I’ve written before on this blog that I don’t have many pet peeves. It’s true. I really don’t. Perhaps I should qualify what I mean though. For there are some things that I hate with the passion of a lambada dancer. But that’s different than having peeves. Peeves are annoyances. Hate is at once emotional and, in my case, completely rational. It’s about seeing something that’s throwing the world off its axis and knowing you must condemn it for the travesty that it is. I will list some things that I hate here:
Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberg: Look at this smug son-of-a-farmer. He lands a plane in the Hudson River and they book him on Oprah and 60 Minutes. Next thing you know, they’ll be knighting Toonces the Driving Cat for swerving off a friggin cliff. That’s right. Sully ain’t no better than Toonces. I mean, from where I stand, any pilot who can’t land his plane on a runway is a fascist, socialist, French food-eating, soccer-loving kamikaze! You can, and you should, quote me on that. Want a hero? Try John Travolta. Not only was he the yin to Kirstie Alley’s yang in all those Look Who’s Talking movies, but he also never lands his planes on rivers. Case in point.
Sustainable Agriculture: Cucumbers are like albino rhinos. When I buy a one, I’d like to know that there ain’t any others like it. It’s the last of its line. So, I would hope that after my cucumber has been plucked from its cucumber bush, the entire plant is torched, the soil is drenched with kerosene, and some overalls-clad hillbilly is tossing his corncob pipe down and banjo plucking the inferno into the night. An extreme view? Not if you’ve ever suffered the humiliation of showing up at The International Cucumber Festival in Suzdal to find that some woman also has a kirby shaped like a duck.
Orphans: I’m not talking the Dickens variety or those Slumdog Millionaire tots, though I’m certainly not big fans of their pickpocketing, gameshow-winning ways. What I’m talking about are the ones who are always hanging out at the hotspots with Sandra Bullock and Madonna and Angelina Jolie. Clearly all they want to do is wink and shoot finger-guns at the paparazzi, then parlay the TMZ coverage into a book deal and a perfume line. I’ve had a hard enough time getting department stores to even sniff Dusky, A Fragrance by Aaron Starmer, now I got some 4-year-old Javanese celebutante to compete with for shelf space! It’s enough to make a man cancel his subscription to OK! Magazine.
Bushbabies: I don’t have many occasions in my life when I actually have to deal with bushbabies, but every once in a while I like to pop into the nocturnal primate room at the local zoo and check out an aye-aye or a slow loris or two. Without fail, I always end up coming across one of these bug-eyed nightmare merchants of a bushbaby and my day is shot. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I certainly can’t take in some jungle-themed animated film, for fear that it might feature a John Ratzenberger-voiced silver greater galago singing Randy Newman ditties.
Huns: Attila was alright, but the rest of these jokers? According to Wikipedia, “Huns practiced scarification, slashing the faces of their male infants with swords to discourage beard growth.” Jeeze, what a pathetic band of 5th-century metrosexuals. Remind me that next time I take my time-machine back to the pre-Magna Carta days I shouldn’t worry about bringing toenail clippers and Amstel Light. The Huns should be fully stocked. Sissies.
I always assumed it happened at a town meeting in Pennsylvania circa 1718. They were hammering out a new ordnance, regarding wooden dentures or witches or something, when a young statesman with that distinctly American spirit said, “If I may venture to put forth a proposal, it would be that we cease conversing in this ridiculous British accent? Let’s just talk like normal people talk.” The proposal was followed by silence. Then the slow clap. Then the first occurrence of a crowd chanting, “USA, USA! USA!” a full 58 years before Washington crossed the Delaware. And from then on, not a single person born on this side of the Atlantic would grow up to sound like this guy:
Now don’t get me wrong. I’m a bit of an anglophile. I adore London. I can sit through hours of British television with its washed-out palette and easily attainable heroines. I shrug like a Slim-Jim-fed simpleton and humor any Brixton-born footy fan who informs me that “the rest of the world doesn’t call it soccer, mate, they call it football, you know, like you yanks call the one with the chubby blokes.” I’m charmed by the Brits in the same way I’m charmed by that 35-year-old-guy who still wears his letterman jacket out to bars and gives you tips on how to pick up the ladies. There’s some interesting historical perspective there, but these are the folks that find Benny Hill funny.
The only thing that truly annoys me about our friends across the pond is their occasionally ridiculous pronunciation of words. I’m not talking about usage of words. I’m fine with crisps and lifts and biscuits and lorries and all that. It’s the zany sounds that get me. Any waver of the Union Jack will say that British English is the purest form of the language and that it contains nothing but correct pronunciation. But I submit this. Ever since the fore-mentioned monumental town meeting of nearly 300 years ago, they’ve had it out for us. And Sir Robert Walpole or some 18th-century statesman decided that they should spite us by making their version of the language even more ridiculous. He went to Parliament, all wigged up and drunk on Pimms, and proclaimed, “We shall show those uppity colonists. From henceforth, Glacier is pronounced Glassier, like…Classier. And urinal is pronounced Your-Eye-Nal, like…well, good heavens, I haven’t a clue. But what the heck, it’s bound to rankle the noblemen of New Jersey.”
Seriously. Glacier. Urinal.
If you’re friends with Peter O’Toole, ask him to say those words. Gasp in horror and do what any red-bloodied American should do. Remind him he starred in Supergirl.
It’s true. I took some time off from the blogging and I hid in the Grand Canyon for a spell. Seven days rafting on the Colorado with the fine folks at Wilderness River Adventures. If you don’t believe me, check out this video of what it looks like to hit a rapid from the perspective of a life-jacket. Absolutely stirring stuff:
It was a fantastic time, and I consider myself blessed to have seen 100 miles of stunning wilderness that the majority of the world will never lay eyes upon. The National Park service only allows 150 people on the river each day, and for good reason. We don’t want to turn the place into Pigeon Forge after all. I have but one misgiving about the trip. I only wish it didn’t make me feel like less of a man.
Yes, yes, yes, I know. I’m a hairy-backed burly fellow who can throw a football and pound a beer and sing along with the chorus to not only one, but two, RATT songs. How on Earth could my masculinity be in question? Well, it’s all a matter of survival.
I’m no Les Stroud, but my fire building skills are more than adequate, I can purify water, and I know not to rub poison ivy on my special bits and roll around in a pile of fire ants. I could make do in the wilderness for a couple days if things got all Cormac McCarthy out there. What I can’t do is pilot a boat through Class V rapids. This never bothered me when I went on rafting day trips in West Virginia. Yet, in the Grand Canyon, as I faded off to sleep with the woosh of the mighty Colorado as my lullaby, I couldn’t help but amend my nightly prayers.
“God Bless Mama, and Dadda, and all the people who have never eaten a banh mi sandwich, because damn those are some really good sandwiches and everyone should try one, and God, especially bless these river guides, without whom I’d probably end up looking like Ronny Cox in Deliverance, which is to say nothing bad of Deliverance, because for all the hillbilly jokes it’s spawned, it’s still a great American movie, adapted from perhaps one of the greatest books of the last fifty years, but in it Ronny Cox gets his bicep all wrapped around his neck and his body gets crushed up against some rocks and that sure would be a crappy way to go, so God bless these river guides who haven’t let that happen to me, and God, make sure they don’t let that happen tomorrow either.”
That’s what it all comes down to. For seven days and six nights some fit young men and women took turns rowing me and my floral swimming trunks down 100 miles of river while I bounced on my rubber seat and got splashed with freezing water and giggled like the Snuggle Bear. Sure, I hiked down to the river on an exceedingly hot day (in the 110 F range), and I know I could have hiked back out (on a trail, of course) in an emergency, but if called upon to guide a boat to Lake Mead, well, I might as well have dispatched a homing pigeon to the Daily Sun with the four word message: “There were no survivors.” Heck, for the short moment during the trip when I was handed the oars on a piece of flat-water, I was all wonky and out of rhythm, hardly ready for a Class I, let alone the fabled Lava Falls.
I realize that rafting the Grand Canyon isn’t akin to climbing K2 or running the Badwater Ultramarathon or some such insanity, but it takes a good bit of skill, a fair amount of endurance and a healthy set of…(what’s the English word for cojones?). It also takes tolerance and good spirits. You have to deal with folks like me, who ask a lot of strange questions, who eat more than their share of pickles and potato chips at lunch, and who act all Louisa May Alcott when danger lurks: “Please ma’am, would you see to it that I am not volleyed from this vessel resulting in spinal fracture, as my spine is what I use for bipedalism. And bipedalism is ever so nice.”
So hats off to those river guides, who effortlessly jump from boat to shore in flip-flops and buttoned poplin shirts, while the rest of us stumble around all Teva’ed and dry-wicked. You’re a good combination of smart and talented and friendly ski-bums and adrenhelin junkies and nature lovers and slightly grizzled hermits, and you have accomplished something that my ex-girlfriends have not. You have made me feel needy and weak. It’s about time.
TV shows do it. And so must I. I will be off the air for the next couple weeks. As far away from computers as I’ve been in a long time. There will be no posts to peruse for a while. I don’t doubt your heart is broken.
I could have had some posts on deck and spooled them out using WordPress magic, but that’s not my style. Recharging is a good thing, and I plan to come back refreshed with musings on Kiwis, kamikazee chipmunks, dead bodies in hotel mattresses, tips on writing childrens’ books, and other silliness. See you then!
I have a friend who was a holdout for the cassette tape. Up until seven or eight years ago, he would only buy new music in cassette tape form. Absurd, I know, and as you could guess, I teased him mercilessly about it. When the music industry finally did away with the archaic format, he threw up his hands and joined the rest of the world. He accepted CDs into his life.
His reasons for sticking with the cassette ranged from his suspicion of format fads (CDs might go the way of the laser disc or DAT, he argued) to his thriftiness (why buy new equipment, when his “decks” worked just fine?). My friend came of age in the 80s, so nostalgia may have played a big part too, and honestly, I can’t begrudge him that.
Admittedly, there’s nothing cool about being nostalgic for cassettes. I’ve never been a vinyl guy, but I respect the people who scour the flea market tables and garage sale boxes, examining the grooves of old 78’s and confidently tucking their salvage under their arms. There’s purpose and a little bit of poetry in that. Vinyl has history, beauty, and acoustic integrity. Cassettes have none of the above.
But still, I am nostalgic for cassettes. I didn’t realize it until recently. Another friend, who is prone to bouts of pop philosophy when beer is on hand, can be blamed for my ill-advised wistfulness. He proposed that when the CD stabbed the cassette in the heart, and the CD-R and MP3 twisted the knife, not only did the cassette die. The album died too. I had to agree.
Consider this. The album as a concept was only fully realized during the short age of cassettes. The vinyl and digital ages are highlighted by ease of choice. Not digging a particular Hendrix solo? Just lift the arm and drop the needle on another groove and relax into the familiarity of “Purple Haze.” Not sure which Vampire Weekend song you heard on the latest Gossip Girl. Scan a few tracks until you hear that distinctive keyboard chords. Why bother with an entire album when you can simply spin the hits?
The cassette’s limitations were also its virtues. Fast-forward and rewind were labor-intensive operations, so listeners were forced to actually suffer through an artist’s indulgences. Spinning the hits on cassette just wasn’t a convenient option. By listening to an album front to back, tastes were acquired and grander ambitions bubbled to the surface. One came to appreciate an album as a whole, not as just a collection of songs.
As a teenager, sitting in the dark listening to my sister’s Pink Floyd tapes, I experienced something akin to an Almost Famous moment. I discovered that “Wish You Were Here” only had full resonance when sandwiched between the various parts of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” I gradually fell in love with “Southhampton Dock” while waiting for “The Final Cut” to kick in. This was not the first music that seduced me (that honor goes to the Muppet Movie soundtrack), but it was the first time I was seduced by the organization of music, the noble concept of the album.
That might not have happened with a record or a CD. It certainly wouldn’t have happened with MP3s. I would have logged onto ITunes, made my Pink Floyd greatest hits playlist and called it a day. I would have paired “Money” with “Another Brick in the Wall” and finished it off with “Learning to Fly.” Somewhere in England, Roger Waters would have felt a shiver go down his spine and absolutely no one would have been the better for it.
I still try to listen to albums front to back, no matter what the format. I hardly ever hit shuffle. But I must admit I’ve hit skip more than one time on Yo La Tengo and Guided By Voices. I shouldn’t necessarily be ashamed of that, but as a fan of both bands, I have a responsibility to trust them a little more. Relationships with musicians are like relationships with anybody. You must let eccentricities sink in, be willing to grant forgiveness, and endure patches of annoying feedback.
The same could also be said for mix-tapes. I used to have a box full of old mix-tapes under my bed. Mix-tapes are like time capsules—monuments to tastes, to the evolution of music collections, and to the efforts once expended in the name of puppy-love and friends-forever idealism. I will not step on Nick Hornby’s toes and write a mix-tape manifesto, but I will say that the mix-CD and ITunes playlist pale in comparison to the glorious mix-tape.
For the mix-tape requires genuine effort. From the scouring of shelves of music, to the pause-play-record-pause-play-record dexterity required of dubbing, to the handwritten liner notes, the elements of a mix-tape speak of dedication and romance. There’s no dedication involved in dropping a bunch of files from one computer folder to another, hitting burn, and loading up the ink-jet with jewel-case-sized sheets of paper. There’s absolutely nothing romantic about ITunes. And what’s to say the person you’ve presented with a mix-CD isn’t going to hit skip when that Califone tune doesn’t grab them right away? What’s to say they aren’t going to dump the file of Nina Simone covering “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” into the trash because they’re sick of you trying to sneak a little Bob Dylan past them.
In some ways, cassette tapes are also like letters. Remember letters? They were like emails with souls. Cassette tapes have souls too. And like letters, they’re messy and imperfect and personal. Forgive me some “things were better in my day” indulgence, but the hiss of a 5th-generation dubbed copy of Straight Outta Compton will always mean more to me than the crisp playback of the latest Drake joint. And sitting in a friend’s basement with a tiny screwdriver, trying to flip the reels on a Led Zeppelin cassette around so we could listen to “Stairway to Heaven” backwards feels a hell of a lot more subversive than exchanging torrents. Cassettes are tangible objects with tangible stories and sadly they have been relegated to the trash-heap and forgotten.
My cassette-dedicated friend has an IPod now. As do I. The IPod’s size and shape are vaguely reminiscent of a cassette. Only they hold more music—a whole lot of music. I am certainly thankful for that. Yet IPods will eventually be replaced too and IPod nostalgia will be deemed quaint and silly. There’s nothing quaint and silly about championing the experience of music, though. Format is tied into that experience. So let me mourn the death of the cassette tape, because it provided me, and many others, with genuine experiences. It shaped the way I listen. It exposed me to more music. It made me a curious and tolerant fan. Its sound wasn’t so great, maybe, but its sound will be missed.
Hipsters have taken irony from us. They’ve co-opted it and mutated it into a sad little shell of what it once was. Just as they’ve done with The Golden Girls. Irony to the hipster is nothing more than creating a clash of symbols. Which is really just sarcasm, not irony. One only need examine these snippets of conversation I overheard at a recent Dirty Projectors concert:
“Check it out, I’m wearing a trucker hat. No, I don’t truck. Too many carbon emissions. I ride a bike. It’s ironic.”
“How about this knarly beard? Am I lumberjack? No. Clear-cutting is appalling to me. I work in IT, but I do own a Bonnie Prince Billy CD. Ironic, huh?”
“My T-shirt? Why yes that’s a BP logo. Why? Because I despise them. Irony at its best.”
It’s the T-shirts that get me the most. It’s rare to find a T-shirt that’s ironic by itself. This one succeeds. These do not. Yet if you search “ironic t-shirts” on Google, you’ll think that every t-shirt with a pun or a flippant quote is ironic. Alas, situations provide irony. Catchphrases do not.
Now, I’ll give hipsters some credit. They’re not necessarily buying the corporate produced T-shirts that are clearly aimed at them. They’re scouring garage sales and thrift shops and boxes in their parents’ attics looking for something unique. But there’s nothing ironic in a skinny, pasty hipster girl wearing a T-shirt that says 1993 First Team Bucks County Nose Tackle. It might get a few thumbs up at a Jonathan Lethem reading, but that’s the opposite of irony, because that was the intended effect. She wanted to impress like-minded people. The T-shirt would only be ironic if it produced the opposite of the desired effect, in some synchronistic way.
For instance, imagine the girl wore that T-shirt to a town hall meeting where the debate of the night involved tearing down an art gallery to put in a football stadium. She may be trying to voice her indignation in the form of an absurd, illogical T-shirt. But what if the town board saw the shirt and said, “Well, we were going to turn down the stadium proposal, but obviously the town is full of football fans, most notably the skinny, pixie-haired girl, who once challenged the status-quo by succeeding in an arena traditionally ruled by obese black men. Football stadium approved!” Now that’s ironic.
The picture above shows a mugshot of a man wearing a “World’s Greatest Dad ” T-shirt. Skirts the edge of irony, but it ain’t quite it. Turns out the man was arrested for soliciting a 14-year-old online, certainly not the actions of the planet’s finest father. Ironic? I’m still not convinced. It’s disturbingly contrary, like a terrorist donning a peace sign, but it isn’t ironic. For his sake, part of me wants to imagine he is a dedicated hipster, and he wore this shirt, and committed this crime, so that I would blog about him and say he is the greatest ironic prankster of his generation. But I won’t do that. Because I believe in the integrity of irony. And I believe this guy is really just a pervert.
I’ve been poking my head around the web to see what people thought of the Lost finale. There’s a fair amount of disappointment, but just as many people who thought it was beautiful and touching. There’s also a ton of confusion, and I might as well start by stating the obvious. The island was real. They did not die during the plane crash. They all lived and died on their own timelines and reunited in the afterlife. There is no doubt about this.
I didn’t adore the finale initially, but now that I’ve let it sink in, I’m appreciating it more and more and discovering that the “answers” so many people were looking for have been there all along. They’re all tied to the afterlife concept.
The Island was the gateway to the afterlife. The afterlife needed to be protected, because it contained the dreams and desires of every man and woman. And it was too powerful for the living (and magnetic compasses) to handle. However, it was leaking from the island. Some were trying to escape from it. Some were trying to harness its magic. It healed, but also corrupted. Time travel and ghosts and monsters and miscarriages and Star Wars references and all other sorts of nonsense were born from it. Yet only in death, and only if you put the love of others before the love of yourself, were you granted entrance to it. And that’s how the show ended.
Hokey? A bit. But the theme of the show was always about being lost. And every character, from Jack and Kate to Ben and Locke to Jacob and his Mother, was lost. Physically and spiritually. The viewer was lost as well. Sifting through the mysteries and trying to find a key to solve it all. Turns out, by leaving so many mysteries unanswered, the show is providing the template for an afterlife. And now that Lost has died, the key is to piece together that afterlife in any way the viewer wishes. Why were Walt and Aaron special? Who built the statue? Who was shot in the out-riggers? You decide. It’s the only way the narrative can live on. The only way the light can be protected. The only way the blog posts and term papers and theses can keep coming.
I, for one, am grateful for that, but I won’t be writing about Lost anymore, cause I’m not sure you all care. But in order for you to care about future posts of mine, I give you the following order. Join Netflix. Watch Breaking Bad. Thank me.
The latest season of Lost premiered on February 2nd, aka Groundhog Day. It was a joke, a cheeky clue for the audience. Because they introduced a major plot device in the premiere. It’s come to be known as the “flash-sideways” narrative and it’s essentially a big “what-if.” What if the characters had a chance to do it all over again? What if the circumstances were different – no island, no smoke monster, no Geronimo Jackson spinning on the turntable? What would have happened to these poorly reared, trigger-happy pawns of science and faith? The answer seems to be that their pesky destinies would have eventually tracked them down anyway. In a week, the series will come to a close, and hopefully we’ll have a better idea about what exactly is at play. But if Lost peddles anything, it peddles ambiguity. And the faithful aren’t shy about hitting the bulletin boards to shout their opinions and theories. The internet might bust a spring or two in the hours after the finale.
I can say with a certain amount of confidence that most people will not be discussing Groundhog Day. The wink-wink-nudge-nudge premier date will be just another piece of Lost trivia, no more significant than the Hurley Bird. The date was a reference to the movie, of course, and on the surface it doesn’t seem to be much more than that. We’ve all seen the movie. A cynical weatherman played by Bill Murray lives the same day over again and again, until he finally gets it right and becomes a man who can love and play the piano.
I remember when Groundhog Day came out. It was a hit, though it barely beat forgettable fare like Dave and Cool Runningsat the box office. Critics thought it was enjoyable and clever, though they hardly thought it was earth-shattering. A better than average comedy – not much more. Over 15 years later, Groundhog Day has become not just a favorite of the revisionist cineast, but a genuine classic. The Writer’s Guild considers it the 27th greatest screenplay ever written. The New York Times even put it in a list of the Ten Best American Movies. Of the 1990s? No. Of all time! Say what you will about the existential implications of the film, about searching for meaning in our post-9/11 world. It makes for a good term paper, but I don’t think that’s the reason the film has gained such a following of late. The reason is TBS.
If you turned to the cable station TBS in the late 90′s and early 00′s, it’s likely you would have seen Groundhog Day on more than a few occasions. TBS syndicated it and played the grooves off the thing. Over time, the film worked its way into the DNA of many a channel surfer. The more familiar you became with it, the more you enjoyed it, because it was offering you the experience of its main character. You were living the film over again and again. You began to anticipate plot points (Ned Ryerson punch in 3, 2…), and the exact words and inflections of the dialogue (“Too early for flapjacks?” ”I’m a god. I’m not the God.” etc.). In other words, you learned to be one step ahead of it.
Repetition and familiarity have served Groundhog Day better than just about any film in history. It is its essence. Because of the internet and DVRs, people don’t channel surf anymore. So it’s unlikely that any other film will be able to take such a covert route to classic status. Word of mouth will create the cult followings, and blockbusters like Avatar and The Dark Knight will be anointed masterpieces as soon as the Thursday night sneak-preview receipts come in. Another Groundhog Day will probably be lost in the mix.
On the flip side, the legacy of television shows have benefited greatly from technology. With DVRs and Hulu and Netflix and so on, viewers can watch a television show at their leisure. Breaking Bad in a weekend? It’s doable (and recommended!). They can also study a television show in depth and in slow motion and in freeze-frame and every which way they want. No show has been studied more closely than Lost. Check the comment sections at Entertainment Weekly. Better yet, look at Lostpedia. The detail would make a Trekkie (sorry, a Trekker) faint. I’m a fan but holy smokes, guys! Turn off the TV and computer screens every once in a while. Shoot some hoops. Drink a beer. Dance with a girl.
The creators of Lost undoubtedly read these sites. They must if they want to keep one step ahead of their fans. And each week they see how certain ideas fly and if something’s not in the can, they rethink their plan. They adjust. They try again. People complain that they seem to be making it up as they go along, but how could they not? They can’t guarantee whether one actor will stick around for the entire run, or if a character will become a pariah on the level of Jar Jar Binks. For the last six seasons of Lost, the creators have rolled with the punches, and learned, and gone down different paths to get to the end. And now the end is finally here.
It reminds me of that last day in Groundhog Day. Bill Murray’s weatherman takes his well-earned wisdom and he puts it to the best possible use. He lives his life the way it should be lived – naturally, honestly. The Lost finale must do the same. Not everyone is going to love it, but if the creators want to escape from the perpetual “what if’s” that plague shows like Seinfeld and Battlestar Galactica, then they can’t go with gimmick or gotcha. It must be natural, honest and earned. The pressure is huge, but the payoff…well, let’s hope “it’s a doozy.”
I have taken a vow of silence. A week back, I received a ticket to attend an advance screening of a big Hollywood film that premieres later this summer. I went to the film and signed some piece of paper saying I wouldn’t release information about it and I plan to hold true to that pledge. I know first hand how advance reviews can occasionally sour enthusiasm. All I will say is that during the screening, people cheered and clapped and I was absolutely flumoxed. It wasn’t the worst film I’d ever seen, but it was, to put it lightly, rather awful. And yet clapping. Cheering even. For one liners and kisses and such.
I’m going to attribute it to peoples’ excitement at being the first to see something. They were so invested in believing that they saw the next colossal hit, that they whooped and whistled their doubts away and went home and updated their Facebook profiles with something along the lines of “Guess who went to a big Hollywood premiere? I probably won’t respond to any messages for a while, cause I’m guessing I’ll be grabbing cocktails with Matthew Lillard and Eddie Furlong later. So suck it, zeroes.” Now consider this. No one was cheering when I went to see Avatar, and that movie’s box office dwarfs the GDP of many a nation. The Navi need not get their braids in a twist. I doubt the film I just saw will challenge their record.
Then again, maybe I’ve completely lost touch with the public. Maybe it will be the hit the world’s been waiting for. I’ve been wrong before. There are a few things I was sure would bomb, but went on to be wild successes:
Middlesex by Jeffrey Euginedes – I read this book months before it was released and while I could appreciate the scope, I was sure it would derided for being a blatant rip-off of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. Homage is one thing, but I felt Euginedes took the ideas, the form, even certain plot points of Rushdie and transplanted them with far less elegance and wonder to Greeks in the upper Midwest. I didn’t think Euginedes would be run out town with pitchforks, but I thought more than a few critics would wag a finger at him. But no. Oprah pick. Pulitzer winner. Modern classic. And no Greek equivalent of a fatwa to deal with. Go figure.
The Big Bang Theory - Not the actual theory, which I knew the kids would love. I’m talking about the television show. I think I watched the first episode or two of this sitcom and wrote it off as formulaic tripe. Virgin nerds fumble around a pretty lady while trading Star Wars metaphors. Insert laughter. I figured it would last a couple seasons with a “well, nothing else is on,” viewership, but it has become a verified hit. And critics dig it. I’ve poked my head back in to see if it’s changed. It hasn’t.
Communism – My buddy Karl assured me he was onto something. I thought it was some hippie BS. “Go back to the drum circle, Karl. Go date a girl who wears skirts and jeans at the same time, Karl.” But one toppled tsar, a shining path, and an arms race later, and it’s still kicking around. Even in our White House, at least according to my most trusted news source: Victoria Jackson.
In the first of what we hope are many journalistic coups, The Indubitable Dweeb has managed to land an interview with the erstwhile most-wanted-man-in-America, accused Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad. We asked some tough questions. He gave some surprising answers. No matter what you think of miranda rights and the role of bloggers in the reporting of terrorism, you’ll want to read this fascinating journey into the mind of a man who a few days before was just another immigrant, another face in the crowd.
ID: Let’s start with your name. Faisal Shahzad. That’s not a name most Americans are familiar with, or certainly comfortable with. Is there something else we can call you? A nickname? Anything like that?
FS: Sure, sure. A lot of people, they call me Fievel.
ID: Like the cartoon mouse?
FS: Exactly! An American Tail. It’s a funny story actually. Back in Pakistan, when I was a kid, my sister and I, we use to love to sing together. Duets, you know? There was a talent show at the local mosque and we signed up to do Close My Eyes Forever, which is a song by Lita Ford and Ozzy Osbourne.
ID: We’re familiar with the song.
FS: Showstopper, right? Anyhoo, the night before the talent show, we see this movie. This cartoon. And there’s this song. Somewhere Out There. It’s sung by cartoon mice and it’s out of tune and it’s almost like a bad Andrew Lloyd Webber ballad, but damn it, it works. I’m telling you, it absolutely breaks your heart. So we ditched the ripped jeans and teased hair which, come to think of it, weren’t exactly Taliban-friendly, and we sported some rags and mouse ears and sang Somewhere Out There. And we killed. Just blew the beards right off the crowd. The next morning, people started calling me Fievel. “Keep wishing on that same bright star, Fievel!” That sort of thing. A few years later, I went through a Gomer Pyle phase, I tried to convince people to call me Shazam!, but it never took. It was Fievel then. It’s still Fievel now.
ID: You are aware that Fievel is Jewish, aren’t you?
FS (after a long pause): But he is a mouse?
ID: Yes. A Russian Jewish mouse. His last name is Mousekewitz.
FS: No. You’re wrong. I have the blu-ray at home. I watch it once a year. I’m pretty sure he’s Chechen or something.
ID: Fair enough. You’re entitled to your interpretation. In any case, do you find yourself relating to Fievel’s story.
FS: You know, I do. I was an immigrant to America, just like him. I’m not particularly fond of cats, just like him. There are a lot of coincidences between our stories.
ID: Did Fievel ever try to blow up Times Square?
FS: Well, no…but that doesn’t mean he didn’t want to. It’s never stated explicitly, but I’ve always assumed that sometime before he reached America, Fievel travelled to Pakistan for some training in explosives. There’s a scene where he unleashes the Giant Mouse of Minsk, which is this big mechanical rodent that shoots fireworks from its head. Genius stuff. Where did you think I got the fireworks idea from?
ID: So your attempted bombing was based on ideas found in a Don Bluth cartoon?
FS: Most attempted bombings are. Remember last Christmas when that kid tried to light his crotch on fire and blow up that plane? Straight out of All Dogs Go To Heaven. The original title of the film was actually All Dogs Go To Heaven Where 72 Virgins Are Waiting For Them, but they shortened it because it didn’t fit onto marquees.
ID: We find that hard to believe.
FS: I find it hard to believe that Linda Ronstadt never won a Grammy for her performance of Dreams to Dream from the sequel Fievel Goes West, but it’s true.
ID: So you enjoy Linda Ronstadt, Ozzie Osbourne and Lita Ford, as well as the films of Don Bluth and the catchphrases of Jim Nabors. Any other recommendations?
