Catching Up

Oh, the places I've been and the things I've seen!

Auditions for Diary of A Superfluous Man: I love holding auditions. As an actor, I always loathed auditioning. Whenever the audition counted for a damn thing, nerves consumed me. Whenever I didn't want the role, I was always relaxed enough to get it. It made for an irony filled career, if nothing else. But I love being on the other side of the table, particularly this time around, when there were more talented actors than there were roles. (So many, in fact, that I changed a character's gender to bring in one actress who I thought was too special to let go.) Auditions are my first chance to see what people can do with my work. Their readings suggest possibilities I hadn't considered, and give me a chance to think anew. I have high hopes that this play will succeed, and help expand my nascent empire.

The convention: I haven't had a chance to watch as much as I'd like. Hillary Clinton delivered a good speech, and Biden surprised me with his performance. I don't fall in love with politicians, but I like his brashness and energy in asserting his ideas, which, mostly, line up with mine. (I'm to the left of Biden, but that's okay. I'm to the left of everybody.) The whole thing seems about as good as a four-day infomercial where everybody's trying desperately hard not to fuck up has a right to be.

The Dark Knight: Bitterspice and I saw it this weekend. We both liked it, though I was slightly more enthusiastic. Neither of us loved it. I admired Heath Ledger's performance, even though it wasn't as iconic as the hype had led me to believe. I thought the acting across the board was strong, and the Joker's antics posed some interesting moral tests for Batman and company (tests they ended up failing, in many ways). That said, I found the ending unsatisfying (maybe the sequel will clear it up, but I don't think it's too much to ask, after 150 minutes, to get a satisfactory conclusion now), and I thought that Two-Face came and went way too quickly--unless of course they're planning him to have a Michael Meyers-esque comeback. I always thought that Two-Face, along with Mr. Freeze, were the most compelling, tragic, Sweeney Toddish Batman villians; why kill him off so easily, or even kill him at all?
I thought the movie was a success, not a triumph. And those who consider it the best movie of all time need to grow up and, along the way, see some of the best movies of all time.

A Brief Encounter With a Con Man

On my way back from auditioning actors for Diary of A Superfluous Man (and a fine collection of actors they were), I pulled into the left turn lane and stopped at the light. As I watched cars rumble through the crowded intersection, I heard someone shouting to my right. It was the guy in a huge black SUV next to me, calling for me to roll my window down. I did, and he told me a tale about some extra speakers he had for an expensive home theater system that he wanted to give me cheap because he "couldn't take them back to the shop." I said no. He pressed on with his pitch, his voice rising with almost-convincing urgency. I said no again. The light turned green, and I was gone.

I figured he was a con man, and that whatever speakers I'd have gotten would have fallen apart upon contact with Earth's atmosphere. What I didn't know was that this con has a specific name: The White-Van Speakers con. Fat Tony was right. Crime boasts a rich lexicon.

There's only one part I think the grifters flubbed. The con calls for them to prowl a high-traffic area for someone who looks flush with cash. I don't know what it was about me--the Costco clothing, the filthy ten-year old Nissan Sentra with a missing right turn signal--that screamed money to these guys, but I think they need to work out a better system for identifying their mark.

Isaac Hayes

It saddened me greatly to hear of Isaac Hayes's death. As a tribute, I've been playing his music here, and I watched his first appearance as Gandy Fitch in the Rockford Files episode "The Hammer of C Block". Wonderful stuff.

Dispensing Judgment

John Edwards has admitted to an affair that he'd previously denied having.

As a one-time supporter, do I feel betrayed? Hmm. Not really. After all, he never told me he wouldn't see other people. Do I think he should get a day or two of shit for having cheated on his wife? No doubt the moral guardians of the nation will hurl shit at him regardless of what I think. That's what society pays them for, when society isn't blowing its mad money on internet porn. I can hear them now, even though I'm deliberately avoiding cable news, "To think this man was almost President! A man who can lie to his wife about an affair can lie about anything!"

Actually, I think we can disprove that one. American history overflows with men who were respectable specimens in private, but lying reprobates in public. America has endured, just in the last half century, a pair of miserable sods who, as Presidents, lied about malfeasance, conspiracy, and fraud in the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, the Pentagon, the NSC, the NSA, the Committee to Re-Elect the President, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth, and the White House. Neither Richard Nixon nor George W. Bush approached a microphone during their respective presidencies without declaiming a dozen hand-crafted lies into it. George W. Bush has lied so profligately during the last eight years that, if he introduced himself to me right now, I'd demand three pieces of identification and a DNA sample. That said, to the best of my knowledge, neither Richard Nixon nor George W. Bush ever cheated on their wives. If asked about that, they could justifiably put up an indignant front and speak truthfully of their devotion to their spouses.

I've always taken it that a man who can lie about cheating on his wife is a man who's capable of lying about cheating on his wife. In this area alone can I assume his credibility is suspect. In other areas I try to assess his credibility by comparing his statements to reality, as I understand it. When John Edwards described the two Americas, he was describing something that matched my experience of how this country operates. When he told me the merits of his health plan, I gleaned from others who know more about the field than I do that Edwards knew what he was talking about. These statements and policies of his retain credibility, even though the man was a jackass where his marriage was concerned.

It's too bad that Edwards has damaged his reputation by lying about sex, because it allows stupid people to conclude that those lies negate everything of value the man has ever said. Ah, well. What's to be done?

The Original Maverick

I understand that John McCain has recently taken to touting himself in his advertisements as the "original Maverick". While a few who probably don't know any better have claimed that the original Maverick should, in fact, be Tom Cruise's character from a movie that helped finance one of Don Simpson's 1980s drug buys, the smarter of us all know that the original Maverick is the gentleman pictured above.

Parenthetically, Mr. Garner is now in poor health, but I'm willing to bet that, should he get a chance to vote, he'll vote for Obama.

Excused Absence

Sorry I've been away so long. I've been busy outlining a movie script so that I can win a bet with bitterspice. (You'll learn not to bet me, Sweetheart.) I've also been preparing Diary of A Superfluous Man for podcast and organizing the auditions for same. And I've been trying to keep out of trouble with creditors and get a short story mailed to an editor who asked for it and...well, I could have just said I've been busy but where's the fun in that.

Thought to chew on:

Ten years ago, we impeached the President for saying, during an official inquiry into the adventures of his penis, that it depended on what the meaning of "is" was. Today we don't impeach a President whose administration asserts a difference between removing a detainee's clothes for "enhanced interrogation" and stripping him naked for torture. I guess it says a lot about what sorts of nudity we Americans prefer.

How Can You Go Wrong With Cute Robots?

Well you can, but Pixar didn't. I realize I'm joining a very large chorus, and taking on all the discomfort that comes with that, but I absolutely adored Wall-E. From its unexpected use of the secondary Broadway song-and-dance number "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" during an animated trip through the galaxy to the final, joyous scene on Earth, this picture owned me. I'd follow Wall-E, this cute little tramp of a robot, just about anywhere, and I'm glad this movie let me.

See it. Live it. Love it. Be it.

The Many Faces of Bad

As longtime readers, all three of you, already know, I'm come to know bad movies of many kinds and styles. And today I've decided, for my amusement, to break bad movies down by arbitrary categories, in hopes of groping toward my bad movie aesthetic.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

(This post, incidentally, is dedicated to the late Jesse Helms, a beacon to bigoted halfwits everywhere, whose long political career is one of the many things that North Carolina will have to spend the next ten thousand years apologizing for.)

Worst Movie I've Ever Watched on a Premium Cable Channel: The Lonely Lady

Because I was actively repressing my memory of this movie, I almost put Glitter here. Now Glitter is a singularly awful, cheesy, and exploitive look at the ugly side of show business; but nobody tried to rape Mariah Carey with a garden hose, or marry her off to an impotent guy who carries said garden hose around whenever he really needs to win an argument, or place her spread eagled on a pool table while some sleaze shoots pool balls up her crotch. Mariah Carey, even in the delicate mental state she was in during the making and promotion of Glitter would never have agreed to such humiliations. Pia Zadora, however, being of sound mind, agreed to it straight away. Indeed, her billionaire husband financed it. The Lonely Lady could be used in aversion therapy. Anyone who watches it will shun show business, movies, pool tables, typewriters, eurotrash, garden tools, or human sexual organs for at least ten years. This movie made me ashamed to be a multi-cellular organism.

Worst Movie I've Ever Watched on Basic Cable: Jaws: the Revenge

I will give this movie credit for this much: it gave me a catch phrase to use whenever someone does something impossible in a movie. In this picture, the shark attacks a plane that Michael Caine's character has crashed into the ocean. The plane goes under, and presumably Caine does to; but a moment later his cast-mates are fishing him out of the drink, intact, and wearing dry clothes. When they ask him how he evaded the shark and made it to the boat (they don't notice his dry clothing), he says "It wasn't easy!" I say that all the time when I watch wild, inexplicable action in pictures now. Thanks, Jaws 4! Basic plot of the movie? Mrs. Brodie suspects that the shark who attacked her husband in the first movie is now after her and her family. (Apparently, somewhere on the Paramount lot, the shark and Michael Myers merged into one.) So she flies to the Bahamas to be with her son and flirt stupidly with Michael Caine. Eventually, to save everyone else--because everyone else can't just pick up an move to Nebraska where the shark would have a really hard time--she decides to sacrifice herself to the shark. There she has flashbacks to moments in previous Jaws movies, and this is odd because she wasn't present for the moments she flashes back to. Eventually, the black guy dies, the shark roars, and the movie ends.

Worst Movie I've Ever Watched on Video: Monster A Go-Go

This movie contains two lies in the title alone. There's no monster, and there's no a-go-go. There's a lot of black screen to make you think your television is broken. There's a lot of tedious dialog that never goes anywhere. There's a long scene where an actor leads the camera away for a long walk down a long hallway, so that it won't see the "monster" tearing up the room the actor has left. There's an actor who, before he answers the phone, makes a "Brrring-Brrring" noise. There's a full cast change in the middle of the movie.

Roger Ebert once described a movie as being no improvement over a blank screen. This movie was a blank screen, occasionally interrupted by visible tedium. Stay away.

Worst Movie I've Ever Watched on An Airplane: Armageddon

Because I'm tired of bitching about this picture, I'll turn it over to the fabulous Bad Astronomy and the equally fabulous Roger Ebert. My only addition to what they'll say is what I said when I first saw this piece of shit: "I wanted to walk out of this movie, and I was on a plane!"

Most Morally Degrading Picture I've Ever Seen: tie Sidehackers, Amityville 2: The Possession, The Lonely Lady

Okay, in Amityville 2, a possessed teenaged boy barges into his sister's room one night and asks to take naked pictures of her. Eeew! Right? Y'know what's even more disgusting? She shrugs and whips her top off. The boy's possessed. I want to know what her excuse was supposed to be. Five minutes later, the two are having sex. Why is she involved in that? Is she supposed to be evil too? I thought the point of the movie was that this family was fine before they arrived in this house. It looks to me like they were pretty fucking evil to start with. I would have thought that Satan, or whatever evil hell beast held sway over the Amityville house in the movie, would have seen that and said, "Whoa! Okay! You motherfuckers are too sick even for me! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, Mr. and Mrs. Caligula! Keep the damn house, and may you rot in the filth of your incestuous fornication!" Repugnant!

(Also, there's a moment in the movie that just defies explanation. The demon has possessed the teenaged boy in the movie, yet the demon also barks instructions to the teenaged boy through his Walkman. Why would this be necessary if he's possessed the boy? Does the demon just need to think out loud a lot?)

The Sidehackers starts out as a pointless, but harmless movie about a ridiculous sport called sidehacking, in which a team involving a motorcycle rider and a guy who hangs off one side of the motorcycle, race around. Soon we meet two sidehackers. One sidehacker's girl tries to seduce another sidehacker, fails, and for revenge claims she was raped. In revenge, the aggrieved sidehacker kidnaps the other sidehacker and his girl, beats him, and rapes her to death. And then it gets grim. By the end, you wish that humanity would just curl up on the floor and die.

You know how I feel about The Lonely Lady.

Respected Film That I Dislike Intensely: Happiness

I respect many things about Todd Solondz's Happiness. Solondz gets good performances from his actors. His dialog is frequently witty and sharp. He has a good eye. But I came away from this film feeling as if it was saying to me that sexual desire inevitably makes people hypocritical, mean-spirited, neurotic, and violent. The characters felt over-determined, which might not have been a problem if they'd been over-determined in service of a picture whose theme struck me as true. Instead, his movie's view of sexuality brings to mind that over-celebrated twit Camille Paglia, whose view of sex the late Molly Ivins dissected in the following fashion:

Paglia's view of sex--that it is irrational, violent, immoral, and wounding--is so glum that one hesitates to suggest that it might be instead, well, a lot of fun, and maybe even affectionate and loving.

I don't know if the fun, affectionate, or loving aspects of sexuality had ever occurred to Solondz; or if he decided to ignore that reality because it wouldn't help him build his case against the upper-middle income suburbanites he apparently loathes. Either way, his denigration of human sexuality leaves me thinking of Happiness as a well-made picture that is also deeply wrong.

Worst Movie I've Ever Seen in a Theater:

I hate to punk out at the end like this, but because I know one of the people who was in this movie and wouldn't want to piss him, or her off, I'm going to demur on this one. (That person, if he or she has guessed which movie I'm talking about, should know that I thought that he or she was the best thing in it, for whatever that's worth.) Those who know me and promise not to tell tales out of school can email me for the offending movie's moniker.

Until next time, kiddies.

The Lighter Side of 007

Daniel Craig is brilliant in this sketch for British TV in which he is besotted with a woman who has no idea that he's the actor who plays James Bond.

Best Line: "She doesn't know what I do, but she knows who I am."

Longer Carlin Post

Because I live in Seattle, I got an extra treat the last couple of times George Carlin came to town. Seattle was either the first stop or one of the earliest stops on Carlin's last two tours, and, because he always showed up with new material, I was among those who heard it first. He'd come out to great applause, place a notebook or a stack of cards on a stool or tabletop, and tell us that, because he was still shaping and refining his material, he'd be referring to these notes throughout the show. I loved the idea that I was, in a small way, a part of his revision process, and that the work he was doing here would eventually shape his performance in an HBO special nine months or a year down the road. When I watched his last HBO special, I thought back to his performance at Seattle Center and, in between laughs, took note of the differences--what he left in, what he cut, where he changed cadence, where he added or subtracted pauses or looks. Yeah, I can forget my wallet or my keys any day, but I've a great memory for voices, and Carlin's was one of my favorites.

What amazed me most about him was his ability to stay fresh as he aged. Most comedians last, if they're lucky, five or ten years before their acts go stale and force them into talk-show hosting or some other menial occupation. But Carlin kept going. From middle-class observational comic to hippy to cantankerous old man, he both changed with the times and remained himself. It's an almost impossible feat, but he pulled it off. His material ranged over a universe of topics. Pick a subject. Carlin had something to say about it, and it was smarter and funnier than anything you'd say about it. His Tacoma show ten years ago (or so) made me laugh so hard that my ribs ached for a week, and kept me thinking long after the ache subsided.

Losing him hurts. He was something to look forward to on a planet that sorely lacks things to look forward to. I'm glad I got to see him as often as I did, but I'm a greedy person. I never got enough, and I guess I never will.

Goodbye George

Sadly, not Bush; Carlin.



Yes, George, something is fucked up. You're not here anymore. I'll miss you.

Dave Allen Talks Religion

One of my favorite comedians, Dave Allen, on growing up Irish Catholic:

Tut-Tutting As the First Refuge of A Scoundrel

Michael Gerson, Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, wags his finger at Al Franken for his satirical piece in Playboy:

In the razor-close and nationally important Senate race in Minnesota, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman is presented with a unique political problem. Should he raise in his ads the issue of comedian Al Franken's offensive vulgarity? Or would this risk a backlash against Coleman for coarsening the public conversation? Remember that when Ken Starr detailed Bill Clinton's most repulsive antics -- stained dresses and such -- it was Starr who was accused of sexual obsessiveness.

Franken's defenders explain that his edginess is the result of being a "satirist" -- a term he embraces. "My work, dare I say, is provocative, touching and funny," Franken has explained. "It sounds immodest, but I now have a brand name in political satire."

Satire has been called "punishment for those who deserve it." Writers from Erasmus to Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have used humor, irony and ridicule to expose the follies of the powerful, the failures of blind ideology and the comic weakness of human nature itself.

So what is Franken's "provocative, touching and funny" contribution to the genre? Consider his article in Playboy magazine titled "Porn-O-Rama!" in which he enthuses that it is an "exciting time for pornographers and for us, the consumers of pornography." The Internet, he explains, is a "terrific learning tool. For example, a couple of years ago, when he was 12, my son used the Internet for a sixth-grade report on bestiality. Joe was able to download some effective visual aids, which the other students in his class just loved." Franken goes on to relate a soft-core fantasy about women providing him with sex who were trained at the "Minnesota Institute of Titology."

Well, I've always felt that since most of us have done the "repulsive act" that results in stained dresses, or sheets, or other household fabrics (Billy Mays is ready to start shouting about a new cleaning solution, isn't he?), the vulgarity does lie with the blue-nosed twirp who insists on invading our private lives, parading the stained fabric before the public, and harping on it for months on end. But let that pass.

The clip Gerson quotes from the Franken piece doesn't strike me as the most original comic idea in the world. Still, it does offer an amusing take on the way we hype the internet as a learning tool even as we use it, mostly, to polish our tools. Does it fail to live up to the dignity we expect from members of the U.S. Senate? I dunno. Considering that Dick Cheney, current president of the senate, once invited a senior member of the senate to violate himself in a highly impractical fashion, I'd say it actually rises one or two notches above the apparently acceptable standard. At least Franken was kidding.

Is Gerson finished? Nope:

Our popular culture, of course, violates even these expansive boundaries of tastelessness with regularity. We laugh at comedies featuring the C-word and at cartoons of foul-mouthed third-graders. In the cause of relevance and realism, our common life is already decorated with excrement. Why should political discourse be any different?

For at least one reason: Because vulgarity is often the opposite of civility. This is not, of course, always true. I know a brilliant and large-hearted academic with roots in south Philly who uses the F-word with the frequency of "like" or "and." But the vulgarity of "The Jerry Springer Show" or misogynous rap music -- the cultural equivalents of Franken's political "satire" -- generally expresses contempt and cruelty. Franken is not content to disagree with Karl Rove; he calls him "human filth." He is not satisfied to criticize Ari Fleischer; Franken terms him a "chimp." The objects of Franken's humor -- including political opponents and women -- are not merely mocked but dehumanized. His trashiness is also nastiness. Rather than lampooning the emptiness and viciousness of our political discourse -- a proper role for satire -- Franken has powerfully reinforced those failures.

Hmm...I'm not sure that someone who looks down his nose at people who get a laugh out of South Park, one of the cleverest satirical shows of the last twenty years, should be in the business of determining the "proper role for satire". As for Franken's calling Rove "human filth", I think that when speaking of a man who has gleefully accused opponents of child molestation without evidence, who has used push polling to intimate that Ann Richards's staff was dominated by lesbians or that John McCain had a black child, and who has helped build the most corrupt and criminal presidential administration in history, calling that man "human filth" is actually a bit tame.

I'm suspicious of people who call for civility in public discourse because the Bush administration used those calls as a euphemism to cover their true wish: "Let's stop arguing so that I can do whatever the hell I want." Underneath all the Gersonian tut-tutting was the Dick Cheney "go fuck yourself".

If civility is your bag, the courts of renaissance princes were truly wonderful places. There was a lot of calumny and murder, of course. But the slander was always elegantly whispered, and the daggers were always polished. I prefer my politics straight and down-home. That means more open fights and naughty words, but it also means that the peaces are more genuine, and the compromises are more inclusive. When I see M.P.s in the British Parliament yelling at each other during question time, or the House of Commons slamming the door in the Queen's face every year, I say, "There's a country that's all right."

Do You Ever Feel Like Crying But You Don't Know Why?

I know why. You must have sensed it, this ineffable, dark presence that looms over all our lives, suffocating our hopes, strangling our dreams, sapping our collective will to live and think and do. A presence so terrifying that none but the boldest of us dare whisper its name.

Yet I'll whisper it.

Come closer.

Closer.

Okay, Casanova, back off a little.

Here it is.

They're bringing the Smurfs to the big screen.

Last one to leave civilization, turn out the lights.

The Eternal Question

Now that Indiana is under water, we return to that age-old question. Which is worse, George W. Bush doing something, or George W. Bush doing nothing?

The Ten Films I've Seen Most Often

10. For Your Eyes Only (1981) Roger Moore, Carole Bouquet, Topol. Until I was twelve years old, I wasn't aware that anyone other than Roger Moore had played James Bond. This was one of the first Bonds I remember seeing in the theatre, and it's the one I watched most often on cable or video. Though in later years I found other Bond pictures I've liked better, this was for a long time my favorite, and it's still in my top five. The ski stunts alone are worth the price of admission, and watching Bond have to elude his would-be murderers in the world's wimpiest Peugeot cinches it for me.

9. Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 1964 Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden: "You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" This is one of my favorite pictures to quote, and of all of Stanley Kubrick's films--and I love them all--this is the one that most often finds its way into my DVD player. In this picture he gives Peter Sellers a workout that would have killed just about any other actor, and I love every minute of it.

8. Superman: The Movie and Superman II Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Terrance Stamp, Gene Hackman. I find it easier to consider these films as a unit. For some people, Sean Connery will always be James Bond. For me, Christopher Reeve will always be Superman, and all others will be pretenders to the throne (yes, Brandon Routh, I'm looking at you). Reeve managed to find ways to be compelling and charismatic as both Clark Kent and Superman, and, in the sequel, revealed that, for Superman, the wish-fulfillment fantasy is to be Clark Kent--though he sours on the reality of being Clark Kent awfully fast. It's amazing how much the Superman character develops in these two pictures, and after that, almost anything would have been a letdown. (Though they didn't have to let us down quite so far or so fast, did they?)

7. Tootsie (1983) Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Bill Murray. Sydney Pollack. There were summers where I'd watch this picture two or three times in a day. I used to know it from memory, and would run through the first scene between Michael Dorsey and his agent, George Fields, in my head while on walks. "YOU WERE A TOMATO! A TOMATO DOESN'T HAVE LOGIC! A TOMATO CAN'T MOVE!" "That's what I said! So how can a tomato sit down, George?" I'd quote it as well. "I don't believe in hell. I believe in unemployment, but I don't believe in hell." I loved the writing. I loved Hoffman in a dress. I loved Bill Murray's entire role. Goddamn it, I love it all!

6. Wargames (1983) Matthew Brodderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman. So many of my favorite movies involve Dabney Coleman in some way. (A couple of my favorite TV shows too.) There was never a man so good at being wrong about everything. Coleman raised being wrong to an art in Tootsie, 9 to 5 and this film about a computer that, because it doesn't know the difference between games and real life, tries to destroy the world in order to win a game. Though the film's ideas of what computers can do seems more fanciful now than when the movie was released, its message and its method are still compelling.

5. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, James Earl Jones. The best of the Star Wars pictures, which used to mean more than it does now, Empire boasts character development, witty dialog, outstanding special effects, and the most dramatic lightsaber duel in the series' history. Favorite line: "Hey, your worship. I was only trying to help." "Would you stop calling me that?" "Sure, Leia." Never again was the series that funny.

4. Airplane! (1980) Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, Julie Hagerty, Robert Hays. Everybody knows this film by heart, so I won't bother quoting it. It's impossible to explain in a synopsis how funny it is, so I won't bother to summarize. I'll just say that never have I laughed so hard, for so long, at one piece of film. However many times I see it, I can't stop giggling.

3. Goodfellas (1990) Ray Liotta, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino, Joe Pesci, Robert De Niro. Whenever students ask me how to open a story or an essay, I refer them to one of the first lines of this movie: "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." The movie gets right to the point, and it stays on the point, unraveling The Godfather's myths about the mob to reveal how much of it had to do with just getting the best bread in the store and the best table in the club. From Ray Liotta on the front lawn to Joe Pesci's "Funny Guy" scene to, well, everything else, the movie never strikes a false note. Once it starts, I can't stop watching it.

2. Real Genius. (1985) Val Kilmer, Gabe Jarret, William Atherton. I first caught this movie on cable. My mother was watching it, and I, at first, wasn't too impressed. By the middle, however, I was hooked on this story about socially awkward genius's who were trying to prevent a crooked professor from using their laser as a space-based assassination weapon. This was partly because I thought of myself as a socially awkward genius, and partly because I wanted to be Val Kilmer's version of a socially awkward genius. I think I watched this movie roughly seven-trillion times. But I still haven't seen it as much as I've seen...

1. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Ricardo Montalban. Star Trek movies have never been, and likely can never be, better than this one. Do you hear me, Mr. Abrams? Nicholas Meyer took a Star Trek episode, "Space Seed", that was decent but not brilliant, and turned it into a meditation on revenge and the necessity of accepting loss that I still need to watch every now and then, even though I've committed the film to memory.

So that's it. The final proof that, in spite of my best efforts, I'm trapped in the 1980s. Oh, well, like all the rest, I'm a prisoner of a time. Cover my face.

Sydney Pollack Died

"Life goes on. It always does, until it doesn't."
Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) Eyes Wide Shut

Indiana Jones

I just returned from a late screening of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Is it a fun picture? Yes. Does it have great action sequences? You bet. Is it as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark? Get serious. My reason for feeling that way? I don't want to spoil it, but you'll find a lot of dangling plot threads in this movie, more than I'd expect from a story that's been through as many revisions as this one has.

Still, it's great to see Ford back in the hat. It's great to see Karen Allen anywhere. And it was especially great to see Indiana Jones try to survive a nuclear test. That alone is worth the cost of going to the theater. So go.

It's Up

After a month of sporadic, poorly organized labor, I'm ready to launch the soft, supple, surprisingly limber and sexy website to be known forever as The McCroskey Memorial Internet Playhouse. It's the new portal for all my past and future audio projects, including Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and Christian Science. Bookmark it, link to it, stick out your tongue and lick its shiny boots, marry it and move to the kinds of suburbs populated by upper middle class neurotics who hold key parties and carry on cold, detached affairs (all-in-all, The Ice Storm was a pretty good picture), or, if you're more conventional, click the damn link.

New Stuff

You'll notice if you look in the right column that I have links to feeds for both Let Us Sit Upon the Ground and, the new podcast, Christian Science. I'll soon be able to direct you to a new website, the McCroskey Memorial Internet Playhouse, where you can find all my audio projects in one location.

Ah, my expanding empire!