Saturday, December 19, 2004

And now, an instant replay for our West Coast audience

I originally had this towards the end of the comment threads on my last blog page. And I’m sure the four people who comment on this blog (Scott, Nate, Tammy, Mike) all read it there. But there are a few silent lurkers out there who don’t comment on this blog (Ted, Dave, Gary, my ex girlfriend Laurie, probably at least a few others I’m not aware of) and they may not bother with the comment threads. So, for posterity, I shall reprint my final Top Ten list, which mutated into a To 20 list, here.

Also, I made a few changes, which is another reason why I’m wasting time on this, instead of getting caught up on my email, like I should be, dammit.

Start musing in public on The Best Movies Of All Time, and, well, the first thing that happens is, everyone within earshot immediately leaps up and says "Oi! What about Walter DeMeeziel's brilliant 1954 black and white version of Dostyoefski's VERDANT CRIMSON AUTUMN FOR STORM SEASON VETERANS featuring Olin Patinski as Olaf the Winter Guard and Shelly Duvall as Young Orphan Svetlana? Only the most aberrant and witless of culture-less fools could create any sort of Top Ten list and not include THAT!"

I knew that was going to happen, and was prepared to be ruthless, and I still am. It's MY Top Ten list. MINE MINE MINE. Being There doesn't get on it because I say it doesn't get on it; no movie in which Shirley MacLaine masturbates on camera is going to get on my Top Ten list, and Roxanne can strike itself repeatedly about the head and shoulders with its own tennis racket, too. I would rather have the movies I consider to be the finest movies in the world on my Top Ten list than the finest movies in the world. So there.

However, The Always Esteemed Scott is correct, ten is an arbitrary number, and it seemed clear that I needed to do at least a Top 20. I thought I'd come up with a brilliant solution, though... instead of a Top 10, or Top 20, I'd just do a bunch of different lists... Top 5 Adventure Movies, Top 5 Science Fiction Movies, Top 5 Fantasy Movies, Top 5 Comedies, Top 5 Romances, Top 5 Westerns... etc.

As I said, I thought this was brilliant, and started to plan out how I was going to define each particular sub-genre, so people couldn't argue with me that, for example, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was an adventure movie, not a fantasy movie, and like that.

But then I started thinking stuff like "Well, it's pointless to do a Top 5 Romances, because I'm just looking for a place to put Pretty Woman which I really like; there aren't any other romances in the history of the world except maybe Can't Buy Me Love that I like, and Can't Buy Me Love would go in the Top 5 High School movies list, along with, yes, Heathers, shut up Scott, and then, worse, what the hell is It's A Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington? Slice of Life Movies? Mainstream Movies? It's A Wonderful Life is very nearly unassignable as to genre... religious films? Holiday films? Well, if you make a Holiday Films category It's A Wonderful Life is going to kick the shit out of everything else ever done for any holiday anywhere, so that doesn't seem fair...

You see the fix I'm in?

So, as I'm awake, here's, like, a Top 15 list, with Honorable Mentions in different categories as they suggest themselves.

1. The Terminator. Runners up in best SF category: Robocop, Blade Runner, Frequency and A Clockwork Orange. SF movies are hereby defined as 'movies which have as an essential thematic element the exploration of the impact of a currently non-existent or non-prevalent technology on human behavior and society'. Now, there are a lot of movies that do this really badly, like Total Recall and Minority Report, but we aren't talking about the bad ones.

2. Casablanca. Runners up in the Best Adventure Film category: Congo, Mountains of the Moon, Jurassic Park III, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. "Adventure Film" is defined as "a film which is set in a reality that is recognizably our own in which the heroes are attempting to accomplish a certain well defined objective, usually obtaining some specific material object, and which takes place in, or in which they have to travel to, at least one exotic locale in order to do this". That may seem arbitrary, but I've been called worse. And, also, it lets me work in Apollo 13, which deserves to be mentioned, and which, strangely, fits that definition.

3. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Runners up for Best Western: Unforgiven, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Extreme Prejudice, Winchester '73, The Big Country and Star Wars. Okay, never mind, I'll probably do Star Wars under 'Best Fantasy', since it ain't Science Fiction.

4. The Fellowship of the Ring. Runners up for Best Fantasy - Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Monsters, Inc. "Fantasy" is, a story set in a completely different section of space/time, that has no discernible connection with our own, in which the laws of physics seem to operate on a largely different basis, allowing things that are simply impossible in our own reality. There are doubtless other good fantasies, by this somewhat loose definition, that I can't think of right now, but Willow isn't one of them, so nobody even mention it.

5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail Runners up: an endless list, starting with nearly anything else remotely Python-esque, like Time Bandits and A Fish Called Wanda , and then going on to The Commitments and, I suppose, even Shaun of the Dead.

6. Raising Arizona. Runners up? I guess this would be the Screwball and/or Social/Romantic/Family Comedy Genre. So I'd give Arsenic & Old Lace an Honorable Mention here, along with The Addams Family. And I suppose The Big Chill, although that's a stretch, associating it with Raising Arizona.

7. Inherit The Wind. There are no runners up, this seems to be a movie that defies genre... well, it's a courtroom drama, so, fine, let's give an Honorable Mention to A Few Good Men. And Sommersby, what the hell.

8. The Last of the Mohicans. You know, the Daniel Day-Lewis one. I'm trying to think of Runners Up for the Larger Than Life Heroic Adventure category, and all I'm coming up with is Doc Savage, Man of Bronze. So never mind. Um… well… I suppose there’s always Reanimator… However, in the Historical Melodramas With Lots of Cool Period Atmosphere category, I'd give an Honorable Mention to Rob Roy, Glory, Braveheart, The Last Temptation of Christ, Sommersby, The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers (1974 version), and Paul Verhoeven's Flesh & Blood.

9. Nobody's Fool - Runners Up in the Films About Eccentric But Lovable Small Town Denizens - Groundhogs Day and Roxanne.

10. Miller's Crossing.

11. This Is Spinal Tap

12. Goodfellas. Runners Up in the Mob Movie category - Donnie Brasco and Prizzi's Honor, and, of course, the first two Godfather movies.

13. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. Runners Up in the "weird comedies with SF overtones that don't fit anywhere else and need to be mentioned" category are Ghostbusters, GalaxyQuest, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I am aware that the last is a real stretch, but it's a singular enough, and influential enough, movie that I needed to mention it somewhere.

14. The Road Warrior. Runners Up in the All Out Action Films That Need No Justification But Mayhem Category - Kiss of the Dragon, The Professional, Point of No Return, Blue Thunder, DieHard, Near Dark and The Warriors. Runners Up in the Really Cool Post Apocalypse Adventure Film Genre - A Boy And His Dog.

15. It's A Wonderful Life. Mind you, I listed It's A Wonderful Life first, and then typed in everything else above it, to make sure I didn't forget it. Runner's Up for, you know, Overall Greatest Films Ever Made would have to be stuff like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington and probably a few other Frank Capra movies, plus amazing films like Schindler’s List, Quiz Show and Ordinary People and, yes, I suppose, Being There.

And since this isn't enough places...

16. Spider-Man. Runners Up in the Superhero Films Category - The Incredibles, Dark Man, The Rocketeer, the X-Men movies, Blade and Hellboy.

17. Say Anything. Runners Up in the Hopeless Romantics Category - Pretty Woman, Run Lola Run, Sommersby, No Way Out, Mad Dog and Glory, An Officer And A Gentleman, and because I need to mention it and can’t seem to fit it in anywhere else, Thelma and Louise.

18. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Runners Up in the High School Movie category - Can't Buy Me Love, Heathers, Ordinary People. And I swear to God I will personally throttle, or at least, publicly and cruelly ridicule, the first person who mentions Pump Up The Volume or The goddam Breakfast Club.

19. Eight Men Out. You'd think there should be other good sports movies, but when I try to think of any, I'm immediately into second tier, nowhere near as good as Eight Men Out stuff like Any Given Sunday and White Men Can't Jump. So, I'm just going to note how amazing it is that a sports movie made my list at all, and move on... oh, wait, pool is a sport, and I need to mention The Color of Money, so, fine, here we go.

20. Deep Cover. Runners Up in the Cop Movie Category - Cop Land, Q & A, The Bad Lieutenant, Sea of Love (just to get something by Pacino in there).

All that, and I still couldn't free up a category for "Horror", so Hellboy and Blade got crammed into "supeheroes" while Near Dark got stuffed in with 'action'. There's just no way to do it well, which is best illustrated by the fact that I couldn’t find a spot to mention Don Coscarelli’s brilliantly surreal Phantasm series, which certainly deserves a spot on any Favorite Films list of mine, but, well, you try and figure a place to give it an Honorable Mention in the above structure. Go ahead. I dare you.

Equally left out, although I don’t want them to be as I like them enough to want to at least mention them somewhere, are Lawrence Kasdan’s amazing femme fatale/murder mystery/romantic intrigue Body Heat, and Bryan Singer’s uncategorizable The Usual Suspects. I don’t like either of them enough to bump one of the other movies in my Top 20, but, well, I like them enough, and think they are good enough movies, to deserve being mentioned.

It should go without saying, on any list in which It's A Wonderful Life doesn't show up until #15, that these are not listed in any particular order of preference or quality. But I'd better say it, or someone will start screaming at me about the order I've ranked things in. So, none of that! Yell at me because I left Battleship Potemkin or Paths of Glory off if you like, and I'll just sneer haughtily at you and call you an art school wank and a goddam film major. But if you're angry because I dared to put Raising Arizona ahead of Inherit the Wind, well, don't be; I think Gene Kelly's performance in the latter is every bit as good as Nicholas Cage's in the former.

Now, before I close this somewhat modified and expanded reiteration of one of my longer comment thread entries, I also want to note that I blocked and copied the contents of that comment thread entry in order to somewhat modify it here. And in doing that, I was forced to re-do all the html coding for all the bolded movie titles, which was a real pain in the ass. And since I already got about 12 comments on this in those previous comment threads, I really don’t expect too many more here. So it may all have been a colossal waste of time, especially when I owe people email. But, still, here it is.

Baby it’s cold outside

The coldest night of the season to date is settling over Central Florida right now, as an arctic cold front slides on in and locks down for at least the next 24 hours or so. It is projected to get down into the 20s. Fortunately, tomorrow is my day off, so I need not leave the house if I don’t want to, and I suspect that I won’t want to.

Cold in Florida is generally unaccompanied by snow or ice, so it’s not like this is anything like as inconvenient as the northern winters many of you are still suffering through and that I remember quite well. However, on the other hand, I’ve been in Florida since 1997 and my blood has long since thinned; when it gets down into the 20s outside, well, that’s way too cold for me. We also aren’t anywhere near as well prepared for cold down here as y’all are up there; my winter coat is a very nice leather jacket, but it isn’t exactly a parka, and I have no gloves or scarf at all.

And, I should also mention that should we, by some evil mischance, get an appreciable amount of snow or ice during one of these cold snaps, lots of people simply die. People in Florida can’t drive in the rain, for God’s sake. When it snows they simply go batshit and drive into houses.

The Bucs lost once again today, which pretty much puts the finishing touches on their already dismal play off hopes. It was a horribly wrenching loss; since they’d been pretty much using the beleaguered New Orleans Saints for a rug for the entire game, and then suddenly, they decided to stop playing towards the end of the fourth quarter, letting the Saints come from behind and score two touchdowns in the last five minutes to win.

In an upside, the Bills continued their winning streak. Unfortunately, living where I do, I cannot count on being able to watch Bills games (today, CBS chose to show me some idiotic non-contest between the Chiefs and the Broncos instead). Also unfortunately, the Bills play in the AFC. A five game winning streak would guarantee them a wild card play off berth in this season’s mostly hapless NFC, but in the AFC, the division titles are already locked down, and the wild card spots are very nearly completely sewn up already, as well. The Bills could still make it, if they continue to win and several other teams oblige by losing, but, well, they’d be a mortal lock for that wild card spot if they were playing in the NFC this year.

The Bills have two more games, against the Browns, whom they should fairly easily beat, and the Steelers, whom it is starting to look as if God Himself could not defeat in a gridiron contest without calling down locusts. But they’ll play the Steelers in the last game of the regular season, and as the Steelers already have their first round byes for the play offs secured, as well as home stadium advantage, it won’t matter to them whether they win or not, and I’m hoping Bill Cowher will decide to rest his starters and play, I don’t know, maybe, the cheerleaders.

The Bucs have two more games as well, and one is against the Panthers, so they don’t have much hope there, so I think I’ll just stop watching football now, at least, until and unless the Bills actually get into the play offs, or CBS actually decides to broadcast a Bills game locally. (I cannot fathom it. The Bills, at the very least, are a team from a region in our same time zone, and they were playing Cincinatti today, and yet, still, for some reason, CBS chooses to broadcast the Kansas City Chiefs against the Denver Broncos to a Central Florida audience.)

At least for the moment, I have a surplus of reading material. It’s rare, and something to be enjoyed when it happens, however annoying it may be. First, I started to re-read The Chronicles of Amber recently, reasoning that there were 10 of them, so that should keep me going for a while.

Then my editor at JoeBobBriggs.com, who I honestly thought must have long since replaced me as their fantasy reviewer, sent me an advance proof copy of The Bloody Crown of Conan, which is like a stroke book for Robert E. Howard fans, or something… in addition to containing two longish Conan stories and the only Conan novel Howard ever wrote (The People of the Black Circle, The Hour of the Dragon, and A Witch Shall Be Born), it also has a lot of stuff from Howard’s original files and carbons (the Conan material is apparently reproduced from Howard’s carbons and thus is not the somewhat edited versions that have appeared in print before) and quite a few pedantic articles from rather windy Conan scholars likening Robert E. Howard to, like, Jehovah, or something.

I haven’t done a review for JoeBobBriggs.com in nearly a year, so I was surprised to get this. And usually they send me some rubbish by Terry Brooks, which I used to either give to one of my brother Paul’s friends who will read anything, or just let Chewie gnaw to tatters. But this is something I’m actually interested in, so I’ve started reading it, right as I was in the middle of The Guns of Avalon, figuring I should finish this and do a review for the site ASAP.

And then, two days ago, I got a book I’d ordered from one of Amazon.com’s Market Resellers in the mail. It’s actually a Christmas present for someone else, so I won’t mention what the book is here, but I want to read it before I send it on, so I have to do that, too.

Speaking of that, I ordered a buncha stuff online for Christmas presents this year, although I still haven’t done anything about getting gifts for my family. While I was out ordering things for various other people, though, I also ordered some stuff for me. One thing I got was the CD “Tiger Lily” by Natalie Merchant, because a local station recently did a telethon for muscular distrophy, and they were playing “Wonder” over the closing credits (hearing “Wonder” played over shots of various kids in wheelchairs and leg braces grinning into the camera and playing basketball and such like that really gives the song a whole new depth) and I’ve always liked that song, so I went out on the web and looked it up. It’s on “Tiger Lily” (of course) so, well, when it comes I’ll see if I like owning a Natalie Merchant album enough to want to own more of them, or if it’s just the one song I like.

In addition to the music, I also picked up To Live And Die In L.A., Lost In Translation, and Swimming Pool on DVD. The first is a favorite of mine; probably the only William Friedkin movie I’d ever want to own (one of a very few I’m willing to actually sit through), although I haven’t seen it in nearly 20 years, so it may not hold up well after all this time. Still, I hope, and even suspect, I’ll enjoy it as much as I did back when I was watching it in a campus auditorium as a member of the Syracuse University Union Cinema Board.

The other two I haven’t seen. I’ve heard nothing but good stuff about the second, but, well, critics are often wrong (you never heard anything but good reviews regarding David Mamet and Coen Brothers films these days, but most of them suck profoundly). The third is just something they offered to throw in with Lost In Translation for like another $3, and it’s supposed to have a lot of good looking women naked in it, so I figured what the hell.

I sent a small box of clix off to Mike Norton last week, which he got, but somehow or other, an Experienced Cable snuck into the box instead of the Experienced Bishop Mike needs. I have an extra Experienced Bishop to send Mike, but Mike is supposed to be sending me a few clix too, and I don’t have any small boxes to mail Bishop off in until I get the package from Mike. (Also, going to the post office in Zephyrhills at any time when the snowbirds are here is nightmarish, and going there in Christmas season anywhere in this hemisphere is also horrible, so you can only imagine what going to the post office here in Zephryhills is like this month. I’ll do it, but any excuse not to right now, or tomorrow, is acceptable, and waiting for Mike’s package to arrive works fine for me.)

And I sent Steve Tice a large check for some comics he’s ordered for me over the past few months… not Silver Age back issues, such as I was getting from a dealer named Doug Sulipa way up in Canada somewhere, but actual currently published, ongoing books, like my old buddy Slappy’s current work on Conan and Justice League, as well as a few back issues of some other titles I’d missed, like Promethea, Tom Strong, and Justice Society. Steve also ordered a few of the Sandman tpb’s I don’t have, so it will be nice to re-visit those, as well.

Yet another of the things I’ve recently been annoyed to remember I used to have a very nice collection of, which I do not have any more, is Omaha the Cat Dancer. Yes, like all my Silver Age Engelhart and Gerber stuff, like my signed copy of What If #3, like all those cool Modesty Blaise comic strip collections from Titan that I used to have, like all that great 70s Cary Bates Superman and Legion of Superheroes and Flash stuff, like my complete run of Fabian Nicieza’s brilliant Psi Force and Jim Shooter’s first half dozen or so issues of Star Brand and the Mike Baron and William Moessner-Loebs run on Flash and all those Baron/Rude Nexus issues and a complete set of the Jack Kirby New Gods and a lot of Kamandi and, jesus christ, I honestly don’t know what all else, all my Omahas are also gone now.

Subiaks.

We hates them, we hates them, forever.

Ah, but I don’t. Kenny was doing me a favor; otherwise the comics would have had to be abandoned. His parents didn’t even know me. It was just bad luck. And it could have been worse; something bad could have actually happened to some person I cared about (or me) instead of just to several thousand comic books and magazines.

Still. I once read in some fantasy story about someone casting a spell that would allow them to, over the course of a certain time period, recover every object they had once had in their possession.

Wouldn’t THAT be nice?

I made brownies tonight. I had this packet of mix in my cupboard that had been there for a while, and I decided I could use a chocolate fix, so I mixed it up. I also had a bag of walnuts that had also been in there for a while, so I ground up some of them and threw them in, too. They’re pretty good.

My life is very, very boring. However, Basic Training taught me many things, and among them is, boring is not always bad. In fact, in comparison to any number of possible situations you could find yourself in, it’s actually pretty good. And, hey, at least I’ve got a lot to read right now…

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, "Wow, I didn't recognize you in men's clothing". According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I'm reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I'd take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here's The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people's blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin's Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron's blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don't really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren't related to me by marriage, I'd most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I've learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don't care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I'd get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don't Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.