Discomfort Foods

I DO NOT mean to suggest that today's lunch has caused me any kind of distress or discom-fort, which it has not, although God knows, I have been told all my life that this is precisely the kind of thing no one should ever eat. (Although everyone does.) This is the double cheeseburger, which this time, just out of chance, comes equipped with two extra thick slices of American cheese, and by design, two almost disparate seasonings: Celtic sea salt and cracked green pepercorn on one patty, and pre-packaged Lowry's Garlic Pepper on the other. The IPA is from the Bridgeport Brewing Co., and frankly I was expecting a great deal more from it. It was properly hoppy, but didn't really live up to the "Five Floral Hops!" hype on the bottleneck tag. Also, the body was a little thin for an IPA, which is to say that if this were coming from another microbrewery, it would probably have been touted as "Refreshing!" and "Perfect for the hot days of summer to come!" Not that it was in any way bad, or even inadequate, just not as extreme as I usually like my IPAs.

(I was tempted to say something along the lines of "If Budweiser made an IPA, this is what it would be like," and then take it back, but that's a hell of a thing to say, even if taken back, so I'd rather just not say it to begin with.)

The film of the day, well, I was nuts even to think about it.

This is something that I remember hearing about way back when, but never knew too much more about than what legend brought: famous film nobody's ever seen, which never ever shows up on TV, directed by the Great George Romero, whom many serious film critics considered then, and still consider today, a hack. It was also said to be a rip-off of the film based on the Michael Crichton novel The Andromeda Strain, which it both is and isn't. We almost went to see the remake last year when it was in theaters after they Democratized it-- "Hey, we know it's not a GREAT idea, but what if we thow alot of money at it?"-- but eventually didn't, I think mainly because we were busy with roller derby stuff. When news came out that it had been released to DVD, I sprinted to stick it in the Netflix queue, and then decided that, in order to really do it right, I needed to get the original and watch it, whether before the remeake or after. (Neither would matter too terribly, since I already know how it ends-- and if you are reading this site and need to be told that SPOILERS are coming, you're either new here, or simply not very ALERT.) So I did. With the result that the original 1973 film version of The Crazies is way, way better than it has any right to be.

First and foremost, it has that flat kind of 1970's directorial style that I never understood, which almost always has the effect of putting the characters at a remove. Now, I always thought, and to a degree still believe, that this was a way for directors making movies on the cheap with the understanding that the finished product would be delivered into the distribution pachinko machine with no guarantee that it would ever be judged for its quality to hide the fact that some of the actors were just no fucking good at all, and were hired as much for a great body, willing libido, or ready access to drugs as for whatever talent they might posess. In this case, the posit is almost uniformly disproven: all of the actors aquitted themselves marvelously, and absolutely shone through, despite the flat directorial style. (Or maybe that's just the nature of the cinematography of the era, I don't know.) The script was also marvelously done, with huge chunks of dialogue that go from "I SAID GET IT DONE NOW!" straight to "Look, I know you don't understand this, neither do I, but we're trying to save lives here." Basically, this ensures that pretty much every character gets a chance to come off as sympathetic. Up to an including the military types. With that, it's off to do a little plot synopsizing.

A plane carrying a military grade bio-weapon crashes in the hills near a remote rural town and the ground water gets contaminated with the agent, which is a virus designed to turn the enemy murderously insane, so that they would kill each other and, eventually, themselves. (This is something our government did, in fact, try to do; no dice.) (Make the weapon, not poison a town. Hold your horses there, conspiracy theorists.) The army shows up to try and contain the contamination and stem the infection using antibiotics-- and the containment crew is initially told what they are trying to stem is an accidental release of an inocculant, which totally is not the word I am looking for, and only learn that what they're fighting is a bio weapon about a third of the way in. The people go slowly insane, a handful try to escape the quarantine, the soldiers go around acting like soldiers, and eventually almost everybody is dead. Then the head military guy on the ground gets a peevish message that he's aaaaaa . . . needed in anoooother town . . . He he! You sure did a fine job there, but, well, there's a developing situation, and since you did ssssssoooooooooooooo well there, we, well, we'd like you to take over the next operation.

Antibody! THAT's the word!

Anyways, this was probably more gripping than the 1990 film Crazy People, which starred Dudley Moore as an ad exec who goes crazy Spring Break style and starts telling The Truth-- and, how crrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzy is this? IT WORKS! And people start buying Metamucil so they won't get cancer and die! I remember watching it and hating it on HBO back in the day, and then about a week and a half ago stumbled across it as I was having the morning coffee and decided I would give it another try. The point is that no film will ever be more cynical, negative, caustic, or difficult to watch than Crazy People. I couldn't be bothered to dig up a copy of the poster.

And although The Crazies does crib some basic points from The Andromeda Strain, it's way scarier. The accident that leads to the infection releases something dastardly that was to be released on purpose. As the film goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell who is going insane due to the infection, who is going insane from the stress, or who was just kind of a crazy asshole to begin with. And, in the end, it turns out that the big brains running the machine aren't really all that on top of things anyways. Heckuva job, Brownie.


This will not be the movie of the night, or tomorrow night, or this weekend. After I stuck it in the queue and it made its way to the number one slot, next to be mailed out, its status changed from AVAILABE NOW to LONG WAIT to VERY LONG WAIT. Usually when a disc gets there, it just never ever ever ever ever comes. Oh, well.



PS: Guess what just came in the mail? Crrraay-zeeee . . .