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Seriously, no Gog and Magog? Or Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Not even Old BOB?
Amateurs.
]]>Seriously, no Gog and Magog? Or Huey, Dewey, and Louie? Not even Old BOB?
Amateurs.
]]>
create your own personalized map of the USA
Not very impressive, is it? Certainly not for a guy who fancies himself a big traveler, anyway. According to the helpful statistics provided by MyWorld66.com, I have visited 11 of the 50 states, or only about 21% of the country. (I've actually set foot in several more states, but I figured passing through an airport doesn't count as actually visiting.) Ilya has done much better. However, in my defense, I would note that I have seen large tracts of many of the states I have visited, rather than just one or two cities or sights. I'll elaborate a bit below the fold (and explain the title), if you're at all interested...
Of those state I have visited, here are a few details:
So do I have a favorite among those states I've visited? Not really... they all have their attractions and their downsides. Colorado and Idaho felt the most like home to me, on account of their geography, probably. I like the free spiritedness of Nevada, but the dry, brown landscape depresses me (I'm not a big fan of outright deserts; Utah is arid, but not like Nevada). I'm kind of a freak in that I actually like LA, but then I don't have to live there day in and day out. I thought Pennsylvania was beautiful. Of all these states, I probably dislike Arizona the most -- that whole desert thing again; I was there in May and daily temperatures were already averaging 110 degrees, way too hot for my tastes -- but the saguaro cacti were in bloom, and that was beautiful, and the sunsets were amazing.
Of the states I've not yet visited, I'm very interested in the Pacific Northwest and New England, and I'd love to see the sights of Washington, D.C. (not to mention visit a friend there that I haven't seen in person in years, as she reminds me everytime we speak... one day, Cheryl, really!) As I said before, I'd like to eventually visit all 50 states, but I have to admit that the southern and midwestern states are pretty low on my list of travel priorities. Nothing personal, for anyone reading this from those areas, I just haven't heard anything about them that demands I bump them to the top of the wishlist.
Just for kicks, here's a map of the European countries I've visited, all three of them:
create your personalized map of europe
Yeah, I know... that's not so great either. The countries that are inked out, in case you don't know your Europe very well, are England, Germany, and Luxembourg (where I basically just nipped across the border for an hour, but I like to count it anyhow.) Someday, though, someday...
[Update: Oh, I nearly forgot! The title derives from the Jimmy Buffett song "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes." The relevant lyrics are:
Reading departure signs in some big airport/
reminds of the places I've been/
Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure/
make me want to go back again.
Yeah, I'm really feeling the yen to hop on a plane now...]
]]>Which Star Wars Character Are You? | |
 | You are Luke Skywalker. You are adventurous and love to be where the action is. Your curiosity runs wild and you have to seek out the answers to all your questions or else you will not be at peace. People see you as a great leader, although you are uncomfortable with this because you don't see yourself the same way. You just believe in being honest and focusing on the good in the world. You are sweet and lovable and have many friends that would be lost without you. |
| Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com | |
What do y'all think? Does that sound at all like me? I do have a curious streak...
]]>The first is a feature story about the handful of drive-in theaters that still operate in Utah; it focuses primarily on the Motor Vu in Erda, which I briefly mentioned in an entry a couple weeks ago.
The other, somewhat more exciting news concerns the Road Island Diner in Oakley, Utah, which I first wrote about just over one year ago. This is the authentic 1940s-vintage prefab diner that was shipped cross-country from the east coast to a small town at the edge of the Uinta Mountains. To cut to the chase, the renovation is complete and it opened for business this weekend. Details are here. According to the linked article, it's one of only about 1,200 diners left in the country.
I've also found an official website for the Road Island that includes an extensive photo gallery of the renovation. In classic-car terminology, it was a complete "frame off restoration," i.e., it was stripped right down to the bare bones and rebuilt from the ground up. It looks fabulous now, like a time traveler from the Greatest Generation plopped down right here in the 21st Century. I'm very pleased to see that the new owner went for authenticity after all. (I heard a rumor a while back that he'd planned a huge, two-story addition that would've completely overshadowed the original structure, but that was either untrue, or someone talked him out of it.) Of course, it's not entirely authentic. The Trib article notes that the there are flat-screen TVs, which I could've lived without (I realized today just how ubiquitous video displays have become in our society, and how distracting they frequently are; it'd be nice to escape them once in a while), and the tabletop jukeboxes are described as "remote controls for iPods in the back," but I guess you can only go so far in recreating another time period.
Oh, and it wouldn't be a Utah attraction if there wasn't some element of cheesiness to it: all the employees have been given "diner names." Oy. What is it with this state anyway? It's like people just can't help but find some way of being cutesy.
Still, I'm pretty eager to try the place out, even with TVs and cutesy-ness. The Girlfriend and I plan to take a little road trip within the next couple of weeks...
One final note: if you're interested in reading those articles, don't hesitate: in only a few days, the Tribune will drop them behind a pay-wall... I really wish they'd follow the New York Times' example and quit doing that...
]]>Again, I agree with Jaquandor: Azkaban is the better entry in the series than Goblet. I feel the same way about the Potter movies, now that I think about it. I just really like Sirius Black and the way Azkaban comes together. Also, the Dementers aren't as scary again as they are here in their first appearance.
It's such a goofy idea -- a comic-book retelling of the Holocaust with cats standing in as Nazis and mice as Jews -- but it works on you in subtle, unexpected ways, and the end result is far more effective than if Spiegelman had chosen to draw his story in a more realistic manner.
A devastating account of courage, hubris, and stupidity in the face of implacable, uncaring nature.
Everyone considers one of the big classics, if not The Classic, of the comic-book/graphic novel medium. I really need to check it out one of these days.
Haven't read it, don't even know what it's about, but I will say this gets my vote for "most pretentious title on this list."
I'd like to read this...
This probably should be more of a "half-bolding," as I've only read bits and pieces of this, but from what I've seen, it's a tremendous book, part memoir, part advice to those who would follow in King's footsteps, and part love-letter to the process and joy of expressing oneself with words. King has given his loyal fans this sort of intimate monologue on a small scale throughout his career, in the form of his frequent forewords and author's notes, but this book -- again, based just on the bits I've read -- seems to be everything the man is about in one volume. I need to read the entire book.
Magnificent, a genre-transcending monster of a novel that is ultimately more about friendship and the importance -- and costs -- of sticking to your personal codes than it is about cows or six-guns.
I read this in college and didn't get it. I need to revisit it now that I actually have some inkling of what cyberspace is supposed to be...
I once recommended the Sandman series to someone as "comic books for people who don't know anything about comics and don't really want to," and I still stand by that. The series begins rather shakily, as a contrived effort to revive and reinterpret a long-dormant (and mostly forgotten) character from the medium's Golden Age, but as soon as Gaiman was given the go-ahead to run with his own ideas, it quickly hit its stride and became something truly remarkable, nothing less than a meditation on the notion of storytelling and imagination itself. It's brilliant... and Gaiman's conception of Death is a cutie, too, much nicer than Ingmar Bergman's...
I'm not sure why the 1939 World's Fair holds sway over the popular imagination, unless it's because it was the last gasp of naively optimistic futurism, but it was a fascinating moment in history, a good backdrop for a novel, and I remember liking this book very much. Can't remember why I liked it so much, but I did...
A rich, engrossing novel that combines the history of comic-books -- including some real-life people -- with high literary quality. I highly recommend it.
I'm interested in this book, but suspect it would (a) tell me nothing I didn't already know, and (b) piss me off about the injustice of our supposedly just society.
My mother is the Elvis fan in this family -- I respect Elvis' contributions to pop music, but I don't really love them, if that makes sense -- but I'd still like to borrow this from her one of these days...
I read this years ago, but all I really remember are the annoying and pretentious gimmick of a second-person-present-tense narration ("you do this, you do that" -- gack), and an overall '80s-urban vibe. I suspect I would find it badly dated now.
Liked the movie. Probably ought to read it one of these days.
Like the Ehrenreich book above, I'm interested but suspect it would just raise my blood pressure. Or gross me out. You see, I eat a lot of fast food, and I know it's bad in a million different ways, but I kinda don't what to know the details...
I've got no interest in this book, despite apparently being the last person on the planet who hasn't read it...
Meh. I really don't get the fuss over Jon Stewart. I may be on the same political side as him, but he strikes me as so self-satisfied...
Book lists always depress me a little, because they demonstrate rather forcibly that I'm not nearly as literary as I've always believed. I'm ashamed to admit how few of these supposedly important works I've ever even heard of, let alone read. I have nothing to add to the list, either, except perhaps Stephen King's Dark Tower series, a monumental epic fantasy that is both informed by and informs King's entire body of work (although that probably wouldn't count because the first volume appeared more than 25 years ago), or possibly Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat, which completely upended our conception of vampires and is still producing imitators today. But perhaps those choices only show how pedestrian my reading tastes really are...
]]>Okay, I guess I will quibble with placement, at least when it comes to this one. I so completely do not understand the affection so many hold for this flick. I think it's an impossibly overrated, disturbingly amoral gimmick film. Tarantino reminds me of the obnoxious kid in grade school who was always disrupting class in a desperate effort to get the teacher's attention, but when she finally acknowledged him, he had nothing to say. In that sense, Pulp Fiction is a perfect reflection of its creator. I loathe this flick and wouldn't even have it in my top 100 list, let alone as number one.
A magnificent accomplishment. Even with all the recognition these films received, I don't think most people understand how really good they are, how complete a job of world-building was done, or how unlikely it was that they'd turn out good at all.
As I said in the previous entry, I really don't get the backlash against this movie. I liked it. I still like it. And I'm man enough to admit it, too!
Curiously, there seems to be something of a backlash building against this movie, too; I've read a lot of blogs lately that have said it's not as good as Pixar's later films. I disagree -- I find this one eminently re-watchable, certainly superior to the seemingly better-liked Toy Story 2, and it is, of course, historically significant for being the first all-CG feature. It deserves its place on any "top" list.
A good enough movie, for the most part, but vastly overrated. And William Goldman is right: the frame story is an outright lie. The movie would've been better without it.
Remember seeing it, but don't remember the movie.
Still brilliant and chilling, even if Hannibal has been watered down by sequels, prequels, and countless stand-up routines.
It set the mold for a host of imitators, but still one of the greatest action movies ever.
Meh. I never did get the fuss over this one. Entertaining enough, but ultimately kind of stupid. I'm with Joey Pants' character: is it so bad to be a slave in a tube if you think you're eating real steak instead of gray glop? And wouldn't Keanu have had zero muscle definition if he'd spent his entire life in a tube prior to getting flushed? It's the little niggling questions like these that cause this movie to unravel for me.
I love this movie. That said, I'm not one of those who thinks Scorsese got robbed by Costner on Oscar night. Dances with Wolves was a great flick, too, just different. Apples and oranges.
Ugh. Another one I do not get. Obnoxious in just about every way. Renee Zellweger squints through the entire flick, her kid is annoying, and the "you complete me" line is truly gag-worthy. Cameron Crowe is really hit or miss for me; this one is a tremendous miss. In a just universe, Almost Famous would be his most acclaimed flick.
Overrated. Beauty and the Beast is the best of Disney's output in the '90s.
I think I've seen this. In truth, the Merchant-Ivory movies blur together in my mind...
Meh. All the pop-cultural references are already dated, and am I the only one who thinks it would've been a more powerful movie if the princess had remained human and opted to be with Shrek regardless?
Have I mentioned how much I hate the shaky-cam?
A romantic movie that works for men and women. Why don't they make 'em like this more often?
Beautiful and heart-breaking.
A good movie, but not nearly as profound as its cultish fans believe. And I hate the dreary, humid dankness of it all. This and Seven are responsible for a decade of truly ugly filmmaking.
A classic for we people of a certain age. I wonder if today's teens would still relate to it?
I need to see this.
Possibly the best cartoon ever made for grown-ups. Love everything about it, from the groovy '60s spy-movie production design to the voice work to the genuinely funny jokes and tear-jerking pathos.
Meh.
I think this one holds up quite well, even if you figure out the twist or have seen it before. It's some of Bruce Willis' finest work. Too bad M. Night Shyamalan has turned out to be something of a one-trick pony.
Love this one... my teen years were in the '80s instead of the '70s, but so much of this still ran true and looked familiar. And it's the only movie where I've actually liked Matthew McConnaughey, so that's got to be worth something.
Saw it, don't remember it.
I'm with Jaquandor on this one: it's a pleasant little comedy, but one of the best of the last quarter century? How do you get that?
I need to see this one, too.
Need to see this one again, since I don't remember much.
I've never been very fond of this variety of humor, the absurd-slapsticky thing. Leslie Neilson is an appealing lead, though.
It's so strange to watch this now and see how natural and unaffected Tom Cruise's performances used to be. I miss the real Tom instead of the android that now uses his face.
I know I saw this back in the day, but couldn't even tell you the premise now. I remember thinking it was weird and not my cup of tea. I suppose I ought to give it another look...
Another flick I thought everybody liked but which seems to be developing a backlash. I still like it...
As I've said before, one of my personal classics.
Possibly Harrison Ford's best performance, if not his best movie. Someone in college once told me that this was just another example of imperial-colonialist filmmaking, i.e., a movie that requires an average white guy to serve as our access point into a little-understood culture. This conversation was my first inkling that I didn't fit into the world of academe as well as I had hitherto imagined.
If we're talking "best movies," the first Terminator is by far superior to this one.
Wha? I thought this was a good-enough movie, largely because Clooney delivers a strong performance, but it wasn't anything all that special. It was a plot we'd basically seen before...
An unexpected choice for this list, but glad to see it here. Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell rock...
An excellent movie, and also a really damn depressing one if you happen to be a man of a certain age who still hasn't achieved the goals you thought you'd have reached long before that age...
I maintain that you if you took the best bits from all three Austin Powers movies and cut them together, you might -- might -- end up with one consistently good one.
Ugh. The most painfully unfunny movie of the last 25 years, perhaps. Why is this thing so popular? I never will understand it...
The little movie that could. It never gets old.
Makes me cry every time.
Garbage! Garbage, garbage, garbage! Shrill, unlikable characters and nausea-inducing camera work that leave you ultimately feeling exhausted, rather than scared or exhilirated. Just goes to show you what a lot of hype can do for your box-office returns. And how far the horror genre has fallen.
On my "to see" list. I nearly gambled and bought it from the five-dollar bin the other night, for whatever that's worth...
So what's missing from this list? Jaquandor mentioned The Shawshank Redemption, which I'd probably include, and Braveheart, which I probably would not. (I remember liking this when it first came out but haven't had any desire to revisit it, which leads me to think my initial response may have been more to the hype than the film. Or it may be because I've lost so much respect for Mel Gibson in recent years. With the exception of The Road Warrior, I find it very hard to watch him anymore.) I'd also add Almost Famous, as I mentioned above, and Wonder Boys, a wonderful movie that went criminally unnoticed due to (I believe) a lousy marketing campaign. It includes some of Michael Douglas' best work; if you haven't seen it, you should. And finally, where's the love for Dances with Wolves? This, like Titanic, seems to be a victim of its own success -- everybody loved it at first, then suddenly started resenting the fact that everybody loved it. Well, I still love it. So there.
Moving on to books now...
[Ed. note: Given the length of these lists, I decided to chop this into two parts. Check the next entry for the top 100 books, according to EW, and my thoughts on some of them...]
]]>Anyway, enough defensiveness... on to the list!
20. Autumn in New York
Richard Gere and Winona Ryder in a May-December romance might have been interesting, if this movie had really been about the issues faced by people in a May-December romance. But it seems that she's dying, which transforms this into a very different kind of movie. And also, conveniently, lets Gere's character off the hook of having to make a decision about whether he can really spend his life his someone half his age. Lame. Why do so many chick flicks involve terminal illness, anyhow?
19. The English Patient
I'll be honest, I don't remember enough about this movie to say anything intelligent. I recall thinking that it was beautifully filmed and unbelievably frustrating, but as to why it frustrated me... well, I honestly have no clue. Other people have said it was boring. Perhaps that was it...
18. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Haven't seen it. Doubt I ever will, since it appears to be one of those "men are stupid, so we Southern sisters have to stick together" movies. (That's another question: why are so many chick flicks about Southern women in particular? Aren't women from other regions of the country "colorful" enough?)
17. The Notebook
Haven't seen it. Heard too many bad reviews...
16. Dr. T & The Women
Haven't seen it.
15. Sweet November
Another movie where the female lead is dying, but not before teaching the man a valuable lesson about how to live life to its fullest. Do screenwriters think women want to be martyrs to a cause, rather than partners in a genuine relationship?
14. You’ve Got Mail
Haven't seen it.
13. The Prince of Tides
Haven't seen it.
12. Georgia Rule
Haven't seen it. Not even sure what it's about.
11. Crossroads
Britney Spears' big cinematic debut. Need I say that I haven't seen it?
10. The Bridges of Madison County
Haven't seen it, but would actually like to. Clint Eastwood is The Man, in my book, and if he saw something redeeming in that pedestrian, sappy, and inexplicably successful novel, then I'm willing to give the movie a try.
9. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Haven't seen it, but have nothing against the premise of a group of friends who share a magical pair of pants. And besides, Amber Tamblyn is a major cutie. I loved Joan of Arcadia.
8. Fried Green Tomatoes
I actually liked this movie. I thought all of the characters were appealing and funny, and I love movies set in the 1930s. It was a very photogenic time period, with the hats and the cars with headlights the size of dinner plates.
7. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Okay, this is an example of the dopey thing, not to mention the cruel, let's-screw-with-somebody's-head thing: Kate Hudson is a magazine writer on a mission to, as the title suggests, lose a guy in 10 days, figuring out the most efficient means to drive him away, basically, so she can write some catty, superficial article on the subject. Matthew McConnaughey -- not exactly my fave actor, as my loyal readers know -- meanwhile has a bet that he can make a girl fall for him in 10 days. So these two people, who are each trying to carry out some hidden agenda for less-than-noble purposes, are supposed to be sympathetic and believable when they really fall for each other? How long would a real-life relationship built on this kind of crap survive? I hate the game playing that so many men and women think they need to do when it comes to the pursuit of the opposite sex, and I find this kind of "battle of the sexes" stuff mind-bogglingly offensive...
6. Beaches
I know I saw it. Have no memory of it aside from that damn "Wind Beneath My Wings" song. Man, did that get overplayed.
5. Sleepless in Seattle
Didn't see it. Didn't much care to. Long distance relationships don't work, friends, and I have little use for the fantasy that they do.
4. Dirty Dancing
As I've noted before, this is one of my personal favorites. Yeah, the lead is a girl and it's all about music and dancing and falling for a cute guy, but it's also about finding out what you can do when you have to, and earning respect and making choices and living with the consequences, and, ultimately, about making others see you for what you really are instead of what they want you to be. The line, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," gets mocked in these oh-so-ironic days, but in context, it's an affirmation that always brings a smile to my face. In a lot of ways, this movie is less a chick flick than an underdog story along the lines of The Karate Kid. Hm... I might have to develop that idea a little more some other time.
3. Steel Magnolias
Ugh. This is the movie that established so clearly for me so many of the things I hate about this genre: the strong and "colorful" (i.e., goofy and/or bitchy) women who don't behave like any women I've ever met, the ineffectual and/or evil men, the fatal disease... if there is any movie in this genre that provokes in me the stereotypical male response to a "woman's picture," this is it.
2. Ghost
I remember loathing this flick back in the day, but I think it's because I was working at the theater when it came out, and it was such a huge deal and it just wouldn't go away... it played for months and months, night after night of sell-out crowds all gushing about how romantic it was, and how sexy the pottery scene was, yada yada. I think I just got royally sick of it. But you know, I caught part of it on TV recently and was surprised by how much I enjoyed what I saw of it. I've never thought Demi Moore was all that sexy, and the ultra-short haircut she had in this movie made her look like a boy, but the movie itself, eh, I got no problem with it.
1. Titanic
Man, I so do not understand the backlash that has risen up against this movie. Everybody liked it the first three times they saw it (and you know everybody saw it; it wasn't just teenage girls that pushed its box-office numbers so high). It's a grand spectacle, and the love story at its heart is no more or less dippy than most other film romances. Sure, the star-crossed lovers from different worlds thing has been done many times before, but in recycling that particular trope, James Cameron was able to show us the social stratification of that great ship through two single characters, rather than the sprawling cast other movies on the Titanic have been forced to employ. The dialogue isn't as bad as many people claim. The only part of this movie that really doesn't work for me is the frame story; yeah, I know it's there to provide exposition, and I do like the very end with Old Rose, but all the scenes with Bill "Cardboard" Paxton are just painful...
One title I think I'd add to this list is Serendipity, a movie that literally angered me with the ridiculousness of its premise: oh, I've met someone I really click with but I want to be sure it's real, so let's pull some kind of stupid little stunt and if Implausible Event A ever occurs, then we'll know It Was Meant to Be. And if that wasn't offensive enough in its stupidity, when Implausible Event A does occur, our two leads are involved with other people who seem to be perfectly nice, but they get dumped on their asses because of this magical fate-thing left over from years before. Gah. It's awful in so many ways...
***
Anyway, moving right along, we come now to a list of Top 20 Movies That Make Men Cry, the handful of movies that supposedly acceptable for men to show emotion while watching. Are these the movies that make yours truly emotional? Read on for more unsolicited insight...
20. It's a Wonderful Life
I have a love-hate thing with this movie... for a long time, it was my annual tradition to view it with my mom at Christmas time, and yes, I teared up when George Bailey begged Clarence to reverse his wish and when the entire town came to his rescue. But then later on, when I started realizing my own life had come to resemble George's in ways I wasn't very comfortable with, I started to despise it. I refused to watch it for a few years... but last year, I caught the last half-hour or so on TV, and well, I cried right on cue. Go figure. It's sappy, but it's a nice fantasy, to think that a single man can mean so much to his neighbors...
19. Schindler's List
Liam Neeson's breakdown at the end -- his near-hysterical wondering how many more lives he could've saved in exchange for the value of his car, or his coat -- just kills me. He did so much, and yet still didn't feel like he'd done enough... that's tragic, in my eyes.
18. Frequency
Haven't seen it.
17. Dead Poets Society
Jaquandor and SamuraiFrog have both written convincingly on why this isn't a very good movie, and not having seen it in a very long time, I can't really refute their arguments except to say that 20 years ago, when I was a college student working part-time at a multiplex and dreaming of something more than a mundane life in the 'burbs, I was moved and inspired by the film. Whether I would still be today is an open question...
16. Forrest Gump
God, I hate this movie. What's the message of it supposed to be, anyhow? That in order to be happy and successful, it helps to have a room-temperature IQ? Forrest never learns anything, never evolves in any way during this movie -- he's the same character at the end as at the beginning. Is that supposed to be inspiring? Or amusing? Why does no one else see how friggin' pointless this movie is?
15. The Natural
Haven't seen it, although it's on my list.
14. The Shawshank Redemption
I'm surprised by how this movie has been elevated into such a classic in the last decade. I liked it, and I did mist up at the end, but I never saw it going on to become such a favorite of so many people.
13. Big Fish
I saw it and remember liking it. I don't remember any specifics, though, including whether I cried.
12. Seabiscuit
A good movie that I enjoyed very much, but I did not cry.
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Yeah, I bawled several times during this one, but I think I actually had a stronger reaction to Fellowship: Bilbo's sorrow at inadvertently setting everything in motion, Boromir's death while defending "the little ones," Sam's headstrong determination to stick with Frodo no matter what, and most of all, the final scene, when there is so much ahead of them and all they have on their side is friendship... well, those are the scenes that stick with me from the LOTR trilogy.
10. The Passion of the Christ
Never saw it and have no intention of ever seeing it. A sacred snuff film holds no appeal for me, and in fact strikes me as a little bit perverse. Not to mention the fact that, in my mind, the real significance of Christ's life is in his message, not his suffering and death. But then I'm an agnostic; what do I know?
9. E.T., The Extra-Terrestrial
Of course! Only the truly heartless could not shed a tear in this movie... although what gets me isn't E.T.'s death and resurrection, which seems to be what everyone else responds to, but his farewell, the "I'll be right here" line.
8. The Green Mile
Good movie. Tears? Not that I remember.
7. Saving Private Ryan
No, no tears. The frame story is a lie, you know. That undermines the whole thing for me...
6. The Pride of the Yankees
Haven't seen it.
5. Rudy
Haven't seen it.
4. Braveheart
Seen it, no tears that I recall.
3. Brian's Song
Haven't seen it.
2. Old Yeller
Not sure if I saw it as a kid, or if I've just seen so many clips that it feels like I did. I probably did cry, if I actually saw it.
1. Field of Dreams
Oh, yeah. Grown men and their dads is almost always guaranteed to turn on the spigots. I don't know if women understand that dynamic, the competition and stupid social conventions that get in the way of fathers and sons expressing any genuine emotions until it's too late. If only we could bring them back after they're gone for one last, genuine connection.
Just to wrap up, there are a few movies I can think that ought to be on this list, or at least my personal version of it:
The look on the boy's face is simply priceless... and heart-breaking, the poor kid...
So here's my conspiracy theory: maybe my dad's right and there is something more to those high gas prices. Maybe it's all a scheme on the part of some cabal to break down the walls keeping the oil barons out of the wilderness zones. Let's imagine "they" really have done something to raise gas prices beyond what ordinary market forces can explain. Soccer moms are feeling the pinch and getting desperate. The politicians respond by proposing the same thing they've been pitching for years: opening the Alaskan wilderness to drilling. Only now the public is more receptive to the idea because it's costing so damn much to drive little Emily to her piano recital. And quick as you please, there are derricks pumping away in ANWR.
Crazy? Maybe. I don't really believe it myself. But you've got to admit that it'd be an ingenious endgame, don't you think? If there's any truth behind this notion, and if it ends up being successful, the really sad thing is how little pushing it will have taken to break the well-intentioned but ultimately self-interested American voters...
[For the record, I am NOT any kind of major tree-hugger myself. Hell, I drive a Mustang, okay? I also don't have any particular attachment to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though I do think there is value in untouched natural landscapes and that non-human life ought to have as much right to go about its business unmolested as we do. But I'm enough of a realist to acknowledge that many environmentalist goals are completely idealistic -- no, worse, unrealistic -- and unlikely ever to happen, or to be maintained indefinitely. Like the idea that no one will ever set foot in a certain region simply because it's marked "off limits" on the map. I just think it'd be a damn shame if circumstances forced us into disturbing the place for a quick and easy fix instead of taking a longer, more painful, but ultimately better path -- i.e., getting serious about kicking the oil habit -- and it'd be an even bigger shame if those circumstances have come about because of a dirty back-room deal between guys who smoke more in Cuban cigars a month than I make in a year. I hate that so much of what goes on this country seems to be determined by that kind of secretive nonsense, aided and abetted by the forces of marketing and media. Just so you know where I'm coming from here...]
I don't know if teenage boys still go through a phase where they're obsessed with comedy albums -- my guess would be "not," since the "album" is an endangered species these days, and stand-up doesn't appear to be quite the cultural force it used to be -- but back in my increasingly far-off youth, it was almost as if every thirteen-year-old male in the country was issued one at the door as he left that infamously awkward, boys-only puberty lecture in seventh grade. You know, the one where red-faced PE coaches mumbled dire warnings about how we were going to start "noticing hair in new places" and we'd need to start showering every day if we wanted girls to like us. Maybe the comedy album was supposed to be a consolation prize for having just been made to feel impossibly icky about our own bodily functions. Here's a record, kid; go listen to somebody making fun of the stuff you'll be obsessing over for the next few years.
We all had our favorite comedians in the middle-school crucible of the 1980s. As I recall, my buddy Keith liked the absurdities of Steve Martin, while my neighbor Kurt Stephenson grooved on the earthy 'n' crude acts like Richard Pryor and the up-and-coming Eddie Murphy. I liked those guys just fine, but my comedy hero during those harrowing early-teen years was George Carlin.
]]> My introduction to Carlin was almost certainly on television, although I no longer remember the specifics. Probably I caught one of his frequent appearances on the old Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, or maybe it was on an RCA videodisc* recording of the first episode of Saturday Night Live, which Carlin hosted. (He did more than host, really. The format of SNL's premiere show was very different from what we now think of as the "SNL formula." It was more like "the George Carlin show" with occasional filler material featuring the then-anonymous Not Ready for Prime-Time Players. It's included in the first season DVD set, if you're curious.)It couldn't have been very long after that when I talked my parents into buying me my very first -- and still my favorite -- comedy album, George's FM & AM. It was his second album, recorded in 1972 and thus filled with a lot of dated references that I didn't get at the time (for example, I think I actually learned who Ed Sullivan was from Carlin's impression of him), but I loved it anyway. I played it over and over and over, memorizing entire routines and learning the man's vocal patterns, characters, and impressions by heart. I can still recite some bits, notably "Shoot," an examination of our culture's favorite euphemism for excrement and all its many nuances, and "The Hair Piece," a joyful celebration of hirsuteness. The album was pretty tame by modern standards, and actually even by the standards of the early '80s, certainly compared to the Eddie Murphy stuff that Kurt was into, but it was still grown up in a way that's difficult to define, grown up like Johnny Carson was grown up. It had nothing to do with the swear words; it was more the subject matter, the attitude, the sense that it wasn't something that was intended for "all audiences." Listening to it made me feel like I'd stumbled onto something important, something that was as much a part of what was happening to my body as that mysterious "hair in new places." The album talked of drugs and divorce and, most wondrous of all, sex. I like to think that album helped me figure out some of those mysteries. And it was -- still is, in my opinion -- really damn funny.
The time frame blurs together, but at some point after getting that album, my parents again proved their utter coolness by taking Kurt and me to actually see George Carlin live in concert. This was around the time he debuted what is probably his most famous routine, "A Place for My Stuff" (see it here), although Kurt and I would really remember that night for -- yep, you guessed it -- the "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," which George supplemented that night with a lengthy list of variants, all cross-referenced, alphabetized, categorized, and printed on one long strip of chain-driven computer paper... that old-school print-out, yards long and piled on the floor by the time he was finished, somehow made the routine all the funnier. My parents were a bit chagrined by that one, especially my mom, who was terrified Kurt and I would start repeating it all over school -- which, of course, we did -- and cause outraged teachers and parents to call her and question her fitness as a mother, which to my knowledge never happened. But I think in the end they knew as much as Kurt and I did that the topics George covered, even the vulgar ones, were life. They were truth. And George himself came across as gentle and wise, a favorite uncle who pulls you into an affectionate headlock and says, "Boy, let me tell you how it is..."
As with so many of the things I loved during my adolescence, I kind of outgrew George Carlin for a while. I'd occasionally encounter him somewhere out there in the media -- I cheered his appearance as the slick time traveler Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, although I had to explain to the girl I was dating at the time who he was and why it was cool he was in this silly movie -- but mostly I just cherished my fond memories of my favorite comic uncle.
Then, a few years ago, I heard he was going to play Salt Lake again. I was practically giddy at the news and immediately bought tickets, the most expensive ones I could afford so we'd be nice and close. The Girlfriend was unfamiliar with him, so I dug out my old LP and played it for her. I recited all those musty old routines I have socked away up in my brain. I told her how intelligent he was, how witty, how important his work had been to me growing up. We went into the concert hall that night with high expectations... and, to my deep surprise and horror, he wasn't funny. He. Wasn't. Funny.
What he was, was pissed off. Angry. Ranting. Downright, deliberately offensive.
Anne tried, because she didn't want to disappoint me, but she didn't enjoy the show one bit. And I... I was confused. What the hell had happened to my George Carlin, the man who'd given me "Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman" and "The Icebox Man"? He'd always been quick to point out the stupidities of the human race, but he'd never been mean about it, not that I could remember. In my mind, he'd always been about the little oddities of the English language and playing with words and gently -- gently -- mocking his fellow man. But this snarling, hateful misanthrope, this cranky old man who was brimming over with pessimism and contempt for everybody and everything... this wasn't my George Carlin. In truth, I had no idea who that guy was. I didn't recognize him. And that hurt me in a way that's difficult to describe without sounding melodramatic and whiny as hell. In the simplest terms, one of my boyhood heroes had let me down by daring to actually change as he aged.
I'm sure everyone has heard the news by now: George Carlin died last night of heart failure, at the age of 71. I'm seeing tributes to him all across the blogosphere. It seems he mattered to just about everyone, and I'm pleased by that. But I'm also rather disheartened to see that nearly everyone is talking about the latter-day George Carlin, the pissed-off Carlin, as if that's the one that really mattered. And to me, it's not. A lot of comedians need their anger to be funny, and if they get too content, they lose their edge. (Eddie Murphy, I'm looking at you.) With George, it seems the opposite was true. His anger got in the way of him being funny, in my opinion. It's the middle-period Carlin I love, the guy in the photo at the top of this entry, not this guy.
I've often wondered in the years since that last concert just what happened to George Carlin to change him like that. I've felt bad for him, to be honest, because I figure it must've been something awful. It's not that I necessarily disagree with his recent opinions, because I don't. I think he was right about a great many things, and even right to be angry about them, because I also think this country is going to hell in a bucket and the driving force is materialism and stupidity, just as George railed about. And I don't think anyone's ever said anything so wise as Carlin's remark that a cynic is just a disappointed idealist, because that's certainly how I tend to think of myself. I'm even willing to accept, as Evanier suggests, that the "hater Carlin" was just a stage persona.
But if that persona truly was anything like the real man, well, then I hope he's finally found some peace. Because he sorely needed it.
And now, I think I'm going to go find my copy of FM & AM and give it a spin. Just for old times' sake.
Shoot.
* Videodiscs, not to be confused with pre-DVD laserdiscs, were an early home-video format that worked something like phonograph records. The disc had grooves cut into it that were read by a stylus inside the player, just like an LP record. My parents used to rent them from the local appliance store where my mom occasionally worked, and I owe a big chunk of my early film education to those ridiculously impractical things. (They scratched easily, wore out quickly -- especially the rentals that saw a lot of use -- and warped if they got too hot, just like records.) If you're curious about such things, there's more info on the format here. Not surprisingly, there seems to be a cult following for the format out there on the 'webs; this site looks like a good resource for just about any aspect of the scene you'd want to explore.
...anything invented before you were 18 has been there forever, anything that turns up before you're 30 is new and exciting, and anything after that is a threat to the world and must be destroyed.
I like that. Reminds me of that great quote from Grandpa Simpson: "I used to be 'with it.' Once, I even knew what 'it' was. But then 'it' changed; it got weird and scary. And it'll happen to you." Or something like that. In any event, I increasingly understand the sentiment...
]]>As I wrote in comments over at Ilya's, it isn't often that a frickin' commercial makes me smile like a little kid, but this one sure did. Of course, it probably helps that I start recognizing people about midway through. Kudos to whoever thought to include Stephen Hawking in there; his synthetic, monotype Cylon voice ironically seems to add an extra dose of humanity to this sort of thing...
]]>If you've never had one, the garlic burger is exactly what it sounds like, a man-sized hunk of ground beef mixed with chopped bits of fresh garlic, grilled to juicy perfection by a guy who probably has a criminal record, and served on a hunk of wonderfully chewy French bread with all the traditional fixins. Cheese is extra, and worth it.
To be honest, the garlic-to-burger ratio is sometimes a little inconsistent. I've been there on nights when you can hardly detect the stuff, and on other occasions it's so thick it completely overwhelms any other flavor you might experience for the next week or so. But on the nights when the mixture is correct, one of those warm and breezy nights when you get lucky and find a table on the patio and there's a cute biker chick in a leather halter-top nearby who doesn't seem to mind your admiring glances, and you're there with your mates and you've got a pitcher of cold Coors to wash down your dinner... ah, those nights are truly one of the great pleasures of this -- or any other -- lifetime.
It seems like pretty much everyone in these parts knows about those wonderful burgers, but of course the Cotton Bottom is just what I said up front, a tiny and mildly seedy hole-in-the-wall with no ambitions to be anything other than a friendly neighborhood tavern and a local treasure. So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across a blog entry written by a fellow named Lane, a former Salt Laker who now lives in Manhattan, in which he claims to have dined at "this trendy place called Bubby's, in Tribeca," whose menu offers -- get this -- "The Garlic Burger: our version of the Cotton Bottom's classic."
How incredibly unlikely is that? This fancy-schmancy New York place couldn't possibly be copying our Cotton Bottom, could it? Well, yes, it could, according to Lane:
...the Bubby's waitress confirmed [it]: the chef had lived in Utah or skied in Utah or something, and this $15 burger was in fact modeled after that of my hometown dive bar.
For further confirmation, I googled around for the menu. It's there, all right. Just scroll down to the burger section.
Now, we Utahns admittedly do tend to have something of an inferiority complex just as Lane suggests, a certainty that we are the uncoolest, least well-regarded, and most misunderstood people in the country. The joke runs that we finally get the fads here about five years after everybody else abandons them as hopelessly square. Intellectually, I know that's not quite true, certainly not these days anyway. Utah -- the Salt Lake area especially -- has come a long way from the Waltons-style pressed-jeans-and-long-sleeved-shirts-in-summer look that I recall a lot of older men wearing in my younger days. But still... the thought of a trendy eatery outside the Zion Curtain -- one in New York of all places -- aping one of our local delicacies... well, I'm simply astounded.
Brian, if you're reading this, you've got to run down to Tribeca and try this. I know you've never experienced the Cotton Bottom original, but let me know what you think anyway, will you?
Of course, my sour mood wasn't helped by the nicely dressed, very young man -- did I mention he was very young? -- who offered me his seat so I didn't have to stand in the aisle. He insisted upon me taking his seat, actually, despite my polite refusals. I don't quite understand his zeal considering that I am not (a) visibly disabled, (b) grotesquely overweight, or (c) all that old. I may have some gray in my beard, but give me a break, kid. Those Foundation for a Better Life PSAs are maybe a little too effective...
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