Blustery Indiana Hailstorm Smashes Fauna, Causes Widespread Blackouts, Interrupts Quality Time

September 21, 2012 By in Indiana Tags: , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Temperatures in Indianapolis had been dropping this week, so we knew a change in the weather was in store, but we hardly expected anything like tonight.

We were in the middle of entertaining a guest, about forty minutes into Louis Leterrier’s Clash of the Titans when we realized that the explosive sounds of mega-scorpion warfare on TV were suddenly being drowned out by what sounded like massive artillery fire from outside, bombarding our house from every direction. Violating one of my personal rules, I paused in the middle of an action scene, then pulled the drapes to scope out the fuss.

Lo and behold: central Indiana was under siege by killer hail from above.

Indiana hailstorm 9/21/2012

Indiana hailstorm 9/21/2012

For readers lacking a frame of reference, let it be known for the record that our modest deck doesn’t normally look like someone’s laying the foundation for Christmas Town.

We’ve had hail before. The average hailstorm ’round our part of Indianapolis lasts twenty to thirty seconds, at best — not nearly long enough to jangle our nerves. This time was not the same. I rarely describe meteorological events as “frightening”, even when tornado sirens are blaring in my ear and the clouds have turned the color of murder. Tonight, the intensity level assailing our humble abode was officially frightening. For several minutes that dragged like dangerous hours, the onslaught just wouldn’t stop. This new, sturdier, 21st-century hailstorm raged and roared to the point where my son actually evacuated the living room to get away from the potentially hazardous window glass. We Hoosiers have been taught and lectured about important safety tips like that for years. I can’t blame him for obeying them, or for thinking his father was insane for being mesmerized by this unheralded, unsafe display of nature’s brutality.

I might’ve been a little more grounded and less collected if I’d looked out our front door first. This is what the storm did to our neighbors’ very large tree across the street:

Indiana hailstorm 9/21/2012

Granted, this could have been a stray lightning bolt accompanying the hailfire, rather than the hailfire itself. Somehow that doesn’t brighten my impression of the event.

So far our house seems unscathed, except for two sides that are now plastered with our neighbors’ former leaves. It remains to be seen how our roof fared. Our evergreen bushes out front are wider than they were this morning, as if a rhino rolled around on them to scratch his back. Our power blacked out in the middle of the storm, and remained kaput for over two hours before service resumed. As I understand it, we’re among the lucky ones in that regard — local news is reporting that thousands more people remain without power at the moment, and Lord only knows how many hail-related horror stories will be aired or posted by morning. I pray there were no casualties in all this, and that the damage is much less than I fear.

Admittedly, the hailstorm certainly put those fake, showy mega-scorpions into proper, minuscule perspective.

2012 Road Trip Photos #16: On the Way to Pikes Peak

September 20, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The Manitou Cliff Dwellings are on the north side of Highway 24. On the other side of the highway is Manitou Springs, a cozy. woodsy town that thrives on Pikes Peak tourism. You may recall how last summer’s nightmarish wildfires made them a household name. Thankfully the coast was clear, embers were nowhere in sight, and the evacuations were called off days before our arrival. In fact, local news reports earlier that week had interviewed the townspeople about the impact of the wildfires on their economy. I like to think we did our part to reverse a little of that damage, if nothing else.

Lunch was at a restaurant called the Keg. I thought it was a mere bar when my son chose it from among several competitors, but we were starving and no one complained about his teenage presence, so I’m proud to label it as good family dining. I’m still not sure why he chose it, of all the many options surrounding us. Perhaps their wooden mascot captured his imagination with its trustworthy sign promising superlative cuisine. Maybe later we could also find a shop selling the Best Coffee in the World. I rolled with it for the sake of adventure and not-starving, and wasn’t disappointed in the least.

The Keg, Manitou Springs

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Trailer #2 for “The Hobbit” Starring Dr. Watson and Doctor Who

September 20, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Longtime fans of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy who’ve been watching last December’s two-minute teaser for The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey on an endless loop every day for the past nine months can finally close that browser and tune in for the new, full-length trailer that was released to the Internet on Wednesday. It’s comforting to see our old friends Ian McKellen, Cate Blanchett, Hugo Weaving, and Andy Serkis all returned and on point, but I’m personally more interested in the new tidbits:

I’m delighted to see Martin Freeman portraying astounded exasperation with his usual finesse. Whether as Tim from The Office, Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or the average-minded John Watson from Sherlock, Freeman specializes in men who can’t believe what he sees in the other men that surround them. To his credit, his Bilbo Baggins (at least in these scant samples) seems to retain at least a smidgen of confidence in stressful situations, a trait that his adopted nephew struggled to inherit in the trilogy.

New to our eyes this time around: Sylvester McCoy, erstwhile Doctor Who, as Radagast the Brown, a wizard colleague of Gandalf and Saruman who was name-checked in passing in J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novel. I remember reading it in seventh-grade English class, where our teacher Mrs. Price gave us extra credit if we completed our Hobbit homework and quizzes in green ink. I don’t recall Radagast’s name at all, but I’ll take everyone else’s word for it. Here his role has been broadened to compensate for his complete deletion from the LOTR trilogy, and set far apart from those other, mainstream sellout wizards by donning the world’s craziest winter hat and possibly threatening to invoke a divination method certain to make the Middle-Earth Humane Society cry.

Also integral to my seventh-grade Hobbit experience: the three trolls! I was hoping one of my favorite scenes from the book would be included in the first movie, instead of being relegated to The Hobbit Part 7 or however long this series ends up.

I’m especially curious to see more of Richard Armitage’s version of dwarf’s dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, the new face of 21st-century dwarfdom — to say nothing of his dozen companions. Compared to these nimble warriors, in hindsight Gimli son of Gloin looks like Volstagg the Voluminous.

You’ll also note the younger, cleaner Gollum who’s a little less sinister in his threats of hobbit cannibalism. Little does Prequel Gollum know he’s sparring with an opponent who’s a little less highstrung and morose than Frodo was. I don’t look forward to the moment when crafty ol’ Bilbo absconds with his Precious and shatters his heart.

In the grand tradition of The Return of the King and its endless parade of endings, Warner Bros.’ official movie site offers a total of five different versions of this trailer that end with different scenes, each one amusing in its own right, four of them at Bilbo’s expense. Laugh while you can, pesky dwarven bullies. Over the next three years, Bilbo will show you all.

“The Bourne Legacy”: 2½ Hours of Jeremy Renner Having the Time of His Life

September 19, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Tonight’s entertainment was a discount showing of The Bourne Legacy, in which Academy Award Nominee Jeremy Renner enjoys the perks of action heroism without looking like a plasticine sellout. That’s all I wanted, and I’m happy that my expectations were cheerfully met. I was willing to let most of the deficiencies slide.

To understand my mindset, head directly the $5 DVD bin at your nearest Wal*Mart and pick up a copy of 2003’s S.W.A.T., which was chiefly a loud mash-up of the incongruous stylings of Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell. When I watched it years ago, I couldn’t help noticing the showy bad-cop with all the best lines, played by a confident young guy who seemed to be enjoying himself a lot more than the marquee names were. Not long after, I caught him during my Angel DVD marathon in a season-one role as a gleefully evil vampire — once again, cockier and smiling a lot more than his opponent. After back-to-back favorable experience,s I made a mental note to keep an eye out for young Renner in the future.

Fast-forward years later: now his resumé includes The Avengers, The Hurt Locker, and Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol — all grade-A films in my book, all this close to making Renner a household name. Also of interest: last November Entertainment Weekly published a lengthy article about him that detailed his lean years as a struggling actor living a life far from luxury while chasing his dreams. That struck a chord with me, and only served to upgrade my mental note into a full-fledged set of index cards. In the filing cabinet that is my mind, that’s a kind of praise.

Renner finally worked his way up to carrying a big-budget action film on his own (instead of as a sidekick or teammate) with The Bourne Legacy, in which his character is torn between a government that needs him dead and a skeptical audience that’s 95% certain he’s not Matt Damon. I liked the original trilogy, but not nearly enough to consider it sacrosanct. The same screenwriter, Tony Gilroy, is now in the director’s chair adapting his own words for the screen, and he even allows cameos from previous players David Strathairn, Joan Allen, and Scott Glenn. We still have the specter of the evil government programs named Treadstone and Blackbriar, begging to be joined by other new evil programs with ten-letter compound names like “Thumbscrew” or “Riverdance”. It’s in the same timeline as the trilogy, no reboot or disregard for what came before. (Granted, I have no idea how hardcore Robert Ludlum fans feel about what amounts to an apocryphal spinoff…)

I wasn’t really concerned with whether or not it lived up to its predecessors. I harbored no delusion that it would be groundbreaking. I entered in hopes of seeing a guy who used to live on ramen noodles and unpaid light bills enjoy the fruits of a turnaround of fate. As the last survivor of a black-ops Super-Soldier Program made possible by the sinister forces of Big Pharmaceutical, Renner finds plenty of quiet moments for emotion and sincerity in between the running, chasing, punching, kicking, parkour, motorcycle stunts, and smash-cam closeups. His earnestness and lack of Hollywood sheen go a long way toward redeeming a role that, in the shallow end of the ’80s, would have been relegated to any number of direct-to-video martial-arts “stars”.

Also worth noting is Rachel Weisz as the requisite damsel in distress, trying on an American accent for a change, carefully modulating her fearfulness instead of aiming for full-tilt histrionics like others might in her place, and standing her ground as needed with her fully accredited science skills. Edward Norton stands out a tad as the evil overseer with the best-written lines (particularly his discomfiting description of the evil Program as “morally indefensible and absolutely necessary”). I spent the entire movie thinking Stacy Keach was Albert Finney as Evil Overseer #2, so I guess that’s a job well done. And after having coincidentally watched *batteries not included the other night, I was shocked to see that Dennis Boutsikaris, as the constantly upset Evil Overseer #3, has indeed aged a full twenty-five years over the last twenty-five years. Shocking but true.

I had to focus on the performances because the rest of the movie was a mixed bag. The “plot” is Our Heroes enduring one long chase scene while all the best villains hide in a faraway room. All armed henchmen working outside the main control room are one-note, including one Super-Duper-Soldier with no lines and no demonstrable evidence as to why his even-eviler Evil Program was superior to Our Hero’s. The climactic auto-wrecking dance is shot with such a claustrophobic eye that I lost all sense of setting and placement, and thought I was trapped on a merry-go-round. And the movie pauses all that chasing instead of actually ending, as if everyone involved simply stopped and called a truce so they could move on to their next projects.

But for my money’s worth, I achieved my goal of watching Renner hang out with interesting people in exotic locales while stunts are performed and entertainment is adequately concocted for my discounted dollar. Hopefully we won’t have to watch the sad sight of Renner selling out altogether in future years and demanding ten times his salary for an extra-bloated sequel called The Bourne Travesty.

Three final notes, in keeping with past movie entries:

1. The Bourne Legacy has no scene after the end credits. Once again for the true fans, the credits do roll to a reprise of the official Bourne theme, Moby’s “Extreme Ways”.

2. In terms of content, mostly it’s about the smashing and exploding, with very few curse words added so we know it’s still a Hollywood film. For those with the sensibilities of a great-great-grandmother, the end credits include a warning label about the scenes of smoking (*gasp!*) being “an artistic choice” rather than paid product placement. If that makes or breaks the deal for you, consider yourself warned.

3. I counted one veteran of The Wire onscreen: blink and you’ll miss Christopher Mann — a.k.a. one-time mayoral candidate Tony Gray — as a panicky guard desperately failing to smash his way through a locked door. Poor Tony just can’t catch a break.

“Revolution” Pilot: From Slow Burn to Swashbuckling

September 18, 2012 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Billy Burke, NBC, "Revolution"Tonight was the broadcast premiere of NBC’s newest genre series Revolution, from executive producer JJ Abrams and creator Eric Kripke, best known as the original mind behind Supernatural. In a world where electricity has gone the way of the dinosaur and the physics of combustion engines have magically suspended operation, factions have arisen to make the most of a scary new world without advanced technology, lifesaving devices, or Angry Birds.

After a cursory intro peppered by distant, low-key plane crashes, the show’s setting begins fifteen years later after mankind has regressed to villages and an entire generation has grown up with only vague memories of ice cream and the Internet. Our heroine, Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos), is a more optimistic, less assured Katniss Everdeen who eschews regular bows in favor of a crossbow, which serves her poorly when she learns the hard way that reloading takes longer. At least, I hope she realizes her error. If she sticks with the crossbow simply to avoid trademark confusion, I’ve no doubt that future fight scenes will sadly gloss over this issue. Don’t be fooled by how easy the Huntress makes it look, kids.

After a tragic death and the passing of a family MacGuffin, Charlie reluctantly inspires a ragtag team of misfits to quest with her to Chicago. There’s her dad’s Australian girlfriend Maggie (Anna Lise Phillips), a doctor with sly methods for maiming a foe; Aaron (Zak Orth), a former Google exec who tags along because of comic relief; and Nate (JD Pardo), an archer with multiple weapon proficiencies and shifty priorities. They vow to walk dozens of miles together for justice, revenge, safety, and premise.

The reason for this quest? Charlie’s asthmatic brother Danny (Graham Rogers) has been taken captive by the most immediate Big Bad, Giancarlo Esposito (now departed from Breaking Bad and incarcerated on Once Upon a Time), a sinister militia captain named Neville who’s not thrilled with the orders he has to follow, but has no qualms about putting his crack-shot skills to use for his overlord, Sebastian Monroe, ringleader of the militia that rules the immediate surroundings within the landmass formerly known as the USA. Esposito firmly takes charge of every scene and won’t let go, particularly in a sequence in which he nimbly and unflinchingly mows down a row of uppity villagers, exactly one split-second bullet per villager.

Our Heroes’ not-quite-epic journey to save David — even though he’s a prisoner waaaay back home — trots them through O’Hare International Airport, fifteen miles east to Wrigley Field, a few miles south to the Magnificent Mile, then into the heart of the Loop, where an old hotel sets the stage to introduce Charlie’s long-lost uncle Miles (Twilight dad Billy Burke), who may be the lynchpin of their cause if only he can put down the bottle, stop hiding, and assume his role as the One True Main Character…who’s apparently expected to drop all his plans, trek with them back across twenty-odd miles of I-90 North, and save the day without an audition or an incentive beyond “Because family is important!”

When Evil Esposito isn’t onscreen, the first ¾ of the pilot skims through a lot of character meetings without many chances to get to know anyone at length. The energy level cranks up at the 45-minute mark (including network ads) when Miles, previously described in an offhand manner as a “killing machine” as if it weren’t nothin’, engages in the sort of well-choreographed, high-speed, one-man-army swordplay demonstration that was once the hallmark of bygone shows such as TV’s Angel. For a few minutes, I was on Action TV Cloud Nine.

If you’re patient enough to endure the setup and introductions, lying in wait after all that happy Errol Flynn-ing are two special surprises in the final five minutes: a revelation that threatens to undercut the show’s entire premise; and a better look at one of the show’s secret weapons barely noted in the preview materials — David Lyons, once known as TV’s The Cape! Somewhere out there, Abed Nadir is deliriously happy.

The pilot was released online early at NBC’s official site, but that’s not helpful to people like me who prefer larger TV screens, or to people also like me who somehow didn’t find out about the early release until after the fact. (For shame, Internet — you’re supposed to tell me these things!) Revolution isn’t quite A-plus material yet, but the pilot, as directed by Iron Man‘s Jon Favreau, climaxes with enough pizzazz and tantalizes with enough promise that I plan to check back next week for more, though I’m making no long-term commitment yet. After the sweat and tears normally poured into a pilot on big-budget double overtime, it’s usually the second episode that doesn’t try as hard to impress, and is a better indicator of the real quality control levels to be expected in the weeks ahead. Also, I’d like to see if Charlie wises up and ditches that awkward crossbow.

2012 Road Trip Photos #15: Romping Through the Manitou Cliff Dwellings

September 16, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

The south exit from the Garden of the Gods is five minutes away from Manitou Springs, where we spent the next several hours of Day Five. West of the Garden on Highway 24 are the Manitou Cliff Dwellings.

Built ages ago by the Anasazi tribe in southwest Colorado around the Four Corners area, the Dwellings were carefully lifted by their foundations and transplanted further northeast in the 1900s under the care and coordination of a well-meaning anthropologist who rightly noted that they’d been abandoned anyway.

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Internet Commenters Demand Legislation Against Complex Sentences

September 15, 2012 By in Meta, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Hello, readers. How are you? I am hunky-dory.

Today was a good day. I got to rest. I ate good food. I watched some DVD extras. One was a documentary. It was about A Night to Remember. That movie was about the Titanic. The documentary was not fun. The photos were okay. The narrators were all very old men. They talked a lot. Sometimes they talked for many minutes. They talked very slowly. Sometimes there were very long pauses. Then they talked some more. They were nice men. I felt like a great-grandchild. I did not see the last fifteen minutes. I stopped the DVD early. I was sleepy.

Then I got on the Internet. It has interesting pages. I wanted to read a movie review. It was about The Master. I have mentioned that movie before. Joaquin Phoenix is angry and confused. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is charming and maybe evil. Amy Adams is happy and unhappy. I may go see it. I have not decided. My city is not showing it yet. Maybe they will show it in October.

The review was written by a movie critic. Her name is Lisa Schwarzbaum. Her boss is named Entertainment Weekly. She has worked there for decades. She likes itty-bitty foreign films. She also likes movies about sexiness. Sometimes I do not agree with her. Sometimes I do. She uses big words and long sentences. I can usually understand her. Sometimes I also use big words and long sentences. Sometimes she mentions really weird movies. That does not bother me. Sometimes I also talk about weird things.

Ms. Schwarzbaum liked The Master very much. She gave it an A. Her review had big words and long sentences. This was the last sentence of her review:

The cubism of the concluding third of the picture allows a disoriented viewer to consider this singular movie not only as a character portrait, but also as a photographic travel diary, from the days before Instagram, by an important artist following the itinerary of Americans seeking salvation and prosperity when an exterior world war was over but interior psychological battles raged.

The word “cubism” threw me for a moment. I looked it up on the Internet. It has dictionaries and WikiPedia in it. I found Cubism in there. Now I understand the whole sentence. “Cubism” is a good word for a Paul Thomas Anderson film.

Some readers did not like her review. They really did not like her last sentence. A few readers said mean things about her. One reader said this direct quote:

…it is exhausting – why does she have to create super complex sentences with thesaurus worthy big words – it doesn’t impress me, it belittles me. and that last sentence, WTF? I’d hate to be stuck next to a cooler with her, attempting to carry on a conversation about the latest small town drama. Know your audience.

Her audience does not like long sentences or big words. “Entertainment” is a big word. Lisa’s words are mostly shorter than “entertainment”. They should rename the magazine Things Weekly. The audience would like them better.

Another unhappy reader said this direct quote:

“the cubism of the final third……….” this sentence is not only THE most pretentious piece of critical crap I’ve ever read, it also convinced me not see the probable load of “important” blarney that inspired it.

The Internet has many pretentious pieces of critical crap. I have read some of them. I usually do not rank them. Some reviews can be pretentious and not crap. Sometimes I like pretentiousness. That word is even bigger than “entertainment”. It does not scare me. I used to be an English major. Other English majors scared me. One time our class talked about “Murders in the Rue Morgue”. That is an old story about gross murders. One victim was stuffed inside a chimney. One classmate had a theory about the scene’s meaning. He used the phrase “return-to-the-womb motif”. I was very scared. I wanted to leave class immediately. Now I am older. I have conquered that fear.

Ms. Schwarzbaum probably writes how she wants. Maybe she even thinks that way. Her writing made other people sad. She should rewrite her last sentence. It should be many sentences. The sad people might like the new sentences. They could look like this:

The movie shows you things about each character. Some of those things are very different from each other. It takes place in the past. The old places tell one long story. It is better than random photos. The story comes after a war. People were not happy yet. They had a lot to think about. They tried to make money and be saved. The movie is very good. The director is neat.

Shorter sentences can be happier sentences. The biggest word in those sentences is “different”. That word should not be scary. I think Liza Schwarzbaum is a different writer. Maybe I am a very different reader.

Well, got to go. Have a nice day. I will see you all tomorrow. My next entry may have commas and more clauses in it because of pretentiousness. I hope you will not hate my important blarney. I promise I will not read it aloud to you with extra long pauses. That might make it worse.

The Fall 2012 TV Season: Which New Shows Can I Kill Just By Watching Them?

September 15, 2012 By in TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

The Flash. Brimstone. Clerks. Firefly. Threshold. FlashForward. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Persons Unknown. Outsourced. Terra Nova. I watched these shows, I grew attached to them for various reasons, and they each lasted one season or less. This has happened to me often enough that I refuse to write it off as coincidence or horrible taste.

I am not simply unlucky in leisure. I am more than a mere jinx. I am the destroyer of new network programming.

Even as far back as my childhood, incidents occurred. Does anyone else remember the McLean Stevenson vehicle Condo? Its truncated run wasn’t another example of his own curse in action. That was me. When Isaac Asimov co-created Probe, I was there to ensure he failed in at least one creative venture in his entire life. What had two thumbs and watched the American version of Cracker? This young adult viewer, that’s who.

By comparison, consider a few of the shows I didn’t watch: Lost, Heroes, The Big Bang Theory, 99% of all reality shows — all of which I didn’t follow, all of which may have lived longer than they should have. Sometimes I’ve even saved the life of a show by walking away from it. I gave up on Grimm after several episodes about a cop with a greater destiny who insisted on remaining a boring old cop; lo and behold, without me around, the cop and his world of were-critters live on. If a bad time slot and the CBS site’s horrid streaming browser hadn’t caused me to lose track of Person of Interest halfway through its decently rated first season, surely something awful would’ve happened to it or its cast, guaranteed.

(Never mind examples that dispute my hypothesis. Once Upon a Time was either a magical fluke, or will nosedive in quality this season and join the small Two-Season Miracle Club alongside Pushing Daisies, Dollhouse, and Who Wants to Be a Super-Hero? You heard it here first.)

The 2012 fall season is now upon us, and I’m about to kill again. I can’t help myself. Sometimes I just like watching new things on TV. At the moment I’m considering trying several different shows this season. I apologize in advance for the livelihoods I may ruin and any budding fandom that will be crushed because of my attempted participation.

The death march consists of the following shows. I may watch a few others if I hear great things, or if I’m in need of more writing fodder.

Last Resort — A heavily armed submarine crew disobeys a direct order to begin nuking things and finds itself a Gilligan’s Lost Island on which to stand its ground, declare nationhood, and get to the bottom of a vast government conspiracy back in their former homeland. The unusual Tom Clancy-esque premise is bolstered with a cast that blatantly delves into the my mental catalog — Homicide‘s Andre Braugher, Dollhouse‘s Dichen Lachman, Robert Patrick the original T-1000, Persons Unknown‘s Daisy Betts, Karen from Falling Skies, and TV’s Scott Speedman (whom I’ve watched in almost nothing, but he seems to get around anyway). I’ve not seen any other shows from creator Shawn Ryan (The Shield, The Unit), but the buzz from them alone sounded out-of-the-ordinary, and he receives bonus points for having worked on one season of Angel.

Revolution — To be honest, I hate the premise of the show. Earth has all its electricity permanently turned off after a mysterious event, of the kind that made such winners out of FlashForward and The Event. Fifteen years later, the show picks up with the remnants of humanity making the best of a situation where apparently all generators and Duracells were instantly ruined and never reinvented. I’ve never been a fan of shows with primitive settings. I’m hardly a JJ Abrams completist. The cast is largely unknown to me, except for the never-boring Giancarlo Esposito and Elizabeth Mitchell from the new V…but part of me wants to know how they plan to patch this together into a viable series. Also, the pilot was directed by Iron Man auteur Jon Favreau. Whatever happens, at least that episode shouldn’t be boring.

Arrow — May Justin Hartley forgive me, but as a comic book reader, I feel it my duty to try at least one episode of the colorless Green Arrow series, even though it more closely resembles the morose Mike Grell post-Crisis reboot of the late ’80s than the dashing Smallville bright spot. When it comes to comic adaptations that the general public may not get, it can’t possibly be as bland as Sable, which I also helped bury in my youth after a handful of airings. Sorry, First Comics. My fault.

Elementary — My wife and I still have one more episode of Sherlock to watch before we’re caught up with the rest of the world. After that finale undoubtedly blows us away, maybe then I’ll be in a position to ask what in the world CBS is thinking. I thought the preview I posted a while back had potential. Then I began watching Sherlock. Now? I really hope Jonny Lee Miller, Lucy Liu, and the Star Trek: Voyager writer who developed this version know what they’re doing.

Go On — I’ve already seen the first two episodes. So far, it hasn’t been canceled yet. Knock on wood, I suppose. In his role as a sportscaster grieving for the loss of his wife who died while texting and driving, Matthew Perry balances snark and pathos better here than he did on Studio 60, where he was still trying to shake the “Chandler” label. Enough time has passed, and enough hair has grayed, that I didn’t think of Friends once during either episode. The determinedly quirky cast includes Tony Award Winner Laura Benanti, character actor Bill Cobbs, Sam Witwicky’s mom, the new Sulu, the Chris that Everybody Hates, friendly traitorous Skye from Terra Nova, and some comedians I don’t know, none of which I loathe yet. I’m a big fan of humor/heart fusions, and Go On seems to be working well toward finding the right mix. The “March Sadness” scene is what first drew me in, but the interplay between the variegated members of the support group will make or break it in the long run. I could see it happening…alas, if only I weren’t there to see it.

Wave goodbye to all the nice, well-meaning shows, folks. Perhaps I could save careers and lives by sticking to DVD sets or TV Land reruns, but I refuse to live with my head in the sand, or to turn on TV Land if I can help it.

Here’s hoping more than one of them isn’t terrible, and that at least a few of the Nielsen commoners can finally agree with me on anything. The power to stop my TV show killspree is ultimately in their hands.

2012 Road Trip Photos #14: Morning in the Garden of the Gods

September 13, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

With sweet sorrow we parted with Denver on Day Five and headed south toward Colorado Springs. The tragic wildfires had been extinguished barely a week before our arrival, but we steered clear of Waldo Canyon and other affected areas. Those affected didn’t need voyeuristic out-of-towners traipsing around for scrapbook subjects.

Our first major stop was a park west of the city called the Garden of the Gods, whose claim to fame is a collection of geological oddities that don’t remotely blend in with their surroundings. Once you reach the Visitors Center, where I stood while snapping this, you can just tell which part of the landscape is the actual Garden.

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, Colorado

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Unrevised Fragments of a Day Lived on Four Hours’ Sleep

September 13, 2012 By in Comics/Lit, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

1. Last night’s entry took twice as long to construct in print as it should have, even though it was two-thirds written in my head before I sat down. I hate when that happens, even if I’m satisfied with the results.

2. When I have to be at work supernaturally early to compensate for a late afternoon appointment, next time I need to remember to go to bed earlier. Such responsibilities means less time for evening writing, not more.

3. My average for the last decade-plus has been six hours’ sleep per night. I don’t recommend it, but my body complains and groans in those rare evenings when I try to exceed seven.

4. I failed to mention 9/11/2012 also marked my twelfth anniversary with my current employer. I’m certain I’ll never forget my start date or my first anniversary there.

5. The only thing I like about driving to work supernaturally early is the sparse traffic. All straightaways and no logjams make me a happy driver.

6. Jerk turkey is no substitute for jerk chicken. For want of mayo, my food-truck lunch was less remarkable than I’d hoped.

7. My son does not approve of dental hygienists who stab at his gums without mercy.

8. Part of tonight was spent on a surprise visit to the vet. Our dog Lucky tore a rear paw-nail and left cute but revolting bloody prints in several different places. His poor, injured paw is now swathed in a blue bandage that covered an inner gauze bandage. His blue bandage remains firmly in place at the moment, but somehow he yanked the gauze out from inside it with his teeth, like a little Dog Henning.

9. My son and I aren’t finding Super Paper Mario nearly as charming as Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door was, though the former’s version of the Pit of 100 Trials was a more refreshing challenge. After completing all 100 levels, your prize is a magical sprite that allows Mario and friends to run faster than normal. In all other Mario games we’ve played, super-speed was one of Mario’s first abilities he has in the game, not one of the last.

10. I’m sad that Kieron Gillen’s epic Journey into Mystery run will be concluding, but the final arc/crossover “Everything Burns” is full of action, shocking surprises, and characters making disappointing decisions that I wish they’d reconsider, even though they’re thoroughly logical given the course of events. I’m already preparing for the days when I’ll have to live with fewer misadventures of Kid Loki, his frenemy Leah, his bird-half Ikol, and his lovable homicidal fire-breathing hound Thori, but the team is certainly going down in flames in style. It’s scary seeing Kid Loki slowly beginning to grow back into his previous, less awkward, far less innocent self.

11. So far Harbinger remains the best of the Valiant relaunch, though the sanguinary madhouse that is Bloodshot isn’t too distant a runner-up.

12. The only news story that caught my attention today was about Pat Robertson cracking anti-Muslim jokes in much the same way that my third-grade classmates would crack “Polack” jokes back in 1980. Our family doesn’t watch The 700 Club, but we attended an episode taping during our 2008 road trip to Virginia Beach. The show’s host Terry Meeuwsen was gracious and amiable, but Robertson kept his distance from the studio audience, all eight of us. It’s sad to see the distancing continue.

13. Even when I’m only half-conscious, apparently I can still write lists.

Waiting Patiently for My Annual Day of Stillness to End

September 12, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

My mom’s generation had “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” My generation has “Where were you on 9/11?” Since this blog wasn’t around last year at this time, restating my own anecdote for the record — probably just this once — might be prudent.

That day, I was at work sorting daily reports when someone cranked the volume on our quiet morning up to 12. Three hours into my shift, we were all panic and no work. This, plus the fact that I work in one of the tallest buildings in the city, was reason enough for our superiors to let us take the rest of the day off, just in case every American building over ten stories tall had been targeted for destruction. Fortunately nothing happened during the next hour that I spent gridlocked in the employee parking lot, waiting my turn to head for the hills.

Once I escaped and finally arrived home, I turned on the TV news, of which I normally watch an average of thirty minutes per year. With the TV feed kept on in the background to provide a steady stream of information, misinformation, endless speculation, live interviews with the shell-shocked, and endless repeats of all of the above, I served in the best way I possibly could at that particular moment: I spent the entire rest of the day and all of the evening online, talking to anyone who needed someone to talk to, sifting for incoming details faster than TV reporters could communicate them, and monitoring the myriad reactions at the geek message board for which I was a volunteer moderator at the time. As crowd-control jobs go, Internet moderating is less about physical stress, far more about emotional stress during times of unprecedented national trauma. Whether the members needed comfort, sought to make sense of anything, wanted to share updates as they occurred, felt like practicing their rhetorical bluster, or thought this was the perfect time for inappropriate jokes (way, way too soon — thank you so much, insensitive cool-kids), I stuck around to do my part as needed, however minuscule it was in the Grand Scheme.

While others suffered, while still others rose above to do their part in response, I was at home joining and sorting the chorus of those whose first response was to register their horror on the Internet for all to see. Hours passed while I kept waiting for a few moments of calm that might allow me to excuse myself from the fray, long after fatigue set in. The existing records confirm I was online till well after midnight. I broke a personal record for simultaneous IM chats, having carried on six such conversations at one time while still tending to the board. That was my day. Poor, put-upon, still-breathing me, having to type and type and type for the sake of others while buildings crumbled and societal paradigms quaked.

Every 9/11 since then, I’ve spent doing the opposite of that.

Every 9/11, I keep my online communications to a bare minimum. No grand pronouncements, no attempts at punditry, no prolonged conversations, no PhotoShop tributes, and very few laughs. A combination of throwing myself into my work, spending time with loved ones, consoling my coworker whose birthday is 9/11, and offline prayer is usually activity enough to hold me until the clock rolls over to 9/12, the anniversary of not much in particular.

It’s my way of deferring to those who treat the day with utmost, outspoken reverence. It’s my way of avoiding those who tire of the reverence and insist on bleating about their impatience. It’s my way of observing the truth to be had in Psalm 37:7.

It’s also my way of commemorating the Way Things Used to Be, noting The Way Things Have Been Ever Since, and dearly wishing they were the opposite of that.

Missing Blog Post Vexes, Frustrates, Makes Eventual “Complete Works” Anthology Impossible

September 11, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

I’m fanatical when it comes to keeping my littler possessions organized so I lose as few things as possible. I’m well aware my memory and concentration skills aren’t improving with age, despite how much I wish the opposite were true. If everything I own is filed and placed according to a system, then — theoretically — when those memory lapses happen, my system should direct me to where the lost object should be, if I’m on top of my filing.

I have one assigned pile for bills; one stack of Post-It notes scribbled with either to-do-lists or writing ideas that occurred to me at work; one area under the monitor for filled pocket notebooks; one assigned organizer slot for the pens I prefer to carry with me; a separate dumping drawer for pens that don’t fit the criteria; and one assigned organizer slot for my wallet, keys, and absolutely nothing else (any items carelessly dumped in this slot are immediately removed and strewn on the counter). My computer directories are set up in similar fashion, even if they make sense to no one else except me. When I want to locate something, the card catalog that I’ve turned our house into can simplify the process and lighten the mental burden.

When I lose things anyway, I try to remain calm. Misfiling can occur, regardless of safeguards. Tantrums will not summon lost items from their hiding places or their kidnapper hideouts, whichever the case may be. Most lost objects turn up sooner or later. Sooner would be better, but isn’t always possible. To a certain extent, computers are usually easier to manage than physical reality because they’re equipped with search functions that can reveal files that have been misplaced or saved in the wrong folder. I’ve spent the past few days looking around the room for a Search field in which I can type “Lowes receipt from last week” in hopes of locating a little slip of paper that I know is here somewhere, which I need to return some unnecessary, overpriced grass seed. No such luck — whatever construction company cobbled together this non-futuristic hovel of ours totally failed to install a search engine for the occasion. A wider, more thorough manual search may be necessary, but may be fruitless and really boring to conduct, so I’m continuing to procrastinate the manhunt for now.

Unfortunately some losses are beyond our control and must be accepted, whether memory is at fault or not. I’m trying very hard to focus on that right now because I was reviewing my past blog entries the other day, all the way back to Day One when it was just me and my muse hanging out together, and discovered that one of my early posts has vanished. I only recall deleting a post once (#46, according to my stats page), but I immediately reposted it a few minutes later once the issue that was aggravating me had been resolved. This, on the other hand, was not an intentional deletion on my part. This was either random computer error or an evil act of sabotage. I’m guessing the former, but I have no evidence to disprove the latter, except for the complete lack of tampering with anything else (which is circumstantial at best, and still leaves the door open for far-fetched conspiracy theories).

Through the miracle of Google Cache, I was able to retrieve a fraction of the purloined post:

Avengermania Fuels Nostalgia for Early Whedon Works Like “Cabin in the Woods”
Posted on May 6, 2012

After waiting an eternity’s worth of hours after opening day, I finally saw Marvel’s Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. At last I can rejoin the Internet, already in progress. By and large, I was a happy camper through most of the

That’s all that remains of the body of the victim. I have no idea when or how its silent elimination occurred.

Through additional searches I can tell the original tags included “movies”, “The Avengers”, “Avengermania”, “Joss Whedon”, “ancient gods”, and “Primeval Part 2”. From memory I can testify that it was a spoiler-filled, mixed-feelings piece about my issues with Cabin in the Woods, including a special appearance by Bat-Hulk to serve as a spoiler buffer. Thus does the forensic trail abruptly end.

I’m 75% certain it wasn’t the greatest post I’ve ever written. It was born in the very, very early days of MCC, when my daily traffic was still in the single digits, therefore likely to have drawn no ire or aroused any attention from other humans. Nevertheless, its absence is driving me batty. A few jokes I barely remember have all gone to waste, and I may never know why. Random computer error seems a more likely culprit than malice aforethought, but it’s no more comforting, and doesn’t even afford me the option to plot revenge against something or someone (or at least daydream about said plotting). Then again, I’m not sure the annoyance of such a trivial loss would fade any faster if I had a confirmed target to blame, so perhaps it’s just as well.

I’ll let it go in another day or so, but for now it remains a disappointment. If I never find that Lowes receipt, at least that unwanted grass seed can be returned for store credit. If I never find the rest of that lost Cabin review, my only recourse for recovery would be to watch the movie a second time and recreate it from scratch.

I’ve managed to retain the happy memory of Fran Kranz in action, but I’d rather let the rest go, including my own lost efforts.

2012 Road Trip Photos #13: Denver’s 16th Street Mall, with Good Money After Bad

September 9, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

After our extended lunch at the Buckhorn Exchange, we spent the late afternoon of Day Four in and around the 16th Street Mall, a 1¼-mile-long stretch of street tiled over for use exclusively by pedestrians and free shuttle buses. This sounded like a novel concept to us, but in person it wasn’t too different from the “lifestyle centers” (the new euphemism for outdoor malls) that we have back home in Indy, despite being four times their size. The constant (and free!) shuttle buses were a wonderful touch, though.

16th Street Mall, Denver, Colorado

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“Very Inspiring Blogging Award” Nominee Begins Saving Up for Full-Page “Variety” Ad

September 9, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 22 Comments

Very Inspiring Blogger AwardAfter a most unusual Labor Day Weekend enlivened by the responses to “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet“, I was humbled and flattered to be notified and nominated for a “Very Inspiring Blogging Award”. I’ve see similar awards passed around other blogs in the vicinity, but this is the first time one was pinned in my general direction. Suffice it to say, when someone presents me with the word “award” in it, I’m nothing less than honored and grateful.

Out of curiosity as a relative newcomer to the WordPress community, I tried researching the history of this blessed community achievement, but the roads were many and tangled. Who created this prize? Who was the original governing body or organization? Is there a Hall of Fame dedicated to past nominees and winners? Alas, the trail that I followed only went as far back as January 2012 before dead-ending, despite my resorting to viewing Google cached pages to connect a few broken links. Along the path I encountered many an exercise guru, photographer par excellence, fellow Christian, wizened sage, creative powerhouse, master chef, published author, and talking cat. I consider myself privileged to share the same datastream as these peers, predecessors, professionals, authority figures, and cats with an above-average command of spelling and grammar.

The official rules for accepting this nomination showed minute variations, as filtered through each respective nominee’s writing style, but always numbered at least four:

1. Display the nomination logo on your blog. See above.

2. Link back to the person who nominated you. Special, humbled thanks to Enchanted Seashells for the unexpected nod. To acknowledge this honor tonight, my planned tribute to Dial H for Hero has been postponed until a later date.

3. State 7 things about yourself. For those keeping score at home, consider these Bullet Points #101-107:

101. My best possible chance to participate in the National Spelling Bee was ruined by the word “fulsome”.
102. The first ‘D’ I ever received on a report card was in tenth-grade Debate class.
103. Despite dozens of recommendations from very well-meaning friends, I’ve never seen Fireproof because I’m afraid of how I’ll react.
104. I know all the words to “Bring the Noise”, but I prefer Public Enemy’s original to the later jam version with Anthrax.
105. The only soap opera I can say I ever really followed was Knots Landing.
106. I’m now collecting twice as many Image Comics series as I am DC Comics series.
107. One of my ears used to be pierced.

4. Nominate 15 other blogs for the Very Inspiring Blogging Award. And here we go:

1. Bucket List Publications, which I’m pretty sure is already deservedly festooned with awards a-plenty, but consider the fearless Mrs. Carter hereby named nonetheless.

2. Cristian Mihai; same deal here in terms of extra-awardedness. I first began following him early into my new-blog acclimatization period and found plenty of useful takeaways form his regular dollops of writing advice, even though he’s almost half my age and I don’t have an actual book fully planned in my head just yet.

3. Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth.
Recommended reading: “In Defence of Libraries”

4. One Grain Amongst the Storm
Recommended reading: “The Last Salute”

5. Canadian Hiking Photography
Recommended viewing: All of it. Grab a drink, give those sumptuous pages time to load, then marvel at the results.

6. Clotilda Jamcracker
Recommended reading: “Bring out your dead”

7. Leanne Cole’s Photography Field Trips
Recommended montage: “Architecture in the Picture”

8. Ms. Elena Levon Traveling. Great motto: “I choose to collect memories instead of things.” This is almost exactly why our family buys far fewer souvenirs than the average tourists, and why I’ve written online about our road trips every year.
Recommended reading: “Letter To My Father”

9. retireediary
Recommended photo spread: “The Rainbow of Flowers in Biei and Furano, Japan”

10. Simply Sage
Recommended viewing: “Weekly Photo Challenge: Growth”

11. Together
Recommended reading: “Murder in the First” (It helps if, like me, you watched the movie years ago and can still remember the impression it left on you.)

12. Honie Briggs
Recommended reading: “Eighteen Hours in a Red Cross Shelter”

13. The Smile Scavenger
Recommended reading: “‘Wow, That’s a Big Jump!’: a Fool’s Guide to Making Drastic Career Changes“.

14. LIFE is unwritten
Recommended reading: “How to Change the World Without Really Trying”

15. Iconically Rare
Recommended reading: “Releasing Your Inner Superhero — Iconic Exemplars”

As always, thanks very much for reading. Emphatic thanks once again to Enchanted Seashells for the nomination. For those of you still along for the ride, I hope at least one future post here will be worth your time.

Good night to one and all, stay well, drive safely, may God bless you, keep reaching for the stars, and don’t forget to tip your valet. That goes double for you talking cats, who really shouldn’t be driving anyway.

Using Time Loops to Dream-Cast the “Miss Peregrine” Movie

September 8, 2012 By in Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

DON'T LOOK AT US! DON'T YOU LOOK AT US!

“Mmmm, box office receipts.”

I usually avoid reading recommendations from coworkers because few among them share my tastes. (Twilight? Not really aimed at me. The Shack? ) Not only did I recently make an exception, I’m glad I did so, when I was allowed to borrow a copy of Ransom Riggs’ first novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I’d read a review of it a while back in Entertainment Weekly that stuck in my head because of the unusual creative conceit behind it: Riggs amassed numerous bizarre, disturbing, or just plain head-scratching yesteryear photos of haunting-looking children and developed a narrative to string them together. Granted, anyone with bad vacation photos could muster at least a short story out of their own useless outtakes, but the photos in question elevate the project several levels above that.

On an overly reductive level, it’s a WWII-set X-Men vs. Groundhog Day. Jacob Portman is a present-day 16-year-old misfit who finagles his way to an obscure island near Wales to investigate his sketchy family history after his grandfather dies under violent circumstances. A trail of mystery and oddities leads Jacob into a place outside of time where a most unusual headmistress presides over a coterie of kids with impossible powers and features, here called “peculiars” instead of “mutants” — living in secret inside an endlessly repeating day for their own protection. There are super-powers, magical feats, disgusting things, poetic moments, terrifying evils, an open ending that begs for further journeys, and that mad, mad picture collection. I was left satisfied and ready for more.

According to the author’s official website, as of February 2012 the book has been optioned for big-screen adaptation, with big names attached such as director Tim Burton and screenwriter Jane Goldman, between whom I can easily see this being renamed Big Fish: First Class.

Please note the Courtesy Spoiler Alert at this point, where I’m about to delve a little further into character specifics. If this is still on your reading pile, now’s the time for a graceful exit, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

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2012 Road Trip Photos #12: An Hour Inside the Denver Art Museum, Part 2 of 2

September 6, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The other half of our brief visit to the Denver Art Museum was largely spent in the Japan portion of their Asian section, my son’s exhibit of choice. We knew this without even having to ask. He dreams of going to Japan someday so he can confirm in person what he already tells us every other day, that everything they do or have is better than anything we do or have. The “grass is always greener on the other side” argument is useless against him. They probably have an appropriate metaphor that tops that one, too.

My favorite of the collection: a sculpture so intricate, it must have taken the carver’s entire lifetime and/or driven him mad.

Japanese sculpture, Denver Art Museum

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How Not to Drop Out of College Twice

September 6, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Like anyone with a working Internet connection, from time to time I find myself completing online surveys about various companies or products, whether for fun, for freebies, or in hopes that the survey will include an essay question that you can use as a soapbox to unleash a thousand-word tirade about the last time their services ticked you off and ruined your day. “That’ll show ’em!” you think to yourself as your carefully crafted vitriol is forwarded to the survey company and assimilated into the results database containing hundreds of thousands of other surveys, someday to be skimmed by a distracted HR rep who might raise an eyebrow at your poison-pen screed, if you’re lucky.

Every such survey has the obligatory section whose questions are designed for demographic pigeonholing of your results. I don’t mind revealing my ever-advancing age, blissful marital status, or complete lack of Hispanic bloodline. My least favorite question is always, “What is the highest level of education you have completed?” It sounds simple and uncomplicated, especially if you earned a degree. Sometimes I wonder if those who attended graduate school and/or who hold multiple degrees receive a little bonus from the survey company in return, to thank them for bolstering the results with certified demographic classiness.

Mine is the humble ignominy that requires me to check “Some college”. It’s always a multiple-choice question, never a write-in field, so you can’t fall back on the standard glib answers such as “school of hard knocks” or “school of life”, joke answers such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” or “Hogwarts”, or even obscure answers such as “School of Fish”, in hopes that someone in the survey company will agree how cool a song “3 Strange Days” was. Every time I spot the bland, undecorated phrase “Some college” on a survey, I wince for a second and have to shake off the reminder of a young adulthood that wandered astray.

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“Premium Rush” Shows Why Bicycles Should Digitally Replace Cars in All Action Flicks Ever

September 5, 2012 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, "Premium Rush"After seeing the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt flick Premium Rush tonight, I’ve realized that bicycles are the greatest machine ever. I should already know this after multiple viewings of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and my mastery of the old arcade game Paperboy, but those are old and Premium Rush is new. To today’s young folk that means it’s more influential than either of those works by definition.

Consider the pros of bicycle ownership that I’ve learned tonight:

* Bicycles use no gas. Not only does this save average consumers money, it means movies that replace all their cars with bikes will overflow with carbon credits or go-green points or whatever currency this market uses.

* Bicycles fit through tight cracks in traffic jams. Related note: traffic laws only apply if bicycle policemen can catch you. Don’t get too overconfident, since bikecops do have the power of teleportation, based on how many places our hero’s bikecop nemesis (stuntman Christopher Place) shows up in the movie through magical point-A-to-point-B locale shifts. That power only gets bikecops so far, though — their advanced age and lack of BMX tricks makes them an easily evaded adversary.

* Bicycle parts are sturdy and survive any and all forms of undue stress, short of a head-on collision. In that event, temporary replacement bikes should be readily available for borrowing from your immediate vicinity.

* Bicycles are much faster than cars. They can dodge and weave through the thickest of traffic, especially if you have the power of instant super-calculus like Amadeus Cho. If a crooked cop is several feet behind you, just pedal really hard. Sure. he could put his pedal to the metal and flatten you, but he won’t. For some reason. Mental block, maybe, who knows. One exception to this rule: when a finale is coming up, cars are faster because they have to catch up with you before the last big set piece begins. You can’t just arrive in time to save the day while the bad guy is still several blocks away because of rush hour or construction delays. No audience wants to cheer the defeat of a villain in absentia.

* Bicycle-related jobs never have a dress code. Our hero’s pride in avoiding nice suits and ties is a large part of Who He Is. (Our hero clearly learned nothing from Pee-Wee.) Late in the movie, a montage of assorted bicycling professionals confirms that clothing, hair care, and hygiene are left to the employee’s discretion. Hopefully they disinfect their packages before handing them to the intended recipient.

* The bad guys never try shooting you during chase scenes. You’re a small moving target, and they’re probably lousy shots anyway, even if they carry a gun for a living. This facet remains largely unexplored in Premium Rush, but in other chase movies, judging by the average number of missed shots per movie, I get the impression that crooked cops and evil military men never have to fret about marksmanship on their performance review.

* Bicycle lanes are optional. Over the past few years, Indianapolis has spent millions renovating and redesigning numerous thoroughfares to add bicycle lanes — sometime widening streets, sometimes taking an entire lane away from cars and designating it as a bicycle lane instead (White River Parkway North Drive, I’m looking in your excessively named direction). As seen in Premium Rush, Manhattan bicyclists seem to do just fine without them. The closest they come to compromising is when they have to share a walkway in Central Park with wheel-deprived pedestrians.

With so much going for bicycles, I foresee a day when filmmakers and studios revisit their works George-Lucas-style and decide it’s time to tamper with them for the sake of a modern audience. Imagine The French Connection with Popeye Doyle free-styling it up, or The Bourne Supremacy filmed in you-are-there Bicycle-Smashing-Cam. Stephen King’s Christine would have been about twenty minutes long, once the possessed 1957 Schwinn American realized it wasn’t really equipped to kill. Best of all in my mind would be the late John Frankenheimer’s Ronin — narrow chases through all those claustrophobic European streets, still at breakneck speeds, and everyone’s still armed with bazookas. The mind reels at the cinematic possibilities, so much so that I have to stop myself from staying up overnight and brainstorming any more. (Maybe that’s tomorrow night’s entry. No one tempt me.)

Setting all that aside, this was a fun, footloose, albeit PG-13-languaged 91 minutes’ worth of popcorn-movie excuse to watch Gordon-Levitt play the same kind of tenacious, hard-luck, unlikely hero that worked well for him in (500) Days of Summer, except here he’s not a jerk and he gets to win. It’s also a showcase for anyone who wants to know what Michael Shannon looks like, before he appears in next year’s Man of Steel. I didn’t see Revolutionary Road, for which he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for what I read was a fairly tiny role, but here he dominates plenty of screen time as a foul-mouthed crooked cop (who naturally is the one to fill the movie’s one-F-word quota) with an amoral attitude and an unfortunate addiction to Pai gow. His tough New York sounds more like other movies than what we heard last year on vacation, but that only added to his scary intensity.

Other random, disconnected thoughts that flew through my head while watching the Greatest Bicycle Film of All Time:

* Fun geek note: Shannon continually hides behind the alias “Forrest J. Ackerman”, named after the famous sci-fi fan. (Yes, once upon a time, they used to have those. 105% of all sci-fi fans wish that were still the case.)

* Other than Gordon-Levitt and Shannon, the only other actor I recognized without research was Aasif Mandvi, my favorite correspondent in those rare moments when I have time to watch secondhand online clips from The Daily Show with John Stewart. Mandvi basically reprises his role as cranky boss Mr. Aziz from Spider-Man 2, but his presence is value-added good times.

* Listen carefully during one of Gordon-Levitt’s course-plotting moments, and you’ll be rewarded with a Wilhelm scream, to no small comedic effect.

* Do the kids these days still say “shred” in any bike-related context? It sounds like previous-decade slang.

* Gordon-Levitt’s motto, “Brakes are death,” sums up every bad commute I’ve ever harrumphed my way through.

* My favorite thing about the movie was recognizing Manhattan landmarks and locales that our family encountered on our 2011 road trip. Among the notable sights that nab screen time are Chinatown; Columbus Circle; a #1 subway station (the 116th Street Station, if the visuals match the story); the Ed Sullivan Theatre (blink and you miss it); Columbus Street alongside the Natural History Museum; and, of course, Central Park. Natives no doubt will recognize three times as many places as I did.

* No, there’s no scene after the end credits, but you can stick around and hear several more minutes of “Baba O’Riley” if you’d like. You can also recover from the shock of realizing that the entire movie flew right by without a single character using the phrase “need for speed.” Writing without that cliché in a movie all about speed may be its most skillful trick.

2012 Road Trip Photos #11: An Hour Inside the Denver Art Museum, Part 1 of 2

September 3, 2012 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Our itinerary for the first half of Day Four didn’t feel overbooked when we first arranged it. By the time we finished touring the Molly Brown House and standing next to the Colorado State Capitol, we had a little over an hour to walk a few blocks east to the Denver Art Museum, walk a few blocks back to our parking space, and arrive at the Buckhorn Exchange in time for our 1:30 reservation. After allotting for the hot round-trip walk through the artsy part of town, we found ourselves pressed for time on our whirlwind self-guided tour of the Denver Art Museum.

Further complicating matters: my camera batteries died, and my spares were safe and sound in our hotel room back in Aurora. Fortunately my wife is diligent in keeping her camera’s built-in battery recharged nightly. Between Molly Brown and the museum, we found not a single shop of any kind that sold batteries. Even the Art Museum gift shop was of no help — theirs isn’t the kind of place that stocks up on incidentals for inconvenienced tourists. At best, they might’ve carried a commemorative spoon with a painting of a battery on it. Once again, as with the GenCon costume contest, the day is saved thanks to my wife and her superior camera.

A few outdoor sculptures greet you as you approach the Art Museum from the east. Between the museum and the Denver Public Library is Acoma Plaza, in which stands Mark di Suvero’s sculpture “Lao Tzu”, named after the author of the Tao Te Ching. I read the latter in college, but wasn’t prepared to interpret the artist’s meaning here, unless some of these shapes represent Chinese pictographs.

Lao Tzu, Mark di Suvero, Acoma Plaza, Denver, Colorado

Our game plan, once inside: we three each selected one museum section for the group to peruse. I chose the Pacific Northwest section, featuring art from the U.S. and Canadian tribes who dominated that particular coast. Our museums in Indiana and the surrounding states have more than their share of Native American art and artifacts, but I was curious to know if other tribes had their own individual styles unavailable for display in the Midwest. I’ve seen all the maize-based manufactured goods I’ll ever need to see in our museums, but this exhibit was successfully different from those, highlighting the works of the Haida, the Tlingit, the Inupiaq, and the Kwakwaka’wakw (I’m not sure which letters are silent, if any).

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Grateful for “Freshly Pressed” Status, Hoping Not to Turn into Egomaniacal One-Hit Wonder

September 3, 2012 By in Meta Tags: , , , , , 11 Comments

WordPress "Freshly Pressed" badgeFirst things first: I owe a truckload of gratitude to the WordPress staffer who selected last Friday evening’s entry, “The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet” as a feature selection for the WordPress.com Freshly Pressed page. Before that happened, I honestly thought the page was automated and random. Based on the gracious emails I received that offered me some proofreading and specific content input before the FP slotting went live, I’ve confidently shelved that theory.

I also owe many sincere thanks to you, the Viewers at Home, who were kind enough to give it a look-see and leave feedback. The response has overwhelmed me more with its kindness and generosity than with its appreciable volume. My Labor Day weekend took a vastly different direction than the quiet doldrums I’d anticipated. Keeping up with the replies has been a fun ‘n’ lively time, and I’ve also found myself with a plethora of new blogs and writers to check out.

For anyone who’s returned here and sampled any fare beyond the Empty Chair Blues, it’s my sincere hope that other future entries will be of some use or entertainment value to you as well. I aim for one entry per day, based on whatever’s preoccupying my mind at any given moment. The inconsistent MCC experience is fairly consistent with the scattershot nature of my aging mindset. Nine times out of ten it’s entertainment (comics, movies, TV, whatever) because of my lifelong unapologetic nerdist tendencies and my never-ending curiosity about the arts and assorted acts of creation from a variety of perspectives. Every so often I open up about my faith, though not nearly as often as I should. As special events have been occurring of late, I’ve shared experiences with fan conventions and our family’s annual road trips. Once in a blue moon I’ll write something about Indiana, even though no one ever reads those, not even other Hoosiers.

I assume “Empty Chair” will be escorted off the FP page in due time, and my daily experience here will remain on track. I’ll do my best to hold onto my sense of proportion and not print up thousands of business cards bearing the FP stamp and the obnoxious, self-anointed title of CERTIFIED WRITER. If I do, please shoot me down…and feel free to take a card.

Thanks for reading, and a round of hugs for everyone.