Food & Sports

I have the crib to myself this week. Cooking for one is not much fun, though cooking for two is the thing to do.


I whipped up some really swell Mahi Mahi (the dolphin fish so nice, they had to name it twice) Tacos. They're so swell that if I can find someone else (Kristen) who will like them then I'll share the procedure.


Strange week in sports. Golf was exciting and basketball was bo-ring. I like to watch golf on TV, but I've noticed that if Tiger Woods isn't playing, my golf attention span drops from two hours to five minutes. As for the b-ball finals, our LA radio stations overhyped the matchup so much that I didn't even listen to it on the radio. If that doesn't sound extreme consider that I listened to parts of 40+ regular season Laker games and most of the playoff games. And I don't even like the Lakers. Traffic is Hell.

To me, though Tiger and Kobe are the best at their respective sports, I have different viewing relationships with them. Kobe is SportsCenter good. His skills are best viewed as a 30-60 second highlight reel on ESPN. But Tiger is a thrill to watch live. There's always the sense that something miraculous is going to happen at any moment. Example: Woods beating every single professional golfer at the US Open...while he had only one functioning leg. His playoff against Rocco was better than any sports movie, ever. Thank you USOpen.com for streaming that. Yet when Kobe dropped 81 points on Toronto, it made for a perfect SportsCenter segment. I could watch the highlights for a couple minutes and didn't feel like I missed a thing.

The Yankees won last night, but The Farns did his darnedest to prevent that from happening. I am rooting for Joba Chamberlain to make a successful transition to starter, but here's the problem......there's no Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen to save his arse once he throws too many pitches.


My favorite Yankee right now is The 'Stache. Not the guy wearing The 'Stache, but The 'Stache itself. It seems to have magic powers. With it, a seemingly washed up player suddenly plays like he's 10 years younger and on the juice. But 'Roids ain't got nothing on The 'Stache. Go The 'Stache Go! Put the team on your hairy shoulders and carry them through October! My second favorite Yankee remains Jorge Posada's Batting Without Batting Gloves. That's right. That is so manly that I will refrain from going into further description.


On a side note: Moises Alou versus David Ortiz.

For those who don't know, a couple years ago Moises Alou told an interviewer that he urinates on his hands (in the shower) to toughen them up for hitting barehanded during games. There was a large "Ewww Gross" backlash that followed against him and it's still a running joke. I think that's silly. Pee is largely bacteria-free and 90-95% water. What a guy does in his shower is his business, plus it's not like he was pissing on his hands in the on deck circle. Though that would be awesome if he did that once. Plus he's a great hitter when he isn't screwing up his legs. Maybe he should wee on his knee once in a while too.

Then there's David Ortiz. Largely regarded as an absolute saint, the man spits a loog on his batting gloves and rubs them together before every at bat. THAT is disgusting. He might as well just spit right on the dugout boy 5 times a game. And no high-fives. D.O. is that to help grip the bat better? Why don't you just blow a snot rocket into your spikes to help grip the dirt on your home run trots?

Whoa, totally slackin'

The pause between posts has been much too long. My apologies! Last night I wrote a post so massive and without pictures, that I'm going to have to hack it in two and fix it up today. So there should be two posts -- Sports & Food and Music & Movies -- coming up soon.

La Question humaine

Last week was strange and I thought I'd drop a small note about it here in case I can't get another entry in this week.

I have not kept secret the fact that my job is 50 hours a week of soul-suffocating insanity. I was beginning to pull together the first of several emails preparing coworkers for my eventual voluntary departure. Sort of a heads-up that the following things are broken and make my job generally intolerable. So, I prepared to get the writer energies to serve this purpose only to arrive on Monday to find out that I was given a substantial raise. Like, wuh? Raises are almost as rare as quality TV programming at my place of employ. So, just as I came to grips with this idea on Friday, I was informed that I have credits. On TV. Real ones. On Supper Club (quality programming) on Planet Green and This is Why You're Single (dunno, at this moment) on TLC. As a Production Accountant. Incomplete sentence.

Who would have ever thought I would have gotten my first credits this way? I mean, I have Production Assistant credits on a couple of straight to video nuggets, but that's it.

I'm not really sure how to feel about any of this. I've heard myself thanking people for each thing, but it doesn't sound like my voice and it doesn't seem like my life. I don't know.

***

I watched a film and a movie on Saturday. First was Heartbeat Detector (La Question humaine, much better title) which, though released by the French, is a European Union film. The lead, (Mathieu Almaric) a psychologist for a European chemical corporation, is given the task of investigating the CEO whom the board thinks has lost his mind. The film goes completely into the dark reaches of the EU soul after that. The loudest theme in the film is about the dehumanization of language, how we create ways of speaking to legitimize our actions. Then this very language robs us of our humanity once we put it into use. The language of present-day corporations are paralleled with the verbiage used by the Nazis in the step by step assembly of the Final Solution. There are times in the film when the two are combined and one doesn't know where the corporate words begin and Himmler's instructions end. It is horrifying. The film's intensity forces it to leave behind the plot 2/3s of the way through, then eventually abandons all imagery for blackness and a voice speaking fractured prose.

Then, five hours later I watched Sex and the City. The polar opposite, if you will. I will not be too harsh on the movie or Sarah JP. But stylized television acting does not translate to the very big screen. The result is two-and-a-half hours of ACTING. Shatner would be proud. Otherwise there's not nearly enough sex and the male characters are pushed to the far periphery. It could have also used some more of the series' humor. Though I was never able to entirely relate to series' characters, I did admire the unique voice and humor that lived in each episode. I feel it was all abbreviated to squeeze a half season's worth of story into a single 2.5 hour feature. Aside from that, the film wasn't designed for me, so my only true honest criticism of it can be of its tight embrace of the luxury consumer culture that I wish would just come crumbling down already.

Anyway, good Monday wishes to all! Make sure you listen to some good music this week.

The horses hit

I caught a stellar Kubrick film on Netflix's Instant Watch setup, a few days back and thought I weigh in on it briefly. The Killing -- Kubrick's first film with a real budget and a recognizable cast -- is about a bunch of small time crooks banding together to rob a racetrack. Since the Belmont Stakes runs this weekend I thought the film was sort of appropriate. Especially since the characters in the film are robbing one of the seamiest sports in existence.

Forced segue: Horse Racing needs to stop or be completely overhauled. In short, an animal is drugged and beaten so that she can, in sheer fear and terror, run in circles so that people can bet on her. And if she gets hurt in the process, she's killed on the spot. Because it has been deemed a "sport", these actions are allowed, unpunished. There is no place in our society for this sort of sport, instead we deserve a more evolved, enlightened, esoteric sport like imitation MMA.

Back to The Killing. I recommend it to everyone, especially to those who like quick tight crime dramas. At a swift 83 minutes, the story has no "good guys" just a bunch of dames and fellas trying to make a buck to better their lives and pay off their debts. Like the rest of Kubrick's films, every character is cold as ice yet fascinating in his struggle obtain what he desires. Sterling Hayden plays the leader of the group as a man who obtains respect not via threats and murder, but through laid-back confidence. Elisha Cook Jr. and Timothy Carey are just plain chilling. I miss their sort of old fashioned depiction of insanity -- though they're each quiet and still, the performances feel immense. The lighting is sparse and smart, seemingly coming from the actual sources -- lamps and windows -- in the world of the film (another practice that Kubrick played with later in his career).

But what the flick is most known for, and what stays with me the most is the tale's constantly shifting perspective. Kudos to Kubrick for one of his best scripts. At first it's jarring to see a 1956 film leap back and forth through time. Once the opening sequence finishes, we learn that this is the end of the film. Then the next scene is from the week before. Then the next scene was from 5 minutes earlier. Then the next scene was from the next day. Then the next from the previous day. But not an ounce of this is confusing and the storytelling isn't forced. It's not a stunt, it just feels like the only way the story can be spun. Add in the voiceover and it's like someone telling you about a robbery, "First they did this, then they did that, and oh wait the day before this guy did this right before his wife said that, etc." And to top it all off, the final robbery is told from the point of view of each of the main crooks while simultaneously moving forwards and backwards chronologically. And it works.

Finally, though "the killing" may refer to the all the money being stolen, the actual execution that happens may surprise you or strike of irony after this most recent Kentucky Derby.

Gone like Mo Vaughn

The beard is gone. This may not matter to some. But it's momentous to others. "Others" being "my face".

Here are the last known pictures of The Beard, taken on the morning of Thursday, May 22nd.

Here are the murder weapons.

This is what I look like now.

Not much of an improvement, huh? Yeah. So I've decided that the chest hair stays.

I'm Not the Last Crusade / I Am the Crystal Skull

This has been a weekend of rest. Tons of sleep, a deep-pressure massage, muffin baking, ice cream making, more sleep, and some sincere movie watching. And I've earned every moment of it, as I try to wrestle my mind back from a corporate sinking ship.

Here are some brief thoughts on the films/movies:




Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- The most purposely silly of the Indy movies. The action sequences have largely aged fairly. Unfortunately, a lot of the acting has not. Someone made the choice to have Brody and Sallah act like parodies of themselves. The father-son bickering either works very well or is just goofy, which means that it never feels even. I realize now why Connery didn't want to make a second go at Henry Jones for the new film, because he mostly comes across like a daffy old man. Elsa pales against Marion's shadow, but is decently blond and skinny enough to work as a surrogate Bond-Girl. In the end the saga could have ended here. How could Indy ever one up the Old Testament and the New Testament?



Rome, Season 2, Disc 1 -- Awesome. Brutal. Starts off well, picking up exactly where Season 1 ended. This brief series is HIGHLY recommended if you can stomach sex, violence, and characters with endlessly challenging value-systems.




I Am Legend -- Not bad. But not as great as it thinks it is. There's little I can say because I'd give away too many spoilers. The first hour or so of the film is solid, but then after the most intense sequence in the movie, the whole momentum slides downhill quickly. The mannequins are a good touch. Sam, the dog, is great in a part more complex than a lot of other female roles that I've witnessed recently. I appreciate that the film shows Will Smith's character slipping away from sanity. But that's mostly it for the positives.

Two negatives stuck with me throughout. First, on a small note, the close and medium shots of empty Manhattan looked great. But the long shots looked flat and very effects heavy. The "night seekers" or whatever they're called looked CG heavy (read: fake) as well.

And that takes me to the second issue. Ignoring the lengthy credits, the movie falls under the 90 minute mark which is usually a good thing. But here it sacrificed depth, giving up many opportunities to make the protagonist's and antagonist's actions more meaningful. By writing off the bad guys as having "lost all human characteristics", the filmmakers have made them singularly bad. But while watching the Alpha Female strapped down and prodded with needles, it became impossible not to notice (through shot selection) her rather pneumatic feminine form. My mind started wondering about the Alpha Male who searches for her and I began to plug in my own invented story about his motivations and needs. The movie never supplies these because to do so would cause viewers to think too much about all of the torture and pain inflicted by the protagonist on dozens of "night seekers". It also wouldn't have hurt to show how the "night seekers" have developed or learned. We see them set a trap, but it ends there. The filmmakers choose to show them as marauding lunatics and that's where they lost me. They sacrificed a morally complex film for a one-sided movie.

Plus it's generally not advisable to bring God into a story with 10 minutes remaining.

(On a side note: I get Cruise and Travolta's involvement in Scientology. But with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, two seemingly genuine hep-cats......am I the only one who's waiting for the other shoe to drop? Am I the only one expecting Will to say on E! "Ha Ha! Just kidding! I can't believe y'all really thought that we became Scientologists."? I dunno, maybe it's just me.)


I'm Not There -- My mind is still blown. There is so much Bob Dylan fact and lore in every single shot, that I'm still picking up the pieces. A number of great 8 1/2 references too. I think it may be years and a half-dozen viewings before I can even begin a schpiel about it. It's good. It's loaded. And it either means everything or nothing at all. Like our troubadour's lyrics.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -- Yeah, I had to see it opening weekend. First off, terrible title. Say it out loud. Yeah, it's sound falls flat like The Phantom Menace (not providing a link for that film). Thank Spielberg that it's a better flick than TPM. Though that's not an achievement.

It's fun! Just try not to think too much while watching it. The action sequences are well assembled. You can actually follow what's going on in them. How novel. Mr. Ford is great. Nice to see him looking comfortable in a role again. Karen Allen returns as Marion, reminding you why there's no other lady for Indy. Shia LaBeouf comes across well, but I'm sure that's a debate that will last for decades. There are a few idiotic moments during the action that nullifies even Indiana-Jones-level suspension of disbelief. Some sluggish moments in the beginning. A new bunch of stereotypical baddies (Commies). My jury's still out on Cate Blanchett in this one after seeing her brilliance in I'm Not There. It will be interesting to see if this one holds up on DVD and millions of repeat viewings by us fans.

At the end, Steve, George, and David Koepp really make it feel like Indy's hanging his hat up, showing more of his family and emotional side. Though, the final scene rung flat with its abrupt cut and strange lighting. And we really don't need Mutt Williams and the Holy Underwear of Joseph Smith coming out in 2010.

To conclude, I had a dream last night that I was about to fight Anderson Cooper. I regret to say that I woke up too soon.

Twilight

We can't expect the Titans of previous generations to live forever, but it's necessary to have them here with us to remind of better times. And it's inspirational to see them still working hard defending the human in public, making it known that it is our bodies that are broken in order to run the business of the state, so we deserve more in return than murder, insult, and paranoia.

In this dark night of ours there are so few stars left in the American sky. So, I am sad to see the news of Senator Edward Kennedy's ailment and I wish him peaceful time in the days that remain.

Within 24-hours of this announcement came John Lester's truly human accomplishment. In 2007, having survived a battle with lymphoma, Lester had returned to pitch in the majors. Less than a year later, on Monday, he pitched a no-hitter. I'll take inspiration from wherever it comes, even Boston.