Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, Jordan Stokes, and Matthew Wrather overthink White House Down.
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Your Panel
Further Reading
- The Bourse at Independence Mall
- Bourse defined in Merriam-Webster Online
- DeSoto Caverns on Wikipedia
- Jaws 3-D on IMDb
- Burning Man
- White House Down on IMDb
Alternative Titles
- The Enemy’s White House Is Down
- I Want All That is Wicked in The World to be Coalesced into A Face That I Can Punch
- Man Vs. Complicated White House
- The Rogues Gallery of Terrorists Exists on A Continuum of Like-Us-ness
- Dreamboat Stripper Dudes and/or G.I. Joes
- The Evolution of the A-Shirt
- A Terry Gilliam Solution to a Roland Emmerich Problem
- James Woods is Waiting for My Page
Weather’s idea is not too far off from Cory Doctorow’ latest YA novel, Homeland – the first act is set at Burning Man as characters from the earlier book Little Brother are given secret info (stuff similar to the Snowden leaks)
some of the art projects are sabotaged by evil government agents leading to some huge explosions
Weird feeling when I saw this podcast, given I’d just watched this movie on Saturday, and didn’t expect you guys to cover this given it came out months ago. I actually half-expected you’d already done it.
Anyway, re: drone! The movie is not as anti-drone as you guys argue in the podcast. In fact, one of Jamie Foxx’s arguments for withdrawing troops from the whole Middle East is that drones make them obsolete. Overseas military bases are unneeded because, in Foxx’s words, you can just launch a drone from an aircraft carrier if you need to bomb somebody.
So both Foxx’s President and the Speaker of the House are still pro-interventionism abroad, they just differ on the methods used. The Speaker wants a big footprint: tanks, planes, boots on the ground. HE is the one backing the human element in war. It also gets him more contributions from defense contractors, but it’s putting a human face on the military-industrial-congressional complex. Foxx is the one who wants to dehumanize war with his shift toward robots.
Yeah, that’s part of why I was excited to do this movie now. It seems like there’s some sort of social media-driven wave to see it now, and a lot of people’s minds are on it. Like everybody knew it was a “rent” movie, and now we’ve all remembered we can rent it.
I feel like “the Speaker of the House is the one who is pro human element” is a “Billy Zane is the protagonist of Titanic” kind of argument — as in, yes, you have a point, but also the movie’s center of concern is different from this.
True, it’d be wrong-headed of me not to acknowledge that the Heart of the Ocean diamond is the protagonist of Titanic. :)
Picking up on the most important conversation in the podcast: I am a devotee of the V-neck T-shirt under dress shirt. How do crew neck folks function? Do you always have a tie? Or are you ok with flashing the little white triangle?
Perhaps my need for V-neck is tied to being in a city where wearing a suit basically means it’s your first day, you are into court today, or you haven’t had time to do laundry and it’s your only clean outfit.
Awww, little white triangle isn’t so bad. Because I *don’t* usually dress in a coat and tie (avatar picture notwithstanding), you can actually get creative with the triangle, wearing different color crew-necks under your shirt.
How ok you are with flashing the little white triangle is directly proportional to how much the topmost quadrant of your chest looks like a chunk of suet that someone dropped on the floor of a barbershop. (I for instance am fine with it.) #sartorialopportunitycost
But I also approve of Wrather’s answer here — it only works with relatively dark colored dress shirts, obviously, but if you play it right the crew-neck becomes a saucy little pocket square for your throat.
I’ve generally thought of the little white triangle as the preferable condition, and have never even considered feeling awkward flashing it. I’ve tended to think that the potentially different shapes of the triangle of the open-neck Oxford shirt and the triangle of the deep-V undershirt often don’t line up exactly, and it feels weird to me. I’d rather wear a tie if I go deep V.
Of course it occurs to me that this is probably what the purpose of the deep V is — to make you not flash your undershirt. But that has me thinking that of course in a formal situation you want people to know you are wearing and undershirt and aren’t just raw-dogging your Alfani. This makes wearing a deep V as an undershirt uncomfortable to me and an A shirt feel downright bold and ballsy.
Maybe this is a Whorfian linguiatics problem. In my mind, an undershirt fits in the broad category of “underwear.” I would never think that it was good to flash a bit of my boxer briefs so that people know I’m not going commando. The triangle isn’t nearly as bad as that in my mind–I will do it if my only marginally clean undershirt is crew necked. But it makes me feel the same way I feel when I wear black athletic socks with dress shoes–just a bit shabbier that I like.
I do, however, like the idea of recategorizing the undershirt from underwear to accessory. That would require a physical change to my wardrobe rather than a mere linguistic recagegorization, but it’s worth considering.
See, when I wear jeans that hang down around my hips rather than at my waist, I absolutely do hike up my boxers a little bit so that if my shirt is displaced, people see my underwear rather than my pelvis or lumbar. I frequently do this at the gym as well – hike up my underpants so I don’t moon people during olympic lifting.
So many new sartorial perspectives! I look forward to your weekly men’s fashion podcast, Overthinking Underwear.
“Remember, the White House is down!”
I just watched “Olympus Has Fallen” — because I place little value on my free time, apparently — and as a result, I can now say with complete confidence that “White House Down” is the best White House takeover movie ever released. In 2013.
Wow. You watched the trifecta. Amazing.
I am aware I am slightly late with a comment, and you guys all seem to have moved on to the topic of undershirts. But I just listened to this now, right after having read a write up of a talk between Warren Ellis and Geoff Manaugh.
In the talk, Manaugh talks about how burglary is man vs architecture, and says: