Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore

What kind of sicko do I have to be that I've read this book three times? I found it so sad and devastating the first time that I had to run back and repeat the experience, thereby gifting myself with a little thrill of pity and pathos. It must be the German in me.

I've read and reread Fatal Vision and Blind Faith in the same lustful fashion, but at least in those cases the story is coming from Joe McGinniss, and I can hide behind his well-documented fascination and over-identification with the suburban killers and feel like I'm sitting at enough of a distance from the whole thing to not be implicated in the unethical seduction.

I can't hide from the Gilmores, though. Mikal, the baby of the family, tells us the whole horrible story himself, and takes us through his own long, painful process of uncovering the layer after layer of deceit and abuse and waste and tragedy that his family was built on. He was born much later than his brothers and benefited from “second family” syndrome (my made-up term), wherein a horrible parent gets to mess up one family, walk away from it, leave it in disarray, then straighten up and fly right with the second family and get credit for being a swell guy. Except that Gilmore's father stayed with the first family and just worked that aging bad-dad magic on his youngest son.

But the worst of it is that Mikal didn't get that second-family-kid glow about him, that subconscious specialness that comes from being the object of someone's redemption. Instead he got Norman Mailer's intrusion and his brother's insistence on dying and his mother's intractable suffering and the slow dissolution and decay of his entire family. Lucky kid!

Lucky for me, though, sicko that I am, that he became a writer and eventually had the guts to put the whole mess on paper. This isn't one of those memoirs that's really a ploy to get a book contract; it isn't one of those that's really about the writer trying to prove how cool he or she is simply by having gone through something shitty; and it isn't one of those that tries to convince you that the writer's pedestrian life and thoughts are somehow extraordinarily quirky or grievous. It's the real deal: a person struggling with questions of human nature and the wheel of fortune and the sorry truth that some lives have no happy ending, or middle, or start. For this reason, this book has the power of Greek myth to me. Sorry, Marsyas, you seem like a nice guy and all, but we'll be starting the flaying now.

Gilmore approaches the story as a journalist: he researches his family members and their pasts and their religious beliefs in order to present a fuller picture of them and try to understand how they became the people they became and why they treated themselves and others the way they did. That's the value of this book, and what raises it to the level of art. Gilmore writes out of anguish, and his heartbreak is palpable throughout the book, but he has the guts and the grace to search for perspective on his family members and give them to us from their place in the world and not just from their place in his heart.

Read it if you're a sick fuck like me who likes to be reminded that there are no easy answers in life and that your sorry ass better get to dealing with it.

"Under Pressure", Queen w/ David Bowie

I don't even know what this song is about. Stress? Is it about stress? Soaring awesomeness, that's my guess, a.k.a exuberance. It's a song as exuberant as "Mmmm-Bop" (which is about...recycling? My friend Killian claims it is), but with balls. Exuberant balls!

Listening to Freddie Mercury's voice is like diving into a cold pool on a hot day: bracing and thrilling and a little bit overwhelming but a lot just what you needed at that moment. Pairing that force of nature with the other most defiantly and coolly theatrical voice in rock and roll was a stroke of genius, like mixing a summery cocktail of sweet and tart in ice, ice, baby.

I've never met a single person who didn't like this song. People on the street, dee dee dede, all of them, they love it. And well they should, because it's the sound of Bob Beamon soaring through Mexico City, or Michael Johnson rounding the curve, gold heels flashing. It's muscular and theme-park-ride exciting and it reminds us all to relax and recycle.

"Midnight Cowboy" (1969)

For many years I confused this movie with "Midnight Express", and I just didn't want to watch a movie about prison and drugs. I couldn't figure out why Jon Voight was dressed like a cowboy on the poster, like no wonder he got caught in Turkey and thrown in jail! He made such an Ugly American spectacle of himself!

But Jon Voight just wanted to be your big-hatted gigolo. "Midnight Cowboy" is funny and sad and oddly sweet and it did something wonderful for me: it made me root for a guy to fulfill his dream of becoming a male prostitute. In that sense, it made my world bigger, didn't it, because it made me sympathize with someone I would normally be quick to judge.

It seemed like a reasonable dream, really. Worse men than him (Federline) have succeeded in this profession, I'm sure (the second-oldest profession? Third?). He was tall, good-looking, kind of doltish and sweet. What's the problem? I think those stuck-up New York ladies were the problem. Just pay the guy to have sex with you for god's sake! Cut his a break?

Maybe it was his being blonde -- it's unusual enough to be a blonde man that I think people subconsciously hold it against them. Brad Pitt is merely the exception that proves the rule.

The actors are pitch perfect, of course, and it turns out to be a story about true love. I believe too many people are terribly lonely at heart, secretly terrified of dying unloved, and this crazy fable illustrates that it needn't be that way.

This movie features one those perfect movie moments I love so much: Joe and Ratso are on the outs. Ratso's in a diner, hunched miserably over a cup of coffee. Lonely Joe wanders by the window and catches sight of Ratso. They both light up with delight and start to wave at each other before they suddenly realize they aren't talking. They freeze, look away, and Joe walks on. I'm embarrassed to say how many times I've been caught in that conundrum of love and hate.

"My Favorite Brunette" (1947)

This is one of my favorite movies; it never fails to make me laugh, and it perfectly parodies hardboiled detective stories like "The Maltese Falcon" or "The Big Sleep". Bob Hope plays an uncool baby photographer who gets mistaken for his neighbor, a very cool detective, and gets drawn into a case of murder! Dorothy Lamour plays the beautiful straight man pretty much perfectly.

Hope's...no. Bob's? That doesn't seem right. Mr. Hope's? Let's say Bob Hope's...genius is on full display here: his perfect timing, his big-framed gracefulness, his funhouse good looks that make him appealing but approachable. I think this is one of the best, most graceful comedic performances in movie history (and that's a short list, because it's the hardest thing to pull off. Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, and...you're done). It's just funny, yo.

Peter Lorre portrays the Peter Lorre character with excellent comedic chops, and Lon Chaney Jr does the same with the Lon Chaney Jr role. They are a delight to watch.

This movie also features one of those precise movie moments that captures my fancy all out of proportion to its importance. I then try to explain these exquisite moments to other people and just come off sounding like an idiot desperate to join in the fun, like the person who gets all wound up to tell you this awesome joke and then the joke bombs.

But here it is: Bob Hope is running from the bad guys, and he runs up to an apartment building and rings all of the bells on the security intercom thingie in order to be let in. As he hits each button, he says, "Hi, honey, I'm home", for every button, ring it and, "Hi, honey, I'm home". And it totally works! These delighted female voices come out of the intercom murmuring things like, "Bill! I knew you'd come!", "Is that you, Dan?" But the bad guys are coming too quickly, so Bob Hope has to run off around the side of the building while the women keep cooing into the intercom and hitting their door-opening buttons.

That, to me, is hilarious.

Fuck! Told you these stories never work out! See the movie anyway; it's a gem.

"Spellbound" (2002), dir by Jeff Blitz

Who wants to watch a movie about a spelling bee? I do.

I got to go to a super-secret-special screening of this for a reason I can't even remember now. Ok, the screening wasn't secret. And it couldn't have been that special if I was there. And there were only about ten or twelve other people in the little screening room on some movie lot that, again, I can't even remember the name of. Did I dream this whole thing?

I went because it was free and I like documentaries. I picked up a promo packet and learned to my delight that it was directed by a fellow graduate of the Johns Hopkins University. I know Jeff Blitz zero percent, but I was so surprised to come across a Hopkins grad that I was instantly rooting for the movie.

Sure, it's about the National Spelling Bee and the crazy amount of studying these kids do to get to the finals, and about the slightly kooky personalities of the kids themselves (because you have to be kooky to be a schoolkid and be drawn to something difficult and nerve-wracking that does not involve varsity letters or performances of "The Music Man"). And yes the kids are endearing and compelling and all that, as is anyone who is passionately engaged in a quest.

But it turns out that this movie is really about families, especially the families that make up our mongrel nation of immigrants, and about the types of people who strive for greatness even if they don't know why they're doing it, and most of all about the heart-breaking amount of hope and love parents put into their kids, and the utter obliviousness of the kids to the depth of that hope. I've never seen a movie that illustrated the parental bond so clearly and sensitively without being cloying or sentimental or fake. The subjects of this film didn't know to create themselves or represent themselves for the cameras because they thought they were just talking about words.

One of the spellers comes from a small Pennsylvania town much like the ones I grew up around, and her parents are the kind of Pennsylvanians I know so well: modest and self-deprecating to the point of expressing disappointment in who they are and what they’ve made of their lives. They know how special their daughter is, but they don’t know how special they are for the simple fact of loving her and being kind and for caring about what’s going on in her life. Their story says everything that Tuesdays with Morrie tried to say about the meaning of life.

By the climax of the movie, my heart was pounding and I was literally perched forward on the edge of my seat. And all they were doing was spelling!

"The Station Agent", written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

This is a movie about the following people in a little town: a little person who just wants to be alone; a guy who is very gregarious and mans a roach coach; and an accident-prone woman with marriage problems. Also, a librarian. And a bar. And trains. Oh, and a girl who really wants the little person train aficionado to give a speech to her classmates about trains. And that's it.

Like, what the fuck? That's your story? Are you kidding me with this, McCarthy?

Yet I got so hopelessly wrapped up in these people and their lives that I had to turn the frigging movie off at one point and walk away from it for a few hours because I was too stressed out to keep watching. I convinced myself that this was going to be one of those indie downers that thinks it's being profound by being depressing, and I couldn't bear to watch it happen to these nice people.

And what was I so worked up about? What were the earth-shattering stakes in the lives of these characters that caused me such anxiety? What terrifying outcome was I desperate to avoid?

I was afraid that they wouldn't stay friends.

THAT'S IT. I mean, that's all. There is nothing bigger or more movie-rrific. No one climbs to the top of the Empire State Building to either swat at planes or meet Tom Hanks. No one throws the Emperor into a pit. No one has, in fact, been dead all along. The stakes are: will they hang out together on a porch sometime in the future drinking lemonade and shooting the breeze, or won't they. Jesus, God, let them decide to do it!!

GodDAMN, McCarthy! That's great moviemaking.

There are many perfectly nuanced and insightful moments in this frigging fragging movie, but one of my favorites -- SPOILER AHEAD! -- is when the train guy does finally give the speech to the girl's class. Aw, I can't bear to ruin it for you, but let's just say that it shows those phony "stand on your desk and salute your teacher" movies for what they really are. Not every moment in life becomes a stand up and cheer Moment, and thank god, because that'd be more exhausting than church.

"Tom Goes to the Mayor"

Ok, haters, hate all you want, but you're missing out on the best show on television.

Ever since "The Simpsons" proved that you can put anything on TV and avoid the FCC and the morality police as long as the show is animated (prudes and censors are confused by repeating backgrounds, I guess), we've known to look to Adult Swim for the most interesting social commentary on television. (Come to think of it, Anderson Cooper should be animated -- that's how good he is.)

TGTTM is not only freaky-looking, with the stop-motion green screen photo-animation thingy that I don't even have words to describe, it's also subversive + ridiculous which = brilliant. It's great satire -- mall-culture America, get-rich-quick bad business schemes, a bored City Council, a self-absorbed yet super-friendly Mayor who loves every bad idea, then distances himself from it as soon as it tanks, and the worst wife the world has ever seen. Once you watch this show, you see bits of it everywhere in and around your life, which is both horrifying and hilarious. This is what America feels like sometimes.

And it's exec produced by Bob Odenkirk! If you can't trust Odenkirk to point you in the direction of the smartest, most daring comedy out there, who can you trust? Larry King?...you can't beat Norm Crosby for a night full of chuckles...And skirt steak! I love it. No!

Nothing dooms a show faster than the words "it's satire", so let me mitigate the damage by pointing out that Dustin Diamond (aka "Screech") was highlighted in a very strange and funny way on the recent season three opener. And Sir Mix-A-Lot sang a song about big cups. Come ON, people!

I'm so glad this show is back.