The boy scouts have a really simple slogan: “Always Be Prepared.” They teach it to 7-year olds. It’s a very simple premise, but it’s so important. So why the fuck can’t a presidential candidate remember that? If you’re going to be on a televised debate when you’re trying to prove you are the best man for the job, maybe you should…oh, I dunno, study your notes? Talk to the half a dozen people you hired to prep you, AND KNOW THE NAMES OF THE DEPARTMENTS YOU’RE GOING TO CUT!
Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. Last night there was a debate in Michigan (Detroit, what!) and Rick Perry was talking about cutting cabinet positions. This is a direct quote from said debate: “Commerce, Education and the – what’s the third one there? Let’s see…”
Oh, yeah, let’s see…Let me just take a minute to get my thoughts together, not like this is a big deal or anything. Not like I should know this or anything!
He ended up saying it was the Department of Energy, but the damage was done. What’s even better, he thinks it’s no big deal. “I stepped in it, that’s what my wife would say.” He went on to say that he feels this little slip up (little slip up, really?) has made him more human, and people can relate. Look, its no secret, I’m really jaded, cynical, and pretty much bat shit crazy, so forgive me if I don’t want to relate to my President. I don’t want to see the dude and be like, “Yeah, that guy gets me…” ‘Cause if he gets me, he’s got no business running the goddamn country. I know my limits, and maybe these candidates need to know theirs.
Perry then said: “Any time you’re standing in front of however many million people we were and you have a loss of train of thought, sure, it impacts you. But the fact is one error is not going to make or break a campaign.”
That’s true, one mistake won’t, but he’s made a lot of mistakes. He’s no longer a serious (and I use that term extremely loosely) candidate. He’s a joke. The fact that he can’t see it makes it even worse. There’s a bigger issue here then a little brain freeze by Perry. It’s an overwhelming sense that the current culture has that it’s okay to be a fuck up. It’s okay to not be the best person for the job, and still get the job. It’s okay to just believe your own hype.
I blame the internet, and social media. Ugh okay, maybe, I’m just bitter because I’ve been fired from a job where I made really tiny mistakes because I was still learning. But this guy has been a politician for years, and fucks up on a major platform, and he gets to keep his job? I was a freaking secretary and apparently the weight of the company could come crashing down on my typos and inability to format a letter. Guys, don’t even worry about it, I can write letters, I write amazing letters. But my boss was psycho –– I mean it –– I can write a letter! I’ll write a letter right now if I have to! Clearly, I’m not bruised by that experience at all…and do you see how defensive and completely embarrassed I am about this? How I immediately set out to prove that I am capable? Over fucking letters…Yet this dude can FORGET THE NAMES OF DEPARTMENTS live on TV AND then call the African American candidate “brother,” but he gets to stay in the race and just shrug it off, like, “Oh well, I made a mistake. Whoops!”
In the words of my seven-year-old nephew, who’s not even a Boy Scout but still totally grasped this whole debacle, “what a pile of junk.” This whole “Southern boy, awe-shucks, are those my boots under your bed?” act that Perry’s been putting on is getting really fucking old. By the way, that’s not a dig at the South, I currently have a Southern boy’s boots under my bed as I type this. So back off. It’s totally Perry-specific.
The other issue is that everyone is commenting on how he was a front runner, and now that’s over. But why was he a front runner? Well, because the dude’s got bank. That’s what it boiled down to. Money. Not qualifications, not experience, not views, not ethics, but the almighty dollar. I’m getting so disillusioned, and really fed up. Part of me wants to shave my head, hop on my motorcycle, shoot a campaign commercial, and just run on the freak ticket. I’m really good in front of a camera, I know my lines, and I’m sorry but I think I’m a bit better looking Sarah Palin, so I bet I could go really far as long as I don’t have to write my own letters. Oh wait, fuck, it won’t work, I may be at least somewhat qualified in the batshit crazy department, but I’m not a Republican.
“The only thing that really fascinates me is marriage.”
– Donald Sutherland
It’s possible to forget just how damn funny Donald Sutherland is. He’s been in some of the funniest movies of all time and it shows when he walks into our interview with a wry smile while cracking jokes. But his latest movie, An American Haunting, is definitely not a comedy. The movie is set in the American south in 1818 and Sutherland stars as John Bell Sr. a man with a tight knit family who commits a sin against his church which releases a spirit to haunt his house and take out anger against his daughter.
“My style has been a bit different from anyone else.”
– Lady Sovereign
I love all this awesome hip-hop thats coming out so much lately. Ladies like Kelli Ali and M.I.A. are doing such amazingly sexy and funky work. Lady Sovereign is at the forefront of that new wave with her new album Vertically Challenged.
“It takes a lot of electricity to turn black crude oil into gasoline.”
– Chris Paine
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, General Motors’ EV1s were the Apple Macs of cars. Ahead of their time, they were only driven by an enlightened “different” thinking few, but those that did felt passionately about their high tech machines.
A fully electric plug-in vehicle with a range of between 70 and 140 miles depending on model, the EV1 was first introduced into the marketplace in 1996. Available in limited test markets on a closed lease-only basis (whereby no actual purchase was allowed), it was developed by General Motors partly in response to the California Air Resources Board’s requirement that the seven major auto companies in the US had to make at least 2% of their output zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 1998 in order to sell any cars within the state (with further graduated steps stipulated up to 10% in 2003).
Though grudgingly produced by General Motors, the vehicle was beloved by the few consumers lucky enough to rise to the top of the company’s reportedly vast waiting list. But it was likely a car that was never intended to succeed. General Motors seemingly put more effort into fighting the CARB mandate in court than meeting existing demand for vehicles or marketing the EV1 to create even more. It was therefore not uncoincidental that the demise of the EV1 occurred in tandem with the gutting of CARB’s ZEV rules. The EV1 program was officially cancelled in 2003, and a total recall was put in motion, with repossessed cars being not only compacted but shredded for good measure too.
A 2006 documentary, Who Killed The Electric Car, chronicled the crushing demise of this groundbreaking car. In it filmmaker Chris Paine highlighted the collusion of the auto industry, oil companies, and politicians, who all had a vested interest in seeing the electric vehicle die an untimely death alongside CARB’s environmentally prudent directives. Catching the zeitgeist, Who Killed The Electric was the third highest grossing documentary that year (Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth being the first).
However, a decade after General Motors presided over the funeral of the EV1, the killing of the vehicle has proven to be a costly mistake. With gas prices rising, Toyota filled the rapidly increasing fuel-efficient void with their hybrid Prius, which went on sale in Japan in 1997. Following its worldwide debut in 2001, Toyota have sold over a million Prius cars in the US alone, and the rest of the auto industry has been scrabbling to catch up.
With revenge being served on a platter less than a decade on, Paine and his documentary team were compelled to reexamine the fortunes of the electric vehicle in a follow up film. The first had centered on activists working from outside the industry, with this film Paine chose to follow a diverse group of instigators working from within. Revenge Of The Electric Car therefore features four EV evangelists (some of whom were more recently converted than others) who are attempting to drive the future of the automobile into the present: Bob Lutz (General Motors’ Vice Chairman up until May 2010), Elon Musk (Tesla Motors’s CEO), Carlos Ghosn (Nissan’s President and CEO), and Greg “Gadget” Abbot (a DIY electric engine retro-fitter).
SuicideGirls recently visited Paine at his ultra green home to talk about his cinematic “I told you so” and the electric awakening of a sluggish car industry that was in need of a shock. After checking out the 2008 Tesla Roadster parked in Paine’s garage, the irony was not lost that we were conversing about, and anticipating the dominance of, the gas-free vehicle in the heart of LA’s oil country amidst the pumpjack nodding donkeys of Baldwin Hills.
