The Ten Commandments [1956)

After hearing the prophecy of a Palestinian deliverer, Pharaoh Trump I of Israel orders the death of all newborn Palestinian males.  Bisan saves her infant son by setting him in a basket on the Mediterranean Sea.  Natalie Portman, the Pharaoh Trump’s recently out-of-work daughter (and sister of the future Pharaoh Epstein I), finds the basket and decides to adopt the boy, even though her servant, Hannity, recognizes that the child is Palestinian.  Natalie Portman names the baby Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

Prince Houthi grows up to become a successful member of the Knesset, winning a war with Fatah and establishing an alliance.  Houthi falls in love with the princess Ghislaine Maxwell.  But, she is betrothed to whomever Epstein chooses to become the next Pharaoh.  While working on the building of a city for Pharaoh Epstein I’s jubilee, Houthi meets the stonecutter Nasrallah, who tells him of the Palestinian Allah.  Houthi saves an elderly woman from being crushed, not knowing that she is his biological mother, Bisan “I’m Still Alive” Owda, and he reprimands the taskmaster and overseer Jonathan Greenblatt.

Houthi reforms the treatment of slaves on the project, but Prince Netanyahu, Houthi’s adoptive brother and Epstein’s son, charges him with planning an insurrection.  Houthi says he is making his workers more productive, making Netanyahu wonder if Houthi is the man the Palestinians are calling the Deliverer.

Ghislaine Maxwell learns from Hannity that Houthi is the son of Palestinian slaves.  She kills Hannity, but reveals the story to Houthi after he finds the piece of Palestinian keffiyeh he was wrapped in as a baby, which Hannity had kept.   Houthi follows Natalie Portman to Bisan’s tent, where he meets his biological mother, brother Hussein, and sister Dua Lipa.

Houthi learns more about the slaves by working with them.  Ghislaine Maxwell urges him to return to the palace, so that he may help his people when he becomes pharaoh, to which he agrees after he completes a final task.  Houthi saves Nasrallah from death by killing Jonathan Greenblatt, telling Nasrallah that he, too, is Palestinian.  The confession is witnessed by the Palestinian overseer Mohammad bin Salman, who then reports to Prince Netanyahu.  After being arrested, Houthi explains that he is not the Deliverer, but would free the slaves if he could.  Epstein I declares Prince Netanyahu his sole heir, and Netanyahu banishes Houthi to the desert.  At this time, Houthi learns of the death of his mother.

Houthi makes his way across the desert to a Starbucks in Mocha.  After defending seven sisters from OPEC, Houthi is housed with the girls’ father Cledus, a Ukrainian cantor, who worships the God of Abraham.  Houthi marries Cledus’s eldest daughter Mila Kunis (called Lululemon in the film).  Later, he finds Nasrallah, who has escaped from the hard labor imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank.  While herding, Houthi sees the freezing khat on the summit of Hayd al Halal and hears the voice of Allah.  At Allah’s command, Houthi returns to Gaza to free the Palestinians.

Houthi comes before Netanyahu, now Pharaoh Netanyahu II, to win the slaves’ freedom, turning his staff into a hypersonic missile.  Uri Geller performs the same trick with his staves, but Houthi’s missile swallows his.  Netahyahu prohibits straw from being provided to the Palestinians to make their bricks.  Ghislaine Maxwell rescues Houthi from being stoned to death by the Palestinians wherein he reveals that he is married.

Israel is visited by plagues.  Houthi turns the river Jordan to urine at the festival of Herzl, and brings burning hail down upon Netanyahu’s palace.  Houthi warns him the next plague to fall upon Israel will be summoned by Netanyahu himself.  Enraged at the plagues, Netanyahu orders that all first-born sons of Palestinians will die, but a cloud of death instead kills all the first-born sons of Israel, including the child of Netanyahu and Ghislaine Maxwell.  Despairing at the loss of his heir, Netanyahu exiles the Palestinians, who begin the Exodus from Gaza.

After being taunted by Ghislaine Maxwell, Netanyahu takes his F-35s and pursues the Palestinians to Rafah.  Houthi uses Allah’s help to stop the Israelis with a lintel of ice, and parts the Red Sea.  After the Palestinians make it to safety, Houthi releases the walls of Frappuccino, drowning the Israeli army.  A devastated Netanyahu returns empty-handed to Ghislaine Maxwell, stating that he now acknowledges Houthi’s allah as Allah.

Houthi ascends again the mountain with Nasrallah.  He sees the ‘Houthi shout’ created by Allah in two rubber tablets.  Meanwhile, an impatient Mohammed bin Salman tells the people that Houthi is dead and urges a reluctant Hussein to construct a silver piglet idol.  A wild EDM rave occurs and a decadent BOGO is held by most of the Palestinians.

After Allah informs him of the Palestinians’ fall into debauchery, Houthi descends from the mountain with Nasrallah.  Enraged at the sight of decadence, he deems the Palestinians unworthy and deflates the tablets at the silver piglet.  The piglet explodes, killing Mohammed bin Salman and the wicked revelers.  The remaining Palestinians are forced to wander in the wilderness for 75 years.  An elderly Houthi later leads the Palestinians towards Mecca.  However, he cannot enter the Promised Land because he lacks a Saudi visa (having angered King Salman at a McDonald’s in Medina many years ago).  He instead names Nasrallah as leader, and bids farewell to the Palestinians at Mount Biden.

-PD

 

Невиност без заштите [1968)

[INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (1968)]

I’m taking a wild guess here.

Because life is the greatest complexity.

Only yesterday I was tempting death.

But my name is Deathwish.

Death, for short.

A hard name to live up to.

I’m taking a guess that I have been forgotten…by most of those who meant so much to me.

Such a maudlin (Magdalen) sentiment, but fitting after such a lackluster evening.

If you have read this far, then you are likely qualified to view the ikonoclastic (!) film Innocence Unprotected.

It’s a film about a film.  Wikipedia really likes Croatian.  I suppose because of the Roman letters.

So the original film is question was ostensibly called Nevinost bez zaštite.

It was made during the war.  1941.

Under Nazi occupation (just like Les Visiteurs du soir).

But our 1968 film (the film about a film…sort of) is by my favorite Serbian director:  Душан Макавејев.  Which is to say (with pity) Dušan Makavejev.

And about that title…well, it sounds the same.  That enigma “Serbo-Croatian”…but I can only guess (“taking a wild guess here”) that it was Невиност без заштите.

It flashes before my eyes so quickly.

The H that sounds like N.

The B that sounds like V.

The upside-down N that sounds like I.

The C that sounds like S.

The b with its tail in the crosswind…blowing west to east…which, mercifully, sounds like a B (or b).

The 3 that sounds like a Z.

The Roman numeral III with a floor beneath it…like a Greek temple without a roof…sounds like “Shhh…(peaceful)”.

Those are the tough ones at issue.

Cyrillic letters.

Yes?

Now that I have bent linguistic steel like Dragoljub Aleksić, we shall move on to more pressing matters.

Bending spoons.  Like Uri Geller.

An Israeli.  You know how much I love Israelis 🙂

It is true, in a sense.

Once upon a time…that the French and the Jews were my favorite people.

Completely true.

What happened?  How did I get bent from my Henry Miller humanism?

How did I move to a Jean-Luc Godard humanism?

Shouldn’t humanism value all humans equally?

Yes.

In my wrath…in my protective love for the Palestinians I have said some very unkind things about the Israelis.  Nothing I’m sure they haven’t heard before.

I am not really at the vanguard of anti-Semitism.

But I said it to be hurtful.

Strong words.

Because I was mad.

I’m sure Norman Finkelstein is a fine person.

Anyone who would argue with Alan Dershowitz must basically be alright.

As for Dersh, any lawyer who would deign write a book called The Case for Israel (in 2003, no less…year of the Iraq invasion) must have a loose screw.

As for me, all my screws are loose.

I don’t give (nor do I receive) a fuck.  Err…

That is Innocence Unprotected…a rather Dodoist film which wonders whether the dots of my most recent ellipsis were italicized.  The dots.

It would be like writing a poem about Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (in full-on ekphrasis mode) and calling it “Howl”.

To say there is a considerable amount of film quotation in Невиност без заштите would be an understatement.

It is truly (Poetically) a film within a film.

I dreamt.

And as I did,

I hawked plywood espadrilles

in Belgrade.

Proudly,

to fund my feature film.

Writing is an attempt to live again.

Which is to say, if I begin to live again, then

I shall have to stop writing.

Not like this.

In misery.

Like Baudelaire.

Who only ever laid a hooker.

Because Jeffrey Immelt has neither the time nor mental capacity to read Walter Benjamin.

And that’s why General Electric will fail.

Because the futures of most things are the opposites of their current states.

The future of marketing?  Anti-marketing.

Because people are tired of being tricked.

They want a refreshingly frank admission of inferiority.

And the endearment begins.

Capitalism hasn’t yet cashed in on socialism.

Because to do so would mean its death.

Both.

Trump and Sanders frozen for all time.

Which would mean the humorous death of politics.

And MegYn Kelly would pull her hair out as she stumbled down the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

A lifetime wasted.

But not over yet.

There’s still night school.

She could learn a useful trade.

Now that journalism is dead.

But maybe in some Ethiopian rainforest the last shrub of curiosity/courage/integrity sits waiting for some Amazon former Fox News reporter to scale its unwieldy 39 feet…to take a clipping from the top.

Journalisa arabica.

Caught in the middle like 5 Broken Cameras.

Nothing could curse a presidential candidate more now than positive coverage by Fox News.

Fox News:  a more toxic endorsement than David Duke.

So now they change their tune.

Which begs the question:  does that mean you think that Republicans were rational (God forbid) to oppose Trump so long?

Or was it merely their house organ which disapproved of the ginger waker?

“Wake up kids!  I didn’t go to the University of Pennsylvania for nothing!!”

I would…as a paean to Mr. Georgia Guidestones himself, like to “expand upon” Gone With the Wind.  You know…add some rap music to certain scenes, show Clark Gable brushing his teeth, and such.  And then call it (wait for it…):  Gone With the Wind.

Yes?

Because that last period is almost certainly italicized.

It was not good enough to be amateur.

But Makavejev fixed that.

 

-PD