Thursday, August 25, 2005
The Anthology
Michael Blowhard has collected his many great posts on the world of publishing and writing in a one-stop-shopping, handy-dandy blog entry: Me on Books, Redux.
If he'd put this stuff between some covers, you'd have to shell out at least $17 for the trade paperback (which would never appear on the best-sellers lists even if it were a runaway success according to M. Blowhard), yet here it is at your disposal, for free.
Brew up a pot, get the comfy chair, and dig in for a while.
Michael Blowhard has collected his many great posts on the world of publishing and writing in a one-stop-shopping, handy-dandy blog entry: Me on Books, Redux.
If he'd put this stuff between some covers, you'd have to shell out at least $17 for the trade paperback (which would never appear on the best-sellers lists even if it were a runaway success according to M. Blowhard), yet here it is at your disposal, for free.
Brew up a pot, get the comfy chair, and dig in for a while.
Neato
Way way waaaay back in the day when the web was new and still covered in dew, there was a cute little site called "The Randomizer" (if I recall correctly), where you could click the one link it had and would be taken to a randomly chosen page on the web. It was a great way to discover stuff you wouldn't normally necessarily look for. But, that was when the web was relatively tiny, and geeks could actually make visual maps of the "shape" and extent of the web because of that fact. When the web mutated from a cute little puppy into an eternally swelling behemoth like that in Akira, sites like The Randomizer quietly went away.
Apparently, someone else missed The Randomizer as much as I and created a cool extension (translation of geek speak "extension": an addition to existing functionality, or "extending" functionality) that does what The Randomizer used to, but with some rather nifty upgrades. It's called StumbleUpon, and it requires an email address to activate it (the one obvious downside), but boy is it fun. Not only can you select categories of stuff you're interested in, but you can even vote on the sites, which affects their ranking in the randomizer, so - in theory - that which sucks will eventually flush out.
Two cool things I found right away are:
This pictorial of one family as they aged over the years. They took a photo of everyone on the same day from 1976 until now.
A timeline format used to display the current time. Those awash in ennui or passing through some minor crisis related to aging should give this one a pass for now. It really makes you feel the time passing away. Kind of a Kafkian "You Are Here".
I found this one via Kottke.org and not StumbleUpon, but it's still gnarly enough to point out: Flickr has a section that displays the most interesting photos of the last 24 hours (just in case you need some chrono-therapy after visiting the timeline above).
Besides making beautiful and striking pictures created by talented photographers available to us all, Flickr has also obviously turned out to be pressure valve for people who would normally be more dangerous if they had no means of distributing copious pictures of their cats.
Way way waaaay back in the day when the web was new and still covered in dew, there was a cute little site called "The Randomizer" (if I recall correctly), where you could click the one link it had and would be taken to a randomly chosen page on the web. It was a great way to discover stuff you wouldn't normally necessarily look for. But, that was when the web was relatively tiny, and geeks could actually make visual maps of the "shape" and extent of the web because of that fact. When the web mutated from a cute little puppy into an eternally swelling behemoth like that in Akira, sites like The Randomizer quietly went away.
Apparently, someone else missed The Randomizer as much as I and created a cool extension (translation of geek speak "extension": an addition to existing functionality, or "extending" functionality) that does what The Randomizer used to, but with some rather nifty upgrades. It's called StumbleUpon, and it requires an email address to activate it (the one obvious downside), but boy is it fun. Not only can you select categories of stuff you're interested in, but you can even vote on the sites, which affects their ranking in the randomizer, so - in theory - that which sucks will eventually flush out.
Two cool things I found right away are:
This pictorial of one family as they aged over the years. They took a photo of everyone on the same day from 1976 until now.
A timeline format used to display the current time. Those awash in ennui or passing through some minor crisis related to aging should give this one a pass for now. It really makes you feel the time passing away. Kind of a Kafkian "You Are Here".
I found this one via Kottke.org and not StumbleUpon, but it's still gnarly enough to point out: Flickr has a section that displays the most interesting photos of the last 24 hours (just in case you need some chrono-therapy after visiting the timeline above).
Besides making beautiful and striking pictures created by talented photographers available to us all, Flickr has also obviously turned out to be pressure valve for people who would normally be more dangerous if they had no means of distributing copious pictures of their cats.
In Darker News
The pandemic edges closer. I keep wondering what Stephen King thinks of this.
WHO Speeding Up Flu Pandemic Preparations
WHO warns flu pandemic to occur
At least it's not four dead in Ohio this time, but still...
SWAT team police uses excessive force at Utah rave party
Is Your Boss a Psychopath?
Interesting article about how many higher ups in companies like Enron may have gotten there because they're freakin' sociopaths, as some of us have always suspected.
My only quibble is it ends with praising dubious "antibullying" movements and unidentified Asian cultures that put community bonds above individual's rights (hmmmm, China?) as possible solutions, and accuses America's individuality streak as a primary cause of sociopathy. So oppressive institutions will help us with this issue, eh? Sometimes it's hard to tell if this is misguided neocon thinking or misguided socialist thinking.
I've got a rash idea: When we discover someone in a high (or any) position acting rashly and causing a lot of agony, why don't we just fire their asses rather than bringing in the Reds or the "red state" ideologues?
People's kids. Crikey.
The pandemic edges closer. I keep wondering what Stephen King thinks of this.
WHO Speeding Up Flu Pandemic Preparations
WHO warns flu pandemic to occur
At least it's not four dead in Ohio this time, but still...
SWAT team police uses excessive force at Utah rave party
Is Your Boss a Psychopath?
Interesting article about how many higher ups in companies like Enron may have gotten there because they're freakin' sociopaths, as some of us have always suspected.
My only quibble is it ends with praising dubious "antibullying" movements and unidentified Asian cultures that put community bonds above individual's rights (hmmmm, China?) as possible solutions, and accuses America's individuality streak as a primary cause of sociopathy. So oppressive institutions will help us with this issue, eh? Sometimes it's hard to tell if this is misguided neocon thinking or misguided socialist thinking.
I've got a rash idea: When we discover someone in a high (or any) position acting rashly and causing a lot of agony, why don't we just fire their asses rather than bringing in the Reds or the "red state" ideologues?
People's kids. Crikey.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Hatin' on sports, slight return
Joyfully survived the yearly guy's campout. (I was getting over some chest crud, so was pretty wiped out.) No women, no kids are the only rules. No one's dumb enough to believe that what happens at the guy's campout stays at the guy's campout, so even though those are the only two rules, it's a lot of good clean fun.
The primary conversation topic this year revolved around half of the guys being on a softball team together. Not giving a flying frick about sports, I mostly tuned out the blather on how to hit and catch and who sucks and who rocks and instead listened to the music, watched the fire, cooked my meal, etc.
But one tawdry little episode brought back all the nasty memories of gym class hell and the various sports my mom enrolled me in before I decided they weren't for me.
Granted, it brought a happy little memory tagging along, like the four-year-old little brother of someone who gets grudging permission to hang out with the big kids for a little bit. I recalled the exact moment I finally realized sports just weren't for me.
It was during basketball practice, and I had been placed on the loser's lay-up practice hoop with a couple other spazzes like myself while the other guys were in teams and playing a game already. I wasn't allowed to play because I didn't lift the correct leg when going in for a lay-up. I hit the basket as well and as often as the others, but there was this issue with the wrong leg rising. I now realize that the coach had figured out I'd never be anything but a middling player at best, and so had shunted me off to the side until I decided to quit for myself. The moment came as I was trying to get the right leg up during yet another lay-up attempt, and as I dribbled towards the basket, I thought, in big neon letters, "I just can't manage to give a damn about this." (I didn't have a lot of exposure to the f-bomb at the time, or would have thought that in place of "damn".) I aborted the lay-up, stepped off the court, and watched the guys over on the other court playing shirts against skins, and again I thought, "I just don't care and I never will." I just dribbled around for the remainder of the practice, and when it was over, never again voluntarily returned to a sports floor. It was a happy, watershed moment of my life that allowed me to avoid wasting any more time on something I found useless that I could now devote to things I actually enjoyed.
So it has been a while since I've seen that weird random cruelty that crops up in sports, apparently in the name of keeping everyone tough and to promote camaraderie. (If you need to be hard as nails to do something that's supposed to be fun, I'll pass, thanks.)
Some of the guys at the campout took out a softball and started tossing it around for practice. After a few throws, one of the guys sitting down said to one of the guys playing, "Hey, Stan [not his actual name], you throw like a girl!" Stan responded with an appropriate profane retort, but these guys kept pointing and giggling every time he gave the ball a toss, and then started to opine on what specifically they considered girlish about his throw. He just kept quiet, as there was nothing to be done but endure. I watched the other guys who were throwing and noted they did the exact same things that Stan was getting hell for.
From what I could tell, this wasn't good-natured ribbing. No, this was the old playground "let's see if he cries if we pick on him long enough" kinda shit. Later, I kicked myself for not speaking and suggesting they climb the hell off. Still later, I remembered that sticking up for someone during sports play often made the hell they were getting way worse, and then some came your way, too. Glad I just sat there like a church mouse after all.
Swear to God, I will go to my grave not understanding the mechanics or value behind this kind of shit.
Joyfully survived the yearly guy's campout. (I was getting over some chest crud, so was pretty wiped out.) No women, no kids are the only rules. No one's dumb enough to believe that what happens at the guy's campout stays at the guy's campout, so even though those are the only two rules, it's a lot of good clean fun.
The primary conversation topic this year revolved around half of the guys being on a softball team together. Not giving a flying frick about sports, I mostly tuned out the blather on how to hit and catch and who sucks and who rocks and instead listened to the music, watched the fire, cooked my meal, etc.
But one tawdry little episode brought back all the nasty memories of gym class hell and the various sports my mom enrolled me in before I decided they weren't for me.
Granted, it brought a happy little memory tagging along, like the four-year-old little brother of someone who gets grudging permission to hang out with the big kids for a little bit. I recalled the exact moment I finally realized sports just weren't for me.
It was during basketball practice, and I had been placed on the loser's lay-up practice hoop with a couple other spazzes like myself while the other guys were in teams and playing a game already. I wasn't allowed to play because I didn't lift the correct leg when going in for a lay-up. I hit the basket as well and as often as the others, but there was this issue with the wrong leg rising. I now realize that the coach had figured out I'd never be anything but a middling player at best, and so had shunted me off to the side until I decided to quit for myself. The moment came as I was trying to get the right leg up during yet another lay-up attempt, and as I dribbled towards the basket, I thought, in big neon letters, "I just can't manage to give a damn about this." (I didn't have a lot of exposure to the f-bomb at the time, or would have thought that in place of "damn".) I aborted the lay-up, stepped off the court, and watched the guys over on the other court playing shirts against skins, and again I thought, "I just don't care and I never will." I just dribbled around for the remainder of the practice, and when it was over, never again voluntarily returned to a sports floor. It was a happy, watershed moment of my life that allowed me to avoid wasting any more time on something I found useless that I could now devote to things I actually enjoyed.
So it has been a while since I've seen that weird random cruelty that crops up in sports, apparently in the name of keeping everyone tough and to promote camaraderie. (If you need to be hard as nails to do something that's supposed to be fun, I'll pass, thanks.)
Some of the guys at the campout took out a softball and started tossing it around for practice. After a few throws, one of the guys sitting down said to one of the guys playing, "Hey, Stan [not his actual name], you throw like a girl!" Stan responded with an appropriate profane retort, but these guys kept pointing and giggling every time he gave the ball a toss, and then started to opine on what specifically they considered girlish about his throw. He just kept quiet, as there was nothing to be done but endure. I watched the other guys who were throwing and noted they did the exact same things that Stan was getting hell for.
From what I could tell, this wasn't good-natured ribbing. No, this was the old playground "let's see if he cries if we pick on him long enough" kinda shit. Later, I kicked myself for not speaking and suggesting they climb the hell off. Still later, I remembered that sticking up for someone during sports play often made the hell they were getting way worse, and then some came your way, too. Glad I just sat there like a church mouse after all.
Swear to God, I will go to my grave not understanding the mechanics or value behind this kind of shit.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Random Thoughts, IV
Don't Free Willie
Read in my local paper last weekend about how nudity, particularly male nudity, is becoming common in stage productions (or has been common for a while). This apparently tends to cluster in plays with gay characters in them. As can be expected, there is a portion of the audience - the larger portion according to the article - that doesn't really like having to endure penises thrust in their face just because the playwright thinks they're "shaking people up" or because they wanna fill seats with gratuitous nudity. And, of course, one playwright came back and said these people were just homophobic.
Before I go on, I'd like to point out that the article also mentioned how even female nudity will prevent many groups - children and senior citizens - from seeing a play, as well.
What's worst than a charlatan who thinks that naked people on stage is a bold artistic statement unto itself? The asshole who accuses folks of being homophobic merely because they don't wanna see 27 guys with their dicks hanging out, live, on stage.
Here's Your Fogey Sign
Tried Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and grudgingly abandoned it after about 50 pages. This is a book I would have absolutely loved in my 20s, but in my 40s, it's just too centered on juvenile hipness. The hero (named Hiro, har har) is a pizza delivery guy because in the future the only things America does better than any other country are music, movies, computer programming, and pizza delivery. Getting a pizza to a customer on time is more important than wrecked cars, houses, and lives. Only someone in the blessed netherlands between childhood their first soul-crushing job would be able to suspend enough disbelief to enjoy that story.
I'm completely into old fogeyness here, for sure.
However, I loved Cryptonomicon, a later work by Stephenson. A much more fulfilling and - dare I say it? - adult read.
Unconscionable
Saw The Hunting of the President which details the vast right wing conspiracy that tried to oust Clinton out of office. Clinton himself has a point that it wasn't a conspiracy because they pretty much did it out in the open.
It is a nice historical document about how rich guys who think they should run everything can affect and influence the government to the very top levels. It's pretty freakin' scary, but a good lesson in how fragile democracy really is.
The most outrageous story that I didn't know about was what happened to Susan McDougal in prison when she refused to lie about Clinton's involvement in Whitewater. The powerboys actually had the prison dress her in the garb that denoted she was a child molester (red or orange - the movie and web site contradict each other), which in prison society marks you as the lowest of the low and the target for the worst they can dish out. For instance, when they were being transported on the bus, she and the other red-suited inmates were placed in a cage in the center, and during the trip, male inmates would masturbate and throw their jism on them. (And that was just one of the many injustices visited upon her.) When a judge (who was not part of the get-Clinton network) got wind of this, he demanded they move her to another prison and to stop dressing her like a child molester. She went back and got ready for the transfer, but the guard came around and told her to unpack because she wasn't going anywhere, informing her that Starr's "Independent Counsel" called the shots around here, not some judge.
Now, I know a lot of evil stuff goes on in our world, but the fact that this shit happens in America just makes me sick. Cruel and unusual punishment anyone? And for bullshit good-ole-boy politics no less. I spit on the graves of everyone who was party to this travesty.
The New Propaganda
And speaking of travesties, did you see the national TV news the other night? Seems we as a nation are awash with METH! Even moms in Illinois are doing it! It helps them stay up for those late night diaper changes and it puts all those extra binkies to use. The report I watched at least telegraphed the fact that this warning came from "The White House" after it did the main report, which was pretty cool, I thought. I mean they can't come right out and say "Look, the Pres. and his boys want a new thing for ya'll to be scared about so ya just leave Turd Blossom alone."
Fade up on the scene:
"Meth! My God! It's everywhere!" screams the nut staggering through the dashing cars on the highway. Meanwhile, up in the nearest highrise, Rove looks on, almost hoping his lackey on the highway gets hit by a car so he'll have some more mental fodder for his next round of self-abuse in the Oval Office bathroom.
Oh, that may seem like the sick imaginings of a liberal mind, but I betcha it's closer to the truth than any of us would like it to be.
Hope
The best thing about the DVD of The Hunting of the President is in the "extras," there's a lengthy speech by Clinton that he did after the premiere of the film. It is wonderful, because he puts the events into a perspective that is largely missing elsewhere. He points out that he brought most of this on himself, because he formed the "Independent Counsel" not because he had to, or the law provided for it, but because the press (and guess which part of the press) was calling for it. He knew he hadn't done anything wrong and naively thought would be proven innocent, not knowing they would use the opening to do anything they could to discredit him. Then, of course, there's the blowjob, which cinched things.
Beyond that though, he then says that we should be optimistic about the future. He's quite the historian and walks us through all the times in history like we find ourselves in now where the bad guys appear to be winning, and he even says we shouldn't categorize them as bad guys at all on the premise that they have a viewpoint they consider is the best for the nation. We need to talk on the level of the issues and policy, and to not vilify those we disagree with (as I did directly above), because then we're owned by them. When these times have occurred in the past, as long as the issues of liberty, civil rights, and a social safety net have been kept in the forefront, the American public has eventually landed on the side of the same.
Of course, being Clinton, he says it much better. Check it out, by all means.
Don't Free Willie
Read in my local paper last weekend about how nudity, particularly male nudity, is becoming common in stage productions (or has been common for a while). This apparently tends to cluster in plays with gay characters in them. As can be expected, there is a portion of the audience - the larger portion according to the article - that doesn't really like having to endure penises thrust in their face just because the playwright thinks they're "shaking people up" or because they wanna fill seats with gratuitous nudity. And, of course, one playwright came back and said these people were just homophobic.
Before I go on, I'd like to point out that the article also mentioned how even female nudity will prevent many groups - children and senior citizens - from seeing a play, as well.
What's worst than a charlatan who thinks that naked people on stage is a bold artistic statement unto itself? The asshole who accuses folks of being homophobic merely because they don't wanna see 27 guys with their dicks hanging out, live, on stage.
Here's Your Fogey Sign
Tried Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and grudgingly abandoned it after about 50 pages. This is a book I would have absolutely loved in my 20s, but in my 40s, it's just too centered on juvenile hipness. The hero (named Hiro, har har) is a pizza delivery guy because in the future the only things America does better than any other country are music, movies, computer programming, and pizza delivery. Getting a pizza to a customer on time is more important than wrecked cars, houses, and lives. Only someone in the blessed netherlands between childhood their first soul-crushing job would be able to suspend enough disbelief to enjoy that story.
I'm completely into old fogeyness here, for sure.
However, I loved Cryptonomicon, a later work by Stephenson. A much more fulfilling and - dare I say it? - adult read.
Unconscionable
Saw The Hunting of the President which details the vast right wing conspiracy that tried to oust Clinton out of office. Clinton himself has a point that it wasn't a conspiracy because they pretty much did it out in the open.
It is a nice historical document about how rich guys who think they should run everything can affect and influence the government to the very top levels. It's pretty freakin' scary, but a good lesson in how fragile democracy really is.
The most outrageous story that I didn't know about was what happened to Susan McDougal in prison when she refused to lie about Clinton's involvement in Whitewater. The powerboys actually had the prison dress her in the garb that denoted she was a child molester (red or orange - the movie and web site contradict each other), which in prison society marks you as the lowest of the low and the target for the worst they can dish out. For instance, when they were being transported on the bus, she and the other red-suited inmates were placed in a cage in the center, and during the trip, male inmates would masturbate and throw their jism on them. (And that was just one of the many injustices visited upon her.) When a judge (who was not part of the get-Clinton network) got wind of this, he demanded they move her to another prison and to stop dressing her like a child molester. She went back and got ready for the transfer, but the guard came around and told her to unpack because she wasn't going anywhere, informing her that Starr's "Independent Counsel" called the shots around here, not some judge.
Now, I know a lot of evil stuff goes on in our world, but the fact that this shit happens in America just makes me sick. Cruel and unusual punishment anyone? And for bullshit good-ole-boy politics no less. I spit on the graves of everyone who was party to this travesty.
The New Propaganda
And speaking of travesties, did you see the national TV news the other night? Seems we as a nation are awash with METH! Even moms in Illinois are doing it! It helps them stay up for those late night diaper changes and it puts all those extra binkies to use. The report I watched at least telegraphed the fact that this warning came from "The White House" after it did the main report, which was pretty cool, I thought. I mean they can't come right out and say "Look, the Pres. and his boys want a new thing for ya'll to be scared about so ya just leave Turd Blossom alone."
Fade up on the scene:
"Meth! My God! It's everywhere!" screams the nut staggering through the dashing cars on the highway. Meanwhile, up in the nearest highrise, Rove looks on, almost hoping his lackey on the highway gets hit by a car so he'll have some more mental fodder for his next round of self-abuse in the Oval Office bathroom.
Oh, that may seem like the sick imaginings of a liberal mind, but I betcha it's closer to the truth than any of us would like it to be.
Hope
The best thing about the DVD of The Hunting of the President is in the "extras," there's a lengthy speech by Clinton that he did after the premiere of the film. It is wonderful, because he puts the events into a perspective that is largely missing elsewhere. He points out that he brought most of this on himself, because he formed the "Independent Counsel" not because he had to, or the law provided for it, but because the press (and guess which part of the press) was calling for it. He knew he hadn't done anything wrong and naively thought would be proven innocent, not knowing they would use the opening to do anything they could to discredit him. Then, of course, there's the blowjob, which cinched things.
Beyond that though, he then says that we should be optimistic about the future. He's quite the historian and walks us through all the times in history like we find ourselves in now where the bad guys appear to be winning, and he even says we shouldn't categorize them as bad guys at all on the premise that they have a viewpoint they consider is the best for the nation. We need to talk on the level of the issues and policy, and to not vilify those we disagree with (as I did directly above), because then we're owned by them. When these times have occurred in the past, as long as the issues of liberty, civil rights, and a social safety net have been kept in the forefront, the American public has eventually landed on the side of the same.
Of course, being Clinton, he says it much better. Check it out, by all means.
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Nobody Does Smackdown Like Garrison Keillor
I'm beginning to realize that perhaps Denver radio is way more debased than it might be elsewhere. In a small jaunt to the mountains this weekend, I found a station that had a beautiful eclectic mix that would become a constant companion could I get it down here in the foothills. So, I'll just take it on faith that radio elsewhere might actually be flourishing.
According to Garrison Keillor in the charming "Confessions of a Listener," there is hope. (Again, via Kottke.org)
I'm beginning to realize that perhaps Denver radio is way more debased than it might be elsewhere. In a small jaunt to the mountains this weekend, I found a station that had a beautiful eclectic mix that would become a constant companion could I get it down here in the foothills. So, I'll just take it on faith that radio elsewhere might actually be flourishing.
According to Garrison Keillor in the charming "Confessions of a Listener," there is hope. (Again, via Kottke.org)
Bummer. He's into the Koolaid.
Like many, I thoroughly enjoyed Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel which tries to answer the question: Why did (white) Europeans end up being the ones who spread out and dominated other societies? Why didn't China or Arabia, who were way ahead of the Europeans at one point? And just what's up with Africa, anyway? His conclusion, btw, is that the Fertile Crescent (remember that from history class?) contained the majority of the domesticatable animals and plants, and Europe's geography allowed the easy spread of the same, thus giving it a leg up. Good read.
But now there's this article from Mr. Diamond: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. (Via Kottke.org.)
Mr. Diamond thinks that agriculture was a bad, bad thing. See, it created inequality and disease. Well, sorry Jared, but inequality is simply part of the dance. Nothing humans did "caused" inequality. When I was a spindly teenager, the big jock my age would've still pushed me around whether we were in a high school hallway or out on the savanna hunting for dinner. Our finer instincts and societal agreements actually posit the idea that we treat everyone as equal in spite of the obvious, simply because it leads to a better quality of life for most of us.
Further, had we not stopped following the herds around, we wouldn't have built hospitals to deal with the diseases. And so on.
Part of the problem with shooting fish in a barrel is it ruins the barrel and wastes ammunition, so let's just stop there.
I hope that someday Mr. Diamond picks up Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where he posits that the original bad move was coming down from the trees in the first place. Maybe the much needed laugh will clear his head.
Like many, I thoroughly enjoyed Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel which tries to answer the question: Why did (white) Europeans end up being the ones who spread out and dominated other societies? Why didn't China or Arabia, who were way ahead of the Europeans at one point? And just what's up with Africa, anyway? His conclusion, btw, is that the Fertile Crescent (remember that from history class?) contained the majority of the domesticatable animals and plants, and Europe's geography allowed the easy spread of the same, thus giving it a leg up. Good read.
But now there's this article from Mr. Diamond: The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race. (Via Kottke.org.)
Mr. Diamond thinks that agriculture was a bad, bad thing. See, it created inequality and disease. Well, sorry Jared, but inequality is simply part of the dance. Nothing humans did "caused" inequality. When I was a spindly teenager, the big jock my age would've still pushed me around whether we were in a high school hallway or out on the savanna hunting for dinner. Our finer instincts and societal agreements actually posit the idea that we treat everyone as equal in spite of the obvious, simply because it leads to a better quality of life for most of us.
Further, had we not stopped following the herds around, we wouldn't have built hospitals to deal with the diseases. And so on.
Part of the problem with shooting fish in a barrel is it ruins the barrel and wastes ammunition, so let's just stop there.
I hope that someday Mr. Diamond picks up Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where he posits that the original bad move was coming down from the trees in the first place. Maybe the much needed laugh will clear his head.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Mother, Jugs, and Speed
Netflix has got to be a moviemaker's dream because there's no downside to seeing risky, small, or old movies. I decided to revisit the first movie I assembled and projected when I became a projectionist: Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Because it marked my promotion to the lauded projectionists position (the highest achievable position in my little hometown theatre outside of manager), and because I liked the soundtrack at the time, it was a sentimental memory until now, and I wondered how it would hold up.
Well, my friends, it doth stinketh and the sands of time have been unkind, and not only to the print they used as the master for the DVD. I think this may be a quintessential 70s "B" comedy though.
The themesong is all about dancing up a sweat and about the gayest disco song I've ever heard. (There are those of the opinion that all disco is essentially a product of gay "culture." I do not share that blinkered, revisionist, yet oddly hopeful opinion.) There is absolutely no dancing in the movie whatsoever, so the inclusion of this song is inexplicable as the use of Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" is for the spaghetti western My Name is Nobody which contains nary a star-spangled rodeo or any proximity to Broadway. It also contains the ubiquitous-at-the-time "Show Me the Way" by Peter Frampton, and a creaky ballad by Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas called "No Love Today." The rest of the soundtrack, though, was probably compiled or deeply influenced by Bill Cosby because it contains a lot of the Quincy Jones funk he's always been a booster for. So, outside of the disco abomination, the soundtrack (which you can no longer get, btw) was eclectic and fun in a goopy sort of way.
The plot centers around the rivalry between two private ambulance companies in the middle 70s. Bill Cosby ("Mother") is the best driver in the fleet and tends to mother people (hence...), Raquel Welch ("Jugs") is the secretary who secretly pines to be one of the drivers (the boss don't want no wimmin drivers), and Harvey Keitel ("Speed") is a temporarily suspended cop due to a trumped-up accusation of selling cocaine to kids. It's in the loose mold of M*A*S*H, where camaraderie and funny hijinx are the order of the day, intermixed with melodramatic tragedy. Unlike M*A*S*H, this botches the transition from one tone to the other so completely it's almost a study in how to do it wrong.
For starters, Raquel Welch is a spectacularly bad actress. I mean wow. Pretty as hell, but her line deliveries are so wooden that Dick Butkus in the obligatory sports star cameo that was the rage in 70s movies came off as the superior Thespian.
This was Keitel's only go at "romantic leading man" outside of the Jane Campion's sick little trods through lovesongs for the truly sick and demented, and that's a good thing. He's great as an gangster or even the moral cop, but he just hasn't got the warmth or charm for the central love interest guy.
Bill Cosby was charming as usual, and the movie was clearly a star vehicle for him, but apparently they weren't brave enough in the day to make him a romantic lead, thus consigning that to Welch and Keitel.
This movie makes it obvious why audiences responded so strongly to Star Wars, released the very next year, and greats like Jaws. If I remember correctly, Mother, Jugs, and Speed was pretty representational of what Hollywood churned out at the time. Your average modern TV drama, say "CSI," or comedy, say "Scrubs," or even a mix, say "Desperate Housewives" is much, much better than anything this movie had to offer.
See, some things are better than they were in the olden days.
Netflix has got to be a moviemaker's dream because there's no downside to seeing risky, small, or old movies. I decided to revisit the first movie I assembled and projected when I became a projectionist: Mother, Jugs, and Speed. Because it marked my promotion to the lauded projectionists position (the highest achievable position in my little hometown theatre outside of manager), and because I liked the soundtrack at the time, it was a sentimental memory until now, and I wondered how it would hold up.
Well, my friends, it doth stinketh and the sands of time have been unkind, and not only to the print they used as the master for the DVD. I think this may be a quintessential 70s "B" comedy though.
The themesong is all about dancing up a sweat and about the gayest disco song I've ever heard. (There are those of the opinion that all disco is essentially a product of gay "culture." I do not share that blinkered, revisionist, yet oddly hopeful opinion.) There is absolutely no dancing in the movie whatsoever, so the inclusion of this song is inexplicable as the use of Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy" is for the spaghetti western My Name is Nobody which contains nary a star-spangled rodeo or any proximity to Broadway. It also contains the ubiquitous-at-the-time "Show Me the Way" by Peter Frampton, and a creaky ballad by Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas called "No Love Today." The rest of the soundtrack, though, was probably compiled or deeply influenced by Bill Cosby because it contains a lot of the Quincy Jones funk he's always been a booster for. So, outside of the disco abomination, the soundtrack (which you can no longer get, btw) was eclectic and fun in a goopy sort of way.
The plot centers around the rivalry between two private ambulance companies in the middle 70s. Bill Cosby ("Mother") is the best driver in the fleet and tends to mother people (hence...), Raquel Welch ("Jugs") is the secretary who secretly pines to be one of the drivers (the boss don't want no wimmin drivers), and Harvey Keitel ("Speed") is a temporarily suspended cop due to a trumped-up accusation of selling cocaine to kids. It's in the loose mold of M*A*S*H, where camaraderie and funny hijinx are the order of the day, intermixed with melodramatic tragedy. Unlike M*A*S*H, this botches the transition from one tone to the other so completely it's almost a study in how to do it wrong.
For starters, Raquel Welch is a spectacularly bad actress. I mean wow. Pretty as hell, but her line deliveries are so wooden that Dick Butkus in the obligatory sports star cameo that was the rage in 70s movies came off as the superior Thespian.
This was Keitel's only go at "romantic leading man" outside of the Jane Campion's sick little trods through lovesongs for the truly sick and demented, and that's a good thing. He's great as an gangster or even the moral cop, but he just hasn't got the warmth or charm for the central love interest guy.
Bill Cosby was charming as usual, and the movie was clearly a star vehicle for him, but apparently they weren't brave enough in the day to make him a romantic lead, thus consigning that to Welch and Keitel.
This movie makes it obvious why audiences responded so strongly to Star Wars, released the very next year, and greats like Jaws. If I remember correctly, Mother, Jugs, and Speed was pretty representational of what Hollywood churned out at the time. Your average modern TV drama, say "CSI," or comedy, say "Scrubs," or even a mix, say "Desperate Housewives" is much, much better than anything this movie had to offer.
See, some things are better than they were in the olden days.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Flickr Fun
Bouncy balls released into the wild for a commercial shoot (via Kottke.org). Actually, to me it looks like the vomit of a giant clown who's just consumed an entire cartload of "Dippin' Dots" ice cream.
While looking around, I came across this little piece of nightmare fuel.
Offspring of that killer rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Some people's kids.
Bouncy balls released into the wild for a commercial shoot (via Kottke.org). Actually, to me it looks like the vomit of a giant clown who's just consumed an entire cartload of "Dippin' Dots" ice cream.
While looking around, I came across this little piece of nightmare fuel.
Offspring of that killer rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Some people's kids.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Greatest Hits
In thanks for the praise and linkage from the 2Blowhards, I thought I'd compile a one-stop shopping list of my dating adventures for your convenience. Yes, these are all true.
(Note: I've linked these so they pop into a separate window so you don't have to keep surfing back to this page.)
This is the one that started it all. Salon.com had a contest for the worst dating stories. This one's not appropriate for lunchtime reading:
<valley girl> Omiga-awd</valley girl> (aka "Date from Hell" and aka "The slob and the spit gob")
This one time, at band camp...
The Time I Became a Mormon for Dating Purposes
That Girl
The Time I Was on a Sitcom Date
"What's the Worst Green Thing You've Ever Had?"
The Time I Got a Date Because I'm Blonde
Bonus Tracks
These aren't about dating, but they are the ones I've gotten the most positive feedback on. Hope you enjoy them as well.
Vomit Phobia
Big nasty fuckin' spider
My Expeditions to the Planet of Third-tier Strippers - expurgated version
Too much information
Starship Trooper
In thanks for the praise and linkage from the 2Blowhards, I thought I'd compile a one-stop shopping list of my dating adventures for your convenience. Yes, these are all true.
(Note: I've linked these so they pop into a separate window so you don't have to keep surfing back to this page.)
This is the one that started it all. Salon.com had a contest for the worst dating stories. This one's not appropriate for lunchtime reading:
<valley girl> Omiga-awd</valley girl> (aka "Date from Hell" and aka "The slob and the spit gob")
This one time, at band camp...
The Time I Became a Mormon for Dating Purposes
That Girl
The Time I Was on a Sitcom Date
"What's the Worst Green Thing You've Ever Had?"
The Time I Got a Date Because I'm Blonde
Bonus Tracks
These aren't about dating, but they are the ones I've gotten the most positive feedback on. Hope you enjoy them as well.
Vomit Phobia
Big nasty fuckin' spider
My Expeditions to the Planet of Third-tier Strippers - expurgated version
Too much information
Starship Trooper
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
The Thrill is Gone
Saw Lyle Lovett at Red Rocks recently. Lyle is, of course, a national treasure. When we are all dust in the wind, his stuff will still be in rotation on whatever the public transmission medium is of the day. The concert was excellent, natch, so praising it would be like saying ice cream is good. And something happened that I've never seen before at a concert: The entire audience was in reverential silence for the quiet part of a sad song. Usually you hear the low rumble of voices of folks talking through a song they don't know or like. But, twice during Lyle's show the song drops to a whisper, and not a freakin peep from the audience. That's an entertainer, my friends.
Shawn Colvin opened for him, she of the hit "Sunny Came Home." Well, it was just her and her guitar, and she didn't play the hit. Underwhelming doesn't quite come up to describing the experience. It was essentially no different than those girls who brought their guitar to church camp and crooned John Denver songs; pleasant in the moment, but about as memorable as a glass of water. Folks, I know it might be boring to play your hit after a while, but when someone lays out $50 just to get in the door, probably popped for parking too, and has skinned of $7 for a single beer - uh - PLAY THE FUCKING SONG! Damnit anyway. And would it kill ya to drag along a second guitarist or just a bassist?
Nonetheless, I enjoyed myself when Lyle did his thang. Well, the couple songs I didn't are merely acknowledged gaps in my taste. I've really never dug the gospel choir thing. I don't actively dislike it; it just does nothing for me. The whole rest of the crowd was on their feet holy rolling along, and the folks I was with looked down at me like, "What's wrong with you? This is where we're supposed to stand up! It's the gospel choir part!" Yeah, well, whatever flips up your skirt dudes. I'll wait for "It Ought to Be Easier."
My wife has coined something I think is quite wise, she says that a lot of the grief and angst we experience arises from expectations that aren't met. So, when dealing with people, if we can work out what our expectations are with each other, that will immediately relieve a lot of the strife. When approaching a situation, the more realistic your expectations, the better your experience will be, even if it's a bad one. There are many permutations and exceptions to this, of course, but for now the main assertion is all we need.
When I have to lay down a grand total of $80 for something, I expect (there's the word) it to be pretty transcendent. When someone as good as Lyle just doesn't get there, I begin to wonder if it's a function of my age, or if it is just too expensive for what you get. Given my love of music, I'm going to err on the side of the latter, because if tickets were $30 or less, and they at least allowed you to carry your own water into the show, I wouldn't even think of grousing. But it's so clearly tattooed on the experience that if you wanna play, you gotta pay. Starting with $5 for a bottled water.
I suspect there aren't many more live concerts in my future if things don't change.
Saw Lyle Lovett at Red Rocks recently. Lyle is, of course, a national treasure. When we are all dust in the wind, his stuff will still be in rotation on whatever the public transmission medium is of the day. The concert was excellent, natch, so praising it would be like saying ice cream is good. And something happened that I've never seen before at a concert: The entire audience was in reverential silence for the quiet part of a sad song. Usually you hear the low rumble of voices of folks talking through a song they don't know or like. But, twice during Lyle's show the song drops to a whisper, and not a freakin peep from the audience. That's an entertainer, my friends.
Shawn Colvin opened for him, she of the hit "Sunny Came Home." Well, it was just her and her guitar, and she didn't play the hit. Underwhelming doesn't quite come up to describing the experience. It was essentially no different than those girls who brought their guitar to church camp and crooned John Denver songs; pleasant in the moment, but about as memorable as a glass of water. Folks, I know it might be boring to play your hit after a while, but when someone lays out $50 just to get in the door, probably popped for parking too, and has skinned of $7 for a single beer - uh - PLAY THE FUCKING SONG! Damnit anyway. And would it kill ya to drag along a second guitarist or just a bassist?
Nonetheless, I enjoyed myself when Lyle did his thang. Well, the couple songs I didn't are merely acknowledged gaps in my taste. I've really never dug the gospel choir thing. I don't actively dislike it; it just does nothing for me. The whole rest of the crowd was on their feet holy rolling along, and the folks I was with looked down at me like, "What's wrong with you? This is where we're supposed to stand up! It's the gospel choir part!" Yeah, well, whatever flips up your skirt dudes. I'll wait for "It Ought to Be Easier."
My wife has coined something I think is quite wise, she says that a lot of the grief and angst we experience arises from expectations that aren't met. So, when dealing with people, if we can work out what our expectations are with each other, that will immediately relieve a lot of the strife. When approaching a situation, the more realistic your expectations, the better your experience will be, even if it's a bad one. There are many permutations and exceptions to this, of course, but for now the main assertion is all we need.
When I have to lay down a grand total of $80 for something, I expect (there's the word) it to be pretty transcendent. When someone as good as Lyle just doesn't get there, I begin to wonder if it's a function of my age, or if it is just too expensive for what you get. Given my love of music, I'm going to err on the side of the latter, because if tickets were $30 or less, and they at least allowed you to carry your own water into the show, I wouldn't even think of grousing. But it's so clearly tattooed on the experience that if you wanna play, you gotta pay. Starting with $5 for a bottled water.
I suspect there aren't many more live concerts in my future if things don't change.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
I love the web!
And this is why: The alternative Potter: Dumbledore's death
Rumor has it that the great Dumbledore sees the wrong end of a wand in the new Harry Potter. So, in a fit of brilliant impatience, the Guardian has thrown down the magic gauntlet:
"Send us your accounts of the death of Albus Dumbledore, and we'll publish the best. Don't feel that you have to model your prose on that of the great JK. We'd love to hear how Dickens would have dealt with the demise of such a noble wizard, or Raymond Chandler, or Douglas Adams. Aim for around 300 words."
(Found via "Pushing Up Dumbledores" on Making Light)
Way too much fun.
And this is why: The alternative Potter: Dumbledore's death
Rumor has it that the great Dumbledore sees the wrong end of a wand in the new Harry Potter. So, in a fit of brilliant impatience, the Guardian has thrown down the magic gauntlet:
"Send us your accounts of the death of Albus Dumbledore, and we'll publish the best. Don't feel that you have to model your prose on that of the great JK. We'd love to hear how Dickens would have dealt with the demise of such a noble wizard, or Raymond Chandler, or Douglas Adams. Aim for around 300 words."
(Found via "Pushing Up Dumbledores" on Making Light)
Way too much fun.
Million Dollar Bummer
I'm one of those who make it to the theatre only for the big spectacles, the ones where you need the big honkin screen to fully experience the film. The smaller dramas and comedies are just queued up for DVD viewing as I have a pretty sweet setup and enjoy them more at home, what with the commercials before screenings and people talking on cell phones and (inexplicably) to the screen and such. (Note to theatre owners, one of the secondary reasons I rent movies is to completely avoid commercials.)
It's especially hard to see a tragedy, because - I don't know about you - but I have to be in the right mood to be bummed out by a movie. I remember going to Sophie's Choice back in college, and while it was a very moving experience and a beautiful film, it was the first time a movie kicked me in the nuts that hard. I attended with two buddies, both thoughtful types - but you probably guessed that since they'd gone to Sophie's Choice in the first place. We egressed in silence and went with wordless agreement to a bar and ordered a picture. After a couple cold ones we were able to find words again, and once we dispensed with the usual blah-de-blah about performances and general thumbs up or down (all great, all up), we breached the barrier about the experience. All agreed that, while a great film, no one really wanted to feel that crummy without being consulted first.
So finding a babysitter on a night where you can take being emotionally squashed, and then dealing with the distraction and expense that is the modern movie-going experience just fills me with inertia. Also, we have no theatres where I live; they're a half hour or more away down the highway in Denver. To top if off, the butter-flavored topping provided for the $7 popcorn totally ruins any clothing it touches by leaving an indelible, dark grease stain. We've yet to find a laundry product that removes it, so if you're gonna have popcorn, you've got to be diligent and not get any on you, or wear a shirt and pants that're already ruined, which involves complex laundry scheduling and specific placement within the clothes storage system for easy retrieval. With apologies to China, you go through all of this to be immediately confronted with loud TV commercials that were equalized for the same and sound like someone belching through a bullhorn. Outside of finally moving to stadium seating, theatres have really fucked up the moving-going experience.
Thus, my lovely wife and I saw Million Dollar Baby only last night, and not before the Oscars, as usual. We have a standing rule that we try to see the films nominated for best picture beforehand, but due to the litany above, we didn't make it this year.
I knew what was going to happen in the flick because of the silliness of the culture warriors who are trying to make America over within the rubric of their cramped little mental boxes, who think the fictional exploration of a topic is tantamount to endorsing it. If you are the one person who still doesn't know the overall plot of Million Dollar Baby, I won't spoil it for you here. But I will proceed as if you do know.
I liked the movie, but I don't think it was the shining point of brilliance in last year's movie offerings. It was one of the better ones, but the topics have been done before elsewhere, and done better. I suggest approaching this movie with no expectations, and thus it will be the most rewarding.
Hillary Swank is a good actress, believable, technically adept and so on. Yet, I just don't "feel" her in movies. She's like Tom Cruise in that she always seems like she's trying just a little bit too hard, and thus you always have the meta-perception of watching an actor go through the steps, very brechtian, rather than being convinced she's the character. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the movie, but I'm conscious of watching a performance and not in a state of suspended disbelief.
Now Clint Eastwood and, especially, Morgan Freeman do seem as if they are the characters they're playing. Man, Eastwood looks old, though. He conjured the image for me of an angry badger emerging from his hole and snarling at the passers-by who had the temerity to tremor his ground. It works, though. Clint is apparently aware of the roles he fits anymore (well, and always has been). Freeman glides along on that mellow, deep cool he's had forever. He's one of those whose mere presence in a film merits a look.
All this culminates in a fabulous bummer. Good tragedies try to leave you with a little something rather than a dead, oversized cockroach in the corner with a moldering apple lodged in its back. Million Dollar Baby attempts this by showing the heroicness of the Eastwood character, and it almost works. But this is one of those stories were pretty much everything is lost and any redemption to be found is likely to be concocted more by the need of the viewer than there is to be found within the story itself.
If you're in the mood for a good bummer, great acting, and like to see what pulls an Oscar, check it out.
I'm one of those who make it to the theatre only for the big spectacles, the ones where you need the big honkin screen to fully experience the film. The smaller dramas and comedies are just queued up for DVD viewing as I have a pretty sweet setup and enjoy them more at home, what with the commercials before screenings and people talking on cell phones and (inexplicably) to the screen and such. (Note to theatre owners, one of the secondary reasons I rent movies is to completely avoid commercials.)
It's especially hard to see a tragedy, because - I don't know about you - but I have to be in the right mood to be bummed out by a movie. I remember going to Sophie's Choice back in college, and while it was a very moving experience and a beautiful film, it was the first time a movie kicked me in the nuts that hard. I attended with two buddies, both thoughtful types - but you probably guessed that since they'd gone to Sophie's Choice in the first place. We egressed in silence and went with wordless agreement to a bar and ordered a picture. After a couple cold ones we were able to find words again, and once we dispensed with the usual blah-de-blah about performances and general thumbs up or down (all great, all up), we breached the barrier about the experience. All agreed that, while a great film, no one really wanted to feel that crummy without being consulted first.
So finding a babysitter on a night where you can take being emotionally squashed, and then dealing with the distraction and expense that is the modern movie-going experience just fills me with inertia. Also, we have no theatres where I live; they're a half hour or more away down the highway in Denver. To top if off, the butter-flavored topping provided for the $7 popcorn totally ruins any clothing it touches by leaving an indelible, dark grease stain. We've yet to find a laundry product that removes it, so if you're gonna have popcorn, you've got to be diligent and not get any on you, or wear a shirt and pants that're already ruined, which involves complex laundry scheduling and specific placement within the clothes storage system for easy retrieval. With apologies to China, you go through all of this to be immediately confronted with loud TV commercials that were equalized for the same and sound like someone belching through a bullhorn. Outside of finally moving to stadium seating, theatres have really fucked up the moving-going experience.
Thus, my lovely wife and I saw Million Dollar Baby only last night, and not before the Oscars, as usual. We have a standing rule that we try to see the films nominated for best picture beforehand, but due to the litany above, we didn't make it this year.
I knew what was going to happen in the flick because of the silliness of the culture warriors who are trying to make America over within the rubric of their cramped little mental boxes, who think the fictional exploration of a topic is tantamount to endorsing it. If you are the one person who still doesn't know the overall plot of Million Dollar Baby, I won't spoil it for you here. But I will proceed as if you do know.
I liked the movie, but I don't think it was the shining point of brilliance in last year's movie offerings. It was one of the better ones, but the topics have been done before elsewhere, and done better. I suggest approaching this movie with no expectations, and thus it will be the most rewarding.
Hillary Swank is a good actress, believable, technically adept and so on. Yet, I just don't "feel" her in movies. She's like Tom Cruise in that she always seems like she's trying just a little bit too hard, and thus you always have the meta-perception of watching an actor go through the steps, very brechtian, rather than being convinced she's the character. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the movie, but I'm conscious of watching a performance and not in a state of suspended disbelief.
Now Clint Eastwood and, especially, Morgan Freeman do seem as if they are the characters they're playing. Man, Eastwood looks old, though. He conjured the image for me of an angry badger emerging from his hole and snarling at the passers-by who had the temerity to tremor his ground. It works, though. Clint is apparently aware of the roles he fits anymore (well, and always has been). Freeman glides along on that mellow, deep cool he's had forever. He's one of those whose mere presence in a film merits a look.
All this culminates in a fabulous bummer. Good tragedies try to leave you with a little something rather than a dead, oversized cockroach in the corner with a moldering apple lodged in its back. Million Dollar Baby attempts this by showing the heroicness of the Eastwood character, and it almost works. But this is one of those stories were pretty much everything is lost and any redemption to be found is likely to be concocted more by the need of the viewer than there is to be found within the story itself.
If you're in the mood for a good bummer, great acting, and like to see what pulls an Oscar, check it out.
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Chick Lit (and Dude Lit by association)
It's official, I don't like "chick lit." Before I venture further, by "chick lit" I mean the variety of book typically printed as a trade paperback, a jaunty, kicky picture of a cute girl on the front, wherein the story centers on the search for Mr. Right - or at least Mr. Rightnow - written in a quasi-humorous breezy fashion. I thought I would like the humor, but most of it is self-depreciating at the expense of the heroine and after a while it just comes off like she needs therapy. (Yes, therapy, not vitamins. Tom. You freak.)
I won't name the authoresses I've read, because I think that would be unfair. Y'see, I don't think the problem is the books, necessarily, but the fact that I'm not the intended audience. I think these are for abstract commiseration in how difficult dating is for the young, single gal. Since I never have been, nor ever will be a young, single gal, these just have no traction for me.
Oh, I was once a young, single guy who had troubles meeting someone. Well, not meeting someone, but meeting the right someone. I recall sitting on a bench at lunch one day, in the bright sun on a beautiful day, laying down a streak of woe about not having a date for eons. The guy sitting next to me on his cigarette break turned to me and groused, "What do you want me to do? Feel sorry for you?" In hindsight, I love those times where life just comes up and bitch-slaps you and says, essentially, "Cowboy up, weenie!" At the time though, I was shocked. In my mind, I thought, "Well ... yeah. Feel sorry for me. This is tough." But, y'know, there I was whining all over his sunny day when all he wanted was a smoke. It was a watershed for me, so I shut the hell up about that topic; for good, pretty much. (Oh, there were occasional beery moments and those dark teatimes of the soul where I relapsed just a little bit, but I still put on the brakes after a paragraph.)
All of the chick lit I've read is essentially this wailing and gnashing of teeth over the same, with a few digs at what pigs men are (and, when it comes to the rut, yeah, we can be pigs), and then the hosannas on how wonderful the guy is who sticks around past the farting right out loud in front of each other stage. Bores me silly.
But, whilst thinking about this post, it occurred to me that most dude lit - which I would categorize as tough guys doing brave and daring things like in Tom Clancy novels - bores me silly, too. I mean, I liked The Hunt for the Red October because there was nothing out there so deliciously technoweenie at the time. Pages of submarine operation minutia was cool because most of us never see that. But then Clancy veered into Republican hero land and it was over, as far as I was concerned. It's kinda like the "Left Behind" series; the story might be fun, but man, the proselytizing is murder.
The whole genre that Clancy belongs to gives me the yawns. It takes a special person to write action well, and when it's done right - see any of the Robert E. Howard "Conan" stories - it's riveting. But when it's just action hero does thus and such, then does this, then something blows up, it's a lot like heroine dates thus and such, then does him, then something blows up - you get the picture.
Both of these genres, by the way, work spectacularly in a movie, because you can see the action, and movies cover far less material (they're usually the equivalent of a short story). The thin material provided by chick lit and dude lit hangs much better in the cinema than it does on the page.
Thank God we've got a new Harry Potter and a new John Irving coming out in a few days.
It's official, I don't like "chick lit." Before I venture further, by "chick lit" I mean the variety of book typically printed as a trade paperback, a jaunty, kicky picture of a cute girl on the front, wherein the story centers on the search for Mr. Right - or at least Mr. Rightnow - written in a quasi-humorous breezy fashion. I thought I would like the humor, but most of it is self-depreciating at the expense of the heroine and after a while it just comes off like she needs therapy. (Yes, therapy, not vitamins. Tom. You freak.)
I won't name the authoresses I've read, because I think that would be unfair. Y'see, I don't think the problem is the books, necessarily, but the fact that I'm not the intended audience. I think these are for abstract commiseration in how difficult dating is for the young, single gal. Since I never have been, nor ever will be a young, single gal, these just have no traction for me.
Oh, I was once a young, single guy who had troubles meeting someone. Well, not meeting someone, but meeting the right someone. I recall sitting on a bench at lunch one day, in the bright sun on a beautiful day, laying down a streak of woe about not having a date for eons. The guy sitting next to me on his cigarette break turned to me and groused, "What do you want me to do? Feel sorry for you?" In hindsight, I love those times where life just comes up and bitch-slaps you and says, essentially, "Cowboy up, weenie!" At the time though, I was shocked. In my mind, I thought, "Well ... yeah. Feel sorry for me. This is tough." But, y'know, there I was whining all over his sunny day when all he wanted was a smoke. It was a watershed for me, so I shut the hell up about that topic; for good, pretty much. (Oh, there were occasional beery moments and those dark teatimes of the soul where I relapsed just a little bit, but I still put on the brakes after a paragraph.)
All of the chick lit I've read is essentially this wailing and gnashing of teeth over the same, with a few digs at what pigs men are (and, when it comes to the rut, yeah, we can be pigs), and then the hosannas on how wonderful the guy is who sticks around past the farting right out loud in front of each other stage. Bores me silly.
But, whilst thinking about this post, it occurred to me that most dude lit - which I would categorize as tough guys doing brave and daring things like in Tom Clancy novels - bores me silly, too. I mean, I liked The Hunt for the Red October because there was nothing out there so deliciously technoweenie at the time. Pages of submarine operation minutia was cool because most of us never see that. But then Clancy veered into Republican hero land and it was over, as far as I was concerned. It's kinda like the "Left Behind" series; the story might be fun, but man, the proselytizing is murder.
The whole genre that Clancy belongs to gives me the yawns. It takes a special person to write action well, and when it's done right - see any of the Robert E. Howard "Conan" stories - it's riveting. But when it's just action hero does thus and such, then does this, then something blows up, it's a lot like heroine dates thus and such, then does him, then something blows up - you get the picture.
Both of these genres, by the way, work spectacularly in a movie, because you can see the action, and movies cover far less material (they're usually the equivalent of a short story). The thin material provided by chick lit and dude lit hangs much better in the cinema than it does on the page.
Thank God we've got a new Harry Potter and a new John Irving coming out in a few days.
Friday, July 01, 2005
Oy, my sides hurt...
Re-imagined romance novel covers (via kottke.org).
Make sure you read the smaller blurbs on the covers.
My faves were "Senior Photo Backdrop" and "Lord of the Hissy-fit."
Re-imagined romance novel covers (via kottke.org).
Make sure you read the smaller blurbs on the covers.
My faves were "Senior Photo Backdrop" and "Lord of the Hissy-fit."
Summer Music
Summer. You get into the car, and it's so hot you think an obscenity or two. Maybe you even mumble it out loud if you're alone. Start'er up, get that A/C pumping if you have it (enduring the initial blast of even hotter air), or crank the windows down if you don't. Then it's time for probably the most important decision you'll make for the day (unless you're a doctor, astronaut or the POTUS): What to play.
Summer albums can burn entire pockets of time into your memory like those black ash-snake fireworks the can mark a sidewalk for seeming eternity (on a nostalgic drive through my childhood neighborhood after college, I could still see the ghost of one I'd lit way back when). For instance, I think Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is that for many people. For me, it evokes picking up my good buddy Pete in my old beat up '62 Chrysler Savoy with the slant six that was so rusted out many a mechanic warned me one day the body would just fall down off the frame and onto my noggin, heading out to the beach or another friend's house, laughing about the fact that "Second Hand News" was about jerking off (complete with a three cymbal-crash climax), and of course lusting over Stevie Nicks. For a former boss of mine it harkens back to illicit sex which resulted in a pregnancy and a regretted marriage. Where were you when you first heard "Dreams" or "Don't Stop"?
This summer is shaping up to be a fine summer of new music, especially after such a drought, partially because the music industry continues to disappear up its own anus fretting over a new music delivery reality they just don't want to face. DRM should stand for "Damned Right it's Mine" - it's my copy and I'll play it where I want to. But I digress.
The quintessential summer release is Sugar Ray's new greatest hits compilation. This is one of those groups the casual listener has heard and loved, but probably never put together just who they were. This anthology even starts off crooning "summer." My God, within seconds it feels as though you have an ice-cold beer (or lemonade if that's your speed) in one paw, a glob of sunscreen in the other, a beachtowel between you and the hot sand, listening to the glittery sound of children's laughter wafting back from the surf. If any group has successfully absorbed and reimagined the entire history of popular music, it's these guys. Part Beach Boys, Barenaked Ladies, Run DMC, Metallica, and Todd Rudgren, these guys are one of the few bands I can imagine someone from every generation grooving to at a party.
Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (and of Nirvana for the pups in the crowd) promised this was gonna be a great summer for music, and until I heard Sugar Ray, plus the new Foo, I was skeptical. In Your Honor is not as tuneful as previous efforts, but still kicks out the jams. For those of you who like your golden rays enhanced by a little thunder, check out the new Foo.
When I say I was skeptical in the last paragraph, that's because I thought Dave Matthews Band's new release was a fluke, a standout in what would be a typical spate of crep summer releases. Then Dwight Yoakam kicked out a new one which was awesome as usual (he's never made a stinker folks), but he's always good, so I didn't count him initially.
But, finally, when I had 5 new CDs circulating in the player I had to admit that the event of Sugar Ray, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews Band, and Dwight Yoakam putting out so much wonderfulness at once was worth noting. And even though I haven't heard them in their entirety, the new Coldplay and Van Morrison sound like they're both in good stride.
Therefore, it's official: This summer doth rock.
Summer. You get into the car, and it's so hot you think an obscenity or two. Maybe you even mumble it out loud if you're alone. Start'er up, get that A/C pumping if you have it (enduring the initial blast of even hotter air), or crank the windows down if you don't. Then it's time for probably the most important decision you'll make for the day (unless you're a doctor, astronaut or the POTUS): What to play.
Summer albums can burn entire pockets of time into your memory like those black ash-snake fireworks the can mark a sidewalk for seeming eternity (on a nostalgic drive through my childhood neighborhood after college, I could still see the ghost of one I'd lit way back when). For instance, I think Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is that for many people. For me, it evokes picking up my good buddy Pete in my old beat up '62 Chrysler Savoy with the slant six that was so rusted out many a mechanic warned me one day the body would just fall down off the frame and onto my noggin, heading out to the beach or another friend's house, laughing about the fact that "Second Hand News" was about jerking off (complete with a three cymbal-crash climax), and of course lusting over Stevie Nicks. For a former boss of mine it harkens back to illicit sex which resulted in a pregnancy and a regretted marriage. Where were you when you first heard "Dreams" or "Don't Stop"?
This summer is shaping up to be a fine summer of new music, especially after such a drought, partially because the music industry continues to disappear up its own anus fretting over a new music delivery reality they just don't want to face. DRM should stand for "Damned Right it's Mine" - it's my copy and I'll play it where I want to. But I digress.
The quintessential summer release is Sugar Ray's new greatest hits compilation. This is one of those groups the casual listener has heard and loved, but probably never put together just who they were. This anthology even starts off crooning "summer." My God, within seconds it feels as though you have an ice-cold beer (or lemonade if that's your speed) in one paw, a glob of sunscreen in the other, a beachtowel between you and the hot sand, listening to the glittery sound of children's laughter wafting back from the surf. If any group has successfully absorbed and reimagined the entire history of popular music, it's these guys. Part Beach Boys, Barenaked Ladies, Run DMC, Metallica, and Todd Rudgren, these guys are one of the few bands I can imagine someone from every generation grooving to at a party.
Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters (and of Nirvana for the pups in the crowd) promised this was gonna be a great summer for music, and until I heard Sugar Ray, plus the new Foo, I was skeptical. In Your Honor is not as tuneful as previous efforts, but still kicks out the jams. For those of you who like your golden rays enhanced by a little thunder, check out the new Foo.
When I say I was skeptical in the last paragraph, that's because I thought Dave Matthews Band's new release was a fluke, a standout in what would be a typical spate of crep summer releases. Then Dwight Yoakam kicked out a new one which was awesome as usual (he's never made a stinker folks), but he's always good, so I didn't count him initially.
But, finally, when I had 5 new CDs circulating in the player I had to admit that the event of Sugar Ray, Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews Band, and Dwight Yoakam putting out so much wonderfulness at once was worth noting. And even though I haven't heard them in their entirety, the new Coldplay and Van Morrison sound like they're both in good stride.
Therefore, it's official: This summer doth rock.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Quickies
Kinsey starring Liam Neeson.
Kinsey sure tries to make the namesake a hero, but ultimately comes across a little histrionic. You can only gold plate a plastic trophy so much before it collapses under the weight. This movie would have been more effective had it taken a clinical or documentary-esque approach rather than "glowing historic hero" approach. But, as Ebert says, you review the movie you saw, not the one you wanted to see. It was enjoyable and, if you're a movie addict like myself, worth the solid two hours of run-time. Kinsey really did have a lot of positive influence in demystifying sex and redefining what's "normal," but he apparently, like the free love generation, just couldn't grasp the point that sex is more than genital manipulation for most people. It's tied very close to our emotions and attachments. This movie does a decent job at portraying that, but then downshifts and tries to gloss over that lesson. Liam of course and as always is spectacular in the role, though Laura Linney is miscast as his brown-eyed, brunette wife. With some actresses you just can't hide the fact that they're really blonde, and vice versa; imagine seeing the amazing Ava Gardner with platinum hair - you would still know in the back of your mind it didn't quite fit. (In a much more frivolous example, think of Freddie Prinze Jr. as "Fred" in the Scooby Doo movies. Even my 8 year old said after a couple scenes, "That guy's not really blonde, is he?") Stick around for the credits, because after the initial scroll of who played what, there's a montage of animals doing the nasty to a jaunty soundtrack - compiled form footage which was originally done by the Kinsey institute. Apparently Kinsey thought there was value in watching all kinds of critters hump. The final pair is especially entertaining as it provides proof to the veracity of the old joke: Q: "How do porcupines make love?" A: "Verrrry carefully."
Magical Mystery Tours by Tony Bramwell.
Mr. Bramwell literally grew up with the Beatles and entered the biz by starting out as their roadie and graduating to production and management. If you like rafts of trivial detail, this is the book for you. But, it's like sitting at the pub (or reading a blog) and listening to someone gas on and on about the events in their lives. The book is roughly chronological, but Bramwell often digresses [shit-eating grin] back and forth through time as things occur to him. Therefore, even though this book has the best outsider's view of the Beatles I've encountered, it becomes tedious reading. For example, (and I paraphrase wildly here), "We went here and did this, then we shagged some birds, then John was a jerk, which pissed Paul off, George was gloomy and quiet, while Ringo ordered another pint." This one is for hardcore fans, all others should just watch the video series The Beatles Anthology, as it's much more fun. Highlights are: Though a complete original and the de facto leader of the group, John was often a jerk who was eventually as unhinged by fame as Elvis was. Yoko Ono was an opportunistic freak (her performance art act consisted of audience members cutting her clothes off until she was nude, which would qualify as tragicomedy because she had the kind of body that cried out for concealment) who intuited that she could leverage John's weaknesses to weasel her way into permanent fortune and carte blanche (no surprise there, but it's fun to read how she did it and how shameless she was). One prime example is when John and Yoko were doing their ridiculous infamous bed-in for peace, Yoko ordered an entire bucket of caviar every day, had about two bites, and let the rest rot. George was insecure being next to the white-hot talents of Lennon and McCartney and only realized how good he was once he branched out (even the greenest, most lush lawn must sigh with weltschmerz while gazing at a tree). Ringo did his job as a drummer and reveled in the life of celebrity and access to great parties. McCartney was the most grounded of the group, and according to this book, is still that way today. Personally, I think he comes off as a little conceited in interviews these days, but if anyone's earned it, Paul has. Linda was a class act who, being raised by the rich and famous, fit right in with the newly rich and famous. Final verdict: Somewhat tedious, but filled with info you'll find nowhere else. I'm amazed Yoko hasn't sued this guy within an inch of his royalties.
A Dirty Shame, directed by John Waters.
I've never liked Waters' films. They're childish and prurient in much the same way as Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but without the razor wit and with way too many drag queens. I mean if watching a morbidly obese man dressed as a woman eating freshly excreted real dog shit on screen does it for ya, be my guest. But, I love Tracey Ullman, so I'll eventually hunt down anything she's in, and here she's wasted playing an uptight woman who turns into a nympho when she's hit on the head, sitcom style. She is then indoctrinated into a little group of fellow sex addicts who have Johnny Knoxville (of MTV's "Jackass") as their savior, who happens to have a snake for a penis (which he blows in an out-take). A portion of the gay community considers Judeo/Christian beliefs fair game for mockery (for reasons known to anyone who cares), and this movie takes it to the wall in that regard, using J/C religious iconography as the structure of the sex addicts group. So, not only does the flick lack legitimate laughs, it tries too hard to be offensive, and ends up being so only because it tries so hard - in the same way that a movie trying to be funny but failing subsequently loops around to be unintentionally funny (see Ishtar if any undestroyed copies remain). This one's not even interesting in a car-wreck sorta way. Avoid.
Musicology by Prince (once again known as the artist "Prince").
It must truly suck being a genius. When I meet someone whose intelligence vastly outstrips mine, I get the same sensation I got when I first saw the contrail of the space shuttle arc all the way out of the atmosphere. I'm given to wonder how it must feel for someone who truly towers above the rest of us in either intelligence or talent. Practically every time I spin up a new Prince album, I expect it to suck and thus I'll be able to proclaim he's finally lost it, that the well has dried up, but time and again I've been pleasantly surprised that His Purpleness can still pull it off. This guy is just freaky talented, a bonafide and true musical genius, which (to me) goes a long way towards explaining why he comes off as kind of a freak. How could you not be a little out there when in fact you are one of the best around? So I suppose I consider myself lucky to be average, as I stand there gazing at the towering contrail that goes someplace I never will. Musicology is a must for fans, and everyone else should give the samples a test listen on the web site of their choice. I hope Prince has taken Kevin Smith's advice and wears tennis shoes more often (his high heel addiction has ruined his knees) because we want him wiggling his microscopic ass across the stage for decades to come.
Kinsey starring Liam Neeson.
Kinsey sure tries to make the namesake a hero, but ultimately comes across a little histrionic. You can only gold plate a plastic trophy so much before it collapses under the weight. This movie would have been more effective had it taken a clinical or documentary-esque approach rather than "glowing historic hero" approach. But, as Ebert says, you review the movie you saw, not the one you wanted to see. It was enjoyable and, if you're a movie addict like myself, worth the solid two hours of run-time. Kinsey really did have a lot of positive influence in demystifying sex and redefining what's "normal," but he apparently, like the free love generation, just couldn't grasp the point that sex is more than genital manipulation for most people. It's tied very close to our emotions and attachments. This movie does a decent job at portraying that, but then downshifts and tries to gloss over that lesson. Liam of course and as always is spectacular in the role, though Laura Linney is miscast as his brown-eyed, brunette wife. With some actresses you just can't hide the fact that they're really blonde, and vice versa; imagine seeing the amazing Ava Gardner with platinum hair - you would still know in the back of your mind it didn't quite fit. (In a much more frivolous example, think of Freddie Prinze Jr. as "Fred" in the Scooby Doo movies. Even my 8 year old said after a couple scenes, "That guy's not really blonde, is he?") Stick around for the credits, because after the initial scroll of who played what, there's a montage of animals doing the nasty to a jaunty soundtrack - compiled form footage which was originally done by the Kinsey institute. Apparently Kinsey thought there was value in watching all kinds of critters hump. The final pair is especially entertaining as it provides proof to the veracity of the old joke: Q: "How do porcupines make love?" A: "Verrrry carefully."
Magical Mystery Tours by Tony Bramwell.
Mr. Bramwell literally grew up with the Beatles and entered the biz by starting out as their roadie and graduating to production and management. If you like rafts of trivial detail, this is the book for you. But, it's like sitting at the pub (or reading a blog) and listening to someone gas on and on about the events in their lives. The book is roughly chronological, but Bramwell often digresses [shit-eating grin] back and forth through time as things occur to him. Therefore, even though this book has the best outsider's view of the Beatles I've encountered, it becomes tedious reading. For example, (and I paraphrase wildly here), "We went here and did this, then we shagged some birds, then John was a jerk, which pissed Paul off, George was gloomy and quiet, while Ringo ordered another pint." This one is for hardcore fans, all others should just watch the video series The Beatles Anthology, as it's much more fun. Highlights are: Though a complete original and the de facto leader of the group, John was often a jerk who was eventually as unhinged by fame as Elvis was. Yoko Ono was an opportunistic freak (her performance art act consisted of audience members cutting her clothes off until she was nude, which would qualify as tragicomedy because she had the kind of body that cried out for concealment) who intuited that she could leverage John's weaknesses to weasel her way into permanent fortune and carte blanche (no surprise there, but it's fun to read how she did it and how shameless she was). One prime example is when John and Yoko were doing their ridiculous infamous bed-in for peace, Yoko ordered an entire bucket of caviar every day, had about two bites, and let the rest rot. George was insecure being next to the white-hot talents of Lennon and McCartney and only realized how good he was once he branched out (even the greenest, most lush lawn must sigh with weltschmerz while gazing at a tree). Ringo did his job as a drummer and reveled in the life of celebrity and access to great parties. McCartney was the most grounded of the group, and according to this book, is still that way today. Personally, I think he comes off as a little conceited in interviews these days, but if anyone's earned it, Paul has. Linda was a class act who, being raised by the rich and famous, fit right in with the newly rich and famous. Final verdict: Somewhat tedious, but filled with info you'll find nowhere else. I'm amazed Yoko hasn't sued this guy within an inch of his royalties.
A Dirty Shame, directed by John Waters.
I've never liked Waters' films. They're childish and prurient in much the same way as Trey Parker and Matt Stone, but without the razor wit and with way too many drag queens. I mean if watching a morbidly obese man dressed as a woman eating freshly excreted real dog shit on screen does it for ya, be my guest. But, I love Tracey Ullman, so I'll eventually hunt down anything she's in, and here she's wasted playing an uptight woman who turns into a nympho when she's hit on the head, sitcom style. She is then indoctrinated into a little group of fellow sex addicts who have Johnny Knoxville (of MTV's "Jackass") as their savior, who happens to have a snake for a penis (which he blows in an out-take). A portion of the gay community considers Judeo/Christian beliefs fair game for mockery (for reasons known to anyone who cares), and this movie takes it to the wall in that regard, using J/C religious iconography as the structure of the sex addicts group. So, not only does the flick lack legitimate laughs, it tries too hard to be offensive, and ends up being so only because it tries so hard - in the same way that a movie trying to be funny but failing subsequently loops around to be unintentionally funny (see Ishtar if any undestroyed copies remain). This one's not even interesting in a car-wreck sorta way. Avoid.
Musicology by Prince (once again known as the artist "Prince").
It must truly suck being a genius. When I meet someone whose intelligence vastly outstrips mine, I get the same sensation I got when I first saw the contrail of the space shuttle arc all the way out of the atmosphere. I'm given to wonder how it must feel for someone who truly towers above the rest of us in either intelligence or talent. Practically every time I spin up a new Prince album, I expect it to suck and thus I'll be able to proclaim he's finally lost it, that the well has dried up, but time and again I've been pleasantly surprised that His Purpleness can still pull it off. This guy is just freaky talented, a bonafide and true musical genius, which (to me) goes a long way towards explaining why he comes off as kind of a freak. How could you not be a little out there when in fact you are one of the best around? So I suppose I consider myself lucky to be average, as I stand there gazing at the towering contrail that goes someplace I never will. Musicology is a must for fans, and everyone else should give the samples a test listen on the web site of their choice. I hope Prince has taken Kevin Smith's advice and wears tennis shoes more often (his high heel addiction has ruined his knees) because we want him wiggling his microscopic ass across the stage for decades to come.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
After all this time...
Was playing with MPC1 last night - see I got a Star Wars aircycle and Wookie for Father's Day (I love that particular childhood logic: "Dad will love this! I know I do!") - and it dawned on me after all this time: How in the hell did Wookies discover fire when they're covered with long hair?
Was playing with MPC1 last night - see I got a Star Wars aircycle and Wookie for Father's Day (I love that particular childhood logic: "Dad will love this! I know I do!") - and it dawned on me after all this time: How in the hell did Wookies discover fire when they're covered with long hair?
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Batman Begins
Denver has one of the last remaining drive-ins, which is a perfect way to go see a movie with kids. Or so it would seem. The drive-in itself says on their web site that they take in shorts when they show a kid flick. Seems daylight savings time moves the showtimes back so far most parents won't take the kids. (Does anyone still like daylight savings time?) Last Friday we granted a parental exception to bedtime and off we went to see the latest cartoon, Madagascar. Alas, it was gone, so we saw Batman Begins instead.
I liked it a lot; the wife did not. MPC1 fell asleep before it could really get off the ground (hence proving the drive-in folks were right), and MPC2 was just confused and cried a lot (little babies are creatures of habit and schedule - we were supposed to be home in the quiet living room, not in a dark car somewhere with the call and refrain of horns interrupting her sleep.)
I suspect the difference in my wife's opinion and mine is due to expectations based on previous incarnations of Batman. We both love the campy TV show - it was a fixture of both our childhoods - and we both liked the first movie. I was (... well, "am") a comic book fan, though, and the Batman of comic books was a much more serious character. (I'm not gonna bother with the defense of comic books being serious art. That opinion is kinda like your political opinion - no doubt you've already formed it and no amount of persuasion will sway you. Which is OK. Gotta stand for something, donchaknow.)
So, whilst I enjoyed the campy Batmans, this was the Batman I'd always wanted to see: A guy just barely hanging on to sanity, pissed at the world due to all the injustice, and equipped with enough money and toys to do something about it. My wife thinks the premise of Batman is silly enough in the first place, so trying to play it straight rather than as pure fantasy kinda trips her bullshit meter so that she can't suspend disbelief. Funny how we can both have the same problem with a premise - how can a guy justify putting on a bullet-proof batsuit and chase down crooks who have a thing for costumes, too - but require completely different solutions. Me: Make it as plausible as possible in the given world; Her: It's a goof, so play it that way, Charlie. If "make it real" is the new trend in the Batman films, I'm probably going to be seeing them sans wife from now on.
The only thing this story really muffs is the credibility of the scheme that Batman must unravel to save the city. Anyone who understands the technology employed will wonder if the writers did any research on it whatsoever (I'll put that below in a spoiler section).
Outside of that, it’s a fun ride, with just the right level of detail to thrills. For instance, the machinations of Bruce Wayne's wealth are presented in enough detail to answer nagging questions I've always had. Also, the villains in Batman are supposed to be pretty freakin' sinister. Superman gets the mad geniuses you can almost appreciate in a Wile E. Coyote sorta way, but Batman's thugs are supposed to be exponentials of more fucked up than he is.
Most thrilling of all, though, is they manage to make the main bad buy, the Scarecrow, legitimately scary. The wife and I were very glad MPC1 had fallen asleep when he popped up. After about scene 3 of some truly goosebump inducing stuff, we vowed we will now strictly adhere to the PG-13 rating. (This is only the second time we've taken the chance and yet we got burned again; the first being "Legally Blonde 2" where it comes out that her Chihuahua "Buster" is gay and wants to boff a boxer or something.)
Collective opinion across the web tends towards identifying this as a guy flick, which might also explain my wife and I not agreeing on the merits of Batman Begins. So it looks like we have a new excuse for a boy's night out. Take advantage, my friends.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
Ok, the big mistake is that the evil plot hatched by the villains involves using a large microwave device to vaporize the city's water supply. Microwaves energize water atoms which results in their releasing the energy as heat. Well, folks, anything that vaporizes water by merely passing by it would also vaporize every living thing since we're composed primarily of the stuff. It would be an effective weapon as intended, but it would play hell on the plot because not only would the citizens of Gotham pop like nasty water balloons, so would Batman and the bad guys, quickly bringing the movie to a gorily splashy halt. Apparently, the writers have never seen JoeCartoon.com's classics exploring that very messy fact.
Denver has one of the last remaining drive-ins, which is a perfect way to go see a movie with kids. Or so it would seem. The drive-in itself says on their web site that they take in shorts when they show a kid flick. Seems daylight savings time moves the showtimes back so far most parents won't take the kids. (Does anyone still like daylight savings time?) Last Friday we granted a parental exception to bedtime and off we went to see the latest cartoon, Madagascar. Alas, it was gone, so we saw Batman Begins instead.
I liked it a lot; the wife did not. MPC1 fell asleep before it could really get off the ground (hence proving the drive-in folks were right), and MPC2 was just confused and cried a lot (little babies are creatures of habit and schedule - we were supposed to be home in the quiet living room, not in a dark car somewhere with the call and refrain of horns interrupting her sleep.)
I suspect the difference in my wife's opinion and mine is due to expectations based on previous incarnations of Batman. We both love the campy TV show - it was a fixture of both our childhoods - and we both liked the first movie. I was (... well, "am") a comic book fan, though, and the Batman of comic books was a much more serious character. (I'm not gonna bother with the defense of comic books being serious art. That opinion is kinda like your political opinion - no doubt you've already formed it and no amount of persuasion will sway you. Which is OK. Gotta stand for something, donchaknow.)
So, whilst I enjoyed the campy Batmans, this was the Batman I'd always wanted to see: A guy just barely hanging on to sanity, pissed at the world due to all the injustice, and equipped with enough money and toys to do something about it. My wife thinks the premise of Batman is silly enough in the first place, so trying to play it straight rather than as pure fantasy kinda trips her bullshit meter so that she can't suspend disbelief. Funny how we can both have the same problem with a premise - how can a guy justify putting on a bullet-proof batsuit and chase down crooks who have a thing for costumes, too - but require completely different solutions. Me: Make it as plausible as possible in the given world; Her: It's a goof, so play it that way, Charlie. If "make it real" is the new trend in the Batman films, I'm probably going to be seeing them sans wife from now on.
The only thing this story really muffs is the credibility of the scheme that Batman must unravel to save the city. Anyone who understands the technology employed will wonder if the writers did any research on it whatsoever (I'll put that below in a spoiler section).
Outside of that, it’s a fun ride, with just the right level of detail to thrills. For instance, the machinations of Bruce Wayne's wealth are presented in enough detail to answer nagging questions I've always had. Also, the villains in Batman are supposed to be pretty freakin' sinister. Superman gets the mad geniuses you can almost appreciate in a Wile E. Coyote sorta way, but Batman's thugs are supposed to be exponentials of more fucked up than he is.
Most thrilling of all, though, is they manage to make the main bad buy, the Scarecrow, legitimately scary. The wife and I were very glad MPC1 had fallen asleep when he popped up. After about scene 3 of some truly goosebump inducing stuff, we vowed we will now strictly adhere to the PG-13 rating. (This is only the second time we've taken the chance and yet we got burned again; the first being "Legally Blonde 2" where it comes out that her Chihuahua "Buster" is gay and wants to boff a boxer or something.)
Collective opinion across the web tends towards identifying this as a guy flick, which might also explain my wife and I not agreeing on the merits of Batman Begins. So it looks like we have a new excuse for a boy's night out. Take advantage, my friends.
*** SPOILER ALERT ***
Ok, the big mistake is that the evil plot hatched by the villains involves using a large microwave device to vaporize the city's water supply. Microwaves energize water atoms which results in their releasing the energy as heat. Well, folks, anything that vaporizes water by merely passing by it would also vaporize every living thing since we're composed primarily of the stuff. It would be an effective weapon as intended, but it would play hell on the plot because not only would the citizens of Gotham pop like nasty water balloons, so would Batman and the bad guys, quickly bringing the movie to a gorily splashy halt. Apparently, the writers have never seen JoeCartoon.com's classics exploring that very messy fact.
Monday, June 13, 2005
All Things Peter Pan
The story of Peter Pan has been a persistent presence in our lives lately, much like Peter himself visiting the nursery until he finally persuades everyone to fly off to Neverland.
It started with a family viewing of Finding Neverland wherein Johnny Depp stars as a playwrightwith scissors for hands, er, who pens the now classic Peter Pan and Kate Winslet plays the doomed, widowed mother of the boys who inspire him. I resisted this movie because scuttlebutt was that it was a disease movie (where the main engine of the plot is someone wonderful dying of a terminal disease and all the steel magnolias get their big scene to attempt to touch your heart without your permission, which makes many of us in the reluctant audience feel like rendering our review with the aid of a chuck bucket). But the charms of Kate Winslet were enough to place my grumbly butt in a seat for family movie night, with a curmudgeonly warning that if it veered into disease movie cliche land, I'd bolt and go read blogs or something. Thankfully, it was tasteful enough to center on how others are affected when a loved one dies rather than train the camera on the deathbed and line the area with chewable scenery. And as such, it was a legitimately touching entire-Kleenex-box-weepie, especially when the little boy, Peter (yes, him), is trying to understand a world where both his mother and father die. Not since the little trooper in Terms of Endearment broke our hearts so completely that I heard grown men openly blubbering in the showing I attended has a child's grief been portrayed so bracingly. It moves any parent to want to save all children from any possible harm and suffering.
Now, like Terms of Endearment, Finding Neverland is also leavened with much humor and magic, so it's not all sniffling and sweaty eyes. I wouldn't recommend it were it otherwise. The portrayals of James Barrie's various inspirations for the story of Peter Pan are brilliant. The juxtaposition of the real life Peter growing up too quickly pressed against the fictional Peter who never has to grow up is just one of the many. A seemingly evil mother trying to steal Kate and her family from Depp (Barrie), who is the template for Capt. Hook, is another. I still wonder how much truth was bent to provide these dramatic touch points, but to be honest I don't really want to know. The fiction will suffice for now.
And speaking of the fiction, the live action version of Peter Pan from 2003 is spectacular. I had wandered through the living room a couple times when MPC1 was watching it and was amused by what I saw, but hadn't sat down for the whole voyage until this last weekend. What a joyous little piece of entertainment. I swear, all the best movies anymore are the kid flicks.
For example, one reason Wendy has been brought to Neverland is because of her wonderful stories. In one scene, the pirates have Wendy and the boys captive, and even the pirates are so rapt by Wendy's stories that in the midst of Captain Hook having Wendy tell a story to wrangle valuable Peter Pan information out of her, it comes out that one of the pirates is featured. The pirate beams, "Didja hear that Cap'n! I'm in the story!" Hook shoots him on the spot. Not since Pulp Fiction has a character's demise via a gun been so damn funny. For some reason I don't recall, a second pirate is dispatched moments later. Smee opines over his shoulder to the camera, "The story's just begun and two dead already! How exciting!" We alarmed both the cat and the dog with our howls of laughter. Do check it out.
We were watching Peter Pan because my daughter had her first dance recital the next day, and the ballet was - yup - Peter Pan. Now, this isn't the Bolshoi's classic version of Peter Pan that made Catherine the Great weep so profoundly for the endangered Tinker Bell that she claimed she'd swear off horses for a couple months if it would help the poor little fairy. No, this was cobbled together from ballet cliches, new age music (particularly during Tinkerbelle's big and completely inexplicable solo), and direct liftings from the soundtrack of the Disney version. But I'll be damned if seeing my lovely daughter come out to play a marionette in the Darling's nursery didn't make it feel like the best damn ballet EVER.
It totally removed all uneasiness my wife and I had over the amount of makeup we were directed to apply to our young daughter's face. It was surreal to see an entire lobby of little girls made up like Gloria Swanson on a Cecil B. DeMille daiquiris and delusions night. Makeup tends to bring out the eventual adult face these little babies will use to break hearts, which tears at a dad's soul like a monsoon in the rigging. On stage, under the bright lights, the eye shadow and lipstick washed out enough to make them all look like little girls again, though.
Well, save for the high school senior who played Wendy. Dear Lord, I'm sure many of the dads in attendance are still ashamed of the thoughts nubile Wendy in her nearly transparent babydoll dress stirred. I know I am. (This just speaks to the fact that no one consulted an adult heterosexual man on the girl's costume. If her father is still around, I doubt he saw it under the hot lights until performance time.) Fact: Most men past a certain age feel so pervy for oogling anyone under twenty-five that we just turn it off and don't even usually notice. But once in a while, a pop fly will come at you out of nowhere.
Brief group pervy moment aside, it was a sweet, sentimental time in life where the memory machine in the mind engages to record every detail down to the smallest molecule and when hard moments visit, which they eventually always do, this is one of the memories that will flip past on the greatest hits reel to bring back the joy that keeps us sane. Forever in my mind will my sweetie twirl onto the stage, beaming that smile, and dance like the prettiest doll in the universe.
This threefold trip through Neverland has come to be an unintended exploration of mortality for me, and a revisiting of the loss of our baby girl a couple seasons ago. As anyone who's lost a child can tell you, the grief never goes away. It just hides out in the canyons of the heart and can always be heard in the echoes that sometimes bounce back.
The struggle with maintaining hope and finding the strength to enjoy the happiness that life has to offer can be as desperate at times as the insomniac's search for restful sleep. Sometimes all that can be done is to take heed to the gentle reminders everywhere that joy and happiness do eventually return from wherever they hide, and all you have to do is wait it out, just like - and pardon the triteness of this if you can - a child believing in fairies and clapping her hands for Tinkerbelle can bring about the miracle of restored life.
And if you wait, sure enough, happiness pirouettes onto the stage and makes you feel a little embarrassed - just a little - for the that brief moment you took slightly too seriously that moment of darkness that precedes the orchestra striking that first note as the lights begin to glow again.
________
Update:
For those of you who were wondering: Yes, this post has a lot in common with the following joke:
A woman spotted the mother of a young child at the checkout line in the grocery store. The child was screaming at the top of her lungs, grabbing stuff off the shelves, and throwing things. All the while the woman remained level, and said things like, "Calm down, Heather. That's OK, Heather. Don't cry, Heather." Usually parents in this predicament are angry towards their children, so the woman walked up and commended the mother, "I just wanted to say I noticed how kind you are to your child. Most parents aren't as patient as you. I take it her name is Heather." To which the mother replies, "No, I'm Heather."
The story of Peter Pan has been a persistent presence in our lives lately, much like Peter himself visiting the nursery until he finally persuades everyone to fly off to Neverland.
It started with a family viewing of Finding Neverland wherein Johnny Depp stars as a playwright
Now, like Terms of Endearment, Finding Neverland is also leavened with much humor and magic, so it's not all sniffling and sweaty eyes. I wouldn't recommend it were it otherwise. The portrayals of James Barrie's various inspirations for the story of Peter Pan are brilliant. The juxtaposition of the real life Peter growing up too quickly pressed against the fictional Peter who never has to grow up is just one of the many. A seemingly evil mother trying to steal Kate and her family from Depp (Barrie), who is the template for Capt. Hook, is another. I still wonder how much truth was bent to provide these dramatic touch points, but to be honest I don't really want to know. The fiction will suffice for now.
And speaking of the fiction, the live action version of Peter Pan from 2003 is spectacular. I had wandered through the living room a couple times when MPC1 was watching it and was amused by what I saw, but hadn't sat down for the whole voyage until this last weekend. What a joyous little piece of entertainment. I swear, all the best movies anymore are the kid flicks.
For example, one reason Wendy has been brought to Neverland is because of her wonderful stories. In one scene, the pirates have Wendy and the boys captive, and even the pirates are so rapt by Wendy's stories that in the midst of Captain Hook having Wendy tell a story to wrangle valuable Peter Pan information out of her, it comes out that one of the pirates is featured. The pirate beams, "Didja hear that Cap'n! I'm in the story!" Hook shoots him on the spot. Not since Pulp Fiction has a character's demise via a gun been so damn funny. For some reason I don't recall, a second pirate is dispatched moments later. Smee opines over his shoulder to the camera, "The story's just begun and two dead already! How exciting!" We alarmed both the cat and the dog with our howls of laughter. Do check it out.
We were watching Peter Pan because my daughter had her first dance recital the next day, and the ballet was - yup - Peter Pan. Now, this isn't the Bolshoi's classic version of Peter Pan that made Catherine the Great weep so profoundly for the endangered Tinker Bell that she claimed she'd swear off horses for a couple months if it would help the poor little fairy. No, this was cobbled together from ballet cliches, new age music (particularly during Tinkerbelle's big and completely inexplicable solo), and direct liftings from the soundtrack of the Disney version. But I'll be damned if seeing my lovely daughter come out to play a marionette in the Darling's nursery didn't make it feel like the best damn ballet EVER.
It totally removed all uneasiness my wife and I had over the amount of makeup we were directed to apply to our young daughter's face. It was surreal to see an entire lobby of little girls made up like Gloria Swanson on a Cecil B. DeMille daiquiris and delusions night. Makeup tends to bring out the eventual adult face these little babies will use to break hearts, which tears at a dad's soul like a monsoon in the rigging. On stage, under the bright lights, the eye shadow and lipstick washed out enough to make them all look like little girls again, though.
Well, save for the high school senior who played Wendy. Dear Lord, I'm sure many of the dads in attendance are still ashamed of the thoughts nubile Wendy in her nearly transparent babydoll dress stirred. I know I am. (This just speaks to the fact that no one consulted an adult heterosexual man on the girl's costume. If her father is still around, I doubt he saw it under the hot lights until performance time.) Fact: Most men past a certain age feel so pervy for oogling anyone under twenty-five that we just turn it off and don't even usually notice. But once in a while, a pop fly will come at you out of nowhere.
Brief group pervy moment aside, it was a sweet, sentimental time in life where the memory machine in the mind engages to record every detail down to the smallest molecule and when hard moments visit, which they eventually always do, this is one of the memories that will flip past on the greatest hits reel to bring back the joy that keeps us sane. Forever in my mind will my sweetie twirl onto the stage, beaming that smile, and dance like the prettiest doll in the universe.
This threefold trip through Neverland has come to be an unintended exploration of mortality for me, and a revisiting of the loss of our baby girl a couple seasons ago. As anyone who's lost a child can tell you, the grief never goes away. It just hides out in the canyons of the heart and can always be heard in the echoes that sometimes bounce back.
The struggle with maintaining hope and finding the strength to enjoy the happiness that life has to offer can be as desperate at times as the insomniac's search for restful sleep. Sometimes all that can be done is to take heed to the gentle reminders everywhere that joy and happiness do eventually return from wherever they hide, and all you have to do is wait it out, just like - and pardon the triteness of this if you can - a child believing in fairies and clapping her hands for Tinkerbelle can bring about the miracle of restored life.
And if you wait, sure enough, happiness pirouettes onto the stage and makes you feel a little embarrassed - just a little - for the that brief moment you took slightly too seriously that moment of darkness that precedes the orchestra striking that first note as the lights begin to glow again.
________
Update:
For those of you who were wondering: Yes, this post has a lot in common with the following joke:
A woman spotted the mother of a young child at the checkout line in the grocery store. The child was screaming at the top of her lungs, grabbing stuff off the shelves, and throwing things. All the while the woman remained level, and said things like, "Calm down, Heather. That's OK, Heather. Don't cry, Heather." Usually parents in this predicament are angry towards their children, so the woman walked up and commended the mother, "I just wanted to say I noticed how kind you are to your child. Most parents aren't as patient as you. I take it her name is Heather." To which the mother replies, "No, I'm Heather."
Friday, June 10, 2005
We've always been monkeys
Reading Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt (idea guy) and Stephen J. Dubner (word guy), and it's a blast. You've probably heard of this book because in it he (Levitt) posits that the decrease in crime in the 90s was due to abortion, in that the generation that would have been the criminals of the day were presumably greatly decreased due to being snuffed in the womb. Well, of course, I doubt we can ever end that debate, because the correlation is nearly impossible to prove. Therefore, that's not the topic of this post, so if you've not surfed away at the drop of the "a" word, you can relax. Maybe.
What blew my mind into the void was how much the mass media had to do with the waxing and waning of the Ku Klux Klan. More to the point, the fact that the mass media I'm speaking of was that of 1915 (!!!) and the early 1940s.
Apparently, when the infamous movie about the Klan, D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (in terms of innovative movie spectacle, it was the Star Wars of its day), was released, it caused a huge reinvigoration of the Klan which lasted until the World Wars overshadowed events. In the 40s, a man by the name of Stetson Kennedy (couldn't make that one up, couldja?) infiltrated the Klan with the intention of finding a way to bring them down. One day, while watching children play spygames, he noticed how similar their passwords and behavior were to the secret structures, passwords, and activities of the Klan. He realized that if he could somehow expose the silliness of this side of it to the world at large, it would humiliate and thereby render them impotent. He contacted the producers of the radio program Adventures of Superman and gave them the whole box of Klan secrets, which the producers then worked into the shows where Superman took on the Klan. The next week after the show, kids across America where running around doing all the Klan handshakes, using their passwords, and so on while playing Superman that the dads who were in the Klan were embarrassed beyond expression. They tried changing the passwords and stuff, but the next week they were on the show anyway. People left the Klan in droves. Kennedy is acknowledged in the history book as the most important player in squelching the Klan (along with Superman, of course).
These days, especially since the widespread punditry of the web via blogs like this, there's a lot of complaining about the mass media and its negative influences. Almost always, it's discussed as being a relatively recent phenomenon, say since the late 50s or early 60s, kinda when rock and roll was born. Obviously this is not the case.
Society, at least American society, appears to have been in the thrall of the mass media for at least a century now. Holy doctoral thesis, Batman.
Reading Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt (idea guy) and Stephen J. Dubner (word guy), and it's a blast. You've probably heard of this book because in it he (Levitt) posits that the decrease in crime in the 90s was due to abortion, in that the generation that would have been the criminals of the day were presumably greatly decreased due to being snuffed in the womb. Well, of course, I doubt we can ever end that debate, because the correlation is nearly impossible to prove. Therefore, that's not the topic of this post, so if you've not surfed away at the drop of the "a" word, you can relax. Maybe.
What blew my mind into the void was how much the mass media had to do with the waxing and waning of the Ku Klux Klan. More to the point, the fact that the mass media I'm speaking of was that of 1915 (!!!) and the early 1940s.
Apparently, when the infamous movie about the Klan, D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (in terms of innovative movie spectacle, it was the Star Wars of its day), was released, it caused a huge reinvigoration of the Klan which lasted until the World Wars overshadowed events. In the 40s, a man by the name of Stetson Kennedy (couldn't make that one up, couldja?) infiltrated the Klan with the intention of finding a way to bring them down. One day, while watching children play spygames, he noticed how similar their passwords and behavior were to the secret structures, passwords, and activities of the Klan. He realized that if he could somehow expose the silliness of this side of it to the world at large, it would humiliate and thereby render them impotent. He contacted the producers of the radio program Adventures of Superman and gave them the whole box of Klan secrets, which the producers then worked into the shows where Superman took on the Klan. The next week after the show, kids across America where running around doing all the Klan handshakes, using their passwords, and so on while playing Superman that the dads who were in the Klan were embarrassed beyond expression. They tried changing the passwords and stuff, but the next week they were on the show anyway. People left the Klan in droves. Kennedy is acknowledged in the history book as the most important player in squelching the Klan (along with Superman, of course).
These days, especially since the widespread punditry of the web via blogs like this, there's a lot of complaining about the mass media and its negative influences. Almost always, it's discussed as being a relatively recent phenomenon, say since the late 50s or early 60s, kinda when rock and roll was born. Obviously this is not the case.
Society, at least American society, appears to have been in the thrall of the mass media for at least a century now. Holy doctoral thesis, Batman.
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Something old,
something new,
something borrowed,
and something blue.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Funny how some seminal movies never end up in film classes, or even get an honorable mention. I took a lot of film classes in college (what fun!), but don't recall "Taking of Pelham" coming up even once. Pity. But then, I doubt The Poseidon Adventure got mentioned either - other than as the subject of a snigger from the prof. - even though it spawned a film genre (unless you wanna be a twit and sniff that Airport probably was the real progenitor of disaster films). Whereas you can make a decent case that The Poseidon Adventure was hackneyed, regardless of how influential it was, you can't claim the same for "Pelham." It, quite simply, is a wonderful, grubby, authentic little film.
Though dated in the sense that you can tell from whence it came, it's not in the sense that time has diluted the impact of it. As a matter of fact, (and I swear I did not take this from the Netflix description which I didn't see until after I went to rate the film), this is really the font from which most of Quentin Tarantino's film have sprung, particularly Reservoir Dogs. As the film spooled out of my DVD player, and it dawned on me how much Tarantino "borrowed" from this movie, I began to wonder when something goes from "homage" to, well, theft. Reservoir Dogs is sort of a remake in which the fates of the criminals are slightly reimagined, is all.
Walter Matthau stars at the transit cop who has to deal with one of the subway trains being hijacked. Jerry Stiller, Ben's dad (or George Costanza's dad if you think in fictional terms), stars as the beat cop who works with Walter. Robert Shaw, the shark boat captain from Jaws, is the head hijacker. Joseph Sargent directs. Interesting note on Sargent, he also directed Colossus: The Forbin Project and the "Star Trek" episode: The Corbomite Maneuver - the one where young Clint Howard (Ron's brother) takes a break from his series, "Gentle Ben," and fakes out the Star Trek crew that he's an ugly green alien via ventriloquist dummy until he finally invites them on board for some Tranya.
It's a fun, tense ride that's entirely plausible, if not almost quaint in the days since 9-11. It's filled wall to wall with ugly New York mugs and accents (check out the cast character listing - it alone is a hoot), and pretty foul language for the day. The film is rated "R" pretty much for language only. Of all the joys of the movie, one of the best is Walter Matthau's final scene. Actors can work their whole lives and never get a moment like that.
If you are a movie lover, this one should be on your "must see" list.
Dave Matthews - Stand Up
For once I'm not gonna whine about the state of rock radio because today, brethren and sistren, we have a cause for celebration. Yea and verily Dave Matthews and the band have created a masterpiece, in my opinion. Stand Up indeed.
The reviews on Amazon.com are intriguingly schizophrenic, and I have a theory about that. When an artist bursts out of their previous mold, fans are often dismayed that the old stuff ain't quite like the new stuff. Imagine what the reviews on Amazon.com would have been like had it existed when the original fans of Fleetwood Mac encountered Rumours. We all know what a classic Rumours is, but Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues ensemble (check out "Black Magic Woman") and here they are kicking out smooth California pop rock. I'm sure many a drunken rant ensued in pubs across Britain at the time. So my theory is this, the more groundbreaking an album is, and the possibility that it's a potential classic, the more you'll see that in the confusion of the reaction towards it. If it sucked, that'd be obvious. If it were good and what's expected, that'd be obvious too. But if it's just out of the blue possible genius that wasn't presaged by earlier work, you get a "what the fuh?" reaction like you see on Amazon.com. Imagine if Cobain had survived to finally make that album that would rival the Beatles we all knew he had in him (Queue: "If There's a Rock and Roll Heaven...").
The last album I thought was this groundbreaking and out there was the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but while that one's kinda quirky, and more along the lines of you'll love it or hate it depending on your tastes, I can see Stand Up as one that is much more universal. (I'd be interested to see what my buddy Sleemoth thinks of it, hint hint.)
Though there's not a stinker in the whole set, standout songs are:
- "Dreamgirl" - Which starts the album with a gorgeous harmonizing that evokes a sunrise on the savanna, then sways into a loping gait that melts into a melody worthy of the title.
- "Old Dirt Hill" - About racing your bike around when you're a kid. You can almost hear the playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes.
- "Stand Up" - Awesome bass break which then dives into the chanted title. My wife snarked that it sounds like a record skipping, but dogonnit, if a record skipping sounded that funky, then there'd be all these DJs just making records skip. (...Wait a minute!...)
- "American Baby" - Probably the standout hit. My daughter's favorite. "God's grace lost, and the devil is proud." - Beautiful line. Kind of the antithesis of Guess Who's "American Woman."
These are just the first four tracks folks.
The rest of the greats are:
- "Louisiana Bayou" - A funky snort of a groove, replete with South African guitar style. (I'd always wondered why you never heard any South African guitar from Dave, a South African artist.) The vocal is a lot of fun, and I've not heard any other contemporary artist take such an interesting chance and choice outside of Dwight Yoakam.
- "You Might Die Trying" - A tense scuffle about not wasting your life, braced by a phenomenal sculpted drum sound reminiscent of Bowie's intro to "Modern Love" and decorated with great sax work.
- "Hunger for the Great Light" - Though this starts out sounding like a hymn, it fades into an all-out rocker about sex. Hilarious! The opening lyric: "Here ... you ... go, you dirty girl! Good God! Try to love ... try to ... uh ..." and from there he's clearly too swept away to go on. This ends with a luscious violin meditation, and since it's the last song it flows directly into the harmonics of the first song as though the album were designed as a continual loop. Beautiful. It leads me to wonder if they constructed the album as an event, a whole work, like the artists of yore used to do.
And, to make things even more spectacular, this album is available in the DualDisc format, where one side is a standard CD, but the other is a DVD (all on the one disc). Most DualDiscs that I've seen waste the DVD side with "extras" or a 5.1 mix of the album (which can be cool, but so far, outside of the mix on the Beatle's DVD of Yellow Submarine), I've not been impressed with a surround mix on a music DVD), but this one is a Linear PCM format: An uncompressed 96 kHz/24 bit sample version of the whole album. (It does contain a short documentary on the "making of," but the highlight is this version of the songs.)
Oh. My. God. (Or, to quote Dave from the last song: "Good God!") I imagine the leap in sound quality here is equivalent to a move from a wax pressing of a 78 played on a phonograph whose speaker was really a megaphone to a stereophonic vinyl LP played over a high fidelity system. I have literally not heard such amazing sound come out of my stereo before. See, even the 5.1 soundtracks in movies are compressed, which causes a limit to the sound, and the intent of a movie soundtrack is usually not pristine music delivery anyway. When the first song started, I stood gobsmacked, pricking up my ears like a cat homing in on a mouse, because I'd never heard sound that full and bottomless before - outside of an original 24-track master played in a recording studio. There is no discernable limit to the high end or low end on this recording. I turned to my daughter who was sitting there with kind of a shocked look on her face, too, and asked, "Have you ever heard anything like that?" She just smiled and shook her head and then shushed me. We have yet to stop playing this thing when we get an opportunity. It's now the primary soundtrack I use to lull my baby asleep (the sound is so rich that even the upbeat songs don't have harsh edges to them - something I was completely unaware of in other recordings previously), which is great because I was getting a little tired of Enya.
And ignore those warnings in the Amazon.com reviews about this version not being copyable. I've made a copy of the CD for my car (a strict rule in my house is only copies can be used in a car stereo) and MP3s for my computer. Perhaps they were trying to copy or rip the DVD side, which is silly if you're going to be playing it via an MP3, or in your car. Any gain in sound from the DVD side as I've described above wouldn't survive the transition to a compressed MP3 or the sonic environment of a car.
The Book Meme of the Blogs of Summer 2005
I've not been tagged, nor do I intend to tag anyone, but I've really enjoyed reading other's lists, so....
1. Estimate the total number of books you've owned in your life.
I don't even have a clue as how to estimate this, because as a Lit major, I've owned so many books and anthologies, I will have to completely guess.
TLD: One of the tiny regrets of my life (and all of mine are tiny so far, I'm happy to report) is that I had to sell all of my college books about three years after graduation in order to have enough money to get home after a disastrous attempt at graduate school (disastrous because that was when Ronnie cut all the education funds, and I could no longer afford it; the caps on the loans I could get would have only paid for half of the degree - but no regrets, as I said).
Anyway, on a slow day when I worked in a bookstore, I went around and pulled forward an inch (so I could easily push them back quickly) all the books I'd read to that point, most of which I had owned. Even so, the store had only about 1/3 of what I'd read. I ended up pulling about 1,200 books. And that was in my twenties. So, round up, add two decades, and I'm guessing I've owned about 3,000 to 4,000 books.
2. What's the last book you bought?
I don't buy books anymore. A couple years back when I got laid off during the Bush Depression, I finally had all the time in the world to read, and no money to do it. Luckily, we have one of the finest libraries in my town that I've ever encountered, which even allows you to search for and then reserve books via the web, so I've never looked back. Kinda like Netflix, only free. Plus they have this "lucky day" section where all the latest and greatest releases are available; no one can reserve them or keep them for more than one checkout period, so the turnaround is great.
Now, I only buy books I want to keep. The last book I bought a couple years ago was: Which Lie Did I Tell? : More Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. (This does not count books I've bought for my daughter.) I love movie gossip and trivia, especially when it comes from the horse's mouth.
3. What's the last book you read?
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. It was on the "lucky day" shelf and my pile was empty. I enjoyed the suspense of The Da Vinci Code even if I had to roll my eyes through all of the BS conspiracy theory about Jesus having a wife who bore a child, and thought this would be fun, too. It was. Mr. Brown deserves his bestsellerdom.
4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Perhaps the most perfect novel ever written in the English language. No other work has ever moved me as much as this does. The Great American Novel, and all that.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Funny as hell, and as complicated. A trippy Mobius strip as promised by the title.
Robots of Dawn by Issac Asimov
What science fiction can be if it tries hard enough. This has it all: Love, mystery, robots, sociology of planetary systems (which is more interesting than you'd think if you're not a sci-fi fan), and a twist ending that knocks you right off the couch. And, by this time, Asimov had become a pretty decent stylist.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
Funny and profound all at the same time. Even my mom, who's not a fan of sci-fi at all, loved this series. She laughed so hard at one point, a neighbor came by to make sure she was OK.
Texasville by Larry McMurtry
The second in the "Last Picture Show" series, though you don't need to read the others to enjoy this one (though the whole trilogy is good). McMurtry is probably alone in his ability to evoke real people with all their warts and still make you love them.
Here's a page I put together years ago along these same lines. Odd that I haven't really read anything worth adding in a while. I should add The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, come to think of it.
5. Tag 5 people!
Y'know, I've come so late to this game, I doubt there's anyone left to tag.
Primer Plot Graph
No movie has haunted my thoughts in recent years more than Primer has. While a better film and ultimately more satisfying, my other recent obsession, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, was more of an emotional rush than an intellectual one - though it certainly has an intellectual payoff, too.
So I was suffused with joy when I happened across all this prime (har har) linkage on Kottke.org, particularly this one which is a graphical representation of the time travels of our heroes in Primer. It's a thing of beauty, a thing of joy. (And it's blue in keeping with my theme!) I got a big printout of this thing and have had a lot of fun pouring over it. Luckly, my wife understands me and waits until she's in the other room before she rolls her eyes after she catches me tracing my finger around this thing.
These guys, however, disagree that the timelines, multiple people copies, and so on are as complex as that graphic makes them. I haven't decided for myself, yet (I have to buy a copy of the damn thing and watch it a few more times - yay!), but I betting that the amount of work that went into that graphic speaks to its accuracy.
Have fun!
something new,
something borrowed,
and something blue.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
Funny how some seminal movies never end up in film classes, or even get an honorable mention. I took a lot of film classes in college (what fun!), but don't recall "Taking of Pelham" coming up even once. Pity. But then, I doubt The Poseidon Adventure got mentioned either - other than as the subject of a snigger from the prof. - even though it spawned a film genre (unless you wanna be a twit and sniff that Airport probably was the real progenitor of disaster films). Whereas you can make a decent case that The Poseidon Adventure was hackneyed, regardless of how influential it was, you can't claim the same for "Pelham." It, quite simply, is a wonderful, grubby, authentic little film.
Though dated in the sense that you can tell from whence it came, it's not in the sense that time has diluted the impact of it. As a matter of fact, (and I swear I did not take this from the Netflix description which I didn't see until after I went to rate the film), this is really the font from which most of Quentin Tarantino's film have sprung, particularly Reservoir Dogs. As the film spooled out of my DVD player, and it dawned on me how much Tarantino "borrowed" from this movie, I began to wonder when something goes from "homage" to, well, theft. Reservoir Dogs is sort of a remake in which the fates of the criminals are slightly reimagined, is all.
Walter Matthau stars at the transit cop who has to deal with one of the subway trains being hijacked. Jerry Stiller, Ben's dad (or George Costanza's dad if you think in fictional terms), stars as the beat cop who works with Walter. Robert Shaw, the shark boat captain from Jaws, is the head hijacker. Joseph Sargent directs. Interesting note on Sargent, he also directed Colossus: The Forbin Project and the "Star Trek" episode: The Corbomite Maneuver - the one where young Clint Howard (Ron's brother) takes a break from his series, "Gentle Ben," and fakes out the Star Trek crew that he's an ugly green alien via ventriloquist dummy until he finally invites them on board for some Tranya.
It's a fun, tense ride that's entirely plausible, if not almost quaint in the days since 9-11. It's filled wall to wall with ugly New York mugs and accents (check out the cast character listing - it alone is a hoot), and pretty foul language for the day. The film is rated "R" pretty much for language only. Of all the joys of the movie, one of the best is Walter Matthau's final scene. Actors can work their whole lives and never get a moment like that.
If you are a movie lover, this one should be on your "must see" list.
Dave Matthews - Stand Up
For once I'm not gonna whine about the state of rock radio because today, brethren and sistren, we have a cause for celebration. Yea and verily Dave Matthews and the band have created a masterpiece, in my opinion. Stand Up indeed.
The reviews on Amazon.com are intriguingly schizophrenic, and I have a theory about that. When an artist bursts out of their previous mold, fans are often dismayed that the old stuff ain't quite like the new stuff. Imagine what the reviews on Amazon.com would have been like had it existed when the original fans of Fleetwood Mac encountered Rumours. We all know what a classic Rumours is, but Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues ensemble (check out "Black Magic Woman") and here they are kicking out smooth California pop rock. I'm sure many a drunken rant ensued in pubs across Britain at the time. So my theory is this, the more groundbreaking an album is, and the possibility that it's a potential classic, the more you'll see that in the confusion of the reaction towards it. If it sucked, that'd be obvious. If it were good and what's expected, that'd be obvious too. But if it's just out of the blue possible genius that wasn't presaged by earlier work, you get a "what the fuh?" reaction like you see on Amazon.com. Imagine if Cobain had survived to finally make that album that would rival the Beatles we all knew he had in him (Queue: "If There's a Rock and Roll Heaven...").
The last album I thought was this groundbreaking and out there was the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, but while that one's kinda quirky, and more along the lines of you'll love it or hate it depending on your tastes, I can see Stand Up as one that is much more universal. (I'd be interested to see what my buddy Sleemoth thinks of it, hint hint.)
Though there's not a stinker in the whole set, standout songs are:
- "Dreamgirl" - Which starts the album with a gorgeous harmonizing that evokes a sunrise on the savanna, then sways into a loping gait that melts into a melody worthy of the title.
- "Old Dirt Hill" - About racing your bike around when you're a kid. You can almost hear the playing cards clothes-pinned to the spokes.
- "Stand Up" - Awesome bass break which then dives into the chanted title. My wife snarked that it sounds like a record skipping, but dogonnit, if a record skipping sounded that funky, then there'd be all these DJs just making records skip. (...Wait a minute!...)
- "American Baby" - Probably the standout hit. My daughter's favorite. "God's grace lost, and the devil is proud." - Beautiful line. Kind of the antithesis of Guess Who's "American Woman."
These are just the first four tracks folks.
The rest of the greats are:
- "Louisiana Bayou" - A funky snort of a groove, replete with South African guitar style. (I'd always wondered why you never heard any South African guitar from Dave, a South African artist.) The vocal is a lot of fun, and I've not heard any other contemporary artist take such an interesting chance and choice outside of Dwight Yoakam.
- "You Might Die Trying" - A tense scuffle about not wasting your life, braced by a phenomenal sculpted drum sound reminiscent of Bowie's intro to "Modern Love" and decorated with great sax work.
- "Hunger for the Great Light" - Though this starts out sounding like a hymn, it fades into an all-out rocker about sex. Hilarious! The opening lyric: "Here ... you ... go, you dirty girl! Good God! Try to love ... try to ... uh ..." and from there he's clearly too swept away to go on. This ends with a luscious violin meditation, and since it's the last song it flows directly into the harmonics of the first song as though the album were designed as a continual loop. Beautiful. It leads me to wonder if they constructed the album as an event, a whole work, like the artists of yore used to do.
And, to make things even more spectacular, this album is available in the DualDisc format, where one side is a standard CD, but the other is a DVD (all on the one disc). Most DualDiscs that I've seen waste the DVD side with "extras" or a 5.1 mix of the album (which can be cool, but so far, outside of the mix on the Beatle's DVD of Yellow Submarine), I've not been impressed with a surround mix on a music DVD), but this one is a Linear PCM format: An uncompressed 96 kHz/24 bit sample version of the whole album. (It does contain a short documentary on the "making of," but the highlight is this version of the songs.)
Oh. My. God. (Or, to quote Dave from the last song: "Good God!") I imagine the leap in sound quality here is equivalent to a move from a wax pressing of a 78 played on a phonograph whose speaker was really a megaphone to a stereophonic vinyl LP played over a high fidelity system. I have literally not heard such amazing sound come out of my stereo before. See, even the 5.1 soundtracks in movies are compressed, which causes a limit to the sound, and the intent of a movie soundtrack is usually not pristine music delivery anyway. When the first song started, I stood gobsmacked, pricking up my ears like a cat homing in on a mouse, because I'd never heard sound that full and bottomless before - outside of an original 24-track master played in a recording studio. There is no discernable limit to the high end or low end on this recording. I turned to my daughter who was sitting there with kind of a shocked look on her face, too, and asked, "Have you ever heard anything like that?" She just smiled and shook her head and then shushed me. We have yet to stop playing this thing when we get an opportunity. It's now the primary soundtrack I use to lull my baby asleep (the sound is so rich that even the upbeat songs don't have harsh edges to them - something I was completely unaware of in other recordings previously), which is great because I was getting a little tired of Enya.
And ignore those warnings in the Amazon.com reviews about this version not being copyable. I've made a copy of the CD for my car (a strict rule in my house is only copies can be used in a car stereo) and MP3s for my computer. Perhaps they were trying to copy or rip the DVD side, which is silly if you're going to be playing it via an MP3, or in your car. Any gain in sound from the DVD side as I've described above wouldn't survive the transition to a compressed MP3 or the sonic environment of a car.
The Book Meme of the Blogs of Summer 2005
I've not been tagged, nor do I intend to tag anyone, but I've really enjoyed reading other's lists, so....
1. Estimate the total number of books you've owned in your life.
I don't even have a clue as how to estimate this, because as a Lit major, I've owned so many books and anthologies, I will have to completely guess.
TLD: One of the tiny regrets of my life (and all of mine are tiny so far, I'm happy to report) is that I had to sell all of my college books about three years after graduation in order to have enough money to get home after a disastrous attempt at graduate school (disastrous because that was when Ronnie cut all the education funds, and I could no longer afford it; the caps on the loans I could get would have only paid for half of the degree - but no regrets, as I said).
Anyway, on a slow day when I worked in a bookstore, I went around and pulled forward an inch (so I could easily push them back quickly) all the books I'd read to that point, most of which I had owned. Even so, the store had only about 1/3 of what I'd read. I ended up pulling about 1,200 books. And that was in my twenties. So, round up, add two decades, and I'm guessing I've owned about 3,000 to 4,000 books.
2. What's the last book you bought?
I don't buy books anymore. A couple years back when I got laid off during the Bush Depression, I finally had all the time in the world to read, and no money to do it. Luckily, we have one of the finest libraries in my town that I've ever encountered, which even allows you to search for and then reserve books via the web, so I've never looked back. Kinda like Netflix, only free. Plus they have this "lucky day" section where all the latest and greatest releases are available; no one can reserve them or keep them for more than one checkout period, so the turnaround is great.
Now, I only buy books I want to keep. The last book I bought a couple years ago was: Which Lie Did I Tell? : More Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman. (This does not count books I've bought for my daughter.) I love movie gossip and trivia, especially when it comes from the horse's mouth.
3. What's the last book you read?
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. It was on the "lucky day" shelf and my pile was empty. I enjoyed the suspense of The Da Vinci Code even if I had to roll my eyes through all of the BS conspiracy theory about Jesus having a wife who bore a child, and thought this would be fun, too. It was. Mr. Brown deserves his bestsellerdom.
4. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
Perhaps the most perfect novel ever written in the English language. No other work has ever moved me as much as this does. The Great American Novel, and all that.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Funny as hell, and as complicated. A trippy Mobius strip as promised by the title.
Robots of Dawn by Issac Asimov
What science fiction can be if it tries hard enough. This has it all: Love, mystery, robots, sociology of planetary systems (which is more interesting than you'd think if you're not a sci-fi fan), and a twist ending that knocks you right off the couch. And, by this time, Asimov had become a pretty decent stylist.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams
Funny and profound all at the same time. Even my mom, who's not a fan of sci-fi at all, loved this series. She laughed so hard at one point, a neighbor came by to make sure she was OK.
Texasville by Larry McMurtry
The second in the "Last Picture Show" series, though you don't need to read the others to enjoy this one (though the whole trilogy is good). McMurtry is probably alone in his ability to evoke real people with all their warts and still make you love them.
Here's a page I put together years ago along these same lines. Odd that I haven't really read anything worth adding in a while. I should add The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, come to think of it.
5. Tag 5 people!
Y'know, I've come so late to this game, I doubt there's anyone left to tag.
Primer Plot Graph
No movie has haunted my thoughts in recent years more than Primer has. While a better film and ultimately more satisfying, my other recent obsession, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, was more of an emotional rush than an intellectual one - though it certainly has an intellectual payoff, too.
So I was suffused with joy when I happened across all this prime (har har) linkage on Kottke.org, particularly this one which is a graphical representation of the time travels of our heroes in Primer. It's a thing of beauty, a thing of joy. (And it's blue in keeping with my theme!) I got a big printout of this thing and have had a lot of fun pouring over it. Luckly, my wife understands me and waits until she's in the other room before she rolls her eyes after she catches me tracing my finger around this thing.
These guys, however, disagree that the timelines, multiple people copies, and so on are as complex as that graphic makes them. I haven't decided for myself, yet (I have to buy a copy of the damn thing and watch it a few more times - yay!), but I betting that the amount of work that went into that graphic speaks to its accuracy.
Have fun!
Monday, June 06, 2005
Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith
(Minor spoiler ahead. See if you can even pick it out.)
Maybe I should recuse myself, because I'm a hardcore Star Wars geek from way back, having seen the original version in the theatre (before it was called Episode 4) - a theatre with a HUGE screen that showed "Scope" movies in their proper frame format. I was unable to hoist my dropped jaw for about a month after seeing it the first time. A buddy who'd seen it in L.A. before it made its way to my small town had warned me of its awesomeness, but it surpassed all expectations and became my favorite movie of all time, for a while. I can pretend no objectivity in these matters. Even though the newer Star Wars movies have been flawed to the point of surpassing newer iterations of Star Trek in terms of suckitude, I am required to see them, if only to witness the death spiral of a dream.
The wonderful ubergeek hisownself, Harry Knowles, usually frames his reviews with a description of what he did that day, leading up to a viewing, because he believes it helps portray his frame of mind going into the flick. I'm going to borrow that trick, since my circumstance probably colored my mood, further absolving my eventual opinion.
The long weekend loomed, and I was ready for fun until a surprise visit by the in-laws, who intended on staying the night. My in-laws are decrepit, amazingly narcissistic chatterboxes who can't stay on topic any better than your garden-variety aphasic. Their kids are used to this, and have developed a strategy to ignore most of the noise, only cherry-picking the occasional word to appear interested, but I'm used to people actually having something to say when they open their mouths, so their visits are sheer torture for me. When they descend, I end up having to hide out in a remote part of the house to avoid their gapped, circular, incessant patter lest I go nuts and end up being dragged away screaming in my underwear like that poor soul at the end of Fargo.
Sunday morning presented itself, and MPC1 and I were listlessly trying to fill our time, awaiting with dread the eventual rising of the wordstorm troopers (they sleep 'til noon). My wife was also abed, catching up on being awaked for nursing during the night. We had scheduled Monday for seeing Star Wars at the big screen here in town, but as the tedium of the coming morning yawned before us, I grabbed the paper and saw there was a showing we could just catch at another theatre. I procured release from my lovely wife, and off we went. We had escaped! (Or so we thought. When we got back, we discovered our absence merely prolonged the visit.)
So, as the famous intro scroll began, letting us know that Obi wan and Anakin are in the midst of saving Palpatine from a kidnapping attempt, I was in a foul mood, brightened only by our respite from the destroyed weekend and the fact I was there with my daughter, whom I love to go to movies with. I'd heard largely positive reviews, so I was expecting enjoyment rather than a two-hour cringefest for once. In other words, a small spark of hope was alight in my breast, much like ET's when he first comes back to life.
The initial action sequence is good and wisely has a little humor in it, but once that's over, we dive back into what made the other new eppys suck - a lot of yadda yadda about political maneuverings, angst over who's a more righteous or kickass Jedi, etc. The movie doesn't pull it's head out of its black hole until Mace Windu (Samuel Jackson) fights Palpatine, converting the latter into the burned lizard we know and love as the Emperor from the earlier, final 3 movies.
It's revealed that "the force" is really a form of Buddhism that's practiced only by people lucky enough to have the cellular component called "midichlorians" that empower one to manipulate the force - kinda like Harry Potter's (or Samantha Stevens') magic powers where you're either born with them or not. Attachment, meaning personal love and not a vague love for mankind at large, leads to jealousy and inappropriate feelings of possession, which lead to the dark side, and thus all passion is directed inward, selfishly. So, by extension, having a wife and kids is a path to the dark side, if you wanna cut to the chase. Therefore, in the Star Wars universe - where it now appears to a blessing that it occurred a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away - if you are born with enough "midichlorians" (which makes me think of badly synthesized computer music that occurs during photosynthesis), you are destined to roam the galaxy as a sexually frustrated monk, putting on a game face while working out your tension by lopping off limbs with a noisy glowstick.
Anakin finds himself in the midst of The Thornbirds in Space, because Natalie Portman is just a drop-dead full-press mondo ultra hottie of galactic proportions, and she's got a kingdom to boot. What's a young monk to do? It's time to get out the light saber that's way more fun, that's what ya do. Even Yoda have a hard time justifying that not, would he.
Now, pardon me whilst I lurch into dime-store psychology here, but I've noticed that Darth's story arc has a lot in common with George Lucas' renowned, self-admitted troubles with women. Seems one of the richest, most well-known directors/screenwriters/auteurs in Hollywood history has trouble holding on to women. This guy ended up having to raise his kids all by himself, even given his wealth and influence. It's hard to face that we live in a world where Donald Trump and His Amazing Wind-resistant Comb-over can get a date, and even marry a pretty young gold-digger, but George can't find one bucktoothed girl who has a secret thing for Ewoks to provide ballast for the other side of the waterbed. Apparently for George, it all comes down to it being preferable to having appendages sliced off rather than face the agonies of a relationship.
The twist in "Sith" that causes Anakin to become Darth, hinted at here, is actually kinda cool and compelling, and I imagine it's the source of the positive reviews out there - along with the fact that this installment doesn't just totally suck out loud. Sometimes just crossing the finish line is enough, dear heart.
Once the freefall of Anakin begins in earnest (which, for those of you in the cheap seats, begins with another character's literal freefall), the movie picks back up and is a decent entertainment (as evidenced by my daughter's losing interest in the crowd behind us and something stuck to her shoe, and tuning back into the movie). As we near the end, we begin to come full circle and see the sets and costumes we did at the beginning of eppy 4, which is a visceral rush for old fans like myself. We are back where we started, after all.
So, my thumbnail review is that this is better than any of the previous new Star Wars, but it's only just as good as the last one (chronologically) in the series - the futzy Return of the Jedi - which is pretty lukewarm praise, my friends. I did not like it as much as Kevin Smith did. My reaction is approximate to Harry's. As always, Ebert is close to the mark, though he gave more stars than "Stars" is worth, imvho.
And now that it's all said and done, I can put my finger on why these movies weren't that good.
I doubt I'm the first one to point this out, but what was wrong with the first (er, last) three Star Wars films was there is no Han Solo. His character helped a lot towards leavening the space opera. Luke was too busy becoming a Jedi, saving everyone's ass, and feeling icky for snogging his sister to provide much humor. Come to think of it, Princess Lea contributed some of the best female smackdown lines, too. How come no one in the new films was a smartass? I'm guessing that Lucas had Jar-Jar in mind for that role, but the mass hatred for the character (not counting the little tots who dug him) must've had him remove the smartass component altogether.
Irreverence, along with great action sequences, was the central joy of the original films. Without it, the new ones just seem like channel surfing between C-SPAN and a lengthy CNN report that features spaceships instead of tanks. (And talk about your classic victim of bad timing, we get this humorless trope right when the majority of us (according to recent polls) are seeking escapism from that very sort of thing.) Alas.
(Minor spoiler ahead. See if you can even pick it out.)
Maybe I should recuse myself, because I'm a hardcore Star Wars geek from way back, having seen the original version in the theatre (before it was called Episode 4) - a theatre with a HUGE screen that showed "Scope" movies in their proper frame format. I was unable to hoist my dropped jaw for about a month after seeing it the first time. A buddy who'd seen it in L.A. before it made its way to my small town had warned me of its awesomeness, but it surpassed all expectations and became my favorite movie of all time, for a while. I can pretend no objectivity in these matters. Even though the newer Star Wars movies have been flawed to the point of surpassing newer iterations of Star Trek in terms of suckitude, I am required to see them, if only to witness the death spiral of a dream.
The wonderful ubergeek hisownself, Harry Knowles, usually frames his reviews with a description of what he did that day, leading up to a viewing, because he believes it helps portray his frame of mind going into the flick. I'm going to borrow that trick, since my circumstance probably colored my mood, further absolving my eventual opinion.
The long weekend loomed, and I was ready for fun until a surprise visit by the in-laws, who intended on staying the night. My in-laws are decrepit, amazingly narcissistic chatterboxes who can't stay on topic any better than your garden-variety aphasic. Their kids are used to this, and have developed a strategy to ignore most of the noise, only cherry-picking the occasional word to appear interested, but I'm used to people actually having something to say when they open their mouths, so their visits are sheer torture for me. When they descend, I end up having to hide out in a remote part of the house to avoid their gapped, circular, incessant patter lest I go nuts and end up being dragged away screaming in my underwear like that poor soul at the end of Fargo.
Sunday morning presented itself, and MPC1 and I were listlessly trying to fill our time, awaiting with dread the eventual rising of the wordstorm troopers (they sleep 'til noon). My wife was also abed, catching up on being awaked for nursing during the night. We had scheduled Monday for seeing Star Wars at the big screen here in town, but as the tedium of the coming morning yawned before us, I grabbed the paper and saw there was a showing we could just catch at another theatre. I procured release from my lovely wife, and off we went. We had escaped! (Or so we thought. When we got back, we discovered our absence merely prolonged the visit.)
So, as the famous intro scroll began, letting us know that Obi wan and Anakin are in the midst of saving Palpatine from a kidnapping attempt, I was in a foul mood, brightened only by our respite from the destroyed weekend and the fact I was there with my daughter, whom I love to go to movies with. I'd heard largely positive reviews, so I was expecting enjoyment rather than a two-hour cringefest for once. In other words, a small spark of hope was alight in my breast, much like ET's when he first comes back to life.
The initial action sequence is good and wisely has a little humor in it, but once that's over, we dive back into what made the other new eppys suck - a lot of yadda yadda about political maneuverings, angst over who's a more righteous or kickass Jedi, etc. The movie doesn't pull it's head out of its black hole until Mace Windu (Samuel Jackson) fights Palpatine, converting the latter into the burned lizard we know and love as the Emperor from the earlier, final 3 movies.
It's revealed that "the force" is really a form of Buddhism that's practiced only by people lucky enough to have the cellular component called "midichlorians" that empower one to manipulate the force - kinda like Harry Potter's (or Samantha Stevens') magic powers where you're either born with them or not. Attachment, meaning personal love and not a vague love for mankind at large, leads to jealousy and inappropriate feelings of possession, which lead to the dark side, and thus all passion is directed inward, selfishly. So, by extension, having a wife and kids is a path to the dark side, if you wanna cut to the chase. Therefore, in the Star Wars universe - where it now appears to a blessing that it occurred a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away - if you are born with enough "midichlorians" (which makes me think of badly synthesized computer music that occurs during photosynthesis), you are destined to roam the galaxy as a sexually frustrated monk, putting on a game face while working out your tension by lopping off limbs with a noisy glowstick.
Anakin finds himself in the midst of The Thornbirds in Space, because Natalie Portman is just a drop-dead full-press mondo ultra hottie of galactic proportions, and she's got a kingdom to boot. What's a young monk to do? It's time to get out the light saber that's way more fun, that's what ya do. Even Yoda have a hard time justifying that not, would he.
Now, pardon me whilst I lurch into dime-store psychology here, but I've noticed that Darth's story arc has a lot in common with George Lucas' renowned, self-admitted troubles with women. Seems one of the richest, most well-known directors/screenwriters/auteurs in Hollywood history has trouble holding on to women. This guy ended up having to raise his kids all by himself, even given his wealth and influence. It's hard to face that we live in a world where Donald Trump and His Amazing Wind-resistant Comb-over can get a date, and even marry a pretty young gold-digger, but George can't find one bucktoothed girl who has a secret thing for Ewoks to provide ballast for the other side of the waterbed. Apparently for George, it all comes down to it being preferable to having appendages sliced off rather than face the agonies of a relationship.
The twist in "Sith" that causes Anakin to become Darth, hinted at here, is actually kinda cool and compelling, and I imagine it's the source of the positive reviews out there - along with the fact that this installment doesn't just totally suck out loud. Sometimes just crossing the finish line is enough, dear heart.
Once the freefall of Anakin begins in earnest (which, for those of you in the cheap seats, begins with another character's literal freefall), the movie picks back up and is a decent entertainment (as evidenced by my daughter's losing interest in the crowd behind us and something stuck to her shoe, and tuning back into the movie). As we near the end, we begin to come full circle and see the sets and costumes we did at the beginning of eppy 4, which is a visceral rush for old fans like myself. We are back where we started, after all.
So, my thumbnail review is that this is better than any of the previous new Star Wars, but it's only just as good as the last one (chronologically) in the series - the futzy Return of the Jedi - which is pretty lukewarm praise, my friends. I did not like it as much as Kevin Smith did. My reaction is approximate to Harry's. As always, Ebert is close to the mark, though he gave more stars than "Stars" is worth, imvho.
And now that it's all said and done, I can put my finger on why these movies weren't that good.
I doubt I'm the first one to point this out, but what was wrong with the first (er, last) three Star Wars films was there is no Han Solo. His character helped a lot towards leavening the space opera. Luke was too busy becoming a Jedi, saving everyone's ass, and feeling icky for snogging his sister to provide much humor. Come to think of it, Princess Lea contributed some of the best female smackdown lines, too. How come no one in the new films was a smartass? I'm guessing that Lucas had Jar-Jar in mind for that role, but the mass hatred for the character (not counting the little tots who dug him) must've had him remove the smartass component altogether.
Irreverence, along with great action sequences, was the central joy of the original films. Without it, the new ones just seem like channel surfing between C-SPAN and a lengthy CNN report that features spaceships instead of tanks. (And talk about your classic victim of bad timing, we get this humorless trope right when the majority of us (according to recent polls) are seeking escapism from that very sort of thing.) Alas.
TLD: Whilst writing this post, I discovered that Microsoft Word 2000 actually knows how to spell correctly the names of the main Star Wars characters, but it doesn't know how to spell "shithead." Interesting, no?
Just goes to show you that there are those who hope Darth Vader wins...
I've been doing my best to keep my head down and ignore the current political situation in order to preserve quality of life, and since a bazillion other blogs are snarking about it, I don't have to.
Still, when the Watergate scandal's Deep Throat finally reveals himself, and a large portion of the conservative punditry actually criticizes HIM rather than admit Nixon was a crook, it just seems surreal.
Tom Burka, via the Poor Man, illustrates.
I've been doing my best to keep my head down and ignore the current political situation in order to preserve quality of life, and since a bazillion other blogs are snarking about it, I don't have to.
Still, when the Watergate scandal's Deep Throat finally reveals himself, and a large portion of the conservative punditry actually criticizes HIM rather than admit Nixon was a crook, it just seems surreal.
Tom Burka, via the Poor Man, illustrates.
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