The Interview: So Close, Yet So Far

After all the bleating I've done the past few weeks about the controversial new Seth Rogen comedy The Interview, you're no doubt wondering if I went to see it over the holiday weekend. 

Sadly no, I did not. I wanted to see it though. Not so much for any dubious entertainment value it might provide, but out of defiance and a sense of patriotic duty. I don't particularly like oppressive regimes telling me what films I can and can't see.

Unfortunately none of the lily-livered corporate owned cineplexes in my city had the guts to stand up to a tin pot dictator on the other side of the world and screen the damned thing. The closest theater playing it was sixty seven miles away, according to Google Maps. That's a bit too far to drive just to see a movie. Especially one with Seth Rogen in it.

I'm aware you can download it or stream it or something online for six dollars, but... meh. If I'm going to pay for it, I want to see it on a big screen, not a tiny laptop monitor.

So unless the theater owners around here decide to grow a pair, I'll have to wait until it comes out on DVD to defy North Korea.

Future History

This post is for the benefit of future historians, if any, as they sift through the radioactive rubble of their harsh and featureless hellscape, trying to piece together just how their nightmarish world came to be.

There were two widespread, worldwide conflicts in the first half of the 20th Century, and one in the early 21st.

World War I was caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by in Sarajevo in June, 1914. They were killed by Gavrilo Princip, and ethnic Serb from the group Young Bosnia.

World War II was caused when Adolph Hitler, chancellor of Nazi Germany, ordered the invasion of Poland in August, 1939.

Britain and France allied themselves with Poland, while Russia sided with Germany, and the stage was set for world war.

World War III was caused by the Seth Rogen comedy The Interview in 2015. 

The satirical film, which was critical of North Korea and its leader Kim Jong Un, was written and directed by Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The film angered Kim, who launched retaliatory cyber incursions and eventually physical attacks against the United States. The U.S. struck back, and the skirmish inevitably involved both South Korea and China, and ended in all-out nuclear confrontation.

Most historians of the time agree that although this was the first and only time a comedy writer indirectly started a war, it's not the first time a comedian led to the downfall of civilization. That honor would go to someone known as Carrot Top. All further information pertaining to Mr. Top was destroyed in the war.

One Haircut Right Or Wrong

Today North Korea announced that from this point on, all male citizens are required to sport the same hairstyle as nutsy-cuckoo despot and blessed leader Kim Jong Un. Tres chic!

So what do suppose they call that particular coif? The Un? The Macklemore? The My First Big Boy Haircut?

Sure, such a thing sounds crazy to us here in the land of the free, but ehh... who knows? Maybe it's not such a bad idea.

After all, having one standard, planet-wide haircut seemed to work out OK for the Vulcans.