Ample Evidence

Earlier tonight, The Girlfriend and I were watching Return of the Jedi on Spike TV, part of that channel’s annual Labor Day weekend marathon of all the Star Wars movies, both original trilogy (revised editions, naturally) and prequels. We’re at the moment when Luke and Leia jump on a speeder bike and race off into the forest of Endor in pursuit of an escaping scout trooper. Han Solo has turned to yell something after them when the trooper he’s been fighting with reaches in from off-screen. An exasperated Han grabs the guy’s arm and judo-flips him onto the forest floor, where he finally lies still.

Anne: “I didn’t know landing on your butt could render you unconscious.”

Me: “Honey, I think we have ample evidence that stormtroopers keep their brains in their butts, don’t we?”

Get it? Because stormtroopers are so dumb and all. Well, we thought it was funny. Maybe you had to be there. Or maybe it’s just been a really long weekend. Hope you all had a good one, and an easy transition back to work tomorrow…

Aug262011

Friday Evening Videos: “We’re Not Gonna Take It”

Hey, kids, how you all doing? Apologies for the rather brusque “I’m going on vacation, kthxbye” thing in the previous entry, but work and life were both pretty hectic leading up to my latest expedition and I just ran out of time to blog about my plans. There’s never enough time for all the things I want to do, never, and I don’t know how it got to be that way or how I can get my life back to something more like what it used to be. It’s probably my deepest, most chronic frustration.

Anyhow, in case you’re wondering, I’ve been in Washington, DC, and at various Civil War sites in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland with my buddy, Loyal Reader, and fellow Blasphemous Bastard* Robert, finally ending up back in Pittsburgh, where he now lives. I returned home Tuesday night and have spent the rest of the week struggling with that surreal dissonant sensation you sometimes experience after traveling — well, that I sometimes experience, anyhow — where you feel like you ought to be someplace other than where you actually belong. Anyone else ever feel that way, or is it just me?

In any event, this week’s video is a little something I’ve dredged up especially for my traveling companion, who made a rather startling confession to me during our time on the road. In the 18 years I’ve known him, somehow it never came up that he’d once been a fan of Twisted Sister… you think you know a guy!

I don’t see how anyone who was a teen in the ’80s could not like this song, and it still works. On one level, it’s utterly ridiculous and silly, of course, but it’s also such an effectively rabble-rousing, almost existential cry of defiance against mindless authority and complacence. Truth is, our post-9/11, post-modern, post-everything 21st century America could probably stand to be reintroduced to the ideas espoused in this little ditty. Especially when it comes to being frisked like common criminals at the airport, something yours truly had to undergo on my way home from Pittsburgh.

Anyhow, the video for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is nearly perfect, a genuine classic of the medium. The young boy’s Wonder Woman-style spinning transformation into the powerful, take-no-prisoners gargoyle figure of Dee Snider became one of the iconic images of MTV’s heyday, and the casting of Mark Metcalf as the, ahem, candidate for Father of the Year was nothing less than brilliant. (In case you can’t quite place him, Metcalf played the sadistic ROTC officer Neidermeyer in the classic 1978 “slob comedy” Animal House, and his spittle-flecked rant against the boy’s taste in music basically recreates one of the signature scenes from that film. Some Loyal Readers may also recognize him — or at least his distinctively resonant voice — from his recurring performance as The Master during the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, The Master never raised his voice and Metcalf was buried under pounds of latex, so its wasn’t immediately obvious why the actor seemed so familiar. But I got a big grin when I finally figured it out.)

And now that we’re all pumped up and ready to go out and take on The Man, let’s start the weekend, shall we?

Aug172011

A Critical Faculty Is a Terrible Thing

The context of where I found the following quote isn’t terribly important — although if you care, it came from an ongoing discussion of the popular Angry Birds video game on a political blog I like to follow — I just thought it was an interesting idea. And, I think, a very true one. It originates from the autobiography Fever Pitch, by Nick Hornby:

A critical faculty is a terrible thing. When I was eleven there were no bad films, just films that I didn’t want to see, there was no bad food, just Brussels sprouts and cabbage, and there were no bad books – everything I read was great. Then suddenly, I woke up in the morning and all that had changed. How could my sister not hear that David Cassidy was not in the same class as Black Sabbath? Why on earth would my English teacher think that The History of Mr Polly was better than Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie? And from that moment on, enjoyment has been a much more elusive quality.

I’d like to say more about this idea, but I’m afraid I’m leaving in the morning for a bit of a walkabout, and it’s already long past the time I ought to be in bed. So I’ll just leave it for my Loyal Readers to mull over — consider in particular how this relates to the furor over the Star Wars prequels — and I’ll catch you all in a week!

Aug152011

Self-Awareness

Not much to say, only that this struck a chord with me…

Word. Source.

Aug142011

Sunday Bonus Video: “Stand by Me”

As promised yesterday, here’s Ben E. King performing his signature tune “Stand by Me” with the stars of the movie Stand by Me, Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix. (Wil and River aren’t actually singing or anything, but they are there in the video, along with some truly excellent — or egregious, depending on your perspective — examples of mid-80s casual fashion…)

Ben E. King had been a member of the fabulous R&B group The Drifters (a group notorious for frequent changes in personnel, usually due to disputes over money), but he left in 1960 to embark on a solo career. “Stand by Me” was his second major solo hit following the lovely “Spanish Harlem”; it made it to number four on the Billboard chart in 1961. Then, like many other notable songs from the ’60s, it found a second life in the 1980s after appearing in a popular movie. It peaked at number nine in 1986.

Interestingly, I don’t remember ever seeing this clip back in the day. I first encountered it on the Stand by Me Special Edition DVD released in 2000 and it utterly charmed me with its nostalgic transition from 1961 Ben E. King to 1986 Ben E. King — he didn’t change much in 25 years! — and of course with the presence of Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix. I like that they weren’t playing Gordie and Chris, but were (apparently) themselves, and they seemed to genuinely understand the coolness of hanging out with a musical legend. Or at least they acted as if they did. I can’t help but smile when I watch this… even if it is a little eerie knowing that River would die on a grimy sidewalk outside a sleazy LA nightclub a mere seven years later. Watching him in this video, seeing his effortless charisma and confidence, even at such a tender age, only underscores the tragedy of his too-soon death. He could’ve made so much of his life, and it’s so evident in this clip…

Aug122011

Friday Evening Videos: “Down Boys”

For this week’s musical selection, I was going to track down a fun little clip I know of that features Ben E. King singing “Stand by Me” with the young cast of the movie — I may still post that later — but my plans changed when I read this morning that Jani Lane, the original lead singer of the late-80s hair-metal band Warrant, died yesterday. He was only 47, just five years older than myself, and although his death is still being investigated, he is known to have had a lot of problems with substance abuse, so I’m willing to bet the cause of death won’t turn out to be “natural.” It’s too bad, and a little spooky considering how near he is to my own age.

Warrant is of course best known for the song “Cherry Pie.” With lyrics consisting of not-at-all-subtle innuendo and lots of sleazy attitude, it was naturally a monster hit in the waning days of glam-rock, just before grunge came along and depressed the shit out of everyone. But I’ll be honest, I never cared much for that one. There’s nothing I like better than a good, dumb, crunchy-guitar-based tune about getting laid, but “Cherry Pie” is a little too dumb for my tastes, and it doesn’t have much of a melodic hook, not like, say, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or just about any of Poison’s major hits. (I did enjoy watching the video on the big projection TV in the student union, though. That Bobbie Jean Brown was rather pleasing to the eye…)

My favorite Warrant song — the only other Warrant song I know, to tell the truth — is actually this one, a track called “Down Boys,” which I discovered only a handful of years ago when I picked up a compilation CD of 80s-vintage hard rock that included it in between Aldo Nova’s “Fantasy” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “I’m Burning for You.” But what a great tune it is; have a listen and try to tell me this doesn’t make you happy:

Now there’s a song that’s just made for top-down driving on a sunny day. It has the kind of riffs that make me want to put the pedal down and power out around the slow-poke blockade of mommy mini-vans, making a break for the open road that leads to the foothills, the way I did when “Cherry Pie” was on the charts and I needed to clear my head. And in fact, I think that’s just what I’m going to go do right now. I can hear the Mustang calling. Time to find that compilation disc and crank it high…

Aug112011

Stand by Me: 25 Years On

Lately, it seems like every other week is witness to one of my personal pop-cultural touchstones achieving some landmark anniversary. Rick Springfield’s Working Class Dog album, the one that included his signature song “Jessie’s Girl,” had its 30th birthday on February 24. Raiders of the Lost Ark also turned 30 back in June, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off reached its silver anniversary the day before Raiders. But somehow none of those tidbits surprised me or made me feel quite as wistful — not to mention old — as the news that this past Monday, August 8, marked 25 years since the release of the film Stand by Me.

The depth of my reaction surprised me, frankly, because if you were to ask me to compile a list of my all-time favorite movies — a list very much like this one, for example — Stand by Me would definitely be included among them, but probably wouldn’t rank very highly. (In fact, it comes in at only number 41 on that list, because that’s the more or less the order in which I thought of it as I was dredging up titles. Obviously, it’s not in the forefront of my brain.) I’m not saying it’s not a great movie. It is, in my opinion, and it’s a damn shame they don’t often make films like it anymore, i.e., mainstream pictures that are modestly budgeted and appear to have small ambitions but end up saying a lot while still being immensely entertaining. For some reason, however, this film occupies a relatively smaller plot of my mental landscape than something like, say, Raiders. I haven’t watched it a hundred or more times, and I don’t have it memorized as I do so many others. I have no particular memories of the first time I saw it. In fact, I have no memory of the first time I saw it, which is kind of odd for me when it comes to these things. (By way of contrast, I can still tell you the circumstances of my first viewing of Tron. It was with my mom at the long-departed Regency Theater, near the mouth of Parley’s Canyon, and I saw one of our local TV newspeople in the restroom. I was all of 12 at the time.) My first viewing of Stand by Me was probably on home video — by which I mean those clunky, archaic videocassette things you may have heard of — and it was likely a year or two after it was in the theaters, because that’s how the release schedules used to work, kids. But I really don’t know.

It occurs to me that maybe the film’s relative lack of prominence in my memory is the reason behind my strong “oh my god, that can’t be!” reaction to its anniversary. Because I don’t have strong memories of my first experience with it, I don’t associate it with any given period in my life. Star Wars and Raiders are films from my childhood; Ferris Bueller is locked firmly to my senior year of high school. Dances with Wolves and a whole raft of others are from my college years, which overlapped the period I worked for the multiplex. But Stand by Me is timeless for me, both in the usual sense that it remains as relevant as ever, and also because it just seems to have always been around. Learning that it is, in fact, a specific number of years old, and quite a few years at that… well, it’s just driven home how advanced my own years are becoming, I guess.

Like I said, though, it’s a great movie no matter where it falls on some silly, arbitrary list. On the surface, it appears to be a simple, nostalgic little coming-of-age story set in a more innocent time. And it is that. But it also has a lot to say about friendship and courage and self-image and how people and events can alter the course of your life and stay with you even if you’re not aware they’re still there, until something happens that yanks them back into the light and floors you with the unexpected intensity of emotions you never imagined were still there. And the thing that makes Stand by Me so great is that these points are made subtly, during a story that slowly builds to a devastating conclusion (assuming you don’t already know how it ends). Just writing about it now, I find myself really wanting to go watch it again. Because I may not think of it when you ask about my favorite films, but when I do stumble across it on TV or am otherwise prompted to see it, I always rediscover just how much I really love this movie.

Wil Wheaton, who starred in the film when he was just twelve years old, has some lovely thoughts about it and especially about his late castmate River Phoenix, who’s been dead and gone for an astonishing 18 years, here. (For the record, I always liked and identified with River in his film appearances, and I still believe he would’ve become one of the all-time great actors had he lived. His death of a drug overdose back in 1993 devastated me.) Wil also gave an interview to NPR about the film’s anniversary, and that includes a number of interesting tidbits that weren’t in his blog entry. You can listen to it here. If you’re even a mild fan of Stand by Me, I recommend you check out both of those pieces.

Incidentally, what the hell is Goofy anyhow? I never have gotten an answer to that question…

Aug062011

One Last Look Back

Yeah, I know, space shuttles again. Sue me. I thought this photo was worth revisiting the subject, though:

Remember if you will that the last thing shuttle Atlantis did before returning to Earth was to deploy a tiny satellite called PicoSat. The photo above was taken by PicoSat as it coasted off into its new orbit. According to Christopher Ferguson, the commander of STS-135 who tweets under the handle Astro_Ferg, this was the last picture ever taken of a shuttle in space. (I guess that awesome shot of Atlantis‘ plasma trail as she re-entered the atmosphere doesn’t count because she technically wasn’t in space any more?) Anyhow, I just ran across this during some late-night surfing and thought it was worth sharing…

Photo source here.

Aug052011

D.B. Cooper Identified at Last?

Longtime readers will probably recall my affection for a certain category of stories that swirl around in the basement of our popular culture. You know, those romantic half-legends that always involve some open-ended mystery: Did Butch and/or Sundance somehow escape death in Bolivia, return to the U.S., and live until well into the 20th century? Was Brushy Bill Roberts actually Billy the Kid, or just an elderly nutcase? Did Melvin Dummar really give Howard Hughes a lift one dark night in the middle of nowhere and get written into one of Hughes’ many wills? Could those three guys who broke out of Alcatraz have survived the frigid waters of San Francisco Bay? And lastly — and most importantly for today’s blog entry — whatever happened to D.B. Cooper, the man who bailed out of a 727 over the Pacific Northwest in 1971 with $200,000 in ransom money on his person?

Some of that money was found in 1980 by a young boy camping with his family along the Columbia River, and many people have taken that as evidence that Cooper — if that was his real name — died during his parachute jump and the money washed away downstream. However, earlier this week, the word went out that the FBI was investigating a new lead on a person it described as a “credible suspect,” and he didn’t die in ’71. The Feds were pretty tight-lipped in the initial reports, but further details were released Wednesday, and they are compelling. You can read the complete story from the Salt Lake Tribune here, but in a nutshell, there’s a woman named Marla Cooper who believes her uncle, known to the family as L.D. Cooper, was in fact the notorious skyjacker who called himself D.B. Cooper. She claims to have childhood memories of L.D. and another uncle planning something that involved walkie-talkies, and of L.D. returning to the house after the hijacking was reported looking “bloody and bruised and a mess,” which would certainly seem the likely outcome of a skydive over a heavily forested area. Tragically (depending on how you view these things), if L.D. was in fact D.B., he apparently lost the money during his jump — all that effort and risk ultimately amounted to nothing.

Marla Cooper lost touch with her uncle and believes he died in 1999, after raising a family somewhere in the Northwest. The FBI is currently trying to obtain some good-quality fingerprints belonging to L.D. to compare with partial prints left behind on the plane by D.B.

Marla’s story certainly seems plausible enough. I kind of hate the thoughts of a definitive answer laying the mystery to rest, though. Much of the fun of these stories is the speculation (especially when it has a local angle; a book I picked up in college makes the case that D.B. Cooper was actually a Utah resident named McCoy), and knowing for certain what happened robs them of their larger-than-life quality. But in this case, I suppose an interesting story could still be told of an ordinary joe and his brother who planned an unprecedented crime in order to improve their working-class lives, and who actually managed to pull off the actual crime part, only to lose the damn money during the escape phase of the scheme. Yeah, that still makes for a pretty good tale, doesn’t it?

Jul312011

I Hear a Debt Ceiling Deal Is Near

My colleague Jaquandor sums up my feelings very nicely:

I would like, just once, to see “compromise” in American politics mean something other than “Republicans get very nearly everything they want while Democrats get very nearly nothing of what they want.”

I’d also like to see Democrats just stand up for what they supposedly believe in. The damned ship is going down, so why not go down fighting? Does the Democratic response to everything need to be to resignedly remove their pants while saying, “Well, now, let’s just close our eyes and think of America”?!

Amen.

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