Category Archives: Movies

Did you see “The Hurt Locker”? What did you think? (I gave it 3 stars)

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Watched “The Hurt Locker” last night. It was good. I’m going to give it three stars on Netflix.

But you know, I would think that a “Best Picture” winner would be a four-star, if not five. So I was disappointed on that count. Among movies I’ve seen recently, it was better than “Men Who Stare At Goats,” “Public Enemies” and “The Invention of Lying,” but not as good as “Up In The Air” (which was awesome) or “Lars and the Real Girl.”

Not that I expect much from the recommendation of Oscar. I’ve pretty much discounted the judgment of the “Academy” ever since it chose “Shakespeare In Love” as Best Picture over “Saving Private Ryan” and “Life is Beautiful.”

SPOILER ALERT: While the makers of this film worked hard to avoid conventions and surprise you, I saw the surprises coming, and saw how the director was working unsuccessfully to prevent me from seeing it. For instance, in the first scene, as you’re being introduced to this bomb-disposal unit, the viewer is manipulated into seeing a certain character as the protagonist: The camera lingers more on his face, he does and says more to reveal character, his words and actions drive the action forward. Also, he’s the only actor I’ve seen before, although I couldn’t quite place him (turns out it’s Guy Pearce, who starred in the very impressive “Memento”). And of course HE is the one killed, which hits you with more impact than if he were a faceless extra, and brings home to you from the very start that any of these guys could be blown to bits at any moment through the rest of the show. Well done, but I saw it coming.

Other things are done well: David Morse in a bit part as the overbearingly enthusiastic, ubermacho colonel who is deeply impressed at an exhibition of bravado by one of the main characters. (That guy always impresses me, from the bad cop on “House” to understated dignity he brought to George Washington in “John Adams.”)

It’s arty — which might be what appealed to the Academy. And thankfully, it’s free of antiwar preachiness, which I have to admit I sort of expected, given Hollywood’s enthusiasm. (Yeah, some might see the violence and the constant tension not knowing which of the civilians around you is really an insurgent as being an argument against our being there, but it’s exactly what I expect war to be like. Antiwar folks probably expect folks like me to think war is like a John Wayne movie, but I probably have an uglier picture of it in my mind than they do, because I read and think about it more. I’m reading Flags of Our Fathers at the moment, and rewatching “The Pacific.”)

But in the end — and yeah, I saw the ending coming, too (you knew what that guy was going to do) — I’m just not going “Wow.”

Have you seen it? Thoughts?

Top Five Sports Movies Ever

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This post was inspired by my having inadvertently run across someone else’s list of best sports movies. There are several others out there — such as this and this and this — if you want to go look. My own may be incomplete, because I have yet to watch “Raging Bull” all the way through (I’ve got the DVD, I just need to block out the time), and I really need to go back and see “Body and Soul,” which I may have seen once when I was too young to appreciate. Those are the two that crop up on other people’s lists that I haven’t adequately vetted.

But unless one’s life is over, one’s Top Five list is always incomplete, right? So here’s mine:

  1. Hoosiers (1986) – This just has it all – the more or less obligatory underdog storyline, the nostalgia, Gene Hackman (in his best role ever), Dennis Hopper (ditto, and then some – he’s the best thing in it), Barbara Hershey (and not a seagull in sight), and a team of non-actors who succeed as no actors could in making the action more real than real. You may surmise I have a particular affinity for a story about a fiftyish coach in need of professional and personal redemption (starting with a job). And yet, I was first impressed with that theme 24 years ago, and even then there was a personal identification. And I suppose we could have a long discussion about the difference between White Ball and Black Ball, and the nostalgic pleasure that a gray-haired White Guy might get from watching some basketball from back in the days when traveling was still against the rules, and everybody wore black Chuck Taylors. But beyond all that, just an awesome flick. And don’t forget, it’s based (loosely) on a true story.
  2. Rocky (1976) – When this came out, it was the first new film I could remember as plain and simple and sincere as this. And there’s been little to touch it since. This is like a plain granite block of a movie – the basic, unadorned stuff from which all good movies that touch the heart are made.
  3. The Natural (1984) – Thank goodness they went all Hollywood on this one, and slathered on the gauzy sentimentality, because it was exactly what this story needed. In Malamud’s novel Roy Hobbes was a brutish antihero, a case of natural talent invested in an unworthy creature, not a guy you particularly wanted to see succeed (and he didn’t, by the way; the ending leaves you feeling dead and empty inside). Redford’s frayed farmboy stoicism, modified only by a tendency to get misty-eyed and lyrical on the subject of baseball, worked perfectly. The ultimate baseball movie, when you’re feeling reverential about the game (when you’re feeling less so, go with “Major League”). Favorite little slice of life: Pop and Red in the dugout during practice, trying to stump each other with “Name that Tune.”
  4. Vision Quest (1985) – As a former high school wrestler myself, I can attest this is THE definitive high school wrestling movie. OK, there isn’t a lot of competition, but that just makes me grateful that when Hollywood made this one attempt, they got it right. Matthew Modine perfectly expresses the awkwardness of being an intelligent, introspective young guy trying to figure out life (favorite example: – he’s trying to impress the girl by complimenting her musical taste and when she says it’s Vivaldi, he says, “Yeah, Vivaldi – he’s great” in a way that utterly fails to convince that he’s ever heard of the guy. Another: He confides to his teacher that he thinks he’s suffering from priapism. Also, before I let you out of this parenthetical, the scenes shooting the bull with Elmo the dishwasher are gems.), and while “coming of age movies” constitute one of Hollywood’s most overworked genres, this is possibly the best such attempt ever. While there was never any danger of my becoming state champ and I never had a hot 21-year-old semi-bohemian chick come to live with me when I was in high school, this feels like what life was like at that age.
  5. Chariots of Fire (1981) – Just thought I’d throw in a posh, arty, nonAmerican film to round out the five. Not that this one doesn’t deserve the honor. Like all good sports flicks, it displays what is best about sport, in terms of its capacity to lift the human spirit (as Elmo explained to Loudon in the clip linked above). Favorite scene – the quiet little homily Eric Liddel offers in the rain after a race, which is as powerful an expression of faith as you’re likely to find in a major Hollywood movie.

That’s my Top Five, and I’m sticking to it — for the moment. But a couple of those choices were a little arbitrary in light of the competition. And as much as I want to preserve the unities of Nick Hornby’s Top Five concept, here’s what I would include also in the second five of a Top Ten:

  1. Breaking Away (1979) – Almost made the Top Five, but it seemed that it was only marginally a sports movie. Wonderfully goofy film about a young guy trying to find his place in the world and meet chicks, and the lengths he’ll go to. Kathryn may be offended by what the kid’s Dad says about “all them “eenie” foods… zucchini… and linguini… and fettuccine. I want some American food, dammit! I want French fries!”
  2. The Endless Summer (1966) – The classic surfing quest movie. The documentary travels the globe in search of the perfect wave. Which is what all of us surfers (and I’m really stretching the definition of “surfer” when I say “us”) would do given the time and money.
  3. Major League (1989) – Also almost made the Top Five, but I only wanted one baseball movie there, and this one wasn’t reverential enough. But this one captures how much FUN the game is, both for players and fans. Favorite line: Bob Uecker’s gloriously goofy hometown-announcer’s understatement when he describes a pitch that goes about six feet astray as “JUUUUST a bit outside…”.
  4. Tin Cup – (1996) Throw me out for including a Kevin Costner flick, but this is WAY more apropos than “Caddyshack” as an evocation of what golf is about. And it’s got Cheech in it, advising Cup that he can win the bar bet with “a hooded four-iron.”
  5. Eight Men Out (1988) – Nice treatment of a key chapter in real-life baseball mythology, helping you understand how the Black Sox scandal could have happened, and how Shoeless Joe could have gotten caught up in it. D.B. Sweeney’s Jackson is a thousand times better than Ray Liotta’s generic effort in the overrated “Field of Dreams.” A great cast, including John Cusack and Charlie Sheen, and a great baseball movie. Say it ain’t so, Joe.

You’ll note that all of my Top Five are from the 80s except for “Rocky,” which just missed that decade by four years. And if you drop out “Endless Summer” and “Tin Cup” (which would stretch the span to 30 years), my whole Top Ten covers a 13-year period, from 1976 to 1989. I don’t know what it is about that period. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I was particularly impressionable. Or maybe it’s that film-making reached just the right pitch during that era. “Rocky” came along when irony had taken such a hold that such a simple, sincere film seemed a throwback, although with modern grittiness — and to some extent that describes something all of the best ones had in common. It’s hard to imagine a character as layered and conflicted as Norman Dale in a movie made in the 30s or 40s (and absolutely impossible in the 50s). Hollywood didn’t think enough of its audiences then. Movies were less frank, less realistic. There’s no way, for instance, a character would have been as obsessed with his sexuality (in a healthy way) as Loudon Swain in an film made before “The Graduate.” Not that that’s everything; it’s just an example. Except for wonderful quirky films like “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” (far better than the remake “Heaven Can Wait,” by the way), sports figures were just a little too monolithic, and their treatment too hagiographic, for my latter-day tastes.

Or maybe there’s some other explanation. In any case, these are the ones I see as best. What would be your picks?

Julie & Julia & me

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Tonight, after we had done all the cooking we could do the night before, my wife and I went to see a movie. Actually, to be more accurate, my wife had done all the cooking at our house, except for a special-recipe cake I made for myself (no wheat, no dairy, no eggs), since I can’t eat the other desserts we’ll be having.

We went to the dollar-movie house to see “Julie & Julia.” Actually, it used to be the dollar-movie house. Now it’s $2.

Anyway, we went to see the movie, and it was cute and all that, but a bit frustrating for a blogger such as myself.

It’s about a woman who does a blog with a gimmick — she’s going to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s famous book in a year — and the blog becomes wildly popular, and she gets a book deal, and it’s made into, you guessed it, a movie.

And the thing is, that’s not going to happen to me, which made me a little sad. I don’t have a gimmick. And I don’t have an obsession that thousands of people will resonate to — at least, I’m not aware of one. I’m not even particularly interested in such things. I know the kinds of things that are engaging and commercial, and I’m not that into them.

The obsession that the blog of the woman in the movie was about was food. This is a very chick thing. Excuse me, ladies, but women get excited about food as though it were sex or something. Some men do, too, but I am definitely not one of those men. My diet is limited by my allergies, of course, and that’s part of it, but I’m just not a foodie at heart anyway. I will fully enjoy my Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, but then I’ll take a nap and not think about it any more. I’ve tried waxing enthusiastic about Dixie Lee field peas and candy pumpkins, but I definitely could not imagine blogging exclusively about such a limited subject. (Foodies don’t think food is a limited subject, but there it is…)

Women are always starting wildly successful blogs, read by other women, about food and shopping and their kids and such, but I’m just not that kind of blogger. For that matter, I’m not into the kinds of things guys usually obsess about, either. Sports, for instance. Sports has the potential for a guy to be the kind of blog money-maker that food and shopping are for women. But I’m not, by American standards, into sports.

So what do I have? Well, I’m really, really into those Aubrey-Maturin novels, and I think it would really be cool to spend a year sailing the world in a square-rigged ship, living on dried peas and salt pork, attacking and sinking the king’s enemies, and blogging about it. But I don’t think it’s really feasible. The obstacles are pretty significant.

I’m really into my grandchildren. But cute pictures I take of them would probably wear thin with my readers.

Then, there’s the fact that I am an actual unemployed guy, the epitome of this economic situation. And the truth is, I have not really tapped into that subject. I don’t tell y’all most of what I’m thinking and experiencing because, well, it’s personal. If I went into perfectly frank detail about what this experience is like, it could be interesting. But it could also chase away every job prospect I have. And I can’t imagine it being commercial. Who pays for depressing? I sure wouldn’t. I mean, I’m living it, and I’ve frankly had enough of it.

So anyway — it would be great if I could come up with a gimmick that would make this blog pay off in a big way. Suggestions, anyone?

Getting it wrong, and right, in ‘State of Play’

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Back on this post, we had a sidebar about the film “State of Play” — Kathryn mentioning that I really should see the original British series, and I will certainly put it in my Netflix queue. As it happens, though, I saw the American film over the weekend, and it was, mediocre.

I’m reminded of it again today because I went by to visit folks at The State, and ran into Sammy Fretwell, and told him I had thought  about him over the weekend. That’s because the one detail the filmmakers got right in Russell Crowe’s depiction of a reporter, aside from the fact that he worked on a ridiculously old PC, was his workspace. I would say “desk,” but this was the sort of workspace that has worked itself up into a fortress, with piles of papers, magazines, newspapers, files, publicity packets, all sorts of stuff in unsteady towers of material dating back 10 years and more, stacked on desk, credenza, nearby filing cabinets, and other items of furniture that can no longer be identified.

I saw that and thought, “Sammy!” (And I say this with all respect; Sammy’s a great newspaperman. He’s awesome. This just happens to be a common characteristic of great newspapermen.)

Beyond that, the screenplay was evidently NOT written by anyone who had ever worked at a newspaper. The characters just weren’t right. And they said ridiculous things that only non-journalists would ever say, such as “sell newspapers.” You know how people who want to criticize a paper for a story say the editors just ran it to “sell newspapers?” That’s always a dead giveaway of a clueless layman. I’ve never met a journalist who spoke or thought in terms of “selling newspapers.” Most journalists didn’t care if you stole it, as long as you read it. Selling was the concern of the business side folks (and a poor job they’ve done of it in recent years, huh?). Another real prize bit of dialogue, which you can hear on the above trailer: “The newspapers can slant this any which way they want to…” Who wrote this stuff?

The one really true bit was during the credits, when they show the Big Story that the movie was about going through the production process and onto the presses. They got that just right. I’m guessing that’s not a tribute to the knowledge of the writers. The producers probably just asked a newspaper to produce a page with this story on it, put it on the presses and run the presses. And THIS part got me. I haven’t really felt nostalgic about the lingering death of my industry, but this simple device of putting the camera on the actual physical processes sort of gave me a lump in the throat — the film coming out of the imagesetter, the plate being made, the plate being fitted onto the press… THAT was real.

But nothing else was. Not even the messy desk, as it turns out. When I mentioned it to Sammy, he said I was behind the times. He took me over to his little fortress in the corner, and it was NEAT. He had gotten permission to take three days off from covering the news and spent the time imposing order. It was freaky.

Sort of made me want to go back and make sure the imagesetters, platemakers and presses were still there…

What IS that thing Boeing wants to build?

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Stargate

Whoa. I had thought the plant we were trying to bring to South Carolina (a prospect which is looking better, given Boeing’s union troubles elsewhere) was for building airplanes.

But you know what this photo looks like to me? Yep, the Stargate, from the movie of that name starring Kurt Russell.

Now, that would certainly give South Carolina a leg up into high-tech manufacturing…

And yes, I realize it’s a cross-section of the fuselage of the 787. I’m just talking about what it looks like…

Sg1stargatefront

Polanski’s a perv, and they finally locked him up. What’s the issue?

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It’s come to my attention that some people are actually making like it’s a bad thing that the Swiss locked up Roman Polanski.

I can’t imagine why. A word in your shell-like: The guy’s a major perv. Here’s a source who seems to have her head on straight about it. But DON”T READ THIS if you don’t want some pretty horrific details:

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let’s just start right there, because that’s the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in “exile” (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never — poor baby — being able to return to the U.S.). Let’s keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she’d rather not see him prosecuted because she can’t stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let’s take a moment to recall that according to the victim’s grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, “No,” then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

I don’t even get what she’s on about with that “how awesome his movies are” stuff. Not really. “Chinatown” had something going for it, but it had some pretty perv-y elements to it also, as I recall.

Here’s Calvin Trillin’s take on it, which is also dead-on (and thanks to KBFenner for passing on the links):

A youthful error? Yes, perhaps.
But he’s been punished for this lapse–
For decades exiled from LA
He knows, as he wakes up each day,
He’ll miss the movers and the shakers.
He’ll never get to see the Lakers.
For just one old and small mischance,
He has to live in Paris, France.
He’s suffered slurs and other stuff.
Has he not suffered quite enough?
How can these people get so riled?
He only raped a single child.

Why make him into some Darth Vader
For sodomizing one eighth grader?
This man is brilliant, that’s for sure–
Authentically, a film auteur.
He gets awards that are his due.
He knows important people, too–
Important people just like us.
And we know how to make a fuss.
Celebrities would just be fools
To play by little people’s rules.
So Roman’s banner we unfurl.
He only raped one little girl.

What more is there to say?

Take a Look at the Lawman, or, The Trouble with Time Travel

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Seems to me we need a break from our exhausting (to me, anyway) discussion of civility, one in which I find myself engaged deeply in discussion with some of the blog’s worst offenders (Lee, “Mike Toreno”) because I feel like I have to consider them thoroughly, give them every chance, before tossing them out, if that’s what I’m to do to keep order. Oh, the fundamental fecklessness of liberal democracy! Perhaps I should just conjure a virtual Gitmo for them, and to hell with due process! One of my friends, a liberal Democrat (in the big D sense) through and through, says I’m guilty of WASPish diffidence, and perhaps I am…

We need some escapism. Let’s talk time travel.

Yes, I know Stephen Hawking says there’s no such thing (his proof: that there are no time tourists from the future — that we know of, I would add), and I figure he’s probably right. That doesn’t keep me from being a sucker for it as a plot device — “Back to the Future,” the H.G. Wells original, variations on the H.G. Wells original (such as the enjoyable thriller/romance “Time After Time,” which starred Malcolm McDowell as H.G. himself), and on and on. Not that it’s always satisfying: “The Final Countdown,” aside from having one of the least relevant titles ever, is probably the most disappointing movie I’ve ever seen. For two hours you build up to the 80s-era USS Nimitz getting ready to go up against the Japanese at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and then the battle is prevented by a plot evasion as cheesy as, “… and then he woke up.” All because the producers lacked the budget to stage the battle, I suppose. The earlier scenes, such as when the F-14s splash the two Zeroes and the confrontation between the Japanese pilot and the historian, are pretty decent though…

I’m always a little embarrassed to admit this, but one of my favorite novels to reread when I want to relax my mind is Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South. Why embarrassing? Well, when you explain the plot — “It imagines what would have happened if the Confederacy had had AK-47s” — you sound like an idiot. But it really is GOOD.

Let me hasten to add that I like the more reputable A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court much better, and have ever since my first reading as a kid. But the Turtledove book is still enjoyable.

In real life, we all engage in a bit of time travel to the best of our means. We all think back to moments in our past when we might have done something differently. This ranges from bitter recrimination (“What I should have told him was…”) to tantalizing wistfulness. I suspect most guys have experienced in their heads some version of Steppenwolf’s “All Girls Are Yours” fantasy.

You run into trouble with such imaginings when you try to make them believable. First, there’s the device — time machine? bump on the head? For that matter, if it’s a machine, how does it work? It’s generally best not to explain it in too much detail. Michael Crichton made that mistake in Timeline. His characters explain that what they have discovered is actually travel between universes in the multiverse, which somehow magically ACTS like time travel in that if you leave a note for yourself in one universe, you can read it 600 years later (or what SEEMS later) in the other. I could explain further, but it gets more ridiculous the more it tries to be serious. Doc Brown’s “flux capacitor” is much more believable, and more fun.

Then, what are the rules — is history mutable, or not? And if not, why not? And let’s not even get into the grandfather paradox. And if you go back to a point within your own life, can you see your younger self as a separate individual (in which case you might have a lot of explaining to do to yourself) or are you back inside that earlier version of yourself, only with what you now know in your mind, like the Steppenwolf back with all his past loves?:

At the sour and aromatically bitter taste I knew at once and exactly what it was that I was living over again. It all came back. I was living again an hour of the last years of my boyhood, a Sunday afternoon in early Spring, the day that on a lonely walk I met Rosa Kreisler and greeted her so shyly and fell in love with her so madly…

Anyway, I’m thinking of all this this week because I rented the first two episodes of “Life on Mars” from Netflix. Premise: Cop in Manchester, England, in 2006 gets hit by a car, wakes up as a cop in 1973.

Promising. You’ll recognize it as the “Connecticut Yankee” device — physical trauma, followed by the time dislocation, which the protagonist can’t explain and at least at first doesn’t believe in, but has to come to terms with. In this case, the hero keeps hearing voices and other sounds that persuade him that he’s in a coma in 2006, but then he is beguiled by the richness of irrelevant detail in his 1973 existence. He keeps thinking, Why would I have imagined that?

I’ve enjoyed it so far, but ultimately it falls down on an important measure for time-travel fiction — the evocation of the visited era. The writers of the show seem unable to go beyond bell-bottoms and vintage cars. Their notion of the difference between being a cop in 2006 and 1973 is that back then the office was a lot grungier, and the cops liked to slap subjects around and disregard proper procedure. Oh, and it took longer to get stuff back from the lab.

Which, I’m sorry, is pretty inadequate… I was in college in 1973, and people were just as insistent upon rules and standards then as now (despite their really, REALLY bad taste). And ultimately, watching this show, I don’t really FEEL like I’m back in that era. And I realized why when I watched a bit of the “making of” video — the writers and others who made this flick were too young to remember that date, which still seems pretty recent to me. The protagonist would have been 4 years old in 73, and the writers and producers seem to be his contemporaries.

Not only that, but they get their idea of what the 70s were like from watching cop shows of the period. In other words, since Starsky and Hutch bent the rules, that’s what real-life policing was like. Sheesh.

The soundtrack’s pretty good, though. The sequence in which the cop is hit by the car and goes back happens to the strains of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” (hence the title):

Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he’ll ever know
He’s in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

… first on an iPod, then on an 8-track.

I’m going to watch the next disc; I’ve got it ordered. To see if he wakes up or whatever. But I’ve seen time travel done better…

(un)Critical Mass(es)

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Let’s have a little discussion about human nature.

First, take a look at this story from yesterday’s WSJ, which reveals the rating inflation that plagues (or blesses, depending onyour point of view) the Web:

The Web can be a mean-spirited place. But when it comes to online reviews, the Internet is a village where the books are strong, YouTube clips are good-looking and the dog food is above average.

One of the Web’s little secrets is that when consumers write online reviews, they tend to leave positive ratings: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five…

Did that surprise you? It did me, a bit. But then I got to thinking about the one place where I’ve done a lot of rating — Netflix, where over the years (in a vain attempt to teach the site to predict my preferences) I’ve rated more than 2,000 movies. And since I love movies, and do a certain amount of selection before watching them, I knew I had given really high ratings more often than really low ones — specifically, I had awarded 5 stars (to such films as “Casablanca,” “The Godfather” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”) 156 times, and 1 star (examples: “Dances With Wolves,” the made-in-Columbia “Death Sentence” and “Dune”) only 24 times.

Still, if you count up all the movies I’ve rated between 1 and 5, you come up with an average rating of only 3.4. And if you factor in the 815 flicks I’ve rated as “Not Interested,” awarding them a 0 score, it drops to 2.0. But that’s misleading, because some of those are good flicks that some time or other I gave that rating just as a way of saying I wasn’t interested in seeing them at that time. But if you count just a fourth of those, it lowers my average to 2.9.

Which is about where you’d expect me to be. I’m a born critic — flaws leap out at me, and I remember them. And my detractors (such as those who think I’m too tough on Mark Sanford) see me as all criticism, as one who never gives my subjects their due. Actually, though, some of my detractors (such as those who were furious that I continued to admire John McCain throughout the 2008 campaign) attack me for the opposite trait — the fact that I can the good outweighing the bad in some people and some things. (You ladies who love Jane Austen may think of me as a health mix of Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, only without their wealth.)

Back to human nature: Why would folks be so overwhelmingly positive on the Web (except, of course, here on this blog)? The story in the Journal speculated as follows:

Culture may play a role in the positivism: Ratings in the U.K. average an even higher 4.4, reports Bazaarvoice. But the largest contributor may be human nature. Marketing research firm Keller Fay Group surveys 100 consumers each week to ask them about what products they mentioned to friends in conversation. “There is an urban myth that people are far more likely to express negatives than positives,” says Ed Keller, the company’s chief executive. But on average, he finds that 65% of the word-of-mouth reviews are positive and only 8% are negative.

“It’s like gambling. Most people remember the times they win and don’t realize that in aggregate they’ve lost money,” says Andy Chen, the chief executive of Power Reviews Inc., a reviews software maker that runs Buzzillions…

Aha! I think I understand… at least, I now understand a possible reason why people gamble.

I don’t know about you, but I have not gambled since I was in college. I went through a period when I shot pool (nine ball being my game) and played a few hands of poker. But the last time I played pool for money and the last time I gambled with cards are etched unforgettably on my mind because of the spectacular ways in which I lost. My opponent at the pool table had had a shocking run in which he had pocketed the nine ball on the break several times in a row. After hours in which no one had had a hand nearly as good, I risked all (even writing a check to another player to get cash to stay in the game) on a full house — only to lose to a full house that was one card better (queens as opposed to jacks).

I’ve never understood, since then, why people would gamble. But this tendency to remember the anomalous wins more clearly than the losses would explain it.

But is that truly human nature?

Frankly, I find myself doubting the very premise of the story. As a newspaperman of 35 years experience, I am so accustomed to hearing from the people who are AGAINST something, or who didn’t like something in the paper, that such universal satisfaction seems unlikely to me. Take letters to the editor. One of my favorite examples were the letters we got for a week or so after U.S. troops first went into Afghanistan in the fall of 2001: They were overwhelmingly against U.S. military action. I knew they were not representative of South Carolina, not by a long shot, but they were the people who were taking the trouble to write. And that seems to me to be the norm.

Yet this story is saying otherwise. What do you think is true, and why do you think it’s the case?

Waiting for my UnParty Peter Boyle

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Wow, I am really humbled by the nice things some of y’all said about me running for office back on this post (am I sounding like a candidate yet? they’re supposed to say stuff like that, about being humbled, etc.).

But again, what office? The context was that we were talking about Congress. But as Karen suggested, maybe I’m better suited for state office. State issues are the ones I’m most knowledgeable about and passionate about.

Not that I don’t know as much as (or more than) the other declared candidates for Congress about national and international issues. I’m pretty confident that I do — or at least that I can hold my own, and I can certainly approach those issues in a fresh way that would break the partisan, shouting-back-and-forth pattern that I, for one, am sick of.

But what if I were elected to Congress? I would just feel pretty weird going off to Washington and watching another lame governor take office back here. And you know what? My own mother called me up the other day and said I should run for governor. So that’s one vote I could count on, I guess. (Right, Mom?)

You know what I need at this point? I need Peter Boyle to come see me and make a pitch. You ever see “The Candidate?” Excellent movie. Peter Boyle plays a political consultant type who talks Robert Redford — son of a prominent politician — into running for the U.S. Senate. Redford is a nonprofit activist who is uninterested in the compromises one must make to run for office. Boyle promises him he can stand up for everything he believes in, and points out that this is a great opportunity to give those things he believes in greater exposure. Redford asks something like How does that work? or What’s the catch? and Boyle hands him a matchbook on which he has written two words: “You lose.” On that basis, Redford agrees to run.

But as the campaign proceeds, the itch to win — or at least not lose by an embarrassing margin — starts to get to him….

Anyway, to run for office what I need is a Peter Boyle moment — somebody to say, we’ll take care of the mechanics of the campaign, you just be the candidate. Because I’m an issues guy, not a mechanics guy. Renting an office and getting phone lines set up would be the overwhelming part for me. Seriously.

This, of course, is why most people run under the auspices of parties. Each of the parties has loads of people like Peter Boyle who can say, here’s your infrastructure, you just concentrate on running for office (and raising money).

What I need is an UnParty Peter Boyle. I guess that would be a party stalwart who has become disillusioned. Or who sees greater opportunity in breaking away from the two-party dichotomy.

It’s interesting to contemplate where such a person would come from. On an earlier post, I speculated that if I were to give in and run under the banner of one of the parties next year for pragmatic reasons (see the above discourse on Peter Boyle), especially for Congress, it would probably have to be the Democratic Party. Why? Well, not because I’m a Democrat, but because I don’t see a Republican having a good-enough shot against an incumbent of that party. Too much of an uphill climb.

But it occurs to me that if I run as an independent, my theoretical Peter Boyle would be more likely to come from the Republican Party. It’s the party in trouble. It’s the party that’s falling apart, rather pathetically clinging to tired slogans and petty resentments that have not served it well of late (whereas the Democrats have been doing OK, for the moment, with their tired slogans and petty resentments). It seems more likely that a smart Republican would calculate that an UnParty bid would be advisable than that a smart Democrat would do the same. Democrats are smelling opportunity now, and are unlikely to jump ship.

Then again, there could be a smart Democrat who would rather see me elected than Joe Wilson, and who also sees as I do that Rob Miller is not the best candidate to take advantage of this moment, and yet he’s the Democrat with the money, and has a leg up toward the nomination. Going with me might be the way to step around that problem. I don’t know. That’s the kind of hard-eyed political calculation that I’m depending on this Peter Boyle person to make — I’m the candidate, not the backroom strategist.

Anyway, now would be a good time for my Peter Boyle to step forward. I’ve got a job interview later this week, and possibly another soon after. This window won’t be open for long (I certainly hope.)

The kindness of friends is one thing, and I truly appreciate the supportive things y’all have said here. But at this point I need a nudge from a hard-eyed professional who truly believes this can be done. You might say I should go out and find that person. But I’m thinking that if I truly have a chance, that pragmatic person will see it and come to me. If I don’t — if it’s just me indulging myself and some friends egging me on — then there’s no point in continuing the discussion. Does that make sense? It does to me… Call it the first test of my viability…

George Clooney has either never had a prostate exam, or a Facebook page, or both

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We don’t normally do celebrity news at bradwarthen.com (with rare exceptions), but I happened to run across this item via Twitter:

Although more and more brands, movie stars, sports figures, and other celebrities are moving to Twitter (Twitter) and Facebook as a way of interacting and sharing with fans, many of Hollywood’s A-List stars are still avoiding social networks.

George Clooney is one of Hollywood’s biggest stars — he’s handsome, congenial, and talented — and also Facebook-page free.

People.com reports that when asked about Facebook at the Toronto International Film Festival last Saturday, Clooney responded:

“I would rather have a prostate exam on live television by a guy with very cold hands than have a Facebook page.”

… and it inspired the above headline.

Of course, the message we are to take away is that George Clooney is such a big star that he doesn’t have to promote himself. Which is true. But he doesn’t have to be so snobby about it. I mean, it’s one thing for me to turn my nose up at celebrities, but they’re not supposed to do it right back at me…

You should definitely go see “The Producers” (now that there’s no chance of me messing it up)

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Well, I did my little cameo appearance last night in the Workshop Theatre production of “The Producers.” It went fine. Although I’ve got to tell you that by the time my cue came early in the second act, I was much more anxious not to mess up than I had been before the curtain went up.

That’s because the show was so good. Everybody was turning in such an impressive, high-energy performance that if there had been ANYthing wrong with my part, short as it was, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. The stakes had been raised. I was sitting there thinking that I was out in right field. You know that feeling? It’s the one where you stand there and stand there and stand there, and the ball never comes to you, and you get used to the ball not coming to you, and you never get warmed up, and then when the ball finally does come to you, the stakes, the consequences of screwing up seem so huge and overwhelming that… well, you screw up. (For that reason, I always infinitely preferred playing pitcher or catcher, where you’re involved with every pitch, to playing the outfield.)

By the time my bit was approaching, everybody on stage was SO warmed up — Matt DeGuire, as Max Bialystock, had worked up a visible sweat before the second scene — that I felt like I’d never be able to come off the bench and jump into something moving at this pace. I felt like the whole show would trip over me or something. But I guess it went OK, because no one threw rotten tomatoes.

After that, I was able to enjoy the rest of the show without that feeling of dread hanging over me. And I really enjoyed it.

Which, I can admit now, surprised me.

Not that I didn’t think the folks at Workshop would do a good job. I assumed they would. My problem was with the show itself. I tried to watch the movie version with Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, and I got sick of it by the end of the first scene. I’m a huge Ferris Bueller fan (who isn’t?), but I found Broderick’s trying-too-hard impersonation of Gene Wilder really off-putting. And frankly, as I thought about that, I realized I hadn’t been crazy about the Wilder-Mostel version either.

For me, “Young Frankenstein” was Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, and “Blazing Saddles” had its amusing parts, but it trails off after that. And the movie versions of “The Producers” fell somewhere below “Spaceballs” in my estimation.

So I was startled to see that something that didn’t work for me on the movie screen was so entertaining in a live show. But it was. And it was more than the fact that “over-the-top” fits the live stage better than the wide screen, which prefers subtlety. It was the wonderful performances of these individual local actors — particularly DeGuire as Max, Kevin Bush as Leopold Bloom, Mandy Nix as Ulla, Kyle Collins as Franz and on and on (there are no weak performances) — and the chemistry of how it all came together.

This was the best thing I’ve seen on a stage in Columbia (except, of course, for the shows that my children were in…)

You should definitely go see it. Even though I won’t be in it anymore. Or perhaps, especially since I won’t be in it anymore…

Whatever it is, they’re against it

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Last night, before I had heard what Joe Wilson had done (I had heard the hubbub, but neither made out “You lie!” not identified the shouter), I was already complaining about the far more civil, formal, GOP response.

The thing is, I always hate listening to those things. I hated them when Bush was president, and Clinton before him. Always just a pointless, nonconstructive exercise in perpetual partisan polarization. Does your party want to be heard during presidential addresses? Well then win the next presidential election.

Rather than having the opposition statement, the networks should just run the Groucho Marx clip, which says the same thing more honestly and more entertainingly: “I don’t know what they have to say; it makes no difference anyway: Whatever it is, I’m against it!” In fact, let’s go ahead and reproduce the lyrics in full:

[Groucho]
I don’t know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I’m against it.

Your proposition may be good,
But let’s have one thing understood,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And even when you’ve changed it or condensed it,
I’m against it.

I’m opposed to it,
On general principle, I’m opposed to it.

[chorus] He’s opposed to it.
In fact, indeed, that he’s opposed to it!

[Groucho]
For months before my son was born,
I used to yell from night to morn,
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
And I’ve kept yelling since I first commenced it,
I’m against it!

It’s even, of all things, more gentlemanly than what we see from Washington these days. Who would have dreamed, ere now, that Groucho Marx, the master insult artist, could give civility lessons to South Carolina congressmen?

Seriously, if the opposition party — whichever one it happens to be at the moment — would simply surrender its response time and let the TV folk run this clip instead, I would think much more of that party than I do now.

Goldfinger II: The Golden Death Mask

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I’m not usually one for the whole “news of the weird” shtick, and I leave “Dumb Crook News” to John Boy and Billy. But this is wild enough to pass on, for what it’s worth:

They apparently thought they could hide their identities by spray-painting their faces gold, Richland County sheriff’s deputies said.

But one of two men who targeted the Sprint PCS store on Sparkleberry Lane last month died a short time after the armed robbery — possibly from the paint fumes, deputies said Friday.

Deputies identified the dead robber as Thomas James, 23. His last known address was in Columbia, court records show.

“It’s the damnedest one I’ve ever had in 34 years,” Sheriff Leon Lott told The State on Friday. “We’ve had robbers paint their faces before, but we’ve never had one die as a result of that.”

Didn’t these guys ever see “Goldfinger?” Did they not learn anything? And no, we’re not talking “skin suffocation” here, but still one should have gotten the message, Not a good idea.

The sheriff isn’t sure whether the paint job was intentionally, or incidental as a result of a “huffing” session. I wonder whether the victim of this insanity knew himself which it was. What a waste of life; what insanity.

Netflix guilt

Like I don’t have enough things to worry about, now I’m coping with Netflix Guilt.

It goes like this:

Once, a year or so ago, I put “Bloody Sunday” onto my list, figuring I should take more interest in how the Troubles started. Somehow it wriggles its way to the top of the queue, and comes to my house. I watch a bit of it. It’s shot in a documentary style. I can pick out, early on, characters who are Not Going to Make It. They are, of course, sympathetic characters. I know they represent real people, not fiction. I know there’s nothing I can do the inevitable slide toward this brief orgy of violence. It takes me about five tries to get almost all the way through the movie, and I still haven’t accomplished it, weeks later. I feel like I don’t care enough about violence in Ireland if I don’t watch it to the end, so I haven’t sent it back.

Trying to turn away from “Bloody Sunday,” I order “The Wrestler,” which has gotten all sorts of good reviews. I start watching it. I can see why it got good reviews. Have to wonder, does Mickey Rourke’s body actually look like that, or is that fake. Can see that this character’s “arc” is not upward. Quickly get tired of the seediness, and the character’s sadness, despite early glimpses of Marisa Tomei nearly nude. Feel like I have to watch it to the end, because this is a Serious Movie.

But I don’t want to.

Hence, Netflix Guilt.

I also have “Defiance.” Should I start watching it instead, if I actually get time for movie watching tonight? And… he asks with trepidation — will I like it any better? Will it be any better than the second James Bond movie he did? And if it isn’t, will I still feel like I have to watch it because it’s about a serious historical subject? Probably.

Der Führer pans the new “Star Trek”

Saw this video spoof earlier in the week and meant to share it. Since I hadn’t posted anything all day, I might as well post it now.

Think of the creative energy it takes to produce something like that on YouTube, and the site is just full of stuff like that.

This was brought to my attention by my high school classmate Burl Burlingame, who blogs out of Honolulu. He works for the Star-Bulletin. Aside from the fact that he still has his job, he and I have been on parallel tracks lately. He also just fell into the twin traps of Facebook and Twitter, so we have commiserated this week.

Burl and I graduated from Radford High School in 1971. You may recall I wrote something about those days in my column last fall, “Barack Like Me.” Burl got into journalism earlier than I did; he published an underground newspaper at Radford. The one thing I remember clearly about that was that he used to refer to our principal, who was virtually never seen by the students (I never saw him that whole senior year, although I knew people who said they’d met him), as “the Ghost Who Walks.” The principal’s name was Yamamoto. Not the admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack; another Yamamoto. (Actually, come to think of it, he could have been the admiral for all we knew, since we never saw him.)

It’s particularly meaningful to me that Burl posted something making fun of Nazis. You may have noted that the lede story in The State today was about a high school prank. A particularly nasty, destructive high school prank, but still a senior prank. Our senior prank at Radford back in 71 was less destructive, but more creative.

About a dozen of us staged a revolution to take over the school. Or rather, in guerrilla fashion, we took over a classroom at a time and quickly moved on. We wielded water guns, and wore rather elaborate paramilitary costumes. Most of us had recently seen Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” and were largely inspired by that, only we were far more international. Our leader was Steve Clark, who was dressed in full military regalia as “El Presidente.” He spoke only Spanish in keeping with his character, which no one but I understood, so I translated all of his commands, being second in command. My character’s back story was that I had been a top officer in the Israeli Defense Force but had been drummed out for something or other and had turned mercenary. Overly elaborate, perhaps, and the nuances were probably not obvious to our audience, but we didn’t care.

Burl’s character was an unrepentant old Nazi whom we had found hiding in Argentina, loudly fulminating at everyone in a vaudeville German accent. He would particularly abuse me, since my character was supposed to be Jewish, and of course I would take offense, and our comrades would have to separate us to prevent violence. Yes, it was that politically incorrect. We wanted to be edgy, and thought ethnic humor, even ethnic humor that dark, to be funny, a la Mel Brooks with “Springtime for Hitler.” We were kids, and stupid. Or rather, a little too “clever” for our own good.

We were most successful in taking over Mrs. Burchard’s English class. Mrs. Burchard was my favorite teacher ever. You can see a picture of her on that same page that I linked to about Mr. Yamamoto, on the virtual yearbook that (I think) Burl put together a few years back. (Cute, isn’t she?) She was a real sport, and played along. When some of her underclassmen students failed to give El Presidente proper respect (as we defined it), we lined them up against the blackboard and hosed them down with the water guns — but only after Mrs. Burchard had fallen on her knees before us to beg us to spare them. She was awesome.

The revolution ended badly, as most do. Some juniors mounted a counterattack on our position, and I caught a water balloon in the groin. C’est la guerre.

My caricature (an Ariail original, I’ll have you know)

caricature72

My colleagues from the editorial department (both past and present) had a going-away party for Robert and me Sunday night, which was really, really nice. (Why so long after we left? It was the first time that Cindi, who hosted the shindig at her place, could round up enough of us.) Aside from the present crowd, the blasts from the past included Kent Krell, Nina Brook, Mike Fitts, Claudia Brinson and John Monk — plus former publisher Ann Caulkins, who came all the way down from Charlotte just for the party, which really touched me. And a special appearance by Lee Bandy.

Actually, I’m deeply touched by everyone who played a role in the event (some would say, of course, that I am just “touched,” period). It was really great. You know, an awful lot of people just keep doing things to prevent me from feeling bad about getting laid off, so I don’t know when the shock sets in.

Anyway, a highlight of such events is always the reading of the mock page, which I won’t go into, except to say that it was full of relatively inside jokes. Some of it was a little more mainstream, such as this excerpt from a column in which I am announcing my plan to run for governor on the Unparty ticket:

Thus validated, I concluded that
there’s no way South Carolina can
get anywhere without the leadership
of my Un-Party, which we’ll
begin to demonstrate just as soon
as we can settle on what
we believe in.
We’re for a strong,
energy-independent
America, respected
worldwide. As is everybody.
We’re for a South Carolina
that pays workers
the same wages that people
expect in the rest of
America. As is everybody.
We’re for a South
Carolina that takes care
of its citizens, and makes
sure that all its children
have a good education.
As is everybody, except
Gov. Sanford.
I talked about my idea with the
governor, who listened to indulge
his self-image as political scholar.
“At the end of the day, Brad,
you’ve got to decide if South Carolina
now has the right soil conditions
for you to grow your political
endeavor,” he said.
“Well, you’ve certainly added
fertilizer to our soil,” I replied.
“You’ll have a problem convincing
voters that your Un-Party
will be as good at un-governing the
state as I have been. After all, I’ve
given the state a new definition of
un-leadership,” he said.
I then took the opportunity to
take a few quick photos and a
video for the Web. Quality wasn’t
so good, as it turned out, since this
was a phone conversation.
“The question, to me, at the end
of the day, is whether you hate
government enough to want to run
it. I don’t think you do, Brad, but
so it goes. To be continued.”
As I disconnected my telephone
headset, I looked up to see Robert
Ariail waiting for me, sketches in
hand. He might well have been
standing there for 15 minutes, just
waiting. Cartooning is not a profession
for the sane.

I should stop there, because I know most of the stuff my colleagues never intended to see published. Oh, all right, one more sample, and then I’m going away. Here, the wiseguys were making fun of my weakness for pop culture allusions (particularly The Godfather) and my propensity to digress, parenthetically, to an absurd degree:

But just as useful for the purpose of creating thinly connected
film-derivative metaphors about politics, government, society or
whatever we might be struggling to make a coherent point about
is the warning that “When they come, they come at what you
love,” with its implicit imperative to preserve and protect the
family. It is an imperative that is made unmistakably explicit in
the words of Don Vito Corleone in the initial 1972 film, The Godfather,
by far the finest movie ever produced (South Carolina, of
course, does not have a don. The governor should be the don,
and others in the organization should tremble at his approach.
But because he does not have the power to rub out discordant
rivals on a whim, instead we must endure the endless gang warfare
we see at the State House.), when he asks apostle Luca
Brasi, who was very handy with a garrote: “Do you spend time
with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn’t spend time
with his family can never be a real man.” (Of course, if Luca
Brasi had spent all the time that he should have with his family,
the core unit and strength of our society, then maybe he wouldn’t
have ended up sleeping with the fishes.)

OK, so you had to be there (like, in the office for the last 22 years). I thought it was a hoot.

And of course, the don didn’t say that to Luca; he said it to Johnny Fontane. But you knew that.

Finally, there was the cartoon — the original of which Robert gave me, framed. Which is very cool (no one on my block has an original Ariail caricature of them, ha-ha). Yet another thing that makes getting laid off worthwhile.

Do you know what your sin is?

Yes, that’s a quote from “Serenity” — the Operative, in point of fact. Do you know, I once took a quiz online to find out “which “Firefly” character are you?,” and it said I was the Operative. Some of my libertarian friends out there will get a chuckle out of that, but I didn’t like it a bit. Then I took it several more times — going the other way on questions that had been close calls — and each time I was somebody else. Never did get to be Jayne, though, which was disappointing. I didn’t even get to be Mal (I was stuck with the doctor — my least favorite character — and Shepherd Book).

But that’s not the point of this post. The point is that I did the first reading in Mass today, which is a rare privilege. I much prefer doing the 1st reading (Old Testament, usually), but I almost always get scheduled to do the 2nd (usually Paul’s epistles). I really get into the Old Testament readings — they tell stories; they take you somewhere — while Paul is usually too dry and abstract to mean as much to me as it should.

So it fell to me today to do the 1st reading, and this was it, from Jeremiah 31:

The days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers
the day I took them by the hand
to lead them forth from the land of Egypt;
for they broke my covenant,
and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD.
I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts;
I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and relatives
how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

One of the ways that my faith manifests itself is that I see meaning in my being chosen to read this to the people. And this reading seems particularly pregnant with meaning for me.

You see, I’m going through a rough patch in my professional life at the moment — what with being laid off and all. And it reminds me of when I went through a much worse one, almost exactly 22 years ago. And God delivered me and my house from that. I’ll tell you the story of it in greater detail another time, but suffice it to say that the four seemingly interminable days it took my wife and me to drive our two cars and (then) four young children out of the Western wilderness to the East Coast caused the 40 years of wandering in the desert to be much more immediate and real for me. And I have always thanked God for leading us out of there, to the land of my fathers, where we have been blessed.

So that part of the reading, about the earlier covenant when God took the people by the hand and led them out of Kansas — I mean, Egypt — is a reference I personally find applicable.

But God says through Jeremiah that that deal is now off, just as my time of being blessed in my job at The State is over.

So that leaves me with two questions:

  1. What was my sin, if indeed sin there was? Maybe there wasn’t one in particular, since I don’t feel all that much of a sense of loss. But if there was one, I should know what it was.
  2. What’s the new deal?

Mostly lately, my mind has been focused on the new deal, the new covenant that lies before me. As it has begun to take shape — just bits of it so far — I’ve gotten pretty excited about it. And the mind naturally turns to “What’s next?”

But this reading causes me to wonder: Is there a lesson yet to be learned from where I was? If so, I need to figure that out. I’m planning on going to the Lenten Reconciliation Service at St. Peter’s Monday night. So I’m reflecting upon this…

Too heavy for you? Well, then go to the mall, as Jack Black’s character said in “High Fidelity,” just to bring us back to the realm of pop culture, for those who are more comfortable there.

‘I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How’ve you been?’

Just had to smile when I saw a release a few minutes ago from a company that does “pet health insurance.” Smiling not at the company, but at the association it brought to mind.

It made me think of Martin Blank, the professional assassin, rehearsing what he would say to people at his 10th high school reunion: “Hi… I’m a pet psychiatrist. Yeah, yeah. I sell couch insurance…” He goes on to say (if this guy I’m linking to quoted it right; I don’t have the DVD on me at the moment:

“… Mm-hmm. And I — and I test-market positive thinking. I lead a weekend men’s group, we specialize in ritual killings. Yeah, you look great! God, yeah! Hi, how are you? Hi, how are you? Hi, I’m Martin Blank, you remember me? I’m not married, I don’t have any kids, and I’d blow your head off if someone paid me enough.”

Not that I’m being the least bit critical; at least these people have jobs. In fact, speaking of John Cusack, I started quoting him completely unintentionally the other night when I was telling one of my kids in all seriousness the things that I would probably not do in my future pursuit. I said something like, “You don’t want to ask me to sell anything…” and my daughter, having my genes, immediately started laughing and quoting,

“I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”

Well, I had to laugh, too, because I guess what I said did sound sort of like that. Maybe I should be a little less picky than Lloyd Dobler, though, under the circumstances. What do you think.

Never mind maneuvers…

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Just watched the end of a movie in which Lawrence Olivier was strutting about in Napoleonic-era admiral’s uniform with an empty right sleeve, which could only mean he was portraying Lord Nelson. And there was Vivien Leigh talking about Lord Keith and St. Vincent and the rest, so I was hooked to the end of it. Saw a highly melodramatic rendering of Nelson’s death at Trafalgar.

As you know, I’m a huge fan of the Aubrey-Maturin novels, and Lord Nelson was Jack Aubrey’s hero. In the books, Jack is the one to whom Nelson said, “Never mind maneuvers, always go straight at ’em.” In reality, he said that to Lord Cochrane, upon whom Aubrey is largely based.

Here’s the kicker: After the movie, the guy who introduces the features on TCM said the movie was so chock-full of homilies about the importance of standing up to dictators that the director was summoned to Congress — still gripped by isolationism — where our lawmakers were investigating pro-war propaganda by Hollywood. He was scheduled to appear on Dec. 12, 1941, so he lucked out there. By his appearance date, isolationism was no longer quite the thing, you know.

Imagine that — Hollywood being investigated for pro-war propaganda.

I’d better go to bed now.