this thing was. I went from box to box, and none of them said anything more than how the doll was shaped. Many of them were made for doggie style. Some had pictures of porn stars on their faces. But no practical information, aside from which holes were available.

And then, near my feet I noticed a few packages that DID say how big the dolls were: three feet. At first I thought it was pretty funny. Who would buy something like that except for people who wanted to bone midgets? But then I thought about who else might want to buy small blow-up dolls: pedophiles. My stomach turned. Well, I thought, if they have to fuck something, why not a fake kid? That would be so much more acceptable than actually fucking real live kids. Maybe there was a social use for mini-blow-up dolls, after all.

I grabbed an Asian blow-up doll, mostly because she was advertised as not being bent over for doggie style. I needed the doll to stand up, so I could dance with her. I brought the box up to the counter and asked the cashier, “How big is this thing?”

She was very polite, as someone who works in a sex shop must be. She offered to open the box for me and show me how much material was in there. With two quick slits made by a box cutter, she pulled out the doll and showed me that they could actually fit a lot of doll into such a small box.

I told her I’d think about it. She sealed the box again, and I went back to browse some more. This time, I found a pregnant blow-up doll, which was really creepy. Distantly, I wondered if there was another doll inside her belly. And then I saw the alien blow-up doll, which was purple and had three tits.

Yeah . . .

And then I saw a bigger box hiding behind the John Holmes doll. Ah! This one actually stood up to full height! She had huge tits and even clothes! I knew I had my winner, but I wanted to look inside, just to make sure.

The cashier opened the box for me and showed me the flattened doll’s body. “Aw, look!” she said. “She’s got hair! You can do her hair, if you want.”

Darkly, I said, “It’s not her hair I plan to do.”

She laughed. “I think you make a great couple.” And she rang me up. While I was waiting for my receipt, I noticed a warning on the bottom of the box: PLEASE PRACTICE SAFE SEX. DO NOT SHARE YOUR LOVE DOLL WITH ANYONE ELSE.

Could an STD really survive inside a sex doll in much the same way as it does in a person? And besides that, who the fuck shares their blow-up doll with someone else? If such people do exist, would they resort to wearing a condom while swapping dolls?

I got in my car and started driving home. It was only then, as I found myself easing into traffic, that I wondered what would happen if I got into a car accident. The paramedics who would pull me from the wreck would not understand the presence of a blow-up doll at the scene. If I died, my grandparents would have to go to the morgue to collect my belongings, and they would find my blow-up doll. As they put my corpse in the ground, they would wonder what kind of pervert they had for a grandson.

I obeyed the speed limit and came to a stop behind the white line at red lights.

When I got home, I thought I’d inflate my doll to take her on a test drive. NO! Not like that. You people have a lot of growing up to do. I just wanted to make sure I could dance with her and pull a few moves while still holding a microphone.

A few things took me by surprise.

I never expected blow-up dolls to lack fingers and toes. It looked like she was wearing mittens and booties.

I never expected blow-up dolls to have a cherry. Not just one, but two. Both the vagina and the anus each had a cherry one could pop. Some of you are drooling and saying, “You bet.” The rest of us are saying, “That’s fucked up, when you think about it.”

I never expected blow-up dolls to have hair. This one’s was like a Barbie doll’s, except it was only attached to her forehead. The rest of her pate was bald. I was tempted to shave the rest of it off.

I never expected blow-up dolls to be so . . . tight. No, I didn’t test it with my dick; I used my fingers. I popped the doll’s front cherry with my fingers and then tried to push them all the way in. I could only fit the first two digits of my index and middle fingers in, and that was at a vertical angle. Horizontally, I could only do one finger. The same held true for her mouth. [EDIT: For the record, when Mercedes popped a few weeks later, her back cherry was still intact, so I never tested her back door.]

There’s no way I could have fit my dick in this thing. Only a micro-penis could get in this doll. Now clearly these things are popular. They’ve been sold for who knows how long? But can there be that many dudes with micro-penises out there? And even then, those guys would have to make their peace with the slightly sharp edges of the vagina. I don’t see that happening.

Anyway, I learned that she would most definitely do for the onstage performance I had in mind. Time to deflate her. I pulled the tab in her back, and air came hissing out, but not fast enough. I pressed her against the floor in an attempt to speed this up, and when that wasn’t as helpful as I was hoping, I pushed her face down into the carpet with all my weight and folded her legs behind her head. As her air blew into my face, I suddenly felt ashamed, as if I was assaulting a woman for real. It reminded me of a story I’d written in college about a guy with a wife-beating habit who went to a shrink for help. He was then instructed to start beating pillows instead. It worked at first, but he got tired of it. The pillows weren’t good enough anymore. He went out and bought a bunch of blow-up dolls, which he then proceeded to beat mercilessly. I never got the chance to market it, though, because shortly after, I read Hunter S. Thompson’s SCREWJACK, which features a character with a similar background.

I shook these horrible thoughts from my head as I bunched her body up into a ball and stuffed her back in her box. I hid her in my closet, where she will wait until my performance tonight.

[At this point, I invited everyone to come out and watch me serenade a blow-up doll. I should make note that, as evidenced by the video, the crowd loved it. However, it turned out that management at that bar was not pleased with me. Instead of talking to me about it, they bitched out and talked to my friend, who ran the karaoke show. I had to play nice from then on out. A few other stunts I pulled: changing Weird Al’s “My Bologna” to “My Salami” and pretending to go down on myself onstage, dressing up like Dean Stockwell in BLUE VELVET and singing “In Dreams” to a cardboard standup of Freddy Krueger, and singing Denis Leary’s “Asshole” in an attempt to win a $1,000 contest. I also did Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-Ling” with a pair of bells hanging from my belt. I was originally going to wear a dildo for this performance, but I heard back about the Mercedes incident, and I toned it down so my friend wouldn’t lose his gig.

It’s a good thing I did. That night, I was picked up for DUI after leaving that bar. Explaining a dildo to the arresting officer would have been next to impossible. If he’d busted me a week before that, I would have had to explain Mercedes to him, because she was sitting up in my backseat like a person, wearing a seatbelt and everything.

For those interested, you can find my DUI Diary on this very site. Start here.]

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #29: SMOKING BOOZE

As many of you are aware, I almost died a few months ago when my pancreas stopped working. I was told by the ER doctors that I could never drink again. I learned from my regular doctor that I technically could drink, but since I drink to get drunk, I shouldn’t. I heard the same thing from a friend of mine who is in med school. Essentially, I can have a couple of drinks every once in a while, but that’s it.

Where’s the fucking fun in that? No one drinks because they like the taste. It relaxes them. Gives them a buzz. Gets them fucked up, if they need to be fucked up. You mean to tell me I can never experience that again?

And then I remembered something my father had taught me to do on one of my visits to Nevada. I’d tried it when I was with him, but I’d been drinking at the time, so I couldn’t really gauge its effect on me. I had to do some research first, though.

What had my father taught me? With just a few household objects, he taught me how to vaporize whiskey . . . SO I CAN SMOKE IT.

I checked up on a few things, and much to my glee, when you smoke whiskey, it doesn’t go through your digestive system, hence it stays away from your pancreas. Instead, it goes to your lungs, where it is instantly processed into your bloodstream and is sent to your brain, creating a buzz faster, in theory, than you could get from drinking it.

That’s the good news. There isn’t a lot of solid bad news, though. The one danger is, since you can’t gauge how much you consume in such a fashion, you’re more susceptible to alcohol poisoning, and there’s not much you can do to stop yourself from dying. When you drink, your body protects you from such poisoning by making you puke if you imbibe too much. There is no way for your body to eject alcohol if you’re smoking it.

The other danger, although it’s not really backed up by hard evidence, is that if your lungs don’t process the booze right away, it could turn back into a liquid, which would lead to a very boozy pneumonia.

I weighed the positives and the negatives and decided that it was worth the risk. As a public service, I thought I’d tell you all about it here.

How does one vaporize booze? It’s simple. You need a few things: a water bottle, a cork (or rubber stopper, but I’d recommend a cork) and a bike pump. That’s it. You put maybe about a finger of booze into the empty water bottle. Then you stick the bike pump’s needle through the cork and stick the cork tightly into the neck of the bottle. Give it three or four pumps and pull the cork out. You’ll get a loud popping sound, and you’ll see vapor instantly form in the bottle. Suck it down and hold it in. Aaaaand repeat. Every once in a while, you’ll have to replace the whiskey with another finger’s worth.

I suggest using a cork instead of a rubber stopper because if you get a solid stopper, you’re going to have a hard time getting the pump’s needle through it. It’s pretty hard to do with a cork, but the going is easier. Actually, cork is a lot tougher than it looks. The cork I got was a bit too long, so I had to cut some of the bottom off. It was a tough motherfucker to get through, and putting the needle through from top to bottom was a hell of a chore.

Anyway, I pumped it up and sucked down a cloud of whiskey. The first thing I noticed was that I could actually taste the whiskey in the back of my throat. And instead of feeling a burn in my guts, I felt it in my lungs. Best of all, when I exhaled, I couldn’t detect a boozy odor on my breath.

I spent an evening doing this maybe two months ago, and I did get a slight buzz. However, much later in the night when I stood up, I did not feel anything more than that. I walked a straight line, and I touched my nose with my eyes closed, no problem. I wasn’t nearly as drunk as I should have been.

It was a very disappointing experience. It’s a shame because there’s a pretty cool ritual that goes with it. Ritual is always fun when it comes to intoxication, whether you’re chopping out a line, cooking a spoon or preparing a glass of absinthe. But in this case, it’s a lot of effort for almost no reward.

Even worse, if you drink the booze that is left over after you pump all the alcohol out of it, it tastes like shit. It’s kind of like drinking a Coke that has been opened for a few days. Flat. And it leaves a bad aftertaste.

But! There is one interesting catch. Just to test things out, I had one drink—equal to about a shot—after I stopped vaporizing whiskey. It hit me so hard that I almost passed out. I felt sleepier than I ever have in my life. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t had anything to drink in a month. Or not. Who knows? But I’ll say one thing for sure: it was the best night of sleep I’d gotten since the week before I went into the hospital.

So is this my new way of getting drunk? No, sad to say. Like I said, it’s waaaaaaay too much effort for the effect. I’d have to spend the night pumping away for something like three hours or so and then drink one shot. No thanks. It’s not worth it. Besides, I like the ritual of drinking too much to ever be satisfied with smoking it. There’s just something about the feel of a tumbler in your hand, sitting in a bar with friends, feeling yourself on the cusp of something that could turn out to be a fucked-up adventure. Or it could be a night of laughing with friends. Or you could get laid. The sky’s the fucking limit.

It’s too bad. I’m going to miss that life. I had a lot of fun, and as a friend of mine recently said to me, that’s a good thing, because I paid dearly for it.

Hey. There’s always heroin, right?

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #28: TRIGGER WARNINGS ON BOOKS IN THE CLASSROOM

I was going to sit down and write a bunch of stuff about the controversial topic of trigger warnings on books in the classroom, but then I remembered that I'm not a student, and I don't have kids, and schools are highly unlikely to ever teach a book by me (unless a teacher figures out a way to make a space giant fucking the sun with a monster cock relevant to students), so this doesn't have any effect on me. I will continue to lead my life as I always have. Ultimately, I have no say in this, so I'll shut up. The rest of you: discuss.

EVERYONE'S GOT ONE #27: NOAH IS A GREAT FUCKING MOVIE

Let’s start this out by saying that I love Darren Aronofsky’s work, ever since I first saw REQUIEM FOR A DREAM way back in the day. He’s got a great sense of story, but even more so, he’s got a great eye for aesthetics, and that’s what primarily drives his films, in particular THE FOUNTAIN.

When I first heard about NOAH, I felt kind of turned off. First of all, it’s a silly Bible story. I love Bible stories, generally speaking. They’re fun. They’re gory. They’re sexy. But the story of Noah’s ark is pretty silly and uninteresting. To make matters worse, it looked like they were going for a gritty retelling, more GLADIATOR than Bible story. Fittingly, they got Russell Crowe to star in it as the title character. Again, I love Crowe’s work, ever since I saw him in THE QUICK AND THE DEAD. He’s better than people give him credit for. But as Noah? It sounded like they wanted to take a silly Bible story and turn it into an action flick.

But then I heard that Aronofsky was going to be at the helm. I have a lot of faith in his work, and I knew he wouldn’t disappoint.

Sure enough, he didn’t. I loved the shit out of NOAH. As much as I love Bible stories, they’re terribly written. This is probably due to the limitations of writing back then. Moses, who is traditionally considered as the author of the Torah, which is where Noah’s story appears in the Bible, had a lot to go over and probably didn’t have a lot of material to write with. As a result, he probably had to keep things short, especially since the laws are more important than the stories. So, in essence, I believe we need fleshed out versions of Bible stories written by experienced authors. NOAH is a great step in this direction. However, Aronofsky managed to piss a lot of people off with this movie. Why?

Let’s take a look at what’s in the Bible. Noah, who is the son of Lamech, who in turn is the son of Methuselah, is a 600-year-old man with a wife and three sons, Shem, Ham and Lapheth. In those days, the Nephilim still walked the earth, and they had a habit of fucking human women, who would then give birth to great men. God became sick with the wickedness of man’s ways, so He decided to kill everything. It should be noted that there is nothing in the Bible about Him deciding to start all over again at this point.

Everyone on the planet was evil, but Noah stuck out as being a good guy, so God decided to spare him and his family. In that moment, He also decided to start over by having Noah build an ark that would contain two of every animal so they can repopulate the world. As a reward for this, God gives Noah and his family (which includes the wives of his sons, as well; so the grand total of people on board is eight) permission to get on the ark and survive with the rest of the animals. Keep in mind, the Bible is very clear on this point: God directly speaks to Noah.

Noah builds this ark to God’s exact specifications (and they are VERY specific) just before the rain begins. Everyone gets on board, and it rains for 40 days and 40 nights. Everything not on board the ark dies. Noah then starts looking for dry land by sending birds out to find it. A dove brings back an olive branch on the third try, and before long, in a very WATERWORLD-type moment, Noah finds dry land. Everyone gets out of the ark. Noah builds an altar to the Lord and starts making sacrifices with clean animals (so, uh, not all the beasts got to renew their species). God loves the smell of these burnt offerings, so He promises Noah that He will never again sentence everyone to death. He chooses a rainbow as the symbol of His covenant with humanity.

Noah becomes a farmer, which is not very important to the story. He also becomes a vintner, which is waaaaaay more important to the story. Noah, it turns out, loved the grape so much that he became the first winemaker by building a vineyard. He was one of the first great drunks in history, and when he drank, he liked to party naked. One day, Ham discovers his father naked and passed out. He’s kind of disappointed in the old man, and he asks his brothers to cover Noah up. When Noah wakes up, he’s furious to find that someone was offended by his nudity enough to cover it up. In one of the biggest overreactions in Biblical history, Noah condemns Ham—the guy who thought to cover up his father’s dick, not the two sons who actually covered it up—and his descendants to a lifetime of slavery. This is the Bible passage that everyone points to when they’re defending slavery in America before the Civil War. It’s generally thought that Ham was black, and that his descendants were Africans. (One of his sons was Egypt, and Egypt is in Africa, so . . .)

Anyway, Noah lives to be 950 years old, and then he dies.

See what I mean? It’s a silly story. It makes very little sense, and there is no mystery to it. It’s very straightforward, even in its goofiest moments. Aronofsky would have to go to great lengths in order to make a great story out of this. And he does. Here’s how he does it.

Take Lamech and Methulselah. There is nothing in the Bible about these guys except their names and their ages. This gives Aronofsky room to play. Lamech, who is also played by Crowe, teaches a young Noah the importance of farming, and he makes it very clear that animals are not to be eaten. Noah and his family are vegetarians, even though in the Bible, God clearly tells Noah that it’s OK to eat animals, that that’s what they’re there for. Interesting development.

It should also be noted that Lamech blesses his son with a snakeskin which presumably came from the devil in the Garden of Eden, since Aronofsky shows such a snake shedding its skin several times in the story. The skin is clearly magical, as it glows when it blesses Noah.

If you’re thrown off by such magic, hold on to your britches. There’s more to come.

Remember that throwaway mention of the Nephilim? They don’t figure much into the Bible story, but in the movie, they’re fallen angels. They spoke up in favor of humanity to God, and they were punished by being kicked out of heaven. They suffered on earth, their golden, fiery bodies becoming lumbering stone monstrosities. Now that they suffer for their choice, they hate human beings and want to kill them. Early in the film, they corner Noah and his family (which consists of his wife and three sons—no wives for them—and the injured little girl that they’ve taken in, who is not mentioned in the Bible at all), but one of them hears Noah’s story and talks the others into helping him.

Here’s another point of difference: God doesn’t speak directly to Noah. Instead, He sends visions. Noah, being just a dude, doesn’t know what any of it means, so he’s on a quest to find his grandfather, who is good at figuring out dreams. This is very important, because this is a story about faith. The problem with faith is that nothing is clear. If it was clear, there would be no reason to have faith. As a result, the message isn’t interpreted properly, which we’ll get to later.

This leads Noah to planting a seed from Eden in the middle of a desolate wasteland, thus growing a great forest, which he then culls to make an ark.

It should also be noted that Aronofsky replaces man’s wickedness with something else: industry. In his version, mankind has razed forests in favor of building giant factories, thus polluting the world and killing most natural things. Hm. Sound familiar? Could it be that Aronofsky is trying to make this silly Bible story, I don’t know, relevant to us?

With the help of the Nephilim, Noah builds his ark. The pairs of animals, birds, lizards and so on come to him, but so does the king of the realm and his warriors. This, by the way, is the guy who killed Noah’s father and now possesses the snakeskin. These guys are savages. They keep slaves, they eat human flesh, they take joy in slaughtering people. Real bad guys.

Obviously, they don’t make it. There are some complications, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. The most important difference between the Bible story and NOAH is Noah’s misinterpretation of God’s intention. Noah doesn’t understand that God wants to repopulate the world with humans, too. He’s of the opinion that God knows He fucked up with humans, and He wants to rid the world of them. Let the animals survive. They did nothing. They’re true innocents. He believes that it’s his duty to end the human race.

Wow. That’s some pretty heavy shit, right? No wonder a lot of people are so upset. Noah knows that he and his wife will be buried by his sons, and then his sons will be buried by his youngest, Lapheth. And he’ll be the last human, and no one will bury him. One problem. Remember that little girl? She’s in love with Shem, but due to her injury, she’s sterile. However, God, through Methuselah, heals her. She’s pregnant on the ark. When Noah finds out, he wants to kill her to ensure his interpretation of God’s plan is carried out.

Any ordinary guy in that situation would take it as a sign from God that he’s wrong. Not Noah. He decides that this is a test. After an argument with the family, he comes to the conclusion that he’ll let her give birth. If it’s a boy, he’ll do nothing. However, if it’s a girl, he will kill the baby.

Heh. As it turns out, the woman gives birth to twins, and they’re both girls. A lot of the climax of the story consists of Noah chasing after her and her babies, intent on slitting the little babies’ throats.

Again, you can see why this film didn’t sit well with most audiences. And you can probably see why this film sat very well with me. This isn’t a Bible story; it’s a horror movie, and it’s a pretty brutal one at that. It is essentially the struggle of one man to help the creator end His own creation. There is a great scene late in the movie when a bunch of violent scenes are juxtaposed together, matching with the first act of violence in history, the moment when Cain murders Abel. This is what Noah is fighting to destroy. It’s the ultimate scorched earth policy. That’s some scary stuff.

Most of the people who hate this movie do so because this is not the Bible story they grew up with. They expected to see a big screen version of it, and they were greatly disappointed. Ordinarily, I would tell these people to go fuck themselves. You can’t get pissed off at a work of art just because it didn’t match your very specific expectations. That’s stupid. However, there are extenuating circumstances with this one, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

I’ve called this Bible story silly many times, but I also recognize that most people don’t agree with me. That’s fine. I understand why that is: everyone who grew up with this story sees themselves as Noah. No one is ever the bad guy of their own story, and while most people recognize their own flaws, they always see themselves as good guys, usually better than most other good guys.

It’s the same thing with zombie flicks. Everyone who fantasizes about the zombie apocalypse assumes that they’re going to survive it. Everyone who identifies with Noah assumes that God would choose them to survive while the rest of humanity ends.

The Noah in NOAH is impossible to identify with. No one wants to see themselves as a guy who wants to stab babies to death. But at the same time, these are the same people who completely miss the point of this massive character flaw.

You all know that I’m atheist. I’m not going to rule out the impossibility of God, since I don’t know everything and all of the evidence isn’t in, but I’m pretty sure, at 99.99999999999%, that God doesn’t exist, which is sure enough to live my life as if He doesn’t. That puts me in the minority.

The argument could be made that God can never give us actual proof of His existence because that would negate the need for faith. I think that’s bullshit, but that’s how a lot of the world looks at it. Everyone else is OK with a creator who plays mind games like a paranoid girlfriend, and that’s fine with me, just so long as no one gets hurt over it. But since 100% of religion depends on faith, that means that God (and that’s a catch-all for whatever deity you wish, not just the Christian one) has to speak through religious documents. This leaves a lot open to interpretation.

Taking the end of Noah’s story in the Bible as an example, people thought this was God giving white people permission to enslave Africans. There are other passages which show why homosexuality is a sin. There are even passages which people used to sentence people to death for witchcraft. Every night, preachers and talking heads use their beliefs to justify all sorts of crazy bullshit.

None of these people EVER wonder if maybe, just MAYBE, their interpretations of the word of God are wrong. You have to be very careful when it comes to this kind of thing. Maybe, instead of wanting help with the end of humanity, God wants your help starting over with people. So instead of jumping the gun and running after your kid’s wife so you can knife your baby granddaughters to death, you should reconsider your interpretations.

That’s the ugly truth that most people who hated this movie can’t face. No one likes being wrong, but people are constantly wrong. Instead of letting things escalate because you’re too afraid of being wrong, you should stop acting like a madman and fix things.

I don’t fault these people entirely, though. Normally I would, but these poor bastards were tricked into seeing this movie by Paramount, or whoever promoted the movie for them. The commercials I saw for this movie were drastically edited to hide a lot of the things I’ve talked about here. I’m astounded by this scam, I really am.

For example, you know the moment in the trailer when Ray Winstone and his warriors confront Noah, and they make a great deal over how Noah’s alone and outnumbered? Noah says, “I’m not alone.” The unspoken implication is that he’s got God on his side, which speaks to the people who are familiar with the story. However, in the actual movie, Noah is not referring to God; he’s referring to the Nephilim, who are hiding as piles of rocks. When the battle begins, they fight for Noah, decimating the king’s men.

Remember the moment when Noah is underwater and surprised? That implies that it is a vision of the coming flood, which viewers understand right away. Edited out of that scene, however, are a bunch of dead bodies floating around. Those expecting the feel-good story from the Bible probably wouldn’t appreciate all of those corpses.

How about the beautiful moment when a warrior throws his sword down and ignites a field with a wave of fire? Well, in the actual movie, the army that was in the field, which also contained the giant Nephilim rock monsters that Paramount is so desperate to hide from potential viewers, and they are ALL EDITED OUT OF THE IMAGE.

There are more moments, but I think you get the idea. Paramount went to great lengths to misrepresent this film in an attempt to get a lot of the people who came out for THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST to come out for this movie. It’s a lowdown, dirty trick, and that’s why I’m excusing all the people who hated this movie for not being what they wanted it to be. I’m disgusted with the studio’s desire to use people’s religious beliefs for purposes of greed.

I don’t think Aronofsky or any of the cast and crew are responsible for this. This is definitely a studio stunt. I recommend the movie wholeheartedly because it’s a wonderful story with great actors and a solid message. But don’t believe the lies of the studio. This is not a Bible story. This is a story. Period.