No, not the one with Queen Latifah

I picked up the book BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE yesterday at the library... and I finished it on the plane. For those of you who haven’t seen the previews for the movie 21, which is based upon the book, this is the TRUE story of a bunch of MIT students who worked out this card-counting scheme and won millions of dollars from various casinos over the course of a couple years. If you’re a fan of Clooney’s Ocean’s 11, you’ll dig this book. It’s a really easy, really fast (did I mention I finished the whole thing in less than 24 hours), and actually quite satisfying read (see, it is possible to have all three, Dan Brown). In addition to giving a really gripping account of how these ballsy little geeks managed to get past the Vegas system (Think the Rain Main blackjack sequence times about 10), the author also gives some really cool backstory into the history of "old" Vegas and "new" Vegas (the security, the mob, the corporations, the back rooms, the strippers, the private investigation firms) in order to show you what these guys were truly up against.

So a highly recommended read that isn’t too taxing on the mind. And it’s TRUE for crying out loud. It all actually happened, which of course makes it even cooler. I’m sure some parts were pizzazed up for dramatic effect and all, but still. And the thing is, you can tell that the movie at least has the potential to be just as good. A curious thing I noticed though, the lead role is being played by a white guy when all the participants in the original scheme were Asian, and, in fact, BEING Asian, Greek or Persian was apparently key to pulling off the scheme because the pit bosses were more suspicious of white kids making big bets. But whatever, I’m rather excited to check it out once it becomes available on DVD and Blu-Ray HiDef... or you know, if I happen to catch it on TNT one night.

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone know who Darwin is?

Today I clicked on perhaps my very first "targeted Google ad" ever, and found something profoundly interesting. Apparently Ben Stein ("Beuller... Beuller...") has made a documentary which is coming out later this year. The doc is called EXPELLED and it addresses a recent trend in academia whereby scientists, teachers, students and really anyone involved in the realm of academic thinking are ostracized for merely suggesting that Darwinism might be wrong. As someone who is an unapologetic Christian but who has read up on evolution and finds the ideas behind it intriguing and fascinating (if not necessarily foregone conclusions) I am very eager and curious to see this film.

I want to stress—and the website stresses over and over—that the aim of this film is NOT to preach Intelligent Design or to make a case against evolution. What it does is expose the “invisible hand” of “Big Science” which has been bullying otherwise intelligent researchers into accepting evolution as it is currently understood, or else. Well established scientists and college professors are being fired, denied tenure, and cut out of research funding simply for pursuing “fact” and “truth” no matter where the road may lead. It’s a trend that is disturbingly familiar in our current vernacular, something that transcends science and religion: anti-war voices being told to “just shut up” by conservatives or global warming skeptics being called “treasonous” by Al Gore acolytes just to name a couple.

If an idea or theory is self-evident why the need to discourage dissenting voices and research? No matter what your religious or scientific beliefs, if the idea of challenging the “Establishment” and encouraging “free thinking” intrigues you, then I encourage you to check out the film’s website. Watch the trailer and read the online literature. And when the movie comes out later this year, go see it with a truly open mind.

http://www.expelledthemovie.com/

Hack me some global warming

I think of all the hack writers out there that America seems to love so much, Michael Crichton is my personal favorite. I say “hack writer” with all due respect. If you’ve read any of his books, you know that Crichton is a very intelligent, very well informed and very well researched man. And like the other hacks out there, Crichton simply uses the vehicle of fiction to present new and burgeoning ideas to the public in a way that is more palatable than a science book or lecture. Dan Brown uses the medium to present cult and religious ideas. Vince Flynn uses the medium to present the uncomfortable truth about the CIA and Black Ops. From a purely storytelling point of view, none of these guys are especially good writers. In fact if their stories didn’t incorporate some element of real life intrigue, nobody would even buy their books. Case in point: The DaVinci Code. This wasn’t a popular book because of its gripping narrative. It was popular because people were so intrigued by the new and scandalous ideas he was presenting… so much so that a lot of the public used nothing more than this work of fiction as the basis for arguing that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married.

But as I said, out of all the hacks and bad storytellers, Crichton is my favorite. Yes, like those other hacks, I read his books more to learn about new ideas in a palatable way. The actual story is something I find myself slogging through as a necessary evil in order to glean the actual information he’s trying to present (the glaring exception to this rule being Jurassic Park, which ruled in every way possible. Even still, he does a better job than those other guys. First of all, there’s rarely a moment of dialogue that sounds contrived. The people speak like normal people, even when they are talking for multiple paragraphs about this scientific study or that misunderstood concept. His characters actually have a bit of depth to them. Even his villains have motivations for what they’re doing and aren’t mere stock characters who are just intrinsically evil. But most of all, I appreciate the fact that Crichton doesn’t feel the need to put in an obligatory but incredibly misplaced and often gratuitous sex scene – something those other hacks do with such uncomfortable, almost squeamish incompetence that you wonder if they’ve ever actually had sex before.

Anyway, that whole lead-up was to say that I just read another Michael Crichton book: State of Fear. This one is Crichton’s chance to express his thoughts on global warming. Like most of his other books, I found myself slogging through all the actual plot and story just to get to the parts where the characters would engage in debates about the science Crichton was presenting. And it doesn’t take you long to realize that Crichton really thinks the whole global warming movement is a bunch of crap. Pretty much every argument a global warming acolyte would throw out there as evidence, Crichton’s characters deftly smack down… with actual references and graphs, complete with footnotes to back it all up. By the time I got to the end of the book, I realized I didn’t actually need to read it. Pretty much all the points made in State of Fear were presented much more succinctly (without petty things like storytelling to get in the way) in a speech I’d read on Crichton’s website.

The basic gist is this: there is absolutely no consistent data indicating that global warming is actually happening. I could summarize several points here, but honestly, the tiny little bit of data I could regurgitate could just as easily be rebutted with rhetoric. Better that you go to his site, click on the speeches page and find the global warming speech yourself. It’s a long read (though certainly not the 500 pages of State of Fear) but it’s quite illuminating and Crichton backs up a lot of what he says with not only science but lessons from history. Besides, I’ve already presented a boatload of my own thoughts on global warming here and here.

One of the things that was in the book that you won’t find in the speech is a rant by an eccentric college professor about the politics of fear in this country – from where the book draws its name. Basically he says that if you look at the American media, the use of words like “catastrophe, crisis, disaster, dire, dreaded, unprecedented” has increased one thousand percent since 1985. In 1985 “catastrophe” was said on the news about as often as the word “budget.” But then the Cold War ended. The big fear of Russia and mutually assured destruction had been lifted, so there was nothing for those in power to use in order to keep the people afraid and in line. So they started making things up to be afraid of. DDT, food additives, foreign diseases, breast implants all became cause for alarm, even though the science was incomplete, and would later even prove to be false. According to this character, global warming is just the next in a long line of things designed to rally the public behind the easiest motivator of all: fear. And in ten years when the science finally catches up to everyone, it will be pushed to the side in favor of something else designed to scare the bejeezus out of us. But in the meantime, how much money will we waste on “solutions” that have no scientific viability; money that could have been used to feed god knows how many people.

Okay, I’m ranting. As I said, I’ve written my own thoughts on global warming before. Bottom line, check out Michael Crichton. His book. His speeches. It’s all good and will make you (gasp) think. He may be a hack, but he's very good at it.

Zap Zap! Free Speech! Blah Blah!

I don't usually post random YouTube videos to this blog, but I've had two people bring this video to my attention thus far today and I just wanted to put my own two cents in before the media cacophony begins. The video shows a college student attempting to ask John Kerry a question during a Q&A session and then the escalation of events until he is arrested and eventually tasered. Watch first, then read my thoughts below:




Hm... I don't really even know what to think about this. Yes, the kid was exercising his fundamental right to free speech. Yes, he was trying to engage John Kerry in a dialogue of pertinent questions. And yes, he had his mic cut off and yes he was arrested and yes he was tasered because of all of this.

Unfortunately I can see this getting blown out of proportion as some kind of "free speech violation" when the fact is, the kid stood up and attempted to monopolize what appears to be a more or less informal Q&A session. He was told repeatedly to ask his question, but rather than asking kept spouting information from a book he'd read. Then once he asked the question, he asked MORE questions and then MORE questions after that. Yes, I get the point that this was his only available forum to ask these pertinent questions to John Kerry's face, so I AM tempted to react the way others are surely reacting, with anger at the fact that he was silenced and arrested, anger at the overreaction of the police.

Then again, he DID try to monopolize an event that was not his to monopolize. And when he was escorted away, he DID resist arrest to the point where it required half a dozen police officers to subdue him, and even then he fought. Personally I don't blame the police for tasering him when they did.

What this brings up is a larger problem, a larger question of: How do WE as normal everyday constituents find a forum to air our questions and grievances and expect to have them actually ANSWERED. Unless you are a member of the press, you can't ask these questions directly to a politician's face. And even then you certainly can't expect a real and legitimate answer to your queries and the opportunity to say, "No, excuse me sir but you DID NOT answer my question."

No clear answers on this one as far as I'm concerned. I just hope this opens up a HEALTHY debate and not just a bunch of crybaby activists whining about "free speech" this and "free speech" that.

Noxious fumes occur in realtime

Okay so I have had a scene from an episode of last season's 24 running through my head all freakin' week. Well, not ALL week, but more like several times a day every time I go up or down the stairs. Allow me to explain.

I've been working in New York this week where I spend my days in a building split between the 12th and 15th floors. Since the elevators are so damn slow, I just take the stairs each time. And seriously, I must make the trip four times every hour AT LEAST. Well these are service stairs and on the 12th floor side the stairwell passes through this little like vestibule area where they apparently keep their trash all day before emptying it at night. This room, obviously stinks to high heaven, so I have taken to holding my breath as I walk through it. I've gotten into a pattern. As I walk through the 12th floor and reach for the doorknob into the vestibule, I take a deep breath, walk through the stinky room, open the door for the stairwell and slowly let my breath out, trying not to breathe again until the door seals behind me. And then I repeat the process on my way back down.

So can the 24 fans guess which episode I'm thinking of? It's the one where they set off the VX gas cannisters in CTU and Jack and everybody else are holed up inside that glass room except for Sean Astin's character who is in another room with some nameless CTU agent. Sean has to hold his breath and run out to reset something on the computer so that the gas can vent out of the building, but that breaks the seal on their room and he and the other agent die as soon as they start breathing.

So seriously, every time, EVERY TIME I go through this vestibule, that scene plays through my head. It's like the garbage room is some kind of airlock, and I make sure to keep my breath held until the door seals behind me. If I've been moving around a lot and I'm shorter of breath, sometimes I don't make it and start breathing before the door closes, and I think, "Oops, you just breathed in the gas. You're dead now."

4 times roundtrip an hour for 9 hours times three days so far. That's nearly a two hundred times that scene has replayed in my head. That can't be healthy.

(bink-BONG...bink-BONG...bink-BONG...)

I take it bada-back

For lack of anything better to do, I just pulled up The Sopranos’ final scene on YouTube to actually see for myself what everyone was talking about (I'd post the link, but in the time it took me to write this, it has already been removed due to copyrights and all that stuff). Two days ago, I joined with the pissed off masses in condemning creator David Chase for his “nothing ending.” Well, I would now like to say that after watching the scene in its entirety, and readily admitting that I don’t know the context of the scene within the show as a whole, the ending actually does seem an appropriate end.

Over the course of the four-minute scene, a whole lot of nothing happens. Tony is sitting in a diner waiting for his family to show up and looking around at the various patrons of the restaurant. He picks a song for the jukebox, Journey’s now-infamous “Don’t Stop Believing.” As his family members trickle into the restaurant, they have a couple of meaningless, boring conversations about what to order and what they did that day. Meanwhile, Tony continues to look up every time the door opens, possibly checking to see any anyone is coming in to whack him. He does this probably a good half-dozen times over the course of the scene. The final shot of the show is of Tony looking up as, we can only assume, his daughter finally runs into the restaurant. And then, of course, the cut to black heard round the world.

Again, I’ve never watched the show, but I know a little about it. Tony is a mobster with a family, and a conscience apparently because he’s famously in therapy. In between his duties as a gangster, he has a typically boring domestic life. Or more appropriately, in between the episodes of his typically boring domestic life, he has duties as a gangster. What I understood from this scene is almost more heartbreaking and poignant than if Tony or his family had been whacked. What this ending said to me is, this is never going to end for this guy. He has been on this path his entire life and he’s never going to get off it. The rest of his life will be spent doing what he can to support his family, but he’s never never going to be able to stop looking up every time a door opens, for fear that some rival will come through it and end it all. I actually get sick just thinking about it, much the way I did upon reading the final page of The Dark Tower series.

Granted, I have the luxury of outside objectivity. I wasn’t personally invested in these characters over the course of however many seasons. But from a storytelling point of view, I am sorry to admit to all the irate fans, that while it may not have been the ending you all wanted, it was in fact the right ending to this story. My apologies to David Chase (who of course reads this blog). You got it right, man.

Bada...Bing?

Although I don’t watch The Sopranos – I think I’ve seen maybe one half of two or three episodes over the years – I am quite positively oozing with sympathy for all the dedicated fans over what I’ve been reading was an absolutely atrocious end to the series. Apparently the final scene plays out with Tony sitting in a diner watching his daughter through the window as she parks a car. Then the door to the diner opens and the screen cuts to black. And… that’s it. The discussions that have popped up all over the internet since the “finale” on Sunday have broken down into two camps: the ones who feel cheated out of closure and the ones who think the ending ranged anywhere from “appropriate in context” to “sheer genius.” The people of this latter camp seem to be furiously attempting to fit the ending retroactively to the motif of the entire series – where life, even for a mobster, is mundane and full of loose ends. I read one quote on CNN, some professor who said, “In our popular culture, we've come to expect things to get tied up neatly… [But] real life doesn't have neat endings.”

I read that and similar quotes like it, which defend Sopranos creator David Chase, and I just get pissed off – as a writer, as a reader and as an overall lover of well-told stories. I’ve heard the same argument many times before, though usually it’s an argument used by amateur writers and filmmakers while defending their work’s monotony and boring self-indulgent dialogue. “Well that’s what happens in real life.” Yes, you’re right. Real life, when you think about it, is boring and monotonous. It’s a lot of waiting around, doing chores, standing in line and having the same old boring conversations that don’t mean anything over and over again until you die. But stories, whether they be on paper or on film, are merely microcosms of real life. They are not intended to mimic real life detail by detail. And as a storyteller, you have a duty, an obligation to your audience to provide some kind of closure to the story you’ve opened. That’s what makes it a story. Beginning…middle…END. It doesn’t have to be neat. It doesn’t have to be happy. It doesn’t even have to be perfect. But it has to be something.

As I’ve thought about David Chase’s decision for the end of his story, I think of a series I recently finished reading and the way it ended. The Dark Tower series by Stephen king is a monster seven-novel story arc that follows a gunslinger named Roland on his quest to find the mysterious Dark Tower. (WARNING: Plot spoiler ahead. Don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want the ending ruined.) Throughout the series, while the Hollywood part of you knows that Roland has to succeed and find the Dark Tower, you do gradually come to the sober realization that that ending might not necessarily happen. You realize that in this story there is a very good chance that Roland will die before he accomplishes his goal. In the end, Roland does reach the Tower and after all the trials, all the horrors, all the heartbreaks he has endured, he climbs to the top. Then he opens a door and is shoved forcibly through by the hand of God… shoved back to the first scene of the first book. Before he goes through he has a brief moment of horror as he realizes that he must go through all those trials, all those horrors and all those heartbreaks again… and again, and again for the whole of eternity. If you’ve been following the series, it is a sickening, gut wrenching ending, mostly because it is SO unexpected. And the human part of you so wants to pull Roland back and say, “No no no, not like this.” So that ending, as a reader, pisses you off. But, as a reader following the series the whole way through, you know that that is an appropriate ending. Perhaps the only appropriate ending. And even though it sickens you, you accept it because even though the ending wasn’t neat and tidy, it did provide appropriate closure.

From what I’ve heard, The Sopranos did NOT do that. It wasn’t neat and it wasn’t tidy. But so much worse than that, it wasn’t anything. I haven’t felt this bad for an audience since the end of X-Files. Damn that Chris Carter. He converted a whole generation into believers in aliens and the paranormal and encouraged them to keep following the characters as they searched for answers. And then he cut them off without anything. No answers. Only questions. I’m not saying he needed to answer all the questions, or even most of the questions. I’m not saying he couldn’t have opened up even more questions at the end, or left the audience to figure a few things out, Hitchcock style, on their own. But damn, throw your devoted audience a bone. Give them something. Anything. Real life doesn’t always provide answers or give you real closure. But a story SHOULD.

Take another much-loathed finale: Seinfeld. We all hated it when we saw it, but even in the midst of “a show about nothing” they still found an ending that was appropriate – namely landing in jail for the despicable people we all knew they were and then (finally) running out of stupid things to talk about. It wasn’t the greatest ending of all time, but it was appropriate to the series (hilarious even, in retrospect) and, most of all, it was at least AN ending.

Shame on you Sopranos. What you did doesn’t strike me as “art.” It doesn’t even strike me as a shameless tease for some future movie. It certainly doesn’t strike me as motivated or inspired writing. It strikes me as a cheap trick played by a storyteller who realized he was either too afraid or too incompetent to deliver a real ending. And your fans deserved better than that.

Sorry Sopranos fans. I feel your pain. I only hope the writers of my dear intriguing show, LOST, don’t pull that same crap on me.

Virginia Te...(click)

I've mentioned in the past how I don't really keep up with the news, almost make a point NOT to watch the news and trust the fact that any news worth knowing about will still be news 2 weeks later when I eventually hear about it and take the time to find out what happened. The way I see it, all news is partial or complete speculation and/or spin until at least that long anyway.

But as with most of the nation, I too have felt compelled to watch at least a few reports about this whole Virginia Tech thing. I just finished watching the local 11 o'clock news report about the video tape the killer sent to the news networks. Except they're not calling it "the video tape the killer sent to the news networks." No, they are calling it, "Murderer's 1800-word Manifesto." Christ. That's seriously all it took and now once again I am off the news. Earlier in the night as I was flipping through the channels in the 15 minutes before LOST came on, I stopped briefly on each of the Big 3 news nets and each one was palpably foaming at the mouth over their "exclusive interview" with the killer's roommate, co-worker, classmate, etc. etc. etc. Basically pick a relationship anybody could have had and the reporters were on them like jackals, each trying to get their own unique perspective so as to show up the other news shows. Each station had built their own animated graphics specifically for the killings, incorporating the killer's face, or crying students, or V-tech sweatshirts, or a combination of them all. Each had accompanying sound effects designed to draw the viewer's attention which sounded like some kind of video game. And goddamn if each reporter didn't deliver their standup, punctuating those key words just absolutely perfectly so that every viewer knew what they were saying was deep, dark, poignant, timeless... poetic even. You couldn't help but wonder if they were seeing the tears in the students' eyes, or the glitter of their own Emmy's.

And now, the "Murderer's Manifesto." Does everybody remember Columbine? Does anybody remember that the two killers in that massacre recorded a similar video telling exactly what they were going to do? Anybody? No, because you know what? Out of respect, they never released that tape to the public. They gave transcripts I believe, but even that wasn't until MONTHS after the rampage. But when this guy actually mailed his video to NBC, what choice did NBC have but to run it? Of course we all watched it. We couldn't help it. We're curious as hell. We want to know why he did it. Did we get any answers? Of course not, other than confirming that yes, this dude was in fact insane. But did we get any answers? No. But NBC sure as hell got ratings. You almost feel bad for them that this didn't take place during sweeps.

I really haven't spent much time thinking about the massacre at Virginia Tech at all because honestly if I think too deeply on it, I know I'll break down crying. But that's not the reason I'm vowing to avoid all news reports about the story until at least 2 weeks have passed. I'm avoiding the news because honestly I would rather think of this tragedy with all the due horror and sadness that it warrants. I don't want to roll my eyes and think on it with disgust. And that's just what watching even a collective 20 minutes of the garbage that passes for "news" this evening did to me. I want nothing more than to reach through my TV screen and strangle every reporter I see covering the event. And that is what this is you know... an "event". That's all these things ever are in the eyes of the media. September 11 was the lone exception to that rule. Every single report, every single reportER I saw covering that day was real and genuine, simply because they were covering something unlike anything they had ever seen before in their lives. Their shock, their horror, their sadness was real, genuine, unscripted. But with VA Tech... they KNOW how to cover this kind of stuff. Hell they've been practicing for this day ever since April 20, 1999.

I only saw the tease for this story, didn't actually watch the full "report", but apparently Simon Cowell is in some hot water because he rolled his eyes at an American Idol contestant who dedicated one of his performances to the victims of Virginia Tech. To Simon, I say, "Right on man." If ALL the contestants had collaborated on a company number for the victims, okay, I'd give you that, but the way this contestant did it, all it did was USE the deaths of 32 people to draw sympathy and votes for his own performance. I know that sounds cynical as hell, and I know this particular contestant actually was from the state of Virginia, but damn man, this wasn't a tragedy for YOU to make your own. I'd have rolled my eyes at THE CONTESTANT as well. And I'm quite certain that's what Simon was doing. He wasn't rolling his eyes at the tragedy or the victims of it. He was rolling his eyes at the contestant for USING those victims for his own benefit. Shame.

Shame. Just like the news organizations. This is nothing new. Tragedy is the bread and butter of the news industry. I accept that, though I decided tonight that if I were running the universe, big domestic tragedies like this would be assigned by lottery. Only ONE news network would be granted permission to cover any given tragedy. NBC would get dibs on VA Tech because CBS drew the lot during Reagan's death, something CBS was actually bummed about because their tragedy didn't garner nearly as many ratings as ABC pulled in during Hurricane Katrina when their number came up, and CNN is crossing their fingers for a dirty bomb in Los Angeles because it's their turn next. As far as I'm concerned, that is the ONLY way for a tragic event to be covered fairly, honestly and tactfully - eliminate the competition. That way, nobody stoops to dispicable levels trying to "scoop" the other networks with THEIR "exclusive witness", or their exclusive "expert" on this that or the other. And certainly nobody tries to grab viewers with big exciting words like "Murderer's Manifesto". Without competition, without the need for sensationalism, the story can simply be told and the dead can know that they were not merely pawns in some grand scramble for ratings...

Mind you, this rule would only apply for the first two weeks following the tragedy. Because as I previously stated, any news really worth knowing will still be news two weeks later. After that time, the other networks would be free to start airing the stuff they shot, or decide that after 14 days, nobody cares anymore and it's time to discuss the paternity results of the latest celebrity death triangle.

To anybody who was affected by the VA Tech tragedy, my deepest and sincerest condolences. I can't even begin to know what to say. But for now, I am going to leave you to cope with your grief without another intrusive eye looking in on you. I'll catch up with you in about 11 days.

3:16 Unplugged

So Easter has come and gone for another year. Lauren and I hung close to home since she was on call, so we missed out on the big ham dinner with the family. But as we ate our own holiday feast of pork chops and potatoes (What is it about Easter that makes us revel in eating food that Jews can’t touch? Are we trying to say, “We’re saved by the blood of the lamb so we can be as non-kosher as we want to now”?) we popped in a video that I try to watch at least once a year, usually right around this time. It’s called “Saint John in Exile” and it is a video recording of a one-man stage show performed during the 1980’s. The star of the show, Dean Jones plays the apostle John (writer of the Gospel of John, not to be confused with John the Baptist) in his old age, imprisoned on the island of Patmos. Over the course of ninety minutes, speaking directly to the audience, John proceeds to tell the story of Jesus, his crucifixion and his resurrection from his own (John’s own) point of view. What unfolds ends up being the most personal, most compelling, most strike-directly-to-your-heart account of the Gospel of Christ I have ever experienced.

The show begins with John dictating a letter to one of the local churches of Ephesus only to be interrupted by a Roman guard who he has apparently been locked in an ongoing battle of words with. And right away you can see that John isn’t your typical soft-spoken, dewy-eyed saint who preaches Jesus with calm faith and a gentle heart. He alternates between shouting at the guard for his lack of compassion and “accidentally” leaving illegal scrolls containing the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke on the floor, which the guard conveniently discovers and confiscates. “There’s more than one way to get a pagan to read The Word,” John laughs after he is once again alone with the audience. Taking a few creative liberties with scriptural dialogue, Jones as John then begins to tell how he met and began to follow Jesus. “From the first moment I saw him I said, ‘He needs a friend,’ and I felt that I could be that friend.” John speaks of miracles, of feeding the multitudes and realizing the Lord’s personal message in it for him: “Little could be much in Jesus’ hands.”

All this preamble does it’s job of drawing you into the story and letting you identify with each character – all just regular men like you and me who somehow found themselves drawn into events and circumstances they couldn’t understand yet tried to embrace with everything they had. But it’s when Jones begins the narrative of the Passion – alternating seamlessly between portraying not only John, but Jesus, Peter, the Romans, people in the mob and Satan himself – that the story truly begins to grip you. It starts with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with all the people shouting praises of “Hosana” the traditional greeting for victorious kings. “If Jesus wanted the people to make him king,” says John, “all he had to do was say so…” and the religious leaders knew it. Goosebumps break across your skin with the gravity of that statement as you immediately understand how this moment would set off a chain reaction of the events to come. John tells of the haunting experience in Gethsemane and the saddened look on Jesus’ face when, in his moment of greatest personal torment, he, John had fallen asleep. John recounts Peter’s anguish at the realization that he had denied ever knowing Jesus, even though he’d swore that he would die for him, and even though Jesus himself had told him that this would happen. Free of props, makeup, sound effects, theme music or any special effect other than stage lighting, Jones depicts the horror of the crucifixion with far more truth and gut-wrenching realism than anything Mel Gibson ever drummed up. “It… is… finished,” Jones as John as Jesus gulps out hanging from an invisible cross before exhaling a long and wheezing terminal breath, and for a good fifteen seconds the theater remains dead silent. The first act ends with John weeping for himself and the other apostles, because unlike the Romans who Jesus had forgiven, claiming “They know not what they do,” John understands that he and the disciples were different… “WE KNEW WHAT WE DID!” he cries, horrified and ashamed of how they, despite the miracles they’d seen, despite all the time they’d spent together, had abandoned Jesus, denied him, let him down in his final hours. And finally John weeps for Jesus, remembering his final moments of suffering when it seemed like even he, their Lord, had lost faith as he cried out, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” John collapses in a heap on the floor and the lights fade.

Act Two opens with a bit of humor involving locusts and wild honey and the impression that Peter, for as great and holy a man as he would become, was also a loveable but loudmouthed bumbling idiot who couldn’t walk and sing at the same time without falling into irrigation ditches. John then conveys the alternating feelings of grief, wonder, disbelief, hope, fear and ecstasy as he and the other disciples realize that not only has Jesus risen, but that he has come back to them just as he said he would. If their faith had been shaken by the crucifixion it was restored and solidified by his return, such to the point that they went out and preached his message wherever they went, earning for their troubles execution of every horrible means, which John recounts one by one over a choir of voices singing “Glory… Glory…”. As the second act winds down, a scroll is delivered to John at Patmos, saying that the Roman persecution of Christians has ended. John is free to go. He hastens to make preparations to leave until the Roman guard from Act One asks him to stay on Patmos and assist him with his own Christian teachings. “Lord, why do you answer my dearest prayers at the worst possible times?” John shouts to the audience’s laughter. The story ends on an inspirational note, with John relaying Jesus’ overriding message to us… so simple yet so profound: “Love one another.”

The story is not a new one. The message is not a new one. And yet this show manages to infuse both with such life, such character, such personality that few works of drama or literature have ever been able to achieve. The writing is intelligent, witty and moving. John’s monologue is never preachy, never judgmental, and yet the message is never sacrificed or watered down. And never do you feel like you’re simply hearing the same old tired lines a thousand preachers and televangelists have said and regurgitated for years. Dean Jones acts the part – all the parts – with such absolute Truth that you never doubt for a minute that he is feeling every instant of joy, pain, sorrow and rapture. He shows impeccable comedic timing, amazing dramatic choices, and you immediately accept the transitions whenever he goes back and forth between various personalities. I don’t say this lightly or cavalierly, but this is, hands down, the greatest dramatic performance I have ever seen played out by any actor on TV, film or stage EVER. Ever. Everybody should see this video if only for the artistic merit that permeates the entire production. But beyond that, people should see it for its message. It’s not a message of condemnation but of inspiration, of hope, of love. We see the passage from John 3:16 thrown around all the time these days: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not die but have everlasting life.” The words lose their meaning after a while when every kook with a placard holds them up inside football stadiums or outside abortion clinics. But when you watch “Saint John in Exile” the true gravity, the true sincerity, the true Truth of these words becomes so plain and simple – stripped of politics, stripped of religion, stripped of hypocrites who would pervert the message. “Love each other as I have loved you.” Though we always try to make it more difficult, it really is that simple. He loved us. Share that love with others so the world might know that you are His.

I highly encourage anybody to find and purchase this video. Or if shelling out $25 bucks for the DVD of a twenty-year-old play isn’t your idea of a good expense, check out a local library or church. One of them is bound to have a copy to lend. However it has to be, find a way to see this show and experience the gospel told in this way. I guarantee it will be a moving experience that will stick with you for a long time.

Impressionable songs

It's funny how powerful first impressions of certain songs can be, and how long they can stick with you. There are certain songs that, whenever I hear them, I remember exactly where I was and what my general state of mind was the first time I heard them. "When I Come Around" by Green Day will always make me think of Winter Carnival my junior year of high school, outside at night with twenty other friends building a big Winnie the Pooh snow sculpture. "You Spin Me Like a Record" by Dead or Alive will always remind me of the bar I worked at when I first moved to Los Angeles, and the cheesy 80's cover band that always sang it as their finale.

But what's really funny about first impressions is how they sometimes just can't allow you to think of a particular song any other way - like when hear a song that is actually a cover of an older song. You get so used to hearing the new version that when you actually hear the original, the one most of the rest of the world recognizes as the "true" version, you can't help but think that the original sounds, well... weird. For the longest time, I only knew the Sheryl Crow version of Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Ma'ker." When I finally heard the original version, I at least knew enough to keep my mouth shut about the fact that I liked the Sheryl Crow version better. That rightly would have been considered sacrilege by the classic rock loving people I grew up with. Fortunately, I managed to get past that first impression. Others stick with me to this day.

At the beginning of Offspring's song, "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" some weird German guy says the nonsensical phrase, "Gunter glieben glauchen globen." This clip was actually taken from an earlier song, "Rock of Ages" by Def Leopard. I'm sure when most hair metal fans heard that clip in the Offspring song, they were like, "Hey those bastards ripped off Def Leopard." But never having heard that particular song previous to "Pretty Fly for a White Guy", I will always associate the phrase with Offspring. On those occasions when "Rock of Ages" comes on the radio, it always seems strange to hear that funny German voice and to not have it followed immediately by, "Give it to me baby! UH HUH, UH HUH!" But I almost have an excuse for that one. It's not just first impressions. I legitimately hear the Offspring song on the radio way more than I hear "Rock of Ages."

One song that I don't have the luxury of that kind of excuse is "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie. Some of you already know where I'm going with this. There is a guitar riff at the beginning of that song that was picked up and sampled in the early-90's by white rapper Vanilla Ice in his one hit wonder "Ice Ice Baby". Once again, my first impression of that particular guitar lick was from "Ice Ice Baby." And like every other white pubescent male of that time, I loved that song, knew all the lyrics, and was too dumb to recognize the irony. So when I first heard "Under Pressure" two or more years later it struck me as immediately weird. "Whoa, that's the same tune from 'Ice Ice Baby'." But here's the really weird thing. I don't think I've actually heard the song "Ice Ice Baby" in... I'd say a good five years or more. And I haven't heard it with anything resembling frequency for a good fifteen years. "Under Pressure", on the other hand, I hear on a fairly regular basis. They play it quite often on the classic rock stations. But here's the thing, every single time the song starts, every single time I hear that opening guitar riff, my mind immediately thinks that I'm about to hear "Ice Ice Baby." It literally takes a fraction of a second to realize what a stupid conclusion that was to draw, and remember what song I'm actually listening to. But it never fails; every time "Under Pressure" comes on the radio, for a split second I think "Ice Ice Baby."

But even that isn't the most ridiculous first impression of a song to stick with me. By far, the most idiotic lasting impression I have is for "Für Elise" by Beethoven. Every time I hear this most famous of piano pieces, every... single... time... I insert lyrics into the tune. That's right, lyrics. And not just any lyrics. The lyrics to a McDonald's commercial. It's all because of The Wizard of Oz. Remember when they used to air The Wizard of Oz like once a year on TV and how it was always, for some reason, a big deal? Well one year, when I was still in elementary school, my family taped the movie off the TV, commercials and all. And one of the commercials that repeated several times over the course of the movie was this McDonald's commercial. Back then, McDonald's put titles on all their commercials and this one was entitled, Recital. The thirty-second plotline involved a little girl who was scared to play the piano at her recital. Her dad gives her a boost of confidence by telling her that when it's all over, they'll all head over to McDonald's. The girl, still scared, walks up in front of the big crowd and begins to play "Für Elise". As she plays, she sings along in her head:

How I wish I were already there,
Instead of here,
Playing this song.
Oh I would have a big choc-o-late shake,
And cheeseburger,
And also (woops) and also fries.

And I would eat
My fries myself,
And not give any
To my dumb brother.
Hands off, they're mine, all mine, all MINE.

Oh boy my recital is almost done.
It wasn't bad.
I'm still alive.
And now I can have my choc-o-late shake,
And cheeseburger,
And also (woops) and also fries.

She finishes off the ditty with a piano version of the McDonald's theme song of the time: "What a good time... for the great taste... of McDonald's."

I swear to you, every damn time I hear that song, to this day, I hear those lyrics. Fortunately, I know it's not just me being lame. And the reason I know this is because a couple weeks ago I was hanging out with my sister and said, "What do you think of when you hear this song?" When I started humming "Für Elise" it took her all of two seconds to say, "That McDonald's commercial from The Wizard of Oz." God love my sister, the first impression got her too. They really are that strong.

(((And my gosh, isn't modern stupid technology wonderful. Here's the Recital Commercial from YouTube.)))

Must-Fix TV

I wrote an earlier blog that talked about how I don’t really watch movies anymore. Well this one is about how I don’t watch TV anymore either. Like the movie thing, it’s not a complete and intentional fast that I’m on. It just kind of happened that there are very few TV shows out there that can jazz me up enough to actually take the time to sit down and commit myself to them every week. I don’t own and have never desired to own a TiVo, the first and most obvious reason being that I don’t watch enough TV to really warrant one. If there’s something I’m not going to be able to watch when it’s on, I’ve got a VCR that I still know how to program. People say that if you own a TiVo you end up watching more TV because you can watch it on your own schedule. Thing is, it really doesn’t bother me that I don’t watch TV. Like with movies, I have a hard time committing myself to sit down and watch for an hour or two at a time… much less several times per week. There’s not much on that I want to see that badly anyway. I wrote off Reality TV and game shows WAY back when they first started picking up steam around the millennium, so I’ve never felt any urge whatsoever to see who got voted off the island, what Simon said to somebody when they sang their song, or what some fat person wept about on the treadmill this week. I could give a damn about any sports, so that’s not keeping me glued to my set. And as far as Primetime TV, there are just very few shows that attract and then keep my interest.

I’m not saying it’s because TV has gotten worse in the last few years. If you don’t factor in reality TV, I’m sure most of the programming is just as good, if not better than it was several years ago when I was watching a lot of TV. And it’s not like I was ever committed to the highest quality programming anyway. During the 1999-2000 TV season, the only show I didn’t miss a single episode of was Dawson’s Creek… But you can just shut up because it was the Pacey/Joey season and the sexual tension was just freakin cool. The only show I watch these days with anything approaching that kind of loyalty is LOST. I’ve been with this one since the beginning and have been very dedicated to it. But I know this one is a ticking time bomb. It has until maybe the end of this season before J.J. Abrams, the creator, gets bored with it and moves onto other projects, letting it languish and suck, the way he did with Alias. But right now, none of that matters. LOST is on hiatus until mid-February. So I don’t know what I’m going to watch between now and then.

I’m sure there are plenty of great shows on, but none of them make me want to commit myself to an hour or more every week. All the commercials just seem the same to me. Besides the various cookie-cutter Law & Order and CSI incarnations, even the shows that I hear everybody raving about appear to be nothing more than business as usual. They come up with some kind of catchy idea that will hook people and then they try to build an entire series around that idea. Unfortunately most show runners aren’t creative enough to look beyond the first season or two so once you get into the third, fourth and beyond, it becomes obvious they’re pulling ideas out of their ass, just reaching for new and different twists that will keep people watching. The most obvious example of this was last year’s Prison Break. From what I heard the original idea for this story was for it to run as a mini-series, but they went and turned it into a full-blown series. Even someone who doesn’t watch a lot of TV such as myself was able to see the inherent flaw in that formula. Eventually there was going to have to be the actual prison break that you’ve been building up. And then what? Either the idea goes and goes until the audience gets sick of it, or else you deliver on the build up and then the whole original premise of your show changes.

I have been burned by so many TV shows that do that in one form or another, jumping the shark as they call it, that I have finally gotten to the point where I don’t feel like investing myself in something until I know they’ve made it to at least their second season and the consensus is that they are still awesome. With the advent of TV shows on DVD that’s pretty easy to do these days. It means I’m coming up two years later than everyone else, but that doesn’t bother me. Until a show comes along that really makes me go, “Now that is something I just HAVE to see,” I don’t see myself changing those TV habits anytime soon.

With that being said, this isn’t just a complaint blog. I actually have a solution, or at least a suggestion to the network executives. I’m sure this is an idea that has been thrown around before. I vaguely remember reading something somewhat similar to it in Entertainment Weekly several years ago when I still subscribed… which was probably sometime during that Pacey/Joey season to give you an idea. In the article they suggested shortening TV shows to only two or three seasons. Basically get a solid three seasons rather than a mediocre seven to ten. At the time I couldn’t imagine that working. I knew enough about TV to know that production companies don’t really make their money back on a show until they have enough episodes to go into syndication. It’s in syndication that the residuals really start to roll in. But you need at least three seasons and really at least four to have a shot at syndication. So under that way of business, the two to three season arc just wouldn’t work. But these days, with TV shows making so much money on DVD, I’m sure there’s just as much money to be made there as there is in syndication – the evidence of that being how Season One of a show will come out on DVD before Season Two even starts up on TV. So now I’m thinking that that two or three season thing might not be such a bad idea. In fact, it could allow us to do some new and cool things with TV that we haven’t before.

Here’s what I would like to see. Here’s what would get me excited about TV again. As I said before, the problem with most TV is the creators only plan for the first season or two and have no idea for what’s going to happen if the show succeeds longer than that. So to fix that problem, what I would like to see is a few new series that have been planned out, episode for episode from beginning to end. Basically, the creators have a story in mind that they want to tell, one giant arc that will be told over the course of 48 to 72 episodes. Even if the scripts themselves aren’t written, I’d like to know that the creators at least know what’s going to happen in each episode. Or at the very least, I’d like to know that they know how the show is going to at least end.

That’s one of my worries with LOST. If only based on the fact that I saw him do it with Alias, I don’t really think J.J. Abrams knows where he’s going with this show. I worry that all these little mysteries and all these little plot twists that have the TiVo and web geeks working overtime trying to keep their sites updated simply aren’t going to manifest themselves by the end of the series. I’m worried that Abrams is going to end up being another Chris Carter. I wasn’t a devoted X-Files fan, but I heard from several of them about how disappointed they were that Carter, the creator, never delivered on any of his promises to answer questions. These people had dedicated themselves to however many seasons X-Files ran for, trying their damnedest to keep up on all the conspiracies and the phenomena and trying to piece it all together, knowing the ultimate storyline was in the hands of somebody they trusted and thought capable and equally loyal as a storyteller. And in the end, Carter simply left those people hanging with nothing to show for ten years worth of loyalty. And it’s exactly that kind of bad storytelling that makes me hesitant to devote myself to any one show.

But how cool would it be to know a show has been constructed and orchestrated from beginning to end ahead of time? To know that plot points have been meticulously planned out so as not to fall flat or lead nowhere? To know that every episode is contributing to a larger more complex story arc, and isn’t merely being thrown in as “filler”? To know that main characters can and will be killed off because there is no need to worry about keeping them employed for eight or more years? With a show like that you would truly believe that anything can happen. And what’s more, you would know that it’s not happening simply because it was something the creators pulled out of their asses for sweeps.

Now that would be a show I would watch. Of course, a show like that would take a really special and gifted storyteller to pull it off, simply because that kind of storytelling has never been done before. Who even knows how to plot out and plan a continuous story arc that would unfold over the course of 72-hours-worth of programming? Well I have some ideas on that to help get the ball rolling. For the first series that follows this storytelling format, don’t rely on a bunch of TV writers to come up with the overall idea. Go to the people who are used to telling stories in long formats: novelists.

You know how they’re always saying the movie ruined the book. Well in most cases it’s not entirely the filmmakers’ faults. If you have a four-hundred-page book, it ain’t all gonna fit inside a two-hour movie. Judicious cuts have to be made simply for the sake of time. Well what if you didn’t have to worry about time? What if you could take all the time you wanted to tell the entire story contained in a book without leaving anything out? What if you could adapt the book to unfold over the course of an entire TV series? There’d be no set number of episodes. You simply tell the story until it was finished. And when the story was complete, the show would be done.

The idea came to me this summer while I was reading the Stephen King book, IT for the third time and I realized this story would be so kickass on the screen. Unfortunately it’s a thousand-page book that even a lame four-hour 1990 mini-series couldn’t do justice to. But if somebody had the time and patience to tell this story over the course of say 72 episodes… that would be absolutely amazing. And actually that book, you probably could get four or five seasons out of. I’m not quite sure how that would work since half of the story is told over the course of a summer while these kids are eleven-years-old and the actors would end up aging a little too much, but hey, these are just preliminary thoughts.

I really think an idea like this could revitalize the TV industry. It could actually get people genuinely excited about TV again, and not just the low-level excitement they get every new season. No doubt it would cause some major revamping of the studio and network system as we know it which is why I think the first move would have to be made by one of the cable movie networks: HBO, Showtime, FX. In the last few years, these have been the places with the real cutting edge programming anyway, so they’d be the perfect jumping off point. And really, if we’re going to start the experiment with IT, they would need a network like that where language, gory violence and sex aren’t an issue. I guarantee you cable companies, if you did this, I would pay the extra money for HBO again.

I don’t expect that any TV executives are going to read this. But maybe a young whippersnapper who is just breaking into the business will read it and sit on it until he gets to the top. I know change doesn’t happen overnight, but maybe by the time I’m a bit older and more worn out by life and actually look forward to my hours spent in front of the TV, things will have changed and I’ll actually be sitting down to programming that makes me excited to just keep sitting there.

Great Scot, now THAT would have been heavy

A few nights before Halloween, Lauren and I were painting pumpkins with Allison and listening to the Sirius oldies station. Well, technically Lauren was painting pumpkins with Allison. I was bundled up on the couch trying to sweat out a cold. As usually ends up happening during this process, one of the side effects is that my mind starts drifting in and out of the most random thoughts; some trivial, some intriguing, some downright surreal. It’s kind of like being stoned, though without that pleasant feeling of transcendence. Anyway, as this was still early in the night, my thoughts hadn’t crossed over into the truly weird category. They were merely goofy, “Huh, d’y’ever think about that?” kinds of thoughts. Well as I sat there listening to the oldies, my thoughts turned to the movie Back to the Future, which takes place mostly in the year 1955. And as my brain cells cooked inside my fever-induced oven of a head, it occurred to me that Marty McFly was really damn lucky he didn’t poof out of existence in that movie.

Now before I continue, I should acknowledge that I understand watching a movie like Back to the Future requires huge suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. I mean, time travel aside, there are various plot points that you just have to kind of go, “Okay, whatever.” I get that, so this isn’t an antagonizing appraisal of the plot itself. I’m accepting the rules the screenwriters put into place as is, as essential rules of the universe. So operating from within that paradigm, Marty McFly was still really lucky that he didn’t poof out of existence.



A little backstory for the uninitiated. In the movie, Marty travels 30 years back in time to the year 1955. Within the first few hours of being there he meets his parents, George and Loraine, as teenagers and interferes with their first meeting. When Marty later meets Doc Brown and shows him a picture of himself and his family, Doc Brown notices that Marty’s brother is disappearing from the picture. If Marty doesn’t fix it so that his parents meet and fall in love again, then they will never get married and never have kids and eventually all the kids including Marty himself will disappear from the picture – and from existence. It takes the better part of the movie, but finally George saves Loraine from a bully and they start slow dancing at the high school dance. But Marty is still fading from the picture. It’s not enough that they’ve met and are dancing. The two of them need to kiss because that is the moment Loraine realizes she wants to spend the rest of her life with George. They kiss just as Marty is about to fade from existence completely. The instant they do, Marty and his brother and sister reappear in the photograph and all has been restored.

As I sat there thinking about this flow of events, something jumped out at me. After Marty interfered with that first meeting, he didn’t poof from existence immediately. There was still time for him to put things back the way they were, because as far as the spacetime continuum was concerned, it was the kiss, not the first meeting that was the crisis moment – the nexus of events if you will. And evidenced by the fact that Marty was about to fade from existence completely, had George and Loraine not kissed at that exact moment, the event horizon would have been irreversibly crossed and Marty and his brother and sister would have ceased to exist. Stay with me here now…

Well, since it was the kiss and not the meeting that was the point of irreversibility, it’s conceivable that nobody would have disappeared from the photograph until that point had been crossed. After all, as far as the spacetime continuum was concerned there was still time to put things right. What if vanishing from existence didn’t happen in stages, but was an all or nothing thing? What if Marty’s brother hadn’t been fading from the picture when Marty showed it to Doc Brown? Would Doc or Marty have realized something was awry and known to put it right? Or would Marty have gone about his business not knowing that at some point a few days later he would just suddenly cease to exist? Without the picture giving them the red flag, would either of them have realized that Marty had put his own future existence in danger and thought to do something about it?



I don’t know. So I guess it’s a good thing for Marty the nature of the universe works the way it does.

That’s all. What you thought there was more? Sorry, this wasn’t coherent thought. At this point I’d moved on to something equally ridiculous. Be happy I thought it through this far.

Most non-heinous

Lauren and I finally had a Saturday night with nothing to call either of us away to something work related, so we cozied up on our couch, played a board game and decided to watch the movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Honestly, I think the movie popped into my head because I’ve been writing a classroom series for Discovery about Relativity, and so Time and multiple dimensions and whatnot was kind of in my head. Whatever the reason, it was a good choice. I haven’t watched that movie in several years and I forgot what a solid little comedy it was.

For those who didn’t grow up in the eighties and haven’t seen this movie, briefly it’s about two boneheaded high school kids who are trying to form a band, except now they’re failing history. They have one last chance to get an A-plus on their final oral report and pass their class or else Ted will be sent away to military school and the band will never form. From seven hundred years in the future, via a time-traveling phone booth, in literally drops a man named Rufus. He sends the moronic duo on a ‘most excellent adventure’ through history, where they gather ‘personages of historical significance’ – including ‘the most bodacious philosophizer in ancient Greece’, Socrates (pronounced ‘SO-craits’); ‘the very excellent barbarian’, Ghengis Kahn; and of course, ‘the short dead dude’, Napolean. They of course succeed in passing their report, and we realize the full importance of these two kids and the band they are trying to form.

No doubt, this movie requires huge, big, gigantic suspension of disbelief, what with future societies being able to travel through time via a magic phone booth and entire civilizations achieving world peace through one band’s rock-n-roll, plus several dozen other minor plot points that you just kind of have to say, “sure they could have done that.” But if you can do that, it is just ninety minutes of good clean fun. Heck, minus a few dirty words here and there, this movie is even clean enough that I wouldn’t feel weird about my daughter watching it. And if this movie doesn’t fill you with the urge to play air guitar, nothing will. I actually have the Bill & Ted guitar riff as the error sound on my computer. But most of all, and this really is the mark of a truly great movie, this flick has a ton of quotable lines. I mean a ton.

'Sixty-nine, dudes!'

I just wrote another blog about how I don’t like watching new movies anymore and tonight, watching Bill & Ted reminded me why. I honestly don’t think anybody could make a Bill & Ted today. The closest anybody came to trying was that lame ass waste of my life, Dude, Where’s My Car. It’s like Hollywood thinks that in order to make a movie about two idiots, the movie itself has to be idiotic. Yet, Bill & Ted, for as “dumb” and improbable as the movie was, was actually very witty and well thought out. And apart from the titular duo being abnormally stupid with ridiculous surfer accents, you never feel as though you’re watching one-dimensional stock characters. Compare that to Dude, Where’s My Car, which first of all wasn’t so much a movie as a series of idiotic and disconnected vignettes, and whose characters were merely idiots and that’s it. No depth. No arc. Every scene made sure to beat it over your head that these two were idiots and that’s all they were.

'Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.'

But whatever. I’ve already written a blog complaining about movies. Let’s move on. What occurred to me tonight was how this movie really defines my generation. I know that’s a heavy statement, and I don’t mean it exactly the way it sounds. But basically, one’s knowledge of this movie, or lack thereof, can tell you a lot about which generation they are a part of. It all comes down to Keanu Reeves. Everybody from my generation cannot watch a Keanu Reeves movie without thinking, “Dude, that’s Ted jumping on that bus… That’s Ted talking to Dracula… That’s Ted learning kung fu.” If you come from a later generation, you simply replace all those declarations with, “Dude, that’s Neo philosophizing with Socrates.”

'All we are is dust in the wind, dude.'

Something else that’s extra funny about this movie for me personally is George Carlin. Those who know me well know I am a huge George Carlin fan. I don’t own all his albums, but the ones I do own I can quote verbatim from beginning to end. I have the same image of George Carlin fixed in my head as everybody else in this world – that of a crotchety old man obsessed with words and pissed off at the world. But here’s the thing, I first met ole George as Rufus in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. A couple years later I saw him hosting a comedy awards show and had no idea that he was this comedic legend. I simply thought, “Wow, that’s weird. Why would they have Rufus hosting a comedy show?” The first time I heard a George Carlin routine (it was one of his best, where he was ranting and raving about Americans’ love affair with euphemisms) I thought, “Hey, that’s that guy from Bill & Ted on that tape all pissed off.” It’s all so ironic because, obviously Carlin’s role as Rufus was the one where was out of character for most people who know and love him. But tonight, watching him in this role made me laugh because for the longest time, I thought that was who George Carlin really was, and that his comedy routines the things that were out of character.

'It seems to me that all you have learned is that Caesar is a salad dressing dude.'

There is one thing that makes me sad when I watch Bill & Ted. Alex Winter. He played Bill, and for the entire world who knows him he truly will always be Bill. And it’s not like Keanu who simply played Ted in various different roles. For Alex Winter, Bill was really where he topped out. After making the sequel, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, he really didn’t do much. I checked out IMDB and the few post-Bill roles he did have were in movies or TV shows that I’ve never even heard of. It’s really too bad. Why did Keanu have life after Bill & Ted and not Alex? They both certainly seemed evenly pitched in their roles as idiots. But somehow Keanu is the one who achieved longevity. Though, actually, I just did a Google search on Alex, and it looks as though he’s developed a new career behind the camera as a writer and director of films and appears to be doing very well for himself. So… good for you Alex.

'Eat the pig! Eat the pig! Ziggy ziggy ziggy zig!'

But anyway, long story short, Bill & Ted, great movie. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. If you already own it, watch it again, because I’m sure it’s been awhile for you too. Watch it and remember that idiocy can be done smartly. And of course, above all…

'Be excellent to each other… Party on, dudes!'

The screen's not so silver anymore

I don’t watch movies anymore. I really don’t. Well, not much anyway. And I never actually go to the movies. The last time I was in a movie theater, in all honesty, was when I went to see The Passion of the Christ back in the spring of 2004. Since then, there have been very few movies that could get me excited enough to think about leaving the comfort of my own home to head out to the multiplex. And with the rare few that could elicit that excitement, I still never made the time. Even after those movies came out on DVD, even then I rarely had the get-up-and-go to rent the stupid things and watch them at my leisure. Friends keep trying to sign me up for free trials of Netflix, unaware of how useless it would be to me. In the past two years, I think I have maybe watched a dozen new movies from beginning to end, maybe… and two of those movies were Smokey and the Bandit 1 and 2, which were merely new to me.

In the overall storyline of my life, this is really a heavy statement. Movies used to be my life. In high school, in college and in my two years in L.A. there wasn’t a month that went by when I didn’t see at least one new movie in the theater and several others on tape. I mean, I guess that’s just part of the package when you think you want to spend your life making movies – watching new movies is just something you do, and do a lot of. But no more.

There are several reasons for my downward turn in screen time. Most notably, of course, was the birth of my daughter, which also happened in the spring of 2004. Since then, free time isn’t something I come by easily. But that’s not the entire story, because absence hasn’t made my heart grow fonder for the stuff Hollywood puts out every year. On those occasions when I do find myself with a couple hours of uninterrupted time, I rarely feel the urge to run out to Blockbuster and catch up on all the entertainment I’ve missed. I certainly have no desire head to the movie theater with my precious hours. These days, I honestly have trouble working up the desire to devote two straight hours of my life to sitting in one place. When I do watch a DVD, it’s usually of a TV show, which only requires a half-hour or less, and even then I’m usually antsy to do something else by about minute fifteen. In most every situation on most any evening after my daughter has gone to sleep, I find I’d rather be doing pretty much anything other than watching a movie: working out, checking e-mail, blogging, working on my back-burner writing projects, paying bills, balancing the checkbook, playing board games with my wife, having an actual uninterrupted conversation with my wife, reading (gasp) a book. If a movie is on in my house, nine times out of ten it’s one that’s already in our collection, that Lauren and I have both seen a million times, and is merely providing background noise to something else we’re doing.

Now, I’m not saying all this to sound all high and mighty, like I’m somehow a better person who has better things to do than all the couch potatoes and film geeks who revolve their lives around movies. To be perfectly honest, when I really sit down and think about it, I do miss it. I miss getting excited about movies. Whenever I read the blog of a friend from L.A., where they’re talking about how pumped up they are over the opening night screening of the latest blockbuster, I feel pangs of longing, because I remember how pumped up I used to get over the same thing. When you’re a movie person, and all your friends are movie people, going to the movies was an event. It was an experience. Especially when it was the opening night of a particularly well-anticipated movie. We’d all meet up at the theater, wait in line sometimes for an hour or more, sit in a packed auditorium before a gigantic screen (we always went to theaters with gigantic screens), with several hundred other people who were just as excited as we were to see what we were seeing. For two hours, you and these other strangers acted as one giant unit. You all laughed at the same time. You all screamed at the same time. You were all dead silent at the same time. And with a really good crowd at a really good movie, you actually all applauded at the same time, just as though you were acknowledging a live performance with actors who could hear your adulations. [I can still remember one of the most awesome movie-going experiences of my life, the midnight opening of the Bruce Willis flick, Armageddon on the gi-normous main screen of the Cheri in Boston (may it rest in peace), and some minor character, in a throwaway line, mentioned M.I.T. Apparently a decent fraction of the audience had made the trip over from Cambridge to see the movie, because all of a sudden the entire theater erupted in applause.] When the movie was over, you sat through the entire credit sequence hoping to see the name of somebody you knew. A lot of times the group of us, or at least some of us, would go out for drinks or dinner or some other form of post-movie entertainment before dispersing for the night. The next weekend, you’d do it all over again.

It never got old.

And yet somehow, for me, it has. And it isn’t because I have a family now and feel I’ve got better things to do with my time than go see every movie that comes out. It isn’t because I’ve turned snobbish over steady stream of crap that Hollywood has put out lately. I’m sure the ratio of gold to crap is the same now as it was back then – though it doesn’t help that all the films people keep raving about to me, that I actually do take the time to see, end up sucking. (Sideways, people? Really? Wedding Crashers was the funniest movie you ever saw? Anchorman? Are you shitting me? You get the idea.) And it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that ticket prices are out of control. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what a movie ticket even goes for these days, but I’m sure the amount it costs compared to my annual income is about the same or better than it was during my entry-level-assistant days back in L.A.

I think I’ve traced my lukewarm feelings toward the cinema to two specific factors. The first is the fact that I haven’t been able to watch a legitimate blockbuster in a long time. I love my wife dearly, but I somehow married a woman who cannot handle any kind of violence, suspense or scariness – all the things that make for the best kinds of movies in my opinion. Finding a movie that we can both agree on is never an easy task and I’ve had to sacrifice a lot of movies that I really wanted to see in order to spend an extra couple of hours with her. Spiderman 2, X-Men 3, The Return of the King, the final Star Wars installment, just to name a few. I partially blame my wife for this, but with the crazy schedules we’ve been working coupled with a daughter who just does not sleep ever, I’ve considered it a pretty mild sacrifice to forgo these flicks in favor of spending more time just drinking coffee, talking with and making love to the woman I love (who is always much more happy and willing when she hasn’t just had the bejeezus scared out of her). In the last two years, there are only four new movies I’ve seen that I have actually liked enough to watch more than once and would recommend to a friend. They are decidedly non-Blockbuster, and I’m a little embarrassed to admit liking them, but I will stand by and defend these movies to anyone who speaks badly of them: School of Rock, 13 Going On 30, What the Bleep Do We Know, and Mean Girls.

So yes, I think the fact that I haven’t seen the type of movie that is created for the express purpose of getting people excited about movies is part of the reason for my general Hollywood malaise. But I think the other reason is the real clincher. I no longer have a group of people to get excited about movies with. While going to the movies alone or with just one other person is great and wonderful and something I did a lot of back in the day, it was always the big group outings that really generated excitement for whole movie-going experience. Experiencing a movie with a band of friends who were just as passionate about it as you were, and who could talk intelligently about what was great and what sucked, was such a big part of what made going to the movies great. But beyond that, the thing that will always make going out to the movies far superior to watching one in your own house (no matter how sweet your home theater system is) was good movie crowds. Like I described before, there’s something inexplicably wonderful about sharing a simultaneous laugh, gasp or moment of silence with several hundred other people. And when that many strangers break into spontaneous applause for no logical reason… as freakishly overdramatic as this sounds, it does makes you feel like you’re a part of something. And unfortunately, since moving out of L.A., I have yet to experience another good movie crowd.

Not once. I know that no other city on earth has as many “movie people” in one place as Los Angeles. But out here in the sucking creative void that is New Jersey and Pennsylvania, it’s like people go to the movies simply because it’s something to do – not because it’s the thing to do. I can’t tell you how many times between 2000 (when I moved out of L.A.) and 2004 (when I stopped going to the movies altogether) that I was the only person in a semi-full theater laughing at a really funny scene. Teenagers and grownups alike showed little remorse in carrying on conversations during key dramatic scenes. On the few opening nights I went to, the theaters were never packed, and you certainly didn’t have to show up two hours early with a pack of friends to secure your tickets. And not once did the crowd I was a part of ever break into spontaneous applause. Not once. Is it any wonder I have felt no compulsion to go back?

Like I said though, I don’t really miss it – save for nights like this when I really sit down and think about it. Other things have come into my life that have not only filled that void, but overflowed it, so much that I rarely think about how great going to the movies used to be. To be honest, the only times that it really sucks is when some movie of the political nature comes out: Fahrenheit 9/11, Syriana, An Inconvenient Truth. Devoted followers of these films’ auteurs assume that I’m refusing to see them because I’m simply a close-minded Bush supporter, when the real inconvenient truth is more along the lines of: “Hey, I didn’t even go see the last Star Wars in the theater, so why would I spend money on this piece of shit?”

But please, dear friends, don’t let this blog stop you from recommending these films to me. Even though on most occasions over the last two years your recommendations have sucked quite largely, you do sometimes get a rare gem through. And if I ever eventually find more free time at my disposal, I do intend on seeing them all… though it will most likely be on a small screen, forty-five minutes at a time in between diapers, novels and my wife constantly asking, “Is he going to die? Is he going to die?”

And to my L.A. friends, if I ever find myself out your way for a few days, please take me to the movies. Somewhere big for something loud. Help me to remember how it used to be.

Who knew Zack Morris could translate into literature?

I have a new favorite author. Well, favorite is probably too strong a word, but I just discovered this guy and I suddenly want to read everything he’s ever written. In the last week, I have read two books by Chuck Klosterman. One being, “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” and the other being, “Killing Yourself to Live.” The former is a collection of short essays providing commentary on pop culture, life in general, and the author’s life in particular. The second book begins under the guise of the author taking a road trip to all sorts of locations where rock stars died, but really that premise is just the jumping off point for the author to provide commentary on pop culture, life in general and his life in particular.

I feel weird calling these books “great” because in the conventional sense of literature, most educated people would probably call these two books puerile, self-indulgent and full of “philosophy for idiots.” Make no mistake, these books are all those things, but beyond that – and as far as I’m concerned, this is all that matters – they are engaging and well written. To give you an idea of the subject matter you’ll find in these books, Klosterman spends thirteen pages of “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” discussing the significance of the TV show Saved by the Bell. He spends the bulk of “Killing Yourself to Live”, which is supposed to be about death and rock-n-roll, going on and on about his ex-girlfriends. And yet, there was never a point, not one single paragraph in any of these books, where I wasn’t completely absorbed by what he was talking about.

At the outset, Klosterman’s writing reminded me of another of my favorite writers, Bill Bryson. Bryson has written several travel narratives, including the books, “The Lost Continent” which is all about his experiences road tripping around the United States, and “A Walk in the Woods” which is about his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail. While Bryson does spend a good deal of time describing his personal day to day life on these trips, those narratives are merely a backdrop for him to tell the histories, little-known backstories and personal commentaries of the areas he passes through. Klosterman, on the other hand, uses the places he visits in “Killing Yourself to Live” as a backdrop to tell the history, little-known stories and commentaries of his own life. Similarly, in “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”, the bulk of one essay about Billy Joel discusses not why Billy Joel was important to pop culture, but why Billy Joel was important to Klosterman.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why would anybody want to read these books, written by a guy they’ve never heard of, about the very same guy who they’ve never heard of? I was wondering this myself as I sped through chapters two and three of “Killing Yourself to Live” where Klosterman completely abandons the premise of rock star deaths and spends fifteen pages talking about a girlfriend who’s not really a girlfriend and who has nothing at all to do with his current road trip – save for the fact that he’s giving her a ride before he embarks on said road trip. “Why should I care about this guy’s girlfriends?” I asked myself several times. And yet, I did, in fact, care about this guy’s girlfriends. And that’s when it occurred to me that while this book probably couldn’t have existed, much less sold thousands of copies, twenty or even ten years ago, the fact of the matter is Klosterman is writing at a time when blogs are one of the most popular forms of written expression. People all over the country spend hours a week reading first-person stories written by people they have never met.

And that’s what Klosterman’s books essentially are – really long blogs about things that we probably shouldn’t care about, but for some reason do. Add to that the fact that Klosterman is a genuinely sharp, engaging and witty writer who often has a dead on perspective on pop culture and the human condition and it makes these novel-length blogs worth the read and worth the recognition.

Heroes for Ghosts

On a somewhat related followup to my previous post, Syd Barrett, the creator of the band Pink Floyd died last week. I became a big Pink Floyd fan the summer before I went to college. Then I became a rabid fan while in college. I listened to them all the time, I had their album posters on my wall, I had quotes from their songs plastered all over my dorm room door, I used their music as background in various video projects I produced, I even named a major character in one of my shows after the now-deceased founder, Syd.

Reading their incredibly informative and intimate biography, "A Saucerful of Secrets" by Nicholas Schaffner only served to fuel the obsession. It was in this book that I read all about Syd, the guy who brought the band together but then fried his brain so much on drugs that he couldn't continue with it. Unfortunately for Syd, yet very fortunately for every Pink Floyd fan out there, music history was much better served by his fall from rock stardom. Pink Floyd only became the super, mega, trippy, space age band it became because of Syd's demise. Roger Waters took over as head of the band, bringing his weird visions and lyrical mastery into the mix. David Gilmour was brought in to replace Syd as lead guitar and vocalist, which gave Pink Floyd their now classic and signature sound. Beyond that, everything great that Pink Floyd has done, every album and song that people know and love them for, was inspired (directly or indirectly) by Syd Barrett's collapse. Dark Side of the Moon chronicles, through poetry and incendiary guitar licks, Syd's descent into madness. The Wall is the story of a rock star who allows the pressure of fame and the horrors of the world to drive him deeper and deeper into insanity. Several songs and scenes from the movie depict actual moments of Syd Barrett's own life, including a night when he locked himself inside his hotel room then sat there catatonic until moments before a scheduled show, while managers, loved ones and the other band members hollered, "Time to go!" from outside.

The song "Wish You Were Here", from the album of the same name, is an obvious dedication to Syd. I've never been to a Pink Floyd concert (I got into them the summer after they stopped touring), but from what I've heard, they are visceral orgasms full of lasers and lights and psychedelic images beamed onto a signature circular projection screen above the stage. Yet whenever they sang, "Wish You Were Here", the lights dimmed, the lasers and the projector were turned off, and the band sang the simple song to their friend, with the audience singing along amidst a sea of lit cigarette lighters.

If only for this I felt a pang of mourning upon hearing of Syd's passing last week. Honestly I held no special place in my heart for him as a musician. I've tried listening to albums Pink Floyd did with Syd at the helm and it is entirely unlike anything they did in their later, more productive, years. During their Syd years, the band had a more Brit-pop sound to them. Basically picture the way the early Beatles sounded... you know, if the Beatles had dropped acid and tried to write songs for children. One of Syd's most famous lyrics comes from the song "Bike" on the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album and goes, "I've got a mouse and he doesn't have a house. I don't know why I call him Gerald." So from a musical standpoint, I don't like anything except post-Syd Floyd. Some pretentious music buffs will try and scoff and say the band was never the same after Syd left. I agree with that... it got better. Infinitely better. Anybody listening to Piper at the Gates of Dawn side-by-side with Dark Side of the Moon would swear that these were actually two completely different bands.

No, my regrets over Syd Barrett are felt more because I do know his story and it is tragic. Here was a guy who was ruling the musical world at the time and he wrecked it all with drugs. He spent the remainder of his life as a recluse, living in his mother's house off his Pink Floyd royalties - which the rest of the band made certain he always received. Yet he was the inspiration for the music that defined so much of my late teens and early 20's. And knowing that these songs originated out of the unravelling life of a real life person who I'd read all about only made the songs hit me at an even deeper level. These days I have to be in a very specific spaced out mood to turn on the Floyd, though their music remains, and will always remain a very fond relic of my college days. If only for that I raise my glass to the late Syd Barrett and say (along with every other cliched Pink Floyd fan), "Shine on you crazy diamond..."

FEED ME... does it have to be human? FEED ME... does it have to be Sprite?

I was up late last night watching the Colbert Report on Comedy Central and waiting for Lauren to get back from a birth. During one of the breaks, a commercial came on for Sprite. I always turn down the volume to almost silent during commercials because the ad companies always jack up the sound on us. Combined with the fact that I was also half-asleep (I'm usually passed out by 11:00), I don't actually know what the context of this particular Sprite ad was. I just know that at low volume, and in a haze of consciousness, it was one of the creepiest images I've ever seen put out by people trying to sell soda. Basically some guy was in a greenhouse watering what appeared to be a large quantity of either Snapdragons or Venus Flytraps. My assumption is that he was spraying Sprite all over them, or maybe he was holding a Sprite in his hand... it was nearly midnight by this point. Either way all these little Snapdragons began seductively turning their white heads with blood red lips toward the guy with the hose. It looked like they were talking to him - whispering actually - though again, with the volume turned down I couldn't tell for sure. Eventually this guy was surrounded by these little whispering flowers. The look on his face was probably intended to express a sentiment like, "Hey why are all these flowers turning toward me?" But what I saw at 11:50 at night was, "Oh my god, these things are going to eat me!"

Again, I don't know what the context of the commercial was. Maybe, had I turned the volume up, I'd have heard silly music in the background and realized that the flowers were actually singing a Weird Al song to the dude with the hose. But with the volume down, I filled in my own soundtrack, supplied by Pink Floyd from their album "The Wall." There is a scene in that movie based on the album where two animated flowers sprout and then begin moving seductively towards each other, much the same way the Snapdragons appeared to be moving toward the Sprite guy. Well in the scene in "The Wall", one of the flowers ends up raping the other flower. Then the vagina on the victim-flower turns into a dragon, bites the head off the rapist-flower and then flies off across a barren desert wasteland with the dead thing in its mouth... yeah, it's a trippy, f---ed up movie if you've never seen it.

So as this image and soundtrack is going through my head, the thought occurs to me, Why would Sprite put a commercial like this on TV at this time of night? And during the Colbert Report no less! They must know that a good portion of their audience at this point is going to be high on marijuana or some other illicit substance that ends up screwing with your perception and paranoias. After all, who else besides out-of-work stoners, college kids and college kid stoners (and, of course, completely sober husbands waiting for their midwife wives to return from the hospital) are up until midnight? Somebody high on Mary Jane is going to watch this commercial and flip right the hell out that this poor greenhouse worker is about to be devoured by thousands of little Audrey II's. You think he's going to feel very thirsty for a Sprite after that?

But what to do I know? Again, maybe it was a Weezer song in the background and the Snapdragon's voice was John Ratzenberger, the guy who played Cliff Claven on Cheers.

Because wolves don't suddenly decide to go vegetarian

Has anybody else from my generation noticed how the classic story "The Three Little Pigs" has been changed to become more "accessible" and "kid friendly"? Everybody remembers the basic story structure. There are three brother pigs who go off on their own to build houses. Two of the pigs are lazy and build their houses out of straw and sticks respectively. But the third little pig is an industrious forward thinker. He knows there are wolves out there who would try to knock down his house and eat him, so he builds a strong house out of bricks. Well low and behold, along comes the Big Bad Wolf who proceeds to "huff and puff and blow the house down" on the first two pigs. But the third little pig's brick house is too strong and the wolf is foiled.

Exactly how the wolf is foiled has evolved over the years. Well first of all, in certain versions of the story that I had read to me as a kid (or told free form) the Wolf actually ATE the first two little pigs. I don't think there is a version around anymore where this grisly turn of events still takes place. I think even if you manage to find a classic book of stories with "The Three Little Pigs" in it, it will have been changed so that the first two little pigs, after having their houses blown down, run to the house of their better-prepared brother. This specific rewriting doesn't bother me all that much. I know the original intent of that particular plot line was to reinforce the Christian work ethic in kids everywhere, basically saying: "Don't be idle and lazy or you'll DIE!" But as a writer, I know it's hard to enjoy good light and happy literature if two such lovable characters die a particularly gruesome death. So I don't mind creative license being taken there.

What bothers me is how history has tried to rewrite the ultimate fate of the Big Bad Wolf. Again, in the versions I always heard, the Big Bad Wolf died at the end of the story. After failing to blow down the brick house, he goes up on the roof and comes down the chimney where the little pig (or PIGS depending on the version) have put a kettle of boiling water into the fireplace. The Wolf slides down, lands in the water and is boiled to death. Again, depending on the version, his death goes down in one of two ways. Either a) the little pig(s) cooked the wolf and ate him or b) (the more palatable version) the wolf simply boils away into non-existence. Either way, the wolf gets his due comeuppance and the little pigs are freed from his reign of terror.

Well, that is not the way it happens today. In every modern version, the Wolf slides down the chimney, burns his bottom on the boiling water then scrambles back up the chimney and runs away into the woods where he decides to never bother the little pigs again.

(((I guess I should acknowledge the caveat that this isn't necessarily a new way of telling the story. The popular Disney version of the story includes this kid-friendly non-violent ending - and that cartoon came out in 1933. I guess it was too heavy to actually show three cartoon characters carving up another character on film. But as of the early 80's, when I was growing up, there were still plenty of printed versions of the story that included the wolf's boiling demise.)))

I know we're trying to save our children's fragile psyche's by eliminating all mention of death in their stories, but I must state for the record that I HATE this version of "The Three Little Pigs" with its non-violent climax. From a purely storytelling point of view, there is nothing satisfying about the Wolf escaping with just wounded pride and a sore bottom. I mean he just spent the better half of the story doing everything HE could do to kill and then devour three helpless little pigs whose worst sin was having lazy work ethic. Why shouldn't the Big Bad Wolf die at the end when, if he had succeeded, the pigs would have been the ones who died? It's just plain gullible to believe that the Wolf is going to give up after this. Do the rewriters really expect us to believe that the Wolf is just going to sit around moping in the woods and never bother the pigs again? Please! As soon as his ass heals, he's going to come back. Knowing he can't penetrate the house, he'll just patiently hide outside, knowing that these pigs are going to have to come out eventually and then he'll pounce. No, the only way to have full closure on this story, the wolf has to die or be subdued in some way. Maybe the pigs manage to tie him up and send him to Abu Dhabi or something. (Pat yourself on the back if you caught the Garfield reference).

The reason why I hate this version of "The Three Little Pigs" on a larger scale however, is because it is so indicative of the society we live in today. Though really, it is more indicative of the patty-cake-playing ultra-liberals who, when a psycho is arrested for chopping up his entire family, want to make sure the guy is treated well and gets basic cable in prison. When some evil dictator slaughters 100,000 people, rather than marching a battalion of tanks up the guy's asshole, they want to impose "sanctions" and "U.N. Resolutions" and other cute little solutions that equate to about as much as giving these people a little smack (or a burn) on their butts. But most of all, this ending epitomizes the growing mindset so many people in this country have of no consequences for your actions. You can be a non-stop maniacal prick, and the second somebody calls you on it, you can just run off into the woods, nurse your burned bottom and wounded ego and wait until people have stopped thinking about you to return to your former prickish-ness.

I know I'm overreacting, and I know it's just a kid's story, but if it is just a story then why are we so gung-ho about changing it in the first place? Why can't we meet half-way and let the wolf dissolve into vapor in that boiling cauldron? It's harmless. It leaves no lasting gruesome images. And it makes for better storytelling and lesson-teaching.

Perhaps I'll float too

I started off writing a blog about something but it has run away from me and now I think it's going to end up being a full-blown essay. I had to stop only two pages into it tonight because I've developed a throbbing case of carpal tunnel in my mouse hand this weekend getting The Road Trip designed and posted and it started flaring up as I was typing. So I've left it for now, but what got me going on it in the first place is the book I'm currently reading. It is, hands down, my favorite book in the world. It is, honestly, the book that makes me want to be a writer of fiction more than anything in the world. The book that I will one day credit as being my inspiration, the muse that I've been chasing. I read this book and I hope to one day create a work of fiction that even approaches it. And the thing is, I'm embarrassed to admit it. I'm embarrassed to say it's my favorite and my inspiration. Because I don't imagine this book has much, or any, weight or significance in "serious" writing circles simply because most people assume it's just a stupid horror book about a demon clown that eats children.

That's right, the book is IT by Stephen King. And for those who haven't read it, or worse, for those who have only seen the HORRIBLE miniseries they did of it back in the 90's, I just want to say that I have never read another book, or another author for that matter, who can break down the psyche of a child as well as Stephen King does in this book. Even a lot of really great authors out there simply don't understand children. They've been away from it for too long or something. Even books that are critically hailed as beautiful masterpieces, when I read them, I see the children as caricatures. Fake. A grownup's idea of what a kid is. But in IT, every single one of the seven main characters is a flesh and blood kid. They talk like kids do. And not just the way kids talk when they're around adults. They talk the way kids talk when there are only other kids around.

I love this book and if you've ever read my (essentially defunct) humor column you know why. I say in it that I've never really grown up. But that's not really accurate. It's more that my memory is very vivid and I remember PERFECTLY my childhood. I remember specific days, instances, feelings, conversations. I remember how I was and how others were. Which is why I can spot a phony kid so easily when I read another author's depiction of childhood. I feel cut from the same swatch as Stephen King because he seems to be the only other person on earth to not only remember childhood the way I do, but can express it honestly without screwing it up. And to be honest, while I remember it easily, I know I have a long way to go in expressing it. I read IT and I know that. But that is the level of expression that I aim for. I'm not sure what kind of fiction I will ultimately write and hopefully get paid and become famous for, but I know it will involve children as the main characters. And I only hope I can acheive the level of deepness that Stephen King accomplished in IT.

Crap, my hand is flaring up again. Gotta stop now. More on this later.

Whining little maggots

Is anybody else sick of the whiny "boy rock" that's been coming out lately? Bands like Hoobastank, Sum 41 and Simple Plan. High-pitch-voiced BOYS singing and whining about their daddies, literally using the word "daddy" in their lyrics, and moaning about the fact that they're "not a perrrrfect perrrsonnn...." God I swear, if I hear another little boy bitch with a guitar whining about how he's not perfect, I'm going to punch somebody in the face. For the love of God, BE A MAN! Take a tip from your other deeper-voiced contemporaries like Nickelback, Three Doors Down or Rob Thomas. Wait until your balls drop, and your voice changes before you go making music. Nobody EXPECTS you to be perfect. Just own up to the things you've screwed up, move on, and sing about something with more substance that we might actually give a crap about. Or if the teen angst is really just too much for you to handle and you just can't help but lament over how not perfect you are, the least you could do is take a cue from the king of angst, Kurt Cobain, and deal with your problems in a constructive way.

Now if only there had been naked women at stake

Who knew golf could be so exciting? Certainly not I. But I too watched with bated breath as this year’s U.S. Open drew to its dramatic conclusion and Phil Mickelson lost his tenuous lead and finished second to Australian Geoff Ogilvy. Though, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really care who won the tournament on Sunday so much as I cared that somebody won on Sunday. You see, I spent this past week providing Avid tech support for one of the sports networks up at Winged Foot Golf Course. Nineteen-hour days, early starts, late outs, and inundated on all sides by a sport that I absolutely despise. Not that it was really all that bad for me. Overtime pay aside, on-site Avid support done correctly really means a week’s worth of downtime. If you prep your systems the right way and keep them running properly, the editors should be able to work all week with zero problems, thus zero reasons for you to do anything technical for the duration of your stay. I spent the bulk of my week the same way I did during this job last year: sitting out in the shade, writing, reading books, eating awesome catering and hanging out with other engineers who had done their job correctly too. We laughed, we joked, we busted each others balls, we caught some of the World Cup here and there. The one thing we didn’t do much of was watch golf.

It’s a funny thing working as a TV engineer. Work is work and you get it where you can, and that often means working on shows that, while the rest of the country is salivating to get in on, you yourself could really care less about. I had zero interest in the U.S. Open and neither did the engineers around me. Not a one of us had watched a single minute of golf all week long. And yet, there we all were, a dozen or so of us, huddled around a tiny television monitor out in the TV compound hanging on every shot at the end of Sunday’s competition. Why you ask? It certainly had nothing to do with this Mickelson Grand Slam thing I heard people talking about. Our motives were entirely selfish. You see, the outcome of Sunday’s match would determine when we all got to go home.

If two players are tied at the end of the U.S. Open, an entire 18-hole playoff is conducted the following day. That means every editor, producer, truck guy, camera guy, sound guy, fiber guy and Avid guy has to stay an extra day to cover the event. And none of us wanted that. Sure the overtime had been good and I personally hadn’t lifted a finger since Monday, but it’s still a long week when you’re confined to one area the entire time and we were all ready to go home.

So no matter what the outcome, we didn’t care who won, just so long as the match didn’t end in a tie. Yet with only two holes left to play, that was looking more and more like a possibility. For the past several holes we’d all been routing for big Phil, simply because he was already in the lead and we wanted him to broaden that lead far enough to make a last minute rally by one of his competitors unlikely. But then on the 18th hole, Phil choked. He sliced his tee shot into the crowd where it actually bounced off the media tent behind the trees.

“Oh no.” The entire compound made a collective groan. His closest competitor, Olgilvy was only down by one stroke after his 18th hole. It seemed very possible that Phil would now need to spend an extra shot over par to get himself out of the purgatory where his ball had clunked down. Phil chipped the ball and it landed in the sand trap just outside the green. If he somehow sunk his next shot, he would hit par and win the match by a single stroke. But we all realized that the more likely scenario was going to be that he’d chip it up onto the green with one stroke and then put it in the hole on his next, effectively resulting in a tie for first place, and sentencing the entire compound to a day beyond what our bodies had prepared themselves to handle. I and my fellow engineers clustered around the TV, sending curses and jinxes of our own design upon Phil’s head. He spent a good thirty seconds practicing his swing, assessing his shot, and then let fly. The ball popped up out of the sand, landed on the green and rolled toward the hole. It was obviously off course, but if it stopped within a reasonable distance, we were all screwed. But it didn’t stop within a reasonable distance. It rolled and rolled and rolled… and then it rolled some more. With each additional foot it traveled from the hole, the cheer from our little band of engineers went louder and louder until the ball finally came to rest in the rough on the opposite side of the green.

It was unlikely that Phil was going to sink the shot from where he was now, but you never knew. Signs of the devil were wiggled in the direction of Mickelson. All he needed to do was miss one more shot and our Monday would be liberated. Once again he spent several seconds lining up his shot and practicing his swing before chipping the ball onto the green where it rolled a healthy six feet off course. Another, much louder cheer erupted. It’s probably the only time you’ll ever hear a group of people on a golf course cheer when a guy misses a shot. I don’t think that myself and that many people I’ve known have ever had so much riding on a single putt. It was truly a beautiful moment.

The energy in the compound, which is always a little sluggish by this point in the week, was immediately restored. Editors, producers, utilities, production assistants, everybody kicked into full gear, giving it everything they had… knowing that tomorrow they would be home. So on behalf of the entire TV compound at the U.S. Open, I’d like to express our congratulations to Geoff Ogilvy for your big win and our deepest thanks to Phil Mickelson for your colossal choke.

Russell Crowe had NOTHING on these guys

You know what TV show I used to love as a kid? American Gladiators. What an awesome show that was. To a ten-year-old boy, that show was like gym class for superheroes. I mean you had dodgeball, except the balls in this case were tennis balls fired at you from a high speed canon while you shot back with giant Nerf crossbows and rocket launchers. There was a rock wall with the added element of a really big guy chasing you, trying to yank you off. You had an obstacle course, though it was more like a mythological gauntlet full of smoke, flashing lights and really big guys trying to knock you down.

I don’t know if that show would impress kids these days, what with the gluttony of fast-paced action-filled cartoons and kid shows they already have at their disposal. But when the most exciting shows we were used to watching were Growing Pains and Muppet Babies, American Gladiators was like a forbidden look into the hidden lives of action stars or something. The fact that it came on late on a Saturday night, right after Saturday Night Live where I lived, only added to the allure that you were somehow breaking the rules and seeing things that only grownups were meant to see.

As kids who played sports, my friends and I would often talk about wanting to go on American Gladiators. To be honest, I don’t even know what kind of prizes the winner of each show received. For us, it wasn’t about winning, it was about competing. But really it was about playing. Hardcore, meat and muscle, violence-for-fun playing. Running inside a giant metal sphere and bashing into your opponents in an effort to score points. Walloping a guy twice your size with a big foam jousting stick, trying to knock him off his ten-foot pedestal. How freakin’ awesome would it have been just to be allowed inside that auditorium and be given the chance to compete in any of those games.

I read in TV Guide one time the qualifications needed to be considered as a contestant for American Gladiators. I don’t remember them all, but I do know you had to be able to do something like thirty chin-ups in a minute. That was crazy. Even at my strongest I’ve only been able to do ten of those things. I’m sure other qualifications were you had to be able to run a mile in less than five minutes, you had to be able to lift a certain amount of weight with your legs and arms. Stuff like that. Stuff that only somebody at the very peak of physical strength and fitness had any hope of accomplishing.

I wish they’d bring back competition shows like that. Shows where you actually had to have, not just talent, but extreme talent to compete. What an awesome bar that gave us to shoot for. To get onto American Gladiators you had to aim high and work hard. These days, most of the competitions shows you see on TV require no other qualifications than not being a convicted felon. Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race. Anybody can, in theory, appear on those shows. The only thing that increases your odds of being chosen isn’t superior strength or talent, but above average looks and a quirky personality. I guess that appeals more to people these days. The average viewer can watch these shows and actually picture themselves on that screen competing as they are, without any new skills or improvement. Hell, William Hung taught us that you didn’t even have to be a good singer to appear on American Idol.

Is this all a sign of where we’re headed as a country? As a civilization? As a species? The bar used to be high. Impossibly high no doubt. None of us were going to attain the superiority required to appear on American Gladiators. But in the end, was that really such a bad thing? It gave us something shoot for and even when we didn’t hit that mark, we landed higher than we would have had we shot for a low mark. These days, there’s no mark to shoot for. The message competition shows send out today is, “Just be yourself… your regular, stupid, talentless self, and you too could be a star.” If this trend continues, the human race is doomed. Evolution cannot progress if we aren’t constantly challenged in our daily lives.

I’ve split no hairs about my thoughts on the abomination that is “Reality TV.” I refuse to watch any of it. But I promise all you TV executives out there, if you were to bring back American Gladiators, I would watch. But it’s got to be the real thing. The standards have to remain high. Contestants actually need to be able to pass a physical test to compete. And for the love of God, if I don’t see ugly people in the mix along with the hotties, I’ll tune you out forever. Because strong people with talent come at all levels of beauty.

Bring back American Gladiators. The future of the world depends on it.

Wheel... of... DEATH!

I was sitting around in the edit truck the other day and Live With Regis and Kelly was on. Well apparently Reeg was out sick or something because they had a very special guest host on: the one and only Pat Sejak. Can I just tell you how incredibly weird it was to see old Pat on this show. First of all, can I just say, man that dude is getting old. Pat Sejak always struck me as a Dick Clark kind of guy. His face remains plastered permanently at whatever age he was circa 1985. Probably because that’s the last time I really watched Wheel of Fortune. But also, and more so, it was just weird to see Pat doing anything but that show He’s been doing it for how many years now? His face is synonymous with that big clicking wheel and the idiots who spin it every weeknight. Same with Vanna White. You cannot hear her name or see her face without immediately picturing her in front of that big green and white board.

There are only a few other game shows and game show hosts that are like that. First of all, that other Merv Griffin hit, Jeopardy. The only time I can remember seeing Alex Trebek on a show other than Jeopardy was when he was on Cheers playing himself as the host of Jeopardy. And then of course there is the long standing The Price is Right with the longer standing Bob Barker.

As I sat there watching Pat Sejak on Live, a couple thoughts occurred to me. The first being, why have I never noticed before just how freakin cute Kelly Ripa is? You could just put her in your little pocket and take her home with you she’s so dang cute.

But back to the whole gameshow thing, I couldn’t help but wonder what is going to happen to the three gameshows I mentioned when their key personalities either retire or die? Like I said, their names and faces have become synonymous with those shows, but more importantly, I don’t think anybody in America could picture those shows without those names and faces. People tune in to watch The Price is Right as much to see Bob Barker as they do to watch an hour-long commercial for TidyBowl. I remember Vanna White was planning on leaving Wheel of Fortune several years ago after nearly two decades and the studio somehow threw enough money at her to get her to stay because they knew people tuned in to watch her more than the silly game.

Actually I find her whole situation funny in and of itself. Those of us who grew up with that show during the 80’s remember that she used to actually spin the letters around when they lit up. It was like that had to give her some semblance of a function to distract people from the fact that she was really only on screen to be eye-candy. These days they don’t even pretend that she has a larger function than that. Now when the letters light up, all she does is touch them while some production assistant backstage presses a button to make them actually flick on.

But back to my point, what are these shows going to do when their personalities move on? Because it certainly doesn’t seem to me that they’re doing any planning for that certainty. At least shows like The Tonight Show will bring on a guest host every now and then so it isn’t such a huge shock when their main guy retires. But have you ever seen anybody other than Bob Barker hosting The Price is Right? How about Wheel or Jeopardy? Of course you haven’t. These producers are certainly putting all those eggs in the proverbial basket full of more fabulous prizes. Bob Barker alone is a ticking time bomb. He’s starting to look like Pope John Paul II did toward the end, like he’s about ready to collapse into himself. Vanna White is eventually going to get old and cease to be pleasant eye-candy anymore. And at some point I’m sure Alex Trebek, who I’ve heard is quite the asshole off screen, is going to draw a line in the sand and demand more money than he’s worth and that will be the end of that. And dear Pat Sejak. Who knows, maybe he’ll get a taste of greener pastures doing these little guest host stints he’s doing and finally have the three-quarter-life crisis that sends him on his merry way.

And then what happens? What happened before? I know Alex Trebek wasn’t always the host of Jeopardy. Can somebody older than myself tell me what happened when he took over for the previous host? Was it a hard transition? Did they not like him at first? Was there some other letter bimb that Vanna muscled out? Was there a catty breaking-in process for her and the rest of America? And what about Pat? I know he’s charming and charismatic now, but did people take to him right away or did they say, “Who’s this yutz with the poofy hair?” I know things obviously worked out in the end because here they all remain. But then again, studios have lot shorter attention spans these days. Will the producers and audiences of these three shows have the patience and loyalty to break in a new personality? Or will the producers simply allow the shows to die along with their hosts?

Does anybody know? Anybody?

Dunk this

I was watching a little bit of the NBA Finals tonight and a couple of thoughts occurred to me. The first was just a reaffirmation of how much I really and truly hate spectator sports. I mean, I enjoy playing basketball but watching it is just so incredibly boring. Same goes for baseball. I enjoy it when I'm actually sitting in the bleachers because it's all about the overall experience. But to watch it on TV... just can't do it. I can kind of get into football, but with as much as the play constantly starts and stops and goes to commercial, it's hard to stay excited about what's happening. And I certainly can't follow a team game for game all season.

About the only sport that I could truly sit and watch an entire game of on TV, and never get bored with, is soccer. I've realized this week, with the World Cup being on TV in just about every bar, restaurant and production truck I walk into, soccer just sucks me in and keeps me in. I think the fact that soccer doesn't get broken up by commercials is the first and most important factor. But also, soccer is the only sport where I feel like I have to watch every minute of the game. In basketball, they score a basket an average of every thirty seconds. A goal in soccer, on the other hand, is sometimes scored only once a game. And it could happen at any point. If you walked away from a basketball game and came back to realize ten points had been scored during your absence, you wouldn't really think too much about it. But if a soccer goal was scored while you were looking away, it would be a very big deal that you missed it. That goal could in theory be the only point scored all game. That goal, scored perhaps within the first ten minutes of the game, would essentially then be the winning goal. I've always felt that the only exciting part of a basketball game is the final two minutes. And then only if the game is close. Because only at that point does every point count. All the baskets scored in the first 38 minutes of the game are essentially null and void at that point and all that matters is what the two teams do during the crunch time at the end. But in soccer, every single goal counts because they're so hard to score and they are so few and far between.

And when you do score a goal... I remember watching an interview with some soccer player a few years ago who compared soccer to basketball. He said that a really good player in the NBA will score maybe 30 points in a single game. And each basket he scores will give him a little charge and cause the crowd to applaud. But scoring a goal in soccer is like taking the little charge and little applause for each basket and cramming it all into one single moment. And that's why soccer is far more exciting and can draw me in more than basketball. Every drive to the goal, every shot on goal, your nerves seize up and then release when it doesn't result in a point. But then on that one key moment when a shot finally gets through, all those nerve seizures that have been building and building over the course of the game explode in an veritable orgasm of triumph because you know, you feel, how big a deal it is. The only comparison you can have to that feeling watching a basketball game is when a winning shot is scored right at the buzzer. That is as close as a basketball fan can come to experiencing what a soccer fan feels every time a goal is scored.

So that was the first thought I had tonight watching the NBA Finals. The second thought came during a short bump back into the game in which a large graphic was shown of the earth, and all the countries that were broadcasting the game were highlighted in red. Apparently this game is being broadcast to something like 250 countries around the globe. That's mindblowing. Do that many non-Americans really care about who wins this game? In the last couple years, ever since the start of the Iraq war, all I've heard about is how much the rest of the world hates us, how much America is such a joke, a laughingstock to the other countries of the world.

The popular conservative response to that is, "Well if they hate us so much, then why are so many of them trying to get in here?"

I'll take it a step farther than that. If they hate us so much, if they think we're all just a bunch of big fat ignorant slobs, then why on earth do they care so much about the stupid games we play? Why is the Superbowl the most widely watched event in the world? Why would somebody in India care whether Brokeback Mountain won Best Picture? If everything we stand for is so stupid then why are all our most popular TV shows repacked and not only aired in Europe but viewed by more people than their own native programs? In America we don't clamor to watch rebroadcasts of popular British or Japanese shows. If anything, we take their concept and redo it American style. Is it because we're close-minded xenophobic stupid Americans who can't appreciate things from other cultures?

Or is our shit just better than theirs?

Truly, if they hate us so much, why are they all so eager to experience our experiences, from Friends to the Academy Awards? If the World Cup is on right now, why the hell would somebody in France be watching the NBA Finals?

"High" enough anyway

As I was driving home from a late day at work, racing to make it in time for the series finale of LOST (which was ab…so…lutely… AWESOME by the way), I was flipping through the channels on my Sirius radio and stopped by a station called “The Vault”. This is the station where they play “deeper classic rock.” Basically all the B-sides, lesser known and lesser played songs from classic rock artists. When I switched it on I heard a familiar and eerie sound of church bells. The text on the screen confirmed what my ears were telling me. It was the intro to the song “Fire On High” by Electric Light Orchestra.

I haven’t listened to this song in… maybe not years, but definitely a long time. And I really can’t remember the last time I heard it while driving in my car. I have the song on mp3 on my computer, but with no CD player in my car (and the fact that they rarely ever play this song on regular radio) the only place I really had the option to hear it was while sitting at my desk. Which is probably the reason I haven’t listened to it in so long, because this is and always has been one of the greatest driving songs ever. With no lyrics, incendiary and impossibly fast guitar riffs as well as crushing drum fills, it’s the perfect song for speeding down an empty Maine road, picking imaginary chords with your fingers and pounding out hardcore beats on the steering wheel.

Whenever I hear this song, my thoughts turn immediately to my college days. And anybody who was real close to me at Emerson at the time knows why. I used this song my sophomore year as the background for a marketing promo I edited for the Evvy Awards (which if you don’t know, is Emerson’s version of the Emmy’s). I had wanted to cut something to that song ever since I’d learned to edit a couple years earlier. The fast beats and guitar were perfect for quick cuts and movement. This ended up being the promo that first made people at Emerson think I was some kind of kickass editor. I’m not saying that conceitedly, in fact I kind of laugh when I think about it. I laugh because when I watch the promo now (well I haven’t actually watched it in… god, I don’t even know when, but I can remember exactly what it looked like), I think the editing was actually pretty… childish is the only word I can think of to describe it. I know I was only a sophomore in college, so I was still learning, but the whole promo is nothing but a series of lightning fast cuts. Cut,cut,cut,cutcutcutcutcutcutcut… Seriously, the only real talent it required was the ability to find a beat and the patience to tediously lay in each individual shot. That’s why I really think it was the song more so than the actual editing that made the promo be perceived as awesome. There’s just something about that song.

Tonight when I heard “Fire on High”, my thoughts didn’t go to my Emerson days… well maybe just for a second. Mostly this time, they returned to highschool, back when this song first came into my life. This was the song that they played when our soccer team ran out onto the field every game. I can think of no better song to get you pumped up for a game as much as this one. Alternating between majestic sounding verses full of strings and angelic voices, and the adrenaline-inducing chorus with its signature guitars and drums, that song made us feel like gods as we ran our warm-up laps around the field. I mean, you know, before the game started and we got our asses kicked six to nothing.

And like I said, as far as driving songs go, there simply was no better. But only when you were driving on the kind of empty two-lane cop-less roads we drove back home in Maine. Because inevitably, as you jammed on air guitar and pounded out steering wheel drums, your speed increased by at least ten miles an hour. It was seriously unavoidable. When that last round of badda-ba-ba-ba-bom… badda-da-daddadadada-dom-dom-dom… dadada-DOM ended, and your hands were numb from bashing against the steering wheel and your body was tingling in the now complete silence from how loud you’d had the radio cranked, you’d look down and realize you were doing almost eight and had drifted half-way across the center line.

As much as “Fire on High” took me back tonight, it just wasn’t the same. Driving down congested Street Road, one of the major thoroughfares through the Philly suburbs, it was impossible to truly give in to the music. With lights every thirty seconds, cars all around me, and a forty-five mile per hour speed limit on a street that’s loaded with cops, I couldn’t really concentrate on my guitar and drums too much. I was mostly using my thumbs as opposed to my whole hands on the drums. And the meat of my palms stayed planted on the wheel, rather than down near my side, as I picked out the notes on air guitar. For a second or two I tried to play the way I always remembered doing it back in Maine, but the second my car drifted and inch, I grabbed the wheel again and muted my performance a bit. Plus, whenever I stopped at a light, I had to ease it back for fear of the person in the next car looking at me.

But in spite of not being able to really cut loose, the song put me in such a great mood and got my adrenaline coursing through my veins the way it always had whenever I ran out onto that field, or whenever that marketing promo ended and one of my peers told me it had given them goosebumps. It was the most perfect appetizer for the most kickass episode of LOST ever. I only wish I had thought to lock the song into my radio’s memory on the off chance that it would come on again someday while I was out and about on one of the few two-lane roads in the area. Then I would be able to click over and experience “Fire on High” to its fullest. Oh well. With luck they’ll dust the song off and pull it out of The Vault again while I happen to be passing through and it’ll be just like the old times… you know, minus the getting creamed by our rival school afterward.