Jedi Mind Trick
I wanted to alert you to a factual error in Simon Abrams’ review of The Clone Wars (“Clean Futures,” Aug. 13-19). He writes, “Apart from the new ground Ahsoka breaks as the first female Jedi,” but this is simply incorrect. There have been many female Jedi before Ahsoka, as seen in the prequel films, the previous Clone Wars cartoon series, the novels and the comics. There have been hundreds of them, in fact. With all due respect, I suggest revising this particular statement, as fans are having a good chuckle about it on a number of forums, since it shows a lack of knowledge on the writer’s part. Otherwise, a very interesting and well-written review!
—Rich Handley
McLovin In It
Although I generally find Armond White intelligent and thoughtful, his once again glaring oversight in this week’s “Mailbox” is laughable. The movie Superbad was set in neither the ’70s nor the early ’80s, and it is obviously meant to take place in a present time period, a period in which nearly all working-class kids can afford the Internet (even the earliest public networks were not available until the 1990s). The expiration date on McLovin’s fake ID very clearly states “exp: 06/23/2008.”
Armond has clearly paid little attention to the movie again after a second viewing, or perhaps he has still not watched it at all? Sometimes humor evolves, and perhaps it is just Mr. White who is becoming outdated.
—Lindsay Haeber
Smells Like Bologna
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar... [A line] from the [review] of Tropic Thunder contains an error: “Every line sparks: regarding his penis “That’s built just like bologna for some reason”; reciting The Jeffersons’ theme song…”
Downey’s character actually says, “That smelled just like bologna for some reason.” There was no reference to the size of his penis; it was just his way of adding to the believability that he had just urinated (which he had not). Not everything is a dick joke. I actually thought this was one of the funniest lines in the film. If he had actually said the line you say he did, not only would it not have been funny, but it also really doesn’t even make sense as its own sentence.
—Chuck Lynn, Burbank, CA
Right on Doc
This was a very good review (“Student Affairs,” July 30-Aug. 5) of an awful movie [American Teen]. Armond White may be in the minority (American Teen is certified fresh at 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but he is definitely right on. Keep up the good work!
—Michael Bloecher
Music Makes the People Come Together
Color me cynical, but the three things I want to suggest to Susan Crain Bakos (“Harlem: It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” July 30-Aug. 5) are to start campaigning to trash assault laws, take up a self-defense course (however banal some of those ads are) and start ditching that typical tough-turf vicinity of Harlem and tarnished St. Nick’s Pub and gravitate toward the East Village and Lucky Cheng’s Instead. I began to feel that your unfortunate encounter with “Mykul” appropriately served you a wakeup call.
Even while descending from black and white parents myself, I still can’t count the incidents of being attacked, threatened and hassled—primarily by fellow blacks but by others as well. It wasn’t surprising the police would now act as apathetic toward you as to me (unless they felt they could get me somehow). Just as evident are the three leading strands of the American Farce (speech, self-defense and sovereignty), so now the ugly trilogy of the Big Lemon (New York, Poseur Central, what else!?) makes up a wasteland amounting little more beyond the “gorgeous mosaic” of reported turf vicinities (Broad Channel, Chinatown, practically the entire Bronx and Gerritsen Beach along with Harlem), congestion-riot-engulfing Scaffoldgate for 90-story skyscrapers and what is now indeed as ass list/thug life seesaw masquerading as pop culture.
Doubtless, you happen to like jazz. I think that’s great, and no matter what kind of culture you born into, you should simply gravitate toward genres or works that compel you the most.
I lean to Goth now (for better or for worse), though I had my brush with classical in the ’90s, with frequent trips to the Lincoln Center library. Despite this, even the land of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms was soon beset by an indifferent record company (Deutsche Gramophone) far more inclined to rehashing standard repertoire and courting British pop stars than reissuing other posthumous medieval tracks by David Monroe. Let’s not forget that the Nazis brought their own thug-life premise for a time as well (not to mention their own apologists and defenders).
They say that for evil to prevail is for “good people” (an obvious oxymoron) to do nothing, and I am certain you won’t heed a single one of my aforementioned suggestions, though you are still as naïve to this world as Arthurian England, where chivalry reigns supreme. Seriously, a YouTube video shows a cop shoving a Critical Mass cyclist just days before; yet not only are you willing to romanticize Harlem but yours is an imaginary self-idealized order of “a world where men do not hit or shove men.” Last year, one such worm in a wheelchair struck me with her umbrella; scores of gasbags made her the sacred cow and me the pariah. After my arrest for retaliating, it became a legal and personal ordeal. Let me spell it out for you: Human nature will always prefer saving face over making waves, cowardly bad-ass streaks over humane goodwill. So Grandma Dorothy, get back to reality while you still can, because as sure as Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, you are definitely nowhere near Kansas anymore.
—Pierre Brown, NY
I wanted to alert you to a factual error in Simon Abrams’ review of The Clone Wars (“Clean Futures,” Aug. 13-19). He writes, “Apart from the new ground Ahsoka breaks as the first female Jedi,” but this is simply incorrect. There have been many female Jedi before Ahsoka, as seen in the prequel films, the previous Clone Wars cartoon series, the novels and the comics. There have been hundreds of them, in fact. With all due respect, I suggest revising this particular statement, as fans are having a good chuckle about it on a number of forums, since it shows a lack of knowledge on the writer’s part. Otherwise, a very interesting and well-written review!
—Rich Handley
McLovin In It
Although I generally find Armond White intelligent and thoughtful, his once again glaring oversight in this week’s “Mailbox” is laughable. The movie Superbad was set in neither the ’70s nor the early ’80s, and it is obviously meant to take place in a present time period, a period in which nearly all working-class kids can afford the Internet (even the earliest public networks were not available until the 1990s). The expiration date on McLovin’s fake ID very clearly states “exp: 06/23/2008.”
Armond has clearly paid little attention to the movie again after a second viewing, or perhaps he has still not watched it at all? Sometimes humor evolves, and perhaps it is just Mr. White who is becoming outdated.
—Lindsay Haeber
Smells Like Bologna
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar... [A line] from the [review] of Tropic Thunder contains an error: “Every line sparks: regarding his penis “That’s built just like bologna for some reason”; reciting The Jeffersons’ theme song…”
Downey’s character actually says, “That smelled just like bologna for some reason.” There was no reference to the size of his penis; it was just his way of adding to the believability that he had just urinated (which he had not). Not everything is a dick joke. I actually thought this was one of the funniest lines in the film. If he had actually said the line you say he did, not only would it not have been funny, but it also really doesn’t even make sense as its own sentence.
—Chuck Lynn, Burbank, CA
Right on Doc
This was a very good review (“Student Affairs,” July 30-Aug. 5) of an awful movie [American Teen]. Armond White may be in the minority (American Teen is certified fresh at 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), but he is definitely right on. Keep up the good work!
—Michael Bloecher
Music Makes the People Come Together
Color me cynical, but the three things I want to suggest to Susan Crain Bakos (“Harlem: It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” July 30-Aug. 5) are to start campaigning to trash assault laws, take up a self-defense course (however banal some of those ads are) and start ditching that typical tough-turf vicinity of Harlem and tarnished St. Nick’s Pub and gravitate toward the East Village and Lucky Cheng’s Instead. I began to feel that your unfortunate encounter with “Mykul” appropriately served you a wakeup call.
Even while descending from black and white parents myself, I still can’t count the incidents of being attacked, threatened and hassled—primarily by fellow blacks but by others as well. It wasn’t surprising the police would now act as apathetic toward you as to me (unless they felt they could get me somehow). Just as evident are the three leading strands of the American Farce (speech, self-defense and sovereignty), so now the ugly trilogy of the Big Lemon (New York, Poseur Central, what else!?) makes up a wasteland amounting little more beyond the “gorgeous mosaic” of reported turf vicinities (Broad Channel, Chinatown, practically the entire Bronx and Gerritsen Beach along with Harlem), congestion-riot-engulfing Scaffoldgate for 90-story skyscrapers and what is now indeed as ass list/thug life seesaw masquerading as pop culture.
Doubtless, you happen to like jazz. I think that’s great, and no matter what kind of culture you born into, you should simply gravitate toward genres or works that compel you the most.
I lean to Goth now (for better or for worse), though I had my brush with classical in the ’90s, with frequent trips to the Lincoln Center library. Despite this, even the land of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms was soon beset by an indifferent record company (Deutsche Gramophone) far more inclined to rehashing standard repertoire and courting British pop stars than reissuing other posthumous medieval tracks by David Monroe. Let’s not forget that the Nazis brought their own thug-life premise for a time as well (not to mention their own apologists and defenders).
They say that for evil to prevail is for “good people” (an obvious oxymoron) to do nothing, and I am certain you won’t heed a single one of my aforementioned suggestions, though you are still as naïve to this world as Arthurian England, where chivalry reigns supreme. Seriously, a YouTube video shows a cop shoving a Critical Mass cyclist just days before; yet not only are you willing to romanticize Harlem but yours is an imaginary self-idealized order of “a world where men do not hit or shove men.” Last year, one such worm in a wheelchair struck me with her umbrella; scores of gasbags made her the sacred cow and me the pariah. After my arrest for retaliating, it became a legal and personal ordeal. Let me spell it out for you: Human nature will always prefer saving face over making waves, cowardly bad-ass streaks over humane goodwill. So Grandma Dorothy, get back to reality while you still can, because as sure as Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, you are definitely nowhere near Kansas anymore.
—Pierre Brown, NY
