Everything I Consume: Midcentury and Innumeracy

These were two busts. I loved John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy and this book is written in the same style. There are multiple narrators, profiles of important representative people of the times and chapters that are snippets of songs, articles and expressions of the time. He was very ahead of his time. While U.S.A. was filled with a compelling variety of characters this book is mostly about bitter old ex-radicals and their miserable life dealing with labor unions. I gave up after 160-odd pages.

I think my train was barely into Manhattan the day I started Innumeracy before I bailed on it. It was supposed to be about teaching important math concepts that average Joes, Joe Sixpacks, what have you don't know and are important in our daily lives. Well, we'll never pick it up when it's written this poorly. His jokes weren't funny either.

Everything I Consume: Tropic Thunder

Many years ago there was a great show on PBS called Sneak Previews. There were two movie critics talking about movies and it was really good. The knew their shit and loved talking about it. The two guys were a little annoying on their own and didn't seem to like each other but boy, did they have chemistry together. Like Astaire and Rogers or Lemmon and Matthau or one part hydrogen and two parts oxygen. Of course, I'm talking about Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

They did the show for a long time and became famous. The name changed to At The Movies and moved to commercial television. Everyone in the world knew what "Two Thumbs Up" meant. They taught a lot of people, like me and my brother, about movies and gave time to everything from My Dinner with Andre to Friday the 13th. They really cared. When the last Star Wars movie came out Roger Ebert watched two days in a row from the same seat, once in in digital video, once in film to judge how the special effects looked. When the re-edited the ending of Jade before it was released, Roger went to see it again.

My favorite memory was the Worst Movies of 1995 episode. That was a year I saw a lot of movies. Gene Siskel picked Jade as the absolute worst movie of 1995, a choice I totally agreed with. When it was Roger's turn he said, "Just for the record Jade was my worst movie too but Gene won the coin toss and I had to pick something else."

The show was frequently imitated but nobody came close. Still, it was always nice to hear two people who loved movies talking about them even if one of them was Rex Reed. At the Movies lasted for about twenty years until Gene Siskel got sick and died.

He is buried in the white suit from Saturday Night Fever. Really, look it up on his Wikipedia page.

Roger Ebert continued the show with a variety of hosts before settling on a decent guy called Richard Roeper. It wasn't bad. But Roger got sick a few years ago and even though he's healthy he can't talk any more. He's still going strong. They tried some guest critics but the people in charge of the show decided to chuck Roeper and try something new.

The new At the Movies has five critics who spend about five seconds apiece telling you whether you should "See It", "Wait for the DVD" or "Skip It". Here's a math problem, if two people you've never heard of tell you see a movie, two people you never heard of tell you to rent the DVD and one person you've never heard of tell you to skip it what do you do?

The only person I recognized in Ben Mankiewicz from TCM who is supposed to be the snarky kid but comes off as a burned-out art director who will never get the promotion to head creative and realized it years ago but is too lazy to quit. Sadly, At the Movies now just reminds me of the political shoutfests that have destroyed American democracy. There's no depth and no kids are going to learn anything about movies, or anything, watching this show.

Anyway, Tropic Thunder was great and everyone should see it.

Some Unfortunate Recent Old-Time Radio

I've had a bit of a bad luck streak on my old-time radio podcasts.

The other morning I was out running and listened to a show about a husband who needed money for an operation on his wife. There is only one doctor who can perform the operation. He hooks up with a burglar and they rob a safe. They are interrupted by the homeowner and have to kill him. The husband escapes blame for the murder and has the money for the operation but it turns out the guy he killed…was the only doctor who could perform the operation! The irony!

The I listened to a show about the first trip to the moon, you know in 2000. On the way back everyone is happy except for the wise, old ship's doctor (what is is with ship's doctors?). It seems he was alive in 1945 and saw the first atomic explosion and the craters on the moon look exactly like the crater from the first A-Bomb! (This is not true. Crater from the Trinity test. Moon crater.) He theorizes that there was a civilization on the moon but it was destroyed by an atomic war that left all those craters and burned up all the atmosphere. The rest of the crew begs to differ but the matter is soon settled because just as they are about to land on Earth there is an atomic war that leaves Moon-esque craters and then burns up all the atmosphere.

I'm serious, that was the story.

I Kinda Totally Screwed Up My Secret Santa

This year I was doing great with my secret Santa gift. Last night I quickly took up The Wife's offer to regift her secret Santa present from her office. It was some hot chocolate and a little thing of coffee in a Godiva bag with some tissue paper on top. It was perfect. But then the combination of Jewish and Catholic guilt that has wrecked my life took over and I decided I needed something else, like a tumbler. So, I went to Starbuck's today and found a create-your-own tumbler thingie. After a short wait behind an older women who was having some problems with her gift card (I used every ounce of mental strength I possess to block out the details) I brought my mug to the regsiter. The barista asked me if I wanted coffee. Foolishly, I said no and explained I was buying the tumbler. The barista laughed and said he didn't even know they sold those. Then I realized I'd blown it. I could have gotten the tumbler for the price of a venti coffee only I would have gotten the coffee too. Then I could just wash the mug and include it with my secret Santa present. It would have topped Elain Benes' Boggle Bar Mitzvah gift on the chaep scale. It would have been awesome but I blew it.

I have a cold; I shouldn't be drinking coffee anyway.

Tom Glavine's Wikipedia Entry 9/30/07 5:35 PM

Thanks for Saving Me the Trouble!

Great post on Fire Jay Mariotti making fun of a ridiculous Gregg Easterbrook column from a few days ago.

Everything I Consume: Smokin' Aces

This contains spoilers as if this movie needs any more spoiling.

As Homer Simpson would say, "This is the suckingest bunch of sucks that ever sucked." Admitedly, I was --sucked in-- by the premise of four teams of competing hit men trying to kill Jeremy Piven but I never got that far. The movie begins with fifteen solid minutes of exposition as characters talk and talk and talk some more. I just couldn't take it. I knew I would never care. So we just fast forward to the ending and listened to Andy Garcia explain the movie to Ryan Reynolds. It turns out the aging mob boss isn't killing magician turned mobster Jeremy Piven because they're rivals, he's killing him because he's his son and needs his heart for a transplant. Really. The shot where Ryan Reynolds tearfully pulls the plug on the two guys on life support was one of the funniest things I've seen in weeks.