The gluteus minimus and gluteus maximus muscles which form the bottom evolved in relation to walking and running. Sometimes running away from things. It’s not like you run at a wooly mammoth (to call upon a historical example); you wait for one and ambush it with fifty of your friends. Running is good for survival.

So essentially, in appreciating your well-toned derriere, people are (in a reductionist way) appreciating you for your ability to scamper away at speed from threats. Cowardice.

Evolutionary imperatives are confusing and disgraceful.

It’s a tight loop, but it also has effects on a social level too. Like the important scientific discoveries and perspectives that have changed peoples mindsets, for example the understanding of the term ‘ego’ and the relativism revolutions, this understanding of neurons will also feed back into the way the brain is structured, in a larger loop. Not only do we know different things, we now think differently, maybe so much so, that an intellectual discussion between a contemporary citizen and one from say, two thousand years ago, would be nigh-on impossible. Thus social events feed back in very real and tangibly physical ways in terms of how our brains are structured.

From the TV production God on Trial.

Thanks to David, for bringing this to my attention.

Robin Hood leading the English army... wait... what?

SPOILER ALERT: This is not the film you’ll expect to see. It doesn’t even mention Sherwood Forest, robbing anyone and giving to anyone else, thwarting the Sheriff of Nottingham,  firing the famous bow that much, or even running around with his bunch of ne’er-do-well cultural stereotypes, er, I mean, Merry Men.

How I can sum this movie up? Rather than focus on the film as a whole, I’ll just break it down into individual, ridiculous sections. It might not mean anything to those who haven’t seen the movie, but I think the stupidity I’m outlining will keep you from making my mistake and watching it at all. Here we go….

• Feral children riding Shetland ponies into battle against the French.

I skipped a lot to get to this point, but still, you’re not missing much. Early on in the proceedings, the extent to which England has gone down the toilet without the leadership of Richard the Lionheart, is explained by a random raid on a store house by small children wearing masks, a la Scarecrow from Batman Begins. This theme is largely ignored for the rest of the film, until the end, in the ‘final battle’, when they charge into battle against the floundering, moist French, who are struggling to gain a foothold on the beach they just invaded (I don’t remember this in my history class, but never mind). How they kept up with the rest of the army riding to resist this mysterious invasion force, is a mystery. How they learned swordplay, let alone kung-fu, in the forests of Sherwood, is also an enigma. Those French soldiers, trained and disciplined, don’t stand a chance against a collection of eighty-pound armorless boy-scouts, it seems.

Evidently, everyone forgot to inform Robin that the battle was taking place in the other direction.

• The French soldiers making the French sound.

The French in their evil dastardly ways manage to break into Friar Tucks mead supply (Tuck is an alcoholic… shock horror) and actually make the French uh-huh-huh-huh noise. I’ve never heard a French person sound like this, so imagine my surprise to discover that it was simply indicative of the parlance of the time. You learn something new every day.

• Maid Marion riding into battle in full armor.

Back to the final battle. She turns up on the beach as an anonymous knight in black armor, after everyone one else had gotten there, and then proceeds to get laid out at the hands of the evil Godfrey, the English turncoat, before needing to be rescued by Mr Hood. He then carries her off into the sunset (Well, sort of. You don’t get sunsets in England, more like a smudged stains in the sky). How does he do this? She must weight 150lbs at least, plus armor, at least another 120lbs, plus his armor, plus wading through the water. Archers must have been ripped in those days, not the malnourished conscripted peasants I thought they were.

Maid Marion looking all made-up and purdy. Clearly, Galadriel is a bit more earthy looking in this flick, but she hasn't lost the blurriness, reminding us that she's female.

Oh, and she gets a long sloppy, a little-bit-bloody kiss. I don’t know what Medieval dental standards were up to, but that can’t have been pleasant.

• Attacking an island.

Of all the hundreds of miles of English coastline, why on earth do the French land in the one part that is defensible, in front of an impassable cliff? Oh yes, of course, it’s so the English longbow can make one of only three appearances in the whole film, firing in volleys off the cliff into the hapless French ranks.

• Turning ships around in the English Channel.

SCENE – French King on prow of ultra-maneuverable Medieval warship, regarding the failed beach landing: “Sacre-bleu, we are losing! I am Français, and my stereotype dictates that I run at the first sign of trouble! We must flee, tout-de-suite! Turn around, maintenant!

Turn around? How the hell are you going to turn around? You’re in a ship that barely had a rudder! It’s a wooden brick with a sail! Your movement is dictated by the tides! How in gods name….?

• Landing vessels that look suspiciously like something from Saving Private Ryan.

Oh those French, always one step ahead.

Like this, but made of wood. I'm not joking.

• Democracy in the Middle Ages.

The film continually tries to introduce contemporary values and ideals throughout the movie, such as taking a lassaiz-faire attitude to religion, gender equality and best of all, individual rights and freedoms. As per the plot, Robin Hood’s dad was killed trying to preach democratic rights to an unsympathetic elite. Upon having a massive memory recall whilst drunk one night with his new pater-familias played by Max Von Sydow (oh, you have fallen so far Max), our hero finds his calling as Martin Luther Hood, and starts giving speeches about how every mans house is his castle (always wondered where that phrase came from) and how everyone can be individuals. The Evil King, under pressure, agrees to endow these rights, honest, right after everyone goes to fight a war for him. Just before the film ends (about 139 minutes after it should have done) the screenwriter must realizes the glaring historical inaccuracy, and so the King renounces these former policies promises (not at all like what happens today) and everything goes back to normal. Whew. For a second there I thought they were all going to vote.

• Summing up.

Other than displaying the directors penchant for having people fling weapons to Russell Crowe for him to use whilst on horseback, and the fact that for a simple archer, Robin Hood was an all-round weapons master, and that he could gives speeches that people would actually listen to, and that the color palette of the movie couldn’t make it’s mind up whether to be dystopian brown or blurry pastoral yellows, or how Robin couldn’t have known how to ride a horse (less fight proficiently off one), or that Maid Marion shows no previous aptitude at using a sword, or that people didn’t bathe for months at a time, or how there was plantation forests and modern dancing, or that the French didn’t invade England until 1216, were actually successful and put a king on the throne for a while…. other than all that…. it was still shit. Badly edited, scripted, cast and directed.

Ridley Scott was on some drugs when the screen-writer pitched this steamer to him. He must have been.
“Oh yes, Mr Scott… and then, then, Maid Marion rides into battle! And ooh, ooh, some wild children on ponies turn up! And then they win! Yay! It’s great! I know! Do I get paid yet?”

Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves, remember that one, with Kevin Costner, in all its resplendent American-accented glory, where the only English-speaking person was the bad guy? Yes, well it was better. I said it.

Nice film though. ‘Specially like the part with the airplanes. I recommend you play this in high-definition.

Lost: the absence of direction.

Cause: a definitive purpose within an ideology.

The phrase lost cause makes me think of something I read once, that we can sometimes be a boat on the ocean with a sail, but no rudder. The sail is our passion, our drive. The rudder is our common sense, our grounding, practicality. Without the sail we would run in circles, endlessly and uneventfully. To be with a sail but minus the rudder, we would push destructively across the seas, no compass, like a candle that would burn down too quickly. It is the combination of the two that keeps us steady.

The term ‘lost cause’ means (at least to me) that we have the drive, but we don’t where to put it. We’re talented, but don’t know where to devote it. We’re pushing forward, but we question if we’re making a difference. We’re foundering on open seas and there’s no sign of the moon or stars to guide us.

“The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long, and you have burned so very brightly.”

So we are lost, and yet we know we want to go somewhere. Maybe the cause makes us lost. Perhaps knowing the route and having the means to walk it frightens us, so we meander around the start line, never taking that oh-so important first step.

Or perhaps we took those first steps, we’re half way along the road, maybe further and now we have lost the map, or the purpose. We are the scarecrow, tin man, lion and we’re all on the side of the yellow-brick road wondering how the hell we all got into this mess, looking for the critical component that will get us going again. Solidarity might hold the answer? Good friends, good strong hands to pull us up again. Perhaps.

Or maybe not. All the advice in the world, clamoring at our ears for audience doesn’t matter. In the end, the battles are our own. And we always lose.

I think there is real comfort in that.

Here’s to lost causes. And here’s to finding them again.

It’s peculiar that an item can be touted as superior, based on its lack of ingredients. Especially when we really shouldn’t be thanking the producer for its sense of responsibility, when the product shouldn’t contain the offending ingredient in the first place.

I’ve seen apples that are advertised as “Trans Fat free” when apples don’t contain it to begin with. Or sugar-free gum that uses aspartame as an alternative. Bread that contains sugar but is then low-sodium.

And I’m further dismayed to the extent that advertisers will patronize their various demographics, by selling a product minus some chemical additive, that produces no adverse effects, and that the manufacturer knows is truly unnecessary to remove anyway, by relying on the gullibility of the consumer to not look into the details.

I’ve always considered health food, or even regular food that is promoted as healthy, to be something of a niche sell, purchased by those who are more interested in the identity that the use of these types of products provides, instead of looking into the statistical evidence that proves that exercise and common sense with food is by far the best option one has to living longer and healthier. Vitamins, minerals, the absence of this and that, are only contributing factors at best, and in reality play very little part in ones sense of well-being (beyond the placebo effect of course).

In the style of District 9, I’m glad to see we’re beginning to explore what we can really do with CGI, and this is a superb example.