Dickwad of The Wk.

Just Another Blog's™ official position on Hollywood, movies viewed anywhere but from the comfort of one's domicile, & especially the Oscars™ is: Who cares, who needs 'em, why bother, etc. That said, some self-righteous puke in the Op-Ed page of the Incredible Shrinking Newspaper (a little larger today because of wknd. sales & movie advertising) wrote a screed about Heath Ledger & his Oscar™ possibilities. As someone w/o much sympathy for anyone but ourself, we know wretched assholery when we see it. Maybe you can recognize it as well. Here the "it" is Ledger's performance as The Joker.

It has all the subtlety of a hangover -- exactly what I'd expect from someone who headed home every night to a pill party.

Excuse the living fuck out of us, Mr. Eric P. Lucas (The "P." Does it stand for Prick or Pretentious?) "a writer in Seattle," but we, at least, were laboring under the impression that Ledger had one fucking hell of a sleep problem, & while he may have visited too many doctors & pharmacies, had too many prescriptions, & took his work too seriously, or worked too hard or whatever, unless you're sure he was just popping pills for kicks, we really don't think that his attempts (however misguided) to get some rest can be correctly described as a "pill party."

Lucas doesn't seem to have much grasp of the concept of cause & effect either.

The preeminent example is the deification of Hendrix. How many young men pick up a guitar to emulate him, and wind up under a bridge with a bottle of Colt 45 picking out a wobbly solo on a tinny set of strings? I see them every day in downtown Seattle.

Golly, we just don't know. Does the act of picking up a guitar, inspired by a great player & musical innovator, lead directly to wandering under bridges w/ a Colt 45? Better close the music stores & confiscate all copies of Guitar Hero. (Playing Guitar Hero may cause you to play the Boozing While Picking on Tinny Strings video game.)

Here's the giveaway:

It's a simple thing to find help for drug and alcohol abuse these days. Millions have done it, including me, and though not easy, it represents the only way to live with the integrity we owe ourselves, our families and the world around us.

Lucas did it, he's better than all these loser creative successes who died before the age of 80. Of course, any one w/ the merest fraction of a brain knows that the word "integrity" has been completely devalued by puds like this. It's simple to get help, but it's not easy. (?) As well as Hendrix, Eric. P. mentions Janis Joplin, Jackson Pollack, Hank Williams, James Dean & Dylan Thomas. (What? No Lizard King?) Just how simple was finding help in their days?

Later deaths on the Lucas list include Kurt Cobain. If we (again) aren't mistaken, Cobain (the only one mentioned who purposefully committed suicide) had very painful stomach problems that led to his opiate addiction. And maybe a bit of depression. In other words, he was physically & mentally ill, & self-medicating. But to Lucas, w/ his AA bullshit,

Some drank themselves to death, some overdosed, some ran their cars off the road. As the saying goes in AA, the stories are the same, only the details are different

seems to think it's all a "moral" issue, that devalued, cliched words like "courage" & "integrity" are all it takes to suck it up & straighten up. (That & "surrendering yourself to a higher power," even if your higher power is a doorknob – yes, they actually say that to people who don't buy into gawd & the ancient wretched morality of AA – quite a load of integrity there.) We won't waste time explaining that booze & dope troubles are generally a subset of mental illness (That's right, a chemical imbalance in the brain, so it's physiological illness as well) let alone the agents, managers & other enablers that surround popular, wealthy cultural workers. None of that an excuse, mind you, but a much clearer explanation than Lucas's "Don't give him an Oscar™© because he was cowardly & dishonest" shtick.

And speaking of the "details,"

"Hendrix's creative journey was cut short by an accidental overdose of sleeping pills." (Nine sleeping pills, accompanied by barrels of wine; he choked to death in his own vomit.) The Hendrix monument at a cemetery south of Seattle says nothing at all about his death. It's as if the angels just took him away to the big amplifier pile in the sky.

Barrels of wine? Surely Jimi's monument is the only one ever to neglect the cause of death. Most of the cemetery visits we make are to read the tragic headstones: Died of Cancer, Shot By A Jealous Husband, Murdered By The Police, Hit By A Drunken Driver, Slipped On Some Snow & Hit Her Head, Gnawed To Death By A Pit Bull, ad nauseum. Families & loved ones want to remember the gory details.

Take your tough love of whatever you call this garbage & stuff it up your ass, E.P. Lucas!! Preferably sideways, schmuck.