The Urban Pantheist

Say what you want about Bush, but the man can duck a shoe. Ought to provide fodder for a few late night skits and editorial cartoons.

Last winter I made a snarky comment about Albuquerque when it got hit with a foot of snow (something like "cross Albuquerque off the list1") Portland (Oregon--I only need to make that distinction to New Englanders btw) just got a two inch dusting, the kind of snow that is beneath contempt for Bostonians--if you even mention it to your coworkers they groan and roll their eyes and get back to work. It's completely paralyzed the city, everything is closed except the bars, which would stay open during a nuclear attack from what I can tell. How do I know all this? I'm a member of damnportlanders, and they have gone absolutely crazy; every member there has posted pictures of the snow, or desperate pleas about how to get into a car with frozen locks. My god, the things I take for granted.

Yesterday's happy thing was spending almost all of it next to my wife. It was warm and cuddly.

Oh, I haven't crossed Portland off the list. If two inches of snow is rare enough to flummox the whole city, that's a good thing. Their long-range weather forecast is much nastier than Boston this week, but this too shall pass. They'll be watching flowers bloom in March when we're still trying to come up with new layers to wear.

This just in: Bush made a stop in Afghanistan, where Hamid Kharzai threw his shoes at him. Kharzai is currently the only Afghan who owns shoes, and rumors indicate he was paid a hefty sum to throw them. Bush caught them in mid air and threw them back.

I fell asleep last night with the movie Spaceballs as my background. I saw it in the theater, and even as a teenager I recognized it as a huge disappointment from the director who brought us Young Frankenstein. In the intervening years it's become a cult hit with the kids. I was curious to see if there was something I missed when I saw it the first time. Nope. It's still a half hour's worth of (mostly bad) jokes stuffed into an hour and half. It's a mix of stale borscht belt comics (Joan Rivers as C3P0?), "Police Academy"-quality 80's humor, and non-comedians (Bill Pullman in a comic role? He was funnier in Independence day) telling you they are about to tell a joke, then telling you they told a joke, then telling you they just told you a joke a while ago. There were a couple spots where the timing worked and I laughed, but they were surrounded by what seemed like hours of tedium and embarrassment. I didn't know I could feel embarrassed for John Candy. When sleep came it was a relief.

Alex and I watched the last half of Lake Placid last night--Alex wanted to watch the Betty White part again--and it stands as one of my favorites in the genre. I did notice this time that they not only fired darts into crocodile hide (I've seen people have trouble getting darts to penetrate raccoon hide) but with what seemed like only one dart, they got the croc to go down in about 5 minutes. A real 30 foot croc would need like a gallon of ketamine and even then it would take an hour to go down. And it might kill him.

Should I write something about how my job experiences and knowledge of natural history color my enjoyment of movies, especially creature horror?

I also noticed that my vcr (it's a machine for playing movies recorded on magnetic tape) is having some kind of problem with its motor. It plays the tape okay, but it makes a tiktiktiktiktiktiktik sound, which is really annoying in the quiet parts of the movie. Finally I decided to pretend that it was a movie projector (it's a machine that shines light through a row of slides moving at 24 frames per second) like we used to watch movies with in high school. I remember the first time I saw a tv in school--it looked so out of place.

Speaking of obsolete technology and movies, I also watched The Prestige. This is going to get me into trouble, I can feel it. Five of my netflix friends rated it 5 stars (Loved it!) I didn't. I'd give it 2 and half. Mostly it's entertaining, but just like Fight Club, a pretty good movie is sunk by its BIG SURPRISE ENDING. In fact, it does Fight Club one better by having two BIG SURPRISE ENDINGs, one for each jerk magician protagonist. Michael Caine is good, David Bowie is good, the two endings are stupid. I wrote a Soylent Screen column on it, but I have to sit on it for a week--it's probably for the best, I should think about it before I post it anyway. I was annoyed by the endings, and that emotion probably made me say things that were unkind, like using the word "stupid" three times. I bet this is one of those movies that people are going to say "Oh, it's better when you see it a second time!" In fact, I'm sure it is, since the BIG SURPRISE ENDINGS reveal information that would help you understand the characters' actions.

Is this what dvds have done to cinema? Do we all have to rewatch every movie to get more out of it? As long as we've bought these things, we may as well get more information from each viewing. I guess that makes sense, but it sort of reduces us all to preschoolers begging to see the same Thomas the Tank Engine episode over and over again. If I only kind of like a movie, I don't want to have to see it again to appreciate it.

People have told me that The Prestige is better than The Illusionist. That doesn't bode well.

Alexis and I watched the first season of "The Riches." She liked it more than I did, but I found it entertaining enough to watch more if we get more. I'm a little bothered by Eddie Izzard's character. I find him implausibly articulate, well-educated, and good at golf. He's the brains of the operation because he's got a 7th grade education. Izzard's a good actor and a compelling on-screen presence, but I don't buy him as a swamp grifter. It's funny to see the gag reel where Minnie Driver flubs a line and drops her Louisiana ex-con drawl to curse in her proper British accent.

I guess this is what being sick is for.

I'm about a quarter the way through Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Does anyone else think that Bryson spends an inordinate amount of time and ink scrutinizing the warts of scientists?

I just finished watching the movie a couple hours ago, it's after midnight, and this review might be gibberish, but I'll put it out there for you to judge. I don't think there are any spoilers here, but I think it's a better review if you've seen it already.

( Read more... )