apropos of nothing, part 7

-Bad Ribs

I am leery of anything that everyone says is good...like pilates, Million Dollar Baby or this local rib house we attended today for a pleasant Memorial Day luncheon. Crys' parents clamor after the place, saying it is smack-smack good. I should have objected right then and there.

What we got were ribs that while pleasant, were not great, and were considerably hurt by their jigsaw bone structure, which made each bite an Indiana Jones-esque walk through the temple. You never knew when something was going to snap forward and gut you or take out a lung. It was the kind of meal that, afterward, would make me want to cry out, "I wanna vomit and then eat a good meal!" After saying this, my lovely wife snorted so hard that she almost lost control of both her car and sinuses.

I have only recently learned of the joy that can be had by the meat of the rib, though in this case it was clearly the death-meat of an unwanted orphan pig, one who had low self-esteem and who had been so unloved by its brethren that it was not his savory juices that were sealed into his flesh, but the dour self-loathing of a fetishistic nightmare boar, and the sauce could not cover his indiscretions, nor his karmic decay.

The slaw, however, was rather tasty.


-Bad Sensations

I would not go so far as to say I am hypochondriacal, but I do regularly have legitimate pangs and twinges that lead me to worry, perhaps necessarily and perhaps not, almost all the time. In fact, the best way for me to forget about one uncomfortable sensation is to simply have a new one pop up.

I have lately been under the impression that I a) pulled a groin muscle, b) am developing a second hernia, or c) have swallowed the clutch from a 1968 Ford Impala. I'm less apt to believe the Impala option, as I am not a classic car enthusiast nor do I readily have access to such items.

When bothered by a pain, I used to visit Web MD, a medical website that provides sufficiently detailed information on anything that could ever happen within the confines of the human anatomy. But I stopped doing that because frankly, every time I read up on a subject I would inundate my brain with a dozen or more dire possibilities that scared me far worse than the actual problem would have. Now, I just watch House and look away whenever they zoom in through someone's aorta and show a few nerves exploding, or something equally graphic and unpleasant. I enjoy that show, but every now and then they do something I find particularly uncomfortable.

I have made a doctor appointment for this week and will see which wins, the sore crotch or the surgical enhancement to my checking account.


all my excess lies in texas

goodbye, city life!

Eddie Albert died the day the remake of The Longest Yard released in theaters. Now if that isn't irony at its saddest, I don't know what is.

Albert is one of those actors you grow up watching. Every generation will have these, and he was part of mine. And I don't just mean from the safe and silly confines of Green Acres, either. Albert acted in numerous feature films during his career: Roman Holiday, Oklahoma!, The Longest Day, The Heartbreak Kid, The Longest Yard, Escape To Witch Mountain, The Devil's Rain, and as The President in the little-seen, whacked-out Dreamscape, a film of such loopy, guilt-soaked fun that you might wet yourself.

The schmaltzy closer would be to say that acres or no, he has definitely moved on to greener pastures. But I prefer this:
Dun-dun dun-dun-dun, DUHHN DUHHN!

I'm lost

Took two hours out of my life last night to watch the season finale of Lost, ABC's second biggest hit this year (following those domestics on Sunday nights). All I can say is: huh? If I understood what most of the big mysteries were, then I can safely say that absolutely nothing was revealed, and it seems like you usually want to throw your audience a bone every once in a while, but especially at the end of the season.

All I know from watching last night is: 1) Pippin saved a baby and scored some horse; 2) the most annoying guy on the show got blown up; 3) two of the three coolest guys on the show did an Island Theater remake of Wages of Fear; 4) in doing so, we still don't know where that damn hatch leads to; 5) the third coolest guy was left to lead Pippin around in pursuit of one of the creepiest-looking scary-crazy ladies ever filmed; 6) the narrator of OZ had his son stolen by pirates and his boat knocked out from under him; 7) Carrie won American Idol; and 8) Deadwood, The Shield and House are still the best programs on TV. Oh, and 9) we still don't know what that "security system" is all about.

To top it all off, I got to see several commercials for Alias where it looks like the show turned into Resident Evil. That was fun.

so close

Ever consider that "compliant" and "complaint" are a mere flip of two letters away from each other?

and not a very good one at that

The whole Star Wars thing has finally spiraled down into its inevitable conclusion, which is to say, we're back to James Earl Jones and a nasty respiratory condition, Luke on Tatooine, Leia on Alderaan, and John Williams' gentler score. That's all that matters because all the loose ends are tied neatly, waiting for us to time travel back to the seventies and see the original all over again.

But shouldn't a film be more than just a method to tie up loose ends? Shouldn't it be a satisfying whole that just happens to also tie up loose ends? As I watched Episode III, all I could think was "convenient progression". There's a massive battleship that looks like an earlier version of the ones in the first film. There's a fighter ship that looks like a prototype of a tie fighter - and sounds like it, too. There's an Alderaanian ship - which looks just like the very first thing we see in the original. Go into hiding, say you? Like to Dagobah, mean you? Molten lava scars that will turn into the slightly more healed versions we see at the end of Return of The Jedi? Yay, Neosporin! Leia safely in the arms of the Organas, Luke at dusty home with Owen and Beru. Obi-Wan, soon to become Old Ben, going off to the hills. And, as stated, James Earl Jones' delightfully nostalgic timber emanating from that damn helmet.

To say that III was better than I or II is too easy, because even Return of The Jedi was a disappointment as far as storytelling goes. Only the scenes between Luke, his dad and the Emperor have much that resonates. And blaming the Ewoks is a little easy, too. Fact is, the fun kind of leeched out of the series the moment The Empire Strikes Back turned dark, which was not a bad thing, but after that moment, anything that would have been fun turned silly or cloying. And the series became less about the joy of serialized adventure and more about serialized discussion. For every solid scene of action in Episodes I, II and III, there are two or three scenes of talk, often badly written, and about things that really, we already get. Or just performed by people who aren't terribly good at it, or are very good but seem awkward in their roles. Guys like Liam Neeson, Ewan MacGregor and even Samuel L. Jackson, who are powerhouse dramatic actors in their own rights, seem like stiffs when placed in the skins of George Lucas' characters. Then there are questionable choices like Hayden Christensen, who is simply a bad actor, and does the whole scenario no favors.

To view the artistic and dramatic failure that is The Phenomenon is to view George Lucas. On the one hand, the emperor not only doesn't have any clothes, he hasn't that much raw material to start with. So Lucas begins by picking up his tale in the middle, where the most fun (and don't forget the serial aspect of the first film, dead-on, is what drove both the newness and the nostalgia of it all) was to be had. But once done with a reasonable storyline, how does he back up and give it origins? My guess is that Lucas never really had the first three chapters very well thought out when he made the original films, and came to find that he had to create a whole lot of stuff to get started again. But he forgot all about the imminent joy (perhaps because of the serialization) of the first film, going instead for a more political tale. It was no longer Death Stars R Us, but instead All The Chancellor's Men. It became treatise and allegory, dry and displeasing. And if it's true that Lucas was making a direct jab at George W. Bush with a few scenes of us-or-them proselytizing, he really chose the wrong format for democratic debate. I don't think the average filmgoer wants to know your feelings on the real world's problems when you're telling such a basic fantasy story. We don't go to Star Wars movies for messages, because we know all about good vs. evil, and we're aware that good is the right one. But in 1977, Lucas promised us something fun. And the fun was forgotten somewhere along the way, while too many oddly shaped creatures were being dreamed up and too many CG effects were being thrown at the story in greater and greater volume, until there was so much busy work involved that a coherent story that was enjoyable was all but erased, as easily as Lucas made changes in recent DVD releases, replacing certain actors with their current counterparts.

Does this make me upset? Not really. It's summertime, and all the blockbuster action epics are coming at us. Batman Begins looks superior, and The War of The Worlds could be great. But it is a little sad, because what started out as a very cool thing has become kind of an unfortunate obligation. When the most enjoyment gained from your film is the introduction of that with which we are already very familiar, then I think the point of fun has been missed. And after all, it should be fun, if nothing else.

It's just a movie.

copy boy

There was a piece in Reuters last week about how someone is making an opera from George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984. Personally, I would rather have heard that some idiot had decided to make a broadway musical called "BROTHER!", or a Merchant-Ivory production called "Winston & Julia" (in appropriately floral font).

While we're on the topic of crack reporting, there was an Ain't Life Goofy? piece about how authorities in British Columbia had finally determined that it was a lazy teen employee who whacked off two goat heads at a local slaughterhouse, and not satanic cultists, as was previously believed. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police wanted the community to rest easy about those concerns of evil intent. I'm sure everyone was relieved to see that Live At 5 report, the Mounties standing in front of the blood-caked charnel house, telling the concerned families "There's nothing to see here..."

For more of the latest in news and life's jolly fodder, go to www.reuters.com.

that'll show me

Wrote a big long American Idol piece. The web failed me. Words were lost.

Rather than attempt to re-create it, I will re-attach my manhood and move on to different topics.

(sigh)

the heart as engine

I recently walked out of a movie.

I do not do this often; in fact, I have not done this in over ten years. I was viewing Kingdom of Heaven, that continuation in the Orlando Bloom: Blacksmith-As-Hero series. It was not entirely that the film was boring me to acrid tears that caused me to leave the theater. I was also physically uncomfortable, experiencing what I thought was an erratic heartbeat and a queasy, hot-balloon-headed feeling that I associate only with going to ground. I believe I may have taken in too much salt and sugar, gotten anxious, and then nervously monitored my pulse just long enough to scare myself to a new level of anxiety that prompts 41-year-old out-of-shape men to leave mediocre crusade epics at the halfway mile marker.

I have always been concerned about the heart, or more specifically, my heart. Not that I have any reason to be other than being 41 and gutty. But the anxiety that I know takes hold in that same region of the torso always makes me pause. Being a poet first and a smart man second, when I consider the heart, I am confounded that it is represented as the window to emotional grandeur, when it should be more rightly viewed as the steam engine that drives each of us forward. Love? No, mechanics.

Ultimately, and again because I am a poet first and a hard man second, I don't buy that for a minute. I have too much stock in love and all it's dumb, breathy convictions. Because of love and the hope that it will persist, I want to live for a hundred years.

So I walk, try eating less, drink more water and hightail it when all the signals tell me that the crusades weren't that dull. This is balance. It is the hardest challenge I have ever known.

When Orlando Bloom finds himself 100 pounds heavier and realizes that his chainmail will no longer sustain a career, perhaps he'll come to this same realization.

crash is good

Paul Haggis' film Crash is one of those fifteen-characters-in-six-storylines affairs that falls loudly like a string of dominoes into a too-neat ending. It's also pretty damn good, and everyone comes across with solid, worthwhile performances. The movie is all about cathartic body blows, and how some people roll with them and others collapse from their damage. Poor Don Cheadle, as one of the more decent characters, bears the worst of it; he takes the cruelest blow from his own momma.

I recommend you run out and see it, but gird yourself for a flurry of racial hurt the likes of which you won't find in the average cinematic treatise on the human condition. And maybe if you're lucky, you'll catch that Episode III trailer.

Human condition, indeed.

dirty, dirty, leprechauns

I know a man who has leprechaun eyes. By that, I mean his eyes glitter and gleam in a way that makes him look quite unreal, like at any minute he might jump up and cry, with great zeal, "They're magically delicious!"

And then he'd shower us all with hearts, moons, diamonds and clover.

recent observations - giddyup!

Well, I didn't observe her, but apparently everyone else did...that is to say, Tara Reid, who if she ages should make a really fun-to-watch old person, in that boy-this-is-awkward-but-I-can't-pull-myself-away-OH!-there-look-she-did-it-again way.

"Actress" and society bon vivant Reid showed up uninvited to a recent Kentucky Derby gala, news agencies have reported, and she did her act, which is not really an act except for the fact that she does it so frequently now that she seems quite practiced at it, like all the best method students. She arrived and verbaled her way past security with her best "don't you know who I am" routine, moved to the cocktail juggling act, and then thesped her way around every male guest she could slink towards. All in all, another notch in the Gen Y Grand Dame's sobriety-reduction belt, and another step on the ladder to that majestic hall of fame for aggressive over-indulgers that the rest of us call "the grave".

"THEY'RE OFF! And Spindlehammer is in the lead, followed closely by Washtub Jane, who leads Biblical Proportion and Lead With Your Right, with Formal Attire trailing dead last and as they round the first corner -- WAIT! There's a young woman staggering onto the track, and I believe, yes, it's Tara Reid! Reid gets her steam up and as she comes even with the horses it's now Biblical Proportion, followed by Spindlehammer, with Reid and Washtub Jane a close third. My lord, this is going to be one for the books, ladies and gentlemen..."

Heh.

subterfuge!

American Idol just isn't the same without Constantine.

He may not have been the greatest singer. He did, however, have the most charisma of the current set of competitors, and from the squealing throng in the Fox audiences, he had the female demographic consistently sewn up.

Last night was the first non-Constantine show, and the performances were mostly bland or bad, with the exception of Scott Savol, that least-liked and therefore now-most-likely-to-win playa, who was true to form with two really great songs. The show doesn't ring true without Constantine, but at least we can hang our hat on the guy who plays underdog to the nation's voting.

Savol must feel testy after the last few weeks. In fact, when you look at him at just the right angle, you can see the seething anger bubbling up. One doesn't expect Seacrest to make it out alive if the guy gets bumped tonight.

As for the "sexpose" story being aired tonight: if Corey Clark had won the competition that year, I'd say sure, maybe Paula Abdul has no business being part of the show and should be ashamed of her behavior. Of course, I say that now anyway, but for completely different reasons. Fact is Corey Clark never stood a chance, and unless someone comes up with photos of "I'll Have Another" Reuben Studdard getting nasty favors from Abdul while they plan his defeat of Clay "I Could Kick Federov's Ass Any Day" Aiken, then it's pretty much a non-story being hyped as a story. As for the claims that the producers of Idol somehow tampered with the voting process, again, I say: "Did you see who won those years?" In my humble, black-hearted opinion, Fantasia Barrino may be the only Idol contestant who ever seemed like the Absolutely Right Choice to win the contest. Until Constantine showed up.

Really, come on, who do you want to see win this kind of thing?

-A perfect, beautiful farm girl with a lovely voice who seems terrific in every way but specializes in country music?

-A hippie who won't "take sides"?

-A dainty little girl who looks like she might snap in two if you squeezed her tight enough?

-The "other black one"?

-Topdog/Underdog?

No, apart from Carrie, Bo, Anthony, Vonzell and Scott, what choices do we have? None. we're past the point of no return as far as Best In Show. That would have been Mr. Maroulis.

You want the jowly, bestubbled, charming rock-and-roll guy. You want the guy who makes your girlfriend squeal, all the while seeming cool enough to talk about old albums with over a couple of beers. You want the guy who could have been you if you hadn't married your first wife, learned to play guitar and been somewhat of an introvert.

On a completely different note, it's been two weeks now and the behavior of the judges has improved vastly. Someone had a meeting...

Finally, why subterfuge!? Because all this hype over nothing, all this wringing of hands and clearing of throats, all this making the stupidest story the biggest story of the day just sounds hollow. If you consider the State Of Things, all of this is really very sad. More people vote on pop-culture music competitions than on public policy and public office. More shows of emotion are spent on the loss of a favorite singer than on the ways we live, the ways we treat others and the direction of our nation and world. A greater emphasis is placed on the commercial product and marketing tool than on health, safety and welfare. Everyone's making such a kerfuffle of so many petty, silly things, and when it comes down to it, veracity is not their forte. They all come across as false idols.

America, you have not kept it real. You are not down.

You are quite simply very, very pitchy.

"crazy eyes" mcginty rides again!

When you think of runaway brides, you envision young girls who've decided that whole nuptials deal just isn't for them, whether out of better judgment or after being on the wrong end of a forced conjoinment. By comparison, Jennifer Wilbanks has been made to look like some wild-eyed, KA-RAAAAAAZZY harridan. The 32-year-old woman who last week got cold feet and disappeared from her hometown on a bus, stopping off in New Mexico to call her folks with the bad news, seems a tad old for the whole running-away-from-home-saga concept. At that age, you expect people to be on their own anyway, which begs the question, why would you run away from home, rather than just going to it and not returning certain calls?

Beside the point: let's get back to those photos. Did someone just dig through all the family albums and declare "We have a winner!" when they came across that ghastly, glaring image, something akin to a woman who's possibly had too much too drink out of depression over a bad relationship choice, but then decided, "Hey, some blow would go nicely with my buyer's remorse!" and hitched a ride to another in a long string of bad dive-bars?

I'm just saying. But maybe we give this gal a break, and hope that she doesn't jump at further proposals any time soon.

Similarly, back in 1993, Winifred "Crazy Eyes" McGinty was alleged to have said she was going out for pizza, when hours later she was discovered three counties away eating chicken wings. Her friends and family were appalled, recalling how, five years earlier, she said she was going to see a movie, but was found reading romance novels in the local library. And she hadn't told a soul!

Her pictures didn't come out too good, either.

cruelty defined

The innate cruelty of language is evident in words that phonetically match their meanings. Take the words "stuttering" and "stutterer": here are two words that not only sound exactly like the thing they mean but in pronouncing them, you are likely to DO that thing.

Imagine someone attempting to tell of their affliction. That's just harsh.

No, that was it. Sometimes things have to be written down so I can see just how idiotic they are.