Sharktopus

Saturday evenings are usually spent with my favorite girlfriend, Credit Card Olga from the Ukraine, some loaded weapons, a bottle of Grey Goose, and the Sci Fi Channel. I love their movies. Ridiculous scripts, atrocious special effects, acting from the school of "hey you with the nippley big hooters, want to be in a movie."

Titles like Bone Eater (not worth the sexual pun even for me), Flu Bird Horror, Dinocroc vs Supergator, House of Bones, Hellhounds, Mongolian Death Worm, and SS Doomtrooper are the grandchildren of such endearing cinematic gems as Little Shop of Horror, the Poe adaptations, The Raven and House of Usher, and Creature from the Haunted Sea. While other Madison Central High students in the early 60s were learning them educating skills for a normal adultifying life, I was a kid sneaking into the Capital and Orpheum Theaters on State Street waiting in the dark for the next Roger Corman brain blight.

50 years later Corman is still The Man. His latest assaults against the ongoing waste of big budget Hollywood movie making are for the Sci-Fi Channel. His current epic of eye wincing wonderment, SHARKTOPUS, proves what I've always said about him--and probably one of the reasons why I got tossed out of UCLA Film School. Roger Corman is the greatest film maker of all time. Even the influential French film magazine, Cahieres du cinema said he was the greatest maker of du film ever. As I don't read French, I believe somewhere in their many Jerry Lewis tribute issues that remark was made. Some lovers of film crave Chateaubriand a la Bouquetiere with Marchand de Vin Sauce. I'll take chicken gristle cocovan with a side order of Eric Roberts.

But What About Vincent?

Don’t Matter Brother

I had planned to never again blog about LOST. What's the point? Life is short. The death of a show is longer. Once a program is over and done with, then, like a relationship gone as sour as milk left overnight next to a litter box, it is time to concentrate on other passions, other obsessions, other inconsequential ways of wasting time.

I loved the show for six years. Much of it, like my lifestyle, made absolutely no sense. Yet, the writing was so gloriously convoluted ,wickedly obscure and powerful that it forced me away from questionable online adult sites and onto the pages of Wikipedia -- and beyond. I spent so much time investigating the show's Easter Eggs that I developed a yolk. Jeremy Bentham, Michael Faraday, John Locke, and Rousseau, among others became new and cherished friends. Thank you LOST writers for helping me finally complete my GED.

The ending to LOST elicited two responses from me: WTF did I just waste six years over? and Holy Mary, Mother of God! I can’t wait to crash land on a island and go through years of pure unadulterated hell before finally coming to grips with some highfalutin concept and landing the babe of one's dream to canoodle with for all eternity. The heavenly light at the end of the show was so intense, I sat in front of my set wearing sun block.

I would have preferred for my last LOST meal less of a salad of greens Psalm 23 amply tossed with a tangy In the Sweet By and By and more red meat. I understand why it was necessary to make sure that all the broken love affairs somehow reconnected somewhere at some time. That's why love songs are written in a major key. Make us believe that in the afterlife there still will be some form of physical recognition with those we knew on Earth. What's really heartening is that where these couples are preparing to spend eternity, neither Viagra nor Estrogen cream will be necessary. That, in itself, is worth leading a righteous existence. Also taking time to answer even a modicum of the questions posed throughout the series would have been far too practical for a show built on sand.

LOST left more dangling mysteries out there than can be seen at an all male nudist camp. When were you guys planning to tell us about the Island? Now or when the novelizations come out? It was as if the writers came in pitching "Swiss Family Robinson" but left behind an ending fit for Pat Robertson.

Several immediate questions came to mind after pulling myself up from the floor and when the frothing had stopped. They are in no specific order of psychosis.

Any more information on the big-toed statue? Was it part of the Lighthouse at Alexandria that somehow drifted away.

What was that Temple all about? Who built it? What about The Pool of Life? And why was that a sanctuary against the Smoke Monster?

Did the polar bear in the series pilot have a one show contract? Was his presence truly ever explained?

Who made the Island so mystical? Why would pulsating electromagnetic fields do that? Is this alien technology? Why did the Island need protecting? Why isn't it on anyone's flight maps? Is it clocked? Why hasn't it been subdivided yet?

Why didn't MIB simply turn the damn Wheel of Time and leave? Did he know of its existence? Who created the Wheel of Time? Was it ever used before, and, if so, by whom?

Why didn't MIB steal some C4 from the Others or the Dharma drillers and just blow the plug? Why couldn’t he just steal a raft and leave?

Who took over after Hurley and Linus? Did Hugo have to crash a plane as well to get the next group of “candidates?”

How could Desmond punch in the sequence every 108 minutes for years without any weird form of sleep deprivation. Was he saving the world by doing this repetitive action? Let's face it people, the one time he fails, only one lousy airplane crashes. A plane, incidentally, destined for the Island.

How did Jacob leave the Island? How did he get around the world without credit cards? Who supplied him with his clothes? What was the MIB doing while Jacob was hobnobbing off the Island?

Why didn’t Jack or Desmond turn into a smoke monster? Must one be dead or the murderer of one's mother for that to happen?

This is nuts. I quit. Except for one last item.

BUT I'LL MISS VINCENT MOST OF ALL

What eventually happened to Vincent, the funky LAB that ran in and out of episodes looking for guidance love, and, depending on whether he was fixed or not, his own Kate, Shannon, or Juliet? Vincent was a harbinger. When that canine sauntered into a scene, odds were some real weird shit was about to hit the proverbial beach.

When Jack finally breathed his last, it was in the same bamboo field and position that we first met him six years before. Vincent was there looking sad-eyed both times. Am I missing a Van Gogh reference here? If only Jack had been eating a potato at the end, amidst sunflowers looking up at a starry night. But alas, he wasn't.

After Jack dies, what does Vincent do? Bury him? Snack on Jack? Rush off to Hurley and Linus? So many people died violently on the Island that logic would dictate Vincent probably bit down on some morsels other than Dharma kibble. The wild boars and any loose polar bears couldn’t have feasted on all the femurs themselves.

Noticeably absent from the Church of We Let Most People Come In were Michael, Walt and Vincent. Is this an oversight? I thought all dogs went to heaven? Were none of them worthy of this form of salvation reunion or was the real Smoke Monster still very much alive and well in the form of battling agents and lawyers?

These questions will never be answered until the LOST conventions begin and the writers are held at gunpoint. I heard it through the grapevine that the first LOST movie is in pre-production. Its entitled LOST: THE MISSING YEARS OF BOO RADLEY.

I Will Always Be LOST

The series LOST ends Sunday evening. In preparation, I plan on serving myself the sort of food most of the survivors ate during much of their stay on the Island: wild boar, polar bear, Dharma crackers, electromagnetic current, sea water, sand, and grass, all nicely plated alongside fatal knife wounds, flaming arrows to the chest, gunshots, explosions and drownings. More major characters died on this show than in a dozen Sergio Leone westerns. I loved them all and cried over each one of them. Then I turned on Fox News and cried for a different reason.

Of course the real mystery at this moment is how the show will end. Two and half hours to go before the Monday morning post-LOST shakes commence and I start reading Wikipedia entries all over again. So LOST, go out with a blast and not a Seinfeld whimper. It will make all of those insufferable late night readings through the philosophy of John Locke worth it.

Okay enough bellyaching. Now about the ending: If I had any talent in writing, how would I close out the final chapter of a series so full of signs and cosines, tangents and time travel, cul-de-sacs and sacks of C4, overwrought metaphysics and broken metacarpals?

I've been giving this problem some thought while waiting for the phone to ring with the call from the escort service. Hopefully my credit card will go through this time. I hate watching series finales by myself.

So many people. So little time. If I were the network suit in charge, I'd say bring everyone back to the Island for one last gang shootout. Not because I get a cut of SAG benefits, which by doing so would secure medical benefits for most of the actors for another season, but because it is the only logical thing to do. The adversary that floats in and around the palm trees of this unincorporated paradise must be destroyed. This bag of cumulus psychotic wind is awesome and pernicious, and it will take a big body count to blow this bad boy away.

The dead, the people that should be dead, the Dharma initiatives and those never initiated, Jughead the hydrogen bomb, the parallel universe inhabitants, the incidentals who we never really met but ended up as floating bodies or convenient sides of beef for errant bullets must be avenged. So everyone come on down, the water's fine.

All lives lost, all broken existences, all the time travel, the sweat, tumult and murder of six years on the island is due to the singular motivation of one brother wanting off Gilligan's Island paradise and the other brother saying, "Like hell you are!" If Mister Black Lung ever leaves the Island, all of us are doomed. Doomed I tell you! I'm tired of putting night lights around my apartment after each screening of an episode. It's so unmanly and really freaks out any female visitors I pay to come over.

But how to destroy Mr. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes? Let me tell you right now we need muscle vs muscle and not some whiney wet blanket or exhaust fan discussion involving sacred daggers or snipers from trees. We fight fire with fire or, in this instance, smoke with smoke. Apparently created when good brother Jacob tossed bad unnamed brother, who had just murdered the woman both had believed was their mother, into the Island's energy source, this plume of evil cigar smoke just couldn't wait to escape and wreck havoc. Talk about the underground coughing up a Super Fund size hair ball. Sooner or later it's going to come out that both British Petroleum and Halliburton had something to do with this little disaster.

Incidentally, to understand many of the Jacob allusions in LOST, begin thumbing through that book called the Bible beginning with Genesis Chapter 25. Some of the favorites themes alluded to are such ITunes hits as Jacob stealing the birthright of his brother Esau, tricking his old man Isaac, colluding with his mother, hightailing it out of Dodge, working 14 years to marry the right woman, and wrestling with an angel of God. I've noticed that more Bible references waltz in and out of this series than can be found misquoted on any Sunday morning Heap O Money My Way Tele-evangelist Hour.

The black smoke monster is like your drunken ex: a roaring mess that crashes your parties, throws up on your guests, burns down the house and then disappears before the cops show up. For such bad JuJu and ill manners, the islanders would need its counterpart: racial insensitivity aside, a white smoke monster created in an identical fashion. Someone needs to be tossed into the cave of light that needs to find redemption and resolution to life. I see the ending as a steel cage match simmering towards an EPA smack-down between two forms of salsa gyrating circulating air. Which one of our last four has not only the cajoles but the blood lust to make the jump into the light? I nominate Sawyer.

Sawyer is the blustery con man, a fast talking carnival barker without a freak show. When a con goes south, hustlers like him get in their Porsche and drive north. They take the first boat to China, climb the highest mountains, dissolve into crowds, create new identities for themselves. They leave in a hurry to go smell out the next gullible mark. What they don't do is stand and fight (unless, of course, one has found among LOST luggage a US Marshall's hand gun and a Dharma Initiative polar bear is charging straight towards you).

Since crashing on the island, Sawyer has had his brains screwed with and his masculinity dampened more than any of the other final four Oceanic 815 contestants. I guess that's the reason why he tends to go shirtless. Disregarding his peacock strutting bravado bullshit, his one real heroic act of jumping into the sea from a crippled over loaded helicopter to save others fleeing the Island ended up, eventually, to be simply the sound of a man hitting water. There is one other thing about Sawyer that feels important. He's the only remaining "candidate" (Kate name is not on Jason's wall of graffiti) of the three who never escaped the Island at all. His life has encapsulated more of the Island's history than either Jack or Hurley. Pretty wonky stuff, eh?

Not a killing machine like Sayid, but a smooth talking lady's man like this blogger, Sawyer was conned into killing the wrong guy in Australia and tricked into snuffing Locke's old man, Anthony Cooper on the Island. He did mean old Tom Friendly because I hated mean old Tom Friendly. I simply starred at my DVR box for weeks thinking vile thoughts about Friendly until Sawyer cracked. Who says all those years of reading X-Men comic books didn't serve a purpose.

Sawyer failed to keep alive what viewers have come to believe was the only woman he didn't think of as a patsy in Juliet Burke; and he finally developed a heart rendering conscience several weeks ago, blaming himself for the deaths of Jin, Sun and Sayid. Ingloriously at the same time, he was saved from drowning by the other alpha male of the group, Doctor Jack Shepard (always leading his flock), a guy who never really wanted to swing his dick in a chest thumping response to any crisis at hand yet was always forced to.

So if this scenario of smoke vs smoke holds true, who else but Sawyer would take the leap into the light as a last heroic act to vindicate his rather tawdry existence. Or if he doesn't want to take the plunge on his own, Miles or Hugo could give him a stiff push. Or maybe not.

You know what. I don't care how LOST ends. I've had six seasons of enjoyment. I own all the DVD s to date. I can't wait for the LOST compendiums to come out and will look forward to the eventual LOST autograph conventions that one day will follow. Always a beautifully produced and well written show, filled with smart intellectual clues and gorgeous scenery, my one regret remains it was never a series on HBO. That way there would have been the de rigueur bare breasted shots of all those tee shirt wearing hot babes prancing, running swimming and sweating through this wonderfully picturesque jungle island of LOST.


PS. The Island will end up at the bottom of the ocean, maybe.

PPS. The Smoke Monster will escape and come to Los Angeles where it will blend right in with his cousins the Smog Monster and the Cookie Monster.

PPPS. Hugo will survive but run like hell to do it.

PPPS. Frank Lapidus is alive.

PPPPS. Ben Linus will die, and if he lives, I will hunt him down and kill him myself.

PPPPPS. Kate will remain bouncy and flouncy until the end.

PPPPPPS. The Dharma Initiative will open up an office in Santa Monica and begin recruiting all over again.

PPPPPPPS. Has anyone commented that Matthew Fox is once more in a party of five: Kate, Sawyer, Hugo, Locke and himself?

PPPPPPPPS. Miles ends up writing a book about his adventures and ends up being institutionalized at Hurley's old asylum.

Have to go. Someone on the other end of the phone named Svetlana tells me my credit card will once again make me a happy camper. Now where is my pup tent?

COOKING MY GOOSE ONCE AGAIN

Well, once again I exploded my budget, ripped the screen door of fiscal responsibility clean off its hinges, and climbed willingly into the twin caves of excess and endangerment. As Mr. Schenck, my math teacher, once said to me, “Life is short, death is long; mister, you’re making a mockery of both simultaneously. Life is meant to be lived, so live it to the fullest, you dolt.” So instead of rushing to the beach on this beautiful May day, I sat in front of my computer, phone in hand, as I participated once again in the biennial Open Fields GREAT GOOSE EGG AUCTION. The quality of the eggs present and the exuberance of my bidding will, as usual, force me to eat dust bunnies until the next auction in 2012. I did remember, however, to put on sunscreen.

I am not an alumni of Open Fields which produces some of the smartest youngsters in that neck of the woods. Given my grades from ages 4-12, my enrollment chances would have been nil had I even applied. Somehow, being placed on a wait list until I turned 80, or being directed in Middle English by an eight year old towards some open fields in another state would have been more in line with my academic abilities.

I’ve been participating in this charity event ever since 2000, although, unfortunately, I've never made it back to sit in the audience myself and raise a paddle in person. I've had some very wonderful surrogates instead doing paddling for me. I keep saying "next biennial in Hanover" but that chant, like so many others, fall on ears stuffed with cotton.

My history with the city of Hanover is blighted at best. The last time I was in the town Dartmouth calls home was in the late 90s. Over a cup of smoking joe and a bagel at The Dirt Cowboy, I was given the boot by a woman who basically told me at gunpoint that our relationship was not only over but so over. She was a kind sort and did wish me all the luck in the world hitchhiking back to California without shoes or any personal ID. She then gave me directions towards the Canadian border for good luck. I'd love to Facebook her and tell her that, after several years and a couple of months in jail for vagrancy, I did make it back to Los Angeles. I don't believe she has Internet service in her shack up on Mt. Washington though.

I recommend taking a gander at this year's Open Fields catalog. While dreaming of owning any of these very special items will do you no good now, there is always 2012. Knowing how smart the Open Fields people are, no doubt they will schedule the next goose egg auction well in advance of the end of the Mayan Calendar.

My Version of Roughing It

A friend of mine who swims in Edmonton oil shale for a living sent me this site. The web cam is shut down at night, but during the day and early evening it's a real hoot watching mom in action. The male shows up, as most of our species does, only to take out the garbage, toss some change on the table, and move leaves around. I caught her once accusing her mate of spending his nights after work at the duck pond across town. The feathers flew during that conversation.

Watch the Journal Goosecam

Here is an eagle nest:
http://www.wildearth.tv/static/wildearth/channels/we_hornby_eagles.html

The Worst Julius Caesar Joke of All Time

On the Ides of March in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, the man who single-highhandedly brought down the Roman Republic, walked into the wrong end of several daggers. If you want to learn more about this man whose innards were turned into a salad of the same name, I suggest something called school -- but as assassinations go, this one ain't no Jean Paul Marat.

I wasn't looking for one, but recently a friend named Pig-Iron told me a Julius Caesar joke. He calls me up like clockwork whenever an arcane holiday hits the calendar: Arbor Day, St. Vitus Dance Day, Wash Yourself Properly for a Change Day. I think most of the holidays he comes up with are from the Mayan Calendar. Fortunately for him all play wonderfully at 2 AM at the Laugh Factory after three shooters and two Long Island Ice Teas.

Pig-Iron is also a plagiarist: Most of his humor can be found wherever the Internet survives. Since I owe him money from some bad investments involving the words "Texas" and "Hold-em," I let him use me as a sounding board for his stand-up patter.

Julius Caesar was addressing the crowd in the Coliseum.

"Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears. Tomorrow I take our glorious army to conquer Northern Europe and I shall start with France. We shall kill many Gauls and return victorious."

The crowd are up on their feet "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees, Hail mighty Caesar!"

Brutus turns to his mate and says ," He doesn't half talk some rubbish, eh? He couldn't fight his way out of a wet parchment bag."

Six months later, Caesar comes back having conquered France and addresses the crowd in the Coliseum: "Friends, Romans and Countrymen, I have returned from our campaign in France and, as I promised, we killed 50,000 Gauls."

The crowd are up on their feet again. "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees, Hail mighty Caesar!"

Brutus once again turns to his mate and says, "I'm sick of his nonsense, I'm off to France to check this out."

So Brutus sets of for France and three weeks later he comes back to Rome. Caesar is addressing the public in the Coliseum again: "Friends, Romans and Countrymen, tomorrow we set off for Britain and we are going to sort those b*stards out"

The crowd are up on their feet. "Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees, Hail mighty Caesar!"

Brutus jumps up and shouts "Caesar, you are a liar. You told us you had killed 50,000 Gauls in France but I've been there to check it out and you only killed 25,000 !!!!"

The crowd is stunned and all sit down in silence.

Caesar gets up and looks slowly round the Coliseum then across at Brutus and says, "Brutus, you are forgetting one thing.........

Away Gauls count double in Europe."

For those who don't get the joke either, here is an explanation of the term Away Goals.

I Want Some Action...I Want To Live

I love movies, but the Academy Awards program is prolonged, tedious, and redundant. There is about as much surprise in an Oscars broadcast as there is in handing a bottle of whiskey to an alcoholic grandparent suffering from incontinence then plopping him on reupholstered couch just to see if the inevitable happens.

In contrast, the Grammy broadcast is like a couple of healthy teenagers who, upon discovering sex, try out every position at least once. It’s wild, silly, unpredictable, energetic, and messy.

The Golden Globes broadcast resembles a European soirée where, in the beginning, everyone is on their very best behavior; by the end all are drunk, rude, pawing at each other’s spouses, and ready to attack the Balkans.

Yet as boring as I find the Oscar ceremonies, every year I faithfully watch them...

Tonight is Oscar night and as I do with every other jumbo cultural event broadcast in America, I will be seeking shelter elsewhere. The guy below me has a 50-inch plasma screen with a volume setting that ranges from Michael Bay to Michael Bay IMAX 3D. He and his girlfriend are both mixed martial artists, bodybuilders, and bow hunters of small game. I think Ted Nugent visits them in their dreams. I don’t talk knuckle dragger so I have no reference point of communication with them.

A young couple recently moved in next to me. Their entertainment unit is even larger than Punch and Judy’s downstairs. It radiates so much light I can see the screen through my wall; this is fine because I never got around to ordering the full sports satellite package. I contemplate talking to them about the noise coming from their apartment, but I just don't have the heart. They are newly-weds who speak to each other coquettishly while making love. I don’t know whether they are writing a “How To” manual for the Pilates set, but their nocturnal and early morning sounds apparently have scared away any reason to tent this building for termites.

Every Sunday evening, the Iranians across the courtyard broadcast Farsi versions of South American telenovelas. So really, where's my starting off point there?

So I am off to look for an Oscar party I can crash. Everyone I know puts on the same sort of Academy Awards night get-together: a lot of cold cuts, beer, big charts with all the nominees, and gambling pools. While the food is upscale, all the talk remains somber and the subject is usuall about the business of downscaling expectations. These parties are no longer fun; they end up as extended therapy sessions for those running out of Cobra insurance. And I am tired of cold cuts.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been calling up coffee shops, sports bars, hotels, and restaurants to see whether any of them will be blending Oscar parties with America’s newest craze: open carry. I’m looking to attend an event where strapped on pig iron competes with dainty, bite-sized finger foods before the real fingers get blown off.

Open carry is tough guy street lingo for openly carrying a firearm in public, usually a handgun strapped inside a very fancy-looking holster. Each state’s laws vary on public swaggering around like you're Wyatt Earp or Bat Masterson traipsing down the streets of Laredo, but then who has the time to read statutes, pilgrim? Proponents argue that the Second Amendment allows the normal law abiding citizenry to twirl weapons in public and show off their own peace makers anywhere they damn well please. Fat, thin, manicured, young, old arthritic, and twitchy. All fingers need apply.

I want that party where coke flows, liquor is available in wide abundance, no one knows anything, and everyone packs enough firepower to make John Wayne look like the leader of a Quaker movement. I want to witness a face-off between a guy who bets he can outdraw anyone in the room who knows the difference between sound mixing and sound editing. Perhaps I'll be lucky enough to witness a firefight over the merits of The Cove vs The Most Dangerous Man in America for best long form documentary.

Does it sound like I will do anything to be part of a Academy Awards party that has some buzz?

The only heat I will be carrying on me will be the body heat generated by driving around with both an expired license and fake DMV tags. If I’m going to listen to an opening monologue as humorous as a Joe Biden speech or award’s presenter chitchat more canned than Del Monte, then like Alicia Bridges, “I got to go where the people dance. I want some action …I want to live!

The Second Annual You Don’t Know Dick about the Oscars

All I do on weekends is watch films from the local Blockbuster. I rent so many I think I might be the only one keeping the chain solvent. I am a hold-out: I don’t use video on demand nor do I Netflick by mail. I leave my apartment so rarely that the opportunity to meet anyone to practice my grunts and groans is worth the journey into sunshine and smog. I stay in my apartment so much I have to take night classes at UCLA just to learn how to reuse a fork. Video on demand might be the wave of the future, but I never learned how to surf and chlorinated water makes my skin itch.

Even with all of my expertise in film watching, I have never won an Oscar pool. Ever. I have never even come close. I’ve been betting on the awards since “Wings,” and all I've earned is derisive laughter. Years ago, I worked with a woman who promised to sleep with me if I could pick even one winner that year. Okay, so I didn’t think “Titanic” was that big a deal. Who knew?

I’ve lost to people who base their choices on astrological signs or the names of their deceased cats. I knew an accountant who used a complex algorithmic system to figure out his choices. It worked well for him in the Oscar pools although the IRS frowned on his methodology during tax season.

So these are my 2010 picks. I offer them knowing full well that by Monday morning no one will remember the results other than those who won and those who lost and are now too drunk to care.

BEST PICTURE: “The Hurt Locker”

I saw all the candidates and found this one the most compelling: There is no truer statement about how war warps man’s basic survival instinct to stay clear of danger. Second choice goes to "District 9." Not since the original “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” with its veiled commentary on McCarthyism has the use of a science fiction trope been used so effectively to make a political statement regarding current hellish attitudes. The budget of the entire movie was the honey wagon cost for “Avatar.”

BEST DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow

This is the year that a female director finally bests the males. Her film is superlative; her credits substantial. Even her ex, James Cameron, is rooting for her.

LEAD ACTOR: Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker”

Yes, I know it will go to Jeff Bridges. If I could actually vote for Oscar, I’d go with journeyman actor Renner’s breakout performance over Bridges who really should have won it years ago for “The Big Lebowski.” “Crazy Heart” is “Tender Mercies” lite and I have the black eye and the video bar fight to prove it.

LEAD ACTRESS: Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire"

“The Blind Side” gave me peripheral vision problems. Sandra Bullock will take the award playing a strong-willed, southern white woman helping a confused black kid out of a world far too difficult for him to escape on his own. Yawn! The movie itself is an excellent example of a feelgood Lifetime Network weepie. I’m waiting for the movie where an ornery black woman takes in an unloved overweight white kid and turns him into whatever the good Lord damn well wants him to be. I loved Helen Mirren in “The Last Station,” but then she could star in a Uwe Boll movie and I’d still watch her (as I did with Sir Ben Kingsley in “Blood Rayne1”).

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz in “Inglorious Basterds”

This is the first time I ever rooted for an actor playing a Nazi to win anything other than execution at dawn. Waltz’s performance is, at times, riveting, frightening, ghoulish, and gentlemanly. Find an American performer who could slide effortlessly between four languages and I’ll show you no one I know. Second choice: Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”. He continually amazes me as one of today’s most versatile actors though I still prefer him killing zombies and declaring that the world will end in 2012.

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mo'Nique, “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire"

Her performance so infuriated me that I burned both my “Phat Girtz” and “Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins” DVDs, although somewhere I still have a few VHS copies of “The Parkers” that I should see sometime.

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: “The Hurt Locker”

Odds on favorite looks to be “Inglourious Basterds,” although my second choice would be “The Messenger.” Did anyone notice that “Inglourious Basterds” is nothing more than a bunch of set dialogue sessions between shoot-outs? I thought Trini Lopez’s character was better developed in “The Dirty Dozen” than Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine.

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: “District 9”

This is a Hubble long distance outer space Hail Mary shot. It looks like a slam dunk for “Precious.” but I keep drifting back to “District 9." Maybe the Academy would have paid more attention to the script’s merits had the movie been entitled "District 69" instead.

ANIMATED FEATURE: “Up”

I liked them all. I picked “Up” because it’s the shortest title of the five and I have other things I need to work on today.

FOREIGN-LANGUAGE: “The White Ribbon”

This is a pure guess given that I only saw “The White Ribbon” which I thought was very evocative of the herky-jerky deconstructional negative space cinema movement of post-war Europe with its neo-realist approach to the vagaries of small town life against the forces of the bourgeoisie influences of urban encroachment. Actually I have no idea what I am talking about, but every time I sit through a subtitled film I go all Manny Farber or Dwight MacDonald on myself. Second choice would be France’s “The Prophet,” because who doesn’t love French prison movies?

I Sing The Body Electric

Today was the day of my annual physical. I usually have them in February so I know whether to celebrate my upcoming birthday in March or just buy the coffin and sit in the dark and wait for my Cheney episode. I’ve been going to the same doctor for 36 years so he knows who I am. I am his chronological patient number 114 out of close to 10,000 that he's examined in his office though he has examined many thousands more in hospitals. He says he will retire when his heart does. I tell him that I don't open his bill unless I have my defibrillator charged up and ready to go.

I am now treated so well he uses two fingers during the prostate exam. In fact there is something about this procedure that forces me into saying really stupid things during the only time of the year when I have any reason to look at my swollen ankles.

“If you didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have any sex at all.”

“Have your fingers gotten longer since last year.”

“Are you expecting to find Judge Crater up there?”

“Are you now using a miner’s helmet this year?”

“Check to see if my personality wants to come home.”

“I keep all loose change you find.”

"Did you just send in a surveying team?"

“I’d rather have you blow smoke up my ass.”

“Do I get a medical discount if you want to do it a second time?”

"Did I just hear a rimshot?"

"Oh I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener."

“You just pushed my tonsils into my sinus cavity.”

“So this is how babies are made.”

“We do this because you think I need practice for prison.”

And today:

“Would a female doctor expect a phone call the next morning?”

My doctor never laughs. I believe he just adds a few extra dollars to the bill as compensation.

Flawless Logic and Lawless Logic

Finally picked up the DVD of “Law Abiding Citizen” and screened it last night. I can only imagine the development meetings behind this gem.

THE BOSS:

Okay people we don’t have much time to act. I just got word that both Gerald Butler and Jamie Foxx are available to star in our next Wasted Talent Production. Of course the script doesn't yet exist, but that has never stopped us before. We have to get something, anything for them or we lose our window of opportunity. What do we have in the slush pile?

DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE ONE:

Remember that western written for Lee Marvin after "Cat Ballou?" I think it was called “When Billy met Jesse." It’s about the years Billy the Kid rode with Jesse James when both were scouting for Custer. I guess we can make one of them black. The original writer left the business or shot himself or became a doctor.

THE BOSS:

Who's Lee Marvin? Maybe this has potential -- and we do have a bunch of Native Americans still on contract from the "Dancing with Wolves" sequel we optioned back in the previous century. Check to see if we’ve placed it in turnaround yet. On second thought, westerns don't appeal to the young unless we can attach vampires and video games somewhere. Kids today have no understanding of history.

DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE TWO:

I read a script during my last stint in rehab that has two lesbian detectives working out of Cleveland, Georgia going undercover to break up a white supremacy ring that deals crystal meth. We could get some A-list writer to do a quick touch up and pitch it to their reps. You know like a "Bad Boys" type thing.

DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE THREE:

I got this great script called "Boyd and Lloyd" about two gay guys who battle each other in court to adopt this kid from Tibet who might or might not be a reincarnated god. Hijinks ensue throughout. Doesn’t Jackie Chan have a kid we could use here? Maybe we can get Gary Marshall to play the judge?

DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE FOUR:

Don’t both of these guys sing and dance? I know that musicals aren’t in right now because of "Nine," but I read a couple of blogs that explained "Nine" tanked because it was about a bunch of foreigners. Let me check to see who has the film rights to that Huck Finn musical written by Glenn Miller. I remember from my Spark Notes reading that there are both white and black characters.

THE BOSS:

Butler might be too young to play Finn. Doesn’t Finn always scream out the word "mendacity" at his son Brick? I hate it when writers use big words unless they're English and it's a show for PBS. Anyway, wasn’t "Showboat" about guys floating down the Mississippi? It might work for our bottom line. Let’s check the tax credits for all the states that the river flows through. Better yet, see if we can borrow Cameron's green screen.

DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE ONE:

Science fiction is hot right now. Maybe we can do an updated version of "Alien Nation" or some other kind of buddy film set in outer space. I’ll post a log line on some bulletin boards over at UCLA and USC. Some student has to have a script like that lying around.

INTERN STRAIGHT OUT OF COLLEGE:

I’m just vamping here, but how about if we throw away Butler’s singing ability and his good looks and make him a crazed serial killer. He works as a brain for the CIA so he knows everything and can build the Panama Canal in his living room using tin foil and margarine if he needs to. But his family gets killed in a bungled home invasion, although we really don’t know why his place was picked and it is only the catalyst for the entire movie reprisal motif. Am I using the word "motif" correctly? Butler’s character is so smart that he spends 10 years planning his revenge on all the lawyers who helped get one of the bad guys off. He sets car bombs, murders a judge with an exploding cell phone, and buries someone with just the right amount of oxygen pumping into his nose to keep him alive until 30 seconds before rescue. Butler's character has accumulated enough C4 to rival Blackwater -- or maybe that's where he buys it all from. He digs into a maximum security prison by himself and knows exactly which cell in solitary will be his after he kills his prison bunk mate. And he goes in and out of prison without anyone suspecting anything even though he is on 24-hour lockdown.

We make Foxx an obsessed hot shot prosecutor who is married to a beautiful woman and has a cello-playing daughter to whome he pays very little attention. In fact, let's make sure no pianos are around for him at all. Viewers might then ask questions about why he isn't playing duets with his kid. We have Butler’s character go after Foxx’s character when all the other characters relevant to the case are killed in extreme ways. The audience will believe Butler has a partner on the outside but the surprise is he doesn't. It's like "Saw" meets "Phantom of the Opera," except no one sings anything. Maybe over end credits Butler and Foxx can perform an old standard like "Me and My Shadow" -- unless you guys think that might have some racial overtones attached to it. We can set it in Philly because that’s where I come from and I can visit my folks on the production’s dime. And…

THE BOSS:

Enough. I love it. Tight. Concise. Energetic. That’s why I hire kids with math degrees. You guys put everything down so logically, and I don't even need to understand the difference between algebra and trigonometry. Okay, we’re shooting next week. Where’s the rewrite already?

One Line Says It All

Over heard today at the local grocery store:

My ex is so brutal that in the divorce settlement, I’m only allowed to talk to the voices in my head every other weekend.

A Vietnamese neighbor saw me coming upstairs with several pizzas for the Super Bowl. Later that afternoon, she knocked on my door and asked if she could borrow a pizza because she and her friends had run out of food.


In addressing a Tea Party audience this past weekend, Sarah Palin was seen with cribbed notes written in black ink on the palm of her hand. I wonder who will be the first person to remark that such an act adds new meaning to the term hand job.

Things to Watch For During Tonight’s State of the Union

Obama’s Introduction of foreign dignitaries including the Na’vi, the Cylons, and those creepy characters from District 9

Congressional members showing populist support by hanging tea bags from their $2000 Armani suits

The “You Lie” Glee Club receiving more applause than the President

Fox News Cutting In to Broadcast a 1994 Newt Gingrich Rebuttal

Supreme Court allowing large corporations to begin construction on luxury box Seats behind the President

Representatives of Indiana and Louisiana already drunk in anticipation of Super Bowl Game

Rachael Maddow in a Low Cut Pants Suit

Glenn Beck walking up and down the aisle hawking gold coins

The words “Saving Middle Class”, “Employment Opportunities”, and “Non Defense Measures” end up as a drinking game.

The best post analysis of the speech comes from John Oliver of the Daily Show

Sasha and Malia signal their father to wrap it up before the start of “American Idol”

Newly elected Senator Scott Brown showing off his own stimulus package

Smurfs on Steroids

Sitting in theaters watching 3D movies has always given me migraines. It is not the 3D process itself, which is enjoyable with or without an attached storyline. No, the migraine problem is rooted in my inability to keep my hands off the 3D glasses. I spend most of the screen time moving them up and down the bridge of my nose or taking them off completely just to see the contrast between 3D and blur. I have four eyes going into the screenings. Adding two more eyes becomes too weighty for me to bear.

These actions drive what few dates I have crazy -- especially my patented three-hand balancing act of glasses, barrels of popcorn, and several soft drinks in and around my lap. If I had had a fourth hand, I might spend some time actually holding my date’s hand, for my father told me that’s what is required of a good gentleman during a movie. I think the last movie my dad saw was the original "All Quiet on the Western Front." I told him times had changed.

A date once asked me why I couldn’t simply watch the movie without all the vertical hand gestures to my face. I didn’t have an answer for her. Luckily we stopped seeing each other during a "House of Wax" retrospective when I spilled a tall order of Coke down her left leg.

I hate going to movies by myself, so I don’t, if at all possible. That’s why I always carry singles in my wallet. Going to things alone reminds me too much of my teen years in Madison when I did everything as a gang of one, both legal and otherwise (and if truth be told, doing “otherwise” was even more strenuous).

Back then I couldn’t find a date even amongst the homeless. I spent most Saturday nights with a deck of cards, a pea, a card table, and three thimbles. The State Historical Society has pictures of me running for my life down State Street being chased by Madison’s finest and a few angry roughnecks from Black Earth and Portage.

I decided to see "Avatar" with a woman who fidgets in her seat even more than I do. I’ve known Adele for decades and it was she who coined this line after our first blind date:

"Not if you were the last guy on Earth and there were no German shepherds around."

Nor was I immune to her Dorothy Parkeresque insults even when I was with someone else:

"If breasts were brains, your cheap looking friend would be running MIT."

I still think about the psychologically damaged children the two of us could have produced. They might also have looked like police dogs. But I digress.

Adele is a member of one of the fast-growing subspecies in the world of web journalism: an online movie critic. She gets paid nothing for her reviews, but they show up all over the Internet. Since she uses big words and quotes Eric Rohmer in French and knows the difference between Heinrich von Kleist and Otto Von Bismarck, her remarks are taken earnestly by the literati.

Adele had already seen "Avatar" once in IMAX 3D, so she had no difficulty in allowing me the opportunity to pay the king’s ransom admission so she could see the movie a second time. She needed to continue to compile her "Avatar" cliché list for her column and one viewing was not sufficient. Since she hates sitting next to me during a screening, as it could construed a date with someone who was not a vegan, I bought her a ticket several rows below me and to my far left. The person sitting next to me was a little girl accompanied by her parents who became fascinated with my ability to juggle my glasses, soft drinks, and popcorn. Her mother kept muttering something to her about not imitating the strange man next to her.

This particular IMAX screening was packed with repeat viewers. I know this because half the audience kept whispering to the other half, “Wait till you see what happens next.” Crowds like this drive me nuts. Homeland Security should worry less about gun toters on airplanes and more about gun toters in theaters.

While I settled down to play with my glasses, Adele was fast at work jotting down notes. She can write in the dark without use of any illumination. She picked up that trick, she told me, from years of undressing in the dark with her dates. I never understood the correlation, and she always walked away from me without explaining. She had already counted as many story clichés within Cameron’s movie as the number of dollars it took to make the film, excluding the cost of prints and advertising during her first viewing. She decided to go a second time to check her math.

During the fifth or sixth or seventh flying sequence, my mind began to wander further than the hills of Pandora. This film had everything: the Cherokee Trail of Tears, Polynesian unison swaying, pidgin English, pantheism, and animism. It was anti-military, possibly anti-American, certainly anti-imperialist, pro-environment, and, I decided after witnessing the interaction with all the animal life, creationist to the core. Here was a place in the universe that obviously did have an Intelligent Designer: Humanoids flying around on cool looking pterodactyls while Venus flytraps waved at them from below

And the Tree of Souls. Who else but an Intelligent Designer would come up with a world where you blow up a big tree and everyone comes out of the woodwork to seek revenge?

I expected to engage in a spirited debate with Adele after the screening, perhaps at some vegan hot spot. So I began making a mental list of the questions I thought should have been answered somewhere within the movie:

Why didn’t the Tree of Souls do a smackdown at the first sign of environmental trouble?

How did the scientists obtain the Na’vi DNA in the first place? Was Gitmo still open 150 years in the future?

Why are the Na’vi blue and ten feet tall rather than red and the size of a Munchkin? Forget that question since this is a science fiction movie and not a fantasy.

How did a humanoid species evolve in an atmosphere heavy with carbon dioxide?

Why are the Na’vi wearing African tribal jewelry?

Why don’t the Na’vi immediately recognize the avatars in their midst, since they speak the language like Berlitz dropouts? Why didn’t they just kill them and turn a 160 minute movie into a six minute short?

Do the Na’vi walk around naked or are they wearing blue jump suits over their natural blue skin?

Why is it always the Marines who have to do the dirty work?

How did the Na’vi evolve when so many odd looking gigantasaurs could swallow them whole and use their spines as ten foot long blue toothpicks?

Why is their religious ceremony a cross between a Polynesian singalong and a Chautauqua revival?

Where did they get their culture and why wasn’t anyone smart enough to invent gunpowder?

Why just ride buzzards? Why didn’t they domesticate the hounds from Hell or any of the other wild life?

Why didn’t the white colonists simply drop fancy looking bows and arrows laden with small pox bacilli down on them to clear out the indigenous population? Who would know the difference?

Why hasn’t colonialist weaponry advanced in the 25 years since "Aliens?"

Am I the only one who sees a similar look between the Na’vi and some of the blue characters of "ThunderCats?"

Why does every pro-environmental film end with half of the environment destroyed or up in smoke?

Why does the unnamed transnational company give up so quickly? Why weren’t more soldiers sent in? It’s not like the Na’vi have lobbyists in Congress.

I never had that conversation with Adele. She met some guy coming out of the theater, waved goodbye to me and left. I threw my list of questions away, looked at the clock, and sneaked into “Daybreakers.” I also kept the 3D glasses.

The 2011 New Year’s Day Message from the FAA

Due to the hysteria created by the Underwear Bomber, the FAA went into a sanity lockdown and began a new round of regulations for the flying public that continued throughout 2010.

To the Flying Public:

Congratulations one and all for surviving another wild and wacky year with us here at the FAA as America continues to fly around this great globe of ours! We hope you've had as much fun working through our regulations as we’ve had making things up on the fly (aren't we the punsters?). We understand the awkwardness brought upon by observing those willing to walk across tarmacs at gunpoint, seeing their babies dropped on cold floors,or watching as infirm epileptics are held down by airport personnel during possible fake seizures. So in 2011 we will be making a few modifications to our bylaws to better assist you throughout your journey.

1) We will no longer require a colonoscopy 36 hours before take off-for those under the age of 100. 2010 has brought tremendous advances in technology. Many of our screeners (straight from Blackwater University) are now skilled enough to inject cobalt isotopes directly into the jugular. This hastens your ability to get through the day-long security lines since it irradiates all organs at once. Hiding anything anywhere on a human body is now a thing of the past. Frequent travelers have complained of the sienna-like color in their burning urine for weeks afterwards. We believe there is no scientific correlation between colored urine and sudden death; hair loss; shrunken genitalia; or anal and stomach bleeding. We have been told by government trendsetters that sienna will be the new Fall color of choice among the fashionistas, so frequent flyers are already ahead of the game.

2) The pat down, reach around, feel up finger jab will remain in force for the foreseeable future. We regret the unease this causes those young females whose landing strips don’t match up with their hair, and those well-buffed males who appear to be swaggering with a package far greater than they deserve. The latter will continue to be pulled over and strip-searched to see whether their equipment measurements are in line with those now listed on their passports. This is no time to enhance any numbers needlessly; for if you do the terrorists have won.

3) We at the FAA want all of you to know that we take complaints of using cattle prods and Bunsen burners very seriously. For the time being, we have stopped hiring any individual who has been employed either in slaughter yards or chicken processing plants, though some pesky applicants still sneak through. We certainly do not want our traveling public treated as if they were either cattle or capons.

3) As of January 1st, 2011, we will be stocking our own required brand of thong underwear for women and jock straps for men. We have listened to your screams of walking buck naked through terminals with only the harsh glare of searchlights and snarling dogs as your companions. Made of the highest quality of polyester blend, the FAA undies hopefully will be clearly delineated enough to keep our friendly genitalia-sniffing Dobermans at bay. Rest assured that we had no knowledge the Pentagon had mistakenly shipped us a pack of border patrol canines trained to bite down on all low-hanging fruit of illegal male aliens.

4) Expressions like “you call that a pee-pee?” and “dick-less wonder” and “let’s touch to make sure they’re hung properly” have been replaced with less provocative terminology for addressing male passengers as they wait to be manacled into their seats before flight. We at the FAA extend our heartfelt sympathies to all XY chromosome carriers traumatized by our playful female TSA operatives. Lucky for us, lobbyists in Congress have exempted all federal agencies from frivolous class action lawsuits. We are not to blame if your junk is undersized.

5) As of January 1st, females under the age of 30 whose nipples become erect due to the lack of heat in the cabins will be allowed to maintain them without incurring penalties. Those females over 30 must arrive at the airport with a doctor’s explanation explaining why this phenomena still occurs for them. Females suffering through hot flashes can continue to share their heat with passengers next to them.

6) Planes will continue to taxi from one airport to another if the flight is under six hours. We know this remains an inconvenience for those customers who find it quicker to walk to their destinations. However, strutting your stuff across the plains of the Midwest or traipsing around unescorted by federal marshals through the mountain ranges of Appalachia, for instance, will now immediately place you on the n- fly list and could cause you to be shot on sight. Trans-oceanic flights will maintain a glide of no more than ten feet over the surface of the water regardless of wave size.

We believe we have finally solved that embarrassing and sticky problem of public evacuation during a flight while bolted and manacled to your seats. We have replaced those holes cut in the seats that were hastily lined with adult diapers back in early 2010 with a new form of technology affectionately called “Outhouse Moderne” that combines the scent of French vanilla candles with a steady downward suction that keeps the rectum teased and delighted. Their stainless steel build makes for easier cleaning, and so far we have had no complaints of either splinters or cushion burn though it still remains cold to the touch.

We realize that flying is a privilege and not a right, so we at the FAA will continue to strive to make your future flights as unremarkable as possible. Wishing you all a Happy New Year and pleasant journeys in the year ahead!

PS.

Here is our winner of the 2010 Passenger of the Year at our new FAA approved snack shop at LAX.

Christmas Shorts In Between the Caroling

Those of us who scour the Internet looking for animated good cheer that doesn't involve liquids, find plenty to choose from this time of year in the files of gifted animators. Christmas means so many things to those with the talent to draw objects other than water from wells or long stretches in the state pen. Take these three samples for instance, all of which exhibit how expansive a holiday Christmas actually is.

PAPU Meets Santa Claus from Xeth Feinberg on Vimeo.