Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Think fast!
I hadn’t been to this location of my gym in several months. The In Shape on White Lane tends to be less well air-conditioned than the other locations, more crowded, or both. But I had business on this side of town. Food business. The guy who runs medical records (a man who knows his food) told me there was a new market nearby, supposedly a “Mediterranean” market whatever that is, and I wanted to check it out. And a good butcher nearby, too. So I had two reasons to sweat my stuff at the White Lane gym.
Everything looked a little new or different. I wondered if they had remodeled, or if I had simply been away too long. When I went into the locker room, I was sure they had remodeled. Painted the lockers, perhaps? I didn’t know. The place looked a whole lot cleaner than I had remembered.
I’d gotten out of my pants and into my gym shorts when a woman (fortunately fully clothed) walked over to the sinks.
My first thought: The lockers have gone co-ed here? Whoa.
Then: Think fast. Did you see any urinals when you walked in?
Sadly, no.
“Um,” I said, “this is the women’s locker room, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” she said.
I contemplated telling her how it was all okay, since I was after all just a lesbian trapped in a man’s body, but all I managed was, “Whew. That was close,” and I grabbed my pants out of the locker and retreated to the men’s locker room, which was just as nasty as I had remembered.
But I read the Locker Room Rules this time, and you know what? I didn’t do anything wrong. They have rules against taking photos with cell phones and rules against allowing opposite-sex children over the age of five into the locker room, but no rules against allowing creepy balding almost-fifty-something men into the women’s.
They really ought to do something about that.
D.
In case you missed it.
Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is not your average vampire film. The (IMO brilliant) conceit of the film is that German expressionist filmmaker F. W. Murnau found a real vampire to star in his classic Nosferatu — but as far as the cast and crew know, actor Max Schreck is some dude who takes his work really, really seriously. Call it method acting circa 1921.
John Malkovich stars as the obsessed F. W. Murnau and delivers a memorable performance. I blow hot and cold on Malkovich. I love him in this movie, and I thought he made a damn good Ripley. In Being John Malkovich, he convincingly played himself, which can’t be easy for an actor. But his turn as Kurtz in Nicolas Roeg’s Heart of Darkness sucked big time, rivaling the bloated lameness of Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. Bottom line, I think Malkovich does best when he has free rein to chew the scenery, AND the movie’s subject and tone is compatible with said scenery-munching. Shadow of the Vampire fits the bill.
One of the reasons that Malkovich’s scene-sponging thrives in this film is that he is well and truly upstaged by Willem Dafoe, whom (unlike Malkovich) I almost always love (though I found him just meh in those Spider Man movies). This role must have been a blast for Dafoe. Just watch. Although I like Malkovich in this movie, Dafoe is the main reason to rent it.
Interestingly, the movie Nosferatu had a checkered history. Bram Stoker’s widow successfully sued Murnau for copyright infringement, and the movie was ordered to be destroyed. Were it not for some bootlegged copies, the movie might have been lost. It’s a hoot, by the way, and well worth seeing. (I don’t know about you, though, but I need to be in a particular mood to want to watch a silent film.)
Shadow of the Vampire is a good one for a dark night, thunderstorms, fire in the fireplace, giant bowl of popcorn, and mass quantities of (insert drug of choice here). Or enjoy it with a clear head. It’s one of those movies we watch whenever it’s on and never seem to tire of it.
D.
I suppose there are worse things to worry about
Jake is a scant two years away from college, and if things proceed in typical fashion he’ll no doubt be at a school where “dorm living” (an oxymoron, that) is mandatory for the first year. “Dorm living” requires “dorm eating,” sad to day. And that’s what Karen brought up tonight. How will a kid who has been raised on my cooking manage to survive dorm food?
She has worse memories of dorm food than I do. She recalls “fish patties” where the chef forgot that bit about gutting the fish before using it as a food stuff. I remember decent meals at International House during my freshman year, but I’ve conveniently blocked out my sophomore (dorm) year. Although I do recall that the most special thing about Special Dinner was that it was edible. We had one per semester, if I remember correctly.
Jake likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I hate to think what nutritional deficiencies one would develop by subsisting entirely on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh, and pizza, of course. Is there any readily available fast food that is also wholesome? We had a Good Earth in Berkeley, and one of the first meals I had in Berkeley was a vegie burger at Good Earth. We had a delicious vegetarian Chinese restaurant, too, and they made the most amazing sweet and sour walnuts. (But Jake hates it when I cook with nuts. So strike that.)
Even as a freshman, I tried to make wholesome food for myself. I had to fend for myself on the weekend, and I honestly don’t know what I did with my electric frying pan. Russ, my roommate, went home to Novato on the weekends. His reputedly awesome-cook-mother took care of him. But I had to take care of me. I remember only one of the meals that I made for myself, mostly because it was so very disastrous. I bought a big hunk of fish and breaded it and fried it. Which would have been fine, had I not decided that bran cereal would make a fine material with which to bread fish.
I do remember eating out. A lot. One of my favorite memories from Berkeley was the time I ate three hot dogs at Top Dog. I’m quite sure that today, this would kill me. But back then it only left me with a warm spot in my heart and a glistening smear of grease on my upper lip.
Once Jake gets an apartment, he can cook for himself. I intend to teach him enough about cooking to take care of himself. But what will he do during that dorm year? Worst comes to worst, I suppose we can give him enough money to live on restaurant food . . . which is not a particularly healthy option, but it may beat the alternative.
D.
Am enjoying . . .
John Dies at the End by Cracked writer David Wong. This is one of those novels that surprises me over and over again. The sort you don’t want to spoil for people (but I can at least tell you that it’s funny enough that I wish I had written it, and it’s scary too, and it’s FRESH). It’s also the sort of book that makes you say, DAMN this would make a great movie, and guess what — they are indeed making it into a movie (according to a sub-page on the link above). Paul Giamatti is the biggest name in the cast, and Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep) is directing.
I’m not sure you should watch the video on the John Dies at the End website. I have a bad feeling that I just got a walloping dose of spoilers. Funny video but, jeez, part of the joy of this book is the seemingly endless series of surprises.
So what are you reading?
D.
Countdown and launch!
Keith Olbermann is back tonight on Current TV (which sadly only reaches 60 million homes in the US).
If you like Olbermann and would like the chance to see the new Countdown, how about pestering your cable carrier?
D.
Such a deal
Just bought a painting from my pal Kenney Mencher, who has a store on Etsy.com. I know how much Kenney’s paintings usually sell for, and believe me, these prices are a steal. Are these his harder-to-move paintings? I don’t know. All I know is, I found the one I wanted.
The Night my Dad Went Out for a Pack of Smokes
There are others I like, most notably this one and this one (which has the great title, Cohen Boybarian), but none that Karen and I could both agree on. Perhaps I’ll buy Cohen Boybarian for my office. I’ll have to sleep on it.
D.
Harmonica, RIP
Ferrets are heartbreaking. They only live five or six years and then they’re gone. Harmonica (the blond who “co-stars” in the video below — the undisputed show-stealer is our other ferret, Bueller) died in his sleep today after a brief illness that began with an infected eye.
Can’t help but think that if I weren’t sick with a cold this week, I would have been more willing to sit in the vet’s waiting room (which I was loath to do because of what I knew it would do to my lungs). Would it have made a difference? Who knows. My hunch is that these small mammals live and die depending upon their own health and genetics, and there isn’t much we can do about it. But I realize this is a self-serving theory.
Still . . . shouldn’t he have been able to fight off what seemed like a minor eye infection? Instead, he seemed to get septic fast.
I don’t think he was ever in any pain. Small comfort.
D.
A tale of two crucibles
Just a quick comment about two movies which are structurally similar, but one of which I liked well enough to watch twice, while the other made me flee the room in about 10 minutes.
They both involve obvious crucibles. I can’t recall which book on writing this came from, but the author argued that a good drama requires a crucible. The author defined this as an inescapable problem: seven shipwreck survivors on a life raft, a fortress that must repel the barbarian invasion against all odds, a ring that must be destroyed else a giant eye will, um, keep staring at us. You get the idea.
The good movie: 1408, with John Cusack starring as a writer who debunks ghost stories, and who spends a very, very long night trapped in a haunted hotel room.
The crappy movie: Devil, a story about four or five people trapped in an elevator. (Honestly, I can’t remember. Let’s see. There was Old Lady and Annoying Man and Mystery Man and Young Lady and Black Man. Okay. Five.) And one of them is the Devil!
Honestly, WTF? I remember when I saw this previewed in a theater, I asked myself, how could you possibly create a feature length movie about people trapped in an elevator and keep it interesting for all 100 minutes? Answer: they didn’t. It took me three tries to even get through the Wikipedia summary, and after doing that, all I can say is, thank heavens I didn’t waste a couple hours of my life on that.
It’s easy to say that one movie works and the other doesn’t based on “good” versus “bad” writing, but that answer is too general to be of much interest. What’s good about the good writing, and what’s bad about the bad writing? I think it comes down to characterization. Cusack’s character is interesting (if not completely likable) from the start, and he does become more and more likable as the movie proceeds. In contrast, the five people trapped on the elevator in Devil are either irritating or invisible. Please, can’t we have at least one likable or interesting character?
I’m sure it’s not the story that’s to blame. Both are legitimate crucibles. Trapped in a hotel room that is itself murderous, or trapped in an elevator with a Devil willing to kill, machts nichts. It could have been the other way around — Devil might have been the spellbinder and 1408 the snore-fest. Which tells me authors probably obsess over plot far more than they should. Characterization, that’s where it’s at.
I’d blather on but I have this summer cold, dig? And I still have a bit of a headache.
D.