I’m sure everyone with a television or Internet access or friends who talk has heard of James Cameron’s Avatar by now, which alone indicates a greenback-laden future for the movie. But as far as its grandiloquent claims of changing the way movies are made and even being “something we’ve never seen before,” I’m skeptical. With its release just a few days away, I’ll tempt fate and say that it doesn’t look like the game-changer it’s touted as. Not that it doesn’t look like a good, fun movie. I mean, tall, skinny cat/goat people sure beat the second breakfast out of Hobbits. But for Avatar to really be the movie I’ve never seen but always wanted to see even without knowing it, it would probably have to be something like a Star Wars-style epic narrative delivered through the immersive atmosphere of the Soarin' Over California ride at Disney’s California Adventure theme park. And I don’t mean a juiced-up version of Star Tours. That would be nice, but without visionary storytelling to quicken it, it would just be a nice theme park ride.
Cameron’s the guy who brought us a Universal Studios stage show “sequel” to his film, Terminator 2, so it’s no stretch to think that he might like to bring a bit of that theme park scale to the big screen. I’m not necessarily saying that the next big leap in feature films has to include staged stunts and live explosions, or that your seating area has to lift you off the ground and fly you over the screen. Though all that might constitute a real leap, none of it would be reproducible on your couch/flat-screen setup, and it’s unlikely that technology that further separates the movie theater and the home theater would replace movies as they exist now. But if Avatar aspires to be a turning point in the very nature of cinema, it will have to be much more than Dances With Wolves meets Ferngully, shot with a camera that costs more than most McMansions.
If we’re lucky, we’ll come out of Avatar having seen merely a great movie. And that wouldn’t be so bad, except for Cameron, who may really believe that he’s bringing us into a brave new world of moviegoing.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
His Error-ness
I was out doing a little harmless holiday shopping the other day, when I was assaulted by the following fresco:
Now, I'm neither an art critic nor a basketball fan, but I do know that Michael Jordan rarely sported such a lobotomized facial expression. And have we forgotten that he was known for dunking basketballs, not stroking his own balls?
Be like Mike? Sorry, this painting be like crap.
(Painting spotted at Fashion Valley Mall, San Diego, CA.)
Now, I'm neither an art critic nor a basketball fan, but I do know that Michael Jordan rarely sported such a lobotomized facial expression. And have we forgotten that he was known for dunking basketballs, not stroking his own balls?
Be like Mike? Sorry, this painting be like crap.
(Painting spotted at Fashion Valley Mall, San Diego, CA.)
Friday, October 30, 2009
Evil has no name
In response to a recent blog post about the “true face of terror in gaming,” I offer another perspective, one that reveals the “true true face of terror in gaming.”Yes, Phanto from Super Mario Bros. 2 was scary. But did you know . . . there is another . . . Phanto-like thing!
In later years, we saw Phanto successors like the evil Samus clone who would chase you around Metroid Fusion, and a freak called Nemesis who would hunt you in Resident Evil 3. There was also the ghostly and impatient Baron von Blubba in Bubble Bobble, which pre-dated Mario 2. These and even Phanto are Johnny-come-lately sissy scares compared to the scariest creature in the history of gaming . . . and life.
Some call him the “hall monster”; others call him the “green monster.” Hell, some people probably call him “Maurice,” for all I know. I have my own name for him: “evil green face.” But learn from my example: naming him gives you no mastery over him . . . or over your fear.
The game was called Venture, produced by Exidy and released on the Atari 2600 (among other systems) back when game controllers looked like calculators. Long before Nintendo “created” Doki Doki Panic/Super Mario Bros. 2 and its resident tormentor, Phanto.
Now, by putting quotes around “created,” I’m not saying Nintendo stole this Phanto idea from a crappy Atari game. Allow me to postulate a fictional true story that maybe one day, they were making Doki Doki Panic, and someone, say, Shigeru Miyamoto, says, “You know, when I was a kid, I played a game called Venture, where you grabbed some treasure, and then this evil face would chase you down until you died. And I’m going to steal that face for this game. And I don’t even care if people know I stole it. I yam what I yam.”
And then the imperialist Hiroshi Yamauchi likely said, “Yeah, do it! Steal from those patak!”
And then the enfant terrible, Gunpei Yokoi, who would later be secretly murdered by a Nintendo hit squad for his role in creating the monumental failure, the Virtual Boy console, his death faked as a car accident, probably said, “Haha, man I like to steal things like this from other games and not give credit to the yo-yos who created it.” And then one day, he was dead.
But I digress.
Venture had a main screen with four rooms you could enter. In the main screen, your character was a pixel. For those of you who were born during the Taft administration, a pixel is a small colored square.
Today, we have these silly newfangled words for it like “pixel” and “avatar,” but back in the Reagan years, we just called it a “dot.”
When you went into one of the four rooms, you turned into a smiley face. Now back when I was a sproutling, we called such things a smiley face, but only recently did I learn that the game makers gave him a name, Winkey (sometimes Sir Winkey), and you were obliged by the instruction booklet and/or box art to believe that Winkey was a big muscle-bound clod who shot monsters with a bow and arrow. I didn’t have the game box that showed this picture, so I was blissfully ignorant and untainted by this evil fruit of knowledge.
There’s a lovely phrase about how sometimes things are better if you don’t know so much. I think it goes, “You’re a beautiful retard.”
Can that “noo-nee-noo-nee” background noise even be called “music”? Good gravy. And if he’s supposed to be packing a bow and arrow, why does it sound like a laser?
Anyhoo, if I were the marketing people at Atari or Coleco or whatever, I wouldn’t tell people that you would be controlling a muscular jungle guy with a bow and arrow. That’s just misleading. I’d tell people, “You is controlling a face with a dongle on it that shoots balls.”
And that’s how Faceball 2000 was born. It’s criminal, really, how you people steal.
So first there’s a room with skeletons, and you have to fight past them to grab some blue boxes. Then a room where you shoot snakes and snag a big grape. Then a room with several copies of the robot from Forbidden Planet who are guarding the Lion King’s head. Finally, a room with moving walls that protect the Cullinan Diamond. I guess that’s where Ocean’s Eleven came from.
After you beat these four rooms, there are four more rooms of masochism . . . and terror . . . to go.
But really, you would never beat more than one or two rooms because after your first encounter with “evil green face,” you will wish you were a blind deaf-mute, with all your senses fallen away.
If you linger too long in any of the rooms, he comes for you. If you stop to caress the Lion King’s head, he comes for you. If you shoot one of the skeletons and its corpse blocks the exit from the room, he comes for you . . . and kills you.
Yes, “evil green face” was scarier than Phanto. He came first, and he also had something Phanto didn’t: he was accompanied by the most horrifying and sickening staticky noise since the tipped-over television from Poltergeist.
When I was a kid, I had a recurring nightmare about being chased by a cactus man on the street where I lived. It was a Halloween type night, but without the candy, and the cactus man wasn’t wearing a costume. He was the costume. That’s kind of what “evil green face” was like, except real.
If you met “evil green face” in a dark alley in Tijuana, you’d say, “Please, I have so much to live for.” And he’d say to you, “I’ll eat you until you die.”
Remember that part in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox has just finished playing “Johnny B. Goode,” and the room full of befuddled 40-year-old high schoolers is staring at him, and he says, “I guess you guys aren't ready for that, yet. But your kids are gonna love it”? I hope nobody at Atari ever looked parents in the eye and said that about Venture.
What in the name of Peter Mayhew is going on here?:
It’s like a documentary, a video game review, and an experiential psychological experiment all rolled into one unholy enchilada. I like the intermission where he goes to set up his Atari 2600. Notice that after he starts playing the game, the video turns into The Blair Witch Project.
My God, that is so sad. That numbnuts never had a chance. He didn’t even know he was dead!
Venture, why do you make children cry?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The Greatest Show on Earth
P. T. Barnum uttered the iconic maxim, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Or did he? History convincingly says no, if only anyone bothered to check their facts. Huh, isn’t it weird how the false attribution of a phrase about people being suckers has made suckers of us all? (Hmm, is there a word for that?)
So when Britney Spears came to town last month, I couldn’t help but think of Barnum and his bogus saying. If the title and packaging of her latest album, Circus, don’t make the line of descent from Barnum to Britney clear, then surely the stage production of her accompanying concert tour, The Circus Starring Britney Spears, does. Her concert was every bit the spectacle it was meant to be:
Let me first discuss the show, then the compunctions. Britney’s Circus was actually something like a cross between a Cirque du Soleil show and an arena concert. It opened with several genuine circus acts, including a guy who twirled big glowy things above his head, a female acrobat jumping off of and landing back on an elastic beam, and a seriously disturbing legless(!) woman being bounced up and down a trampoline by a strongman:
Oh, there was also a concert wedged in there:
Britney looked shockingly great, and this is coming from someone who never liked the way she looked, even before she went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. She sounded . . . well, she sounded like Britney, that is to say, the recorded, reverse osmosis purified Brit, this being an obviously lip-synched show.
Sadly, my favorite Britney song was the one that sounded the worst – “Baby, One More Time,” apparently in a remixed format. It was tediously militaristic, lacking the sparkle and flirtatiousness of the original. They didn’t bother to treat us to my other two favorites, “Oops, I Did It Again” and “(You Drive Me) Crazy.” Alas, alack, etc. New songs dominated the evening. After all, this was The Circus Starring Britney Spears, not the The Circus Starring the Barely Pubescent Sex Object Nostalgia Britney.
The songs were punctuated by the occasional martial arts display, a street dancing interlude (including a brief, obligatory Michael Jackson imitator), and most interestingly, a magic act featuring Britney as the magician’s assistant/victim, in a variation of the “sawing a woman in half” staple, followed by a take on "the transported man":
It was an extravaganza, but in the aftermath of the concert, I wondered to myself: was I a sucker for paying a big head of lettuce to see what was essentially a dancing blond girl lip-synching to a catalog of mediocre songs? I wondered if Britney were the latest in a long line of hucksters, charlatans, and flim-flam artists, a girl after fake Barnum’s own heart.
I’m sure my compunction has more than a little to do with my having to endure the scornful ire of my rock snob acquaintances for having gone to a Britney concert, and on my own dime at that. But if she were at least singing live, the critics might have relented. I guess in my youth, I would have seen this episode in similar terms. You don’t go to a live show to hear pre-recorded music. That’s what CDs (and yes, mp3s, sigh) are for. But as I’ve grown older and gone to more concerts, there’s been a sea change in my views.
I used to think that a concert was the definitive rendering of an artist’s music. An artist who could “bring it” on stage was not just legit, but was sharing his or her music in the most intimate, honest way, naked even. And it was one of a kind because they could never reproduce that exact performance. However, as I saw more and more of my favorite artists on stage, I started to feel that a lot of them sounded a lot better on a recording than they did live. And they weren’t even bad live; they just weren’t quite what I knew them as from the CDs. To be sure, some artists were even better live, but I realized that it wasn’t necessarily because of the music. The best live performers were just that – performers, and they could overcome a bad sound system or shabby acoustics. Passion and charisma made up for the jumbled mess of noise that concerts often became. The greatest concerts inject the feeling of the music into the audience, no matter what the actual aural quality is.
This new paradigm reaches its apotheosis with Britney’s Circus, which carries on Barnum’s spirit of showmanship. At this point in my life, I want to see the spectacle, I want to be blown away. I don’t really care to just see someone strumming a guitar and yodeling into a mic. Hey, her songs aren’t that great anyway, but they generate a manic energy that suits the big top perfectly. And if Britney has to lip-synch so that she’ll have enough energy to dance for two hours, then I say, let the girl dance! I’d rather see her moves anyway.
No, I don’t think I’m a sucker for wanting that, and I don’t mind ruffling some purists’ feathers by saying that a concert can (should?) be about more than just the music. I can listen to the music at home or in my car and be just as happy. John Lennon himself said that he “wasn’t that upset that Elvis never came to England.” He liked listening to the records. I think he was on to something. Whether fake Barnum was onto something, well, that’s another story entirely.
So when Britney Spears came to town last month, I couldn’t help but think of Barnum and his bogus saying. If the title and packaging of her latest album, Circus, don’t make the line of descent from Barnum to Britney clear, then surely the stage production of her accompanying concert tour, The Circus Starring Britney Spears, does. Her concert was every bit the spectacle it was meant to be:
Let me first discuss the show, then the compunctions. Britney’s Circus was actually something like a cross between a Cirque du Soleil show and an arena concert. It opened with several genuine circus acts, including a guy who twirled big glowy things above his head, a female acrobat jumping off of and landing back on an elastic beam, and a seriously disturbing legless(!) woman being bounced up and down a trampoline by a strongman:
Oh, there was also a concert wedged in there:
Britney looked shockingly great, and this is coming from someone who never liked the way she looked, even before she went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. She sounded . . . well, she sounded like Britney, that is to say, the recorded, reverse osmosis purified Brit, this being an obviously lip-synched show.
Sadly, my favorite Britney song was the one that sounded the worst – “Baby, One More Time,” apparently in a remixed format. It was tediously militaristic, lacking the sparkle and flirtatiousness of the original. They didn’t bother to treat us to my other two favorites, “Oops, I Did It Again” and “(You Drive Me) Crazy.” Alas, alack, etc. New songs dominated the evening. After all, this was The Circus Starring Britney Spears, not the The Circus Starring the Barely Pubescent Sex Object Nostalgia Britney.
The songs were punctuated by the occasional martial arts display, a street dancing interlude (including a brief, obligatory Michael Jackson imitator), and most interestingly, a magic act featuring Britney as the magician’s assistant/victim, in a variation of the “sawing a woman in half” staple, followed by a take on "the transported man":
It was an extravaganza, but in the aftermath of the concert, I wondered to myself: was I a sucker for paying a big head of lettuce to see what was essentially a dancing blond girl lip-synching to a catalog of mediocre songs? I wondered if Britney were the latest in a long line of hucksters, charlatans, and flim-flam artists, a girl after fake Barnum’s own heart.
I’m sure my compunction has more than a little to do with my having to endure the scornful ire of my rock snob acquaintances for having gone to a Britney concert, and on my own dime at that. But if she were at least singing live, the critics might have relented. I guess in my youth, I would have seen this episode in similar terms. You don’t go to a live show to hear pre-recorded music. That’s what CDs (and yes, mp3s, sigh) are for. But as I’ve grown older and gone to more concerts, there’s been a sea change in my views.
I used to think that a concert was the definitive rendering of an artist’s music. An artist who could “bring it” on stage was not just legit, but was sharing his or her music in the most intimate, honest way, naked even. And it was one of a kind because they could never reproduce that exact performance. However, as I saw more and more of my favorite artists on stage, I started to feel that a lot of them sounded a lot better on a recording than they did live. And they weren’t even bad live; they just weren’t quite what I knew them as from the CDs. To be sure, some artists were even better live, but I realized that it wasn’t necessarily because of the music. The best live performers were just that – performers, and they could overcome a bad sound system or shabby acoustics. Passion and charisma made up for the jumbled mess of noise that concerts often became. The greatest concerts inject the feeling of the music into the audience, no matter what the actual aural quality is.
This new paradigm reaches its apotheosis with Britney’s Circus, which carries on Barnum’s spirit of showmanship. At this point in my life, I want to see the spectacle, I want to be blown away. I don’t really care to just see someone strumming a guitar and yodeling into a mic. Hey, her songs aren’t that great anyway, but they generate a manic energy that suits the big top perfectly. And if Britney has to lip-synch so that she’ll have enough energy to dance for two hours, then I say, let the girl dance! I’d rather see her moves anyway.
No, I don’t think I’m a sucker for wanting that, and I don’t mind ruffling some purists’ feathers by saying that a concert can (should?) be about more than just the music. I can listen to the music at home or in my car and be just as happy. John Lennon himself said that he “wasn’t that upset that Elvis never came to England.” He liked listening to the records. I think he was on to something. Whether fake Barnum was onto something, well, that’s another story entirely.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Summer that wasn’t (and was)
The new Stephen “The Mummy” Sommers-directed G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra movie marked the end of the 2009 summer blockbuster season. And what a summer it wasn’t.
In, oh, about April of this year, my brother suggested to me that we had a lot of big movies to look forward to this summer. We’re talking Star Trek, Terminator, Transformers, even G.I. Joe. The first two would be the returns of two mega-franchises, hopefully to glory. The last two brought the supreme favorite toys of every young boy of the 1980s to the big screen. A big summer, for sure.
Until it wasn’t.
I’m not a movie reviewer, but feel free to gander at the hyperlinks above for comprehensive coverage. Rather, I’ll give my short takes in an attempt to understand why on earth I took for granted that this was a summer for the ages, when in fact, it was a summer for ages 4 to 12. (And yes, I know I skipped one or two of your favorites; what can I say, except that I can’t be bothered to see every movie that gets you panting, and even if I did, it probably wasn’t worth my writing about.) There will probably be SPOILERS henceforth.
I thought Star Trek was a great movie, full of emotion and relevance. The summer started big, maybe setting expectations too high for the rest of the cinema season.
Terminator Salvation was about as painful as self-flagellation. Maybe it was the mishmash of bad influences, from Mad Max to War of the Worlds, and I think I even tasted a dash of Red Dawn in there (Patrick Swayze, rest in peace in your great big road house in the sky). Or maybe it was the fact that the only good thing about the movie, Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright, ended up sacrificing himself (with no logical justification) for the overshadowed and unapproachable Christian Bale’s John Connor at movie’s end.
I could legitimately have expected Terminator to be good. I like Bale, and director McG, unfortunate moniker notwithstanding, did some good work on TV’s The O.C. and my recent favorite show, Chuck, though that in itself should have made me skeptical. He should probably know his place and stick to tales of angsty young males, not somber treatments of tortured middle-aged sci-fi warrior males.
But what the Wreck-gar possessed me to think that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would be enjoyable? The 2007 Transformers was a real looker, but it was emotionally stillborn, and though the tone of the teaser trailer for the sequel made it seem like a “darker” movie was in the works (maybe following the brooding example set by The Dark Knight for superhero/comics movies), by the time the movie came out, the promotion clearly marked it as more of the same. And yes, it was brutally awful. Between the obnoxious Lebeoufian schlub-stick and the skull-grinding battle sequences, I felt bludgeoned from both sides.
I cannot be one of these Bruckheimer apologists content with deafening explosions, somebody’s daughter in mortal peril, a helicopter, and a scruffy dog leaping to safety just in the nick of time to dodge a firestorm and/or river of lava. No, no, no. Substance is style, though not all audiences agree with me.
G.I. Joe was far better than it had any right to be, and it salvaged a pretty meager summer for me. It wasn’t the G.I. Joe I remembered from my childhood, lacking the mythology in particular, and substituting its own half-baked origin story. But it was fun and breezy, and it made me want a sequel. In short, it was everything that Transformers wasn’t, even if it didn’t necessarily do right by the original cartoon. Memo to the eighties: Stay just the way you were.
Interspersed in the four months of summer were other gems like Harry Potter, the Johnny Depp and Christian Bale-starring Public Enemies, and Pixar’s Up. All dogs. Am I alone in thinking that the shine is wearing off of Pixar’s “can do no wrong” image? And were it not for the assurance of another Batman sequel, I’d be very worried about Bale becoming the next Russell Crowe, intense actor turned misanthropic nutjob. As far as Harry Potter, I didn’t understand half of what they were saying in the movie, so I just kept playing over and over in my head my own fanciful rendition of Harry as a Dickens novel. (Dumbledore dragged the whelp by his ear, saying, “Harry! Harry Potter! Bring me my dinner, Harry! Heed my words, or it’ll be the stables for you tonight!”)
The summer’s best movie stood far outside the blockbuster paradigm (“no duh, Sherlock” you’re probably thinking, but just stay with me here). (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph “Cobra Commander” Gordon-Levitt and my blue-eyed heaven, Zooey Deschanel, won me over with its charming understanding of that old hand – the “failures of the human heart.” It had moments of flippancy and a few comedic misfires, but throughout, it maintained its focus on the quiet way that love can break your heart.
In, oh, about April of this year, my brother suggested to me that we had a lot of big movies to look forward to this summer. We’re talking Star Trek, Terminator, Transformers, even G.I. Joe. The first two would be the returns of two mega-franchises, hopefully to glory. The last two brought the supreme favorite toys of every young boy of the 1980s to the big screen. A big summer, for sure.
Until it wasn’t.
I’m not a movie reviewer, but feel free to gander at the hyperlinks above for comprehensive coverage. Rather, I’ll give my short takes in an attempt to understand why on earth I took for granted that this was a summer for the ages, when in fact, it was a summer for ages 4 to 12. (And yes, I know I skipped one or two of your favorites; what can I say, except that I can’t be bothered to see every movie that gets you panting, and even if I did, it probably wasn’t worth my writing about.) There will probably be SPOILERS henceforth.
I thought Star Trek was a great movie, full of emotion and relevance. The summer started big, maybe setting expectations too high for the rest of the cinema season.
Terminator Salvation was about as painful as self-flagellation. Maybe it was the mishmash of bad influences, from Mad Max to War of the Worlds, and I think I even tasted a dash of Red Dawn in there (Patrick Swayze, rest in peace in your great big road house in the sky). Or maybe it was the fact that the only good thing about the movie, Sam Worthington’s Marcus Wright, ended up sacrificing himself (with no logical justification) for the overshadowed and unapproachable Christian Bale’s John Connor at movie’s end.
I could legitimately have expected Terminator to be good. I like Bale, and director McG, unfortunate moniker notwithstanding, did some good work on TV’s The O.C. and my recent favorite show, Chuck, though that in itself should have made me skeptical. He should probably know his place and stick to tales of angsty young males, not somber treatments of tortured middle-aged sci-fi warrior males.
But what the Wreck-gar possessed me to think that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen would be enjoyable? The 2007 Transformers was a real looker, but it was emotionally stillborn, and though the tone of the teaser trailer for the sequel made it seem like a “darker” movie was in the works (maybe following the brooding example set by The Dark Knight for superhero/comics movies), by the time the movie came out, the promotion clearly marked it as more of the same. And yes, it was brutally awful. Between the obnoxious Lebeoufian schlub-stick and the skull-grinding battle sequences, I felt bludgeoned from both sides.
I cannot be one of these Bruckheimer apologists content with deafening explosions, somebody’s daughter in mortal peril, a helicopter, and a scruffy dog leaping to safety just in the nick of time to dodge a firestorm and/or river of lava. No, no, no. Substance is style, though not all audiences agree with me.
G.I. Joe was far better than it had any right to be, and it salvaged a pretty meager summer for me. It wasn’t the G.I. Joe I remembered from my childhood, lacking the mythology in particular, and substituting its own half-baked origin story. But it was fun and breezy, and it made me want a sequel. In short, it was everything that Transformers wasn’t, even if it didn’t necessarily do right by the original cartoon. Memo to the eighties: Stay just the way you were.
Interspersed in the four months of summer were other gems like Harry Potter, the Johnny Depp and Christian Bale-starring Public Enemies, and Pixar’s Up. All dogs. Am I alone in thinking that the shine is wearing off of Pixar’s “can do no wrong” image? And were it not for the assurance of another Batman sequel, I’d be very worried about Bale becoming the next Russell Crowe, intense actor turned misanthropic nutjob. As far as Harry Potter, I didn’t understand half of what they were saying in the movie, so I just kept playing over and over in my head my own fanciful rendition of Harry as a Dickens novel. (Dumbledore dragged the whelp by his ear, saying, “Harry! Harry Potter! Bring me my dinner, Harry! Heed my words, or it’ll be the stables for you tonight!”)
The summer’s best movie stood far outside the blockbuster paradigm (“no duh, Sherlock” you’re probably thinking, but just stay with me here). (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph “Cobra Commander” Gordon-Levitt and my blue-eyed heaven, Zooey Deschanel, won me over with its charming understanding of that old hand – the “failures of the human heart.” It had moments of flippancy and a few comedic misfires, but throughout, it maintained its focus on the quiet way that love can break your heart.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
And your bird can sing
In a previous life, when shaggy hair and round-framed glasses were more my bag, I received two of the odder, more flattering comments I’ve ever received.
The first was from a girl I met through ballroom dance. One day, without prelude, she told me I reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t remember whom. “Someone famous and very good-looking?” I fished. I got it half right. After dance class, she finally conjured the name: “John Lennon.” She suggested that it went beyond the glasses and hair; there was something in my demeanor.
The second comment came after I had parked on the street one night, on my way to the Casbah for a show (undoubtedly, it was a sub-Beatles-caliber band). Just as I stepped out of my car, a (presumably homeless) man approached me, crying, “Hey, hey! You got a cigarette?” I was mildly alarmed, but right when I turned to face this figure emerging from the shadows, it was he who was taken aback. “Whoa! You look just like . . . that guy!” I shook my head, “Who’s that?” “The Beatles guy!” he said. “John Lennon?” (There’s not much chance of people mistaking me for Paul.) The guy seemed very pleased, but unfortunately, I couldn’t pay him back for his compliment, seeing that I tend not to pack death sticks.
This coming just a few weeks after the comment from my dance friend, I wondered if I had subconsciously been cultivating Lennon’s look. I certainly had him on the brain, having recently seen a TV documentary about his death and life. This was also around the time when the Working Class Hero two-disc compilation of Lennon’s best was released – my first serious exposure to Lennon’s post-Beatles work.
Hearing the music 30 years after it was made, I marveled at how humane it sounded, especially compared to most of the mindless aggression that clogs the airwaves today. In his songs, I heard a man obsessed with personal freedom and in love with love itself; fitting, since between love and freedom, when one is absent, the other soon withers.
Some time after my two interesting encounters, I had a chance to travel to New York, and I visited Strawberry Fields, a small garden on the western edge of Central Park, just across the street from the Dakota Apartments, where Lennon lived and died. Strawberry Fields commemorates his life and dreams, and on the day I visited, the Imagine mosaic at its center was particularly inviting:
Without any premeditation on my part, I think I just naturally gravitated to John more than the other Beatles. I’m not saying his songs were the best in the band (not all of them anyway), but only that I empathize most with the way he seemed to be. I think of how much we miss him now, not just his music, but the hopeful vision it fostered, and I hope that my similarities to him go beyond looks.
As much as I admire John’s solo work, he’ll always be a Beatle first in my mind. Today, September 9, 2009, is the big release day: all of their original studio albums REMASTERED(!) in two sets: 1) a stereo box set, and 2) a mono box set containing those albums that were originally mixed in mono sound. (Oh, and a little thing called The Beatles: Rock Band also comes out today.) It’s fitting that a band that took 22 years to remaster their music should issue it exclusively on a dying technology – the compact disc. (To be fair, the original 1987 CDs were “remastered”; it’s just that the 1980s tech sounded older and worse with every passing year.)
I bought the stereo box today. It may be the first time I’ve ever purchased a CD on the release date. It’ll also be the last; these are the last CDs I’ll ever buy. Well, until I can get my hands on the mono box.
The first was from a girl I met through ballroom dance. One day, without prelude, she told me I reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t remember whom. “Someone famous and very good-looking?” I fished. I got it half right. After dance class, she finally conjured the name: “John Lennon.” She suggested that it went beyond the glasses and hair; there was something in my demeanor.
The second comment came after I had parked on the street one night, on my way to the Casbah for a show (undoubtedly, it was a sub-Beatles-caliber band). Just as I stepped out of my car, a (presumably homeless) man approached me, crying, “Hey, hey! You got a cigarette?” I was mildly alarmed, but right when I turned to face this figure emerging from the shadows, it was he who was taken aback. “Whoa! You look just like . . . that guy!” I shook my head, “Who’s that?” “The Beatles guy!” he said. “John Lennon?” (There’s not much chance of people mistaking me for Paul.) The guy seemed very pleased, but unfortunately, I couldn’t pay him back for his compliment, seeing that I tend not to pack death sticks.
This coming just a few weeks after the comment from my dance friend, I wondered if I had subconsciously been cultivating Lennon’s look. I certainly had him on the brain, having recently seen a TV documentary about his death and life. This was also around the time when the Working Class Hero two-disc compilation of Lennon’s best was released – my first serious exposure to Lennon’s post-Beatles work.
Hearing the music 30 years after it was made, I marveled at how humane it sounded, especially compared to most of the mindless aggression that clogs the airwaves today. In his songs, I heard a man obsessed with personal freedom and in love with love itself; fitting, since between love and freedom, when one is absent, the other soon withers.
Some time after my two interesting encounters, I had a chance to travel to New York, and I visited Strawberry Fields, a small garden on the western edge of Central Park, just across the street from the Dakota Apartments, where Lennon lived and died. Strawberry Fields commemorates his life and dreams, and on the day I visited, the Imagine mosaic at its center was particularly inviting:
Without any premeditation on my part, I think I just naturally gravitated to John more than the other Beatles. I’m not saying his songs were the best in the band (not all of them anyway), but only that I empathize most with the way he seemed to be. I think of how much we miss him now, not just his music, but the hopeful vision it fostered, and I hope that my similarities to him go beyond looks.
* * *
As much as I admire John’s solo work, he’ll always be a Beatle first in my mind. Today, September 9, 2009, is the big release day: all of their original studio albums REMASTERED(!) in two sets: 1) a stereo box set, and 2) a mono box set containing those albums that were originally mixed in mono sound. (Oh, and a little thing called The Beatles: Rock Band also comes out today.) It’s fitting that a band that took 22 years to remaster their music should issue it exclusively on a dying technology – the compact disc. (To be fair, the original 1987 CDs were “remastered”; it’s just that the 1980s tech sounded older and worse with every passing year.)
I bought the stereo box today. It may be the first time I’ve ever purchased a CD on the release date. It’ll also be the last; these are the last CDs I’ll ever buy. Well, until I can get my hands on the mono box.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Quiet Desperation
The other day, I was driving through the Parkway Plaza shopping mall (a Westfield joint) to get to the movie theater, when I passed a spot that had burned itself into my memory about five or six years ago.
It was, let’s say, the Christmas season, and I was driving down the back alley behind the mall, when I saw a huddle of burly cops tackling a guy on the sidewalk behind the JC Penney. Three of El Cajon’s finest pinned the schmo down while a fourth bruiser called it in. Called for what, backup? I don’t know. That poor idiot chewing concrete wasn’t exactly built like a pro football player (speaking of criminals), unless we’re talking about the punter.
The guy was clearly nabbed for shoplifting (which, according to shopping mall operators, is the second most heinous crime in the history of the world, after what Hitler did). I couldn’t tell how far he had run or how long he had been chased, but it ended the way these things inevitably end: the guy was dogmeat.
Not twenty feet away stood a woman, probably dogmeat’s wife or mistress, shopping bags dangling from hands that had risen to cover her quivering mouth. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her body trembled with fear for her man. She looked like a wrecked, heartbroken puppy dog in “beg” position. As shocking as it was to see someone being put down and more or less bagged like a trophy kill, I was far more disturbed by the sight of the woman, powerless to help him or herself, and probably caught between the twin agonies of “Why’d he do it?” and “Please God don’t let them hurt him.”
What could this guy have possibly stolen that was worth this violence? Maybe a pair of Arizona jeans, or something from the Izod collection? No, judging by the universe’s sick sense of humor, it was probably a 14k gold electroplated necklace for the lady in his life. A Christmas tale worthy of Dickens, or maybe O. Henry, if one of them would deign to come back to life and write it.
To quote another writer, Thoreau states in Walden that “thieving and robbery . . . take place only in societies where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.” I think Thoreau’s blunt idealism may be a bit much, but I do see his point.
Whatever it was that this man so desperately needed or wanted, I can’t help but think that it might not have seemed so important if only there were more things going right in his life.
It was, let’s say, the Christmas season, and I was driving down the back alley behind the mall, when I saw a huddle of burly cops tackling a guy on the sidewalk behind the JC Penney. Three of El Cajon’s finest pinned the schmo down while a fourth bruiser called it in. Called for what, backup? I don’t know. That poor idiot chewing concrete wasn’t exactly built like a pro football player (speaking of criminals), unless we’re talking about the punter.
The guy was clearly nabbed for shoplifting (which, according to shopping mall operators, is the second most heinous crime in the history of the world, after what Hitler did). I couldn’t tell how far he had run or how long he had been chased, but it ended the way these things inevitably end: the guy was dogmeat.
Not twenty feet away stood a woman, probably dogmeat’s wife or mistress, shopping bags dangling from hands that had risen to cover her quivering mouth. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her body trembled with fear for her man. She looked like a wrecked, heartbroken puppy dog in “beg” position. As shocking as it was to see someone being put down and more or less bagged like a trophy kill, I was far more disturbed by the sight of the woman, powerless to help him or herself, and probably caught between the twin agonies of “Why’d he do it?” and “Please God don’t let them hurt him.”
What could this guy have possibly stolen that was worth this violence? Maybe a pair of Arizona jeans, or something from the Izod collection? No, judging by the universe’s sick sense of humor, it was probably a 14k gold electroplated necklace for the lady in his life. A Christmas tale worthy of Dickens, or maybe O. Henry, if one of them would deign to come back to life and write it.
To quote another writer, Thoreau states in Walden that “thieving and robbery . . . take place only in societies where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.” I think Thoreau’s blunt idealism may be a bit much, but I do see his point.
Whatever it was that this man so desperately needed or wanted, I can’t help but think that it might not have seemed so important if only there were more things going right in his life.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Touched for the very last time
As I walked down Michigan Avenue on a recent trip to Chicago, I saw a familiar building bearing unfamiliar nameplates. The Virgin Megastore at the corner of Michigan and Ohio, long one of my favorite stops along Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile,” is no more, and has been replaced by a Forever 21 (aka, “XXI”), the ubiquitous young women’s fashion store that specializes in designer knockoffs at Walmart prices.
Here is how the building looked during my college years:
Here is the same building on June 4, 2009:
Along with the old Tower Records store on S. Wabash (and to a lesser extent the still extant Borders on N. Michigan), Virgin was one of Chicago’s premier places to browse for music, especially classical music, which evolved to become practically the only music I listened to in college.
I can trace my love of classical music to two sources: 1) my father’s enjoyment and regular playing of it at home while I was growing up, and 2) my time at the University of Chicago, where my friends introduced me to their favorite music, got me hooked, and led me to my own discoveries. Very quickly, borrowing CDs from friends just wasn’t enough. I had acquired the thirst, and a bite here and a nibble there would no longer satisfy. So I went shopping.
Tower had an immense selection, but Virgin was arguably as good, and it had Tower beat in terms of presentation. Tower was housed in a gritty building under the El tracks. The classical section was on the top floor, and though there was an escalator up, there was none going down, so when I was done poring over Beethoven box sets and woefully pulling my pocket linings out of my pants, I had to walk down along a steep and winding side staircase that emptied into a filthy corridor adorned only with a stack of Chicago Readers and the smell of fresh urine.
Virgin, on the other hand, was an immaculate prestige store right on the Mag Mile. In contrast to the raucous downstairs selection of rock, pop, and hip-hop, with music blaring from above and played by a live DJ, the classical section upstairs featured quiet contemplation among the glimmering rows of CDs, as well as an entire wall of opera recordings. This was the real McCoy, unlike the token classical sections of off-brand “100 Greatest Hits of Mozart” CDs found at your local Best Buy or the late, unlamented Circuit City.
Both Tower and Virgin had all the labels: Decca (formerly London in the U.S.), Philips (now joined with Decca), Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, EMI, Teldec, Naxos – all your favorites, each with their more or less exclusive stable of legendary performers.
My favorites were the box sets. These were a cost-effective way for a college student to amass a library of classical music, and they were the fundamental building blocks of my collection. I had little patience for browsing new releases by the latest diva of the month or the “next great violinist,” sold at a premium price. I preferred the classic recordings, superlative performances that had endured over the decades, and every label had its archive series, boxed and priced to move. DG’s 9-disc complete set of Dvorak string quartets played by the Prague String Quartet set you back about $70, a hefty sum, but also a relative bargain when you consider that it’s just $8 a disc. Decca’s 13-disc set of the complete Chopin solo piano music played by Vladimir Ashkenazy cost about $95, a veritable mint, but still, that’s about $7 a disc. The bargain sets brought great, sophisticated music into the hands of a college student who was only just learning how to pretend to the high life.
Sure, it could be argued that no one pianist’s interpretation of Chopin, no matter how fine, could really tell the whole story of the composer’s work. That’s true enough, and I’d love to buy multiple recordings of my favorite works and compare the nuances that each performer brings to the music. I’d also love to be massaged by Russian princesses while eating foie gras seared by my manservant, Witherby. . . .
Eventually, we’ll have clueless generations who won’t remember a time when people actually bought music on shiny discs in a store, rather than online from a degenerate corporation clad in whiteface. That is, if people buy music at all. Hell, even I can barely believe that I once took for granted that you had to pay money for music. How stupid was I? (For the record, it was during my college years that the mp3 downloading revolution and its attendant piracy were born, but that’s a story for another time.)
As a commercial venture, the Virgin Megastore chain was a much bigger success for Richard Branson than, say, The Rebel Billionaire. With the way the world is going now, I don’t know if either Branson or anyone else could, or would even want to, replace it. Borders and Barnes and Noble are okay. Amazon has the volume, but the interface is so 1997 (and not in the good way). And classical music is comparatively difficult to find in the downloadable world (though this will certainly be the answer one day). For all our technological advances, one thing seems obvious to me: Browsing through thousands of CDs in a store is fun. Browsing through thousands of links and web pages on your laptop is . . . mind-numbing.
As a side note, I wish there were a men’s version of Forever 21, a store that carried highly fashionable and “of the moment” menswear that could be bought with the change stuck beneath your sofa cushions (if you could afford a sofa, which I can’t). There is H&M, the super-popular Swedish chain that slowly crawled across America and has only in the past two years penetrated the West Coast. H&M carries a full men’s selection, but overall, they are more like the sartorial analogue to Ikea than a place for imitation couture. They specialize in a Euro-minimalist aesthetic, rather than the more diverse dabbling in trendy styles that characterizes Forever 21.
Indeed, the bigger Forever 21 stores now have a men’s section, usually occupying a disgraced corner of the store, like the unruly kid forced to don a dunce cap. And while the prices and material are in line with the ladies’ selections, the “designers” at XXI apparently believe that men like to wear only gray, black, and white, and have an inordinate fondness for shapeless hoodies over skintight jeans. The lady’s side showcases pop tarts, faux vintage princesses, and cute tomboys; the men’s side perpetuates slob chic. Why the disconnect?
Though I know many women would disagree with me, it is entirely obvious to me that cheap, good men’s clothing is much harder to find than cheap, good women’s clothing. At Forever 21, girls can buy a t-shirt for $5. They can buy a skirt for $10 and a dress for $20. I’ve seen $16 jeans there, and they weren’t on sale. The only place I could find prices like that for men’s clothing is Old Navy, and I swear their stuff is made from crumpled newsprint.
Until some visionary fashionisto brings us a Forever Dudes Be Stylin’, you can find me in the clearance racks at the Banana Republic Factory Store. Yeah, the shirts say “Banana Republic” on them and are emblazoned with your typical fake golf tournaments and bogus yacht races, but come on – they’re $3! Even Witherby has to eat.
Now about those Russian princesses . . .
Here is how the building looked during my college years:
Here is the same building on June 4, 2009:
Along with the old Tower Records store on S. Wabash (and to a lesser extent the still extant Borders on N. Michigan), Virgin was one of Chicago’s premier places to browse for music, especially classical music, which evolved to become practically the only music I listened to in college.
I can trace my love of classical music to two sources: 1) my father’s enjoyment and regular playing of it at home while I was growing up, and 2) my time at the University of Chicago, where my friends introduced me to their favorite music, got me hooked, and led me to my own discoveries. Very quickly, borrowing CDs from friends just wasn’t enough. I had acquired the thirst, and a bite here and a nibble there would no longer satisfy. So I went shopping.
Tower had an immense selection, but Virgin was arguably as good, and it had Tower beat in terms of presentation. Tower was housed in a gritty building under the El tracks. The classical section was on the top floor, and though there was an escalator up, there was none going down, so when I was done poring over Beethoven box sets and woefully pulling my pocket linings out of my pants, I had to walk down along a steep and winding side staircase that emptied into a filthy corridor adorned only with a stack of Chicago Readers and the smell of fresh urine.
Virgin, on the other hand, was an immaculate prestige store right on the Mag Mile. In contrast to the raucous downstairs selection of rock, pop, and hip-hop, with music blaring from above and played by a live DJ, the classical section upstairs featured quiet contemplation among the glimmering rows of CDs, as well as an entire wall of opera recordings. This was the real McCoy, unlike the token classical sections of off-brand “100 Greatest Hits of Mozart” CDs found at your local Best Buy or the late, unlamented Circuit City.
Both Tower and Virgin had all the labels: Decca (formerly London in the U.S.), Philips (now joined with Decca), Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, EMI, Teldec, Naxos – all your favorites, each with their more or less exclusive stable of legendary performers.
My favorites were the box sets. These were a cost-effective way for a college student to amass a library of classical music, and they were the fundamental building blocks of my collection. I had little patience for browsing new releases by the latest diva of the month or the “next great violinist,” sold at a premium price. I preferred the classic recordings, superlative performances that had endured over the decades, and every label had its archive series, boxed and priced to move. DG’s 9-disc complete set of Dvorak string quartets played by the Prague String Quartet set you back about $70, a hefty sum, but also a relative bargain when you consider that it’s just $8 a disc. Decca’s 13-disc set of the complete Chopin solo piano music played by Vladimir Ashkenazy cost about $95, a veritable mint, but still, that’s about $7 a disc. The bargain sets brought great, sophisticated music into the hands of a college student who was only just learning how to pretend to the high life.
Sure, it could be argued that no one pianist’s interpretation of Chopin, no matter how fine, could really tell the whole story of the composer’s work. That’s true enough, and I’d love to buy multiple recordings of my favorite works and compare the nuances that each performer brings to the music. I’d also love to be massaged by Russian princesses while eating foie gras seared by my manservant, Witherby. . . .
Eventually, we’ll have clueless generations who won’t remember a time when people actually bought music on shiny discs in a store, rather than online from a degenerate corporation clad in whiteface. That is, if people buy music at all. Hell, even I can barely believe that I once took for granted that you had to pay money for music. How stupid was I? (For the record, it was during my college years that the mp3 downloading revolution and its attendant piracy were born, but that’s a story for another time.)
As a commercial venture, the Virgin Megastore chain was a much bigger success for Richard Branson than, say, The Rebel Billionaire. With the way the world is going now, I don’t know if either Branson or anyone else could, or would even want to, replace it. Borders and Barnes and Noble are okay. Amazon has the volume, but the interface is so 1997 (and not in the good way). And classical music is comparatively difficult to find in the downloadable world (though this will certainly be the answer one day). For all our technological advances, one thing seems obvious to me: Browsing through thousands of CDs in a store is fun. Browsing through thousands of links and web pages on your laptop is . . . mind-numbing.
* * *
As a side note, I wish there were a men’s version of Forever 21, a store that carried highly fashionable and “of the moment” menswear that could be bought with the change stuck beneath your sofa cushions (if you could afford a sofa, which I can’t). There is H&M, the super-popular Swedish chain that slowly crawled across America and has only in the past two years penetrated the West Coast. H&M carries a full men’s selection, but overall, they are more like the sartorial analogue to Ikea than a place for imitation couture. They specialize in a Euro-minimalist aesthetic, rather than the more diverse dabbling in trendy styles that characterizes Forever 21.
Indeed, the bigger Forever 21 stores now have a men’s section, usually occupying a disgraced corner of the store, like the unruly kid forced to don a dunce cap. And while the prices and material are in line with the ladies’ selections, the “designers” at XXI apparently believe that men like to wear only gray, black, and white, and have an inordinate fondness for shapeless hoodies over skintight jeans. The lady’s side showcases pop tarts, faux vintage princesses, and cute tomboys; the men’s side perpetuates slob chic. Why the disconnect?
Though I know many women would disagree with me, it is entirely obvious to me that cheap, good men’s clothing is much harder to find than cheap, good women’s clothing. At Forever 21, girls can buy a t-shirt for $5. They can buy a skirt for $10 and a dress for $20. I’ve seen $16 jeans there, and they weren’t on sale. The only place I could find prices like that for men’s clothing is Old Navy, and I swear their stuff is made from crumpled newsprint.
Until some visionary fashionisto brings us a Forever Dudes Be Stylin’, you can find me in the clearance racks at the Banana Republic Factory Store. Yeah, the shirts say “Banana Republic” on them and are emblazoned with your typical fake golf tournaments and bogus yacht races, but come on – they’re $3! Even Witherby has to eat.
Now about those Russian princesses . . .
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Baby, one more time . . .
As Robert Lusetich put it, “It might have been one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen in sports,” and I suppose he’s seen a lot of sad things. Old Tom Watson, all 59 years of him, had taken a one-stroke lead into the final hole of The Open Championships at Turnberry. Needing only to par the hole to win his ninth major and become the most improbable victor in the history of sports, he instead flubbed two putts to end with a bogey, sending him into a playoff with Stewart Cink, who through no fault of his own had just become the villain of this morality play, and soon would become the destroyer of dreams.
I couldn’t find a live online video stream of the final round, so I settled for audio coverage, handled sparklingly by a pair of British announcers who commented with a melodious interplay of wit and charm that is simply foreign to their American counterparts. I listened to them amble from hopeful confidence in Watson’s chances to stunned deflation as the victory started to slip away so suddenly. When they announced Watson’s missed chance on the 18th hole, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach. As soon as he fell behind on the first hole of the four-hole playoff, I couldn’t listen anymore.
I’ve never wanted to play golf, and can only barely understand why anyone would. Walking around under a hot sun, a sack loaded with metal rods strapped to your back? I’ll pass, thanks. I think there’s a chain gang nearby that has an opening.
But I found myself mesmerized by the possibilities presented by this year’s British Open. When Watson shot a 65 and settled near the top of the leaderboard after the first round, I could smell a good, but brief, story. When he pulled into a tie for the lead after the second round and then kept the lead after the third, I was dumbfounded. The numbers: 59 years old. Watson last won a major in 1983, a generation ago. The oldest person ever to win a major: Julius Boros won the PGA Championship at 48. There’s always some old-timer who experiences a second wind at one of the majors, who seems touched by the gods of golf, at least for a few rounds, and this time, it was one of the legends of the sport.
Last year at the Open, it was 53-year-old Greg Norman’s turn to laugh in the face of Father Time. Like what happened with Watson, I found Norman’s run to be an inspirational story, and I was disappointed that he didn’t win, as well. But this year hurts more, and it’s because last year at Royal Birkdale, the Great White Shark faded early in the fourth round, and by midday, we had come to terms with his great attempt and inevitable failure. We wished him well as he went home with his newlywed bride, Chris Evert.
This year at Turnberry, Watson summoned some kind of power or sorcery to get within a hair’s breadth of a win. The 18th hole, his lips almost planted on the Claret Jug, and even when he fell there, he still had a chance in the playoff (although I think anyone who saw him knew that his only real chance to win was at that 18th hole). And there’s the history. Watson’s fabled “Duel in the Sun” with Jack Nicklaus happened on this very course in 1977, when the younger Watson conquered the older and far more celebrated Golden Bear on the final hole in what is considered by some to be the greatest golf tournament of them all. For Watson to win here again, 32 years later, when by all sanity, he should be sipping Arnold Palmers in a lawn chair somewhere – that would be history.
History, as opposed to just another Tiger-centric tournament. How rare is the former, and how increasingly unbearable is the latter. If Watson had won, it would have been the biggest story in the history of golf, and maybe even one of the biggest stories in sports history, right up there with the “Miracle on Ice” (if you’re into gee-whiz patriotism), Jesse Owens winning four golds at the Nazi Olympic Games, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, and one of those Ali fights that everyone talks about.
Okay, so a Watson win probably wouldn’t have had the cultural resonance of those moments, but it really should. Golf is different from all other sports. It’s the only sport where a 59-year-old man could even have a chance of winning against men half his age. And yes, golf is meant to be played by the old, but as we saw this year and last, it certainly isn’t meant to be won by the old. If Watson had pulled it off, he would have single-handedly demolished what we all take for granted – that you can never be as good as you once were. The fact that he didn’t win means that we were all cheated of that upheaval.
I have no doubt that the better performer won the Open this year. But the better story? Not by a long shot. After all, do you remember who won the Open last year after Norman’s collapse? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I couldn’t find a live online video stream of the final round, so I settled for audio coverage, handled sparklingly by a pair of British announcers who commented with a melodious interplay of wit and charm that is simply foreign to their American counterparts. I listened to them amble from hopeful confidence in Watson’s chances to stunned deflation as the victory started to slip away so suddenly. When they announced Watson’s missed chance on the 18th hole, I actually felt a little sick to my stomach. As soon as he fell behind on the first hole of the four-hole playoff, I couldn’t listen anymore.
I’ve never wanted to play golf, and can only barely understand why anyone would. Walking around under a hot sun, a sack loaded with metal rods strapped to your back? I’ll pass, thanks. I think there’s a chain gang nearby that has an opening.
But I found myself mesmerized by the possibilities presented by this year’s British Open. When Watson shot a 65 and settled near the top of the leaderboard after the first round, I could smell a good, but brief, story. When he pulled into a tie for the lead after the second round and then kept the lead after the third, I was dumbfounded. The numbers: 59 years old. Watson last won a major in 1983, a generation ago. The oldest person ever to win a major: Julius Boros won the PGA Championship at 48. There’s always some old-timer who experiences a second wind at one of the majors, who seems touched by the gods of golf, at least for a few rounds, and this time, it was one of the legends of the sport.
Last year at the Open, it was 53-year-old Greg Norman’s turn to laugh in the face of Father Time. Like what happened with Watson, I found Norman’s run to be an inspirational story, and I was disappointed that he didn’t win, as well. But this year hurts more, and it’s because last year at Royal Birkdale, the Great White Shark faded early in the fourth round, and by midday, we had come to terms with his great attempt and inevitable failure. We wished him well as he went home with his newlywed bride, Chris Evert.
This year at Turnberry, Watson summoned some kind of power or sorcery to get within a hair’s breadth of a win. The 18th hole, his lips almost planted on the Claret Jug, and even when he fell there, he still had a chance in the playoff (although I think anyone who saw him knew that his only real chance to win was at that 18th hole). And there’s the history. Watson’s fabled “Duel in the Sun” with Jack Nicklaus happened on this very course in 1977, when the younger Watson conquered the older and far more celebrated Golden Bear on the final hole in what is considered by some to be the greatest golf tournament of them all. For Watson to win here again, 32 years later, when by all sanity, he should be sipping Arnold Palmers in a lawn chair somewhere – that would be history.
History, as opposed to just another Tiger-centric tournament. How rare is the former, and how increasingly unbearable is the latter. If Watson had won, it would have been the biggest story in the history of golf, and maybe even one of the biggest stories in sports history, right up there with the “Miracle on Ice” (if you’re into gee-whiz patriotism), Jesse Owens winning four golds at the Nazi Olympic Games, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, and one of those Ali fights that everyone talks about.
Okay, so a Watson win probably wouldn’t have had the cultural resonance of those moments, but it really should. Golf is different from all other sports. It’s the only sport where a 59-year-old man could even have a chance of winning against men half his age. And yes, golf is meant to be played by the old, but as we saw this year and last, it certainly isn’t meant to be won by the old. If Watson had pulled it off, he would have single-handedly demolished what we all take for granted – that you can never be as good as you once were. The fact that he didn’t win means that we were all cheated of that upheaval.
I have no doubt that the better performer won the Open this year. But the better story? Not by a long shot. After all, do you remember who won the Open last year after Norman’s collapse? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Pictures from an Expedition
Last month, I made my annual visit to Chicago. I go back every year for an alumni function, just for two or three days. It’s a chance to catch a little rain, eat my favorite foods, and provoke a few memories. The memories I have of my time in college grow fainter year by year, and since memory’s best friend is documentation, I thought I’d put together a little slideshow, and let the present jog whatever it can of the past.
The best cookie I almost had
This is a picture of the cookie I ate in lieu of the best cookie I’ve ever had:
Raspberry-filled shortbread with icing. At their best, these are maybe the second best cookie I’ve ever had. Today, they were honestly a bit stale. These are sold at the Classics Café at the University of Chicago (in the Classics Building, naturally), and are generally found individually wrapped inside a plastic jar at the cashier, next to another plastic jar that generally holds the best cookie I’ve ever had: a shortbread cookie of basically the same shape and proportions as this raspberry one, but filled instead with caramel, topped with a thick mound of chocolate fudge (these are sometimes called “thumbprint” cookies). Biting into one of these was like having cookie, cake, brownie, and fudge all at once, but with none of the remorse. (The raspberry does what it can, given limited resources.)
I was introduced to both of these cookies by my friend, Caroline, who in my last year of college told me that these were the best cookies she had ever had. I’m sorry I was at the end of my collegiate rope when I finally found my way to them in that plastic jar, just on the other side of the main quad from my dorm room. But I am eternally grateful to Caroline for her great culinary service to me. Now every year, I return to the Classics Café to look for them and get my annual fix, but this year, I was denied my chocolate cookie. Ironically, a few years after we had both left Chicago, I spoke to Caroline about the cookie that changed my taste buds forever, and told her how I would never forget her introducing them to me. She had no memory of the incident or even the cookies! What a strange, amoral monster is memory.
How green was my memory
I always said that the University of Chicago is the most beautiful place in the world. Botany Pond in the spring is the living showcase of my words. When the ivy grows into full leaf over the entire façade of Erman Hall, you can take in a nearly 180 degree view where everything is green. Here, a couple of mallards add their plumage to the landscape:
I love it when the wind picks up and catches the ivy. The effect is like the rippling surface of the ocean, or a blanket being billowed over a mattress.
In a different season, in the fall of my second year, Botany Pond once played a crucial role in the house elections at my dorm, Snell Hall. My friend, Zach, had just been elected house president, a position of much esteem, and unbeknownst to him or me, the more senior members of the house had prepared for Zach the traditional coronation ritual. It began with many “hip hip, hoorays,” then everyone got on their feet and herded Zach out the front door and down the slate path toward the pond. I followed along, not knowing what was to come. When we reached the edge of Botany Pond, the leaders of the pack hoisted Zach up by his arms and feet and inaugurated him by heaving him into the pond. Ah, college.
On the boob tube
As I flipped through the TV listings at the hotel, I came across this gem:
“Humankind enslaved.” A very succinct synopsis of The Matrix, although it could also describe, oh, Planet of the Apes. The Matrix came out in 1999, the midpoint of my college career, just before the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Then and now, it seems, The Matrix was the more . . . critically appreciated(?) movie, but I found it to be just a chilly rehash of New Testament flapdoodle. It certainly wasn’t a movie that would inspire me to make a midnight run.
The best pizza I’ve ever had?
During my college orientation, we first-years were almost buried in free food, much of it Chicago-style pizza. Freshman 15? That’s for those svelte West Coast colleges. Chicago seemed intent on delivering the Freshman 30. The two primary chains were Edwardo’s, which touted its “natural” pizza, whatever that means, and Giordano’s. Though the latter was and is my favorite, both chains made great pies, the likes of which I had never even imagined back home in San Diego. I mean, chunky tomato sauce covering the entire surface? Oh, you Midwesterners! Here is a spinach and sausage stuffed pizza from Giordano’s:
Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the photo to show scale aside from the laptop charger in the top left. I estimate that the pizza was about ten inches in diameter, and weighed at least a pound and a half. Yes, it was the “small.”
I don’t know if Giordano’s is the best pizza I’ve ever had. Bella Bacino’s on Wacker makes a strong case. (The reason I don’t qualify it as best “stuffed” pizza is because anyone who’s ever had stuffed pizza knows that other pizza styles are no longer contenders.) I do know that after I left Chicago and returned to my hometown, I longed for stuffed pizza and wished that some Chicagoan would have the gonads to take it national. In the too many years since I graduated from college, San Diego has seen the birth of at least three pizzerias that purport to make Chicago-style stuffed pizza. The most renowned, I suppose, is a sad joint called Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria in the North Park neighborhood. When I first heard of them, I wore out a good pair of sneakers running over there to try their stuffed pie. It looks like the real thing. It even smells like the real thing. And then I tasted it.
Before you read on, know that I reserve graphic language only for occasions that genuinely demand that level of rancor. So I reluctantly but justifiably say that if I were a less stoic man, I would have thanked the chef by urinating on his creation and not shaking his hand. Yes, reader, I warned you that my words had acid. Frown on me if you must.
The other two stuffed shirts in town don’t fare much better, though they try their darnedest. My first conjecture was that the failure was in the ingredients. The cheese is the primary criminal in the San Diego pies. In Chicago, the cheese oozes out of the pie like high-calorie molten lava. In the imposter pies, the cheese is solid and congealed, with a texture similar to that sponge rubber they use to make sandals. I swear I saw unmelted strands of cheese once or twice, which is a scandal.
And then I thought, maybe we don’t have the right ovens in San Diego. Maybe the pizzas aren’t cooked hot enough or long enough. They do seem to take longer to make in Chicago. The quoted time for my small at Giordano’s was 50 minutes, but it ended up taking about an hour and 15. In San Diego, they can pop out a large in under 45 minutes.
And then I realized that I was just making excuses for these petty crooks. It wasn’t the cheese or the oven or something special in that Chicago River water. Ingredients and equipment are a big part of cuisine, but not nearly the whole. A great pizza is made by a great chef, and that’s what Chicago has that San Diego doesn’t. You don’t just pay a pimply high schooler 7 clams an hour to slap cheese and sauce on flat dough, then call it a pizza. Without the care and knowhow, you don’t get a Giordano’s.
Ode on a Grecian pie
Pictures of partially eaten food may become my signature. Here we have a delicacy that takes me way back and way far away to my study abroad days in Greece. Back in the old country, we called this a “zambonotyropita,” which means, “ham-cheese pie”:
In my traveling life, there have been a few unforgettable regional foods, including sweet pork jerky in Hong Kong, mandarin oranges in Japan, and stuffed pizza in Chicago (see above). These foods can be found in various bastardized forms elsewhere on the globe, even in San Diego. But after leaving Greece in the spring of 2000, I never again saw my beloved “pitas,” the multifarious pies made in those superb bakeries found all over the land of Homer. These are not American dessert pies or pizza pies, but more like a pastry.
Among these was the tyropita, a regular cheese pie, the milopita, a kind of apple pastry, and my favorite, the zambonotyropita, which had all the things that were good in the world: a thick slice of ham, melted cheese, and delicate and crispy yet soft phyllo dough. Back before this Euro nonsense, you could buy one of these golden oldies for about 300 drachmas (about a dollar), making it one of the best bargains in that entire sun-drenched nation.
Until now, I hadn’t seen this delicacy in the States, not even in Chicago’s Greektown, so imagine my surprise when I saw it in the food court at Chicago’s Midway Airport! The product is not exactly authentic; it uses diced ham instead of a slice, and the cheese is a little different, but as far as variants go, it’s pretty close to what I had in Greece, and it’s pretty delicious. The $6 price tag is pure American larceny, but what's a hungry Hellenist to do? I’m not sure I like the idea of having to make a special trip to Midway every time I’m in the mood for one, but I suppose it’s easier than flying to Greece.
The man of many ways
On my annual trips to Chicago, I always try to cram in as many activities as I can. I especially try to see the things I never got to see when I was a student, to do things I never seemed to have time for. Every year I make a list of things to do, and every year, I’m disappointed that I don’t complete it. We all have regrets when we leave college, and I look at these trips as a chance to make up for lost opportunities. I always feel like my Chicago experience is incomplete.
But this year, I realized that every year I come back, I do exactly what I most enjoyed doing in college: I walk around and run into things I didn’t expect to find.
Here is a picture from inside the newly completed Modern Wing of the Art Institute, looking at a glorious section of the Chicago skyline at night:
The long vertical lines of the window echo the lines of the skyscrapers, which surely was architect Renzo Piano’s intention. Perhaps the two reed-like statues in the left part of the frame are placed to emphasize the lines, as well. I’m the dark reflection in the middle of the photo, with my arm crooked. This is the only photo of me from my trip, which seems fitting, just another shadow passing through.
On my last day in Chicago, it rained. At last.
The best cookie I almost had
This is a picture of the cookie I ate in lieu of the best cookie I’ve ever had:
Raspberry-filled shortbread with icing. At their best, these are maybe the second best cookie I’ve ever had. Today, they were honestly a bit stale. These are sold at the Classics Café at the University of Chicago (in the Classics Building, naturally), and are generally found individually wrapped inside a plastic jar at the cashier, next to another plastic jar that generally holds the best cookie I’ve ever had: a shortbread cookie of basically the same shape and proportions as this raspberry one, but filled instead with caramel, topped with a thick mound of chocolate fudge (these are sometimes called “thumbprint” cookies). Biting into one of these was like having cookie, cake, brownie, and fudge all at once, but with none of the remorse. (The raspberry does what it can, given limited resources.)
I was introduced to both of these cookies by my friend, Caroline, who in my last year of college told me that these were the best cookies she had ever had. I’m sorry I was at the end of my collegiate rope when I finally found my way to them in that plastic jar, just on the other side of the main quad from my dorm room. But I am eternally grateful to Caroline for her great culinary service to me. Now every year, I return to the Classics Café to look for them and get my annual fix, but this year, I was denied my chocolate cookie. Ironically, a few years after we had both left Chicago, I spoke to Caroline about the cookie that changed my taste buds forever, and told her how I would never forget her introducing them to me. She had no memory of the incident or even the cookies! What a strange, amoral monster is memory.
How green was my memory
I always said that the University of Chicago is the most beautiful place in the world. Botany Pond in the spring is the living showcase of my words. When the ivy grows into full leaf over the entire façade of Erman Hall, you can take in a nearly 180 degree view where everything is green. Here, a couple of mallards add their plumage to the landscape:
I love it when the wind picks up and catches the ivy. The effect is like the rippling surface of the ocean, or a blanket being billowed over a mattress.
In a different season, in the fall of my second year, Botany Pond once played a crucial role in the house elections at my dorm, Snell Hall. My friend, Zach, had just been elected house president, a position of much esteem, and unbeknownst to him or me, the more senior members of the house had prepared for Zach the traditional coronation ritual. It began with many “hip hip, hoorays,” then everyone got on their feet and herded Zach out the front door and down the slate path toward the pond. I followed along, not knowing what was to come. When we reached the edge of Botany Pond, the leaders of the pack hoisted Zach up by his arms and feet and inaugurated him by heaving him into the pond. Ah, college.
On the boob tube
As I flipped through the TV listings at the hotel, I came across this gem:
“Humankind enslaved.” A very succinct synopsis of The Matrix, although it could also describe, oh, Planet of the Apes. The Matrix came out in 1999, the midpoint of my college career, just before the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Then and now, it seems, The Matrix was the more . . . critically appreciated(?) movie, but I found it to be just a chilly rehash of New Testament flapdoodle. It certainly wasn’t a movie that would inspire me to make a midnight run.
The best pizza I’ve ever had?
During my college orientation, we first-years were almost buried in free food, much of it Chicago-style pizza. Freshman 15? That’s for those svelte West Coast colleges. Chicago seemed intent on delivering the Freshman 30. The two primary chains were Edwardo’s, which touted its “natural” pizza, whatever that means, and Giordano’s. Though the latter was and is my favorite, both chains made great pies, the likes of which I had never even imagined back home in San Diego. I mean, chunky tomato sauce covering the entire surface? Oh, you Midwesterners! Here is a spinach and sausage stuffed pizza from Giordano’s:
Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the photo to show scale aside from the laptop charger in the top left. I estimate that the pizza was about ten inches in diameter, and weighed at least a pound and a half. Yes, it was the “small.”
I don’t know if Giordano’s is the best pizza I’ve ever had. Bella Bacino’s on Wacker makes a strong case. (The reason I don’t qualify it as best “stuffed” pizza is because anyone who’s ever had stuffed pizza knows that other pizza styles are no longer contenders.) I do know that after I left Chicago and returned to my hometown, I longed for stuffed pizza and wished that some Chicagoan would have the gonads to take it national. In the too many years since I graduated from college, San Diego has seen the birth of at least three pizzerias that purport to make Chicago-style stuffed pizza. The most renowned, I suppose, is a sad joint called Lefty’s Chicago Pizzeria in the North Park neighborhood. When I first heard of them, I wore out a good pair of sneakers running over there to try their stuffed pie. It looks like the real thing. It even smells like the real thing. And then I tasted it.
Before you read on, know that I reserve graphic language only for occasions that genuinely demand that level of rancor. So I reluctantly but justifiably say that if I were a less stoic man, I would have thanked the chef by urinating on his creation and not shaking his hand. Yes, reader, I warned you that my words had acid. Frown on me if you must.
The other two stuffed shirts in town don’t fare much better, though they try their darnedest. My first conjecture was that the failure was in the ingredients. The cheese is the primary criminal in the San Diego pies. In Chicago, the cheese oozes out of the pie like high-calorie molten lava. In the imposter pies, the cheese is solid and congealed, with a texture similar to that sponge rubber they use to make sandals. I swear I saw unmelted strands of cheese once or twice, which is a scandal.
And then I thought, maybe we don’t have the right ovens in San Diego. Maybe the pizzas aren’t cooked hot enough or long enough. They do seem to take longer to make in Chicago. The quoted time for my small at Giordano’s was 50 minutes, but it ended up taking about an hour and 15. In San Diego, they can pop out a large in under 45 minutes.
And then I realized that I was just making excuses for these petty crooks. It wasn’t the cheese or the oven or something special in that Chicago River water. Ingredients and equipment are a big part of cuisine, but not nearly the whole. A great pizza is made by a great chef, and that’s what Chicago has that San Diego doesn’t. You don’t just pay a pimply high schooler 7 clams an hour to slap cheese and sauce on flat dough, then call it a pizza. Without the care and knowhow, you don’t get a Giordano’s.
Ode on a Grecian pie
Pictures of partially eaten food may become my signature. Here we have a delicacy that takes me way back and way far away to my study abroad days in Greece. Back in the old country, we called this a “zambonotyropita,” which means, “ham-cheese pie”:
In my traveling life, there have been a few unforgettable regional foods, including sweet pork jerky in Hong Kong, mandarin oranges in Japan, and stuffed pizza in Chicago (see above). These foods can be found in various bastardized forms elsewhere on the globe, even in San Diego. But after leaving Greece in the spring of 2000, I never again saw my beloved “pitas,” the multifarious pies made in those superb bakeries found all over the land of Homer. These are not American dessert pies or pizza pies, but more like a pastry.
Among these was the tyropita, a regular cheese pie, the milopita, a kind of apple pastry, and my favorite, the zambonotyropita, which had all the things that were good in the world: a thick slice of ham, melted cheese, and delicate and crispy yet soft phyllo dough. Back before this Euro nonsense, you could buy one of these golden oldies for about 300 drachmas (about a dollar), making it one of the best bargains in that entire sun-drenched nation.
Until now, I hadn’t seen this delicacy in the States, not even in Chicago’s Greektown, so imagine my surprise when I saw it in the food court at Chicago’s Midway Airport! The product is not exactly authentic; it uses diced ham instead of a slice, and the cheese is a little different, but as far as variants go, it’s pretty close to what I had in Greece, and it’s pretty delicious. The $6 price tag is pure American larceny, but what's a hungry Hellenist to do? I’m not sure I like the idea of having to make a special trip to Midway every time I’m in the mood for one, but I suppose it’s easier than flying to Greece.
The man of many ways
On my annual trips to Chicago, I always try to cram in as many activities as I can. I especially try to see the things I never got to see when I was a student, to do things I never seemed to have time for. Every year I make a list of things to do, and every year, I’m disappointed that I don’t complete it. We all have regrets when we leave college, and I look at these trips as a chance to make up for lost opportunities. I always feel like my Chicago experience is incomplete.
But this year, I realized that every year I come back, I do exactly what I most enjoyed doing in college: I walk around and run into things I didn’t expect to find.
Here is a picture from inside the newly completed Modern Wing of the Art Institute, looking at a glorious section of the Chicago skyline at night:
The long vertical lines of the window echo the lines of the skyscrapers, which surely was architect Renzo Piano’s intention. Perhaps the two reed-like statues in the left part of the frame are placed to emphasize the lines, as well. I’m the dark reflection in the middle of the photo, with my arm crooked. This is the only photo of me from my trip, which seems fitting, just another shadow passing through.
On my last day in Chicago, it rained. At last.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
The Gloved One
The first time I saw The Gloved One, I wanted to be him. I wanted his moves, his swagger, his single glove, and most of all, his wounded history. But this Gloved One wasn’t the Moonwalker; it was a Skywalker. Luke Skywalker’s single black glove appeared in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, covering the prosthetic hand that replaced the one Vader had cut off in The Empire Strikes Back. Lightning would strike twice in 1983, which also saw the debut of Michael Jackson’s one white glove (not to mention the first moonwalk) in his performance of “Billie Jean” at the Motown 25 anniversary special on television.
It’s not so strange to compare Star Wars and Michael Jackson. I can’t think of two more universally known properties, nor two more universally liked properties. And if the recent activities of both had caused some fans’ devotion to sour a bit, perhaps it was because they remembered so well the Star Wars and Michael Jackson of their youth, and found their current renditions so changed.
I was familiar with Return of the Jedi from an early age. My father had taped it on VHS (probably copied from a rental video) and sent it with me to my babysitter’s house, and almost every night, we would pop it into the VCR and watch it. In fact, back then, I thought this movie was Star Wars, I mean, the entirety of Star Wars. I had no idea I was missing two previous episodes. What made it worse was that my father’s tape cut off about ten minutes before the end of the movie. For years, until I was maybe 10, I thought that this movie was Star Wars, and that it ended with the Death Star blowing up and Lando and his grotesque, mush-faced co-pilot screaming in joy. Then the tape ended and started rewinding, which I assumed was what always happened at the end of a movie. I never knew there was an Ewok celebration, never saw Vader’s body burning in a funeral pyre, never knew Anakin’s spirit found peace and companionship with the ghosts of Obi-Wan and Yoda. But I got everything else, and to me, Luke was the essence of cool, not just because of the lightsaber, but because he wielded it with that one black glove, and that made him dangerous, invincible, and maybe just a little bad.
On the contrary, I had never seen Michael Jackson’s performance on Motown 25, never even knew it existed. And if not for his death, I probably never would have come across what I now consider the most amazing five minutes of entertainment I’ve ever seen:
(For the Jackson 5 medley that immediately preceded this performance, see here. This clip shows Michael’s way with the crowd as he introduces his solo number.)
This performance is made all the more incredible by the fact that it’s lip-synched, yet it loses none of its immediacy. And for being the first time he showed the moonwalk to the world, it's astounding that it's just four steps lasting all of three seconds. But when I tried to figure out what made this performance stand out among all the iconic and mesmerizing images we have of Michael, I realized it was not only because it was live and he was throwing down all his best dance moves, but because he’s out there all by himself. You can see the band lurking in the shadows, but the reality is that MJ didn’t need anyone else on stage with him, and the audience wouldn’t have noticed anyone else when he was there. His greatest sidekicks on stage were sequins, a cocky fedora, and of course, the one white glove.
If you had asked me on June 24 what I thought of Michael Jackson, I would not have recognized having any personal feelings about him. It’s a tribute to the hugeness of his imprint on our social consciousness that I didn’t even notice all the ways he would show up in my daily life. Without trying to seek him out, I kept running into him.
Last year, just casually reading some forgotten online article about an unrelated subject, I learned for the first time that Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo on “Beat It.” Around the same time, I was delving into the post-Beatles recordings of Paul McCartney and John Lennon when I heard an unmistakable voice on Paul’s, “Say Say Say.” Maybe everyone other than me knew that Michael and Paul had collaborated, and not just that once. And that was indeed MJ singing on Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me,” which I first heard in the Adam Sandler movie, The Wedding Singer (the song is now a TV staple thanks to the Geico commercials).
When I started doing ballroom dance a few years ago, I never thought of Michael Jackson as one of my dance influences. After all, his was a completely different style from ballroom (he was practically a style in himself). Yet even in the ballroom world, there was no escaping the man.
I remember one time at a dance competition where I was entered in the hustle, an updated disco dance that is now usually set to synth-heavy contemporary dance-pop. To the delight of me and probably everyone else in the room, the music started to play, and it was “Billie Jean.” No one could have expected it. I couldn’t move at first because I was so surprised by a sound so familiar, yet strange in this context. Afterward, I thought to myself that they should play MJ at every competition.
I remember going to practice with my partner one day at our regular studio. In those days, I tended to wear white socks for no good reason except that I owned them. That day, I was dressed in black warm-ups from head to toe, with the exception of those white socks. The studio owner noticed me and asked if I were trying to channel Michael Jackson. I didn’t get the reference at first, but then I looked down to see that what looked a little ridiculous on me once looked funky and fresh on MJ.
All of these things were just neat facts and coincidences, because for years now up until his death, I never thought about Michael, maybe because he was everywhere all the time. I had ceased to notice, either for good or bad.
My first thought after hearing of his death was about Guitar Hero. Just a few days earlier, I had sung the vocal part on “Beat It,” with the guitar and bass parts in the hands of my siblings. In general, I do the vocals for this game under duress, and mostly because my siblings are reluctant and prefer the instruments. But I was ecstatic to get to this song, and I didn’t really know why. I knew I wouldn’t do it justice, and I just about mangled the “Hee” and “Hoo” yowls so badly that my brother thought I was making fun of the man, when in fact, those were part of the vocal track.
I always thought that a music artist’s success and influence shouldn’t be measured in number of albums sold. 100 million albums sold doesn’t tell you how many more millions (billions?) of people heard the songs and loved them. I never bought a Michael Jackson album or single or anything, but my first musical memory is of “Beat It.” It was my favorite song as a kid, and even though I don’t believe in favorites anymore, I don’t feel bad about saying that it’s still my favorite song. It may sound silly, but singing it in Guitar Hero has brought me closer to my memories of how much I loved Michael Jackson as a kid.
All my personal run-ins with MJ over the last few years fed into my subconscious sense of his impending comeback. Seemingly everything from the 80s and early 90s has returned to us, and the results have been a mix of successful (New Kids on the Block, Transformers, Indiana Jones, Rocky Balboa, Nintendo’s market dominance), mediocre (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Terminator, American Gladiators), and just plain ugly (Knight Rider, shutter shades, the G.I. Joe movie?). Finally, Michael Jackson announced what seemed inevitable, that he was coming back, live on stage. This was going to be his year. Even though I wouldn’t be there to see it, I wanted it to happen.
Now that the man is gone, I can only imagine what his comeback concerts in London would have done for his career and his legacy. I console myself by thinking that his death may have done exactly what he hoped the London concerts would do: bring the real Michael Jackson back into the public eye and private hearts. At least for now, it seems like all the ridicule and Michael-as-punching-bag have been wiped away, leaving only the music, which had dried up ever since his last album in 2001 and the subsequent child molestation trial that more or less banished him from the stage he once owned. More important than this, I think his death has reminded those of us who revered him back in the 80s that to us, he is still the greatest, even if we had forgotten.
On June 24, I wouldn’t have thought of Michael Jackson. On June 25, I remembered the man who first brought music into my life, and wondered how it was possible to feel so deeply about something and not even know it.
One last anecdote: I was in a Nordstrom store yesterday, browsing some shirt racks, when the mewling sounds of Coldplay overhead gave way to the opening synth of “Thriller.” I immediately started nodding my head to the beat, and then I looked up to see two other guys nodding their heads as well. We gave each other some knowing glances, but to be honest, these guys looked a little douchy, and I’d be surprised if I had much in common with them. Yet if there was one thing that could join us in a head-nodding unison, it could only be the Thriller himself. May the Force be with you, Michael Jackson.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Moonwalker
He was a man, take him for all in all. I shall not look upon his like again.
- Hamlet
Michael Jackson
1958-2009
- Hamlet
Michael Jackson1958-2009
A Tale of Two Cirques
I recently visited Las Vegas and had the rare and expensive opportunity to view not one, but two, Cirque du Soleil shows: KÀ and Zumanity. Both shows surprised me with how different they were from my preconceptions of what Cirque du Soleil was. Like most people, I had a passing familiarity with Cirque: acrobats in colorful skintights, extreme contortionism, and that dude who lies on top of that other dude.
Yeah, that’s the one.
I had my first glimpse of Cirque as a child, viewing the televised versions on Bravo. Though strange and impressive, I thought the acts were sort of one-note – supremely flexible people doing unconscionably weird things with their bodies. I suppose these French Canadian wunderkinds were rescuing the circus from the likes of Bozo clowns and the guy fighting a lion with only a whip and a tiny chair. Now, the concept is so popular that there are six Cirque du Soleil shows in residence in major Vegas casinos, and it seems that you’re not hardcore as a casino until you score a Cirque show. I’ve even seen a Cirque-style show (knockoff?) at Sea World; their Cirque de la Mer is the Cirque formula with jet skis.
Going in to the first show, KÀ, I had an ominous feeling that I would not be amused. I think I had some notion that Cirque was an overly precious bourgeois kind of entertainment, lacking the history and gravity of the theater or opera worlds, as well as the glitz and youthful exuberance of a rock concert.
Here are my impressions of the two shows. (Warning: Spoilers and adult situations ensue.)
KÀ
KÀ, at the MGM Grand, has the distinction of being the first Cirque show with a true narrative. That doesn’t mean there’s any talking, aside from a brief prologue voice-over. It’s more like watching a Tchaikovsky ballet, where the music and dance tell a story without words. Actually, what’s special about KÀ is that it’s like many different art forms at once. It’s like a ballet or silent stage play in its presentation, but there’s also an epic feel and emphasis on technology that make it about as cinematic as live performance gets. The cup holders and surround speakers built into the seats make it feel even more like being at the movies. It’s also a lot like one of those stunt shows at Universal Studios, with the enormous infrastructure and audience interaction before the show. In a less than enthralling way, it even feels like an amusement park ride, when staff members go around taking your picture and then giving you the option of purchasing the photo after the show.
I was skeptical about whether the show would be worth the exorbitant cost, which, even after student discounts and seasonal promotions, averages about $70 for the mid-range seats (we’re talking about $150 regular price for the best seats). Cirque du Soleil is notorious for its steep sticker prices, so I would be happy with nothing less than being utterly blown away. Well sir, consider yourself blown. KÀ is an amazing show, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
That’s a cliché statement, but think about how rare it is that you actually see something and don’t immediately categorize it as a type, another example of a style you’ve experienced many times over. A movie, a play, a sporting event, a museum, etc. – only the finest examples really slap you in the face and make you wonder, “What did I just see?” Otherwise, a movie is just a movie, and you don’t feel like you’ve experienced something more.
The story of KÀ, as a “story,” is rather minimal, and not always easy to follow. Two imperial twins, brother and sister, are separated from each other when enemy forces attack. They endure various adventures before finding each other again and reclaiming their rightful place. There’s a vaguely Chinese/Asian feel to the show, with a heavy emphasis on martial arts action and Asian-style costuming.
In addition to martial arts, KÀ has straight-up acrobatics, just as I expected from a Cirque show. But the show isn’t about acrobatics or any kind of athletic prowess as an end in itself. Rather, the human physique is placed in the service of a visionary dream. KÀ consists of a series of brilliant set pieces that don’t necessarily make up a great story, but individually, the pieces are gorgeous and, at their best, poetic.
My favorite section involved the twin sister being tossed overboard into the ocean during a storm. The thrashing ship, impressive on its own, gives way to the serene sight of the girl falling slowly down the entire height of the theater. Images of bubbles and watery ripples are projected onto a transparent screen at the front of the stage to render a perfectly convincing scene of a girl sinking deeper into the ocean. Then we see her find her bearings and swim downward to save her nursemaid who is in danger of drowning. It ends with the girl swimming upward to the surface, nursemaid in tow. The scene is simple and sparse, accompanied by a beautifully simple melody. I know what it is and what technology was employed, and yet I’ve never seen anything like it.
KÀ is as much about technology as acrobatics, and the most impressive piece of technology is the stage itself. It’s a floating platform operated by a gigantic robotic arm, and it seems to spend most of the show tilted toward the audience at various angles, so that the cast is constantly performing on a slant. At one point, after a scene at the beach, the stage goes completely vertical facing the audience, thus dumping I don’t know how many pounds of sand in a shimmering cascade into the pit below (I’ve read that the “sand” is actually cork).
I thought I had really seen something there, but the climactic battle scenes of the show involve the cast clashing on the same vertically-oriented stage. The cast members are in harnesses and suspended by wires, of course, and it created a melee in 2-D, kind of like a moving painting, with swordsmen flying all across a stationary background.
Even that was not as much fun as another use of the vertical stage: at one point, thin posts protruded from all over the face of the stage. The acrobats proceeded to chase and fight each other by swinging and climbing from post to post, all without wires or support. I saw one guy falling from the top to the bottom through the posts, shifting from side to side; it was like watching human Plinko.
There’s much more to the show, including shadow puppets, rock-climbing, aerial tissu, the wheel of death, archers shooting what looked to be real arrows over the cast-filled stage, and some small-scale pyrotechnics. It’s all accompanied by a grand score, the kind of music someone would write for a movie if told that the music would take center stage instead of the actors.
I came out of KÀ with enormous respect for what Cirque du Soleil is all about: challenging established art forms and melding them together to create new experiences in live performance. What began as a band of preternatural acrobats is now almost a myth-making enterprise. I don’t think it’s an accident that each Cirque show is given a meant-to-be iconic name (Mystere, O, Love, Varekai, etc.), as if they are new worlds in themselves.
Zumanity
Zumanity, at New York New York, has the distinction of being the first 18-and-over (aka “R-Rated”) Cirque show. From the name, I had originally thought that the show might have something to do animals, maybe even animals versus humans, à la Grizzly Man; I was sorely disappointed. Zumanity is essentially a cabaret-style burlesque show with acrobatics. Like KÀ, Zumanity is a series of set pieces, but without the narrative and the brilliance. There is near constant nudity, but surprisingly, it doesn’t make up for the lack of fun.
Admittedly, having seen KÀ the previous night, I couldn’t help judging Zumanity against it. Most of what I liked about the former was absent from the latter. In place of an army of cast members, Zumanity offered numbers focusing on couples and individuals. Instead of technology, we were given intimacy. The by turns martial and dreamlike score of KÀ gave way to dirges rooted in bluesy saxophone. Warriors in Asian robes were replaced by a woman in ass-less pants.
The best part of Zumanity came before the actual show started, in the pre-show banter and audience interaction. Bawdy cast members would take turns smothering defenseless audience members in their unyielding bosoms. Flamboyant male actors would bait some of the men in the seats into homoerotic innuendo. Ironically, the more the men resisted, the gayer they seemed. The lady doth protest too much?
By the time the 7-foot-tall drag queen came out to MC the night’s festivities, I was ready for an entertainment distinct from KÀ, but just as engaging. And yet the show, from its structure to its music to its acrobatics to its cringe-worthy attempts at humor, just didn’t do it for me. (This was a show that thought funny was an out-of-shape woman using liquid-filled Ziploc bags as breast enhancement devices.)
Numbers include two girls writhing in an oversized fishbowl, a young Fabio lookalike doing a strip tease, and two chiseled dudes engaged in what can only be described as steel cage tango-wrestling. None of the numbers were really bad, though I’m sure I would have been more impressed with the aerial work if I hadn’t already seen the same thing for free at Circus Circus earlier in the day. I was mostly disappointed by the unnatural attempt to marry a sex show with a circus show.
There is enough raw sexuality in the sight of a woman spinning and flipping her body in mid-air while clinging to a strip of aerial silk. Having her do it topless is not only overkill, but it distracts the viewer from the beauty of the movement, leaving it with a tawdry feel. Most of the pieces gave me the same uneasy feeling of stumbling upon some great acrobats who were trying too hard to be exotic dancers.
The most impressive performance of the night was also the most inappropriate. A solo contortionist took the stage, just a bony dude in short shorts who could twist his body into one godless position after another. He was a methodical loon, maintaining a feral grin on his face as he robotically went through his routine. He’s kind of what might happen if people were Transformers. He had me hooked as no other part of the show did. But what on earth did this sickboy have to do with the “sensual side of Cirque du Soleil”? Aside from a stomach-turning suggestion made by the MC that the man could do a self-inflicted crotchplant, I didn’t see any connection between his brand of contortionism and the show’s stated goal of titillation. Especially as a solo act!
For some sad reason, the show ended not with a bang-up group number, but with the MC inviting an old couple on stage and having them do a slow dance to celebrate their 40 years of marriage. Really? This is the right way for the reinvention of burlesque to climax? There is something subtly sadomasochistic about Cirque du Soleil as a whole. I mean, look at all the ropes and the dangling and the bodies bent double over themselves. But instead of playing that up and taking it to its natural conclusion, Zumanity misguidedly tries to serve lechery and romance on the same plate, and ends up shortchanging the hungry audience on both counts. When the MC asked a guy in the front row what he was going to do after the show, it’s no wonder that his response of “Have sex?” sounded more like a question than a statement.
Ultimately, the problem with Zumanity is that it doesn’t do justice to either burlesque or Cirque du Soleil. (I’ve heard the same problem afflicts another of their shows: Criss Angel Believe, Cirque fused with illusionism.) They are impressive enough as acrobats, and they provide the “sex,” but they’re missing the all-important next word: “appeal.”
Yeah, that’s the one.I had my first glimpse of Cirque as a child, viewing the televised versions on Bravo. Though strange and impressive, I thought the acts were sort of one-note – supremely flexible people doing unconscionably weird things with their bodies. I suppose these French Canadian wunderkinds were rescuing the circus from the likes of Bozo clowns and the guy fighting a lion with only a whip and a tiny chair. Now, the concept is so popular that there are six Cirque du Soleil shows in residence in major Vegas casinos, and it seems that you’re not hardcore as a casino until you score a Cirque show. I’ve even seen a Cirque-style show (knockoff?) at Sea World; their Cirque de la Mer is the Cirque formula with jet skis.
Going in to the first show, KÀ, I had an ominous feeling that I would not be amused. I think I had some notion that Cirque was an overly precious bourgeois kind of entertainment, lacking the history and gravity of the theater or opera worlds, as well as the glitz and youthful exuberance of a rock concert.
Here are my impressions of the two shows. (Warning: Spoilers and adult situations ensue.)
KÀ
KÀ, at the MGM Grand, has the distinction of being the first Cirque show with a true narrative. That doesn’t mean there’s any talking, aside from a brief prologue voice-over. It’s more like watching a Tchaikovsky ballet, where the music and dance tell a story without words. Actually, what’s special about KÀ is that it’s like many different art forms at once. It’s like a ballet or silent stage play in its presentation, but there’s also an epic feel and emphasis on technology that make it about as cinematic as live performance gets. The cup holders and surround speakers built into the seats make it feel even more like being at the movies. It’s also a lot like one of those stunt shows at Universal Studios, with the enormous infrastructure and audience interaction before the show. In a less than enthralling way, it even feels like an amusement park ride, when staff members go around taking your picture and then giving you the option of purchasing the photo after the show.
I was skeptical about whether the show would be worth the exorbitant cost, which, even after student discounts and seasonal promotions, averages about $70 for the mid-range seats (we’re talking about $150 regular price for the best seats). Cirque du Soleil is notorious for its steep sticker prices, so I would be happy with nothing less than being utterly blown away. Well sir, consider yourself blown. KÀ is an amazing show, and unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
That’s a cliché statement, but think about how rare it is that you actually see something and don’t immediately categorize it as a type, another example of a style you’ve experienced many times over. A movie, a play, a sporting event, a museum, etc. – only the finest examples really slap you in the face and make you wonder, “What did I just see?” Otherwise, a movie is just a movie, and you don’t feel like you’ve experienced something more.
The story of KÀ, as a “story,” is rather minimal, and not always easy to follow. Two imperial twins, brother and sister, are separated from each other when enemy forces attack. They endure various adventures before finding each other again and reclaiming their rightful place. There’s a vaguely Chinese/Asian feel to the show, with a heavy emphasis on martial arts action and Asian-style costuming.
In addition to martial arts, KÀ has straight-up acrobatics, just as I expected from a Cirque show. But the show isn’t about acrobatics or any kind of athletic prowess as an end in itself. Rather, the human physique is placed in the service of a visionary dream. KÀ consists of a series of brilliant set pieces that don’t necessarily make up a great story, but individually, the pieces are gorgeous and, at their best, poetic.
My favorite section involved the twin sister being tossed overboard into the ocean during a storm. The thrashing ship, impressive on its own, gives way to the serene sight of the girl falling slowly down the entire height of the theater. Images of bubbles and watery ripples are projected onto a transparent screen at the front of the stage to render a perfectly convincing scene of a girl sinking deeper into the ocean. Then we see her find her bearings and swim downward to save her nursemaid who is in danger of drowning. It ends with the girl swimming upward to the surface, nursemaid in tow. The scene is simple and sparse, accompanied by a beautifully simple melody. I know what it is and what technology was employed, and yet I’ve never seen anything like it.
KÀ is as much about technology as acrobatics, and the most impressive piece of technology is the stage itself. It’s a floating platform operated by a gigantic robotic arm, and it seems to spend most of the show tilted toward the audience at various angles, so that the cast is constantly performing on a slant. At one point, after a scene at the beach, the stage goes completely vertical facing the audience, thus dumping I don’t know how many pounds of sand in a shimmering cascade into the pit below (I’ve read that the “sand” is actually cork).
I thought I had really seen something there, but the climactic battle scenes of the show involve the cast clashing on the same vertically-oriented stage. The cast members are in harnesses and suspended by wires, of course, and it created a melee in 2-D, kind of like a moving painting, with swordsmen flying all across a stationary background.
Even that was not as much fun as another use of the vertical stage: at one point, thin posts protruded from all over the face of the stage. The acrobats proceeded to chase and fight each other by swinging and climbing from post to post, all without wires or support. I saw one guy falling from the top to the bottom through the posts, shifting from side to side; it was like watching human Plinko.
There’s much more to the show, including shadow puppets, rock-climbing, aerial tissu, the wheel of death, archers shooting what looked to be real arrows over the cast-filled stage, and some small-scale pyrotechnics. It’s all accompanied by a grand score, the kind of music someone would write for a movie if told that the music would take center stage instead of the actors.
I came out of KÀ with enormous respect for what Cirque du Soleil is all about: challenging established art forms and melding them together to create new experiences in live performance. What began as a band of preternatural acrobats is now almost a myth-making enterprise. I don’t think it’s an accident that each Cirque show is given a meant-to-be iconic name (Mystere, O, Love, Varekai, etc.), as if they are new worlds in themselves.
Zumanity
Zumanity, at New York New York, has the distinction of being the first 18-and-over (aka “R-Rated”) Cirque show. From the name, I had originally thought that the show might have something to do animals, maybe even animals versus humans, à la Grizzly Man; I was sorely disappointed. Zumanity is essentially a cabaret-style burlesque show with acrobatics. Like KÀ, Zumanity is a series of set pieces, but without the narrative and the brilliance. There is near constant nudity, but surprisingly, it doesn’t make up for the lack of fun.
Admittedly, having seen KÀ the previous night, I couldn’t help judging Zumanity against it. Most of what I liked about the former was absent from the latter. In place of an army of cast members, Zumanity offered numbers focusing on couples and individuals. Instead of technology, we were given intimacy. The by turns martial and dreamlike score of KÀ gave way to dirges rooted in bluesy saxophone. Warriors in Asian robes were replaced by a woman in ass-less pants.
The best part of Zumanity came before the actual show started, in the pre-show banter and audience interaction. Bawdy cast members would take turns smothering defenseless audience members in their unyielding bosoms. Flamboyant male actors would bait some of the men in the seats into homoerotic innuendo. Ironically, the more the men resisted, the gayer they seemed. The lady doth protest too much?
By the time the 7-foot-tall drag queen came out to MC the night’s festivities, I was ready for an entertainment distinct from KÀ, but just as engaging. And yet the show, from its structure to its music to its acrobatics to its cringe-worthy attempts at humor, just didn’t do it for me. (This was a show that thought funny was an out-of-shape woman using liquid-filled Ziploc bags as breast enhancement devices.)
Numbers include two girls writhing in an oversized fishbowl, a young Fabio lookalike doing a strip tease, and two chiseled dudes engaged in what can only be described as steel cage tango-wrestling. None of the numbers were really bad, though I’m sure I would have been more impressed with the aerial work if I hadn’t already seen the same thing for free at Circus Circus earlier in the day. I was mostly disappointed by the unnatural attempt to marry a sex show with a circus show.
There is enough raw sexuality in the sight of a woman spinning and flipping her body in mid-air while clinging to a strip of aerial silk. Having her do it topless is not only overkill, but it distracts the viewer from the beauty of the movement, leaving it with a tawdry feel. Most of the pieces gave me the same uneasy feeling of stumbling upon some great acrobats who were trying too hard to be exotic dancers.
The most impressive performance of the night was also the most inappropriate. A solo contortionist took the stage, just a bony dude in short shorts who could twist his body into one godless position after another. He was a methodical loon, maintaining a feral grin on his face as he robotically went through his routine. He’s kind of what might happen if people were Transformers. He had me hooked as no other part of the show did. But what on earth did this sickboy have to do with the “sensual side of Cirque du Soleil”? Aside from a stomach-turning suggestion made by the MC that the man could do a self-inflicted crotchplant, I didn’t see any connection between his brand of contortionism and the show’s stated goal of titillation. Especially as a solo act!
For some sad reason, the show ended not with a bang-up group number, but with the MC inviting an old couple on stage and having them do a slow dance to celebrate their 40 years of marriage. Really? This is the right way for the reinvention of burlesque to climax? There is something subtly sadomasochistic about Cirque du Soleil as a whole. I mean, look at all the ropes and the dangling and the bodies bent double over themselves. But instead of playing that up and taking it to its natural conclusion, Zumanity misguidedly tries to serve lechery and romance on the same plate, and ends up shortchanging the hungry audience on both counts. When the MC asked a guy in the front row what he was going to do after the show, it’s no wonder that his response of “Have sex?” sounded more like a question than a statement.
Ultimately, the problem with Zumanity is that it doesn’t do justice to either burlesque or Cirque du Soleil. (I’ve heard the same problem afflicts another of their shows: Criss Angel Believe, Cirque fused with illusionism.) They are impressive enough as acrobats, and they provide the “sex,” but they’re missing the all-important next word: “appeal.”
Monday, June 1, 2009
Happy Birthday, Jar Jar!
May 19, 2009, marked the tenth anniversary of the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and its hapless hero, Jar Jar Binks. As Jar Jar would say, “Yee gods! Meesa shocked at such long time passing!” Ten years, the age of Anakin Skywalker in the movie, when he met the Christ-looking Jedi master; the impetuous Padawan who would become father, mentor, brother, rival, and finally lightsaber-fodder to him; and that sexy older woman he would make his own. Ten years. Seems like a good time to look back.
Phantom Menace came out while I was in college, and was borne on a sail barge of hype that probably no other movie will ever again command. I purchased tickets online for the midnight premiere at Ford City, a suburban mall on Chicago’s South Side, far south of the University of Chicago. This was a time when midnight showings were pretty much unheard of, aside from the cult of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was a time before every mall you drove by had the name “Westfield” emblazoned on it. This was a time when online purchases were still new and unfamiliar enough to make me nervous about sending my credit card number into cyberspace. Amazon.com had just the “books” and “music” tabs back then, and the website was actually soliciting advice for its soon-to-arrive classical music store.
I and my best friend, Zach, made the journey down to Ford City together. He was the logistics man, planning out the series of bus exchanges that would take us there. Back then, as now, and ever since the prehistoric Greater Lake Chicago receded thousands of years ago, the South Side of Chicago was known as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. And enlightened though I was about civic relations, it was hard at that age to ignore such old saws as “Don’t go south of 60th Street.” That’s right where the University ended. Ford City was down on 76th Street. But it was a mall with a movie theater and it was showing Star Wars to hundreds of salivating fans, so how bad could it be? Zach strapped his wooden kendo sword to his back, just in case.
I’ll never forget that night, but the iconic image of the trip was the face of a black man on the bus as he stared at me, eyes as round and alarming as thermal detonators. Zach and I were the only non-black people on that bus. I sat nonchalantly, I thought, like a rookie football player reaching the end zone for the first time, knowing that it was best to act like “you had been there before.” Slowly, however, I sensed a disturbance in the Force. I turned my head to see that just across the aisle, a middle-aged man was gazing at me, not at all trying to hide the fact. I looked back, just because I thought it would be less offensive than to look away, and he just kept on staring at me with an expression that was one part bemusement, one part shock, and three parts utter bafflement. His expression changed not a whit, not even to blink. I thought I saw tears glazing over his eyeballs just to keep them moist. I’m sure he was just surprised to see a Chinese college boy on a South Side bus in the middle of the night. Hey, I was surprised to be that Chinese college boy. He probably doesn’t remember me, but much as a certain farmboy couldn’t get the image of a certain mysterious white-gowned princess out of his head, the image of that man and his bulbous eyes remains embedded in my memory.
At the theater, we saw some fellow U of C students, some with plastic lightsabers in hand, as well as dozens of other Star Wars devotees waiting for the midnight start time. But to my disappointment, there were no overtly delusional fanboys, as the media had led me to expect, with its stories of all manner of Jawas and Jedi standing in line for months. There was no one in full Chewbacca garb, nobody singing “Yub Nub,” no “I am your father” reenactments (random recitation, yes, but true reenactments, no).
If this were a movie review, I would write about the thrilling CG podrace, the light-speed two-on-one lightsaber duel, the music that only John Williams could write, the gratifying and inventive fan-service (C-3PO naked!), and whether the movie was worth the wait. I think it’s enough to say that the first note of the Star Wars fanfare and the first glimpse of the Star Wars logo, both unchanged from their 1970s glory, were greeted with the happiest response I’ve ever seen in a mass audience. I wanted to cry but hold it back, so that people could see me holding it back and thus appreciate how emotional I was. But I don’t think I held anything back, and I don’t think anyone was looking at anything other than the screen.
* * *
I can’t remember how long we waited for the bus, but by the time we realized it wasn’t coming, there wasn’t a soul around. All those Force-junkies had taken their landspeeders home; apparently, we were the only Padawans foolish enough to rely on public transit. There we were, maybe 3:30 in the morning, staring at an endlessly desolate parking lot, like the painfully featureless CG battlefields of Naboo. “Weesa in big doodoo,” I thought.
Checking the fine print on the bus schedule, we realized our mistake: the bus only ran certain hours, and not the hours we needed. We could either wait for dawn or walk to a station with an all-hours bus route. Why we chose the latter, I don’t remember. Don’t tell Yoda, but I guess we preferred adventure to patience.
I’d like to say we were like Anakin and Obi-Wan, brothers of the lightsaber, venturing side by side. However, I fear we were more like C-3PO and R2-D2, two bumblers wandering aimlessly through the treacherous Tatooine desert. We walked through residential neighborhoods full of modest houses and quiet streets. We walked on noisier streets, too, which in a way were more comforting. And though I was nervous and would still be nervous to walk in a strange neighborhood in the middle of the night, I looked at Zach and thought how lucky I was to be with my friend and to do this unlikely thing together. We took confidence in our good spirits and each other . . . and that wooden kendo sword. And as far as treachery, we found none.
I went to midnight premieres of the next two Star Wars prequels in 2002 and 2005. I would have been disgraced if I had waited for the morning. And as movies, I enjoyed them even more than Phantom Menace. My only regret is that I didn’t get to see them with Zach. I think the second time around, we would have been a bit more like Anakin and Obi-Wan (Episode II-style, not so much Episode III).
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