It’s been forever since I’ve blogged. No wait, forever plus a few days. And nights. It just seems there should have been 728 hours build into the standard day. I mean, please, I’m a writer and I struggle to find time to WRITE. Thing is, I miss blogging. Blogging for me is where I get to write free-flowing, not worried if a reader is going to find a typo (okay, I still worry, and they still find them). It’s also where I get to have fun—be myself, so to speak. I don’t write humor books, so here I can crack wise (read: tick people off), be sarcastic (my native tongue), and basically blow off steam (a steam engine has nothing on me, baby).

And my readers missed me, too. The outpouring was truly heartwarming.

Not really. I didn’t hear from anyone. Apparently my blog isn’t nearly as entertaining and useful as my ego had me CONVINCED it was.

But that’s okay. The world doesn’t revolve around me (I learned that just after learning the sun doesn’t revolve around the world, which was last April, I believe). So I really wanted to slip in a blog today. I have LESS than zero time available, but I figured, if I combine a few things into one—check a task or two off the list WHILST blogging—I could justify it. So business first. Next month there is going to be a really great promo that’s the first I’ve heard of an iPad Mini being given away. I’m sure it’s happened, but you don’t want to miss THIS ONE (it’s inaugural, for crying out loud)!! Click the really cool banner made by Ben Wallace’s UBER-talented wife, Patty, to enter (NO PURCHASE NECESSARY)!

Seriously. A shot at a new iPad Mini (or $300 if you are already graced with one) is a pretty sweet deal for simply signing up. (Just forgive the website—it’s still under construction but will be up LOOOOOONG before 1 WTC. 

Now the next thing I want to do (since who knows when I’ll be back on this damn blog again) is get this damn DJANGO thing off my chest (no, I did NOT just misspell the insanely-frustrating but party-favorite, Jenga. I’m talking about the latest Quentin Tarantino movie. The “D” is silent. If you’ve seen the movie, that may put a smile on your face. If it does, I just hope it isn’t a racist smile.<Trademark Long Sentence Alert> Because about five minutes after the masterpiece of a movie finished its first screening (a movie, by the way, that treats a horrific and inexcusable time in American history just the way a Tarantino film should: with the bad dudes—i.e. white slave owners, traders, henchmen, House <you-know-what-word-I-still-won’t-say>s, etc.—getting blown into a gazillion and a half gory, fleshy, that’s-goddamned-right-you-evil-ignorant-inhuman-soulless-bastards-you-deserved-much-worse pieces—twice for real!) some “movie critics” who are really only granted presence on this planet to stir as many pots and disturb as much shit as they possibly can—damn the consequences—started barfing out columns about “white people laughing in the wrong places” and “black characters being more brutally mutilated than white ones onscreen”.

For the sake of all that is sane and holy will you half-witted, no-brained, “critics” who can’t just sit down with a theaterful of your brothers and sisters no matter what their color, age, gender, nationality, or hair length and enjoy a movie that is, was, or should be:

A) Another Tarantino classic.

B) Lauded for taking on arguably the most nationally embarrassing time in our history and actually both teaching us all some ugliness that we need to know and never, ever, in this lifetime or any other forget, AND making a damned-entertaining movie at the same time.

C) Applauded for making Leo DiCaprio one thousand times more despicable than I’d have believed he could be made, no matter how much Hollywood “magic” you used.

D) Enough for Jamie Foxx to get another Oscar—this time one where no one (especially said “critics”) will most incorrectly say “aw, that’s just because he pretended to be someone else”.

Mottos of the second half of the blog:

1. GO SEE THE MOVIE.

2. PAY ATTENTION AND ENJOY

3. GO HOME.

I left out “lighten the fuck up” because no matter how much you want it not to be, after the movie (that is ultimately just another movie), slavery (and more importantly the absolutely sadistic, reprehensible, disturbing, unpardonable acts that were perpetrated by “humans” against other human beings) cannot ultimately be taken lightly. Not even close. However, the reason I wanted to say it and the context in which it was meant (since I sneaked it in anyway) is that a movie can just be a movie, especially when—as Tarantino did with the Nazis giving us Inglorious Basterds—the subject is treated with truthful, unapologetically realistic depiction, followed by some YES, PLEASE, no-holds-barred, self-serving, we-ALL-earned-seeing-it, good old-fashioned violence-matches-the-crime retribution.

No, it didn’t change history. It did not change the fact that racism is still ridiculously rampant in our (or any other) country. It did not erase the atrocities that were committed nor keep those still happening all over the world from occurring.

But it wasn’t supposed to.

It’s a movie.

And a fine one at that.

You know how I know that it’s a fine movie and that the subject was treated fairly and with realism and respect? Because while I was walking out, feeling the adrenaline flow for the hero, I wanted to cry for him, too, and I wanted to shout from the top of my lungs, with every ounce of conviction I contained:

I’M SORRY!

I am sorry. I wish I’d have been there—back then, I mean. I know what parts in the actual drama of history that I would have chosen to play and I wouldn’t have ever had to feel sorry for playing them. That reality makes me want to see the movie even more because I believe Tarantino’s goal was brilliantly served:

Revenge, on a deserved, bloody platter.