In 30 Minutes or Less!

Sure, anyone could cook their family in 30 minutes if they had a whole production staff prepping everything for them...

You Need the Basic Instructions

Basic Instructions is perhaps my favorite web comic going right now.  Scott Meyer, the creator, seems like a kindred spirit...in that he overanalyzes every social situation and bit of pop culture he comes across.  He then converts it to a short life-lesson, complete with helpful role-playing examples.

It's always helpfully linked in my blog roll to the right, but here is one of my favorites to give you an idea of what we're dealing with here.

On Brendan Fraser...

I'm here to eulogize a friend...or at least the career of someone a lot of us once thought of as a friend.  It is necessitated by the news that Brendan Fraser's next film will be something entitled Whole Lotta Sole.  It's a fish heist story.  Yes, that kind of sole.

Honestly, this would have been better.

What an odyssey Brendan Fraser's career has been.  Encino Man introduced us to this endearing lunk of a man.  True, most film fans likely dismissed him based on that credit only, what with his most compelling line of dialogue being "Betty...nugs." 

Pauly Shore was the draw for this movie.  It was a different time...

Then he starting showing up in dramatic roles...and killing them.  From his turn as a secretly Jewish football star in WASP-dominated 1950's prep school in School Ties, and then as a driven Harvard political science major who learns practical knowledge from a homeless Joe Pesci in With Honors, it appeared that he could be the next great American leading man.  A sort of GenX Harrison Ford, or more appropriately maybe Michael Keaton, with his goofy comedic properties.  Tall, handsome, funny, and as proven by 1999's surprise hit The Mummy, a truly rough and ready action star as well.  Sure, there was George of the Jungle, and Blast From the Past, but he certainly wasn't the weak link in those productions, either in concept or execution.  And he did make Airheads, a cult favorite among my people (Midwestern air guitar players), so the 90's were, on the whole, a great decade for Fraser.

But the karmic wheel spins, and Fraser's slow downswing began almost immediately after The Mummy.  His very next movie was Dudley Do-Right.  Honestly, who remembers the cartoon Dudley Do-Right?  Anyone?  The answer is no, because it bombed at the box office ($70M budget, $9.6M gross), and the descent began.  Monkeybone, two disappointing Mummy sequels, the sometimes-great-but-mostly-not Bedazzled, all adding to the dismal tally.  A smallish role in the overwrought 2004 Best Picture Crash marks the last respectable film role for our hero.  I give you his last 5 films, in order of oldest to newest:

-Journey To The Center Of The Earth (In "comin' atcha" 3D!)
-The Mummy:  Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Hey, did you know there are Chinese mummies too?  Yeah, Rachel Weisz didn't care, either.)
-Inkheart (Anybody out there see this?  Again, the answer is no.)
-Extraordinary Measures (Really a Harrison Ford movie, and it bombed too)
-Furry Vengeance  (92 minutes of our boy being kicked in the nuts by CGI raccoons)

I didn't include his uncredited appearance in G.I. Joe, though I will mention it to save some of his dignity.


Buuuuuuut, then his delicately-waisted action figure steals it right away again.

 It's like he's become drawn to ridiculously bad ideas, put together by morons.  So the fish burglary movie shouldn't be a shock to anyone, but it is a sad nadir to a long-fading career that started with such promise. 

Rest in peace, Link.  We'll always have Encino.

My Oscar Picks 2011

Oscar, looking...oscarly.

Oscar time!  It's the biggest TV event in this country behind the Super Bowl, and this year has been a particularly good one for film.  I've always thought of myself as a decent judge of what is good and what is bad (at least as far as movies go), so why not step out in public and make a few bold predictions, eh?  Well, okay, some aren't all that bold <coughkingsspeechcough>, but others might surprise you.  I'm not picking all of them (what do I know from dust bunnies about sound editing?), but I'll hit the high points that everyone cares about.

I'll say upfront that my credibility on some of these is going to be weak, since I haven't seen every nominated film.  However, I have seen several, and I'm an avid enough observer of the cultural zeitgeist that I can pretty well gauge a film or actor's chances based on buzz.  Does that make me an infallible film critic?  No.  Does it matter since no one is providing oversight of my "work" here?  Also no.  So read on, and challenge my picks if you feel I'm being an idiot.  Or, you know, praise them if you think I'm spot on.  Whatever.

Arsenal Update: Relegation is a good thing...seriously

One of the intrinsic aspects of English soccer that is so difficult for Americans to accept is the concept of relegation.  In 'merica, if a team is in the NFL or MLB, by God they stay there, no matter how crappy they are.  It just feels...weird to kick them out, even in the face of overwhelming evidence supporting banishment.  How else do you explain the continued presence of the Oakland Raiders?
But what we have to learn to recognize is that relegation energizes the sport, because it makes both ends of the standings matter. 

Of course the teams at the very top of the league--currently Man U, Arsenal, Man City, Chelsea, and Tottenham--fight with tooth and claw into the spring.  Barely ten points separate those 5 teams at the time of this writing, so the championship in May could literally rest on whether a team collects a win or a draw a now.  This is not notably different from any American sports league heading into the end of the season, with the exception of there being no playoff tournament in the EPL (despite inaccurate reporting to the contrary in this space.  Though, really, the entire season functions as a round-robin tourney, so I wasn't TOTALLY wrong).  However, a key difference can be found at the bottom of the table.  The three teams who finish in last in the EPL (currently Wigan, Wolverhampton, and West Ham--wow, tough year for W's) do not qualify for play in the league next season.  They are replaced with the top three finishers in the Football League Championship, England's second-tier division. 

Think about the stakes here.  English football clubs are businesses, like any other pro sports team.  But the range of wealth is much broader than in American leagues.  All NFL, NBA and MLB owners are extremely wealthy, collecting hundreds of millions in revenue every season regardless of the quality of the team.  Sure, losers may not make as much in ticket sales and merchandising and whatnot, but revenue sharing and TV deals even out the take so that it is still a very comfortable wage no matter your finish.  There is even a certain amount of speculation as to whether some American professional sports teams do simply collect the paycheck, put a substandard team on the field year after year to hang on to more of that cash, and damn the fans.  Beyond the prospect of higher draft choices, there simply is no incentive for team owners to try to assemble and invest in the best possible team, but for that mythical "honor of the game."

Now, imagine if, after finishing dead last in your division, you can no longer play with the big boys.  Pittsburgh Pirates, have fun in AAA; welcome to the Bigs, Columbus Clippers.  Oh, and Columbus gets your share of the profits next year. 

What this amounts to is hunger.  Every team, as an organization, is hungry to make it to the big time.  England has hundreds of independent football clubs that play professionally at some level.  Technically speaking, any twenty of them play in the EPL with enough sustained winning.  And the English Premier League is the biggest professional sports league in the world.

Let that one sink in, NFL fans.  Super Bowl Sunday is a big day:  111 million viewers in 2011, $3 million per 30 seconds of commercial time, nonstop sports news coverage.  Attracts worldwide attention.  Now imagine Super Bowl Sunday every weekend from August to May.  Twice per weekend. 

There are perennial EPL teams that seldom if ever get relegated, sure.  But any one of hundreds of smaller, truly community teams can have a chance at the big time.  The teams that dwell in the bottom half of the EPL want desperately to stay there, in the league, to keep the momentum moving upward.  So when you get into the home stretch of a season, as we are now, you have motivated teams at both top and bottom of the standings playing for more than just pride.  Take today's match of Arsenal vs. Wolverhampton.  Wolves is second to bottom in the standings going in, Arsenal 2nd place overall, a few points behind Manchester United.  Arsenal of course needs the win to keep pace or gain on Man U for the championship.  But Wolves is just as motivated, maybe more so, because of what could await them next year.  So they've been playing giant-killer this season, fangs bared.  They beat Man U last week, ending that club's bid for an undefeated season, and also checked off wins against Manchester City, Liverpool, and Chelsea.  Because they're hungry.

Arsenal won, but only because they relentlessly attacked and never took their foot off the gas, trying to expunge from our memories the ugly draw to Newcastle last week (the first time in EPL history a club has given up a 4-goal lead), who are another of those hungry teams that is freshly back from the relegation woods this season.  The final tally was 2-0, but it could have been more had Wolverhampton rolled over.  But they are fighting simply for survival in the big time...and that cannot be underestimated.

A Public Service Announcement...

That is all.

Sit Down, We're Not Going Anywhere: Shaun of the Dead

Okay, so this is a recycled piece, but since it hasn't technically aired in this space, I think it's worthy of putting out here.  Back in October I had the pleasure of participating in Zombiepalooza, a month-long festival of the macabre hosted by Amanda Hocking, current superstar of the indie publishing world.  My inclination, rather than submit a piece of flash horror fiction, was to write a reflection on my personal favorite zombie movie, Shaun of the Dead.  It's one of the few entries I've managed to generate in the feature I'm calling“Sit Down, We’re Not Going Anywhere.”  For refreshment, it deals with movies you must watch again and again, to the point of delaying better activities if said film is encountered unexpectedly, such as on basic cable.  As a bit of a formality, SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW…

You’ve Got Red on You:  How Modern Life Parallels Shaun of the Dead

Have you ever taken a look at your life when you’re in the middle of a workday?  Most of the time we shuffle along in our daily routines, blindly pursuing the next waypoint in an ever-repeating loop.  Get up earlier than you’d really care to, so you can get on the road with enough spare time to sit in slow traffic, all for the pleasure of spending the next 8-10 hours in whatever corporate-funded cell you’re required to occupy.  Head home in same slow traffic, feel vaguely guilty for not doing more constructive things with the few free hours you have left in the day before getting to bed too late to feel good in the morning when you have to get up earlier than you’d really…  Anyway, the point is that modern existence has become a series of urgent but stumbling steps toward the next poorly defined goal, in a constant fog of distraction and ennui.

This is why, when watching Shaun of the Dead, you must watch very closely to determine exactly when the world has fallen apart around the titular hero.