Some time ago, I mentioned there was an exhaustive collection of “Bloom County” comic strips coming soon to a bookstore near you. I think I’ve also mentioned that I adore Berke Breathed’s masterwork, but — despite the fact the book is out now and that I covet it like a certain hobbit-y thing covets a certain piece of gaudy jewelry — I have yet to lay claim to a copy. Ain’t it Cool News has seen fit to torment me by running an interview with Scott Dunbier, the editor of the new collections. The piece is surprisingly lengthy and also quite interesting.
Tag Archive for 'nostalgia trip ‘09'
It’s here and it’s glorious. The trailer for Pixar’s Toy Story 3.
Look, I’m not a fancy-schmantzy Audiophile and I honestly couldn’t tell you whether or not the newly-remastered Beatles CDs are all that much better than the old ones. My gut instinct is that they are, but I have no raw data to back this up. All I can say is that I am pleased to own them, the new packaging is terrific, and they sound pretty darn good to me.
Just to be clear, this isn’t a proper review. You all know the Beatles, and most of you probably like (or at least respect) them. To those of you who don’t care for their music, you have my condolences and I wish you the best of luck with your syphilitic insanity.
As for me, I’m not a first generation Beatles fan. I was only four when John, Paul, George, and Ringo decided to call it quits. My experience of the band comes almost entirely through my father. Every evening, Pops would come home from work and his first order of business would be to slap something onto the turntable. Almost invariably, it would be either The White Album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, Let it Be, or Abbey Road. As a result, I absorbed all of that music and it became part of me at a genetic level. If I am ever unfortunate enough to require a biopsy, whatever they remove will be at least thirty percent Beatles.
We lost my dad in 2001, and I bought these new reissues not only for myself but as a tip of the hat to the old man. Listening to the records reminds me of simpler times, and in my book, that’s well worth $12.99 a disc.
[Circa 1980: The old man assembles the Slave One as my little brother looks on.]
Post Script:
To date, I’ve bought seven of the fourteen reissued Beatles records. I’ve always been more interested in the Experimental Hippie period than the Lovable Mop-top period, but I’ll get around to buying those other records in time.
“I will not carry a gun… I’ll carry your books, I’ll carry a torch, I’ll carry a tune, I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I’ll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will NOT carry a gun!”
This blog is called “Crabapple Cove” because that small town in Maine is the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, the comic hero from the television show MASH. That program began its eleven year run on CBS in 1972, but I’m sure I didn’t become hip to it until it hit syndication (I was, after all, only six when it debuted). I have vivid memories of watching MASH on the tiny black and white TV in my parents’ bedroom. Invariably, in these memories, the sun is still up and I am stretched out on the carpet in my pajamas. Though I was definitely not six, I was probably still much younger than the show’s target demographic. MASH just latched onto my young brain and has not let go since those earlier, simpler times. Why do I think that is? A knee-jerk response would be ‘Because it was funny’, but the real answer is Hawkeye. That character, with his deep-seated distrust of authority and his facility for lobbing witticisms in from the sidelines, had a tremendous impact on my burgeoning psyche.
I’m sure I didn’t realize it at the time, but there are two reasons why Dr. Pierce was so vivid to me as a child. The first was Alan Alda’s performance. It was impeccable. With charm and sincerity, Alda made Hawkeye someone I wanted to emulate. The second reason was Larry Gelbart. Mr. Gelbart, a brilliant comedy writer, was given stewardship of MASH by the network, and it’s his comic sensibilities that permeate the first four or five seasons. Go back and check out some of the early shows on DVD and you’ll see what I’m talking about. MASH isn’t just funny, it’s idiosyncratically funny. It has a point of view and a rhythm which indicates — to me at least — that a single man with a vision was at the helm. Mr. Gelbart was the originator of said vision. He wrote the words and Alan Alda made them sing.
Larry Gelbart died a few days ago and I didn’t want to let the occasion pass without a tip of my metaphorical chapeau. Mr. Gelbart was an unwitting architect in the shaping of my own sense of humor, and I just wanted to thank him properly for all the laughs.
Post Script:
The aforementioned Mr. Alda has weighed in with his thoughts on the matter. Check it out.
Also, here’s Mr. Gelbart’s last interview, given to Vanity Fair Magazine. (Actually, this is an excerpt from the book And Here’s the Kicker, which I reviewed here. A terrific book.)
[80s-palooza Part 18]
Let me just throw out a quick mea culpa: I’ve been pretty busy working on something of a pseudo-professional nature and, sadly, the good ol’ Cove has been pretty far down my priority ladder as a result. Thus it is that I am now going to dash off a few words on a film I watched three weeks ago.
The Road Warrior deserves better than to be viewed and quickly forgotten, and my callousness in this regard shames me. The film is not only one of the ten best action flicks ever made, it is a marvel of world design (not to mention skill in physical production). “Warrior” depicts a future world which literally has no seams — the cars, the people, the sets — it’s all completely convincing. The story, as trifling as it is, connects on a visceral level, too. Despite the fact that Mel Gibson’s Max says probably less than a hundred words in the whole picture, you’re on his side all the way — particularly in the stunningly effective car chase that acts as the movie’s climax. Put simply, it’s one of the best action scenes ever committed to film.
The Road Warrior was a joy to revisit.
The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:
- War Games
- The Sword and the Sorcerer
- Big Trouble in Little China
- The Beastmaster
- Buckaroo Banzai
- Dreamscape
- Excalibur
- To Live and Die in L.A.
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- Top Secret!
- The Thing
- Hoosiers
- Re-animator
- Lone Wolf McQuade
- Ghostbusters
- Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
- First Blood
![Image of The Road Warrior [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514F6u69ZjL._SL160_.jpg "The Road Warrior [Blu-ray]")
Okay, so Groundhog Day isn’t uproariously funny, but I don’t think that was ever really its intent. It’s actually a charming and sweetly old-fashioned movie much in the way that Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman is also a throwback. This story of a weatherman damned to a sort of purgatory is, I think, what you would get if Frank Capra and Rod Serling had somehow been able to collaborate. What I admire about it is the fact that it’s actually about something – a thing you can say about precious few films. Hell, Groundhog Day even manages to be borderline spiritual and just a touch sublime. I enjoyed revisiting it very much.
To say I was disappointed with the first season of The Larry Sanders Show would be a) an overstatement and b) unfair. I have fond memories of this HBO show which ran from 1992 to 1998. At its peak, it was sharp and funny and its clearly-delineated and well-performed main characters were a lot of fun to watch. The “Season One” set wasn’t quite the show I remember, however. I chalk this up to the program not quite finding its sea legs within those first thirteen episodes, and this is certainly not a crime. How many shows can you think of that were everything they would go on to become within their first few installments? That type of show certainly exists, but it’s more the exception than the rule. I’m willing to forgive “Sanders” for taking its time to find its way, but there’s a problem with that approach: The other five seasons are currently not on DVD. That’s a shame as far I’m concerned. There is a “best-of” compilation out there (which I will take in at some point), but that’s hardly a fair substitute for all of those missing episodes. I do take some comfort in the fact that Garry Shandling’s other well-regarded cable series, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, hits the stores in October. I have some decidedly good memories of that one too.
Woody Allen has fallen out of favor to a degree in the last twenty years, and it’s not too hard to figure why. Sure, there was that creepy scandal back in the day, but more importantly, he’s become extremely inconsistent in his twilight years — so much so that his good films are more the exception than the rule.
I won’t lie: I was a big fan of the Woodman when he was at the height of his powers from the mid-seventies through the mid-eighties. His best work is still, I would argue, really damn good. But even when Allen was kicking ass and taking names (cinematically speaking), he still had his detractors. People would complain, ‘Oh, he’s so whiny and everyone in his movies is overly erudite and SO Upper West Side New York Liberal’. I won’t refute those complaints here because they’re accurate to a large degree. On the other hand, surrendering to those complaints entirely would be throwing out the baby with the bath water. While Allen’s films can be grating (depending on your sensibility), they’re also clever and they manage to strike a remarkable balance between wit and pathos. Though he has fallen out of favor even with yours truly, I wouldn’t trade his better films for anything. And by better films, I mean an off-the-top-of-my-head list like this one:
- Sleeper
- Annie Hall
- Manhattan
- Stardust Memories
- Radio Days
- Zelig
- The Purple Rose of Cairo
- Broadway Danny Rose
- Hannah and Her Sisters
- Crimes and Misdemeanors and
- Sweet and Lowdown
I don’t care who you are, that’s a pretty respectable list.
For many years (despite my earlier affection), I had taken a semi-unintentional hiatus from Woody Allen. I haven’t seen any of his movies in more than five years. Between my renewed interest in comedy and a 7$ price tag at Target, I decided to break my fast with a viewing of Annie Hall, Allen’s 1977 Best Picture Winner. All in all (and many of you won’t need me to tell you this), it’s a terrific movie. One of its greatest strengths, its brilliantly non-linear structure, is also responsible for some of its occasional wrong notes, however. Linking the jumbled dots of the narrative sometimes results in a clumsily expositional piece of dialogue, but that’s a small price to pay for giving me a story which I am allowed to construct myself in my head as it unfolds. Allen, by delivering his tale in asynchronous order, is clearly trusting us. I for one appreciate that. As for the comedy, “Hall” isn’t often laugh-out-loud funny, but it is able draw us into a compelling and believable portrait of two people and their relationship. It all feels very real and very warm. Watching the film again was pleasantly nostalgic for me — enough so that I’m thinking about tracking down a few of the other titles on the above list and giving them another go as well.
[80s-palooza Part 17]
First Blood is certainly not a perfect movie. The funny thing is, though, that most of my issues with it revolved around the beginning and the end. Everything those two sections bracket is perfectly entertaining.
The first act of the film features Vietnam veteran John Rambo’s well-intentioned arrival in an unnamed town in the Pacific Northwest. Immediately upon crossing the border into said town, Johnny is harassed by some cartoonishly villainous cops who get him on a trumped-up vagrancy charge. This is where the trouble begins, narratively speaking. All Rambo wants is a place to crash and something to eat, but local law enforcement treats him like a newly-arrived Charles Manson. (Which is weird since he’s not even all that scruffy-looking. We’re talking about a man who is still recognizably Sylvester Stallone even under all of that hair.) I accepted the bombastic behavior on the part of the police as a pretext to the mayhem that ensues, but the sheer venom the cops hurl at our hero is a little tough to swallow at times. Once the sheriff and his boys drive Rambo into the woods, though, things pick up considerably. In fact, it’s nothing but good fun to watch Stallone –playing an ex-Green Beret– spring trap after trap on not only the local-yokels but also the hundreds of National Guard troops that are brought in once the indigenous coppers drop the ball. It’s this free-for-all (not to mention the show-down that takes place in the town immediately thereafter) that the movie’s really all about. Get to the action and you’re all good for a while. Unfortunately, after the action comes the problem of the finale. Or maybe “finale” is too triumphant a word…
It’s not that the climax of First Blood is as awkward as the beginning, it’s more that there’s a substantial build-up and then things just… stop. If anything, the ending to the picture screams “sequel”. Things are left in such an unresolved place emotionally that you can’t help hoping there will be another entry in the Johnny Rambo saga. I suppose that in itself indicates that the filmmakers must have done something right.
The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:
[80s-palooza Part 16 (unofficial entry)]
It’s amazing the degree to which comedy imprints itself onto my psyche. Monty Python’s Meaning of Life came out in 1983 and I probably haven’t seen it in more than twenty years. Nevertheless, I remembered absolutely every punch line right before it was delivered. This is, of course, problematic since so much of the laughter response relies on surprise — ergo, no surprise, no laughter. This is a phenomenon I don’t typically experience with other genres of movie because (I suppose) their rhythms are different; their intended effects are not so predicated upon amazement. As you may recall, I had a similar reaction to Ghostbusters, and so these two laughter-free experiences have caused me to concoct a little theory (shallow though it may be): Watching comedy you’re familiar with is like returning to treasured albums from your record collection. You’re never going to get the same effect you got the first time you listened to the songs, but there’s a certain transcendent comfort in going back to that place for a while. When I load up a movie like Caddyshack or Stripes, I’m doing it not so much to laugh, but for the experience of visiting those characters again and of returning to a place in my life long since gone. (Maybe that sounds a little more melancholy than I might have intended, but you get the idea.)
Anyway, as I watched Monty Python’s Meaning of Life again a couple of nights back, I couldn’t help but wonder “Am I not laughing at this because it’s not funny or because I know it by heart?”. I think the preceding paragraph more or less answers that question, but there is an important fact here which I shouldn’t dodge: “The Meaning of Life”, while clever and funny, is probably the weakest of the Python’s three features. So much of its humor is reliant upon shock (look no further than the “Mr. Creosote” episode for confirmation) that it doesn’t age as well, perhaps, as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I say this with some confidence, but there’s only one way to be sure: I plan on watching both of those flicks again soon too (not to mention the episodes of the TV series as soon as I can lay my hands on them).
At any rate, all of this indicates to me that I need to find some comedy I’ve either never seen or have forgotten about if I am to get the full effect out of My Comedy Year. I have a few ideas on that subject, but suggestions would be welcome…
The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:
My father, brother and myself were always pretty tight, and I think part of the glue that held us together was a shared loved of comedy and a similar sensibility in terms of what we found funny. Throughout the 80s and part of the 90s I was a bit of Comedy Nerd. I watched a lot of funny movies and I was familiar with most of the stand-ups working at that time. Starting in the mid 90s, I went through some life changes that took me away from comedy. I still loved to laugh (and to make others laugh), but I had fallen from the True Faith. Reading And Here’s the Kicker by Mike Sacks has served to reignite some of that earlier passion.
“Kicker” is a collection of interviews (all conducted by Mr. Sacks) with twenty-one comedy writers. Some of the humorists included in the collection are out-and-out giants — people like Buck Henry, Harold Ramis, Merril Markoe, David Sedaris, Robert Smigel, Dave Barry, Dick Cavett, and Larry Gelbart. Of course, there were a few names I didn’t know right out of the gate, but as soon as I read their bios, I knew that their inclusion was a smart choice. Trust me, there’s not a runt in this whole litter. Sacks’ interview style fits the subject matter terrifically, as well. He’s done his research and some of his questions and responses are humorous in their own right. I was a little worried when I saw that the publisher was Writers Digest Books, however, because I feared that the editors might try and steer the book too far into how-to territory (and I’ve sworn off Writing How-tos for all of calendar year 2009). I needn’t have worried, as it turns out. There are brief interludes of writing advice for humorists, but these run no more than a page or two each and are relatively innocuous. The real meat here is the interviews and it’s, well, pretty damn meaty. I found myself energized by the experience of reading And Here’s the Kicker to the degree that I wished I could forget about it and read it again. Hell, I might read it again anyway just for shits and giggles. Another (perhaps unsurprising) side effect was that I found myself wanting to get more comedy into my life. This I plan to do.
In fact, join me in celebrating My Comedy Year: July 11th, 2009 through July 11th, 2010.
Wow, it felt really weird finally polishing off this collection…
I scored The Complete Calvin and Hobbes on eBay a couple of months back (at a significantly reduced cover price, of course) and it’s been my bedside companion ever since. I would knock out twenty or thirty pages a night, in no real hurry at all to finish. The collection is the very definition of “light reading” and it always felt like a good way to end my day. An hour or two ago, I read the last ever strip — a Sunday comic from December of 1995. Three hardcover volumes, nearly fifteen hundred pages at a total weight of roughly twenty two pounds (including the fancy slipcase). Now that it’s over, I’m sorry to see it go.
I think I may have commented a time or two on this blog that I didn’t give cartoonist Bill Watterson his proper due back when “Calvin” was still running in newspapers. At the time — to me at least — the strip felt repetitive and dry. Now, having consumed the whole ten year run in a relatively short period of time, I see it for what it is — a disciplined and articulate work by a genuine artist.
Calvin and Hobbes has several things in common with its only slightly more famous forebear, Peanuts. It focuses on a narrow set of circumstances, has a very limited cast of characters and is clearly not meant to be perceived only as what it is on its surface. Both Watterson and Charles Schultz before him don’t intend for us to take their dialogue and comic scenarios featuring children at face value. What we get when we read Calvin or Charlie Brown’s dialogue is a direct window into the worldview of the their respective creators. So, to be clear, we’re not talking Ziggy here. Calvin and Hobbes has a consistent voice and an integrity that sets it apart from the vast majority of the comic strips done over the roughly one hundred year history of the medium. Yes, it has a limited series of repeating motifs, but the overall effect is a fully-realized world with honest-to-God thematic through lines. Some novelists have trouble laying claim to that sort of artistic achievement, let alone lowly cartoonists.
[80s-palooza Part 15 (unofficial entry)]
I had a hankering to see Ghostbusters again because a) there’s a new video game releasing this week which features all of the original cast and b) just because. What can I say? It is what is, and you all know what it is. There’s always a problem revisiting a movie like this, a movie that you know so well that it holds few surprises. It’s a particularly odd feeling when it’s a comedy and it isn’t funny per se because you know exactly what the next line is going to be. The fact that I’ve seen this movie so many times in the past quarter century is a testament, I suppose, to how well it works. It creates its own weird little world that you just accept despite the absurdity. Part of that verisimilitude comes thanks to Dan Aykroyd who’s influence is all over this flick. You always know that Aykroyd had a hand in a script because of the odd-ball detail, the technical jargon and lore that ties everything together. Were it not for that sort of embellishment, I don’t think Ghostbusters would work as well or feel as “real” as it does. Your other Most Valuable Player here is undeniably Bill Murray. As great as the details are, you also need a Wisecracking Skeptic in a movie like this, and Murray fulfills that role better than anyone else could.
Anyway, I guess the best word I can think of describe a viewing of Ghostbusters 25 years later is “comfortable”. It’s like spending an hour and a half with an old friend.
Post Script: The Perils of Hi-Def:
This is going to sound like a weird thing to say but I think the new blu-ray of Ghostbusters looks pretty terrible. The level of visual detail is unquestionably higher, but this comes at a price: The film grain is annoyingly prominent and noisy, so much so that it’s distracting. In darker scenes, I actually had trouble following the action because I was so transfixed by the dancing patterns of dots. I must say that this is not a problem I expected to have when I decided to dive into this new format.
The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:
[80s-palooza Part 14.]
The critic in me is demanding that I tell you that Lone Wolf McQuade is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good movie — the script is sub-par, Chuck Norris’ acting is, to be generous, extremely wooden, etc. But you knew all of that (or could guess it). Let me make a case now for why “McQuade” isn’t just a stupid early 80s actioner… Are you ready? Bullet-point number one: One of the villains is an articulate (albeit maniacal) midget bound to a wheelchair. Bullet-point number two: The musical score is unabashedly Spaghetti Western, lending the whole enterprise an infectious over-the-top absurdity. Both of these bullet-points add up to one thing: The filmmakers weren’t taking this movie seriously, so we shouldn’t either. They weren’t striving to create Cinema (in the grand sense of that word) and we should take their film in the spirit it was intended — good, silly fun with a deliberate wink and a nod. I took it on that level and had a good time.
The 80s-Palooza Film Festival to Date:
Today marks the tenth anniversary of the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I mention this mainly because it’s trippy, not because it’s an important landmark. I mean, seriously, where did the time go? I have very clear memories of seeing it at a midnight show in suburban Atlanta with my friend Nathan. It’s like it was last year, not an honest-to-God decade ago.
My ambitions for this post were considerably grander when the idea first occurred to me a few days back. My intention at that time was to revisit the film and share with you my feelings ten years after. But then I thought ‘Fuck that. Life is too goddamn short and the film has almost certainly not improved with age’. In that moment I was absolutely sure that I could come up with something better to do with my time even if that something ended up being nothing at all. I did think back to my reactions to the film when it first appeared, though, and, I must say, I’m embarrassed about those reactions today. I was, to my shame, an apologist for “Menace”. Having had my psyche shaped to a large degree by the first three films, I just couldn’t live in a world where there could be a bad Star Wars movie. It hurt me to even acknowledge the possibility. With a decade between now and then (as well as a few additional viewings of the picture on DVD), I now know full-well that it’s a miserable turd. Sure, the prequels did get better from installment to installment, but they never achieved the spirit of fun or mythic transcendence of their forebears. But let’s not devolve into Prequel Hating — the ‘net is clogged with that kind of thing already. Let us instead focus on the fact that we are ten years closer to the grave. Salut!
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