Madness

If you haven't yet been exposed to the mind-numbing, unfunny train wreck that is the FOX NEWS answer to The Daily Show, count yourself lucky. There's a great pot by John Rogers over at Kung Fu Monkey that concerns this, as well as the point of comedy and general. I can't remember what turned me on to this blog, but Rogers is consistently a great source of discussion and wit, and this piece is one of the best posts I've read from him.

Spot on. Check it out here.

One fact I didn't know: the show in question was created by Joel Surnow, the mastermind behind 24. Given the current direction of the show, this frightens me a lot.

Snow, Babies, and Why You Should Never Skip #3

Ask and Ye Shall Receive...

Last Wednesday the white stuff came screaming out of the sky (thank you Mr. Pynchon). Only instead of large, gentle snowflakes cascading down like it was Christmas in Bedford Falls, it was hard, wet, painful sleet that within a few short hours encased the entire street in ice. I went out to shovel the steps and sidewalk only to come in sopping wet 45 minutes later. By 5 o'clock I was one of only two houses that succeeded in doing any shoveling at all. Now, six days later it's still just the two of us. The road isn't plowed or even salted and the parts of my house I didn't succeed in digging out have hardened to concrete. In the backyard I can see squirrels slipping and sliding across the deck and garden. Today starts a 4-day bout of upper 40's weather, so maybe the Devil's Tower of snow in the back of my driveway will begin its inevitable decline.

New Homeowner's Idyllic Life Finally Shattered...

I woke up around 5:30 AM on Monday morning, wide awake and feeling rested and ready to take on the world. Or at least my mother and family, who we were planning on visiting later that morning. The wind was kicking up a party outside, and the house was freezing. We've been having a few issues with our boiler lately, so I went downstairs to check out the problem. Sure enough, the water gauge was below the minimum line, and the boiler was off. No worries - I've handled this thing before:

1. Turn off the boiler.
2. Open valve to add water.
3. Close valve.
4. Turn back on boiler.

I should emphasize at this point in the post again my feeling of being rested and ready to take on the world. I would also like to point out that I have done this process dozens of times in the past in the old apartment.

I would also like to add that, if you have to skip ANY of the above steps, DO NOT skip #3.

I went back upstairs and sat down in the den looking for a DVD to watch. As I sat there on the floor, flipping through some contenders for the DVD player, I could hear a sound like spraying water. It kind of sounded like the radiators were letting off some steam, but I never heard it that loud before. I slowly turned my head to left, a copy of THE LEOPARD MAN in my hands.

The radiator in the kitchen was spouting up the air, and had already covered the floor in about a centimeter of water. I ran in and immediately shut off the pipe leading to the radiator and surveyed the damage, angry but resigned to cleaning up the mess before the Missus woke up.

That's when I heard the running water upstairs. I took the steps two at a time (no mean feat when you're wearing a robe and have the agility and grace of a horse on ice) and ran to the bathroom where the same thing was occurring. I shut off THAT pipe as the Missus woke up asking in her tired, beautiful voice just what the !@#$ was going on so early in the morning.

I started explaining when, as I ran through the events of the morning, it hit me.

I had skipped #3.

I jumped down the stairs, grabbed the door molding and spun into the kitchen, threw open the door to the basement launched myself into 3 inches of water. I bounded into the work room, turned off the boiler, closed the valve, and shut off the hot water to boot. At this point it became obvious we flooded boiler and, consequently, the pipes leading to the radiators. I left the Missus in the basement momentarily while I went upstairs to make sure no more radiators were leaking, gushing, or generally destroying the house. I walked through the living/dining rooms, going from radiator to radiator. As I neared the front door, I felt a few small drops fall on my head.

I looked up.

There, stretching from one side of the room to the other, was an enormous crack in the ceiling. About a three foot area was slowly dripping water on the floor where I was walking.

I think it was at this point I went a little crazy.

Around 7:00 AM we called my brother-in-law over. 60 gallons of water later (emptied the Shop-Vac 5 times) the basement was free of water. We completely emptied the boiler, refilled it to its proper level (this time remembering #3), and disconnected all the radiators, emptying them of excess water and cleaning out the valves before re-connecting them. About 5 hours later we turned the boiler back on and cheered as all the radiators began working again, including two that did not work previous to that morning's incident. So it looks like the only damage that needs to be repaired are two valve replacements for the radiators that spouted, and the damage to the ceiling, which isn't that bad since in the next two weeks work begins on repairing and repainting the living room and dining room.

Things That Go "Bump" in the Night...

Although it actually occurred the evening before the Boiler Episode, I wanted to end this post on a happy, warm, and huggy moment. A couple of weeks ago my mother bought us the BebeSounds Prenatal Gift Set, which allows you to listen, talk to, and play music for your baby. We finally broke it out Sunday night. We couldn't hear a heartbeat or any moving around yet (although we're not exactly sure what we should be hearing), so we broke out the microphone/speaker set to read and talk to the baby.

Now I've been doing this on a semi-nightly basis anyway, but using the tried-and-true method of putting my mouth close to the Missus' stomach and waxing over a broad range of topics, from why Mommy is driving Daddy crazy to why Mommy is driving Daddy crazy. But we liked the idea of the microphone, so we set it up and I read him his first bedtime story which , due to a veto from the Missus on my current book, Norman Mailer's The Spooky Art, was Richard Scarry's The Bunny Book, about a bunny family wondering what the new baby bunny will grow up to be.

(SPOILER ALERT: It's a Daddy Bunny).

One of the bunnies (I think it was Uncle Bunny) thinks that the baby bunny will grow up to be a train driver, whose train will go "TOOT! TOOT!" along the tracks, or something like that. As I made the "TOOT! TOOT!" sound, the Missus jumped up.

"Do that again! The baby kicked!"

I read the page again, and again the little guy kicked and jumped like a teenager doing the Frug.

Man, the smile on my face that night just came back to me.

Moving at a Snail's Pace

Although the review for High Cotton went up this morning, I actually finished reading it in late January. Things over at the other blogs have been moving so fast and furious this little site kind of got left behind a bit. So there are two more reviews to write up, as well as a face-lift so this little guy doesn't feel left out.

I finished Book 1 of In Search of Lost Time, Swann's Way, on Thursday night, and yesterday ripped through John Scalzi's debut novel Old Man's War - both should written up here over the course of the next few days. Since Old Man's War went by so fast it didn't even get a chance to be posted as a picture on the What Am I Reading link, here's the cover:

Short version of Old Man's War? It was the complete opposite of Swann's Way, and exactly what I needed after finishing that behemoth novel. I'm still not ready to move onto Book 2 yet, but I will definitely get to it.

High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale

Joe Lansdale's short story collection High Cotton is horror served up Texas-style. Similar to Stephen King, whose work is always filled with the kitsch of the his youth growing up and living in Maine, Lansdale imbues all his stories, whether they involve an elderly man running Death off the road in his old pickup truck or two young men chasing their friend who happens to be trapped in the jaws of a gator, with the spirit of the South.

The horror rarely resorts to anything supernatural - out of the 21 stories, only the aforementioned story concerning Death entitled "Not From Detroit" has anything that could be considered fantastical. Instead, Lansdale opts for circumstances and tensions straight out of a Cohen Brothers film, mixing the horror with humor and insight into the human condition. "Booty and the Beast" plays like an insane version of BLOOD SIMPLE, and begs (in my mind, at least) to be brought to the screen.

There are science fiction stories, alternate reality stories, out and out horror, and simply funny stories. Lansdale tackles them all in his signature style that is instantly absorbing and wicked to read. "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was turned into one of the only decent episodes of the Showtime MASTERS OF HORROR series (although they embedded a supernatural element not present in the actual story), and the rest, while maybe not being filmed, play with a filmic quality as you read them. Gruesome and funny, sometimes all at once, High Cotton is a great place to start as an introduction to Joe Lansdale.

In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Attempts Restraint

...Although not in the title, apparently.

So the goal is to write up three movies in the same amount of space I took to write about YOJIMBO. Shouldn't be too hard, especially since the three movies ranged in quality from crap to "pretty good." And rather than waste space with hundreds of stills for each film, I'll settle for a single image per movie. Not counting the poster (which I skipped for YOJIMBO - whoops!).

Okay...here goes:

CRANK (2006)

I don't get it. I like Jason Statham. He's got an easy charisma that I think translates well on screen. A big part of why I enjoyed LOCK STOCK... and SNATCH was his presence (haven't seen REVOLVER, but it looked okay), and for what it was, I thought THE TRANSPORTER was a hoot and a half. But the rest of his oeuvre? Grade-A Prime Crap. And CRANK doesn't do much to redeem him. A remake of DOA as done by people who apparently spend way too much time watching MTV and SCARFACE, Statham plays a hitman who wakes up to find he's been injected with a "Chinese cocktail" that by all rights should have him dead within minutes.

His only hope? To "crank" himself up - keeping his adrenaline going in an attempt to counteract the poison that's coursing through his system. To do this he snorts cocaine, runs non-stop, screams, plunges a hypodermic filled with an overdose of epinephrine, and inhales bottle after bottle of nose spray. He's going to die - he knows it, but he simply can't die until he kills the stereotypical Latino gang-banger responsible. I'm all for a great action flick, but the performances by the bad guys in this was so over the top and cliche I thought I was watching someone play GRAND THEFT AUTO, except I think that had a better story.

Just plain bad. Only two redeeming features: Statham is once again decent, and he and Amy Smart engage in one of the funniest sex scenes since THE TALL GUY. Decorum prevents me from going into too much detail, but it involves among other things a mailbox, a busload of Asian school girls, and a raucous crowd:

IDIOCRACY (2006)

OFFICE SPACE is one of those movies that grow on you over time. There's so many things to catch each time you see it that every subsequent viewing is in turn funnier and funnier. IDIOCRACY is filled with so many great ideas that it suffers from not knowing what it really wants to be. Luke Wilson, about as funny and likable as I've ever seen him, plays Joe Bowers, a librarian for the US Army when, because of his being average in every conceivable way, is signed up for a secret government hibernation experiment. Things go awry, and Joe wakes up (along with his partner, a hooker played by Maya Rudolph) 500 years later to a world dumbed down so much by TV and rampant commercialism he literally becomes the smartest guy on the planet.

The beginning is absolutely hysterical, as a narrator calmly demonstrates why "evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence" with illustrated family trees and a family that shows why sterilization may not always be a bad thing. There's a great gag that begins with an army colonel's presentation on testable subjects for the experiment that begins slow and slowly evolves to encompass the colonel's obsession with the "pimp" lifestyle that borders on brilliant. When Joe wakes up in future, the narration briefly continues - his attempts to speak (in perfect English) are received by the dumbed down populace as "pompous and faggy."

Unfortunately soon after the movie becomes confused as to whether it wants to be a slapstick comedy or a biting satire, and as a result feels more diluted as the movie progresses (supposedly there was a lot of studio interference). There are still some fun moments, and a couple quips and gags that are great (water is replaced by Gatorade, Costco is larger than New York City), but IDIOCRACY soon falls prey to the mass commercialism and mindless routine Mike Judge has skewered for so long.

THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON (2006)

If nothing else, watching THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON will probably make you want to listen to John Lennon records. For those people who forgot just how great Lennon sans the Beatles was, this will remind you. This documentary, presented by VH1 with the full cooperation of Yoko Ono means that the film will skirt over anything remotely controversial regarding the most famous Beatle, but you can argue that that's not what the documentary was about, anyway.

What it is about is the life of Lennon as a political activist, and the trials and tribulations he suffers at the hands of the evil Nixon Administration. Vietnam looms as a spectre throughout the film, and Lennon is shown as an ethereal space child, expounding on his theories of "Give Peace a Chance" while hanging out with Bobby Seale and Abbie Hoffman. His relationship with Ono figures heavily in the film, and I came away (although I imagine this was the idea) feeling that they really were of two like minds, as pure and committed to peace as they could be in a country that was constantly trying to deport them. G. Gordon Liddy comes off particularly nasty and evil, and the sections dealing with Middle America burning their Beatles records after the whole "bigger than Jesus Christ" thing is scary even almost 50 years later.

No documentary on Lennon would be complete without dealing with his murder. When THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON does get to it, it does it a way that completely shocks you and wakes you up from whatever complacency you might have fallen into during the course of the film. At the end I came away feeling like the world truly lost not only a great musician, but perhaps even more a warm, funny, human being and an agent for true change through love and peace.

Still sounds like a nice idea to me.