step brother hijinks

I’ve never seen John C. Reilly as a comedic actor. Even the parts of Talladega Nights that I’ve seen, I didn’t find his performance particularly funny. He spread his butt cheeks for Playgirl. The entire movie was one big dick and homosexual joke. They could have done more, and he could have proven himself in a better environment.

What little I’ve seen of John C. Reilly in Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job has been funny, but Step Brothers is his coming out party. I have never laughed in a theater the way I did during Step Brothers. I first saw John C. Reilly in Boogie Nights, and this is a far cry from Dirk Diggler’s sidekick. It’s like the reverse of a Jim Carey or a Robin Williams. Instead of a comedic actor turning dramatic it’s a drama veteran immersing himself in comedy. Sometimes it takes an incredible actor to pull off both comedy and drama. John C. Reilly can do it.

“When you fall asleep, I’m going to take a pillow case and fill it with soap bars, and then I’m going to beat you with it.”

“That was me at 6. Don’t make me go to 10.”

“If you could masturbate to any non-pornographic magazine, what would it be?

Good Housekeeping!”

“Boats and Hoes!”

At least one of those might have been Will Ferrell’s lines, but Step Brothers made me like Will Ferrell again, so he deserves a mention in this entry. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back made me appreciate him, but everything since Anchorman has been Will Ferrell playing Ron Burgundy. Step Brothers worked because it was two forty-year old men playing pre-teen boys. And I really think it was Will Ferrell singing at the end of the movie. He has a beautiful voice. I mean that in a stunned, entertained, ultimate karate chop kind of way. Step Brothers will be worth your time and money. Do your diaphragm a favor and see it.

Recently listening to: Rook, by Shearwater. I found out the other day that Jonathan Meiburg left Okkervil River to do Shearwater full time. If that’s the case and it means more Shearwater records and lots of Shearwater touring I’m all for it, but it still stinks. He was a big part of Okkervil River. Rook is a solid record. Jonathan Meiburg will do just fine.

am I the only one?

I know I’m not. The evening after the madness I was hanging out with some friends in the basement lounge of Fox Hall at Roanoke College, playing a board game for distraction. Of course we couldn’t keep ourselves very far from what happened. The television stayed on, covering what little remained to be covered, offering nothing new to the surreal turn of events. One of the game bystanders mentioned something that had been on my mind all day. The image we’d seen over and over again, the moment of impact seen from every possible angle – the Boeing jet slamming into the World Trade Center and exploding out the other side in a fireball – there was something strangely beautiful about it. Death and despair aside, the war that was to come and continue raging to this day aside, the event itself, ingrained into my mind like a cattle brand, is a matter of pure aesthetics. There is something beautiful about the thing in and of itself. One can make the argument that this is case in point a product of American media, coping with this image like it’s a movie. But there is nothing at all cinematic about it. It bears little to no resemblance to what happens in the movies. The jet races in and the building swallows it. There is no impact blast. It’s like a football falling into a field of mud. The building absorbs it, and it’s not until the jet is entirely inside that the fuel ignites, and all hell explodes out the other side. There’s something perfect, a golden mean that to this day makes me stop in amazed wonder. Seeing it in video I suppose the primary fascination derived from a withdrawn sense of scale. These could be miniatures from this distance. To wrap your mind around an entire airliner swallowed up by a skyscraper and exploding like napalm out the other side – it’s an atrocity, but it’s beautiful. You realize how small and mortal you are.

I’ve seen Dark Knight twice now, and both times I watched it I found myself drawn back to that day. I wonder if it’s everyone who watched that day, near and afar, or if it is only me. You see firefighters standing on a burning hulk of rubble, spraying hoses back and forth, trying to salvage some sort of positive from a catastrophe, to say they tried even in the face of death, and suddenly you’re seven years in the past walking to the Commons for breakfast with the day’s infant images on the news, and then a little over an hour later you’re dumbfounded and numb. Everyone holds that day close to their heart whether they want to or not. The strangest things carry you back. The past becomes your present and you’re left just as numb as you were that day. There is no satisfactory resolution, no closure, and to seek it is a wild goose chase. Do you live your life a victim of memory and give up? No. You just live your life, because this is what your life has become. Nothing is crippling unless you want to be crippled. Maybe I am still hurting enough to seek exorcism from a blog, or maybe this just a natural reaction. Maybe both are true. I know I am not the only one. An ending is impossible, so it ceases.

it's a lovely f***ing war

Our country is in one of the most trying and testing times it has ever faced. We are fighting wars in two nations with a body count that rises every day, and we have what may or may not be a recession running rampant here at home (but that depends on who’s definition of “recession” you believe). Crisis like this cycles through our country with regularity. Look back at 1968. We had Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement burning brightly in our streets. A little less than forty years before that the Great Depression sent Tom Joad and company into the Dust Bowl. World War I. The end of Reconstruction. The United States of America is a nation ripe for domestic turmoil. While each of these events may be unrelated in their nature and circumstance, they each have one uniting characteristic. They were all responsible for the election of a president.

Look at the way Obama and McCain are exchanging fire. One of the key points on which McCain has assailed Obama is his apparent lack of expertise on the ground situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s to the point that Obama is currently visiting both nations to assess the situation. Obama’s position has always been to withdraw American forces from Iraq and strengthen our presence in Afghanistan, a move that the Iraqis favor and the Afghans would welcome with open arms. Before Obama left on his trip he said he would use his findings to help him formulate his plan for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Immediately the McCain camp jumped on this and accused Obama of shifting away from his anti-war stance, saying he had gone closer to center. Obama fired back, saying his belief that our presence in Iraq has always been a mistake has not changed and that he simply wants to understand the situation in order to calculate how fast a withdrawal is necessary. Can we believe him? I think so. Maybe this is all political maneuvering on both sides, McCain seizing any and every opportunity he can find to catch a formidable foe off balance, Obama wheeling and dealing with words to cover up his flip-flopping. Maybe that’s true. I like to think not. I trust Obama. In a situation like this you have to put your trust in one man. The fate of the nation – the fate of the world – is at stake. Before you cast your vote for president, you have to keep that in mind. Just like with Reconstruction, just like the Great Depression, just like Vietnam and Civil Rights, Iraq, Afghanistan and recession are going to decide who wins the election in November. I have faith that Obama is telling the truth.

All of this talk about Obama flip-flopping on Iraq makes me think of the run up to the 1860 election where Lincoln defeated Stephen Douglas. Lincoln’s platform had been from the beginning a platform of abolition, and as soon as he showed signs of wavering on the issue his critics jumped all over him and accused him of backing off. Here was his response:

“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps save this Union; and what I forebear, I forebear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union…I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men, everywhere could be free.”

People like to use this as further evidence that Lincoln was a racist white man who fought the Civil War for phantom economic reasons (although whenever I ask what those economic reasons were, the discussion always finds its way back to slavery). But here we have a man with deep personal convictions standing up for what he believes in. At the same time he understands that first and foremost comes the preservation of the Union. Lincoln wanted to avert war. So did every president who came before him. He would do whatever it took to avoid it, because bloodshed would do nobody any good. Unfortunately things didn’t turn out that way.

Forgive me if I say that I see this situation replaying today with Obama’s trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. This morning I read an Associated Press article at Yahoo about Obama’s trip, and of course McCain’s criticism took half of center stage. Here is how the article summed up Obama’s stance:

“Lately, (Obama’s) efforts to explain how he will use what he learns from U.S. commanders to refine his proposals have brought charges from Republicans and complaints from Democratic liberals that he seems to be shifting his Iraq policy toward the political center. But Obama maintains his basic goal of ending the U.S. combat role soon remains unchanged and that he's always said the U.S. withdrawal must be done carefully.”

The italics are mine. Obama is a politician. That’s the long and the short of it. His position is and always has been that we need to get out of Iraq – out of a disaster that never should have happened and that diverted our attention away from a far more pressing matter – and concentrate our forces on completing a regime change that we forgot about five years ago. The time-frame and the numbers are what need careful consideration. We made a mess with how we went in. Let’s not make a bigger mess when we leave.

Making a comparison to something like slavery might seem drastic, but when we have a war with a body count of 4,000 and rising I ask you how drastic is too drastic. Look beyond your front yard and see the rest of the world. Yes, there is no fighting in your street, there are no IUD’s exploding Humvees into twisted hulks of metal, there are no weddings being torn asunder by stray cluster bombs, but this is happening halfway across the globe on a daily basis. After a while you wonder how much it’s worth. Are we safer now that we’re stuck fighting an endless guerilla war in Iraq? My answer is no. We were never safer by going in. We are not safer by lingering and making unnecessary targets of our brave young men who are only doing their job by following orders. Other parts of the world are falling into strife while we waste our time in a place that never needed us. Look beyond the politics and see the truth. The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

And as a side note, remember how the Bush administration used Iraq’s non-existent missile program as their reasoning behind establishing a missile defense system in Eastern Europe? We wasted five years in Iraq, not finding a single shred of evidence to back up the propaganda, and now Iran has successfully test-fired a missile that can reach as far as Romania. Now Condoleeza Rice is saying Iran’s successful test-firing is case-in-point why we need a missile defense system. What if we had gone after Iran to begin with, a country with a long history of hating the United States and who we always suspected of having a nuclear program, instead of Iraq, a country with a severely depleted military and absolutely no infrastructure thanks to one major defeat and a decade of economic sanctions? I’m just saying.

a night at the salem un-fair

Last night I went to the Salem Fair with a few of my co-workers. Any trip to the fair is going to have its highlights. Among mine were the many rides. Did you know there is a ride at the Salem Fair where you stand in line for twenty minutes with no one to talk to but the people you came with, and then right at the end you pay twenty dollars for a wristband?

Among the actual rides I rode, the Extreme was the best, the giant mechanical arm that tosses you back and forth while it spins you in a circle. I would have said the Fire Ball was the best, the train that loops repeatedly, stops at the top and dangles you for a few seconds, and then loops some more. My ride on the Fire Ball last night left me thankful for my life. While I’m sure my safety harness was perfectly secured, I prefer them latching tightly in place with little to no give. My harness felt loose, and when we reached the apex of the loop and stopped in place, I was hoping the train would start moving again before it broke and I plummeted to my death. It was a fun ride as usual, but I will think twice before going on one again. The most exciting thing that happened to me on a ride was on the Swings when we were attacked by a stray balloon. Hilarity ensued to the Benny Hill song.

My most favorite highlight that occurred while not on a ride was while standing in line for the Extreme when somebody’s cell phone came flying out and smashed on the asphalt next to us. I’m not exactly sure why I began thinking to myself, Please be somebody’s iPhone. Please be somebody’s iPhone. But I did. It wasn’t an iPhone, but it made me hand my phone to a friend who was not going on the ride with us.

My second most favorite highlight that occurred while not on a ride was when one of my friends had to throw up. She was very calm about it. “I think I’m going to throw up. I’m going behind that trailer for a second.” And she went behind the trailer. And she threw up. And then she was okay again. And then hilarity ensued to the Benny Hill song.

At the test of strength, the place where for lack of the appropriate word you hit the hammer on the thing and find out how strong you are, they were giving away inflatable blue hammers with the American flag on them. I thought it would be funny if there were an inflatable Iranian watermelon to hit with the inflatable American hammer, but it wasn’t until today that I realized we needed something else, something the entire nation could rally around. What they needed to go with the inflatable American hammer were all the things Americans can proudly unite against – universal child healthcare, gay marriage, the writ of habeas corpus, partial nudity on television and swear words in music, religious freedom in the Air Force, a higher minimum wage to accommodate a higher cost of living – all the evils that plague our great nation and will only become more rampant if Barack Obama is elected president. How else can we pass on our values to our children? And then hilarity ensues to the Benny Hill song as we destroy the lives of human beings.

It was a great time last night. The sunset was beautiful behind the mountain, and when we still had daylight it was something to go up in the air and have a nice view of the valley. Nights like that, being out with my friends, makes me wish I took it upon myself to do things like that more often.

My currently listening to for this entry is not so much “currently” as “recently.” I’ve been listening to the Yardbirds a lot. If you want to think of an all-time super group, they’re probably it, not based on record sales but on all the people who cycled through the line-up. Eric Clapton. Jimmy Page. Jeff Beck. I might go so far as to say I like them more than the Who. In fact, yes. I like the Yardbirds more than the Who.

change the dee's to doo's - "d'oh!"

Every time the Bastards of Fate play in town I try to make it out. Doug Cheatwood assembled a solid line-up of musicians, and every show they play is the rival of anything I would have to drive four hours to see in Carborro or DC. Along with the Sad Cobras they’re one of those hidden gems, one of those bands that had the rotten luck of being born somewhere that is not only under the radar but where radar doesn’t even exist. Good music is wherever you find it, and Roanoke has plenty.

Obscurity aside, the Bastards always manage to play with a very good act from out of town. Back in March they played at Martin’s with a band from Idaho called Finn Riggins. I have subsequently bought the Finn Riggins CD A Soldier, A Saint, An Ocean Explorer, and it is one of the best I’ve gotten my hands on this year. Two nights ago the Bastards played at the Local Roots Café with a band from Austin, Texas, called the Shake ‘Em Ups. The Shake ‘Em Ups are a bluegrass trio, but they’re a bit more than a bluegrass trio. Many of their songs are traditional and draw on traditional influences, and watching them you’d be hard-pressed to call them anything more than bluegrass. At the end of the day their songwriting is their own. They’re an act worth missing your bedtime for. But as I watched them play Wednesday night I realized that out of all the non-pop, non-classical genres of music – bluegrass, jazz, blues, etc – bluegrass is the one I find myself drawn to at the clear-cut expense of the others.

When you talk about jazz or the blues or bluegrass, there’s always someone who says they like them as background music, and there’s always an aficionado who takes offense and fires a diatribe aimed at why they love their music. I’m the person who says they like jazz as background music. My opinion has never been like Homer Simpson’s “they make it up as they go along,” and it has nothing to do with being blind to the skill. I could never play music like Miles Davis or John Coltrane, and I will never pooh-pooh their work. My problem with jazz is that I listen to it for five minutes and then it all runs together. I’m more impressed with what’s happening underneath, keeping the rhythm while someone shows off. The “jazziness” of jazz all sounds the same. I’m not saying it doesn’t take skill. I’m just saying it’s not my thing.

Blues, well, it is the same song every time. Listen to any given blues song and it’s going to be about Jesus, losing your woman, alcoholism, trying to catch a train, or a combination of the four. Toss in a song about going down to the crossroads to sell your soul to the Devil and you have a classic album. That’s really all there is to say about the blues. There’s one recycled riff and four recycled themes. I know it’s at the center of everything rock and roll, but listen to the Rolling Stones, especially Let It Bleed. First four tracks – “Gimme Shelter,” “Love In Vain,” “Country Honk,” “Live With Me.” Translation – “trying to find a woman,” “losing your woman when she leaves on a train,” “drinking yourself silly and looking for a woman,” “trying to convince a woman to sleep with you.” Let It Bleed is a great record. Don’t get me wrong. The same thing can be said about the Beatles, though. The best song on Let It Be is “One After 909,” and it’s about trying to meet your woman at the train station.

I don’t know what it is about bluegrass that I like so much. Maybe it’s a level of entertainment I don’t find anywhere else, and maybe that’s conceited of me, but I’m a music fan. If I’m going to spend money to listen to music, why would I spend money on music I don’t like. Like it or not, I’m looking for entertainment. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying to you or has too much money to spend on music. Bluegrass is just more entertaining for me. Watching a band like the Shake ‘Em Ups is exhilarating. It’s nothing like a welcome change of pace or breaking out of the music shell I find myself in. I just like bluegrass more. It’s a matter of dynamics, listening to everything at once and hearing how it mixes. I know jazz is the same way. Maybe the blues are, too, but it’s hard for me to listen to jazz or the blues. The mixture doesn’t get under my skin the way bluegrass does. It’s just one of those musical things. I like what I like. I’m not going to say, “To each his own,” because that’s a cop-out. I stand by what I like and I know I am right, but I will let someone else listen to what they want to, regardless of how I feel.

All of that being said, this leads me to my currently-listening-to for today. I am currently listening to Giant Steps by John Coltrane. Listening to the radio at Starbucks can make you do weird things sometimes, and I decided to buy some Coltrane at Plan 9 today because I’d heard a lot this week and liked it. Originally my post was supposed to be about contradicting my opinion right at the end by saying I was listening to John Coltrane and loving it. I am currently listening to John Coltrane, and he’s all right. He’s been a good background while I wrote this entry. He will not be finding his way into my iTunes library…yet.

call me an asshole one more time

What is a hero? Is it someone who possesses superhuman strength? Superhuman compassion? Does he do extraordinary things extraordinarily well? Does he clean up the messes the rest of us can only dream of comprehending? Does he enjoy his work?

Who is a hero? What is it like to have that stigma over your head? Are heroes comfortable knowing they are a rare breed, few and far between? Are they tired of the limelight? Are they tired of an unappreciative public? Have they been driven to the bottle after a lifetime of scorn and distrust? Is there any hope for them coming back?

Hancock asks all of these questions. From the first time we see our hero passed out in a drunken daze we realize this is no cliché superhero. Hancock (Will Smith) is no knight in shining armor coming to the rescue in chivalrous fashion. A little kid points to a shop window full of TV screens where a police chase unfolds all over the LA news. Hancock tells the kid to buzz off. The kid calls Hancock an asshole on the way out. “You heard me,” the kid says. He can’t be more than eight. This is how the public treats their god. Hancock immediately tries to stick his hand up a pretty lady’s skirt. “Asshole,” she says. Then he gets to work saving the day. You have to wonder why.

Hancock is a movie a lot like The Incredibles. It casts superheroes in a new light, i.e., the light of reality. What would happen if the world really were populated with a gifted few? Would humanity embrace these people as saviors of good, or would humanity insult them and call them criminals? Hancock is a gifted man who is tired of screwing up every time he saves someone. Our secondary hero (played by Jason Bateman), our average Joe who finds his purpose in spinning Hancock a new public image, finds himself trapped on a railroad track with a freight train barreling down. Hancock nonchalantly lands on the hood of his car, flips it gracefully backwards off the track, and then stops the train dead with his presence. The average Joe is okay, albeit upside down in his car which is now on the hood of another car. The train is not okay. Hancock pulls himself from the great dent in the locomotive and surveys the ensuing mile-long jackknife of train cars that unfolds even as he looks. “Ah, shit,” Hancock mumbles. Not again. What else should he expect? Something breaks every time he tries to do something right. Why should this be any different? And why should the crowd react any less angry?

Hancock isn’t Iron Man or Spiderman by any stretch of the imagination. If you want a likeable superhero, Hancock will let you down in a heartbeat. Something tells me this is closer to reality than anything Marvel or DC can ever muster, though. If we are to attribute human characteristics to people who possess superhuman abilities, the rest of us are bound to watch them with a questioning eye. Sooner or later these people are going to notice us staring. Sooner or later they’re going to ask, “What the hell are you looking at?” Sooner or later we’re going to call them assholes. Sooner or later they’ll stop caring. Is it better to be unique? Or is it better to be a face in the crowd? Hancock fights with both avenues, and in the end he makes his choice, and he chooses well. I won’t call this movie believable, but it’s levelheaded. Hancock is a man you want to love, but when you see what we’ve made him, what the public has turned him into, you can’t. It’s easier to hate than it is to understand. And what is hate but a reaction to something you don’t like about yourself? When we see our heroes as they really are we end up hating them. We can’t stand to think that maybe our constant attention and scrutiny made them this way. We’d rather not hate ourselves, so we’ll just hate our creation and call him an asshole. It’s what we’re used to. It’s what he expects. Bad habits die hard. Hancock is a movie worth watching again.

Currently listening to: Marmoset, Florist Fired. This CD isn’t what I expected. I don’t know what I expected. But I like this.