Secure Immaturity

When I was a young lad I used to watch The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. All I remember about it was that Gilligan was in it with an evil-Spock goat and The Thinker statue. So while perusing my seemingly endless selection of channels I stumbled upon Turner Classic Movies and, upon looking at their schedule, came across The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. I was unaware such a movie existed and I was curious if a)it was any good, b)it had anything to do with the series, and c)would provide a sort of backward nostalgia for me.

And The Affairs of Dobie Gillis is kind of like your grandfather’s Van Wilder (starring a guy who even has Van in his name, Bobby Van) because it is basically doing crazy stuff in college but under the guise of 1950s America and it’s rating board. So what you have is a very innocent romp of college life. But all the Van Wilder staples are there: hot chicks (Debbie Reynolds lookin’ damn fine and her sidekick Barbara Ruick), hijinks, disrespectful parents and teachers, and even law breaking. And even love. Awwwww.

This is my first real exposure to Bobby Van, who plays the enigmatic Dobbie Gillis, a freshman college student who is interested in chasing girls around. He has no motivation to work or do anything of substance with his life except have fun. Naturally, and ironically, he meets the most dedicated girl in all existence, a girl quite fittingly called Pansey (Reynolds), who wants to do the college motto right: ‘learn, learn, learn. . .work, work, work’. Dobie becomes good friends with fellow slack off Charlie (Bob Fosse, THE Bob Fosse) and the girl Charlie wants (but sadly, she wants Dobie) named Lorna (Ruick). What starts out as quite a chore for Dobie, chasing around the hardest worker in town, ends up becoming a blessing as Pansey wants to break out from the oppressive bonds of learning, learning, learning and working, working, working. Hijinks ensue.

Dobie Gillis is definitely a star. Girls love him and men want to be him. Even with his outdated outfits, his strange lexicon, and absolute craving for non sexual fun, Dobie is pretty awesome and Bobby Van, much like Gene Kelly, makes a guy who can dance and sing not seem lame (look, I like the dancers and singers like the next person but. . .you don’t add cool too often when describing them). It is nice to see such a wholesome hero whose primary quest is innocent fun and pure and simple love. Call me a softy.

But let’s not paint Dobie as a complete angel here. One of my favorite things about Dobie Gillis is his amazing ability to commit non-violent crimes (both legal and ethical) and get away with it. Van Wilder would blush compared to the rap sheet Gillis piles up. Gillis’ activities include and are not limited to:

• Plagiarizing previously written essays to pass off as his own
• Stealing treasury money to buy upwards of 7 complete dinners
• underage visitation of bars, nightclubs, and jazz hang outs
• staying out past curfew
• not leaving room for the holy ghost while dancing
• breaking and entering a lab (also trespassing)
• staying overnight with a female
• making harassing phone calls INCLUDING creating a fake identity to avoid detection
• possible kidnapping (under investigation)
• unwittingly making people order magazine subscriptions under the false guise of buying concert tickets
• being communist (what the hell, it was the 50s. . .I’ll throw it in there)
• destruction of property

But then again, I don’t blame Dobie Gillis. He goes to school in which sadistic German-esque teachers exist to make sure life is a living hell for anyone that is not German-esque. It’s terrifying. Dobie Gillis is just too much fun for the teachers! And Pansey, the lovely girlfriend of Dobie, is equally a menace though not out of malicious intent. She is an absolute disaster when it comes to chemistry and has almost burned down the school lab at least seven times. And she has an almost maniacal desire to mix chemicals. . .future unibomber that one: learn, learn, learn. . .blow up, blow up, BLOW UP!’

All joking aside, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis is a lovely little comedy that has small musical elements thrown in probably because it was expected more then anything else. The songs are decent if unmemorable but the dancing is excellent and fun to watch. Bobby Van is a talent I will look out for in future classic production while Debbie Reynolds, who seemingly aged backward in this role compared to her appearance and demeanor in 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, was someone I wish I appreciated more in the more mainstream appearances I’ve seen her in: lovely girl and fabulous, innocent little actress.

So if you haven’t seen the TV series or the film that inspired it and you love musicals/comedies/1950s film, then I highly recommend The Affairs of Dobie Gillis. It is a charming and fun film that, while not gracing the halls of cinema greats, is worth a peek.

Neil Gaiman is a strange creature. I feel like I should LOVE the guy since he just kind of embodies the ‘geek’ aesthetic BUT he I find him more polarizing then anything else. I’ve read two Neil Gaiman books in the last month and a half and they literally took that long to read: about a month and a half. I respect his writing talents, like his seemingly effortless talents, and appreciate his tendency to be charmingly strange but I am also unnerved by his overlong plots, odd pacing, and obnoxious attention deficit disorder. Reading one of his books is a test in both joy and madness and, in the end, I think Gaiman himself would get a kick out of that.

As I said in my very short review of Good Omens (which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett), I mentioned that Gaiman’s ideas are glorious for short stories and American Gods, one of his most critically awarded books, is exactly the same. American Gods is an epic. Sure, it isn’t approaching the 1,000 page region but it’s near-600 page length is made to feel like double that. And the way I got through it was pretending I was watching a TV show. Is that considered a success for a book? I dunno. But American Gods, if treated like roughly two seasons worth of 45 minute episodes, is a masterpiece of television. The problem is this is a book and it’s all one story that seems to drag on and on.

It doesn’t mean I don’t like it. American Gods has moments of absolute brilliance and during some stretches I was absolutely hooked. But then ADD Gaiman would step in and interrupt the story with a 30 page treatment on characters we’d never see again. Very frustrating. But it is what it is. American Gods is about a man named Shadow who, upon being released from prison, learns his wife has died whilst cheating on him. Along the way to her funeral he meets a man named Wednesday who hires him to be a helper. Shadow, with really nothing to lose in his life, joins Wednesday on a journey all throughout America where they commit bank heists, meet old friends, and prepare for war. The war, you ask? Well, it appears Wednesday and his group of friends are old world gods who have fallen out of favor in the young country of the United States and the newer gods, who come and go like fads, are stealing all the power.

What Gaiman deserves credit for instantly is being entirely original. There is a lack of cliches. Shadow isn’t given much of a past (it comes in pieces) but he is so intricately written that he is fully three dimensional within the first few pages. The characters he meets that he is unsure of are kept perfectly mysterious. There are no real big reveals in the plot to explain how everything ticks and while this can be somewhat maddening for those who NEED things explained (me, sometimes), it is unique and compelling for those looking for a world that feels both fantastical/mysterious yet real.

Until the very end, Gaiman manages to base the plot in some sort of reality. Any type of magic or ‘godness’ is subtle. You always suspect Wednesday and his friends are more then they seem but you are often waiting for the catch or for something to break. It doesn’t and I have to give Gaiman all the credit in the world for that. But, like mentioned earlier, Gaiman has excellent ideas that sometimes can’t handle being stretched over 600 pages and, maybe noticing this, Gaiman shifts gears heavily throughout the book. Shadow will be in one place for awhile and then go somewhere else and almost live out an entire book’s existence in that place. Then he moves again. This is, of course, when he isn’t interrupted by tales of Gods that span all types of different time periods.

The ‘interludes’ as they are often called, in which Gaiman describes a god who was once prevalent but faded once on America’s shores, are actually the best written stuff. . .and if they were isolated short stories then great. But they interrupt the other story he’s got going on and while the stories sort of have their place, they are beautiful distractions that, in the end, do not aid the other 530 pages you’re reading. I remember at one point reading about 80 straight pages and not wanting to stop but then seeing the ‘interlude’ and getting completely sucked out of the zone I was in. The book would have been finished a lot faster without these distractions.

So, once again, I’m bestowing a middle of the road rating towards a Gaiman book and I think I’m going to retire from his novels. I still would like to read his graphic novels (Sandman) but his novels, while intriguing, end up being more chores then anything else. Being amazed just isn’t worth feeling like I’m working and sweating.

There is a strange parallel universe where George C. Scott and Tony Danza share top billing in a movie AND actually equal each other in performance. And while I could go on and on about how Tony Danza really isn’t that bad of an actor given the right material I’ll save that for Tony Danza Week which will happen in. . .2012, after the apocalypse. Let’s not get sidetracked: today is the first day of Jack Lemmon ‘Week’ and we’re starting with one of his performances that is probably best known for the award Lemmon DIDN’T win. I wouldn’t call it infamous exactly because it’s kind of sweet and tear jerky but Ving Rhames, the large black actor from the television film Don King: Made in America, was so choked up over winning that he gave the award to Lemmon saying that he deserved it.

I’m sure the ‘who deserved what’ is always up for debate but it wasn’t the movies or even the performances that mattered in that humbling moment between Lemmon and Rhames. Lemmon’s performance in 12 Angry Men, if we are going to talk about it, was that of the set-up man (whereas Rhames was the true star of his film). A character of no strong conviction or emotion whose existence propels the other excellent actors to action, Juror #8, the man who stands alone in a room full of 11 angry, hot, sweaty, and, in some cases, racist, jurors, isn’t particularly complex but has to maintain a presence that ignites the fires of the jurors around him. So while bland on paper, only a special actor can portray Juror #8 as they have to be able to act with 11 different types of actors as well as garner sympathy from the audience in what appears to be a losing cause. Lemmon is cast perfectly. He is not only loved by audiences but by his fellow actors and while the play/film lacks a certain atmosphere at times (sometimes you just can’t replace a stage) you can tell the other eleven actors are doing their very best to act WITH Lemmon.

And when I say there is a wide range of actors of that there is no doubt. The mesmerizing George C Scott, calm and old veteran Hume Cronyn kind of represent the old school legends of the game but they are surrounded by notable television actors (Courtney B. Vance, James Gandolfini, Tony Danza, William Petersen), journeyman movie actors (Mykelti Williamson, Edward James Olmos), and aristocratic film actors (Armin Mueller-Stahl). I can’t say that the presence of Lemmon alone makes these gentlemen rise above their usual levels but, in most cases, these actors deliver the greatest performances of their careers (Williamson and Danza specifically) and they just so happened to be interacting with Lemmon in their greatest moments.

12 Angry Men’s original screen adaptation was similar in its performances. Henry Fonda, a legend of the screen, was Juror #8, and he was mostly surrounded by actors that, at best, you could say you ‘maybe saw somewhere that one time’ (I’m probably pissing off a whole slew of classic movie buffs. . .sorry; all I remember is the guy who did Piglet was in there. Oh, I do remember Jack Warden now that I think about it). Fonda’s presence, like Lemmon’s, was enough to propel the other actors into action but you wouldn’t be able to believe 11 other people would be fired into action without someone strong and with a presence to make them act the way they do.

George C. Scott, justifiably, rules the roost since he is the most bombastic and dynamic of the cast. He has the most characterization and background and he becomes the villain, of sorts, who, at times, seems to exist to go against Lemmon’s Juror #8. Any scene where those two interact is extremely powerful and the best part of the movie because you have two men who are the same age from the same time who lived different lives and now have drastically different perspectives. Seeing Scott and Lemmon go at it is just mesmerizing. So, in a way, Scott is the notable performance of 12 Angry Men. . .which doesn’t take anything away from Lemmon. But Lemmon is wise enough to not make Juror #8 more than he is. He is the conscious. . .the 11 other actors and the audience are experiencing humanity through his point of view.

12 Angry Men could have been one of Lemmon’s most forgotten performances if it wasn’t for the Ving Rhames Golden Globe switch but, sadly, it IS a forgotten performance for many of the other actors. No one seems to talk about Edward James Olmos’ brilliant portrayal of a noble European. No one seems to mention Tony Danza playing his type of character but at a new level. No one talks about the likable and un-CSI like William Petersen. Or the spellbinding Williamson, most known for playing Bubba in Forrest Gump. So Lemmon and Scott are known for other performances, some of the others will seemingly be lost in time, stuck behind Ving Rhames award.

I Cried the Day Jack Lemmon Died by William Johnson

There is a time in a person’s life when they don’t exactly have perspective. I was fortunate to live a life where the first person I really knew and loved died when I was 25. I heard of a few deaths here and there but never really tasted that emptiness you feel for a loved one in ‘reality’ until I was grown up. In a way, the death of a family member was the final rite of passage as an ‘adult’. I almost lived in the type of fantasy world that exists in television and movies: someone may ‘die’ but they’re always around to do a flashback or a guest appearance as a ghost or, in some cases, even come back to life!

Everyone accepts the fantasy of television and movies in different ways. Some people ignore it completely. Some watch it mindlessly and move on. Some are engrossed and others are obsessed. And with obsession comes its own caste system: some people are obsessed and maintain websites or go to conventions and some people go to extreme levels. I’d like to think (and pray) that I am somewhere in between. I lead a responsible life but I can get a tad obsessed with a show here or a movie there. I remain grounded. But that brings us back to reality and your perspective. By the time I heard the news that Jack Lemmon, my favorite actor had died, I didn’t know what death was. And next to family, my ‘relationship’ with actors was pretty close. Hearing about his death instantly brought tears to my eyes.

I was in high school and my mom wondered what I was crying about. I told her ‘it isn’t fair. It just isn’t fair’. Naturally, my mother was momentarily freaked out thinking something really bad had happened but then she saw CNN and noticed that Lemmon had died. She, knowing me, knew this was the first death of someone I really loved and she comforted me. Thankfully my dad wasn’t there. . .he would have been less comforting about something so seemingly silly (especially now when I have seen and felt real death) but he was, at one point, a victim of this type of adoration as well. Early in life, while listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, my dad told me he cried the day Van Zandt and half the band died in a plane crash. He told me it was the only time in his life he cried for someone he didn’t know.

We probably all have those moments. As a real young kid I cried when Optimus Prime died. I was so young and naïve that it didn’t matter that Optimus Prime death was a marketing ploy to sell new toys by Hasbro. It was someone personal to me and I cried. Jack Lemmon was a part of a different stage of my life: a time of growing up and learning my sense of humor. He not only was my favorite movie star and actor but he also connected me to people: my best friend Tony and I worshipped the guy and to this day we are connected because of his movies. But also, I was moved by the ‘art’ of the man. People touch us in many ways and in some cases they are trivial and for pleasure only, like movies. And at that young age, Jack Lemmon had touched me personally and made me appreciate emotion and character.

Now a days I don’t think I could cry for an actor or musician unless it was after the fact and there was a moving ceremony or something. Jack Lemmon’s death was a once in a lifetime (ironic) thing that happened. I had yet to feel a certain aspect of life (and this death) so his death was all I understood of that concept and I wept. It was crushing. It was a moment in time that will never happen again. It’s almost like the loss of a certain type of innocence.

He was a special talent and a special person and a breed of actor that no longer exists. When he died, a type of acting died with him as did a type of entertainment. Maybe a new generation (or old generation) of fans can love or re-love him all over again. I cried the day Jack Lemmon died. . .but his art and his humanity will live on forever.

***For my review of the original Twilight, go here.***

I’ve decided to go easy on this one. Really. . .I am. I’ve liked a few films that some people would find completely embarrassing to be attending. I’ve stood up and cheered when a Klingon Bird of Prey was destroyed and cried my eyes out when those midgets in that Rings thing went in that boat with that old guy with white hair. I’ve worshipped things. . .and I have to realize that the Twilight ‘Saga’ is the same thing for little girls and retarded people that Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica or whatever was to me but has more abs.

So, like I said, I’m going to go easy on this movie, that being the second film in the ’saga’ called New Moon (sidebar: why was the first film called Twilight but had an apple on the cover and this one is called New Moon but has a flower dripping blood? I mean, the vampires sparkle and a flower has nothing to do with the moon, right? Why not just call it Full Moon. . .that would make more sense in regards to the fashion models that play wolves in this flick. Anyways. . .). Truth be told. . .it ain’t a terrible movie. Sure, it has monstrously awful acting, its share of terrible CGI, and the masturbatory need to show guys taking their shirts off or walking in slow motion to suicide inducing indie music. But it also has wolves eating people, people smashing people’s skulls into marble floors, a dude with red eyes who creepily hangs out with Dakota Fanning and two other miserable looking sad sacks, and a hot red headed woman who just runs around a lot. Oh, and the production value is lightyears ahead of the first film. So, yeah, not bad.

Well, instead of breaking a couple of my friend’s spawn’s hearts by talking about how large Robert Patterson’s (sorry, that’s how we know him in our world) jaw is or how I want to rub my face in Anna Kendrick’s wonderful bosom, I’m just going to talk about the plot of the film and let the reader decide if I liked the film or not and, for those who haven’t seen it, if they would like to see it. We all know the strange rape-fantasy for girls (for dummies) that was the first book and film was pretty awful. It’s main star, Kristen Stewart, seemed to be grunting through a painful bowel movement or was the first person to contract down syndrome AFTER birth during the whole thing and there was a Yao Ming looking vampire WHO FUCKING SPARKLED. Jesus. Just explaining it makes my head hurt. Would New Moon do better?

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I’ve learned a lot of things lately thanks to The A Team: mainly that if I ever cross the Central Intelligence Agency, I want Jessica Biel to be the one to arrest me. Hard. But I also learned that sometimes, with enough effort and good casting, these seemingly endless television adaptations can actually be GOOD. Granted, for every Charlie’s Angels (a solid television rehash) there is a Dukes of Hazzard or an I, Spy. For every Brady Bunch Movie (a shockingly funny little satire) there is a Dragnet or Bewitched or McHale’s Navy (or on and on and on). The A Team happens to be one of the few films that not only surprises you for being decent (in fact, good, if not, at times, great) but indicates that there can only be bad things to come. The A Team is a rarity and when something like The A Team happens, only bad things tend to follow.

At this point in our movie going lives, the idea of an 80s television show being remade into a movie already has the stamp of failure on it. We’ve already got enough remakes, reboots, rehashes, restarts, resets, and redos to deal with and the television ‘reimagining’ is just another tired genre of film we have to deal with. And it never seems to end. So, without doubt, when I had to choose between Predators and/or The A Team, two titles I wasn’t exactly enthused to see, I went for Predators. But someone convinced me The A Team was the way to go instead and, alas, I am writing to you about how great it was! Yeah. . .life does have surprises.

I never watched much of the original show (okay, I never watched it at all) but, naturally, I was familiar with the popular character of BA Baracus (Mr. T) and that van. Plus, Reg Barclay from Star Trek: The Next Generation was on it (or so I’ve heard). So maybe the complete lack of knowledge of the show allowed me to enjoy the film. Though I hadn’t watched a second of the television show, I don’t remember anyone telling me it was violent and lots of people died. The A Team movie not only has lots and lots and lots of death BUT it also has probably my favorite on screen kill I’ve EVER seen. I literally kept laughing after the death stroke (delivered by BA) for about four whole minutes, much to the audiences dismay (more on this later).

The film, besides being a television-remakedothingy, also had a cast I wasn’t too thrilled with. I’ll always go for Liam Neeson (and it’s nice to see him survive in a movie these days) but I really don’t like Bradley Cooper that much and I hate MMA (so I, therefore, didn’t like that Rampage fellow who plays BA). I was pretty shocked to finally like Cooper in something and that those MMA guys actually have brains and acting skills. Without doubt, combined with the wonderful Sharlto Copley (from District 9), the foursome make a really fantastic and engaging group. The A Team, in this case, isn’t just a brand to exploit but an actually well oiled machine of acting and laughs.

Plus, I was blindsided by a few casting quirks that made me happy. I’ve always liked Jessica Biel and having her run around in short skirts while holding guns is more then just okay in my book. But Patrick Wilson shows up as well and plays this really odd CIA agent who you’re not sure if you are supposed to be afraid of or make fun of. And video game voice artist Brian Bloom makes for a one dimensional but creepy villain that you can easily root against. So by establishing a great cast and not exploiting the name The A Team, the movie manages to start off on the right foot.

Now sure, if you have NO expectations almost anything good can save a film and boost the praise but The A Team, besides the cast, actually has some mind boggling action set pieces that are surprising and intense. I suppose it’s the fact that the four heroes really never takes themselves or their situations seriously that makes the action both ridiculous and fun. This film contains, and is not limited to, The A Team piloting a tank in the air while shooting down computerized planes with a gun turret, conducting an operation on a storage boat in which it’s entire payload of multi-ton cargo containers fly in the air and smash things, use magnets to attached themselves to moving vehicles in sewer drains, use a helicopter to do 360s, handcuff rabid rottweilers, invade a German psyche ward, and get in a gun fight while spelunking down a glass building. Oh and there was that one legendary kill where BA takes a dude and literally body slams his neck and face into a cargo container with the force of a hurricane. That was awesome.

The movie definitely benefits from NOT being an origin story (only about 20 minutes is focused on the actual assembly of the team) and thanks to that story choice, we get an hour and a half of solid action fun without a need to CREATE chemistry. Instead, while SOME of the chemistry of the A Team is forced on us, the actors involved really connect and work well together. There is a ‘twist’ and a few sub plots along the way, like the almost needless love story between Biel and Cooper and BA going through a spiritual crisis, but the basic idea is this: The A Team were set up and they need to be vindicated and thanks to the fun loving bunch that is assembled here, we really want to see The A Team win. And while it’s no surprise that our heroes will prevail in the fictional world, it was quite a surprise that The A Team succeeded in reality. It shouldn’t have at all. . .but it did. Go watch it. Fool!

The Loss of Innocence

Growing up is hard to do y’all. I’m a Toys R Us kid. . .in a land where kids don’t even know what Toys R Us is anymore. It’s all online now on that computer thing with the pipes that pop up when the computer isn’t used for awhile. I should use one of those old screen-savers with text and just put ‘I’m getting old’. . .and in many ways I felt that sentiment today when the last of my childhood indulges died a slow, fiery death and I realized that the ‘miserable sad sack of misery’ that is my friend Adam was/is actually a true prophet and a man who has tasted the loss of sports innocence and has, for years, tried to prepare me for the inevitable break down.

I’ve grown up in a lot of ways, no doubt. I’ve got a kid now, my own car, a mortgage, my own small business, a full time job, blah blah blah. I’ve got the genetic grey hairs starting to grow at the young age of 28 (my dad was grey by mid-30s) and the more I don’t get my knee fixed from injuries so long ago the more I realize how much harder it is to walk and it’s only going to get worse. I’ve never been married (and thus divorced) but I’ve felt heart break and the joys and pains of relationships. I’ve had sex, done drugs, gambled, talked dirty, watched rated-R movies (even rated X ones), gotten in fights, drank alcohol, found religion, lost religion, and voted in two major elections. I’ve paid taxes and maxed out credit cards. I’ve done what every other adult, being someone over the legal age of 18, has done EXCEPT grow up when it comes to sports. I’m still a kid. . .thinking with the dream like ideals of a child who doesn’t know any better. A child who thinks the world runs around an actual code and though he sees his parents fighting from time to time, honestly thinks all people are truly good deep inside and everything will work out just like in the end of a great, innocent fictional world like television or young adult novels.

It’s funny that one world can move on around you while the other stays rooted in one place, daring you to tear down it’s protective walls and breach the rosy, pretty sheet placed over the rotting corpse of its reality. For years I’ve sensed the downfall and felt the pressure that my sports world is collapsing. . .but I found avenues to send that anger and never embraced the overall problem. I made excuses. Worst of all, I defended. Slowly, I shed the major sports as if they didn’t exist so that the purity of my child-like existence could go on and on. First, I lost football. The brutality of the sport and the negative aspects of masculinity that the mostly worthless core of players projected made me turn my head, though I still didn’t deny the ‘glory, pride, etc’. I just pretended the problem existed in isolated ways. . .and wasn’t a rampant problem that spread around the league (plus, a Kurt Warner would come along and give you faith). I unknowingly just stopped following my beloved Bucs and watching football with my dad because, well, it was a subconscious denial of facts that the NFL is not something I want to be a part of.

I’ve always flirted in and out of MLB and while I am enjoying a renaissance of sorts right now (the steroid era is over but big money spending isn’t), I expect it, at any point, to disappoint me even though, as my habit, I allowed the ‘history’ of the game to defend itself against the future of where it was/is heading. The NHL pretty much ended itself while even four or five years of obsessive soccer watching led me to turn away as the only concern was money, money, money, money. Even the pride of the country fell flat. But I denied it all and simply put my head in the sand.

But I can no longer be in denial. I have to embrace the fact that the world I live in is not a dream, or a wonderland, or even a Candy Land, but a cruel place where the people we dare to look up to betray us; where we put all the work in and get nothing in return. LeBron James, though I’ve never liked him or looked up to him, has now not become an isolated incident but the GLOBAL representation of a sport and league, my once beloved NBA, that has decided to take away my innocence and rape my will to protect it. I feel like once LeBron James decided to put his execution of an entire city on television and acted like a robot from a different world whose heart is made of twisted metal and steel, I realized that the final piece of my emotional maturity, or growing up, came to be. . .and it was humbling and not pretty.

This goes beyond territory (I’m a Magic fan and LeBron signed with the Heat) and it goes beyond fandom. When LeBron James, along with destructive cohorts Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, came from beneath the ground to smoke and music to present themselves to the crowd of ‘loving’ Miami fans (where exactly have you been the last four years?) I realized that not only do these three wear uniforms that say Heat on them but they now wear the uniform of shame and disappointment. I never thought that my home state would be the epic-center of my loss of innocence and the final straw that made me want to ALMOST abandon all that I have loved. If it wasn’t for the Orlando Magic and the truly great experiences I’ve had with them (I’ve met friends through them and, through good acquisitions, I’ve met the actually people in the organization and they have been class and defied the stereotypes I once denied were possible), I would literally walk out on the NBA right now. I would literally say goodbye to the sport that I’ve played and loved and watched and worshipped and, worst of all, DEFENDED for 28 years of my life. But even my Magic can’t save me from looking at every basketball athlete as public enemy #1 or guilty before proven innocent.

This whole fee agency debacle made me realize how futile loving sports is. The city of Cleveland, who I, frankly, HATED for the last two years (because of our rivalry with them and James), is now probably one my favorite cities because they, like me, are realizing the futility of hero worship for people who never really deserved it. They are now seeing that not even home grown loyalty is worth consideration anymore. The quest for manufactured championships and personal glory outweighs the blue collar passion of those who commit blood, sweat, and tears to watch someone put a fucking ball in a fucking net. I’ve literally, LITERALLY, failed to pay a bill to buy tickets to watch my heroes before. That is WRONG and that is SAD. Cleveland actually believed that bills were not worth paying or that vacations were worth sacrificing to see a bastard play who, even though he was once one of them, couldn’t give a crap about them. He represented how I view all sports stars. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. And James seemed to be the ultimate golden boy. As documented here, I’ve never liked him much but A LOT OF PEOPLE did because they believed the image and they were innocence. An entire city and most of the nation as found out that there are no heroes anymore. None. The only people sports stars care about are themselves.

Like I said, there are exceptions to every rule. But now is the time for all of us to unite and let the sports institution die. I don’t see any value in an NBA Championship anymore. I’ve wanted on so bad. . .more than almost anything. . .and I almost feel like crying right now because something inside me says ‘it’s still important’ but really. . .it isn’t. Who does a championship benefit? In some cases it doesn’t even benefit players on the roster. It benefits ego and desire that don’t involve me or anymore else. If my Magic win a championship, can I truly be happy. How innocent our the ‘heroes’ on that team. I used to never doubt. . .now I can’t help but look at ALL of them, even the ‘nice’ ones, and be suspect. That being said, I will release a list of suspect untouchables (those who I have complete faith in as athletes/people):

–Kurt Warner

–Grant Hill

–Manute Bol (deceased)

–Adonal Foyle

–Ummmm. . . . . .

I am feeling miserable right now. I can’t even look at Dwight Howard without suspecting something and I recently gave $300 dollars to his Haiti Fund. But is it because he cares or because he wants us to think he cares. Fuck you LeBron James. You have ruined the sport of basketball, the sport of baseball, the sport of football, the sport of soccer, the sports of America, and the sports of the world. Because of you I see you and people of your ilks true colors. I can’t look at any of you or your kind anymore without suspicion because you, my friend, betrayed those closest to you and if YOU can do that then who else can? You are the scum of the universe and you have taken something from me that I can never have back. . .the love of the game. No matter how many rings you win ‘King’, you will have done it because money allowed and because you walked over those who made you feel and act like ‘the chosen one’. The championships, from now on, are tainted. . .not just for the Heat but for the entire league. And it will never go back to what it was. . .and neither will my sports innocence.

I’ve been absent a lot lately so my updates have been few and far between so apologies. Anyways, this whole LeBron James thing is a sham of sports. But instead of going into specifics here and ranting all day, I’m going to post something I wrote back in December 2009 when I was ALL ALONE in the world of LeBron hatred. From my review of The Art of a Beautiful Game:

Now we’ll come to the complaint. Notice I said complaint and not complaints. The book is near perfect but loses an entire star on a five-star rating system due to the final analysis on LeBron James. Before I go off, the book starts off by profiling Kobe Bryant and his desire to win. What I like about the opening chapter is that Ballard doesn’t take a point of view on Kobe personally. He mentions positives and negatives, sure, but Ballard’s point is to show a top athlete (the best active player in his chosen sport) wanting and willing to win at any physical/mental cost. The point is made effortlessly by Ballard’s objective and thorough ‘reporting’, as it were.

But in the end, Ballard becomes ‘LeBron Back Patter #9000 by examining James and how great he is. I don’t want to rip on Ballard here because, well, he did a great job with the book, but he just ends so poorly I feel like calling him Rocco. He loses all perspective and goes into fan mode (he put LeBron’s fucking picture on the cover for god’s sake). Here is where I tangent: I dislike LeBron James immensely.

One thing my dad always taught me, especially in the sports world, was respect, loyalty, and heart. I have seen LeBron display none of these qualities. Raw talent and skills can say a lot and even place someone in the Hall of Fame, but I need all these qualities to apply as well as this little thing called a championship ring. In the football world, my all-time favorite QB was Trent Dilfer. Many of you may laugh but the guy was respectful and kind, played with the most heart I’ve ever seen in an athlete, not to mention loyalty (look at the teams he played for in Tampa and look at any video of his blood-bumping effort) and won a ring with the Ravens (fully deserved). The fact that so many, Ballard included at the end of his book, give LeBron so much respect and worship, despite the fact that he shows no respect to the game or the players he plays against (or with for that matter), and displays his ‘heart’ like a well written script and doesn’t have an NBA Finals win, let alone a ring, is mind boggling.

Now, as you may have ascertained, I am an Orlando Magic fan. When LeBron didn’t shake any one’s hands when he was soundly defeated by Howard and my Magic in the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals and then continued to pout by not addressing the media and supporting his teammates, I realized how arrogant and selfish the kid is. . .not to mention his lack of respect for the victors and even his own teammates. To him, a ring is destined to him but, to us and the world, it is not yet earned by any stretch of the imagination. And his loyalty is a joke. . .he’s leaving his fans in the air by playing media games with all his Yankee caps and such. I dislike him immensely. . .’nuff said*. . .so reading even 10 pages of his exploits and how perfect and legendary he is just put me off to the extreme. If Ballard ever reads this. . .I ain’t hating on you brother. I’m just sick of the love when it hasn’t been earned yet and, since your book was about the love of the game and the will to win (it was your lead-off story), how could you put LeBron on the cover and glorify his clear failures? Oh well. . .I’ll never know.

I Told You So.

I was recently reading an article that Chris Noth, one time star of the original Law and Order, it’s sister series (or the ‘bastard cousin’ as my friend Tony calls it), Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and Mr. Big on Sex and the City, really regretted starring on Criminal Intent since it’s very episodic nature made his acting abilities stagnant and non-existent. He did later recant and say that they made a lot of great episodes (and they did) and the people were great (nice save!). But he was saying what most of us were thinking anyways (and I won’t comment on the fact that Noth is an excellent one note actor. . .he’s not exactly Russell Crowe). And his thoughts are why, for the most part, I stayed away from the Law and Order franchise in it’s entirety.

For one, I never loved the court sequences in the original show. So, essentially, I liked half of the show. Special Victims Unit is just too troubling for me to watch week in and week out and Trial by Jury was cancelled well before it’s time, though it was no fault of the show (long time Law and Order actor Jerry Orbach, was ‘transferred’ to that show, had died). But, for whatever reason, the ‘bastard cousin’ Law and Order series always kept my interest at times if not for long periods. It seemed that everything Noth was complaining about was, at least in the early years, non-existent. Criminal Intent was the closest thing I could get to the ‘real’ X-Files and Vincent D’Onofrio as Detective Goren and Katheryn Erbe as Detective Eames, was pretty damn close to Mulder and Scully.

See, Criminal Intent seemed to be the Deep Space Nine of the Law and Order franchise. It didn’t stick to the general expectations of the other shows in the franchise: it took a different perspective (you often knew who the killer was from the start but the motivations were the mystery) and it focused on aspects mostly forgotten in the inner-city (white collar crime, big business scams, high priced heists, and extremely gifted killers). Despite all these things working in it’s favor, the name Law and Order, sadly, drove me away.

But with a bonus at work comes spending cash and a local store (which shall remain nameless because, in the end, for reasons I won’t go into here, sucks major balls) had a sale of seasons 1 and 2 of Criminal Intent for only $25 bucks. A passing interest became a large investment of time. . .and that investment paid off heavily. Not only does CI not feel like a Law and Order series but it contains one of my, now, favorite television characters of all time, Detective Robert ‘Bobby’ Goren, played by the truly bizarre Vincent D’Onofrio.

Now the first thing I learned as I popped in the DVDs, as I expected all along, is that there really is no reason to a)buy DVDs of this show (it is endlessly repeated on 80 channels) and b)follow the show in order. As D’Onofrio points out in the special features, he took the role on an episodic program because it would contain absolutely NO soap. So yes, Criminal Intent has pretty much no arching story lines and virtually no character development on the surface. And while that bothered me from the outset (I’m a serial kind of guy), I realized that television doesn’t have to be plot heavy to be fun and exciting.

Plus I realized, if your patient, the character development comes slow and builds over time. The show almost rewards you for following characters you know nearly nothing about (I can only recall one ’social’ moment, outside of work, with our leads) by sneaking in a little here and a little there. Over a long period of time, the people become like work buddies. You might not go to their house or know their deep secrets, but you like them just the same. In the end, the show is their work and not their lives so we don’t really NEED to know them on any deeper level. But, naturally, D’Onofrio isn’t going to just walk through a performance. His character of Goren is so impressively, and almost oppressively, eccentric, that you are entranced with everything he does.

And while I normally don’t like episodic TV, Criminal Intent has an amazing success rate in terms of coherent and interesting mysteries of the week. The first season runs a little bland and general compared to later seasons but the presence of Goren, and his straight ‘man’ Eames, makes the shows worthwhile. The second season is where the show gains a lot of steam. The cases get more complex and the case studies become both more bizarre and twisted. And while the show aims to be as anti-soap as possible, Goren is given a ‘nemesis’, of sorts, named Nicole Wallace (played by the gorgeous Olivia d’Abo) who appears five times in the series, twice in the second season.

Bizarrely, these are the most gripping episodes (and they rely on a pseudo-serial/soap understanding of past events) and it makes you wonder whether the show SHOULD be somewhat soap and if the show is betraying itself by being soap in these very few episodes. And while the Nicole Wallace episodes stand out the most, I wasn’t disinterested in watching the episodic plots that surround it. As mentioned, D’Onofrio and Erbe are fantastic together and make the whole show tick but the other two original regulars also make their marks.

Jamey Sheridan plays Captain Deakins and while he doesn’t really do anything of any importance except check on the status of investigations, he has an every-man, nice guy quality that is attractive. You like when Deakins shows up and he often is the only comic relief on a sometimes very dark show. Plus he himself adds a few personality quirks in there from time to time (for those who follow the show a lot, I particularly like Deakins choice in eye wear in the first two seasons). I am also immensely impressed in the normally anonymous Courtney B. Vance as ADA Carver. I can’t accurately compare him to other ADAs and DAs on other programs but Carver is a righteous douche bag in this show, but somehow likable. He has this sophisticated arrogance to him, and he is often right, and I like how he often butts heads with the detectives. Carver deals with what can be proved and generally hates (or doesn’t understand) Goren’s odd thinking. He also can get a little crafty which peeves Goren and Eames. It’s a nice character quirk to a pretty thankless role.

So I suppose the only thing to really say here is that I was surprised that I would find myself kind of addicted and in love with a show that goes against everything I usually like in a TV show. But the writing is actually top notch, the performances are always engaging and bizarre, and the mysteries, for the most part, always make me think which is, oddly, more then I can say for a lot of plot heavy shows I like. Maybe I like Criminal Intent because it takes a proven formula and stretches it a bit. Sure, sometimes it sticks to a formula but at least its a formula the show created for itself and didn’t endlessly regurgitate from years of previous series. I’m not too hot with the new Jeff Goldblum/no-D’Onofrio CI that’s currently on BUT I’ve got plenty of back issues, as it were, to watch before I get there. I’m team Goren!

I really shouldn’t be surprised but then again, I always set myself up for these things. Halo: Contact Harvest is less a book but a series/video game bible/layout that, I imagine, was thrown aside when better ideas came along. I don’t want to say the book is written poorly because writer Joseph Staten is actually quite talented. His universe building skills, as shown in the second Halo game, for example, are excellent.

I really shouldn’t be surprised but then again, I always set myself up for these things. Halo: Contact Harvest is less a book but a series/video game bible/layout that, I imagine, was thrown aside when better ideas came along. I don’t want to say the book is written poorly because writer Joseph Staten is actually quite talented. His universe building skills, as shown in the second Halo game, for example, are excellent.

His problem: the universe he’s built is boring and as confusing as shit. I remember really liking Halo 2 at first. I felt the writers really expanded a universe that was mostly a rip off of Aliens in the first place. But then I started getting a bit confused and realized that SHOWING me a universe is one thing but hearing/reading about it is another. Halo 2, while an underrated game story-wise (the Covenant sections are interesting though not compelling), was definitely a mess. They lost track of their hero and focused on aspects that were made so utterly confusing and deep that, well, it wasn’t fun. And let’s not get started on Halo 3, in which they had to a)continue this craziness established in Halo 2 and b)erase all the terrible mistakes from Halo 2 in some exposition-heavy way to make Halo 3 a bit more accessible to newbies of the XBox 360 and to the now critically mixed franchise.

I always ignored the books because I always found myself more frustrated with Halo’s mythology as opposed to drawn to it. Also, I was shocked that despite the Halo franchise being one of my all-time favorites in the video game world, I was very unattached to it emotionally. I liked Master Chief but he is a very thin hero. . .not much depth there. He’s cool but is he lovable. There was Cortana. . .and who knows what the fuck happened to her at the end of Halo 2. I know Halo 3 told me but. . .I still don’t really know. And then there was the tricky Arbiter, who, himself, is a mythological symbol that makes you want to tear your eyeballs out. He was cool and I liked his missions in Halo 2 but. . .yeah. . .not much there either EXCEPT Keith David’s awesome voice.

The main three characters were really devoid of anything other then COOL moments. And the Halo games outside the Master Chief vein were pretty unbearable. A lot of people seemed to like ODST but, frankly, I had no interest in exploring the Halo world any further WITHOUT at least someone COOL since emotion was too hard to ask. I didn’t even finish Halo Wars and I will probably skip Halo: Reach since it is a prequel and prequels, especially loaded with anti-climaxes, dense mythologies, and, once again, none of the original characters, just sounds like crap on a stick.

So I think I just explained why I skipped the Halo books! I don’t want to read about this universe that is confusing and dense and has no emotion behind it. . .especially when I can’t fire weapons that blow shit up! But, somehow, I bought two Halo books. I bought one called The Ghost of Onyx, and this book, Contact Harvest. I initially bought Contact Harvest because it had Sgt. Avery Johnson on the cover. Now this was interesting to me for two reasons. One, I was GOING to name my first child Avery (and my last name is Johnson) so that would have been weird. . .and it had nothing to do with Halo. Second, Johnson seemed to be the only genuinely fun NPC in the whole Halo universe. You cared for him when he was there. . .which wasn’t enough, frankly. And, naturally, they fucking killed him at the end of Halo 3. Figures the first main character, of sorts, to die would be black!

But in the video game, Johnson was an Apone-rip-off who was kind of fun. But as I started to read his story in Contact Harvest, which is a prequel by the way, I instantly regretted it. Some people, who are rip-offs of other caricatures in the first place, can’t be made three dimensional. Johnson is a drill Sgt who says witty things and shoots stuff. . .yet in Contact Harvest he has a tragic past and a way with the laaaadies. It’s all kind of sad really. And now that I’ve read Johnson in all kinds of different situations outside of mindlessly shooting elites. . .I don’t like him anymore. Once again, the creators behind Halo have OVERDONE the mythology. Sgt. Johnson is no longer interesting to me now because he is OVER written now. Ugh.

The rest of the book doesn’t help much considering half of it is about Covenant politics. And the writer fails to let the story flow. . .he insists on writing a sentence and then writing eighteen paragraphs on Covenant society that led to that one sentence. It’s really distracting and annoying. It is not exaggeration when I say this book really could have been 100 pages shorter. But pesky Joseph Staten can’t let us turn the page without knowing how the Elites had a war once or how Sgt. Johnson masturbated once when he was 14!

Plus there is this inane subplot involving an Unggoy (the little creatures for the Covenant) and a flying creature called a Huragok and their friendship even though both, to facilitate the narrative of future games, must die. And then there are the AIs (like Cortana) that kind of Moonlighting/love-hate each other. Really bad. There is no one to root for in this book, nothing physical or emotional to grab on to, and the story, what little there is (something to do with Covenant/UNSC first contact out on the frontier of human space), is underwhelmed by the oppressive back story. I am seriously questioning reading the second Halo book I bought. . .I’d advise to ignore this one if possible.