Tuesday Short Bits

-Walter Reed Army Hospital/ Bob Woodruff and Veteran's Affairs Hospital

Wow. This is just one of those things that I recall some folks being concerned about in the run up to the Iraq War. It's easy to send in the tanks and helicopters. It's in the following years that we, as a nation, have to answer the tough questions. Will we honor our soldiers when they come home, but don't come home in a box? When they took a piece of metal to the head for us, will we make sure we take care of them?

I watched the Woodruff special last week, and the answer appears to be: we'll help out a bit, but don't expect too much. Oh, and we'll report that injuries are coming in at a rate of 1/10th of the actual numbers of soldiers receiving treatment.


-Anna Nicole Smith's Mom

I totally think I saw her at the Austin airport when I went to pick up Jamie Sunday night. Jamie assures me it wasn't her, but I think it was.


-Ann Coulter

At what point did folks decide it was okay again to use bigotry as part of the political process? And just outright hatred?

How can you even do much but roll your eyes anymore when Coulter speaks? One horribly distasteful comment can sink a career, but it's no secret that a steady line of reprehensible comments builds a career.

I spent enough time in suburbia to know that this is the sort of discourse that occurs over a cold beer or three, and that, however idiotic and seemingly juvenile Coluter's comments, she's speaking for some segment of the population. Do we give too much credit to the Conservative Political Action Conference? At least to some attendees.


-Kyle MacLachlan to voice Superman

Here's some good news (in my book). Special Agent Cooper is scheduled to play the voice of the Man of Steel in the upcoming "New Frontier" straight to DVD feature-length cartoon.

I think MacLachlan should have landed the George Reeves role in Hollywoodland, but I guess the producers didn't think he'd sell enough tickets. He was, after all, up for the role and is the appropriate age.

Keep your eyes peeled for "New Frontier" when it's released. The comic series was excellent stuff, and Darwyn Cooke's style will most likely be maintained for the feature (think 1950's and 60's cartooning). Hopefully the series was self-contained enough that nobody will feel they need to tweak the story too much. I loved the Right Stuff meets Mort Weisinger sensibility of the whole thing.

Just wait until you see Cooke's Lois and Wonder Woman.


-Superman at accident, but not particularly helpful

And before anyone assumes I do not have a TV or the interwebs...



-Extreme Make-Over Home Edition airplane family

Upon occasion on Sunday nights Jamie I watch this horrible, horrible program while we DVR stuff on other networks. The formula is simple: Find people who have simply too much responsibility and a ton of misfortune fall upon them, and give them a McMansion and flat screen TV. Usually the family has someone who is chronically ill and lives in a hovel, or they've taken in 6 foster kids and a tornado levelled their trailer.

The show has been on a while, but last night was the first time I thought (a) these people are badly off not just because fate dealt them an unlucky hand, but because they made a stupid decision by cancelling their home owner's insurance while refinancing, and then living across the street from an airport. Yes, a plane ran into their house. And (b) these people fully knew what was in store for them when they got on the program. They fully expected the amenities of the McMansion and kept saying things like "Oh, this is totally what I wanted." Not, "Wow, I am used to sharing a room with six people and ten rats." IE: these people weren't exactly slumming it prior to the show, or at least prior to getting hit with an airplane.

A few weeks ago, the show was about a family in Austin with 5 autistic kids and a dad who worked two blue-collar jobs to try to cover the bills, but their house was days from being foreclosed upon. But with five autistic kids, the bills were piling up, the house was in serious disrepair and mom was at her wit's end.

These people cancelled their insurance as part of a plan to refinance their existing house. Had the plane NOT hit the house, they'd still be a comfortably middle class family with very few problems. Sure, their son was a marine who'd been in Iraq, but he wasn't injured. And he was 21. As mentioned above, we have a lot of our troops who are not so fortunate. And, he's 21... How long was he expected to live at home?

I dunno. The funny thing is that the cast usually spends the whole episode talking about how amazing the families are who they're helping out. In this instance, they were sort of quiet on the subject. I think they knew, and we knew, that there were probably a lot of families in Florida in much worse shape than these folks.

When Good Sentiments Go Wrong

This dude had this hair as late as September 12th, 2001.



I'm probably mistaken, but is that the same beach from the end of "Planet of the Apes"?

Found at this blog.

Along with this Captain America/ Team America video.

editor's note: Mom, Dad... do not watch. This has naughty, naughty words.



Scenes are from the little-seen 1990 Captain America feature film starring the son of JD Salinger. Yes, I have seen it. And it rulz.

week end

Well, with Jamie gone for the weekend, I still managed to entertain myself fairly well.

Friday night I enjoyed an extended dinner engagement with Jason, Mandy, Greg Johnson, Susan and a girl who I believe was named "Shelly". We wound up at Homeslice Pizza on S. Congress, which is pretty much just a dimly lit, overcrowded pizza joint, but it's a nice destination for a night out when you don't have much planned. But, it's also apparently a bit of a hipster locale as evidenced by the lengthy wait we had for a table.

Saturday, Peabo's 10:55 AM call woke from slumber. I have no internal clock anymore. Each morning I rise with either dogs or wife harassing me (or an alarm), and long ago I lost any natural ability to just wake up from sleep. Lately Jamie's been doing little "fly-by" wake-up's. She comes by the bed for 30 seconds and says "are you going to get up?" when I am clearly dead asleep and in deep REM. It's enough to sort of wake me up, but then she wanders off in disgust, and I fall asleep once more, only to have the process repeated every 30 to 45 minutes until I finally roll out of bed. I'm not sure what strategy she believes she's employing, but it's not working.

So, Saturday morning, I showered, dressed and headed for Peabo's, where I caught the second half of the Texas/Kansas game (Texas lost). Then, Peabo and I sort of hung out while Adriana took a much needed nap. Adriana and Peabo have about 7 weeks before little Jefferson is born, and it's safe to say they're both excited, but not in a "WE'RE HAVING A BAYYY-BEEEEE!!!!!" creepy kind of way that we non-breeders fail to get properly jazzed about.

I've known Peabo since 4th grade (when we kicked it old skool on the corner of Taterwood and Pencewood). Peabo will be a good dad, although it may take decades for his kids to appreciate that their father's continuous mocking laughter was born out of love. I expect Adriana shall be the voice of reason at Casa de Peabo. I suspect there shall be a lot of "survival of the fittest" going on with Peabo and his brood. You want to be one of Peabo's kids, you gotta be tough.

Saturday night I went with Mangum to see "Zodiac", which is long enough, but add on 30 minutes of really horrible trailers (all of the trailers were about crazed, guy next door, secret genius murderers. There were three in a row) and we walked out of the movie at 12:30 AM.

I spent today cleaning. We haven't done any serious cleaning since a solid, post-Christmas attempt. We've done some vaccuuming, etc... but not a "today we clean the house" sort of cleaning, and it shows. With Parental Units in town next weekend, and then (hopefully) Nathan and Wagner coming for Spring Break/ SXSW, plus a surprise announcement of a visit from former roommate and now crusading attorney, K. B., the house needs to be in order. There's also a chance for a visit by The My.

So, today I cleaned toilets and such. Which was good, but i missed the lovely weather. Furtunately, I hear it's going to be 70+ and sunny all week, so...

Also, I spoke with the birthday girl at length this afternoon.

More on "Zodiac" later.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KAREBEAR

Happy Birthday to the M-O-M!!!

We love you, Mom! See you next weekend!

Jeter, Bush and Mantle

An employee at Topp's after my own heart inserted images of George W. and Mickey Mantle into a new Derek Jeter baseball card.

Here.

Open Weekend and Romantic Movies

So, through an odd turn of events, Jamie's mom is under the weather (everyone give a Huzzah! for Judy) and Jamie's Dad is headed for Brazil. It's complicated, but it involves large, migratory birds and a German/Canadian physicist. More than that, I cannot say.

So Jamie is trading positions with Judy and is heading to Lawton for a few days to go run the show, wrangle cats and make sure Judy doesn't try any stunt driving. Which means The League is left to his own devices from Friday mid-day to Sunday evening.

Luckily, I have a lot of booze left over from the Christmas Party, so Mel and I are going to raise a pirate flag, stand on the upstairs balcony and wave sabers menacingly at the neighbors until the police show up. Yarrrgghh...

I'm also totally poor. So this weekend may mostly entail a lot of catching up with comics, cleaning, and trying to lay low.

A job would be totally sweet right about now.

We're headed for Erica F.'s wedding in a few weeks, and Jamie bought a shiny dress for the event. I have learned it is outside in Houston in March, so I hope Bug won't mind when I show up in shorts and my OU812 tour shirt. The following weekend we've got another outdoor wedding for Denby. I am sure Denby will want to change her name, but that ain't gonna happen. She'll always be Denby to me.

She's marrying a purveyor of fine meats. Go figure.

So a special shout out to the Loyal Leaguers who addressed my probing questions regarding romantic movies.

go here.

Once again, RHPT refuses to elaborate, leading me to believe that he was the kid in class who plagued the teacher with the "do we have to know this for the test?" questions. Hang your head in shame, RHPT.

As always, I've written questions without having any answers in mind of my own. Here goes:

1) What movie do you think best exemplifies the ultimate expression of romantic love?

I want to say that flying around the world so fast that you travel back in time for love is pretty good. But Maxwell points out another candidate in "Somewhere in Time" where Chris Reeve once again travels through time, but this time to meet the super-foxy Dr. Quinn, and that's good, too.

This is a particularly tough one as I don't watch too many romantic movies.

There's something about sacrifice for love that's sort of nihilistic and romantic. For example, Casablanca as love means letting go. But I think the never-realized love of Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is particularly poignant.

Plus, you know, Michelle Yeoh. Yowzah.

I might point out that this category was romantic love, not love between a boy and his dog. But if that's how you want to define romantic love, that's cool. I only ask that you stay far, far away from my dogs.

2) What movie do you think demonstrates the most fun look at Mad Love?

True Romance. Those are too crazy kids in some crazy, mixed-up love.

And, of course, The Quiet Man.

3) What movie do you think most accurately depicts or reflects how you feel about romantic love in your own reality?

I sort of think Jamie and I have a real nice Gomez and Morticia Addams thing going on.

But there's also something very visceral about "Punch Drunk Love" that, though the events don't reflect anything familiar, there's something I respond to about a semi-obsessive, self-conscious guy with borderline social skills realizing he has a good thing and realizing he's going to have to fight for it.

Also, I love pudding.

Hollywoodland

This review is spoiler-laden:

Going into the movie, I probably knew more about the topic than I should have. I do not consider myself to be any sort of expert in matters George Reeves, but my reading on Superman has lent itself to some reading on the life and death of George Reeves.

I believe that there is very good reason to think that George Reeves did not kill himself. But I don't know. But it certainly colored how I saw the movie.

The film, itself, is a sort of mix between a standard detective picture and Citizen Kane flashback sequences (also used in Immortal Beloved). The detective in question is Louis Simo, a fictionalized character/ convenient amalgamation of many real people who lives the standard movie detective life of the shabby apartment/ office, the messy divorce and kid left behind, and a girlfriend who will dump him before the end of the picture.

Ben Affleck, who is never as old as the character he is portraying, especially for the second half of the film, still manages to portray a reasonable fascimile of Reeves without giving in to parody or imitation. We've got lots of Reeves to look at, and with six seasons of The Adventures of Superman to pull from, Affleck manages to use that both to his advantage and manages to overcome the problem of mis-playing someone with whom some viewers might be fairly familiar.

For me, the story failed on a few fronts.

I take some umbrage at insertion of a fictional detective with a fictional dysfunctional family life as the framing device for the film. The film is really the story of Louis Simo chasing down the truth, and coming to the revelation that mediocrity in Hollywood is okay. A suspect moral, I think, but the lesson we're to understand Reeves' death has taught us is that hoping to become something better than what you are is a way to drive yourself mad. At least in Hollywood. At the end we're supposed to get really excited to see Simo in a suit (I guess he's gotten a straight job) and is coming over to check on his kid in the two bedroom LA-style tract house. With a promise of him giving up on the chance for the abstract greatness of private detective work, I guess. Hooray?

Further, the movie really spares no expense in setting up the husband of Reeves' spurned lover as a potential murder suspect, then backs down completely. This build-up includes details that seemingly make no sense if Mannix is NOT the murderer, such as an MGM rep's appearance at Reeves' funeral and the one scene between Hoskins as Mannix and Simo. Add in some mysterious tarot cards at the crime scene, and some fudgy actual details of the murder included in the film, and the final resolution seems like a lot of back-peddling.

Which raises the question: Did the producers wimp out? As folks looking for jobs in LA once Hollywoodland was in the can, did a moment of clarity tell these guys that fingering a studio exec using studio resources to bump a prominent actor might not be a good idea, career-wise?

I'm also fairly certain that as a non-actor, the melancholy and despair presented by Affleck as Reeves at his lot in life as the Man of Steel is something that's fairly foreign to me as a person (though, certainly not Affleck). Whether a personal failure or one of the movie, I felt that there was too much telling and not enough showing of Reeves' frustration at not being able to land other roles, and it was difficult to garner much sympathy for Reeves as a working actor and kept man, aside from the "Here to Eternity" sequence (which, I've read Reeves and Mannix did not actually attend). That said, as Superman was ending, Reeves had directed a few episodes of AoS, and as the movie indicates, was making a move to television directing. His career wasn't exactly over, though it might have been over in front of the lens. It's a detail, but a detail glossed over in the movie. And as the movie is trying to point to the certainty of Reeves' suicide, the ommission becomes somewhat problematic.

Reeves' death is a huge questionmark, and that lends itself to Rashoman type-speculating. Unfortunately, none of the answers provided by the film-makers are particularly satisfying. And that means that the movie isn't particularly satisfying, either.

Brody isn't bad, but there's a bit of New York to his LA born and raised detective. Diane Lane is excellent as Toni Mannix, and makes a very believable romantic interest for Reeves.

Some additional minutia:

It also can't help that I have read multiple conflicting stories regarding whether or not Adventures of Superman was actually cancelled. After all, as a syndicated show, the principles never knew whether the show was actually cancelled or not until someone called them to show up for work. Secondly, in the wake of the death of Reeves, the studio tried to put two other shows on the air (Superpup and Superboy), indicating that they planned for more Superman product. In fact, they used the exact same set for Superpup as AoS, so they hadn't torn down the sets as if the show was over. Further, I'd read that Noel Neill was under the impression that additional seasons were in the future and that Reeves' death was what ended the program.

For some eye-brow raising comments, you can also turn to a recent Noel Neill interview at the Supermanhomepage. It's known Noel was not necessarily socially involved with Reeves off the set, but it's definitely worth reading.

***UPDATE***
Phyllis Coates, who played Lois Lane for the first season of Adventures of Superman (Neill had predated her in the Kirk Alyn serials), also takes issue with the portrayal of Reeves and events. Read here.

***UPDATE UPDATE***
Noel Neill was interviewed on KryptonFan this week. There is some mention of Hollywoodland. 02-28-2007