Simple Tricks and Nonsense

Aloha and All That Stuff

2012-02-02T07:54:12Z

A word of advice, kids: don't ever schedule a major vacation within three days of a life-changing event like having someone move in with you. Anne and I are leaving in the morning for a Hawaiian cruise with her parents, and we're both completely frazzled. I always end up packing in the wee hours the night before any departure, but this time I'm feeling downright panicky because there just hasn't been any time to do the things I like to do to prepare for a trip. I've been too focused on the move.

In any event, I won't be posting here for at least the ten days we'll be on the cruise, and it'll probably be more like two weeks before I get back into the blogging frame of mind. Just so you know. Talk quietly amongst yourselves... and we'll see you on the other side.

So How Much Has VW Paid Uncle George Anyhow?

2012-02-02T01:46:52Z

Another Super Bowl commercial has slipped onto the Internet, this one being VW's follow-up to last year's wonderful "Vader Kid" spot, as well as to the "Bark Side" teaser that was released a couple weeks ago. The Star Wars connection isn't immediately obvious, but when it comes, it's a real pay-off:

Once again, it feels a little strange to realize how directly this is pitched at my specific demographic, how coldly calculated this ad must have been to so precisely push the buttons of we 40-something Gen-Xers. But whatever... it's fun.

Another Grail Found!

2012-02-01T13:44:45Z

Happy news today from Jahnke's Electric Theater over on Facebook: it seems that one of my personal "holy grail movies," i.e., the handful of films I'd like to own but which have been long been unavailable on DVD or any other home-video format, is finally on the way. In this case, it's High Road to China, a 1983 adventure flick starring Tom Selleck. Although High Road is often dismissed as a knock-off of Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's actually a fun little B-movie romp on its own terms, and not really that much like an Indiana Jones movie. High Road is being released on both DVD and Blu-Ray by Hen's Tooth Video on April 17. Here's a peek at the sales sheet:

With this release, my list of MIAs is down to only three (well, okay, technically six) items: another early-80s Selleck vehicle called Lassiter; FM, which was sort of a forerunner to the WKRP in Cincinnati series; and, of course, decent-quality anamorphic transfers of the pre-1997 Star Wars trilogy, my perennial hobbyhorse.

It's funny... the movie industry obviously feels the DVD is on its way into the landfill of history, and it seems to me that Blu-Ray really hasn't caught on the way everyone hoped. The future, we are constantly hearing, is going to be all streaming and clouds. Maybe so... and yet it's only now, supposedly at the end of the medium's life cycle, that a lot of obscure titles are finally finding their way onto shiny silver discs. I almost wonder if the attention being given to streaming is making it possible... maybe because nobody expects big DVD sales anymore, niche titles are free to move in modest numbers without being considered a failure. Maybe... it's just an idea I had...

2011 Media Wrap-Up

2012-02-01T00:06:30Z

And here's another of the myriad things that frustrate the crap out of me: my utter inability to stay on top of this blog to my satisfaction. The first month of 2012 is nearly over and I still haven't gotten around to tying up the loose ends from 2011. Not that anybody else cares about what movies I watched during the past 12 months, I'm sure. But I care -- I've been keeping lists of this stuff for years, and I find it interesting and sometimes even useful to track my media-consumption habits -- and if I was doing this blogging thing right, I would've had this post up shortly after New Year's, if not before. Yes, I've had a lot going on during the month of January 2012, but I know my situation well enough to know it wouldn't have mattered either way. I'd still be playing catch-up regardless. Because that's just the pattern I've lapsed into in recent years. A quick check of the Simple Tricks archive reveals I have 74 unfinished, unpublished entries on this blog. Seventy-four. And nearly every single one of them has followed the exact same pattern: some subject catches my interest, I start composing an entry, and then I get distracted by some mundane matter of daily life and a day or two (or five or ten) passes, and in the meantime more subjects of interest come down the pike and then the moment is lost and that poor orphaned scrap of writing slips into blog-entry limbo. Sometimes I can come back to them later, but usually the topic has lost its relevance and I can't rekindle the creative spark to get back into it anyhow. Nobody knows or cares about these unfinished things except me, but they drive me batshit crazy.

So, this topic may be well past its sell-by date, but I'm going to do it anyhow. If you're not interested, I understand. Lists below the fold...
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Movies Seen in a Theater

TRON: Legacy *
Thor
Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Green Lantern
Super 8
Captain America: The First Avenger
Jaws *
Cowboys and Aliens
Labyrinth *
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Boys of Bonneville: Racing on a Ribbon of Salt
The Help
The Rum Diary
Real Steel
North by Northwest *

I think this is the fewest theatrical movies I've seen in a 12-month period since before I got my job at the multiplex (and that was in 1989!). And it's telling that three of the 15 were special screenings of favorite classics, and one of them was a repeat viewing of one I'd seen in 2010 (TRON: Legacy). A big part of the problem, I think, is that I'm simply no longer the target demographic for most Hollywood films being made these days -- I'm too old -- and so the stories being told and the style in which they're presented don't appeal to me. And of course real life has been finding more and more ways to eat up my time and attention this past year. Sometimes being a grown-up really sucks.

For the record, my favorite new movie this year was Captain America, a fun adventure flick that took itself just seriously enough to sell the earnestness of the biggest square in comic books, but not so seriously as to become either ridiculous or grindingly bleak (or both), as so many superhero movies do. The best time I've had at the movies in a long time. My runner-up this year was Real Steel, a thoroughly formulaic film that nevertheless wins your heart through good old-fashioned storytelling and un-ironic sentimentality. Not to mention some refreshingly competent editing without all the damn shaky-cam crap. I also enjoyed Thor (I seem to be one of the few who did), The Help, and the final Harry Potter movie. I recall liking the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean, Green Lantern, and Super 8 at the time I saw them, but I have no memory of them now, so make of that what you will. Big disappointments this year: Cowboys and Aliens and The Rum Diary, neither of which were anywhere near what I was hoping they'd be. And in case you haven't heard of it, Boys of Bonneville is a nifty documentary about Ab Jenkins, a Salt Lake building contractor who set numerous land-speed records and popularized the Bonneville Salt Flats as the place to set them. If you can find a copy of that one, I highly recommend it.

Movies Seen on Home Video

Tron *
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
Flashdance
Grand Canyon *
Mean Streets
Man on Wire
Blaze *
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Cadillac Records
Police Story (VHS)
Jackie Chan's First Strike (VHS)
Mother Lode *
The Desperate Hours
Me and Orson Welles
Hunter Prey
Jesse Stone: Thin Ice
Jesse Stone: No Remorse
The Long Goodbye
Jason and the Argonauts (1963 version) *
Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn
The Tourist
Morning Glory
Jeremiah Johnson *
Bonnie & Clyde *
The Ice Pirates
One Crazy Summer
The Freshman *
Man from Atlantis
Man from Atlantis II: The Death Scouts
Flash Gordon (1980 version) *
The Shining *
The Rocketeer *
Phantasm *
The Fog (1980 version) *
Kingdom of the Spiders
The Molly Maguires
Man from Atlantis III: Killer Spores
National Lampoon's European Vacation *
Space Battleship Yamato (2010 version)
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec
Fletch *
The Thing Called Love
Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
Videodrome
Charlie Chan's Murder Cruise
Charlie Chan in Panama
Blow Out
Romancing the Stone *
Patriot Games *
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation *
Airplane! *

Not much to say here, except to note that a friend of mine recently told me he thought it was a waste of money and floorspace to collect DVDs, because you watch them once and never touch them again, or you never watch them at all. Um, please observe how many bolded titles are on this list...

TV Series on DVD

Michael Palin's New Europe
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981 version) *
Happy Days: The Complete First Season *
The Beast: The Complete Series
Doctor Who: The Ark in Space *
Doctor Who: The Sontaran Experiment *
Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks *
Doctor Who: Revenge of the Cybermen *

Books

Late, Late at Night: A Memoir -- Rick Springfield
Hunt at World's End -- Gabriel Hunt (Nicholas Kaufman)
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency -- Douglas Adams
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul -- Douglas Adams
Where Is Joe Merchant? -- Jimmy Buffett
Tales from Margaritaville: Fictional Facts and Factual Fictions -- Jimmy Buffett
The Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America -- Stephen Coonts (ABANDONED)
Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut -- Astronaut Mike Mullane
Danger--Heavy Goods: Driving the Toughest, Most Dangerous Roads in the World -- Robert Hutchison
Cairo: A Graphic Novel -- written by G Willow Wilson, art by MK Perker
Baghdad without a Map and other Misadventures in Arabia -- Tony Horwitz
The Shining -- Stephen King *
Different Seasons -- Stephen King *
The Postman Always Rings Twice -- James M. Cain

And finally, the number of books I read this year was way down, owing to my bogging down in a couple of them and only managing to get through a few pages a day. One of them, The Cannibal Queen, actually became so resistant to my efforts to read it that I finally had to give up, something I almost never do. (Man, was that one a disappointment! I bought it clear back in college and never got around to reading it until this year. I was expecting a travelogue filled with colorful characters and adventures in charming, off-the-beaten-path locales, but it ended up being a lot of tedious and redundant tech-talk about the idiosyncrasies of flying a biplane, dry descriptions of small-town airstrips that were hard to distinguish from each other, and an occasional dollop of right-wing bullshit.) The Douglas Adams and Jimmy Buffett books were also disappointments, as was Danger--Heavy Goods.

Riding Rockets, however, was fantastic... an incredible memoir by a born storyteller, filled with insider details, gossip, pathos, and a rare case of honest self-appraisal and growth. If you have any interest at all in the space shuttle program, or just in the drama of an eventful human life, I highly recommend it.

I also recommend Late, Late at Night, the painfully frank memoir by my main man, Rick Springfield. This book got a lot of attention on its release because of the surprising (to some) revelations of Rick's lifetime of sexual escapades, infidelities, and struggles with depression. I know the book offended some casual fans who couldn't reconcile their image of cuddly Dr. Noah Drake from General Hospital or that cute teen idol whose poster used to hang on their bedroom doors with the self-destructive asshole Rick has often been in real life, but those people just weren't paying attention, in my opinion. The details had always been secret, of course, but the broad strokes of who Rick really is and the demons he's fought have always been there in his music. For me, the book just made my appreciation of his work and of him personally even deeper; after reading it, he's more human to me, more relatable. Maybe that's just because I have many of the same problems he does. Not the scads of meaningless one-night-stands, but the insecurities, the self-doubt... I think there's a reason why I've always been drawn to his music, even when I was very young. And I was delighted to learn that he collects Star Wars toys!

Broderick? Broderick?

2012-01-30T13:10:02Z

In case you missed it, a ripple of excitement rolled across the InterWebs last week following the release of a short "teaser" video featuring actor Matthew Broderick in what appeared to be a reprise of his signature role, Ferris Bueller. Many people hoped that whatever this was about would turn out to be a full-fledged sequel to the classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Well, the big secret was revealed today, and alas, it's just a Honda commercial made for this year's Super Bowl advertising extravaganza. (Personally I figured all along this was going to be the case. There's no way a movie studio could keep a sequel to a generational touchstone secret throughout its production. Nor is there any reason for them to do so -- as excited as people were over a mere ad, just think of how loud the buzz would be following the announcement of an actual feature.)

In any event, Honda is no doubt hoping this little exercise in Gen-X nostalgia will inspire all we 40-somethings who desperately need our own Bueller-esque screw-off day to rush out and buy a CRV, thinking it will somehow give us the freedom that Matthew/Ferris is enjoying. Nonsense, of course, and we should all be offended that the marketers think we're so easily manipulated. But if you can manage to overlook the cynical purpose behind it, this is actually an entertaining little homage to one of my favorite movies:

I love the bit with the stuffed panda in the car. The scene in the museum with the walrus, though... I know it's a reference to Ferris' line about the Beatles song "I Am the Walrus" in the original movie ("I could be the walrus, it still wouldn't change the fact I don't own a car."), but I can't help but think Broderick is pondering his own increasing doughiness, and then I hate myself for being unkind, because I'm not exactly looking the way I did back in 1986 myself...

Friday Evening Videos: "Lorelei"

2012-01-27T17:13:54Z

It is an interesting (and possibly pathetic -- I leave that to your measured judgment) truth about me that I still enjoy most of the musical artists I listened to as a teenager. I've expanded my repertoire considerably since then, of course, adding new artists and even whole new genres to the great, swirling mass of music I find pleasing, but unlike many people I know, I've never really shed the older stuff... with a handful of exceptions. One of those is the band Styx. Once upon a time, I thought they were the coolest. I had their albums on vinyl and cassette, I wore a t-shirt, I coveted the Velcro-flapped wallet bearing their logo I saw at the state-fair midway booths, the whole she-bang. But at some point over the past 25 years, I just got bored with their sound. Blame the near-constant airplay of "Come Sail Away" on classic-rock radio, I guess.

Even so, there are a couple of old Styx tunes I still like, on the rare occasion I actually hear them anyplace. "Too Much Time on My Hands," with its insistently throbbing bass line, is a catchy classic, and "Mr. Roboto" is a sublime masterpiece of 1980s kitsch. "Babe" is a lovely romantic ballad. And then there's "Lorelei," which is just a damn good rock and roll song. It was originally recorded in 1976, before the music video had fully materialized as a form, so here's a live performance from 20 years later:

There's a reason why I chose this particular song for tonight, besides me just plain liking it. The music you most care about is the stuff that resonates, you see, that forms a soundtrack for your life, and that lyric about living together, well... I have an announcement to make.

The woman I refer to here as The Girlfriend, my lovely Anne, is moving in with me tomorrow.

It's a tremendous step for us both, the first time either of us have lived with a significant other, and it's long overdue. Embarassingly so. If anyone out there doesn't already know how many years we've been a couple, I'd rather not say, because I am honestly ashamed it's taken us so long to make a big grown-up move in our relationship. I can't even fully explain why it's taken so long, although there's little question in my mind that it's mostly my fault. Basically, we found a pattern, and it was comfortable enough, so we stayed there. For years. But now we're finally moving forward. I'm nervous, but also anticipating nights in front of the fire (I got a gas log for Christmas!) watching crummy old TV shows on DVD, and not feeling like I'm dividing my attention between two households, and all the other little pleasures of cohabiting.

Wish us luck, won't you? After the way the year has gone so far, we might need it...

Inauspicious Beginnings

2012-01-23T11:36:30Z

Well, I don't know about you guys, but 2012 got off to a pretty shaky start for the Bennion Collective (a wholly owned subsidiary headquartered on the fabulous Bennion Compound).

First of all, remember that awful head cold I had a few weeks ago? If you'll recall, The Girlfriend was relatively unfazed while I was knocking at death's door. Well, that situation inverted itself right after I wrote about my cat wanting to eat my eyes: I began steadily improving (although I still have an irritating dry cough first thing in the morning) but her iteration of this filthy little bioweapon abruptly exploded into a full-blown bronchial infection that kept her indoors on New Year's Eve and required a round of antibiotics and an inhaler for her to gain any traction at all against it. (Like me, she's now mostly over it aside from that nagging cough.)

As if Anne trying to retch up her lungs didn't give me enough to worry about during the first week of January, I got a phone call from my mom on the afternoon of the third, my first day back at the office after a week-long holiday break, to inform me she'd taken Dad to the ER that morning with severe abdominal pains. I was a little miffed she hadn't bothered to inform me until hours after the fact, but my irritation seemed petty under the circumstances. I had bigger things to be concerned with. Like, the fact that my dad was in the hospital. That would concern anyone, of course, but in my case, the concern was leavened with a big fistful of disbelief. My dad? In the hospital? Nah, my dad doesn't get sick. Not seriously sick. Not hospital sick. Oh, I've seen him injured before, sometimes badly enough to leave him essentially incapacitated for a time (such as when he suffered for several months with a ruptured disk in his back). I've seen him ill with the usual complaints: viruses, food poisoning, hangovers (which are kind of the same difference as food poisoning when you think about it). And I've seen him physically diminish in recent years as age finally starts to catch up with him. But even with those ailments, in spite of them really, he still looms in my imagination as some kind of elemental bull, immensely strong, fundamentally vital even as he begins to slow down. Such men do not go to the hospital.

Except Dad had to. After two nights of worsening misery -- the pain had gone away during the daytime, only to return with a vengeance the following evening -- he decided he'd had enough. He spent the first day undergoing a battery of tests, including an MRI, which revealed his gall bladder was full of stones. In addition, one of those stones had escaped into his bile duct and gotten wedged there. He underwent two separate laparoscopic surgeries the next day, Wednesday, January 4; the first was to clear the bile duct, followed by the more routine procedure to remove the gall bladder.

The surgeon who removed the gall bladder later told my parents and me that he encountered two major challenges with my dad: the first was that Dad's abdomen is full of scar tissue from an operation he had when he was an infant, and all that had to be "broomed aside," whatever that means. I guess this was a tricky enough situation that the surgeon almost abandoned the laparoscopy and opened Dad up. The second issue was the gall bladder itself, which the surgeon seemed rather astounded by. He described it as "ugly," and "the worst he'd ever seen." To be blunt, the bladder was filled with pus, and the surgeon couldn't help but spill some of it into Dad's abdomen as he was removing the diseased organ, setting the stage for a post-surgical infection. And that, as well as the trauma of having two back-to-back surgeries (and therefore a double-dose of anesthetic) kept Dad in the hospital for three more days.

I was never terribly worried about the surgery itself; Anne had her gall bladder removed several years ago and was home later the same day, so I just expected that Dad's operation would be similarly smooth. But the aftermath -- and the fact that Dad's case turned out not to be as simple as Anne's -- was much more difficult for me to deal with. It was... sobering... to see him night after night, laying there in a backless hospital johnny while he soaked up antibiotics and painkillers, struggling to sit up and wincing if he twisted his torso too far in any direction. The bull disappeared within the confines of the hospital, and that troubled me in a way that's difficult to put into words. No one wants to face their parents' mortality, I guess, or the frailties that precede it. It's even more difficult when you're used to seeing your parent as a force of nature.

Of course, it's all turned out fine. Dad was released to come home on January 8, and even though the release orders called for him to rest and take it easy for six weeks, he was impatient to get back to work after only one. He's never been the sort to enjoy or even tolerate just sitting around, doing nothing. He had a follow-up with the surgeon a few days ago and was told everything has healed very well, and surprisingly quickly. He still tires easily, though, and just between you and me, I can't help but wonder if his stamina will ever fully return to its previous levels. But for the most part, everything's back to normal around here.

Unfortunately, having him out of commission for a couple weeks has thrown a big monkey wrench into certain plans that should've been finished -- or at least much further along -- by now. More on that another time. For now, I'll just say I really hope the whole damn year isn't going to be like this...

Friday Evening Videos: "The Wallflower (Roll with Me, Henry)"

2012-01-21T00:50:17Z

In honor of the late, great Etta James, who passed away this morning at the age of 73, here's her very first hit single and a big favorite of mine, "The Wallflower," a.k.a. "Roll with Me, Henry," a.k.a. "Dance with Me, Henry," from the year 1955:

Not much of a video, I know -- although I personally enjoy watching obsolete media technology do its thing -- but I couldn't find any actual clips of James performing the song, and this at least gives you the authentic sound of a nearly 60-year-old recording. The sharp-eared movie aficionado may know this song from Back to the Future -- it's playing in the cafe after Marty decks Biff and runs out with the meatheads in hot pursuit, launching the "skateboard chase" scene. -- and it was on the soundtrack album from that flick that I first heard it. So why do I love this song? Well, the Back to the Future connection doesn't hurt -- it's one of my favorite films, and I listened to that soundtrack a lot back in the day -- but mostly it's just a catchy tune that makes me happy when I hear it, simple as that. Curiously enough, the co-writer and producer of this tune, Johnny Otis, who is often credited with discovering Etta, passed away himself just a few days ago. (He's probably best known for his own recording of "Willie and the Hand Jive").

Etta James is most often associated with the song "At Last," which has become a standard at weddings and was so memorably significant at President Obama's inaugural ball, and for that record's sound, she is often thought of as a jazz singer. But she was far more than that. In her time, she performed pop standards, traditional blues, '60s soul, and even a cover of Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" on her final album. It is her work from the '50s and '60s that I enjoy most, though. Like so much from that era, it's just plain good music. As I said, it makes me happy for no reason... and need we ask anything more of our music?

Oh, in case you're wondering why tonight's selection has three different titles, it's because the song's original name, "Roll with Me, Henry," was considered a little racy by the standards of 1955, so it was changed to "The Wallflower." (Interestingly, the lyrics remained intact, probably because they very obviously refer to dancing and not the innuendo that many would assume, but the title was the important thing for preventing radio executives from tossing the demo before they listened to it). In a later cover version by Georgia Gibbs, both the chorus and the title were switched for the less controversial "Dance with Me, Henry." Those were very different times, to put it mildly.

Netcrap: "The Bark Side"

2012-01-19T15:11:05Z

Floating around the InterWebs today, this delightfully daffy VW commercial, apparently intended to be a teaser for something bigger during the upcoming Super Bowl broadcast:

I love the greyhound dressed as an AT-AT wandering in at the end. Last year's VW Super Bowl spot was, of course, that sublime ad featuring a little kid in a Darth Vader costume trying to use the Force on various household objects. I don't know what ad agency VW retains, but I wish I worked for them...

Great Visual to Go with Some Great Words

2012-01-16T18:39:27Z

This has been going around Facebook today; I thought it warranted repeating here as well:

"Not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." -- Dr. Martin Luther King

The sad thing is that many people nod along to this sentiment, but in practice it seems to me that racism is alive and well in this country; it's just been driven underground. Certain words have been banned in polite company. Certain practices are illegal or no longer socially acceptable. But the irrational thinking and emotional responses are still there. (Case in point: the hysteria sparked by President Obama's "otherness." People who are uncomfortable with him can't flat-out say it's because he's a black man, so they cook up bizarre fantasies about him being a Kenyan Muslim socialist Manchurian Candidate, and then utterly refuse to accept any evidence to the contrary.)

The dream is still alive... but it hasn't been fully achieved yet. Someday I hope.

Appreciation for the Classics

2012-01-14T00:08:12Z

I'm currently reading Stephen King's latest release, 11/22/63, and, so far, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. If you haven't heard about this one, it's a time-travel story in which our protagonist Jake learns there is a portal back to the year 1958 in the pantry of his local diner; the diner's owner persuades him, naturally, to use the portal and attempt to change history by preventing the assassination of President Kennedy. But that's still a few hundred pages ahead.

At the point where I am in the book, Jake has just completed his first lengthy foray into the past, kind of an exploratory mission, during which he spends several weeks driving a '54 Ford Sunliner. Upon returning to 2011, he makes this observation about his "real" car:

As I turned off the engine I thought about what a cramped, niggardly, basically unpleasant plastic-and-fiberglass shitbox my Toyota was compared to the car I'd gotten used to in [1958].

As someone with -- ahem -- a bit of experience driving classic cars, I can totally relate. Modern cars get you where you need to go and of course they're far more fuel-efficient than the chromed phantasms from Detroit's golden age, but once you've been behind the wheel of something that feels like your living room, it's really hard to get comfortable in a footlocker.

Another Year Over, A New One Just Begun

2012-01-03T07:18:41Z

A new year already? What the hell happened to the old one? Seriously, 2011 is just a blur for me... as I think back and try to remember exactly what happened during the past twelve months, only four events come immediately to mind:

The death of Osama bin Laden. (I wonder if this is going to become one of those "remember where you were when you heard about..." kind of things, or if the event proved too anti-climatic to make much of an impact on most people? I think I'm going to remember, at least, because the circumstances of my hearing about it struck me as very weird: I was at a TV-viewing party with about a dozen other people, watching the HBO series Game of Thrones. If you've never seen it, it's when I got a text message from my friend Mike G. delivering the news. I thought he was yanking my chain for a moment... and then everyone else's cellphones started lighting up with similar messages of their own.)
The Girlfriend and I driving to Las Vegas to celebrate the wedding of our friends Dave and Sarah, and all the assorted misadventures associated with that.
Meeting up with Cranky Robert in DC and road-tripping our way through several Civil War battlefield sites on the way back to his home in Pittsburgh.
The end of the space shuttle program.

And that's pretty much it.

Oh, there was a Rick Springfield concert with our friends Jack and Natalie in there somewhere. And another concert with Jack and Nat, one of those old-fart triple-threat shows comprising Night Ranger, Foreigner, and Journey. And I bit the bullet and took Anne to see Erasure, one of those inscrutable synthpop bands I've never cared for, but which she really likes.

And there was the wedding of Anne's niece Kaitlyn (occasionally referred to in the past on this blog as "The Teenager"), which was a truly weird experience because it wasn't all that long ago she was a jealous three-year-old who didn't want to share her "Nana" (she couldn't pronounce "Anne") with some scruffy guy (that would be me); surely 16 years haven't passed that quickly, have they?

And my uncle Layne died. And the father of my old friend Keith.

There was also a development in my personal life that I'm not quite ready to blog about yet (don't worry, it's nothing bad, and in fact, most of my friends already know about it; I just have other blog-business I want to deal with before I write about it).

But otherwise... a blur. My impression is that I was generally happy during 2011, not counting the occasional off day. At least I wasn't as consistently depressed and angry as I was in 2010, but I couldn't tell you why, i.e., I don't know what changed or was different from the prior year. Certainly I didn't experience any of the difficulties so many people faced in '11; my job remained (thankfully) rock-steady. And it seems like there were fewer of those last-minute "wait, you have to stay late tonight because someone else screwed up and now our hair is on fire" moments at the office that so piss me off. But my more upbeat mood nevertheless puzzles me considering all the ways in which 2011 drove home the point that my youth is officially, irrevocably, irretrievably behind me.

Yeah, I know, I know. I've been talking about getting old and being out of touch for ages, but this thing I've been feeling lately is... something else. Something much harder to articulate. And somehow it's also much more authentic and consequential than my earlier whinging about landmark birthdays and losing my hair, although, again, I can't really put my finger on why. Or what caused it. Maybe it was seeing that grumpy toddler all grown up dancing with her groom. Or perhaps it was the startling moment a few weeks ago when I realized my friend Cheryl's daughter is now about the same age Cheryl and I were when we met. Maybe it was the observation that all the pretty young things walking around out there no longer pay much attention to me (and why should they, since I'm the same age as their dads?) Or the even more unsettling observation that I now tend to find their mothers more appealing anyway. Probably it's all these things and a million more, large and small, all adding up to an understanding of something I've been trying to deny or simply ignore for a very long time: that while there may always be possibilities -- as Mr. Spock so frequently counseled us back in the days when Star Trek was relevant -- the probabilities of a great many things are shrinking for me. It's a thought and a sensation that should fill me with panic, or at least a tremendous slug of regret. And it does, from time to time. Still, the impression remains: I think I've been generally happy this year. Or so I believe at this particular moment. Maybe I wasn't really as happy as I think and this is just some kind of post-holiday glow I'm feeling. Because Christmas in 2011, for the first time in recent memory, was not a completely depressing and anxiety-provoking ordeal for me.

What the hell is happening to me? No, seriously, this is weird... enjoying Christmas, having an epiphany about lost opportunities and not instantly overwhelming myself with self-recriminations?

Some among you may be tempted to suggest I'm finally growing up. And you may even be right. But if you say it to my face, I'll most likely tell you where to stick it. Because there's a part of me that really doesn't want to hear that. The part of me that once made a pact with the very Cheryl I mentioned above to become Lost Kids rather than grow up.

I'm beginning to babble, I know, but I have one more thought about 2011 before I click "Publish" on this entry: generalized sense of well-being aside, I feel like I really dropped the ball on blogging during the past twelve months. I haven't actually compared the number of entries I published this year to what I posted in 2010, but it seems like there were a lot fewer ones, and most of the ones that did go up were shorter and pretty superficial. Or so it seems to me. As I said, I haven't actually quantified it. But our esteemed colleague-in-blogging Jaquandor mentioned a while back that he wished I wrote more, and this blog's archive is filled with half-finished entries that I keep hoping I'll get back to, but somehow know I won't. Maybe one little guy out in Utah slacking off on his personal blog doesn't matter in the Big Scheme of Things, since we've been repeatedly told throughout 2011 that blogging is over as a social phenomenon anyhow. But it troubles me to see myself letting Simple Tricks slip away from me, because my little rants and musings here are about the only writing I do anymore, and if I stop doing even those...

Which parts of your self-image -- which dreams -- are okay to let go of, and which do you have to keep fighting for?

In Memoriam: Bob Anderson

2012-01-03T06:38:45Z

I've just learned that 2012 began with the passing yesterday of the legendary swordmaster Bob Anderson, who trained and/or doubled for every Hollywood swashbuckler from Errol Flynn to Orlando Bloom during his long life. Mr. Anderson was an Olympic fencer who started working in movies in the 1950s as a stunt double on Errol Flynn's Master of Ballantrae. (He was notoriously known for a time as "the man who stabbed Errol Flynn" because of a minor on-set accident.) Of somewhat more relevance to we nerdy Gen-Xers, Anderson doubled for Dave Prowse as Darth Vader during the climatic lightsaber duels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. (He wasn't credited, but no less a source than Mark Hamill -- the guy on the other end of Vader's saber -- has reported it was so.) He also trained actors and choreographed fights for The Princess Bride, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the 1993 version of The Three Musketeers (that'd be the one with Charlie Sheen and Keifer Sutherland), the two Antonio Banderas Zorro flicks, and, of course, the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. He even trained Lindsay Lohan, of all people, for a scene in the remake of Disney's The Parent Trap.

Anderson's work first came to my attention as a result of my mid-1990s obsession with the Highlander franchise -- he was Sean Connery's fight double in the original Highlander film, and he worked with the star of the Highlander TV series, Adrian Paul, during that show's first season. As I read up on him, I was impressed by how many of my favorite films he'd had a hand in. In a sense, he's had more influence on my cinematic tastes than any other single individual. What an amazing career this man had.

Anderson was 89 years old.

My Eyes! He's After My Eyes!

2011-12-29T17:09:41Z

Good lord, has it really been two weeks since my last entry? Sorry, kids. I didn't mean to vanish without notice like that. To explain, The Girlfriend and I have both been under the weather since the weekend of the 16th. And when I say "under the weather," I mean "down in a two-mile-deep bomb shelter with a Cat-5 hurricane stalled above it, slowly grinding away the very crust of the earth." Seriously, I can't remember ever having a head cold lay me out the way this one has. I normally have a fairly strong constitution, or so I like to believe, but while Anne has remained relatively functional, I've been helpless in the face of this shit. At its peak, I spent two days on the couch in my bathrobe, weak as a kitten and drifting in and out of a fitful sleep. A few days ago, I ruefully joked -- and it was one of those jokes with a grim kernel of truth at its not-very-funny heart -- that I have in fact picked up a case of Captain Trips, the implacably deadly weaponized flu virus from Stephen King's novel The Stand (his scariest work, in my opinion; I don't do "outbreak" stories anymore, because they're all too plausible in my mind).

It started pretty innocuously as a sore throat and a raspy voice, which I chalked up to Salt Lake's annual winter temperature inversion, when a mass of cold air traps car exhaust, fireplace smoke, and all the other atmospheric filth you can think of near the valley floor for weeks at a stretch. Soon I had a cough too, which I again attributed to the inversion-caused "crud layer." But then came the runny nose, the nasal congestion, the weepy (and then gooey, and then crusty) eyes, the sinus pressure -- I had a day where I felt like Rocky Balboa had given me a solid right cross, the entire left side of my face ached so badly -- and the stuffed-up ears, all of these rotating in and out of prominence. Just as I started to feel like I was making headway, a new symptom would pop up and smack me back to the couch. And underpinning all of it was a mind-deadening fatigue that quashed any ambition to do, well, anything. I suppose my kitty boys have enjoyed the constant company, at least.

Speaking of the kitty boys, on the second or third night after this thing really got a hold on me, I awoke to see one of them, Jack-Cat, sitting in the open doorway to my bedroom. Well, to be more accurate, I saw his silhouette sitting there. Unlike his shaggier, Creamsicle-colored brothers, Jack is sleek and black, a classic Halloween-style cat, so it was easy to identify him in the dark. I don't know if I was feverish or if it was just the hour of night when the lack of good sleep finally gets to you, but in the instant of spotting him there, only a few feet away, his face ominously invisible in the shadows, I knew, just knew, that he was waiting for me to die. And once I'd rattled off my last breath, my normally sweet-natured little black buddy was going to eat me. Starting with my eyeballs. My tender, juicy eyeballs, round and bulging, primed to pop in Jack's fangy little mouth like giant grapes...

Silly, right? Of course, it's silly. But that was a bad night regardless.

I think I'm finally making headway on this stuff. My left ear is still intermittently stuffy, and I have a nagging cough. But my nose is free again, and I'm starting to regain interest in doing things that I used to do in the Before Time. And Jack-Cat hasn't made any suspicious moves whatsoever. But still... I'm keeping a close watch on him. You never can tell...

For Sale: Vintage Spaceplane, Slightly Used

2011-12-14T03:59:49Z

This past Sunday, December 11, a ceremony was held in New York City in which representatives from NASA officially transferred the title of ownership for the space shuttle Enterprise to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. While the thought of suit-and-tie-wearing administrator-types delivering speeches and signing documents is not particularly inspiring, I couldn't help but chuckle when I read that a spaceship of all things has a title, like any other jalopy that backyard mechanics might trade amongst themselves. I immediately remembered all the old cars my father has bought and sold over the years, and one thing in my brain led to another, and... well...here's something silly that I just dashed off:

FOR SALE: 1976 space shuttle orbiter, rare prototype model, very low mileage (only driven on local errands to the troposphere and back). U.S.-built. All-original interior with factory air and working 8-track. Paint is good (kept in garage for past 26 years). Tires were new when it was parked. Engines need work. Would make a great conversation piece! Best offer. Call 555-5555, ask for Buzz.

Yeah, sometimes I worry about my brain...