What I Love About Summer

It's not the sun ... it pretty much burns me on contact. So swimming or going to the beach was never a tremendous pleasure for me. I've never had occasion to walk on the beach at sunset, but I have done so at sunrise, and that's okay, once in a while. Add to that the fact that I wear glasses, so if I'm swimming, I can't see a damned thing ... even people watching is out.

And it's not baseball either. I tried, I swear I tried, to care about baseball on at least a couple of occasions, but to no avail. I enjoy going to a minor league game upon occasion, but it's not something I particularly look forward to or miss when I'm not doing it.

And it's not the bugs, or the time off when I had it, or the reruns. Mostly what I like is Sam Adams Summer Ale.

(I know some of you are disappointed that I've stooped to a product endorsement, but I assure you that I have no affiliation with the Sam Adams organization other than as a satisfied consumer.) Speaking of which, it's quitting time!

I laughed aloud

Timing is everything. The part about the spice routes is quite good ... shortly before and after the minute mark.

I was wrong

I know, I know, it doesn't happen very often ... but in retrospect, I was wrong about Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It's taken me a while to admit it, but on my last trip through the movie, I came to realize that yes, it's a pretty good film.

Of course, it has its terrible moments. A few too many pathetic screams from Kate Capshaw, too many shots of her dumping perfume on the elephant, etc. I'm tempted to call them Lucas moments, but let's be honest: Spielberg wrote the Goonies, which came out a year later, and it's just as juvenile as the stupider moments in Temple of Doom.

So what's good about it? For one thing, the aforementioned Ms. Capshaw. She's not just hot ... she's eighties hot. Don't know what I'm talking about? Here's the classic example. Was Willie Scott a letdown from Marion Ravenwood? Sure, but since the second film was set before the first one, it makes sense.

Secondly, not chronologically of course, is the opening sequence, which is a lot of fun ... the "Anything Goes" song, the pre-Dennis Quaid in DOA poison stagger, the tuxedos. What a great scene! From A to Z, from "Anything ... " through zeppelin if you will, it's pretty great.

Thirdly and most importantly is that even more than in the third movie with its fairly clumsy "origin of" backstory, it's in the second film that we see some actual character development. Jones begins by trading an artifact for a big diamond and talking only of "fortune and glory," but he ends up saving a bunch of kids and leaving emptyhanded. See ... he learns and grows.

Never mind that in the third movie we see that he was already altruistic about artifacts even as a lad.

Another note about DOA: it's the film that made me want to be an English professor (okay, one of the films) ... and Meg Ryan might have been eighties cute, but never quite eighties hot. You might think I'm working my way around to a vicious comment about her current appearance, but honestly, I'm not going to stoop ... as the duke says, I choose never to stoop.

Unnecessarily.

I ask you

I generally hate ads for prescription drugs, since they're so hampered by what they can and can't say that it's pointless to listen unless you already know what they're talking about.

And the list of possible side effects that seem much worse than the condition being medicated is usually pretty horrifying.

But I love the ad for the anti-reflux medication AsipHex. Not because it avoids these pitfalls, which it actually does, but because apparently AT NO POINT in the marketing process did it occur to these people that the cool name they came up with could only be pronounced "Ass Effects."

Hidden Fortress

In a burst of what I can only call masochistic egomania (masochism is always egomania, but I don't think it's true the other way around), I've tried repeatedly to find an quick and easy way to upload an mp3--20th anniversary edition of an Ivory Tower song. I was trying to use some free hosting place that still gives me some control over the damned thing. I remain at a loss, so you're just going to have to do without for now.

I've been wanting to do this ever since I read about those damned fake Elmers. I suspect they're probably dupes of my nemesis, whom I shall not name. Damned fake Elmers.

So last night I watched Hidden Fortress, which was inexplicably next up in my Netflix queueueueueue. I have too many movies listed there, all because I don't want to forget any of the movies I might like to see. This means that I have several years worth of movies in line, especially since I don't watch films as often as I used to.

Please quit distracting me and I'll talk briefly about this film. I don't know why it was in my queue ... could I really have put it there because I read that its clownish protagonists were Lucas's inspiration for C-3PO and R2D2? I don't think so. Is it because I'm a Kurosawa fanatic? Nope. Or that I like black and white movies with subtitles? This is true, but it's not the reason. I'll never know. Maybe it was a mis-click, or maybe I added it back when I thought I could still trust the Netflix recommenderbot.

Anyhow, I'm glad I did. It was a great movie. Honor, humor, suspense, and the weirdest-voiced princess you'll meet all day. Super-accessible and beautifully filmed, and very fast-paced considering its length.

Hey, what do you want, thoughtful and detailed movie reviews? If so, get Mike to watch it next time it's on TCM. And while you're at it, see if you can get him to post the movies he might review in advance so we can watch them too.

It's like going to an English class to listen to the lecture without having read the assignment. Oh, you don't know what that's like? Be honest now ...

My problem in a nutshell:

I think I internalized a lot of irony at a very impressionable age, having spent most of my adolescence listening to stuff like this over and over:

I believe in democracy and the earth

Here is evidence that I'm One Of The Good Guys. Yep, that's me, carrying the banner of democracy! At Earth Day! I may be a realist about the prospect of everybody deciding that they'll quit eating cows and pigs so that everybody else can eat too, or deciding to build more expensive buildings that will be cheaper in the long run rather than the short run, or generally deciding that the future is more important than the present and its petty gratifications, but that's only because I've lived among people my whole life. Most of them prefer comfort when they can get it.

Granted, most of the people I know who might be reading this (I can't comment about the thousands of others who for all I know are hanging on my every word!) are superior people. And they're not superior because I know them ... that would be a little like Shaw's definition of patriotism: "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it." But I like to be around people I respect, and these are generally not the greener than thou types.

I know the good guys are sincere, but I also know they're outnumbered. The earth is going to win in the long run though, even if we don't like the way a win looks.