Five Albums that Changed My Life, Vol. 1

These albums have all had an impact in not only how I play and write music, but also in what and how I think. They are the most important cultural experiences of my life, and here's why:

Tool – Ænima (1996)
This album defined and in many ways facilitated my musical ‘coming-of-age.' It is Tool at their most intense - full of the driving bass lines, heavy guitars, and thrashing drums that define so much of mid-90s, post-hardcore metal. This album, though, is strikingly unique because amidst all the heaviness lay intricate moments of sheer melodic bliss. The influence of bands like Rush and King Crimson are undeniable here, and they add a layer of complexity not often found in music of the genre and era. H., the album’s third track, is the perfect example: it starts with a pounding three note bass line and slowly progresses to moments of utter rhythmic beauty. Maynard draws a deep breathe before he sings softly over clean guitar scales and the ticking of drum rims, and suddenly bursts into a high-pitched scream, careening the song back into it’s heavy beginnings. This album taught me to listen less for the next heavy riff and more for MUSICANSHIP, and in that respect, is probably the most important album I’ve ever listened to.


Rage against the Machine – Evil Empire (1996)
In terms of influencing my own style of playing guitar, this album is the absolute paradigm. I stole this album from an unbeknownst acquaintance a few years after its release, simply because I had heard of Rage against the Machine and wanted to check it out – talk about P2P sharing. Actually, he lent it to me…permanently. Anyway, the album immediately changed the way I play and write music. Tom Morello taught me how to effectively infuse hip-hop and funk with rock, and to this day those ‘lessons’ are reflected in the way I play and structure the music I write. I listened to this album for 4 or 5 months straight, and soaked up every minute of Morello’s inventiveness, Tim2k’s amazing bass licks, and De La Rocha’s incredible flexibility. In hindsight and context of Rage’s other releases, this album is a bit tedious and drawn-out in places, but that doesn’t change the immense influence it had on me as musician.


Radiohead – Kid A (2000)
My second ‘musical coming-of-age,’ specifically because it’s one of the most atmospheric albums ever recorded, and also an absolute masterpiece. It’s a slick, multi-layered, and beautifully structured mixture of rock and electronica that reveals an entirely new dimension of Radiohead's capabilities and talent: starting with the piano driven Everything in Its Right Place, to the dreamlike Motion Picture Soundtrack, the band cycles through various styles and combinations, and does that quite successfully, if not perfectly. This album is especially significant for me because it’s about subtleties; the excruciating amount of detail I heard on each and every track on this album completely blew my mind. There isn’t any particular moment of distinctiveness; everything meshes delicately into one experience. This album is smart and well crafted, and it forever changed the spectrum of music I listened to. Everything loud suddenly turned to everything subtle, heavy riffs turned to delicate melodies, and my definition of music became something simpler to listen to, and infinitely more difficult to write.


The Mars Volta – De-loused in the Comatorium (2003)
This is arguably the most successful musical experiment ever. Get this: This band manages to mix jazz, funk, punk, prog metal, electronica, and a whole bunch of white noise into one cohesive experience. Pretty impressive, if you ask me. Ironically, I remember thinking of this album as a surpeme cacophonous mess when I first picked it up. Even after years of listening to odd rhythms and dissonant progressions in other bands, the music on De-loused just didn't sit well with me at first. It was a radical departure from the metal I had come to know inside and out - a gateway into a musical universe in which I knew next to nothing. There is a spirit of careless experimentation and improvisation that leaps from the music and grates on the ears. But, like the best music out there, after several listens, I was hooked.

After Tom Morello (mentioned above), the influence of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez on my own play style is undeniable. The frantic pace of his playing, the sloppy yet undeniably cool tone, had me hooked and doing something which, frankly, I had never done before - looking back. I researched his influences and listened to them like mad. Everyone from Mahavishnu Orchestra, to early Santana, to more modern bands like Can. This band, and especially this album, gave me an appreciation for roots and, consequently, for the music of the 60's & 70's which is now a much valued part of my library.

Candiria – 300 Percent Density (2001)
This music is challenging, engrossing, and enthralling - probably to more of an extent than anything else I've heard. Much like The Mars Volta, Candiria switches in-and-out of generes freely, except not with Volta's careless spirit. This is as precise as it comes. A serene jazz melody will suddenly erupt into a math-metal frenzy of complicated time signatures and staccato guitar riffs, then into a precariously timed hip-hop segment and back into a frenzy. While this may sound like a recipe for disaster, this band has the incredible talent of being able to do all this, and still manage to keep the music at a cohesive fever pitch, and with a reasonable amount of listenability.

Metaphysical agnosticism.

"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." -Herbert Spencer

I just got back from an amazing debate at UM. It dealt primarily with evolution and intelligent creation, the age-old argument that’s been burning up the proverbial charts for decades. Events like this always lead to interesting chains of thought post and pre-event, but I’ll get to those later.

The debate featured a microbiologist who believes in intelligent design, Paul Nelson, and an evolutionist, Michael Ruse, from good old Great Britain who is…well…an evolutionist (what more is there to say?) The basic arguments broke down like this:

The microbiologist argued that if we trace the history and composition of what we’ve come to know and conceptualize as life, we know that its most basic component is a molecule called RNA. RNA is involved in the transfer of information from DNA, programming protein synthesis and maintaining ribosome structure, and a plethora of other functions that make it absolutely essential for life to even begin. Nelson argued that in the lab, RNA is an extremely fragile molecule – it breaks apart easily under the microscope and during testing. One of Nelson’s points is that because RNA is so fragile, it would’ve been impossible for it to survive on prehistoric Earth long enough to create any kind of life, therefore creating the need for intelligent design.
He also brought up some really complicated microbiology in ORFan genes. ORFans are in essence hypothetical genes. They show no sequence similarity to those in any other organisms. They exist for no apparent reason, but are in some way essential to the composition of a DNA strand, because without the ORFan genes, the cell dies. The point? Because of this complexity, there very simply HAS to be an intelligent entity that created the natural laws that eventually created these genomic complexities.

These arguments, while they are well thought out, seem to me to be a throwing-up of hands in surrender. It's basically admitting to the limit of the potential of science to discover and uncover properties of the phenomenal world that as of now are mysteries. To so quickly attribute an ORFan gene or the fragility of RNA to an intelligent creator is just plain giving up. But there is a problem with this logically speaking that goes beyond any surface biological issues.

In the same way that the origin or function of ORFan genes are unknown, or unproven, the existence of an intelligent entity as the creative force behind the universe is UNPROVEN. However, the specific function of ORFan genes can be and will be tested and re-tested – probably until we find sound scientific evidence that justifies their existence in the human genome. Intelligent Design is not a valid scientific explanation for ORFan genes – or anything, for that matter – because it is and always will be un-testable, and therefore UNPROVEN.
The science behind the testing of these genes is not seeking to make any metaphysical claims about the origin of the universe. It has one clear objective: to gain scientific knowledge about the role of ORFan genes or to gain scientific knowledge about how RNA could survive in such a harsh pre-historical environment. To so quickly wave the scientific white-flag when it comes to these issues not only violates the traditional quest for knowledge of the sciences, but also inherently involves making a very metaphysical claim that the genealogists who study this problem are simply not making.

Making these metaphysical claims is problematic in the scientific sense because, again, they are not testable. However, for me, they also present a philosophical and epistemological problem: the origin of the universe and the metaphysical questions surrounding it are inherently unknowable - cognitively closed - in an objective sense. This, of course, is right from the pages of Kant. He stressed, more than anything, the subjectivity of what we experience on a daily basis, and refutes that can we can use these subjective experiences to define and describe metaphysical notions. Kant puts it better: "That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt... But... it by no means follows that all arises out of experience."

As an example - there can only, thinks Kant, be one explanation of our a priori (independent of experience) knowledge of the properties of space: the spatial properties of the world must be contributed by the knowing subject. That is, the world as it is in itself is not made up of objects arranged in space. Only the world as it appears to us is spatial, and this is precisely because space is nothing more than our way of representing the world to ourselves. I know it sounds complicated, but its actually quite simple. In Kant's own terminology, space is nothing more than a 'form of intuition [i.e., perception]'. Kant employs a similar argument to conclude that time, too, is a mere form of intuition. Space and time are features of the phenomenal world - the world as it appears to us - only. The noumenal world - the world of things as they are in themselves - is aspatial and atemporal.

The knowledge of these things or rather, the extent to which we can know about these things-in-themselves (as Kant called them) is bound by the limits of human conceptual frameworks and schemas. Aims to gain knowledge of the world as it is in itself is a futile engagement because theoretical knowledge can only be of the world as it appears to humans. If there is an intelligent being that created the universe, that being would undoubtedly fall into the group of metaphysical concepts like that of space and time, which claims to go “beyond” the appearance of experience (the phenomenonal) to grasp the essence of things-in-themselves (the noumenonal), which are not subject to experience. Knowledge of God becomes, in a Kantian scheme, a knowledge that has no object, and therefore cannot claim to be a well-founded knowledge. Kant provides an interesting image: metaphysics appears outside the realm of experience as a dove that seeks to fly without air beneath its wings. For this reason, when metaphysics asks questions about the existence of God, of the soul, of the world, of freedom – all realities that escape from a phenomenal type of experience – it falls into insurmountable antinomies.

Science, however, in its insatiable quest for objective truth, isn't spared from these faults. After all, there is plenty of science that seeks to understand an idealized universal truth. However, there's a convenient trick happening behind the scenes. Whether it acknowledges it or not, science is always studying the phenomenonal because it is studying the observable and testable - that which does fit into the concepts and schemas we derive from phenomenal experience. Religion, or at the very least the ideas espoused by the microbiologist, seeks the answers to something which not observable, not testable, in human experience. It is important to note that Kant's epistemology stands as a critique of both empiricism and rationalism. The empiricist view is wrong, since the mind is not a mere tabula rasa which passively receives knowledge of the world through the senses. The rationalist model of knowledge is just as mistaken, as reason alone can never give rise to knowledge, since knowledge demands both concepts and the raw data supplied by the senses. What we can relay on is science's ability to test the world-as-perceived and interpreted by human beings. That being said, to say that our current lack of knowledge about microbiology is direct evidence of a greater power is giving up. One of science’s key traits is its persistence. And like Ruse (the evolutionist) said in his argument, scientific persistence is impossible if we begin to include the notion of God and creation in and as a theory, because its simply not science!

Religion, for me, is the embodiment of the false metaphysical pursuit Kant warns of. In much the same way as it was invoked by the microbiologist in the debate, religion it is a human interpretation of something that is inherently beyond human comprehension. It tries to form the universe and its mysteries into something tangible, something explainable - and the result is, to no surprise, something ultimately mythical. Again, one could argue that science essentially struggles for the same answers; but again, one must remember the trick of science - its search for truth is inherently framed and bounded by the phenomenal. Religion's search for truth is framed in the noumenonal. That is the fundamental difference between the two. I, for one, don’t think that we as humans will ever have a clear understanding of the universe and its true beginnings and endings in an objective sense. Its just too vast, too uncategorized to fit into the realm of human understanding. As humans, the best we can do is describe the world as bound by the limits of our perceptions - define and understand reality as our reality and stop using vauge metaphysical explanations which, as Kant shows, have a huge epistemological flaw.

There is hope, though. What happens over time is science (and, therefore, as argued, observations based inherently off of phenomenal knowledge) turns many religious concepts on their heads. The sun doesn’t rise and set because of the Sun God’s will, it does so because of the Earth’s axis of rotation; a sacrifice to the Gods doesn’t bring about the rainy season, the Earth’s position relative to the Sun determines it. I think we’re reaching a new age of enlightenment about religious thought – we’re reaching that point, the glorious tipping point that has brought about so many revolutionary changes in the past, where science is catching up to and finally turning many contemporary metaphysical & religious ideas into old, crackpot myths and legends.

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." - Nicolas Copernicus

Ghosts of New York City.

I know it's the ultimate post-college cliché, but I'm doing it: I'm moving to New York City.

The glass and steel of Manhattan, while appealing in it's own right, isn't why I want to move. Nor is it the frantic pace on the street. I won't be there because I want a high-paying, high-ranking job in some gleaming office tower or to fulfill some goal of personal "success." I'm going because of the City. There's something about the Citiness of New York - all 5 boroughs - that is absolutely enthralling. The neighborhoods are the important prospect for me. Not the banal rows of single-family homes I'm accustomed to in the suburbs of Miami, where everyone keeps to themselves, where there's no real need to make any kind of connection with the people in your neighborhood. New York, especially the outer boroughs, is all about neighbors and neighborhoods. It's about connections and interactions - almost forcibly so.

When I look at downtown Miami, with the cranes erecting huge structures that are slowly conquering the skyline, I can't help but think of the effects those soulless buildings have on the culture that thrived below. On the street, people interacted. They went to corner coffee shops, met people, got on trains, and exchanged something vital, they exchanged a culture that was vibrantly unique in Miami. A people culture. With downtown Miami quickly becoming a Midtown Manhattan, with buildings acting as great overseers, I'm concerned that in many respects, Miami (or at least downtown and it's surroundings) is loosing what it already only minimally had. It's loosing an essential component that was robbed from most of Manhattan decades ago. It's ceasing to be a cultural city, and becoming a corporate city. So, I'm going to New York - the real New York, New York City, to experience city culture first-hand. Far from the strip malls and single-family houses of the suburban Miami. Far from a Miami that is shallow and utterly deprived of a city.

In going though, I realize the inherent contradictions. New York, especially Manhattan is the epicenter of this great loss of the cultural city. Maybe, I fear, I'm chasing the ghost of New York City, rather than something that still exists. For a long time, I've racked my brain (and craiglist's servers) searching and searching on where to live. For a while, I had my heart settled on somewhere on the Upper West Side, only to read about the ridiculous rents and the closing of many mom-and-pop stores (the real institutions of cultures) in the area. Somewhere in Brooklyn, I thought - Fort Greene is beautiful - only to find out about the proposed Brooklyn Nets Arena coming to nearby Bed-Stuy that will hugely contribute to the area's already problematic gentrification.

My sentiments about these things are rooted in, basely, my strong sense of what gentrification and corpratization does to the essence of makes New York City, and other great American cities, cultural places. From Wikipedia: "Gentrification, or urban gentrification, is a phenomenon in which low-cost, physically deteriorated neighborhoods undergo physical renovation and an increase in property values, along with an influx of wealthier residents who may displace the prior residents."

While an increase in neighborhood affluence may initially seem appealing, the human cost to the neighborhood's lower-income residents is often staggering. The increases in property value, and subsequently in rent, make previously affordable neighborhoods expensive and, quite frankly, turn them in bourgeois, homogeneous neighborhoods. Aside from the massive displacement of lower income families, the architecture of gentrified areas often changes radically; eradicating beautiful brownstones and low-rises and replacing them soulless monstrosities that utterly sever the cultural artery of any area. That's exactly what I don't want - to move somewhere with no culture, no real New York essence. I like the dirty urbanisms, the crazy people you meet, the quintessential (maybe romantic) New York of Goodfellas, not the bourgeois of You've Got Mail. It's blatantly apparent in Manhattan. The Village, once an area almost burdened with culture, is a vestige of what's happening not just in New York City, but in major urban centers across the globe, all shining examples of the corporate world making hollow something that should be hallowed. Commercializing, stereo typifying, gentrifying an area until it is essentially dead.

"By the early 1960s, the Beat's enclave of Greenwich Village had
been... commercialized by middle-class onlookers... Between 1964 and 1968,
dozens of specialty shops that catered to the hippies had opened along St.
Mark's Place... In addition to students and hippies, the neighborhood's
countercultural atmosphere attracted copywriters, editorial workers, fashion
designers, and commercial artists... Although the youthful movement criticized
middle-class values and lifestyles, its members, nonetheless, were of largely
middle-class origin living in one of the poorest working-class districts in the
city." (Mele, 159-169)

I used to blame the hipsters and bohemians, but I really can't. They're after what I'm after - somewhere affordable, with the authentic city vibe. Unfortunately, and seemingly without fail, the commercial infrastructure that follows the appeal these people bring to neighborhoods results in a boring, homogeneous place that may be physically nicer, but is culturally more run-down. Which of the two is valued more? The answer is there in every high-rise luxury condo.

Don't get me wrong. I like a safe, nice looking neighborhood as much as the next guy. I'm not saying I want to live somewhere rat-infested or crime ridden for the sake of culture. What I want, like the hippies of yore, is somewhere that is culturally authentic. Somewhere that feels like a neighborhood, where real people interact and converse and where there is a shared sense of "this place is the shit and there's no other place like it." I want to feel connected to the place I live, to walk outside and encounter it in a very real way. This essence, what has made cities like New York so great for so long, is slowly (or rapidly in some places) dying. what's being put there in it's stead is essentially a gated city, one in which only a select few have access and those that do not are pushed to the fringe of.

This is happening in New York as we speak, that is undeniable. And perhaps the ultimate irony of this is that by moving to New York, I will be contributing to the very things I've just railed against. The only I can do, I think, (after long considerations) whether in New York or in my native Miami is fight it. Be more a cause of the reversing of this trend than a cause of it. No matter what part of the city I end up in - the only thing I can do is fight the developers and other corporate forces that are robbing New York of....well...being New York. Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be so concerned but the where of New York, but of the how. How am I going to make the best of this move? How can I get involved to fight these seemingly overwhelming forces? How can I (to quote a famous anarchist phrase) 'create the world I want to live in?' These questions, the how, I've realized, are the only real concerns I should have.

And so, the search continues......

"I moved to New York City for my health. I'm paranoid and it was the only place
where my fears were justified.” - Anita Weiss

The Mars Volta's "The Bedlam in Goliath" -- A Review.

This is the best The Mars Volta has released in a long time. Much like their other works (and possibly more so), this album will take a few listens for full appreciation. With it, though, comes the intensity that has been lacking on some of their recent stuff, and a sound that is on the whole less polished and more on the side of raw, tenacious music - in a good way. The reason why this album works is largely because of group's blending of the styles and methods that they've employed on their other 3 albums into one, (mostly) cohesive work. The mish-mash segmentation of songs present on Amputechture is here ('Metatron', 'Cavalletes'), as well as the more ethereal, drawn-out fusing of tracks and song sections found in Deloused and Fraces the Mute (Ouruborous, Iyllena). Thankfully, though, its handled with care this time, sparing us 4 minute segments of white noise between tracks.

Drummer Thomas Pridgen, new to the band, shows himself to be as much a badass as previous drummer John Theodore, although at times he seems to be overplaying, lacking some of the dynamic subtlety that Theodore brought to the band's sound. This is a minor thing, though, as it is not overtly present and, frankly, there are few moments in the album where such subtlety is really required. ('Soothsayer' is probably the biggest example of this critique.)

Every song on here is solid, and the album, as I said, is Volta's best release in a while - probably since their brilliant debut. If you're at all a fan, or want some music thats going to kick you in the face, Check it out!

Radiohead's In Rainbows -- A Review

The last we heard anything new from Radiohead was 2001's Hail to the Thief. The six year wait, the longest in their career, paid off - big time. The musicianship on this album is simply mind-blowing, and not in a technical way. This album is full of beautifully arranged and passionately performed music that tugs at those heart-strings without relying on stylistic bullshit or superficial complications. The songs are clean, simple, as Thom Yorke put it "embarrassingly minimal." Rather than using dense solos or diluted riffs, simple arpeggios create interesting harmonies ("Weird Fishes," "Jigsaw Falling into Place") and Yorke's famously expressive falsetto is as sharp as ever, soaring through the music and puncturing it at the just right moments ("Nude," "House of Cards") But don't be fooled though, the album does have it's harder moments. "Body Snatchers" and "Reckoner" are sometimes jagged, sometimes serene songs that accentuate this band's song-writing talent. Every note is handled with care - carefully placed and beautifully arranged, making for a masterful album.

One could gripe that there isn't really anything new happening here, but what I would argue is that this album is really a synthesis of the sound Radiohead has been crafting for the length of their long career. The straightforward, guitar-heavy songs of their older efforts The Bends and Ok Computer is present really throughout the album. The more derivative, abstract Radiohead of Kid A and beyond is present, though in the background on In Rainbows. "House of Cards," with it's beautiful guitar riffs and strange reverberations embodies what the band has achieved on this record: a quiet collaboration with it's own uniquely esoteric sound.

Because of this, I feel that this is really Radiohead's best release - although I even hesitate to make such a contentious statement. Nevertheless, whether you're an old fan or a first-time listener, this album is sure to blow your mind. I know it did to me.

Cultural Learnings, indeed.

This is a copy-and-paste from a previous blog of mine (hence the post date), but I rather like it and think it makes some still relevant points. Therefore, here it is, along with some editing!

Saturday night I went, accompanied by a certain someone (who for my own sake will remain unnamed) to see Borat. I loved it, while my "certain someone" was less than amused. This certain someone was greatly offended by the movie, and in this person's words, was 'disappointed in me for stooping to the ignorant levels of the movie and actually laughing'. Why not? I can certainly see this person's point. I mean, it's full of wild racism, leering sexism, all-around grotesque intolerance. Or is it?

The movie introduces us to a racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic crazy Kazakh, but what a lot of people failed to realize is that that Kazakh is us. Borat is more than an offensive spoof on middle-eastern culture - it is a brilliantly unapologetic commentary on all thing Americana. Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of this character on a TV show he regularly spears on, is a Cambridge-educated writer who wrote his thesis on Jewish involvement in the American civil rights movement. He's no intellectual pushover. This film, and in essence the show that spawned it, is his vehicle for commenting and exposing intolerance, even if crudeness is his secret weapon. There is no question that Borat is spectacularly lowbrow— but the film stoops to conquer, blowing the lid off people's secret prejudices and hidden resentments and airing out the rancid stupidity that breeds them. Cohen makes a farce out of things we're not supposed to joke about, cutting ugly hatred off at the knees and robbing it of its power by offering it up for ridicule. As this reckless innocent abroad travels to a gun store, a rodeo, a Pentecostal church service, the "Magnolia Mansion Dining Society" in Birmingham, Ala., and even a Pamela Anderson book-signing in California, something incredible happens, something that reveals the audaciousness and really, the genius of this film: Borat becomes less shocking than the real-life folks he encounters. Is it crude? Yes. It is over-the-top? Yes. But its piss-in-your-pants funny and incredibly provocative, and that's the point people are missing.

Case-in-point. I recently got into one of my famous political scuffles with several members of my family. I'll spare you the mundane details, but the long-and-short of it is that I happened to mentioned the fact that the democrats now had control of the house and senate and, well, to put it lightly, fireworks ensued. Somehow the conversation progressed to my grandmother claimed that Muslims had already killed "100,000 Americanos innocentes" and they would now have the opportunity to killed many more because of…blah blah blah. Of course, I retorted with the tried-and-true Bush-bashing. The battle ensued for no more than few minutes and ended on generally friendly terms. However, upon laughing hysterically at Borat's antics, I was accused of being a hypocrite. How could I stand up to my grandmother's ignorance so furiously and yet laugh at a movie which stoops to such "ignorant" levels? Well, there are several answers to this question.

The first answer is plain-and-simple: seriousness. When my grandmother speaks of the hundreds of thousands of people killed in 9/11, something which is blatantly nonfactual, she is being absolutely and concretely serious. When she chooses to ignore the obvious fact that Saddam Hussein had no connections with 9/11 and that there are reasons for the current invasion of Iraq that have yet to be discussed by the U.S. Government, she is being unmistakably unyielding. When Borat tells me that his Kazakh town is populated by a man designated as the 'town rapist' and that his sister is the 'fourth-best prostitute in all of Kazakhstan,' common sense tells me that Borat, who is fictitious character to begin with, is kidding. The prospect of these things, which the movie succeeds greatly on expounding, is drop-dead hilarious. The movie never attempts to be anything but a comedy, even in its most 'dramatic' moments. It doesn't take itself seriously, and establishes that mood even from its very first frames. That allows movie geeks like me to forgive the movie for its lack of cinematic prowess and just sit back and laugh. It's a well-made comedic satire and it is nearly flawless in its execution. Period. If you decide to view this movie any more seriously than it views itself, then you're missing the whole damn point.

Countless people are offended and shocked, I say LIGHTEN THE HELL UP! The government of Kazakhstan is very unhappy with this film and hired two Western public relations firms to counter Borat's claims, running a four-page advertisement in The New York Times. Sorry, but the musings of a British comedian on the big-screen is not going to convince me that Kazakhstan is actually anything like what it is depicted in movie. In fact, it won't convince anyone with half a brain. "The male nudity is so offensive! It's like watching porn!" First off, its not porn. It's a freakin' hilarious naked fight scene between an extremely obese man and his skinny counterpart which leads them to run naked through hotel elevators and a business conference. Granted, the scene is hilariously grotesque, but hey, its all for the sake of an awkward, uncomfortable comedic moment and its works brilliantly. After all, its you who watches this scene and thinks: Oh my god, its gay porn! "This movie is so anti-Semitic and racist!" The genius behind Cohen's humor is how he's able to make people believe with a simple accent and a few grammatical antics that he comes from a world so "primitve" that he doesn't even know how to use a toilet. In fact, it can be argued that Cohen specifically targets racists, anti-Semites, and homophobes and exposes them not only through the interactions with the people his character meets in film, but also by using the character himself. Although he had the police called on him 91 times during the making of the film, he was never once exposed as being a fraud or as putting on some kind of act. Hell, people are even suing him because they had no idea they were even in a movie. Apparently, its very easy to confuse someone with a middle eastern accent in this country as either "primitive" (i.e, Magnolia Mansion Dining Society) or as a terrorist (i.e the leader of the Rodeo who actually tells him to shave his mustache to look like an I-talian.) Hm, who's the racist now? Don't you see? The joke is ultimately not about Borat, but about us. That is the ultimate point the movie is making.

The brilliance of Borat is that its comedy is as pitiless as its social satire, and as brainy. Yes, that's right, brainy. So please, try not to take Borat's seemingly offensive antics to heart. Just go to the theater, accept that it's just satire, and laugh. After all, it's pretty damn funny.

High Five!