Since I've done most of the others... oh, hell, that came out wrong, didn't it?
But anyway, enough about me. Let's talk about Ron Paul.
Ron Paul is a libertarian. That means, apparently that he believes in "liberty" above all else. Or something. At least in theory. In practice, Ron Paul says a lot of kooky things that everyone thinks are fascinating because he seriously seems to believe that one cannot possibly deviate from one's overarching theoretical principle. even if the "logical conclusion" makes no sense.
Representative Paul - he's been in Congress for quite a while - also has the real politician's gift for making otherwise outlandish statements seem perfectly reasonable. He presents well. He has that "am I the only one who sees this?" quality that suggests that he does, indeed, see something more clearly than the rest of us. Of course... this is not actually a good test.
There's this long debate about just how much libertarians and conservatives actually have in common. For one thing, Ron Paul is no fan of defense spending or an expansive foreign policy, mostly because he's generally no fan of government of any sort. Or not much sort. Or something. It's a very long debate and people on either side of it can argue about really esoteric details for a really long time. If we're lucky, we can use this to distract them... and run away.
Libertarians are the ones who think that society is best when the individual is pretty much allowed to run free, free of rules and pesky regulations and the ever present hand of Big Brother. Conservatives don't like Social Security because it's socialism. Ron Paul doesn't like Social Security because it's the govertnment. See the important distinction?
So the thing is, there are a lot of people who fancy themselves "libertarians," and most of them really like Ron Paul. A lot. And because the Republicans can't seem to exclude any wild idea from their side's discourse, Ron Paul has built himself a pleasant libertarian fiefdom within the GOP. Republicans don't really want a lot of Ron Paul... but if Ron Paul stays calm, most of those "libertarians" will reliably vote Republican. You know... for the people who want the government to regulate people's marriages and sex lives. Because that's totally, like, liberty.
Ron Paul, by the way, doesn't have a problem with gay marriage. He has a problem with (wait for it...) marriage licenses.
Look, I try to take Ron Paul seriously - and believe me, if we'd taken Ron Paul a little more seriously, perhaps we'd have better avoided the train wreck of Senator Rand Paul, his son, every bit as out there, but not as bright - and then I go and listen to Ron Paul... and I can't do it. I just can't do it.
So... did you hear the one about Ron Paul actually winning Iowa?
I'm sure it's just, you know, a joke.
And win or lose, you've got to admit, it would be pretty funny. It's almost as if he could be President. Or something.
The Hangover is one of those films I initially resisted, despite various positive reviews. I skipped it in theaters, and only the insistence of my boss that it was that good got me to add it to my Netflix queue (where, despite suggestions of a wait, I managed to get it pretty quickly.
The only way I can explain my urge to rush out, today, and see The Hangover 2 is that I, too, was convinced after one viewing: The first Hangover was a rude, dirty, outrageous joke of a film.
The good news is that The Hangover 2 convincingly follows up on the first film's promise, every bit as rude and crude, with an even more dagerous edge. But if the premise of the first one turned you off... this one is surely not going to change your mind.
Sold as a fairly brazen filthy paean to the hedonistic misbehavior of randy bachelors, both the Hangover films are, to my mind, not quite that at all. Instead, they're actually caper films, that age old genre where solving a mildly intriguing mystery allows for the unfolding of a complex tale, usually in flashback, to explain How We Got Here and What Really Happened. In these films, the shameless, filthy hedonism is really window dressing to a much sturdier plot device: how do these idiots reconstruct a hazy night of debauchery while coming out of a drunken stupor?
By making the debauchery a series of ever more outrageous reveals (One of them got a tattoo! One of them stole a tiger! One of them married a stripper! They got into a fight with a drug kingpin!), The Hangover actually plays a game of Can You Top This, while stringing the audience along to find out what happened to one hapless victim. In the first film, it was the groom. In this one, it's the bride's brother.
Hangover 2 takes up a couple of years after the first, with the wedding of Stu, the dentist (he married the stripper in the first one, and subsequently broke several of his teeth) to a woman he met after the first failed Bachelor extravaganza (he broke up with his then fiancee at the end of the first). His new bride is Thai, and the wedding is being held at a coastal resort outside Bangkok. And the other guys are along, but there's a promise of "no bachelor party" and no repeat of the first film's antics.
That edict lasts about 20 minutes into the film, when a post rehearsal dinner "just one beer" leaves the film's orginal three protagonists in a filthy motel room in Bangkok, once again facing a bewildering array of messes and that missing brother (who happens to be a teen prodigy, top cellist, and premed at Stanford). Last time, they had a tiger in the suite; this time it's a small monkey.
Also in their Bangkok hotel room is Mr. Chow, the first film's nominal antagonist, who basically tops even the 3 main characters in shameless excess. In this film's first of many out of the blue turns, after telling them he can reconstruct the previous night's events, he takes one hit of cocaine and promptly drops dead (this, I have to say, was just about pitch perfect). Leaving the boys to both dispose of his body, and try to figure out what the heck happened.
From here the film basically takes off on a breathless chase across the crowded streets and less savory alleys of Bangkok, stopping at a tattoo parlor, a Buddhist monastery and a strip club, just to name a few. Along the way they acquire and return a Buddhist monk (to his monastery, natch), they find out the back story of the monkey, and they even return to discover that Mr. Chow is very much alive - and cold, having had his body stuck in an ice machine.
Though it's fair to argue that The Hangover films glorify a kind of ugly male behavior that deserves no celebration, I suspect the real appeal of the films is that they're in on the fact that this behavior is odious, and the lead characters aren't so much heroic as assholes the audience can't entirely dislike. In part, the film makes liberal use of torturing, abusing, and even disfiguring it's main characters (Bradley Cooper's Phil gets shot at one point, Stu gets a face tattoo much like Mike Tyson's), so that their suffering and humiliations are very much the joke.
Indeed, the film's real hero is Zach Galifianakis as Allen, the sad boyman who still lives in his parent's upscale mansion in middle age. Galifianakis is no pretty boy, and he plays Allen as an off-kilter, slightly shambling nerd boy who doesn't quite get the world of grown-ups. As a result, he ambles pleasantly through both films, causing trouble, getting hurt, but not nearly so much as the others. It's the survival of Allen, really, that both films deliver, much to the audience's relief (and if the producers have any brains left, they'll make The Hangover 3 his wedding).
Cooper's pretty-boy asshole performance made the first film, and he remains the second film's emodiment, such as he is, of the cool dude who can handle almost anything (it makes his reaction to getting shot all the more priceless). And Ed Helms does a weird, wonderful job of turning hapless Stu from victim to participant in his humiliations. And, too, Ken Jeong's Mr. Chow, which could easily be dismissed as ugly stereotyping, refuses to fit into any easy label. Justin Bartha, on hand again as the film's first groom, now brother in law to Allen, has little to do, and misses the night's fetivities.
The point, really, is that the combination of solid plotting and well realized, three dimensional characters is what separates The Hangover both 1 and 2, from other, more derivative comedies that mine the same territory. Rather than celebrate hedonism, the films remind us that "wild party nights" are, in fact, kind of sleazy, small, and sad. The film doesn't avoid the results of misbehavior, and doesn't glorify them, so much as say "if you are going to be this kind of jerk... own it." Take your medicine, face your music, live with your tattoo.
Director Todd Phillips continues to give all of this a fresh, gritty feel that revels in excess, but doesn't lose sight of the seedy, tacky edges (the first film really gets Las Vegas in all its sonagles and seediness). Bangkok, in turn, fares better than one might expect - seedy, in places, but also energized and exciting.
It would be easy to suggest that Hangover 2 is more of the same... but the point, I think, is that the first film's premise worked well enough that returning to it yields yet more payoffs. And the wide appeal of the film - the first was a mcuh bigger than expected hit, this one may well match similar expectations - is probably proof, too, that straight white men are funny when they can be seen as ignorant assholes. It's a disservice, of course, to stright men to make such a blanket pronouncement, much the way humor that still finds gay people effemtinate or fat people worthy of ridicule carry a cruel, unkind edge. The Hangover, Parts 1 and 2, are probably a sign that this joke shows no sign of growing old. And not when the results are sick, wrong, and as flat out funny as this film turns out to be.
In the contest for "America's Most Prominent Public Mess" (recent previous title holders: Whitney Houston, Lindsay Lohan, Robert Downey Jr., Tara Reid), it's clear we have a new winner: Charlie Sheen.
Sheen's problems are, as they say, "legendary", which mostly means tales of his partying ways have been with us pretty much since he arrived as a public celebrity, in his late teens. Booze! Drugs! Prostitutes! Pornstars! It's no wonder, really, that Sheen's exploits have been tabloid fodder for so long and in such detail.
It's hard to say what changed of late - though the sheer length of time is itself probably a good reason - but sometime in the past year, pick your point, the story of Charlie Sheen and his messy exploits went from comedy to tragedy... though it's taking a while for the media and the public to catch up.
Certainly, a string of arrests for drug possession and erratic behavior are part of it, as is the fact that Sheen's been enjoying a modest comeback as the star of Two and a Half Men, which benefits considerably from Sheen's droll delivery of outrageous, party hearty mindset as dialogue.
But I'm sort of less fascinated about the spectacularly public nature of Sheen's meltdown as I am with the way people are watching it, because I think the misture of humor and revulsion that's driven the story much of the way thus far is a good indication of the problems we have as a nation, socially and culturally, of dealing with addiction issues.
If that sounds terribly serious for such a frivolous story... well, there's the problem in the nutshell.
It's well past the point to face the reality that Sheen's personal problems aren't funny. Friends, family and his employers have all gone public with their concerns that he has a considerable substance abuse problem and needs treatment. His most recent collapse in Los Angeles led to revelations by one of his companions, an adult film actress, of his disturbed behavior and the large quantities of cocaine and other drugs present in his home. His TV show was put on hiatus so Sheen could get treatment. Sheen now claims to be just fine, and this past week lashed out at CBS and his show's producers, saying he was fine and ready to work.
Almost all of the preceeding paragraph has been presented as hilarious, and given to the public largely as entertainment.
I've been thinking about this topic for weeks; those who know me well can guess as to why this might resonate more with me than most stories. But what got me off the dime to finally write this down was this post from Melissa McEwan, in its entirety:
I'm not inclined to give unsolicited advice, but I'm going to make an exception just this once.
Charlie Sheen: Take a nap.
Shhhhhhhhhh. It's sleepytime now.
Charlie Sheen doesn't need "a nap." He needs treatment for a significant substance abuse problem. It's cute, and cheeky, to see his trials and travails as a public meltdown happening in front of us, for our amusement. But it's that failure to take addiction seriously - as we do most issues around mental health - that's helped make it harder for addicts to get access to treatment and for family, friends, employers and coworkers to find the support they need to help someone they care about. It's a ghastly, ghoulish aspect of American culture that so much of our need to be entertained is satiated by gawking at the antics of the intoxicated. It's not new, it's not healthy, and it's not helping Charlie Sheen. And maybe we won't figure that out until he's dead. But even if that happens, I'm pretty sure we'll just keep staring, wondering, in our sweet faux-naive way, how this could have happened. Because drug addiction leading to overdose is so unexpected... and so funny.
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