Take the Skinheads Bowling I

Take the Skinheads Bowling

I went to see Bowling for Columbine yesterday. If you've not seen this film, you are really missing out. It's fantastic. Flat out brilliant. It's not so much about guns in America (though it is a bit of a theme). Underneath, it's actually about the climate and culture of fear in the America.

All in all this film is full of great nuggets. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's not seen it but I do want to mention a few things. We all know that Michael Moore is from Michigan. And as expected there's a lot of the Great Lake State in his latest work. I grew up in Michigan too. Michigan is full of gun nuts. Our local party store is "Pat and Gary's Bow Hole" and they proudly advertise with a sign outside that reads "Bait, Guns and Ammo! We sell Liquor!" ... Norm Olson, Grand PooBah of the Michigan Militia, lived down the road from us. I always had this involuntary urge to duck when we drove by.

I fired my first (and only) gun when I was 17 at the insistence of my boyfriend (who several years later used a similar firearm to blow his brains out at the local bar - pretty). And every fall for two weeks you can hear the familiar sound of "pop pop pop" and see the results strapped to the hoods of SUV's around the state. It depicts Michigan's Welfare to Work program to be the absurd ass-backwards policy that it is. The kids at the Oscoda arcade are the kind of guys I went to high school with, and had I not had the good sense to be born queer and get the fuck outta there - I probably would have married one of those ignorant fucks. But I digress...

Columbine is not the central theme, but the actual footage (obtained through the Freedom of Information Act) was the toughest part of the whole film for me. The audio of MSNBC, CNN, FOX and other media outlets jamming Littleton's 911 dispatch asking for "Live On-Air Interviews" during the rampage was un-fucking believable. And Charlton Heston's "Jimmy the Greek" moment was a jaw dropper.

I ended up leaving with more questions than answers. I laughed - hard. And I cried. See it damn it. I'm going back for seconds.