Girl in a Cage

Saved By the Bat

So the kids really wanted to watch Epic Movie, which just came out on DVD.

It's one of these things like "Scary Movie" that sends up the conventions of a genre of movie. In this case, The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe was the skeleton, and parts of Pirates of the Carribean, Nacho Libre(?), Harry Potter, Snakes on a Plane, Willy Wonka, and a couple of other things were attached, Frankenstein-like.

Now, let me be clear--I love a dumb, fun movie as much as, if not more than, the next guy. I went into this with low, low expectations. I figured I'd pass a painless 90 minutes occasionally giggling at fart jokes and the like. I like Crispin Glover, Kal Penn, Jennifer Coolidge, Tony Cox and Fred Willard. How bad could it be? As the minutes dragged by, though, I sat there stone-faced. I knew we were in trouble when the menu came up, introduced by the Narnia beaver, who says, "Hi! I'm Harry Beaver." Get it?

Scary Movie is Citizen freaking Kane compared to this movie. I think it may actually be the worst movie I have ever seen. And I saw Surf Nazis Must Die. I have a soft spot for movies that aim low and hit the mark perfectly, but a movie with no ambition at all to be anything but dumb fun that misses even that low mark is just a contemptible piece of crap. Every joke is recycled, either from another, better movie, or the fourth-grade playground.

Fortunately, about halfway through the movie (only about 45 minutes, but it felt like three hours), the kids started screaming because we had a bat in the living room. I cornered him in a room upstairs and spent the next forty-five minutes or so catching him. It looked a lot like this, at least in my memory:

(Aside: How to Catch a Bat! Close the doors and open the windows of whatever room the bat is occupying. Though they can get into your house through a half-inch gap in the soffit (or wherever, but I like saying soffit), they will be unable to find and exit through the open windows. Watch as they circle the room for a while. Step outside, making sure not to let the bat out of the room. Hit the bathroom, get a snack, check in on the incredible piece of shit movie your family is watching, and head back to the room where the bat is circling. Eventually--after maybe 20 minutes or so--the bat will tire of circling. When you peek your head in and assume the moron actually found the open windows, don't be fooled! He's perching somewhere. Once you find his perch--high up on a wall, or in a corner, or both, you can approach pretty nonchalantly--he can't see you, after all--and slap a shoebox or some similiar container on him. I used a clear plastic shoebox. The bat may or may not begin to screech at this point. This is alarming but harmless. Slide a cover between the box and the wall, head to the open window and chuck the bat into the night.)

Now, under normal circumstances, I would have been really annoyed to have a flying rodent in my house while I was trying to watch a movie, but in this case, I was nothing but grateful. I spoke in a calm voice as I stalked my prey, saying, "Okay! Are you ready to get the hell out of my house? Good! You don't want to be here, and I don't want you here. Thank you, though, for saving me from that movie."

So once again, I'd like to thank the bat for allowing me to get out of watching what may well be the worst movie of all time, and if anyone ever tries to make you watch this movie, all I can say is that I hope a bat flies into your house too.

The Soul of Wit

Took the family to see Pirates of the Carribean at World's End yesterday. It was entertaining, smart, well-acted, and way, way too long.
I mean, for God's sake, this is a popcorn movie. It simply doesn't need to be three hours long. From my perspective, you could cut the entire Calypso story line, because it adds so little to the movie. (Minor spoiler alert!) For one thing, it's vaguely racist (Ooh, the only black character of consequence is threatening, unpredictable, and amoral! you might say dark and mysterious! Because that's how Those People are, you know!) and the only thing it adds is a little bit of depth to the Davey Jones story, which you could do without because we came to this movie to see freakin' swordfights. It also gives a justification for the incredibly cool naval battle in the whirlpool at the end. But they could have had anything set up that whirlpool. There's a fantastic two hours-and-change movie lurking inside this bloated movie. Don't get me wrong--at three hours, it's good, but at two it would have been fantastic.

(Aside--did they put makeup on Keith to make him look extra decrepit, or does he just look that decrepit?)

I've been thinking about this issue a lot lately with regards to fiction. I'm reading a great book with one of my daughters: Millicent Min, Girl Genius by Lisa Yee. It's a really funny book with a really skillfully created narrator who's both a genius and an idiot. We're enjoying the hell out of it, and it struck me that the books I've read in the last couple of years that have really stuck with me are books written for children and teens. I mean, there's the Harry Potter books, but then there's also Frank Portman's King Dork, and Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux,
which is this incredibly powerful, sad, beautiful book that is probably as close to perfect as any book I've ever read. And yeah, it's about a mouse and soup.

So I figure there are a couple of possible explanations for all this, none of which necessarily exclude the others. 1. I am immature. 2. YA and Children's books are given more care in the editorial process than books for adults or, my personal favorite, 3. They're just freaking shorter. Your average YA or Children's book is just shorter than your average book for adults, and so there are fewer opportunities for the author to screw things up. (I certainly include myself in this--it's hard for me to read over any of my books without finding something that makes me cringe, something I would have done differently, something that just bugs me.)

I think in general, the longer something gets, the bigger chance you have to mess it up. There are any number of songs I would consider perfect, but only a handful of albums. (London Calling, Under the Big Black Sun, Rubber Soul, Rocket to Russia..I might be done.) There are tons of perfect poems, but so few perfect novels. If any. I mean, almost any novel I read, I end up thinking, "that would have been better if it were shorter." I sometimes like getting lost in a big fat novel, but there are always slow parts, or a visit from Tom Bombadil, or something that detracts from the whole thing.

So my conclusion is this--when in doubt, make it shorter. Leave 'em wanting more!

Missed it by that much

So I'm in my house, reading my latest issue of Conan. No socially redeeming value whatsoever--not a graphic novel, just a good old-fashioned blood n' guts comic book. I mean...well, just look at this:

Crom's devils, if that doesn't make you want to go buy this comic, all I can say is...you are obviously not me.

Anyway, so I'm sitting there reading my latest issue of Conan, and I see an ad for this. And my first thought is not, "Who the hell would want to do that?" or "yet another timesink for the get a life crowd," or anything else except, "Whoa! That is so cool! Where do I sign up?"

Well, it turns out that in order to sign up, you need a couple of things I don't have: a PC or an Xbox, and, of course, untold free hours not occupied by any valuable real-life activity like spending time with your family or working. So, okay, Age of Conan is not for me. But, Jesus, if I was 14, that would be crack to me.

And it occurred to me that somewhere (oh, who am I kidding--I know exactly where--on Earth 2!) there is an alternate version of me, much heavier and even paler, in his mom's basement, warming up his PC just waiting for Age of Conan to launch.

Somewhere, there was a fork in the road, and I turned away from that path. Maybe it was after 8th grade, when I got hip to the fact that all the time I was spending playing Dungeons and Dragons wasn't helping my case with the ladies. Maybe it was in the 8th grade, when impossibly glamourous (at the time) 10th grade girls were in an 8th grade play with me. Whenever it was, I'm really glad I have enough good stuff going on in my life that I don't have time to play Age of Conan.

Well, maybe I could find a few hours on weekends. Oh yeah, I don't have an Xbox. Yet...

A Hoax With a Purpose

Most electronic hoaxes have no purpose but to make their victims look stupid. The particularly vicious ones prey on people's good nature by asking them to forward some fraudulent "Little Timmy Has Cancer" message to all and sundry. People who think it's funny to create email hoaxes about cancer should really spend some time in an oncology waiting room. LOL!

Anyway, I've decided to create a hoax with a higher purpose. Feel free to copy, paste, and redistribute as necessary. Perhaps together we can change the world.

From the Secretary of Homeland Security

Attention Citizens:

It has come to our attention that many of you are using the abbreviation "lol" in your emails, instant messages, and text messages at times when you are not, in fact, laughing out loud.

In fact, most of the remarks you append with "lol" do not even raise a grin on the faces of the heroic agents who sift through your electronic communications, and, frankly, most of said remarks are of such marginal humor value that is incredibly doubtful that anyone on earth, even if they were under the influence of a variety of controlled substances, would so much as chuckle, much less laugh out loud upon reading them.

As you know, the price of electronic storage has fallen drastically in recent years. Nevertheless, it is our conservative estimate that all of the unnecessary "lol"s in your communications are consuming thousands of gigabytes of storage in our surveillance computers every day. The war on terror is a complex operation that requires a staggering amount of resources. If loyal, patriotic citizens were simply to eliminate unnecessary "lol"s in their communication, we could save not only storage space, but also the valuable time of the brave men and women who monitor every word you type.

Put simply, when you use "lol" and you are not actually laughing out loud, the terrorists win.

It is my fond hope that this appeal to your patriotism will result in a reduction of "lol"s in your electronic communication. If it does not, rest assured that the next version of the Patriot Act will provide for heavy fines and possibly even prison time for the overuse of "lol."

Thank you, and God Bless America.

Michael Chertoff

United States Secretary of Homeland Security

Rock Bottom.

It's Sunday, and as such, I like to reflect on my Bible: Entertainment Weekly. This week, Stephen King has assembled a list of the top 24 rock songs of all time. It's an interesting list, though of course wrong because I am not the person who assembled it. Also, Steve needs to get hip to the fact that some decent music has been made since 1980. There are some scandalous omissions (no Ramones, Clash, Who or Kinks on his list. Is he mad?), and all I can say is that I hope that the editors over at EW were asleep at the switch and somehow put a couple of songs from his follow-up "worst rock songs of all time" column in there. How else to explain the presence of Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vida" and John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band's "On The Dark Side"? O, Jesus, those are horrible songs!

This, (and the fact that my post on VH1's best songs of the 80's gets like 20 hits a day on its own) inspired me to make my own list. But this time of the worst rock songs ever. Just because Stephen King did it, I will exempt soul, disco and country songs. I have also exempted rap-rock and death metal, because a) I'm not familiar enough with it to say anything about particular songs, and I'm damn sure not downloading any Linkin Park or Deicide in order to find out and b) Realistically, you could probably build an entire list out of just those two genres, and where's the fun in that?

In no particular order, here's my bottom 17.

In A Gadda Da Vida--Iron Butterfly. Moronic lyrics and one semi-catchy riff repeated over and over for 17 minutes. Except for the 3 minutes devoted to the drum solo. Horrific excess that paved the way for all kinds of whole-side-of-an-album-length travesties like Yes' "The Gates of Delirium" and Steve Miller's "Macho City" (which is actually worse, but Iron Butterfly takes it for being the groundbreakers in this genre. Plus I kinda feel like obscure album tracks should be exempt.)

On the Dark Side--John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band-- If I want third-rate Springsteen, I'll go buy Lucky Town!

One Hand in My Pocket--Alanis Morrisette. There's this old episode of ALF where ALF walks in and says to Willy, "Hey Willy! Tell me when this gets annoying!" He then throws his head back and makes the most godawful sound ever and poor, long-suffering Joe-Lieberman-voiced Willy says, "Oh, Alf. It was annoying almost immediately!" And so it was with Alanis' vocal hiccup. That got old from Dale Bozzio, it got old from Cyndi Lauper, and from Alanis, it was annoying almost immediately. I've got one hand in my pocket, and the other one's changing the station.

How To Save a Life--The Fray. There are songs that I don't like, but I understand why other people like them. And then there are songs like this, with its whiny melody line, overwrought singing, and dumbass lyrics. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone likes this. It's so awful it bumped "Drops of Jupiter", which I previously thought was the worst song of this type, off the list.

Another Postcard--Barenaked Ladies I had to look up the title. It's that chimp song. "Clever" "Funny" bands like this always dance on the line between funny and annoying, but this band took up residence on the annoying side pretty early on, and with this number, they gave up on clever altogether.

There is Only One Way To Rock--Sammy Hagar. And apparently it is by sucking out loud.

The Living Years--Mike and the Mechanics. Oh, you're always in trouble when the children's choir is on the scene. And, I mean, inane lyrics are fine when they're about partyin' and rockin', but not when you're supposedly making some profound statement about father-son relationships. Ugh.

Magic Power--Triumph. If I want third-rate Rush, I'll listen to Rush!

Let's Roll--Neil Young. Oh, Uncle Neil. I know you were upset and all, but somebody needed to tell you this was a really crappy song.

The End--The Doors. The Doors did some groovy pop songs, "Light My Fire" and "Touch Me", but this dreck just epitomizes the whole take-yourself-too-seriously pseudo-profundity that would mar so much of their work.

Fairies Wear Boots--Black Sabbath. When they were good, they were very very good. And when they were bad, they were horrid.

I'm No Angel-Gregg Allmann. Let me show you what a rockin' rebel I am with my easy-listenin' Skynryd-on-valium, country-rock! Oh yeah, I have a tattoo, too. Zzzzzzz.

Sister Christian--Night Ranger. Not much to say. I just hate it.

St. Elmo's Fire--John Parr. Take a song about a guy in a wheelchair, randomly shout a movie title at the end of the chorus, and create a nonsensical hit!

What Condition My Condition Was In--Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. Yeah, it was in The Big Lebowski. It's still a guy trying too hard to sound freaky and psychedelic and ending up just sounding squaresville, man.

Love the One You're With--Stephen Stills. You know, lots of guys have written about the joys of getting a piece on the side while on the road, but only Stephen Stills tried to make a groovy philosophical statement out of it. I have this picture of Stephen Stills coming home from a long tour and staring down the business end of a rolling pin and going, "But honey! The eagle flies with the dove!" I know, I kind of made Stephen Stills into Andy Capp there. I just feel like the hypocrisy of an entire generation is laid bare in this song. Hey, you wanna get high and sleep around? Go for it--just don't pretend you're doing something noble, for God's sake. Give me the honest sleaze of a Kiss song ("Plaster Caster," "Great Expectations," etc. etc. etc.) about banging groupies over this pap any day.

Turn the Page--Bob Seger. The epitome of the contemptible "it's so hard to be a rock star" song. I have never understood why ol' Bob didn't leave the horrible life of the rock star behind and go apply for a job at the GM plant. Poor guy. I hope he got enough money from the truck ads to retire and leave the drudgery of rock stardom behind forever. It's even more rich to hear Metallica cover this. I mean, Lars only made 4 million bucks from selling his art collection! Imagine the kind of life he could have had if cruel fate didn't force him into a life of riches and stardom!

This is my happening!

There are moments when a work of art gives you a straight shot of joy. Like in The New Pornographers' "The Laws Have Changed" when the "na-na-na's" start high and then go higher. Gets me every time.

Or the genius that is Beyond The Valley of the Dolls.

Despite its unfortunate violence and insincere moralizing, this movie is just so gleeful that it was hard for me to wipe the grin off my face while I watched it. I suspect this is because veteran low-budget sleazebag director Russ Meyer and neophyte sleazebag screenwriter Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger Ebert) had been given the greenlight from a major studio. I think this is kind of like giving the car keys to your 15-year-old. The big party scene near the beginning of the movie is just a masterful montage of decadence, a barrage of quick cuts so fabulous that it makes the host, Z-Man, stop and scream "This is my happening, and it freaks me out!" (you may recall Austin Powers using the same line decades later). The same party features the line "You're a groovy boy. I'd like to strap you on sometime."

Oh, but the fabulousness doesn't stop there. The movie throws our innocent small-town girl band(and their manager) into the Hollywood cesspool, and we watch with glee as they descend into promiscuousness and drug use. Like all good exploitation films, the movie then pretends to condemn the very behavior we've been revelling in for most of the movie, and if there's one thing that makes me a little uneasy about the whole thing, it's that while heterosexual promiscuity is punished only by injury, paralysis and heartbreak, any hint of homosexuality (or perhaps just crossdressing--the whole thing with Z-man's boobs remains kind of unclear to me after four viewings--is he really just, as another character says, "a really ugly chick?" Or is he a guy with boobs? I don't know) leads to death. It just seems kind of icky.

Also, I mean, a flamboyant music industry guy with a ridiculous appearance snaps and starts killing people? Talk about unrealistic! Oh. Yeah. Well. Maybe not.

Talkin' Bout My Generation

Oh, I'm introspective as hell these days. This bout of introspection brought to you by Pangea Arcade, which I downloaded because I needed a dose of video game action, but my life doesn't permit sitting in front of a screen for five hours pretending to be a +2 sword-wielding elfin thief, or whatever. Not that it doesn't appeal, sadly, but I need a game I can get in and out of in 5-minute increments.

All of which led me to think about my g-g-g-g-generation. I mean, I knew that those of us in what was once called Generation X were scarred by being raised under the threat of nuclear annihilation. The threat is still there, of course, but it felt a lot closer and more inevitable when I was growing up. I have talked to a lot of people my age who told me in all seriousness that they didn't think they'd ever live to be adults because we'd all die in a mushroom cloud.

This was reflected in our popular culture. We had post-apocalyptic movies like The Road Warrior, we had songs like 1999 and 99 Luftballoons--for several years it seemed like every single band had to have a "we're all gonna die!" song.
My favorite example--on the live version of "Godzilla" on the Extraterrestrial Live album, as E. Bloom is introducing the song, he goes, "been in the news a lot lately...heigtening tensions between the East and the West...chance of...NUCLEAR DESTRUCTION" and the crowd goes "wooooooo!" That kills me every time. Yeah! It's like the same cheer you give when the band goes "We love you Springfield!", except it's for nuclear destruction. How high do you have to be to cheer for nuclear destruction?

So here we are, living in fear of the missiles falling,(I used to fear nuclear destruction every time they tested the tornado sirens), and our escapist popular culture gives us more of the same.

But at least we could escape into video games! Which is where Pangea Arcade comes in--it's basically updated versions of centipede, asteroids, and missile command. So, I mean, asteroids and centipede are bad enough, because like all the video games I grew up on, you can't win. Talk about instilling pessimism and fatalism in the youth. Kids who grew up on video games you could beat have no idea what it was like to pump quarter after quarter into a machine and ALWAYS DIE ANYWAY. In the end, the aliens, the asteroids, the pookas and the fygars always won.

Especially horrible in this respect was Missile Command, where you controlled batteries of anti-missile missiles and tried to defend cities.
For one thing, I think this game probably inspired Reagan's moronic attempt to make a real-life version of this, as well as people's credulous response to the not-really-functional Patriot Missiles in Gulf War 1. But for another, even when in command of weapons we didn't really have to try to fight off the nuclear apocalypse, you could never ever succeed. Talk about depressing! We did this shit for entertainment! No wonder we're all so screwed up!

Test Your Grindhouse IQ

So I noted that the Brattle Theatre (oooh, how I hate that "--tre" spelling. So pretentious! Take that spelling to the other side of the Atlantic, pal!) in Cambridge MA is having a grindhouse festival. Just for fun, I devised the following quiz:

1. Click here and take a look at the fabulous films on offer.

2. Count how many you've seen. Give yourself one point for every movie you've seen. Give yourself one extra point for each movie you've seen more than once. Two bonus points for any movie you've seen in an actual movie theater.

3. Tally up your points and see your score below:

0--Oh, for the love of God, put that Runaway Bride DVD away and live a little!

1-2--Sure, you've seen the ones with Kurt Russell, but what about the really sleazy stuff? Do you understand that these were the indie films of decades past? In my day, we didn't have your precious, unfunny Rushmore. We had crap like this!

3-6--you've merely dipped your toes in the waters of sleaze--dive on in! The water's fine!

7-9--You are a true student of what the French call le cinema du fromage. But your grindhouse knowledge has more holes than le fromage suisse! Get to the movies!

10-15--You have a fine, or shall I say, Halpinian appreciation of crap cinema.

16-21--You sick bastard. You know, they do make other kinds of movies.

22 and above--Get a life, Quentin.

Everybody's Lost But Me

"Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing"--Lou Reed.

"I think Lou Reed is a creep!"--The Dictators.

At the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, River Phoenix, as young Indy, is on an excursion with his scout troop. He wanders off into a cave and finds bad guys doing bad guy stuff, and when he emerges, he finds the rest of his troop gone. "Oh no!" he exclaims, "Everybody's lost but me!"

Spending some time over at mog.com (where you can see exactly what I've been listening to today, should such a thing be of interest to you--check me out here), I realized that this is often the position of the music geek. (And yes, I certainly include myself in that category.)

So many music geek screeds fall into the "everybody's lost but me" category--either "this band is unjustly obscure!" or else "this band is unjustly popular!"

With this in mind, I was going to write something in honor of the new Nirvana biography by Everett True--the same guy who wrote the incredibly annoying, strangely half-assed Ramones biography I read a few months ago--about how Nirvana is actually not that great, blah blah. But, you know what? If you think Nirvana is the fabulous voice of a generation, good for you. If you can somehow dig some meaning out of the "Come as You Are" or "All Apologies" (I actually had a soft spot for this latter tune until I found out that he was not, in fact, saying, "In the Sun, in the sun...I'm Marion....Barry!" which would have actually made the whole thing make sense and shown a sense of humor I otherwise don't see in much of their work), then I suppose it doesn't hurt me a bit. I was befuddled at Nirvana's popularity in 1991, and I'm befuddled now, but I suppose today, ironically, I'm just in too bad of a mood to launch into some angry screed about how everybody is lost but me.

I know such screeds are entertaining, especially if you agree with them, so fear not--I'll be pontificating again soon. I just had to pause for a little Indy-inspired reflection today.

Can You Feel It?

Looks like Amy Winehouse's "Rehab" is poised to become the Official Song of Summer. I can't really object--it's a hell of a song, she can actually sing, and I love the old school Stax sound of the whole thing. It sounds kinda like a Mable John record or something.

(Aside--this is getting a lot of play on "alternative" stations, which is cool, but it just seems weird that if you make a record that sounds like 60's soul, you're alternative. If you make a record that sounds like 70's metal, you're alternative. Old Skool party rap? alternative. I could go on. Alternative never really meant anything, but now it really seems to mean "anything that doesn't sound like either Timbaland or John Mayer had a hand in it.")

And yet, as the weather warms up and it appears that our long cold wet spring in New England may be coming to an end, I find myself reaching for The Apples in Stereo's New Magnetic Wonder more and more. This is just a perfect summertime record, and I think "Can You Feel It" deserves some consideration as maybe the Unofficial Song of Summer. Yeah, it came out months ago, and yeah, it'll never get Official Song of Summer status because of the "drown out the bullshit on the FM radio" line. Seems like a way to guarantee no airplay for a fantastic pop song, but, then again, it's not like they were getting a lot of airplay anyway. So you won't hear it on the radio, but when you get sick of "Rehab," (I'm not yet--not by a long shot!), crank up "Can You Feel It" and soak up the sun.