Under the Table and Dreaming

Last night I had a strange dream. I hope that my loyal readers can interpret the symbols within said dream and tell me which psychiatric drug I will no doubt be prescribed. In the dream, my mother was giving me a lift home from some unknown place. We were both hungry, so we stopped at the McDonald's drivethru. At window #1, we placed our orders and paid the cashier. At window #2, a weary looking woman gave us our food and asked if we wanted ketchup. She looked familiar to both of us, and then we realized who she was - none other than Claire Huxtable herself, Phylicia Rashad. She had dyed her hair orange, and there were some lines under her eyes, but there was no mistaking it - this was Phylicia Rashad in the flesh, slinging out Quarter Pounders to the masses. My mom got all excited and told her how much she loved the Cosby Show. Phylicia thanked my mom and told her how tough things had gotten for her since her second show with Bill had been cancelled. She even pleaded with us to let her know if we knew of any acting gigs that might be coming up. My mom promised that she would. We all parted amicably, and I ate my fries.

What triggered this dream? Maybe it was because I caught the last ten minutes of a Cosby Show rerun yesterday afternoon. It was the one where Vanessa had snuck out with her boyfriend and Cliff used two apples to illustrate how close the two of them had gotten in the car. It wasn't a Claire-driven episode, so I don't know why it was Phylicia Rashad that got stuck in my subconscious. In real life, Ms. Rashad has gone on to a very successful career in theater. She even won a Tony a couple of years back. I'm guessing that the royalties from her 80s heyday are keeping her and her kids fat, happy and educated. Unless she was doing research for an upcoming role as a fast food worker with orange hair, there would be no sane reason for her to be working at McDonald's. Why did my twisted mind concoct such an image? What is it about middle-aged black women that has captured my imagination so much of late? Enlighten me, please, someone.

Are You Hungry?!

There are some things that I find oddly fascinating - things like maps, conservative Christian movie reviews, and those mini-roller coasters for marbles that you can buy at museum gift shops. They do not so much inspire affection or joy as do they stimulate regions of my brain that don’t normally get utilized. Once these things enter my line of sight, any and all neurons that attempt to distract me are soundly overpowered. One of the stimulants of this brainy arousal is a person – a very special person with true star quality that defies conventional standards of attractiveness. Of course, I am referring to the Honey Bunches of Oats Lady.

You know her. She’s everywhere (except Google Images). She is the middle-aged black woman wearing a shower cap and protective goggles whom Post Cereals has chosen to be the face, voice, and spirit of Honey Bunches of Oats in their national commercials. I doubt that many would call her beautiful. I must confess that I don’t find anything sexy about her. Indeed, there is something psychotic in her folksy cackle. But damn it all to Hell, when she pops out from behind a doorway excitedly screeching “Are You Hungry?????!!!!??” I cannot turn away. Yes, Honey Bunches of Oats Lady, I am hungry – hungry for knowledge!

Who is this woman? Why does she love Honey Bunches of Oats so much? What possesses her to promote said bunches to apparent strangers with such ferocity? Does she work at the Honey Bunches of Oats Factory? Is that why she wears that shower cap that seems like one small step up from Aunt Jemima’s old school doo rag? Are she and the Burger King lovers? Who is the actress who so fully embodies this character? Was there a large search put out seeking enthusiastic, heavyset, mildly deranged yet pleasant black ladies who don’t mind being portrayed in a somewhat subservient light? Is she Pepsi to the Pine Sol Lady’s Coke? Is it actually Halle Berry packing on the pounds and prosthetics to stretch herself as a performer?

Why do you haunt my dreams, Honey Bunches of Oats Lady? I mean, when you say that a spoonful of Honey Bunches of Oats is “like a mouthful o’ joy,” adding about four extras syllables to the word “joy,” I really believe you! No breakfast cereal has ever made me feel that way, but you make me suspect that this particular cereal might just do the trick. You, Honey Bunches of Oats Lady, could sell refrigerators to Eskimos. You are a superstar!

Royale With Cheese

Ah, Europe - the continent from which I got most of my genetic material! I’ve only been there once. At the age of 18, I went to Russia for a couple of weeks to sing a bunch of goofy songs with my classmates as part of a cultural exchange program. We sang in a bunch of schools and went on endless tours of magnificent palaces and cathedrals. We were also treated to the leftovers of the Soviet Bloc – gargantuan apartment complexes that were crumbling to the ground, shantytowns with thousands of people living in shacks the size of my bathroom, and food so old, terrible, and ridden with parasites that I prayed for death on my toilet. It was an amazing experience, but I returned home extremely thankful that I was American.

Europe puts out a lot of movies. A lot of them are awesome, and a lot of them are mind-bogglingly pretentious, bizarre, and annoying. Our Euro brethren seem more concerned with creating Art with a capital “A” than entertaining people, and I’m cool with that. Variety is the spice of life. Something I find interesting are the crowd-pleasers that are made by Europeans for Europeans. It’s in those movies where you begin to see the subtle differences between cultures, because everyone likes to laugh, but we laugh at different things.

For instance, there is a particular kind of British comedy that has flourished over the last decade. All the films within this genre contain variations on certain themes:

1) An economically depressed industrial village
2) Colorful villagers who need money fast
3) A quirky taboo being experimented with to bring prosperity back to the village
4) Pasty naked Brits who have no business being photographed in such a state

Classics of the genre include “The Full Monty,” “Calender Girls,” “Billy Elliot,” and “Waking Ned Devine.” Actually, Ned Devine is set in Ireland, but it was filmed in the UK by an English director so it still counts in my book. All of these movies were made on low budgets and were hugely profitable. Something about naked old people being silly drives the Brits into hysterics. I dunno. They’re kinda funny, but in an old people sort of way. There’s a new entry in this genre entitled “Kinky Boots,” which has more repressed English people raising their spirits, this time with slutty boots and a drag show or something. Your grandma will love it. I will not.

Not to be outdone, the Germans have come up with a crowd-pleasing sub-genre of their own: The Gay German Sports Comedy. I was not aware of this phenomenon until I perused the Apple movie trailer site and came across previews for two new movies. The first has possibly the funniest movie title I have ever seen: “Guys and Balls." Seriously, they named their movie “Guys and Balls!” It’s about a gay soccer team that defeats the odds and teaches us about humanity and all that crap. The American voice-over actor they chose to narrate the trailer had to have been laughing his ass off in the studio. The way he annunciates the title at the end is fucking hilarious. Gay German Sports Comedy #2 is called “Summer Storm” and seems to be about gay rowing teams that defeat the odds and teach us all about humanity and all that crap. Whatever. The Germans have a long way to go before they can teach me much about tolerance, but I guess that these movies are a step in the right direction for them as a people. Although, I am wondering, are there any Straight German Sports Comedies? Is that a contradiction in terms?

Anyway, I think it is fair to say that no American studios would have financed these movies. I also doubt that many Americans will go see them, myself included. When it comes to comedies, we’re currently more amused by the antics of Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, and Steve Carell… and I like it that way. They all make me chuckle on their good days. I’m not a complete philistine, though. Check out the trailer for “Art School Confidential.” I can’t wait to see this movie. I miss you, NCSA!

I WANT YOU!

Am I the only one who is really pissed off by the new wave of military recruitment ads? You know the ones I’m talking about – a young guy returns home in full uniform and he and Dear Old Dad have a man-cry moment about how much better he is at handshaking, a fatherless kid of about 18 decides that he can prove his manliness to his mom (WARNING: Oedipal overtones!) by joining the army so he can go to college, etc. Dear God, do these disturb me.

Liberal-leaning art school wuss that I am, I still think this country needs a strong military. I also think that in order to have a strong military you need people who want to be there, like any organization that aims for success. For a lot of people, the military can be a terrific opportunity to get ahead in life. Immediately after 9/11, even I considered it. I was unemployed at the time, unsure of what I wanted to do next, and felt like I was contributing nothing to society when society clearly needed all the help it could get. I have three uncles and a cousin who were in the Navy, so it is in the blood. But then I reminded myself of all the things that I would hate about life in the armed forces: the mind control, the humorlessness, the lack of free will, and the real possibility that I might play a role in killing people. I would have gone crazy. I also realized that there were plenty of other ways to improve the world we live in without enlisting. But hey, that’s just me. A lot of people love that disciplined environment, and I’m glad that they’re out there fighting for us and making something of themselves. Too bad a lot of them are fighting and dying in an unnecessary war that is now three years old, declared by a president who has never given a good reason for its being declared, and now doesn’t seem to care that there’s no end in sight, but I digress.

What angers me about these recruitment ads is how misleading they are. Instead of showing any kind of reality about military life, they show young kids how proud their parents might be if they join the army. No marching, saluting, guns, planes, ships, rockets, or national monuments. Certainly no explosions, screaming civilians, hospitals, or body bags. All we see are ambitious kids having heart-to-heart talks with Mom and/or Dad. I’m guessing that since enlistment rates are at such a low point, the military figured it needed to try a new marketing strategy to loop in kids that normally wouldn’t be interested, which apparently includes the kind of kids who fix radios, like snowboarding, have engineering ambitions, and are incapable of simultaneously shaking hands with Dad while looking him square in the eye. It all reeks of trickery to me, and I hope that those targeted kids see through this line of bullshit. I hope that they take some time and find out exactly what they are in for. If, after doing some investigation and hard thinking, they want to join up, more power to them. I respect that. I just really hope that no one joins up and dies because he saw a piece of melodramatic propaganda from a desperate and dishonest administration.

Let's Dance!

Back in my high school days, I was quite the drama dork. I was frustrated that in order to get any kind of acting experience, I had perform in the lame-ass 30+ year-old shows that suburban high school drama clubs always do (Anything Goes, Annie, Fiddler on the Roof). They were the kind of shows that didn’t offend anyone and packed the house with Grandmas. As a young, energetic, heterosexual male who liked to go onstage and kick some theatrical ass (granted, there weren’t many of us), something was always missing. I just couldn’t get pumped about Dolly and Mr. Vandergelder getting married, or Tevye and Golde finally packing it up to leave Anatevka. There just wasn’t much I could sink my teeth into. Now I realize what had been eluding me: the twin colossal forces of Kung Fu and Rock & Roll.

According to a recent item on imdb.com, your one-stop shop for journalistic integrity, a new Broadway musical is in the works about martial arts legend Bruce Lee. As is if that aesthetic pairing was not weird enough, the music for the show will be provided by none other than David Bowie! That’s right, kids! The Way Of The Intercepting Fist will be put to glorious song by The White Duke, himself. I envision vast battalions of singing, dancing, kung fu warriors doing battle with Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in the show-stopping finale “AAAAIIIIIIYYYEEEEEEAAAAHHH!” Wouldn’t it be awesome if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made an appearance, so that he and whoever’s playing Bruce could duet on “Anything You Can Kick, I Can Kick Better?” I can’t wait for the inevitable Jackie Chan/Iggy Pop follow-up, which I think should be titled “I Gotta Rust for Rife.”

Why weren’t there shows like this in the mid to late 1990s? If only my evil drama club advisor had had the foresight to inject some heavy metal and ass kicking into the shows we were doing! “The Sound of Music” would have totally rocked if Fraulein Maria had traded in her nun guitar for a kick-ass Stratocaster and whipped those little von Trapp bastards into a band of sword-wielding blonde assassins that put an end to Nazi tyranny. That would have been The Balls!

By the way, I haven’t had time to learn Photoshop yet, so those of you who want to see what Bruce Lee would look like in full 1970s Bowie makeup (and who doesn’t?!), please have at the two (crappy) photos posted above. I have a feeling it will be amazing.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

I decided to skip out on the parade in Southie today, and instead went to see "V For Vendetta." All I can say is WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? The media has informed me that it has parallels to today's political climate, the Thatcher years in Britain, Nazi Germany, and other totalitarian states. Outside of the political stuff, I spotted references to works in various mediums (Batman, Phantom of the Opera, 1984, Amadeus, Zorro, Triumph of the Will, Joan of Arc, Apocalypse Now, and others). I'd warn you about spoilers, but since every commercial and trailer shows you what happens at the end of the movie, why bother? The plot was muddled and confusing. I never really understood why Natalie Portman was so bound to this guy and what exactly he meant to her. The super duper IMAX theater I saw it in comes equipped with Tempurpedic chairs that have subwoofers wired into the seats, so that every time something loud happened on screen my balls were jiggled accordingly. When Parliament blew up, I experienced something I've never come across in a movie theater - I was kind of horrified by the sight of a building that houses one of the world's great democracies exploding spectacularly to the delight of the onscreen crowd, and at the same time Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture and stupendous sound effects were being pumped into to my undercarriage with such force that I damn near creamed my pants. I walked out of the movie feeling confused and a little violated. Maybe some of my faithful readers could enlighten me as to what it all meant, and calm me down.

They can't cancel us. We're Public Access.

St. Paddy's Day at the club was lame, although the old ladies (one of my key demographics) loved my scally cap. There was no way I was actually going to don one of those stupid bright green plastic derbies that fake Irish people wear on St. Paddy's. I'm authentic, you bleedin' tossers!

Instead of going out to party after work, I got myself a pizza and turned on the local public access cable channel. Pathetic, you say? A little, but there's something kind of fascinating and train-wreckish about it. There are some innocuous shows where my neighbors talk about cat grooming, and another one where incredibly old people talk about how much the town has changed since 1872 and how the giant dome that topped the Jordan Marsh at Shoppers' World was one of the great architectural wonders of its time. It's gone now, replaced by an Olive Garden. Who needs a dome when you can have neverending breadsticks?

Sandwiched between shows like this are a couple of interesting programs. One is a broadcasting of video production projects from my high school. There was no honest-to-Allah video production class when I was there a mere nine years ago. These kids are so damn lucky. They have real equipment and giant plasma screens for their editing! Most of their projects are music videos. I'm actually kind of impressed that most of them pick halfway decent music. I was shocked that a kid born in 1990 would be compelled to make a video for Bohemian Rhapsody rather than something by Fall Out Boy or some other crappy current band. After watching a few of these videos, certain motifs began to emerge:

1) A good 75% of these videos feature the hero of the piece being awakened from a blissful sleep by an alarm clock

2) Teenagers spend a lot of time running down hallways (these are the AV geeks, so there's no athleticism to their running)

3) Teen girls (especially the AV geek ones) feel a lot of pressure to be pretty, when sadly, they're not

4) Heart wipes and pixelated dissolves are the editorial transitions of choice for the iPod Generation

5) Skater kids think anything they do that is captured on video is hilarious, particluarly when they're not wearing shirts

In addition to the high school video stuff, there is a whole series featuring this guy in my town who is determined to rid Framingham of those awful illegal immigrants (this isn't an actual picture of him, but you get the idea). Over the last couple of decades, thousands of Brazilians have moved to my town. I'm sure that some are illegal, and some are not. Naturally, this scares the shit out of old white people who have nothing else to do but complain. Framingham is actually nicer than it was 10 or 15 years ago, so I don't really see the problem. If your beloved New England hometown is going to be "overrun" by illegal immigrants, you could do a lot worse than the good folks from Brazil. Brazilian food is awesome, the chicks are hot, they know how to party, and our soccer team will be kicking some major ass. But anyway, this dude with his lame ass show has made it his mission in life to keep these people out of his town. He's so crazy, he actually took a video crew and some fat dude with a rifle to the Mexican border in Arizona to show how serious he is. I have no idea how two pasty-ass middle-aged dudes with guns in the Arizona desert are supposed to keep us Framinghamians (some 3,000 miles away) safe from illegal Brazilians, but whatever. They get an "A" for effort, and a big fat "F" for geography.

I’m Alriiiiiiiight! Ain’t nobody worried ‘bout me!

Thursday, March 16, 2006 – St. Paddy’s Eve

Since November, I have been bartending at a country club. The average club member is about 55 years old, plays golf, flies down to Florida on a regular basis, and probably voted for Bush - both times - even though some have come to regret it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m probably not the ideal bartender for such a setting. A good barkeep should be able to chitchat about topics that his or her clientele give a crap about. I just keep the Dewar’s and Bud Light flowing, smile a lot, and hope for the best. I try, but it is damn near impossible for me to shoot the shit about golf, or pretty much any professional sports topic outside of the Red Sox - and even that’s a stretch this early in the Spring. Don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against golf. In the summer of 1999, I played nine holes as a goof and had a good time doing it. But to fork over several thousands of dollars each year to whack a ball across a field into a tiny hole 18 times is just something I have no interest in doing. If there was a country club for movie, music, and comedy fanatics… now that would be something. I would dazzle the patrons with my encyclopedic knowledge and rake in tips like the hottest stripper at Scores.

Tomorrow night, there is a St. Patrick’s Day party at the club, which I have to work. Kinda sucks, ‘cause St. Paddy’s Day in Boston totally rocks, and I’ve never been able to really enjoy it, either because I was underage or out of town. I should be able to swing over to Southie on Sunday for the parade. I went there last year and had a blast. It made me want to be a fireman for a day. When the firefighters march down the street, the women of Southie go absolutely insane. Many of them drape banners from their windows emblazoned with “Men In Uniform Drink For Free.” Lucky bastards. If only assistant editor/bartenders were invited into anonymous women’s homes for free drinks and good times! Oh wait, firefighters run into burning buildings and save thousands of lives every day, and I don’t, so I guess they do deserve it, and I don’t. Maybe I could get a job on “Rescue Me” where I could digitize footage of actors pretending to be firefighters running into burning buildings to save people’s lives. It’s sort of related. I bet then I could weasel my way into some residual safety worker adulation. I was a lifeguard for a while, and my grandfather was a volunteer fireman back in the day, so it’s not totally preposterous – just 99.9%. Hey, even a wuss can dream.

Baby, here I am, I'm the man on the scene

People asked for it, so here it is... my very own blog. I have no idea just yet what I will be writing about. My friends with blogs tend to jibber jabber about movies, comic books, politics, literature, cars, macs, and 20-something cynicism. I may touch on those subjects from time to time. Well, probably not much literature, 'cause people who read too many books end up drinking a lot of Earl Gray tea, develop bad eyesight, and are afraid of social interaction. Here in Moranadu Earl Gray tea sucks, my eyes are pretty well fucked already, and I love a good party. I don't care much for comic books, either... unless they get turned into cool movies. Talking about macs is retarded. Cynicism is pretty pointless. Politics are important. I vote all the time. Talking about politics kind of blows, though.

Once I start doing real posts, my style will emerge. I hope you enjoy the ride.

- Captain Mike of the USS Awesome