by Travis Mateer

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say the fourth installment of the Matrix franchise is a disappointment for anyone expecting the spark of creativity to find an honest breath within our real-life matrix of corporate cooptation, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t narrative value in what one-half of the Wachowski team managed to expose.

We’ll get to how this applies to George Carline in a minute.

Here’s a little context on the “meta-joke” of Thomas Anderson being forced to make a sequel to his popular VIDEO GAME series, the Matrix, by his corporate overlords, Warner Bros.

The Matrix Resurrections opens with the reveal that Thomas Anderson runs a big gaming company that made games, not movies, called The Matrix. And now its parent company, Warner Bros., wants a fourth game… which he does not want to do. The whole thing feels like a very obvious commentary on Wachowski’s personal feelings about making this movie, so we asked if it was specifically in regards to any trepidations or if Warner Bros. ever pushed back on being made fun of.

“Trepidation. I think that’s a fair word,” Mitchell said. “And the trepidation gets sublimated into Thomas Anderson’s general existential anxiety I think. [As for] any crapping [on Warner Bros.], this is done, of course, with respect and affection. In the most legal possible sense with respect and affection. But yeah, I think trepidation is a fair word. It was a big step.”

The article goes on to describe how information later leaked that Warner Bros, in real life, was more than willing to make Matrix 4 without ANY Wachowski.

How this relates to George Carlin is the fact his joke routine in 1992 about developing golf courses to deal with the homeless problem is now a real-life approach to solving the affordable housing crisis in 2022, something I wrote about yesterday.

Here’s the routine in words first. Below that will be the video.

I’ve got just the place for low-cost housing. I have solved this problem. I know where we can build housing for the homeless: golf courses! It’s perfect! Just what we need. Plenty of good land, in nice neighborhoods, land that is currently being wasted on a meaningless, mindless activity engaged in primarily by white, well-to-do male businessmen who use the game to get together to make deals to carve this country up a little finer amongst themselves. I am getting tired, really getting tired, of these golfing cocksuckers in their green pants, and their yellow pants, and their orange pants, and their precious little hats and their cute little golf carts! It is time to reclaim the golf courses from the wealthy and turn them over to the homeless! Golfing is a arrogant, elitist game which takes up entirely too much room in this country. Too much room’ in this country! It is an arrogant game on its very design alone, just the design of the game speaks of arrogance. Think of how big a golf course is – the ball is that fucking big! What do these pin-headed pricks need with all that land?! There are over seventeen thousand golf courses in America, they average over one hundred and fifty acres a piece – that’s three million plus acres, four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles – you could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, racist, there’s another thing; the only blacks you’ll find at country clubs are carrying trays. And a boring game. A boring game for boring people. You ever watch golf on television? It’s like watching flies fuck! And a mindless game, mindless. Think of the intellect it must take, to draw pleasure from this activity: hitting a ball with a crooked stick and then, walking after it! And then, hitting it again! I say pick it up asshole, you’re lucky you found the fucking thing! Put it in your pocket and go home, you’re a winner! You’ve found it! No chance of that happening. Dork-o in the plaid knickers is going to hit it again and walk some more. Let these rich cocksuckers play miniature golf! Let them fuck with a windmill for an hour and a half or so! See if there’s any real skill among these people. Now I know there are some people who play golf who don’t consider themselves rich. FUCK ‘EM! And shame on them for engaging in an arrogant, elitist passtime.