The Friends are drawn into Global Warming

Perhaps the keel and rudder of this venture has been cinema - hotel cinema in all its grandolinquent charms of charged dialogue and all that comes with it, the laughs, the cries (of joy and pain), and all the rest - but, and let's be honest about it, it is often the beer that can fuel the exchange, the fruitful digression, the equating of Brando with the Turner Thesis and rhuemy expressions of awe for Godard. For this reason we must now find ourselves drawn into the fight for the future of the mankind as global warming has wreaked havoc on the acid balance of the delicate Saaz hops, the subtle "compound that produces the delicate, bitter taste of pilsners." According to the report by the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute, as reported in the New Scientist, it may begin here and with those delightful Czech beers where the acid balances and the flavors are indeed quite so delicate, it will spread to other beers by way of their ingredients as well. This is something we should fight, something we should stand in arms about, something that should be stopped immediately. How can we stand idly by and allow the slow (though accelerating) destruction of one of the world's finest beers. Something must be done!

Oh, and Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland by request of US authorities. I understand for what and even why, and it is with a bit of a cringe that I admit my ambivalence regarding such. The same does not hold, however, for the need to protect the hops!

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Letters to sons about various things

It is nothing exceptional, if you are at all a fan of American cinema, and/or are at all a student of the country's mid-century politics, to know the name Dalton Trumbo. Screenwriter of some of the most recognizable and significant films of the sweet-spot of American cinema from the 1930s into the 60s, he was also one of the most visible and out-in-the-open members of the Hollywood Ten. This is not a new story, but it is one that was more than ably told earlier tonight on PBS's American Masters. With a script heavily dependent on the script of a stage play by the screenwriter's son Christopher, it was indeed not a heavily critical affair, but it was generally and garrously informative. Nathan Lane, however, stole the show with his reading of a letter from father Trumbo to son on the bawdy and shameful pleasures of masturbation. Redolent with faux-shame and filigreed with an apparently new-found love of Nabakov, the letter was an expression of self-entertaining chagrin and the barely contained glee of Lane's reading won over even the half-witted curmudgeons watching the show.

A shameful moment in American cultural history, even if one that seems almost defanged by time and more recent events. Still, Trumbo could craft a unity of voice against ugly power, even if it was largely imaginary. It seems hard to think of a better image than the one he imagined



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Like Cops . . . but better?

I remember once thumbing through a piece on Christopher Reeves that mentioned that for many the tall and athletic actor had become so identified with his most famous role that when his bicycle was once stolen on the streets of New York City and he lept into action, chasing down the thief and catching him, the man blanched white and begged "please don't hurt me Superman!" That was then, this is now - and now we have:


The press release issued by A&E last November when they announced production of the show is a wealth of information on both the project and Seagal himself. For instance, did you know that he was also a "recording artist and guitarist" or that his film Exit Wounds was a "blockbuster hit"? Unfortunately, there is a legal holdup in the actual release of this reality show shangri-la. Hopefully, it can be put to rest soon and the show in all its fourth-wall busting glory can be loosed on us all. How long can it be after that that we get a ride along with Ranger J.J. McQuade?! "Who do tis 'ting" you ask? I reply who else could?!

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The RPG that is life

A recent study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that the average "gamer" in the U.S. is 35, overweight and depressed. Apparently the working hypothesis of the study was that "video-game players have a higher body mass index — the measure of a person's weight in relation to their height — and 'a greater number of poor mental health days' versus nonplayers." A hypothesis that Dr. James B. Weaver III of the CDC's National Center for Health Marketing said was essentially correct.

Just so we're all clear on what that means, a "poor mental health day" is typically defined as one in which "mental health prohibits an individual from accomplishing everyday activities." Of course, I realize that that definition leaves open what, exactly, constitutes "everyday activities" but I'll presume that it means more than tumbling from a bed of dank sheets and resuming marathon run of World of Warcraft wherein you forego bathing and chew through 3 bags of Munchos and a case of RedBull.

And here I thought the StarWars Kid had a bright future ahead of him.


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Because it belongs

The Passing of Kwai Chang Caine

I am abroad at the moment. Having witnessed the clear aqua marine furlings of the Aegean Sea from the rocky beaches of the Greek Isle of Santorini last week, I spent the last two days skimming across the choppy waters of Gryts skärgård, ankle-deep into the Baltic. With both, my (secondary?) companion was a quickly-becoming-battered copy of Melville's weighty Moby Dick. This was perhaps appropriate, though it is also certainly better addressed at another electronic place and I shall do that straight away but my purpose here is to raise the cup and lower the brow to that signaled by the makeshift bookmark I have been using since Friday. A brief stop in Milan between the Mediterranean and Nordic Sea stops gave the chance to grab the abbreviated, complimentary USA Today for its NBA Finals Preview and it was there that I first saw the news that David Carradine had died - by suicide or awkward miscue it apparently remains unclear and the Carradine family is likely to keep the cause, no matter the determination, a family concern. There is much about the gaunt, long but thin-haired character actor that is in many ways at the heart of the concerns of TFoSF. His voice, deep and metallic but somehow possessed of a quality that even if a duck's quack does echo his words would not - as if a command from him need not be heard twice to be heeded, was immediately distinguishable by most any (male?) of my generation, whether he was offering up the existentialism of Superman or the pathway to advertising enlightenment. He didn't just walk across the borders and gulfs that make up the entirety of the misty and hazed contours of hotel cinema - those spiky peaks between high and low culture, camp and rigid posterity - he strode across them, they did not exist for him. How could they for the man who was both the revenging Frankenstein and the man to star in the only Hollywood film made by Bergman? We'll leave aside the less savory bits for now - though we won't dismiss the potential role of secret kung-fu assassins - and hope only that the grasshopper has returned to the side of his beloved Master Po

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A Yawn

It is easy to compute that I spent ten of this past week's waking hours viewing Bela Tarr's Satantango and the finally realized The Watchmen. I have felt the lingering warmth and pity of the prior repeatedly. I just saw the latter yesterday and aside form the opening credits, I am not sure there has been much resonance. I understand if such creates discord: how can I lavish such praise on a 7.25 hour saga of Hungarian rural life and not be moved by the celluloid treatment of what many consider the greatest graphic novel ever? It proves quite simple, actually. It was little surprise that Gus Van Sant admits that Tarr is his greatest influence. Many of the shots in the overrated Paranoid Park indeed owe something to the rich abstinence of Tarr's focus. As raindrops compete with wind blown refuse, we can peek behind to see the questions wrestling Tarr to static ecstasy: its the errant poet cum messiah who avoids interment by guiling the yokels into exile. If this sounds akin to the machinations of the Comedian in Watchmen, then wait, there's more.

Behind both Alan Moore and Tricky Dick I smell sulphur and that spectre in the Hungarian midst is of a similar species: Godard's Marx, where Chairman Mao can only dream of factories that manufacture the transcendence of Hollywood's High Definition milk and honey (with a mail-in rebate)Let us then fetishiue biceps and pussy along with Coke Zero and await Saul of Damascus in the loo's glory hole -- that's a firm grip there, apostle. If Tarr's children, abandoned by Social Realism, choke their cat's out of boredom and then sup on rat poison, we of Private Idaho should estimate in earnest and then temper our own priapic belch by giving Jon Benet the dirty Sanchez in Rod Serling's utility closet. Personally, I blame Sophocles. If it weren't for Antigone's sense of filial duty, as if any debt is owed once the husk begins to decompose. Only films and bawdy songs should be preserved.