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A whole bunch of new photos and videos just went up at our Flickr page. Enjoy!
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I always get nostalgic over summer movies during June, so it is fortuitous that Drew McWeeny over at Hitfix is asking famous people what their all-time favorite summer movies are. Today, Bill Hader shared his thoughts on Tim Burton's Batman, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this month. Hader perfectly captures how a nation of pubescents was affected by that movie. He writes:
"I was 11. I had the T-shirts, a huge poster of the Batmobile, the Prince single -- all before I saw the movie. I was primed. I remember sitting in a packed theater with my dad and the moment the theater went dark my stomach went into knots. "I'm finally going to see this!" The Warner logo comes up with the first strands of Danny Elfman's music and then - BAM we're moving through the Batcave! Titles over one of the best film scores of all time. The sense of excitement and mystery captured simply by music and a camera tracking through dark corridors. Where the hell are we? I was certain we were going to turn a corner and see Batman hopping into his Batmobile. But then, the camera pulls back to reveal we were not in the Batcave, but moving through the bat symbol! Holy shit! The music swells. The theater goes nuts! I started wildly clapping. That's what summer movies are for me."
1989 was the first summer that I actively went out of my way to attend every big movie on opening day. Like everyone else of my generation, I was pretty obsessed with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, but I was also painfully aware that I had missed out on the communal euphoria of seeing those movies with huge crowds on opening weekend. In '89 -- which had an incredible slate of product -- I was determined to make-up for that. Last Crusade, Star Trek V, Ghostbusters II were all memorable experiences (even when the movies downright sucked), but they were just the undercard to the movie that had been making salivate for over a year.
We drove out to theater on opening day and were greeted by a line of at least 400 people that wrapped around the entire block. My dad didn't even slow down. Just kept driving by because there was no way we were going to get in. I was crestfallen. The first show the next morning was at 11:15 am. I made sure that everybody was out of the house by 9:30.
Now, we were spending that summer out in Berkeley and was a much different place to see a movie than Salt Lake City. Berkeley was a real city --- with college kids! -- that vocally reacted to what they saw on screen. And their reaction to the opening of the film is exactly how Hader describes it -- except my audience applauded the Warner Bros. logo, Jack Nicholson's credit, the main title, the "Songs by Prince" credit and the reveal of the Batman logo at the end of the sequence.
And things just escalated from there.
Neither before nor since have I been part of such a receptive audience* and it definitely made the movie better by a factor of thousands. We cheered when Batman punched that guy and threw him into a garbage can, roared when we saw the television news anchors who weren't allowed to wear make-up, screamed (well, I did) when Nicholson removed that mask from Jerry Hall's face. Hell, we even applauded at the line "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" which everybody in the audience must have already seen at least fifty times in the trailers and TV spots. And during the parade sequence when the Batwing bursts through the clouds and hangs motionless in the sky for just a second, perfectly silhouetted by the moon? The roof came off of that place. Why that moment? No idea. And I don't want to analyze it too much.
Okay, it's because we were preconditioned by the hype, but it was still funner than hell and I'm glad I got to experience it.
* With the possible exception of a Sundance screening of Run, Lola, Run (which I stupidly omitted in my list of great films of 1999). |
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Here is how The Daughter counts: "1...2...6...7...8...9...10!" |
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Perhaps in an effort to feel even older than we already do, The Wife and I watched Ghostbusters last night to celebrate the film's 25th anniversary. We've seen the movie more times than we can count, literally quote it every day and, when necessary, use it in place of comfort food (the one and only time we did acid, we watched it to help us come down). Despite the multiple viewings and my queasiness with the film's right-wing politics (oooh, the scary government regulators aren't just stifling entrepreneurship, they're bringing about the apocalypse!) I still haven't tired of watching it and still find things in it that make me laugh out loud (last night: the way Rick Moranis -- possessed by Vince Clortho -- keeps mimicking the people around him just like a toddler would).
What is also mind blowing is that we could have also celebrated the 25th anniversary of Gremlins. It's not surprising that Gremlins is that old (by the way, I watched it again last summer and it still holds up), but it is surprising when you realize that it opened on the same day as Ghostbusters. Who would think that you could have two giant, effects-driven behemoths that target the same demographic come out on the same day and that they would both open huge ($13.6 million for Ghostbusters vs. $12.5 million for Gremlins). That just doesn't happen anymore and when studios try to replicate it, well, you wind up with movies like Terminator: Salvation or Land of the Lost getting their throats cut.
Current Music: Bob Dylan - "Dreamin' Of You" from Vloume 8 of his Bootleg Series |
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Last week we hosted a barbecue for our PEPS Group (which is for new parents, even though we aren't exactly new parents anymore). Because I am me, I put together a playlist of appropriate BBQ music for the gathering. It's an eclectic mix. Some old rock 'n roll, some indie stuff, even some French pop. Almost all of it is upbeat and bouncy, but nothing too hard. Lot of songs specifically about summer, sunshine, the beach (oh, and parenting).
The playlist runs for nearly three hours, but somehow our party lasted longer than that, so The Wife had to plug her iPhone into the stereo and turn on Pandora. And that's when one of our guests says, "Wow, you've got some good music going. Is this off your iPod?" The Wife turned to me and smirked. "No," she told our guest, "It's Pandora. Internet radio."
"Yeah? I like it. Playing some Death Cab For Cutie. Belle & Sebastian."
Ha! Now it was my time to smirk. Pandora hadn't played any Belle & Sebastian, but they were on my playlist. So somebody had been listening and appreciated the hours minutes I had spent cobbling the music together.
Here's the music from the playlist if you need some background for your own BBQ. Keep what you want, delete what you don't. The best thing to do is put on shuffle and then go off and enjoy yourself.
The track listing to give you an idea of what you're downloading follows:
SUMMER BBQ PLAYLIST - 55 tracks - 2 hours 52 minutes
Air France - "Beach Party"
Belle and Sebastian - "Me and the Major (Live)"
Bob Dylan - "Summer Days"
Bob Marley vs. Funkstar Deluxe - "Sun Is Shining (ATB Airplay Mix)"
The Boswell Sisters - "We've Got To Put That Sun Back In The Sky"
The Boy Least Likely To - "When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade"
Buddy Johnson - "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?"
The Champs - "Tequila"
Chuck Berry - "Havana Moon"
The Clash - "Train In Vain"
Coldplay - "Sleeping Sun"
The Contours - "Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance)?"
The Coup DeVilles - "Big Trouble In Little China"
Digable Planets - "Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)"
The Ditty Bops - "Summer Rains"
The Ditty Bops - "Interlude For Ten Strings"
Duke Ellington - "Mood Indigo"
Eddie Cochran - "Summertime Blues"
Elvis Presley - "That's Alright Mama"
Foghat - "Slow Ride"
Gene Vincent - "Be Bop A Lua"
Gillian Welch - "Summer Evening"
The Go-Gos - "Vacation"
Gorillaz - "19-2000 (Soulchild Remix)"
The Hollywood Flames - "Buzz, Buzz, Buzz"
Jesse Rose - "Well Now"
Julien Doré - "Les Limites"
Jurassic 5 - "Canto De Ossanha"
The Kingsmen - "Louie Louie"
The Kinks - "Sunny Afternoon"
Langhorne Slim - "Set Em Up"
Len - "Steal My Sunshine"
Leo Kottke - "Cripple Creek"
Little Richard - "Baby"
Los Lobos - "Si Yo Quisiera"
Marlena Shaw - "California Soul (Diplo Remix)"
Mary Z Cox - "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss"
Matt Costa - "Sunshine (Live)"
Mint Royale Featuring Pos from De La Soul - "Show Me"
Morrissey - "Pregnant For The Last Time"
Mungo Jerry - "In The Summer Time"
Mustard Plug - "Summertime"
The Pearly Gatecrashers - "In The Summer"
Polaris - "Hey Sandy (The Adventures of Pete & Pete Edit)"
The Raconteurs - "Old Enough (Live)"
Radiohead - "I Am A Wicked Child"
Raffi - "Mr. Sun"
The Ramones - "Rockaway Beach"
Raphael Saadiq - "100 Yard Dash"
Sarah Vaughan - "Summertime (UFO Remix)"
The Scofflaws - "William Shatner"
Three Dog Night - "Summer In The City"
A Tribe Called Quest - "The Jam"
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Hysteric (Acoustic Version)"
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| » WHAT A TRAILER IS SUPPOSED TO DO |
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Earlier this summer The Wife and I were all gung-ho to see the new Star Trek movie, but then we got a $9000 credit card bill and realized that we had to cut back on our discretionary spending, meaning that excursions to the nearest IMAX theater were no longer on-the-table.
So, we've been staying home and watching all of the old Trek movies which have just been re-released on Blu-Ray and at the start of each one is this trailer and every single time we see it either she or I will turn to the other and say, "Okay, we have to see that."
Current Mood: Highly anticipating our trip to Salt Lake in three weeks...so we can see Trek at Brewvies
Current Music: Jesse Rose - "Well Now" (my song of the Summer)
Jun. 3rd, 2009 @ 08:47 pm
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| » ARRGH! |
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I wrote some Tweet the other day about how I think all Objectivists are a-holes and now some Objectivist is following me. That doesn't make her open minded or brave...just annoying.
Current Mood: Annoyed
Current Music: The Raconteurs featuring Ricky Skaggs and Ashley Monroe - "Old Enough"
Jun. 1st, 2009 @ 01:40 pm
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| » TECH KID |
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We let The Daughter play with our iPhones (especially when she's eating as she apparently needs distraction lest she suffer from too much ennui and be unable to consume an entire meal) and today she figured out how to download the Rachel Maddow podcasts off of iTunes. I would be more proud, but she got bored by the lack of video and asked me to play her some Blue's Clues instead.
Current Music: The Kinks - "Sunny Afternoon"
May. 28th, 2009 @ 04:13 pm
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| » A PLEA FROM A PARENT |
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If you are writing a children's book please, for the love of God, don't print your black text on top of a dark background. That may look really cool in your studio or wherever it is you work, but in a dimly lit room right before a child's bedtime, the text melds into the background and cannot be read.
Current Mood: Frustrated
Current Music: Elmo's World
May. 25th, 2009 @ 08:51 am
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| » FALSE GOODS |
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I finally saw this trailer for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and maybe it's because I've been conditioned by Days of Heaven to melt whenever I hear Saint-Saëns, but goddamn, I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if it had been the one promised by that trailer.
Current Music: Other Lives - "Don't Let Them" (Live on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic)
May. 19th, 2009 @ 11:13 am
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| » (No Subject) |
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I finished reading The Road a few weeks ago and as fate would have it, a major article in Esquire about the movie adaptation of the novel, which includes the film's rather controversial trailer, appeared online shortly thereafter.
I was aware of the history of the movie -- how it was supposed to come out last November and be a major awards contender, but had its release date pushed back by the studio for reasons that nobody completely believed -- and that history colored my reaction to the book. I was also aided to think about the movie version by McCarthy's prose which is so spare (it lacks even quotation marks) that it often reads like a screenplay.
But it doesn't have the structure of a screenplay and that could be where the film of The Road, if it is a loyal adaptation of the book, could falter and why its release date might have had to be delayed so that the Brothers Weinstein could tweak something salvageable out of their investment. Because even though the book is effectively evocative, emotionally engaging and successful in creating a world bleak enough to give me nightmares every evening for two weeks straight, the darn thing doesn't have much of a plot. Okay, sure The Father and his Son have the goal of making it to the coast, but for what reason? And what happens to them if they don't make it? There are no stakes, no major antagonist and not even any rising tension until maybe the last five pages of the entire novel. That might work in a book (might? no, of course it does; The Road not only won the Pulizter, it was also endorsed by Oprah), but movie audiences are conditioned to expect the peaks and valleys and reversals of the three-act structure. And there's a reason for that. In the cinematic medium the "and then...and then...and then..." style of storytelling on display in The Road is dreadfully boring.
Current Music: Sam Flanagan - "Arctic Monkeys vs. Roots Manuva"
May. 17th, 2009 @ 08:35 pm
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| » FUNNY THINGS THE WOMEN IN MY LIFE SAY |
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When The Daughter doesn't get something she wants she'll start to wail then abrupty stop, look you in the eye and say, "Crying," as if making sure that you are aware exactly what she is up to -- you know, just in case there was any confusion.
She also knows how to say the names of some countries (please watch this video before you watch this video; it's much funnier that way).
The Wife and I were watching Star Trek III the other night and there's a moment when Kirk breaks down over the loss of Spock. "Oh, Kirk is crying," I said. "Crying?" responded The Wife, "There's no crying in Starfleet!"
A lesser woman would have said, "There's no crying in Star Trek," but The Wife has earned her geek cred which is one of the many reasons that she is so awesome.
May. 15th, 2009 @ 11:13 am
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| » ALL CLEAR |
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According to Hollywood, Summer began on May 1st and the mercurial Seattle Weather Gods agreed because we got one of those warm, clear days that can only be described as "brilliant."
I spent the morning in the ER getting tested for swine flu.
The Wife, The Daughter and I all had fevers, coughs and were leaving behind unintended trails of snot on our clothes and sometimes the cushions of the couch. It could have just been a virus...or it could have been the Satan Bug that done come up from Mexico and, oh my God, we have a vulnerable one year-old living in the house and if she needs to get on the Tamiflu we have to know immediately! So I volunteered to go to the hospital to get checked out. On the drive up I started to feel kind of silly, but that embarrassment vanished the instant the receptionist informed me that I would be required to wear a mask. They took my temperature and it had gone up half-a-degree since I last took it 30 minutes ago and I started to feel like everything from that point on was just going to be a formality. I was rehearsing my answers to the question "Have you recently been to Mexico?" when the doctor -- let's call him Dr. Hook because that's his real name and he was kind of a dick -- said he would have to take a sample of my mucus by performing a nasal swab. A nasal swab basically consists of a doctor asking you to tilt your head back then taking a sixteen inch long Q-tip, jamming the entire thing into one of your nostrils and mashing it around as if he were making a mint julep (how appropriate for Derby weekend). Based on his grin, I'm pretty certain Dr. Hook got a perverse sort of pleasure from doing it to me and from doing it to all of the other hypochondriacs who came in wasting his time by thinking that they were about to die.
You see, he knew beforehand that I didn't have swine flu (legitimate sufferers of swine flu have a fever of at least 100 degrees -- mine was only 99.9; this is not made up) In fact, I didn't even have the normal type of flu. Just a belligerent head cold.
I came home feeling physically wasted, but relieved enough to read a little bit of The Road and go to bed. The Wife and Daughter went outside to play. Hello Summer.
Current Music: Great Northern - Remind Me Where The Light Is (an album -- that's right, an album. The first one I've bought in more than a year.)
May. 4th, 2009 @ 08:20 pm
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| » DOOMSDAY |
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Off to buy two weeks' worth of food and water just in case they have to shut down the city. Hooray interesting times!
Current Condition: Sniffly (but I swear that it's just a cold; swear)
Apr. 30th, 2009 @ 07:02 am
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| » HALL OF FAME |
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Congratulations to Utah Jazzmen John Stockton and Jerry Sloan for being inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame. Some other faking cheater named Jordan also got into the Hall of Fame because he once faked having the flu during an NBA Finals game to boost the ratings of his friend Ahmad Rashad's network and for pushing off on Bryon Russell in order to make his "miraculous" game-winning shot in the subsequent finals -- and even that piece of chicanery wasn't enough; he needed the refs to negate a 3-point shot made by Howard Eisley well before the buzzer sounded while allowing a two-pointer by Ron Harper even though the shot clock had clearly expired and my God I can't believe that I'm still pissed off about this game over a decade after the fact...
Current Music: Smoosh - "Make It Through"
Apr. 6th, 2009 @ 08:45 pm
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| » TRUTH |
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Shortly after The Daughter was born, parents with older children would often tell us, "Don't worry. It gets a lot more fun."
They never told us, "Don't worry. It gets easier." And now that I am giving advice to new parents I know why.
Current Mood: Exhausted
Apr. 5th, 2009 @ 08:25 pm
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| » THE HOLE |
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I just finished reading the article in The New Yorker from two weeks ago about how psychologically and physically damaging solitary confinement is and it really affected me because
a) I wonder if The Daughter suffers similar damage when I put her down for a nap and leave her in her Pack 'n Play for up to 20 minutes (the way that she jumps up-and-down while shaking her head side-to-side and talks to herself leads me to believe yes) and
b) I often become lost in thought to be the point of near hallucination, constantly dream up revenge fantasies* and find myself having trouble concentrating, which are all symptoms of long-term isolation.
My mother often told me that even though she was with The Brother and I all day long when we were infants, it was the most alone that she ever felt.
Thank God I have the internet, cable TV and satellite radio.
* Usually against people I feel who wronged me in high school or members of the Bush administration, i.e. two groups of people I'll never have the displeasure of encountering in real life.
Current Music: Bat For Lashes - "The Big Sleep"
Current Mood: A $70 million opening for Fast and Furious? Really, America?
Apr. 5th, 2009 @ 08:25 pm
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| » OMG! OMG! |
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Today was the first real day of Spring that we've seen in Seattle and, as usual, we all freaked out, invading the parks, waterways, mountains and garden stores. Traffic was insane...which means that it was just like any other Tuesday in southern California. Of course, every day in southern California is as nice as the first real day of Spring up here. Coincidence?
Current Music: The White Stripes - "Stop Breaking Down (Live)"
Apr. 5th, 2009 @ 08:06 pm
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| » TECTONIC SHIFTING |
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Awesome birthday present before I became a stay-at-home-dad: a trip to Chicago for Opening Day at Wrigley Field.
Awesome birthday present now that I am a stay-at-home-dad: a Dyson DC-17 Animal vacuum cleaner.
Current Music: A really cool cover of "Merry X-Mas Everybody" by some band I don't know the name of (why am I listening to this in April?)
Apr. 4th, 2009 @ 02:36 pm
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| » PACIFIER SUBSTITUTE |
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I was driving home, listening to Cinemagic, and The Daughter was in the backseat going crazy: throwing her shoes, launching loogies and making the sign-of-the-cross in reverse when the soundtrack to Lawrence of Arabia came on and she instantly STFU.
Apr. 3rd, 2009 @ 09:48 pm
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