YOU CAN MAKE ME DO IT, BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE ME CARE

An interesting post over at Jaime Weinman's blog with his take on the failures of Vincente Minnelli's now-on-DVD adaptation of the Broadway musical Kismet. I agree with his overall conclusion, but not his specifics.

At this point, many regular readers may be thinking, "Wait a second. A Minnelli picture on DVD and he's not going on about how great it is? Whaaa--?" Well, no, I'm not going on about it because it's not very good. Kismet is a perfect example of what happens when a director gets stuck doing something he doesn't want to do. In this case, Minnelli hated the material (and resented the assignment), so he basically threw a movie-long snit. The premise and setting could have allowed him to create a fantastic Persia-of-the-mind, similar to his exotic, heavily stylized Caribbean in The Pirate, but he just didn't want to try, and the movie just sits there.

Way back when, studios treated directors as mere employees, assigned to whatever the bosses wanted them to do. Great filmmakers used to get stuck with material inappropriate to their talent all the time--no amount of auteurist justification can ever convince me John Ford had any business directing Wee Willie Winkie, Howard Hawks himself hated A Song Is Born, and seriously, who thought Anthony Mann was the right guy for The Glenn Miller Story? These guys were pros, and did their best--they clearly didn't connect with these projects, but at least you can't visualize them off-camera holding their noses. With Minnelli and Kismet, you can.

With the collapse of the studio system of old, more independent-minded directors seldom found themselves stuck with projects they obviously hated, but it still happened. Richard Lester's disinterest in his material in Superman III is palpable, and Brian DePalma has practically made a career out of this sort of thing--when you watch Wise Guys or Mission: Impossible or (shudder) Mission To Mars, you can see contempt drip from the screen.

Sometimes these projects are fascinating in a train-wreck sort of way(I don't think Sidney Lumet hated the project when he made The Wiz, but boy, that movie is like a step-by-step example of how not to make a musical), but mostly they're just depressing. When Wes Anderson makes a Tim Allen vehicle or Paul Thomas Anderson gets a gig on the Scary Movie franchise, you'll see what I mean.

FAMILIAR SHADOWS REMAIN

Hurrying off to work yesterday morning at 6:30 AM, dreading the day awaiting, I almost didn't notice the birds swooping and arcing and singing their morning songs.

This used to be my time of day. Weekends, especially Sundays, were days for getting up early and taking long walks, enjoying the birds and squirrels and occasional rabbits, noting the play of early morning light on the fine old Victorian houses in my neighborhood. After my walk I'd head somewhere for a leisurely breakfast, and whatever parts of the Sunday Times I didn't read over breakfast I'd finish sprawled out in bed, sections of the paper scattered on the floor without a care.

That was my weekend routine when I first moved here five years ago. Five years! My life has changed so much in that time, yet I haven't. Stuck in the same spot, even the simple, comforting routines I once devised for myself have dribbled away. In their place...what? Where is my comfort now?

Perhaps with Katie? Ah, but...relationships have a way of blowing up in my face. I thought I was ready to shed the old and find a new way of living when I met Tabbatha, but that didn't happen. Is there new hope in a new person, or old pain waiting to return?

Besides, that's not fair to Katie, or anyone I might know. It's not another person's job to make me happy, to help me feel at ease in the world. Only I can do that. Perhaps next Sunday. Perhaps another early morning walk, and permission given to myself to take the time to just relax and enjoy it.

SUNDAY MORNING FREAKINESS

We're nothing if not ruthlessly honest around here. If inspiration fails to strike, and I just don't feel like writing, by God, I tell you so. (Any lingering bitterness about the Yankees losing to the Red Sox? I don't wanna talk about it.)

Anyway, it's not like I have nothing to give you. Here's an early short film by David Lynch, and holy crap, is it ever creepy. Something to consider while watching: Lynch's entire filmography consisted of shorts such as this, plus Eraserhead and The Elephant Man when George Lucas asked him to direct Return Of The Jedi. If only he'd signed on--imagine what the Ewoks would have looked like in Lynch's world!

LET'S JUST STOP THIS RIGHT NOW, OKAY?

Looking through lists of motion pictures announced for production always causes one's soul to die a little, but this strikes me as particularly stupid: They're remaking My Bloody Valentine.

In case you're one of the many with no memory of it, 1981's My Bloody Valentine was one of innumerable anonymous slasher pictures released in the wake of Friday The 13th, part of the original string of dead teenager epics. Valentine was neither the best nor worst of this sorry lot, distinguished only by its clever title.

That title, apparently, is the only thing the remake will have in common with the original, but really, who cares? Coming on the heels of this weekend's deeply unnecessary in-name-only redo of Prom Night, it would appear that studios have run out of good movies to dumb down with "reimaginings", and now are attempting to reproduce absolute crap. Sad thing is, they can't even do that very well.

The original My Bloody Valentine and Prom Night may have been awful, but they were turned out fast and cheap by people who likely thought an exploitation hit could lead to better opportunities somewhere down the line. The new versions are much more polished affairs, backed by major-studio budgets...but utterly devoid of purpose. Their very professionalism makes you wonder why the cast and crew even bothered showing up. No one could have been under the illusion they were doing anything worthwhile.

UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

Is it just me, or does the vision of Happy HoHo emerging from the tender, yielding petal seem a bit, uh, suggestive?



We'll not say a word about the creamy filling, or the kids urging their mom to "Take a bite," or Mom's dazed, happy-for-the-moment-but-how-long-can-this ecstasy-last reaction to Happy's chocolaty goodness. After all, any subtext in this commercial was surely unintentional.

And as for this:



"Draw a banana and give it a hat"? Huh.

What's weird is, as a child of the seventies, I took all this in stride. Happy HoHo was just an ambulatory snack treat, not a walking, talking (and surprisingly diminutive) representation of African-American manhood. And Charles Nelson Reilly wasn't a squishy yellow Freudian nightmare, but just, you know, a big banana. Nothing odd, nothing troubling. Nothing to embed itself into the collective subconscious of an entire generation, who purely by coincidence came of age in the era of Prozac.

On the other hand:



A huge, property-smashing pitcher offering children the drink of choice from Jonestown? Even as a kid, I found that terrifying.

I CAN FEEL AND I CAN CRY

One last thought for my mom's birthday.

If I knew how to post a clip from VHS, I'd show you a clip of my ex, Sue Ellen, singing "There Are Worse Things I Could Do" from a community theater production of Grease.

(If I did do that, she'd be mortified, so instead of that, let's include her and her blog, Musings Of A Chick as part of the six-word profile challenge mentioned in the previous entry, shall we?)

If you know Grease, you know that stops-out weeper is by far the highlight of the score, and Sue nailed it every night. Mom acquired a videotape copy, intended mostly for people involved in the production, and watched it endlessly.

And cried every damn time.

One of the odd things about Mom as she got older was her tendency to seek out things she must have known would make her sad. She'd watch tapes of The Muppet Show and skip past the funny parts just so she could hear Kermit singing some wistful ballad or other, and she'd cry. She'd listen to Janis Joplin or watch West Side Story, then call me, sobbing. It was almost as though she needed some kind of assurance that she could still feel something, and though she laughed often, she came to distrust laughter, it seemed. Tears were real.

One time Sue and I had Mom over as an overnight guest, as well as Sue's young niece Courtney. Since both of them were in awe of Sue's voice, they insisted on watching that number from Grease. Mom's tears started flowing, of course, prompting confusion from Courtney: Why was she crying?

We explained as best we could, and after that, Courtney told everyone who would listen that, "Sue's Ed's mom cries at pretty things." That pretty much sums it up.

TAGGED

Okay, so Blog Princess over at Food, Film, Fiction tagged me to write a six-word memoir. Hey, that part is easy:

BITTER LONER CAUTIOUSLY, CONFUSEDLY, ATTEMPTS OPTIMISM

The rules:

1. Write your own six-word memoir.

2. Post it on your blog (with or without visual representation).

3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post.

4. Tag five more blogs with links.

5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Tag five more blogs? That's the hard part. Hmmm. This will require some thought...

WE CAN HOLD ONTO LOVE LIKE INVISIBLE STRINGS

April 10th. Mom's birthday. And I have the day off, a whole day with nothing to do but stare down my sorrow.

Except...I'm not that sad.

Somehow, I don't really miss Mom anymore. She's receded into the past, along with my Johnny West action figure and old issues of TV Guide, with all the cats I had growing up and my beloved dog Elinore, with comic books and movies I've long since forgotten, with my dad and my oldest brother, with things and people who were here, who mattered more than anything in the whole world...and then were gone.

In other words, Mom is something glimpsed occasionally, remembered fondly for a second before moving on. A comforting but non-corporeal presence, like the glowing spectral figures of Yoda, Obi-Wan and Annakin smiling to Luke at the end of Return Of The Jedi.

Yes, yes, I know I just made a geeky Star Wars reference, but it's okay, because if there's anything I learned from Mom, it's the importance of being myself, and that the things I love and care about matter, if only to me. My life, like everyone's, is a work in progress, but wherever I'm at, I know Mom first pointed the way.

I may not weep every day in her absence as I once did, she may only float into conscious thought from time to time. But when she does, I always take a moment to remember her, and in those moments, she lives.

THE HORROR, THE HORROR

West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV issued a formal apology to John McCain yesterday for making the following claim: "McCain was a fighter pilot who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,ooo feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into these issues."

In his apology, Rockefeller offers up the standard bullshit about McCain's military service as proof he's a real American hero, blah blah blah, but really, what did Rockefeller say that was inaccurate?

Apparently, McCain's years as a POW absolve him from any responsibility for his actions while he was in the military. And yes, those actions did involve firebombing Vietnamese villages, killing untold numbers of civilians. We could argue all day about the morality of that, but the fact is, massive civilian casualties are the cost of modern warfare.

The terms of the debate here in America regarding the ungoing quagmire in Iraq involve bringing our men and women home, not the thousands and thousands of brown-skinned people killed by the hands of Our Noble Troops. In constructing his half-baked analogy (his point was apparently that McCain is out of touch with the concerns of common folk, or some such), Rockefeller unintentionally uttered a truth we dare not consider.

Naturally he had to apologize, so we can all pretend it never happened, and never think such troubling thoughts again.

BEREFT OF LIFE

Sorry, folks, running late, so no time to actually, you know, write. But, hey, here's a happy little Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht number to cheer everyone up, from G.W. Pabst's film of Threepenny Opera. Not quite Bobby Darin, is it?

FEVER IN THE BLOOD

As I got out of bed yesterday morning, the phone rang. It was Katie; she'd overslept and needed a ride to work. Give me about twenty minutes, I told her.

The problem was, as I detailed in yesterday's post, I'd just had the most extraordinary dream. I wanted to write down every detail, but by the time I turned on the computer and it booted up, it would be time for me to leave.

So I pulled out a tablet I'd fortuitously brought home from work last week, and started scribbling. Three dense, ink-smeared pages later, I felt I'd gotten down the pertinent details, and could sort out the rest when I got home. It wasn't until later I really appreciated what I'd done.

I'd scribbled something down in longhand! The way I used to write so long ago, when words flowed so much easier! Later, yes, they could be cleaned up, set in cold, unforgiving print, but there's nothing like the feel of a pen scratching on paper, nothing so free, so uninhibited, so...real. This was my M.O. when I first fell in love with writing, and it had been so long since I'd done this.

Maybe I'll start carrying a notepad around with me, jotting furiously whenever inspiration strikes. I'm into my third year--!!!--at this site, and I finally feel like I'm writing again.

ALL THAT YOU LIVE TODAY

Strange dream last night, beginning as dreams usually do, nowhere special. Things happened, then I found myself traveling--or maybe running?--through the night, until pink and purple streaked the sky and I realized I was on a train, heading east towards the sunrise. No one occupied the seats around me, and I sat placidly, watching the fields and dusty old roads go by.

The tracks curved and the train rose, and passed through a long, dark tunnel, a darkness that felt like the end of the world, emerging into dazzling sunlight. The tracks twisted almost vertically as the train ascended a hill, slowing at the summit, then slowing more, moving only inches at a time.

The journey seemed unlikely to continue, and I felt stranded, alone. Suddenly I heard whistling behind me--"Music, Music, Music". Turning, I saw my dad seated several rows back, dressed in his usual blue workshirt and overalls. He smiled, the train lurched and we continued, now speeding down the hill.

We approached a small town, all quaint little shops and bustling citizens, as the train slowed, then stopped. "Looks like we'll find some place to eat," Dad said.

"It's the altitude," Mom said, because suddenly she was there, too. "Food just tastes better."

The three of us climbed down the stairs and followed the crowd, Dad stopping in front of a flyer posted for a series of MGM musicals being shown at the local library. "Looks like we missed it," he said. "Good. Your mom would make us sit through it like she did with me once."

Mom smiled. "I think you enjoyed it."

Dad shrugged.

"Tell him about--" Mom began, then stopped.

I turned and saw Dad's face as he looked at her, an intensity in his eyes I'd never seen, not in him, not in anyone. He half spoke, half sang:

"The clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore

The smile you are smiling you were smiling then

But I can't remember where or when..."

Abruptly, the dream ended, and I woke up.

It was just a dream, after all. No way anything like that could ever have happened in the real world. No way Dad would ever let his emotions be known. Hell, no way he'd even know a Rodgers and Hart song. Roger Miller, maybe...

Yet something almost as unbelievable awaited me as I began to stir from my dream. Delmar--Delmar!--snuggled under the covers with me, burrowed under my torso, his head curled down and his front paws crossed in front of his face.

Delmar, my little psychokitty, doesn't do things like this. He's always slightly detached, always somehow unknowable. Yet his love for me is never in doubt, and his rare displays of affection are somehow overwhelming.

I stirred, and Delmar trembled, then stretched, stood up and prepared to leave. I picked him up and sat him on my chest and he stood, purring, and as I stroked his back, I thought about how much I missed Dad.

Then Del, tired of attention, snapped at my fingers and hopped down, and I got out of bed and started my day.

ARE YOU A MASTER BUILDER OR A MASTER BUTCHER?

Charlton Heston is dead at the age of 84. Where to begin?

You could fill volumes writing on Heston, focusing solely on single aspects of his career: His turn from liberalism to rabid right-wing nuttiness, his iconic roles in stolid fifties epics like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, his later decline into camp with cheesetastic seventies fare like The Omega Man, Earthquake and Airport 75.

He could be a superb, surprisingly nuanced character actor, as in his film debut, William Dieterle's underrated Dark City, or William Wyler's The Big Country, or especially Sam Peckinpah's almost-great Major Dundee. He was a fine comic performer, too, a talent best utilized by Richard Lester in his sublime The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.

He was exactly the outsized presence needed for terrific movies like The Naked Jungle and El Cid, and if he's the weakest link in Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil, he still gets a pass, since he had a hand in getting Welles the job. And don't even get me started on Planet Of The Apes, or we'll be here all day.

The point is, whatever the vehicle, when the man was on screen, you couldn't help but watch him. He was one of the last by-God Movie Stars still working into the twenty-first century, and he'll be dearly missed.

OUT ON THE OCEAN SAILING AWAY

I took Paul to baseball practice last night, he crashed here for the night, and he's got a game today. As soon as he's finished with this particular episode of Spongebob, it'll be off to Donutland, our traditional breakfast spot whenever he stays over.

Sometimes it's difficult for people to understand why Paul and I still hang out together. "But he's not your kid," they'll say, "and you and his mom aren't dating anymore."

True, I say, Tabbatha and I broke up. But Paul and I didn't.

After all, Tabbatha and I were serious enough in our relationship to go apartment hunting together. We'd even mentioned marriage. And Paul was very much a part of those plans. He'd taken to calling me dad, and I liked the sound of that.

Even as my relationship with his mom wound down, Paul and I spent more time together, as her new work hours left her unable to pick him up from school or daycare. I'd pick him up, fix him supper, take him to movies, ball games, or just hang out. We had a blast.

Neither one of us wanted to stop. So we didn't.

Last night, since his practice ran late, we didn't have time for the movie marathon we had planned. We watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3, but he informed me next time he was over we'd finally get around to Temple Of Doom.

(Probably a good choice, by the way. Yeah, I realize Temple Of Doom was largely responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating, but it strikes me as the most kid-friendly of all the Indiana Jones movies. It starts off with a bang, has a really scary villain and a wisecracking young sidekick, features tons of bugs, monkey brains and a still-beating heart torn from a body. What eight-year-old wouldn't love it?)

Of course, I'm not sure when we'll get around to it. Between practice and games, baseball will be eating up a lot of Paul's time for the next two months. But we'll find time, darn it. Nothing can stop us from being there for opening night of Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. We're practically waiting in line already.

HE'S NOT ASKED AND DOESN'T KNOW

So much time has been spent around here hating Hillary Clinton, it's easy to forget how much seething contempt I have for John McCain.

In an act of mind-boggling cynicism, McCain plans to speechify today in Memphis, in honor of the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. That would be the same Martin Luther King whose legacy the United States clebrates in a national holiday every year. A national holiday McCain initially opposed.

He changed his mind later, of course, but for all appearances, only because of a public outcry. His initial opposition speaks volumes about the man's character. But what lame, cobbled-together explanation does he now offer for changing his mind?

"Well, I learned that this individual was a transcendent figure in American history, that he deserved to be honored, and I thought it was appropriate to do so," he told The New York Times.

Really, Johnny? Sometime in the eighties, you had someone explain to you how important "this individual" was? Were you so isolated in your Naval Academy days you had no knowledge of the momentous events taking place in the outside world? Were you so busy dropping bombs on Southeast Asians you couldn't take a moment to reflect on the truly brave acts of a real American hero? Or could it be that you come from a family of old-fashioned racists, and were inculcated in their ways more deeply than you realized? Have your views really changed, or are you just better at playing the game?

Oh, and I should mention Hillary Clinton will also be in Memphis today, pretending like McCain to give a rat's ass about black Americans. Barack Obama, presumably, doesn't need to pretend.

WHAT, YOU MEAN I HAVE TO ACTUALLY WRITE SOMETHING?

You know what? Suck it, YouTube. "Performing site maintenance"? How can you do this to me? Dammit, I want to embed something now. My readers haven't been forced to sit through enough Richard Thompson performance clips!

Actually, I intended to post some clips from the works of the great animation director Ralph Bakshi, in honor of Unfiltered, a new book on his career. There will be much more to say about Bakshi's work and its importance in my life later, when I've examined the book and, more importantly, when YouTube is back at 100%.

For now, let me point out that my copy of Unfiltered is on the way, the first thing I've ever ordered from Amazon.com. I've been extremely reluctant to order anything online, for fear that once I've opened the floodgates, the damage can't be undone.

When I ordered Unfiltered at the prepublication price, Amazon very helpfully let me know I could bundle my order with a new book on animation designer Maurice Noble and receive both books for less than either would cost after publication. Also, if I enjoyed these items, I'd surely like a newly-compiled collection of Chuck Jones artwork, and hey, why not pre-order Some Came Running while you're at it? Wait...I've never ordered from Amazon before. Why are they recommending Vincente Minnelli movies to me? How do they know me so well?

I'm weak, and I was tempted, and yes, I'll probably get around to pre-ordering Some Came Running. But not just yet. For now, I'm still able to resist the siren call of Amazon, though I hear its sweet, faint tone even now.

BLACK, WHITE, GRAY

Here, in no real order, are some of the many affectionate nicknames I call my beloved Delmar:

Psychokitty
Del-Star
Del-Phonic
The Del-Meister
Delly Del Del (Incidentally, when you're using cutesy monikers like this for a cat, you're about two steps away from spending the rest of your life watching Murder, She Wrote reruns.)
Delmar Von Dellington III
The Li'l Feller
Li'l Spleeny
My Special Little Guy
Monster From The Id
Jack's Raging Bile Duct
Mr. Pink
Mr. Bad Example
Excitable Boy
George Peatty
Mooch
Shtinky
Herr Drosselmeier (Really doesn't fit his personality, and I have no idea how this started...)
Rotwang
El Marko
Hey You
Cat Of Destiny
Fur Miser
Senor Stubby
Wheezy Joe
Tuna Whore

All well and good, but here are the affectionate names I have for Monika:

Monika

I mean, is that fair? Okay, when she was a kitten, I used to call her Kiddo, and sometimes still do, albeit in a creepy Udo Kier voice that seems more unsettling than endearing.

The point is, Monika is a wonderful cat in every way, shape and form. She leaps on the bed and cuddles with me every night, burrowing under the covers and smooshing her head under my arms, her intense purring sending literal good vibrations through my entire body.

So surely she deserves some sort of adorable nickname. Doesn't she? Maybe not. Any further term of endearment would be redundant; she's just Monika, and perfect the way she is.

HOW IT MIGHT HAVE GONE DOWN, AND WHY IT WOULDN'T HAVE MATTERED

Some recent rows on the interweb, what with the imminent release of new entries in the Indiana Jones and Star Wars franchises, rehash the same old myth about how Spielberg and Lucas brought about the Death Of Serious Cinema.

You know the drill, right? The massive successes of Jaws and Star Wars somehow brought about the end of the seventies Hollywood Renaissance, the director-driven era in which the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Paul Mazursky, Brian DePalma and so many more were allowed to commit their sacred visions to celluloid.

Yeah, there were a lot of great movies made in that era, but the myth of Spielberg/Lucas is simply untrue. To illustrate why, let's imagine an alternate filmic universe.

Let's say George Lucas--who, it's easy to forget, was once rightly considered the most talented member of the film school generation--followed up his debut, THX-1138, with the project he'd spent some time developing: Apocalypse Now.

Hard to imagine what Lucas would have done with it. (Or maybe it's not: Even in Coppola's hands, Kurtz is still presented as a noble warrior who somehow turned to "the dark side"--Hmm...) He reportedly wanted to shoot it hand-held, documentary style, with a cast of unknowns. Though still influenced by Joseph Conrad, Lucas apparently thought of the project as something of a black comedy, and expressed admiration for the Vietcong.

Lucas worked on Apocalypse Now both before and after the massive success of American Graffiti, and his inability to find funding led him to develop a little science fiction movie you may have heard about. But what if he'd made it? It may have been great, it may have been terrible, but it's unlikely it would have been a commercial hit. Even if it had proven hugely influential--and Lucas' bold plans suggest it would have impressed his fellow filmmakers, if not general audiences--and he had ascended to his rightful place in the auteurist pantheon, he would have remained just another hungry filmmaker.

He would, in other words, have been a lot like Steven Spielberg. His first theatrical film, The Sugarland Express, was absolutely astounding. But boy was it bleak, and audiences stayed away in droves. Like his fellow movie brats Scorsese and DePalma, he needed a hit if he wanted to keep working.

Scorsese's grab for success was a blatantly commercial "woman's picture" Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, so mainstream it could be adapted into a sitcom, and DePalma made Carrie, a teen-targeted horror movie based on a popular novel. Both great movies, but neither one particularly personal.

Spielberg, of course, also made a horror movie based on a popular book: Jaws. But it's not like he set out to make the biggest blockbuster of all time. Universal, which owned the rights to Jaws, originally visualized it as something closer to the disaster movies so popular in the seventies, and courted Charlton Heston for the lead. Spielberg certainly wasn't the first choice to direct; in fact, he really only took the gig because he needed work.

What if he hadn't taken that particular job? He'd spent a lot of time hanging with his New Hollywood contemporaries, including producers Michael and Julia Phillips, who later produced Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and writer Paul Schrader, later hired to write the initial script of that same film. At around the same time Spielberg mulled the offer for Jaws, Michael Phillips sought a director for a script of Schrader's: Taxi Driver.

True, there's no evidence anyone offered Spielberg the chance to direct it. But it was offered to other directors before Scorsese got ahold of it (apparently Robert Mulligan was set to make it with Jeff Bridges in the lead!), so it's possible. It could have happened.

And it might have been great--people tend to forget how brilliantly Spielberg assembled his early films. (No, 1941 isn't all that funny, but it's clearly the work of a born visual stylist.) And coming on the heels of The Sugarland Express, it would have marked the director as a Serious Artist. Again: So what?

But Spielberg didn't direct Taxi Driver, of course; Scorsese did. It was more a success d'esteem than a commercial blockbuster, but it got Scorsese a huge budget to make whatever the hell he wanted: A depressing anti-musical starring the box-office dream team of Liza Minnelli and Robert DeNiro. I'm one of the few people who believes New York, New York to be a masterpiece, but undeniably it was a misbegotten project in commercial terms, and Scorsese turned the filming into a coke-fueled nightmare.

It flopped, of course, as did Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon, and these failures, along with the long delays and whispers of disaster coming from the set of Apocalypse Now--which Coppola, of course, hijacked from Lucas--really brought about the end of the Hollywood Renaissance. It wasn't the success of Jaws and Star Wars--which caught their own creators by surprise-- so much as the arrogance of the artists, blowing millions of other people's dollars on coke, whores and movies nobody wanted to see.

The director-as-superstar era ended as a result of hubris--Heaven's Gate, anybody?--but the rise of the blockbuster era was bound to happen, with or without the help of Spielberg and Lucas. Studios which once functioned more or less autonomously were swallowed by huge corporations, which were in term swallowed by larger entities still. Risk would be minimized, safe bets would be the rule. Production budgets would be measured against projected profits. Studios would be charged to follow the money, which would mean cranking out time-killers for teenaged boys.

Spielberg and Lucas didn't bring about the Death Of Serious Cinema--Paul Thomas Anderson is working, right?--and they didn't create the blockbuster era, either. So stop blaming them. For that, at least. On the other hand, if you want to blame Spielberg for Hook or Lucas for that whole Greedo-shoots-first thing, be my guest.

I THINK IT'S WHAT I WANT TO BE

Lacking anything substantial to write about, deciding to resort to a clip job, casting about for something to post. I found a clip of Renee Fleming performing Leonard Bernstein's A Simple Song, which led me to Dawn Upshaw singing some Rodgers and Hart. which led me to something else, then something else, which led to...

Oh crap. There's clips posted of the 1990 memorial service for Jim Henson. Any one of these conjures such overpowering memories, mostly of my mom, that I can't help but cry uncontrollably. No way to process all my thoughts right now, or manage this sudden, unexpected rush of grief. Instead, I'll let Big Bird speak for me:

JUST SAY NO TO INDIVIDUALITY

Really, really tired, folks, and I've got a fair amount to do before leaving for work. But it's not like me to let a day go by without posting something, so here I am.

Uh, really, that's all I've got.

Well, and this: A good live clip of L7.



Hopefully, coherence returns tomorrow. If not, another clip job. We'll see.

UNIVERSE-DESTROYING ACTION IN THE MIGHT MARVEL MANNER!

There's an awesome story in today's New York Times detailing the efforts of two self-appointed protectors of all that is good to persuade a judge he should prevent the operation of a giant particle accelerator. Once this thing starts smashing protons together, these two are convinced, it could result in the creation of a miniature black hole which could destroy the earth--or even the universe.

Hommina Hommina Hommina. Also: Whaaa--?

Okay, first of all...I can't even get my head around this. Scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (the acronym is CERN...but shouldn't it be ECNR?) claim the black hole theory is very unlikely, but they're double-checking just to be sure.

Wait...again, whaaa?

Isn't this the sort of thing you double-, triple-, then quadruple-check, then decide to scrap? Because, well, criminitlies, we're talking about the possible creation of a black hole here. Or, if not a black hole, a possibility the collider could produce something called a strangelet, which would reduce the earth to a big hunk o' nothing called, in scientific terms, strange matter.

(I've got two lame jokes here: 1. Strange Matter--hey, didn't he play for the Bears? 2. Strange Matter--hey, didn't ELO record that? And as long as I'm in the middle of a parenthetical aside, seriously, scientific community--strange matter? That's the best name you could come up with? If a boxy, lab-coated leading man in a fifties sci-fi movie used that term, the audience would laugh derisively.)

This is the something Dr. Doom should be putting together in some godforsaken Baltic state, with only the combined talents of The Fantastic Four to stop it. (The collider even looks like Jack Kirby designed it!) Unfortunately, this being the real world, it's up to a judge to decide the fate of the universe. No clobberin' time here.

INTRODUCING A BOLD NEW VOICE IN THE LITERARY WORLD

Yesterday I jokily mentioned letting my beloved cat Delmar post something here, but after giving it some thought, I'm convinced Del is cut out to be a writer. Personality-wise, at least.

Consider: He wakes up whenever he wants, can't function until he has something to drink, and when food is presented to him, he rejects it in favor of another drink. (For Del, the drink of choice is water, not gin, but still...)

A pathetic, needy display of affection is interrupted by a violent rage, followed by an extended period of sullen silence. Then, a nap, the better to avoid doing any actual work.

He's neutured, which makes him perfect for sad, unconsummated affairs with an ever-younger series of "research assistants" and being a cat, he's not capable of doing anything more than wandering up and down a keyboard, stringing together letters that never form into a coherent whole.

So pretty much exactly like Norman Mailer, as far as I can tell.

THROW OUT YOUR GOLD TEETH AND SEE HOW THEY ROLL

Two things:

1) So...a guest post yesterday. Weird, huh? Not something that happens a lot around here. In fact, it's never happened at all. Heck, I've never even allowed Delmar to guest post. Of course, it would take him a long time to put anything up, what with a tiny kitty brain and lack of fingers--keyboards aren't really designed for paws--but I'm sure he'd have something interesting to say, though it would probably boil down to some variation of HISSHISSGROWLGROWL, followed by brief purring and loud, disturbing snoring.

Anyway, thanks to all who took the time to read Katie's post. She's threatening to start who own blog, so watch out...

2) Much as I hate turning this site into a perpetual mourning area, I wanted to note the passing of the actor Richard Widmark at the age of 93. I almost referred to Widmark as a film noir mainstay, but looking at his filmography, I was struck by how relatively few true noirs he'd appeared in. His unforgettable turn as the giggling sociopath Tommy Udo in Kiss Of Death and iconic performance in Jules Dassin's magnificent Night And The City skew the curve, though he did fine work in Samuel Fuller's Pickup On South Street and Vincente Minnelli's kinda sorta noirish The Cobweb.

Another thing about Widmark--he was seldom bad (he could be, though--his dull, uncommitted performance pretty much ruins Peter Sykes' To The Devil--A Daughter, which had the makings of a horror classic), but too often he'd be the best thing about a largely forgettable movie. He would have been a perfect leading man for Robert Aldrich or Anthony Mann, but instead spent time appearing in the likes of Red Skies Of Montana or Frog Men. Good things still came his way--particularly his proto-Dirty Harry in Don Siegel's Madigan--but by the late sixties and seventies he mostly essayed bland authority figures, with the occasional colorful character part.

I've always thought of Widmark as ranking somewhere between Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden in my personal iconography of coolness, but really, Night And The City aside, his career is sort of a profile in frustration--a great actor in search of great roles.

AND NOW, A SPECIAL GUEST COLUMN

I am Edward's friend Katie--the one he has spoken of before. He now tells me he seldom mentions me on this site anymore, though he apparently went on and on about a previous female. This concerns me. I'm thinking that he may not be as interested in me as he says he is. Should I be concerned? He says this is because he doesn't know the nature of our relationship. Neither do I.

I think I may be confused because I have a lot of hangups and stress of my job and don't know if it's a good idea to get into a relationship. I have a good time when I'm with him but we have a lot of differences and don't always have a lot in common. Is that a sign or merely opposites attracting? Can a casual relationship maybe help out with stress from a job or get in the way? I tell him that I want to take it slow and I don't think he accepts that. I wish he was more understanding because I'm thinking if he can't give me time and maybe a little space, it may ruin something that could be great.

If anyone has any opinions or advise on this subject, please feel free to leave a comment.

Thank You, The Relationshiply Confused Katie:)

GONNA MAKE YOU SAD SOMEDAY

Let's make this clear: Everything Hillary Clinton says or does is fundamentally dishonest.

When she claimed she ran from sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia, she lied. When she explained away the statement by saying she "misspoke," she lied. She knowingly made up a story suggesting she had experience she lacked, and when called on the story, couldn't be honest enough to 'fess up.

Then again, her whole life is a lie, a series of compromises she's all too willing to make.

Consider her most recent attack on Barack Obama, the claim that she would never have a pastor like Jeremiah Wright.

Where to begin?

By pointing out Clinton's sometime affiliation with the likes of Billy Graham, an apologist for anti-semitism?

By suggesting an increasingly desperate Clinton is deliberately trying to torch Obama's campaign because if she can't get the nomination, no Democrat deserves to win?

No, I think the most interesting aspect of Clinton's latest utterance is the fact that it came in an interview she granted with The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, a noxious ultraconservative rag founded and funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the guy primarily responsible for backing all the Whitewater investigations, whispering suspicions about Vince Foster's suicide, backing the impeachment of Clinton's husband. Yet not only will Clinton participate in an interview with this guy's paper--Scaife himself sat in on the interview!

In other words, she's all too willing to cozy up to the most extreme fringes of the right wing in order to bring down an opponent. Party loyalty? Fuck that--all that matters is her ambition. Clearly, she's willing to do and say anything just to get the nomination. If somehow she attained the highest office in the nation, how far would she go to keep it?

YUMPIN' YIMINY!

Today would be the 118th birthday of Elmer Brendle, who, under the name El Brendel, briefly became one of the most popular comedians in America.

Brendel, who had no trace of an accent, achieved fame as a dialect comedian, specifically as a comical Swede--because Swedes, of course, are inherently funny--and milked his shtick for all it was worth. (Apparently, he actually coined the phrase "yumpin' yiminy"--now you know who to blame!)

Inexplicably, he achieved enough popularity to land parts in big movies. The Gershwins tailored a song to his "talent" for the 1931 movie Delicious. That same year, he had the lead in the misbegotten science fiction musical Just Imagine. I first stumbled across this as part of an all-night science fiction festival back in 1980, and I've hated Brendel ever since. Think I'm being harsh? Try sitting through this:



I don't know if audiences at the time actually found Brendel funny, or if he was sort of the Larry The Cable Guy or Dane Cook of his day. In any event, ye gods, this guy was irritating.

OLD SCHOOL RULES

Here's how a Hollywood studio used to sell an upcoming superhero epic:



This is how they do it now:



Like night and day, isn't it? The 1978 trailer for Superman is almost painfully earnest in tone. This isn't a movie about spectacle or sensation; it's about character. The trailer for the upcoming Iron Man, on the other hand, is nothing but empty sensation: flashy camera moves, heavy-handed CGI, arch and unfunny gags, jokey use of music.

It's that--the music--I want to discuss. Aside from the nudge-in-the-ribs use of the same-named Black Sabbath song, the Iron Man trailer is a mixed bag musically, blaring metal, whooshing synthesizer, temp music used to enhance various moments onscreen but utterly lacking any stylistic unity.

The Superman trailer, of course, uses John Williams' score for the finished film. Aside from giving the trailer a sense of grandeur Iron Man utterly lacks, it suggests another big difference between moviemaking then and now.

The studio could use Williams' completed score to sell Superman because the movie was largely complete, even months before its debut. Williams was hired early on in the process and given adequate time to compose the music because movies back then had enough of a post-production period to fine-tune every last detail.

This Iron Man trailer debuted in late February for a film to be released in late April, but the use of a temp score is a dead giveaway: This thing isn't completed yet, mere weeks away from its premiere. Not an unusual situation these days, unfortunately. Movies now--even ones not involving an overqualified cast acting in support of a goofy-looking metal suit--are so reliant on CGI effects which are often not delivered until the last minute, the final cut can't be locked in until weeks, even days before the damned thing opens.

This is moviemaking in its crudest form, unapologetically manufacturing product instead of even pretending to create art.

THIS SUCKS, I HATE IT

Whenever I get to thinking about the current dreadful state of the movie industry, and how it got this way, it helps to visit a website largely catering to fanboys.

Case in point: Rotten Tomatoes recently ran a piece on Judd Apatow's all-time favorite movies. I should point out I have nothing against Apatow. His TV work, especially, is genius: He had a hand in The Larry Sanders Show, Freaks And Geeks, Undeclared. Plus, the guy's worked with both Joel Hodgson and Marshall Crenshaw, so for that alone my admiration is boundless.

In film, though, his reputation rests on two movies he's directed, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin (which I mostly liked) and Knocked Up (which I mostly hated). Apatow also has a producing credit on seemingly every movie Will Farrell has ever made and writing credits for various Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler efforts.

A mixed bag, but I think we can agree there's nothing in Apatow's filmography that would tax the intellectual capacities of your average beer-swilling, video game-playing, porn-lovin' twentysomething male. These movies are stuffed with dick jokes and easy sentimentality.

Anyway, the Rotten Tomatoes piece is obviously nothing more than Apatow attempting to drum up interest in yet another movie he's slapped his name on, the dreadful-sounding Drillbit Taylor. But it's an interesting list, and it gives some indication of what Apatow is at least shooting for in his films, something more apparent in his TV work: comedy informed by real experience, real pain.

His favorite movies, according to the list, are The Last Detail, Terms Of Endearment, Being There, Welcome To The Dollhouse and Tootsie. Not a bad list at all. I actually hated Welcome To The Dollhouse but I know Todd Solondz has admirers smarter than me, and I'm no big fan of Terms Of Endearment, although it's easy to see its mixture of sitcom laughs with manipulative heartbreak reflected in Apatow's work. Tootsie, though, is a model of smart comedy filmmaking, and The Last Detail and Being There show what a great director Hal Ashby could be--they're masterpieces of sustained tone.

Unfortunately, this list comes with comments from regular visitors to Rotten Tomatoes, and they're mostly of the "This sucks, I hate it" variety. Here are some typically insightful examples: "ZZZZ." "Yuck, yuck and more yuck." "how could one of the best directors in the world get his inspiration from **** movies?"

That last one's my favorite. Lack of caps aside, Apatow as one of the best directors in the world? Really?

Sadly, probably in this person's world, yes. More sadly still, commentors at sites like this and (shudder) Ain'tItCoolNews clearly have no idea what they're talking about--you think any of these clowns have actually seen The Last Detail?--but they've been given a forum, and undeserved influence.

These are the people studios cater to when they churn out the latest gross-out comedy, the latest toothless remake of a Japanese horror movie, the latest hyperkinetic action spectacle. Even though the box-office returns keep diminishing, executroids in Hollywood continue to monitor these sites, tailoring their product to what they perceive as the target audience.

So we get movies made for people who think I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry totally rules, and Being There is ****.

A MAN'S GOT TO KNOW HIS LIMITATIONS

Clint Eastwood--who, it should be noted, turns seventy-eight this year--just signed to direct a hush-hush project called Gran Torino. This is in addition to Changeling, a drama about an abducted child he directed for release later this year, and The Human Factor, a biopic on Nelson Mandela(!) he's scheduled to direct next year.

Impossible to know if any of these will be any good, but Eastwood is certainly a role model for aging with grace. Coming off such recent strong work as Mystic River, Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima, I'd say his work as a filmmaker keeps getting better and better, but since his first two efforts as director were Play Misty For Me and High Plains Drifter, he's been knocking 'em out of the park for a long time. Sure, he's made some bum efforts--but even they're fascinating. (Is The Rookie a bad buddy-cop movie or a deadpan spoof of same? Given the casting of Raul Julia and Sonia Braga as Germans, I gotta go with the latter. I'm also possibly the only Eastwood fan on earth who actually likes The Eiger Sanction. On the other hand, I didn't care much for Million Dollar Baby. Go figure.)

Anyway, Gran Torino. Absolutely nothing is known about this, but the interweb is already chock foll o' rumors--based, it must be said, on the thinnest of evidence--that this will be a new Dirty Harry movie. While this strikes me as unlikely...man, that would be awesome. Think about it: A new Indiana Jones, James Bond, Star Wars and Dirty Harry, all in the same year?

The geekiest imaginable part of me just wet himself. Metaphorically, of course.

I MET A LITTLE GIRL

Nothing in particular to talk about today. But hey, here's a great Marvin Gaye song, from his brilliant album Here, My Dear, simultaneously one of the most beautiful and most depressing recordings of all time. I could go on and on about how amazing it is, and why, but for now, let's let Marvin do the talking.

REACH FOR TOMORROW

It's been years, decades even, since I've read anything by Arthur C. Clarke. Yet I'm profoundly saddened to hear of his death at age 90.

No need for sorrow, really--again, he was 90. And continued to live well, deep-sea diving nearly every day despite the debilitating effects of post-polio syndrome, still churning out novels, though none would ever have the impact of his seminal works, Childhood's End or Rendezvous With Rama. Those books ranked among the best friends I had in junior high and high school, and I could return to them to be reminded that my day-to-day travails were as nothing, that there was something more, a higher purpose to our time on earth.

Still, they meant nothing compared to 2001.

I literally divide my life into before and after the first time I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. Before, there was my house and my life and my corner of the world. After...there was everything, a universe of possibilities. My mind was well and truly blown. I spent days, weeks, months, years trying to unlock its mysteries. Full of awe and wonder, yet disturbingly pessimistic, it was the first movie I ever encountered (I was 10 at the time) that demanded something of me, transcending mere entertainment to enter the lofty realm of Art.

The film, of course, reflects Stanley Kubrick's vision much more than Clarke's. The novel Clarke wrote parallel to the production of the movie makes literal what Kubrick allowed to remain abstract. Kubrick is clearly the greater artist, but 2001 certainly showcases one of Clarke's recurring themes, the need for humankind to transcend its prosaic existence and attain a higher level of being.

For Clarke, perhaps, that time has finally arrived. He is infinite.

THE STORYTELLER

Just a quick post to note the passing of writer-director Anthony Minghella at the unbearably young age of 54.

Minghella wasn't a prolific filmmaker, and much of what he did--Cold Mountain, especially--smacked of middlebrow Oscar bait. But he directed a very fine adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, and his first film, Truly, Madly, Deeply, is both a lovely ghost story and one of the affecting meditations on love I've ever seen.

Fine as it is, though, I'll always think of Minghella as the writer for Jim Henson's extraordinary TV series The Storyteller. He wrote all episodes, even published an adaptation of his scripts, and despite the uniformly fine acting and impeccable physical production, it was the poetic nature of Minghella's writing that made the program such a treasure. As the title suggests, this show celebrated the very act of telling a story, something Minghella could do as well as anyone.

Here is one of my favorite episodes of The Storyteller, in three parts. If you're anything like me, you might want to have a tissue handy. "Because, you see, despite all that took place, a little boy once met a giant, and they became friends."

Part One:



Part Two:



Conclusion:

WHY, I OUGHTTA...

You know, I realize yesterday's post may not have been as cheerful and relaxed and upbeat and whatever as one might expect from somebody who just took a few day's off. A mini-vacation, and all I can do is whine.

So be upbeat, I thought. Maybe something light, something nutty about the cats or--wait, what? Everyone's favorite lying scumwad, Bill Clinton, is now suggesting his comparison of Obama's campaign to Jesse Jackson's was in no way tinged with racism.

Actually, he's not suggesting it, he's casting his latest lie in neon: "They made up a race story out of that...They thought they could hurt me with that, and so they put a bizarre spin on it..."

Bizarre spin? Fuck, fuck ,FUCK!

That tears it. Any thought I had that I might, possibly, out of misplaced and long-faded loyalty to the Democratic party, vote for this idiot's FemBot 2000 wife (now with Simuducts to make her cry real tears!) if she got the nomination is gone. I sure as hell wouldn't vote for McCain, and there's no point in voting for Nader, so fine. I won't vote.

Oh, and Bill? Shut the hell up.

HEAR THE SUNSET SONG

A good vacation, mostly: A great Richard Thompson concert, the unexpected discovery of a fine restaurant, time spent with family. Even spending half a week away from Katie was good; surprised to realize how much I missed her while I was gone, I blathered on and on to her on my cellphone while walking through a grocery store. And I hate people who do that. (She and I got together when I got home and things went great. You probably don't want to know the details.)

But as usual, melancholy intruded. Gradually, at first, in degrees so tiny only one familiar with the feeling might have noticed. Still, watching my nephew perform the lead in Fiddler On The Roof, the impossibility of watching this without imagining Mom's reaction became overwhelming. ( I know exactly what that reaction would have been: sniping about many aspects of the show and other performers, but as soon as Matthew started into Sunrise, Sunset, she'd have dissolved into a puddle of tears.)

Mom's absence seems felt in a much more profound way, though. As much as I enjoy hanging out with my brother and his family, the simple act of doing that reminds me of other family members I don't see so much. Some of them are vague presences, some have vanished completely from my radar. This never would have happened when Mom was around.

She held the family together simply by being. She was the one person everybody talked to, stopped by to visit, hung out with. She kept us all informed about the comings and goings of other familial strands, nieces and nephews or cousins we hadn't seen for so long. Without her, without a center, we all seem to have gone our separate ways.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Without Mom, the strongest tie to the past has been severed, and we're all free to live in the here-and-now. Things play out now as they will, and if paths never cross, so be it. Part of me feels free, as though my life has finally become my own, and I can succeed and fail without concern for the approval of family.

Family. It's what is missing in my life right now, a sense of being connected to something more than myself. Life is good, life is bad, the same as always, but there's this weird feeling I have lately of something winding down, a climax with no resolution, things lost and never replaced.

CAN'T CRY IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW

Well, I'll officially be away until Sunday, at least. I'm off on a mini vacation, and frankly, I hope to spend absolutely no time thinking of posting. The point of the trip, ostensibly, was to see my nephew in his school play--a red-haired Midwesterner of Swedish descent, he's playing Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof, but hey, if he can tap into his vast genetic reservoirs of guilt and despair, he should be fine--but it turns out Richard Thompson is in concert in Omaha tonight, so suddenly that's the most important thing in the world.

I've shown plenty of Thompson clips in this space before, and dammit, it's time for more. He's easily one of the best songwriters we have at the moment, as evidenced by this, possibly the gloomiest breakup number ever written. "All your magic and your ways and schemes/All your lies come and tear at your dreams"--brilliant.



However great Thompson's prowess as a songwriter, it's equaled or even exceeded by his abilities as a guitarist--he's simply the best, period. One of the joys of seeing him in concert is that you never know when he'll let loose with an oddly chosen cover showcasing his amazing fretwork, as happens on this old Louis Jordan tune:



Here's another cover. It seems like a joke at first, but typically, Thompson eaisly finds the dark, dark heart of even the most disposable pop song.



Hope you enjoyed. Be back soon.

IT WON'T BRING YOU DOWN DAY AFTER DAY

My friend Howard once suggested I should try finding a girlfriend by randomly walking up to women and saying, "You look like a real Marshall Crenshaw fan." Sure, I'd endure endless rejection, perhaps the occasional macing, but if I finally found someone who said, "Why yes, I am"...Well, presumably everything else would fall in place.

In other words, any woman who is a hardcore Crenshaw fan probably wouldn't make me sit through shit like Must Love Dogs or Because I Said So or the awful, awful romantic comedy of your choice. I know an alarming number of women who are drawn to this sort of thing. Why?

I hate the term "chick flick" and I'd like to think it's meaningless. There are only good movies and bad movies, and we're not drawn to certain things because of our gender. I mean, sure, give me a bag of popcorn, a bottle of Heineken and a screening of The Dirty Dozen, and I'm happy. But that's a good movie. Okay, a good movie with Lee Marvin, Jim Brown and Charles Bronson blowing up Nazis, but still...

If I'm going to watch a bad movie, I'll do so because it's bad. (Neil Diamond IS The Jazz Singer!) And if I want to watch a particular type of movie, I'll go with a good example of its type. If I want bone-crunching action, I'll watch The Dirty Dozen, not some lame Van Damme crap. And if I want a romantic comedy, Jeebus, I'd stay the hell away from anything involving Kate Hudson, Mandy Moore, Sandra Bullock...anything made in the last twenty years, basically.

My point is, just because Hollywood marketeers target your demographic, you don't need to cave in.

NEVER BEFORE, DEAR READER, HAVE YOU BEEN WITNESS TO A COLLECTION OF THOUGHTS SO UTTERLY RANDOM

1) Posting will undoubtedly be kinda light this week. I have tentative plans for this evening, and I'll be gone from Thursday through the weekend, so don't expect much. A bad time to leave, actually, since my stats are kinda sorta up--instead of two regular readers, I now have four!

2) Never watched the show, don't really know much about it, but for some reason, I had a dream about that Sex And The City movie. No, I'm not gay. Why do you ask?

3) Many recent articles attempt to explain the American economy's slide into recession, as if the fact that this is happening is something that couldn't have been foreseen, as if cutting taxes while spending billions, possibly trillions on a pointless, unending war hadn't doomed us from the get-go. Not to play Cassandra, but I could have told you this was coming all along, and I'm just some working-class schmuck, not a hot-shot economist.

4) That "hot-shot economist" line was originally going to lead me into a discussion of Paul Krugman, and the annoying tendency of this site to be New York Times-centric...but screw it, I don't wanna get that introspective.

5) Delmar and Monika are again sticking their noses in the air when I feed them. I bought this Friskies Select crap they'd gone gaga over previously, now they're tired of it. Oh my God...perhaps they'll only be satisfied with the taste of HUMAN FLESH. AAIIEE!!

Nope. Turns out they'll eat Cat Chow. Whew!

6) Since I suspect any postings this week will tend towards clip jobs, let's kick this trend off right, shall we? Here's an all-time favorite MST3K sketch.



7) There is no seven.

LUMINOUS BEINGS ARE WE, NOT THIS CRUDE MATTER

The surprise isn't how many articles and mournful farewells have appeared online following the death of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax, since we know who rules cyberspace, but it is astonishing how thoughtful and touching many of them have been, particularly Jason Heller's piece at The AV Club and this essay by Adam Rogers in The New York Times.

Me, I never played D & D. Or cared much for Star Trek. That was geek stuff to me. Sure, I had a Space: 1999 lunchbox (which I carried even after the show's cancellation, even into junior high, which...pretty embarrassing) and regularly read Starlog and the now-forgotten Fantastic Films and was briefly into Tolkien and, of course, pretty much had an out-of-body experience the first time I saw Star Wars.

But even then, I had other obsessions. Doc Savage and The Shadow, for instance. Sure, they're part of the pulpy origins of Indiana Jones (which leads to its own level of geekery), but I loved them as much for the cool art deco worlds they moved through as for the adventures they led. Many Doc Savage novels served as virtual travelogues of thirties-era New York City, which seemed like the coolest place in the world. And The Shadow flat-out killed guys ('twin automatics speak as one"), usually two-bit hoods whose lives weren't living, at least according to the twisted moral code of pulp fiction.

These things led to film noir, and the novels of Dashiell Hammett, and dark landscapes of the soul, which seemed so much more interesting than, say, Middle Earth. I watched movies and read novels of all types, and my obsessions spiraled and became more all-encompassing. I don't care much about Tolkien anymore, and a recent attempt to watch some episodes of Space:1999 resulted in stultifying boredom.

On the other hand, I found myself killing time in a bookstore yesterday, and instinctively picked up a copy of Star Wars Insider. The 100 Greatest Things About Star Wars, and Number One is...The Jedi Order? The hell? Everyone knows the single greatest thing about Star Wars is...

NOTHING EQUALS THE SPLENDOR

I'd have been twelve when Carry On Wayward Son by Kansas first hit the charts, and I'm forty-two now, so I've had plenty of time to nurse a grudge against it. On one hand, the stunning banality of its lyrics, totally generic "heavy" guitar work and utterly anonymous vocals are kind of harmless, almost endearing.



If you heard this song once, you'd feel like patting it on the head, smiling and nodding as you might when your girlfriend mentions she really liked The DaVinci Code. You try to overlook it even as you realize this relationship is doomed.

But what if you stay in the relationship, metaphorically speaking? What if Carry On Wayward Son is played constantly on the radio, day after day after miserable day? What if it's on the mixtape your boss plays EVERY FUCKING DAY and you have no choice but to stand there, letting that cheeseball organ solo and those whiny vocals pound your head like a meat tenderizer?

And those lyrics--omigod, the lyrics! "I set a course for winds of fortune"? "If I claim to be a wise man/It surely means that I don't know"--Whoa. This is the type of crap jocks knock out in comp class to show how sensitive they are, and maybe score points with that black-clad "artsy" chick they secretly think is kinda cute even though they'd never admit it in front of their buds.

I just spent more time than I'd like to admit reading Wikipedia entries on this stupid song and the faceless, uninteresting band responsible for embedding it in my subconscious, and it hurts. It really, really hurts.

RIP HER TO SHREDS

A recent piece in The New York Times revealed Team Hillary's "endgame" plans to seal the nomination by any means necessary, a byzantine plot out of a John LeCarre novel. By implementing this scheme, they may well be handing the presidency to the Republicans.

I'm not a big fan of Barack Obama--at this point, I don't think I'd believe a word uttered by anybody affiliated with the Democratic party--but he at least appears to offer a viable alternative. Clinton is more of the same, a professional insider, somebody who assumes the presidency is her birthright. Kinda like the guy we've got now.

So, God knows, is John McCain. He's all about continuing the U.S. presence in Iraq, continuing to run up massive debt while cutting taxes. The differences between McCain and Bush are so slight as to have no meaning...but for some reason, when he hauls out the straight-talkin' maverick shtick, people buy it every time.

If he turns on the twinkly, avuncular warmth and presents himself as the common-sense alternative to that cold, castrating bitch, how many moderates of both parties will fall for it? Clinton would be unable to respond without appearing to attack a kindly old man, and another Democratic nominee would go down in flames. That's the real endgame.

I HEARD SOMEBODY SINGING SWEET AND SOULFUL

Sorry, woke up late, filled with outrage and bile over Hillary Clinton's primary victories yesterday, depressed over the continuing battle between who-cares Democrats, and...the usual.

But hey, here's some music. It's long been my opinion that Warren Zevon's 1976 major label debut must have crushed the aspirations of a generation of would-be songwriters, who must have realized nothing they could ever do would ever touch it. Every single song on that album is a marvel of craft, and here's one of the very best.

WE TAKE YOU EVERYWHERE...BUT GET YOU NOWHERE

1) It turns out Love And Consequences, a critically acclaimed new memoir about growing up in the middle of South Central gang territory, is pure fiction. Author Margaret B. Jones, subject of a recent fawning profile in The New York Times, is actually Margaret Seltzer, well-to-do product of Sherman Oaks. Her story fell apart when her sister saw a photo of "Jones" in a magazine and called foul.

Um...Aren't publishing houses supposed to have fact-checking departments? Shouldn't the background search for someone peddling a supposedly true story be more extensive than what a temp agency would run for someone hired to dig ditches? Didn't The Times do any research of their own before they ran their story on "Jones"? Doesn't anyone remember James Frey?

2) Speaking of The Times, they ran a puff piece last week on the HBO series In Treatment, specifically on the slavish fan base surrounding Gabriel Byrne's fictional therapist. Diane O'Rourke, identified as a medical writer from Chicago, explains her attraction to Byrne's character thusly:

"Paul is attractive not because he has great youthful biceps but because he's vulnerable--a real person who wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, worrying, 'What the hell am I doing here?'"

Really? That's what makes a man attractive? Because by that standard, I am the most desirable fella on the planet!

3) Clinton, Obama, Ohio, Texas, whatever. Sorry, folks, I'm contractually required to mention that somehow.

4) There are plans afoot for a sort of updating of John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, only instead of being about high school kids stuck in detention, this will be about twenty-somethings stuck in an airport, and instead of being a fondly-remembered piece of eighties effluvia that doesn't quite stand up when you actually rewatch it, this will suck from the get-go.

5) Here's all ten minutes of the "Air-rotica" sequence from Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, which seems more and more like one of the most perfect movies ever made. Nobody ever filmed dance better than Fosse, and his attention to detail--the squirming producers, the fidgeting stagehands--amazes. The performance of the late Roy Scheider, though only briefly glimpsed here, is perfection, as are the awesome breasts of Sandahl Bergman. In an artistic sense, of course.

WALK BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS

It begins, as it has so many times before, with talk and touching, and it continues, who knows where?

Katie and I haven't known each other that long, but already we see each other nearly every day, always talking, hanging out, even doing laundry together. It doesn't get much more intimate than that.

She's great, I enjoy being with her, yet I confess a wariness to my pose.

Scroll back a year or so into the archives here, and read, scattered among all the anti-Bush screeds, of my infatuation with Tabbatha, of the great wonders and delights awaiting me when she and I moved in together, when we married, when I became a father. My life had finally acquired some faint patina of meaning.

So it seemed.

What ended that relationship? What ended my marriage? Are all my relationships destined to play out the same way? Do I somehow make these hesitations manifest, does the fear of failure result in failure?

But...I didn't expect my marriage to fail. I took the whole "for better or worse" thing seriously, but the fact that it all fell apart seems to have instilled in me a sense of impermanence. Nothing can be started that can't be ended, so really, why even start?

So where am I now? This feels different than it has before. Too soon to say if it's better or worse, just different. Which is good. I can't just go through the motions when I'm learning brand new steps.

HASTEN DOWN THE WIND

All the people I knew, all the people I saw on TV, everyone came from loving homes, everyone's parents stayed together. Widowhood might occur, but divorce? That was something only whispered about, but never fully understood.

My parents exemplified this. The quintessential married couple, a farmer and his wife, knocking out kids at fairly regular two-year intervals, facing down whatever problems came their way with pluck and good humor.

So it seemed.

Dad sprang from fairly hardscrabble circumstances, the product of Swedish coalminers, isolated from the wonders and ways of the larger world. With only an eight-grade education, he sought employment at an early age, and his life may have gone in an entirely different direction, except...

He found himself in Europe during World War II, working in the motor pool. What a change that must have been! His whole life had been lived within the range of a few miles, he had no idea what the rest of the world looked like, and now here among the splendors of the Old World, he confronted death on a daily basis. His division somehow wound up with clean-up duty at Dachau, and this vision of ultimate, incomprehensible horror surely numbed his senses.

He came home with no ceremony, and no counseling to help him process what he'd witnessed, and worked and saved, and tried to bury the memories, determined to lead a simple life.

But though the girl he married willingly became part of his life, she was smart and well-read, with a curiosity about the world beyond the little bit of it she'd seen. She'd get no help in that regard from her husband; he'd been there, he'd seen too much already, and never wanted to go back.

So Mom stayed home, helped on the farm, slopped the hogs, beheaded chickens, raised the kids, all the things expected of her. She drove into town once a week to buy groceries, chatted endlessly with the neighbors, built her days around her soap operas.

And again, she did this willingly, with no complaints. Mostly. Although many years later she'd admit sometimes, when the kids were in school and isolation overwhelmed her, she'd stare out at the sun-dappled trees lining the lane and think about getting in the car and driving off a bridge, ending her life just to relieve the boredom.

All this, of course, I found out later. As a kid, Mom and Dad seemed as perfect as Ward and June Cleaver, albeit without the suits and pearls. I knew nothing of any serpents lurking in the garden. Life could not have been better.

Could it?

SO LET'S SWITCH OFF ALL THE LIGHTS AND LIGHT UP ALL THE LUCKIES

Ordinarily, there'd be no reason for anyone outside the industry to care that Warner Bros. has essentially dissolved New Line Cinema, folding the erstwhile indie studio into its own corporate tent and firing many of its employees, including New Line founder Robert Shaye.

But New Line had something unusual for a studio these days: a personality. Shaye founded it back in the sixties, when he resurrected the old thirties scare picture Reefer Madness and played it to audiences of stoners. He was an enthusiastic early supporter of John Waters, and kept such cult items as Night Of The Living Dead and Texas Chain Saw Massacre in distribution through the seventies and early eighties.

Shaye loved exploitation filmmakers, and he made a name for his studio with Wes Craven's Nightmare On Elm Street and its infinite sequels. The serious money made by this series gave New Line entry into the big time, and the massive success of the Austin Powers and Lord Of The Rings series.

Shaye made many mistakes along the way, and New Line hadn't had much artistic or commercial success for a few years, but as a production or distribution entity, they gave us Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, Wise Blood, Gregory's Girl, The Hidden, Menace II Society, My Own Private Idaho, Short Cuts, In The Mouth Of Madness, Boogie Nights and Magnolia. All these movies have a very specific, off-beat point of view, and are serious and fun in equal measure. If made now, none would see the light of day in the corporate world of today's Hollywood. With Shaye's ouster, the future of the movies seems even less interesting.

HERE I STAND, HEAD IN HAND

It's not that I'm happy about the death of the lizard-like arch-conservative William Buckley. In fact, in the current neo-conservative landscape, in which the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter are allowed influence beyond their station, Buckley's preening intellectual act would seem like a breath of fresh air.

Nonetheless, Buckley thought Joe McCarthy was A-OK, believed whites were genetically superior to other races and was an unapologetic imperialist. When, late in his life, the conservative movement he had helped found turned on him, it had some of the ham-fisted irony of an old EC comic book. I, for one, won't shed a tear, largely because his noxious views continue to inexplicably shape political discourse to this very day.

If you want to mourn someone, mourn the death of cinematographer David Watkin. He was the brilliant eye for director Richard Lester on a string of amazing films--The Knack; Help!; How I Won The War; The Three Musketeers--that are some of the greatest things cinema has to offer. His use of available light was highly influential--Steven Soderbergh rightly regards him as one of the greatest cameramen of all time--and in addition to his superlative work with Lester, he worked with Ken Russell, Sidney Lumet, Tony Richardson...a long, distinguished list.

He also shot Yentl, but we won't hold that against him.

GREET THE BRAND NEW DAY

Okay, for those of you who are wondering when this site will stop being so unbelievably depressing, good news. Are things looking up? Well, I'm sitting here writing this with Katie sitting next to me. That would be my new--what's the word?--acquaintance Katie.

She, it should be noted, objects to the word "acquaintance". Oh, I ask her, so how would you describe our relationship?

"Um, dating..."

Yeah. And?

"But. Don't move too fast or you might scare me away." Pause. "Well, not scare me away...Just...Don't overthink it."

Me? Overthink things? Clearly, she knows me well already.

NUMBERS TOO BIG TO IGNORE

You might think of Geraldine Ferraro--if you think of her at all--as Walter Mondale's vice-presidential candidate, half of the ticket that lost so spectacularly to Ronald Reagan, a typically hapless Democratic match-up.

But Ferraro's using whatever cache she believes she possesses to stump for Hillary Clinton at every given opportunity. She wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times defending Clinton's threat to count delegates from Florida and Michigan, in violation of rules established by her own party, and I heard her yesterday on NPR, defending her chosen candidate and bashing Barack Obama:

"For Mr. Obama to say he was against the war--excuse me, he was a state senator. He had no vote at the time. Hillary did exactly what she was supposed to do. Based on the evidence presented to her, she voted to give the president authority to deal with a threat posed to our nation..."

Uh-huh.

Just because Obama couldn't vote against the war doesn't mean he wasn't opposed to it. He rightly smelled a rat, and said so at the time. Clinton, despite the claims of Hans Blix and so many others that no WMDs existed, that Iraq was no immediate threat, chose to believe what she was told to believe and signed on to the war. She can frame it however she wants, but if she and the other quislings in the senate had demonstrated the capacity for independent thought, so many of the horrors the Bushinistas have wrought might never have come to pass.

There are many reasons to oppose Clinton's nomination, but to Ferraro and others any objections automatically smack of sexism. True, old prejudices die hard, but on the other hand, no one but Clinton seems to have a problem with the notion of a black president. Clinton's record shows nothing but pure opportunism and naked ambition, and she seeks the presidency not for a desire to, lead but as a sort of right. She can't even pretend she cares about ordinary people, and yet feigns surprise when people don't care about her.

I'M HAPPY

What? Tex Avery was born one hundred years ago today? And I've done nothing to celebrate?

Better fix that!

I NEVER SEEN YOU LOOKING SO BAD MY FUNKY ONE

I realize I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again: I suspect postings around here will become a bit less frequent.

My job requires me to get to work fairly early, and I respond by waking up three or four hours earlier than I really need to, all so I can allow myself plenty of time to ruminate and research whatever it is I choose to write about on any given day. And it's not like I'm doing God's work here; I allow all this time, and wind up posting clips from a Lynda Carter special.

I'm spending too much time here, is what I'm saying. This space is a good, valuable and, at times, necessary part of my life, but I'm allowing it to dominate me for reasons I don't fully understand. It's time to step back. Daily postings may or may not continue, but if they do, they may appear in the late afternoon or evenings. Mornings are killing me.

Of course, in the past, whenever I've claimed I'd post less frequently, nothing really changed. We'll see...

SOMEDAY YOU WILL ACHE LIKE I ACHE

For those of you still shaking your heads and muttering curses over that Lawrence Welk clip I put up the other day, you should be aware, it could have been worse. Much, much worse.

Boys and girls and kids of all ages, gape in silent bemusement or twitch in astonished horror as you behold the alleged versatility of Lynda Carter:



I would merely add that if your fantasies--rock & roll or otherwise--involve Bette Midler, you may want to seek professional help.

SAWDUST AND TINSEL

It's not like I went out of my way to avoid watching the Academy Awards last night, it's just that I don't care anymore.

And I very much doubt I'm alone on this. If the Writer's Guild strike had continued, and the ceremony itself hadn't happened, would anybody have cared? Anybody outside of Hollywood, that is?

The awards themselves have no meaning, as pretty much everyone acknowledges. In past years, the ritual itself was enough, the chance to see Hollywood's finest parading around on the home screen, a bit of big-time glamour in our own living rooms. That's all gone now, partly because there are almost no real movie stars anymore (George Clooney would qualify, if he wasn't such a publicity whore and if any of his movies actually did well at the box office), and partly because...again, who cares? Movies are merely one more entertainment option in a world already overloaded with choices, and celebrities fascinate the public only when they're in some sort of state of permanent collapse.

As for this year's ceremony, well, I didn't watch it. I had been pulling for Brad Bird to actually get the screenplay award for Ratatouille, but he lost to Juno's Diablo Cody, though her moment has surely passed. It was nice to see Joel and Ethan Coen win (though I'd have given their awards to Paul Thomas Anderson), but I wonder if receiving such a pure Hollywood award will rob them of some hipster cred.

Oh, and Transformers, August Rush and Norbit all received nominations. It's all about quality, you see.

ANY WORLD THAT I'M WELCOME TO

A lazy Saturday morning-into-afternoon. Paul told me two weekends ago he planned on hanging out with me, staying here the night, if his mom would let him. Okay with her, okay with me.

He spent last night watching Hannah Montana and, even though he refuses to admit he thinks Miley Cyrus is hot, he does seem to go on about her. A lot.

He's watching TV now--the miracle of cable, which his mom doesn't have--and later, we'll be heading off to a movie. Probably The Spiderwyck Chronicles, although there's also a possibility of opting for Jumper, because it has Annakin and Mace Windu. (Needless to say, Paul and I are both jazzed about the new Star Wars movie, which opens just in time for his ninth birthday--surely the best present ever.)

Bummer that his mom and I aren't a couple anymore (though, according to Paul, he believes we "are meant to be together"), but it's nice that he and I have stayed buddies. This is exactly the kind of laid-back hangout day everybody needs.

STILL I REMAIN TIED TO THE MAST

A creeping sense of despair seems to have taken up residence in my soul. Various reasons, some concrete, some nebulous, most impossible to deny. It's been a long, cruel winter, and if spring ever comes, I'm not sure I'll be able to fully embrace it.

Wow, that came out even more depressing than intended.

But hey, the good news is, at least I barely feel like writing, so no long nihilistic screeds, no figurative howls of pain. Brevity's the key word around here, otherwise this site could be as tough a slog as a Bukowski tome.

So when words fail, how can a poor boy share his pain? Simple:



Oh, Good Lordy, no. Sorry. I'm not that depressed. Or wasn't...

OH, YOUTUBE, WON'T YOU SPARE ME THE BURDEN OF ACTUALLY WRITING SOMETHING?

And, as usually happens, YouTube comes through. Have I mentioned we're huge Chuck Jones fans around here?

THEM HOGS HAS GOTTA BE FED

Are all things connected somehow?

Today's New York Times carried an obituary for Morton J. Savada, who for many years owned and operated the store Records Revisited, which specialized in old 78s. I remember rumaging around there during one trip to New York, specifically trying to find a copy of Red Ingles' Get Up Offen The Floor for my mom. I found some Ingles stuff, but not that one specifically, and in any event, the paper sleeves made the records too fragile to pack in my suitcase.

Amazingly, I found a recording of that very piece on YouTube.



The female vocalist featured on the song and the accompanying slideshow is Jo Stafford, who had a hit with the song Ragtime Cowboy Joe...which happened to be the only song Mom knew how to play on ukulele.

Red Ingle died in 1965, as did his old cohort and collaborator Spike Jones. I was born in 1965.

Are all these connections coincidental? Yeah, probably.