Okajima in the 7th.
Gagne in the 8th
Pabelbon in the 9th.
BOOYA!
Plus for situational use you’ve now got Delcarmen who’s been much improved this season (a couple of recent implosions both expected and not withstanding), Timlin and Tavarez who’s pretty solid for one pass through the lineup.
Of course our bullpen’s been pretty amazing all season; that was never really the issue. The Gagne trade smack of Yankee-blocking: keeping a high profile arm away from New York bullpen as the season moves into the home stretch. And I’m not sure we really need Gagne, who seems mostly recovered from elbow surgery but wasn’t having the season that either Okajima or Pabelbon have been having. If nothing else he can now spell Pabelbon in the closer role for a few games, but is that really worth the cost?
The money isn’t so much the issue as losing Kason Gabbard and David Murphy in the bargain, the latter whose value has dropped somewhat since the emergence of Jacoby Ellsbury. But Gabbard’s 4-0 this season and a lefty, something we’ve gone the whole season without. With Schilling coming back from the DL in a week and Jon Lester inching back to his pre-cancer highs there was, arguably, nowhere to put Gabbard other than back to AAA Pawtucket which really wasn’t going to help anyone, so perhaps his greatest value was as trade bait. But man do I feel weird giving up a promising young leftie when you’re banking on two pitchers coming off of injuries staying healthy through the end of the season.
Plus, with the odds of the Sox spending another 13 million to keep old man Schilling around next season pretty low and Wakefield not getting any younger, would it have been so bad to have a rotation built around Beckett, Dice-K, Lester, Gabbard and Wakefield (with maybe Clay Bucholtz up by mid-year) next season? Now we’re just going to have to go find some over-priced free agent in the off-season to fill a self-created void. That sort of thing just bugs the shit out of me.
But whatever, we’ve essentially lowered an iron curtain from the 6th inning on. Our League best E.R.A. just got even better. Now all we have to worry about is scoring more than 3 runs a game, but when you’re banking on the awesome numbers being put up by JD Drew and Doug Mirabelli how hard should that be?
But hey, the bullpen’s rock solid.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
I don’t see the resemblance either
So after no less than a dozen tries, I was finally able to “Simpsonize” myself after almost everyone else on the net was done the gimmick and quickly moved on. The software stinks and it kept bugging out on me but I guess I hit a lucky streak today. I’m a little bit disappointed in how it came out; not exactly a spitting image of myself. I suspect my features aren’t really “cartoonish” enough for any kind of real resemblance to come out. What did I expect though, it’s just a stupid Burger King marketing tool anyway. Plus it captured my weak chin perfectly I think.
And while I'm on the subject, a quick note on The Simpsons Movie. It's exactly what you expect it to be. No more, no less. Consistently amusing but eminently forgettable. Lots of little laughs but no big, sustained one. The South Park movie remains safe as far as evolutionary leaps between show and film goes. Still, I can't think of too much I'd change... scratch that... it really needed more of the show's supporting cast. Over the years the family's become the least interesting part of the show. But really minor gripes that are almost unavoidable when staging something 18-years in the making. For better or worse, the quintessential disposable summer movie.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Bourne Again
Okay so first thing’s first: can anyone remind me what happened in the last one? All I can remember is Franka Potente driving a jeep off a bridge and the camera twitching uncontrollably like Katherine Hepburn on one of those vibrating benches that Stern is such a fan of. The Bourne Supremacy has been canonized in the past three years (just the other day a friend referred to it as “a masterpiece of the genre”) but I remember despising it, often with me fighting the urge to exit the theater and go vomit in a corner or at the very least track down some Dramamine post haste.
Actually I was about to go into an extended rant on why Supremacy didn’t work for me but I realized I said it best on my (defunct) Geocities page so I’ll just reprint the choice excerpts below. I’ll be back in a minute:
…this is really a failure. An ambitious failure mind you, but ultimately an unmitigated one, with every single scene rife with glaring missteps and fatal miscalculations by all parties involved. Put bluntly, Greengrass is a hack (I was thoroughly unimpressed with his horrifically over-praised Bloody Sunday) relying upon the same stylistic crutch he used in his previous film. While the first film evoked the films of the cold war with its use of wide angles, long takes, artfully choreographed blocking and an overall jazzy tone that set the mood for the perfect summer film, Bourne 2 finds the filmmakers striving for portent and manufactured pathos, and involves a visual scheme just this side of epileptic (there's a word for critics who bag on Michael Bay's editing while applauding Greengrass' slash-and-hack approach here: they're called hypocrites). Plot is largely inconsequential, as I suspected the filmmakers had developed amnesia somewhere between Naples and Berlin, and the action (including the much heralded climactic car chase) is lacking any kind of emotional tangibility or spacial[sp] coherence. Frankly, I cared less and less about the film with each passing minute
--July 23, 2004
And I’m back. If I could just make a couple of less knee-jerk observations with three years removed from my disappointment, I’d say my opinion of director Paul Greengrass has softened somewhat. The hack label was unfair, and while I’ll never respond to it in the way its champions do, I don’t think anyone could have made a better film of United 93. I think Greengrass is a serious filmmaker who’s got a lot more on his mind than frivolous summer fun and he lends a lot of weight to a series which really started out as a Cold War lark.
I tend to over-praise Liman’s first Bourne film, but there was almost a “Gee whiz” sense of discovery to the character; something about the whole amnesia angle and Damon’s apple-cheeked performance. It was the ultimate little boy fantasy: what if you woke up tomorrow and you were a killing machine on the run from the government? The direction was crisp and clean and simple, and really allowed you to appreciate the incredible stunt work. Long, fluid camera movements that really capture the excitement of watching someone do what they’re great at (they being both Bourne and the action coordinators).
Greengrass, as a citizen of the world, seems a lot more interested in fall-out and the effect these back-office black-ops have not only on their victims but the men and women whose job it is to execute them. It was so angsty and unpleasant and annoyed at the world half the time I thought the camera was shaking because Greengrass was kicking it in frustration. But remove the overused “this time it’s personal” angle and there was really nothing holding the film together. Bourne is pissed. Bourne is under attack. Bourne brings the fight to your door. The plotting existed more to move Bourne from one foreign locale to another (again not a bad thing per say, Bond does the same thing) but Greengrass seemed intent on sapping all of the fun out of the entire endeavor.
I can’t quite pinpoint exactly why I liked The Bourne Ultimatum so much more than Supremacy as it contains many of the same issues, especially the same problematic tendencies from Greengrass. Greengrass directs action the way Baz Luhrman directs dancing; lots of quick cuts and artificial energy without any real sense of what’s happening and where. There’s a brutal hand to hand combat scene in the film’s Tangiers sequence that’s sure to get a lot of attention but I was mostly irritated at how close and tight Greengrass places the camera. It’s like watching two Olympic judo champions from three inches away; we know what they’re doing is spectacular but there’s not enough distance to appreciate it.
Greengrass repeats this visual scheme throughout this film but the result is less detrimental I *think* because there’s more to the film than simply Bourne’s white hot rage at his former employers. For starters, Bourne has been given a truly worthy antagonist in David Strathairn’s deputy director. Strathairn’s character is cut from the same entitled, starched, white beaurocrat mode who’s not above getting his hands dirty. Joan Allen who was fine in the last film was ultimately too professional and “decent” to really hammer home the threat so this film wisely places her in the role of Bourne’s uneasy ally. The film finds Bourne looking inward, desperate to find the men who made him what he is (much of this material reminded me of Wolverine’s past in the X-Men series) only to find he’s more complicate in his behavior than he’d like to believe.
The film has genuine appreciation for the skill of tactics and one-upmanship, with each side covertly moving against the other. While the film is shockingly violent at times its most riveting sequences are those where we see Bourne anticipating several moves ahead of everyone else, such as an early sequence involving a series of phone calls and a busy train station. While I think Greengrass tends to distort our perspective too much in the action sequences, you do get the sense you’re watching a chess game being played.
But mostly the film returns some of the fun to the story. It still pushes the characters into some dark waters but the film itself retains the propulsive energy one would expect from a film opening in the first week of August. The thing fucking cooks; even when it’s unclear what direction we’re heading in there’s no downtime to get worked up over it. Plus (and this is a big one) it certainly compares favorable to most of the summer’s big event films. The series ultimately got away from where I wish it would have gone, but it’s more or less as it should be in the end. Plus, factor in everyone on Earth loved Supremacy except for me so whatever my enthusiasm is for this one, figure yours will be up exponentially.
Actually I was about to go into an extended rant on why Supremacy didn’t work for me but I realized I said it best on my (defunct) Geocities page so I’ll just reprint the choice excerpts below. I’ll be back in a minute:
…this is really a failure. An ambitious failure mind you, but ultimately an unmitigated one, with every single scene rife with glaring missteps and fatal miscalculations by all parties involved. Put bluntly, Greengrass is a hack (I was thoroughly unimpressed with his horrifically over-praised Bloody Sunday) relying upon the same stylistic crutch he used in his previous film. While the first film evoked the films of the cold war with its use of wide angles, long takes, artfully choreographed blocking and an overall jazzy tone that set the mood for the perfect summer film, Bourne 2 finds the filmmakers striving for portent and manufactured pathos, and involves a visual scheme just this side of epileptic (there's a word for critics who bag on Michael Bay's editing while applauding Greengrass' slash-and-hack approach here: they're called hypocrites). Plot is largely inconsequential, as I suspected the filmmakers had developed amnesia somewhere between Naples and Berlin, and the action (including the much heralded climactic car chase) is lacking any kind of emotional tangibility or spacial[sp] coherence. Frankly, I cared less and less about the film with each passing minute
--July 23, 2004
And I’m back. If I could just make a couple of less knee-jerk observations with three years removed from my disappointment, I’d say my opinion of director Paul Greengrass has softened somewhat. The hack label was unfair, and while I’ll never respond to it in the way its champions do, I don’t think anyone could have made a better film of United 93. I think Greengrass is a serious filmmaker who’s got a lot more on his mind than frivolous summer fun and he lends a lot of weight to a series which really started out as a Cold War lark.
I tend to over-praise Liman’s first Bourne film, but there was almost a “Gee whiz” sense of discovery to the character; something about the whole amnesia angle and Damon’s apple-cheeked performance. It was the ultimate little boy fantasy: what if you woke up tomorrow and you were a killing machine on the run from the government? The direction was crisp and clean and simple, and really allowed you to appreciate the incredible stunt work. Long, fluid camera movements that really capture the excitement of watching someone do what they’re great at (they being both Bourne and the action coordinators).
Greengrass, as a citizen of the world, seems a lot more interested in fall-out and the effect these back-office black-ops have not only on their victims but the men and women whose job it is to execute them. It was so angsty and unpleasant and annoyed at the world half the time I thought the camera was shaking because Greengrass was kicking it in frustration. But remove the overused “this time it’s personal” angle and there was really nothing holding the film together. Bourne is pissed. Bourne is under attack. Bourne brings the fight to your door. The plotting existed more to move Bourne from one foreign locale to another (again not a bad thing per say, Bond does the same thing) but Greengrass seemed intent on sapping all of the fun out of the entire endeavor.
I can’t quite pinpoint exactly why I liked The Bourne Ultimatum so much more than Supremacy as it contains many of the same issues, especially the same problematic tendencies from Greengrass. Greengrass directs action the way Baz Luhrman directs dancing; lots of quick cuts and artificial energy without any real sense of what’s happening and where. There’s a brutal hand to hand combat scene in the film’s Tangiers sequence that’s sure to get a lot of attention but I was mostly irritated at how close and tight Greengrass places the camera. It’s like watching two Olympic judo champions from three inches away; we know what they’re doing is spectacular but there’s not enough distance to appreciate it.
Greengrass repeats this visual scheme throughout this film but the result is less detrimental I *think* because there’s more to the film than simply Bourne’s white hot rage at his former employers. For starters, Bourne has been given a truly worthy antagonist in David Strathairn’s deputy director. Strathairn’s character is cut from the same entitled, starched, white beaurocrat mode who’s not above getting his hands dirty. Joan Allen who was fine in the last film was ultimately too professional and “decent” to really hammer home the threat so this film wisely places her in the role of Bourne’s uneasy ally. The film finds Bourne looking inward, desperate to find the men who made him what he is (much of this material reminded me of Wolverine’s past in the X-Men series) only to find he’s more complicate in his behavior than he’d like to believe.
The film has genuine appreciation for the skill of tactics and one-upmanship, with each side covertly moving against the other. While the film is shockingly violent at times its most riveting sequences are those where we see Bourne anticipating several moves ahead of everyone else, such as an early sequence involving a series of phone calls and a busy train station. While I think Greengrass tends to distort our perspective too much in the action sequences, you do get the sense you’re watching a chess game being played.
But mostly the film returns some of the fun to the story. It still pushes the characters into some dark waters but the film itself retains the propulsive energy one would expect from a film opening in the first week of August. The thing fucking cooks; even when it’s unclear what direction we’re heading in there’s no downtime to get worked up over it. Plus (and this is a big one) it certainly compares favorable to most of the summer’s big event films. The series ultimately got away from where I wish it would have gone, but it’s more or less as it should be in the end. Plus, factor in everyone on Earth loved Supremacy except for me so whatever my enthusiasm is for this one, figure yours will be up exponentially.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Y God Why?
I knew this was coming but it hurts and it sucks.
As first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, who are currently camped out at Comic-Con, the production team of BenderSpink is following through on their Quixotic journey to adapt Brian K. Vaughn’s groundbreaking, long-form comic Y the Last Man into a self-contained feature film. And as if this idea weren’t awful enough to begin with, they’ve brought along some of the least talented people in Hollywood to help forever taint the memory of this incredible property.
I don’t know D.J. Caruso personally. He seemed agreeable enough while serving as a guest host on “On the Lot” but in the past five years this is the resume he’s compiled:
2002: The Salton Sea
2004: Taking Lives
2005: Two for the Money
2007: Disturbia
Distrubia may end up being the most profitable film in Dreamworks’ short history and what little memory I have of Two for the Money was mostly pleasant, but Salton and Taking Lives would make a short list of the worst films of the new millennium. He’s for all intents and purposes a voice-less hack who can probably bring a project in on time and on budget but will never be accused of crafting something lasting or memorable.
But it gets worse: from what I’ve been hearing, Vaughn’s (who had been working on a script for the project for over a year) drafts of the script appear to have been tossed aside in favor of a new one from Carl Ellsworth who’s worked previously with Caruso on Disturbia and BenderSpink on Red Eye. So basically, a guy whose only credits of note are cheap, claustrophobic thrillers has been handed the reigns to a story that takes place over seven contents over the course of five years.
Here’s the thing, it’s doubtful there’s a filmmaker alive who could even partially do this story justice in a feature film format. Unlike most comic books, Y the Last Man doesn’t have superheroes and villains or a simple plot to be resolved. With less than a hundred issues in total (the series is scheduled to conclude its run by the end of 2007), the series explored an uncertain future where nearly every male creature on Earth is wiped out instantaneously by a toxin, save for its reluctant hero, lovelorn street magician Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand. With 49% of the world’s population gone (including the vast majority of the world’s politicians, police officers, doctors, soldiers and athletes) and Yorick’s survival seemingly intertwined with the virus, the comic deals with the sobering reality that the human race is likely doomed in four generations (the story taps into a lot of the anxiety cultivated by Children of Men but actually pre-dates the film by years) but still needs to make do in the meantime. It’s a story about evolution and acceptance and starting over. It was funny and topical. It was digressive yet propulsive. It allowed room for both a feminist slant on a typical male-driven genre will still making room for latent male fantasy (lots of girl-on-girl action).
And it can in now way be told in 2 hours.
Or in a couple 2-hour movies (not like we’d get sequels).
The comic so blatantly calls out for the television treatment that Vaughn even preemptively addresses this complaint on his Myspace page’s Frequently Asked Questions. The obvious model for this would be (aside from Stephen King’s The Stand) is the show “Lost” which, ironically enough, Vaughn currently serves as one of its staff writers. Yorick is barely the hero of his own story and streamlining a narrative that follows him exclusively not only would be detrimental to the story, it goes against the very spirit of it. If ever there were a global story, this would be the one, yet a feature-film’s limitations tells me any glance at the larger world outside of our protagonist would be cursory at best.
I get it now. I get every Potter fan who groaned when they hired Chris Columbus, or Fantastic Four fan who get films from the director of Barbershop and Taxi or for that matter my good friend Sean Burns who’s had Mark Steven Johnson destroy not only Daredevil and Ghost Rider for him but also the promise of fucking up the upcoming Preacher TV-Series (which, by the way, is also a BenderSpink production… guys HINT HINT HINT).
This entire concept is so horribly misconceived I can’t lay too much blame on Caruso and Ellsworth no matter how happy it would make me. The fault here lies at the feet of Vertigo the comic’s publisher (which like everything else under the sun is a division of Time Warner) as well as with Vaughn and co-author Pia Guerra for selling off the rights without protecting the integrity of the project. I’m sure they were all well compensated for their efforts but they ultimately bear the responsibility for the entire misbegotten enterprise.
As first reported by the Hollywood Reporter, who are currently camped out at Comic-Con, the production team of BenderSpink is following through on their Quixotic journey to adapt Brian K. Vaughn’s groundbreaking, long-form comic Y the Last Man into a self-contained feature film. And as if this idea weren’t awful enough to begin with, they’ve brought along some of the least talented people in Hollywood to help forever taint the memory of this incredible property.
I don’t know D.J. Caruso personally. He seemed agreeable enough while serving as a guest host on “On the Lot” but in the past five years this is the resume he’s compiled:
2002: The Salton Sea
2004: Taking Lives
2005: Two for the Money
2007: Disturbia
Distrubia may end up being the most profitable film in Dreamworks’ short history and what little memory I have of Two for the Money was mostly pleasant, but Salton and Taking Lives would make a short list of the worst films of the new millennium. He’s for all intents and purposes a voice-less hack who can probably bring a project in on time and on budget but will never be accused of crafting something lasting or memorable.
But it gets worse: from what I’ve been hearing, Vaughn’s (who had been working on a script for the project for over a year) drafts of the script appear to have been tossed aside in favor of a new one from Carl Ellsworth who’s worked previously with Caruso on Disturbia and BenderSpink on Red Eye. So basically, a guy whose only credits of note are cheap, claustrophobic thrillers has been handed the reigns to a story that takes place over seven contents over the course of five years.
Here’s the thing, it’s doubtful there’s a filmmaker alive who could even partially do this story justice in a feature film format. Unlike most comic books, Y the Last Man doesn’t have superheroes and villains or a simple plot to be resolved. With less than a hundred issues in total (the series is scheduled to conclude its run by the end of 2007), the series explored an uncertain future where nearly every male creature on Earth is wiped out instantaneously by a toxin, save for its reluctant hero, lovelorn street magician Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand. With 49% of the world’s population gone (including the vast majority of the world’s politicians, police officers, doctors, soldiers and athletes) and Yorick’s survival seemingly intertwined with the virus, the comic deals with the sobering reality that the human race is likely doomed in four generations (the story taps into a lot of the anxiety cultivated by Children of Men but actually pre-dates the film by years) but still needs to make do in the meantime. It’s a story about evolution and acceptance and starting over. It was funny and topical. It was digressive yet propulsive. It allowed room for both a feminist slant on a typical male-driven genre will still making room for latent male fantasy (lots of girl-on-girl action).
And it can in now way be told in 2 hours.
Or in a couple 2-hour movies (not like we’d get sequels).
The comic so blatantly calls out for the television treatment that Vaughn even preemptively addresses this complaint on his Myspace page’s Frequently Asked Questions. The obvious model for this would be (aside from Stephen King’s The Stand) is the show “Lost” which, ironically enough, Vaughn currently serves as one of its staff writers. Yorick is barely the hero of his own story and streamlining a narrative that follows him exclusively not only would be detrimental to the story, it goes against the very spirit of it. If ever there were a global story, this would be the one, yet a feature-film’s limitations tells me any glance at the larger world outside of our protagonist would be cursory at best.
I get it now. I get every Potter fan who groaned when they hired Chris Columbus, or Fantastic Four fan who get films from the director of Barbershop and Taxi or for that matter my good friend Sean Burns who’s had Mark Steven Johnson destroy not only Daredevil and Ghost Rider for him but also the promise of fucking up the upcoming Preacher TV-Series (which, by the way, is also a BenderSpink production… guys HINT HINT HINT).
This entire concept is so horribly misconceived I can’t lay too much blame on Caruso and Ellsworth no matter how happy it would make me. The fault here lies at the feet of Vertigo the comic’s publisher (which like everything else under the sun is a division of Time Warner) as well as with Vaughn and co-author Pia Guerra for selling off the rights without protecting the integrity of the project. I’m sure they were all well compensated for their efforts but they ultimately bear the responsibility for the entire misbegotten enterprise.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
State of the Union
Keeping it short and sweet. This isn’t some groveling cry for help or any of that happy horse shit; it’s a laundry list of why I’ve got a hair across my ass these days:
Work has never been less fulfilling in my entire life. I’ve finally found a script I want to produce after four years on the job and I expect my boss to either a) pass on it or b) drag his feet and/or low-ball the writer till it slips between our fingers. If I can’t be involved with this film I don’t see how I can stay with the company.
My weird anxiety-related breathing thing has passed (x-rays prove my lungs are fine) but now I’m pretty much popping Xanax like they’re M&M’s. I realize I’d rather be numb than feel anything close to what I’m feeling right now. But that’s okay right, because nothing bad can come from a prescription drug habit, right? Thank God I lose my appetite when I’m depressed. The last thing I want to deal with right now is being fat.
Oh, the Sox totally suck balls. I knew they’d implode but I sort of thought it would be the pitching doing them in, per, I dunno MY ENTIRE HISTORY WITH THE TEAM. Instead, I’m listening to Dice-K and Beckett throw 3-hitter gems while a bunch of overpaid crybabies can’t hit the fucking ball with a runner on 3rd with 1 out. Manny’s contract can’t run-out soon enough. I actually found myself getting excited the other day over the thought of the Sox paying Scott Boras’ 30-million a year ransom for A-Rod next year; how fucked is that?
The script that I’m 50+ pages into writing, the one that was supposed to reveal how much range I had as a writer because it’s such a dramatic departure from the self-indulgent dogshit I usually write… yeah well it stalled. I’m literally terrified to write anything else. Haven’t written more than a paragraph in weeks.
I realized the other day that the highlight of my day is when I go to bed. Really. I used to look down my nose at my sister when she was in highschool and would spend all day hiding from the world in her bed. But I really do get it now: sleep is easier than life. Everything just goes away and when you wake up you have about 45-seconds where you forget just how awful the day before was and you feel like anything is possible. Actually that's the highpoint of my day and if they made it into a drug I’d spend my live savings on it till I more or less had the trajectory of John Belushi.
Nothing to watch on TV (obviously) but what’s really killing me is having to listen to people I respect and want to spend more time with tell me how Transformers “is just a fun summer movie.” Why has everyone’s standards become so low? Am I the only one who demands more than flashing lights and loud noises?
Something has to give. Something has to change. Soon.
Work has never been less fulfilling in my entire life. I’ve finally found a script I want to produce after four years on the job and I expect my boss to either a) pass on it or b) drag his feet and/or low-ball the writer till it slips between our fingers. If I can’t be involved with this film I don’t see how I can stay with the company.
My weird anxiety-related breathing thing has passed (x-rays prove my lungs are fine) but now I’m pretty much popping Xanax like they’re M&M’s. I realize I’d rather be numb than feel anything close to what I’m feeling right now. But that’s okay right, because nothing bad can come from a prescription drug habit, right? Thank God I lose my appetite when I’m depressed. The last thing I want to deal with right now is being fat.
Oh, the Sox totally suck balls. I knew they’d implode but I sort of thought it would be the pitching doing them in, per, I dunno MY ENTIRE HISTORY WITH THE TEAM. Instead, I’m listening to Dice-K and Beckett throw 3-hitter gems while a bunch of overpaid crybabies can’t hit the fucking ball with a runner on 3rd with 1 out. Manny’s contract can’t run-out soon enough. I actually found myself getting excited the other day over the thought of the Sox paying Scott Boras’ 30-million a year ransom for A-Rod next year; how fucked is that?
The script that I’m 50+ pages into writing, the one that was supposed to reveal how much range I had as a writer because it’s such a dramatic departure from the self-indulgent dogshit I usually write… yeah well it stalled. I’m literally terrified to write anything else. Haven’t written more than a paragraph in weeks.
I realized the other day that the highlight of my day is when I go to bed. Really. I used to look down my nose at my sister when she was in highschool and would spend all day hiding from the world in her bed. But I really do get it now: sleep is easier than life. Everything just goes away and when you wake up you have about 45-seconds where you forget just how awful the day before was and you feel like anything is possible. Actually that's the highpoint of my day and if they made it into a drug I’d spend my live savings on it till I more or less had the trajectory of John Belushi.
Nothing to watch on TV (obviously) but what’s really killing me is having to listen to people I respect and want to spend more time with tell me how Transformers “is just a fun summer movie.” Why has everyone’s standards become so low? Am I the only one who demands more than flashing lights and loud noises?
Something has to give. Something has to change. Soon.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Transformers (Michael Bay)
Be careful what you wish for. I can’t really blame Bay and company for the film they turned in as, if I were eight years old, this is exactly the film I would expect from a series of cartoons based on action figures. The thing is, this is a story that probably demanded a little restraint and patience (and no, taking 90 minutes to get to your film’s plot isn’t the sort of patience I was referring to) and while the film bears the name of Steven Spielberg as an executive producer, it’s exactly his instincts that are missing from the film. I mean is the film anything more than Jurassic Park meets E.T. (with some T2 and Independence Day thrown in for techno-cool shading)? Yet instead of delaying our first full on glimpse at the robots in all their stories-high biped glory, whetting our appetite and building towards the huge reveal, here we get full on Decepticon mayhem in the first 10 minutes. Scenes of Shia’s robot car/guardian being dragged off while Indy Jr. Jr. makes sad puppy dog eyes are completely emotionless, with no real bond created between man and machine. The film’s got ass loads of plot but I could barely make heads or tails of it and I grew up with the stupid cartoon (I’m sure it’s addressed in the film but why does Megatron, who’s frozen in the Artic Circle, know the whereabouts of the plot device/Rubick’s Cube/Allspark if it’s at the Hoover Damn? Why for that matter does everyone need it anyway?)
At this point I’ve stopped looking for humanity in Bay’s films (although you’d think a man who’s spent his entire ill-gotten career jerking off to sports cars and jet planes might be able to muster up some sort of empathy) yet I still keep holding onto the misguided belief that between all his lens-flares and slo-mo strides and jingoistic bombast that I’ll get to see some shit get blown up but good. And then I always remember how Bay has never even been able to get that right, preferring to dump us in the middle of the action and epileptically cutting from one disjointed medium close-up to another (if ever there were a film that demanded for long wide shots it’s this one) till you’re more or less beaten into a state of somnambulist submission. So much going on yet I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about what’s happening in a film than I did in this one. Also, does anyone find Bay’s racist, misogynist, lowest-common-denominator tendencies funny? Considering how many innocent bystanders are killed in these films (although conveniently off-screen) he sure seems to be keeping himself in stitches engaged in fratboy humor. Good to see even in robot form the black guy still dies first. On the plus side, it did make me want to re-watch Iron Giant, so that’s something.
At this point I’ve stopped looking for humanity in Bay’s films (although you’d think a man who’s spent his entire ill-gotten career jerking off to sports cars and jet planes might be able to muster up some sort of empathy) yet I still keep holding onto the misguided belief that between all his lens-flares and slo-mo strides and jingoistic bombast that I’ll get to see some shit get blown up but good. And then I always remember how Bay has never even been able to get that right, preferring to dump us in the middle of the action and epileptically cutting from one disjointed medium close-up to another (if ever there were a film that demanded for long wide shots it’s this one) till you’re more or less beaten into a state of somnambulist submission. So much going on yet I don’t think I’ve ever cared less about what’s happening in a film than I did in this one. Also, does anyone find Bay’s racist, misogynist, lowest-common-denominator tendencies funny? Considering how many innocent bystanders are killed in these films (although conveniently off-screen) he sure seems to be keeping himself in stitches engaged in fratboy humor. Good to see even in robot form the black guy still dies first. On the plus side, it did make me want to re-watch Iron Giant, so that’s something.
30 Rocks!
I got on board the “30 Rock” train fairly late in the season as I’d decided early on that if I was going to throw my hat into the ring for one new NBC show based on the inner-workings of a fictional late night comedy/variety show it was gonna be the one where Aaron Sorkin gets revenge on various ex-girlfriends, media analysts, critics and network heads. Whoops.
Thankfully NBC has been re-airing the entire first season all summer, and blessed be me, they started at the beginning. The show admittedly was a bit rough early one but it grew in confidence, clarity and silliness as it went along until by the time the first season wrapped up in May it was far and away the best comedy on television and a true heir to the crown vacated by “Arrested Development.”
For your enjoyment I now reproduce the worst Dear Jane letter in history as read by the very talented Dean Winters from last night’s new (to me) episode.
“Dear Liz Lemon:
While other women have bigger boobs than you, no other woman has as big a heart. When I saw you getting ready to go out and get nailed by a bunch of guys last night, I knew for sure it was over between us, and for the first time since the ‘86 World Series, I cried… I cried like a big, dumb homo. And if it was up to me, we’d be together forever. But there’s a new thing called “women’s liberation”, which gives you women the right to choose and you have chosen to abort me, and that I must live with. So tonight, when you arrive home, I’ll be gone. I officially renounce my squatter’s rights.”
Where I come from, they call that brilliant.
Thankfully NBC has been re-airing the entire first season all summer, and blessed be me, they started at the beginning. The show admittedly was a bit rough early one but it grew in confidence, clarity and silliness as it went along until by the time the first season wrapped up in May it was far and away the best comedy on television and a true heir to the crown vacated by “Arrested Development.”
For your enjoyment I now reproduce the worst Dear Jane letter in history as read by the very talented Dean Winters from last night’s new (to me) episode.
“Dear Liz Lemon:
While other women have bigger boobs than you, no other woman has as big a heart. When I saw you getting ready to go out and get nailed by a bunch of guys last night, I knew for sure it was over between us, and for the first time since the ‘86 World Series, I cried… I cried like a big, dumb homo. And if it was up to me, we’d be together forever. But there’s a new thing called “women’s liberation”, which gives you women the right to choose and you have chosen to abort me, and that I must live with. So tonight, when you arrive home, I’ll be gone. I officially renounce my squatter’s rights.”
Where I come from, they call that brilliant.
I’m Anxious
This is an update for my nearest and dearest who have been watching me slowly devolve into pacing wreck over the past week or so. I’ll cut through a lot of drama right off the bat just so I don’t milk this for anymore than it warrants: In short, I’m fine… I think. I went to the E.R. Monday night after feeling progressively worse for about the fourth day in a row and after being test by various interns and doctors for about an hour they more or less confirmed what I’d suspected all along: I was experiencing the mother of all anxiety attacks.
Anxiety attacks (or panic attack), for those who’ve never had the joy of experiencing one, essentially recreate the sensation of having a heart attack. They can happen out of thin air, often with little to no external provocation and are completely fucking terrifying. Everyone’s can be a little different but certainly two symptoms which are uniform, as far as my inquiries and personal experience go, are shortness of breath and overriding sense of ill-ease. You really do feel like you could die at any second and you have no idea why. They don’t call them panic attacks because they’re fun.
I had my first panic attack back in the late 90’s when I was in high school (right around the time Tony Soprano had his first one). The worst of them happened when I was in Philly with my parents looking at colleges and it got so bad that I ended up curling into a ball in the back seat of a cab, hugging my knees and trying to stay conscious. Being told by your doctor that there’s nothing physically wrong with you and that your public collapse was a result of a short circuit in your brain is both simultaneously a huge relief and the most insulting/humiliating thing on earth. He might as well have told me I was desperate for attention.
There have been minor ones since (in the interest of full disclosure, I think I had a small one around the time Danielle and I broke up… needless to say the fall of 2003 was very much life in flux) but by and large the full-scale anxiety attack has been safely in the rearview mirror for almost eight years now.
Or at least it was until last week.
I first noticed something was up while at work about ten days ago when I found myself getting light-headed and having difficulty taking full, deep breaths. I assumed it had something to do with my office being a sweat box with an ineffective A.C. built amidst vegetation that looks like it was imported from Jurassic Park. Surely this was all some horrible allergic reaction brought on by just how fucking oppressive the heat’s been lately, right? But things only seemed to get worse with each passing day. My breathing became constricted constantly; if my lungs were a Nerf ball imagining being only able to squeeze it 3/4 of the way and you get the idea. I managed to keep myself calm through all of this because a) I’d been through something like this before and come out safely on the other side and b) I’m twenty-six-years-old, I’m in great shape and I’d convinced myself that heart attacks don’t happen to people who fall into that description.
But then my hands started tingling. My left hand and forearm felt sort of numb, like when you sleep on your arm and it feels sort of dead for a few minutes. Except this was an all day occurrence. I was still trying to stay calm although at this point I began telling my friends and family about what I was going through, in part so they can tell me to stop being such a pussy and walk it off… and partially in case something did happen it wouldn’t come as a complete shock to my loved ones (I guess you could say this blog is serving a similar purpose seeing as how the story is currently ending with an ellipse as opposed to a period). I really only started to panic once my right hand started tingling as well. Arguably it was psychosomatic but it was enough to get me asking questions and checking WebMd.
The internet’s got limited use as far as self-diagnostics as it tends to err on the cautious side. So pretty much simply entering the expression “shortness of breath” will earn you a one way ticket to the emergency room. Factor in the hands thing and I’d essentially narrowed my options down to either a stroke or a coronary.
What ultimately pushed me over the edge was my aforementioned ex who I happened to catch online and who began screaming at me (or her caps lock key was stuck) that I should go see a doctor immediately (who know she still cared?). I also spoke with the roommate of my housemate’s girlfriend (she’s a nursing student) over the phone who after listening to me calmly list off my symptoms said it would probably be in my best interest to get to the E.R. lest I get worse during the middle of the night.
So fine, various women in my life had successfully talked me into going to the hospital, something I really had no concept of. I’m kind of a William Holden man if you get my drift. I’ve been living in LA for four-years and I still don’t have a general-practitioner. Once I figured out how one simply goes to the hospital at 10 at night (you mean I don’t need to call in advance and let them know I’m coming?).
The E.R. is not a pleasant place at 10 at night, even in a relatively swank suburb like Sherman Oaks. By my unofficial count there were two homeless people waiting ahead of me and a woman who’d clearly been beaten about the face (with what, I’m left to wonder although her eye looked like one of the California raisins had been super glued into her eye cavity). Still, considering the fact that Michael Moore’s spent the past few weeks trying to tell me that in American hospitals they anal impale you with rusty shovels and make you pay with your first born child (or at least that’s what I took away from Sicko) I was pleasantly surprised by how they handled me. Sure I spent probably 90-minutes sitting around waiting in various, progressively smaller anti-chambers but I had the morning’s Opie & Anthony recorded into my XM (say what you will about them being a spineless corporation desperate for federal approval, they do make some mighty fine toys) and at this point was pretty sedate (seeing that the guy in the bed on the other side of the room sounds like there’s glass in his lungs as he’s hooked up to a million tubes definitely puts things into perspective). Plus the whole visit didn't cost me a dime... At least not yet. Bill could be in the mail for all I know.
I finally get some face time with the doctor. He takes my blood pressure, checks my lungs, examines the back of the my throat then says those two cursed words: “you’re fine.” Says it’s anxiety. Well shit, I could have said that.
Of course I couldn’t have written myself the script for Xanax that he handed over before sending me packing.
Yes, your intrepid hero is on Mother’s Little Helpers. Tom Cruise would be sooo disappointed in me. The thing is I’m still not really breathing better. I don’t really see the pills addressing the problem, only calming me down to the point where I don’t really mind not breathing especially well. I have an appointment to meet with a doctor next week and should be getting a real physical within the next few weeks which should shine a little bit of light on the situation. I’ve probably got a date with a shrink in the next few months, but we all knew it would come to that eventually.
The irony behind this supposed anxiety attack is that things have been going pretty well as of late. Work’s been on an upswing when it hasn’t been mind-numbingly dull. I’ve been making a lot of new friends through poker. Hell, even the ever barren “personal life” category has revealed unforeseen opportunities. Plus the Sox are back to 20+ above .500 and A-Rod just hurt himself. Life is not bad for Andrew at the moment. So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit suspicious of this sudden onslaught of panic.
I don’t like the idea of constantly being on meds. Historically antidepresents stifle creativity and I’m far too manic to have something in my medicine cabinet that can cause an O.D. (why keep a loaded gun in the house, right?), but I’ll give it a shot if it can get me through the next few weeks till we can figure out what’s wrong with me. In the meantime, I found out online that one of the side-effect of Xanax is euphoria? Now that’s something I could get hooked on.
More as it develops…
Anxiety attacks (or panic attack), for those who’ve never had the joy of experiencing one, essentially recreate the sensation of having a heart attack. They can happen out of thin air, often with little to no external provocation and are completely fucking terrifying. Everyone’s can be a little different but certainly two symptoms which are uniform, as far as my inquiries and personal experience go, are shortness of breath and overriding sense of ill-ease. You really do feel like you could die at any second and you have no idea why. They don’t call them panic attacks because they’re fun.
I had my first panic attack back in the late 90’s when I was in high school (right around the time Tony Soprano had his first one). The worst of them happened when I was in Philly with my parents looking at colleges and it got so bad that I ended up curling into a ball in the back seat of a cab, hugging my knees and trying to stay conscious. Being told by your doctor that there’s nothing physically wrong with you and that your public collapse was a result of a short circuit in your brain is both simultaneously a huge relief and the most insulting/humiliating thing on earth. He might as well have told me I was desperate for attention.
There have been minor ones since (in the interest of full disclosure, I think I had a small one around the time Danielle and I broke up… needless to say the fall of 2003 was very much life in flux) but by and large the full-scale anxiety attack has been safely in the rearview mirror for almost eight years now.
Or at least it was until last week.
I first noticed something was up while at work about ten days ago when I found myself getting light-headed and having difficulty taking full, deep breaths. I assumed it had something to do with my office being a sweat box with an ineffective A.C. built amidst vegetation that looks like it was imported from Jurassic Park. Surely this was all some horrible allergic reaction brought on by just how fucking oppressive the heat’s been lately, right? But things only seemed to get worse with each passing day. My breathing became constricted constantly; if my lungs were a Nerf ball imagining being only able to squeeze it 3/4 of the way and you get the idea. I managed to keep myself calm through all of this because a) I’d been through something like this before and come out safely on the other side and b) I’m twenty-six-years-old, I’m in great shape and I’d convinced myself that heart attacks don’t happen to people who fall into that description.
But then my hands started tingling. My left hand and forearm felt sort of numb, like when you sleep on your arm and it feels sort of dead for a few minutes. Except this was an all day occurrence. I was still trying to stay calm although at this point I began telling my friends and family about what I was going through, in part so they can tell me to stop being such a pussy and walk it off… and partially in case something did happen it wouldn’t come as a complete shock to my loved ones (I guess you could say this blog is serving a similar purpose seeing as how the story is currently ending with an ellipse as opposed to a period). I really only started to panic once my right hand started tingling as well. Arguably it was psychosomatic but it was enough to get me asking questions and checking WebMd.
The internet’s got limited use as far as self-diagnostics as it tends to err on the cautious side. So pretty much simply entering the expression “shortness of breath” will earn you a one way ticket to the emergency room. Factor in the hands thing and I’d essentially narrowed my options down to either a stroke or a coronary.
What ultimately pushed me over the edge was my aforementioned ex who I happened to catch online and who began screaming at me (or her caps lock key was stuck) that I should go see a doctor immediately (who know she still cared?). I also spoke with the roommate of my housemate’s girlfriend (she’s a nursing student) over the phone who after listening to me calmly list off my symptoms said it would probably be in my best interest to get to the E.R. lest I get worse during the middle of the night.
So fine, various women in my life had successfully talked me into going to the hospital, something I really had no concept of. I’m kind of a William Holden man if you get my drift. I’ve been living in LA for four-years and I still don’t have a general-practitioner. Once I figured out how one simply goes to the hospital at 10 at night (you mean I don’t need to call in advance and let them know I’m coming?).
The E.R. is not a pleasant place at 10 at night, even in a relatively swank suburb like Sherman Oaks. By my unofficial count there were two homeless people waiting ahead of me and a woman who’d clearly been beaten about the face (with what, I’m left to wonder although her eye looked like one of the California raisins had been super glued into her eye cavity). Still, considering the fact that Michael Moore’s spent the past few weeks trying to tell me that in American hospitals they anal impale you with rusty shovels and make you pay with your first born child (or at least that’s what I took away from Sicko) I was pleasantly surprised by how they handled me. Sure I spent probably 90-minutes sitting around waiting in various, progressively smaller anti-chambers but I had the morning’s Opie & Anthony recorded into my XM (say what you will about them being a spineless corporation desperate for federal approval, they do make some mighty fine toys) and at this point was pretty sedate (seeing that the guy in the bed on the other side of the room sounds like there’s glass in his lungs as he’s hooked up to a million tubes definitely puts things into perspective). Plus the whole visit didn't cost me a dime... At least not yet. Bill could be in the mail for all I know.
I finally get some face time with the doctor. He takes my blood pressure, checks my lungs, examines the back of the my throat then says those two cursed words: “you’re fine.” Says it’s anxiety. Well shit, I could have said that.
Of course I couldn’t have written myself the script for Xanax that he handed over before sending me packing.
Yes, your intrepid hero is on Mother’s Little Helpers. Tom Cruise would be sooo disappointed in me. The thing is I’m still not really breathing better. I don’t really see the pills addressing the problem, only calming me down to the point where I don’t really mind not breathing especially well. I have an appointment to meet with a doctor next week and should be getting a real physical within the next few weeks which should shine a little bit of light on the situation. I’ve probably got a date with a shrink in the next few months, but we all knew it would come to that eventually.
The irony behind this supposed anxiety attack is that things have been going pretty well as of late. Work’s been on an upswing when it hasn’t been mind-numbingly dull. I’ve been making a lot of new friends through poker. Hell, even the ever barren “personal life” category has revealed unforeseen opportunities. Plus the Sox are back to 20+ above .500 and A-Rod just hurt himself. Life is not bad for Andrew at the moment. So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit suspicious of this sudden onslaught of panic.
I don’t like the idea of constantly being on meds. Historically antidepresents stifle creativity and I’m far too manic to have something in my medicine cabinet that can cause an O.D. (why keep a loaded gun in the house, right?), but I’ll give it a shot if it can get me through the next few weeks till we can figure out what’s wrong with me. In the meantime, I found out online that one of the side-effect of Xanax is euphoria? Now that’s something I could get hooked on.
More as it develops…
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