Well, not quite sure how to segue from last week. So I won’t. I’m glad I did it, hopefully a few of you were glad as well, and now, something different.
Figured I’d cleanse the palette a bit and get back to what I used to do exclusively here: talk about pop culture in its myriad forms. Given my 60+ hour workweeks lately, I haven’t be able to enjoy too too much of said culture, but nevertheless I’ve been collecting a few thoughts. So, to heck with coherence, let’s bring out paragraphs that have their own titles and very little relevance to each other, shall we?
“Once Upon a Time in Mexico”
Come the Depp, stay for the Mendes. I think it was either Rene Descartes or Buster Poindexter who coined the phrase “Hot Hot Hot”, but in either case, I’m sure they were predicting the arrival of Eva Mendes. She hath o’erlept Ms. Knightley in my Top 5 Safety List. (For those of you keeping track: Garner, Hayek, Hannigan, Barrymore, Mendes.) Johnny Depp, while never achieved the maximum coolness level of “Pirates”, still kicks major butt. Banderas and Hayek completely phoned this one in. And I couldn’t figure out which was weirder: Willem Defoe as a Mexican mob boss, or Enrique Iglesias wielding a guitar case that doubled as a flamethrower. Both had me completely baffled. The movie was strictly a level C until one miraculous moment where the camera caught Mendes in full, tight-shirted glory. All of a sudden, we've got a B+ on our hands. Should win the Oscar for “Best Use of an Elevator Scene to Pad 8 Seconds and Men’s Pants”.
“Anything Else”
Or, as I call it, “The Movie That Draws A Blank Stare Until I Tell Them That The Kid Who Humped The Pie Is In It”. Decided on a whim Friday to see this. Worked until 9, and this showed a few blocks away at 9:45 pm. Two giant theatres. So I got there at 9:35 pm, figuring no one would be there. Wrong. Got one of the last tickets. According to trade papers, this movie made $1.7 million over the weekend, and I’m willing to wager than $1.5 million came from these two screens. Amazing. Even more amazing was watching the verbal showdown between Uber-Geek Concession Boy versus the Two Wanna Be Thugs before the movie started. See, Loews now brings snacks into the theatres, pawned off to you by Tony Robbins wanna-bes. Now, this dude sees these two young African-American kids, who are just looking around. He asks for tickets, which I thought was a bit weird, but OK. They said they had tickets. He asked them to show him. Oh, we don’t have tickets for this theatre. So, almost racism staved off by actual truth. I'm not saure if that makes it any better, but by now, I'm wishing I hadn't picked the seat RIGHT NEXT TO THESE OCCURING EVENTS. Geek-Boy aion't backin' down. Oh, then you’ll have to get out, he says. Oh Christ, I mutter to myself, hoping the impending bloodshed wouldn’t splash on my shirt. After listening to UberGeek explain fire codes to these kids, I was fully prepared for the worst. As such, the kids backed down, which instantly made them the least frightening thugs ever. They backed down to Michael Richards’ dorkier cousin. That being said, they probably waited until after the theatre to close to shove some Goobers up his behind once he got off shift.
(Oh, the movie was pretty good, too. About 150 jokes, evenly divided in thirds amongst the categories “Cackle-Inducing”, “Grin-Inducing”, and “Cricket Chirping-Inducing. Ricci was hot and insane, so of course I had a crush, Biggs was better than in the “Pie” movies, Allen wasn’t too bad himself. This is a bitter-ass film. Luckily, I am a bitter Caucasian. So it played to my strengths. But I am digressing.)
“Dark Side of the Moon DVD”
A DVD which gives interviews, exclusive performances, and in-studio track by track breakdowns of the songs. Hearing “Time” in 5.1 Surround Sound is as close as I’ll ever get to God. Bought this at Newbury Comics Saturday, along with “De Stijl” by The White Stripes, a Pearl Jam 3-CD bootleg, and a new pair of headphones. Highlights of each: an acoustic piano breakdown of the “Breathe” chord progressions, “Truth Don’t Make a Sound”, the “Betterman” singalong with 20,00 fans, and the fact that they aren’t broken like my current pair.
“A Rush of Blood to the Head”
A few weeks back I wrote how “Elephant” was the most important record I had heard in a year. That’s still true, but “Rush” is the best album I’ve heard in that time. The two ideas: “most important” and “best”, are not mutually exclusive, but than can certainly be separated. Ditto for “favorite” and “best”. Case in point: “Moulin Rouge”. The most imperfect movie that I love this much. There’s no point in trying to convince me that this movie has flaws; I agree and will probably find more than you do. That being said, no movie in recent years (except maybe “Fellowship”, and for utterly different reasons) has lifted me this high. The “Your Song” sequence is one of the most exquisitely realized examples of unabashedly romantic sentiment in the last ten years of cinema. And yes, I’m counting the last scene in “She’s All That”. And yes, that was a joke. Pop art needs not be flawless to love them; like we do with people, we embrace such art because of, not in spite of, these imperfections. That is, if we truly embrace them. “Elephant” has fewer highs than “Rush”, but nothing on “Rush” comes close to the emotions I feel listening to “I Want to Be the Boy To Warm Your Mother’s Heart”. And in the end, I’ll take emotion over perfection any day.
The “Alias Season 1” DVD
I don’t own this. I want to. Who wants to buy it for me? I’ll show more cleavage on this site, if that’s what it takes.
“Foleys Gone Wild: Volume 6: The Elizabethan Years”
Man, when the Commander gets too much mead in him, ye wenches beware. This one comes with an audio commentary by Eddie Izzard, Strong Bad, and Anne Boleyn.
“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”
You know, I gotta say, I enjoyed it much more when the guys the fixed up with either straight up morons, homophobes, or moronic homophobes. Somewhere along the line, the clientele has turned into guys whose basic psychology can be summed up as, “I’m sooo sad. Please, somebody help me. Please. I’m teetering on the brink.” Look, if I wanted human-interest stories, I’d watch “Yes, Dear”. As such, when I tune into “Queer Eye”, I wanna see dudes with porn stashes that shame my college roommates try to eat a lobster and then dance. That’s frickin’ comedy. I don’t wanna see Mr. Divorced Trying to Get a New Lease on Life. I don’t want reality in my reality shows. Come on, people. (Must, though, give props to the show for giving me my favorite line I can never actually use: “It takes a village, people.”)
My Gym
It’s not pop culture, but I’m looking pretty good these days, so all you hot mamas out there take note. Hey, I’m single, and judging by last week’s entries, only mildly manic-depressive with a dash of self-loathing for taste.
OK, that’s about all. Pretty palette-cleansing, if you ask me. And yes, it’s safe to comment again, so long as none of the comments include the following, now off-limit words/phrases: