Captain Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick: I was misinformed.
- Casablanca

The art of graceful banter seems sadly to be slipping away from our cinematic tradition. This thought occurred to me only recently while indulging in a late-night screening of Casablanca. This movie—an action flick by all rights—can often be found at the top of critical best-of lists, and sitting through a showing of it left me convinced its standing is well-deserved. Certainly, the compact plot, superb acting, and stunning cinematography (resistant, even, to Ted Turner's woefully misguided efforts at colorization) contribute to the film's reputation as the gold standard in American cinema. But it is the quick, witty, and impeccably well-timed dialogue that distinguishes this film from the best and most highly acclaimed movies that are being produced today.

I am decidedly no romanticist, and I do not gaze longingly with rose-tinted nostalgia at relics from the past. I know that for every My Man Godfrey and His Girl Friday, was a dirigible counterpart, such as Bringing Up Baby. Nevertheless, the quality of repartee in the comparably good movies produced by our current motion picture industry has regrettably declined. Gone are Nick and Nora's jagged barbs, and such signature swipes as, "I'm much too busy seeing that you don't lose any of the money I married you for." Who now proclaims "nuthin' can be a real cool hand"? Where is the excessive egotist who declares, "I am big. It's the pictures that got small"?

Ironically, from where the modern audience sits, Norma Desmond's famous pronouncement has proven, alas, untrue: pictures have become too big for small parts—and for small lines. Supporting, minor, and bit roles are exploited merely for their assistance in moving along scenes or for expositive purposes, impoverished of the verbal gems often bestowed so generously upon their predecessors. Pithy verbal pearls of wisdom are eschewed because of their irrelevance to the plot. A glance at IMDB.com's memorable quotes pages from current, celebrated films reveals a disenchanting scarcity in clever dialogue. To wit, the closest effort at such an exchange from this year's Oscar winner for best picture, Million Dollar Baby:

Frankie Dunn: You got big holes in your socks.
Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris: Oh, they're not that big.
Frankie Dunn: Didn't I give you money for some new ones?
Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris: These are my sleeping socks. My feet like a little air at night.
Frankie Dunn: How come you're wearing them in the daytime, then?
Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris: 'Cause my daytime socks got too many holes in them.

Um, I guess it's cute. Not really clever or funny, just, you know, cute. And Lord of the Rings help you if you endeavor to mine a spoken jewel from last year's Academy victor. Sideways? The "intellectual" sleeper of the year? The onanistic discourses made me drowsy. Certainly, there is much to praise in, well if not in the above examples, then in many of the movies of today. Furthermore, I acknowledge that sharp banter and incisive wit alone do not a worthy film make. I just wish there were more of it to hear nowadays.

This Thursday brings with it the heady excitement of Cinco de Mayo. That means it's time for another warm, fermented bath in America's melting pot. As the Mexican population in America has risen, so has the prominence of Cinco de Mayo and though the celebration has moved into non-Mexican communities, the history and relevance has not. That 143 years ago the French used Mexican debt as an excuse to expand their empire, that Lincoln could not offer a masculine defense of the Monroe Doctrine because of the Civil War, that Ignacio Zaragoza and his men had to defeat the French on their own, that the French promptly retaliated and seized Mexico, all that is usually glossed into "Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day." It's not. That's Dieciséis de Septiembre. But, who really knows all that much about St. Patrick, either? Something about snakes, right? Symbolic snakes or real snakes? A century? Can we get a century on Patty? It's the fifth, but is that more important than the green beer?

In both cases, Americans have shown a delightful willingness to incorporate as well as assimilate—provided they can get hammered while they're broadening their cultural horizons. Because tequila is condoned as a means of paying homage to Zaragoza, he is a fun guy to toast. And toast and toast. Ramadan, for example, with its month of fasting, has not been embraced by non-Muslims looking to partake just for the hell of it.

Of course, there are corporate barkeeps fueling this phenomenon. Guinness is not so fool that they would miss the marketing blitz that is St. Patty's and Corona has now happily followed suit. A few weeks ago, as it has the previous few years, the Mexican beer maker launched its "Are you ready?" ads. Readiness in this case means being stocked up on Corona, not, say, studying the writings of the 1960s Chicano-American students who pushed Cinco de Mayo as a day to celebrate Mexican heritage.

Secular American holidays often mean drinking. Beer on Thanksgiving. Champagne on New Year's. More beer on the Fourth. St. Patrick's Day and, increasingly, Cinco de Mayo, are welcomed into this group of secular celebrations, irregardless of their original significance, because they offer a new chance to drink. Perhaps Purim, the Jewish holiday on which drunkenness is condoned, may be the next to be stripped down and added to the national calendar. Some Hebrew distiller out there best circle March 14, 2006 on its marketing calendar.

The charity bracelet phenomenon started when the Lance Armstrong Trust sold stretchy yellow wristbands etched with the inspiring word "Livestrong". Lance had dramatically overcome cancer to win the Tour de France seventy-one times in a row. The bracelets were a wild success, inspiring multitudes of charity organizations to follow suit. They've become hot—it is not uncommon to see trendsters about London wearing several of them on one arm. The basic idea goes thusly: you buy a bracelet dedicated to a charity of your choosing, and the very small amount of money you spent on the bracelet goes to charity. While no individual is severely put out by these efforts, the collective effect is that charities deemed worthy receive quite a lot of money.

Phrased in such a manner, charity bracelets are unproblematic. As you may guess, however, I will be using this space to explore the hypocrisies involved in the charity bracelet phenom. As will become clear, my distaste for this particular do-gooder trend is something I grew in to, initially finding them quite a proactive form of engagement. As I saw more and more of them, the superficiality of the bracelets became offensively apparent. I admit I am someone who generally looks at trends with a critical eye; however, I am particularly put-off by those that prop themselves up on serious issues.

Taking my cue from traditional campaign strategies, I will try to sway you to my way of thinking using two primary strategies: first, I will share my own experience and detail how I came to feel their ridiculousness. Second, I will look at the underside to the charity bracelet business—specifically fraudulent bracelets.

So let us delve.

My first wristband experience was at a Make Poverty History Rally in Trafalgar Square. White bands adorned the four larger-than-life lion statues as well as the statue of former colonial master Nelson that looks over central London. As Oxfam, the organization in charge of the Make Poverty History campaign, explained, white bands were chosen because anyone anywhere can find a white band to wear. While the proceeds of the white bracelets available in Oxfam Shops would go towards the campaign, pieces of white string or cloth available anywhere can be substituted and solidarity can be achieved. The rally culminated with an entirely different Nelson, Nelson Mandela, accepting a white band from a group of Scottish school children and giving one to them in return to deliver to George Bush and other world leaders when they visit Scotland this summer.

I'm not going to lie, I was moved. It was Nelson Mandela after all. And my personal mental image was of a poverty-stricken South African child whose parents had both died of AIDS and was living as a street urchin on the mean streets of Cape Town. The child, sitting on a muddy road at dusk, finds a dirty white piece of cloth. Having seen footage on CNN of the rally in London, the child ties the cloth around her malnourished wrist and then clenches her tiny hand into a tiny fist and raises that tiny fist to the sky in solidarity with me, also wearing a white band. Unfortunately, by some bizarre oversight, they weren't actually selling any of the wristbands at the rally so I wasn't wearing one. But I was feeling it nonetheless.

My first experience actually owning a wristband came when a friend bought me overpriced tickets to see latest Brit-pop superstars Franz Ferdinand at one of London's most glamorous venues, The Royal Albert Music Hall. We wouldn't have bothered, of course, but it was a charity event, something to do with teenage cancer (I think it was against it). We were given a purple bracelet upon entry. We left to drink a bottle of wine in the park during the opening act, and upon reentry the door man looked at our hole-punched tickets and then us with critical eyes.

"You've already been in," the man at the door said.

"Yes," we answered.

"So you already got a bracelet," the man said, tightening his grip on his bracelet-filled bucket.

"Yes," we answered.

"I can't give you two," the man said.

"That's all right," we answered.

He let us in and my friend murmered in my ear, "I would only have wanted two if it was for crippled blind African children's cancer."

I think he meant against.

I didn't wear my bracelet at first. This is not because I do not care about teenage cancer. It's because I didn't quite know what it meant to support teenage cancer. . . I mean, support a teenage cancer cause. Was I funding research? Is teenage cancer so different from adult cancer that it requires its own research? Does it go to treatment for teenage cancer victims? This is a land of nationalized medicine—treatment already does not cost anything. Do teenage cancer cells somehow sense that there is collective action against them and back down, admitting defeat? Then surely the bracelets should be free.

So I felt silly wearing it at first. Then I read that purple bracelets also represent domestic violence. That is something I know about. Now I sometimes wear my purple bracelet, and when I do, I do it proudly (albeit inside-out so the teenage cancer etching doesn't show), telling anyone who asks about my commitment to abolishing domestic violence.

I lucked out, all of the purple causes are ones I at least don't hate. But the fact that there are only so many colors does create some interesting quandaries. For example, the white bracelet that originally brought tears to my eyes regarding making poverty history also means Jesus Loves Me. On one level, I would consider that probably if Jesus loves people, he loves me too. It is not an offensive message per se, it's simply that I don't feel the need to broadcast to the world the idea that Jesus might possibly love me (let's be honest, though, everyone—if I found a bracelet that said, "Jesus might possibly love me" that shit would not come of my wrist).

White bracelets also mean Right to Life, a cause I most emphatically do not support. (Interestingly, I couldn't find a Right to Choice bracelet. Where are they on this one?) There are more clashes as well. HIV Awareness is red, as is Vote Bush; the Livestrong bracelet shares yellow with Support our Troops (also green); in the UK black opposes racism in soccer and signifies a period of mourning (I'm not sure where the proceeds for that one go).

My personal skepticism of charity bracelets was reinforced in several recent news stories. Apparently, the world's finest do-gooders have cashed in so much that it was just too good for the world's seediest underground. The illicit trade in fake charity bracelets is now common fare. Recent police raids in Birmingham, UK have shut down some of these sinister international bracelet rings. According to the New York Times, similar raids have been made by custom agents all over Europe. The lesson here is clear, friends: make sure you know what you're buying before you reach for your wallet—is your dollar raising awareness about cystic fibrosis or supporting international crime?

This is not the first instance of purchased would-be virtue the world has ever seen. In ye aulde England, holy men would roam around selling prayers of salvation or fake relics, pieces of Jesus's belongings. They would pay a shilling for a blessing to forgive their horrible, horrible ways. That's not what we do now, our cynical world doesn't believe that we can purchase our own salvation. Instead, we put our shilling into a cause that we will never take any real action on again. The bracelets are our badge of honor, the proof of our socially conscious behavior. It almost doesn't matter if they are real or not—we have a rainbow assortment of evidence that we are not part of the problem, but can we really say that a pounds' worth of plastic make us a part of the solution? Because really, everyone (pay attention here, this is my point), as if socially proactive engagement is merely a matter of donating a pound to a campaign you like the sound of, as if combating global ills does not require a serious commitment to a responsible lifestyle, something that is not easy in the world we live in. I don't mind if people don't live according to ideals at all times—an unhypocritical lifestyle is almost impossible to achieve. But, please, let us be aware of that. Let us not try to mask our ineptitudes in responsible behavior with these small pledges of allegiance.

I have a proactive solution to these contradictions. I propose a commercial which will start with a well-dressed twenty-something happily buying her little slice of plastic virtue. A deep voice-over will begin as the camera zooms-out (quickly, almost nauseatingly) detailing the good-intentions of the aforementioned twenty-something. "But" the voice will continue "where is the money really going?" Then comes a zoom-in to images of hundreds of brightly colored bands being packed into suitcases by a man smoking a cigarette. Another zoom-out/zoom-in will reveal the same man handing the money to a man wearing a turban. The voice will continue: "Millions of fraudulent bracelets are sold every year and the proceeds do not go to charity." Another zoom-out/zoom-in will reveal the man with the turban exchanging money for AK-47s. Freeze frame, the voice becomes stern "Charity bracelets support terrorism." The picture changes to a freeze frame of the original twenty-something smiling away. The voice, softer now: "You can't buy your way out of a guilty conscious. Support charity through a responsible lifestyle, not by dropping your pennies. You don't know where they go."

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