What can I tell you? Sometimes you just need a little Dolemite.
This is what a movie trailer should be. Not only does it make you want to see the movie, it makes you want to see it RIGHT THIS MINUTE. It also makes you want to tell your friends about it, and figure out ways to work the phrase "Fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game" into everyday conversation. (Even better in that respect is the follow-up to Dolemite, The Human Tornado, which gave us the timeless catch phrase, "Bitch, are you for real?" I say it to the cat all the time!)
If a movie like this even got made these days, it would be...wait, what am I saying? There's no way a movie like this would get made these days. Not when there are CGI dog movies to crank out.
Well. I've just lost the will to live, and if you watched that horrible trailer, you most likely have as well. You're welcome!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
AND LEAVE YOU ON THE ROLLING RIVER SHORES OF CHANGES
Since my last post went on and on about what a wonderful cat Delmar is, I would be remiss if I didn't say a few words about my other feline housemate, Monika.
True, she's no longer here in corporeal form, having passed away several months ago. But she's still here in spirit, much missed but no less beloved. I had only lived in this house for about a month before she died, but as far as I'm concerned, she will always be a part of this place, and always have a home here.
She's been invading my dreams lately, too. They don't specifically focus on her, but whatever is going on in the dream, Monika is always there, a lovely, benign presence, her wide face and dignified mien suggesting a wisdom she never quite chooses to share. She's sweet and loving and unfailingly decent, but always reserved and just a tiny bit remote.
Which is pretty much what she was like in real life. When compared to a crazy force of nature like Delmar, Monika's quiet nature could fade into the background. It was easy to take her for granted, and sometimes I did, but she'd always reassert herself, remind me of why I loved her in the first place. Periodically she'd abandon all dignity and tear about like a kitten, or climb on my shoulder for no apparent reason, or use her patented James Coburn Zen Cool to display her superiority to lesser four-legged beings. (Poor Del was putty in her paws, but Monika could quietly intimidate anyone. She once calmly punched--not scratched or clawed, but punched, using her paw balled into a workable fist--my mom's large dog, who thereafter ran from her in fear.) She was just short of her sixteenth birthday when she died, but in all that time, I never did quite figure her out.
I'm not a spiritual person in any way, and I have no use for New Agey crap or messages from beyond or that sort of thing. Still, I like to think of these dreams as Monika's way of saying hello, letting me know she's still out there in the ether, fuzzy, gray and inscrutable as ever, and eternally awesome.
True, she's no longer here in corporeal form, having passed away several months ago. But she's still here in spirit, much missed but no less beloved. I had only lived in this house for about a month before she died, but as far as I'm concerned, she will always be a part of this place, and always have a home here.
She's been invading my dreams lately, too. They don't specifically focus on her, but whatever is going on in the dream, Monika is always there, a lovely, benign presence, her wide face and dignified mien suggesting a wisdom she never quite chooses to share. She's sweet and loving and unfailingly decent, but always reserved and just a tiny bit remote.
Which is pretty much what she was like in real life. When compared to a crazy force of nature like Delmar, Monika's quiet nature could fade into the background. It was easy to take her for granted, and sometimes I did, but she'd always reassert herself, remind me of why I loved her in the first place. Periodically she'd abandon all dignity and tear about like a kitten, or climb on my shoulder for no apparent reason, or use her patented James Coburn Zen Cool to display her superiority to lesser four-legged beings. (Poor Del was putty in her paws, but Monika could quietly intimidate anyone. She once calmly punched--not scratched or clawed, but punched, using her paw balled into a workable fist--my mom's large dog, who thereafter ran from her in fear.) She was just short of her sixteenth birthday when she died, but in all that time, I never did quite figure her out.
I'm not a spiritual person in any way, and I have no use for New Agey crap or messages from beyond or that sort of thing. Still, I like to think of these dreams as Monika's way of saying hello, letting me know she's still out there in the ether, fuzzy, gray and inscrutable as ever, and eternally awesome.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
KIND OF LIKE AN ARCTIC MINDBATH
He trails me as he always does, following my every move, ready to pounce, to purr, to bite, whatever he has to do to remind me of his presence, whatever will get a reaction. Maybe I'll yell at him, or scoot him away, or pick him up and hug him. Or maybe--his favorite--I'll just sit down and he can leap onto my lap, where he'll curl up, his powerful hind legs kicking at my chest, his teeth nibbling gently on my arm.
Delmar is a very strange cat.
He was born into a litter of adorable, bouncing kittens, most of them fuzzy and gray. They wrestled gently with each other, curled up together at nap time, and followed their mother around, models of obedience. But there was among their number a wiry, unruly little thing, black and white with half his tail missing, always a step or two behind, who seemed lost and out of place and a little bit angry. I could have chosen any of these kittens to take home with me, but of course, there was only one choice.
Oh, but did I choose Delmar, or did he choose me? Sometimes I think he lucked into finding the only person in the world who would not only tolerate his anger, his mood swings, his sometimes irrational behavior, but celebrate it. I've known sweet and loving cats, and cold, indifferent cats, but I've never known any creature, on four legs or two, quite like Del. It's not always easy living with him, but he's taught me to be patient, to accept him on his own terms. And those terms are as basic as the elements: Love me, and I'll love you back.
For he is, curiously, the most loving cat I've ever known. He greets me at the door whenever I come home, his long body stretching to meet me, to hold me, to claim me as his own. Even before I can remove my coat or set down my keys, he demands a hug, and he receives it, his head burrowing into my arm pit, his purr so loud it makes my own body tremble. Then he squirms, and starts to bite. The session is over.
One of my little rituals is to give him a hug anytime I'm heading out the door. In case I don't make it back, I want his last memory of me to be a pleasant one. With most cats, that would be a meaningless act; the feline brain has no short-term memory. But Delmar's no normal cat, and his brain is wired in a different way. He remembers, all right. He knows.
Delmar is a very strange cat.
He was born into a litter of adorable, bouncing kittens, most of them fuzzy and gray. They wrestled gently with each other, curled up together at nap time, and followed their mother around, models of obedience. But there was among their number a wiry, unruly little thing, black and white with half his tail missing, always a step or two behind, who seemed lost and out of place and a little bit angry. I could have chosen any of these kittens to take home with me, but of course, there was only one choice.
Oh, but did I choose Delmar, or did he choose me? Sometimes I think he lucked into finding the only person in the world who would not only tolerate his anger, his mood swings, his sometimes irrational behavior, but celebrate it. I've known sweet and loving cats, and cold, indifferent cats, but I've never known any creature, on four legs or two, quite like Del. It's not always easy living with him, but he's taught me to be patient, to accept him on his own terms. And those terms are as basic as the elements: Love me, and I'll love you back.
For he is, curiously, the most loving cat I've ever known. He greets me at the door whenever I come home, his long body stretching to meet me, to hold me, to claim me as his own. Even before I can remove my coat or set down my keys, he demands a hug, and he receives it, his head burrowing into my arm pit, his purr so loud it makes my own body tremble. Then he squirms, and starts to bite. The session is over.
One of my little rituals is to give him a hug anytime I'm heading out the door. In case I don't make it back, I want his last memory of me to be a pleasant one. With most cats, that would be a meaningless act; the feline brain has no short-term memory. But Delmar's no normal cat, and his brain is wired in a different way. He remembers, all right. He knows.
Friday, March 26, 2010
IF I ACTUALLY COULD THINK OF ANY FALL OUT BOY LYRICS, I'D USE THEM HERE
Concert-goers here in Des Moines have had a bounty: Bret Michaels and Black-Eyed Peas have both played here this week, so if you have too much money to spend and no taste whatsoever, it's been good news!
I originally intended to use this post as an excuse to mock skanky, relentlessly auto-tuned Peas chanteuse Fergie, to essentially use her as a metaphor for everything that's wrong with pop culture today...but then the good folks at Reuters came along with a new interview with Pete Wentz, which rekindled my absolute and somewhat inexplicable hatred for Fall Out Boy and, well, there you go.
The thing is, this interview with Wentz--I'd provide a link, but honestly, it's so not worth it--is essentially the same as the one the AP did a month or so ago, and which I duly commented on at this very site. And my point is the same: Who gives a sweet shit?
I mean, it's Pete Fucking Wentz. The guy was in Fall Out Boy, a band so relentlessly mediocre that one of their claims to fame was discovering Panic! At The Disco. Plus, he's married to Ashlee Simpson. The fact that she's back to billing herself as Ashlee Simpson after a brief go-round as Ashlee Simpson-Wentz suggests that even she doesn't care about her husband.
But Reuters does. Evidently. Why else would they publish an interview with a guy who, instead of making crappy music, is now peddling a crappy clothing line. Wow! That puts him up there with Jaclyn Smith and Kathy Ireland, though presumably Wentz considers his clothing line more, you know, edgy. Kind of like that noxious cognac Ludacris slapped his name on.
(Actually, to be honest, I'm surprised I haven't picked up a bottle of Ludacris' cognac. Not because I would expect it to be any good--Lord, no--but simply for ironic novelty value. I once bought a bottle of James Darren's spaghetti sauce, for crying out loud.)
Anyway, the main point of the article seems to be that Wentz is doing fine not making music, which is good, because the citizens of Planet Earth are doing fine not listening to his music. The only odd thing is, there's no mention of an inevitable upcoming project. I mean, he's a self-absorbed, personality-free ex-rock star married to a moderately attractive woman with no talent whatsoever, right?
He's a VH1 reality show waiting to happen.
I originally intended to use this post as an excuse to mock skanky, relentlessly auto-tuned Peas chanteuse Fergie, to essentially use her as a metaphor for everything that's wrong with pop culture today...but then the good folks at Reuters came along with a new interview with Pete Wentz, which rekindled my absolute and somewhat inexplicable hatred for Fall Out Boy and, well, there you go.
The thing is, this interview with Wentz--I'd provide a link, but honestly, it's so not worth it--is essentially the same as the one the AP did a month or so ago, and which I duly commented on at this very site. And my point is the same: Who gives a sweet shit?
I mean, it's Pete Fucking Wentz. The guy was in Fall Out Boy, a band so relentlessly mediocre that one of their claims to fame was discovering Panic! At The Disco. Plus, he's married to Ashlee Simpson. The fact that she's back to billing herself as Ashlee Simpson after a brief go-round as Ashlee Simpson-Wentz suggests that even she doesn't care about her husband.
But Reuters does. Evidently. Why else would they publish an interview with a guy who, instead of making crappy music, is now peddling a crappy clothing line. Wow! That puts him up there with Jaclyn Smith and Kathy Ireland, though presumably Wentz considers his clothing line more, you know, edgy. Kind of like that noxious cognac Ludacris slapped his name on.
(Actually, to be honest, I'm surprised I haven't picked up a bottle of Ludacris' cognac. Not because I would expect it to be any good--Lord, no--but simply for ironic novelty value. I once bought a bottle of James Darren's spaghetti sauce, for crying out loud.)
Anyway, the main point of the article seems to be that Wentz is doing fine not making music, which is good, because the citizens of Planet Earth are doing fine not listening to his music. The only odd thing is, there's no mention of an inevitable upcoming project. I mean, he's a self-absorbed, personality-free ex-rock star married to a moderately attractive woman with no talent whatsoever, right?
He's a VH1 reality show waiting to happen.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
YUMPIN' YIMINY, OR: SOMETIMES, EVEN I DON'T UNDERSTAND MY OBSESSIONS
Today's my day off, which means I have more time than usual to write. I figured I'd probably post something about the odd series of dreams I've been having lately, or perhaps some musings on the blatant efforts of the Republican party to exploit the latent racism of the American people, or maybe say a word or two about the passing of actor Robert Culp.
Then I discovered El Brendel was born 110 years ago today, and that was that.
Okay, I can't really explain my El Brendel thing, but I can tell you it started almost exactly thirty years ago. The Science Center in Des Moines used to have an annual all-night science fiction movie festival (the films projected in glorious 16mm in those pre-video days), and in spring of 1980 the line-up included When Worlds Collide, Alien, Starcrash (!), The Day The Earth Stood Still...and Just Imagine.
I knew of Just Imagine from a passing reference in Jeff Rovin's A Pictorial History Of Science Fiction Films--a book that was practically my bible, and man, what a hopeless geek I was--but I didn't really know what it was about. The stills in Rovin's book showed a fantastic futuristic New York City clearly influenced by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, but it was barely mentioned at all in the text.
So watching the movie was pretty much a voyage into the unknown. It was about midnight, and all of us in the packed screening room were getting a little punchy. It wouldn't have taken much to entertain us, to make us laugh. But once Just Imagine started, and we realized it was nothing more than a vehicle for a punishingly unfunny comedian nobody had ever heard of, merely sitting through it became one of the cruelest slogs imaginable. It actually hurt to watch.
Naturally, for my brother and me, the fact that we endured this became something of a point of pride. And, in the form of El Brendel, it gave us a new reference standard for unfunny. So, for instance, we might greet the appearance of a new Rob Schneider movie by asking, Is it merely bad, or El Brendel bad?
Rob Schneider, incidentally, is the closest I can come to a contemporary version of Brendel; that is, someone so profoundly, obviously unamusing you can't believe anyone ever put him in front of a movie camera. But Schneider keeps getting work--although at this point, it only seems to be due to his friendship with Adam Sandler--and Brendel, well, evidently somebody used to find him funny.
Because way back when, people seemed to think he was, as the kids say, the shit. His fake Swedish accent and prop bow tie had 'em rolling in the aisles of vaudeville theaters, and he was popular enough that Hollywood came calling. He did character parts for William Wellman, Raoul Walsh and Preston Sturges, had a few leads in the early talkie days, and his own series of two-reelers for Columbia, occasionally teamed up with Shemp Howard.
And in all that time, he was never funny.
I realize fashions change, sensibilities change, things that were once popular are inevitably forgotten. But funny is funny, and I refuse to believe anyone, anywhere, ever ever found this guy even faintly amusing. Still, hey, judge for yourself. Here he is with his wife, Flo Bert, performing a portion of their vaudeville act. This appearance comes from an episode of the fifties show You Asked For It, and I must say, I find that title a bit of a misnomer. Nobody ever asked for El Brendel.
Then I discovered El Brendel was born 110 years ago today, and that was that.
Okay, I can't really explain my El Brendel thing, but I can tell you it started almost exactly thirty years ago. The Science Center in Des Moines used to have an annual all-night science fiction movie festival (the films projected in glorious 16mm in those pre-video days), and in spring of 1980 the line-up included When Worlds Collide, Alien, Starcrash (!), The Day The Earth Stood Still...and Just Imagine.
I knew of Just Imagine from a passing reference in Jeff Rovin's A Pictorial History Of Science Fiction Films--a book that was practically my bible, and man, what a hopeless geek I was--but I didn't really know what it was about. The stills in Rovin's book showed a fantastic futuristic New York City clearly influenced by Fritz Lang's Metropolis, but it was barely mentioned at all in the text.
So watching the movie was pretty much a voyage into the unknown. It was about midnight, and all of us in the packed screening room were getting a little punchy. It wouldn't have taken much to entertain us, to make us laugh. But once Just Imagine started, and we realized it was nothing more than a vehicle for a punishingly unfunny comedian nobody had ever heard of, merely sitting through it became one of the cruelest slogs imaginable. It actually hurt to watch.
Naturally, for my brother and me, the fact that we endured this became something of a point of pride. And, in the form of El Brendel, it gave us a new reference standard for unfunny. So, for instance, we might greet the appearance of a new Rob Schneider movie by asking, Is it merely bad, or El Brendel bad?
Rob Schneider, incidentally, is the closest I can come to a contemporary version of Brendel; that is, someone so profoundly, obviously unamusing you can't believe anyone ever put him in front of a movie camera. But Schneider keeps getting work--although at this point, it only seems to be due to his friendship with Adam Sandler--and Brendel, well, evidently somebody used to find him funny.
Because way back when, people seemed to think he was, as the kids say, the shit. His fake Swedish accent and prop bow tie had 'em rolling in the aisles of vaudeville theaters, and he was popular enough that Hollywood came calling. He did character parts for William Wellman, Raoul Walsh and Preston Sturges, had a few leads in the early talkie days, and his own series of two-reelers for Columbia, occasionally teamed up with Shemp Howard.
And in all that time, he was never funny.
I realize fashions change, sensibilities change, things that were once popular are inevitably forgotten. But funny is funny, and I refuse to believe anyone, anywhere, ever ever found this guy even faintly amusing. Still, hey, judge for yourself. Here he is with his wife, Flo Bert, performing a portion of their vaudeville act. This appearance comes from an episode of the fifties show You Asked For It, and I must say, I find that title a bit of a misnomer. Nobody ever asked for El Brendel.
Monday, March 22, 2010
MY MESSAGE IS THAT IT'S OK TO RELAX
1) Yes, boys and girls, the unusually positive title of this post is yet another quote from Larry King, signifying yet another Random Thoughts entry. I don't claim to understand the rules, self-invented though they may be, I just play by them.
2) Woo-hoo! The utterly emasculated, essentially meaningless health care bill passed. It will be quickly signed into law, but Republicans are vowing all manner of legal challenges and...who cares, really? It's such a messy, complicated piece of work that it's unlikely to make much of a difference in most people's lives. But fine, better that it passed than not, I guess.
A couple things worth mentioning about the whole run-up to the vote, however. First of all, all those deals that had to be cut and language that had to be altered to placate anti-abortion Democrats--um, maybe I'm wrong about this, but abortion is still legal in this country, right? Sure, there are those who find it morally repugnant, but it is the right of every woman to obtain the procedure--why are so many lawmakers so casually willing to circumvent the law?
The other thing is: Democrats, look to the Republicans. This is how it's done. Next time a Republican president nominates a far-right nutjob to a position of great power or tries to slam through some bit of legislation that mocks the founding fathers' intent, you don't have to vote for it. All of you band together and just refuse to play. Stop offering half-hearted objections, then going ahead and voting in favor. Show some spine, for God's sake.
3) Anyone who knows me, even if only through this site, may well be wondering why I didn't write anything about the sudden, terrible death of Alex Chilton. Fact is, when I first heard about it, I was too busy reeling from the shock to say anything more coherent than, "Fuck no!" And even when I tried to organize my thoughts, I really didn't know what to say.
Fortunately, Paul Westerberg offered a lovely tribute to his friend and hero in yesterday's New York Times. I can only add my sincere belief that everyone reading this should run out and buy Rhino's recent Big Star boxed set, as essential a musical purchase as anyone could make. After that, you'll want to hear everything Chilton ever did, and it will all be worthwhile.
4) I spent about two hours Friday night on YouTube, helplessly watching intros and promos for various TV shows from the late seventies. I kept telling myself this was research for an upcoming piece I intend to write, and maybe it is, but about the time I got to this--
--I was horrified by the fact that I actually remembered this show's existence, and only mildly relieved to remember that I never actually watched it. Ask me to name all the U.S. presidents, you'll have a long wait. Ask me what that TV show was that Marc McClure did right after he first played Jimmy Olsen, and the answer's easy: California Fever.
What the hell's wrong with me?
5) Finally, Delmar: He's taken to curling up on my lap and actually staying there for lengthy periods, purring until he falls asleep. Sure, he bites and scratches furiously once he wakes up, but until then, he's almost normal, barely a psychokitty at all these days.
Oh, he still rips my flesh until I bleed sometimes, but old habits die hard...
2) Woo-hoo! The utterly emasculated, essentially meaningless health care bill passed. It will be quickly signed into law, but Republicans are vowing all manner of legal challenges and...who cares, really? It's such a messy, complicated piece of work that it's unlikely to make much of a difference in most people's lives. But fine, better that it passed than not, I guess.
A couple things worth mentioning about the whole run-up to the vote, however. First of all, all those deals that had to be cut and language that had to be altered to placate anti-abortion Democrats--um, maybe I'm wrong about this, but abortion is still legal in this country, right? Sure, there are those who find it morally repugnant, but it is the right of every woman to obtain the procedure--why are so many lawmakers so casually willing to circumvent the law?
The other thing is: Democrats, look to the Republicans. This is how it's done. Next time a Republican president nominates a far-right nutjob to a position of great power or tries to slam through some bit of legislation that mocks the founding fathers' intent, you don't have to vote for it. All of you band together and just refuse to play. Stop offering half-hearted objections, then going ahead and voting in favor. Show some spine, for God's sake.
3) Anyone who knows me, even if only through this site, may well be wondering why I didn't write anything about the sudden, terrible death of Alex Chilton. Fact is, when I first heard about it, I was too busy reeling from the shock to say anything more coherent than, "Fuck no!" And even when I tried to organize my thoughts, I really didn't know what to say.
Fortunately, Paul Westerberg offered a lovely tribute to his friend and hero in yesterday's New York Times. I can only add my sincere belief that everyone reading this should run out and buy Rhino's recent Big Star boxed set, as essential a musical purchase as anyone could make. After that, you'll want to hear everything Chilton ever did, and it will all be worthwhile.
4) I spent about two hours Friday night on YouTube, helplessly watching intros and promos for various TV shows from the late seventies. I kept telling myself this was research for an upcoming piece I intend to write, and maybe it is, but about the time I got to this--
--I was horrified by the fact that I actually remembered this show's existence, and only mildly relieved to remember that I never actually watched it. Ask me to name all the U.S. presidents, you'll have a long wait. Ask me what that TV show was that Marc McClure did right after he first played Jimmy Olsen, and the answer's easy: California Fever.
What the hell's wrong with me?
5) Finally, Delmar: He's taken to curling up on my lap and actually staying there for lengthy periods, purring until he falls asleep. Sure, he bites and scratches furiously once he wakes up, but until then, he's almost normal, barely a psychokitty at all these days.
Oh, he still rips my flesh until I bleed sometimes, but old habits die hard...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
THE PIPES, THE PIPES ARE CALLING, OR SOME DAMN THING
Yeah,I know: Another clip job. What can I say? Things have been kinda touch-and-go here in the real world, in areas that don't need to be discussed in this space, and, well, who doesn't love music? I know I do! (He said with all the fake enthusiasm he could muster.)
Yesterday, as I threatened to geek out over all things John Williams-related to a friend of mine, she brought me up short by saying, "I think everything he does sounds alike." Well, sure, when he's in full blockbuster mode--even I have to admit his score for Superman is one of the laziest things ever written.
But there's always Star Wars, dammit. The soundtrack for the 1977 original is probably the most-played album I've ever owned in my life. It was a gateway drug to me, to the world of classical music, but also to contemporary film scores. Without it, I'd never have discovered Ennio Morricone, and my life would be meaningless.
But back to John Williams--Star Wars aside, there's his hilarious score for Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, his intentional self-parody for 1941, his atypically jazzy music for Catch Me If You Can...and this, my favorite Williams score, for Brian DePalma's irresistably trashy The Fury. This was another LP I wore out the grooves on.
Speaking of things that can make me geek out: Marshall Crenshaw, ladies and gentlemen!
Finally, it is of course St. Patrick's Day, and I figure I should do something to acknowledge it. Honestly, though, why aren't people of Irish descent loudly complaining about how we celebrate the holiday? Here's how we pay tribute to your culture, Ireland: By wearing green and getting piss drunk. You're welcome.
Anyway, if you must celebrate, you should do so by reading James Joyce's The Dead, nothing less than the greatest story ever written in the English language. Or you could just watch The Swedish Chef, Animal and Beaker sing Danny Boy. This clip from The Muppet Show makes the rounds every year around this time, and no matter how many times I see it, I still laugh. Loudly.
Yesterday, as I threatened to geek out over all things John Williams-related to a friend of mine, she brought me up short by saying, "I think everything he does sounds alike." Well, sure, when he's in full blockbuster mode--even I have to admit his score for Superman is one of the laziest things ever written.
But there's always Star Wars, dammit. The soundtrack for the 1977 original is probably the most-played album I've ever owned in my life. It was a gateway drug to me, to the world of classical music, but also to contemporary film scores. Without it, I'd never have discovered Ennio Morricone, and my life would be meaningless.
But back to John Williams--Star Wars aside, there's his hilarious score for Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, his intentional self-parody for 1941, his atypically jazzy music for Catch Me If You Can...and this, my favorite Williams score, for Brian DePalma's irresistably trashy The Fury. This was another LP I wore out the grooves on.
Speaking of things that can make me geek out: Marshall Crenshaw, ladies and gentlemen!
Finally, it is of course St. Patrick's Day, and I figure I should do something to acknowledge it. Honestly, though, why aren't people of Irish descent loudly complaining about how we celebrate the holiday? Here's how we pay tribute to your culture, Ireland: By wearing green and getting piss drunk. You're welcome.
Anyway, if you must celebrate, you should do so by reading James Joyce's The Dead, nothing less than the greatest story ever written in the English language. Or you could just watch The Swedish Chef, Animal and Beaker sing Danny Boy. This clip from The Muppet Show makes the rounds every year around this time, and no matter how many times I see it, I still laugh. Loudly.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
DON'T WALK AWAY
The predictably terrible reviews greeting Love Never Dies, Andrew Lloyd Webber's incredibly unnecessary sequel to his last major commercial hit, The Phantom Of The Opera, serve as a reminder that there's nothing quite like a bad musical. No form of entertainment demands more from its creators--if they can't build a convincing artifice, if they can't make us believe in a world in which people burst into song, the whole enterprise falls apart and becomes impossible to salvage.
Love Never Dies, of course, is a stage musical, so theoretically it needn't try so hard--the audience is aware it is sitting in a theater, watching performers on a stage, who will most likely react to applause and cheers. We understand going in that they are artificial constructs; they can be well done or poorly done, but we accept what they are. Movies, on the other hand, are (or at least seem) more realistic by nature, so to convince us of the heightened reality the musical form demands, they have to work harder. When the elements gel, you get Love Me Tonight or Meet Me In St. Louis or Singin' In The Rain. When they don't...well, let's take a look.
We'll begin with the gold standard for terrible musicals, 1980's Xanadu, starring Olivia Newton-John, the withered remains of Gene Kelly and the charisma vacuum Michael Beck. This is a movie that fails to convince from the very first frame, when it tries to convince us that Beck is some kind of brooding artistic type. The plot--involving ancient mythology and a plan to open a roller disco!--is unbelievably stupid, but this scene is the point where the movie goes completely off the rails. It's a basic rule of movie-making: Never turn your leads into cartoon fish. Sure, the only movies dumb enough to do such a thing were this and The Incredible Mr. Limpett, but isn't that enough?
Incidentally, to give you an idea of how misguided Xanadu is, how utterly unaware of the basic mechanics of moviemaking: Why did anyone involved think that a moody, downbeat Jeff Lynne ballad was the perfect accompaniment to scenes of its protagonists cavorting as, you know, cartoon characters? Maybe something lighter and more, I dunno, romantic?
Just because characters can start singing doesn't mean they should. This is the lesson to be learned from the first wave of musicals of the sound era. The thinking was, if audiences were still impressed by a technology that allowed them to hear characters speak on screen, they'd be even more impressed to hear people burst into song. So studios cranked out a lot of movies with gratuitous musical numbers grafted onto stories that were already grotesque hybrids.
Like, say, science fiction comedies starring refugees from the vaudeville stage. Just Imagine, a 1930 vehicle for jaw-droppingly unfunny comedian El Brendel, is elaborately-produced piffle that probably didn't play well at the time, and is utterly unwatchable today. I'll spare you Brendel's big number--you're welcome--and bring you instead Frank Albertson and Margaret White performing that timeless ditty Never Swat A Fly.
Two big problems with this number. First off, even in the context of a largely plotless variety show like Just Imagine, this song comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with anything. It's a cute enough song--if this movie had been made at Warner Brothers, it probably would have become a favorite of Carl Stalling's--but it just goes on and on. And then they start dancing!
Which brings us to the other problem, with this song and the whole movie: Director David Butler pretty much nails down the camera and has the performers do their thing in front of it, showing no imagination or understanding of how to stage and film a production number. Admittedly, this is partly to do with the crudity of early sound recording techniques, but Butler made a number of early musicals at Fox--Sunny Side Up, Delicious--and they're all equally painful. He became a little more proficient later on--his Betty Grable vehicles were indistinguishable from Walter Lang's, and his Doris Day vehicles were about equal to what a declining Michael Curtiz was then cranking out--but he never showed any flair, or even any real talent.
In that sense, he was kind of like Charles Jarrot, the hapless functionary in nominal charge of Ross Hunter's allegedly expensive (but incredibly cheap looking) Lost Horizon. Here are Sally Kellerman and Olivia Hussey, singin' and dancin' to arguably the worst song Burt Bacharach ever wrote.
Finally, the trailer for by far the worst musical of the twenty-first century, which had after all already seen the release of From Justin To Kelly and Joel Schumacher's overripe adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera.
How to make a musical the Rob Marshall way: Keep paying tribute to Bob Fosse, even when it makes no sense to do so, and edit, edit, edit. That way, nobody can even tell that you have no idea what to do with a camera, or how uninspired your choreography is.
Genius!
Love Never Dies, of course, is a stage musical, so theoretically it needn't try so hard--the audience is aware it is sitting in a theater, watching performers on a stage, who will most likely react to applause and cheers. We understand going in that they are artificial constructs; they can be well done or poorly done, but we accept what they are. Movies, on the other hand, are (or at least seem) more realistic by nature, so to convince us of the heightened reality the musical form demands, they have to work harder. When the elements gel, you get Love Me Tonight or Meet Me In St. Louis or Singin' In The Rain. When they don't...well, let's take a look.
We'll begin with the gold standard for terrible musicals, 1980's Xanadu, starring Olivia Newton-John, the withered remains of Gene Kelly and the charisma vacuum Michael Beck. This is a movie that fails to convince from the very first frame, when it tries to convince us that Beck is some kind of brooding artistic type. The plot--involving ancient mythology and a plan to open a roller disco!--is unbelievably stupid, but this scene is the point where the movie goes completely off the rails. It's a basic rule of movie-making: Never turn your leads into cartoon fish. Sure, the only movies dumb enough to do such a thing were this and The Incredible Mr. Limpett, but isn't that enough?
Incidentally, to give you an idea of how misguided Xanadu is, how utterly unaware of the basic mechanics of moviemaking: Why did anyone involved think that a moody, downbeat Jeff Lynne ballad was the perfect accompaniment to scenes of its protagonists cavorting as, you know, cartoon characters? Maybe something lighter and more, I dunno, romantic?
Just because characters can start singing doesn't mean they should. This is the lesson to be learned from the first wave of musicals of the sound era. The thinking was, if audiences were still impressed by a technology that allowed them to hear characters speak on screen, they'd be even more impressed to hear people burst into song. So studios cranked out a lot of movies with gratuitous musical numbers grafted onto stories that were already grotesque hybrids.
Like, say, science fiction comedies starring refugees from the vaudeville stage. Just Imagine, a 1930 vehicle for jaw-droppingly unfunny comedian El Brendel, is elaborately-produced piffle that probably didn't play well at the time, and is utterly unwatchable today. I'll spare you Brendel's big number--you're welcome--and bring you instead Frank Albertson and Margaret White performing that timeless ditty Never Swat A Fly.
Two big problems with this number. First off, even in the context of a largely plotless variety show like Just Imagine, this song comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with anything. It's a cute enough song--if this movie had been made at Warner Brothers, it probably would have become a favorite of Carl Stalling's--but it just goes on and on. And then they start dancing!
Which brings us to the other problem, with this song and the whole movie: Director David Butler pretty much nails down the camera and has the performers do their thing in front of it, showing no imagination or understanding of how to stage and film a production number. Admittedly, this is partly to do with the crudity of early sound recording techniques, but Butler made a number of early musicals at Fox--Sunny Side Up, Delicious--and they're all equally painful. He became a little more proficient later on--his Betty Grable vehicles were indistinguishable from Walter Lang's, and his Doris Day vehicles were about equal to what a declining Michael Curtiz was then cranking out--but he never showed any flair, or even any real talent.
In that sense, he was kind of like Charles Jarrot, the hapless functionary in nominal charge of Ross Hunter's allegedly expensive (but incredibly cheap looking) Lost Horizon. Here are Sally Kellerman and Olivia Hussey, singin' and dancin' to arguably the worst song Burt Bacharach ever wrote.
Finally, the trailer for by far the worst musical of the twenty-first century, which had after all already seen the release of From Justin To Kelly and Joel Schumacher's overripe adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera.
How to make a musical the Rob Marshall way: Keep paying tribute to Bob Fosse, even when it makes no sense to do so, and edit, edit, edit. That way, nobody can even tell that you have no idea what to do with a camera, or how uninspired your choreography is.
Genius!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
YOU THINK YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE
I come home from work and find my neighbor wielding a rake and a hoe, taking care of her lawn. She asks me how my car is running, since her husband did some work on it, and I tell her it's doing fine. We talk awhile, then I go inside, change my clothes and start picking up my own lawn, removing dead branches that have until now been covered with snow, remnants of this long, punishing winter.
Back inside, I head immediately for the basement. With all the snow finally melting, and several days of rain, water is seeping into my basement. I deploy my large, formidable wetvac, sucking up what I can, and sweeping the rest to the drain. The water will be a constant for the next few days, given the forecast and the shape my basement is in. That's fine; I'll take care of it.
A quick meal, some time wasted on the computer, then I decide to wrap up this lazy evening by watching a movie. But before hitting Play, I wait for a minute, turning the volume down on the TV. Traffic is heavy on my busy street, and the pavement is wet, and I love hearing the SWUSH SWUSH SWUSH of the tires. There's something about it I find inexplicably relaxing, and somehow it gives me a measure of comfort.
Then again, I'm finding comfort in the strangest places lately. However cruel this winter has been, it has been consistently reassuring to come back to this battered old house, greet my cat, check my mail, enact familiar rituals, much like I've doing right now. Maybe this will all grow tiresome, but for now, I am content. This doesn't feel like a routine, it feels warm and cozy, something I've wanted but never had before.
It feels like home.
Back inside, I head immediately for the basement. With all the snow finally melting, and several days of rain, water is seeping into my basement. I deploy my large, formidable wetvac, sucking up what I can, and sweeping the rest to the drain. The water will be a constant for the next few days, given the forecast and the shape my basement is in. That's fine; I'll take care of it.
A quick meal, some time wasted on the computer, then I decide to wrap up this lazy evening by watching a movie. But before hitting Play, I wait for a minute, turning the volume down on the TV. Traffic is heavy on my busy street, and the pavement is wet, and I love hearing the SWUSH SWUSH SWUSH of the tires. There's something about it I find inexplicably relaxing, and somehow it gives me a measure of comfort.
Then again, I'm finding comfort in the strangest places lately. However cruel this winter has been, it has been consistently reassuring to come back to this battered old house, greet my cat, check my mail, enact familiar rituals, much like I've doing right now. Maybe this will all grow tiresome, but for now, I am content. This doesn't feel like a routine, it feels warm and cozy, something I've wanted but never had before.
It feels like home.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
RIDING THE CREST OF A WAVE BREAKING JUST WEST OF HOLLYWOOD
Yeah, it's Academy Awards night. Am I supposed to care?
Because I don't, not even a little. I mean, I've never given a rat's ass about the awards themselves, and I don't think anyone who cares about the art or science of film ever has. But the presentation, the ceremony itself, always used to have some guaranteed camp value, or something, but now it's just this pointless, outdated ritual enacted by the elite for their own amusement, and holy crap, that last part almost sounded like it could have been spit out by a pundit at Fox News, so why don't I stop right now?
But, to continue just a bit longer, is the movie business even worth celebrating these days? Because this week, when Hollywood is presumably trying to put its best foot forward and pretend that it routinely makes stuff that is even halfway watchable, some major studios and one big-time producer announced a series of projects that, uh, well...
Gilligan's Island? Seriously? A remake of Police Academy? A movie version of the vintage arcade game Space Invaders? All three of these terrible ideas come from the vast Time Warner empire, which is about a third of Hollywood right there. Paramount chimed in with the comparatively only mildly terrible notion of reworking Pet Sematary.
But hey, you want everything wrong with the movie business in a nutshell? Consider the fact that Gary Marshall--storied producer of Blansky's Beauties and auteur of The Other Sister--is planning to remake Frank Capra's State Of The Union. The original starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn; Marshall hopes to cast Richard Gere and Jessica Biel.
So no, I don't feel like the American movie business deserves any kind of celebration tonight. Hell, I don't even think it deserves saving.
Because I don't, not even a little. I mean, I've never given a rat's ass about the awards themselves, and I don't think anyone who cares about the art or science of film ever has. But the presentation, the ceremony itself, always used to have some guaranteed camp value, or something, but now it's just this pointless, outdated ritual enacted by the elite for their own amusement, and holy crap, that last part almost sounded like it could have been spit out by a pundit at Fox News, so why don't I stop right now?
But, to continue just a bit longer, is the movie business even worth celebrating these days? Because this week, when Hollywood is presumably trying to put its best foot forward and pretend that it routinely makes stuff that is even halfway watchable, some major studios and one big-time producer announced a series of projects that, uh, well...
Gilligan's Island? Seriously? A remake of Police Academy? A movie version of the vintage arcade game Space Invaders? All three of these terrible ideas come from the vast Time Warner empire, which is about a third of Hollywood right there. Paramount chimed in with the comparatively only mildly terrible notion of reworking Pet Sematary.
But hey, you want everything wrong with the movie business in a nutshell? Consider the fact that Gary Marshall--storied producer of Blansky's Beauties and auteur of The Other Sister--is planning to remake Frank Capra's State Of The Union. The original starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn; Marshall hopes to cast Richard Gere and Jessica Biel.
So no, I don't feel like the American movie business deserves any kind of celebration tonight. Hell, I don't even think it deserves saving.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
HOT LICKS AND RHETORIC DON'T COUNT MUCH FOR NOTHING
Here's my ritual: Though I set my alarm clock for a certain time each morning, I am always, always always awake at least an hour before it goes off. This allows me time to take a nice, relaxing bath, go for a short walk and, theoretically, have time to write something here.
Of course, I realize I've been lax in that last department lately, and appy polly logies for that, but honestly, as I drifted off to sleep last night, I looked forward to getting up in the morning and getting to it, because I had a swell idea for a new post. But what do you know? I slept until the alarm went off, and there's no time to write.
But hey, in the meantime, there's this, an incredibly uninteresting explanation of why there's no new material here today. Not that this explains why whole weeks can go by without new content appearing here...Let's just say I've been busy. I haven't been, particularly, but it sounds good.
The point is, I'll be writing again soon. Probably.
Of course, I realize I've been lax in that last department lately, and appy polly logies for that, but honestly, as I drifted off to sleep last night, I looked forward to getting up in the morning and getting to it, because I had a swell idea for a new post. But what do you know? I slept until the alarm went off, and there's no time to write.
But hey, in the meantime, there's this, an incredibly uninteresting explanation of why there's no new material here today. Not that this explains why whole weeks can go by without new content appearing here...Let's just say I've been busy. I haven't been, particularly, but it sounds good.
The point is, I'll be writing again soon. Probably.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
TOMORROWS FALL IN NUMBER
It wasn't fair that Rudy Larriva's very name would become a joke among animation fans, but that's what happened. Larriva, who passed away last week at the age of 94, had the misfortune to direct a series of Road Runner cartoons sub-contracted by Warner Bros. for theatrical release in the sixties. These are a far cry from Chuck Jones' original creations; these were low-rent time-killers, rightly regarded as some of the worst dreck ever distributed to theaters.
Larriva did absolutely nothing to distinguish these efforts, but really, how could he? The scripts were terrible, the budgets non-existent; there was no time, money or talent to emulate Jones' exquisite timing and characterization. Besides, it's not like Larriva was alone in turning out this crap. At the same time, Warners released a series of Daffy Duck/Speedy Gonzales cartoons directed by WB veteran Robert McKimson. No one uses this series as representative of McKimson's work, mostly because he'd done better things once. But then again, so had Larriva.
He started in the business as an animator for Jones himself, toiling away on several Sniffles The Mouse outings as well as the proto-Bugs Bunny entry Elmer's Pet Rabbit. He jumped ship to Disney, where he would be one of the army of animators credited on Song Of The South, the animated sequences of which remain some of the finest things the studio ever did.
His time there was short, but he was fortunate to find himself at the storied United Productions Of America, where he landed an animating gig on their first theatrical shorts, Robin Hoodlum and The Magic Fluke, both directed by the great John Hubley. Larriva served as an animator on Hubley's Ragtime Bear, the first Mr. Magoo cartoon, and would become a mainstay at the studio for several years, earning his first directing credits on later (and sadly, far less distinguished) Magoo cartoons.
This, then, was a fine career. Larriva had worked with some of the best, and they had relied on his solid professionalism. He wasn't a great animator, in the Ken Harris/Bill Tytla/Frank Thomas sense, but he could get the job done, and many great directors obviously respected him. How many people could say they worked with Chuck Jones and John Hubley? Rudy Larriva could!
So, as far as those Road Runner cartoons go, yeah, they're every bit as bad as their reputation. But work was hard to find for old studio hands in the sixties, when even Disney laid off many of its second-stringers. Larriva did the best he could under incredibly dire circumstances. And in any event, far worse was yet to come: In the seventies and eighties, he'd find himself employed by the likes of Filmation, Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears, helping to crank out the likes of The New Adventures Of Gilligan, The Scooby And Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour, Rubik The Amazing Cube and It's Punky Brewster. Nothing to be proud of, artistically, but at least he kept working in the medium to which he'd devoted his life.
Of course he did. Rudy Larriva was, above all, a professional.
Larriva did absolutely nothing to distinguish these efforts, but really, how could he? The scripts were terrible, the budgets non-existent; there was no time, money or talent to emulate Jones' exquisite timing and characterization. Besides, it's not like Larriva was alone in turning out this crap. At the same time, Warners released a series of Daffy Duck/Speedy Gonzales cartoons directed by WB veteran Robert McKimson. No one uses this series as representative of McKimson's work, mostly because he'd done better things once. But then again, so had Larriva.
He started in the business as an animator for Jones himself, toiling away on several Sniffles The Mouse outings as well as the proto-Bugs Bunny entry Elmer's Pet Rabbit. He jumped ship to Disney, where he would be one of the army of animators credited on Song Of The South, the animated sequences of which remain some of the finest things the studio ever did.
His time there was short, but he was fortunate to find himself at the storied United Productions Of America, where he landed an animating gig on their first theatrical shorts, Robin Hoodlum and The Magic Fluke, both directed by the great John Hubley. Larriva served as an animator on Hubley's Ragtime Bear, the first Mr. Magoo cartoon, and would become a mainstay at the studio for several years, earning his first directing credits on later (and sadly, far less distinguished) Magoo cartoons.
This, then, was a fine career. Larriva had worked with some of the best, and they had relied on his solid professionalism. He wasn't a great animator, in the Ken Harris/Bill Tytla/Frank Thomas sense, but he could get the job done, and many great directors obviously respected him. How many people could say they worked with Chuck Jones and John Hubley? Rudy Larriva could!
So, as far as those Road Runner cartoons go, yeah, they're every bit as bad as their reputation. But work was hard to find for old studio hands in the sixties, when even Disney laid off many of its second-stringers. Larriva did the best he could under incredibly dire circumstances. And in any event, far worse was yet to come: In the seventies and eighties, he'd find himself employed by the likes of Filmation, Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears, helping to crank out the likes of The New Adventures Of Gilligan, The Scooby And Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour, Rubik The Amazing Cube and It's Punky Brewster. Nothing to be proud of, artistically, but at least he kept working in the medium to which he'd devoted his life.
Of course he did. Rudy Larriva was, above all, a professional.
Friday, February 19, 2010
IN WHICH YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT MY PRE-ADOLESCENT LUSTS THAN YOU COULD EVER WANT TO KNOW
I was surprised to find that someone had posted the entire 1973 TV movie Linda on YouTube. Here are the first ten minutes; if you're interested, you can easily find the rest.
This is a fine example of a typical seventies Movie Of The Week. It wasn't a "prestige" effort, and unlike some telefilms from the era (Duel, most obviously, but also such well-remembered gems as Dying Room Only or Night Chase), it has been almost completely forgotten even by hardcore cultists. Still, it is efficiently made, has a reasonably involving plot and is overall a worthwhile sampling of the much-missed workmanlike qualities of the era's TV product.
Yeah, yeah, which is great and all, but who am I trying to kid? I remember this movie very well, not because I watched it, but because its original broadcast was heralded by a full-page ad in TV Guide featuring a bikini-clad Stella Stevens smiling knowingly at the viewer. Since it was the sight of Stella traipsing through the otherwise dire comedy Arnold in her underwear earlier that year that caused my previously-inactive seven-year-old loins to, uh, do what they do, that ad prompted a similar warm feeling in my pants. And, by the next week, that particular TV Guide had been spirited away to a secret location (a long-abandoned chicken coop, and dear Lord, that sounds positively Ed Gein-like) where I used it to, shall we say, explore my nascent libido.
What's interesting--to me, at least--is, given that my first stirrings of lust were entirely due to Stella Stevens (and seriously, I sat through a lot of bad TV movies just because she was in them), in subsequent years, I've never had a thing for blondes. Since my initial concept of feminine allure were formed by a platinum-tressed goddess, you'd think there'd be some trace amounts of that long-ago longing in what I've been attracted to since, but that hasn't been the case.
Or maybe my feelings for Stella Stevens had nothing to do with her hair...
This is a fine example of a typical seventies Movie Of The Week. It wasn't a "prestige" effort, and unlike some telefilms from the era (Duel, most obviously, but also such well-remembered gems as Dying Room Only or Night Chase), it has been almost completely forgotten even by hardcore cultists. Still, it is efficiently made, has a reasonably involving plot and is overall a worthwhile sampling of the much-missed workmanlike qualities of the era's TV product.
Yeah, yeah, which is great and all, but who am I trying to kid? I remember this movie very well, not because I watched it, but because its original broadcast was heralded by a full-page ad in TV Guide featuring a bikini-clad Stella Stevens smiling knowingly at the viewer. Since it was the sight of Stella traipsing through the otherwise dire comedy Arnold in her underwear earlier that year that caused my previously-inactive seven-year-old loins to, uh, do what they do, that ad prompted a similar warm feeling in my pants. And, by the next week, that particular TV Guide had been spirited away to a secret location (a long-abandoned chicken coop, and dear Lord, that sounds positively Ed Gein-like) where I used it to, shall we say, explore my nascent libido.
What's interesting--to me, at least--is, given that my first stirrings of lust were entirely due to Stella Stevens (and seriously, I sat through a lot of bad TV movies just because she was in them), in subsequent years, I've never had a thing for blondes. Since my initial concept of feminine allure were formed by a platinum-tressed goddess, you'd think there'd be some trace amounts of that long-ago longing in what I've been attracted to since, but that hasn't been the case.
Or maybe my feelings for Stella Stevens had nothing to do with her hair...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
ALTHOUGH I MIGHT LIKE IT FOR ONE AFTERNOON, I DON'T WANT TO LIVE ON THE MOON
This date is locked forever in my memory.
I don't remember when Dad died, exactly, or Keith, not the exact days. But with you, it was different. When Ann called me with the news, I stood for a minute staring out the window, at the ice and snow falling, the streets and houses five stories below so gray and cheerless, the whole world drained of color. Then, turning and looking around the apartment, my eyes stopped on the EC Comics calender on the wall. I grabbed a pen and circled February 16th, my hand pressing down harder and harder, the lines of ink so erratic they finally covered the number. I never wanted to forget this date, but I wanted to erase it at the same time.
How could I live without you, I wondered. Literally, how could I live? Was it worth it to continue? Should I just jump out the window, say the Big Adios? How could I function without the person who gave me life and would always give me strength?
You were, after all, the person I talked to the most, the keeper of my secrets, the one who knew me better than I knew myself. You were the one that bought me all those Big Chief tablets and encouraged me to fill them with whatever was in my head. You were the one that bought me that first issue of The Shadow. You took me to The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad, and listened to me talk about it all the way home, and allowed me to remain under its spell. You gave me not only The Catcher In The Rye but also Nine Stories, and you knew where that would lead.
And you were always there, whatever would befall me in my life, and you always listened and pointed the way. Whatever may have happened, I knew I could get out of it, because you would always be there, to give me a push, to say the right words, to make it better.
Then...you weren't there. I kept staring at the calender, at the window, the ground so far below. And the pictures on the wall, and the clock, and the bed, these surroundings that now seemed so meaningless. How would I make sense of all this now? Who would tell me everything was okay?
The moment passed, and the next one. They kept passing, until now: Four years have gone by. I miss you, but not so much, not anymore. Life, well, it really does go on, and there have been some wonderfully unexpected destinations. And the whole journey has been weird because it seems as though I've discovered a strength inside myself, a resiliency I've never known. Maybe your passing was the very thing I needed. In your very absence, you still point the way.
I don't remember when Dad died, exactly, or Keith, not the exact days. But with you, it was different. When Ann called me with the news, I stood for a minute staring out the window, at the ice and snow falling, the streets and houses five stories below so gray and cheerless, the whole world drained of color. Then, turning and looking around the apartment, my eyes stopped on the EC Comics calender on the wall. I grabbed a pen and circled February 16th, my hand pressing down harder and harder, the lines of ink so erratic they finally covered the number. I never wanted to forget this date, but I wanted to erase it at the same time.
How could I live without you, I wondered. Literally, how could I live? Was it worth it to continue? Should I just jump out the window, say the Big Adios? How could I function without the person who gave me life and would always give me strength?
You were, after all, the person I talked to the most, the keeper of my secrets, the one who knew me better than I knew myself. You were the one that bought me all those Big Chief tablets and encouraged me to fill them with whatever was in my head. You were the one that bought me that first issue of The Shadow. You took me to The Seventh Voyage Of Sinbad, and listened to me talk about it all the way home, and allowed me to remain under its spell. You gave me not only The Catcher In The Rye but also Nine Stories, and you knew where that would lead.
And you were always there, whatever would befall me in my life, and you always listened and pointed the way. Whatever may have happened, I knew I could get out of it, because you would always be there, to give me a push, to say the right words, to make it better.
Then...you weren't there. I kept staring at the calender, at the window, the ground so far below. And the pictures on the wall, and the clock, and the bed, these surroundings that now seemed so meaningless. How would I make sense of all this now? Who would tell me everything was okay?
The moment passed, and the next one. They kept passing, until now: Four years have gone by. I miss you, but not so much, not anymore. Life, well, it really does go on, and there have been some wonderfully unexpected destinations. And the whole journey has been weird because it seems as though I've discovered a strength inside myself, a resiliency I've never known. Maybe your passing was the very thing I needed. In your very absence, you still point the way.
Monday, February 15, 2010
BE MORE FUNNY!
There's a great book to be written about The Simpsons, about the disparate group of personalities who created the show, how they achieved an amazingly consistent run of quality for several years, and how one by one its greatest creative talents exited, and the sad slide of a once-great show into continuing mediocrity.
John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History is most certainly not that book.
The most obvious mistake Ortved made when writing this was to tell the story as an oral history. Why? When examining the genesis and influence of a particular creative work, a singular voice is needed, a critical independent mind, someone capable of sifting through the agendas of various former staffers and arriving at some sort of truth, and a writer well-versed enough in TV history to analyze the impact The Simpsons may or may not have had on the medium.
Instead, Ortved mostly just talked to a bunch of people--some only tangentially connected to the show--and cobbled their conversations together in the most arbitrary manner imaginable. True, Tom Wolfe did a guest voice on a late-period episode, but how are his comments even vaguely relevant?
More damagingly, Ortved couldn't get interviews with the key creative personnel--Matt Groening, James L. Brooks or Sam Simon--and tries to make do with interviews they'd conducted elsewhere. (Except for Simon, who's never given an interview about his time on the show, and whose absence seriously undermines the wisdom of the whole oral history concept.) But since these interviews often seem to be taken out of context, what they have to say is often made to look bad. (Ortved seems to have a particular dislike for Brooks.)
In fact, there are no fresh interviews with any of the best-known writers from the show's heyday--George Meyer, John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti are only heard from second-hand. Ortved's biggest "get" is Conan O'Brien, whose tenure with the show was relatively brief, and has little of interest to say. (Probably not O'Brien's fault; given everything else wrong with the book, I suspect he simply wasn't asked the right questions.) But hey, we spend lots of time talking to various execs from Fox, and learn all about how the show got on the air--as if that's the story anybody wants to hear.
The absolute worst parts of the book, though, are when Ortved's own voice emerges to try to supply some kind of connective tissue. Simply put, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He has absolutely no knowledge of animation history--which would be useful when writing about a cartoon show--and the things he presents as Absolute Truths about TV history are wrong, wrong, wrong.
He claims The Simpsons was unique in sitcom history for its caustic worldview, though everything from Sgt. Bilko to Buffalo Bill prove otherwise. He wants us to believe that the show appeared fully-formed in a sea of prime time mediocrity, though its first season was wobbly and the network landscape already included Cheers, Roseanne, The Wonder Years and an early incarnation of Seinfeld. (True, none of these shows were as good as The Simpsons at its best, but they weren't chopped liver.) He seems convinced that The Simpsons single-handedly ushered in a new wave of series driven primarily by their writing staffs, although that's pretty much the whole history of TV ever.
That last point is particularly laughable. At one point, Ortved implies that The Sopranos and The West Wing were somehow made possible by The Simpsons, that it alone made TV a respectable medium for writers. Leaving aside such well-respected Golden Age scribes as Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling--Ortved would consider such names ancient history--what about MASH, which was clearly Larry Gelbart's show, or Jay Tarses' Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd...or Taxi, with a staff of writers that included James L. Brooks and Sam Simon?
In fact, the evidence of Ortved's own book shows that writers weren't particularly respected at any point in the history of The Simpsons, since every script would be punched up a string of gagmen, and the credited author often had nothing to do with the final episode. No one voice could ever emerge, no one individual would ever be considered the auteur of the show. It's not the only way to do a show, but it worked just fine for many, many years. Just how it managed to work is a story that fans have been waiting to hear.
And thanks to Ortved, they're still waiting.
John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History is most certainly not that book.
The most obvious mistake Ortved made when writing this was to tell the story as an oral history. Why? When examining the genesis and influence of a particular creative work, a singular voice is needed, a critical independent mind, someone capable of sifting through the agendas of various former staffers and arriving at some sort of truth, and a writer well-versed enough in TV history to analyze the impact The Simpsons may or may not have had on the medium.
Instead, Ortved mostly just talked to a bunch of people--some only tangentially connected to the show--and cobbled their conversations together in the most arbitrary manner imaginable. True, Tom Wolfe did a guest voice on a late-period episode, but how are his comments even vaguely relevant?
More damagingly, Ortved couldn't get interviews with the key creative personnel--Matt Groening, James L. Brooks or Sam Simon--and tries to make do with interviews they'd conducted elsewhere. (Except for Simon, who's never given an interview about his time on the show, and whose absence seriously undermines the wisdom of the whole oral history concept.) But since these interviews often seem to be taken out of context, what they have to say is often made to look bad. (Ortved seems to have a particular dislike for Brooks.)
In fact, there are no fresh interviews with any of the best-known writers from the show's heyday--George Meyer, John Swartzwelder and Jon Vitti are only heard from second-hand. Ortved's biggest "get" is Conan O'Brien, whose tenure with the show was relatively brief, and has little of interest to say. (Probably not O'Brien's fault; given everything else wrong with the book, I suspect he simply wasn't asked the right questions.) But hey, we spend lots of time talking to various execs from Fox, and learn all about how the show got on the air--as if that's the story anybody wants to hear.
The absolute worst parts of the book, though, are when Ortved's own voice emerges to try to supply some kind of connective tissue. Simply put, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He has absolutely no knowledge of animation history--which would be useful when writing about a cartoon show--and the things he presents as Absolute Truths about TV history are wrong, wrong, wrong.
He claims The Simpsons was unique in sitcom history for its caustic worldview, though everything from Sgt. Bilko to Buffalo Bill prove otherwise. He wants us to believe that the show appeared fully-formed in a sea of prime time mediocrity, though its first season was wobbly and the network landscape already included Cheers, Roseanne, The Wonder Years and an early incarnation of Seinfeld. (True, none of these shows were as good as The Simpsons at its best, but they weren't chopped liver.) He seems convinced that The Simpsons single-handedly ushered in a new wave of series driven primarily by their writing staffs, although that's pretty much the whole history of TV ever.
That last point is particularly laughable. At one point, Ortved implies that The Sopranos and The West Wing were somehow made possible by The Simpsons, that it alone made TV a respectable medium for writers. Leaving aside such well-respected Golden Age scribes as Paddy Chayefsky and Rod Serling--Ortved would consider such names ancient history--what about MASH, which was clearly Larry Gelbart's show, or Jay Tarses' Days And Nights Of Molly Dodd...or Taxi, with a staff of writers that included James L. Brooks and Sam Simon?
In fact, the evidence of Ortved's own book shows that writers weren't particularly respected at any point in the history of The Simpsons, since every script would be punched up a string of gagmen, and the credited author often had nothing to do with the final episode. No one voice could ever emerge, no one individual would ever be considered the auteur of the show. It's not the only way to do a show, but it worked just fine for many, many years. Just how it managed to work is a story that fans have been waiting to hear.
And thanks to Ortved, they're still waiting.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
THE DREAM IS OVER
I know, psychologically, how this dream was formed. I did my taxes last night, for the first time as a home buyer, which meant I found myself poring over all the details of when I bought the house, and reliving in my mind the anxiety of those months when it was never certain whether financing would actually come through.
So in the dream, I attempted to buy a house. It was located in a small Iowa town--Casey, apparently, based on the layout--which improbably contained an Indian restaurant, a Milio's sandwich shop and a sprawling indie bookstore with a large film section, but was otherwise a typical Midwestern burg, well-stocked with overall-wearing farmers.
One of which was my real-estate agent, portrayed by a straw-hatted Slim Pickens, who explained to me that, yes, I would almost certainly acquire the property, but there was a waiting period before I could take possession. In the meantime, he showed me the temporary housing he'd located for me: A shack. More specifically, the crawlspace under a shack, which was itself located inside a squirrel-infested corn crib. "There's no electricity, but yuh can see okay durin' the day. Yuh ain't claustrophobic, are yuh?"
The next day, I returned to the shack, accompanied by Mom, who was helping me move. As soon as we got to the shack, we noticed it, the corn crib and indeed the entire town plastered with Old Timey Wanted posters. "Hobos and Vagrants will be SHOT ON SIGHT," the posters claimed, and at the bottom was a crude line drawing of me.
Mom noticed my real estate agent had left me with a week's worth of entertainment during my stay--a box full of Max Brand novels!--then made ready to leave. "But Mom," I said, "don't you feel weird leaving me here? I may be killed."
"Nature takes its course," she shrugged, and walked slowly away. I watched her until she simply vanished, and I realized I was no longer in a corn crib in an unfamiliar town. I stood in the shallow ditch beside the rutted lane of the farm where I was raised. A familiar engine sounded in the distance: The school bus. My dog Spinner ran to greet it. I heard it slowing down.
I knew I was about to see myself, clad in a sweatshirt and striped pants, happy and romping with Spinner. I knew this would overwhelm me, either with joy or despair. Either extreme seemed too much to bear.
So I opened my eyes, and heard Delmar's paws clunking in the other room, and I knew I was awake. I stayed in bed several minutes more, listening to cars on the snow-coated streets, their tires hissing, hissing.
So in the dream, I attempted to buy a house. It was located in a small Iowa town--Casey, apparently, based on the layout--which improbably contained an Indian restaurant, a Milio's sandwich shop and a sprawling indie bookstore with a large film section, but was otherwise a typical Midwestern burg, well-stocked with overall-wearing farmers.
One of which was my real-estate agent, portrayed by a straw-hatted Slim Pickens, who explained to me that, yes, I would almost certainly acquire the property, but there was a waiting period before I could take possession. In the meantime, he showed me the temporary housing he'd located for me: A shack. More specifically, the crawlspace under a shack, which was itself located inside a squirrel-infested corn crib. "There's no electricity, but yuh can see okay durin' the day. Yuh ain't claustrophobic, are yuh?"
The next day, I returned to the shack, accompanied by Mom, who was helping me move. As soon as we got to the shack, we noticed it, the corn crib and indeed the entire town plastered with Old Timey Wanted posters. "Hobos and Vagrants will be SHOT ON SIGHT," the posters claimed, and at the bottom was a crude line drawing of me.
Mom noticed my real estate agent had left me with a week's worth of entertainment during my stay--a box full of Max Brand novels!--then made ready to leave. "But Mom," I said, "don't you feel weird leaving me here? I may be killed."
"Nature takes its course," she shrugged, and walked slowly away. I watched her until she simply vanished, and I realized I was no longer in a corn crib in an unfamiliar town. I stood in the shallow ditch beside the rutted lane of the farm where I was raised. A familiar engine sounded in the distance: The school bus. My dog Spinner ran to greet it. I heard it slowing down.
I knew I was about to see myself, clad in a sweatshirt and striped pants, happy and romping with Spinner. I knew this would overwhelm me, either with joy or despair. Either extreme seemed too much to bear.
So I opened my eyes, and heard Delmar's paws clunking in the other room, and I knew I was awake. I stayed in bed several minutes more, listening to cars on the snow-coated streets, their tires hissing, hissing.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
DID ANYONE ASK FOR THIS?
Does anybody, anywhere, have any interest at all in another Mission: Impossible movie?
Probably not, but we're getting one anyway. While it may be true that, as Paramount's press release notes, the first three entries in the franchise have made well over a billion dollars worldwide, they are textbook examples of the kind of blockbuster entertainment nobody really likes. Audiences, primed by pricey and seemingly endless marketing blitzes, show up, sit in the theater for two hours and go home, remembering not a single thing about the experience.
They're not bad movies, but they hew to the action movie template so closely, with explosions, chases and love scenes arriving at exactly the expected moments, that in all three previous outings they have yet to fashion any kind of identity, as a brand name or even as Tom Cruise vehicles. The first in the series remains the least interesting thing Brian DePalma has ever directed, the second offered proof that John Woo's American career was going nowhere, while the third--oh, who the hell cares? I've seen the damned thing, and I can't remember a single thing about it.
I doubt anybody could. But the suits in Hollywood don't care. If there are a few dollars to be squeezed out of a franchise nobody likes, they'll squeeze like there's no tomorrow. It's so much easier than being, you know, creative.
Probably not, but we're getting one anyway. While it may be true that, as Paramount's press release notes, the first three entries in the franchise have made well over a billion dollars worldwide, they are textbook examples of the kind of blockbuster entertainment nobody really likes. Audiences, primed by pricey and seemingly endless marketing blitzes, show up, sit in the theater for two hours and go home, remembering not a single thing about the experience.
They're not bad movies, but they hew to the action movie template so closely, with explosions, chases and love scenes arriving at exactly the expected moments, that in all three previous outings they have yet to fashion any kind of identity, as a brand name or even as Tom Cruise vehicles. The first in the series remains the least interesting thing Brian DePalma has ever directed, the second offered proof that John Woo's American career was going nowhere, while the third--oh, who the hell cares? I've seen the damned thing, and I can't remember a single thing about it.
I doubt anybody could. But the suits in Hollywood don't care. If there are a few dollars to be squeezed out of a franchise nobody likes, they'll squeeze like there's no tomorrow. It's so much easier than being, you know, creative.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
TROUBLE MAN
She sits cross-legged on the bed, crying softly. I sit on the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, arms to my side, making no move to comfort her. I'm the reason she's crying, after all.
It's been a difficult day for her, emotionally. I understand that. It's the anniversary of her husband's death, her emotionally and physically abusive husband, and this day must have brought more demons to the surface than usual, especially since she received a phone call before I arrived from one of her now near-adult children, a kid taken away from her long ago when she was declared an unfit mother.
So maybe it wasn't the best day for me to tell her I had no interest in continuing our relationship. Friends, sure, but nothing more than that. But she'd kind of forced my hand, as we spent the long afternoon visiting the gravesites of her husband, her father, assorted cousins and seemingly anyone she'd ever known, and she spent the time talking of all the mistakes she'd made, and how things would be better in the future, and how that future would include me.
"How could you say that?" she says at last, her voice raw and low from crying. "How could you say this today?"
"I wanted to be honest. You think there's a future for us, and...there's not."
"How do you know that? How do you know there couldn't be?"
"There are...reasons. Don't make me say them, not now. They'll just upset you more. I don't want to hurt you."
"You don't?" She whips around, her legs suddenly uncurled, and looks as though she might fling me off the bed. "The fuck you don't. Why the fuck else would you say this to me, today of all days?"
"Because all day long you've been talking about how things will somehow be better for you because of this magical entity of us together, and I've been trying to think of a nice way of saying there is us, there is no future. But there's no nice way to say it, so instead of letting you down easy, I went ahead and let you down rough. And I'm sorry. For everything."
"But I love you, Edward--"
"No, you don't. You love your idea of me, and you love that I'm there for you and I listen to you, and you want someone in your life so bad you've built this image of me in your mind, but it's not me. You can't love me, not really. You don't even know me."
"I know you better than you think."
"Yeah?"
She curls back up on the bed, no longer angry or sad, her voice full of resignation. "I knew you'd do this."
It's been a difficult day for her, emotionally. I understand that. It's the anniversary of her husband's death, her emotionally and physically abusive husband, and this day must have brought more demons to the surface than usual, especially since she received a phone call before I arrived from one of her now near-adult children, a kid taken away from her long ago when she was declared an unfit mother.
So maybe it wasn't the best day for me to tell her I had no interest in continuing our relationship. Friends, sure, but nothing more than that. But she'd kind of forced my hand, as we spent the long afternoon visiting the gravesites of her husband, her father, assorted cousins and seemingly anyone she'd ever known, and she spent the time talking of all the mistakes she'd made, and how things would be better in the future, and how that future would include me.
"How could you say that?" she says at last, her voice raw and low from crying. "How could you say this today?"
"I wanted to be honest. You think there's a future for us, and...there's not."
"How do you know that? How do you know there couldn't be?"
"There are...reasons. Don't make me say them, not now. They'll just upset you more. I don't want to hurt you."
"You don't?" She whips around, her legs suddenly uncurled, and looks as though she might fling me off the bed. "The fuck you don't. Why the fuck else would you say this to me, today of all days?"
"Because all day long you've been talking about how things will somehow be better for you because of this magical entity of us together, and I've been trying to think of a nice way of saying there is us, there is no future. But there's no nice way to say it, so instead of letting you down easy, I went ahead and let you down rough. And I'm sorry. For everything."
"But I love you, Edward--"
"No, you don't. You love your idea of me, and you love that I'm there for you and I listen to you, and you want someone in your life so bad you've built this image of me in your mind, but it's not me. You can't love me, not really. You don't even know me."
"I know you better than you think."
"Yeah?"
She curls back up on the bed, no longer angry or sad, her voice full of resignation. "I knew you'd do this."
Saturday, February 06, 2010
THANK YOU, ASSOCIATED PRESS, FOR DARING TO BRING US THE NEWS THAT REALLY MATTERS
Though the world was thrown into a state of almost terminal indifference earlier this week with the news that Fall Out Boy might be breaking up, the scrappy, ink-stained scribes at the Associated Press have managed to score an interview with the deeply uninteresting band's barely-sentient bassist, pretty boy and Joe Simpson son-in-law Pete Wentz, who is eager to point out that FOB isn't necessarily breaking up so much as...Well, let's let Pete have his say:
"I'm OK if Fall Out Boy comes back or doesn't come back. Like, if it's fun for everyone to do again, we're going to do it...I just want it to be authentic when we come back."
Yeah. Authentic. Because if there's one thing Fall Out Boy stands for, it's authenticity. Their pledge to, like, get their fans moving, or whatever, is something Wentz and his faceless bandmates take, you know, seriously. But not so serious that it's, like, whatever. You know?
I should point out here that people have made me aware of my tendency to use the words "Fall Out Boy" as a synonym for "shitty band", and that I seem to hate them out of all proportion to their actual non-worth. But that's just it--they're not even interesting enough to be bad. They're proudly, solidly mediocre, crafting product, not art, and they're not even particularly skilled artisans. In that sense, they're a contemporary version of REO Speedwagon or Kansas, doomed to a future of playing some Aughts Nostalgia Circuit.
Meanwhile, I'll start using 30 Seconds To Mars as my shorthand reference to a shitty band.
"I'm OK if Fall Out Boy comes back or doesn't come back. Like, if it's fun for everyone to do again, we're going to do it...I just want it to be authentic when we come back."
Yeah. Authentic. Because if there's one thing Fall Out Boy stands for, it's authenticity. Their pledge to, like, get their fans moving, or whatever, is something Wentz and his faceless bandmates take, you know, seriously. But not so serious that it's, like, whatever. You know?
I should point out here that people have made me aware of my tendency to use the words "Fall Out Boy" as a synonym for "shitty band", and that I seem to hate them out of all proportion to their actual non-worth. But that's just it--they're not even interesting enough to be bad. They're proudly, solidly mediocre, crafting product, not art, and they're not even particularly skilled artisans. In that sense, they're a contemporary version of REO Speedwagon or Kansas, doomed to a future of playing some Aughts Nostalgia Circuit.
Meanwhile, I'll start using 30 Seconds To Mars as my shorthand reference to a shitty band.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
CATS AND DOGS FIGHTING LIKE, I DUNNO, CATS AND DOGS
Ive been dog-sitting again, and while I could try to describe how the presence of an adorable, rambunctious canine turns poor Delmar's world upside down, I'll just post another Chuck Jones cartoon to give you a rough approximation. As always with Jones, the keenly accurate observation of character traits makes this soar: Yes, dogs are that cute, and yes, cats are scheming bastards. (Well, not all cats, but if you knew Delmar...)
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