So my grandmother was a Nazi.
I should probably elaborate. When I say "my grandmother was a Nazi", I'm not using it in the general, loose and--frankly--offensively glib way that people tend to use the word "Nazi" nowadays. I don't mean she was just kind of mean or that she insisted on running a draconian house or that she didn't bake me cookies. All of the above is, in fact, true, but none of that should be used to gloss over the fact that my grandmother was a true to life, actual Nazi.
Born in 1924, GG was 15 or so when Hitler started all that unpleasantness with Poland and, being of solidly German stock, the idea that she was part of the purest, strongest, bestest pile of genes in all the world sat well with her. By the time Operation Husky started, she was not yet 20 and regularly soliciting donations around the neighborhood for "the war effort", which she would then bundle up and send to Berlin.
So like I was saying, my grandmother was a Nazi. Which fit with her personality well because she was, without resorting to exaggeration or hyperbole, completely fucking evil.
When my sister and I were kids GG lived in this two story brownstone over by my school. It was large, always rather dusty, and the yard was surrounded by one of those cast iron fences. You know the ones; made of iron bars, about four feet tall, and at the top of each bar, there was an ornamental piece of iron, shaped like an upside down heart, or a spearhead. I know what you're thinking: it's foreboding, but not particularly sadistic.
So in one corner of the yard, butted up right next to this chest high, spike fence, there was a trampoline.
HA! Fuck YOU with your "not particularly sadistic." This wasn't a scenario where she put it in the corner while it wasn't being used and it was pulled out to the larger, non-spike-covered middle of the yard for playtimes. In fact, it was chained to the fence to prevent just such a thing. She always said it was to keep it from being stolen, but even at 7 I was able to smell the bullshit brewing in that statement.
I was kind of an odd child, so the idea of jumping on a trampoline was in direct opposition to my distaste for bouncing and heights, not to mention my (very real) fear of getting stabbed. Not by a fence post, mind you, but by a tightly coiled spring that finally decided to snap and send shrapnel in all directions.
But for the other children, both relatives and from the neighborhood, the temptation of a trampoline--even one that came pre-packaged with a coin-flip's chance of death or disfigurement--was difficult to resist. The trampoline was used on occasion. Usually some stupidly brave child would sneak over while their parents were at work or busy making dinner or some such thing and bounce for a thrilling minute or two until they were spotted. I have to assume that my grandmother was threatened with police action at some point or another but, being as young as I was, I don't remember any specifics. All I know was that the trampoline stayed there in that corner until I was 16, when it was struck by lightening.
One day, when I was about nine or ten, my sister decided she was going to try something. My sister is nine years older than I and has always been kind of a dim bulb. So when she watched one too many episodes of The Bionic Woman and decided that that "jumping over walls" shit looked pretty neat, she got herself an Idea.
Don't get ahead of me.
The trampoline was fairly large, so the distance from the middle of the surface to the fence was probably 4 feet or so. The fence extended about a foot and a half above the height of the jumping surface, and beyond that was the sidewalk. My sister rigged up a few sheets of butcher paper between a couple of sticks and tied them to a couple of the fence poles, so she would have a "wall" to bust through as she "sha-na-na-na-na-ed" her way to glory.
It's funny how the human mind works. Some of us can grasp calculus with no effort at all, while others need to have their universal remotes explained to them daily. Similarly, there are certain ideas that we all just seem to gravitate to naturally. Think about the old Nintendo Entertainment System. When you put a cartridge into the machine and it didn't work, what did you do? You pulled it out and blew into it. This was before the internet and help lines. No one told us about it, and there were no strategy guides on the matter. We all just figured it out.
So when my sister started putting this butcher paper wall up on the fence in front of the trampoline, the mind of every kid on the block had one of those moments. Even kids who were in their houses or playing at the school playground down the street came running for apparently no reason. It was like a dog whistle had gone off; kids just perked their ears up and thought "someone's going to Bionic Woman over that death fence."
By the time my sister had started her practice runs, there were probably a dozen of us gathered. Some in genuine excitement; some in morbid curiosity. My sister bounced high and took off, towards the middle of the yard, in an effort to gauge how high and far she could go. Once she was convinced she could make it, she set her eyes on her makeshift wall and started bouncing.
There was genuine effort being put forth by the kids who'd come to watch. They wanted so badly to cheer her on like wild men, but too much noise was sure to bring a parent or two to the windows, and then the kabosh would be put on the whole thing. So while my sister jumped and stared at her wall, she was accompanied by an eerie, solemn silence. After six or seven bounces to get to the proper height, she pitched herself forward, and jumped at the fence, one leg shot out in front of her, balled fists in a running position fore and aft, doing her very best Jaime Sommers impression.
What happened next was, well, about what you'd expect. She cleared the fence easily and burst through her paper wall to the sudden, explosive cheers of the accumulated crowd. I mean, seriously, the fence was sharp and all, but it's not like it was the green monster or anything. Any teenager with a working set of legs could have made it over that thing.
Of course, my sister wasn't terribly coordinated, and when she landed she was unable to keep her balance, pitched forward across the sidewalk and put her arm through a car window.
The aftermath was awesome. Blood, screams of various octaves and duration, and children scattering like roaches with the lights turned on. Nobody wanted to be seen to have been anywhere near this mess. If a circus had randomly passed by just then, a dozen kids would have joined up and disappeared.
I went in and called mom and the ambulance (GG told me to close the door and that my sister could have paper towels, but no lemonade because it was HERS) and attended to my sister--who's impression had switched from Jamie Sommers to Carrie pretty damn quickly--as best I could. When people with better medical training than I came and finally took her to the hospital, I stayed at GG's house and waited for everyone to come back to collect me. GG told me to stay out on the front steps, because I was now too dirty.
Eventually mom and my sister came back for me and we all went home. My sister, eyes puffy and swollen from crying, showed me the jagged zipper of stitches that ran from her wrist to her elbow. She let me count them on the way home. There were 77. I was envious.
The idea of getting stitches horrified me but I was, as previously mentioned, a rather odd child and I enjoyed both symmetry, and the number 7.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Movie Collection Review: A Chorus Line
Musicals are like anal sex: if you're forced into them as a child you'll never like them as an adult. Additionally--much like the occasional, mid coital finger in the back door--having one or two in your collection doesn't make you gay.
As those of you who are well versed in my Facebook mini-reviews are aware, I'm not ashamed to admit that I own a few, having already watched Chicago and 8 Mile (which is totally not a "musical", but I think it would be hilarious if I could somehow start a trend of referring to it as such and have word of it get back to Eminem, thereby causing him to rage right the hell out), and I can assure you there are one or two more on the way.
But on to the task at hand: Explaining why Andrew Lloyd Webber is a pox on musical theater.
First off, I know that there are many, many people out there who would disagree with me and who think that Andrew Lloyd Webber is the best thing going. There are also many people who think heroin is the best thing going, and I'm pretty sure they're full of shit, too. So now that we've established that Mr. Webber is just a horrible, horrible person, let us briefly cover why (and do so without pointing out that he "borrows" from other composers and musicians like he's Puff Daddy and is responsible for the Eurodance single "Tetris").
Andrew Lloyd Webber had one moment of revolutionary thought: Jesus Christ, Superstar. That musical took off like trousers with zippers and, before you can say "ctrl+v", the world was officially awash in Andrew Lloyd Webber sound-a-likes. "But that's good, right?" You might be saying. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery."
First off, you're an absolute bicycle helmet wearing, low-wattage gurgler if you think that. Secondly--and more to the point--all the Andrew Lloyd Webber sound-a-likes were coming from Andrew Lloyd Webber*. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; "Evita"**; Cats; Phantom of the Motherfucking Opera (full title). All of them have two things in common: They were all wildly, blisteringly, soul crushingly successful and they all sound just about the same.
Now before the more pedantic of you out there start frothing at the screen, let me clarify. I'm obviously not saying that you could take, say, "Memories" and "Any Dream Will Do" and sync them up note for note. Of course they don't literally sound exactly the same. But all of his musicals DO have the same feel, the same (now tired) musical formula and the same slavish, unrelenting devotion to the sweeping, grandiose sound that made Superstar such a success.
The problem therein is that one of the reasons that Superstar was so successful was because it was new. The sound was big, bold and exciting. It was such a departure from previous hits like The Sound of Music and the Gilbert and Sullivan classics because it overwhelmed you and made you take notice. Fast forward a half dozen works later and the effect is distilled. Old hat. But what's far worse is that it kept being successful and that enormous success set back the growth of musical theater by 20 years. Webber dominated the '70's and most of the '80's with his artistic D.C. al fine and, as a result, not only did people spend a decade and change trying to mimic something that was a musical zombie to begin with, but when the trends finally DID start to switch direction, it took the mainstream another 10 years to really find some kind of different voice.
There were exceptions, of course: Les Miserables opened in Paris in 1980 and if you think the fact that Les Mis is now the longest running (and, as argued by some, finest) production in musical theater history isn't spurred at least a little bit by its sound being so un-Webber-ish, you're fooling yourself.
But in a way, that's always been the way of things. One of the reasons people were so eager to gobble up Webber's stuff in the beginning is because musical theater in the '50's and '60's had become something of a miasma. If there hadn't been that artistic stagnation, there would have been nothing for Webber to revolutionize. So, in a perverse kind of way, non-Webber successes like Les Miserables and the Marvin Hamlish penned A Chorus Line owe their fortunes to Webber's laziness. If Jesus Christ, Superstar, Joseph and Phantom hadn't created the the logjam they did, there would have been nothing to stand out against and rise above.
A Chorus Line. Why is that ringing a bell...Oh shit, yeah. I'm supposed to be reviewing the movie.
OK, so in 1975 Marvin Hamlish and Edward Kleban gave the theater going world A Chorus Line, and it was good. The show ran on Broadway for, like, ever and was the longest running production in the road's history when it ended its original run. Exactly 10 years after the debut of the live show, Richard Attenborough directed the film version and it was...kind of a bloop single.
People who loved the stage production hated the film. This isn't really news to anyone, because people who love a stage production always hate the film (Hedheads not withstanding). But the thing that most of the critics had a problem with was Attenborough's concerted effort to stay as true to the source material as possible. What comes off as legitimate and true on a stage sometimes seems cloying and edging up to camp on film. But Attenborough had some brilliant material to work with; the music is great, the songs all pop and includes one of the most iconic pieces of all time, and while the characters can be a little mawkish at times, they manage in the end to come through as human and sympathetic, if not completely relate-able. Micheal Douglas works wonders on a role that's only loosely fleshed out and there are moments of genuine emotion in the scenes between him and Alyson Reed, who plays Cassie. The rest of the cast, led most notably by Terrance Mann and Janet Jones (who's only other claim to fame is marrying Wayne Gretzky), is competent without managing to stand out (unless you count Audrey "Tits and Ass" Landers). A Chorus Line is a flawed piece of translation, but most translations inevitably are. In the end though, I think the film works, in no small part because of how closely Attenborough stays to the original piece.
Perhaps the most damning thing you can say about the film is that it's nothing more than the stage show put on film. But when your stage show is as good as A Chorus Line, it pretty much puts you in a pizza situation, and that ain't too shabby.
* directed by M. Night Shyamalan
** Coming before year's end: Movie Collection Review: Evita, or "Why owning this movie doesn't make me a hypocrite"
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
I got nothin
One of the reasons why I started this blog was to try to get into the habit of writing every day or nearly everyday. One of the reasons why I don't already write nearly every day is because I so rarely have anything of substance to say.
(But that hasn't stopped you from blogging so far, you might say. Zing!)
It's one thing to be working on a larger piece--a novel for example--and to have a day where you just aren't feeling it and to have your production for the day be below average. But it's entirely another when you sit down to work on something completely new and just not have anything.
Look. I'll be the first to admit that the act of writing a blog (and a blog that, like, six people read to boot) isn't a monumentally challenging act. Take the entries that I've posted so far: I sit down at the computer with whatever topic I've decided to prattle about for the day; I figure out how I'm going to start, which is always the most difficult part; I type--sometimes for upwards of 20 minutes--then re-read what I've put down in a (usually surprisingly unsuccessful) attempt to copy-edit. Done! Six of you read it, one of you will comment, and I go to bed safe in the knowledge that my original thought for the day has been heard by slightly fewer people than if I had just stood on my doorstep and shouted it at the neighborhood.
But writing about something just strikes me as boorish. Like calling someone to tell them you're tired. And when you're trying to add to a blog where you've (allegedly) set a precedent of being funny? Fuck man. You know what it's like when someone introduces you to someone else, and they're all like "this is so-and-so. He's the funniest person I know" and so the new person is like "Oh, tell me a joke"? No one has ever thought of something funny in that moment. Now imagine doing that to yourself for like an hour.
You: "Dude, if you're going to write something, don't forget to make it funny too!"
Yourself again: "...really? It's bad enough I can't think of anything to say, but there's that as well?"
You: "Don't give me that. You're hilarious. Everyone says so. Just write something down right now. Something funny. Go."
...I don't know. I guess I could just link to more Family Guy.
(But that hasn't stopped you from blogging so far, you might say. Zing!)
It's one thing to be working on a larger piece--a novel for example--and to have a day where you just aren't feeling it and to have your production for the day be below average. But it's entirely another when you sit down to work on something completely new and just not have anything.
Look. I'll be the first to admit that the act of writing a blog (and a blog that, like, six people read to boot) isn't a monumentally challenging act. Take the entries that I've posted so far: I sit down at the computer with whatever topic I've decided to prattle about for the day; I figure out how I'm going to start, which is always the most difficult part; I type--sometimes for upwards of 20 minutes--then re-read what I've put down in a (usually surprisingly unsuccessful) attempt to copy-edit. Done! Six of you read it, one of you will comment, and I go to bed safe in the knowledge that my original thought for the day has been heard by slightly fewer people than if I had just stood on my doorstep and shouted it at the neighborhood.
But writing about something just strikes me as boorish. Like calling someone to tell them you're tired. And when you're trying to add to a blog where you've (allegedly) set a precedent of being funny? Fuck man. You know what it's like when someone introduces you to someone else, and they're all like "this is so-and-so. He's the funniest person I know" and so the new person is like "Oh, tell me a joke"? No one has ever thought of something funny in that moment. Now imagine doing that to yourself for like an hour.
You: "Dude, if you're going to write something, don't forget to make it funny too!"
Yourself again: "...really? It's bad enough I can't think of anything to say, but there's that as well?"
You: "Don't give me that. You're hilarious. Everyone says so. Just write something down right now. Something funny. Go."
...I don't know. I guess I could just link to more Family Guy.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Shitty Movie Review: Law Abiding Citizen
To begin, a couple of disclaimers.
1) The following post will feature a few spoilers. So if you haven't seen "Law Abiding Citizen" yet and were still hoping to without knowing too much about it, then I should also probably tell you that Kevin Spacey is the killer in "Seven" and the chick in "The Crying Game" is a dude. I mean come on. You've had six months.
2) For better or worse, everyones tastes in things are different. And it's just human nature for people to take criticism of their tastes as criticism of themselves. So there might be a couple of you out there with particularly thin skins who might read a statement like "this movie goes beyond normal stupid, and moves into 'cast of Deliverance, marry your cousin and have babies with flippers for arms' level stupid", and think that I'm really calling you stupid for liking the movie. Friends. That's why I'm taking the time to include this disclaimer. So I can clear up any potential confusion as early as possible. That's absolutely what I'm doing. This movie is for people who would drown during a heavy rainstorm if someone didn't keep them from looking up to see where the water was coming from. The kind of people who appreciate "The Teletubbies" for it's nuanced character development. Copies of this DVD should have been packaged with a Special Olympics enrollment form.
OK! Now that we've gotten both of those things out of the way, on to the review:
Every film that comes out, be it summer action blockbuster or Indie-darling Oscar fodder, relies to some degree or another on the suspension of disbelief. We, as movie goers, buy into that unspoken contract each time we pay for a ticket. But the thing about willing suspension of disbelief is, we're willing to believe in a LOT of things for the sake of appreciating a story (space operas, for example), but you had damn well better get the little shit right.
Case in point: When sitting in the theater with a friend watching Paul Verhoeven's faux-propaganda masterpiece Starship Troopers, we sat in rapt attention while an army of Space Marines fought with a planet of impossibly sized bugs so they could capture one to be handed over to the military psychics. All disbelief was willingly suspended until this scene.
My friend turned to me and snorted at the idea of three people not only outrunning an explosion, but turning and looking back several times to check their progress. It didn't completely ruin the movie for us, but it certainly pulled you out of the moment of the scene. Explosions are an especially common example. One of the things that made Scifi fanboys shoot a big creamy one over Joss Whedon's wildly under-appreciated Firefly was the fact that he shot all of his space action sequences with no sound. Because there's no fucking sound in space.
But I've gotten off track.
What does ANY of the above have to do with Law Abiding Citizen, you might be wondering. Well at the films heart, there's actually a really excellent story idea. And the whole thing gets blown 11 minutes in, when Jamie Foxx's Assistant DA character shakes hands with a convicted murderer.
The way the film kick off is that King Leonidas' family gets killed by a couple of burglars. After watching his family die but surviving his own wounds, his majesty has to then watch the ensuing legal wrangling as the man who actually did all the killing makes a deal with Ray Charles to pin the murders on his accomplice. In exchange for throwing his buddy under the bus, the real killer pleads guilty to murder in the third degree and will serve a few years in prison while his partner gets the death penalty. This makes Leonidas mad. Realllly mad. And the image that burns into his mind is one of Ray Charles standing on the steps of the courthouse. See, he's there explaining the deal to reporters and up walks his new best friend the murderer with the cops who are supposed to be taking him back to jail. He holds out his hand in a mock show of friendship and Ray Charles shakes it.
RIGHT THERE!
There is so much wrong with that ONE scene, that the wheels came right off this wagon for me. Quick, bring up Google in a different window. Now do a search and find me a photo of a prosecuting attorney shaking hands with the dude he's sending to jail. I'll wait. I've got some chips here.
It's damn hard to find, right? Because it doesn't happen! See, the thing is, even though the DA cut a deal, and even though one guy is helping send another guy to death row, none of that changes the fact that the first guy is STILL being convicted of murder. And DAs don't like to take pictures shaking hands with murderers. And that's without bringing up questions like "why was this convicted murderer allowed within 10 feet of the man who's currently bragging to the press about sending him to prison?" And "Why was the convicted murderer being brought out the front doors anyway?" So much wrong with that scene.
"But so what?" You might be saying. "That's one scene in a 90 minute film. You can't let one thing ruin the whole movie." Oh friends, I didn't. The film resumed getting the small things wrong just four minutes later, when we fast forward 10 years and we see Ray Charles' daughter go to a music recital, pick up a cello and proceed to rock that shit like she's Yo-Yo Ma. Throughout the film, Director F. Gary Gray continues to botch the little stuff which, unfortunately, has the effect of underscoring just how preposterous the big stuff--the stuff for which we'd normally try and suspend our disbelief--really is.
So King Leonidas goes off the deep end and hatches a grand plan to get revenge on the DA's office, the people who killed his family, the judge, the cops, random inmates, the entire city of Philadelphia...pretty much everyone. It's a plan that involves getting arrested for one murder, so he can go to jail, so he can break out of jail, so he can commit MORE murders...so he can try and get the DA to make a deal to let him out of jail.
And just so things can begin as weirdly as possible, the whole plan starts like this.
WHY DID THAT HAVE TO HAPPEN?? Why is he naked???
Since we've already committed this blog entry to "tl;dr" territory, allow me to digress for one more moment here: Is there an actor today with a more mis-matched head and body than Gerard Butler? I mean, you look at a head shot and--while he certainly doesn't look fat or anything--he seems like a guy who knows his way around a beer and a couch.
But then he takes off his shirt (and he WILL take off his shirt; it's in his rider), and it's all like KABLAM-O! He's still rocking the "300" abs.
Moving on.
So he's got a plan to kill everyone he possibly can, no matter how tenuous their connection to his family's murder and subsequent trial. This includes a half dozen random paralegals, his cell mate--who's death serves no purpose other than to get him into the right cell--and, eventually, the mayor. Which, assuming she's the same person who was mayor when the events that sent him over the edge took place, means she's serving at least her third term in that position. Not unprecedented, but just worth pointing out.
And here's the point when we stop harping on the little things and start looking at the story as a whole. Every story needs certain things. Paramount among them are people to fit the protagonist/antagonist roles. The audience needs someone to empathize with and root for. That person doesn't have to be a good guy, and he doesn't have to be nice, but he has to be there.
When it comes to "Law Abiding Citizen", it starts out pretty clean cut: Butler's character watches his family get slaughtered, then seethes with anger at the judicial system that allows the man actually responsible to serve a sentence far below what he's earned. On the flip side is Foxx's Assistant DA, who cuts a deal with a murderer in a move that (as we're hit over the head with in the exposition) is geared solely towards padding his high conviction numbers. He'd rather make a deal for one bad guy then risk a trial to get two. Fine.
But then Gray takes his film sideways on us and we watch the character we've hitched our emotional wagons to slip off the deep end in pretty stunning fashion. We try to stay with him for a bit--who WOULDN'T want to exact slow and painful revenge upon someone who killed our family--but it quickly encompasses a scale to which we're not meant to follow; our good guy is the bad guy. Even that would be fine, except for the fact that Foxx continues to play his character with the same flippant disregard that he had in the beginning of the film and it sets us adrift emotionally. We don't really care about Foxx's character, and we can't care about Gerard's. With no emotional anchor, the film loses all investment and becomes a bunch of random violence that serves only to push us to the next ridiculous scene, rather than to validate our feelings one way or the other.
Gerard is a better actor than his abs would allow you to believe. His biggest flaw as a professional is an apparent ignorance of the fact that he's allowed to say "no" to a script now and then. As for Foxx, while he's certainly a multi-talented dude, he's definitely got his shortcomings. He's musically gifted; he can sing, dance, and is spot on with his impressions (he won an Oscar for one). But if he's not aping someone else, his artistic range is somewhat limited.
My point is that the actors, despite their limitations, do the best they can with what they were given. The blame for this movie turning into a gigantic piece of shit rests completely with Director Gray and writer Kurt Wimmer (who's list of previous credits is rife with films that were brimming with promise and suffered mightily from scripts that were half baked and poorly constructed). This brings us back to my original point.
When you've got a plot that so obviously hinges on such a high number of ridiculous and improbable events--things you're specifically counting on an audience letting slide--it becomes that much more important to meet them half way and to keep the world surrounding those events as "real" as possible. Which is why things like the Assistant DA shaking hands with a convicted murderer or a 10 year old girl playing the cello like she's Rainman counting cards makes it so difficult to swallow the idea of a millionaire ex-black operative buying a ware house next to a prison so he can tunnel underneath the walls and into the solitary holding cells, then commit a crime and get sent to the same prison so he can get put INTO solitary so he can sneak OUT of prison through the tunnels he built...
And it's not a matter of me just not wanting to go along because I feel like some contract has been broken; it's a systemic thing. Once a movie puts you in a position to question small things, it's an easy slope to move on to questioning the things the film centers around. When that happens, the audience is less likely to go on your ride at all.
A good example of this can be found in the Die Hard films. In the first Die Hard, John McClane is introduced to us as efficiently as possible. We see him arriving in LA to spend Christmas with his wife, we see where she works, we meet everyone we need to and there's very little about the story set up prior to Hans Gruber's takeover of the Nakatomi Tower to question. Therefore, when the first belief-suspending coincidence comes up (that John happens to be in the same building Gruber is taking over and happens to be the one person the bad guys don't find when they seize control), we're willing to take that ride. Everything after that is gravy (including more explosion shenanigans).
But as the series progressed, while the method for telling the stories remained pretty much the same, the character of John McClane evolved from "NYPD Everyman" to some kind of GI Joe action hero, until the fourth installment has him killing a helicopter with a car.
So, getting back to this crapfest, when you find yourself starting a movie off asking questions like "why is that murderer standing on the courthouse steps", it gets you in the frame of mind to KEEP asking questions, which leads to things like "why couldn't he do this whole plan from his living room?"
In fact, it seems like the story could have been much more taut if he had conducted the whole plan from his living room. The premise given for his anger is the loopholes and legal procedures that allowed a murderer to walk free after a short jail term. If the movie had spent 90 minutes showing Butler's character killing person after person, yet doing so in a ways that made it impossible for any strong charges to be brought against him, it would have been a film about an angry (crazy) man underscoring the flaws in an imperfect system that's heavily weighted in favor of those who can work it.
I wanted this movie to be better than I suspected it was going to be. It's not like I went to the video store thinking "I kind of want to be frustrated and intellectually insulted for a couple hours", but that's what happened. Which is my clumsy way of segueing into my final point.
As a friend of mine pointed out: "The point of a movie is to entertain. It did its job. Despite being moderately intelligent, I was still entertained by it. I'd call it a 'fun movie', but not a 'good film.'"
There are plenty of stupid movies out there and there's a segment of the population who'll pay to see them. But I don't think that should be allowed to be a viable defense. One of the interesting bi-products of (the perception of) unfettered freedom in America has been the willingness to continually dumb-down our society. This is largely a capitalistic move. In a effort to cash in on the knuckle dragging masses, the lowest common denominator continues to be lowered. The result is that, rather than our arts and entertainment raising the level of our thought and discourse, we allow our bottom feeders to drag the entertainment level down to them. Art imitates life, life reflects art, until we've reached a point in society where people will go on TV for free for the chance to catch an STD from Tila Tequila, and we actually have politicians talking about an opposing politician's extensive education like it's a bad thing.
Look, I'm not saying that every film that comes out needs to be "Primer"; far more people have seen "The Lord of the Rings" than "Le Cercle Rouge" and I'm 100% OK with that. But when Hollywood stands over our collective chests, clenches it's eyes shut and drops a cinematic Cleveland Steamer for us to enjoy, I'm going to revel in my God-given right to mock people who sit in the front row and 'tard clap for it.
No, despite my most ardent wishes, Hollywood does not have a social responsibility to help make us a smarter, more rounded society. And, despite my deepest desires, mainstream films and video games will never reach their true artistic potential because of it. But that's the world we live in, and you don't have to join me in my disappointment. But that won't stop a few of us from fighting the good fight.
1) The following post will feature a few spoilers. So if you haven't seen "Law Abiding Citizen" yet and were still hoping to without knowing too much about it, then I should also probably tell you that Kevin Spacey is the killer in "Seven" and the chick in "The Crying Game" is a dude. I mean come on. You've had six months.
2) For better or worse, everyones tastes in things are different. And it's just human nature for people to take criticism of their tastes as criticism of themselves. So there might be a couple of you out there with particularly thin skins who might read a statement like "this movie goes beyond normal stupid, and moves into 'cast of Deliverance, marry your cousin and have babies with flippers for arms' level stupid", and think that I'm really calling you stupid for liking the movie. Friends. That's why I'm taking the time to include this disclaimer. So I can clear up any potential confusion as early as possible. That's absolutely what I'm doing. This movie is for people who would drown during a heavy rainstorm if someone didn't keep them from looking up to see where the water was coming from. The kind of people who appreciate "The Teletubbies" for it's nuanced character development. Copies of this DVD should have been packaged with a Special Olympics enrollment form.
OK! Now that we've gotten both of those things out of the way, on to the review:
Every film that comes out, be it summer action blockbuster or Indie-darling Oscar fodder, relies to some degree or another on the suspension of disbelief. We, as movie goers, buy into that unspoken contract each time we pay for a ticket. But the thing about willing suspension of disbelief is, we're willing to believe in a LOT of things for the sake of appreciating a story (space operas, for example), but you had damn well better get the little shit right.
Case in point: When sitting in the theater with a friend watching Paul Verhoeven's faux-propaganda masterpiece Starship Troopers, we sat in rapt attention while an army of Space Marines fought with a planet of impossibly sized bugs so they could capture one to be handed over to the military psychics. All disbelief was willingly suspended until this scene.
My friend turned to me and snorted at the idea of three people not only outrunning an explosion, but turning and looking back several times to check their progress. It didn't completely ruin the movie for us, but it certainly pulled you out of the moment of the scene. Explosions are an especially common example. One of the things that made Scifi fanboys shoot a big creamy one over Joss Whedon's wildly under-appreciated Firefly was the fact that he shot all of his space action sequences with no sound. Because there's no fucking sound in space.
But I've gotten off track.
What does ANY of the above have to do with Law Abiding Citizen, you might be wondering. Well at the films heart, there's actually a really excellent story idea. And the whole thing gets blown 11 minutes in, when Jamie Foxx's Assistant DA character shakes hands with a convicted murderer.
The way the film kick off is that King Leonidas' family gets killed by a couple of burglars. After watching his family die but surviving his own wounds, his majesty has to then watch the ensuing legal wrangling as the man who actually did all the killing makes a deal with Ray Charles to pin the murders on his accomplice. In exchange for throwing his buddy under the bus, the real killer pleads guilty to murder in the third degree and will serve a few years in prison while his partner gets the death penalty. This makes Leonidas mad. Realllly mad. And the image that burns into his mind is one of Ray Charles standing on the steps of the courthouse. See, he's there explaining the deal to reporters and up walks his new best friend the murderer with the cops who are supposed to be taking him back to jail. He holds out his hand in a mock show of friendship and Ray Charles shakes it.
RIGHT THERE!
There is so much wrong with that ONE scene, that the wheels came right off this wagon for me. Quick, bring up Google in a different window. Now do a search and find me a photo of a prosecuting attorney shaking hands with the dude he's sending to jail. I'll wait. I've got some chips here.
It's damn hard to find, right? Because it doesn't happen! See, the thing is, even though the DA cut a deal, and even though one guy is helping send another guy to death row, none of that changes the fact that the first guy is STILL being convicted of murder. And DAs don't like to take pictures shaking hands with murderers. And that's without bringing up questions like "why was this convicted murderer allowed within 10 feet of the man who's currently bragging to the press about sending him to prison?" And "Why was the convicted murderer being brought out the front doors anyway?" So much wrong with that scene.
"But so what?" You might be saying. "That's one scene in a 90 minute film. You can't let one thing ruin the whole movie." Oh friends, I didn't. The film resumed getting the small things wrong just four minutes later, when we fast forward 10 years and we see Ray Charles' daughter go to a music recital, pick up a cello and proceed to rock that shit like she's Yo-Yo Ma. Throughout the film, Director F. Gary Gray continues to botch the little stuff which, unfortunately, has the effect of underscoring just how preposterous the big stuff--the stuff for which we'd normally try and suspend our disbelief--really is.
So King Leonidas goes off the deep end and hatches a grand plan to get revenge on the DA's office, the people who killed his family, the judge, the cops, random inmates, the entire city of Philadelphia...pretty much everyone. It's a plan that involves getting arrested for one murder, so he can go to jail, so he can break out of jail, so he can commit MORE murders...so he can try and get the DA to make a deal to let him out of jail.
And just so things can begin as weirdly as possible, the whole plan starts like this.
WHY DID THAT HAVE TO HAPPEN?? Why is he naked???
Since we've already committed this blog entry to "tl;dr" territory, allow me to digress for one more moment here: Is there an actor today with a more mis-matched head and body than Gerard Butler? I mean, you look at a head shot and--while he certainly doesn't look fat or anything--he seems like a guy who knows his way around a beer and a couch.
But then he takes off his shirt (and he WILL take off his shirt; it's in his rider), and it's all like KABLAM-O! He's still rocking the "300" abs.
Moving on.
So he's got a plan to kill everyone he possibly can, no matter how tenuous their connection to his family's murder and subsequent trial. This includes a half dozen random paralegals, his cell mate--who's death serves no purpose other than to get him into the right cell--and, eventually, the mayor. Which, assuming she's the same person who was mayor when the events that sent him over the edge took place, means she's serving at least her third term in that position. Not unprecedented, but just worth pointing out.
And here's the point when we stop harping on the little things and start looking at the story as a whole. Every story needs certain things. Paramount among them are people to fit the protagonist/antagonist roles. The audience needs someone to empathize with and root for. That person doesn't have to be a good guy, and he doesn't have to be nice, but he has to be there.
When it comes to "Law Abiding Citizen", it starts out pretty clean cut: Butler's character watches his family get slaughtered, then seethes with anger at the judicial system that allows the man actually responsible to serve a sentence far below what he's earned. On the flip side is Foxx's Assistant DA, who cuts a deal with a murderer in a move that (as we're hit over the head with in the exposition) is geared solely towards padding his high conviction numbers. He'd rather make a deal for one bad guy then risk a trial to get two. Fine.
But then Gray takes his film sideways on us and we watch the character we've hitched our emotional wagons to slip off the deep end in pretty stunning fashion. We try to stay with him for a bit--who WOULDN'T want to exact slow and painful revenge upon someone who killed our family--but it quickly encompasses a scale to which we're not meant to follow; our good guy is the bad guy. Even that would be fine, except for the fact that Foxx continues to play his character with the same flippant disregard that he had in the beginning of the film and it sets us adrift emotionally. We don't really care about Foxx's character, and we can't care about Gerard's. With no emotional anchor, the film loses all investment and becomes a bunch of random violence that serves only to push us to the next ridiculous scene, rather than to validate our feelings one way or the other.
Gerard is a better actor than his abs would allow you to believe. His biggest flaw as a professional is an apparent ignorance of the fact that he's allowed to say "no" to a script now and then. As for Foxx, while he's certainly a multi-talented dude, he's definitely got his shortcomings. He's musically gifted; he can sing, dance, and is spot on with his impressions (he won an Oscar for one). But if he's not aping someone else, his artistic range is somewhat limited.
My point is that the actors, despite their limitations, do the best they can with what they were given. The blame for this movie turning into a gigantic piece of shit rests completely with Director Gray and writer Kurt Wimmer (who's list of previous credits is rife with films that were brimming with promise and suffered mightily from scripts that were half baked and poorly constructed). This brings us back to my original point.
When you've got a plot that so obviously hinges on such a high number of ridiculous and improbable events--things you're specifically counting on an audience letting slide--it becomes that much more important to meet them half way and to keep the world surrounding those events as "real" as possible. Which is why things like the Assistant DA shaking hands with a convicted murderer or a 10 year old girl playing the cello like she's Rainman counting cards makes it so difficult to swallow the idea of a millionaire ex-black operative buying a ware house next to a prison so he can tunnel underneath the walls and into the solitary holding cells, then commit a crime and get sent to the same prison so he can get put INTO solitary so he can sneak OUT of prison through the tunnels he built...
And it's not a matter of me just not wanting to go along because I feel like some contract has been broken; it's a systemic thing. Once a movie puts you in a position to question small things, it's an easy slope to move on to questioning the things the film centers around. When that happens, the audience is less likely to go on your ride at all.
A good example of this can be found in the Die Hard films. In the first Die Hard, John McClane is introduced to us as efficiently as possible. We see him arriving in LA to spend Christmas with his wife, we see where she works, we meet everyone we need to and there's very little about the story set up prior to Hans Gruber's takeover of the Nakatomi Tower to question. Therefore, when the first belief-suspending coincidence comes up (that John happens to be in the same building Gruber is taking over and happens to be the one person the bad guys don't find when they seize control), we're willing to take that ride. Everything after that is gravy (including more explosion shenanigans).
But as the series progressed, while the method for telling the stories remained pretty much the same, the character of John McClane evolved from "NYPD Everyman" to some kind of GI Joe action hero, until the fourth installment has him killing a helicopter with a car.
So, getting back to this crapfest, when you find yourself starting a movie off asking questions like "why is that murderer standing on the courthouse steps", it gets you in the frame of mind to KEEP asking questions, which leads to things like "why couldn't he do this whole plan from his living room?"
In fact, it seems like the story could have been much more taut if he had conducted the whole plan from his living room. The premise given for his anger is the loopholes and legal procedures that allowed a murderer to walk free after a short jail term. If the movie had spent 90 minutes showing Butler's character killing person after person, yet doing so in a ways that made it impossible for any strong charges to be brought against him, it would have been a film about an angry (crazy) man underscoring the flaws in an imperfect system that's heavily weighted in favor of those who can work it.
I wanted this movie to be better than I suspected it was going to be. It's not like I went to the video store thinking "I kind of want to be frustrated and intellectually insulted for a couple hours", but that's what happened. Which is my clumsy way of segueing into my final point.
As a friend of mine pointed out: "The point of a movie is to entertain. It did its job. Despite being moderately intelligent, I was still entertained by it. I'd call it a 'fun movie', but not a 'good film.'"
There are plenty of stupid movies out there and there's a segment of the population who'll pay to see them. But I don't think that should be allowed to be a viable defense. One of the interesting bi-products of (the perception of) unfettered freedom in America has been the willingness to continually dumb-down our society. This is largely a capitalistic move. In a effort to cash in on the knuckle dragging masses, the lowest common denominator continues to be lowered. The result is that, rather than our arts and entertainment raising the level of our thought and discourse, we allow our bottom feeders to drag the entertainment level down to them. Art imitates life, life reflects art, until we've reached a point in society where people will go on TV for free for the chance to catch an STD from Tila Tequila, and we actually have politicians talking about an opposing politician's extensive education like it's a bad thing.
Look, I'm not saying that every film that comes out needs to be "Primer"; far more people have seen "The Lord of the Rings" than "Le Cercle Rouge" and I'm 100% OK with that. But when Hollywood stands over our collective chests, clenches it's eyes shut and drops a cinematic Cleveland Steamer for us to enjoy, I'm going to revel in my God-given right to mock people who sit in the front row and 'tard clap for it.
No, despite my most ardent wishes, Hollywood does not have a social responsibility to help make us a smarter, more rounded society. And, despite my deepest desires, mainstream films and video games will never reach their true artistic potential because of it. But that's the world we live in, and you don't have to join me in my disappointment. But that won't stop a few of us from fighting the good fight.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Extra Sausage
I didn't realize until he was getting ready to close the door that the guy I just delivered a pizza to wasn't wearing pants.
It was last summer, and I was delivering on the city's west side. This particular deliver was later in the evening--about 10 or so--and I was looking forward to going home. The way I usually deliver a pizza is like this: I walk up to the door, greet the person, then pull their order out of the bag and set it on top of the bag so I don't burn my hand. I remind them of the total, take their cash, then hold the order out and let them lift if off the top of the hot bag. This was exactly what happened here.
He came to the door, I pulled his pizza out of the bag and told him the price. I took the cash and held the pizza out until he took it off the top of the bag. Because of the way I hold the oder out to the customer, I couldn't see him from about mid-chest down until I lowered the bag. That was when I noticed his penis was flapping at me.
But the whole time before that, he had been completely nonchalant about the fact that his pork and beans were in the apartment hallway. Nothing. When he answered the door, there was no looking from my eyes down to his waist and back up; no "lookit what I've got" eyebrow raise; he didn't answer the door with a hearty "How's your evening? Look at my penis!" So the whole time that I'm holding his pizza out to him and he's counting out ones and handing me the cash and taking the pizza, I had absolutely no inkling what was down there. Then I lowered the bag and went to put the cash in my pocket...and there's this guys lil spittin' cobra looking at me with its one good eye. I took a half jump back and think I even squeaked a little.
Even THEN, things didn't turn weird(er). He didn't wink and invite me in. There was no cheap innuendo about offering me a better tip. Nothing. In fact, he was so blasé about it that for a moment, I wondered if I was the weirdo because I was wearing pants. He told me to have a good night, and closed the door.
What. The. Hell.
I've had chicks answer the door in underwear before. I've gone to houses where people were sitting around looking at porn. Corey Taylor of the band Slipknot lives in our delivery area and he's fond of ordering pizzas for parties he throws and having naked ladies answer the door. So it's not like you don't get used to seeing strange stuff when you deliver things to people's homes late at night. But the thing of it is, when people DO shit like that, they usually do it for the effect. Chicks will answer the door in their bras to watch the guys eyes bug out at the gift of free boobies. People do shocking stuff for the shock. At least, people do things they THINK are shocking for the CHANCE to shock people. Most delivery drivers, we see a guy or a chick in their underwear, we just shrug and assume that means we're not getting tipped.
But this guy did absolutely nothing to call attention to it. And once I finally noticed, he STILL didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He didn't even laugh at my--admittedly--funny reaction. That made the experience even more strange.
Whenever someone tries to make the argument that delivery drivers don't deserved to be tipped, I think of that guys penisokyousee, now, that didn't come out right. (that's what she said) Let me try again: Whenever someone says delivery drivers don't deserve our tips, I think of that evening. People say "I tip waitresses because they bring my food, refill my drinks, and do other things that drivers don't do!" And I think "AND THEY NEVER SEE YOUR DICK!"
It was last summer, and I was delivering on the city's west side. This particular deliver was later in the evening--about 10 or so--and I was looking forward to going home. The way I usually deliver a pizza is like this: I walk up to the door, greet the person, then pull their order out of the bag and set it on top of the bag so I don't burn my hand. I remind them of the total, take their cash, then hold the order out and let them lift if off the top of the hot bag. This was exactly what happened here.
He came to the door, I pulled his pizza out of the bag and told him the price. I took the cash and held the pizza out until he took it off the top of the bag. Because of the way I hold the oder out to the customer, I couldn't see him from about mid-chest down until I lowered the bag. That was when I noticed his penis was flapping at me.
But the whole time before that, he had been completely nonchalant about the fact that his pork and beans were in the apartment hallway. Nothing. When he answered the door, there was no looking from my eyes down to his waist and back up; no "lookit what I've got" eyebrow raise; he didn't answer the door with a hearty "How's your evening? Look at my penis!" So the whole time that I'm holding his pizza out to him and he's counting out ones and handing me the cash and taking the pizza, I had absolutely no inkling what was down there. Then I lowered the bag and went to put the cash in my pocket...and there's this guys lil spittin' cobra looking at me with its one good eye. I took a half jump back and think I even squeaked a little.
Even THEN, things didn't turn weird(er). He didn't wink and invite me in. There was no cheap innuendo about offering me a better tip. Nothing. In fact, he was so blasé about it that for a moment, I wondered if I was the weirdo because I was wearing pants. He told me to have a good night, and closed the door.
What. The. Hell.
I've had chicks answer the door in underwear before. I've gone to houses where people were sitting around looking at porn. Corey Taylor of the band Slipknot lives in our delivery area and he's fond of ordering pizzas for parties he throws and having naked ladies answer the door. So it's not like you don't get used to seeing strange stuff when you deliver things to people's homes late at night. But the thing of it is, when people DO shit like that, they usually do it for the effect. Chicks will answer the door in their bras to watch the guys eyes bug out at the gift of free boobies. People do shocking stuff for the shock. At least, people do things they THINK are shocking for the CHANCE to shock people. Most delivery drivers, we see a guy or a chick in their underwear, we just shrug and assume that means we're not getting tipped.
But this guy did absolutely nothing to call attention to it. And once I finally noticed, he STILL didn't do anything out of the ordinary. He didn't even laugh at my--admittedly--funny reaction. That made the experience even more strange.
Whenever someone tries to make the argument that delivery drivers don't deserved to be tipped, I think of that guys penisokyousee, now, that didn't come out right. (that's what she said) Let me try again: Whenever someone says delivery drivers don't deserve our tips, I think of that evening. People say "I tip waitresses because they bring my food, refill my drinks, and do other things that drivers don't do!" And I think "AND THEY NEVER SEE YOUR DICK!"
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Zen and the Art of Pizza Delivery
My dad's a cop. He's been with the police force for 19 years or so now, but he got a late start in his police career, not going through the Academy until he was 42. But the thing of it is, my dad was a cop before he was a cop, if you know what I mean. He's always been the authoritarian, good with keeping tabs on things, willing to bust his ass for what he thought was right. So when he actually became a cop, it was like "oh yeah, this fits."
So, for better or worse, it's save to say that I've pretty much always been a pizza delivery guy.
It's easy to see how people could look at that statement and pull a negative connotation from it, or assume that I'm being self deprecating. After all, you think of pizza guys, you think of stoned slackers who want to work as little as possible and spend their free time riding their fixies and listening to Zepplin in their parents basement. I'm not going to say that any of that is false for a lot of drivers.
But I think that--whether they realize it or not--many drivers have a far more zen-like approach to life than the average person. We all do the job for the tips and the ability to have a decent amount of walking around cash in our pockets, but no one ever became a pizza driver under the auspices of becoming rich from it. And most of us are fine with that. Myself, for example: I only deliver three to four days a week, averaging right around 20-25 hours. My paychecks are juuuuuust enough to pay my rent and bills, and the tip money keeps me in food and DVD's. It's not very Rand-ian of me, but it certainly fits the "pursuit of happiness" portion of the American Dream.
Another thing that attracts many of us to the job, is the impermanence of the whole thing. I'm personal friends with the owners of my shop. I first started working for them when I was 18 and they had one store in town. Now I'm 34 and they've expanded to 11 locations in two states. I haven't worked for them the entire time, but rather I've come and gone pretty much as I've pleased. If I decide tomorrow that I've got to get out of dodge for a while, I can say the word and walk away from the job without causing any real disruption for them. And, when I finally arrived at my chosen destination, there's a pretty solid chance that I could get a job the same day delivering pizza somewhere. As I mentioned in my first post, there's not a huge screening process for drivers at most places; there are usually not a lot of questions asked beyond "do you have a car?" "can you find your way around?" and "can you keep your pants on for six consecutive hours?" As a general rule, as long as you can show up when asked, get food from one place to another without it going cold, and don't steal your bank at the end of the day, you can deliver pizzas whenever and wherever you want. It opens up a lot of options for a person who's looking for a more languid approach to life. Which is why it tends to attract stoned slackers. That and the pizza, of course.
I guess what I like most about all of the above, or the thing that most defines the majority of the drivers I know is that we don't tend to define ourselves by our jobs (says the guy with a pizza blog). I happen to deliver pizzas to pay my bills at the moment. I didn't always, and I might choose to stop tomorrow. But in the meantime, the method by which I get my cash isn't a reflection of who I am or what I want out of life; it's a means to end. Granted, not being defined by my job also means I'm not particularly fulfilled by it, either. But I've got other things to do that. My friends. My kittens. A ton of old generation video games. I don't come home at night worrying about the next day or sweating something that happened at work. I come home at night with breadsticks. And for now, that's a pretty sweet way to go.
So, for better or worse, it's save to say that I've pretty much always been a pizza delivery guy.
It's easy to see how people could look at that statement and pull a negative connotation from it, or assume that I'm being self deprecating. After all, you think of pizza guys, you think of stoned slackers who want to work as little as possible and spend their free time riding their fixies and listening to Zepplin in their parents basement. I'm not going to say that any of that is false for a lot of drivers.
But I think that--whether they realize it or not--many drivers have a far more zen-like approach to life than the average person. We all do the job for the tips and the ability to have a decent amount of walking around cash in our pockets, but no one ever became a pizza driver under the auspices of becoming rich from it. And most of us are fine with that. Myself, for example: I only deliver three to four days a week, averaging right around 20-25 hours. My paychecks are juuuuuust enough to pay my rent and bills, and the tip money keeps me in food and DVD's. It's not very Rand-ian of me, but it certainly fits the "pursuit of happiness" portion of the American Dream.
Another thing that attracts many of us to the job, is the impermanence of the whole thing. I'm personal friends with the owners of my shop. I first started working for them when I was 18 and they had one store in town. Now I'm 34 and they've expanded to 11 locations in two states. I haven't worked for them the entire time, but rather I've come and gone pretty much as I've pleased. If I decide tomorrow that I've got to get out of dodge for a while, I can say the word and walk away from the job without causing any real disruption for them. And, when I finally arrived at my chosen destination, there's a pretty solid chance that I could get a job the same day delivering pizza somewhere. As I mentioned in my first post, there's not a huge screening process for drivers at most places; there are usually not a lot of questions asked beyond "do you have a car?" "can you find your way around?" and "can you keep your pants on for six consecutive hours?" As a general rule, as long as you can show up when asked, get food from one place to another without it going cold, and don't steal your bank at the end of the day, you can deliver pizzas whenever and wherever you want. It opens up a lot of options for a person who's looking for a more languid approach to life. Which is why it tends to attract stoned slackers. That and the pizza, of course.
I guess what I like most about all of the above, or the thing that most defines the majority of the drivers I know is that we don't tend to define ourselves by our jobs (says the guy with a pizza blog). I happen to deliver pizzas to pay my bills at the moment. I didn't always, and I might choose to stop tomorrow. But in the meantime, the method by which I get my cash isn't a reflection of who I am or what I want out of life; it's a means to end. Granted, not being defined by my job also means I'm not particularly fulfilled by it, either. But I've got other things to do that. My friends. My kittens. A ton of old generation video games. I don't come home at night worrying about the next day or sweating something that happened at work. I come home at night with breadsticks. And for now, that's a pretty sweet way to go.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
I broke my taint today
I finally got to ride my new bike today. A fixed gear, for anyone who's interested in such information. I hadn't actually "ridden" a bike in probably 4 years or so, but I bought a new one so that I could add another dimension to the slimmer, more active, "now with more sexy!" me that I've been working on and I've been looking forward to a day that was dry/warm/free enough to give it a spin. Today was that day.
The actual ride number one went pretty well. There will be an adjustment period to get used to actually riding again, but I expected that, and I wound up making the ride from my gym to my apartment--about 45 blocks--in right around 20 minutes. The ride TO the gym will probably be a different story, as it's mostly uphill, but today I felt pretty good. I got home, whipped up a bowl of oatmeal and sat down to watch the first 140 hours or so of Ken Burns' "The Civil War" (oh, General McClellan. You're so gosh darned lovable with your borderline treasonous rhetoric and crippling military ineptitude!). All was well.
Well, that is, until about 4:00, when I got up to get ready to join a friend for a bite to eat. Lying down on my living room floor, surrounded by oatmeal and kittens, everything was sunshine and lolly pops. Standing up and trying to walk around, however, was all screaming pain and flaming taint*. Seriously, I know I was concentrating on not getting hit by cars and everything, but I still figured I would remember having the bicycle seat actually plunge into my ass. Especially if, as it seems to feel like, it had gone up there sideways. I mean, what the fuck?
I've never had this problem before. I don't mean to brag or anything, but there was a time when I was the 10th or 12th best horse rider at the Dubuque, Iowa YMCA Day Camp. And I never remember getting particularly saddle sore. It's true that I haven't ridden a bike in a while, and not regularly since I was in Junior High, but when I think back to those times, I never once remember wanting to rub Icy Hot on the underside of my coin purse.
And while we're on THAT topic, let me just say for anyone who's thinking that possibly sounds like a good idea that it totally is not. Icy Hot is great on shoulders. Arms, chests, thighs and calves are all fine, too. But don't go anywhere NEAR that whole butt/taint/dangles and orbs area. Sweet Jesus, it's like someone hit my dusty runway with a tazer. While kicking me in the sack. With another tazer. Made of Icy Hot.
I've been looking at different seats for my bike. It's something I was probably going to do anyway, since I'd planned on customizing it a bit when I had the cash. But now that I know that my current seat is made of granite and the fiery tongue of Satan himself, I think the seat issue has been upgraded to "necessity". I am, however, happy to say that it hasn't dimmed my love for my new bike. Gritting through the pain (and the residual burning of my pelvis's version of Dresden), I actually managed to mount up again when I got back from dinner and take a dying light spin around the block. I won't have time to ride it tomorrow, but you can bet that I'll be back out there again Saturday. But that's one of the wonderful things about getting involved in a regular workout program; once you get beyond the starting aches and pains, not only do you start looking forward to your regular workouts, but you start looking for other ways to start being a healthier, more fit person. And enjoying them.
So I'm a bike rider now, or at least I will be, once I either toughen up my ass crack or find a seat made out of cotton and baby seal eyes.
*"Flaming Taint" is currently sitting at #5 on my list of "greatest band name ideas", and I've officially called "dibs". So any of you out there who have been reading my blog in search of the perfect name for your punk band: move along. There's nothing to see here, bitches.
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