In Which No Pleasure Is In Itself Evil

Nevermind

by DICK CHENEY

True Detective
creator Nic Pizzolatto

The New York Post had a headline this weekend that read 'Don Voyage.' Apparently questioning someone's service in the Vietnam War is enough to exclude you from consideration for anything. Bulworth is still a fairly prescient movie. I never served in the Vietnam War, or in any other places, but I have a lot of ideas about it. My main one is that it is just about as bad as it looks, but regular people never see it, not really.

There are a lot of things from which we are protected. Ever seen a dead body, for real, on television? Someone always has an excuse for why the most horrible thing is beyond all reason, but what does that make the second, third, and fourth most horrible things? Just fucking fine?

Colin Farrell got a new look, but she still looks like skunk. No justice. 

Just one time I would like to turn on my television or read a book and find out what things were really like. I have to say I don't think it's terribly important, things that happened forty or five years ago. They might as well not have occurred. I passed by a protest of nuclear weapons the other day. About 2,000 people had turned up for this important cause. Their cell phones and tablets were being powered by something, made by someone.

If the world makes us hypocrites, then we might as well sit in our own shit comfortably. "The minute you smelled shit," Vince Vaughn explains to his prissy, infertile wife, "you would be on the next plane." He is conveying to the love of his life why they can't just be farmers.

Ask her to marry you, Ray.

There is a sign outside the Chipotle I went to until it was closed down because of rats like so many others in the chain. It says No GMOs. This campaign against science — and it is a campaign against science — tells us that food becomes somehow awful if we grow it for a purpose. Do you know how fucked up a thing that is to say to someone who is starving? Do you have any idea how babies are made? Where's Alan Sokal when we need him?

What happened to the guy who used to run the evidence room? Is he Rust Cohle's new partner? Give me something!

It is amazing how every ideology, no matter how innocent, makes enemies. I believe I can summarize each major character on True Detective by showing how their worldview is not completely their own:

Taylor Kitsch/Kierkegaard "Love builds up by presupposing that love is present."

Colin Farrell/Hegel "The inclination to act as the laws command, a virtue, is a synthesis in which the law loses its universality and the subject its particularity; both lose their opposition."

A romantic walk on the beach. If only they could switch haircuts.

Rachel McAdams/Karl Jaspers "A choice made now, today, projects itself backwards and changes our past actions."

Kelly Reilly/Epicurus "No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves"

Adoption is a hell of drug.

Vince Vaughn/Erasmus "This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind."

Ben Casper/Nietzche "Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?"

What are the chances of these two ending up in bed together?

It is not religion that is disappearing — it was always some definite, resilient portion of the population determined to make God real. It is philosophy that has vanished from our society. I remember taking a class on Kierkegaard in college. The European professor explained how we had to know that Kierkegaard was a sexist, but that these ideas were divorced from his intellectual ones. I said, this isn't like Shakespeare cheating on his wife! How a philosopher treats human beings seems pretty important.

But that too has been lost. I don't care how a person treats people they barely know — strangers are dogshit anyway. I want to know how they treat the people they love. That's why Ray Velcoro's "just alcohol" redemption tour rings so hollow. I hope his wife gets full custody. And Rachel McAdams probably needed that harassment support group — after all, she was sleeping with a subordinate. Granted it was a nice gesture to allow him access to her pooper, but that doesn't make her Florence Nightengale. The law isn't a convenience. It may be pointless or unjust, but it is not a means. It is an end.

See, it really isn't that hard to write like Nic Pizzolatto. You just need to spend a lot of time on wikiquote.

He's looking at Velcoro with a bit too much intensity, but I have to say I loved his mother-in-law.

Vince Vaughn's Frank Seymon had to default on his mortgage and move into a small apartment. Velcoro couldn't even come by to help him unpack. I don't know exactly how you can be set up to hurt a man when you're a police officer and you can fully be expected to do the research yourself on whether he assaulted your wife. Abigail Spencer's new boyfriend better check himself. That guy is just meansies.

I wish there were more Donald Trumps so we can find out if all the things people assume are true are actually factual. Tiptoeing around reality only benefits those for whom that reality represents sustaining power and wealth. I believe Foucault said that, or maybe it was my wife in the throes of ecstasy. It's not surprising I could confuse those two sources.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Let the Laughter In" - Hannah Peel (mp3)

"Pale Green Ghosts" - Hannah Peel (mp3)

In Which We Are The Truest Of All Detectives

Moment of Conception

by DICK CHENEY

True Detective
creator Nic Pizzolatto

Frank Seymon (Vince Vaughn) is getting a blow job from his red-haired wife Jordan (Kelly Reilly) somewhere in the first ten minutes of last night's True Detective. It has been a long, arduous Fourth of July weekend, and Lynne is on my last nerve. "Ew," she exclaims, "Why is she doing that? Does he have a gun pointed at her?" I calmly explain to Lynne that they are trying to have a baby.

"You can't even have a baby that way," she says, and spits out some of her Big League Chew into a steel bucket.

You know, if he just stood on the chair, she probably wouldn't have to kneel at all. She might even need a stepstool.

"First of all," I say, "you don't know that for sure. I mean you might be right, but if that's the case why has Orlando Bloom fathered so many children and yet he is still a virgin?"

She is already distracted by the next thing. Colin Farrell wears these unflattering shirts that hide his body usually, and since he was shot last week, he is showing his torso for the first time. He looks fantastic, but Lynne is distracted by the grey highlights in his hair that remind us he is not Colin Farrell, but Ray Velcoro. (If these names sound absurd, it is because they were invented while Pizzolatto was on whippets.)

Rachel McAdams would have been a far more believable Daenerys Targaryen.

"How old is he?" Lynne asks of Velcoro. "Why do they make him look so old? Is this why no one wants to work with this guy? If he was going to ruin someone's career, it should probably have been Matthew McConaughey. I mean, that is a meaningless statement: we get the world we deserve. It's a tautology."

"Colin Farrell is thirty-nine," I say. She considers this, and then makes a hand-motion like she is masturbating a violin. "Careful," I say, "you could get pregnant doing that." While she is the kitchen I think a lot about Rachel McAdams. It is hard to take her very seriously in the role of a police detective named Antigone who carried knives around with her everywhere she goes. She explains that she is from a tough background — two of her siblings committed suicide, and another one is in jail. The last of her siblings works as a cam girl, and Rachel obviously had some kind of quasi-sexual relationship with her. Incest is the last thing I want as a theme of shows Dwayne Johnson or Bill Paxton is not involved in.

Taking shots at Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson is just the tip of the penis for Pizzolatto

Reviews seems to have completely missed the point of this show. Watching it, the only thing I can think to myself is, finally, the person who wrote this stuff is more of an asshole than I am.

The third member of True Detective's triptych is a highway patrolman portrayed far too broadly by Taylor Kitsch, whose studliness wanes with each moon. Unlike any other gay man on HBO, Kitsch's growling, mewling act consists of hiding his homosexuality from his mother, his girlfriend and his fellow officers. (He seems to have had homosexual awakening and subsequent sexual experiences in Iraq. Would I be presumptuous in suggesting this may be justification for several wars I may or may not have caused?)

And the Emmy for worst scene in recorded memory goes to

As I am typing this, Lynne is still talking about McAdams' haircut. "She looks like a skunk fucked a mountain lion," she whispers. We are in bed by this point, since Pizzolatto's dialogue makes Lynne kind of sleepy. There was this one scene where Vince Vaughn was poignantly explaining how his Dad used to lock him in the basement when he drank, and that he is not sure if he still actually down there, if he died in the dark place. "This is Lost all over again," Lynne said worriedly.

It is actually refreshing to see television taking itself seriously. As these police officers investigate the murder of a city manager connected to Vince Vaughn's land deal and the future of public transportation in Los Angeles, you start to focus in on why exactly True Detective feels so different from other shows. It is because the vast majority of artistic visions of the world paint it as a hopeful place, but Nic does not care about that at all. He is dedicated to explaining at great length why things are worse than ever.

This was some mean shit. Go after Woody - he can take it

"The man is so jaded," I say to Lynne as I am looking up at some water spots on the ceiling, recollecting some disturbing anecdote from my childhood that made me what I am. The scene where Farrell and McAdams visit the set of an alcoholic director who looks exactly like Cary Fukunaga was kind of a racist low point, but I wish more people would take up the example of insulting their former colleagues Matthew Weiner-style through characters in their fiction. If someone had done that to Christopher Nolan, maybe I wouldn't have to sit through the big bag of trash that was Interstellar.

The best part of True Detective is trying to solve the murder myself, and I believe it comes back to the miniature sculpture of a woman drowning in the bathtub they found in Ben Casper's house. Ray also makes miniatures — the concept of enjoying putting them together with his kid and then doing them by himself so does not fit at all with the character. There must be some kind of point to it, like maybe he uses them to spy on his kid when he is motorboating with his stepdad, Chad.

Who will be surprised if this boils down to the culpability of evil corporations? No one.

The connection between all the various traumas on the show — Taylor Kitsch's time working for military contractors, the overseas connections of the Russian mob, the inviability of all the women on the show's wombs to conceive children (it seems like they are all being poisoned by the local toxic waste) may revolve around the CEO of Catalyst. He is one probable villain — the other, Ray's ex-wife's rapist, is probably from a neighboring township. Given the genetic makeup of Ray's son, he should not be terribly hard to find. Lynne offers that they should just hold a ginger casting call.

The mayor is just the best. Strong leadership.

Lynne doesn't understand why I like True Detective. "The dialogue is soooo bad," she keeps saying as she strokes my forehead lovingly and murmurs like a kitten. "Half the sentences have the same grammatical subject or object: The world. The world is an undergarment. We marry the world we observe. We inoculate the world we conserve."

The reason is that I like having to figure things out and then not enjoying what I discover. Why do you think I watched Lost, read Donna Tartt books, and married my wife?

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording and the star of the Bravo original series Odd Mom Out.

I think this was a shot at George Miller also?

"Paradise" - Little Boots (mp3)

"Get Things Done" - Little Boots (mp3)

In Which Marty Hart's Daughter Was The Real Yellow King

The Greatest Throne Of All

by DICK CHENEY

Morning comes, and the disappointment of last night's True Detective finale has yet to wear off. I can't shake the overwhelming sensation that the Yellow King is still out there somewhere — I was pretty sure it was going to be Marty Hart's eldest daughter, especially after she set up one of the crime scenes in her playroom. I believe that children, and to a lesser extent, toupees, are our future. Treat them well and let them have three-ways. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride.

Sometimes I think Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown's tendentious relationship was the only thing I have ever really cared about.

he didn't mention AIDS during this episode either

The show did reveal the centerpiece of the Carcosa myth, which is that it is a place you can go, a passage to the underworld. It is shrouded with branches and corpses, both of which made the lair of the YK one of the great television sets I have seen since the mill on Twin Peaks. The weird wooden statues are merely signs or guideposts to the passage. "There is only one story... light and dark," Matthew McConaughey muttered at some point last night, which caused everyone I watched the show with to burst out laughing.

I once tried to kill something that was attacking me. It turned out to be hail.

Before Rust entered the throne room of the Yellow King, he heard a noise behind him. He never identified it, or tracked down the source of the disturbance, but it could not have been the King himself, peeking out of the underworld to see what happened on Earth? Statues are merely signposts; the beings they indicate lurk nearby. Even a hospital is merely a marker for something else, some passage in and out of things.

it's like...a waypoint from the darkness into the light GET IT

It seemed like the True Detectives of True Detective knew where the killer was for over three episodes; they were so sure of their results that they had a mute guy mail them to local newspapers. Instead of taking the yellow king alive, they chose to eliminate him in his lair, possibly due to their worries he could be vindicated by Tuttle elements in the criminal justice system. Going to the evil lair of a killa with no Kevlar or satellite phones sounds pretty dumb, but then, clearing one murder case over a twenty-year period isn't exactly stellar work either.

this loving relationship could have had more screentime

I always believed I could solve any cold case purely from reading the wikipedia entry. JonBenet's killer is probably dead now, and can't be apprehended, but didn't someone once say the truth is out there (in her wikipedia page). The next season of True Detective will feature a killer whose calling card is posting the DOD of their victims on wikipedia as a sadistic, Adobe-flash based calling card. (In an ironic twist, the perpetrator will turn out to be a Brooklyn woman disappointed by sexism.)

I thought we had all retired light and dark as a metaphor after the Harry Potter series IDK

Murder, True Detective suggests, is the second worst crime. It is worse than treason or rape, abduction or corruption. The absolute worst crime is having an accent that sounds like dogshit.

actually nevermind the worst crime is that shirt

+

I have watched my last episode of The Walking Dead. The writers who could actually compose dialogue were fired and forced to write Mob City by Frank Darabont at gunpoint. Whoever is left over penning these awful episodes fell asleep during the part of writing class when they instructed verbs other than "to be."

a woman in her twenties who has never had a drink. In the south. That's likely.

Every line of dialogue now is the same, each conversation the identical meaningless pattern.

"I have to go."
"You don't have to."
"But I do."
"You'll be gone."
"I want you here."
"You have to be gone, don't you see?"

It is utterly maddening byplay. Worse even than the terrible dialogue, though, is that even the show's most taciturn figures to this point are now voluminous holes of un-vocabulary. Sure it was fun to cut the budget by killing off the The Walking Dead's most educated characters, but there has to be a middle ground between long Bible quotations and the dumbest pattern dialogue since Aaron Sorkin wrote most of Studio 60 on cough syrup and pure. That was bad, and this is worse. Action talks, bullshit walks.

cut out her voicebox with that knife please

A recent episode, which consisted of the impotent natterings of a blonde woman to a white power activist, soured the concept of an odd couple for me forever. If I hear one more word out of Carl about how he's capable of handling himself, I'm going to burn down Sanctuary. They should just keep hiring people from The Wire, since the rest of the show's cast can't act worth a fucking shit.

oh wipe the sad face off, if you loved your wife so much you never would have left her side

Let us not forget the scene where a man left two ten year old girls in the wilderness, stood them back-to-back and told them "you're going to be fine." This actually happened. And good lord, Glenn, grow up. She's just a woman, even if she is your wife. I am going back to watching Four Weddings and a Funeral every Sunday, enough of this shit.

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 Felicity having sex for her country.

maybe he was just annoyed by her

"Keep On Wanting" - The Fray (mp3)

"Wherever This Goes" - The Fray (mp3)