Oh the carnage

OK, any other Seattle people out there drive west across the I-90 bridge today? Did you see what I saw?

Dozens — scores — of scattered bodies strewn along the left side of the freeway. Bears, bunnies, puppies... little stuffed animals of every race, creed, and color. It looked like some fiend had visited a pogrom on a Hallmark store or hospital gift shop, and turned the floating bridge into a mass grave.

Some lay in solitude, face-down in the oily gravel. Others, in sad little piles. As I drove west across the span, the bodies became fewer and farther between, but still, every so often, another lonely panda, another pathetic koala.

Could this be the aftermath of some horrible accident? A mass-transit disaster? Or truly, were there evil forces at work? Systematized Gundicide? I shudder to think that such an unspeakable atrocity could have descended upon our fair city.

Pretty in pinstripes

Over the weekend I tried out the new Godfather game, and it's very, very cool — especially if you're intimately familar with the movie. The music, the atmosphere, the city, the cars, the locations, the characters are all perfect. It really is like inhabiting the world of the Corleones.

Even the story is spot-on: Your character exists on the periphery of the movie plotline, rising through the ranks of the Corleone family during the Five Families War. You could easily be one the “lotta new faces round here” Clemenza sees hanging around the Corleone stronghold, or one of the shadowy characters briefly spotted during the film's gang-war montage.

Fans of the movie will appreciate the game's attention to detail. You start out as a young street punk taken under Luca Brasi's tutelage (as a “favor” from Don Corleone, to whom your father was faithful unto death). After Luca's murder, you witness Sollozzo's attempt on the Don's life, and help a panic-stricken Fredo get his father to hospital — an act which gets you noticed by Clemenza. Pretty soon, Tom Hagen is calling to invite you up to the family compound (which is where I left off).

(And since it was Barzini who had your father murdered, I can only assume that eventually you'll get to join up with this guy on the road to revenge.)

The best part of the game has to be the city itself — they've beautifully captured late-40s New York, right down to the pigeons and the litter blowing down the streets of Little Italy. Anyone who knows their way around Manhattan (I do not) could navigate the game without ever consulting the map.

Another feature of the game that is ridiculously detailed is the character generator, which you use to “build” your character at the beginning of the game. It allows you to control an overwhelming number of features and traits, including dozens (possibly hundreds?) of details in the face alone, which essentially allows you to make your character look like anyone.

I let Maus do the choosing when it came time to set up my guy (she named him “Enzo”) — we must have spent well over an hour tweaking all his facial features, until she got him just the way she wanted. When we were done and took a good look at the results of her careful sculpting, I realized that what Maus had created was... Andrew McCarthy.

Not exactly a convincing face for a menacing button man. But who knows? Maybe if I earn enough money to buy Enzo a fedora and a tommy gun, or maybe let him grow a moustache and collect a few facial scars, he'll rise above his pretty-boy visage and garner enough respect to eventually “take the cannolli” for Clemenza.

Ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long

OK, today it's gonna be “Fun with Ads by Goooooogle.” Here's why: Lately I've been revisiting a lot of the music Poupolis and I used to play on our college radio show — stuff like Primus, The Cramps, King Missile, Dead Milkmen, Ministry...

Which set me a-Googlin’, starting with the opening lyrics to Ministry's tour de force, “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” (from whence cometh the title of this post).

What caught my eye when I found these lyrics were the Google Ads that came with them. On your average Web page, keyword-targeted ads usually work pretty well. But song lyrics must confound the Google scoopers, and they throw out some pretty hilarious results. For instance:

Artist: Ministry
Song: “Jesus Built My Hot Rod”
Lyrics:
Soon I discovered that this rock thing was true
Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil
Jesus was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
All of a sudden, I found myself in love with the world
So there was only one thing that I could do
Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Ads by Goooooogle
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Within the International Metaphysical Ministry.
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Artist: Primus
Song: “The Air is Getting Slippery”
Lyrics:
It’s incredibly hot in here today, incredibly hot in here
It’s incredibly hot in here today, incredibly hot in here
The air is getting slippery and it’s not to my surprise
My heart it beats irregularly, the sweat it fills my eyes
I do not mind what I excrete ’cos I’m here to make a buck
And those that cannot take the heat can take a flying...
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Artist: The Cult
Song: “Peace Dog”
Lyrics:
Poor man, sad man, you should be a glad man
Stand up for your rights, peace, talkin’ about peace
Good dog, bad dog, roll over and play dead
Do it again, baby, peace, peace dog, yeah
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Artist: Tom Waits
Song: “Jockey Full of Bourbon”
Lyrics:
Schiffer broke a bottle on Morgan’s head
And I’m stepping on the devil’s tail
Across the stripes of a full moon’s head
And through the bars of a Cuban jail
Bloody fingers on a purple knife
Flamingo drinking from a cocktail glass
I’m on the lawn with someone else’s wife
Admire the view from up on top of the mast
Ads by Goooooogle
Plastic Lawn Flamingos
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Satan the Devil
will rule as God and enforce 666 the mark of the beast

And my favorite:

Artist: Gordon Lightfoot
Song: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”
Lyrics:
Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
May have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.
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(Thanks to LyricsFreak.com.)

Works every time

Happy first day of spring!

Sweet Cheeses O'Grady, I wasn't sure we were gonna make it for a while. But, oh yes, it is gorgeous out there today, as it should be. I even installed the Charlie Brown baseball screensaver this morning and suited up my desktop Schroeder for Spring Training.

In celebration, let's do three more inductions into the ACADEMY OF THE UNDERRATED (two of which are a little risky, but very much in the spirit of giving the underrated a fair hearing):

1. William Hurt. Boy, did I dislike him in The Big Chill. But then, I disliked everyody in The Big Chill, except maybe Jeff Goldblum. And Broadcast News aside, William Hurt in the 80s was the poster-boy for dull movies that deflected Oscar noms away from the more-deserving: Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Accidental Tourist, Children of a Lesser God, you get the idea. Hurt always struck me as a humorless, watered-down, wet-blanket version of Jeff Bridges.

Then came Dark City in 1998, where he made the subtle but effective switch from dull to dour, and I realized William Hurt was made-to-order for film noir (which he did way back in 1981 in Body Heat, but unfortunately in the wrong role). The more he got away from sympathetic leading roles and into characters who were quietly menacing, the more I appreciated him.

And then came his tiny payoff appearance at the end of A History of Violence, which earned him his fourth (?!) Oscar nomination. Was it an Oscar-worthy performance? Probably not. Was it good enough to elevate him to “underrated” status? Apparently so.

2. Kenneth More. Who? You know, the dependable British lead from the late 50s and early 60s. No? Come on, this guy. Still no? Well, you obviously need to see more British films — especially those involving sinking ships.

More survived the Titanic through cool-headed heroism in 1958, and methodically helped sink the Bismarck two years later. His specialty was the reliable-yet-affable British officer, always the professional, always the gentleman. He was a very popular star in Britain, yet remains largely forgotten in America.

The performance that puts More into the Academy is his brief appearance in the star-filled D-Day epic The Longest Day. In a 3-hour movie that features (deep breath) John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Rod Steiger, Eddie Albert, Robert Ryan, Red Buttons, Mel Ferrer, Roddy McDowell, Robert Wagner, Edmond O'Brien, Peter Lawford, George Segal, Gert Frobe, Jeffrey Hunter, Curd Jurgens, Christian Marquand, and Sal Mineo...

...it's Kenneth More who manages to steal the movie from the whole lot, as a colorful British officer who swaggers along the beach, dragging his unwilling, unhappy bulldog behind him all through the invasion. In an unflappable performance that almost predicts Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, More remains unfazed by the explosions around him, and gleefully delivers lines like “As my grandmother used to say, anything mechanical, give it a good bash” and “The sooner we get off this beach, the sooner they'll stop this blasted shelling — it's very bad for the dog.”

3. Billy Dee Williams. The burden of proof weighs heavy here. Let's set aside the Colt 45 commericals and pretty much everything he's done since Batman (17 years ago — man am I getting old). Let's look at a charismatic up-and-coming leading man of the 70s, a fun actor to watch, and in spite his trademark smooove-ness, one of considerable range: Brian's Song, Lady Sings the Blues, The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings. As an African American actor, he should have come through the 1980s in step with fellow rising stars Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones.

What set Billy Dee off course? It wasn't Star Wars — Williams not only broke the sci-fi color line in The Empire Strikes Back, he also introduced to the saga its first (and only) complex character, one with conflicted motives and questionable loyalties. And I'd argue that he's the only returning star who bothers to act at all in Return of the Jedi. (It's Lando who sells the precariousness of their battle against Jabba and their assault on the Death Star, while Luke, Han, and Leia just look depressed, bored, and drugged, respectively.)

Williams seemed on track for a meaty role when he was cast as D.A. Harvey Dent in Batman — a character destined to become the flamboyant and tortured villain Two-Face. Sadly, by the time they got around to developing that villain, the role had been disastrously shifted to Tommy Lee Jones, in the painfully flat Batman Forever. Whether or not Billy Dee dodged a bullet there, we'll never know.

But I do say that Williams remains a better actor than his resume and pop-culture status suggest, and given a shot at a good role, he may yet prove me right.

Sorry, no ice cream flavors in this Academy induction. But I do welcome nominations.

March Madness: Not my ball of cheese

For me, March is all about Spring Training, although I do admit to showing a little more interest in the college hoops tourney lately, as both of my wife's schools (B.C. and Indiana) are perennial participants. Plus, I love brackets — doesn't really matter what you fill them in with. I'd enjoy following a 64-team Rock-Paper-Scissors bracket.

This year, I see Oral Roberts University made the cut. Well, glory hullabaloojah! I'll be pulling for those guys, if only because I once visited the Oral Roberts campus as a stopoff on a Route 66 tour, marveled at the Jetsons-inspired architecture, had my photo taken with the giant praying hands, and bought my friend Clark a Moses action figure in the gift shop, complete with sea-parting action staff and commandment-hurling grip (this was 10 years ago, long before such things were de rigueur at Archie McPhee). I can honestly say it was the best thing I saw in all of Oklahoma. So hey, I've got a fiver that says Oral goes all the way. Any takers?

On the subject of “March Madness” — what then, may I ask, to make of the rest of the year? Here, in decidedly McSweeney's-esque* fashion, is how I see post-March Madness shaping up:

April Aberration

May Malaise

June Jauntiness

July Jollity

August Asininity

September Spasms

October Outrage

November Neuroses

December Desolation

January Jadedness

February Funk

* Indeed, a quick search of McSweeney's yielded this. When you're out of hash, it's time to rehash, I guess.

Tiki no mo

Farewell and adieu to you fair Greenwood tikis
Farewell and adieu, you tikis and lanes
For they're received orders for to raze you for condos
And soon never more will we bowl you again.

The phrase “end of an era” gets thrown around pretty liberally these days, but in the case of the destruction of Seattle's Leilani Lanes, its not much of an exaggeration. It's one of the few remaining haunts from my mid-20s (Orpheum Records on Broadway: gone; Harvard Espresso on Roy: gone; Nikola's on 45th: gone; Shop-n-Save on Market: gone) and possibly the one unchanged detail throughout my 12 years in Seattle (bad redecorations and smoking bans notwithstanding).

I bowled what I expect to be my last game there last night (ugh — two of the worst games of life, too). Appropriately, as I rolled the last ball of my last frame, the song blaring over the speakers was “It's The End Of The World As We Know It” — how perfect. And I didn't pick up that last spare — how typical.

Academy of the Underrated

As a kind of follow-up to this tirade against those who take great satisfaction in pointing out how everything you love is overrated, I offer this counterpoint...

The Urban Bourbon Academy of the Underrated

And by “underrated” I mean, of course, that which has been insufficiently appreciated by me. Thus, the Academy is meant to serve as both a mea culpa and a vehicle of recompense to those for whom I have not shown adequate respect, or have unfairly berated. Let the record be set straight here and now.

And so, I give you the Academy's inaugural class of inductees:

1. Randy Newman. Oh, how I despise the song “I Love L.A.” — it's a top-fiver on the mute-button list, possibly second only to “Walking on Sunshine”. I'm not a fan of “Short People” either (and that's not because it takes a bad hair day to push me over 5’6). I did like “I Love to See You Smile” from the film Parenthood, but alas, I fear that overexposure has pushed that one over to the dark side as well.

Randy's voice now triggers an instacringe reaction in me that requires a manual override — and the truth is, I do like the songs “You Can Leave Your Hat On” and “Mama Told Me Not to Come” and “Burn On” (the appropriately woeful theme song to Major League). What's more, for years I have mistakenly and unfairly held Randy Newman responsible for the Randy Bachman song “Taking Care of Business” — another groan-inducer.

Lest we forget, Mr. Newman is an accomplished composer of memorable film scores (including Pleasantville and both Toy Story movies), and holds the record for consecutive Oscar noms without a win. But one particular bit of scoring puts him over the top — and that, of course, is The Natural. Is it even possible to feel that even jolt of your bat connecting squarely with a baseball, or to hear the echo of that perfectly resonant crack, or to follow the arcing trajectory of a towering moonshot, and not subconsciously hum that majestic anthem? Ba-DUMMMMMM.... Ba-DUM-DUM-DUMMMMMM...

Yes, Randy Newman makes the Academy's first cut on the strength of six perfect notes blasted by a French horn.

2. Dean Stockwell. He's often remembered as the hologram guy on Quantum Leap (I guess TV just has that effect). Beverly Hills Cop 2 usually pops into my head when I see him, and that's just not fair. Dean Stockwell has one of the longest-running and most-prolific film/TV careers of anyone still active in Hollywood (anyone not named Mickey Rooney, anway). He may very well be film's most famous “son” — having in his early years played the progeny of William Powell and Myrna Loy, Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson, to name only a few.

He also played a cold-blooded, murdering intellectual in Complusion (not sure if he was the Leopold or the Loeb, but for Rope fans, his was the Farley Granger role). He was a concerned, sympathetic brother to Harry Dean Stanton in Paris, Texas; a truly creepy and memorable transvestite who sings “In Dreams” into a lightbulb in Blue Velvet; a corrupted doctor who wore the bad moustache of treason in Dune; and notably, was one of the few actors to play someone other than himself in the massive ensemble The Player (he played a Hollywood agent with the relish of someone who has spent 50 years in the company of Hollywood agents).

Stockwell has received one Oscar nomination (as a supporting actor in Married to the Mob), and for four consecutive years received both Emmy and Golden Globe nominations (for yes, Quantum Leap). He's one of those actors who comes across as completely at ease, and if I'm not mistaken, mildly amused. And there's no telling where he'll pop up next: Most recently, he played a priest-who-surprise!-is-actually-a-Cylon on the superb season finale of Battlestar Galactica. Which would explain how he made it onto this Academy ballot.

3. Strawberry ice cream. Unfairly marginalized as a second-class citizen in the Neapolitan triumvirate. Often included as a token “3rd party” candidate among milkshake flavors. Largely ignored by vanilla-chocolate traditionalists, and dismissed as pedestrian by the Chunky Monkey-Chubby Hubby set. A critical and oft-overlooked component of any proper banana split. Go to a Baskin-Robbins and order a single scoop of unadorned strawberry — your server will give you a Gladys Kravitz look.

4. Martian Manhunter. J'onn J'onzz was a founding member of the Justice League of America. He was right there from day one, pulling his weight in the battle against Starro the Conqueror. (Did Superman and Batman bother to show up for that one? I think not.) As a shape-shifting, mind-reading Martian stranded on Earth, he could have had the run of our planet. Instead, he chose to fight crime in the unassuming guise of a police detective.

By far the most thoughtful and morally grounded member of the JLA, he was completely ignored when that group was reimagined in the 1970s cartoon Superfriends (which makes no sense — shapeshifters and Martians make great cartoon fodder, certainly better material than a guy who talks to fish). Despite being a lifetime JLA fan, I knew virtually nothing of this character until only a few years ago.

Darwyn Cooke helped set things aright when he made Martian Manhunter one of the primary characters in his superb series DC: The New Frontier (second only to a pre-lantern Hal Jordan). I still can't believe this guy lost his roster spot to a giant Apache and a purple monkey.

5. Yellow. The color of cowardice, urine, jaundice, pollution, danger, quarantine, exploitive journalism, pornography, construction zones, the 1970s, and Scut Farkas's eyes. Despite being a primary color, yellow was forced to give up its seat in the additive three-color model to green, and had to settle for a partnership with second-stringers cyan and magenta on the less-glamorous subtractive-model squad.

The Pittsburgh Pirates remain the only baseball team to wear primarily yellow, and if you ask them, they'll tell you it's gold. Yellow has fared better in the NBA, favored by the Sonics, Lakers, and Kings — though only the Kings wear a true, non-gold shade of yellow.

Maus painted our guest room yellow this weekend. It's really quite nice. Maybe it's time to be nice to yellow again.

Duh.

So Barry Bonds was on steroids when he set the single-season home-run record? And he started doping the year of Sosa and McGwire's much-publicized chase of Maris's record?

Well, I am just stunned.

A pleasant evening with Oscar

OK, that was a good show.

For one thing, no one film dominated — the Oscar love got spread around pretty evenly, and the nominees were all deserving, such that you couldn't really fault any of the choices. Hoffman and Witherspoon, Clooney and Weisz, Lee and McMurtry and Altman all got their due. The speeches were gracious. Huzzahs all around.

Grizzly Man was robbed by not even being nominated, of course, but we knew that already — I don't think it would have beaten Penguins anyway.

But Crash? Crash? No, I don't think so. History will record that win as a lucky last-minute shift in the winds of fortune and favor (or possibly as Hollywood's love-letter to itself). Good movie, the making of which was somewhat remarkable, but I don't think it's a Best Picture. Not even close, really. At least, not in the year of Walk the Line, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, Capote, Munich, Grizzly Man, Batman Begins, March of the Penguins, King Kong, Syriana, Wallace and Gromit...

But that's OK. The show was fun to watch, even if the rude producers did keep playing off the non-celebs (these are the people who never get the spotlight — can't we just let them have their moment?), and it was difficult to watch the great Lauren Bacall struggle through her tribute to film noir.

Huge credit to Jon Stewart. He set the perfect tone for the event: light, fun, and not too serious (with great help from Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, Will Farrell and Steve Carell, Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, and especially the cool and unflappable George Clooney — not to mention the absence of Sean Penn). And Stewart was so damn funny.

And oh, the montages. Stewart's joke about looking forward to “a tribute to montages” couldn't have come on a better night — we got the look at great biopics, the film noir tribute, the traditional “farewell” to those we lost over the last year, and then, oh yes, the gay-cowboy montage. Possibly the funniest thing I've seen all year. Beautiful.

How they managed to omit Howard Hughes's The Outlaw from that cowboy montage is a mystery. Maybe the homoerotic imagery was just too over-the-top to stand alongside Charlton Heston and The Duke. Still, if you want to see really outrageous sexual tension between gunslingers, check out The Outlaw. Against all historical probability, a crusty Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), a rotund Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell), and a naive Billy the Kid (Jack Beutel) trade meaningful looks and suggestive dialog while poor Jane Russell struggles mightily to distract them with her impressive boobs. Now that's a movie.

Oscar picks 2007

Oscars weekend. Ho hum. Another chance to suck down cocktails while we second-guess the Academy, critique the speeches, ogle the cleavage.

Close heat this year — hard choices to make (except for Reese Witherspoon), and somewhat empty choices at that, as the year's best movies weren't even nominated. (Having not yet seen Munich, I reserve the right to reverse that claim should a blowing-off-of-socks occur.)

So instead, let me look forward rather than back, and give you my predictions for next year's Oscars:

2007 Best Documentary — Bowling for Cheney

2007 Best Animated Feature — My Pet Scapegoat: Brownie and the Fudge-Up Factory

2007 Best Actor — Timothy Bottoms as “G.W. Bush” in Downfall II

2007 Best Actress — Judi Dench as “Judi Dench” in The 2006 Academy Awards

2007 Best Director — Peter Jackson, King of the Ring: Kong vs. Mechasauron

2007 Best Picture — Rosebud: The Wrath of Kane

Sleep now.

You wake up. You're soaking in the tub, in the green-tiled bathroom of a dark, grimy apartment. A hanging lamp is swinging back and forth, casting weird shadows on totally unfamiliar surroundings. You wait for the disorientation to lift, for memory to kick in and remind you where you are... who you are. But you can't remember anything.

You feel a sudden rush of panic and leap from the bath. Examining your face in a dirty mirror, you see a thin trickle of blood running down your forehead. What happened to you? You find some clothes and quickly throw them on. Stumbling clumsily into the bedroom, you knock a fishbowl to the floor. It shatters. Impulsively, you scoop up the flopping goldfish and drop it into the bathtub.

You find a small suitcase and rummage through it in a desperate search for something, anything, that will cut through the fog of confusion. You find a shirt — too large to be yours — a cop's badge, and a postcard from a place called Shell Beach, which instantly triggers a memory-flash of yourself as a child, on a pier, bathed in bright sunlight.

At that moment, the phone rings, loudly and harshly. You answer, and a manic, staccato voice comes over the receiver:
“You are confused, aren't you? Frightened? That's all right, I can help you.”
“Who is this?!”
“I am a doctor. Now you must listen to me. You have lost your memory. There was an experiment, something went wrong. Your memory was erased. Do you understand me?”
“No, I don't understand! What the hell is going on here?!”
“Just listen! There are people coming for you, even as we speak. You must not let them find you. You must leave now!”

Then you see the body. Dropping the phone, you walk in horror around the bed to see a half-naked woman lying on the floor, with sinister, disturbing spirals carved into her. You recoil, backing into a table and knocking a bloodied knife to the floor. You totally freak.

You flee the apartment in pure panic, stumbling into the dark hallway just as the elevator arrives on your floor with a menacing chime. The doors roll open, and three strange, evil men in dark hats and trenchcoats emerge, heading straight for you...

These are the first couple minutes of the movie Dark City — watching it again the other night reminded me of just how great the movie's opening is. In terms of dropping the hero into the action without any explanation to either the audience or the hero, only Hitchcock's North By Northwest does it better.

The movie manages to hold this initial tension for about 45 minutes, and then it starts to slip as the story's veneer is stripped away. The finale, though, is really good, and so reminiscent of The Matrix that it's important to remind yourself that this film came out a full year before the Wachowskis' opus.

Like many, I'm not a fan of Dark City's opening narration, spoken prior to the above scenes — it unnecessarily gives away far too much of the story. The movie's opening is infinitely more powerful if taken without that preface. (Special edition DVD? Director's cut? Please?)

Dark City remains one of only two perfect fusions of science fiction and film noir (the other being Blade Runner — another film weakened by unneeded narration). And while The Matrix had a very similar and better-developed premise (perhaps overdeveloped), it didn't deliver the nightmare quality of Dark City — the “Strangers” of Dark City are much creepier than the “Agents” of The Matrix.

The movie's nightmarish atmosphere and haunting imagery are (sorry) an oneirologist's dream (ouch), lifted directly from our most common nightmares: not knowing who or where we are; being accused of a crime we didn't commit; running from an unstoppable menace we don't understand; being forgotten by our loved ones; drowning; needles; suffocation; falling. And of course, lots of clocks — what's a nightmare without a dash of Dali?

And what do the sinister “Strangers” do when they catch you? They wave their hand hypnotically in front of your face, and purr-hiss an irresistible command: “Sleeeeep. Sleeeeep now.”

More dreams. Just what you need.