So I started feeling back pain again, similar to but less severe than the stabbing sensations that led me to an Emergency Room visit a few months ago. A visit to the doctor led to mostly similar results, a diagnosis of a displaced rib and a prescription for a muscle relaxer. (But a different muscle relaxer this time around, Soma, and, by the way, Big Pharmaceutical: Really? You're naming a drug after the fictional narcotic of choice in Brave New World? Is that, um, a good idea?)
Since I was seeing my regular doctor instead of an anonymous ER functionary, he suggested a further course of treatment: "I could try manipulating your back." He led me to a separate room, where I flopped down on a massage table, but as soon as he laid his hands on my back, the doc realized there was nothing he could do. "There's too much tension here," he announced. "Your muscles feel as if they never relax."
Me? Tense? Just because I live by the motto A Day Without Flying Into An Apoplectic Rage Is Like A Day Without Sunshine? Just because I've never relaxed a day in my life? What fun would that be? Without tension, my life would have no meaning. Or so I must assume, since I've never been free of it.
Look, it's not that I don't want to be happy, calm and relaxed. Honest! I just...don't know how.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Sunday, August 09, 2009
DONUT RUN
Walking back from Quik Trip, Paul begins musing on the nature of our relationship. "It's weird. I never used to have grown-up friends. My friends were other kids. Now I spend more time with grown-ups. It's weird that we're still friends."
Yeah. Especially if you remember how we started out.
"What do you mean? Didn't we like each other when we met?"
No, I didn't mean it like that--
"I remember my mom didn't even introduce us at first--"
Yeah, but she got around to it eventually. And I'd kind of figured out who you were. But what I meant was, we didn't start out as friends so much as...I mean, I was dating your mom. Remember the second time we met? We barely knew each other at that point, but you still talked me into buying you a root beer and kept asking me when I was going to marry your mom.
"I don't remember doing that. Did I say that in front of her?"
Yeah, she was right there.
"What did she say?"
She just laughed. And I told you you'd have to ask her about the whole marriage thing.
"And what did she say to that?"
She still just laughed.
"It might have been nice if it had worked out with you guys."
Yeah, well.
"Was I the first kid...I mean, were there other kids...I mean--"
Had I dated other women with kids?
"Yeah."
Sure, but either the kids were older or I never even got to meet them because the relationship never lasted that long. But with your mom, it was different, because we--
"--Talked about getting married?"
Talked, yes.
"And did you know about me? When you first started dating her?"
Oh yeah. Of course. She talked about you quite a bit. She loves you and she's very proud of you.
"She yells at me a lot."
That's because you never help her clean up.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But...so you didn't care that she had a kid?"
Evidently not, since I kept seeing her. But it's weird. I'd never...gotten as far into a relationship with someone with kids as I did with her. We were...it's weird.
"You already said that."
Yeah, I know. What I mean is, we were calling each other 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' before I'd even met you. If I'd met you and hated you...Who knows?
"It's a good thing you didn't hate me. You didn't, right?"
Are you kidding? I couldn't stand you. As a matter of fact, I don't like you now.
"Yeah, right. You just don't like me because I hate the Yankees."
That's as good a reason as any. At least you're not a Red Sox fan. Then I'd have to kill you.
"No, you couldn't."
Why not?
"Because I'm going to kill you first!"
(Suddenly we grab sticks off the ground and begin zapping each other with magic spells, chasing each other down the sidewalk, screaming with manic enthusiasm, not caring if we wake the neighbors. After all, they should be awake, and enjoying this lovely Sunday morning right along with us.)
Yeah. Especially if you remember how we started out.
"What do you mean? Didn't we like each other when we met?"
No, I didn't mean it like that--
"I remember my mom didn't even introduce us at first--"
Yeah, but she got around to it eventually. And I'd kind of figured out who you were. But what I meant was, we didn't start out as friends so much as...I mean, I was dating your mom. Remember the second time we met? We barely knew each other at that point, but you still talked me into buying you a root beer and kept asking me when I was going to marry your mom.
"I don't remember doing that. Did I say that in front of her?"
Yeah, she was right there.
"What did she say?"
She just laughed. And I told you you'd have to ask her about the whole marriage thing.
"And what did she say to that?"
She still just laughed.
"It might have been nice if it had worked out with you guys."
Yeah, well.
"Was I the first kid...I mean, were there other kids...I mean--"
Had I dated other women with kids?
"Yeah."
Sure, but either the kids were older or I never even got to meet them because the relationship never lasted that long. But with your mom, it was different, because we--
"--Talked about getting married?"
Talked, yes.
"And did you know about me? When you first started dating her?"
Oh yeah. Of course. She talked about you quite a bit. She loves you and she's very proud of you.
"She yells at me a lot."
That's because you never help her clean up.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But...so you didn't care that she had a kid?"
Evidently not, since I kept seeing her. But it's weird. I'd never...gotten as far into a relationship with someone with kids as I did with her. We were...it's weird.
"You already said that."
Yeah, I know. What I mean is, we were calling each other 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' before I'd even met you. If I'd met you and hated you...Who knows?
"It's a good thing you didn't hate me. You didn't, right?"
Are you kidding? I couldn't stand you. As a matter of fact, I don't like you now.
"Yeah, right. You just don't like me because I hate the Yankees."
That's as good a reason as any. At least you're not a Red Sox fan. Then I'd have to kill you.
"No, you couldn't."
Why not?
"Because I'm going to kill you first!"
(Suddenly we grab sticks off the ground and begin zapping each other with magic spells, chasing each other down the sidewalk, screaming with manic enthusiasm, not caring if we wake the neighbors. After all, they should be awake, and enjoying this lovely Sunday morning right along with us.)
Friday, August 07, 2009
WILL YOU CALL MY NAME?
If you are of a certain age, the very name John Hughes meant something to you once. Hughes, who died Thursday at the age of 59, later became the hack writer-producer of indefensible comedies like Home Alone and (shudder) The Great Outdoors, and directed treacly crap like Curly Sue. But for a three-year run in the mid-eighties, he was the go-to guy for teen angst, a trusted brand name for the Clearasil set.
He achieved this primarily with three movies he wrote and directed--Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as well as Pretty In Pink, which he wrote and produced and essentially ghost directed. Taking their characters and their all-too-common travails seriously, whether they were going through first love, negotiating high school cliques or dealing with parental pressure, Hughes elevated teenage life to the stuff of high tragedy; his films were especially notable since most depictions of teenagers on screen at the time either depicted them as the noxious horndogs of the Porky's series or fodder for masked killers in slasher epics.
The Hughes formula was hugely successful and amazingly influential--spiritually, he helped father everything from My So-Called Life to Buffy The Vampire Slayer to Superbad. The thing is, though, all three of those things are so much better than anything Hughes ever did. However significant his work seemed at the time, it wasn't really very good.
Oh, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller are still watchable, though they have many wince-inducing moments. But my God, has anyone actually watched The Breakfast Club lately? It's painfully bad, with scattered moments of insight undermined by an embarrassing sense of self-importance. One of the genuinely admirable qualities of Sixteen Candles was Hughes' insistence on casting real, gawky teenagers like Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, a virtually unheard of tactic in American movies at the time. Ringwald and Hall returned for The Breakfast Club, but the other actors had clearly passed their high school days, especially Judd Nelson, whose hilariously overwrought performance (the finest actor since Elmo Lincoln!) is unfortunately showcased by Hughes--Nelson gets all the big dramatic moments and the final iconic freeze-frame.
I have a certain fondness for Hughes' teen ouevre because, well, I was the right age for it. But today's teenagers would most likely sneer at the whole shebang, wondering why anybody bothered. And they'd be right to do so. For somebody who once burned so brightly, Hughes disappeared fast. He hadn't directed a movie since 1991, and honestly, had anybody even noticed he was gone?
He achieved this primarily with three movies he wrote and directed--Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, as well as Pretty In Pink, which he wrote and produced and essentially ghost directed. Taking their characters and their all-too-common travails seriously, whether they were going through first love, negotiating high school cliques or dealing with parental pressure, Hughes elevated teenage life to the stuff of high tragedy; his films were especially notable since most depictions of teenagers on screen at the time either depicted them as the noxious horndogs of the Porky's series or fodder for masked killers in slasher epics.
The Hughes formula was hugely successful and amazingly influential--spiritually, he helped father everything from My So-Called Life to Buffy The Vampire Slayer to Superbad. The thing is, though, all three of those things are so much better than anything Hughes ever did. However significant his work seemed at the time, it wasn't really very good.
Oh, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller are still watchable, though they have many wince-inducing moments. But my God, has anyone actually watched The Breakfast Club lately? It's painfully bad, with scattered moments of insight undermined by an embarrassing sense of self-importance. One of the genuinely admirable qualities of Sixteen Candles was Hughes' insistence on casting real, gawky teenagers like Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, a virtually unheard of tactic in American movies at the time. Ringwald and Hall returned for The Breakfast Club, but the other actors had clearly passed their high school days, especially Judd Nelson, whose hilariously overwrought performance (the finest actor since Elmo Lincoln!) is unfortunately showcased by Hughes--Nelson gets all the big dramatic moments and the final iconic freeze-frame.
I have a certain fondness for Hughes' teen ouevre because, well, I was the right age for it. But today's teenagers would most likely sneer at the whole shebang, wondering why anybody bothered. And they'd be right to do so. For somebody who once burned so brightly, Hughes disappeared fast. He hadn't directed a movie since 1991, and honestly, had anybody even noticed he was gone?
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
5, 6, 7, 8
It would be way too obvious to point out that the wonderful new documentary Every Little Step, which follows the audition process of the recent Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, eerily reflects the very theme of that musical theater landmark. So obvious, in fact, that directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo feel no need to stress it. They know they've got great material and need do nothing more than stand back and watch.
Yes, they do focus too much at times on one blandly pretty semi-professional dancer just starting to make her way with a lot of pluck and moxey, and its thumbnail description of A Chorus Line's genesis is a bit too well-scrubbed. (Director-choreographer-genius Michael Bennet is presented as a genial good guy, when pretty much all of his collaborators would describe him as an egotistical, credit-grabbing monster, though they'd undoubtedly agree about the genius part.) But mostly they just let the cameras roll as the grueling process of making a show grinds along, with a lot of pain and a lot of joy along the way.
The pain is there in the bodies of dancers who can't quite make their limbs do what they need to do, in the voices of singers who can't quite hit the notes. It's in the faces of the show's director, Bob Avian, and choreographer, Baayork Lee--two former Bennet who didn't come to hate his guts--as they relive some painful memories watching fresh-faced talent recreate moments from their own lives. And mostly it's in the reactions of actors who don't get the job, who feel as if they've been cut for entirely arbitrary reasons, as if their professional careers, their very lives, have been judged and found wanting.
The joy, of course, comes when the bodies and voices do exactly what they're supposed to do, when everything snaps into place with clockwork precision. (One of Every Little Step's highlights is when auditionee Jason Tam reduces the entire casting staff to tears with a recitation of a monologue they've all heard a thousand times. The film doesn't even bother trying to milk suspense over whether Tam would get the gig; it's just assumed we'll understand he had it then and there.) But even that joy is bittersweet and fleeting; all these people working so hard for something that is, after all, ephemeral. In that sense, perhaps it is appropriate that the revival of A Chorus Line had already closed by the time the film opened--nothing lasts forever.
Of course, we know that, don't we? A soon as the movie ended, I felt the overwhelming urge to share my enthusiasm for it with the one person in the world who would most appreciate it--Mom, of course. For one brief moment, I forgot that I can't do that anymore, and when the realization that such a conversation will never, ever be possible again passed over me, I hurried from the theater to the privacy of my car, where the tears began to fall.
Mom's life--like all of our lives, or like a dancer's movement or a first, awe-struck viewing of a profoundly moving work of art--was temporary, here and gone, never to return. Yet without her, I never would have seen Every Little Step, because I would have had no interest in the subject matter. But I do care, of course, because throughout my life, she introduced me to things she must have instinctively known I'd love. (She pointed me toward tomorrow, you might say.) Movie musicals, the novels of Ross MacDonald, the music of Roger Miller and Spike Jones, even the comic books she picked out for me when I was a kid were all perfect, were all ideally suited to me, the person I was, the person I'd become, the person I have yet to be.
A Chorus Line may have closed, but its original run is still legendary, and it is still revered by dancers and actors everywhere. Mom may be dead, but every time I reflect on her, when I remember everything she did for me, she is still somehow here. Nothing lasts forever, but maybe everything lasts long enough.
Yes, they do focus too much at times on one blandly pretty semi-professional dancer just starting to make her way with a lot of pluck and moxey, and its thumbnail description of A Chorus Line's genesis is a bit too well-scrubbed. (Director-choreographer-genius Michael Bennet is presented as a genial good guy, when pretty much all of his collaborators would describe him as an egotistical, credit-grabbing monster, though they'd undoubtedly agree about the genius part.) But mostly they just let the cameras roll as the grueling process of making a show grinds along, with a lot of pain and a lot of joy along the way.
The pain is there in the bodies of dancers who can't quite make their limbs do what they need to do, in the voices of singers who can't quite hit the notes. It's in the faces of the show's director, Bob Avian, and choreographer, Baayork Lee--two former Bennet who didn't come to hate his guts--as they relive some painful memories watching fresh-faced talent recreate moments from their own lives. And mostly it's in the reactions of actors who don't get the job, who feel as if they've been cut for entirely arbitrary reasons, as if their professional careers, their very lives, have been judged and found wanting.
The joy, of course, comes when the bodies and voices do exactly what they're supposed to do, when everything snaps into place with clockwork precision. (One of Every Little Step's highlights is when auditionee Jason Tam reduces the entire casting staff to tears with a recitation of a monologue they've all heard a thousand times. The film doesn't even bother trying to milk suspense over whether Tam would get the gig; it's just assumed we'll understand he had it then and there.) But even that joy is bittersweet and fleeting; all these people working so hard for something that is, after all, ephemeral. In that sense, perhaps it is appropriate that the revival of A Chorus Line had already closed by the time the film opened--nothing lasts forever.
Of course, we know that, don't we? A soon as the movie ended, I felt the overwhelming urge to share my enthusiasm for it with the one person in the world who would most appreciate it--Mom, of course. For one brief moment, I forgot that I can't do that anymore, and when the realization that such a conversation will never, ever be possible again passed over me, I hurried from the theater to the privacy of my car, where the tears began to fall.
Mom's life--like all of our lives, or like a dancer's movement or a first, awe-struck viewing of a profoundly moving work of art--was temporary, here and gone, never to return. Yet without her, I never would have seen Every Little Step, because I would have had no interest in the subject matter. But I do care, of course, because throughout my life, she introduced me to things she must have instinctively known I'd love. (She pointed me toward tomorrow, you might say.) Movie musicals, the novels of Ross MacDonald, the music of Roger Miller and Spike Jones, even the comic books she picked out for me when I was a kid were all perfect, were all ideally suited to me, the person I was, the person I'd become, the person I have yet to be.
A Chorus Line may have closed, but its original run is still legendary, and it is still revered by dancers and actors everywhere. Mom may be dead, but every time I reflect on her, when I remember everything she did for me, she is still somehow here. Nothing lasts forever, but maybe everything lasts long enough.
Friday, July 31, 2009
WAIT AND SEE, CRAP, DESPAIR AND UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME
One of the weird things about going to the movies these days is sitting through the trailers for upcoming releases. Sometimes they seem to be actively attempting to turn you away from the movies they're ostensibly promoting. In most cases, they're so formulaic you never want to go to the theater again. Often they're jaw-droppingly awful. And once in awhile, they actually make you think, "Holy crap, I can't wait."
Consider this.
I have very mixed feelings about this. As a huge fan of stop-motion animation, my initial thought is that I hate this--the characters move in a generic, uninteresting way, as if the animators were only interested in moving the models from Point A to Point B and didn't care about such niceties as characterization.
On the other hand, this movie is a unique case: the first animated film directed by Wes Anderson. The acting in his films is always particularly stylized, designed to be part of a larger aesthetic, coordinated with his very particular use of settings and camera set-ups. That seems to be what he's going for here, in a radically different context, and there's no way of knowing whether his experiment will be successful until we see the final film.
This trailer, however, is mostly awful. From the generic "Based on the book by the author of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" credit--Really? They think nobody will recognize Roald Dahl's name?--to the emphasis on the big name voice cast to the forced light-hearted tone, this is made to look like a standard issue Dreamworks animated picture, full of wacky action and zany characters. But it's a Wes Anderson picture, which means it will most likely be more melancholy than anything else. I understand why the studio may not want to promote it that way, but I can easily imagine lots of pissed-off kids and parents complaining about this movie when it opens, feeling that the movie advertised wasn't the movie they were given.
Two thoughts on this one. The first time I saw this in the theater, I was with Paul, who, when the title appeared, asked, "Are they actually saying all this is going to happen in 2012?" When I told him yes, that's the idea, he shook his head and said, "I don't think so." When a nine-year-old is mocking your very premise, you're in trouble.
But my other thought is, if you look at old school disaster movies, the two that work best--to the extent that they work at all--are The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. The reason for that is, they are about very specific situations: A cruise ship turned upside down, a skyscaper on fire. Everything that happens follows from that premise: How do we get out of this ship? How do we put out the fire? Another movie from that era that tried to ramp up the disaster formula to near-apocalyptic levels was Earthquake, and aside from terrible acting and a laughable script, its main problem was that there was so much going on, floods and fire and falling debris and runaway elevators and collapsing houses, that it became too much, and the sheer overkill became laughable.
Multiply that problem by a million and you have 2012, the movie that boldly assumes that, when the whole world is ending, we actually care what happens to John Cusack.
Oh, dear God. This, more than anything else, is the type of trailer I hate sitting through. It's utterly generic, reveals all the plot points, robs the movie of any and all surprises. And worse, it's for a movie that will clearly be utterly generic, have an easily-predicted plot and have no surprises to reveal. It's the type of competent, formulaic crap (and, of course, a remake) that seems to be the only thing Hollywood knows how to turn out anymore. There's not a hint of wit or originality to be found here, and enduring three or four similar previews in a row is enough to make anyone want to never go out to the movies again.
Ah, but then there's this.
Look, I could go on for days about Joel & Ethan Coen (Have I mentioned my theory that they're the cinematic equivalent to Steely Dan? Have I mentioned that's the highest praise I can muster?), but what's worth talking about here is the trailer itself: Whether it was put together by the Coens themselves or farmed out to some boutique, it's a thing of beauty. It has its own rhthym (literally--the thump thump thump against the wall), it shows plenty of footage from the movie itself and yet somehow reveals nothing of the plot, it is funny and disorienting and a little bit sad. And more than anything else, it makes me really, really want to see the movie.
Which is what a trailer should do, of course, but as we can see, almost never does.
Consider this.
I have very mixed feelings about this. As a huge fan of stop-motion animation, my initial thought is that I hate this--the characters move in a generic, uninteresting way, as if the animators were only interested in moving the models from Point A to Point B and didn't care about such niceties as characterization.
On the other hand, this movie is a unique case: the first animated film directed by Wes Anderson. The acting in his films is always particularly stylized, designed to be part of a larger aesthetic, coordinated with his very particular use of settings and camera set-ups. That seems to be what he's going for here, in a radically different context, and there's no way of knowing whether his experiment will be successful until we see the final film.
This trailer, however, is mostly awful. From the generic "Based on the book by the author of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory" credit--Really? They think nobody will recognize Roald Dahl's name?--to the emphasis on the big name voice cast to the forced light-hearted tone, this is made to look like a standard issue Dreamworks animated picture, full of wacky action and zany characters. But it's a Wes Anderson picture, which means it will most likely be more melancholy than anything else. I understand why the studio may not want to promote it that way, but I can easily imagine lots of pissed-off kids and parents complaining about this movie when it opens, feeling that the movie advertised wasn't the movie they were given.
Two thoughts on this one. The first time I saw this in the theater, I was with Paul, who, when the title appeared, asked, "Are they actually saying all this is going to happen in 2012?" When I told him yes, that's the idea, he shook his head and said, "I don't think so." When a nine-year-old is mocking your very premise, you're in trouble.
But my other thought is, if you look at old school disaster movies, the two that work best--to the extent that they work at all--are The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. The reason for that is, they are about very specific situations: A cruise ship turned upside down, a skyscaper on fire. Everything that happens follows from that premise: How do we get out of this ship? How do we put out the fire? Another movie from that era that tried to ramp up the disaster formula to near-apocalyptic levels was Earthquake, and aside from terrible acting and a laughable script, its main problem was that there was so much going on, floods and fire and falling debris and runaway elevators and collapsing houses, that it became too much, and the sheer overkill became laughable.
Multiply that problem by a million and you have 2012, the movie that boldly assumes that, when the whole world is ending, we actually care what happens to John Cusack.
Oh, dear God. This, more than anything else, is the type of trailer I hate sitting through. It's utterly generic, reveals all the plot points, robs the movie of any and all surprises. And worse, it's for a movie that will clearly be utterly generic, have an easily-predicted plot and have no surprises to reveal. It's the type of competent, formulaic crap (and, of course, a remake) that seems to be the only thing Hollywood knows how to turn out anymore. There's not a hint of wit or originality to be found here, and enduring three or four similar previews in a row is enough to make anyone want to never go out to the movies again.
Ah, but then there's this.
Look, I could go on for days about Joel & Ethan Coen (Have I mentioned my theory that they're the cinematic equivalent to Steely Dan? Have I mentioned that's the highest praise I can muster?), but what's worth talking about here is the trailer itself: Whether it was put together by the Coens themselves or farmed out to some boutique, it's a thing of beauty. It has its own rhthym (literally--the thump thump thump against the wall), it shows plenty of footage from the movie itself and yet somehow reveals nothing of the plot, it is funny and disorienting and a little bit sad. And more than anything else, it makes me really, really want to see the movie.
Which is what a trailer should do, of course, but as we can see, almost never does.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
RISIN' UP TO THE CHALLENGE OF OUR RIVAL, OR SOMETHING
A good weekend spent mostly hanging out with Paul, which I mention mostly for one reason: As we tooled down SE 14th (which, due its abundance of used car lots, fast food joints and quickie motels, is by far the most endearingly tawdry major thoroughfare in Des Moines, and thus an entirely appropriate setting for anything involving Sylvester Stallone), we suddenly and inexplicably started singing Eye Of The Tiger. Actually, Paul started it, but he didn't know any of the words beyond the first line of the chorus, so I chimed in with the one additional line I actually know, and we just winged it for the rest.
I asked him if he'd ever seen any Rocky movies and he said no, and I pretty much decided, Well, that's it. Sure, he's not my kid, but there's no way any boy should enter his teen years without having seen Rocky. Well, okay, Paul's not even ten yet, but that's not important right now: The point is, Rocky is common currency among guys. You can't have not seen it--that's like saying you hate America.
And of course, you can't just see the first one and be done with it. Even aside from the fact that Eye Of The Tiger doesn't even get played until the third entry in the series--that alone makes it essential viewing for those with a taste for cinematic red meat--you have to at least sit through Rocky IV because at some point in life, someone you know (another guy, obviously) will quote that stupid speech our hero makes after he clobbers that Russian guy, and it will be important to know what the hell he's talking about.
I would have just sat him down and forced him to watch my copy, except I don't own any of the Rocky movies. (I don't own any Stallone movies, which is kind of surprising, since I can easily imagine myself enjoying regular hyper-ironic viewings of Over The Top.) Owning them is kind of redundant, since they play endlessly on cable, and they're exactly the kind of movie that actually benefits from frequent commercial breaks. (They provide regular opportunities to grab more beer and scrounge up additional snacks. Also, they allow regular respite from the punishing stupidity of too much Stallone-authored dialogue.) But since the time I spend with Paul isn't actually coordinated according to basic cable movie schedules, I'll probably wind up renting or buying the stupid things. For a hardcore cineaste, that will be kind of like buying porn--I'll need to pick up copies of Two Or Three Things I Know About Her and Last Year At Marienbad and throw Rocky in the middle, hoping no one will notice.
And what if I go through all that trouble, and Paul fails to be properly swayed by the macho poetry of Sylvester Stallone? Or worse, what if he really likes it? Rocky is just a gateway drug; soon, the poor kid could be needing some Rambo.
I asked him if he'd ever seen any Rocky movies and he said no, and I pretty much decided, Well, that's it. Sure, he's not my kid, but there's no way any boy should enter his teen years without having seen Rocky. Well, okay, Paul's not even ten yet, but that's not important right now: The point is, Rocky is common currency among guys. You can't have not seen it--that's like saying you hate America.
And of course, you can't just see the first one and be done with it. Even aside from the fact that Eye Of The Tiger doesn't even get played until the third entry in the series--that alone makes it essential viewing for those with a taste for cinematic red meat--you have to at least sit through Rocky IV because at some point in life, someone you know (another guy, obviously) will quote that stupid speech our hero makes after he clobbers that Russian guy, and it will be important to know what the hell he's talking about.
I would have just sat him down and forced him to watch my copy, except I don't own any of the Rocky movies. (I don't own any Stallone movies, which is kind of surprising, since I can easily imagine myself enjoying regular hyper-ironic viewings of Over The Top.) Owning them is kind of redundant, since they play endlessly on cable, and they're exactly the kind of movie that actually benefits from frequent commercial breaks. (They provide regular opportunities to grab more beer and scrounge up additional snacks. Also, they allow regular respite from the punishing stupidity of too much Stallone-authored dialogue.) But since the time I spend with Paul isn't actually coordinated according to basic cable movie schedules, I'll probably wind up renting or buying the stupid things. For a hardcore cineaste, that will be kind of like buying porn--I'll need to pick up copies of Two Or Three Things I Know About Her and Last Year At Marienbad and throw Rocky in the middle, hoping no one will notice.
And what if I go through all that trouble, and Paul fails to be properly swayed by the macho poetry of Sylvester Stallone? Or worse, what if he really likes it? Rocky is just a gateway drug; soon, the poor kid could be needing some Rambo.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
WHY, I ASK YOU--WHY?
Remember about a week and a half ago, when I inexplicably decided to write about the mostly forgotten, hugely unloved 1983 film Krull? Sure you do, just as you'll recall only a few days ago, when I sadly revealed that my subconscious is so unspeakably dull I actually had a dream about turning on my computer.
So last night I woke up, rolled out of bed and, to my horror, realized an awful, awful truth: I JUST HAD A DREAM ABOUT WATCHING KRULL.
Specifically, I dreamed I watched Krull as I sat at my computer, noting what actions take place when because--apparently--I had some website devoted to the damned thing. Yeah, there's a good idea! If I wanted to get even fewer hits than this site already generates, I should start detailing Krull minutia. That way, I'd be guaranteed no readers at all.
Dammit, if I'm going to have dreams about watching movies I really don't care about, couldn't I at least be viewing American Beauty? That way I'd have topless Thora Birch to sidetrack my imagination, and it might turn into an entirely different kind of dream.
So last night I woke up, rolled out of bed and, to my horror, realized an awful, awful truth: I JUST HAD A DREAM ABOUT WATCHING KRULL.
Specifically, I dreamed I watched Krull as I sat at my computer, noting what actions take place when because--apparently--I had some website devoted to the damned thing. Yeah, there's a good idea! If I wanted to get even fewer hits than this site already generates, I should start detailing Krull minutia. That way, I'd be guaranteed no readers at all.
Dammit, if I'm going to have dreams about watching movies I really don't care about, couldn't I at least be viewing American Beauty? That way I'd have topless Thora Birch to sidetrack my imagination, and it might turn into an entirely different kind of dream.
Monday, July 20, 2009
A LONG, RAMBLING DISCOURSE THAT DOES NOTHING TO DISPROVE THE THEORY THAT I'M WAY TOO NEGATIVE, AND A SEPARATE QUEST TO SEE HOW LONG A TITLE CAN BE
For years, people have told their tales in hard time, stories of broken childhoods, of cold, unfeeling step parents, of crazy, dysfunctional families, and my reaction tended to be the same: Thank God my life wasn't like that. I came from a happy family, all rooted in solid Midwestern values, growing up together on a farm, no hint of discord, no sign of trouble.
Of course, my older brothers refused to talk to each other, and occasionally got into fistfights. The girls in the family overachieved as the boys proudly, perversely underachieved. Dad was emotionally distant, and my only solid memories are of him kicked back in his recliner, a dirty magazine in one hand, a can of Grain Belt in the other, utterly disconnected from whatever was going on in the foreground. At least Mom was always there, the center of things, so relentlessly cheerful, a tireless booster for all of her kids...yet somehow it wasn't surprising when she revealed, much later in life, that her role as child bearer combined with the terrible isolation of country life often resulted in thoughts of suicide.
Still, for me, an idyllic existence: All the toys and comic books I ever wanted, and the entire farm to call my playground. True, I was always tense and withdrawn in social situations, especially family get-togethers, and my hatred of school resulted in terrible grades, and by even my third year I was well on my way to being a total burn-out. And there were the headaches, and the overwhelming depression; by eighth grade I'd started seeing a therapist. Later, there'd be multiple suicide attempts, a decade spent in emotional oblivion and a resigned feeling that life was something to be endured, not celebrated.
But, um, Mom and Dad didn't get divorced, so, you know, everything was great!
Since my mother died, the remains of my family have largely scattered to the winds. I've lost touch with or am actively estranged from most of them, just as they have largely disconnected from each other. And the sad thing is, I don't care. I faintly recall making a rambling speech at Mom's funeral, the last time all of us--brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews--were all together, and I remember telling them all I felt the need to say I loved them. A nice sentiment, but was it true? Did I? Do I? Have I ever? How can you love people you barely know?
All this has been weighing heavily on me recently because...well, I'm not sure, actually. But I've noticed lately how most of my childhood memories are of places, not people, and of quiet moments spent by myself, maybe accompanied by the dog as we ran along the creek, maybe watching John Wayne slaughter Indians on TV though no one else paid attention, maybe taking solace in the cathedral quiet of the row of evergreens behind the machine shed. Where are the other people in all these recollections?
Even in more recent memories, the times and the places are recalled more vividly than the carbon-based life forms who presumably inhabited them. The exact layout of the apartment in Iowa City is vivid in my mind, even as the wife with whom I shared it fades into an abstraction, a vague blur of something non-specific that coulda been.
Maybe that's why I've been thinking of family lately, as one relationship after another goes down in flames, another shrug, another cause to wonder why bother. Is my inability to form a lasting bond with a woman, to love and be loved, is this related to the family that spawned me? The fact that I don't even know the phone number or current whereabouts of most of my family members--Is that a problem? What does it mean that I haven't even bothered trying to track them down, or they me?
A couple of years before Mom died, I asked her about a story I'd heard on the radio, about a study suggesting mental illness was a genetic trait. Yeah, she said, she'd always wondered about that. She was speaking of my problems, and her own, and all of ours. Sometimes, she said, she saw us as a doomed family out of a Hawthorne novel, forever destined to skulk down endless dark hallways, cursing the wider world we'd never know, a world untouched by madness. (Granted, she phrased it in a slightly less overwrought manner, but she did invoke Hawthorne, so the purple prose is justified.)
But she also said, What's normal? Anxiety, despair, sorrow--who doesn't feel these things? And the depression she suffered when she was younger, which may have had unspoken and untold effects on her children, lifted as she got older. It didn't go away, it just...lessened. Eventually, she realized the daily rituals which had seemed so tedious, so soul-draining, had instead become comforting, and she experienced something she hadn't known before: contentment.
I try to hang onto that conversation, and I try to remember it whenever things get rough. But still there are questions: What were the rituals she found so comforting? Did they involve people, or things? In other words, did she take comfort from her children, or the things she did for them, like preparing meals and sewing clothes?
Because if it was the latter, it suggests that I'm bound to her in deeper ways than I imagined, that she preferred solitude to company. But that wasn't Mom at all: She was nothing if not gregarious, willing to talk (or listen) to anybody for hours at a time. And I'm...not like that. Or maybe I am, but it doesn't get me very far: I don't talk, I babble. And while that can be amusing in small doses, it ultimately becomes wearying, which explains why women who proclaim their love for me ultimately move on.
Ah yes, women. Even the ones I barely know, who are only there to fulfill basic biological needs, tend to have the same complaint as the long-termers: I'm too touchy-feely. That is, I want to hold them, even after the obvious physical acts have been completed, even when all they want to do is sleep. And it's no doubt true: I want to take them in my arms, embrace them and never let go, feel something, anything, a connection I will otherwise never know.
Of course, my older brothers refused to talk to each other, and occasionally got into fistfights. The girls in the family overachieved as the boys proudly, perversely underachieved. Dad was emotionally distant, and my only solid memories are of him kicked back in his recliner, a dirty magazine in one hand, a can of Grain Belt in the other, utterly disconnected from whatever was going on in the foreground. At least Mom was always there, the center of things, so relentlessly cheerful, a tireless booster for all of her kids...yet somehow it wasn't surprising when she revealed, much later in life, that her role as child bearer combined with the terrible isolation of country life often resulted in thoughts of suicide.
Still, for me, an idyllic existence: All the toys and comic books I ever wanted, and the entire farm to call my playground. True, I was always tense and withdrawn in social situations, especially family get-togethers, and my hatred of school resulted in terrible grades, and by even my third year I was well on my way to being a total burn-out. And there were the headaches, and the overwhelming depression; by eighth grade I'd started seeing a therapist. Later, there'd be multiple suicide attempts, a decade spent in emotional oblivion and a resigned feeling that life was something to be endured, not celebrated.
But, um, Mom and Dad didn't get divorced, so, you know, everything was great!
Since my mother died, the remains of my family have largely scattered to the winds. I've lost touch with or am actively estranged from most of them, just as they have largely disconnected from each other. And the sad thing is, I don't care. I faintly recall making a rambling speech at Mom's funeral, the last time all of us--brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews--were all together, and I remember telling them all I felt the need to say I loved them. A nice sentiment, but was it true? Did I? Do I? Have I ever? How can you love people you barely know?
All this has been weighing heavily on me recently because...well, I'm not sure, actually. But I've noticed lately how most of my childhood memories are of places, not people, and of quiet moments spent by myself, maybe accompanied by the dog as we ran along the creek, maybe watching John Wayne slaughter Indians on TV though no one else paid attention, maybe taking solace in the cathedral quiet of the row of evergreens behind the machine shed. Where are the other people in all these recollections?
Even in more recent memories, the times and the places are recalled more vividly than the carbon-based life forms who presumably inhabited them. The exact layout of the apartment in Iowa City is vivid in my mind, even as the wife with whom I shared it fades into an abstraction, a vague blur of something non-specific that coulda been.
Maybe that's why I've been thinking of family lately, as one relationship after another goes down in flames, another shrug, another cause to wonder why bother. Is my inability to form a lasting bond with a woman, to love and be loved, is this related to the family that spawned me? The fact that I don't even know the phone number or current whereabouts of most of my family members--Is that a problem? What does it mean that I haven't even bothered trying to track them down, or they me?
A couple of years before Mom died, I asked her about a story I'd heard on the radio, about a study suggesting mental illness was a genetic trait. Yeah, she said, she'd always wondered about that. She was speaking of my problems, and her own, and all of ours. Sometimes, she said, she saw us as a doomed family out of a Hawthorne novel, forever destined to skulk down endless dark hallways, cursing the wider world we'd never know, a world untouched by madness. (Granted, she phrased it in a slightly less overwrought manner, but she did invoke Hawthorne, so the purple prose is justified.)
But she also said, What's normal? Anxiety, despair, sorrow--who doesn't feel these things? And the depression she suffered when she was younger, which may have had unspoken and untold effects on her children, lifted as she got older. It didn't go away, it just...lessened. Eventually, she realized the daily rituals which had seemed so tedious, so soul-draining, had instead become comforting, and she experienced something she hadn't known before: contentment.
I try to hang onto that conversation, and I try to remember it whenever things get rough. But still there are questions: What were the rituals she found so comforting? Did they involve people, or things? In other words, did she take comfort from her children, or the things she did for them, like preparing meals and sewing clothes?
Because if it was the latter, it suggests that I'm bound to her in deeper ways than I imagined, that she preferred solitude to company. But that wasn't Mom at all: She was nothing if not gregarious, willing to talk (or listen) to anybody for hours at a time. And I'm...not like that. Or maybe I am, but it doesn't get me very far: I don't talk, I babble. And while that can be amusing in small doses, it ultimately becomes wearying, which explains why women who proclaim their love for me ultimately move on.
Ah yes, women. Even the ones I barely know, who are only there to fulfill basic biological needs, tend to have the same complaint as the long-termers: I'm too touchy-feely. That is, I want to hold them, even after the obvious physical acts have been completed, even when all they want to do is sleep. And it's no doubt true: I want to take them in my arms, embrace them and never let go, feel something, anything, a connection I will otherwise never know.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
JUST BEFORE THE DAWN
3 AM or some such, stumbling out of bed, shuffling to the desk, hitting the button to turn on the computer. For a second I stand, watching the Compaq logo appear, signifying the start of the lengthy booting-up process. As I think how much I hate the phrase "booting-up," I hobble back to the warm, inviting bed.
And sleep. And wake, abruptly, blinking. The computer is dark, not even its comforting green power light shining with the promise of hours of time-killing hope. I look at my clock, my answering machine, all the potential signifiers of a power outage. They're working fine. Again, stumbling out of bed, shuffling to the desk, hitting the button. The light comes on. The screen illuminates. And suddenly I realize I had not powered up the computer earlier. I only dreamed I had.
In their dreams, many explore unreachable erotic idylls, or imagine unlimited wealth and power. Some confront truths too terrible to parse in the real world, or explore the farthest reaches of their consciousness. Some know joy they'll never never know in the waking hours, and some happily encounter friends and family long gone.
Me, I dream about hitting the ON button of my computer. Crap. Man, I gotta get a life...
And sleep. And wake, abruptly, blinking. The computer is dark, not even its comforting green power light shining with the promise of hours of time-killing hope. I look at my clock, my answering machine, all the potential signifiers of a power outage. They're working fine. Again, stumbling out of bed, shuffling to the desk, hitting the button. The light comes on. The screen illuminates. And suddenly I realize I had not powered up the computer earlier. I only dreamed I had.
In their dreams, many explore unreachable erotic idylls, or imagine unlimited wealth and power. Some confront truths too terrible to parse in the real world, or explore the farthest reaches of their consciousness. Some know joy they'll never never know in the waking hours, and some happily encounter friends and family long gone.
Me, I dream about hitting the ON button of my computer. Crap. Man, I gotta get a life...
Friday, July 17, 2009
MY BRAIN HURTS!
Here's the deal: I was killing time in a Barnes & Noble yesterday when I happened to glance at the New Releases display, and there it was--At Last, a new album from Lynda Carter!
So, just to clarify, a well-known national chain store prominently displayed this as an item people might actually want to buy. Unlike, say, David Hasselhoff albums, which we all know exist but have never actually seen, this was there for the world to, uh, enjoy. And though I was tempted to take the damned thing over to a listening station so I could luxuriate in the sweet sounds of a large-breasted TV has-been desecrating the Harold Arlen songbook (there are covers of Come Rain And Come Shine and Blues In The Night), common sense overcame me. After all, I was in public.
But we're all alone here, aren't we? Thankfully, I couldn't find any Lynda-does-Arlen clips, but possibly worse, here she is having her way with Stephen Stills. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
So, just to clarify, a well-known national chain store prominently displayed this as an item people might actually want to buy. Unlike, say, David Hasselhoff albums, which we all know exist but have never actually seen, this was there for the world to, uh, enjoy. And though I was tempted to take the damned thing over to a listening station so I could luxuriate in the sweet sounds of a large-breasted TV has-been desecrating the Harold Arlen songbook (there are covers of Come Rain And Come Shine and Blues In The Night), common sense overcame me. After all, I was in public.
But we're all alone here, aren't we? Thankfully, I couldn't find any Lynda-does-Arlen clips, but possibly worse, here she is having her way with Stephen Stills. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
A GALAXY NOT AT ALL FAR AWAY
Honestly, I have no particular intention of turning this site into a series of grumblings about movies recently viewed on cable, but while sitting through the fiercely bland 1983 fantasy epic Krull, I had...well, not an epiphany, but a blinding flash of...something. Let me try to explain.
The early eighties will be remembered by many filmgoers as the time of The Great Sword & Sorcery Scare, when studios as one felt the inexplicable need to cram stories of Mighty Warriors, Fair Maidens, Lusty Peasants and Strange Creatures down our throats. It was the time of Conan The Barbarian, Dragonslayer, Beastmaster and...well, okay, those are the only titles I could come up with off the top of my head. But there were more, trust me. Sword & Sorcery epics were as common then as comic book-derived movies are now. It was impossible to go to the multiplex without walking past several bad Frazetta knockoff posters for some upcoming extravaganza showcasing a pec-flexing hero and barely-clad heroine. (Oooh, I just thought of a couple more: The hilarious Lou Ferigno vehicle Hercules and the unimaginitively titled The Sword And The Sorcerer.)
Since this it the type of thing that was being made, people were going to be hired to make them, whether they had any affinity for the genre or not. Which brings us to Krull, a movie as uninteresting as its title, and, like many of its ilk, a pretty transparent Star Wars imitation. (The opening credits even feature an enormous spaceship gliding majestically past the camera, a de rigeur shot at the time.) The by-the-numbers script is credited to Stanford Sherman, who has done nothing else of consequence. But the director was Peter Yates.
Although uneven, Yates has a filmography that included Bullitt, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle and Breaking Away. A sure hand with actors and a guy who knew how to stage a solid action scene, Yates' greatest strength has always been his ability to let each project find its own personality, to let the substance dictate the style. But what could he do with a script that has no substance whatsoever, that barely seems to have been written at all? Krull can't even be bothered to find a variation on its premise: A beautiful princess has been kidnapped by sinister nonhumans, and its up to our white, white hero (the non-legendary Ken Marshall, sporting a can't-commit-to-it beard) to gather a plucky band of followers to rescue her and...You could pretty much write the rest yourself, though likely you'd come up with something more interesting than what the filmmakers did.
The only thing interesting about Krull is the disconnect between the talent involved and the movie that was made. The cast includes Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane, Francesca Annis and one of my personal favorites, Freddie Jones. They hired the great Peter Suschitsky to photograph, John Huston mainstay Stephen Grimes to design the quasi-surrealist settings and Ray Lovejoy editor of 2001--2001, for God's sake!--to cut the thing together. Yates, apparently finding nothing to interest him in the script, finds time to reference everything from Cocteau to The Thief Of Bagdad to, incredibly enough, Mario Bava's Planet Of The Vampires. The whole thing is never less than professional, but never remotely interesting.
And the non-epiphany but nonetheless interesting thought that struck me as this thing ground on and on? Krull would be the future of movies: Lots of smart people lavishing huge amounts of time and care on projects they really didn't care about. Even those other sword & sorcery pictures I named earlier had something to recommend them, some slight twist in the formula. Not Krull; it delivers the most basic level of entertainment possible. Its talented director could leave not a single fingerprint to mark its individuality. The floodgates of mediocrity had opened: To survive, the great directors of the sixties and seventies would have to crank out absolute junk: Brian DePalma would jumpstart a franchise for Tom Cruise, Francis Coppola would direct Robin Williams in full-out man-child mode, Walter Hill and Joe Dante would do some of their best work for television.
Like almost every major studio movie cranked out these days, Krull isn't bad, not extravagantly, punishingly bad, not Xanadu bad. It just sits there, something to watch as you eat your popcorn, something to forget as soon as it ends, of no interest whatsoever, except for the little piece of your soul it steals as you watch.
The early eighties will be remembered by many filmgoers as the time of The Great Sword & Sorcery Scare, when studios as one felt the inexplicable need to cram stories of Mighty Warriors, Fair Maidens, Lusty Peasants and Strange Creatures down our throats. It was the time of Conan The Barbarian, Dragonslayer, Beastmaster and...well, okay, those are the only titles I could come up with off the top of my head. But there were more, trust me. Sword & Sorcery epics were as common then as comic book-derived movies are now. It was impossible to go to the multiplex without walking past several bad Frazetta knockoff posters for some upcoming extravaganza showcasing a pec-flexing hero and barely-clad heroine. (Oooh, I just thought of a couple more: The hilarious Lou Ferigno vehicle Hercules and the unimaginitively titled The Sword And The Sorcerer.)
Since this it the type of thing that was being made, people were going to be hired to make them, whether they had any affinity for the genre or not. Which brings us to Krull, a movie as uninteresting as its title, and, like many of its ilk, a pretty transparent Star Wars imitation. (The opening credits even feature an enormous spaceship gliding majestically past the camera, a de rigeur shot at the time.) The by-the-numbers script is credited to Stanford Sherman, who has done nothing else of consequence. But the director was Peter Yates.
Although uneven, Yates has a filmography that included Bullitt, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle and Breaking Away. A sure hand with actors and a guy who knew how to stage a solid action scene, Yates' greatest strength has always been his ability to let each project find its own personality, to let the substance dictate the style. But what could he do with a script that has no substance whatsoever, that barely seems to have been written at all? Krull can't even be bothered to find a variation on its premise: A beautiful princess has been kidnapped by sinister nonhumans, and its up to our white, white hero (the non-legendary Ken Marshall, sporting a can't-commit-to-it beard) to gather a plucky band of followers to rescue her and...You could pretty much write the rest yourself, though likely you'd come up with something more interesting than what the filmmakers did.
The only thing interesting about Krull is the disconnect between the talent involved and the movie that was made. The cast includes Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane, Francesca Annis and one of my personal favorites, Freddie Jones. They hired the great Peter Suschitsky to photograph, John Huston mainstay Stephen Grimes to design the quasi-surrealist settings and Ray Lovejoy editor of 2001--2001, for God's sake!--to cut the thing together. Yates, apparently finding nothing to interest him in the script, finds time to reference everything from Cocteau to The Thief Of Bagdad to, incredibly enough, Mario Bava's Planet Of The Vampires. The whole thing is never less than professional, but never remotely interesting.
And the non-epiphany but nonetheless interesting thought that struck me as this thing ground on and on? Krull would be the future of movies: Lots of smart people lavishing huge amounts of time and care on projects they really didn't care about. Even those other sword & sorcery pictures I named earlier had something to recommend them, some slight twist in the formula. Not Krull; it delivers the most basic level of entertainment possible. Its talented director could leave not a single fingerprint to mark its individuality. The floodgates of mediocrity had opened: To survive, the great directors of the sixties and seventies would have to crank out absolute junk: Brian DePalma would jumpstart a franchise for Tom Cruise, Francis Coppola would direct Robin Williams in full-out man-child mode, Walter Hill and Joe Dante would do some of their best work for television.
Like almost every major studio movie cranked out these days, Krull isn't bad, not extravagantly, punishingly bad, not Xanadu bad. It just sits there, something to watch as you eat your popcorn, something to forget as soon as it ends, of no interest whatsoever, except for the little piece of your soul it steals as you watch.
Friday, July 10, 2009
NON-THRILLING DAYS OF YESTERYEAR
With an unexpected day off yesterday, I divided my time between sitting slack-jawed in front of the computer and sitting slack-jawed in front of the TV. Two hours of that TV time was spent reacquainting myself with the 1976 comedy-thriller Silver Streak.
This movie seemed enormously entertaining back when I was eleven, and I remember enjoying it a couple times since, but I hadn't seen it in years. It doesn't have much of a reputation, except as the initial pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and it was made by a team of familiar hacks, including director Arthur Hiller (the auteur of Love Story) and writer Colin Higgins (of Foul Play and Nine To Five infamy). Nonetheless, I thought it would be a pleasant time-killer, and I thought it might be further proof that even the most routine pictures from the seventies had a basic quality of craftsmanship, a respect for the audience, that you simply don't see today.
Boy, was I wrong. Absolutely nothing about Silver Streak works. Its racial attitudes seem to come from the pre-civil rights era (Pryor character is a petty thief, and every other black actor with a speaking part plays a porter, waiter or shoe-shine guy!), its sexual politics are wince-inducing, its comedy is rooted in stereotypes (Clifton James plays a variation of the dumb redneck cop he so unamusingly portrayed in Live And Let Die) and the suspense sequences are so maladroit all you can do is sit there and marvel at the sheer incompetence.
About the only fun to be had is counting all the seventies signifiers, from a briefly glimpsed Alka-Seltzer "Plop, plop, fizz fizz" ad to Wilder's flared pants and ankle boots, which are treated to an almost fetishistic series of close-ups. There's also some fun to be had for fans of seventies James Bond pictures, since in addition to James, we also get a pre-Jaws Richard Kiel as another lurching henchman with weird dental work...but when a movie has nothing to recommend it other than how it reminds you of other, marginally better movies, something is very wrong.
Yet Silver Streak remains a typical movie of its era. Critics like to view seventies cinema as some sort of lost Golden Age, when the likes of Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese were free to follow their muses wherever they would go. In fact, most films of that time were Big Dumb Entertainments like Silver Streak--or like so many movies now. The only difference is, however mind-numbingly silly something like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen may be, it at least trusts its audience to follow along. With Silver Streak, a good fifteen minutes could be shaved off its protracted running time if you cut out all the endless re-stating of expository dialogue. (Wilder has to explain the premise of why he's taking a train instead of flying at least half a dozen times!) How stupid did they think viewers were? Did they think anyone cared about the plot in the first place?
Unfortunately, since there seems to be some newly-enacted law decreeing that every single movie from the seventies needs to be remade, we'll no doubt someday get a new version of Silver Streak that will combine the lazy plotting and stereotyped characters of the original with the quick-cut shaky-cam aesthetic of modern action cinema. I'd jokingly suggest it as a vehicle for Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, but I have a feeling that could actually happen, and I don't want to give anyone ideas...
This movie seemed enormously entertaining back when I was eleven, and I remember enjoying it a couple times since, but I hadn't seen it in years. It doesn't have much of a reputation, except as the initial pairing of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and it was made by a team of familiar hacks, including director Arthur Hiller (the auteur of Love Story) and writer Colin Higgins (of Foul Play and Nine To Five infamy). Nonetheless, I thought it would be a pleasant time-killer, and I thought it might be further proof that even the most routine pictures from the seventies had a basic quality of craftsmanship, a respect for the audience, that you simply don't see today.
Boy, was I wrong. Absolutely nothing about Silver Streak works. Its racial attitudes seem to come from the pre-civil rights era (Pryor character is a petty thief, and every other black actor with a speaking part plays a porter, waiter or shoe-shine guy!), its sexual politics are wince-inducing, its comedy is rooted in stereotypes (Clifton James plays a variation of the dumb redneck cop he so unamusingly portrayed in Live And Let Die) and the suspense sequences are so maladroit all you can do is sit there and marvel at the sheer incompetence.
About the only fun to be had is counting all the seventies signifiers, from a briefly glimpsed Alka-Seltzer "Plop, plop, fizz fizz" ad to Wilder's flared pants and ankle boots, which are treated to an almost fetishistic series of close-ups. There's also some fun to be had for fans of seventies James Bond pictures, since in addition to James, we also get a pre-Jaws Richard Kiel as another lurching henchman with weird dental work...but when a movie has nothing to recommend it other than how it reminds you of other, marginally better movies, something is very wrong.
Yet Silver Streak remains a typical movie of its era. Critics like to view seventies cinema as some sort of lost Golden Age, when the likes of Robert Altman and Martin Scorsese were free to follow their muses wherever they would go. In fact, most films of that time were Big Dumb Entertainments like Silver Streak--or like so many movies now. The only difference is, however mind-numbingly silly something like Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen may be, it at least trusts its audience to follow along. With Silver Streak, a good fifteen minutes could be shaved off its protracted running time if you cut out all the endless re-stating of expository dialogue. (Wilder has to explain the premise of why he's taking a train instead of flying at least half a dozen times!) How stupid did they think viewers were? Did they think anyone cared about the plot in the first place?
Unfortunately, since there seems to be some newly-enacted law decreeing that every single movie from the seventies needs to be remade, we'll no doubt someday get a new version of Silver Streak that will combine the lazy plotting and stereotyped characters of the original with the quick-cut shaky-cam aesthetic of modern action cinema. I'd jokingly suggest it as a vehicle for Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, but I have a feeling that could actually happen, and I don't want to give anyone ideas...
Thursday, July 09, 2009
DAYS LIKE THESE
Apologies to all regular readers (I'd do the "both of you" gag, but even I'm getting sick of it) for the lack of activity around here. It's just...I feel like I have nothing to say, and no particular desire to express whatever it is I'm not feeling. My financial situation gets worse by the day, the future of my job seems somewhat in flux, my sleep patterns are all out of whack and I have no desire to do much of anything, really. Another bout with depression, in other words.
So why foist my misery on you? Well, I haven't been, and have no plans to do so. Sure, this site is all about mining my personal life for the amusement and possible edification of others, but there's just nothing going on here. I come home from work tired and filled with a vague despair, sit glassy-eyed in front of the computer for a few hours (even watching movies or listening to music seems like too much work), then go to bed, where I'll sleep for maybe an hour or two, then toss and turn for the rest of the night, dozing for a few minutes, then waking violently just as I begin to dream. The next day, the same pattern is repeated, and the next, and the next...
Maybe I'll be here occasionally with the random observation about...I dunno, whatever. If I'm not, it's all good, I'm probably half-heartedly reading comments on some animation site, comments about a movie I can't even force myself to watch because it's just too much work. Not much of a life, but for right now, it's all I've got.
So why foist my misery on you? Well, I haven't been, and have no plans to do so. Sure, this site is all about mining my personal life for the amusement and possible edification of others, but there's just nothing going on here. I come home from work tired and filled with a vague despair, sit glassy-eyed in front of the computer for a few hours (even watching movies or listening to music seems like too much work), then go to bed, where I'll sleep for maybe an hour or two, then toss and turn for the rest of the night, dozing for a few minutes, then waking violently just as I begin to dream. The next day, the same pattern is repeated, and the next, and the next...
Maybe I'll be here occasionally with the random observation about...I dunno, whatever. If I'm not, it's all good, I'm probably half-heartedly reading comments on some animation site, comments about a movie I can't even force myself to watch because it's just too much work. Not much of a life, but for right now, it's all I've got.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN
I know when I came back to this space I vowed to reduce the number of clip jobs, but the thing is, it's the Fourth Of July, so as an American and a writer, I felt a weird obligation to make some kind of statement about national identity, or patriotism, or some damned thing.
Originally I was going to write about Westerns as a great and wholly American art form, and when I realized that was too wide-ranging for a relatively limited space, I thought I'd narrow it down to Sam Peckinpah's Westerns as an expression of a Great American Artist, and then I realized since I'd likely make some mention of The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, I'd be obligated to mention Stella Stevens' nude scene, which I decided I needed to watch again, which got me, um, distracted.
Which wasted too much time, so instead I decided to do a grab bag clip job of some of the music that makes America great. I found a killer version of Where Or When by Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee, and figured I'd toss in some Roger Miller, Art Blakey, Beastie Boys, Marshall Crenshaw and, what the hell, even some Weird Al.
But mostly I wanted to include something by Harold Arlen, because he's surely one of the greatest songwriters this country has ever produced, but which song to showcase? Come Rain Or Come Shine? It's Only A Paper Moon? Blues In The Night? A Sleepin' Bee? The Man That Got Away? Seriously, I couldn't decide--the guy just wrote too many great songs.
Then I realized time was getting tight, and it's time to head off to work. So here's something that really makes me proud to be American--Jerry Lewis! And sadly, this is pretty much what it looks like when I dance.
Originally I was going to write about Westerns as a great and wholly American art form, and when I realized that was too wide-ranging for a relatively limited space, I thought I'd narrow it down to Sam Peckinpah's Westerns as an expression of a Great American Artist, and then I realized since I'd likely make some mention of The Ballad Of Cable Hogue, I'd be obligated to mention Stella Stevens' nude scene, which I decided I needed to watch again, which got me, um, distracted.
Which wasted too much time, so instead I decided to do a grab bag clip job of some of the music that makes America great. I found a killer version of Where Or When by Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee, and figured I'd toss in some Roger Miller, Art Blakey, Beastie Boys, Marshall Crenshaw and, what the hell, even some Weird Al.
But mostly I wanted to include something by Harold Arlen, because he's surely one of the greatest songwriters this country has ever produced, but which song to showcase? Come Rain Or Come Shine? It's Only A Paper Moon? Blues In The Night? A Sleepin' Bee? The Man That Got Away? Seriously, I couldn't decide--the guy just wrote too many great songs.
Then I realized time was getting tight, and it's time to head off to work. So here's something that really makes me proud to be American--Jerry Lewis! And sadly, this is pretty much what it looks like when I dance.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
GUESS THAT'S JUST THE WAY THE STORY GOES
It's good right now, the back door of her apartment open onto the fire escape, affording a view of the neighborhood, of people out and about on this perfect summer evening, the long shadows and the azure sky, the smell of backyard barbecues wafting all the way up here into her kitchen. And she looks so good, her robe undone, her black skin still glistening from the bath, her smile so fucking inviting. When she pauses to rub her chest against mine, I indicate the open door. "Let 'em watch," she laughs.
A perfect moment, then, but as always, the spell fades quickly enough. She's playing that damned Mariah Carey CD again, and she starts to sing along to Without You. Her voice is loud and off-key--the sound of a drunk--and she turns around and reaches into the refrigerator for the second can of Natural Ice she's had since I've been here.
I sigh. "It's really not a good idea to drink when you're on antidepressants."
"I like to drink." She shrugs. "I think it relaxes me. I'm a happy drunk. Aren't I? And I'm more fun when I drink. Right?" She reaches down the front of my boxers.
I pull the robe from her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor, and we press together. "You know the door's still open, right?" I ask.
"Maybe we should go to the bedroom."
We've been seeing each other for...what? Two moths? Three? The rules should be clear here, since she's just a rebound, an in-betweener, the first woman I've been with since my marriage dissolved. Whatever we have, it's essentially meaningless. Right? Though we've spent so many nights together, shared intimacies in so many different ways, we remain strangers in each other's lives, connected only for the moment.
Still, she feels so good in my arms, and it's so comforting to wake up beside somebody, it's tempting to just give in, to ignore all the warning signs: the drinking, the mood elevators, the irrational behavior. Just the fact that I'm here, relaxed and safe in her presence, seems as though it must mean something. When she speaks of her feelings for me, of the future we could have together, I'm tempted, I want to believe that somehow the stability that has so far eluded me is somehow attainable, and she is somehow the key.
Then my foot kicks over an empty can of Natural Ice while we're in the middle of our vigorous if somewhat desultory lovemaking, and I realize once again this is not the person I'm meant to be with. Still, there are rules, and I try to play along. She gazes deeply into my eyes and murmurs, "You're so good for me, Edward. You know I love you, don't you?"
And I say, "I love you, too," and wonder if she knows I'm lying.
A perfect moment, then, but as always, the spell fades quickly enough. She's playing that damned Mariah Carey CD again, and she starts to sing along to Without You. Her voice is loud and off-key--the sound of a drunk--and she turns around and reaches into the refrigerator for the second can of Natural Ice she's had since I've been here.
I sigh. "It's really not a good idea to drink when you're on antidepressants."
"I like to drink." She shrugs. "I think it relaxes me. I'm a happy drunk. Aren't I? And I'm more fun when I drink. Right?" She reaches down the front of my boxers.
I pull the robe from her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor, and we press together. "You know the door's still open, right?" I ask.
"Maybe we should go to the bedroom."
We've been seeing each other for...what? Two moths? Three? The rules should be clear here, since she's just a rebound, an in-betweener, the first woman I've been with since my marriage dissolved. Whatever we have, it's essentially meaningless. Right? Though we've spent so many nights together, shared intimacies in so many different ways, we remain strangers in each other's lives, connected only for the moment.
Still, she feels so good in my arms, and it's so comforting to wake up beside somebody, it's tempting to just give in, to ignore all the warning signs: the drinking, the mood elevators, the irrational behavior. Just the fact that I'm here, relaxed and safe in her presence, seems as though it must mean something. When she speaks of her feelings for me, of the future we could have together, I'm tempted, I want to believe that somehow the stability that has so far eluded me is somehow attainable, and she is somehow the key.
Then my foot kicks over an empty can of Natural Ice while we're in the middle of our vigorous if somewhat desultory lovemaking, and I realize once again this is not the person I'm meant to be with. Still, there are rules, and I try to play along. She gazes deeply into my eyes and murmurs, "You're so good for me, Edward. You know I love you, don't you?"
And I say, "I love you, too," and wonder if she knows I'm lying.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
THE WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL
I haven't offered up any thoughts about the deaths of Farrah Fawcett or Michael Jackson because...well, what's left to say, really? So many words have been written about their work and the choices they made in life, I can only wonder this: Did they ever regret allowing their very existences to be nothing more than one big photo op? Fawcett, who tried so desperately to maintain her celebrity even when her time had passed (nothing smacks of desperation more than a Playboy spread), and Jackson, claiming he sought anonymity even as he wandered around in public in a series of goofy outfits and masks from the Eyes Wide Shut collection, must at some point have looked around and wondered what the hell they were doing.
Or maybe not. In any event, they were for a time the biggest things in the world. Jackson lived his whole life as a superstar, thanks initially to his awesome talent and eventually, mostly, for his flair for showmanship. And yet he let that showmanship, those carefully-cultivated eccentricities, define him. Fawcett became a phenon mostly because she had big hair, sparkly teeth and perky tits, which, back in the seventies, was enough. She wasn't famous, her image was, her poster briefly as iconic as any image of Marilyn Monroe or James Dean. We know all too well how these people lived and died, but we'll never know who they really were, if they even knew themselves.
Or maybe not. In any event, they were for a time the biggest things in the world. Jackson lived his whole life as a superstar, thanks initially to his awesome talent and eventually, mostly, for his flair for showmanship. And yet he let that showmanship, those carefully-cultivated eccentricities, define him. Fawcett became a phenon mostly because she had big hair, sparkly teeth and perky tits, which, back in the seventies, was enough. She wasn't famous, her image was, her poster briefly as iconic as any image of Marilyn Monroe or James Dean. We know all too well how these people lived and died, but we'll never know who they really were, if they even knew themselves.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
SAD IN A NON-IRONIC WAY
Given his deteriorating health, the death at age 86 of Ed McMahon, TV's most beloved second banana, isn't exactly a surprise. And we've seen the end coming, too, for the form of showbiz he represented: Pure entertainment, free of irony, aimed at the largest audience possible.
That second death has been on the way since 1982, when Late Night With David Letterman went on the air. It immediately followed Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, the very program on which McMahon had labored for so long, and was in fact co-produced by Carson. But Letterman's program, while seeming to function as a standard TV talk show, dripped with sarcasm and irony, its very existence seemingly bracketed by air quotes. It was absolutely brilliant, but it made no pretense of being aimed at a large audience. It specifically targeted the hipsters of Gen X, and it largely invented the new rules of the game. The roots of virtually all great modern comedy, from The Simpsons to Mr. Show to Mystery Science Theater 3000, can be traced to Letterman's efforts.
Many of us, in those pre-internet days, felt a rush knowing there was someone out there who viewed the world through the same skewed prism as us. And by "the world" I specifically mean "showbiz": Letterman may have been on network TV, but he reveled in its very cheesiness, mocking the very notions of celebrity that a show like Carson's worked so hard to enshrine. Carson made sure guests on his show came off well; Letterman frequently laughed at them.
And where did the dawning Age Of Irony leave poor Ed McMahon? He still had his Tonight Show gig, of course, but in the era of cable and VCRs, the audience shrank alarmingly. He tried to roll with the punches, and allowed his name to be used in the very title of Ed McMahon's Star Search. Though the show was part of a long TV tradition from Talent Scouts to American Idol, it was, if not post-modern, then at least post-Letterman: It tended to be a little too aware of its own silliness. (I mean: Spokesmodels?)
Was McMahon in on the gag? To some degree, sure; as a former carny barker, he knew full well that all entertainment was a form of selling lies. But what did he think of Phil Hartman's hilarious but mercilessly cruel parody of him on Saturday Night Live, which seemed to imply that McMahon's very existence was a joke. He'd flown combat missions in Korea, for God's sake. He'd boned more women than Sinatra. Who did these young bastards think they were?
In between Star Search tapings, McMahon teamed up with Dick Clark for those endless blooper and practical joke shows, and even post-Carson, still had a regular second-banana position as Jerry Lewis' foil every year on the telethon. He clung to his peculiar form of celebrity into the new century, still faking sincerity, still trying not to let the seams show, still hoping Alpo and Budweiser would call up with endorsement deals, and it would be 1975 all over again and all would be right with the world.
That second death has been on the way since 1982, when Late Night With David Letterman went on the air. It immediately followed Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, the very program on which McMahon had labored for so long, and was in fact co-produced by Carson. But Letterman's program, while seeming to function as a standard TV talk show, dripped with sarcasm and irony, its very existence seemingly bracketed by air quotes. It was absolutely brilliant, but it made no pretense of being aimed at a large audience. It specifically targeted the hipsters of Gen X, and it largely invented the new rules of the game. The roots of virtually all great modern comedy, from The Simpsons to Mr. Show to Mystery Science Theater 3000, can be traced to Letterman's efforts.
Many of us, in those pre-internet days, felt a rush knowing there was someone out there who viewed the world through the same skewed prism as us. And by "the world" I specifically mean "showbiz": Letterman may have been on network TV, but he reveled in its very cheesiness, mocking the very notions of celebrity that a show like Carson's worked so hard to enshrine. Carson made sure guests on his show came off well; Letterman frequently laughed at them.
And where did the dawning Age Of Irony leave poor Ed McMahon? He still had his Tonight Show gig, of course, but in the era of cable and VCRs, the audience shrank alarmingly. He tried to roll with the punches, and allowed his name to be used in the very title of Ed McMahon's Star Search. Though the show was part of a long TV tradition from Talent Scouts to American Idol, it was, if not post-modern, then at least post-Letterman: It tended to be a little too aware of its own silliness. (I mean: Spokesmodels?)
Was McMahon in on the gag? To some degree, sure; as a former carny barker, he knew full well that all entertainment was a form of selling lies. But what did he think of Phil Hartman's hilarious but mercilessly cruel parody of him on Saturday Night Live, which seemed to imply that McMahon's very existence was a joke. He'd flown combat missions in Korea, for God's sake. He'd boned more women than Sinatra. Who did these young bastards think they were?
In between Star Search tapings, McMahon teamed up with Dick Clark for those endless blooper and practical joke shows, and even post-Carson, still had a regular second-banana position as Jerry Lewis' foil every year on the telethon. He clung to his peculiar form of celebrity into the new century, still faking sincerity, still trying not to let the seams show, still hoping Alpo and Budweiser would call up with endorsement deals, and it would be 1975 all over again and all would be right with the world.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
BRING ON TOMORROW
The same observation over and over, each time phrased in nearly the same way: "I didn't expect you'd be here today."
All the clients I dealt with were senior citizens, and seemingly every one of them listened to the obituaries broadcast on the local radio station. They knew my father had passed away the day before, and apparently expected someone else in my place. Their words held a slightly accusatory tone: Why was I there? Why hadn't I taken the day off?
Why, indeed? Why didn't I go ahead and spend an entire day dealing with...whatever my feelings were. Grief, or something? That's what I was supposed to feel, right? Problem was, Dad and I weren't that close. No animosity, just a distance, a realization that whatever bond was supposed to be there just wasn't. So I felt bad, but I didn't feel as bad as I should, which of course made me feel worse.
I tried to reflect, to seize on some happy moment as a point of focus, but there just wasn't much in my memory. Most of what I knew about him came later, as I tried to assemble the bits and pieces I learned from Mom or from his sister. I began to have some admiration for the man Dad had been long before I was born, but by that time, by the time I longed to talk to him and get to know him better, he had become paralyzed due to a series of strokes. He couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he just sort of existed, most of his time spent sleeping. When he died, I--to be brutally honest--mostly felt relief, grateful he had passed from the dreadful shadow land he inhabited for so long.
Again, though, relief at his passing made me feel somehow heartless, and I didn't want to confront my thoughts and feelings. Better to go to work, to take comfort in the routine of familiarity. Soon enough there would be an official grieving process, family and friends gathered, the time-honored rituals enacted. But that would be for tomorrow, and the next day, and the rest of my life. There would be plenty of time to process the feelings I couldn't quite understand. For the moment, there was my job, and as I heard the words over and over--"I didn't expect you'd be here today"--I stood numbly, wondering how to respond.
All the clients I dealt with were senior citizens, and seemingly every one of them listened to the obituaries broadcast on the local radio station. They knew my father had passed away the day before, and apparently expected someone else in my place. Their words held a slightly accusatory tone: Why was I there? Why hadn't I taken the day off?
Why, indeed? Why didn't I go ahead and spend an entire day dealing with...whatever my feelings were. Grief, or something? That's what I was supposed to feel, right? Problem was, Dad and I weren't that close. No animosity, just a distance, a realization that whatever bond was supposed to be there just wasn't. So I felt bad, but I didn't feel as bad as I should, which of course made me feel worse.
I tried to reflect, to seize on some happy moment as a point of focus, but there just wasn't much in my memory. Most of what I knew about him came later, as I tried to assemble the bits and pieces I learned from Mom or from his sister. I began to have some admiration for the man Dad had been long before I was born, but by that time, by the time I longed to talk to him and get to know him better, he had become paralyzed due to a series of strokes. He couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he just sort of existed, most of his time spent sleeping. When he died, I--to be brutally honest--mostly felt relief, grateful he had passed from the dreadful shadow land he inhabited for so long.
Again, though, relief at his passing made me feel somehow heartless, and I didn't want to confront my thoughts and feelings. Better to go to work, to take comfort in the routine of familiarity. Soon enough there would be an official grieving process, family and friends gathered, the time-honored rituals enacted. But that would be for tomorrow, and the next day, and the rest of my life. There would be plenty of time to process the feelings I couldn't quite understand. For the moment, there was my job, and as I heard the words over and over--"I didn't expect you'd be here today"--I stood numbly, wondering how to respond.
Friday, June 19, 2009
SEA CHANGE
If anybody even bothers checking this space out anymore--and really, why bother, since I announced a month or so ago that I was taking an extended break--this unnamed hypothetical reader may have discovered (GASP!) actual new content appeared yesterday.
And while this content may have seemed familiar in a way--another trip down Dead Marriage Road--it might serve as a portal to a new way of doing things around here. I've noticed that when I spend brief periods of time alone, primarily at work, my mind wanders until it lands on a random, but still vivid memory. These moments out of time are usually nothing dramatic, which makes the extreme detail stand out in sharper relief. Why do I remember the exact moment I ran to the bathroom when I saw Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze at the local drive-in, or my mom dragging me out of the house to look at a rainbow, or the odd mix of anxiety, relief and contentment when first meeting my ex-girlfriend's family at her son's birthday party?
I suspect recreations of moments like these, and attempts to sort out what they mean, may come to dominate this site. Yes, this does sound awfully me-centric, and whether this could be of any interest to anyone else, I have no idea. But hopefully, the larger feelings these memories represent are universal. You, the theoretical reader, may not share my specific history, but maybe there's some larger shared human meaning in all of this we'll discover together.
Or not; honestly, that previous paragraph was a load of pseudo-pretentious hogwash, more suitable as ad copy for a new Mitch Albom book than anything you're likely to read around here. But it's the best description I could cobble together of where I'd like to take this space. Long-winded political screeds are a thing of the past, and though I'm sure I'll still write about movies and pop culture (I'm itching to write something about Up, and my sincere belief that Pete Docter could become a truly great filmmaker), my take on these things will probably become even more subjective, more personal. Also, hopefully, fewer clip jobs, although I'm sure Lynda Carter will still make ocasional appearances here because, hey, why not?
The point is, this site is again open for business, at least temporarily. Daily posts will almost certainly not resume, but I hope to at least get back on a weekly schedule, or something. Where all this will wind up I can't say, but as I said back when I first started this site, if you're reading this, you're already part of the journey.
And while this content may have seemed familiar in a way--another trip down Dead Marriage Road--it might serve as a portal to a new way of doing things around here. I've noticed that when I spend brief periods of time alone, primarily at work, my mind wanders until it lands on a random, but still vivid memory. These moments out of time are usually nothing dramatic, which makes the extreme detail stand out in sharper relief. Why do I remember the exact moment I ran to the bathroom when I saw Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze at the local drive-in, or my mom dragging me out of the house to look at a rainbow, or the odd mix of anxiety, relief and contentment when first meeting my ex-girlfriend's family at her son's birthday party?
I suspect recreations of moments like these, and attempts to sort out what they mean, may come to dominate this site. Yes, this does sound awfully me-centric, and whether this could be of any interest to anyone else, I have no idea. But hopefully, the larger feelings these memories represent are universal. You, the theoretical reader, may not share my specific history, but maybe there's some larger shared human meaning in all of this we'll discover together.
Or not; honestly, that previous paragraph was a load of pseudo-pretentious hogwash, more suitable as ad copy for a new Mitch Albom book than anything you're likely to read around here. But it's the best description I could cobble together of where I'd like to take this space. Long-winded political screeds are a thing of the past, and though I'm sure I'll still write about movies and pop culture (I'm itching to write something about Up, and my sincere belief that Pete Docter could become a truly great filmmaker), my take on these things will probably become even more subjective, more personal. Also, hopefully, fewer clip jobs, although I'm sure Lynda Carter will still make ocasional appearances here because, hey, why not?
The point is, this site is again open for business, at least temporarily. Daily posts will almost certainly not resume, but I hope to at least get back on a weekly schedule, or something. Where all this will wind up I can't say, but as I said back when I first started this site, if you're reading this, you're already part of the journey.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
IF YOU DON'T KNOW ME BY NOW
Me, alone, driving. Monday night, six-thirty, maybe seven o'clock, already dark on a nondescript late winter evening. After a quick doctor's appointment, I'd hopped onto I-270 for the drive from Germantown back home to Montgomery Village. Usually I'd take Frederick Road, but I thought I'd do something different.
The whole evening was different. Most trips like this, my wife would've been with me, a nice drive together, maybe stop for something to eat. A quick and cheap mid-week date, always fun. But she was tired this evening, and just wanted to stay home. Her job, she said.
Fine. The solitude gave me a chance to listen to some music. I'd bought a bunch of sale cassettes at Tower Records a week or two before, and I popped one in, The Best Of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. The side kicked off with a campy, needless cover of Cabaret, then got down to business: Teddy Pendergrass acing If You Don't Know Me By Now. What a voice, what a sound, what a song, Philly Soul at its absolute sweetest.
And most troubling. Just trust in me like I trust in you/As long as we've been together it should be so easy to do/Just get yourself together or we might as well say goodbye/What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye. Then the chorus, musically gorgeous, lyrically devastating: If you don't know me by now/You will never never know me...
Blood ran cold in my veins. Since moving out here, things between us had been...different. Was this it? Was this song about my life? We hadn't fallen out of love, that wasn't it. Then what? No real passion, merely routine, one thing after another to no particular purpose. Sometimes it felt like we spent too much time together, but couldn't stand the loneliness of being apart.
The love, though--it was still there. I could still recall our first date, and the exact moment I fell for her. And the feeling never left. Maybe the fire died down, but that's inevitable. Nothing could take away the memory, which was always there, always, always. And surely she could remember as well. We were still together, through all the good and bad. Neither one of us was going anywhere.
I popped the cassette out, no longer in the mood for The Blue Notes, and exited, turning onto Quince Orchard Road, passing Food Lion and 7-11 and Lake Forest Mall, no cars, barely any lights on, all nearly deserted for so early in the night.
Mellow sounds poured from the radio, Washington's classic R&B station being the default setting. The DJ paused in between songs, dedicating all the music this hour to everyone who's ever found that special someone, or anyone who ever will. Because, he said, everyone finds love sooner or later. Sometimes you just have to work at it.
Yeah, I thought. Yeah, you do. But you know what? It's worth it. The DJ threw it back to the music--Stevie Wonder's Ribbon In The Sky--and joy washed over me, the realization that I had found it, that everything I wanted, I had. It had been tested lately, betrayed and bruised, but at that moment, I loved my wife as fully and passionately as I ever had, and my heart raced with anticipation to get home, to see her, to tell her.
Still. At that moment, too, a voice sounded somewhere--you will never never know me--telling me love alone couldn't save me, or this marriage, or anything else.
The whole evening was different. Most trips like this, my wife would've been with me, a nice drive together, maybe stop for something to eat. A quick and cheap mid-week date, always fun. But she was tired this evening, and just wanted to stay home. Her job, she said.
Fine. The solitude gave me a chance to listen to some music. I'd bought a bunch of sale cassettes at Tower Records a week or two before, and I popped one in, The Best Of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes. The side kicked off with a campy, needless cover of Cabaret, then got down to business: Teddy Pendergrass acing If You Don't Know Me By Now. What a voice, what a sound, what a song, Philly Soul at its absolute sweetest.
And most troubling. Just trust in me like I trust in you/As long as we've been together it should be so easy to do/Just get yourself together or we might as well say goodbye/What good is a love affair when you can't see eye to eye. Then the chorus, musically gorgeous, lyrically devastating: If you don't know me by now/You will never never know me...
Blood ran cold in my veins. Since moving out here, things between us had been...different. Was this it? Was this song about my life? We hadn't fallen out of love, that wasn't it. Then what? No real passion, merely routine, one thing after another to no particular purpose. Sometimes it felt like we spent too much time together, but couldn't stand the loneliness of being apart.
The love, though--it was still there. I could still recall our first date, and the exact moment I fell for her. And the feeling never left. Maybe the fire died down, but that's inevitable. Nothing could take away the memory, which was always there, always, always. And surely she could remember as well. We were still together, through all the good and bad. Neither one of us was going anywhere.
I popped the cassette out, no longer in the mood for The Blue Notes, and exited, turning onto Quince Orchard Road, passing Food Lion and 7-11 and Lake Forest Mall, no cars, barely any lights on, all nearly deserted for so early in the night.
Mellow sounds poured from the radio, Washington's classic R&B station being the default setting. The DJ paused in between songs, dedicating all the music this hour to everyone who's ever found that special someone, or anyone who ever will. Because, he said, everyone finds love sooner or later. Sometimes you just have to work at it.
Yeah, I thought. Yeah, you do. But you know what? It's worth it. The DJ threw it back to the music--Stevie Wonder's Ribbon In The Sky--and joy washed over me, the realization that I had found it, that everything I wanted, I had. It had been tested lately, betrayed and bruised, but at that moment, I loved my wife as fully and passionately as I ever had, and my heart raced with anticipation to get home, to see her, to tell her.
Still. At that moment, too, a voice sounded somewhere--you will never never know me--telling me love alone couldn't save me, or this marriage, or anything else.
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