So You Want To Be A Hollywood Leading Man

So you want to be a Hollywood leading man? Do you think you have what it takes? Do you know the Leading Man rules?

As a service to our readers, we thought we’d share the Hollywood Leading Man rules with our readers and gives others a chance.

1. No matter what my problem is, it’s the fault of someone other than myself. The appropriate response is to find that person and kill him with my bare hands.

2. To be truly attractive, a woman must wear high heels and an outfit so tight you can tell whether she’s cold or not from across the room.

3. There are two kinds of women in the world: the type that want to go to bed with you, and the type that want to kill you. Both types are physically attractive and under 25 years old.

4. If I rudely argue with my boss in front of my co-workers, not only won’t he fire me, but he will gain a profound respect for me.

5. If I can find an important enough mission, it will supersede my obligations to perform household chores, bathe, and call the next day.

6. If I go without bathing, swear a lot, and treat women badly, they will adore me.

7. If a woman tries to clean a bullet wound and I curse in pain, she will fall in love with me.

8. Anyone who isn’t a cop, mercenary soldier, and/or private investigator is a homosexual… or at least a sissy.

9. If I have a prolonged fistfight with another guy and neither of us dies, we will become best friends.

10. My arch-enemy will bear an uncanny resemblance in age and bearing to my father, and he will make it clear that he has gained a deep respect for me before I kill him with my bare hands.

11. When I shoot people, they will die quickly and cleanly, and I will never be arrested or troubled by their widowed wife and children. When people shoot me, however, I will at most receive a flesh wound, which will be tended to by a beautiful woman.

12. If I’m white I will befriend at least one black guy, or one white guy if I’m black. If I am Latino the monster/villain will kill me halfway through the film, urging the hero to even greater levels of violence.

13. If an aged scientist is involved in any way, he will have a beautiful daughter who will gaze at me adoringly.

14. If royalty is involved, it will include a beautiful princess who will gaze at me adoringly.

15. If I have a kid partner, he will be tightly muscled, clean-cut, and gaze at me adoringly.

16. If I am asked to compete against a world champion at any sport or game of any type, I will win. This will infuriate my opponent, who will then try to kill me.

17. If I am attacked by surprise, I will be attacked by only one or maybe two people at a time, and I will find that I am well-skilled in karate and jujitsu, and if all else fails, I will always have one last firearm hidden somewhere on my body.

18. If my opponent has a sidekick or henchman, he will never have a sensible name like Rick or Steve.

19. Beautiful women will frequently furrow their brows with concern and ask, “When’s the last time you got any sleep?” They will never ask when I last bathed or used the toilet, although I apparently never do those things either.

20. While chasing or fleeing from an enemy, I can drive anything with a motor recklessly at 100-130 miles per hour without a seatbelt, with ammunition filling the passenger seat, and nothing will fall out of place. Also, no police will ever catch me; they’ll just look in amazement in my direction.

“If you live your life the right way, the dreams will come to you”

Excerpted from the last lecture of Dr Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University.

The entire lecture on video can be found here.

Here is the transcript of the lecture.

There aren’t a lot of things parents and children (of any age) can do together and experience together. Watching this video/reading the transcript together is one of those things.

We aim to practice what we preach.

“What if the Muslim armies hadn’t been stopped at the French border?”

“What if the Muslim armies hadn’t been stopped at the French border?”

According to David Levering Lewis, author of God’s Crucible: Islam And The Making Of Europe, the world would be a better place.

In what is yet another by now tired and dull hypothesis, Lewis is yet another link in the historical revisionist chain of drivel:

The Muslims came to Europe, he writes, as “the forward wave of civilization that was, by comparison with that of its enemies, an organic marvel of coordinated kingdoms, cultures, and technologies in service of a politico-cultural agenda incomparably superior” to that of the primitive people they encountered there. They did Europe a favor by invading. This is not a new idea, but Lewis takes it further: he clearly regrets that the Arabs did not go on to conquer the rest of Europe. The halting of their advance was instrumental, he writes, in creating “an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe that . . . made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.” It was “one of the most significant losses in world history and certainly the most consequential since the fall of the Roman Empire.” This is a bold hypothesis.

Bold hypothesis indeed- and absurd. White colonialism is bad. Muslim colonialism is good.

Let’s examine some realities Mr Lewis ignores.

When Islam was stopped at the gates of Vienna and the French border, it did what other invading forces elsewhere have done since the dawn of time. They promptly retreated and went home. The cost of war became too high to bear and the Europeans held on to what was theirs. See The Moral Economics Of War.

Europe went on to develop great nations, economies and societies. It is also true that much of Europe had colonial and imperial ideologies- not at all unlike those of the Arab invaders- a truth Mr Lewis has trouble discerning.

Mr Lewis also waxes eloquent about the Islamic Golden Age, that pretend Utopia. To be sure, he mentions the restrictions as if they were merely annoying (‘badges on clothes’ and ‘building height restrictions’ on non Muslims. He notes the heavy jizya tax as having ‘melted away’ under the same ‘enlightened’ rulers that instituted the tax. He mentions nothing of the public humiliations that accompanied the financial burden.

Mr Lewis cannot seem to acknowledge the very pedestrian nature of the Islamic retreat from Europe. As the conquerors lost their grip on Europe, political leaders manipulated their faith to serve virtually any agenda that was not religious so as to maintain their hold. In truth, this abuse started long before the retreat from Iberia and Europe. Naked power and abuse are old friends. Their was nothing special about the Arabs in either their behavior or ideologies. Empires that could not maintain their grip simply fade away into political nothingness. The Greeks, Romans, Chinese or other lost empires are remembered for their cultural legacies and contributions. The primary contribution of the Arab empires is oil.

It is true that the Arabs oversaw a great advances in medicine, mathematics, philosophy and science. There is no question they were to have a tremendous influence in the world as we know it, but that is not the story.

The Golden Age of the Arabs did not occur in Arab lands.

There would have been no Golden Age for Islam had Muslims not been in contact with Jews and Christians.This glaring truth still holds true today. The best programs and scholars of Arab world studies are found in the west and not in the Arab world. The Arab world has produces nothing of real worth, save racism and bigotry. Conversely, the Arab world consumes obscenely.

Lewis presumes that Europe would have remained in the dark ages were it not for Muslim ‘enlightenment.’ He seems to say that Europe would not have advanced or achieved anything were it not for Arab influence. He complains that by stopping the ‘enlightened’ Arabs, Europe never was destined to overcome failures only they could have precluded.

Nowhere does Lewis address the implosion of the ‘enlightened’ and advanced Arab culture and society, massive failures that go on to this very day. He does not mention the Arab world obsession with hate and bigotry that trace back to the very jizya tax he so readily waves away.

Lewis is determined to place European failures, real and imagined on the tragedy of the failed Arab colonial aspirations. The Arabs are once more victims of the White Man.

It is easy to blame colonialism and imperialism for the woes in much of the world today. Certainly the Arab world has hopped on to that bandwagon but in fact, that is the retreat of fools. We noted in Imperialism? Colonialism? Oh Really? SC&A’s Politically Incorrect Look At Reality that

Environment no more affects human progress than does race. They are contributing factors, of course, but in the end there are three things that inspire or impede achievement or progress. Those things are principles, values and beliefs.

There are societies for whom principles, values and beliefs made achievement and progress inevitable. Those are the cultures and societies that embraced change, and they valued those who carved out that change. It’s that simple.

Now, much has been made of ‘Colonialism’ as the scapegoat for hindering change, but clearly, that excuse is wearing thin. Colonialism has now become the watchword- and an excuse for those who refuse to join the rest of a modern and productive society.

The legacy of colonialism is what those former colonies make of it. More often than not, colonialists came into a society that was far behind their own, in terms of achievement, advancement and human progress. Notwithstanding the mythical and fabricated notions that ‘the white man’ came into primitive, peaceful and loving cultures, only to destroy them, the fact remains that these cultures and societies could have been greatly benefited by the advent of the ‘white man.’ Those societies resisted the advances they could have assimilated into their own culture.

It is true there were abuses, of course, as there are in any human endeavor. It is also true that taking advantage of modern day tools and ideas are not an all or nothing proposition. Even today, there are groups of people that refuse the tools that might make their lives easier…

The Arab world has proved to be another story. Notwithstanding the almost obscene wealth from natural resources, these societies have little to show for it (save for large cities and buildings, built by others and owned by a few very corrupt few). Unlike other colonial states, they rejected an educational system that could have benefited them (where are the world class universities, for example?). This is in stark contrast to their cousins, the Jews. With memories of their ‘vacations’ in Auschwitz still fresh, they came to an arid land, made the desert bloom, built a real economy and built world class institutions of higher learning- all at the same time. There will those that say, ’sure, we gave them billions in aid,’ but in fact, that is irrelevant. The fact remains they went to work and built their country and institutions from the ground up. The fact is they were able to build those institutions because education and higher learning were integral to principles, values and beliefs of the Jews. That cannot be said of the Arabs. The oil riches of the ummah were far greater- and nothing was built for that ummah. Why? Because the values, principles and beliefs are very different from those of their cousins…

Raskalnikov, on victimhood:

…It may have began centuries ago with the colonial crimes we all hear about, but today we Indians have taken over control of the yoke that’s around our neck. The cult of victimhood, the incessant demand for monetary compensation from people who supposedly need nothing more than a return to a ‘traditional’, more humble way of life to regain our selves and our pride, the knee-jerk whines of racism when something doesn’t go our way. How worse is that than residential schools and infected blankets? It’s certainly less dignified. Being beaten by a stronger force is one thing, and can carry a certain nobility if you went down as a man and not a bitch; beating the shit out of yourself and then blaming everyone else for your woes is just
disgraceful.

Many people think I’m a bootlicker to whitey and that he can do no wrong. I know the historical record of my people and I get angry just as much as any Indian radical when I see injustice. Unfairness and bullying, that pisses me off more than any bad words or stereotypes. That is a true crime, being unfair to someone and not allowing them to be themselves, to even find themselves. I realize the government did that for a long time, however those days are over. Unfortunately, the bleeding heart governments in this country have made the same mistake every bleeding-heart government has ever done in history — they overcompensated.

The white liberal guilt in this country has gone into overkill. It’s like a dysfunctional family that buys new appliances when one son comes out of the closet, or the youngest daughter gets pregnant. Throw money at it, spend it away, ignore it under a pile of material compensation. Granted some if it does go to honorable ideas such as education, culture and health. These are vital aspects of life and the opportunities in them for us are now endless. The playing field may not be completely level, but it’s much better than it was 50 years ago. Shit, 20 years ago. Any Indian not handcuffed by mental illness or addiction can be anything he or she wants to be. A doctor, a cop, whatever. It’s sad most of them choose to keep on perpetuating the victimhood cult. In a society where we place such small value on thinking, is it any surprise the victimhood pimps use emotional fervor to brainwash future generations into whining and bitching? Mix this with the revolting, degenerate hip-hop destroying the minds of our youth and it sure beats having to take responsibility for yourself. And the welfare being handed to us by the Government only serves to put more value on the role of victim; not only does it appeal to baser human instincts, but you can get paid for it too.

The progress of nations, cultures and societies are not about about environment, race or any other extraneous stimulus. That progress is determined by principles, values and beliefs. Blaming Whitey, the Jews or colonialism for failure just doesn’t wash. It’s about choices- individual, cultural and societal.

The proof is in the pudding.

Europe is not the victim of Arab failure, Mr Lewis. The Arab world, at the hands of generations of dysfunctional leaders, has failed all by itself.