A Not-So-Jolly-Good Jaunt

This is one of those where you keep expecting the punch line, and it simply never comes. I kept waiting for the chick in the back seat to text “WTF” to the chick in the driver’s seat, but it just never happened.

Apparently, this aired as a public service announcement in the UK, and it has come under some fire for its controversial depiction of trauma. But I think that might have been necessary to get through to people.

Anyway, I’m sure most of us have done this at some point or another. Think about it.

Hope Rises With The Tide On Fourth Anniversary Of Katrina

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, the scars run deep in New Orleans and the Lower Ninth Ward still struggles. On the plus side, President Obama pledges to end the "turf wars" that slow recovery.

We'll see.

In the meantime, a tip o' the brew and thoughts are sent to the Big Easy.

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXVI: R.I.P. Teddy, Plus Infuriating Musings

They called him the lion of the Senate
Pushed civil rights up to his dying minute
The key to life is to get up, after all,
Just one more time than you fall
Ted Kennedy knew this, and how to live it

So what is the real media?, they ask
As they take college fan sites to task
Once lived in Mom’s basement, by the water heater
Dreamed of star rankings while bagging at the Teeter
Now in Internet mediocrity they bask

Comes in at the crack of 10, leaves at 4
She’s a trendy Kaiser Soze to the core
Just like that—poof, and she’s gone
With fake boobs and a tan sprayed on
The Teflon Diva is just another word for (*rhymes with poor*)

It looks like PETA has some gall
Oakland’s still the joke of football
Another free pass for John Calipari
And Derrick Rose now drives a Ferrari
Leaving Memphis to take the big fall

It’s high time for a fantasy football draft
Looking for sleepers both fore and aft
Injuries kill you ever year, it does seem
So you can now get insurance for your team
Just in case Blind Midget Patrol needs a life raft

Last time …

Cries Of “Socialism” Now The Anthem Of The Displaced, Misled And Irrelevant

These days, the most familiar refrain heard from the Republican camp now ably manned by Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber involves any number of words with “socialism” before them or after them. It’s become a curse word of sorts, hurled by the disenfranchised like so many 3-year-olds with so much rage and so few words with which to express it. Signs, bumper stickers, T-shirts, mudflaps, spittoons, all adorned with the word “socialism”—sometimes even spelled correctly.

And any time any footage of these “nutters” (coined by Joe Klein) is shown, inevitably it’s an angry, shaking, Appalachian-looking person who is basically screaming a lot of random words strung together, punctuated with utterances like, “my life” and “my doctor” and “my choice” and “my pipebomb” and “fatback.” I’m not trying to be TOO judgmental here, but sweet crikey, have you gotten a gander at the people that make up the Republican “face” these days? But I’m sure that’s all just a coincidence (or media selectiveness), right?


Of course, one can’t escape the sneaking suspicion that 100 out of 100 of these people have no idea what socialism is or means. So perchance a “Word of the Day” is called for?

Socialism (noun): "Any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources, as advocated by socialists"

Jumpin’ jimsonweed jeezus. No wonder everyone is so scared, huh? Where in the hell is there any room for concepts like “equality,” “collective,” “public” and “resources” in a country such as ours?

Of course, one can’t rule out the distinct possibility that the entire religious right-wing establishment has been dummified by eight years worshipping at the altar of the biggest jackleg in the history of politics, W; it’s certainly not outside the realm of reason to suggest that he’s made his entire party stupider through sheer force of osmosis. And now that they’ve been relegated to the sidelines by an *gasp* African-American, the tantrum is akin to a toddler closing his eyes, plugging his ears and screaming “Socialism! Socialism! Socialism!” over and over again while rocking in the fetal position in the corner.


But these geniuses always have one really big arrow left in that quiver, don’t they? Call it deceit, truth-twisting, misperception or whatever … the reality is that it’s lying. And now that Republicans are out of power, they're hitching their wagons to borderline-retarded ex-beauty pageant contestants and pill-popping, racist blowhards. So if these “leaders” make up something called a “death panel” or suggest that Barack Obama “ain’t from here” or even compare him to Hitler because he would dare to suggest a better healthcare alternative, the nutters eat it up like a newly Geo’d squirrel in front of their trailer park. And that’s how an unfounded lie gets uttered by an idiot and repeated by the brainwashed, uneducated masses until it becomes a “fact.” These, after all, are the same people who refuse to watch “Fahrenheit 911” or “Sicko” because the fat guy from Michigan who no likey the president made it, dismissing as a “lie” a movie they’ve never seen before.

For years, the religious right stole elections, destroyed civil liberties, pissed away money and invaded countries based on personal vendettas. Now, someone from the other side of the aisle offers up an alternative for a health care system that everyone agrees shit the bed about 20 years ago—and now there’s moral indignation? Really? Because the cult on Fox & Friends brainwashed people enough to get them to turn them into a line of parrots who simply repeat whatever animated dildos in bowties serve up from whatever compound shelter they’re currently broadcasting from? What are rational people really supposed to make of all this? That apparently "socialism" is only OK to try to impose on the countries that we arbitrarily invade without cause?

Look, I don't claim that the Democrats have come up with some magical healthcare reform without any holes; hell, I'll be the first to admit that that's impossible. There are bound to be holes, and for crissakes, I'm sure we're all relatively well aware that it's not going to be dandelions and puffy clouds for everybody -- there's going to be a lot of people who simply don't like it. But shouting random words like "socialism" and "death panels" and "I'mnotlisteningI'mnotlisteningI'mnotlistening" every time a Democrat steps up to a microphone makes you look like a Weeble-Wobble in a "Deliverance" remake.


Joe Klein put together a pretty compelling article about the state of the Republican party recently, noting the hypocrisy and double standards with insights like, “The same people who rail against a government takeover of health care tried to enforce a government takeover of Terry Schiavo’s end-of-life decisions.” Klein concludes that the right-wingers are becoming a party of nihilists, something I know a little bit about (*fill in your own “Big Lebowski” joke here*).

What have we degenerated into here? People who can’t spell Obama, much less grasp a complex and value-soaked political theory like socialism, leading the charge against a proposal they’ve neither seen, read nor heard? You have the most distracted and most unabstract folks that our fine land has to offer trying to grasp an abstract concept -- and that just can’t end well. Don’t worry, though, you tired, you poor, you wretched, you weak, you racist, you citizens; socialism isn’t going to gain traction within our borders.

After all, we can’t be having all kinds of “social and economic equality,” can we?

“The Lake House” – “The Lake” + “The Beach” – Magic Mailbox – Keanu = “Nights In Rodanthe”

When this movie was posed to me as being next on the “watch” list, I mistakenly referred to it as “The Beach House.” Apparently, in my mind, I had confused it with that movie about Keanu Reeves and his magical mailbox called “The Lake House.” My bad. But I really wasn’t that far off in my supposition.

Since Rodanthe is on the Outer Banks and George Burns Richard Gere’s (holy shit does he look old) character was from Raleigh, there was some cool, familiar scenery. Beyond that, however, this was one of those films that was basically over after an hour and then felt the need to extend it to the requisite hour-and-40 minutes or so.

Not to give away too much of the plot (there really wasn’t much of one anyway, I promise), but the always-underrated Diane Lane plays an estranged wife, Adrienne Willis, who is serving as the innkeeper of a friend’s beach house in Rodanthe as a favor. Gere is the angry surgeon, Paul Flanner, who travels to the OBX to confront a family that is suing him for wrongful death in a surgery gone wrong. Obviously, he’s the lone guest in the B&B, and he and Adrienne rather quickly and suddenly start telling each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. Toss in Hurricane Coincidental, the speedy resolution of very complex problems (apparently, in a weekend, no less) and a relatively tragic ending, and voila -- you have a Nicholas Sparks novel brought to life.

Yes, it sucked, but more in a way where you’re mad at yourself for letting the events of your life unfold in such a way that leave you having to watch such a flick; after all, being mad at a movie like “Nights in Rodanthe” for sucking would be akin to being pissed at the sun for being all, like, bright and sunny and shit.

But it certainly wasn’t a horrible movie, and in many respects, it was more profound than I expected. Of course, the bad Southern accents and the slightly stereotypical depiction of North Carolinians arise, but you come to expect that in movies like this. These factors notwithstanding, it was at least watchable—which was more than I expected (I have a low ceiling in any project where Gere is involved) when the opening credits of “The Beach House” started rolling. Hell … at least it made me want to go to Nags Head as soon as possible.

Strange Things Are A-Brew In Dolphinland

So a couple of Miami Dolphins might have the swine flu. Also, the team decided it would rather pay someone $4.5 million to NOT be on the team instead of $3 million to actually be on the team. And now, after bringing in several has-been or never-wear pop stars (as we previously discussed here), the organization now thinks Venus and Serena Williams would be solid additions to the roster.

You may be asking, “So how are these things related?” And to you I say, “How are they NOT related!”

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXV: "Mad Men" Brings Out The Big Guns, Plus Short Round Says "F U Tiger!"

“Mad Men” comes back with some power
Office politics makes everyone a little sour
Don Draper returns with a (literally) bang
Wife pregnant, he still can’t control his wang
I could just watch Christina Hendricks for the whole hour

“Dear god, please me it stop,” we did pray
Just make freaking Butt Favre go away
He cries each and every time he retires
Wears Wranglers and hopes someone rehires
He’s the herpes of the NFL, I heard someone say

UNC-Miami is in rare form
An assault in the freshman dorm
Gay-on-guy crime shows Butch you’ve got fire
It’s one way to avoid the waiver wire
When you bring in thug after thug, this is the norm

The rock world tells another legend goodbye
Les Paul is off to that music festival in the sky
He revolutionized guitars with a block of wood
And then picked it like very few could
His passing brought a tear to many’s eye

It had the sound of a made-up fable
A huge fight around the meeting table?
The Raiders had to call the law
An assistant has a fractured jaw
Why didn’t you punch Al Davis, Coach Cable?

His hybrid on 18 made many say, “Dang!”
He broke the hearts of all the CBS gang
They gave Tiger the tourney on Friday
Then an Asian said, “We’re doing things my way”
Kudos to a rare humble champ—Y.E. Yang!

Last time …

The-Value-Of-An-Engineering-Education Fail

I guess the sign that shows an engineering student how to walk through an automatic door could use a little marketing.

So that's how you got that "god nipple," eh Mujibur?

Giddyup.

Rediscovering The Power Of Prose Along “The Road”—With A Heartfelt Thanks To Cormac McCarthy

“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

“You wanted to know what the bad guys looked like. Now you know. It may happen again. My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“He sat there cowled in the blanket. After a while he looked up. Are we still the good guys? he said.
“Yes. We’re still the good guys.”
“And we always will be.”
“Yes. We always will be.”
“Okay.”

So one day, out of sheer boredom, I took one of those Facebook quizzes. This one took your answers to odd questions and surmised which novelist you would be, and 45 seconds later, the computer punched up “Cormac McCarthy” for me. I’d heard the name here or there, but never read his work (although I later found out that “No Country for Old Men,” which quickly became one of my favorite movies, was his), so when my sister-in-law recommended his masterpiece, “The Road” (it won the Pulitzer, if that kind of thing is important to you), I gave it a shot.

I was quickly taken aback by McCarthy’s short, clipped sentences, his Faulknerian style of breaking up clauses into abbreviated sentences. The sparse punctuation, including no apostrophes in contractions, made it difficult at times to discern dialogue from description, but McCarthy’s incredible language, similes and metaphors (“A blackness to hurt your ears with listening … By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp.”) more than made up for it. Some reviewers characterized McCarthy’s descriptions as nearly Biblical, ascribing him with a incredible vocabulary, and I had to agree -- I was sent scrambling to the dictionary more than a few times.

“The country was looted, ransacked, ravaged. Rifled of every crumb. The nights were blinding cold and casket black and the long reach of the morning had a terrible silence to it. Like a dawn before battle.
“Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.”


The story itself was very reminiscent of Stephen King’s “The Stand,” with the two main characters launched into a post-apocalyptic world that has been destroyed by some unnamed disaster that we’re never told of. It’s a wasted landscape, a gray void with nearly everything burnt to a crisp, reduced to rubble and covered in ash. The father and son at the center of this struggle for survival are never named, known only as “the man” and “the boy” throughout the story. The mother committed suicide at some point in the past, leaving the father to protect the son with his life through all manner of threats, perils and mishaps. We follow the duo as they cut a path through the horror toward the coast, trying to avoid roving bands of half-wild cannibals, the elements, hunger, sickness and ennui.

Repeatedly, the man has to break his son’s compassionate streak with the reality that they are fighting for their lives each and every day, with no room for generosity or kinship with any fellow survivors. They wander through deserted towns, homes and farms, looking for any morsels of food or drink to sustain them for another day, another hour. Their sole possessions are bundled into an old grocery cart, with all they are and all they have protected by a pistol with a single bullet.

“He could not construct for the child’s pleasure the world he’s lost without constructing the loss as well and he thought perhaps the child had known this better than he.”


There are moments of redemption, bright spots in the darkness. Halfway through the tale, they find a fallout shelter stocked with food and all the necessities—but even that is fleeting, as it isn’t safe to stay there in case they are discovered by the “bad guys,” the cannibals who are enslaving and devouring any remaining holdovers. The father very occasionally shifts into first person, which was jarring but offered deep insights into the fears he has of growing sick and being unable to protect his son (“The slow surf crawled and seethed in the dark and he thought about his life but there was no life to think about and after a while he walked back.”). These moments feel very personal, partially because McCarthy has revealed that the tale is semi-autobiographical, with the boy based on his son and some of the inherent worries that come along with being an elderly father (McCarthy is 76, while his son is 8). Of course, the all-encompassing totality of the love between father and son makes up the core of the book, the foundation upon which the story is built … the reality that each other is all they have to make it possible to wake up again each morning, despite the seeming pointlessness of it all (“I don’t know what we’re doing,” the boy finally manages at one point), is a powerful, powerful theme.

“Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.”

“‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yes. Of course you can.’
‘What would you do if I died?’
‘If you died I would want to die too.’
‘So you could be with me?’
‘Yes. So I could be with you.’
‘Okay.’”

The clipped sentences are especially effective at building terror and tension. The starkness of the prose also lends to the overriding sense of the suddenness that comes along with unexpected events … it’s as if this series of horrific scenes rises up out of the page like a freight train coming around a corner. The result is a quick, but gut-wrenching and emotional read. I took one death in the book as hard as any I’ve ever read, dating back to the loss of Jake Chambers (his third death, for those of you keeping score at home) in King’s “Dark Tower” series or Simon in “Lord of the Flies,” finding myself crying in the wee hours.

“I want to be with you.”
“You can’t.”
“Please.”
“You can’t. You have to carry the fire.”
“I don’t know how to.”
“Yes you do.”
“Is it real? The fire?”
“Yes it is.”
“Where is it? I don’t know where it is.”
“Yes you do. It’s inside you. It was always there. I can see it.”


“The Road” has been hailed in some quarters as a seminal, hugely important environmental book, while others characterize it as science fiction and still others (myself included) paint it as a story about the love that emerges between a father and his son in the most forebidding and hopeless of times (“This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man’s brains out his hair. That is my job … Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly … But when he bent to see into the boy’s face under the hood of the blanket he very much feared that something was gone that could not be put right again.”). McCarthy’s book has many overtones -- including the imagery of the boy as an angel -- that reminded me very much of the epic “Children of Men.” Indeed, and disappointingly predictably, “The Road” has been turned into a movie (starring Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee) slated for release this October.

“When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you can’t give up. I won’t let you.”

“But who will find him if he’s lost? Who will find the little boy?”
“Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.”

In this world of blogs and tweets, 10-second sound bites and podcasts, iPhone apps and texts, we are losing the ability to truly impact other human beings through the written word. We absorb, we scan, we move on. We don’t think, we don’t digest, we don’t consider. As a writer, it can be quite frustrating, upsetting and frightening, to see the language stolen, to see prose and grammar bastardized, to see tone twisted. So to find a book that reads like a 300-page punch to the diaphragm … to stumble across a work of art that evokes emotion … to not so much read, as experience, a piece that elevates as it depresses … it can restore a little faith to a vessel that’s increasingly found wanting. And if I found anything in McCarthy’s stark, gray, lonely, ashen, tilted world, it was that—a rediscovery of inspiration through literature, blooming like a solitary white rose in a field of rock.

Being a witness to McCarthy’s immense talents can be a bit overwhelming and make you feel unworthy of calling yourself a writer … but it still made the journey along this road an unforgettable and awe-inspiring experience.

Triumvirate Of Bitches Turn “Dolores Claiborne” Into A Memorable Tale

“It's a depressingly masculine world we live in, Dolores … Sometimes, Dolores, sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive.”

I have to admit that I didn’t feel “Dolores Claiborne” was one of Stephen King’s better efforts at the time that I read it. It seemed to drag somewhat and King, like all male writers, tends to struggle somewhat in developing female characters. However, I finally got around to seeing the film version (it only took me 15 years, gimme a break) and I’ve gotta say, the movie painted a different portrait.

Director Taylor Hackford chose a rather intense opening scene, setting the stage for the rest of the flick from jump street. Kathy Bates -- who was tremendous in another King vehicle, “Misery,” and also appeared in the TV adaptation of “The Stand -- plays the title character, a housekeeper accused of killing her elderly benefactor. When it turns out that her employer, Vera Donovan (played by a creepy Judy Parfitt), bequeathed a shit-ton of money to Dolores -- a cool 1.6 million beans, in fact --rather unexpectedly, it appears that Dolores is cooked. Throw in her past history of possibly killing her abusive husband and the fact that the mailman found her with a rolling pin over her head getting ready to turn Vera into the Pillsbury Dough Bitch, and, well … things don’t look good for ol’ Dolores.

But all is not as it seems! (*cue major plot point music*) Dolores’s estranged daughter, Selena St. George, finds out about Mom’s latest murder troubles and journeys from her high-falootin’ job as a New York reporter (it’s still eerie to me anytime I see the Twin Towers as a background in a movie) back to her Maine-island roots. Jennifer Jason Leigh is solid as Selena, who hides some rather garish skeletons behind that cute face: she’s promiscuous, is sleeping with her boss and has a disturbing propensity for chasing pills with bourbon … and, well, more pills.

Selena tries to intervene on what appears to be a personal vendetta by Detective John Mackey (well-played by Christopher Plummer) to take Dolores down, but the strained relationship with her Mom keeps getting in the way. Hackford tries hard to juxtapose Selena’s big-city tendencies with her tiny-town upbringing, relying extensively on lingering shots of ferries (the ferry plays a surprisingly large role in this flick) and the surrounding scenery -- almost to the point of awkward uncomfortableness (yes, it’s a word now). It’s an odd approach to cinematography, but it’s difficult to ignore the power of this particular setting (shot in Nova Scotia), and King has always excelled at turning setting into a major character. Elsewhere, at least, Hackford shows his chops with a pretty cool glass-breaking effect.


It’s hard to take the hilarious John C. Reilly too seriously as Constable Frank Stamshaw, especially with his effected Maine accent, and David Strathairn is a weak choice as Dolores’s former husband and Selena’s former father, Joe St. George. Through awkwardly transitioned flashbacks, we learn that Joe was an alcoholic deadbeat who used to beat Dolores and molest Selena (hence the reason why she’s a career-first, emotionally dead, chain-smoking, liquor-swilling, pill-popping harpy with no recollection of the sexual abuse and a grudge against her Mom for killing -- allegedly -- her father). Both mother and daughter see visions of the past to this day, so at least they have that in common. These flashbacks also reveal Vera to be a completely and total bitch, which is one of the reasons why Dolores’s alibi of “I worked for this cunt for 22 years and waited that long just to push her down a flight of stairs?” actually has some credence.

Eventually, the back story of Dolores and Joe is revealed, complete with the revelation that Joe stole the money that Dolores was secretly squirreling away to send Selena to Vassar. Withstanding the verbal abuse and the back-breaking labor involved with working for Vera, Dolores slowly and methodically is able to put aside enough money each month to give Selena a better life. When she learns that Joe found a way to pilfer the account that was in her name and her name only, something within her finally breaks. Piling thievery on top of years of mental, physical and sexual abuse, plus the discovery of Joe’s molestation of Selena, finally sends Dolores over the edge -- semi-pushed by advice from Vera who, in turns out, killed her cheating husband and made it look like an accident. “An accident, Dolores,” Vera cryptically advises, “can be an unhappy woman's best friend."

During an eclipse (which plays a much bigger role in the book) that lasts six-and-a-half minutes, Dolores gets Joe tipsy, confronts him, then forces him to chase her into a field that has an old well hidden under the grass. With weather serving as a metaphor and character (another King specialty), we get an unintentional comedy moment when fatass Dolores jumps over the hidden well (in another strangely shot, awkward scene) and Joe falls in. Under an eerie sky, Dolores refuses to help him and Joe eventually falls to his demise. His death was ruled an accident, but Detective Mackey always believed Dolores was to blame and won’t rest until he finds a way to nail that fat ass to the wall.


However, it is eventually shown that Vera’s death was, indeed, an accident (after a creepy scene with china pigs), and there’s a slightly forced dramatic return to the island by Serena to step in and save her Mom with some quasi-courtroom heroics. Eighteen years after the death of her father, Selena learns the truth behind the story from her Mom and accepts it. It’s cathartic for Selena to accept and for Dolores to finally tell it, setting up a semi-bonding moment as Selena prepares to head back to the Big Apple and leave her Mom jobless, penniless and outcast on a stark island (that part was kinda glossed over, though).

Jennifer Jason Leigh was always a somewhat-limited actress, but this is a pretty fitting role for her. Her memories filter back to her slowly throughout the film; she had blocked out her suicide attempt, a nervous breakdown and the molestation perpetrated on her by her father (a rather nausea-inducing scene). In a split scene where she looks on as her younger version gives her Dad a hand (*coughing) on the ferry, it all comes back to her as she attempts to flee Little Tall Island for good. She goes to the bathroom on the ferry and looks in the mirror only to see her back (creepy as hell), apparently not-so-subtly deriding her for turning her back on her Mom when she needs her most. That’s when she returns to the island to rescue Dolores at the hearing.

Bates is tremendous as usual as Dolores, who has eventually turned into the town’s weird, scary old lady. Despite having a murder charge, a vandalized home, the hatred of her fellow townfolk and a junkie daughter who hates her hanging over her head, she possesses an internal strength and conviction that Bates brings to life tremendously. She’s the metaphoric rock in the hurricane, the lighthouse in the storm, and she seems to thrive in the role of the life-battered, persevering lead character.

All in all, it turns into a damn good yarn, better than I had remembered. Hackford does a fine job of realizing King’s vision, which was to craft a plot founded on the basis of strong, but vulnerable, women. The story itself is perhaps best summed up by Vera’s words to Dolores, who in turn passes them on to Selena:

"Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.”

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXV: The Film World Loses A Legend, Plus Best Wishes To Nasty Nate For A Safe Recovery

Another celebrity passing made the news
This time it was a heart attack for John Hughes
His passing made us say "What the fuck?"
He created "Ferris Bueller", "P.T.A." and "Uncle Buck"
He'll be at heaven's gate in the Family Truckster, with nothing to lose

The Eagles took a shot at the end zone
Signed Michael Vick, who was sitting home alone
He was pimped out by one Tony Dungy
Philly fans will hang him by a cord, bungee
McNabb chokes in big games, hope Vick chokes on a bone

"The Predator" is now gone for the year
I pour one out for him with my beer
They say he's lucky to be alive
He's got passion and he's got drive
Nate will be back in 2010, so don’t shed a tear

They call it "Glory's Last Stand"
As golf fever sweeps the land
Front-running sellouts follow Tiger all day
They hope he wins the PGA
If anyone else wins, it would be grand

What's up with Cheney's Bush hatin'?
Where was he during the war debatin'?
Just don't go on a hunting trip with Dick
Who's worse seems like a pointless schtick
It's like Lucifer calling the kettle Satan

Last time …

“Iron Man” Starts With Unique Take On Superheroes, Then Fades Into Predictable Summer Fare

Some reviews referred to “Iron Man” as one of the more underrated movies of 2008, so I thought it was worth checking out. Hell, the fact that Robert Downey Jr. still finds a way to appear in movies was intriguing enough, so I figured I’d give it a spin even though I had come away rather disappointed in my last bout with kid’s-comics-gone-adult-mainstream with “Dark Night.”

Downey Jr. appears to be on a career arc that looks roughly like the old Loch Ness Monster ride at Busch Gardens, going from has-been to almost-is and back again with frightening regularity. He seems to fit his role as billionaire industrialist-scientist Tony Stark perfectly, acting like an egocentric smartass until he’s literally blasted into having a conscience. His partner, Obadiah Stone (yes, this movie had some rather strange names), is played by Jeff Bridges, who does a not-so-subtle job of concealing the fact that he is a criminal. Hell, when he rolls up to the lab on a Segway, looking like his former buddy Walter Sobchak from “Big Lebowski”, it was hard not to see the invisible neon sign flashing, “HERE IS YOUR ANTAGONIST.”

After he’s attacked and taken hostage, Stark quickly and deftly turns his cave into a world-class laboratory. As best as I could tell, he was able to fashion a superhero costume out of spare parts such as cans of Beefarino and old tuna fish in an Afghan cave, while also designing a rocket—all in under three months. All with an apparent hole in his chest that is filled with what appears to be kryptonite. All while delivering well-timed ironic barbs at his Afghanistanian “helper.” That is one very productive mofo. Of course, it all leads up to a predictable, epic battle between good-and-bad, big-and-small Iron Men.


Gwyneth Paltrow is a surprising choice in a throwaway role as Stark’s ever-present assistant, Pepper Potts (don’t ask). She looks great as a redhead, but this is a pretty far fall for an actress who enjoyed a stretch of time when she was the top choice for any premier leading-lady role, then she started dating ditto-rockers and naming children after various pieces of fruit. Terrence Howard is a solid actor, but he’s pretty wasted as Stark’s military chum, Rhodey. The dude from “New Adventures of Old Christine" also makes an odd appearance as some sort of government operative, but at that point Stark’s crisis of conscience feels a bit convenient and forced, so you’re sorta reduced to, “Why don’t they just do more Rambo/James Bond/special effects stuff?”

What it all added up to was your basic blow-‘em-up summer flick (featuring sequel functionality!), with Jon Favreau directing about like Michael Bay or somesuch. It was funny at times and entertaining at others, which is more than I could say about lotsa summer movies that roll down the pike. So kudos Downey … now, just stay away from the Coreys and the meth labs.

"Glengarry Glen Ross" Meets "Used Cars"?

Jeremy Piven is pretty much a douche who can thank Ari Gold for this shot on the big screen, but he's kinda funny sometimes too.

It's got Netflix written all over it, but maybe that's just me.

The Goods: Exclusive New Red Band Trailer - watch more funny videos

Thompson Hits No Brakes And Avoids No Potholes In Groundbreaking “Hell’s Angels”

“‘We’re the one-percenters, man—the one percent that don’t fit and don’t care.’”
—“A Hell’s Angel, speaking for the permanent record”

“They rode with a fine, unwashed arrogance, secure in their reputation as the rottenest motorcycle gang in the whole history of Christendom … More than ever before, they were wreathed in an aura of violent and erotic mystery … brawling satyrs, ready to attempt congress with any living thing, and in any orifice.
“So the Hell’s Angels, by several definitions, including their own, are working rapists … and in this downhill half of our twentieth century, they are not so different from the rest of us as they sometimes seem. They are only more obvious.”

A hellaciously intense opening, a meticulously researched recitation of facts, freewheel reporting tinged with epic editorializing, hysterical tangents that amount to full-throttle barreling down blind alleyways … welcome to the one-of-a-kind world of Hunter S. Thompson. Welcome to “Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga.” Welcome to Gonzo journalism.

Here we see Thompson at his early best, when he was driven to mix booze, facts, drugs, research and a helluva story, then weave it all into something legendary. He mixes tones and prose, so that some reads like a free-word, free-form tribute to Jack Kerouac and other as a staunchly supported defense of the role of radicals in the free world. You really don’t even see or feel Thompson’s presence until you’re well into the book, a refreshing nod to a time when Thompson didn’t have to be the story in order to be a part of the story.

One summer, he elected to ride with the Hell’s Angels for a year or so in order to write a book on this cultural phenomenon, building on an article he had done that had garnered great reviews. Early on, he seems to take an overly aggressive stance of ensuring “fair” journalism, to the point where it comes across like he’s defending the Hell’s Angels themselves. Thus brings up the eternal question that has always surrounded this book: did he get in too far? Those in the “yes” camp point to Thompson’s own quasi-admission: “By the middle of the summer I had become so involved in the outlaw scene that I was no longer sure whether I was doing research on the Hell’s Angels or being slowly absorbed by them.”

For a while, Thompson makes it sound as if the Hell’s Angels were routinely provoked, just sitting around drinking beer when trouble always finds them. Like Michael Vick, the trouble is always hovering somewhere nearby, a shifting vortex of which they’re coincidentally in ever-present proximity to. He frequently, liberally and humorously relies on footnotes through much of the early part of the book. His great analysis of the Angels and the society that they must relate with eventually evolves into a searing condemnation of post-war America.


At one point, Thompson launches into a tremendous, transcendent description of American white trash and how they came to be, borrowing heavily from Nelson Algren’s “A Walk on the Wild Side” and William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning.” Using Algren’s words, he describes the Hell’s Angels as “fierce craving boys,” with “a feeling of having been cheated.” However, when he is describing the Angels as toads who believe their own press clippings and eventually become their own worst enemies, it is hard not to wonder whether he is unknowingly -- or knowingly -- describing himself.

Somewhere amidst the pervasive discussion of rampant abuse of alcohol and drugs and the rape culture that surrounds the Angels, in the latter parts of the book, we sense and feel a tonal shift in Thompson’s view of and perspective toward the Hell’s Angels. In what is his most insightful and impassioned writing of the entire piece, he positively skewers the gang, offering up a searing indictment of what the Angels had become. It is as if Thompson was willing to endure any horrors and chalk them up as sacrifices for the good of his art, but when he got to the end of the Angels’ highway and saw that it was an empty desert and a hollow dead end, the realization that there was nothing really to being a Hell’s Angel came as a shock. The idea that the Angels aren’t really about anything and don’t really stand for anything seemed to surprise Thompson.

“In the terms of our Great Society the Hell’s Angels and their ilk are losers—dropouts, failures and malcontents. They are rejects looking for a way to get even with a world in which they are only a problem … Most Angels understand where they are, but not why, and they are well enough grounded in the eternal verities to know that very few of the toads in this world are Charming Princes in disguise. Most are simply toads, and no matter how many magic maidens they kiss or rape, they are going to stay that way …
“For nearly a year I had lived in a world that seemed, at first, like something original … Later, as they attracted more and more attention, the mystique was stretched so thin that it finally became transparent.”

The skeptic will invariably -- and understandably -- point to the book’s most infamous feature as the reason for Thompson’s seeming change of heart. At the very ending of the book, as almost an addendum, Thompson adds the tale of how the Hell’s Angels eventually turned on him and administered a severe beating. He is careful to say that the Angels he was closest to and spent the most time with were not involved in the attack, but the circumstances surrounding the beating vary depending on who you want to believe. In the Thompson biography “Gonzo,” Angels leader Sonny Barger himself said that Thompson intervened when a Hell’s Angel was beating his lady and his dog, calling him out in front of the crowd. According to Barger, the Angel in question pounded Thompson on his own. However, most other accounts say that the Hell’s Angels got jealous when it appeared that Thompson was going to make money off the book and they weren’t, then ganged up to pummel him.


The beating is only touched on very briefly in the postscript, so the anticipatory feeling of waiting for a payoff is somewhat robbed; after all, some have read the book only because they had heard the stories about Thompson being beaten to within an inch of his life by the Hell’s Angels (Thompson maintains that one of the Angels had a huge rock and was poised to crush it down on a prone Thompson’s head, until “Tiny” intervened at the lost moment). In the end, there is probably no logical explanation for the episode, other than the fact that Hunter was probably being Hunter and the Angels were simply being the Angels.

“The attack ended with the same inexplicable suddenness that it had begun. There was no vocal aftermath, then or later. I didn’t expect one -- no more than I’d expect a pack of sharks to explain their feeding frenzy.”

It is this tone that permeates the book; Thompson doesn’t shy away from the controversial or dance around the despicable. He tells it the way he knows best: all details included and no holds barred, letting you decide what you want to believe and how you want to feel about it. At the conclusion, it’s still not apparent whether it is a more or less complex deal than what you would think; the Hell’s Angels aren’t complex or misunderstood. They are just outlaws who live in a world of their own morality and making; as Thompson maintains, they are losers, pure and simple. They aim to take out their unvoiced frustration on a world they don’t understand, then blame it on the world for not understanding their frustration and taking issue with the attack itself. In the end, they’re just wandering thugs; in the end, none of it meant anything anyway. After all, this is who they were and nothing more, nothing heroic or romantic, notable only for the same reason society has always been drawn to those who live on the edges of morality.

The larger story is the birth of Gonzo journalism through its mainstream publication in “Hell’s Angels.” The idea that Thompson partially becomes the story, and impartiality be damned, is ultimately crystallized in this work that partly reads like one long op-ed piece. The high of creating an entirely new literary genre must be similar to the way Thompson tries to explain the thrill of winding out his bike on the open road …

“It has to be done right … and that’s when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms … The Edge … There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
“The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
“But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it’s In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definition.”

At the close, there is little question the taste left in Thompson’s mouth is one of bitterness. His conclusion may have been different had the final impression not been one of him getting his ass stapled to his face, but reality is reality. Hence Thompson’s own epitaph, fittingly incorporating another tremendous author, Joseph Conrad:

“It had been a bad trip … fast and wild in some moments, slow and dirty in others, but on balance it looked like a bummer. On my way to San Francisco, I tried to compose a fitting epitaph. I wanted something original, but there was no escaping the echo of Mistah Kurtz’ final words from the heart of darkness: ‘The horror! The horror! … Exterminate all the brutes!’”

Indeed. But breathe a new literary style to life in the process.

“W” Doesn’t Go Far Enough, But Serves As Shameful Reminder Of A Lost Decade

Lately there’s been a rather frantic effort in rather closed-minded quarters to try to salvage what’s left of George W. Bush’s “legacy” by attempting to shift responsibility for his litany of failures onto any number of Democrats or circumstances. With the blamestorming focused on Barack Obama these days for his inability to solve eight years’ worth of fuckups in less than half a year, Bush has quickly faded into memories. One imagines that he spends his days doing pretend golf swings, practicing Word Jumbles in the mirror, polishing Dick Cheney’s shotgun and throwing rocks at small Hispanic children, snickering all the while at the havoc he has wreaked on everyone but himself.

So seeing Oliver Stone’s “W” recently only served as a reminder of just what a colossal failure this piece of shit was in so many ways. I’m not fan of Stone (his career demise came about after he stumbled his way through “JFK,” then threw up the mockery that was “Any Given Sunday”) and the movie feels more like a missed opportunity on many levels, but it is revealing for those not privy to the true story of W’s ascension to becoming the most powerful “man” in the world. As a history lesson, “W” isn’t inclusive enough; as a retrospective, it relies a bit too much on caricature (though the tagline of “A life misunderestimated” is simply stellar); but as a work of theater, it is scary and real enough to seize your attention.

Josh Brolin continues with his career resurgence that began with his work in "No Country for Old Men" (though some might say his true resurgence began when he landed Diane Lane, but that's a story for another day) by doing a tremendous job in depicting Bush. He captures less the mannerisms of W. than the essence, giving voice to the very crude way he carries himself and the way he related to people. Brolin brutally showed how very disgusting Bush is in his personal habits, his excesses, his racism and his misogyny, and there were times in the flick when you felt he truly lost himself in the character. It would have been easy to resort to simply doing an impression of W (which has been done better in many other arenas), but Brolin forces himself to dig deeper.


The surrounding cast is full of highs and lows, with the highlight coming from the creepily brilliant rendering of Karl Rove (Toby Jones) as a creepy, serial-killer-looking mentor who lurks in the shadows and pulls the strings. James Cromwell was also excellent as George H.W. Bush (it’s easy to imagine the elder Bush threatening to beat the shit out of his son on multiple occasions) and Cheney as the contradictory puppet master was also very well done by Richard Dreyfuss. Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) was a bit of a throwaway character and Scott Glenn was a bit understated as Donald Rumsfeld (two lost opportunities), and Thandie Newton was eerily robotic as Condoleezza Rice. Her facial expressions and resemblance to Rice were amazing, but her actions made her into more of a giggling, yes-man caricature of herself than anything else.

The movie shows Bush’s “evolution” from spoiled frat boy to lost alcoholic to overcompensating baseball owner, all the way up until he basically falls into the presidency. Unfortunately, Stone decided not to touch on the pains taken by Bush to steal two elections or the travesty he unleashed upon New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,. Even though there are obviously many, many, many, many other mistakes made and crimes committed by Bush, and you couldn’t cover them all unless this was a 72-hour film, electing to omit those two criminal acts was a bit unforgivable in any retrospective of W’s reign of error.

Perhaps the defining scene is when this cadre of degenerate bastards sits around eating pie as they calmly discuss the mistakes made in the deception to go to war, chewing slowly as they attempt to shift blame around the room, never losing their appetites even as the reality of the untold numbers of lives that they threw away sets in. There were also a lot of allusions to the role that Bush’s brand of religion played in his time in the White House, the frightening over-reliance on false prophets and evangelists with agendas.

Usually, after a really good movie, you wish it wasn’t over. You don’t want the lights come on; you don’t want the dream world you were in to fade into nothingness; you don’t want to go back to real life. But this film was about real life … a stark, depressing reminder that this menagerie of a human being drove our country into the ground for eight years.

And that’s what made it a horror movie to me.

Limerick Friday LXXXXXXXXXIV: Patron And Football Don't Mix, Plus Engineers Ain't So Much On Abstract Thinking

Lendale White has always been quite a hoss
So to what does he attribute his weight loss?
He stopped drinking tequila, he said
Dropped 40 pounds—20 from his head
No wonder he knew the Spanish for “halfback toss”

Engineers look through sextants for thrills
Have the personality of a jar of pickles (dills)
They can use a yogurt cup to fix a bad hole
They’re sure they didn’t come from a tadpole
But their downfall is they’ve no social skills

The health care debate has seen every rant
Now, “It’s socialism!” is the Republican chant
Change seems to frighten them so
When that Commie W. wasn’t so long ago
Consider options open-mindedly? They can’t

Felt a little like that “Money Pit” movie
Made me feel like rolling a big doobie
Wearing goggles and an old bandana
Wound up looking like Tony Montana
But the ceiling is going to be loved by lil’ Ube

Fantasy football is back and that’s pretty cool
Every league has at least one super-tool
Some folks take it to the extreme
When luck often decides the top team
Don’t take yourself too seriously is the first rule

Last time …

“Paul Blart: Mall Cop” Is About What You Thought It Was

There have been a lot of funny fat men in cinema over the years; for example, Jackie Gleason, John Belushi, Oliver Hardy, Dom DeLuise, Chris Farley and Roseanne Barr. I’ve always found the ability to meld social humor with physical comedy fascinating, which is why I’ve been a huge fan of Kevin James and “King of Queens.” So when James took his next step toward putting a sitcom career in the past in favor of a possible future on the silver screen, I gulped hard, tried to forget “Hitch” and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” and threw in “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.” The results were predictable, but mildly entertaining.

Now, acceptance comes easier when you’re already a fan, so I had to laugh at Blart’s porn ‘stache and his hysterical usage of the Segway, which eventually became a secondary character as well as a tremendous constant, running joke. These attributes made Blart’s courting of the super-cute Amy (Jayma Mays) a bit funnier and less pathetic. There were some interesting casting choices (it’s always interesting to me to see how so many of these comedians run in little troupes, like if one signs on to a movie it’s a package deal), but the highlight of the movie is easily the scene where Blart involuntary gets drunk. Freaking priceless.

There were more than a few giggle-worthy moments (James and Nick Bakay, who teamed up on KOQ, co-wrote it, so obviously James is literally made for the role), but I’m more than a little surprised at how popular this flick became. Maybe the mad-cap capers and lighthearted tone combined to make it so you don’t need to think much when watching it, which is what people could be looking for in a disastrous economy. Perhaps it took advantage of an enormous lull in watchable movies coming out of Hollywood. Whatever the reason, James rode his physical humor—and Segway—all the way to the top spot for a while.

It’s hard to get too in-depth with a movie that has “Mall Cop” in the title, so I’ll wrap it up here. But if it’s mindless entertainment and easy laughs you’re after, Paul Blart is the guy you want. At least it’ll make you chuckle to yourself the next time you’re in the mall and a dude in a too-tight uniform who takes himself a bit too seriously is presiding over the food court.

Danny MacCaskill Meant To Do That.

Fucking. Sick.

That is all.

Hoops, Hooch, Heroin And Hopeful Writing: Leo Dominates “The Basketball Diaries”

I guess it’s safe to say that you never know when a movie is going to roll across the cable guide that unexpectedly catches your eye. I had heard mention of “The Basketball Diaries” in passing (released in 1995? Damn, I’m old), and the culture of the New York hoops playgrounds has always somewhat fascinated me—or at least since I got to know “Da Jules of Harlem on His Way to Stardom” a little bit at State.

So when I stumbled across “The Basketball Diaries,” featuring a 20-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio, I figured I’d give it a shot. Initially, it had the gritty feel of a Martin Scorsese flick, but since it was directed by Scott Kalvert, it was obviously lacking in Scorses’s directorial techniques and gifts—though there are some memorable, slow-motion scenes, highlighted by the gang jumping off the cliffs. Of course, its authentic vibe is informed by the fact that it’s based on a true story, captured by noted author and musician (his music was part of the film’s soundtrack) Jim Carroll in his novel of the same name. The tagline was “the true story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist,” and certainly captures the flick in a nutshell.

DiCaprio plays Jim, the main character who tries to blend three worlds: basketball, thuggery and poetry. While he’s hard to accept as a street tough, his gang is lent some credence with the presence of a ‘roided-up Marky Mark (as Mickey … Mickey Mark?), plus the mousy little Pedro (James Medio) and the more straight-arrow Neutron (Patrick McGaw). The insertion of a sickly, wheelchair-bound Michael Imperioli (Chrissy from "The Sopranos") and his subsequent death felt pretty forced, however. Bruno Kirby, unforgettable forever from his role in “City Slickers”, makes an appearance as the gang’s Catholic-school basketball coach, Swifty. However, we see very early on that Kirby is a rather disturbed individual who not so subtly has a “thing” for Jim.

Anyway, the plot unveils a downward spiral as Jim and his crew discover cocaine and various other drugs, and even as the spotlight gets turned on Jim as the city’s premier prep basketball player, his slide into the gutter gets worse and worse. Even meeting a smoking-hot twin (played by a whatever-happened-to-her, insanely hot Brittany Daniel) doesn’t stop Jim from following Mickey and Pedro into the abyss, even as Neutron splits from the crew and tries to convince Jim to do the same, to not throw away his talents.


When Jim and Mickey get tossed off the team for playing games stoned (even though they never find drugs in their lockers because Pedro removed them in time; also, the unintentional comedy level of these guys playing basketball while high is through the roof), the lone thing holding them somewhat in check is finally lost. Vandalism turns into true crime as the trio delves into heroin, starts living on the streets, and falls deeper and deeper into the New York underworld. After he’s thrown out of his house by his besieged mother (Lorraine Bracco), Jim reaches rock bottom. He’s rescued by Reggie (Ernie Hudson of “Ghostbusters”) and goes through horrific withdrawals, but just when it looks as if he’s turned it around, he flakes out, robs Reggie and returns to the streets. The shell of his life is crystallized when the lovable hooker that his gang used to torment, played by Juliette Lewis, mocks him on the streets as even worse than her.

After Mickey and Pedro are arrested, Jim has nowhere else to turn. He tries to return home, but his terrified mother calls the cops, and Jim is sent to jail. While in the slammer, he rediscovers his writings, and “The Basketball Diaries” are truly formed. Following his release, Jim delves into spoken word poetry with Reggie’s help, and the movie leaves off at the point where Jim appears to have it all together (I guess the book deal wasn’t deemed worthy of airing in the flick).

DiCaprio certainly has a tendency to be a bit of an over-actor, but going over the top was called for in this one, especially during the withdrawal scenes. He did a tremendous job in this role, considering how young he was at the time. It was difficult to buy him as a child of Harlem early in the film, but after you see how evil lurks around every corner and in every aspect of these kids’ lives, you get lost in the city as a gritty, dangerous character. Though the gang indeed pursues trouble, they certainly don’t have to look very far, and as you anticipate the impending descent into hell that the crew is certainly headed for, you can’t help but feel some pity.

“The Basketball Diaries” was well worth finally checking out, especially for a writer always interested in the power of prose in helping turmoil-beset and angsty people escape from their own lives and find something pretty … even in the darkest corners.