In Which This Was Made Largely For China And To Hurt Megan Fox's Feelings

Cavities

by DICK CHENEY

Transformers: Age of Extinction
dir. Michael Bay
165 minutes

I don't throw the word genius around a lot, unless someone is washing my feet or my car. We have long needed an American director who was absolutely fearless, and now we have found him. Michael Bay is willing to destroy his actors to get what he wants onscreen. What exactly is Michael Bay's heart's desire? He wanted to make a movie about a love triangle between a father, his daughter and her Australian boyfriend.

In this he succeeded with Transformers: Age of Extinction. Mark Wahlberg's daughter informs us that she has been "taking care" of Marky Mark since his wife passed. (A robot winks meaningfully after that.) It is a poor choice of words at best, a mild and innocuous felony at worst. Unfortunately, Tessa Yeager (Nicola Peltz) had to die:

This is actually how Natalie Wood died IMO

The lifespan of women in Transformers is limited in the extreme. They get tired and fatigued from running and screaming for help, and heart disease claims them in the end. Megan Fox has actually been dead for over a decade. In the last Transformers movie, which I believe was subtitled Transformers: My Pea Is Your Pod, Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf perished in the warmth of Optimus Prime's nasal cavity, requiring this reboot.

Not a single person from any of those previous Transformers movies is even peripherally involved in Age of Extinction, but all of the characters still talk the exact same.

Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) owns a fledgling robotics company that has not produced a single working robot. When he meets Optimus Prime (Christian Bale), he immediately begins planning to steal the alien technology and use it for his own nefarious means. His household is "under control", because after his wife died, he prohibited both himself and his daughter from ever dating, which I believe is both illegal and extremely creepy unless you're Indian.

She couldn't even get a flirtatious moment with Mark Wahlberg? Racist.

Because Transformers is way more successful outside of America, Bay has included a variety of token ethnicities. After the blowback from his ghetto Transformers incident from the NAACP (they later honored him with a lifetime achievement award) Mr. Bay has steered clear of including any black characters in the entire movie. There is not even an African-American dinosaur robot. 

Instead, Bay really appreciates Asian audiences. That's why he has included a female executive (Li Bingbing) in Age of Extinction, who Stanley Tucci regards as "extremely impressive." Naturally, even though she is his subordinate, he hits on her throughout the film and eventually she seems open to his disgusting advances. (How do you think Michael Bay obtained children?)

There is also a Samurai transformer who appears to be attired like the cover of a Midwestern edition of The Art of War. His accent is so unbelievably sinister and racist that it makes Aunt Jemima look progressive, (Unfortunately, I learned this is Ken Watanabe's actual accent. Sorry Ken.)

I can't feel sympathy for the pricks who tow cars. I really can't this time you guys.

Inside of every Transformer is the life force known as the spark; "we cah that a soul" Wahlberg bleats. In a massive alien ship he finds special transformer killing guns and turns into Rambo.  Cade sends his daughter away but she comes back to fight on the side of the good robots. Kelsey Grammar tries to have the daughter gunned down for no real reason by the evil island spirit on Lost and Mark Wahlberg is like, "Ya tried to kull my dawghter." I miss Dr. Frasier Crane.

The dinosaur part of the story goes something like this: the transformers killed the dinosaurs. The only reason they offered is because they have a less than respectful view of the artistic aspects of The Land Before Time. Mark Wahlberg acts like he would rather be anywhere, showcasing an intense contempt for the man he is portraying. Incidentally "Cade" is a very difficult word for a robot to say, and Optimus Prime goes out of his way not to utter Cade's name so as not to confuse his ethnic Autobots.

Mr. Bay, remember that time you gave that extra brain damage as you screaming, "Autobots Assemble" at her while dressed like Nick Fury?

Even though Cade's daughter Tessa is only 17, she has developed an intense emotional connection with a race car driver. God knows what they have in common or where they met, but it's up to this fellow to prove his worthiness to the girl's father. This disturbing wooing of permission is not only deeply retrograde and sexist, it occurs during a car chase.

The action culminates in nothing very exciting. The last film ended with a set piece that destroyed the city of Chicago, which was at least therapeutic. Age of Extinction concludes suddenly after one of the robots is destroyed; I believe the robot's name was Gastroenteritistron. He wanted to bring Optimus back to his "creator," which is probably Morgan Freeman in a suit if the last ten years of cinema is any indication.

There was no one with brown eyes in this entire movie, it was like a 21st century 'Triumph of the Will'

In the end, Optimus decides he is really very sick of humanity, and would do anything he could to get away from them. He watched his Autobot friends hacked and divested of their Happy Meals and metal belongings, and in doing so he witnessed the destruction of his entire way of life. Age of Extinction had the largest ever opening in China. Every invading culture is quietly subsumed and irrevocably altered by the victims it claims.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location who misses Hot Pie.

"If The Morning Comes" - Transfer (mp3)

"We Don't Have To Be Nice Anymore" - Transfer (mp3)

In Which We Hate The Way We're Speaking To Each Other

Post Mortem

by DICK CHENEY

It's not polite to say who died on Downton Abbey. Most people don't even know. Their lives haven't changed as a result. We love people, especially wealthy individuals, in the specifics, since we sense we may become them. In the abstract, they disappoint us.

this guy

My other favorite show is Sons of Anarchy. Except for the Exorcist-like horror involved in watching Gemma Teller (Katey Segal) have sex scenes with Jimmy Smits, who plays a pimp on the show, it's fantastic. I spent the entire hour flexing my knuckles and lamenting that I'm too old to get on a bike. It would probably end more like this:

The first rule about Fight Club is that you never get on a motorcycle with someone wearing a Duke t-shirt. But we were talking about the death of Opie.

It's impossible to connect the phenomenon of a maudlin young motorcyclist (Ryan Hurst) dying in prison to save his boyfriend with the economy, except to say that watching the members of the MC mourn their large, closeted friend, all I could think of was how much money they saved on the funeral by having it themselves.

basically, your father is an idiot Lady Mary

I was gchatting with someone the other day who was telling me how boring they find scripted television. I explained that was probably because they couldn't see the sychronicity between Branson putting his wife between himself and the British government, and the president doing the exact same thing with Hillary Clinton.

She signed off in a huff and e-mailed me the entire Supreme Court opinion on Roe v. Wade. Having friends on the other side of the aisle is like being married to Lady Mary (tell me when you tire of these comparisons). Everything they think of is completely without regard for the economic realities of the world.

I can't even imagine what it would be like to gchat with Matthew Crawley, probably like sucking on a tootsie roll pop that has asparagus at its center.

branson, you disgust me

No one has done more to diminish the cause of Irish independence than Julian Fellowes. I haven't been this mad since South Park eclipsed the boundaries of bad taste and did a storyline making fun of how Bane sounded in The Dark Knight Rises.

Sorry, my mind is wandering a lot lately. It's a function of old age, and the relentless attacks on Mormonism in the mainstream media. I really don't understand this. One group of people believes in a supernatural human being who is supposed to return to Earth and save the world, and another believes a slightly different version of this myth, but is absolutely crazy for thinking this way.

The only thing worse than that is how many times I'll be writing, "The only thing worse than that" in this essai. The only thing worse than that, though, is how every single joke on Mike & Molly is still about how fat the male in the relationship is. It's bullying, and I find it disgusting. That's his natural build.

buy a large bed please

Doesn't it feel like they're making the bed look especially tiny? My only real problem with scripted television is that every single person on it is completely caucausian. Last night I found myself rewinding the trailer for Alex Cross just to interject a little diversity in my existence. The idea of Tyler Perry as a hardboiled cop hunting Jack Shephard from Lost is beyond my dreams. It makes me think of a Jhumpa Lahiri short story, that's how completely amazing it is.

the answer to Lost was a bright light coming out of a cave. Never forget.

Once I was in a country club where the hazing ritual involved watching all of the Madea movies in chronological sequence while you kept getting messages on your phone saying, "They passed another tax on capital gains!" The fact that no one finds it the least bit strange that Matthew Fox could convincingly play a serial killer should tell us something.

"Brickleberry"

The mere idea of Lost usually reduces me to tears. To cheer myself up I watch this show Brickleberry, which takes place in a national park. The point of Brickleberry is to be offensive, and make jokes about subjects that other shows won't touch. In theory this is an interesting concept but (1) Family Guy has been on the air for over two decades and (2) 90 percent of the jokes are simple racism. (The black character is named Denzel. Haha. Get it? If you don't, you're a fucking square.) (The other ten percent of the jokes are about women and gays.)

You start to understand why my liberal gchat friend hates scripted television. That is, until you watch the finest show airing on any network, The Thick Of It.

Malcolm Tucker and Rebecca Front on "The Thick Of It"

You know how Parks & Recreation pretends to be a show about politics, but is really just a larger forum for the writers of the show to copy down all the funny jokes they read on the internet and have comedians act them out? I can't believe they did an entire election storyline with Leslie Knope, and then occupied her time with solving the obesity problem in Pawnee and feuding over a bathroom. Not even I have that little faith in government.

Ben and December

Here is what all the punchlines on Parks & Recreation revolve around: Leslie is energetic, Ron eats free-range meat, Chris is depressed, Andy is stupid, April is a bitch, Adam Scott has a large head for his body.

You know, it's okay to have a person who has more than one aspect to his personality. It's called a fully-fleshed out character; the show's writers might have seen it in passing during the ninety seconds a day they peel their heads away from their iPhones. The only thing more embarrassing than this season of Parks & Recreation is having to read pathetic Emily Nussbaum essais about how much she worships Amy Poehler or how she doesn't want Parenthood to get canceled. Grow up.

Peter Mannion's aides on 'The Thick Of It'

I guess now that I am "retired", politics just bores me. Art lasts for a substantial duration, blog posts slightly less long. Does anyone remember the Whigs? Or what a dick Andrew Jackson was? I can't muster the energy. It's easier to just look to television for escape. That's why there is no better place to rest your head than the considerable problems of the British.

Unfortunately, most of middle America can't understand a single word said in Malcolm Tucker's Scottish accent, so they watch The Walking Dead instead.
 

The only thing worse than that is. There are people everywhere, when I wake. I have no right to judge them. Wake me up after the election.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about intercourse between Lady Mary and Matthew Crawley.

"Fear Is A Man's Best Friend" - Field Music (mp3)

"Heart" - Field Music (mp3)

In Which We Think Green Day's Dookie Is Something It Wasn't

Thirteen Was A Very Bad Year

by LAUREN BANS

Oh man, do you remember the pre-Napster-nabbing days of youth, when buying music was still an active verb that entailed getting your family to drive you 15 minutes to the Sam Goody? I would say halcyon days of youth, but who am I kidding? The financial constraints of your bimonthly babysitting income necessitated that Dad accompany you inside the store, wearing his Trust Me...I'm a [Real Estate] Lawyer t-shirt and joking with the teenage cashier, "Do you listen to this crap too?" This was only the humiliating foreplay to family dinner at the Ground Round where parents shoved kids up to the age of 13 onto a giant scale in the restaurant lobby — reminiscent of that terror-inspiring clock in Safety Last — for the “Penny Per Pound” Sunday special.

I mean, THIRTEEN! Is there anything more inhumane to do to a thirteen year old? Okay, hmmm, after quick consideration, let me specify: to a thirteen year old overfed upper middle class suburban American? Do you perhaps know what this felt like? It was 1994, I was 12, and I remember praying "Lord let me cost less than $1.45" and then emotionally scarfing down a grilled cheese. This is what I endured just to get my hands on a copy of Dookie. Thanks Dad, for buying me that.

Of course, I totally deserved Dookie. I never gave my parents anything to object to. I was a "big boned," paler-than-a-feta-crumble 7th grader who had nothing to do but finish all my homework on time and get a super duper headstart on my SAT prep. I spent most nights on my daybed head-banging along to middling mid-90s mall punk like Rancid and The Offspring, albums about the drugs and sex I wouldn’t actually experience for, like, ten years, save for some senior year dry humping.

Also, there was this boy! I had a crush on him. Once he told me that he was excited for high school because killing frogs would finally be sanctioned, at least in biology, a reveal that struck terror into my heart, but maybe also pubescent arousal. He had Dookie, and so I wanted it, nay, needed it like I wanted, nay, needed him to love me even as his little man hands were tearing apart a frog carcass. Because: teens, suffering, fantasy, oh, you know, if you've watched any My So-Called Life.

And God, Dookie was good. I don’t think I understood a large portion of it at first. In fact, I remember being very confused at the pronoun usage in "Basketcase": I went to a whore/he said my life’s a bore/ so quit my whining cuz it’s bringing her down.

Like did Billy Joe see a male whore? If so, WHO is this woman he’s bringing down? Is this or is this not a PSAT prep riddle like he: gay appropriation by eye-linered Cali darlings as Britney-Madonna lip on lip: performative heterolesbianism? I still do not know! But I could headbang on my daybed to the music and, more importantly, relate to the larger sense of insanity, the anthemic angst, permeating the entire album—"giving myself the creeps", for example, was a strong and present phenomenon for an overweight 12 year teacher's pet pursuing a frog murderer as a romantic interest. Because: love, suffering, murder, oh, you know, if you’ve watched any Dexter.

Incidentally, there was one thing I never got straight about Dookie. Somewhere along the line I came under the impression that Dookie was a totally cool code word for "joint." I listened to the CD with this in mind (that is, until I injured my neck head-banging right before my Bat Mitzvah and my parents replaced all my alt-punk with Indigo Girls). And I somehow missed the clear signifier of the monkey throwing "dookie" on the album cover. In college I said things such as, "Pass the dookie." "Anyone got a dookie?" and "DOOKIE!"

Sure, not often, because I'm not a total fucking retard, but, um, WHERE WERE MY FRIENDS? Why did no one correct me? I have lived 15 long years thinking Dookie to be something it is not, something known to the rest of the world as a DOOBIE, only discovering yesterday, by virtue of a conversation about Green Day, what Dookie really means. That's crazy, right? I mean, yes, when you think about the fact that 20 years from now Heidi will probably be on a Cougar reality show, and that sexting is the new terrorism, or even that Bush was re-elected, it's not that crazy. But in my very small, self-centered world, which for the past 6 hours has been a quarantined mattress in front of a near-godlike A/C window unit, it seems like downright insanity. I mean, fuck, I think it's time I leave my house now.

Lauren Bans is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Pulling Teeth" - Green Day (mp3)

"Having A Blast" - Green Day (mp3)

"When I Come Around" - Green Day (mp3)