31 July 2006

Greg Lemond, cyclist

Oh, Floyd. It's probably safe to say that the Tour de France has really only had two American winners, or at least only two who will remain on the books.

And Lance. Lance seems bent on world domination centered entirely around Lance and what Lance wants. I'm not a member of the Church of Armstrong and don't wear the cult bracelet -- I KNOW it's for cancer, but funny how it's also for Lance, for how he's convinced people to brand themselves for him, and you Live Strong because it's Armstrong, and it's on your Arm, and you now belong to Mister L. Look, good that it's raising money, good that it keeps cancer an active on-going cause and concern, good. But I can't help it; the guy creeps me out, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an Armstrong Celebrity Center going up on Los Feliz Blvd some day.

And that brings us back to Lemond, Le-Mond-Ond. Greg, Lemond, the bi-cyc-list, he's a drop of golden sun. I followed both the Tour de France and the Ironman Triathalon every year when I was growing up because I couldn't believe the feats these people accomplished. It looked so HOT. And WET, and MOUNTAINY, and TWISTY and HOT, again, and just so very very TIRING. Can't we go to a cafe or a luau and forget all this? But they wouldn't, because they're crazy and dedicated and that's worth watching on tv, for some reason.

And because they look happy -- I don't know if it's the kind of happiness that comes from losing your mind, like the euphoria people on hunger strikes experience, but it's certifiable happiness nonetheless. Even the miserable ones, the racers skidding out on top of other races on tight roundabout turns, the wretched sprinters enduring the chug up a mountain stage, or the time trialists getting split reports and knowing, not only in their gut but in their earpiece, that they're falling farther behind with each stroke -- even they look happy. As a kid stationed at the tv every summer, I loved them all.

And then came the miracle of Lemond's 1989 win, the joy of it (not for poor, dashing, blonde ponytailed Laurent Fignon), still one of the most thrilling sporting events I've ever witnessed. ABC used to do such great Tour coverage back then, following the stages closely, but also skillfully setting the stage by profiling the racers and their teams, and how the racers joined the teams, and giving us a sense of the history and rivalries that informed the current race choices. Content with context. [Today's coverage is unspeakably bad, choppy and uninformed, pointless after the Armstrong era, maybe because they don't care about George Hincapie or any of the rest since they lost their star, amybe because all the good character get banned for doping sooner or later any way.]

Lemond rode with a great cast of characters who helped shape his story: the legendary Bernard Hinault, who couldn’t resist using the young upstart to sneak another win in 1985, then couldn’t resist challenging Lemond the next year when he was supposed to be repaying the favor and protecting and assisting Lemond to the yellow jersey. Lemond fought back and the torch was passed whether or not Hinault was willing to admit it was time. It was RED RIVER on the Pyrenees!

Then Lemond’s brother-in-law shot him full of shotgun pellets in a 1987 hunting accident, and Lemond barely survived the wounds. After two years of recovery, he signed on for the 1989 Tour de France hoping just to make a respectable showing.

So we knew all this dramatic backstory as the race progessed. And there was Lauren Fignon, the arrogant (who isn’t in this sport), striking blonde scowling through the race with gritted teeth, clearly pouring his entire heart into it. And there was Greg Lemond, surpassing even his own expectations, appearing buoyed up as each day passed and he felt stronger than the one before. Until the final time trial on the Champs Elysee, the first time they’d ended a Tour this way, forcing a rider in this jostling, team-based, yet solitary sport to face only his own abilities at the end of the race. Nothing to think about but how good you can be or how badly you can fail.

As overall leader at the end of the previous stage. Lemond was privileged to ride last. Long an innovator in the sport, his time trail bike featured a new, more aerodynamic handlebar and disk sheet. He had come from the future to win the race! Fignon left every bit of himself on the road and finished with a seemingly insurmountable time. It was a dramatic ending to a thrilling race, bound to end in failure for Lemond, but what an entirely noble failure.

Yet he won, by an unbelievably slim eight second margin. At home, I jumped and cheered and ran around the house, so full of adrenalin I needed to run laps. A beaming, incredulous Lemond hugged his wife and small child on the street. Fignon sat with his wonderful sweaty blonde mane slumped over the handlebars, but my god what a race he made it.

I am indebted to Lemond for showing me the possibilities of being truly dedicated to your profession, always seeking the cutting edge technically and in your training, having the nerve to challenge decades of French tradition and cycling egos and hierarchies and thrive within them, and for loving him sport so much that he has the balls to repeatedly speak out about the swift and appalling degradation it has suffered from widespread doping, and to keep urging the guilty parties to confess and clean up. No one else in this sport will tell the truth right now, but I get the sense that Lemond is such a dedicated cycling geek that he feels personally betrayed by what has become of his sport.

For being a true gentleman champion, for not giving up, for speaking up when he doesn't have to bring anyone's wrath onto him at this point, for standing up to both bullies and shotgun pellets, for so beautifully and gracefully riding that incredible last stage in 1989, Greg Lemond is one of my very very few sports heroes left.

28 July 2006

"Funny Ha-Ha": Addendum

This movie has a plot. In noting how well it captures feelings, I forget to mention that it is also a well-told story wherein the characters make decisions and act on them, and that those decisions have clear consequences that drive the story forward.

Since the success of the Musing Trifecta (I just made that up) of films including PULP FICTION, SWINGERS, and DINER, some filmmakers got the terribly wrong impression that it's sufficient to make a movie consisting entirely of clever characters standing around (or driving around) musing about random topics. Even Andre, in his cinematic dinner with Wallace Shawn, didn't muse; he questioned, he investigated, and he illustrated. His story had shape and weight. Similarly, the talk in the Trifecta films added to the plot, it didn't substitute for it.

The plot of FUNNY HA-HA is about a love triangle, and the movie contains a perfect scene: the principal characters affecting one side of the triangle meet unexpectedly in a supermarket, and their grocery talk ripples with the undercurrents of the mess of relationships and loyalties and missed opportunities between them. There's a great subtlety to the actors' behavior; it isn't a scene of open confrontation and melodrama, as it would've been as told by a less confident filmmaker. Instead, it's a scene of inflection and tone and of essentially nice people in an awkward situation, trying not to hurt others or show their own hurt.

It takes guts to write and direct a scene like that, and it takes real skill to draw such unaffected vulnerability out of unprofessional actors. So again: well played, Bujalski!

27 July 2006

"Funny Ha-Ha", written/directed by Andrew Bujalski (2002)

So there's this guy Bujalski. He's this young guy who decides to make a movie about his life -- post college, temp jobs, that horrible yet exciting "cusp of the rest of your life" time, searching for "the one" or, realistically, any one. And he gets a camera and a bunch of his friends from school and makes the goddamned movie.

FUNNY HA-HA is a perfect example of personal, from-the-gut filmmaking. It was made on the cheap with non-actors, including Bujalski himself as Mitchell, the moonyeyed nerd who earns your love with his earnestness and honesy and vulnerability in the face of a beautiful woman. Kate Dollenmayer as Marnie is beautiful, not in an overprocessed movie starlet way, but in a "damn, the more I see of her, the more I love her" way. She impresses you because she isn't trying to impress you at all, and too few actresses are allowed to do that in movies and television because they are supposed to represent something more intense or flavorful than the rest of us, instead of representing plain old us.

The movie starts out slow and still and kind of precious and you get the terrible sinking feeling of Indie Movie, Pretentious Shit, Your Thoughts Aren't As Interesting or Unique as You Think They Are (IMPSYTAAIUYTTA). But hold your indie horses (they dye their manes the color of quirkiness!). Let Marnie's seemingly uneventful life wander ahead of you, and follow it like a kid sister. You'll find moments of honesty and embarrassment and courage in this movie that are so true you want to sqry (squirm and cry), but also call your best friend and reminisce about when you were stupid together.

Especially if you vividly remember the confusing and awkward years of your early twenties and are thrilled that this movie so accurately recorded the feeling.

Sorry, Douglas Coupland, this movie Generation X'd you ten years later. It's less, oh, Canadian. I kid because I love.

One more note: this film is very similar in tone and feel to AMERICAN JOB and other Chris Smith films. Modest filmmakers making sneakily powerful movies about regular people that nobody else cares about.

You are the shit, Bujalski!

25 July 2006

NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"

What a bunch of commies, huh? Is it National Public Radio or Nothing Pro-Republican? HUH?!

Thanks to this weekly news quiz comedy show, I have a release for my weekly accumulation of impotent rage over the never-ending travesties masterminded by the political leaders of my country and, oh heck, let's say the entire world, as well.

I admire host Peter Segal's light touch and deft moderating. I love the good-humored special guests. And I get a little thrill from the reveal of each week's line-up of panelists. Will my absolute favorite, comedian Paula Poundstone, bring her commonsensical, rapid-fire wit to this week's show? And will Roy Blount Jr. be there to lay down some folksy wisdom and cheap poop jokes? What about "television personality" Mo Rocca; will he be there with his competitive fire (he's always the one who really wants to win) and his eruditely lisped bon mots? And every once in a while I get a real treat: understudy panelist Amy Dickinson of "Ask Amy", smart and funny and energetically intellectually curious, just like this show.

Praise be to KCRW for making the show available as a free podcast so I never have to miss a show again!

23 July 2006

"Tupelo Honey", by Van Morrison

I think what makes this song so perfectly sweet and dreamily, drowsily edible is that it is just this side of irritatingly coy. It grabs the feeling of idealizing your loved one until you almost hate him a little for drawing you so close, then it squeezes that feeling out in a burst of lyrical lullaby rock.

21 July 2006

Perrault's Fairy Tales, with illustrations by Gustave Dore

I have this weird, fascinating-yet-off-putting book of fairy tales originally published in French in 1697. The translated version is have was published in 1969, so I have had it my entire life (and then some). I remember reading it as a kid and thinking "that's weird; and these drawings are creepy" and putting it aside for 30+ years.

So good for me for hanging on to creepy the book and lugging it across the country and finally getting back to it, because these are well and simply told classic tales with, as the back of the book accurately states, "extraordinary full-page engravings by Gustave Dore that show clearly why this artist became the foremost illustrator of his time." The engravings are like Durer crossed with Pieter Bruegel the Elder crossed with, I don't know, Watteau? What with the pantaloons? Those crossings maybe make no sense, but I'm talking about the clean spidery lines and the depth of activity in the picture frame and the animals in the setting and, of course, the pantaloons.

The book contains the following stories: "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Blue Beard", "The Master Cat, or Puss in Boots", "The Fairies", "Cinderells, or The Little Glass Slipper", "Ricky of the Tuft", and "Little Tom Thumb". Most of the stories have the same moral (helpfully spelled out for you in verse at the end of the story; sometimes it's even restated in a second moral, in case the first doesn't quite work for you), and this is it: pretty girls nab rich husbands. The End.

I think that's why I hated it as a kid -- the highest aspiration in life of men was to be rich and get the pretty girl; of women, to be pretty and get the rich guy. How dull. This made me not very excited to be racing toward adulthood.

But now I understand the stories and their morals as actually being cynical and funny. He points out again and again that the mere appearance of wealth and success and the genetic luck of beauty bring a person all of the admiration and respect of their fellow citizens, regardless of character or accomplishments. He also points out that society will reward you for your wealth and beauty no matter how you come by it (birth, fairies, cats dressed like the fourth Musketeer; what have you). That these stories have endured for hundreds of years not as cautionary tales but as beacons of hope for the ugly, unloved, ignored and poor (i.e. everyone) says more than we wanted to know about human nature.

As for the Dover edition book I have, the engraving of the inexplicable Puss in Boots (tell me again why he's so intent on fixing up his master with the rich chick? Is it just because, as a cat wearing boots and a large hat with a feather in it, he loves to lie and scheme? Like, of course any cat flaunting that sartorial splendor would be a hard-working toady) is priceless. That pussy cat WORKS those thigh high boots, let me tell you.

The other greatest thing about this book is the language in Cinderella. Here are the choice quotes:

When she had finished her work she used to sit amongst the cinders in the corner of the chimney, and it was from this habit that she came to be commonly known as Cinder-slut.

After her meanest step-sister asks if Cinderella would like to go to the ball, and she says she knows it would be no place for her, the sister says:
"That is very true, people would laugh to see a cinder-slut in the ballroom."


Ha ha! Ok, so the Middle English meaning of "slut" in the 1400s was "slovenly woman" or "kitchen maid or drudge", but it was being used as a derogatory term with a sexual connotation by the 1700s. So what did the Frenchman Perrault mean in 1697? Given the tenor of the stories, I imagine he pretended to the first meaning and hoped to slyly get away with the second. Which makes me love his stories all the more.

18 July 2006

Hemlines

16 July 2006

"Mr. Brightside", The Killers

Jealousy-fueled insomnia set to an irresistible beat, complete with paranoic nightmare scenarios of the lost love with her new boytoy, capped off with disbelief that all this pain could've started with a simple kiss.

If you've never felt this perfectly awful, then you've probably never been in love; if you have, you know that in some sick way the pain of it is as beautiful as this song.

"Touching the Void", book by Joe Simpson, movie dir by Kevin Macdonald

You can't make a movie out of this story, it's a ridiculous idea; watching one guy struggle to drag a broken leg down a Peruvian mountain? THAT'S entertainment. Why not have him give soliloquies along the way? Be sure to fill it with plenty of death-themed musical numbers, like maybe just cut in that last stairway dance number from "Sid and Nancy". (I still hear Chloe Webb shouting "SID!" in my nightmares, by the way.)

Joe Simpson's telling of the Rope Cut Heard 'Round the World is enough to make you vomit with fear and wonder and your own goddamned cowardice. It's like reading about infinite space and your complete insignificance in the massive void, and yet being reminded that your only acceptable response to this circumstances is to not die for as long as you can manage. Your reward at the end of all that struggle? Death.

Simpson quite rudely turned down the chance to die dozens of times during the course of his appallingly lonely journey down a mountain, through a crevasse, up and over the worst scree possible for a man in his condition (hungry, thirsty, wracked with pain, one-legged). His traveling companions should have left their base camp by the time he got there, they should've been unable to hear his cries for help, and yet. And still his journey wasn't over -- returning from the dead is a disturbing thing to do, after all, a bit of an imposition on even your closest friends. He still had to be bounced back to civilization on the back of a mule, ignored in a Peruvian hospital, and assured by his home doctors that he'd never again walk correctly. Somehow, he survived, did not go crazy, and did walk and climb again.

So he got to tell his own story, again, in the movie. Macdonald solved the dilemma of how to film this movie by hiring actors to recreate the action and having Simpson and Simon Yates narrate their story in intercut interviews. The result is spellbinding and sad and awful and even funny in the "cosmic joke" sense. It reminded me of "King Lear"; the gods "kill us for their sport".

I was astonished by this movie. I read the book afterwards and was shaken up by Simpson's story in ways I still haven't resolved.

And then there's this: watch the making of feature on the DVD. I think artists, especially movie directors, have to have a streak of terrible cruelty in them in order to do great work. Watch as Macdonald drags Simpson and Yates back to the scene of this awful tragedy, which became not a tragedy, sort of, but somehow an even worse one because of the painfully unresolved feelings of guilt and betrayal and blame and fear and, over it all, loneliness of a type we mostly can't admit to ourselves. Watch as he takes Simpson to the places of his worst nightmares, dresses him in facsimilies of his own former climbing clothes, and makes him reenact dragging himself down the mountain to use in long shots in the movie. And then comes the best part -- he makes him do it AGAIN. And AGAIN, despite the fact that Simpson's face registers pure horror. Whatever it takes to make the movie, right, Macdonald? Right. Watch Simpson and Yates' faces as they see this place again and try to talk casually about it. Watch as they confront boogeymen they'd buried under the bed long ago. Do you feel dirty yet?

Watch as Lear cradles the body of Cordelia.

14 July 2006

Piero della Francesca's Hercules (ca. 1470)


This painting holds infinite appeal for me. Sometimes you come across a work that changes your worldview and makes you reconsider something you thought you knew. This painting is like the Madeline L'Engle book A Wrinkle In Time in that regard for me. You thought you knew what time was and what space was, but she made you think again. The work expands your concept of the possible.

Piero's Hercules is not the Hercules I thought I knew. He's less physically imposing and more vulnerable than I had ever imagines, and it makes me identify with the man in ways I never could before. He's less professional wrestler and more Olympic athlete. He's doing his best, but sometimes his best is exactly the wrong thing. Thus the insecure knock-knees, and the plaintive gaze. This Hercules makes sense to me; I can see the man in this painting beating his wife and children to death and coming out of his god-induced insanity with the determination to serve an impossible penance that turns his accursed physical prowes to his advantage. This Hercules is doomed to be more beast than man.

And I like how the lion's paws both modestly cover and immodestly imitate Hercules's genitals.

See the painting yourself high on the wall on the second floor of the excellent Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (the same room features a great Fra Angelico somewhat hidden on the far side of the fireplace, so look lively, folks).

12 July 2006

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

This novel is a miracle of storytelling, dream-like in its ability to mire us in Humbert's fevered brain, and nightmarish in its power to make us give up and say, "Just DO IT already! Get it over with!"

Nabokov doesn't let us sit back and feel superior to Humbert; instead, he has Humbert seduce us in that way that a gross relative at a family reunion can pull you aside and drunkenly divulge all the things you never wanted to know about his drug-filled adventures in the '70s out in Pensacola or canning in Fairbanks or working the shoelace fries w/ vinegar stand at Virginia Beach. You don't want to know, but you have to know, partly because you know the story is about you and the terrible surprises hiding in your DNA.

Lolita inspires us to pity and awe and disgust and that undeniable knob of admiration that comes from watching someone pursue a goal with unshakeable intensity. It's Greek tragedy on such a sad, small scale that it makes you look at your own life and wonder what the hell's wrong with you; something must be, you're human, after all.

And just when you think you've set your mind on Humbert and convinced yourself that maybe young Lolita was so jaded and tough that she'd grow up and out of the skin that he touched, that she'd thrive anyway and you wouldn't have to worry about her after all, you'd be absolved of your voyeur's guilt, just when you're getting comfortable, along comes Clare Quilty. Suddenly you want to protect your pervert from this worse, more dashing, more destructive and attractive and soulless pervert. Suddenly you're on Humbert's side and resenting Lolly's fickleness. And that's life, because you aren't going to figure it out, but you are going to have to face it.

The 1962 Kubrick film is the same but different. It's got the same brain but different limbs. The cast is outstanding, especially Shelley Winters as Lolita's mom, and Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty, the role he was born to play. Sellers wanted to be Chauncy Gardner, but he was Clare Quilty.

Lolita is a work of genius and a great read.

11 July 2006

"Roseanne" (1988-1997)

Television executives seem to think women only want to see the airbrushed version of themselves, the petite, pretty, inoffensive, wry-but-sweet ladies with "the Rachel" or "the That Girl" do being the only thing that sets them apart. Even Mary Tyler Moore starved herself to be our ideal girl-woman.

"Roseanne" blew that theory out of the water, thank goodness, and proved that men, too, will watch a sitcom that is more funny than pretty. No matter how many behind-the-scenes hurricanes Rosanne blew into existence, she had the sense to get an extremely strong cast of actors around her from the very beginning, and she allowed the show to be an ensemble instead of showing a world that resolved only around her. Everyone Loved Roseanne, but they had lives of their own, too.

The star and guiding force also had the balls to hire interesting, unconventional kid actors. They didn't play precocious or cutesy or perfect or Duff; they played young people struggling to grow up. They made mistakes, and parental talks at the twenty-second minute didn't fix those mistakes, but did let the kids know they were loved. Just like real life.

This show was gutsy and realistic and had a long memory for the lives and loves and grudges of its characters. It also brought Shelley Winters back into the limelight in all her not-giving-a-damn glory, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

Of course, Miss Roseanne herself underwent your typical Hollywood/New Money metamorphosis, but the essential Roseanne remained. Despite her plastic surgery, she still looks like a human being and not like a grotesque doll factory experiment. And despite her many tabloid-worthy adventures in marriage and therapy, she's still smart and funny and cool, just like when she started.

She's also an artist; a difficult one, to be sure, but a vital one. In the last couple of years of her show, she accepted the fact that she could no longer pretend to be the Domestic Goddess of the beginning. She'd become an obscenely wealthy celebrity as well known for her tragedies as for her comedy, and she insisted that the show deal, however obliquely, with that new Roseanne. Her formerly brilliant sitcom became unwatchable, of course, but I admire her for knowing that she could no longer pretend to be a blue-collar working stiff and trying to apply her reality to her show. Artists need to fail to succeed again.

Here's hoping Roseanne someday finds the right venue for who she is now. She's bold and challenging and unapologetic, and we need women like that to be heard in these cloyingly girlish times.

Fear us!


Fear us with our kicking and leaping from the bowels of hell-hot Arizona! We will slip-and-fall and arm-pump our way into your cranium and out of your skull!! We will shoe-horn your eyeballs to INFINITY!

08 July 2006

T.G.I. Fridays Ushers in the End of Days


Thanks, Great Indigestion Fridays!
That Glorious Intestinal-Disease Fridays!
This Gross Institutional-Food Fridays!

If you haven't seen the commercials touting the new appetizers at T.G.I. Fridays, please watch them right now. If you don't, you'll think I'm parodying their wacky fun time flair food when, in fact, they themselves are parodying it.

When I saw the commercial featuring, I kid you not, Fried Mac & Cheese (balls of deep fried mac and cheese), Crispy Green Bean Fries (sticks of deep fried green beans), and Sizzling Triple Meat Fundido (it's fun, indeed-o), I honestly thought it was a joke sketch show commercial. I will always remember the day I saw fried mac and cheese advertised on television as an acceptable foodstuff.

It's over. This country is dead. We are frying our green beans. We have made macaroni and cheese into finger food. We have no hope.

Make peace with your Maker, people. Once Fridays introduces Crunchy Batter-Fried PB&J Squares, the End will be nigh.