my super ex girlfriend 2006 and other

My Super ex-Girlfriend (2006) and other topics...

Saw this sporadically funny movie last night...and felt that there was

a much, much funnier movie lurking in there. Uma Thurman plays

"G-Girl", a superheroine who falls in love with a normal guy (Luke

Wilson). The relationship falls apart, and that is, as they say, when

the fun begins. Don't get me wrong...there is much genuine hilarity

to be had here. But Uma's twitchy characterization, of a woman who is

plagued by the need to continuously save the world, while her personal

life falls to pieces, suggests another, deeper, funnier, more honest

film lurking in there. It needed to be crazier, more creative

visually. The relationship between "G-Girl" and the villain

"Professor Bedlam" needed to be tarted up. We NEVER get to see

exactly what villainy Bedlam has been up to, and that creates some

problems understanding the characters' reactions to each other. Is he

a Lex Luthor type? Does he kill? Or just steal? We need to know

that in order to know what to feel about the rest of the film. And we

never do. I'm going to give it a "C+" for a few hysterical scenes,

and an all-out performance by Thurman. Director Ivan Reitman

("Ghostbusters") just didn't have his comic rhythm fully in hand.

Just got back from the Hurston-Wright writing workshop. It was

intense, and I wanted to do a core dump of things I saw there, and

thoughts I've had in the last week.

1) There are a lot of good writers out there. I was blessed to

have several of them in my class. In fact, there wasn't a loser in

the bunch, thank God. And one of them...well, one of them might just

be a genius. I'm not sure. Hope so...

2) Women outnumbered men by a wide margin. We had high school

students from across the country, and all but two of them were girls.

They complained that the boys were so quiet...the girls were brash,

funny, confident, and kicked butt. This grew into general discussions

of black men and women in America...and some of the discussions

weren't fun. You all know that I straddle a fence that can make me

unpopular with people who are strongly to the left or right: One, that

we as individuals, especially Black American individuals, must take

responsibility for our individual fates--there is no one else to do

it. Two, that historically, we were indeed screwed over major league

big time. I don't suggest to "just get over it." I say that if you

want to bring your dreams into existence, you must find a way to move

forward despite your wounds and pain. Black women have taken point

right now--and the reasons are the same reason you see black and Asian

women having sex with white men in movies, but you don't see non-white

men having sex with ANYBODY. If you want to know the core difference,

look at the Oscars two years ago. Halle Berry got her Oscar for

whoring herself to Billy Bob Thornton. Denzel got his for dying in

the street like a mad dog. And that, right there, in the secret

greasy heart of men, is the secret: we'd like access to all the

females of all groups, and we'd like the men of other groups

to...well, to crawl away and die. As men and women, we aren't

terribly attractive. As black or white, we're less attractive still.

As human beings, on the other hand, there is hope. As spirits, there

is light itself.

3) Was listening to Michael Savage on the radio yesterday. My

sister likes him quite a bit. I don't. But I wanted to give him a

chance. He was saying something positive about an Muslim who wrote a

book about the silent Muslim majority, and I kinda liked that. Then

he got off on Global Warming. He accused Al Gore of lying without

being specific about the lies, which bothered me. He then took note

of the current heat wave, and said the "left wing media" was

scientifically ignorant, and rattled off the dates for all-time

hottest days in various states, many of which were before the

invention of the internal combustion engine. I had the terrible

feeling that his audience was nodding their heads "yup! Lyin'

Liberals!" like little bobble-head dolls. The problem is that all the

facts about cyclic weather and solar fluctuations, which anti-Global

Warming folks often quote, are covered quite nicely in the works of

various climatologists I've seen addressing these issues. Those

attacking them seem to be speaking to an audience who thinks this is

new data. My other problem is that these guys are starting to sound

to me like the Tobacco companies, who set an impossibly high standard

for "proof" that tobacco (and now second-hand smoke) causes cancer,

and then sat back to see who they had conned into accepting an

impossible challenge.

4) He also said that the Liberal Media was attacking Israel

horribly. I've seen a lot fo news shows on Israel's attacks on

Lebanon. It may be ignorance on my part, but it seems to me that they

are just as likely to show Islamic extremist attacks on Israel. Does

anyone out there have an opinion on this?

5) While I was in Washington D.C. I went on an Afro-Centric tour

of the city. I vastly enjoyed most of it, especially talk of Benjamin

Banneker, an African-American who was integral to the design of

Washington D.C. I was grieved, once again, that I had never even

heard of him until after I graduated college. On numerous occasions,

I've had white Conservatives ask me: "why does there need to be Black

History? Why isn't American History enough?" Because any given group

will tend to over-state their own contributions, and minimalize the

contributions of others. The ONLY way blacks have gotten into the

history books is by voting and thinking as a bloc, and forcing the

majority group to change. This has been an horrifically slow and

painful process, fighting all the way. Whether that :outsider" group

is women, gays, blacks, the disabled, the non-Christian, or

whatever--don't stop fighting, and don't assume you are morally

superior to the oppressing group. Blacks, women, gays, and

non-Christians, when holding the reins of power, display the same

grasping pathologies. The key to freedom is balance and love.

6) While on the tour, I was disturbed when the tour guide brought

up that old wive's tale about Napoleon shooting off the nose of the

Sphinx, supposedly offended at the "Negro-ness" of the features.

Sigh. Would anyone with knowledge of the slightest actual original

documentation on this please stand up? A diary entry? A letter by a

soldier at the time? I understand the need to establish a history

that includes black people, but when you get your facts wrong, it

gives bigots a chance to reject everything else you are saying.

7) I had only Scott Sonnon's FlowFit 2 to exercise with while I

was there. When I first arrived, my body looked pretty carved--I'd

been doing Kettlebells, yoga, and FlowFit for my fitness. After a

week of just doing 20 minutes of Flowfit, most of my muscle mass was

intact, and I was more flexible. My wind had decreased a bit--I'm not

advanced at FF2 yet, still working on the coordination and recovery

aspect. But I'll tell you this...Scott has created a graduated path

from couch potato to world-class athlete. NO ONE who can do FF2 for

twenty minutes, at one rep per minute, would be anything other than a

paragon. I kid you not. And because of his brilliant instinctive

training methods, it is really more a mental than a physical system.

I am seriously impressed, and can only HOPE that one day I'll do just

that. Twenty minutes. Sixty seconds per rep (right now, it takes me

about 2 1/2 minutes per rep.) Mother of God.

The first Two-Day Path workshop is at the end of September. I'm going

to be talking about every aspect of it, working out how we're going to

handle it. This is the One. This is what I've been waiting for for