Blah...Blahh...Blog

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I haven't been keeping up with the news lately, too immersed in Olympic fever. Isn't everybody? Umm..hello?...Anybody out there?...Pinocchio? Inspiration hit me like a snowboarder's drug screen the other day. Wouldn't an uplifting story about the two man luge be a perfect follow-up to Brokeback Mountain? Okay fine

Since I've been out of the loop, apparently the Vice President shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Did I get that right? The White House does itself no favors at all when it withholds info from the media until it damn well feels like it, but let's face it. There ain't nothin' here. The poor old fart he pelted with birdshot isn't pressing any charges. Cheney's nuts have been roasted over the coals for this enough. If this is the only thing of substance anybody's got on this guy then fugeddaboudit. Surely there are worse crimes. How much do I NOT care about this? Let me count the ways. 1276. Let's all move on, dot org.

I also don't care that Cindy Sheehan got arrested at the State of the Union address for wearing a t-shirt with that day's total amount of dead soldiers in Iraq. Yes, I believe in her cause. No, she shouldn't have been arrested. But why was she even there...to support the Prez? No. She knew what she was getting into once she put on the shirt. She got the publicity she wanted. Don't cry "thought crime" to me, missy. I hate to be set up and have my emotions toyed with by any side.

Then there's Oprah's public reaming of James Frey. Would anyone be really surprised if, at the the end of the interview, she told to her audience of worshippers to kill him on the spot?

"Audience, tear him into a million little pieces NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I'll have more to say about the Oscars soon, but I think there have been some glaring omissions. No Visual Effects nomination for Revenge of the Sith? Then there's the obligatory Judi Dench nod for what seemed to be a movie nobody had seen yet. Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger would have been a better choice. Kevin Costner was even decent in that film. Maybe he's finally coming out of his slump with some decent character roles in his later years, something Harrison Ford should look into. (By the by, does anybody really want to see Indiana Jones 4?)
The worst snub is the lack of recognition for one of the year's best performances, Mickey Rourke in Sin City. Believe me, I never thought I'd ever think such a think, but the proof is in the puddin' and I stand by it.

Toodles.

2005-Dead or Alive

If there was one word to sum up the clusterhump that was the year Two Thousand and Five A.D., I suppose it would have to be LOST.

(Entertainment Weekly unwittingly agrees with me since the editors proclaim the cast of ABC’s Lost as their Entertainer of the Year. Ignore the logic and focus on the irony.)

The year started in the minus column with the aftermath of two major disasters-the Mommy of all Tsunamis and the 2004 re-election of President Bush League. There wasn’t even enough time to regain our footing from those events as we immediately slid downhill quicker than Tom Cruise’s approval rating.

In 2005 we lost a Pope, a Supreme Court Chief Justice and an entire American city along with much of the Gulf Coast of the United States of America during the worst storms anyone can ever remember. Add to this the Terri Schiavo debacle, the neverending story known as Iraq, the raping and pillaging by the major oil companies, illegal government wiretapping and wind it up with the preliminary strike in the upcoming Holy Civil War known as the Attack on Christmas…and you’ve got yourself either an ulcer, a substance abuse problem or a reason to take your own life and a few others with you.

(Hyperbole. It’s what’s for dinner.)

To keep our minds off the terrible tragedy that is everyday life, we usually can count on mindless entertainment to pull us through, but even then, it was one disaster after another. We became so beaten down that even mediocre was a cause for celebration. We stood up with our lowered expectations to cry for joy when the final chapter of Star Wars was not as bad as the others.

“Hey everybody, Revenge of the Sith didn’t suck! It didn’t suck! Thank you, George Lucas! Oh, thank you!”

(For the record, my favorite film of the year was Robert Rodriguez’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s Sin City. Flawed as it was, it still showed more flair, guts and balls than anything else I saw last year.)

Several great names were taken this year, many of which had a profound influence on my life, including Johnny Carson, Richard Pryor, Hunter S. Thompson and Arthur Miller.

Because it is my nature to balance my tastes between the sublime and the ridiculous, I also must mention the passing of another great performer, the WWE star Eddie Guerrero, a star cut down in the prime of his life. I have no desire to exalt my fascination with professional wrestling at this time, but I would be remiss if I didn’t pay tribute to someone who was a lot better than any of you will ever know.

Howard Stern left what is now known as “terrestrial radio” for the unknown frontiers of satellite broadcasting. Stern, in his farewell speech, called himself “the last of a dying breed”. While he may not be the last, there certainly will be no star of his magnitude to emerge from the ranks of commercial radio again, a business that has been in free-fall for several years now. I personally won’t miss Howard that much. I’m still in mourning for The Don and Mike Show, pulled from Portland area airwaves last Spring with no hope of revival.)

While I maintain that 2005 bit the Big One almost every day out of 365, I was able to claim a solid personal victory, a memory of which I will always cherish.

My book, In the Dark: A Life and Times in a Movie Theater finally made it into my local library. One down, several thousand to go. This completes the last of the attainable goals I set for myself in the publication of this, my book ever to see print. It also makes up for the fact that my sales have been, shall we say, non-existent (currently ranked #3,345,802 on the Amazon.com sales chart) and that I wasn’t able to garner any publicity whatsoever. The ultimate insult was that I was dissed and dismissed by Portland’s ultra-left-wing radio station KBOO-FM, the radio equivalent of public access. I might as well been scorned by a Buddhist monk. When In the Dark first saw the light of day back in 2003, I knew I was in for an uphill struggle. Publish America, the house that handles my book, is a Publish on Demand (or POD) outfit that is not much of a step above self-publishing in the vast Book World. It also pretty dictates that I market the material myself, something that makes me more of an incompetent boob than I already am. I knew from the first few months that it was going to be a Herculean task to get my material purchased by anyone more than my family and friends since, let’s face it, no one else really knew anything about it. I’m not complaining nor do I believe the people PA misrepresented themselves in any way. Who knows if my book would have ever seen the light of day at all unless I paid for the whole shebang myself? So I had to come to grips with this grim reality and at least bask in what remains of any success I’ve accumulated. First of all, I got published. I have a tangible piece of material that came from my own blood, sweat and tears and can call my own. Second, I am in an honest to goodness bookstore. No, not in theory, but the real deal: Powell’s Books in downtown Portland, one of the world’s great bookstores. How my book got there was that someone, I’m not sure who, resold a review copy to Powell’s as used. Technically, it’s still on their shelf, even if it is just one copy. Finally, a couple of months back while perusing the film section of the Beaverton Library, guess what I spied with my little eye? An edition of In the Dark sitting right next to Crime Films by Carlos Clarens, author of An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, one of the first books I ever checked out of the library. You cannot believe the rush I got seeing MY book-written by ME-with MY name on the cover-resting on a library shelf. I needed this validation more than I ever realized and for the first time in a long time, certainly all year, I was proud of myself. Now for full disclosure, I should tell you that I solicited the library myself. I was just pleasantly surprised they went ahead and decided to carry it. I guess one could say this is the equivalent of saying Star Wars didn’t suck. If so, then so be it. The sales of my book are dismal. It can only be purchased in as bookstore if someone returns a copy. And the Beaverton Library carries it only because I asked them too. So what? What this means to me is that I no longer believe myself to be a literary bastard because now I consider myself legitimate at long last. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all the confirmation I need for now…and that is enough.

There’s my freaking silver lining for the black cloud known as 2005.

I put one in the win column.

Speaking of Which...

"Oh, God, do I hate show business..."
"Joe, you love show business."
"That's right. I love show business. I'll go either way."

That snippet of dialogue is from Bob Fosse's classic ALL THAT JAZZ, written by Robert Alan Authur, and sums pretty much how I feel about it all. I hate it. I love it. Actually it's more that I love the show and hate the business, but what it really boils down to is the yin, the yang and the whole damn thang. Each day brings more news from the world of entertainment that just infuriates me to no end...but I can't stop caring about it because it is my red-headed stepchild.

For example...

Pat O'Brien on The Dr. Phil Special, a classic case of the worm that eats its own tail. Here's a guy that nobody should know. He is a non-celebrity. He's just a reporter on a gossip show. He goes into rehab for drug and alcohol abuse but not before alerting his media brethren. Exiting
his stay at E! The True Hollywood Detox Center, he makes a date to have his crash and burn showcased on a Dr. Phil episode. My question is: WHO GIVES A SHIT? The only Pat O'Brien anyone should ever know was the Warner Brothers actors form the 1930s. I'll take Potatoes O'Brien over this zippity-doo-nothing. Why do we feel the need to invent the news? It's like this Paula Abdul non-scandal. Oh my God! Don't tell that the American Karaoke show could lose its integrity now? It's the end of the world!

Speaking of which...

In the print ads for THE INTERPRETER, Sean Penn looks like Mrs. Doubtfire in profile. Of course he's not Mrs. Doubtfire. Sean Penn is one of our finest actors.

Speaking of which...

Will Ferrell may just very well be this year's Ben Stiller. His latest,  KICKING AND SCREAMING, looks like contractual obligation as it is. Then he follows that up with the BEWITCHED "re-imagining". Two words, Will: Elliott Gould. Look it up.

Speaking of which...

Why is Ice Cube's back turned toward the camera in the print ads for XXX: STATE OF THE UNION? His face is simply not shown nor is his name above the title (as it should be-he's earned it) or even mentioned in the movie's trailer? It's as though the studio was trying to distance themselves away from the Iceman. Someone should speak to Mr. Cube or at least his agent over this obvious dissing.

Speaking of which...

Box office analysts are predicting that the HOUSE OF WAX remake may be the number one movie of the weekend since it features the grisly death of Paris Hilton's character. Give the public what they want... Apparently she gets the business end of a spear shoved through her forehead. Well, at least it won't cause any real damage. Hey, this might be a step in the right direction for her. Maybe it will culminate in a remake of FACES OF DEATH. Now THAT'S entertainment.

Speaking of which...

Catch SIN CITY before it leaves the theaters. This is the first movie in a long time that I've actually wanted to see a second time...in a theater. Oh, it has its flaws, particularly with some of the hard-bitten dialogue that some actors aren't capable of grasping. (This means you, Brittany Murphy) And although I thought Clive Owen had the right look for the part, he is the first Brit I've seen in quite awhile that actually sounds weaker with an American accent. But the pluses outweigh the minuses ten-fold. The Mickey Rourke sequence is worth the price of admission alone. Rourke as the character Marv will no doubt be the most memorable character of the year. Robert Rodriquez has leap-frogged to this front of the pack on sheer BALLS alone, telling the Directors Guild to go fuck themselves while he makes movies the way HE wants to make them. Unfortunately, the last fifteen minutes of the film were disrupted by the audio bleed-through from the neighboring film (AMITYVILLE) at the Regal Cinema I chose to view SIN CITY. They're damn lucky I didn't go all Marv on them for this intrusion. You'd think I'd learn. But I don't. Still in all, it could not dampen the impact of this great film. Great film. When was the last time those two words have gone together?

I had to end on a positive note. I just had to.