Earlier this evening, I watched Kicking and Screaming, a 1995 tale of Gen X malcontents. Like a Seinfeld episode, it’s a movie about nothing. It’s a bunch of Ivey League graduates trying to figure out what to do after graduating. Mostly, they choose to do nothing but talk philosophy, trivia and women.
Eric Stoltz’s character was given a line that stuck with me: “How do you make God laugh? You make a plan.”
The sizzle of the tires burning against the pavement lingers in my nostrils. He darted in front of my car, and I locked my brakes in an attempt to avoid him.
I almost hit a pedestrian yesterday. The close call left a stone in my gut.
I was driving south on Fourth Street North in St. Petersburg in the inside lane, not far from our new Chipotle restaurant. In front of me, a few cars sat stopped in the lane, due to an SUV turning left ahead. The big truck oddly straddled both the left-hand turn lane and the inside driving lane. Naturally, I changed lanes - to the outside driving lane, so I wouldn’t have to slow down.
As my car sped toward the front of the line of stopped cars, a man ran into my path. He came from the left, and I couldn’t have seen him. The line of stopped cars obstructed my view.
Apparently, he thought both lanes were stopped. They weren’t.
The brakes pulled my tires to a halt, locking in the process. The awful smell of singed rubber wafted through the vents and the open drivers-side window. He dodged in a panic, and I couldn’t have missed him by more than a few inches. If I had reached my hand out the window, I could have grabbed his shirt as I passed him.
After my heart started again, I saw his figure in my rearview mirror running to the curb.
I don’t mean to be an asshole about it, but I hope he wet his pants, and committed a lesson to memory as he washed the yellow stains from his undershorts. Frogger is a dangerous game, and hopefully the good scare I gave him will convince him not to tempt Mistress Fate.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no interest in hitting a pedestrain. He probably scared me as much as I scared him. But, nearly 5,000 pedestrains die each year. If I would have hit and killed him, it would have proved a meaningless death. There was a crosswalk a block away, at a light where motorist would expect a man to cross the road.
I’m, like, so over the 2004 election. Are you?
Tampa Bay 10 breaking news: Paul Ruditis’ book Rainbow Party gives kids bad ideas.
For those hiding under rocks, the book describes an apparently popular phenomena among those never-can-tell teens that TV has raised. At these “rainbow” parties, young girls apply different colorful shades of lipstick, and young boys vie to get their penises decorated with as many colors as possible.
I have two qualms with this story they’ve done.
1. This media meme is, like, so six months ago. The book was published in June 2005, and last summer got extensive media coverage using the same cautionary tale concept on which Tampa Bay 10 is retreading.
2. The concept of this book, to me, is otherworldly. (Maybe I didn’t hang out with slack enough crowds in my school years.) It seems far-fetched that a group of teen boys could find enough willing teen girls out there to even get such a party started, let alone get candy-striped multiple times. It’s worth noting that the supposed party never happens in the book (according the reviews I’ve read).
Yes, there are less than respect-oriented teen girls out there. Yes, there are boys out there who take advantage of that fact. Always has been, always will be. But, concerned parents are misguided to think that a teen boy needs a book to inspire him to want Lewinskis from multiple women. What teen boy would pick up a book with colorful lipstick on the cover, anyway? And, as far as teen girls, I suspect that any teen girl that would attend such a party wouldn’t need the book for inspiration either.
So, kudos Tampa Bay 10, for breaking this news we needed to know, and at the same time giving more free press to a book that, if we ignore it, would soon end up in bargain bins - never to see the light of a second printing.
Surely, the iPod revolution has now gone too far.
Hat tip to The Cult of Mac.
Last night, I rented the new zombie film Dead Men Walking - not the most brilliant movie on the new release shelves, but I figured I’d enjoy it more than this.
It got me thinking about the components of the zombie movie, and why I get such a kick out of them. First, I want to examine the genre, then take a look at my penchant for it.
Here are the basic building blocks of the genre, as I see them.
Living, breathing humans. Most people think, oh, zombie movies, then man-eating corpses must be the stars. No. The first ingredient (just like Soylent Green) is people. People to run. People to scream. People to plot, scheme, unite and be divided by the freakish events around them. People to have chunks taken out of them, thereby becoming the second ingredient…
Man-eating corpses. Zombies can surface in a 1,000 states of disrepair, but most genre filmmakers agree that the head and some portion of the spine must be intact to enable reanimation. Walking upright (like us non-zombie types) usually requires a brain - though no apparent thought - and a path through which electrical impulses for flesh-eating hunger and mobility can travel.
A raison d’être for reanimation. In the case of Dead Men Walking, it was an experimental toxin developed and loosed by a maverick South African drug company (with, of course, a branch in the U.S. being investigated by the FDA). In this way, the movie was akin to 28 Days Later. Toxic waste is also popular. Still, I think my favorite motivations for animation are only vaguely hinted at through philosophic or existential scripting. Take Dawn of the Dead and the famous line, “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
A clever location. Dead Men Walking, as you might expect, took place in a maximum security prison — a locale I hadn’t seen in the genre before. The clever curve for the genre, of course, was set by George A. Romero with the aforementioned Dawn of the Dead, but it gets bonus points for irony. The zombie mall-walkers remind me of why I used go to malls to watch people in all their autonomic, consumerist glory.
A bucket of gore. Directors Lucio Fulci and Stuart Gordon are overachievers here with Zombie 2 and Re-Animator, respectively, though again Romero’s no slouch. In fact, I believe it was Romero who first filmed zombies tearing into some poor sucka’s tender midsection and eat his intestines like raw sausages. That horrific scene couldn’t have been put to celluloid without the help of special F/X artist Tom Savini. It has also inspired dozens of imitators, including Dead Men Walking and painfully funny Shaun of the Dead.
How do those grim aspect produce films that appeal so much to me? Naturally, in exploring this phenomena, I turned to Google. (I doubt the search term “zombie psychology” gets many hits at a public library.) A selection of the 364,000 hits follows.
This site defines three types of zombies and focuses on one, the “philosophical zombie.” Close. But, I was more precisely looking for what a penchant for such films says about a person. Or perhaps a clue as to motivations.
Through the first site, I found this helpful how-to guide for identifying and destroying zombies. “If an encounter with a zombie(s) cannot be avoided, citizens are strongly advised to attempt one or both of the following survival methods: Method 1, Dismemberment; Method 2, Incineration.”
This thought experiment speculates logically on the condition of being a zombie. “Consensus consciousness,” it discusses, acts as a baseline for the human condition. In this argument, we all sleepwalk through life.
Now, we’re getting somewhere. Maybe I feel better about my modest karmic condition by observing the antics of those I deem to be lower on the consciousness continuum.
Woah, that was deep.
Or, maybe I’m just a sick puppy, and like watching reanimated corpses satisfy their unending hunger by tearing into movie extras. It’s just this thing I have with movies that include the words “of the dead” in the title.
Could it be that simple?
Supplemental reading:
In my newspaper today: Seven USPS mail carriers fired for complying with customer wishes to not stuff their mailboxes with unsolicited advertising. The Postal Service’s reasoning? A third of USPS revenue comes from those advertisers, ergo screw the residents.
I know the government seems to prefer starving the USPS of revenue. Witness the climb in postage prices. Still, according to this press release from Dec. 2004, the revenue of the USPS is about $69 billion. Divide by three, and you get $23 billion. In the context of the US government’s budget, that’s not a lot.
In that same year, the US government collected $809 billion of our hard-earned cash, and an additional $189 billion from corporate entities. Counting just individual income taxes, that averages $6,161.38 per person. Given that there were 131,301,697 tax returns filed last year, the government would have to raise an additional $175.16 per taxpayer to plug a $23 billion revenue hole at the USPS, and save us from bulk mail advertising.
Now, before you go flying off the handle saying you don’t want Uncle Sam to take another $3.37 out of every paycheck, remember that we have a sliding tax scale, and that’s just the average. Also, remember that it’s only another 2.84 percent more than you’re already paying.
That’s also the tax-only solution; I’m sure there’s probably some pork that could be leaned from the recently passed highway bill. Not just that bill, either; the budget is full of pet projects that have limited benefit to the broad base of taxpayers (and I’m not just picking on Sen. Ted Steven’s precious $2-billion “bridge to nowhere”).
I’m sure savings could be had elsewhere too. I’m willing to make a deal with Uncle Sam, and meet him halfway. If the government can find $11.5 billion in savings somewhere, I’d be glad to plunk over another $1.68 per week just so I don’t have to make weekly trips to the recycle center.
For pennies a day (24 of them, to be exact) you too could not dread getting your mail every day.
Or, Congress could go the cheap route and create a national do-not-mail registry. Raise your hand if you’d sign up.
I have a new hero, and his name is George T. Bradway.
Mr. Bradway came across my desk Sunday night, for today’s newspaper. In my line of work, I read a lot of obituaries, and his provided a (respectful) chuckle.
Many of those obits include a picture of the decedent. Mr. Bradway’s features him in a dour expression with his eyes swimming behind large-framed glasses. Perched on his head is a rumpled hat emblazoning the words “DRINK NAKED” in bold, uppercase letters.
Did I mention Mr. Bradway passed away at the tender age of 87?
Hats on to Mr. Bradway. I hope he’s enjoying a good rest in the Hereafter, playing cards and bingo and going to the dog track.
I listen to a lot of Wilco, and generally reside in the Jeff-Tweedy-can-do-no-wrong camp. So, naturally my excitement spilled over onto the carpet when I saw the Nov. 15 release date for “Kicking Television - Live from Chicago.” Click through for a four-track preview. If you pre-order, you get a bonus instant-karma download of How to Fight Loneliness live.
The 2-CD set documents a four-night stint in Chicago in May 2005. If their February show at Orlando’s House of Blues (and the preview tracks) is any indication, it’ll end up a must have for any Wilco fan. But, like I said, I’m biased. The Orlando gig lasted about two and a half hours, and showcased the breadth of Wilco’s songbook. They played relentless versions of Spiders (Kidsmoke), Handshake Drugs, She’s a Jar and Dreamer in My Dreams, all favorites of mine, and I went home a happy man.
You know where I’ll be on Friday when I get paid.
In the meantime, if you haven’t downloaded the free EP on their Web site, go. Now.
Lack of time and ambition have kept me from writing lately. I’ve been busy with work and visitors, and distracted by cathode rays in my down time.
Over the weekend, I went to Guavaween with friends. The official site doesn’t have pictures of this year’s street party yet, but TampaBay.com, the sister site of my paper, the St. Petersburg Times, does. (I took pictures, but I take terrible pictures.)
Lots of drink, plenty of wicked costumes, and a great excuse to wear prosthetic horns. My only question is, what it is about cheap beaded necklaces that fosters public nudity?