Meritocracy

SO FALL has fell, and it's time to start indulging in things that make good sense in cold weather. After all, this is the Lower Piedmont region of North Carolina, so it very well might be back into the mid 80s by Thanksgiving. So this little cold snap, lows in the 50's, high of 70 today, calls boldly and definitively for beef stew. (Of course I added cheese. Who the hell do you think you're talking to here?) (Wow. That was meta.) The bread roll was slightly old, not quite stale but very crusty. Just perfect, actually. The selection of the beers didn't actually seem to make any difference. The IPA and the Pale Ale went along pretty well, but I seem to think that almost anything would have done.

This, on the other hand. I gotta say I think the beer made quite a huge difference here. This is a Sam Fuller joint that, having seen and mostly enjoyed The Ninth Configuration, I knew I was going to come around to sooner or later. Having read descriptions of the basic plot, I could see where there must have been influences of this on that, and Blatty's thing was so weird and weirdly satisfying-- and Fuller's reputation as both a crackpot and a genius filmmaker-- that eventually I had to see it.

And, well, wow. Just wow. What a heap of psychological misconceptions wrapped in shredded, twisted Freudian dogma. (Oh, and do peep that poster. It's the one that Wikipedia uses in their article on the click. There are NO TITS in this movie. No exposed ones anyways, at least not that I saw. Remember, I was making stew at the time as well.) At one point, the main character undergoes electroconvulsive shock, comes out clear and cogent with, as opposed to the expected memory loss, an enhanced memory of events, and the side effedt of losing his ability to consciously speak, getting trapped in an interior monologue that gets more maddening the longer it goes on. This is a side effect of electroconvulsive shock therapy that has NEVER BEEN REPORTED IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE.

That about says it all right there. Just got things wrong, all the way along. Every five minutes, almost like it was planned that way.

But I could not stop watching. As rotten as it was, as much as it got wrong, as silly as the faking a dominant incestual relationship with the stripper who is his girlfriend but is pretending to be his sister so that Our Hero will be involuntarily commited to an insane asylum so he can uncover who killed one of the inmates PLOTLINE is, it's still pretty mesmerizing in its own way. Definitely some striking images, commited (HAH!) perfomances, not least by James Best, most usually known as the genius who gave us the character of Idiot Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane, and some passages alogorizing insanity that were, despite the film's rampant silliness, pretty damned harrowing.

This turned out to be the morning movie, just by virtue of there not being a whole lot else on to watch. I first caught this in high school, fortunately in the company of a romantic schlub who really liked Woody Allen-- and had never seen any of the heavy slapsticks, like Bananas or Sleeper, which, doubtless, helps in appreciating the later work-- and who thus argued sucessfully for me to see the thing despite its faults, all of which he graciously pointed out, to the point where we walked out of the screening with me arguing for the film as a rich, slice of life portrait of a certain class of modern New Yorkers, and my freind arguing that he ought to get kicked in the head for ever suggesting anyone ought to see that slice of pretentious horse shit ever under any circumstances.

And, oddly, I think we were both right. This is a film I can enjoy, so long as I can nip in and out, enjoy the music and the beautiful cityscapes and the quaintly crappy interiors and the naturalistic acting, and not try to convince myself that, in 1970s Manhattan, sophisticated people had entire cocktail party conversations about orgasms in theory and practice.

So do I recommend it? Hell, yeah. Throw on a flannel and jeans, open up the doors and windows, make yourself a hot bowl of stew, and pretend you're ready to settle in for a long, cold winter. So far, in my expereicne, the films of Sam Fuller are to be approached with skepticism and a length of lead pipe. And if you can stomach Allen in what I like to refer to as his pre-offensive period, go for it. Also, scope that gorgeous little Porsche tootling up the West Side Highway! I'd damned near sit through the whole thing for that one scene alone.

Almost.

I Got Yer Dark Ages Right Here

(Sorry. I am watching a show on the History Channel anout The Dark Ages, and they just went through the segment about whether the Dark Ages deserve to be called The Dark Ages, and they went through a brief explication of the fact that Petrarch coined the term, without bothering to note that Petrarch was a snob. Ahem.)
Back in 1989, when hurricane Hugo came through our fair city, I just happened to have a pot of chili in the fridge. For the next three days, cold chili was basically my diet, since there was no power and, being a college student, I didn't have anything else on hand. You might have thought that experience would have poisoned me on chili for the rest of my life, but no. A week later, after power was restored, the first thing I did was make a fresh pot of chili, and the following day lunch was the then ubiquitous chili cheese grilled sandwich. Far above being the best thing I ate that week-- my pal Dog Nagel staked me to a meal at the first joint we found open, which was Sonny's Barbeque, which sucks-- it was absolutely revelatory. It's not just food. It is love.


This was the result of, let us say one of the by-products of, the Wifey's coice to attend Dragon Con this year, and a damned good thing too. I think we had both heard bits and pieces about it over the last year, and I seem to think that the History channel screened it at some point, but getting it on DVD and sitting down and just chewing though the damned thing was the best way to do it. Even at that, there was a HELL of a lot of shorthand involved. James Marsters, who played Buzz Aldren-- oops! More shorthand required: this is a biopic detailing the Apollo 11 mission. So Marsters did a preso at the D*C and dished quite a bit of background, which the Wifey parsed out as we watched, and then I, with my own extensive knowledge of the moon landing, kicked in what I knew on background, and back and forth through the whole thing, to the point where we came to the conclusion that you might not have any real shot at enjoying this if you didn't have significant background to deal from. Whether that's true or not, eeeehhhhh, dunno. We managed to enjoy it, anyways, so that's enough for us.

This, on the other hand . . . We watched an unfinished version of it on a draft DVD about six months ago, with disjointed subtitles and about half the English commentary of the finished version, but I knew enough about the era of F1 involved and the driver himself-- Woops! This is a doc on the life and death of Ayreton Senna, possibly, no, probably, no, certainly the best Formula 1 race car driver of all time-- that we managed to digest and enjoy it with little effort. My Dad and I then went to watch the finished version, in it's limited release, at one of the local part-time art film theaters a week and a half ago. I enjoyed the hell out of it-- better subtitles, more racing footage than there had been in the scratch cut, more English speaking talking heads, and a lot more footage of Senna himself-- but my Dad seemed to think he would have enjoyed it more had there been mor subtext and explanation. And he's right. It'd be good to know that the first four seasons Senna competed in were not held solely at Susuka in Japan, just that that's where the final race of those seasons took place, so that's where the driver's championship was usually decided. Etcetera. I was going to keep going, but, honestly, it's F1. I find it largely the case that, on this subject, you either already know or just don't care.

This. Um. Well! This . . . This I tuned into periodically while I watched Tony Bourdain's show about Dubai, which is wack, and almost got sucked in several times. Ray Wolstone as an ethics professor! Tony Perkins as a star basketball player! Hanoi Jane as an embryo! And say what you will about her politics, she was, back in the day, and continues to be, and incredible piece of pulchritude. (And honestly, her politics don't bother me that much, largely because she really doesn't seem to have much in the way of politics, frankly.) But I just couldn't stick it out, in any way whatsoever, because it was just too ridiculous. Pop psychology and a bullet primer on the philosophical groundings of ethics drive a plot about a failing scholor who happens to be a hot shot on the court being offered a bribe to throw the big game against-- get this-- the Sputniks. I didn't stick around long enough to find out if they were supposed to be Russian or not. But I was there for the big punch line, wherein the hero is told to tell the ethics prof all he knew about Socrates. ("Socrates was a Greek. And they poisoned him.") Wherafter the Dean (or something) declares he passed the quiz because that's literally all he knew about Socrates. Now eat your spinach!

So do I recommend it? Hard to say. I think it takes a particular form of stalwart to even contemplate the notion of a chili cheese sandwich. It also violates at least five points of the Unified Sandwich Theory, not that you'd care per se. I suppose if you know enough about the moon shot you could enjoy Moon Shot, but I think being a big fan of either astronautics or James Martsters would help. You're only going to go see Senna if you're a fan of Senna or with one. But I can't see any reason in the world why you'd want to sit through Tall Story, unless your name was Alex and you were being reconditioned, in which case it might just make for a pleasant change of pace.

SO THIS IS not the lunch of the day. This was yesterday's lunch, the ubiquitous double cheese-burger, which I am in no way tempted to start calling a Royale With Cheese. No way. Well, maybe a little.

The beer here is the real story. This was yet another accidental purchase, something that I thought was on sale for 14 bucks for the variety 12 pack but was actually 18. (Yes, I know this is becoming a familiar story around here, and no, I don't think it's psychological, at least not yet.) The brand in question here is Peak Organic, out of Portland, Maine. The products are exactly what they would seem to be, high-end, organic, micro-brewed beer, and precisely the high quality product you ought to get for the price. In fact, eighteen bucks is maybe even a little cheap, but I am not generally in the habit of buying stuff in this end of the spectrum. I am an unabashed beer snob, I confess it, but the same way I have a single malt Scotch every coupla three years . . . The specimens in evidence here are an Imperial IPA and their maple oak ale. The IPA is a dead solid perfect California IPA, firm-bodied and thoroughly hopped up, and slightly dangereous, ranking as they do at 7.1 ABV. The maple oak ale was a real smartass brew, a terrific oat ale with a child's breath of maple syrup hiding just underneath. It went even better with the Keebler Peanut Butter Fudge Sticks I had for dessert than it did with the burger, which is saying something.


This was not the film of the day, either. Well, because it's not a film. It's something Michael Nesmith did back in the 80's, apparently with his mother's White-Out money,* which largely anticipated and was subsequently sunk by the MTV phenomenon. A collection of mostly funny skits and bits sandwiched in between videos for Mikey's songs, at a shade over an hour's running time, it presented the ideal entertainment package for myriad networks and local stations and cable outlets who refused and/or neglected to play it. That's not entirely fair: it was really aimed more at the home entertainment/VCR market. to suit a demographic which, although it most certainly existed at the time, remained blissfully ignorant of Sir Michael's oblations.

Which is, again, unfair. This has been a cult hit for years, and that I really only just now got around to seeing it in it's entirety is entirely my own fault. I just put it off. However, I may soon buy a copy of my own. Good songs. Fun stuff.


Yesterday's movie was this, which I had seen many years previous. I had forgotten how gritty and funny and poignant and . . . What's the word I'm looking for? The sort of thing that happens when an ironic twist coincides with the satisfaction of a justified revenge in the final act. Like: "Is that . . . could be . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . yeah . . . YEAH!!!" Schadenfruede doesn't really do it.

When I saw it originally, Gary Busey was the guy who played Buddy Holly and Willie Nelson was the guy who sang "On The Road Again." It wasn't until years later that I found out they were drug-fueled perverts bent on discovering the Xanadu of the mind-body duality. The whole thing made way more sense after that.



This was the Weekend Movie. I almost wish I were kidding. The original was really very disturbing, dark and amoral and chaotic and anarchic. There are these caves and there are these people lost in them and then, suddenly, there are things that want to kill and eat them. There: deal with it for an hour and forty minutes. Afterwards, the Wifey declared that a) THAT's the way horror movies ought to be made, and b) she was NEVER EVER EVER EVER watching THAT again. This one, we spent the full hour and a half bitching about how flat the characters were and how stupid they were being and whether or not (about 50%) what they were required to do by the script was anything they would logically ever have done in real life. Basically, The Descent: Part 2 was indecent.

So do I recommend it? I could recommend a cheeseburger anytime, but that's largely a part of the mania that will most likely result in my hospitalization for either cardiac or mental disease. If you love beer like I do, then you ought to plunk down some cash~ for something as exotic as the Peak brews once in a while. Michael Nesmith's collected work is something of an aquired taste, but this is probably as suitable gateway as any. Oh, and it's nowhere near as hokey as the cover art might lead you to believe. You oughta watch Busey and Nelson egg each other on at least once; so far as I know, it never happened again, and if memory serves, this is the best acting job the Redheaded Stranger ever put in.

But The Descent: Part 2? Not just no, not just hell no, but Go To Hell No. To call it pandering would be to give everyone involved waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit.

*Michael Nesmith's mom was an execituve assisant and she invented White-Out. True story.

~In point of fact, this was paid for with grocery money, which lead to me putting out a spot of cash for one thing or another over the past weekend. All's fair in love and beer.