(Pretend this is being read by a ten year-old)

So what'd you get for Christmas? Uh huh. That's great. I got the Up movies from Ali. So cool. And the Alfred Hitchcock Presents box from my mom. And a black Sidney Crosby jersey from my dad. It's awesome! And some clothes. Oh, and a CD and some shoes. And an Atari game from my mother-in-law. And Star Wars 3. Oh, yeah, and a tie and some socks.

temp template

I don't really like this harbor-themed template, but I really don't like the amount of wasted space on the other one. I'm playing around with that other template in an effort to customize it and expand the text surface, but until I figure it out, I'll use this one.

This is all the Transformers movie I'll ever need

*from the cheston/pbf archive* (click to enlarge)

I just read this over and over.

I'm not kidding. This is the nicest thing I've read in who knows how long. I read it over and over again and enjoy it more each time. I'll forego the standard sentimental and retrospective platitudes and simply say that reading this makes me lightly euphoric.

Courtesy of the online Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

State's oldest resident dies at 113
Friday, December 16, 2005

AP

COUDERSPORT, Pa. -- M. Gladys Swetland, believed to be the oldest resident of Pennsylvania, died Wednesday at Charles Cole Memorial Hospital. She was 113.

Miss Swetland was born in Mills, Potter County, on April 18, 1892, when Benjamin Harrison was president and Ellis Island began accepting immigrants, according to Caywood's Funeral Home in Elmira, N.Y., which is handling the funeral arrangements.

She started teaching at the Harrison Valley School in 1910. She saved money to attend Eastern Michigan Teachers College, where she earned a teaching degree, and later taught fifth and sixth grades in Detroit for 16 years.

Returning to Potter County to care for her mother, Miss Swetland taught third grade at the Harrison Valley School for 40 years. She retired at 70 but continued to substitute for almost 10 more years.

She never married but was engaged to a soldier who died in World War I.

She drove her automobile until well past her 100th birthday and lived in the Mills home where she was born until she was 110. During the last years of her life, she lived in the long-term care unit of Charles Cole Memorial Hospital in Coudersport.

It was there, on her 112th birthday, that she played piano for Gov. Ed Rendell.

She again played for relatives and other visitors, including state Sen. Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, on her 113th birthday. Miss Swetland appeared on the "Today" show three days later.

In addition to the piano, she used to play the organ at Mills Union Church, where funeral services are slated to be held tomorrow.

Not Overhyped

A few minutes ago I walked in the door from the Penguins v. Avalanche game, and I'm overjoyed to be able to report firsthand that Sidney Crosby is every bit as good as I hoped he'd be. It won't show up on the scoresheet necessarily, where he got only a single assist in the 4-3 win, but he's as impressive as an eighteen year-old could be.

While he didn't get the points tonight, Crosby's got the same unmistakable points potential that only the great ones have. Even when it doesn't end up in the net from his stick or someone else's, you can just see how his mind is working out ways to create scoring chances. Blind passes and abrupt shots that are always on-target. The refusal to give up on a play. Like Mario, his linemates know they've always got to keep their sticks on the ice. I can't imagine there are five better passers in the league than him right now, and he's only going to get better. He doesn't have Lemieux's size or wingspan, though, or the accompanying ability to conserve movement. Crosby's more of a whirling dervish, though constantly under control, and he puts that high energy to good use-- he made a couple of nice defensive plays tonight, including one great puck-stripping while short-handed. With Mario out of the lineup (and Palffy, and LeClair), Crosby seemed to take ownership for the team's effort tonight, and the team got solid play from all four lines tonight.

Fittingly, Wayne Gretzky was in the building tonight to scout for Team Canada. I can't imagine he'd leave 87 off the Olympic squad.

She turned two three months ago.

My telephone rings. Ali is on the other end, and she greets me by beginning to talk.

"Did Virginia watch King Kong with you and Ruby last weekend?

I involuntarily freeze. What I am imagining is that Ginger has subjected one of her sisters or a family pet to the Tyranosaur treatment (i.e., ripping its jaws apart) or the giant snake treatment (i.e., whipping it violently onto the floor).

After a moment: "Uh, why?"

Ali proceeds to tell me that she was reading the morning paper and Virginia came up to her and saw a print ad for Peter Jackson's remake on the page. She pointed and said, "That's King Kong. He's mean. He gets that lady. He turns nice at the end. He dies." ***




*** translated from kidtalk. Actual phonetic: "Dat's Ding Dong. Ee's mean. Ee dets dat wady. Ee tuns night a'de en. Ee die." Yes, I cringed while typing it.

Gervais Podcasts

Clicking on this link beginning Monday the 5th will lead to the first of a series of podcasts from Ricky Gervais, co-creator of The Office, BBC version. If that show wasn't impressive enough-- and I'm still convinced of its greatness, having revisited large portions of it recently-- I admire the approach Gervais has taken since he became an overnight success. Smallish, personal projects. No obvious paychecks for paychecks' sake (the American version of the show really is pretty good, even if constrained by limits that the BBC original didn't have).

This should be good.

documents

I post the following not just because it's cute, but because this is one way I can be sure it won't be lost, as google takes steps daily to become the Collective Permanent Intelligence of the Future. Just a few weeks ago, right after Halloween, I came across a fantastic piece of paper in which Ruby had dictated to Leah her plans for Halloween costumes covering next year, when she's seven, up through until she turns eighteen. I meant to keep the paper somewhere safe, but it promptly got lost and now I can remember only that she planned to be a witch in 2006 and that I'll need to remind her that she's going as the Creature from the Black Lagoon in 2017.

To avoid a repeat, I preserve the following here. A school paper on which Leah wrote what she wished for when the Thanksgiving wishbone was figuratively snapped:

"I thought about all the pets that were in Katrena. I wished that they all could find homes. Maybe I could even take care of some of them. I would wish that vets would come find them. They would have to stay at the hospital pretty long but maybe they would survive. Leah"

Favorites of 2005 with one month to go

Updated to today.

1. SARABAND (A)
2. THE WORLD (A)
3. L'ENFANT (A)
4. ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (A)
5. HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (A-)
6. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (A-)
7. GEORGE A. ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD (A-)
8. THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (B+)
9. WAR OF THE WORLDS (B+)
10. THE RISING: THE BALLAD OF MANGEL PANDEY (B+)

Drinking the MONEYBALL Kool-Aid

[Writer's Note: I'm posting the following as a sort of public shaming. blogger tells me I started this post on August 27. I never finished it. I suppose it's better that I didn't. Think of everything that's happened to the MONEYBALL crowd since 8/27. The A's collapsed and didn't make the playoffs. Kenny Williams, the GM derided in the book as Oakland's biggest fan for the lopsided trades Beane wrung from the Chisox, now has one more World Series ring than Beane. Paul DePodesta, his once and maybe future right-hand man, was canned by the Dodgers for being unable to win despite bucketloads of cash. Anyway, on to the obsolete.]

Did you check the baseball standings this morning? The relevant stats read like this:

WINS LOSSES % GB PAYROLL COST PER WIN
OAKLAND A'S 75 56 .573 -- $55,425,762 $739,010

CLEVELAND INDIANS 74 58 .561 1.5 $41,502,500 $560,844

PITTSBURGH PIRATES 55 78 .414 20.5 $38,133,000 $693,327

The cost per win isn't right, I know, because that needs to be done with a full year's record, and as far as I know, that's opening-day roster. Throwing the Indians into the mix was a last-minute decision prompted by my incredulity with how well they're doing in comparison to what they're paying out. As for the A's and the Pirates, it's merely the comparison between the baseball team I follow (informally) and the one I wish I was following.

In May of 2003 I finished a week-long trial in federal court that concluded a thirty-year piece of litigation, seven of which had happened on my watch. Winding down from that, we were set to take a five-day trip to Washington D.C. to visit my aunt and see some of the sights. I went to Barnes & Noble to pick out a vacation book, and I narrowed it down to two choices: Eric Schlosser's book about black markets in America and Michael Lewis's Moneyball. I chose Schlosser's book and might have made it to page seventy-five. I didn't catch up to Moneyball until our trip to the beach this year, and it made me all the more disappointed that I went the other way two years ago.

At one level, this is the book that Kevin McClatchy doesn't want me to read, as it shows that an unconventional and whip-smart approach to managing baseball resources can beat pure wealth. The book dissects Billy Beane's success in producing regular-season wins, and consequently destroys every argument the Pirates routinely make about why they are mired in their thirteenth consecutive losing season. It's funny that I read it when I did, as the A's didn't make the postseason last year and nosedived in May to a sub-.500 level. All of the hype and the offseason trades of Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder had caught up to the front-office savant, or so went the conventional wisdom. Now, of course, they're headed for the postseason again after a torrid summer. They'll have an asterisk affixed to their success until they win in the playoffs, but maybe this will be the year. Last year Theo Epstein got to show that sabermetrics plus $125 million could overcome the postseason crap shoot. Why not the A's?

At another level, the book is so satisfying because the Oakland approach can be applied to any number of areas/markets that are mired in stagnating groupthink...

Raging Bull

My younger cousin Craig works for the Denver Police Department. He's insanely strong and, more importantly, big-hearted and even-keeled. He loves to remind me that when we were younger, I would use my long-gone size advantage to pin him down and make him say that I was his Supreme Commander.

I thought intra-police boxing tourneys were just a plot device cooked up on NYPD Blue to let Zack from Saved By the Bell avenge a wronged girlfriend. I was as wrong as wrong can be. Not only do they exist, but they take place in Bermuda.

My aunt sent along this gripping story from the island's paper recounting Craig's fight.

"Craig Klukas (Denver PD) beat Gareth Dixon (BDA Police) by retirement
Round 1: Gone in 20 seconds. Klukas comes flying out of his corner like a raging bull. Dixon takes one look, makes arguably the most sensible decision of the night and runs for cover.
Klukas chases him round the ring before the ref gets the message and stops the fight."

I've read it ten times and can't stop laughing.

My 2005 Top Ten As Of November 3

If the year ended today, my Top Ten films would be

1. SARABAND (A)
2. L'ENFANT (A)
3. ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW (A)
4. HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (A-)
5. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (A-)
6. GEORGE A. ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD (A-)
7. WAR OF THE WORLDS (B+)
8. TIM BURTON'S THE CORPSE BRIDE (B+)
9. MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (B+)
10. THE WAYWARD CLOUD (B)

Ruby's Halloween Costume

The girls had lots of fun on Halloween. No developed pictures yet, but here's a link to a picture of Ruby from her class party. She's the fancy Japanese lady on the left.

Miscellany/ Bad Stand-Up

* In local news, a man was fined $300 for holding himself out as Steelers quarterbacks Ben Roethlisberger and Brian St. Pierre to unsuspecting and media-illiterate single women. Upon leaving the courtroom, Tommy Maddox approached the man and offered to pay him $300 if he'd pretend to be him for a while.

* I hope that if the World Series goes back to new Comiskey, the customary camera cutaway to celebs in attendance will fall on this guy. (insert obligatory "Ligue of his own" ref)

* I watched most of last night's Falcons-Jets game. I'm actually not able to believe how glaringly bad the Jets' clock/game management is, despite their hiring the clockwatcher who stands next to Herm. Near the end of the first half, with the opportunity to do something to make the second half more than just a formality, Vinny throws a ball to Chrebet which he traps but which is ruled a catch. Rather than run up and run a play or spike the ball to prevent replay review, the Jets call time and practically compel the play to be reviewed (and overturned). They improbably get the ball back before the half ends, but then another blundered miscommunication about where they are on the clock and the field results in them just letting time run out while the offense is lined up at midfield. No long field goal setup or attempt. No Hail Mary.

Seriously, if I was playing the Jets, I'd hire Flavor Flav to walk up and down my team's sideline, and every time Herm looked over our way, I'd have Flavor point to that big clock around his neck. You'd be deep in his head.

And maybe I just haven't watched enough Falcons games, but is Michael Vick even in the Top Ten quarterbacks in the league?

* Non-sports: I'm glad to have the DVD of George A. Romero's Land of the Dead now, but after seeing the weekend box office come out like this...

1 N Doom Uni. $15,488,870 - 3,044 - $5,088 $15,488,870 $60 1
2 N Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story DW $9,178,233 - 2,007 +1,012 $4,573 $9,178,233 $32 1
3 2 Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit DW $8,584,304 -25.5% 3,472 -184 $2,472 $43,918,009 - 3
4 1 The Fog SonR $6,665,475 -43.3% 2,972 - $2,242 $20,913,919 $18 2
5 N North Country WB $6,422,455 - 2,555 - $2,513 $6,422,455 $35 1
6 3 Elizabethtown Par. $5,621,009 -47.1% 2,517 - $2,233 $18,848,975 $45 2
7 4 Flightplan BV $4,724,629 -27.2% 2,513 -598 $1,880 $77,294,514 - 5
8 5 In Her Shoes Fox $3,885,189 -36.4% 2,237 -603 $1,736 $26,179,382 - 3
9 8 A History of Violence NL $2,699,962 -25.0% 1,308 -40 $2,064 $26,300,395 $32 5
10 6 Two for the Money Uni. $2,421,835 -48.3% 1,693 -704 $1,430 $20,706,660 $35 3

...I agree with my friend Paul that the film should have been released this month instead of in June. In fact, it should have been released this past weekend. That would have given The Fog one weekend to attract indiscriminate teenagers, then left the rest of October for Romero's film. They might have moved Doom to get away from it. It would have been the first time in a while that a horror movie with some cred had Halloween to itself. Saw 2? Come on.

The Red Lynx Wagon

i. Expressionless Barney

Owing to my circumstances, I've become something of a conoisseur of insightful or unusually hilarious things said by children under the age of ten. I'm pretty sure the undisputed heavyweight champion of such statements is the following remark recorded by Judd Apatow in a diary he wrote for Slate:

My daughter Maude was 5 when she realized that Barney had only one expression. She couldn't stop laughing when she noticed this. She ran around the living room with this psychotic Barney smile which never changed, and then started saying, "I'm happy. I'm sad." She laughed some more and then screamed, "Help me! I don't know how to feel." At 7, my daughter also punched up the drunk-driving sequence in The 40-Year-Old Virgin—which features my wife, Leslie Mann, as the drunk driver—by saying to me one day in the car, "When mom is driving badly, she should fall asleep." The next day she tried to button the joke by telling me, "Dad, when mom falls asleep in the car, she should gas."

After we showed the movie to a crowd, I came home and told Maude, "Mom falling asleep got a huge laugh." To which she replied flatly, "Yes, but did she gas?" When I said, "No," she just shook her head. She is either in for a lifetime of neurosis or a lucrative career as a comedy writer.

I love that these insights come from a little girl named Maude. As that's one of the old woman names not to come back into nouveau vogue, and given Apatow's affection for Hal Ashby, I'm guessing his daughter's name is an homage.

ii. That Lingering Undead Problem

It seems that despite four Pittsburgh-centered Romero films on the subject and dozens of films by others, the region just hasn't faced up to the looming dangers.

iii. That Lingering Hearing Problem

It's been twenty-one hours and my left ear is still ringing pretty distinctly. My pal Shane took me to the U2 concert last night and we had a great time. They're fantastic showmen. Setlist and tour info here.

iv. Book Clubs

It's easy to get cynical about the emergent book club culture, provided, of course, that you can get past the idea that it's an intrinsic positive that people are purportedly reading books and discussing them. Ali pointed me to this article in last Tuesday's paper, and I think it's so fantastic that this club exists, even in its somewhat antiquated, dying-out form. It looks like we're now a little too far north for Ali to be eligible for membership under the criteria as they're stated in the article, but I'm glad it's there, and the thought that these women are going to such great lengths to pursue knowledge and understanding for its own sake-- and not because of a perceived economic, social or other advantage it might confer-- is one of the best things I've heard all week.

Then again, I'm not hearing much now.

v. The 2005 Three Rivers Film Festival

The 3RFF schedule was released this week, and ten of the fortysomething films apparently played in Toronto. Looks intriguing.

Thursday, Nov 3
B 7:30 (reception 6:00) Beyond The Rocks [US 22] with Philip Carli live (*)

Friday, Nov 4
R 8:00 (doors 7:00) Pride and Prejudice [UK 05]
H 8:00 (doors 7:00) Breakfast on Pluto [UK 05]
M 8:30 (doors 7:30) SQUONKumentary [US 05 a] followed by Squonk Opera live

Saturday, Nov 5
R 2:30 The Ninth Day [G 05]
R 4:30 Reel Paradise [US 05]
R 7:00 The President’s Last Bang [K 04]
R 11:00 X: The Man w the X-Ray Eyes [US 63] with Pere Ubu live (*)
H 2:30 Nickelodeon 5¢ Screening with Philip Carli live (*)
H 4:45 Iron Island [Iran 05]
H 7:00 Harlan County, USA [US 76]
H 9:00 Dorian Blues [US 04]
M 2:30 SQUONKumentary [US 05 a]
M 4:00 Das Bus [US 04]
H 6:30 (reception 8:00) Dumpster [US 05 a p]
H 9:00 (reception 8:00) Dumpster [US 05 a p]

Sunday, Nov 6
R 3:00 Jesus, Mary & Joey [US 04]
R 5:00 The Ninth Day [G 05]
R 7:30 The Squid and the Whale [US 05]
H 2:30 The World [China 04]
H 5:15 Breakfast on Pluto [UK 05]
H 8:00 Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1 [US 68]
M 3:00 Das Bus [US 04]
M 5:00 Mutual Appreciation [US 05]
M 7:30 Darwin’s Nightmare [Austria/B/F 04]

Monday, Nov 7
R 7:15 Reel Paradise [US 05]
R 9:30 The President’s Last Bang [K 04]
H 7:15 Harlan County USA [US 76]
H 9:15 Dorian Blues [US 04]
M 7:15 Darwin’s Nightmare [Austria/B/F 04]
M 9:30 Mutual Appreciation [US 05]

Tuesday, Nov 8
R 7:15 Jesus, Mary & Joey [US 04]
R 9:30 Pure [UK 05]
H 7:15 Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 1 [US 68]
H 9:00 The World [China 04]
M 8:00 (reception 7:00) Film Kitchen [US a p] (*)

Wednesday, Nov 9
R 7:15 Pure [UK 05]
R 9:15 Dear Wendy [G 05]
H 7:15 Iron Island [Iran 05]
H 9:15 Côte d’Azur [F 05]
R 8:00 Video Data Bank program [US a]

Thursday, Nov 10
R 7:15 Dear Wendy [G 05]
R 9:15 À Tout de Suite [F 05]
H 7:15 Last Victory [Italy 04]
H 9:15 Côte d’Azur [F 05]
M 7:15 Electric Edwardians [UK]
M 9:00 Filmic Achievement [US 05 a]

Friday, Nov 11
R 7:15 Why We Fight [US 05]
R 9:15 Manderlay [Denmark 05]
H 7:30 (reception 9:00) Short Film Awards
M 7:15 Electric Edwardians [UK]
M 9:00 Dogplayers [US 05 a p]

Saturday, Nov 12
R 1:30 La Petite Jérusalem [F/ I 05]
R 3:45 Manderlay [Denmark 05]
R 6:30 À Tout de Suite [F 05]
R 8:30 The Memsahib [US/India 05 a]
H 4:30 Last Victory [Italy 04]
H 6:30 The World’s Fastest Indian [NZ/US 05]
H 9:00 My Beautiful Girl Mari [K 02]
M 4:30 Derailroaded [US 05 a]
M 7:00 Filmic Achievement [US 05 a]
M 9:15 Story of a Fructiferous Society [US 05 a p]

Sunday, Nov 13
R 2:15 La Petite Jérusalem [F/ I 05]
R 4:30 Lost Embrace [A 04]
R 7:00 Why We Fight [US 05]
H 1:00 The World’s Fastest Indian [NZ/US 05]
H 3:30 Short Films program
M 2:30 Derailroaded [US 05 a]
M 5:00 Ballets Russes [US 05]
M 7:30 Dogplayers [US 05 a p]

Monday, Nov 14
R 8:00 The Memsahib [US/India 05 a]
H 7:15 My Beautiful Girl Mari [K 02]
H 9:00 Keane [US 05]
M 7:00 (reception 5:30) Ballets Russes [US 05]
M 9:15 Story of a Fructiferous Society [US 05 a p]

Tuesday, Nov 15
R 7:15 Lost Embrace [A 04]
R 9:15 At Last [US 05 a]
H 7:15 Keane [US 05]
H 9:15 Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace [Canada 04]
M 7:15 William Eggleston in the Real World [US 05]
M 9:15 Short Films program

Wednesday, Nov 16
R 8:00 At Last [US 05 a]
H 8:00 Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace [Canada 04]
M 7:00 Photo Auction closing reception (*)
M 8:00 William Eggleston in the Real World [US 05]

Thursday, Nov 17
R 8:00 Blackmail [UK 29] with Alloy Orch live (*)

I'm going to sift through these and try to come up with between five and ten screenings I'd really like to make. Further details on particular films can be found here. Comments on any of them are welcome.

anti-spam

Sorry for the added inconvenience w.r.t. leaving comments now, but I've been overrun by spam and the new setting should eliminate that.

This World Expands and Contracts with the Bellows-Shaped Internet

I've been looking for my friend Ebere for the last twelve years. The last time I saw him was on the day I graduated from college. I talked to him through the driver's side window while his car was parked in front of my dormitory. I was carrying boxes out to my car. We were both hurried and I tried to give him quick directions to our wedding, which would be two weeks later and fifty miles away. We haven't seen each other since that moment, or had contact of any kind. I've missed him.

In the late nineties the search went electronic, and after running some white pages searches I called a couple of wrong numbers I'd thought might have some promise. About a year ago I put a "please contact if you have any information" notice in our college's alumni magazine, figuring someone we graduated with would know something. No replies of any kind. Every time I ran into someone we both had known, I'd ask if they knew anything about his whereabouts. Nothing.

A few weeks ago I punched in my quarterly google search and found my friend through a mention in a story written for his university. I called the story's writer to enlist his help and narrowed my internet search. Then, two nights later, while sitting at The Ground Round waiting for my hamburger after covering part of a meeting, my telephone rings. My friend's on the other end. He'd been thinking about me, too.

I've probably told a dozen friends and two or three family members that I (used to) write this weblog. I keep it low-key. I've maintained a rigorous no-writing-about-work policy (second only, apparently, to my no-writing-about-anything policy of late), but this is both not substantive and too interrelated not to mention. Two days after that aforementioned google search wiped out twelve and a half years of non-contact, I'm sitting in my boss's office, and we're conducting a telephone conference call with opposing counsel in a federal case. We're holding the informal conference required under Federal Rule 26 and the Local Rules to set forth a proposed pretrial discovery schedule. Neither my boss nor I has had any real contact with opposing counsel before. As we're discussing various deadlines, one of the three of us mentions the judge's court procedures set forth on his webpage, and then the voice on the other end of the line says, "You have a blog, don't you?" My boss, surprised, says "No, I don't." I say, "Yes, that's me."

(believe/don't believe) the hype

This story was the third link down on espn.com's hot headlines at one point this evening. I love the buzz, of course, and I'm more hopeful than anybody that the production will exceed the publicity, but it's pretty laughable. Crosby making some nice plays in a non-contact scrimmage against guys who in three weeks will be lucky to be playing in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is just news for news's sake. It's times like these that I like to remind myself that Sid's landlord/left wing/check-signer won two Stanley Cups at a time when each and every playoff game was broadcast only on regional television.

Best press exchange thus far occurred when Mario was asked if Sid would be allowed to have girls over, and he replied that he would, but "No sleepovers."

Those pictures look ungood

I'm not going to take them down, but do excuse the low quality scans below. I'm not sure why they uploaded so poorly. They don't look that bad at flickr. Could it be a symptom of dial-up?

One: Indicator #1 of Lameness or the Exact Opposite

Every week, when I take the recycling bin out to the roadside, I put the tequila bottle(s) and beer bottles on top of the pop cans and milk jugs and detergent bottles. I turn the labels upward. My specific intent is to induce the municipal collectors to say to themselves, "Hey, they have a lot of fun."

Two: Virginia: You Are Two (Sunday)

You are a uniquely delightful creature, both superlatively adorable and uncannily mischievous.

Four: Four Films Confirmed, One Not Yet Confirmed

Next Friday night I'm driving up to Toronto to spend the last day of TIFF with some friends. Well, and we'll be seeing movies. Here are the shows I'm confirmed to see, provided I can avoid getting horrendously lost before or between screenings:

9/17
9:30 a.m. The Wayward Cloud
12:00 p.m. All the Invisible Children
2:45 p.m. L'Enfant
9:15 p.m. The Porcelain Doll

I'm going to do everything I can to get in to a 6:30 p.m. show of Ferrara's Mary.

I'm excited for a bunch of reasons. I've been wanting to see the Dardenne film for too long and I'll enjoy having the chance to see some friends and meet new ones. But I'm fairly perplexed at the thought of seeing five full-length films in one day. I haven't really binged like that too often. It's like ordering a huge pizza all for yourself.

Six: Ruby: You Are Six

Last night we told Ruby she could pick any restaurant for a birthday meal, provided that she didn't choose either McDonald's or Chuck E. Cheese. To our surprise and delight, she said without hesitation that she wanted to go to abay, to which we had taken her and her sisters last winter. We had a great time. Then she threw up on the car ride home.

we are winning

Ali's Grandma Pearl presents eight year-old Leah with a snazzy, shiny red purse on the occasion of her beginning third grade.

GRANDMA PEARL: It's Mary-Kate and Ashley's!
LEAH: (perplexed) But it looks new.

Happiness is...

...watching The Man Who Planted Trees with your kids on Saturday then, while hiking with them on Sunday, having them fill your pockets with acorns so that later you can separate the good seeds from the bad ones and consider where to plant them.

a la carte

I have substantially the same conversation with someone different every couple of months. I'm going through the twists and turns in my history with and without cable television and explaining how my life is both better and worse in my present cabled or uncabled state. It's rather pathetic, moreso because I go to great lengths to talk about what a struggle it is for me. I can't help it; I have this irrational fixation that apart from all the other comits and omits I've authored, I'll have to face on the Last Great Day some ledger which tells me how much elapsed time I devoted to "Fantasy Island" in comparison to that which I devoted to reading Dostoevsky. Anyway, at some point in the rote conversation I or my interlocutor will say, "It's such a shame you can't just pick the channels you want. I could really do with [five, ten, fifteen] channels."

So I'm sitting in a chair on the beach back in June, reading a copy of Businessweek that was lying around the beach house. I stumbled across this story and couldn't help but laugh heartily. Really, could you have imagined a more hilarious consortium of anti-competition? I won't be able to not-want my MTV, and apparently I have Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson to thank for it.

What's funny is that my reasons for seeking to limit my cable channels jibe pretty well with Robertson's agenda of excoriating cul-too-ral degradayshun. For my sake and that of my wife and daughters, we could do without the stream of sadistic violence and vertically-shaking rumps and sleb worship and shout-down news and whatever is being passed off as programing by the people at E!. And, yeah, I know that among the channels I'd enthusiastically add to my plate I'd get different kinds of nothingness and low-end culture, but at least I'd have more direct culpability in choosing it. But Robertson knows what I know: despite the fact that I'm a Christian and a large plurality of the country similarly self-identifies (at least according to those Gallup polls), I/we would not pay any amount of money to have his cable channel piped into our living room. It just isn't any good.

Unless, of course, we were interested in watching the endless cycle of two-stepping, in which Robertson makes some indefensible statement or another and then spends a few days denying it or claiming misquoting and then a few more days apologizing and clarifying. That might be worth something.

Robertson, for his part, would likely offer some justification for his lobbying efforts rooted not in personal self-preservation, but in advancement of the Kingdom of God. CBN's continued free-riding and the anti-competitive measures necessary to keep it so are worthwhile just because it provides one more outlet for people to hear the Word of God, he'd argue. I'm not going to be the one to put a dollar figure on eternal salvation (I'll leave that to the televangelists), but I would like to see a tally of how much lowest-common-denominator, spirit-killing prepackaged masturbational fantasy Pat and the other 699 members of his Club are willing to stick us all with in order to continue evading the marketplace.

What I cannot abide: self-proclaimed capitalists who don't really believe in capitalism.

ADDENDUM 8.29.05: I intended, but plainly forgot, to address the first half of the article, in which it is announced that the same coalition will continue to agitate, through FCC-applied pressure and other means, to control the content of cable channels directly. We can wonder whether this is because direct-mail campaigns are so much easier to sell when the phrase on the outside of the envelope is HELP US STOP CABLE FILTH NOW rather than MAKE CABLE TV REFLECT THE ACTUAL VIEWING PREFERENCES OF THE SUBSCRIBERS.

Oh, and this makes two anti-competitive efforts spearheaded by Reed. Combine this with that deal a few years ago wherein he was lobbying for a Christian group who opposed the expansion of gambling in Alabama (again, a political stance which I think has merit, at least in theory). At some point in the effort, an infusion of cash was needed, and somehow a pile of money fronted by the Choctaw tribe ends up in the anti-gambling coffers. The Choctaw, of course, owned casinos in neighboring Mississippi and preferred not to have to compete with Alabama casinos.

What these two events add up to is this: if some sort of multi-era crossroads of time allowed for a meeting of Adam Smith and Ralph Reed, Smith would extract Reed's heart from his bony chest and eat it in front of him.

Dan Laugharn projects: Sufjan Stevens's Texas

This is a great list.

1. From Houston to the Moon and Beyond
2. Lights Over Marfa
3. Permian High School
4. Big Tex welcomes you to the Texas State Fair
5. Santa Anna (Remember the Alamo)
6. Crossing the Rio Grande
7. Cut n' Shoot
8. The Grassy Knoll
9. Ten Wonderful Years of the Republic of Texas
10. Texas Instruments
11. Panhandlers
12. The German Towns of Hill Country
13. Waco
14. Beauty Pageants
15. The Battle of Galveston
16. Sam Houston
17. Huntsville Correctional Facility
18. They Closed the Plant in Sugarland
19. Hey Hey, LBJ
20. Approaching Big Bend from the East

"Penn's Woods and Wouldn'ts"

All right, I reorganized my own list into (1) places, (2) events and (3) people. There's always overlap, of course, between the categories.

I. Places

a. Steel towns generally. Pittsburgh, but also Homestead and Monongahela and the Braddock/Rankin corridor. The towns' strange prosperity and ethnic vibrance dating from the late nineteenth century through the middle 1970s.
b. Punxsutawney and their inexplicable groundhog. Also an event.
c. Three Mile Island. Also an event. This will surely displace Midnight Oil's haggard "Harrisburg" as the best song written about TMI.
d. The Monongahela + Allegheny = Ohio confluence. Yeah, homer here, but it's still a neat thing to see, at least in part because of how it's just there.
e. Philadelphia's Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, various statues of Ben Franklin.

II. Events

f. The 1892 Homestead Strike. It reportedly helped in large part to hand the presidential election to Grover Cleveland later that year.
g. MOVE.
h. Dwyer's press conference.
i. The attempted assassination of H.C. Frick. The way I've heard it, as he's bleeding on the floor and people are wrestling the assassin down, Frick is dictating a telegram to Carnegie to tell him he's going to live.
j. Gettysburg.
k. Mrs. Soffel breaking Mel Gibson out of the Allegheny County jail.
l. General Braddock falling at Fort Duquesne in the French and Indian War. Man, this list is too western Pennsylvania-heavy.

III. People

m. Boxers, fake and real: Rocky Balboa and Smokin' Joe Frazier.
n. Satchel Paige and the Pittsburgh Crawfords.
o. Fred Rogers.

Shane Rooney: Sufjan Stevens's Pennsylvania

My pal Shane Rooney has sent in his hypothesis for what a Pennsylvania-centered album might look like. His list has affinity with mine. Shane and I earned our doctor of law degrees at the same time and place and share the same life-sustaining passion for the Pittsburgh Penguins. He introduced Ali and I to the cinema of Wim Wenders. He projects thus:

I will go so far as to predict the album name: "You've Got a Friend In Pennsylvania."

Using your groupings

Obvious but poignant:

1. Flight 93

Strong candidates

1. Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia July 4, 1776
2. Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 1787
3. Three Mile Island accident
4. Battle of Gettysburg/Gettysburg Address
5. Ben Franklin

Longshots

1. There was some movie(s) about slow moving, carnivorous creatures filmed near Pittsburgh, can’t quite think of the name
2. The Immaculate Reception
3. Johnstown Flood 1889
4. Valley Forge
5. Mother Katherine Drexel (Philadelphia), canonized in 2000. Only Pennsylvania born canonized saint. http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintk03.htm
6. Falling Water http://www.paconserve.org/index-fw1.asp
7. Pennsylvania's lost highway: The continuous 12 mile long, abandoned stretch of Pennsylvania turnpike near Breezewood, including two tunnels. Perhaps the longest, abandoned paved road in the U.S?http://www.briantroutman.com/highways/abandonedpaturnpike/
8. "Chocolate Town" -Hershey, PA

Bits of Miscellany

I. Birth Announcement

Belated congratulations to my friend Kirby and his wife Suedehead on the birth of a daughter, Una Lou.

With a name that adorable, she's genetically predetermined to be a superlative cutie.

And therein lies Kirby's problem.

II. More of a Help or a Hinderance: Undetermined

So last weekend I helped my friends the Ottermans move into their new digs. I forgot as I went home that an enormous box representing all of their clothes hangers was tucked away safely in the cavernous trunk of my antiquated automobile. This goes on for five days while they search frantically everywhere, including both their old and new houses, for the missing hangers.

Have I just ensured that my number won't be called the next time they move?

III. That Kind of Summer

Last night Ali opened the DVD closet and stood there looking for something to watch while ironing. I guessed what she was going to pick before I heard the opening rock song from upstairs. Three Kings. It's been that kind of summer for her. Since June she's read Reading Lolita in Tehran, The Kite Runner, Persepolis and Persepolis 2 and we've spent several nights over the past couple of weeks with Kiarostami's 10. Not to mention whatever news is available to a household with one newspapaer subscription and no cable. Sure, a couple of those books have been pimped in the mainstream press quite a bit (my own reading progress from that list is limited to Persepolis and being in the midst of The Kite Runner), but it's been a middle east summer.

Shall We Play a Game? (Sufjan Stevens-related)

Last Saturday I spent the day with the girls at an amusement park with far, far too many people per square foot contained therein. The water park portion was especially unsettling, particularly one shallow pool which contained way too many people on way too hot a day. At one point I became convinced that I was swimming in a refreshingly cool, Olympic-sized receptacle of urine and I had to immediately get out. All that stuffedness, though, will be forgotten as the days roll on, and what I will remember is how on that day I heard over and over in my mind the piano line from "Concerning the UFO Sighting near Highland, Illinois" and how it made that place enchanted. There was a dusklight ferris wheel ride with my oldest daughter fused with that song that I hope I never forget or allow to fade.

And let me tell you that if I was the President I would immediately sign an Executive Order mandating that certain television shows replace their theme songs. The Order would apply to all of the tentacles of the C.S.I. octopus. It would apply to the Cold Cases and Hard Cases and the Without a Traces and that Law & Order spin-off where writers sit around and try to top each other by coming up with more and more outlandish sex crimes involving children. In short, if the show fetishizes violent acts or violent actors, it's covered. My Executive Order would mandate that when you tune in to one of those shows, you don't get to hear some bouncy, procedural tune. You would not hear The motherfucking Who. You would hear "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." in its entirety.

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is the song where Stevens spent some time reading about Gacy's growing up, looked up from all of that and couldn't remember which one was the monster. It wasn't because he forgot how terrible and dehumanizing were the things Gacy did. Not that at all. Rather, his awareness of his own sin made it impossible for him to construct the Other. Why did a seemingly gentle man kill helpless people? Because I am a poor miserable creature, sinful and unclean.

There are lots of exciting things to talk and write about when you're animated by an album like Come on feel the Illinoise. You can talk about the way in which Stevens manages to create an aesthetic that accomodates both irony and meaning. You can talk about the way that he answers the question concerning whether Christian musicians have anything to say to anybody other than the faithful (the "faithful" being defined, with both irony and meaning, as people who buy their music primarily in Family Bookstores). Beyond those big things, you can talk about how Stevens improbably makes American microhistory and macrohistory exciting and funny and endearing.

I can't wait until he gets to Pennsylvania. I'm already imagining what it will look like.

So here's my challenge: take whatever state you, my single-digit readership, reside within and love it like Sufjan will love it. Pick twenty or so locations or people or events or oddities and make a list of what you could envision Stevens's album looking like for your state. Then submit them and we'll list them here-- I'll make separate blog posts for each of them. Entries with links or explanatory text for your people, locations and events will be especially awesome, but who am I kidding? I'll just be happy if this doesn't go completely ignored. (To Dan: your state for purposes of this exercise is Tejas.) (To residents of Michigan and Illinois: just put your heads down on your desks.) Then, in years to come, we'll revisit the posts as the prolific musician releases the albums for the respective states and we'll see whether we got any of the songs right. I figure if this blog goes, it's because Blogger goes, and if Blogger goes, Google goes, and if Google goes, it's all over.

I've already got ten or so locations out of twenty or so for the Keytsone State, but am resisting listing them in full because I don't want to scare off others from this fine state. I'll be grouping my guesses into (1) Near-locks (e.g. the Homestead strike of 1892), (2) Long shots (e.g. Rocky Balboa) and (3) Obvious but Poignant (e.g. Budd Dwyer's televised resignation). I'll post mine on Wednesday, August 24, along with the entries of anybody else who wants to play.

Some possible line combinations

Top line: M. Lemieux, S. Crosby, Z. Palffy
Second line: J. LeClair, R. Malone, M. Recchi

And those are just the top two lines. And that's not figuring in Evgeni Malkin, provided he can be signed from his Russian team so that it can be ascertained whether he has, in fact, caught up to Alexander Ovechkin in terms of raw gamebreaking potential. And that's not counting on either of the two enigmatic Eastern Europeans, Aleksey Morozov and Milan Kraft. Figure in the lightning-quick Konstantin Koltsov and the apparently-motivated Colby Armstrong, and the over/under for when Sports Illustrated or some other mass media outlet uses "March of the Penguins" to describe these guys is looking more and more like it will come before Christmas.

BIRTH OF A NATION

A few weeks ago I saw a film in which an honorable family was rent in two by the fruits of an unjust society where lawlessness and corruption reigned. The brave and proud protagonist, heir to the family honor, is helpless to watch as the person who meant the most to him meets a horrible death at the hands of an inhuman criminal. In response, the hero is plunged into despair, but pulls himself out of it by dedicating his life to fighting injustice.

One day he happens upon a symbol that strikes fear into the hearts of his cowardly adversaries, so he adopts it as a costume in order to embody the thing of which the craven dogs are most frightened. He finds others who are similarly outraged by the miscarriage of justice and leads a group of operatives who rescue the innocents from the clutches of corrupt warmongerers.

The delicate balance is struck: we're told that the unjust world is a product of greed and stolen pride and that conflict between men descends from that. The hero embodies the desire to create a world without war and pillage, but also clearly stands for the proposition that it's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. The day is saved, and the costumed hero is left with dreams of a better world which he can serve to bring about through acts of costumed bravery.

Does the above plot summary belong to

(a) Batman Begins,

(b) Birth of a Nation or

(c) both?

Sure, it's a cheap rhetorical gimmick, but consider that only one of those two films had the thumbs up of a sitting president coupled with his stamp of historical accuracy, which meant something given that president's academic inclinations. I'm not talking about the Batflick.

A modern cinephile who watches Birth of a Nation for the first time is likely in for a schizophrenic experience. As the earliest film epic, the sheer scope and scale of vision is admirable. You can see Griffith creating the mode of visual storytelling that is so familiar to every single person living in the modern industrial age. He's showing us how film can walk and run, how it can cover a lot of ground and space and time. Griffith goes from hell to South Carolina to heaven, from melodrama to gritty realism. It's a wild ride.

I wonder if the ride goes down easier or harder if you work as hard to constantly remind yourself that Griffith's up is down. His in is out. And there's a neat opportunity to learn greater awareness of the ways in which the arranged images of film manipulate us when we endeavor to invert Griffith's sympathies. Giving in to the film's length, Ali said, at one point, "I can't think of any other movie where I said to myself, 'I wish the Klan would hurry up and get here.' "

But, wow, there's a scene apparently lifted from a scurrilous political cartoon involving a state legislative assembly that can't adequately be described. And Griffith's decision to make the story's two most treacherous characters mulattos (portrayed by white actors in obvious makeup) kept me wondering throughout whether the decision was spurred by a real belief that interracial mixing was the worst danger to be avoided, or whether there were some outer limits to what Griffith could ask for or receive from his black actors.

It's interesting to observe that as Griffith is creating film language, one of his early innovations is self-promotion. Each and every intertitle card bears his last name in the upper left and right corners, with his stylized initials centered at the bottom.

And then there's that awesome part at the end when they unveil the Klan-symbol.

Note to self:

Next time, proclaim it to be I Post Every Day on My Blog Month after you've posted every day on your blog.

Man, if I knew how much work is involved in leaving a job...

Mix in a persistent summer cold and an out-of-nowhere bout with pinkeye...

These excuses are lame. I've got a lot of posts on deck. Perhaps I can catch up by doubling and tripling up. And they'll be substantive posts, mind you.

I need to figure out how to add photos. On Tuesday Tara took me to a going-away lunch and gave me the bestest present ever. Relevant to our earlier MAGNEAT-O! discussions, she presented me with a custom-made gargantuan yellow magnetic ribbon, crafted to its fifteen inches of derisive height by her own hands. The icing on the cake is the formal script, which bleats "I care more than you."

I will post a picture of this ribbon affixed however temporarily on one of our vehicles or the other.

And: thanks for your patience.

Auto maintenance

Ali had the van serviced today, and asked the Honda garage to look at the tape player, which Ali said hasn't worked for a few months. The mechanic found the problem without much trouble. Exactly twenty-five coins had been inserted into the tape slot.

How we can tell the new NHL financial reality is working

The St. Louis Blues tendered then traded Chris Pronger, all-world and way-gaptoothed blueliner, to the Edmonton Oilers for some guys, including one good defenseman whose name escapes me but who isn't in Pronger's stratosphere. In recent years past (well, dating to when they had to trade Wayne Gretzky) the Oilers have been sellers in deals like this. Nice to see them as buyers for a change.

SUMMARY MOVIES

I've seen a few of those-- what do they call them?-- tentpole movies in the past month and change. I'd wanted to write something about each of them (well, and about some other movies with somewhat less apparent structural significance), but being realistic means just firing off a few paragraphs apiece before the films fade into the fog of irrelevance they were probably intended to achieve from right after their opening weekend until their DVD release.

I. CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is not a great or even a very good movie by most measures, but it is a beloved and evocative one for many filmgoing hearts, mine included. Burton's film has moments of visual brilliance and tweaks here and there which make his film work like a cover of a well-known song, but as a stand-alone film it isn't particularly accomplished. Dahl's story-- in all its three iterations-- paints its human characters in such flat colors that the heightened sentimentality of Mel Stuart's film almost seems justified as a means to finding a human core amidst all the cardboard cut-outs. Burton either mistrusts those moments and rejects staging them or simply can't pull them off. And that's how the improbable finding of a golden ticket or the impossible gift of a chocolate factory ends up being as emotionally resonant as a dance number involving one man digitally replicated a hundred times. Big Fish created some hope that Burton was learning how to create characters capable of being responded-to in a more complex fashion; I think that's on hold again.

Of course, I'm also bitter that I saw a trailer for Burton's Corpse Bride before Charlie and I couldn't help but wish that was the movie that I'd be seeing. Shouldn't he be doing animation exclusively? Really, the film looks fantastic, and I think that's where his vision would translate best. Given the multiplicity of ways in which animated films can be made these days, Burton could probably put together several very good projects.


II. WAR OF THE WORLDS

On Sunday night, July 3, I went to see War of the Worlds. On Monday night I dreamt that I was wading in the ocean not far from a shark. Someone yelled and I looked up and the fin was there, sticking out of the water. I yelled to my kids to stay out of the water, then I got myself out of there. I watched from the shore as the fin stayed, and I thought about what it would be like to be out there, in the shark's path.

That Sunday morning I found my father-in-law and oldest daughter in a quiet corner of their house watching Jaws. More particularly, they were watching the scene where Brody, Hooper and Quint are drinking together in the Orca. She didn't get to see much before our social commitments pulled them away, so it will be a few years before her subconscious is struck through with the image of the inexplicable danger of a shark.

WOTW is probably as close as Spielberg will come to recapturing the spirit of Jaws. It's a shame that Spielberg used up his "it's all a dream" capital on a film as common as Minority Report, because he's tapped into our nightmares in this film. The film's tale of rough, tunnel-visioned survival struck me at the same primal level as a dream, and the attendant destruction and mayhem which sets the story in motion seemed appropriate to the cause. I was glad to see David Edelstein make the same connection to nightmare visions in a recent piece ("I don't know if Tim [Noah] would consider the original Godzilla "pornography," but a respectable body of critics—myself among them—consider it a haunting depiction, by the Japanese themselves, of the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Farther afield, I can't think of a film that captures the social upheaval—racial and interfamilial—of the middle and late '60s as suggestively as Night of the Living Dead (which War of the World evokes in the cellar scene with Tim Robbins)."). I've also been mentioning how much Romero's zombie films touch me in a soft spot in my subconscious, and they show up in my nightmares much more often than any other films.


It's worth asking whether the film is better or worse for being headlined by Tom Cruise even if the film were released in a year when he wasn't so dead-set on achieving cultural omnipresence. He plays this character well, of course. Sure, he's a bit more deadbeat than the typical Cruise Achiever character, but it's the same self-possessed charm. His appeal as a movie star has never lain in connecting the audience to a projection of deep virtue or benevolence, but rather in hitching our modest and prudent selves to his narcissistic self-confidence. Even here, among the worst imaginable dangers and sights, he's comparatively collected and level-headed even if a large part of the film is about showing how his natural-born cockiness is neutered and he's reduced to running and hiding. That's all to say that he probably doesn't hurt the film. It's also worth asking whether it might have been better-received from a critical point of view if it weren't a summer movie. Clearly, in Hollywood terms anything directed by Spielberg and toplined by Cruise and costing this much money has three reasons to debut between Memorial Day and the end of July, but I think there's a significant film here that gets lost in the hustle and bustle of summer event films.


III. BATMAN BEGINS (and that's a threat)

Batman Begins shows us the origin of the hero at length, beginning with his days learning martial arts in the Far East to his construction of the Batcave, through his development of the costume and equipment and into his first foray into crimefighting, in which he thwarts a villainous plan to kill everyone in sight. As far as I can tell, the villainous plot involves delivering fear through the Gotham City water supply, which I suppose is a neat twist on the general status quo in which people are simply afraid of their drinking water. This plot, again as far as I can tell, is derailed largely because the poisoner (Liam Neeson, Nell) is compelled to take public transportation when delivering the threat.

I'm pretty sure of two things: this film is a meticulous and faithful cinematic recreation of the whole Batman: Year One vibe and I could barely keep myself interested in it. I'm not convinced the themes that are inherent in every Batfilm are enough to engage me. We get a heavy thematic dose of fear. Fear is both good and bad, depending on the user, the circumstance and the intended end. I couldn't keep straight whether I was supposed to respect fear or, well, fear it. I checked the possession arrow at the end of the film and it was pointing both ways. Oh, and there's also the requisite meditation on the justice of heroes who don't kill bad guys. Maybe my memory is faulty, but didn't the comic miniseries responsible (or culpable) for the Bat-renaissance openly reject the line of reasoning that runs through this film? Can I please be teleported to the alt uni where Frank Miller decided to reinvent Aquaman? I'm too old for this shit.

Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's.

Using the short form of my first name, I've got two names ending in "s." Sure, it took me a little bit of time as a kid to come to grips with Strunk and White's Rule 1, but it's been worth it if only to enjoy the entertainment provided by seeing the rest of the world struggle with counterintuitive punctuation.

Two weeks ago we went to visit my uncle. Some years ago someone gave him as a gift one of those etched "Welcome to my house" stones. I can just imagine the stone etcher contemplating not taking the order. Do you really say that two people named Lucas are Lucases? Where does the apostrophe go? Are you sure?

I don't know whether the etcher was informed that my uncle is a bachelor, and whether this knowledge would have made the job any better or worse. I only know that the finished stone identifies the house as The Lucas s. No plural. No apostrophe. Just a tiny space.

This is the weirdest imaginable result. It's actually a source of inspiration to me, as I've recently undertaken a regimen of exercises to firm and tone the Lucass.

August is I Post Every Day on My Blog Month

Yes, it is.

7.05 Viewings

7.01.05 Land of the Dead (2d viewing)
7.03.05 War of the Worlds
7.05.05 Arrested Development 1.1, 1.2, 1.3
7.06.05 Arrested Development 1.4, 1.5, 1.6
7.08.05 Dead Man Walking
7.10.05 Arrested Development 1.7, 1.8, 1.9
Badassss Cinema
7.11.05 Arrested Development 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, 1.14
7.18 Birth of a Nation
7.19 Arrested Development 1.15, 1.16
7.20 Heart of Light
7.21 Playtime
7.22 Sullivan's Travels
7.23 Arrested Development 1.17, 1.18
7.24 Arrested Development 1.19, 1.20, 1.21
7.25 Charle and the Chocolate Factory
Arrested Development 1.22
7.26 Dark Water (Japanese version)
7.29 Trouble in Paradise
7.30 Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
7.31 The Lady Eve

A Crosby Sweat-uh

While literally stepping onto a bus late afternoon on Friday I got a telephone call from my friend and pastor telling me the Penguins had won the draft lottery. I laughed loudly and spontaneously. How else do you respond when something as fickle as the bouncing of ping-pong balls determines that a natural-born superstar will put on your team's sweater instead of that of the any of the other disappointed teams? It's pure luck. The Penguins didn't even have to lose a large quantity of games to get into this position, as they and several other teams would have readily done, and as the Penguins admittedly did during the middle and late stages of the 1983-84 season, when they lost their way to the top draft pick that allowed them to grab Mario Lemieux. That move paved the way to the franchise actually accomplishing something, and even if that "something" included the initiation of a draft lottery in the NHL, well, it was undeniably worth it.

There's something approaching consensus among hockey insiders that Sidney Crosby has the sort of can't-miss, destined-for-stardom skillset that hasn't been seen in a teenager since Lemieux himself and Wayne Gretzky before him. Of course, that's the standard accolade trotted out for special prospects at draft-time, and it made the rounds as recently as last year, when Russia's Alexander Ovechkin's ball bounced to the Capitals instead of the worst-overall Penguins. The label has also been applied to some first-overall picks who became real stars, like Ilya Kovalchuk, some star-caliber players who were never quite able to get their arms around the needed leadership qualities, like Eric Lindros, and also to players who were simply busts, like Alexander Daigle. Of course, it's quite conceivable that Crosby's the product of unfair and inaccurate hype and that he won't detonate the league scoring records, but it's difficult to imagine him having a more opportune situation than this team and this season.

Unless they're able to adapt quickly, it won't be a good regular season for the Devils and the Wild and everybody else making a living off clogging the neutral zone, hooking everything that moves and holding on to 2-1 leads. As much pleasure as it gives me to write that sentence, it comes with the huge caveat which reveals me to be the naive dreamer I am: for the game to change, the League must make the officials change; there can no longer be any question about who controls the way the game is played. After the way in which the League waited out the NHLPA and forcefed the NFL financial model to the players, I'd hate to see them lose all resolve in dealing with the officials.

Back to my naive dreaming: Crosby will skate center on a line with Mario, who'd generally prefer to play wing these days anyway. There's buzz about the team signing a free agent or two; names like Alex Kovalev, Ziggy Palffy and Scott Niedermeyer are being repeated. A curious report in the Post-Gazette had the team making a run at signing aging pugilist Tie Domi for superstar protection. Had a parallel move been made in 1984-- if Mario had been given his Marty McSorely-- it might have saved hundreds of unavenged cross-checks to his wonky back and some of those surgeries and missed games might not have been needed. So protection for #87 will be a given. And with the return of Mark Recchi, the emergence of Ryan Malone and the question mark of three young Russians-- Aleksey Morozov, Konstantin Koltsov and Evgeni Malkin-- there's some developing or developed goal-scoring skill already on the roster to complement him. The team still has significant weaknesses on paper-- the defense corps needs a veteran presence or two, and the goaltending tandem is wildly talented but unproven-- but spending time under the tutelage of Mario Lemieux on a team that's always encouraged offensive creativity in a League newly and desperately looking for high-octane offense should be the best possible thing for Crosby.

It's funny to think of how many of the most significant events in Penguins history have been tied to the draft. Eddie Johnston, then-GM, has all but copped to a series of intentionally-terrible personnel moves during the 1983-84 season which put the team in position to finish worse than every other team in the league. While it's worthwhile to ask how that strategy differed from their management strategy every other year up to that point, and for a few after, it's clear that when first prize is Mario Lemieux and second prize is Peter Stastny, you should pull out all the stops. For several other years, the team had no first-round pick at all after trading it for some nondescript grinder. Then in 1990, right when the team had started to assemble the pieces of a strong supporting cast, the four teams drafting ahead of the Penguins decided that Owen Nolan, Keith Primeau, Mike Ricci and Petr Nedved had more promising careers ahead of them than did Jaromir Jagr. Those four are all very good players, but none of them had or has Jagr's game-breaking ability and leadership-by-example, at least as he displayed those qualities before he left the Penguins. Does the team win Stanley Cups in 1991 and 1992 with one of those other guys in Jagr's place in the lineup? I really doubt it. None of those players had the sort of immediate impact Jagr did, and over a decade later I can still remember his almost ridiculous strength in winning battles for the puck along the boards and scoring big, timely playoff goals in those two years. Plus, for the rest of the nineties he won at least three playoff series by himself.

The team traded up to get the first overall pick in 2003, and while the extent of Marc-Andre Fleury's potential to be a game-stealing goalie isn't yet clear, it was a good pick. The team finished last overall in 2003-2004, but lost the draft lottery and the right to pick Russian phenom Alexander Ovechkin. At the time, that felt like a significant loss despite the fact that the second pick-- Evgeni Malkin-- is highly-skilled and was the consensus second-best player available. Now that lottery loss is looking in hindsight like an unbelievable win. Few details have been released concerning how the NHL structured last Friday's impromptu lottery draft. Extra balls were allotted to teams which had been the league's "worst" over the recent past, though I don't know if it's been said exactly how many seasons were taken into account to comprise that group. It seems highly unlikely to me that the Penguins would have received that sort of preferred lottery status had they won the lottery in 2004. They lost the battle and won the war.

Another big winner in this deal is Comcast. They're now guaranteed whatever hook-up fee and monthly charge I'll need to follow the team when I can't get down there. And I'll need to decide whether it's unseemly for me to own the jersey of a kid who's exactly half my age until his eighteenth birthday comes in a few months. I'm thinking if Beaks can have his LeBron jersey, then I'm not out of bounds in getting a Crosby sweat-uh. A Crosby sweat-uh. Man, I like the sound of that.

Guero

Mr. Lucas has just returned from running errands, where he does most of his intentional music listening.

Mr. L: Seriously, that new Beck album has actually made my life better.
Mrs. L: I KNOW. I was just thinking that that album is the soundtrack to my entire summer.

As usual in these matters, I was somewhat fashionably late to get here. Still, though, the last time I remember there being an album that was a summer's soundtrack it was a Screaming Trees album in 1996.

MUCK THE FETS

Walking into the ballpark yesterday afternoon I saw a guy around my age with a T-shirt bearing the above message. It was suddenly 1990 again, or the last time I saw that shirt. In '90 the Pirates were still in the East and what stood between them and their first division title since the '79 World Series team were Daryl Strawberry's Mets. Hence the shirt and the sentiment it expressed. It was ages ago that anybody'd take the Pirates seriously as a threat. That the guy had not only kept the shirt fot the last decade and a half, but also dusted it off for the occasion seemed somewhat pathetic. And with Pedro Martinez making an appearance, it seemed thoroughly delusional.

There might have been a hotter place in Pittsburgh than our seats in right field, but you'd have a tough time convincing my brood of that. They lasted five innings, which is coincidentally as long as Kip Wells lasted. Seconds after Jason Bay, Consolation All-Star, hit a Pedropitch about 393 feet to dead center field and fell five feet short of closing the gap to 5-4, I gave in to the various voices begging me to take them home. Someday they will better enjoy sitting out in ridiculously hot weather to watch baseball.

TAKING THE KIDS TO THE WARHOL

That sounds like it should be a euphemistic catchphrase, and so it will be. Now I need only to figure out (1) what it should euphemize (suggestions welcome) and (2) how to inject it into popular discourse. I'm already working on overusing another such phrase ("plays rugby for Vassar") into ubiquity.

So, yeah, we took the kids to the Warhol tonight. Ali's been teaching the older girls about art styles, and Warhol's silkscreens came up. It seemed fitting to go to where you can see a wallfull of Marilyns. It was mildly enjoyable, but it was less that what I'd hoped, and I think it's because Warhol's vision won and won big. Advertising is art now, and a degree of elevation of the common (as opposed to the uncommon or the transcendent) is part and parcel of our cultural language. It's lost its potency.

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE

I've gone through Wednesday's local movie listings and tallied the numbers. On 6/29/05, you could see Herbie: Fully Loaded on 18 screens in the greater Pittsburgh area. You could see Madagascar on any of 11 screens, and The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl on 6 screens.

You could see Howl's Moving Castle on one screen. That's the same number of screens devoted to something called Paper Clip.

Now, I'm of the mind that Academy Awards are one of the least reliable indicators of cinematic quality, but I'm also having trouble imagining another context where a director or actor whose last film brought home Oscar gold would be buried like this in a metropolitan market.

I don't even know who, exactly, to blame. Did Disney send out only a limited number of prints to hedge its bets in case the film flopped, or to keep the deck as clear as possible for the newest wacky Lohan vehicle? Are theater owners declining to book it because it runs two hours and can't be overscheduled like the typical eighty-five minute kidflick? Or are parents and kids simply not responding to it, the former disliking it because it may require answering some questions, the latter disliking it because of its complexity or uniqueness? No, let me take that back. I doubt quite seriously that kids aren't responding to the film or that they are put off by its complexity. The ultimate root causes are irrelevant, and the effect is simply dispiriting. A movie which is demonstrably vastly superior to the other three current movies aimed at children is being seen by a tiny fraction of the audience lining up for the others. The screen imbalance here is 35:1. Something's wrong with the market, or something's wrong with us.

Since our youngest was born in September of 2003, my wife and I have generally played tag team when it came to taking the older two kids out to movies. I took them to see The Incredibles, while my wife has taken either or both of the girls to see A Series of Unfortunate Events, Millions and Robots. Neither of us, however, was about to miss out on Miyazaki, so we took the 22-month old along, a risky proposition given that Miyazaki crowds include a larger number of adults without kids in tow, which makes it a bit less likely that there will be the sort of heightened expectation of ambient noise. Our babysitter doesn't arrive for a few weeks, though, so Virginia got to see her first theatrical film.

When we got into the car afterward and pulled away, Ali said something to the effect that if all children's entertainment was that good (or imaginative, or thoughtful), the entire cultural landscape of growing up would be vastly different, for the better. I completely agree. It's so easy to get wrapped up in what we saw in Howl's that you can forget what you don't see in Miyazaki's films, this one included. We didn't see a simple, mechanical plot which moved from A to B to C, stressing narrative efficiency and clarity over the ambiguity of wonder and the messy, diffuse enchantment of discovering a new world full of divergent possibilities. We didn't see characters who could be summarily identified as "good" or "bad," described in three words or less and assigned plot-roles on that basis. We didn't have to sit through potty humor or, worse, oh-so-clever humor couched in middlebrow referents or double-entendre aimed at the adults who are buying the popcorn.

But this isn't the cinema of reaction; it's an altogether different vision of what sort of things are worthy of captivating an imagination. The film continues some of Miyazaki's earlier tropes: the girl seeking to undo a spell that's both literally and figuratively holding sway over her and in the process rescue a young man caught in his development and serving an unjust master. Howl's is a remarkable example of fairy tale filmmaking, combining images of pure wonder with characters capable of inspiring trust and situations where the actual obstacle to be overcome is much larger and deeper than that show on the screen.

In Sophie, there is a poignant treatment of the way in which we grow old and confront the facets of ourselves from all our yesterdays. Her maturation is set against the backdrop of a civil war that is always in the periphery, threatening to destroy the characters but never advancing on them literally. There's something here about the way in which children-- and adults-- create realms of respite in times of strife. For a movie about war, though, the film contains very little violence.

I reread Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of the film. He quotes a Hollywood Reporter piece in which the writer wonders whether the film will work for American audiences: "Plotting is so multifaceted that it will confuse children, and it lacks the clear-cut heroes and villains tpical of animation." To his first clause, that wasn't my experience. My kids weren't confused in the slightest, and even the toddler was enraptured by the film's visual beauty. As to his second clause, his perception of the needs of children is askew. Many children (or at last mine) appreciate seeing clear-cut good guys and bad guys on occasion, but they're also capable of understanding and appreciating stores with ambiguity and complexity mirroring their developing real-life experience. Those are, not coincidentally, the same attributes that characterize adults who are appreciative of great art, so we shouldn't be surprised that Miyazaki is able to draw adults voluntarily to his animated films.

Other misc. trailer notes:
Chicken Little: I will never see this film. This film will never cross the threshhold of my house in any video format.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Well, it's a story that relies on grotesque, overdrawn characters and locales, so Burton's a natural. And assuming the script simply takes random swaths from the novel, some narrative form should adhere. Still, from the trailer alone I wonder if Depp's gone about this the wrong way by playing Wonka as modern-day Mike Jackson. Subversive, yes, but potentially very grating. I'm thinking I'll need to smuggle in a flask of Jesus Juice just to sit through it.

2005 movies at the halfway point

(a) I don't see much theatrically, and (b) the best is yet to come, but here's what I've seen of 2005 films, how I'd rank them and how I'd grade them to date.


1. Howl's Moving Castle (A-)
2. George A. Romero's Land of the Dead (A-)
3. Star Wars ROTS (B-)
4. Batman Begins (C+)
5. Sin City (C)

June, 2005 viewing

6/1 Gilmore Girls 3.13
6/2 Gilmore Girls 3.14, 3.15, 3.16
6/5 Gilmore Girls 3.17, 3.18, 3.19, 3.20
6/6 Team America: World Police
6/7 Gilmore Girls 3.21, 3.22
6/8 Rosetta
6/14 Kill Bill, Volume 1
6/16 Batman Begins
6/17 Kill Bill, Volume 2
6/20 Napoleon Dynamite
6/21 Day of the Dead
6/22 Land of the Dead
6/24 The Grudge
6/27 Bonhoeffer
6/29 Howl's Moving Castle
6/30 L'Argent

All zombie, all the time

Relevant to recent preoccupations, my pal Shane Rooney pointed me to this relevant science news. I'm so glad to see these experiments are going on in Pittsburgh; it just wouldn't be the same if it were happening in, say, Des Moines.

And this development may force me to rethink my stance on contributing to my law school alma mater, provided I can designate where the money goes. My check will be the one with the memo line: FOR CANINE NECROMANCY ONLY.

Suddenly, falling down the steps while carrying fresh game or slamming your hand in a car door doesn't seem so bad

Alternate title: Suddenly, cutting your pitching hand while opening a DVD with a steak knife or being repeatedly punched by Tawny Kitaen doesn't seem so bad.

*shakes head*

More DEAD

A couple of weeks ago I worried this was becoming too sports-heavy. Now, I'm thinking too horror-heavy.

On Saturday I took the girls to Monster Bash, a movie monster convention. Ben Chapman, Forrest Ackerman and a bunch of others made appearances. We stayed for three hours, or about as long as our youngest would permit, and had a good time. Bill Hinzman, who Romero devotees know as the cemetary zombie and the very first zombie to appear, was there in costume, looked scarcely a day older and signed a glossy photo for me of him emerging from Johnny's body to chase Barbara. "I'm coming to get you next, Russ." I need to set this up with image-hosting capabilities so I can post it and the photo Ali took of him posing with Leah. The two older girls have been teasing their younger sister with "They're coming to get you, Barbara" long enough that it felt like coming full circle.

I also had a chance to meet and talk with Kyra Schon, the girl in the cellar. She was a pleasure to talk with, and if the trowels with the painted-on image of her going after her mom had been $10 cheaper, I'd own one.

More LAND

The internet vortex Beaks has written his erudite response to Land of the Dead. Hey, thanks for the shout-out. He takes the analysis of Romero's themes to another level, and I really love what he has to say about how the zombies appear changes. I'm really glad of his mention of the human underclass ("while the undesirables (mostly minorities) are, in a sort of feudalistic set-up, relegated to the outlying areas. It ain't a hospitable existence, but it is relatively zombie-proof (of course, the humans are still free and willing to do harm unto each other).") It jogs something that I forgot to write about last week.

I haven't said anything yet about the scene in the club where Riley rescues Slack. From a summary or a review, it's tempting to jump to the conclusion that Romero paints the human underclass as the noble proletariat. It's not that simple (it never is). We only see bits and pieces of them apart from the main ensemble cast. En masse, we see the underclass on the streets briefly, milling around and ignoring the religious and political organizers. We also see them en masse in the club scene.

The club's an ugly place. As before, zombies are used for entertainment-- zombie photos and the paintball gallery-- and debasement. But you've also got a human woman topless in a cage-- and not randomly. And, of course, you've got the sport of watching two zombies tear apart a woman. We hear that Kaufman funds this vice, and that's not surprising, but he funds it because he knows they want to buy it and it will keep them from more heightened concerns. How is the underclass going to pull itself out of Kaufman's hegemony when it can't tear itself away from these base distractions? It's telling that the police show up and arrest Riley et al after the rescue and the shooting of the little man. Keeping the peace (read: the status quo) means keeping those vices in business and arresting anyone who threatens their existence.

Of course, the distractions of the club are a great complement to the distractions posed by the fireworks.

LAND OF THE DEAD

I. The Festivities

What a blast. I walked into Cafe Euro two weeks ago to meet a friend before a concert. It was filled with happy hour professionals, which is pretty much its clientele all the time, or at least until it changes ownership and theme in six months. Last night I walked into Cafe Euro and directly to my right stood George Romero, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino and Greg Nicotero. Tom Savini showed up right after I did. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came in later. Seemingly half of the cast of Day of the Dead was there, and several of the actors from Land of the Dead arrived and mingled with the guests and the people made up like zombies. The bartender who got us a drink appeared to have some sort of skin condition. I was relieved to realize that it was just faint, veiny zombie makeup.

Near the end of the pre-party I made my way over to Romero. He's unmistakable in his choice of eyewear and omnipresent vest, but much taller than I would have guessed. He's being talked at by a guy in his mid-twenties whose body language just reeks of determination and extreme self-unawareness. Standing in the on-deck circle, I see and hear the guy just drilling some monologue about his arcane film knowledge into Romero's personal space. The guy never moves his head, doesn't blink, doesn't stop for air. And then it comes: the business card, the sales pitch, the opportunity to advance his career on Romero's big night. Romero's as polite as possible, takes the guy's card but tells the guy not to expect anything out of it. The guy's undaunted and has backup plans to thwart Romero's polite demurrer. Really, has anyone ever made it big by pestering somebody at a movie premiere? I've always been too introverted for my own good and not sufficiently socially outgoing, but I think I'd still rather be a wallflower than that guy. That's all just to say that by the time Romero was able to break the guy's hypnotic trance, I was happy just to get a handshake and a chance to mumble some thanks. Later, I had a chance to shake Tarantino's hand and exchange a greeting with him inside the theater.

After the film the party continued at another locale. A great time, in all. Still, it has to be the most unique crowd I've been part of in my twelve years in Pittsburgh. Sporting event crowds are pretty homogenous, as are most movie theater crowds. Last night's premiere featured the stars and folks still in the business, of course, but there were also a sizable number of people (they were asked to stand) who had worked on or appeared in former Romero films. It was like a big family reunion. Add to that the standard Patrons of the Arts who show up to all of the big events, decked out in fancy clothes (and maybe, heh heh, in store for their first Romero experience) They're sitting side-by-side with the other contingency, the true believing fans, who range from the "average" movie fan to the more goth-heavy model. And thus you end up with the stepsister of the producer sitting next to me and my companion, both of us sitting one row behind a guy who couldn't be more pierced or tattoed. What a great crowd, and I have to think Romero loved being able to get a crowd that varied together. All they've got in common is admiration for him and his work.

Before the film, a couple of people in the industry stood up and talked about how their passion for film was born through the region's cultural assets-- through WPXI's Chiller Theater and, for the younger professionals, through Romero himself. The night became not only a love letter to Romero, but also a paean to regional filmmaking generally. It's so fitting that Robert Rodriguez flew himself here, since he's managed to modify the Romero model better than anybody else. Sure, Romero's had a much tougher time prying loose studio money than a guy with a distribution deal like Rodriguez, and Romero's usual adherence to shooting on location in Pittsburgh is an interesting contrast to Rodriguez's seeming goal of eliminating locations, but there's a symmetry there that's quite fitting. Both men's careers stand, at least partly, for the proposition that good movies (defined either by artistic or commercial success) can be made outside of the Hollywood protective shell. Of course, Land of the Dead also shows that Romero can make a fantastic film inside the system, too.

II. The film

Yeah, so this is great. Like-- really, really good.

Romero picks up right where he should have picked up after taking twenty years off. The opening credits use bits of sound and image to bring the uninitiated up to speed concerning how things have fallen apart. Then we're back in Romero's world, which is always nightmarish but never static. Things have changed. Societies-- plural-- have reformed along clear lines, some predictable and some unpredictable. The zombie plague is a way of life now, and the survivors have adjusted to it in the same way that societies adjust to irritations like hurricane season or longlasting civil wars. They build a wall.

I'm not going to go into thematic or plot spoilers here for people who haven't seen it (those follow), but Romero had a great concept in mind to continue his series, and the added studio support makes the film clearer and bigger in a positive way while retaining the distinctive voice, humor and vision of his earlier zombie films. If aligning himself with Universal's banner (most touchingly and fittingly, under the retro logo that ran before all of those classic Karloff and Lugosi films) was something of a gamble, he won it. In the process, Romero's dark and comic point of view suddenly has grafted onto it somewhat accomplished actors, much larger sets and locations and a breadth of physical scope that is initially incongruous with the earlier films. As a result, the film is not as intrinsically claustrophobic or confined as the first three, but it works very well because now we're exploring not just the fate of a few, but many. Sure, you put two men in a small room and there's a good chance they'll eventually start some kind of fight, but it happens in a big room, too. And that just means there's more room for the fighting.

The film does so well the things that genre films seem to be getting so wrong these days. The characters are sufficiently complex to be interesting without becoming larger than the film itself. The one-liners are actually funny. The sidekick character is endearing and not at all annoying. A romantic subplot isn't unnecessarily shoehorned in. Really, subtexts and signifiers aside, it's a well-done action picture. Add in the contexts and concerns that are part of any Romero zombie movie and it's something else entirely. Something pretty great.

Curiously, despite the regrets expressed by the filmmakers and the press over the film not shooting in Pittsburgh, Land of the Dead is grounded in the city to a degree far exceeding the prior films. Town names, neighborhood names and street names are incorporated heavily into the script. More significantly, the city's bridges, natural boundaries and distinct topography figure prominently and meaningfully into the plot. Romero's even got a hilarious and recurring in-joke for those of us who have never ceased to wonder why western Pennsylvanians are so innately and fervently mesmerized by fireworks displays (seriously, when the Pirates hold a fireworks night, not only will the stadium be unusually sold out regardless of the quality of the opponent, but people driving by will pull off the highways and ramps, safety be damned, just to watch). The consolation prize to losing the economic and pride infusions of shooting the film in Pittsburgh is that the resulting film is about the city in a significant way that, say, Striking Distance or Desperate Measures isn't.

Of course, it's about everywhere else, too.

But while the film will send home happy the people who want blood and guts (there's a bit with a head-challenged clergyman zombie that will bring down the house) and the small but rabid fanbase, the film retains the larger subtexts of the earlier films and dials them to 2005.

(Spoilers follow)

Things fall apart, but then we put them back together again. The survivors hunker down and build their wall (keeping the undead out and them in). Of course, the next thing they do is create a class society with the chosen few living in their high-rise Paradise. Did the survivors urge a guy like Dennis Hopper's Kaufman to become the new city's Czar, bank and CEO, or did he just usurp the power? It doesn't matter. We always look for leaders, and we always get corrupt or corruptible ones. John Leguizamo's Cholo learns that not even doing Kaufman's dirty work is enough to get him approved for membership by the Homeowners' Association. And so the new society looks a lot like the old one.

Of course, in keeping with the gradually evolving model started by Bub in Day, the undead are learning as things go along, and they create their own form of society. Romero's always been so skilled at taking an image and infusing it with both absurdity and significance, and thus we get a zombie band in a gazebo. It's a great moment. It's easy to see where this is headed, though, as any society, even a loosely organized zombie one, has a voice to air grievances and a body to wield a jackhammer.

The zombie horde, as always, ends up intruding on an ongoing fight between the supposedly better people. Here, Romero dips into the stuff of regional civil wars and the War on Terror to play with our sensibilities. Kaufman labels Cholo a terrorist shortly after shooting down his dreams of homeownership and refusing to pay him what he's owed. In response, Cholo steals Dead Reckoning, which can best be described as Hummer's next concept car and which the new not-dead society relies on to pillage the old country (now-overrun) for food, medicine and liquor. Cholo won't return the vehicle until he gets what he's owed. He threatens to destroy the high-rise unless he's made whole. So which is he-- a terrorist or a freedom fighter? A bit of both, I guess. Unmistakably, we get the sense that these societies-- human and zombie-- are just self-defeating crutches wherein we exchange solitude and self-determinism for the illusory promise of safety and a bigger mob to chase out the undesirables. It's enough to make a guy want to head for the prairie. Or Canada.

And so we get the first zombie western (props to Dre for making this parallel). Is it better to live alone or with others? Is it safer-- even under these conditions-- to live alone or with others? These have always been complex questions with assumed answers based on largely-unassailed premises. Find me another film released between Memorial Day and Labor Day that even acknowledges the questions.

Local coverage: Here, here, here, here, and here.

My Wednesday Plans

Tomorrow night I'll be here, catching the show and the pre- and post-festivities. I can't tell you how juiced I am.

I just rewatched Day of the Dead and, while I think it has some obvious charms, it's still clearly the lesser of the three films for me. More complete remarks are in a draft post I hope to finish tonight. The other draft post concerns Rosetta, but that probably won't come tonight. I wrote a couple of pages after seeing the Batman movie to try to work through why it left me so unmoved, and I'd like to put them up later tonight as well.

It's funny, though, and I've spent a little time over the past week wondering about why I've given up on comic book movies generally while clinging to Romero's oevre. One of my first thoughts after emerging from the theater last week was that the odds are heavily stacked against me liking War of the Worlds. Based on where I felt my mind drifting during Batman, I think that I'm getting to the point where When the Fate...of the World...Hangs in the Balance...I am just bored out of my skull. I couldn't have felt less invested in the saving of Gotham City. I seem to have liked Revenge of the Sith more than most of my correspondents, and perhaps that's because there's the plausible possibility of the hero's failure (which becomes, of course, reality). Katie Holmes deciding she can't be part of any relationship that involves a person wearing masks is not a credible stand-in for dramatic tension or heroic failure, no matter how bright the Irony-Signal shines in the moonlit night sky.

This is the summer where thirtysomething man-boys wax rhapsodically about how much wookiees meant to them during those formative years. All right, I'll play. My parents split up right around Easter of 1983. I was finishing sixth grade. Return of the Jedi came out that summer and I was all over it. I saw it three times in the theater. In contrast to that space fantasy holdover from my preteen years, my family life paradigm was shifted and reinvented every month or so. Plus, that fall I started seventh grade at the junior high, which threw the 75 or so of us from my elementary school in with unfamiliar kids from four or five other feeder elementary schools. Everything was possible. For a kid like me, it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to move away from the robots and spaceships dork that I'd cheerfully embodied. When I met a new friend with a worldly high school brother who perpetually wore those cheap concert t-shirts with the black body and white three-quarter sleeves, it was a chance to hear a lot of new music and to get a VHS dub of Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.

Sure, to my thirteen year-old eyes, the attraction was largely the thrill of holding something generally-forbidden or antisocial. Gorewise, I'd never seen anything like it. The stories were compelling, maybe less so than that of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but substantially moreso than the other ripoff films that followed in the wake of Star Wars and Raiders. For my friends and I, the dystopia of Romero's films made us put ourselves in his characters' places in a way that few, if any, other films had managed to do. Sure, at the beginning, it was the same sort of quasi-Red Dawn survivalist hokum that kids would be spinning a year down the road. Where would you hide? Where would you get weapons? Who would you save? But it always went further than that with Romero's films for us because the films steadfastly refuse to rest on the us/them distinctions that let kids think they can be a Wolverine and rule the hills if they get some guns and cheerios. I couldn't have articulated it then, certainly, but Romero's zombie films have always been all about destroying the Other that fuels both horror movies and real-life genocides. We're all just a bite away from being the Other.

I'll now invoke that cliche about movies that grow with you. Imagine the montage: me watching the films at 13, mulleted and talking with my pals about the safest place to go. Then me watching the films at 18, getting the subtexts a little better. In my twenties I watch them more infrequently, preferring cleaner escapist fun for the first few years and misplacing that old VHS dub during a move. And then my late twenties/thirties, when DVD makes fantastic versions of these films cheap and widely-available and I'm impressed by how much is in there behind the blood.

Apart from the Romero movies, I never got into gore. I can't tell any of the Friday the 13th movies apart. Apart from his recut of Dawn, I've never seen an Argento film. Still, I count Romero's films as among the most meaningful to me because they're so clearly more than genre films, and I'd rank his first two Dead films in the top ten American horror films, in the same rarefied air as Bride of Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Freaks, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Rosemary's Baby.

Both Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead open with the female leads waking from nightmares. It's not just lazy repetition. What they're dreaming of is a doomsday that has come true, and the innocent desire to wake up and discover that it was all the mind's trickery is all the hope that remains. Can I tell you that I've never dreamed of flying in an X-Wing or fighting a lightsaber battle? Sure, that Joseph Campbell hero's journey bullshit might run rampant through our myth patterns, but it never ran freely through my subconscious. Nor have I ever literally dreamed that I was a superhero. But over the last twenty years, I've dreamed at least ten times that I was in Romero's broken world where there's no more room in hell. Man, waking up from that dream is something else. It runs deep. And tomorrow night I'll probably get the chance to shake his hand and tell him thanks.