OCTOBER '04 ARCHIVE

10/25/04

WHAT NEXT? “EXPERIENCE THE HORROR OF…THE PEEVED.”

The Grudge opens at number one and as we all know, I don’t do the scary. Not to mention Asian scary, which is a whole other thing (like The Ring, this was originally a Japanese film). See, horror in America an even Europe is somewhat cliché. It’s pretty much the same stories over and over again for the last few dozen centuries. It’s the same stories over and over again in Asia, but with a twist. For example: there’s no such thing as “thing under the bed” in Asia horror because the bed is on the floor, so they have ways of being creepy that are completely new to us. No thanks. If I have to see something even remotely scary, I’ll stick to what I know, like crazy scientists and serial killers, not movies where the house is haunted because someone died angry. What the fuck is up with that? What if the person died horny (The Engorged) or hungry (The Growling) or drunk (The Slurring)? Does this mean ghosts that feel you up, eat your pizza and try to pick fights with you? This actually goes The Ring one better because it keeps the Japanese director and even has it set in Japan. Actually this may work against it, because what’s the point in remaking it if you’re going to keep so much the same? Also a Japanese director really wouldn’t know how to translate some things to his western audience (though a ghost boy in his underwear is pretty much creepy in every language). But I guess they though having Buffy as their star would be enough. Sarah Michelle Gellar. Never has one actress so depended on one talented man for her success, because she is a fucking moron and proves it with virtually every non-scripted utterance from her mouth. Who knows? Maybe not being able to understand what an idiot his star was enabled to do for her what most directors could not. But I’ll never know. Ever. Hell, I won’t even watch The Ring on cable at three in the afternoon. And while a PG rating (not to mention that decidedly non-scary title) does suggest this is less suspenseful (knowing you won’t see someone’s head ripped off through their ass does lessen the tension somewhat), I’m still not going there.

QUEER AS FISH

Down to number two is Shark Tale and this also has a PG rating. Why? Well, probably because of the gay subtext. Yes, this has a gay subtext. The shark in question is obviously a little---ahem---sensitive, what with his refusal to eat other fish or follow in the family business. Also, when he goes “comes out” he paints himself powder blue (he’s pretending to be a dolphin) and starts wearing a strategically placed handkerchief to let people know what he’s all about. Then there’s the speech Will Smith gives to Robert DeNiro about loving his son even though “he’s different.” Actually, they could’ve done something with this if it really didn’t rise about the level of a bad Will & Grace joke. Again, the inherent superiority of Finding Nemo, which was also about a father learning to let go of his son. But that was infused with some genuine poignancy, whereas this is just stupid.

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE; IT COULD HAVE BEEN PHIL COLLINS

Shall We Dance actually rises as notch to number three probably because people heard it didn’t suck nearly as much as they expected. Peter Gabriel covers a song by The Magnetic Fields called “Book of Love” which is in the movie and on the soundtrack. It’s much better than the original, which sings the more sardonic portion of the lyrics (“the book of love is long and boring”) with far too much contempt because it kills anything genuinely romantic to be derived from the resulting contrast (“but I love it when you read to me”), which is unfortunate, because the sentiment it carries borders on beautiful. The music itself actually sounds a little like U2’s “So Cruel” and while Peter Gabriel’s style gives it more emotional heft than the original, his style is so consistent it borders on self-parody. It’s like that old SCTV sketch about Richard Harris only being able speak in one of two voices; the loud urgent one, or the soft intense one. Peter Gabriel sings that way. It begins soft and intense, and gets loud and urgent “love, I GET SO LOST SOMETIMES/days pass AND THIS EMPTINESS FILLS MY HEART/when I want to run away/I DRIVE OFF IN MY CAR…” But the soundtrack needs it, considering it also includes The Pussycat Dolls (yes, that lame group from LA that dresses up like whores and does show tunes) covering the old Dean Martin tune, “Sway” and Mya ruining, absolutely fucking ruining David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance.” Where was there a big outcry for this? And she’s also in this, making it her second film with Richard Gere (she had a small role in Chicago) and I’ve got $20 says he doesn’t even know her name. Sadly, if there’s any role she should have played, it should have been the Jessica Alba role in Honey, but apparently they wanted someone pretty.

THEN AGAIN, IT’S HARD TO TOP “UNCLE FUCKER”

Friday Night Lights is down to number four, followed by Team America: World Police at number five and while up and recovering from drinking over the weekend, I caught South Park The Movie running uncut on Comedy Central at 1am. Man, if I thought this was a step down before, now it’s incredible the stumble they made. But during the movie they had interviews with these guys about Team America and they actually considered making it a musical, but decided to just parody the Jerry Bruckheimer school of moviemaking. That’s cutting off your nose to spite your face at it’s finest. Rather than make a better, funnier movie they chose to just attack someone. What’s scary is that I would have done exactly the same thing. What we do, we do in the service of our muse of bile and rancor. It’s what we’re all about. Humor sometimes has to take a backseat so we can tell you what just pisses us the fuck off.

PRETTY BORING OR IS IT BORING PRETTY

Ladder 49 is still hanging around here at number six and what does this have in common with Friday Night Lights? They both give work to Jay Rodriquez as an attractive, yet uncharismatic minority male, doomed to play support roles, especially for more charismatic minority males and occasional male interest for the actual female lead. Luckily on this one he has Morris Chestnut to advise him, as Chestnut has been playing it for the last decade, supporting Cuba Gooding Jr., Taye Diggs and Jamie Foxx, while being the male interest for Vivica Fox and Gabrielle Union.

SURVIVING YOUR AGENT

Surviving Christmas opens poorly at number seven and Ben Affleck apparently needs to hit rock-fucking bottom before he stop just taking paychecks. Every actor even remotely associated with this is nothing less than a whore---with the exception or Christina Applegate who’s lucky to be working with anyone even remotely associated with the A-list. I can’t imagine this ever seemed like a good idea and as bad as it was, releasing this thing in freaking October was even worse. I mean, it’s not even fucking Halloween yet! It’s so annoying having something holiday oriented so soon, even if it were good, this still would have caused it to fail. But what did you really expect from the director of Deuce Bigalow? Yes, a man with an Oscar for writing and the star of The Sopranos but themselves in the hands of the director of Deuce Bigalow. Whores I tell you. All whores.

VIVA LE DIFFERENCE

Taxi is down to number eight and this is a remake of a French film and is there a greater recipe for disaster than to try and remake a French comedy? Our sensibilities are just so different it might as well be Japanese. Luc Besson did the French original to kill time while waiting on a decision for The Fifth Element, so it was slight crap to begin with---but successful crap. It’s already had two sequels. Thankfully, there’s no chance of that here.

WORDS YOU’LL NEVER HEAR: HEY,THERE’S A FIST FIGHT IN THE CHESS CLUB

The Forgotten is down to number nine with I Love Huckabees closing out the top ten at number ten and the only reason I can think of this being here is that pretentious pseudo intellectuals were driven to it because they felt so isolated from the rest of country and the baseball playoffs. After all, your average art film audience member was rarely ever picked first during recess. Speaking of angry wussies, the director, David O. Russell, is apparently in some sort war with the journalist who wrote about him for the New Yorker. Apparently, he came off badly in the article (this was a man who got into a physical fight with George Clooney during Three Kings) and was pissed. Now they’re “at war.” An indie director and a journalist. Yeah, that’s a pussy slap fight in the making. A fight between six-year old girls is more ferocious. You can look forward to her being brutally mocked (i.e., parodied with such heavy handedness that it cripples the script) in his next film.

LIKE BULL DURHAM, IT’S NOT ABOUT BASEBALL AT ALL

Yeah, that was some pathetic meltdown. I’m mean, it was all there just laid out for the taking. How could it go so wrong? Baseball? Yankees? I thought we were talking about the actress who started talking to me at the grocery store and I blew it so badly that when I told my friend about it, the first words out of her mouth were, “You are such a fucking loser.” I really couldn’t argue with her.

IT’S IN THE WAY THAT YOU USE IT

So a few weeks ago, to thank her for driving us back from Long Island after the wedding, I suggested to Around The Way Girl that we take Star Trek Woman out for a drink or to play pool. She agreed, but as always, Around The Way Girl proved to be unavailable when we finally came down to it, leaving me and Star Trek Woman on our own. Things took a southern turn the moment she said I had to join her at a party with some former co-workers---and I had to dress. Now, one of the big pluses of unemployment is the lack of a dress code and I was horribly dismayed that my sense of obligation was going to force me into slacks for even a moment of my life. I kicked and screamed, but ultimately put on the non-sneakers and slacks and met her at a bar near her office with her boss, who was also going to the party. I had to meet her there around six, which means I had to deal with the post-work crowd and I was reminded of how much I hated my job and the corporate world in general. This only got worse in the bar where I saw all the old interactions at work. After all, these weren’t real friends out at a bar, but co-workers and their dynamics came with them intact, along with my favorite “alcohol blurring the lines for sex.” Sigh. One group was painful in that “The Hot Girl” was very obvious and watching the jockeying going on was pathetic, not merely to see it played out, but from the memories of my own participation. And I don’t know which was worse, winning or losing. Finally we left and caught a cab up to the party, which was on the East Side and actually on a dead end street, which was oddly quiet because the buildings on the other side of the dead end actually blocked the sounds of the FDR. The building was nice and this guy throwing the party was actually planning on buying the apartment above his and making it into a duplex. What he actually did was sell it and his other apartments and buy a whole new place somewhere else. When I saw the place I realized why and was reminded of the sad truth of living in NYC. Now, this guy obviously made a lot of money. Nonetheless, his apartment---as nice as it was with the two terraces and Brazilian hardwood floor he put in---was kinda small. In fact, I think it amounted to just a two bedroom, one of which occupied his wife and son. Honestly, The one bedroom I had on the Upper West Side had nearly as much space. What was sad was that you know that place was worth close to a million bucks, but still wasn’t all that big. In the land outside New York, that we call America, a million bucks gets you more than two bedrooms. In any case, it was a party, meaning free food and drink and we took full advantage of it until she decided it was time to go play pool at Slate on 21st. I’m more of a dive pool player myself, but this was for her, not me. Thank god, because she proceeded to whup my ass. Now, I knew she was good, because she actually owned her own cue, but I wasn’t prepared for how bad I was. I can’t remember if we played five or seven games, but either way I only won two of them (I’m so hoping it’s only five). I’d love to blame the DJ (what the fuck is a DJ doing in a pooh hall?) for distracting me with 80’s songs, but the truth is I just sucked. Well, my debt is paid, so she’s not getting me into another pool hall again. My fragile male ego can’t handle that on a regular basis.

IT’S RAINING DEATH!

Death’s cruel march continues as one of the Weather Girls died. Gee, wonder what of. Of course it was heart failure! She weighed a thousand pounds! I’m not trying to be cruel, but what did you think was going to happen? Every day I pray from someone to tie Aretha Franklin down and force her to diet because the woman is expanding exponentially. And another piece of my youth died when Doug of Doug & The Slugs also passed away. Damn! Is no group too obscure to kill?

WHEN I WAS A CHILD I COLLECTED AS A CHILD, AS AN ADULT I STILL DO IT

So, I need space. I’ve just accumulated too much stuff for such a small place, so I’m on mission to cut it down to the bone, throwing out things I think I need, but am actually kidding myself. Aside from clothes, it’s old guitar magazines (if I didn’t read the secrets of shredding from Pantera’s guitarist in 2001, I’m not going to read it now), old Playboys (I can find all these pictures online any way), old VHS tapes (it’s not on DVD yet, but I probably wouldn’t buy it anyway) and yes, porn on videotape. I decided to go with a variation on the fashion rule, “If you haven’t whacked off to it in a year, then throw it out.” Besides, the VHS is back in the closet, which means I have to make an effort to get it and if I was willing to make an effort, I could get real sex. Besides, now that the older stuff is finally coming out on DVD, so I need not suffer through this primitive medium and will finally lose the last reason I’m still keeping my VCR. I’d sell them off on eBay like I did the others, but these are dupes I made myself of my favorite stars. Kinda like a “mixtape” if you will. And chances are there’s episodes of Superman The Animated series interspersed through the tapes, so who would want them? Actually that would make them worth twice as much to your average geek...but no, it’s also illegal to do that, so the last thing I need is for Vivid Video, DC Comics and Warner Brothers to be coming after me, so they had to go. And some of this stuff is literally from my college days (at the end of one of the tapes I actually found an episode of Crime Story!) So, goodbye to my self-made collection of Heather Hunter (besides, I can always go next door and just ask her), Kitty Yung (she was never the same after that boob job anyway), Gina Valentino (think Teri Hatcher, but not as hard-looking), Sade (no, not that Sade, but pretty damn nice), Sheena Horne (had to leave the business because of a heart condition made it dangerous for her to get too excited), Buffy Davis (back when soft and plush was acceptable for a porn star), Kristara Barrington (who thought choosing that name would keep her from playing typical Asian porn roles---needless to say, she was wrong), Alexandra Nice (think Famke Janssen’s slutty little sister), Kimberly Kyle (not pretty, but these are the girls who work it the best), Careena Collins (believe it or not, her day job is a lawyer), Veronica Hart (which I’m replacing on DVD anyway), Angel & Ashley Long (two six-foot, blonde, foul-mouthed English girls, but they aren’t sisters), Sabrina Johnson (English brunette and like all English girls in porn, seems to suffer from Tourette’s Syndrome), Laurie Smith (think if Margot Kidder actually filmed her 70’s days of being a big slut), the oeuvres of director John Leslie (who actually had subtext to his work), The Dark Brothers (before music videos he did New Wave Hookers and White Bun Busters) and Alex DeRenzy (who may have been the only director who could actually create sexual tension in porn), and the wonderful Vanessa Chase (a short-haired brunette who looked like this little French Arab girl I once worked with---yes, I have problems). And if throwing out the porn impresses you, then this will blow your mind: I sold my Playstation 2 off on eBay as well. Yes. It’s gone. Bought within 24 hours. Sorry, but I was drunk at 3:00 am and after playing SSX 3 for hours, it hit me how much of my life I’d wasted on it (one annoying game actually tells you how long you’ve played it). There’s nothing else I do for hours at a time like this but sleep. I don’t even use the porn this much. But don’t think it doesn’t hurt. I love my Playstation. I love playing games where I tool through the streets of Tokyo at 225 miles an hour to the sounds of hip-hop while being chased by half-a-dozen cops, or fly through some futuristic city at 500 mph with a laser cannon to the sound of techno, blowing away my fellow racers. I love it! But I’m just too old to lose this much time all the time, so I bit the maturity bullet and let it go. Sigh. Porn’s gone. Playstation’s gone. What am I supposed to do now?

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, PART II

So, even though I did all I could to rid my apartment of useless things, it still seemed cluttered, so I accepted the offer of a friend of mine to come and take a look at it. Her sister actually does it professionally. You know, one of those people who come over and tell you to grow up and lose the popsicle stick collection. They’re both Jewish, so think of it as “Yenta Eye For The Straight Guy.” In any case, I thought all she’d really do was come over and yell at me for not getting rid of the comic books and DVD’s and then leave. Well, she did do the yelling thing (“Do you ever dust?” “Do you need all these DVD’s!?!” “Do you need all this porn!?!” “Do you need all these CD’s!?!” “Iron those damn curtains!” “How much damn lotion do you need!?!” “You have the wrong hangers!” “And what’s up with all this fucking dust!?!”) but she did things to this room I’d never have considered in a million years. First, it never crossed my mind to get rid of books, even bad ones (yes, they are eBay bound). Hello, shelf space! And, believe it or not, I have two closets in my one room, one of them full walk-in. This is where I keep my 6,000 comic books and that’s not going to change, so what could you do with it? Tons it seems. I’ve got more floor space than I’ve had in years because of the shit she was able to put in that closet. Not to mention organizing my computer space something awesome. Every time I look it, I’m stunned at how neat and orderly it is now. And she gets big points for temporary measures. If I hadn’t ignored her instructions and taken things to The Salvation Army, she had a way of hiding my lotion collection so I don’t look like a compulsive masturbator. But until I can effect that change she used the habit of my roommate and I of saving every shopping bag we get to put things away (and it’s pretty damn funny to have my condoms and lube now sitting in a pretty golden Godiva bag). Now, not all of it took for me and I undid some things the moment she left (sorry, but books turned sideways may look nice, but it’s wasted space to me), but for the most part I’m delighted and totally understand why some people pay for this (me, I just exploit friendships). Apparently, there’s even more space available with a little more work (there’s the trunk which is filled with god knows what), but I don’t think my heart could handle even more change right now. Not to mention the resulting dusting and vacuuming is killing me.

HEY, LET’S GET THE CONTROL FREAK GEEK DRUNK

So, in this week alone, three women have forced me to go out drinking, all of them falling back on the simple logic of “what the hell do you have to do in the morning that you can’t come out with me?” Sigh. At first, I thought it was a plan of The Former Miss Pretty Boy to kill me, because it was initially her friends, Star Trek Woman and Around The Way Girl, who were also her bridesmaids. I feel she took offense at my wedding gift (which she returned) and sent them to take me down. First, Star Trek Woman invites me to an “Asian Mixer.” I refused outright because it gets a little tiresome being a minority even amongst minorities. Not to mention, the shame of being the non-Asian male at an Asian function. We all know what that guy is about. That’s John Lennon, Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, not to mention every other Jewish male. It’s Yellow Fever. It’s Rice Busting and I’ll have none of it. Apparently, I’m getting old because she still wore me down and that’s how I wound up at Sasha’s on W 55th Street getting my hand stamped with an Asian character. Sasha’s is yet another Russian themed bar with actual Russian girls working behind the bar, which proved to be my downfall, because one thing you do not do in this world is tell your Russian bartender there isn’t enough vodka in your vodka gimlet. To make it even worse, I was drinking this French vodka, Ciroc, which is very, very smooth. Maybe if it had bitten me like regular vodka I’d have been aware of how much we were consuming, but I wasn’t and paid for it later. In the meantime I was keeping time with Star Trek Woman at the bar while she cast a baleful eye on the men in the bar (sista, that’s what the white man wants you to think). As far as the women go, I noticed something very, very strange. The women got taller with every passing hour. From 6-7, it was the 5’- 5’4”women. From 7-8 it was the 5’5”-5’7”women. By the time we left there was a woman clearing six feet walking into the bar. What. The. Fuck? Are all Asian gatherings like this? If so, what’s the mindset behind it? Also, I notice the men didn’t get any taller with the passage of time, so what’s up with that? Another sad occurrence was the way alcohol and music lead to dancing. Actually, I should say the attempt at dancing, because while stereotypes about height were broken every hour on the hour, others held true. Honey, there are only four beats to a measure. How is it you manage to miss every single one of them? The only person on beat was the heavyset Asian guy, who was apparently on a mission to redeem his people. And to show that stupid sorority girls are everywhere, we met one girl who was drunk pretty much upon entry and told Star Trek Woman that she liked her and may kiss her later. Sigh. By the time we left, we were seriously drunk thanks to the Russian response to “There’s not enough vodka in this,” which is to pour as much vodka possible into your glass. I put Star Trek Woman on an express bus to Queens and caught a cab home myself to have two cheeseburgers, fries, a coke and some cookies. Needless to say, I saw them all again from 5:00 am to 7:00 am and it was ugly. The next day, I blamed Around The Way Girl because she introduced me to that particular vodka. Her response: let’s go drinking. This is how I wound up at Chelsea Grill in Hell’s Kitchen having her latest fave drink, Grand Marnier and Tequila. Actually, that’s what I put in my margaritas, so it wasn’t that new to me. I just missed the lime juice. After that we went to Zanzibar, which has improved over the years. The music is better, the ugly zebra motif is long gone and they serve a cuisine reflective of the name (middle-eastern food), but most importantly, the drinks are no longer watered down. One odd change is that waitresses now have to wear odd sarong skirts and it seems to be “if you don’t show your stomach, then it has to be short” because they either wore them long with skin, or short with leg (and there was the one who wore it so low on her hips you pretty much knew whether she shaved or waxed). This wasn’t nearly as painful because Around The Way Girl is a bit of a lightweight, so I got off with just two rounds of mojitos before she called it at night, (just as well, her hatred of our boxy shaped waitress grew with every passing moment). My only danger is the sudden urge she got to run on the hood of a car---which had police id in the window (the previous night, Star Trek Woman had a tendency to get hostile to other women, so I’m sensing a trend of danger here). On Saturday, I thought I was done with all this, because this was the day my room was going to be cleaned up. Of course it could never be that easy. After spending four hours making my room more efficient, I couldn’t say “No” when she said she wanted me to make her a drink. Sigh. What is it about me that women want to drink with me then go home? Am I the modern equivalent of “Hey, let’s get the dog drunk?” Do you just enjoy watching the control freak lose control and go off on how he’d like to have sex with Bridget Fonda while Taye Diggs watches? Luckily, this was the cheapest of the bacchanals, being that we made the various martinis (and had shots). After she left, I took my chances again with a cheeseburger at 1:00 am (while reading comic books and watching South Park), but I was okay. Well, I thought I was. See, while seeing her out, I did something to the lock on my door, which did nothing if you were coming in, but next afternoon when I tried to leave, I couldn’t. Yes, in my drunken stupor, I’d managed to somehow lock myself into my apartment. I had to climb out the window, let down the fire escape, climb down, come back into the building and use the key from the outside to get back in. Sigh. No more drinking. You hear me, bitches? No. More. Drinking. I don’t care if you drive me back from my own wedding and paint my apartment, no more drinking.

LOSE WEIGHT NOW. GRAB THAT BURGER, CHEESE, COKE, VODKA AND ASK ME HOW

So, after a month of drinking, grilled cheese, drinking cokes literally every day and cheeseburgers on weekends, what do I look like now? Well, I’ve actually lost six pounds. Trust me, no one is more shocked than I am, because this leads to one inescapable fact: working out is actually working (and I stopped eating ice cream, cheesecake and cheese covered nachos). Why doesn’t this fill me with joy? I HATE WORKING OUT! I HATE IT! Yes, I enjoy swimming, but when you have to do it, some of the fun is taken away. And it’s not like there’s a hot lifeguard the way I used to have a hot yoga instructor. It’s just either saggy men in bikini briefs, or sculpted gay couples in trunks like mine making me realize how sad it is that I ooze out of the sides of them. But what’s worse is that now I know that maybe, just maybe, if I increase my workout or stop eating something, I can change it. Damn. Ignorance is such bliss.

ANGRY GEEKS ­ THE NEXT GENERATION

Finally, my boy, O.G. (Original Geek) became a dad this weekend when his wife gave birth to a little girl. This means more than almost any of the others because I’ve known him since I was 15. Also, he’ll join me in geeking her up right. She’s not just going to get one or two geek gifts, she’s getting everything the two of us can lay our hands on. Her mother may be able to protect her from daddy’s geek influence, but when Uncle Angrygeek comes to visit, all hope is lost. It’s a never-ending battle for me. I just sent a Supergirl Barbie to New Jersey last week to atone for the stuffed Superman I brought (remember: she didn’t like boy toys). Apparently, it went over like gangbusters (I got a phone call thanking “Bince”) and Supergirl now goes everywhere with her. And yes, your children are next.

10/18/04

“It’s better that it should make you sick than you don’t eat it at all.” --- Catalan Proverb

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

Holding at number one is Shark Tale and maybe it’s just resentment on my part, but I sincerely doubt all of this is in fact, Shark Tale money. What people seem to forget is when South Park The Movie opened, kids paid to see Tarzan and Wild Wild West, but left to see it and American Pie. Think they aren’t doing it again to see Team America? And $118M might be a little more impressive if it hadn’t cost $75M to make and the actors not have backend deals, which you don’t get at Disney because the idea is they aren’t paying for stars, but actors. The deal is, they take scale, but you can’t use their names to advertise. This is why you never heard “Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story 2.” It’s also why Robin Williams sued them for using his name to sell Aladdin and got a Picasso as an apology.

FOOTBAWL!

Friday Night Lights holds at number two and America’s sport is not baseball, but high school football. Everyone doesn’t like baseball, but if you grew up in America, there’s a 99% chance high school football had some impact on your life. You can’t say the same thing about any other sport. Hell, even I was affected. I was in the marching band. Shut up! Not to mention, this is where the whole cheerleader mythos was born. You gonna tell me that’s not a part of the national consciousness? Friday Night Lights is based on a book of the same name that explores the importance of football to a small town in Texas. Now, if you know anything of Texas, you know football is practically a religion there. The players are the priests, the cheerleaders are the nuns, coaches are the cardinals and whomever owns the Dallas Cowboys is the pope (the Houston Texans are the equivalent of the Protestant Reformation). I actually gave considerable thought into seeing this, but stayed home to watch grown up football instead. Besides, there’s no way you can be truly honest about sports in a PG movie. Hell, my time in Little League taught me that. You’d think you were with a bunch of Marines the way we talked. Take that and add the teenage sexual aspect and you’ve got yourself an “R” film from jump street. Hell, even the lame Varsity Blues (also set in Texas) knew that. But what ultimately killed my motivation was four little words: “directed by Peter Berg.” Yes, Pigface directed it. And don’t think they don’t know it’s a problem. Notice how none of the ads read “from the director of The Rundown.” He’s pretty much the new Mario Van Peebles in that he’s an actor/director who cannot simply leave a shot alone. Zoom, pan, swoop, tracking…tripods are for pussies! Sigh. And he only got the gig because he’s the cousin of the author of the book. That does not fill me with optimism, because without nepotism, the world would be spared the horror that is Tony Scott.

ACTUALLY 14-YEAR-OLD MAY BE A BIT GENEROUS

Team America: World Police opens at number three and I was so disappointed by this. While it does have its moments, for the most part it’s the equivalent of a couple of 14-year-olds calling everyone they don’t like “fag” and “asshole” and then giggling with delight at their imagined audaciousness. Even at ninety minutes I was bored and threatened to fall asleep on more than one occasion. The last movie that did that to me was Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Okay, so I was a little sick this weekend and only had three hours sleep, but the whole cursing puppet thing gets old really quickly and their wit is more like baseball bat rather than the scalpel it needs to be if you’re going to take on something like America’s reaction to terrorism. And while some may see this as anti-Bush, it does actually come down more on the president’s side of the fence, literally saying it’s better to be a shoot ‘em up dick than peace-loving pussy (which is one occasion of the scat level humor working). If anything, it makes fun of the people opposed to Bush (the Hans Blix scene is one joke that doesn’t work). The closest it gets to mocking the current administration is when Team America destroys most of Paris while killing terrorists, then expects to be thanked for it. And while I’ve no love for the self-important behavior of Jaenene Garafalo, Sean Penn or Susan Sarandon if you’re going to go after them, then go after them. Don’t just make puppet versions of them that get killed in horrible ways. That’s pathetically heavy handed (only Susan Sarandon gets a razor sharp cut that goes to the bone). Then again, South Park has never been known for its subtlety. Probably the best joke against actors is that they belong to the Film Actors Guild and thinks everyone should live the “Film Actors Guild” way. Get it? “F.A.G?” Live the “fag” way? Yeah, it’s funny once, but they don’t let it go. The film is actually much more on target when it mocks action films (the original idea was to remake Day After Tomorrow with puppets and not change a word of the script) and it’s own use of marionettes (at one point the camera actually knocks one of them over). There’s a cruel tease to the great song parodies of South Park The Movie. You can’t get much funnier or much more on target mocking the Toby Keiths of the world (who love to sing about America kicking ass but strangely avoided their opportunity to wear uniforms and do it) than a song called “America/Fuck yeah!” And their riff on the musical Rent (“Lease”) is nothing less than hysterical: “Everybody has AIDS." But these moments are too few and the movie could have easily been cut by 20 minutes, or better yet, lose some dick jokes and add more songs. This would have made and excellent satirical trailer because it wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to wear out its welcome.

PUT ON YOUR RED SHOES AND DANCE THE BLUES

Opening at number is four is Shall We Dance, a Hollywood remake of a Japanese film of the same name. The big problem with this remake is that the core of the Japanese film lay in the culture, which is severely rigid, so to break out of it is a major step. Here, however, doing something unusual is actually the usual, so there’s precious little room for drama. You could find out your boss is a fluffy and you wouldn’t blink. Sadly, the filmmakers didn’t see that and so they ruin what could have been a painless little movie with layer upon layer of ineffectual pathos. There’s not a woman in America who wouldn’t have been thrilled to the core to learn her husband has been secretly taking dance lessons (I almost signed up for dance lessons a few years back, but wound up taking kendo and don’t bother asking me how I got from one to the other; it’s just how my mind works). Hell, the film should have been rated “R” for the amount of boning that would have happened almost immediately. And the Stanley Tucci subplot about a ballroom dancer ashamed of it is also totally lost in an American context. He wants young women, but is ashamed to be a ballroom dancer. Again, bullshit. One tango at a company function and he’d be fighting off pussy. Also, he’s covering his obsession by supposedly being a sports fan, but the casting and the costume design is as wrong as the script, because he looks and acts nothing like a sports loving jock who’d be ashamed of something like this. But one thing they get right is that this is about the guy, not the dance instructor, meaning if you’re looking for a lot of JLo, don’t hold your breath. It’s Richard Gere’s movie, but unlike most Richard Gere movies, his wife is actually played by someone his own age, Susan Sarandon (who still breaks out some of the best cleavage ever). And you could do worse than Richard Gere in a tux with tails. I’ve got five bucks says he’s still rocking Armani 20 years after American Gigolo. And I question the casting of JLo in a role where she doesn’t flash a smile for 90% of the film. It just seems such a waste. Morose and downbeat is not how you want to see her. If Hollywood needs to remake a Japanese film, how about remaking Warm Water Under A Red Bridge, a Japanese film about a woman who literally gushes water when she’s aroused. How about that remake? And no, porn films about women who squirt don’t count.

TAKING TIPS AND GETTING STONED

Ladder 49 is down to number five and they haven’t printed enough money to get me in to see Taxi, which is down to number six. Forget the annoying Jimmy Fallon, prepared to be yet another SNL member drifting into obscurity (Cheri Oteri where art thou?). Forget Queen Latifah squandering her A-list status on bad movies. THAT’S NOT NEW YORK! I hate that shit. If you know one thing about New York, you know there’s no way in hell you can have a car chase. It’s simply not possible. Why even try to set the fucking thing here? Why not set it in LA? And whose dream team is Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah? I guess the old-age interracial formula still works. Add one White Guy (because everyone in Middle America would apparently drop dead if it were a White woman), either Comedian or Real Actor and add One Black person, either Comedian or Rapper (god forbid you give a Black actor a job), and presto! Instant hit! And now Leonardo DiCaprio’s dick warmer, I mean, his girlfriend is making movies!?! Have the lessons of Cindy Crawford Naomi Campbell taught us nothing? And if someone insists again that skinny bitch is curvy, I’m going to choke them to death. She is not curvy. She is a stick with tits. And how can a Brazilian girl have no ass? But there is a real woman in the cast. Yes, Jennifer Esposito is here, but still she alone is not enough to get me in to seeing this shit. I’d rather hear that annoying Harry Chapin song again, and I hate that fucking song! And how much of whore was he to do a sequel?

IMAGINE FAME, BUT NO ONE HAD ANY TALENT

The Forgotten is down to number seven, followed by Raise Your Voice at number eight and when you’re making a movie about a girl who gets into a performing arts school for singing, shouldn’t she be able TO FUCKING SING!?! I can’t believe this. They could have made her a pianist. At least that they could’ve faked, because this bitch cannot sing. And Hillary Duff wonders why people make fun of her. And the supporting adult cast is a who’s who of “lucky to be working at all.” You’ve got David Keith as dad, Rita Wilson as mom, Rebecca DeMornay as the aunt and John Corbett as the “rebel” teacher. Way to piss away that My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Sex & The City clout, John.

I PREFER THE CHER GUEVARA SHIRTS MYSELF

The Motorcycle Diaries is down to number nine, a result, no doubt of all the little hipsters having seen it last week to justify their Che posters and t-shirts. This is the story of how Che Guevara found his calling in life while touring South America on a motorcycle in the 50’s. Yeah. That’s about how interested I was too. Sorry, but this is another generation’s hero and those people have smoked so much weed they’ve probably forgotten just why they worshipped him in the first place. Not to mention he was a commie and left Cuba to be run by Fidel because he found actually running the government not as much fun as overthrowing one. He’s the guy who goes all out to get the girl, then once he’s gotten her, he’s bored and takes off. Yeah, that’s your hero, people.

ROSY PALM AND THE WORLD OF HER FIVE SISTERS

Finally, Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow closes out the top ten at number ten having made only half of its production budget. Hopefully, this will derail director Kerry Conran’s plan to make A Princess of Mars, the first book in the John Carter Warlord of Mars series from Edgar Rice Burroughs. I loved those books as a kid (I discovered them through the Marvel comic based on them) and would rather they not be made than made by this asshole. I’ve got another $10 says he’s a virgin. If you know how many years he spent working on this lousy movie, you know he’s never, ever been on a date.

CHANCES ARE IT COULDN’T BE WORSE THAN CHANCES ARE

Not breaking the top ten is P.S., directed by Dylan “Rodger Dodger” Kidd and starring one of my favorite actresses, Laura Linney (yeah, I know she’s a redhead, but I like her anyway). Also starring is Topher Grace, who is the only saving grace of the now dead That 70’s Show. She plays a Columbia University administrator who is drawn to a grad student applicant that not only has a similar name to her dead high school boyfriend, but also resembles him and has a similar artistic tendency. “Drawn to him” is putting it lightly, as she not only dresses for his interview like it’s a date, but winds up taking him home for sex. And how sad is the state of sex in American film that Topher Grace tracing his finger along Laura Linney’s arm, across her collarbone to her breasts is, perhaps, the most erotic thing I’ve seen all year? It’s not that it’s so great, but I can’t think of another film, just like Unfaithful was it for 2003 and 8 Mile was it for 2002. Damn the corporate need for PG-13. Damn it all to hell. It’s killed non-violent or non-comedic sex in American movies. Another unique aspect of the whole seduction scene (other than the often nude Linney doesn’t get nekkid here) is that it’s all done in real time. From the moment they hit her apartment to the opening of the wine to his putting on the condom to his orgasm and then hers (because when you’re 22, it stays that way forever---heavy, mournful sigh) and even to her getting dressed and him calling his mom (!), it’s all done in real time. And with no music (this is important because Neil LaBute once critiqued that you can’t have a sex scene in America with no music and he was right). Normally, I abhor these long real time scenes in indie film, because it’s needless (reportedly, in the original cut of Brown Bunny, Vincent Gallo washes his fucking car in real time) and more than a bit pretentious, but when done right, it’s a very effective technique and allows your actors to shine. It’s also used later in Laura Linney’s confrontation with Marcia Gay Harden, her best friend who also dated Linney’s late boyfriend and is equally drawn to his young doppelganger. In fact, it’s when the film uses a montage with music that it feels false. Though I enjoyed it (still sick, still with only three hours sleep, but I was never bored) it ultimately fails to gel. It’s too heavy to be the slightly supernatural romantic comedy it could have been (thank god, one Chances Are is enough) and a bit too light to be the story of a woman in a mid-life crisis that it should have been (thank god, one Unmarried Woman is enough), but the performances are all top notch and manage to carry the film for its full 90 minutes. In a way this film is like one of Laura Linney’s earlier works, You Can Count On Me. In both you have a middle-aged woman feeling trapped in the routine of her life who is awakened by a younger man from her past showing up. In that film it was her wastrel (yes, I’m trapped in the 19th century) of a brother. She has a fuck up of a brother here too (played by Paul Rudd), but the younger man in this case is the image of her former lover, at whom she rages her hurt (Gabriel Byrne is on-hand as her ex-husband who confesses to having been a sex addict throughout their marriage) and her fears (her taunting of Topher Grace through a possible failure of his life pretty much secures her a few acting nominations) just as much as her lust and loneliness.

CHEZ CHEZ LA FEMME

So, in addition to Christopher Reeve dying last week, the other reason there was no top ten was because I was spending all my time with The French Woman, a.k.a, My MacGoddess. She was home visiting her folks in CT and came down to the city to see me and for the second time that week a woman wanted me to help her shop (the first was Star Trek Woman, who wanted an opinion on her black fedora with a white band, which makes her look like a little pimp). In this case it was a bit more justified as she wanted new jeans and cheap. We only intended to start at Filene’s Basement, but she found something perfect there and that was it. Good thing too, because shopping with women is a vicious contact sport. I swear there was almost a fist-fight in the dressing room. Afterwards, we had dinner at La Bonne Soup, which she’d introduced me to years before. She’d actually been going there all her life and once when there were no reservations, she slipped into the French and presto! Something opened up. Though French food is wonderfully decadent with cheese and butter, it’s still made in such a way that it doesn’t sit in your stomach like a rock the way American food does. It’s why they aren’t fat pigs like we are, but also, why I was still hungry later. After dinner we went back to my place where we whipped them out, slipped it in and had some fun. Yes, we broke out our G4 powerbooks, attached them with a firewire cable and set about exchanging music. Like I said, she’s my MacGoddess and actually gave me my first Mac. Even she paused for a second and said, “We’re such geeks.” Of course she’s the bizarre attractive geek girl, whereas I’m typical on all counts. But I helped her with a long sought after song from our youth: Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good.” The next day we went to the Met to see a little French Art Deco. It was beautiful, but a painfully small exhibit. MacGoddess is seriously cultured, so having her with me was like having my own personal tour guide. In addition to computers we share a mutual love of the Armored section of the met (she holds a legitimate black belt in taekwondo, as opposed to mine), as well as the Egyptian and Asian wings. Later that week, I joined her in a trip to one of main purposes of her trip, the International Arts & Crafts Festival held at the armory on Park and 67th. She’s training right now to make jewelry and some of the people from whom she was learning were there…selling their thousand dollar pieces. So by the time she left I was not only aware of how uncultured I am, but how poor as well.

TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT

So my worst nightmares of having my Surrogate Sister are coming more and more true with each passing week. First, I get a desk in my kitchen, next I’m getting drunken phone calls from a bar I hate calling me out. Normally, I wouldn’t have gone, but she then threatened me with even more self-destructive behavior if I didn’t, so I had to put my pants back on and head over to one of those bars where frat boys go to drink after they’ve graduated In this particular instance it was Mercury Bar on 9th, chock full of yelling morons watching the Yankee game. Me, I eased my pain with a plateful of cheese-smothered nachos. Baseball is boring to begin with for me, so the seeming blow out on made it worse. They decided to leave at the beginning of the seventh inning---yeah, the seventh inning where Boston scored seven runs. Not that I cared, but it would have been fun to watch the Yankees’ fans suffer. I thought my night was over, but found myself pushed into a cab by the undeniable logic of “What do you have to get up for tomorrow?” We then went to her friend’s 17th floor apartment at 8th & Broadway. Yes, the view was of Broadway. Yes, life is unfair. There I began to drink White Russians, which I think I’ve had before and is a potentially deadly drink, being sweet so pussy drinkers like myself can just swallow them down. Now, I’ve done my time hanging out with 20-something girls. I did it in my 20’s. Doing it now in my soon-to-be 40’s is amusing, but also really, really sad. For a moment I thought I was in that really, really bad TV show “Mind of the Married Man” because there was an episode where that sad, ugly fuck wound up hanging out in the apartment of two 20-something girls. Because my life is still better written than that shit, I did not wind up being caught jerking off in the bathroom (I never get caught). But what was amusing is what they thought was shocking was so much water under the bridge to me. After all, I saw Wild Child through her 20’s. I’ve heard of stuff you can’t even rent. Because they’d been drinking a lot longer than I had, bodies began dropping at 1:00, but I wasn’t complaining. Factor in my age and we were pretty much on the same plane. But being a lardass does have its advantages. Thanks to my extra layer, one beer and three white Russians barely got me buzzed. But I’ve got to nip this in the bud. I’m too old to be hungover on a Wednesday.

AN ACTOR’S LIFE---NOT FOR ME

So, I need to give my roommate more love and support. As you know, she’s an actress (she’s actually been gone for a month doing Anna Christie to great reviews) and the life of an actor is a miserable one. I know this because I just had my first audition. No, I have not become an actor. I was looking for a job (shut up! I was too!) and there was something from American Movie Classics for movie fans. Turns out it’s a faux dating show. Now, that ended my interest there---until I saw that they will pay you. Now, I’ve been on bad dates before where I talked about movies and lost money. This time I’ll get paid for it. The gist is this: during a film’s commercial breaks, the “host” will talk with members of the opposite sex about movies and reveal their thoughts to the “audience.” At the end, “the host” picks a match and they each get $100 (the host gets an additional $350 for hosting). But here’s the twist: some of the people are actors and some of it is scripted, so it’s actually a faux dating show. Even better. Money and I don’t have to do anything and maybe, just maybe, I could get a job out it, as I “casually” mention I review films for a magazine (in other words, whoring myself like a real actor). They ask you to write a letter and send a picture, so after two weeks of deliberating about it, I finally did so. The letter was easy. The picture took longer. I have no pictures of myself, so I had to take some with my digital camera. I decided it would be best in front of my 300 DVD’s, and the cherry on top would be having Four Weddings & A Funeral playing on my TV (Bullitt was my first choice, but that could just mean car fan). I tried it first with a Superman t-shirt, but that seemed too “scary geeky” and changed it to a nice black Kenneth Cole v-necked sweater. Surrogate Sister preferred the Superman shirt, but Former Miss Pretty Boy agreed with the change. Either they were desperate or it worked, because I emailed it in on Saturday and got a call on Monday. My “audition” was that Thursday. Again, wardrobe consulting was needed and again, I ignored Surrogate Sister’s advice and went more casual. It was at 11:15 and given my issues with time and appointments, I made sure to get some sleep and not eat anything weird too late. It was at 19th street between 5th and 6th, where apparently there’s no shortage of these types of things going on. Just on the floor there were no less than six or seven studios all with auditions going on. Right next to mine, was an insurance commercial, so there were middle-age men in suits rehearsing their lines. I seemed to be the only non-actor there at the moment and it was not pretty. I was pretty blasé about it, but the others were determined to make even the smallest connection with the poor bastard out front taking pictures and names. After all, who knows what he might do for you later? Then there was the “enthusiasm.” It was sad knowing they’d show the same amount if they were there for the insurance commercial or for something on jock itch or menstrual cramps. And you have to have it All. The. Fucking. Time. While waiting for my turn, I could actually hear other people “projecting” their enthusiasm through the closed door. I not only began to understand why my roommate needed a separate liquor collection, but began to wonder why she didn’t have more. So, my turn came and they taped me answering some questions about movies and that was it. It was short, but I managed to have a few of my columns included with the little questionnaire we filled out. But I haven’t heard anything, so maybe I should have gone with Surrogate Sister’s fashion plan and shown a bit more enthusiasm. Oh, well. Guess I’m stuck being A Man of Leisure!

PRETTY BABY

One good thing about my little audition adventure was that it got me out in the city in the middle of the day when all the professionally pretty people are out on their calls and auditions. You think you know how may pretty people are in this city, but you have no idea how many there really are. And to top it off, after I left the audition I went to The Container Store to find something in which to place my various lotions, because Surrogate Sister said seeing them all near my bed made me look like some compulsive masturbator (I’m not saying it’s not true, but it shouldn’t be obvious). In any case, to top off the day of pretty people, I saw Brooke Shields, who was actually quite attractive in person, though not as gargantuan as some would have you believe. Needless to say, when I saw Harry Shearer later, he paled in comparison.

HE HAD THE RIGHT STUFF

Death continues its march, taking not just Christopher Reeve, but Janet Leigh, Rodney Dangerfield, Joyce Jillson and Gordon “Gordo” Cooper, who was played by Dennis Quaid in The Right Stuff. Yes, now real people who actually did some shit are dying. Closer to my heart, Irv Novick also died. While Neal Adams is rightly credited for restoring the darkness to Batman in the 60’s, Irv Novick actually did a few of the stories for which he is famous and worked in comics from 1939 until the 90’s, when his eyesight failed. He wasn’t a comics god, but quite a few books wouldn’t have been out there had Irv not been able to get the job done.

DEEP INSIDE THE CONCIERGE

So, remember when I said I saw former porn star Heather Hunter at the hotel near me? Well, it seems there’s a reason for that. She works there. I saw her walking in to work with her uniform the other day. Hey, good for her. Beats having to suck some ugly guy’s dick for a living and if you’ve seen the recent comebacks of Janine (doing men now), Ginger Lynn and Amber Lynn, you realize that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quote about there being no second acts in American lives goes double for porn.

BEHOLD THE POWER OF CHEESE

So I bought one of the two books out now with grilled cheese recipes. One of them was written by a woman whose previous work was “Everything’s Better With Bacon.” Wow. I’ve found a wife. I actually made my first of the 50 (grilled cheddar on sourdough) while The French Woman was with me. When she saw the container of cheese I’d freshly grated she remarked, “I’d rather have that than sex.” I choose my friends well. She had a dinner appointment too soon to join me, but nevertheless called me a bastard for making it and again when I failed to offer her some. I wasn’t deliberately being rude, but more considerate of her dinner appointment. Also, IT WAS CHEESE! She should have known I wouldn’t voluntarily give it away.

NEXT MONTH: THE OLSEN TWINS IN LINGERIE

Finally, despite the collection of Superman action figures, I do, for the most part, consider myself an adult, which is why I’m so annoyed when GQ puts someone like Lindsay Lohan on the cover pulling her panties down. Ewwwww. And she doesn’t even have a movie coming out! Unlike say, Jennifer Lopez, Annette Benning, Angelina Jolie or any of the 200 hundred women in Alfie. Even Britney was at least old enough to drink before Esquire (the magazine of male menopause) put her on the cover. God forbid they have a covergirl old enough to actually have pubic hair. Hell, that’s the problem right there. You can’t do that panties shot if the person in question has actually grown pubes. If I wanted this crap, I’d buy Maxim and the other too-wimpy-to-be-real-porn magazines. I haven’t been this embarrassed to have a subscription to this magazine since they did that pathetic cover with Tyra Banks begging her to show her breasts. Has it gotten so bad that I’m actually one of the mature ones now? Yea, the apocalypse is nigh if that's the case.

10/4/04

“Criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot.” --- Bruce Wayne

THAT FISHY SMELL

Shark Tale opens at number one and no, it’s not as good as Finding Nemo. It’s not even close. Like Antz vs. A Bug’s Life, Pixar/Disney wins again, hands down. Your first clue is the way the films are marketed. With DreamWorks, stars are promoted first, with the movie coming second. With Pixar/Disney, it’s the movie first, the stars second and you’d think Jeffrey Katzenberg, who was behind Disney’s big animation resurgence would know this. Then again, he was the gas, not the actual engine and the mediocrity he was well known for at Disney shows itself constantly in what comes out of DreamWorks. A Shark Tale shows that whole mentality of trying to rope in the broadest demographic possible rather than just make the best movie possible. You’ve got Will Smith as the wiseass fish, essentially ninety percent of all the roles he’s ever played. You’ve got Robert DeNiro as the mobster fish, which while not most of the roles he’s played, easily what he’s most famous for. And then you’ve got Renee Zellweger as the long-suffering best gal-pal. Gee, anybody seen Men In Black, Analyze This and Jerry Maguire? Only the supporting casting really shows any inventive wit. Ziggy Marley is one of two Jamaican jellyfish (singing one of his father’s songs no less) and Martin Scorsese (complete with the bushy eyebrows) as a puffer fish who blows up when he gets nervous is the best thing about this movie. He makes the most of his small role, giving this film an effort and energy is simply doesn’t deserve. And while I hate Jack Black, I know a lot of people like his “manic” routine and that being the case, why the fuck would you cast him against type as the mild-mannered shark!?! This is what’s confusing. Everyone else is typecast but your second lead and quite frankly, title character. This is why Michael Eisner wouldn’t give Katzenberg the number two slot at Disney. This is so obvious, such a no-brainer and still he didn’t get it right. Also wasted are Angelina Jolie as the sultry angelfish, Peter Falk as an old mobster shark and used just for a fart joke, and half the cast of the Sopranos as other mob sharks. Best joke? DeNiro’s assistant is named Brasi, as in Luca Brasi, who slept with the fishes in the first Godfather movie. Seriously, that’s the wittiest thing in the whole movie.

BURN, BABY BURN

Opening at number two is Ladder 49, a.k.a., Backdraft 2. Yeah, they bitched and moaned about how this wouldn’t be another Backdraft, since all the firemen hated Backdraft so much. They did their research and trained so it wouldn’t happen. Well, you know what? So did all the actors in Backdraft. That does dick to the script. I suffered through Backdraft on video and that was it for me and firemen. It’s funny, but fireman movies don’t work for the same reason Superman is boring to some people. And cop movies are neverending for the same reason Batman always remains interesting. Firemen just do the right thing, period. It’s black and white. They save lives. And not only do they save lives, but they do it in a totally selfless manner. How much can you do with that? Same with Superman. Does the right thing all the time, always wins, which is why so many people find him dull as well. But Batman is a good guy working from anger and can sometimes be meaner than the bad guys he’s fighting. His life is tragic, adventurous and that relationship with Catwoman ain’t G-rated. There’s a lot going on there. By the same token, cops are ideally representative of the eternal struggle between good and evil, but they deal not just with justice, but with society as whole. Ideally it’s black and white, but the reality is very, very gray and sometimes sides are changed. So much can be done with this, which is why you have cop comedies, dramas, tragedies, suspense, etc. You can hardly do this with firemen. There’ll never be a Training Day for firemen. And it all looks the same because it usually is the same. There’s a brotherhood, they’re underappreciated for what the do, they have families, are usually from a family of firefighters, there’s going to be a rookie learning the ropes, an veteran father-figure, a fire where a good guy dies, a funeral procession, lack of confidence by the rookie and finally a big fire where he proves himself. Perhaps a coda with a new rookie as the former rookie looks at him and sees himself. Tell me I’m wrong and Ladder 49 isn’t just like this. And I hate Joaquin Phoenix. He’s butt-ugly with no appeal I can see. Even his ugly brothers, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg bring a boy-next-door and bad boy appeal, respectively. This fugly bastard brings nothing at all. And if John Travolta’s presence isn’t the biggest red flag of a bad script, I don’t know what is.

LOO-TEN-ENT DAN, NYPD

The Forgotten is down to number three and what does it say that Gary Sinise doesn’t even get a mention in the ads for this? No wonder he took the CSI: New York gig. It’s been a loooong time since Forrest Gump and being the lead in bad science fiction movies like Imposter and Mission To Mars didn’t exactly propel his career. But Sinise is a theater boy at heart (a co-founder of The Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago) and probably just works to pay for that. At least, that’s what he’s telling himself now…as he prices his new Lexus.

RICHARD GERE SHOULD BE ARRESTED HERE FOR HIS BREATHLESS REMAKE

Sky Captain & The World of Tomorrow and we must pity poor Bai Ling, who now risks arrest literally every time she goes to China to visit her parents just for making Red Corner with Richard Gere. Unfortunately, when she made her bid to become America’s Favorite Asian, the field was already crowded with Lucy Liu and Kelly Hu who aren’t nearly as odd looking. But even in her capacity as first runner up, Kelly Hu got the cover of freaking Maxim or whatever. Bai Ling posed pulling her panties down and didn’t even get that! While Jude Law, Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow are everywhere on the covers of everything. And she even gave those sorry-ass frat boys what they wanted and talked about being bisexual. But given that she literally does not speak in this film, I guess she needed to talk a lot off the set. But, because geeks have a thing for Asian women (a tiny penis looks a little larger next to a smaller woman) you will see her in the last Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith.

MAMA I WANNA SING ‘CAUSE MY ARMS TOO SHORT TO BOX WITH GOD

Mr. 3000 is down to number five, followed by Woman Thou Art Loosed opens at number six and if you’ve never heard of this, you’re not alone. See, there is this whole community/industry of crappy Black theater and old school evangelicism and they both make money, so it was only a matter of time before someone thought to marry them and that was the basis for this movie. It actually began as a preachy book and then became a preachy play and now is a preachy movie, all written by Bishop T.D. Jakes that could be called “Dead Sista Walking.” And it will be a cold day in hell before I ever see this. While it is somewhat impressive that it pops up in the top ten while in a little more than 400 theaters, it’s just like The Omega Code in that all the scary-ass faithful are the ones in the theaters seeing it. They won’t be back next week and neither will this film.

FUNNY HA-HA VS. FUNNY IT SUCKS

Shaun of the Dead is down to number seven, followed by Resident Evil: Apocalypse, putting our comedic European zombie films side by side, but only one of them is meant to be funny.

HOLY DAWSON’S CREEK!

First Daughter is down to number nine and given how badly this tanked, how happy is Katie Holmes that she’s going to be the love interest in next summer’s Batman movie, Batman Begins? Yes, Joey from Dawson’s Creek will be the love interest of Bruce Wayne. But don’t worry, geeks. She’s neither Selina Kyle or Talia. Hell, she’s not even Vicki Vale or Julie Madison and obviously not Silver St. Cloud, which geeks know are the major love interests of Batman over the last seventy years. Yeah, they just tried a Batman/Wonder Woman thing, but we knew that wasn’t going to happen. Like most good guys, Batman likes bad girls better.

CLICK

Finally, Cellular closes out the top ten at number ten.

IT’S NOT FUCKING “I HEART NEW YORK”

Not breaking the top is the latest from director David O. Russell (Spanking The Monkey, Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings), I Love Huckabees and why people are people calling it “I Heart Huckabees?” Since when did the little heart symbol (fucking html) stop meaning “love?” In any case this is an existentialist comedy. Yes, two words that are second only to “Starring Madonna” on the list of words that should never be put together are put together here and will all the success you might expect. This is not to say it’s bad, because just as a bad indie film is worse than a bad mainstream because it’s not trying to please you on any level the way a mainstream movie always is, misfired indie films can also at least claim to still be interesting because they’re going some place Austin Powers 14 isn’t. This is one such film. It doesn’t work, but it is at least somewhat interesting to watch…eventually. It takes a little while to get started, occupying the first twenty minutes with only the lamest, most clichéd of indie humor and the line from Futurama “forced laughter of an arthouse crowd” came to mind, because the pretentious, elitist pseudo-intellectual fucks in the audience with laughed at every single one of them. Another example is a line from Family Guy which took a shot at Sport Night by saying it was “too smart to be funny.” A lot of I Love Huckabees could be described this way. It stinks with “I’m too smart to actually be funny,” EVEN THOUGH THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FUCKING COMEDY. So yeah, the comedy fails miserably in a conventional sense, but ironically, when it’s joking about existentialism, it’s actually somewhat funny. This means whenever Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin are onscreen as the existentialist detectives (and Isabelle Huppert as their nihilist rival) it’s working. When they’re gone, not so much, with total bullshit elitist humor, like looking down on Shania Twain. It’s an all star indie-cast with Jason Schwartzman (son of Talia Shire who appears…as his mom), Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts and the hardest working man in show business, Jude Law (not to mention a superstar cameo that is only a surprise if you’ve been ignoring the entire movie). Jason Schwartzman should never cut his hair again, because it’s the difference between him being a total dweeb and moderately attractive guy (and by moderately I mean in a “what if Steve Perry from Journey were better looking” way). And I know Naomi Watts is a childhood friend of Nicole Kidman’s but are you sure they aren’t related because she looks and acts just like her at times? And while I still maintain Mark Wahlberg is ugly, I cannot deny he has an onscreen appeal and his whacked out, petroleum-hating fireman who rides his bike to fires, may be the most entertaining character in the movie.

“DOWN IN JAMAICA THEY GOT LOTS OF PRETTY WOMEN…”

I love the Miller Lite “Yellow Flag” commercials for the second penalty joke. “Noticeable unibrow, no second date.” “Cliché arm tattoo.” “Disproportionately hot girlfriend” which is the biggest joke because commercials directed at men are filled with average guys getting models because of beer or a car. However, my favorite is the campsite “Deliberate Acoustic Romanticism. Girls not buying it. Tent invitation, declined!” In the words of Homer Simpson, “It’s funny because it’s true.” This is the best slam against those Acoustic Faux-Sensitive Pussyhounds since John Belushi destroyed the guitar of Stephen “On And On” Bishop.

“…AND PUBERTY’S GONNA RUN YOU ANOTHER 2 G’S.”

So my grandmother was here because she lives in Alabama where the hurricanes were dumping serious rain. To show you it’s not just me, she was here for two weeks before my dad called to tell me she was here. Yeah, this is my family. So my dad dispatched me to give her some money (why him and not my other relatives? Because he’s the only son, that’s why). So, after missing two buses I finally made it up to Co-Op City in The Bronx. My grandmother was alone in my aunt’s apartment and was having a little trouble figuring out the extensive locks. For moment it actually looked like I was going to have to call home to get my aunt’s cell number to call her to call my grandmother inside and have her guide her through the lock sequence, but perseverance paid off and she managed to find the right combination at last. I gave my grandmother the money I brought and in true family fashion, she opened the envelope immediately to count it. I half expected her to turn to me and say, “Where’s the rest, muthafucka? I told yo’ daddy, it’s not just childbirth he’s paying for, but child-rearing. Plus, you got interest, bitch.” Then she’d snap her fingers and my cousins would come out to work me over. My aunt eventually returned and I, of course, got a home-cooked meal out of it. I regretted the deep fried starchy fun almost immediately, but never so much as when I went to catch the bus home. There was some crazy neighborhood guy that my aunt knew and because he gave her a cigarette she was jonesing for, we had to speak with him for a bit and I had to tolerate the fact that he touched my stomach and said, “Hey, what’s going on here?” Sigh. Now even strange crazy people in the street are telling me I’m a fat bastard. I had to go home and finish that cheesecake just to make myself feel better.

BABY TOUR ’04 SPONSORED IN PART BY BABY GAP

Baby Tour ’04 continues, this time wonderfully limited to Manhattan, specifically a rooftop near the World Trade Center. It’s not as depressing as it once was because time and a noticeable tourist trade has taken care of that. It’s hard to be sad when tourist from Omaha are pissing you off. Also, it was the rare baby shower with booze. It was Movie Buddy ’98 this time who’d given birth to a little girl. That’s like two girls to every one boy being born to my friends---and the fact that the woman being on top during conception can actually lead to more boys (because the male determining sperm are stronger) just pops into my mind and makes me go “Ewwww,” because I realize who’s been doing what. Ewww. Needless to say, Baby Gap saw me again (and regular Gap did too thanks to that 50% off sale), but I had to make a stop at a comic book store to make sure I gave a gift uniquely me---and Superman orientated. Also at the shower were Young Married Mother (whose son I babysat for a few weeks ago) and two members of My Fanbase. In fact, they would go see movies with Movie Buddy ’98 and I. Because they are My Fanbase and read this regularly, the first thing they said upon seeing me was, “You’re so thin!” Yes, it’s always easy to mock the fat kid. It was an above-average baby shower spread, with some Asian fusion type cuisine that was quite nice, not to mention baby’s first cake. Young Married Mom is always quite fun with a few drinks in her and this was no exception. Plus, since her husband and son were out at the Greenport house, she was free to hang out for awhile. So I wound up hanging out with her and another girl drinking Cosmos. Yes, I’d left my balls at home that day. Just as well, since we were at the other girl’s apartment and she had a dog that apparently had not just a problem with men, but with men of color. Thank god I’m just barely either one, because the dog freaking loved me.

MAYBE I CAN MAKE HER MOVE TO GEORGIA TOO

So, I knew having Surrogate Sister living nearby would prove to be a problem. She’s not even here yet and it’s already started. Because I’m “unemployed and socially uncommitted” I’m free to hang out with her during the day while she runs errands. We started in Soho, where she returned things and did a little shopping. There we saw Felicity herself, Keri Russell, a little older and still very pretty, but the ingénue days are probably beyond her now, ‘cause now she looks like she’s seen some shit. The big errand of the day was getting Surrogate Sister a steel work desk at one of the restaurant places near Houston. She was just supposed to order it, but they had it ready, which lead to the older brother moments I’ve tried to avoid most of my life. When he told she could take it right now, she asked if it were heavy---pointing to me and adding, “I mean, could he carry it?” “He” could, and since her apartment isn’t ready yet and she didn’t want to take it back to Queens, it’s now sitting in my kitchen. Yeah, she bought me lunch afterwards, but even that backfired on me because it was my first Coke in months and since then I’ve been drinking it like water. Sigh. I’m gonna have to swim six days a week at this rate.

WHAT’S WORSE THAN AN AGING QUEEN?

I keep telling you that men are men, whether straight or gay. Not because I feel you need to keep hearing it, but because I keep fucking seeing it. Like women, I tend to expect gay men to be a little better than the rest of us and am always disappointed when they feel the need to prove they aren’t. In this case it’s the old gay men in my gym. Now, dude, I’m sure you were a god on Christopher street thirty years ago with your long blonde locks and your nipple ring, which was probably the zenith of eroticism and rebellion, but now in your fucking sixties, when your chest is so sagging I actually thought you were an old woman when I walked into the fucking locker room, you need to take it out and cut that fucking hair! Same for you, bald guy. You’re fifty. Let it go. Cut the ponytail and take out the nipple ring. Grow old with some dignity. Not like fucking Robert Evans.

WHY WEDNESDAY NIGHTS MAKES YOU FEEL FAT AND UGLY

So, Wednesday nights are my homoerotic nights of TV it seems. First we start with Smallville and if you watched the season opener we had flight! Yeah, baby! There was geek wood aplenty! Yeah, Lois Lane is on it now and in the same episode where she first appeared, Margot Kidder showed up too. Because I’m a geek, I’ve got a problem with Lois not being a brunette, but I’ll get over it the same way I got over Lana not being a redhead. The ratings have dipped a little, which is why we had Clark and Lana naked in the very first episode and…Lionel Luthor naked in the second? Now, I’m sure John Glover’s got his fanbase, and god knows I wish I had that body now, much less when I’m his age, but I could have lived without seeing that. But when it’s time for Annette O’Toole to bare some skin, I’m ready. I’m sure you can count the moments until Taye Diggs is naked on his new show, Kevin Hill. I have huge problem with how New York is depicted, though. I swear, until they said it was New York, I thought it was LA, it was so fucking bright and colorful. New York has color, but not like that. If you’re going to fake it onscreen, you might want to visit and get a good look at the place. That aside, it’s your typical lawyer drama, though I was relieved to see that the “female only” firm was only three lawyers, because there’s no way someone who looks like Taye Diggs could be realistically be in a office filled with women and not bone everything in sight. I mean, a good looking, successful lawyer raising a daughter by himself? You’d have to scotch-guard every chair in the place because of the affect he’d have on those women. Yeah, that’s nasty, but you know it’s true. But I’m actually glad when the beauty of a star is acknowledged because it’s annoying pretending that your average cop looks like Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie. In real life, we openly discuss who the hot people in the office are and no one pretends they aren’t. Granted, on TV everybody is pretty, but even then they only acknowledge the women. Here, the gay nanny took one look at him and said, “Oh, somebody works out.” But in true TV fashion we never see anyone work out. Well, not until sweeps, anyway. Then we’ll get a sweaty workout and a shower scene.

HEY, I DIDN’T LIKE QUINCY BACK IN THE 70’S

I’ve avoided the whole forensic craze on TV, but recently I’ve watched CSI: Miami, NCIS, and CSI: New York and believe it or not I can understand why people like these shows. They’re very old school type of cop shows, like Barnaby Jones and the like. I half-expect to hear someone announce “A Quinn-Martin” production. They’re very simple: the crime, the investigation, the slight twist and then the mildly violent resolution with justice being done (especially NCSI). Bad guys don’t get away and our heroes prevail with very little damage to themselves and with enough personality to be interesting but not distracting. Also, you feel better knowing people like this actually do exist doing this job. I didn’t watch the original CSI because there’s no one on it I really like, whereas my interest in NYPD Blue pretty much died with David Caruso left. Like Don Johnson, he’s very engaging on the small screen. His role on CSI: Miami gives him the quiet intensity role he’s best at. But one thing drove me crazy about it. You’ve got these people whose job it is investigate a crime scene down the last molecule, but not only are they dressed like they’re hanging out at a bar, but all the women have this huge hair that’s never, ever covered up, not even in the freaking lab. This is how we know it’s Hollywood. CSI: New York gets the look of New York down and the people over at Kevin Hill should look at it. We are a blue-gray city; all gray when it rains. Yes, are colors, but all in relation to the blue-gray. And CSI: New York had my other big peeve with these shows: homicide detectives investigate homicides, not the lab people. These are the people you see the cops talk to for five seconds before they go off to arrest someone. This is like a movie where “Q” battles Goldfinger and James Bond is strangely not around. I watched NCIS (thankfully they dropped the Navy NCIS because the “N” actually stands for “Navy”) because I’ve also always liked Mark Harmon and hated how they killed him off on St. Elsewhere years ago, so I’m glad to see him working. I bought Summer School on DVD the moment it came out because it shows he could have had a nice comedic career. He’s like a George Clooney prototype, good-looking TV guy who’s been around forever, but unlike Clooney, he never had that one hit to break him through. His role as the grumpy boss on NCIS is the center that holds this fluff show together. And having David McCallum as their CSI guy (who does not leave the lab!) is just fun. If they aren’t trying to get Robert Vaughn on this show for sweeps, then they simply aren’t doing their jobs.

YES, THE SNAKE REPRESENTS EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK IT DOES

Richard Avedon (who had an exhibit at the Met a year or two ago, which I saw) is dead as is Geoffrey Beene. Damn, Death is seriously going after the fashion world. Granted these guys were really old, but these are giants dropping and who’s taking their place? Okay, you’ve got David LaChappelle and a few others, but Puff Daddy and whateverthefuck Russell Simmons trophy wife are doing hardly makes up for what’s been lost. Richard Avedon photographed everyone who was anyone for the last 50 years, and is best known for his Marilyn Monroe pictures, but for my generation his most famous photo was that of Nastassia Kinski with the snake. It was in practically every dorm room in the 80’s.

THE RICH WHITE GUY FROM YALE VS…THE RICH WHITE GUY FROM YALE

Finally, I watched the debates on and off and yeah, Kerry kinda won, but before my liberal brethren gets too happy let me point out that he was able to finally look good only in a situation wherein no one could ask him anything spontaneous and that he had weeks to prepare for. Normally, you get that stupid shit like “I regret voting for it, but I think I should have voted for it and I’d do it again.” Not to mention being unable to answer a “Yes or No” question with either a “yes” or “no.” But by the same token, The President was in the same restricted situation and still got flustered a bit. Once they started merely repeating their campaign rhetoric over and over in the guise of actually answering questions I found myself over at One Tree Hill, marveling over how fucking old these high school kids are. Besides, short of one of them breaking down into tears and saying, “I’m wrong. He’s right,” you’re going to vote for whom you’re going to vote for no matter what happened. This is only for those people who weren’t going to bother to vote anyway---which is like, 80% of all Americans. So basically, all this did was cost most of us a few hours of prime time TV---and will again twice more. It just better not be Wednesday.

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