Goodbyeee...

"You ever notice there aren't too many Chinese guys named, 'Rusty'? Guess the name never caught on over there..."

A quick note about George Carlin's passing: Carlin's 'Toledo Window Box' was the third album I ever bought in my own life. (First two: Queen's 'News of the World' and Roxy Music's 'Country Life'. Why? 'Cuz 'News of the World' had 'We are the Champions' and 'We will Rock you' on it, and 'Country Life'... Well, Google the images section of 'roxymusiccountrylife', and you'll see why...)

"Our thrust is to prick holes in the stiff front erected by the smut dealers..."

Carlin's brand of comedy involved reframing reality in our use of language, in the way he pointed out how the English language could be used to fuck people over. I picked up 'Toledo Window Box' because the track listings included such titles as, "Urinals are 50% Universal", and "A Few More Farts", and well, fart and pee jokes were all about what the budding young sophisticate Pajak considered the height of comedy at the time.

"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

What Carlin did for little ol' me was plant the seeds of doubt in faith in authority, be it school, work, government, or organized religion. First and foremost, he taught me that if it smells like bullshit, it's bullshit. You can't listen to his routines and feel the scrabbling intellect at work there, pointing out the hypocrisies and lying in our day-to-day goings on.

"If we could just find out who's in charge, we could kill him."

I can't say I'll miss him, just that I wish we were all a little younger. Bye, George.

"I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work. "

Kung Fu Panda (C+) Pretty good effort from Dreamworks Inc. They've learned the valuable lesson that going to the 'Shrek' template of goofy accents, MOR pop song montages, and dated pop culture references in your animated movie is going to wear thin after, oh, the first twenty movies in your stable. What we're getting is the American animated film version of a Stephen Chow film. The story is solid, the characters have enough going on to have an audience empathise with them, and heck, the Kung Fu action stuff is thrilling. I'd like to think Dreamworks has turned a creative corner, in a good way, but one of the trailers in the theater was for "Madagascar 2". Not a good sign.

While I'm here, let me just make a quick observation about the IMAX theater I saw this in. After I pay my fifteen-fitty for an IMAX 'experience', why should IMAX spend ten minutes selling me on the virtues of the IMAX experience? Don't they have my money already? You won, guys! Stop rubbing it in! When 'Kung Fu Panda' is playing on 'normal' screens, do they taunt the audience? "Ha, ha! You stupid hayseeds could be seeing this on an IMAX screen! Suckers! Oh, be sure and pick up the Blu-Ray version in September, where you can watch this on your 42 inch LCD T.V. with surround Dolby sound at your home! It'll be exactly like IMAX, except you won't have to put up with surly teenagers talking on their cell phones during the movie! And sticky floors! And retarded people carrying on conversations behind you! Um, wait... Why is the movie industry dying, again?"

Summer Movie Calvacade

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (B-) The good, the bad, and the ugly...

The good: Instead of foisting off the direction duties to someone else, Spielberg grabs the reins yet again. (Don't snort- I can seriously see them doing that.) The script's smart enough to acknowledge Jones' age, without Jones whinging about being a dinosaur. The action sequences all work, in the context of the film. That is, if you had Jones doing some of the more energetic stunts, you'd roll your eyes in disbelief. Spielberg wisely hands off the running, sword-fighting, and bike-riding duties to Shia Laboeuf. The family subplot is handled about as well as they can, with a minimum of hand-wringing and soul searching. (Introspection's never been a part of the Indiana Jones series.) Matter of fact, that entire subplot is summed up in the end, where LeBoeuf is about to put Jones' fallen fedora on his own head, only to have Jones deftly snatch it from him. To his credit, Spielberg knows just how far to bend something just before it breaks.

The bad: This is a personal prejudice, but no matter how much CGI you put in a film, when you put 'em next to practical effects, the CGI's suckitude just stands out more. The prime culprits: the monkeys. Oh, God, the monkeys! Also, the plot point with Indy's sidekick with the wonky accent. In retrospect, he's just slowing the movie down, and if you cut him out altogether, I doubt anybody would notice.

The ugly: "I got a bad feeling about this..." Jesus, George Lucas.



National Treasure 2 - Book of Secrets (C) O.K, if somewhat listless adventure yarn. The Walmart to Indiana Jones' Target, if you will. I'd hate to be the historians that the Bruckheimer people contacted for reference, though. America's real history, laid out in a million books written by a million people, is far more interesting than this movie could ever hope to be.



Cloverfield (D) Giant monster movie, told from the p.o.v. of a schlub holding the most energy-efficient video camera ever invented. The premise is kinda interesting, but the people involved decide to make it a teen soap-opera involving a young schmo living in an improbably roomy loft in New York fighting through the rubble to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend. The story's so thin, you find yourself nitpicking the movie. For instance, besides the amazing video camera, we have a forty-foot monster can sneak quietly above the camera schmo, who seems to have the professional training to wield the camera. In this movie's case, geeking out over the discrepancies is the only entertainment you'll get.



The Bucket List (C) - Rob Reiner directs, Morgan Freeman does his noble working-class hero thingy, Jack Nicholson does his lovable curmudgeon thingy, we laugh, we cry, Nicholson's put-upon servant buries the two guys' ashes on top of Mount Everest, the end. Meathead's basically become a journeyman film director. A journeyman film director is someone like for example, John Badham - (Wargames, Stakeout, The Hard Way) or Herbert Ross. (Steel Magnolias, The Goodbye Girl)

I bring this up since they fall into the category of directors who make their mark early on with a really good film, like This is Spinal Tap or Pennies From Heaven, or Saturday Night Fever... and then their career ends up consisting of solid, enjoyable movies that you see on t.v. when you've got an afternoon to kill and then you forget all about 'em until the next time you're watching them - ("Didn't I already see?... Oh, right, right. Hm, what else is on?) I think that these guys are so worried about losing what little opportunities for directing that come their way, they're terrified of taking risks. For instance:

"A script about a young priest who falls in love with a young widow which causes him to question his faith in God? Oh, too much for me! I'll direct that comedy about three middle-aged guys who go on a cross-country road trip in a 1970 Buick in an attempt to recapture their youth, instead!" They've plotted out their careers so painstakingly I'm convinced there's some graph in Hollywood that they all refer to so's they can select their next project.

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Aaand just a quick note on season 3 of 'The Venture Brothers'. It looks like Jackson Public and Doc Hammer are falling victim to what Patton Oswalt called, "Jon Voight's Nutsack syndrome". I'll explain. Oswalt compared the story in the last three star wars movies, that is, showing us nerds how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, and how Boba Fett became Boba Fett, and where C3P0 came from, and what Yoda did before he lived in a swamp that probably smelled like an outhouse, and what happened to Luke and Leia's mom. (Didn't Leia said she remembered her mom being 'lovely, but kind of sad'? Didn't her mom die in childbirth? How could she have-? Nnngh.)

Anyways, what the movies gave us was stories we didn't really need to see. Oswalt's line of reasoning being that if we like Angelina Jolie so much, it would do us all a world of good to see where she came from, namely, Jon Voight's pink, hairy, wrinkly nutsack that she swam out of.

So that's what we've got going on with the Venture Brothers. Turns out Dr. Girlfriend wasn't pregnant, she was ordered by the Guild of Calamitous Intent to get her husband to stop 'arching' Dr. Venture. And we get to see how the Monarch became...he. And how Brock got to be Dr. Venture's bodyguard. And how Master Billy Quizboy lost his arm and eye. And how Phantom Limb...

The thing is, we really don't need to see these origin stories. I realize 'The Venture Brother's' stock-in-trade is putting a twist on classic sci-fi superhero-adventure stories, which includes the old chestnut 'humble beginnings' but since these origin stories are told with a totally straight face, any satirical twist is going to fall flat.

A Daffodlill in Hell, or, What I did on my Vacation

And now, in point form, some observations from my trip to the quaint, John Cougar Mellancampesque - Pacific Northwest town of Montesanto, Washington.

1) Driving across Washington, you'll notice it's mostly scrub land. Northern Idaho has some of the most beautiful countryside ever. Unfortunately, the local skinheads and white supremacists loved it too, and got there before you. Ha, ha. White power! Rha-Ho-Wa!

2) Ron Paul's most diehard supporters live in Washington. So diehard, in fact, that if he drops dead before 2012, (probably), they'll still try and get him on the ticket.

3) Political discourse is alive and well in America, as the local bathroom graffiti in one truck stop in Idaho cleverly opined that the writer would sooner 'drive a fuckin' Toyota then vote for a n-word or a cunt like Hillary!" (n-word. They actually wrote that!)

4) In Washington state, you drive a Ford... or you're a Faggot from Hell. Every town over ten thousand had a Ford dealership.

5) Every town on the east side of the state had at least six churches. When we drove around Spokane for shits and giggles, the streets that Sunday morning were all deserted. Then we drove by a mega-church. Oh, what's this? Droves and droves of people, all in their Sunday best, attending services! I reasoned that if we stopped the car, they'd all turn toward us as one, point at us, and emit unholy shrieks, "Pod-people" style, and chase us, "Dawn of the Dead-Zack Snyder" style.

6) The west coast's church-to-person ratio? Not so high. This is where the hippies came to die, I guess.

7) IHOP is the food of the Gods, at least I thought so. The novelty of eatin' a big stack of cinnamon waffles would wear off after a week or so, I guess.

8) Jack in the Box is also pretty sweet, though the one we ate at in Aberdeen was a little depressing. By that I mean the plethora of- I don't know what you'd call 'em... defectives in community care? -loitering around. Also loitering around were the shit load, and I mean shit load of closed-up buildings in the downtown Aberdeen core. Fuck you, corporate America, and your prime-interest mortgage bubble.

9) While I'm going on about fast food chains, let me mention the Saddest McDonald's That I Have Ever Seen, in Aberdeen, Washington. First off, it was pretty dingy and unkempt. Secondly, the staff had that glazed-eye look you get used to in fast-food resterant, you know, the same sallow features devoid of hope you'd expect to see in SonderKommandos on the Eastern Front. I ordered two of them apple pies they have (Hey, don't judge, I was hungry.) and they were cold. Now, just as I was about to head back and complain like the dickhead that I am, it occurred to me. They'll either give me two new pies, which'll be equally as cold, or they'll give me my money back, and I'll still be hungry. And besides, I imagined someone from McDonald's corporate headquarters coming over to exert some 'quality control' or what ever they call making minimum-wage workers feel even worse in their jobs. He'd come in, start on his speech about upholding standards, and pride in one's job, and building character, then he'd look around at the extras from 'Dawn of the Dead' that he'd be talking to... And he'd just shrug his shoulders and go, 'Ah, fuck it, the only way I could motivate these people is if I gave 'em bus tickets to Olympia!' and leave.

So I sat back down and ate the pies, is what I'm trying to say...

10) Aberdeen, not only being the hometown of Kurt Cobain, (I was taken to the bridge he allegedly slept under, and the town motto is 'Come as you are') is also home to the Saddest Shopping Mall That I have Ever Seen. It had a J.C. Penney, a movie mega-plex, two dollar stores, a couple of kiosks in its food mart.. and that's it! Oh, and a record/DVD/game store where the defectives hung out, when they weren't annoying me at the Jack in the Box. I felt so bad for the teenage girls working there that I came pretty close to buying a Chuck Norris Double-feature DVD (Invasion: USA and Forced Vengeance, I believe.) just so's they could serve a customer who didn't wear a safety helmet in public. Also, it was built on a swamp, so the parking lot was a pond, and the mall's floor was warped and crooked. However, all was not so bleak in this mall. Their bulletin board thingy proudly displayed photos of the time Tom Cruise showed up for the Aberdeen premiere of "Mission Impossible:3" at the mega-plex. Oooh! Must've taken all his OT III training to keep from running away screaming...

11) May I recommend camping out for a night or two on the Pacific Ocean? The park we went to let us rent 'yurts'. Basically, they're small cabins with a roof, heater, and a couple of electric outlets. In other words, a camping experience for people like me. You know, urban cowards who want comfort 24-7 in their lives. So after watching 'Hostel' on my PSP, playing 'hearts' with my friends, horking back junk food, having a liquor parade through my bloodstream, (ie, getting drunk) and hypothermic from running on the beach in my bare feet in -10 weather while it was raining, I settled in to sleep. As the nearby waves pounded against the shore, I realized that only one thing could improve on this chance I had to commune with nature in this alpha setting.

'Shrooms.

12) I got to realize a dream of mine while down there: The dream of eating in an actual 'greasy spoon' diner. In the quaint fishing town of Westpoint, Washington, to be precise. (Boy, I'm maybe thinkin' the title of this post should be, 'Places I ate at in a different country which were pretty much like at home, only I paid in American currency!' Whee.) No, I just wanted to plop my ass down in some non-homogeneous, non-corporate restaurant for a change and soak in the atmosphere. And I was not disappointed. The waitress was middle-aged and called us all, 'Hon.' Yes! You may think I'm being sarcastic, but it was a nice homey bit of Americana to experience. Seriously.

13) Surf's up, Dude! On leaving the diner, which was next to the edge of the ocean, we encountered a pair of extras from 'Point Break' pulling into the parking lot, leaping out of the little Toyota truck they were in, grabbing their surfboards, mincing down to the beach's edge... then turning around and mincing back to their truck, getting in, and peeling out of the lot. Well, I said it was about minus ten degrees, didn't I?

14) Our host, Doctor G. is internet-shy, and didn't want his name bandied about for fear of a psycho ex-girlfriend huntin' him down. So I'll just say his and his wife's hosting skills are beyond reproach. His house was in the 'rich' part of Montesanto, which in this case means no car wrecks in the front yard and the home owners have and utilize lawn mowers. His neighbor is a devout Mormon, and the owner of the local Ford dealership. (You see? You see?) After a brief conversation with our host, the neighbor's son, as a result, is forbidden to pay him any more visits ever again. Doc. G. is a rabid atheist, you see. Kudos, sir! Oh, and his wife is a great cook, so kudos to her, but when we got back from camping, her first words to us weren't 'Welcome back, guys' or 'Hi, how you doin'?' but rather, "So, did you all have gay sex with each other?" Ha, ha, ha. No. No, we did not.

15) So that's all I've got for now, but let me leave you all with a quick anecdote about having my cynicism shattered. If you've read this far, you've deduced that if I had a family crest, it would consist of a pair of eyes rolling in condescension, an ashtray overflowing with butts, and a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels. And you know, using cynicism as a line of defense for the little annoyances and cruelties I've faced in my life is a pretty standard trope for most people in my peer group. So here's the story of how my cynical behavior was knocked on my ass:

So we're in Aberdeen, and it's raining, and half the town is cut off because the train runs through the town, essentially sealing it from Montesanto for a good half hour. So I'm all grumbling about 'crappy civic planning' and 'inbred knuckle draggers' and being a pain in the ass. To kill some time, Doc. G. takes us to a place called, 'Sucher & Son's Star Wars shop'. Now, consider this:

Aberdeen has about 16,000 people. Most of the people who have a job, work in the rapidly dwindling lumber industry. The town is going to shit, what with the recent prime-rate mortgage crisis. I would say one house in three was for sale. (Doc. G. was paying for a monthly mortgage, for his sweet little candyland gingerbread house, what I'm paying for rent.)

Anyways, when I saw the storefront, I was flabbergasted and indignant. Couldn'tve this Sucher guy have started a more, you know, useful or relevant business? Like a payday loan shop or a pawn shop or a gun store? How dare he waste his life on such a nerdy, pointless venture! So we go in, and it's wall-to-wall Star Wars junk. It's dusty, it's badly organized, and they're selling Kurt Cobain photos on one side! So I get to talking to Mr. Don Sucher, the owner, and I say, somewhat sarcastically, 'So, do you get people who don't know the difference between 'Star Wars' and 'Star Trek' trying to buy stuff like a pair of Spock ears?'

And without missing a beat, the son-of-a-gun pulls out a pair of Spock ears!

You know something, he turned out to be a pretty cool guy. Here's a guy who had a hobby, the hobby took on a life of its own, and he just went with it. Mr. Sucher wasn't some lonely, obsessed Asperger-addled basement dweller. He was a genuinely good-natured, upbeat man who enjoyed seeing people's reactions to the stuff he'd amassed over the years. That's really awesome. And here he is, in a town that had some history to it, and where people built their lives, and the people who choose to stay in Aberdeen weather the storm, and in spite of all the crappy things I've been saying in this post, there's still people like Don Sucher in this world. That kinda gets me, you know. Right here. Maybe the world isn't such a shithole, after all.

Now I feel bad for writing, 'Live long and prosper' in his guestbook...