O. J. Simpson is Dead

 

I had been thinking about making my next blog post about another item of paleontological art, but then O. J. Simpson died.  And, as one of the few people left alive who is old enough to remember the Nineties, I felt obligated to comment.  (And then, of course, it took me a few weeks to actually do it.)

As I noted before, the O. J. trial gave Saturday Night Live its greatest Weekend Update moment ever.

Perhaps my most significant personal O. J. memory is that, during the trial, I had no idea that Simpson had been regarded as one of the best professional football players of all time.  I have never been a sports fan at all, and during his football career I was too young to be aware of popular culture in general.  Thus, though I had some vague knowledge that he had played football, I knew him mostly as an actor and rental car spokesman.  And I really didn’t understand why everyone was making such a big deal about a guy who was in The Naked Gun.  (If Leslie Nielsen had been accused of murdering two people, would that have been the Trial of the Century?)

And then there was a Hertz commercial that aired a few years before the murders, in which a line toward the end proved rather prescient:

“Brutal, Juice, brutal.”

Fetch

 

In honor of the new Mean Girls movie, my browser apparently tried to make fetch happen. 

And, of course, my browser failed.  

(I have to admit that I never saw the original Mean Girls, and thus I am not 100% sure of what “fetch” is, or what would be required to make it happen.)

(I also have to admit that I don’t know very much about computers, as not only do I not understand what a “backend fetch” is, but I also have no idea why the error message involves “guru meditation” and “varnish”.)  

It’s Landmark

I may have to revise my movie-watching criteria (as related in the previous post) to the following:

*Star Wars

*Lord of the Rings

*based on someone whom I once knew 

*featuring a mall which I once knew

The trailer for next year’s Wonder Woman 1984 is out.  Some scenes for the movie were filmed at Landmark Mall in western Alexandria.  The mall can be seen in the trailer between 0:33 and 0:47. 

Landmark was the local mall from my childhood onward, and the mall that I knew best.  It wasn’t the fun mall for hanging out when I was a teenager; that honor would probably have gone to Springfield Mall.  But Landmark was, for many decades, a dependable place to buy socks.

Wonder Woman 1984 uses Landmark as a typical shopping mall of the Eighties, but, ironically, what one sees in the movie is not how Landmark looked in 1984.  Landmark was originally an open-air mall; it underwent renovations in the late Eighties and reopened as en enclosed mall in 1990.  

Landmark was available for filming because it is the stereotypically dying modern mall; for the last few years it has been entirely unoccupied except for an anemic Sears.  The mall is slated to be torn down and turned into a mixed-use retail and residential development. 

But we’ll always have Wonder Woman 1984.  

Sartorial Cats

Midnight

And the kitties are sleeping

Downstairs by the furnace

While birdies are cheeping

—David Letterman, back when he was funny

The movie Cats, based on the long-running musical of the same name, is out now.  Realistically, there is no chance of me seeing this movie.  I am not a fan of musical theater.  And I’m not really all that fond of cats either.  Indeed, over the last twenty years I have, for the most part, only seen movies which fulfill one of the following criteria:

*Star Wars

*Lord of the Rings

*based on someone whom I once knew 

However, like most people with internet access, I have been watching the trailers for Cats to marvel at how bizarre they are.  There are many oddities on which to comment, but the question that stands out for me is why some of the cats wear clothes, and others don’t.  Obviously, cats don’t wear clothes in the real world.  I have never come across a cat smartly dressed in a three-piece suit.  Evidently, for the cats of Cats, clothing is not obligatory, as it is in human society.  What factors, then, determine whether a cat is clothed? Does the clothing serve some practical function?  Or is it an indicator of social status?  Or is it simply a fashion choice?

And, ultimately, I don’t really care about any of it.  And so, you might ask, why am I writing this?  I want to boost my total number of blog posts for 2019 while I still have the chance, and it is a lot easier to write about irrelevant pop-culture items like this than about anything more substantial.  

Wait a Minute . . . We ARE Having a Mummy Resurgence

In a recent post, I opined that mummies should be the next big thing in popular horror.  Now it turns out that next summer there will be a major mummy movie, starring Tom Cruise.  The trailer was released last week.  

I almost think that I should blog about other things that I want, and see if they come true.

I could start with the dinosaurs returning, but that might be taking things too far.  

October Sky

October Sky is the name of a 1999 movie based on the life of former NASA engineer Homer Hickam.  The original title, Rocket Boys, taken from Hickam’s autobiography, was changed when marketing research revealed that women over thirty would not see a movie called Rocket Boys.  (The two titles are anagrams.)

In 1999 I saw Hickam on David Letterman’s CBS show promoting the film.  Letterman recalled an occasion on which the producers of Letterman’s earlier NBC show attempted to enlist Hickam to teach Letterman to scuba dive for a special underwater episode.  The idea turned out to be unworkable, however, as at that time of year the local sea water was so cold that Letterman would have frozen to death over the course of the hour-long show.  That would have been a great loss to television, especially during Letterman’s earlier, funnier days.  

I have never seen October Sky, nor does it, or Homer Hickam, or David Letterman, have anything to do with these pictures.   

They are simply some pictures of the October sky.  

(As always, click to enlarge.)

Star Wars and Otherwise Name Confusion

Before I saw the newest Star Wars movie, I blogged my worries about it.  

Ever since I saw it, I have been wanting to blog my reaction.  I don’t know if I’ll ever get that post finished. 

I do feel that I have gotten a little closer now that I have resolved my confusion regarding Riley Keough, Rilo Kiley, and Kylo Ren.  

Brexit

Last week the world witnessed Brexit, in which citizens of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

It is not the purpose of this blog to comment on controversial political issues in any meaningful way.  

The blog may, though, comment in a non-meaningful way.  Thus, I will offer two opinions.  

1. Supporters of Brexit should have been known as the Brexit Club, in reference to the John Hughes movie. 

2. The motto of the Brexit movement should have been "Brekekekexit Koax Koax", from the frogs of Aristophanes.  One might object that a motto based on ancient Greek drama is too arcane for modern politics; however, the motto does fit well with the image that we like to have of the English sitting in drawing rooms saying witty and learned things.  

My Star Wars Worries (or, Star Worries)

The new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, will be opening on Friday.  I don't plan to see it until the end of December, and I will do my best to avoid reviews until then.  But I'm going to go ahead and express my worries.  

I come from the generation whose younger years were essentially defined by the original trilogy–the movies, and, maybe even more importantly, the associated toys, provided the common mythology of our childhoods.  And it was my generation whose entrance into adulthood was greeted by the prequel trilogy.

The prequels clearly weren't as good as the original trilogy.  But I still enjoyed them.  I remember walking out of The Phantom Menace and feeling the old feeling of wanting my own lightsaber, wanting to swing it as I sneaked around the dark corners of a space station, and hear the vroop vroop sound that it made as it cut through the air.  

At the time of the prequels, the general feeling was mixed—that there were some good parts, and some parts that weren't good.  But in the ensuing years, popular sentiment was evolved such that now the only socially acceptable opinion on the prequels is the following three statements:

1. "The Star Wars prequels were the worst movies ever made."

and therefore

2. "They ruined my life."

and therefore

3. "George Lucas must be killed."

(And, I would note, the omnipresence of these sentiments has pretty much destroyed what enjoyment I did get out of the prequels.)

I doubt that the new movie will generate the ill will that the prequels did.  I'm sure that J. J. Abrams knows which buttons to push, as well as which buttons not to push (such as the Jar Jar button), to get the desired audience reaction.  But at the same time, I can't help thinking that the new movie might come across as a transparent copy of the original trilogy.  

The comparison that comes to mind: The prequels were like what would have happened if the Beatles had gotten back together in the late Seventies and made some albums that nobody liked.  The Force Awakens is like what would happen if somebody were to hire professional songwriters to write an album in the style of Sixties Beatles, and then get America's best Beatles cover band to record the album.  

And so, ultimately, I worry that with the new movie, the situation will be the reverse of what happened with the sequels—everyone else will love it unreservedly, and I will be left feeling that maybe it wasn't quite satisfying.

Yoda Best

A week or so ago I was walking by some tennis courts in a park adjacent to the local public high school.  I noticed a great deal of writing in chalk on the concrete walkways near the courts.  From what I could tell, the writing was a tribute from the members of the high school's girls tennis team to two team members who were graduating.  

Part of the tribute was the words "YODA BEST" (i. e., "you're the best"), accompanied by a drawing of Yoda's face. Normally, observing the activities of today's high school students makes me feel really, really old—or rather it makes me understand that I am really, really old, because I actually feel very young; deep down I feel as if I'm only a few years older than a high school student myself.  But here was something that made me feel that maybe I wasn't all that old after all—high school students referencing a character whom I knew when I was in high school.  

Indeed, by the time that I was in high school, Yoda already seemed like a relic of the distant past, just as Yoda probably seems to the student who did the chalking (although, to them, the distant past might only mean the prequels).

It's been almost exactly 35 years since we first saw Yoda.  

Five Questions About The Hunger Games

Since the premiere of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay—Part 1 a few weeks ago, I've developed some questions about the series.  (I could probably answer these questions by reading the books, or watching the movies, or just doing some internet searching, but I have no desire to read the books or watch the movies, and I am too lazy to do the internet searching.)

1. What is a mockingjay? Is it a mockingbird, or a blue jay (or some other kind of jay)?  Or is it some kind of bird that doesn't exist in our world, which would imply that the setting of The Hunger Games is an alternate universe which diverged from our own sometime after the evolution of anatomically modern Homo sapiens around 200,000 years ago, but still long enough ago to allow for the evolution of a novel species of songbird?

2. Why is everyone hungry? Since they live in an advanced technological society, shouldn't they know how to grow crops?  Did they lose the knowledge of how to plant corn?

3. Why is a brief period of gladiatorial combat between teenagers sufficient to distract an entire population from the fact that they're starving?

4. Why does everyone love Jennifer Lawrence so much?

5. What is a mockingjay? 

Ornithological Notes on The Hobbit

I finally saw The Hobbit, despite my earlier difficulties.  One thing that stood out to me was the use of CGI songbirds, particularly in association with the wizard Radagast the Brown (who, I found out in researching this post, is also the seventh Doctor Who).  I thought that I would share some ideas on the identification of these birds, although in all likelihood someone somewhere else has probably done a better job of this already. 

The birds that live under Radagast's hat looked like House Sparrows (Passer domesticus).  I also seem to remember that they were both males, but I'd have to watch the movie again to be sure.  

The bird that alerts Radagast to the location of the Necromancer is very clearly an American Robin (Turdus migratorius).  I found it somewhat disconcerting to see such a characteristically North American bird in the setting of pseudo-European Middle Earth.  

And the bird identified as a thrush that flies to the lair of Smaug at the end of the movie actually is a thrush, though I couldn't identify the exact species.  

Radagast the Brown's talent for communicating with birds was acknowledged in the world of paleontology in 2002, when his name was applied to Paraortygoides radagasti, a fossil bird from the Eocene.

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation

On the Saturday night before Christmas, I went with my friends Andrew, Adam, Kevin, and Brian to see The Hobbit.  We attended the latest possible screening, and were thus alone in the theater as we enjoyed the adventures of Bilbo Baggins. 

Our enjoyment of what we saw in the film was overwhelmed by our surprise at what we found when we left the theater.  While we had been watching the movie, the snows of Christmas had come early.  The snowfall was prodigious; it was piled to our knees, and glistening flakes continued to fall. The roads had vanished, disappeared under the thick blanket of cold white.  No one was to be seen anywhere, and we could find no reason to think that anyone would be stirring again until well after Christmas.  

As we contemplated the seeming impossibility of returning home, we noticed a dark object moving high in the sky. When it came closer, we saw that it was an ornate sleigh pulled by deer; it flew down through the snowflakes, and slid to a stop in the street before us.  The red-clad man driving the sleigh, the man who could only be Santa Claus, addressed us.

"Ho, ho, ho," said Santa, "What are you boys doing out here in the blizzard?" 

"We just got out of the late showing of The Hobbit, and now I fear that we are stranded," I replied, "But we could ask the same of you.  What are you doing out three days before Christmas?"

"The sleigh needs testing, and the route needs charting," laughed Santa, "It would be foolish to travel without rehearsal when a world is depending on my prompt arrival.  You, though, look as if you may not be traveling at all; come, I can offer you passage, there is always room on my sleigh."

And so we climbed onto the sleigh, and it launched into the sky.  We conversed with Santa, and, spurred by talk of the movie that we had seen, he spoke of the long-gone days before he had become Santa Claus, or Sinterklaas, or even Saint Nicholas, when he himself had lived under another name among the peoples of Middle Earth.  He recalled times spent with the elves, the dwarves, and the hobbits, and how his counsel had been sought by Gandalf and other wizards. He told us wild tales of orcs and trolls, of dragons, and of magic, as all the while we soared through the falling snow, high above the lights of the city, high enough to see the dark mountains to the west, and the dark waters to the east.   

And then, when his store of stories was exhausted, Santa brought his sleigh back down toward the ground, and returned us all to our homes, where we had nothing to do but rest without a care and await the joys of Christmas.

* * * * * * * * *

Okay, none of that happened.  I did try to get some friends together to see The Hobbit, but it proved more difficult than averting the Fiscal Cliff, and after three weeks of negotiations things broke down at the last minute.  

And needless to say it almost never snows here in the DC area, especially on or near Christmas.  

Also, Santa Claus doesn't exist.  Middle Earth doesn't exist.  I might not even exist; that is still controversial.  

An Important Ridley Question

The movie Prometheus, from director Ridley Scott, will be opening Friday.  I don't think that I will see it, because I don't see a lot of movies, and in general I am really tired. But for years, every time that a Ridley Scott movie has come out, I have been plagued by a vexing question: If Ridley Scott were to fight the Ridley Sea Turtle, who would win?

I suppose that, since the turtle only weighs around 100 pounds, the director would win.  But, as in many things, the outcome of the battle would probably be determined by where it took place—on land, or in the water. 

The Oscars

For the first time in my life, I find myself caring about what happens at the Oscars. I want to see Moneyball and its cast win in every possible category, and particularly I want to see Jonah Hill win in his role as a character based on a guy with whom I went to school.

I am entirely unexcited about any of the other films of the year. For example, I'm not interested in the movie in which Glenn Close portrays Conan O'Brien.

But then, maybe I should be interested, because when I was in high school the college guidance counselor claimed that he was Glenn Close's uncle.

Yet the college guidance counselor was a little odd in the head, and said some pretty strange things, so in the end I don't know what to think.

Let's Play Some Moneyball

A few days ago I saw Moneyball. Everyone at the theater received a lovely gift bag containing a Brad Pitt bobblehead doll, a pouch of chaw, and an air freshener in the exciting new "locker room" scent.

That is not true. There was no gift bag.

But I did see Moneyball.

The movie is about a general manager and his assistant who led the Oakland Athletics to an unprecedented string of twenty consecutive victories by implementing a set of controversial hiring practices based purely on statistics. These practices were originally called sabermetrics, and eventually became known as "moneyball" after the book which first chronicled the events in question.

(The movie does not address whether the principles of moneyball have spread to other sports. For example, in professional hockey, is there moneypuck? If a hockey team cannot afford a player who is missing seven teeth, can it compensate by acquiring two other players, one of whom is missing three teeth, and the other of whom is missing four teeth?)

I am not a sports fan, and normally don't see sports movies. The reason that I saw Moneyball was that the general manager's assistant, a character named Peter Brand, played by Jonah Hill, was based on a real person named Paul DePodesta. As I have previously noted, I went to school with Paul for many years in elementary and middle school. I saw the movie because I was interested in seeing a story about Paul, and also because I like to think that if someone made a movie about me, Paul would see it.

I haven't seen Paul in at least twenty years, but I could still pick out some differences between the real and fictional versions of him. Peter Brand looks like Jonah Hill; Paul DePodesta, to judge by internet search results, looks uncomfortably like Anthony Weiner. Peter Brand grew up in Maryland and went to Yale; Paul DePodesta grew up in Virginia and went to Harvard. And, most importantly, Peter Brand has almost no self-confidence; Paul DePodesta had more self-confidence when he was in fifth grade. He is someone whom I could imagine easily navigating the corridors of power in professional sports. He is even someone whom I could imagine being invited to play basketball with the President, kind of like, well, someone else with whom I went to school.

As I have said, I am not a sports fan, and thus the wrong person to appreciate a movie about baseball. And for the most part, it wasn't even a movie about baseball, it was a movie about people talking about baseball. (It was also a movie about spitting–most of the characters spent waaaaay too much time spitting tobacco juice into paper cups.) I suppose that the most interesting part of the story was how the general manager, Billy Beane, had to go to extraordinary lengths to convince or force other people in his organization to go along with his plans.

Beyond that I can only say that I was duly impressed by the smallness of Brad Pitt's nose, which is shown many times in profile.

The Past and the Future and Going Back and Movies

I can't help noticing that a new version of the Eighties movie Footloose is coming out this week. I'm not too interested, because, as far as I can remember, the original Footloose was pretty lametastic. But I am pleasantly reminded of the promise from producers Bob Gale and Bob Zemeckis that there will never be a re-make of a truly great Eighties film, Back to the Future.

Back to the Future is a movie that could have only been made in the Eighties, because it wouldn't have worked without the upbeat optimism of that decade.

If Back to the Future had been made in the Nineties, Marty McFly wouldn't have traveled back to the Fifties. Instead, he would have hung out with his slacker friends, gotten stoned, and talked about traveling back to the Fifties.

And if Back to the Future were to be made today, Marty McFly also wouldn't travel back to the Fifties. Instead, he would stand on the roof of the gull-winged DeLorean with Doc Brown singing duets of Lady Gaga songs while the other characters perform choreographed dance moves in the background.

Harry Potter

Three weeks ago the final Harry Potter movie had its opening weekend. (I meant to blog about it then, but I don't have the energy to stay current.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—Part 2 made huge money and received inescapable media coverage, which was at least marginally more interesting that the debt ceiling. I, unfortunately, did not care.

I'm down with all the major topics of nerd entertainment—Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, comic books, X-Files, Buffy . . . But I don't find myself having any interest in Harry Potter in any form. Will Thimblethorpe find the magic thugwump? I don't know, and I don't feel like reading several thousand pages to find out. And I also don't feel like watching several hours of film to find out either.

Maybe Harry Potter is too silly for me. I know that there are elements of Star Wars, Star Trek, etc., that are silly, but the Harry Potter series looks entirely marinated in silliness. And I know that the Harry Potter series is in large part a gigantic fight to the death. But it's silly people having a gigantic fight to the death.

Or maybe I've just passed my nerd expiration date. Maybe I've gotten too old to absorb anything new in the science fiction/fantasy category.

I do, however, enjoy the new Seven-Eleven LARPing commercial.

Celebrity Confusion Abounds

I have a problem with confusing celebrities.

Ever since childhood I have confused Mickey Rooney and Andy Rooney.

Publicity for the current season of Dancing with the Stars has reawakened my confusion of Scott Baio and Ralph Macchio. They have similar names, they look similar, they both reached their respective peaks of popularity at about the same time, and they both worked with Pat Morita, Baio in Happy Days, and Macchio in The Karate Kid.

I am also starting to get Nathalie Portman and Winona Ryder confused—although separated in age by a decade, they kind of look alike, they both have fake last names, and they were both in Black Swan. (Please note that I know of the Black Swan connection only by reading about it; I don't watch movies about ballet.)

But none of this can compare to my difficulty in differentiating Jason Sudeikis (from Saturday Night Live) and Ed Helms (from The Office). These two NBC stars register on my brain as the same person. I even got them confused in a dream last year, as I previously noted on the blog.

A few months ago I kept seeing television ads for a movie about a man running wild with his friends. Bizarrely, sometimes the movie starred Jason Sudeikis, and sometimes it starred Ed Helms. I took this to mean that either I was going crazy, or Jason Sudeikis and Ed Helms really were the same person. As it turned out, there were two similar films being released at the same time, Hall Pass (starring Jason Sudeikis) and Cedar Rapids (starring Ed Helms).

This weekend my confusion will reach some sort of critical mass. Ed Helms will be hosting Saturday Night Live, where he will come face to face with cast member Jason Sudeikis. The part of me that is still a nerdy fifteen-year-old expects the show to begin with the two of them rushing together uncontrollably, causing an enormous explosion in which both of their bodies will be converted entirely to energy. The part of me that is a slightly more mature nerdy adult can only wonder if anyone else will note the similarity. Am I the only one who sees it?

People Whom I Have Known Part I : Baseball

About a month ago I was watching Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The guest was Jonah Hill, an actor best identified as Seth Rogen's mini-me. Hill discussed filming a movie called Moneyball starring Brad Pitt. Hill will play a character based on Paul DePodesta.

Paul DePodesta is a baseball executive who rose to fame in 2004 as the general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, making him one of the youngest general managers in Major League history, at the age of 31. Unfortunately, as best I can understand with my feeble knowledge of professional sports, things, um, didn't quite work out right, and he was fired in 2005. He then worked for the San Diego Padres as a "front office assistant", which is presumably more prestigious than it sounds, before being hired by the New York Mets as the "vice president of player development and scouting", in which role he does important baseball stuff.

I am not a baseball fan, and indeed all that I know about managing a baseball team I learned from George Costanza. What makes all this interesting to me is that from around first or second grade until eighth grade, I went to school with Paul. I was even the campaign manager in his failed run for sixth grade class president. (Do not trust me for political advice.)

Of course, there are probably hundreds of people out there who went to school with Paul at one time or another, but that's not important, because none of those people is me (or, more grammatically, none of those people is I, although that sounds weird). And I would like to take this opportunity to wish Paul well in his future endeavors, and to thank him for giving me this brush with fame—fame in its most modern sense, which translates as someone having his own Wikipedia entry.

In a final odd sub-coincidence, while researching this post I learned that, before the DePodesta-derived role went to Jonah Hill, it was set to be played by an actor and comedian named Demetri Martin. I didn't know him, but he was in my class in college.