One of those moments

I was driving on Magnolia yesterday, on my way to a student newspaper board meeting at U of L, when I saw a woman running to catch the Fourth Street bus as it pulled away from its stop and headed downtown.

I almost typed “running frantically” just now, except for the fact that she had this enormous smile on her face. A smile so huge and glowing that it made me stop and take notice of her well beyond a glance from the corner of my eye. She was in her mid-40s and really quiet lovely, dressed in a very smart business suit, complete with high heels. If I were running in heels, there’s no way I’d be smiling like that. If I were catching a bus to go to my office job – instead of sliding into my comfortable mid-level four-door for a mile-long drive to work – I’d be less inclined to smile, as well.

I forced myself to be in a better mood than usual at the board meeting.

Only what I take with me ...

I dreamt last night that I was on a boat, but not a real boat – the kind of floating car found in the ‘70s Hanna-Barbera TV ride at King’s Island. Everything was pretty cool, except when we approached an ominous door. It seemed to be set back in swamp or some other secluded corner. It was a place of looming evil; I had just talked extensively with a 9-year-old about Star Wars, so maybe it was the duality cave on Dagoba. Hell if I know. I think I remember some visage of a wet ghost child, a la Ringu, popping into my peripheral view just as fright jolted me from sleep.

This happened at least 10 times over the course of evening. The dream would change a bit – in one sequence some wrestling T Rexes ran up and grabbed children off this amusement park tram I was riding with Clint Eastwood. I think Mr. Eastwood was directing some film to which much of the surreal landscape could be attributed. A purple whale jumped from the sandy landscape and breached right on the tram, but I never woke from these calamities. Only that swampy door creeped me out that bad.

Each time I woke, I was sitting up in bed starring at the door to my little-used office in the corner of my bedroom.

I gotta turn off the TV at night.

It would be funny if it weren’t true

vengeful movie tripe

In my lonely quest to find others who dislike Sin City as much as I do, I found this gem at the site One Man's Opinion, via the nexus Rotten Tomatoes:

“It’s the bad-boy equivalent of Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart.”

Really, this is on the cusp of unhealthy obsession for me. I pulled out my trade of the original Sin City storyline and re-read it last night, to see if I’ve just gotten older than even I suspected, and consequently less patient with hysterical exercises of form over substance.

It’s a little bit of that, to be sure. It also occurs to me that comic books – apologies for not adopting “graphic novel” or the more ludicrous affectation “graphic journalism;” if it was good enough for Will Eisner, it’s good enough for Harvey Pekar, damn it – are just a more palatable media for self-indulgent hyperbole.

There’s wrong, there’s wrong, and then there’s this

movie tripe

I’ve just rented Stray Dog, Akira Kurosawa’s masterful 1949 homage to American noir film. I did so because I feel compelled to rinse the taste of Sin City, which I saw this afternoon, from my mouth. Better Kurosawa than M&Ms.

I’m at a loss to describe how much I disliked Sin City. I would have disliked it more, I’d imagine, if not for the fact that I found the comics trite and soulless in their initial run, so I was prepared, to some degree. I’ll always owe Frank Miller for Batman: Year One, but this Sin City film is the perfect storm of Miller’s punch-line driven writing and the Rodriguez/Tarantino fetish for overlapping story arc. Yuk.

I’m big on suspended disbelief, so I can run with a 60-year-old man with angina getting shot seven or so times and surviving somehow. I had forgotten, however, the agonizing self-importance and jarring stupidity. Semi-spoiler warning: So, a completely corrupt senator wouldn’t be interested in killing a stripper who knows his dirty little secret, regardless if Hartigan is dead or alive? But hey, it makes for some tidy plot looping and ponderous self-sacrifice to gratify the 15-year-old martyr in all of us.

And don’t get me started on the ninja hookers. Hard to swallow when drawn on a comic page; even more embarrassing when depicted by actual, breathing human beings.

This one is destined to join the Kill Bill ranks of crappy films that are initially heralded by critics but quickly fade into the anonymity they deserve. For Sin City, not quick enough.

For those of you who are interested, here’s a look at how the film adapts Miller’s art in an almost storyboard model.

The Internet Horror

Internet tripe

I have been drafted to see the upcoming remake of The Amityville Horror with the Almighty Twinkie; I have been nominated, and I choose to serve. Expect a full report in the next few weeks.

At any rate, in knocking around the Internet, I found this site, which I find far more disturbing than any film adaptation of an alleged haunting. These guys have way too much time on their hands, and they’ve decided to devote it to dissecting every aspect of the Long Island home where the DeFeos family was brutally murdered and where flies allegedly gave a meddling priest the diabolic business.

Here, you get a dissection of photos of baseboards and shoes. There’s also a forum and a weekly chat. You can marvel in an in-depth interview of the father who’s sticking to his story of a levitating wife, and revel in some harsh words for an author who “flip-flopped” in his support for the veracity of the whole business. And there’s a freakish pig photo, for good measure.

Springsteen was right: People find some reason to believe.

Leftover “spA-GHET-tie”?

lifestyle tripe

I tormented myself last weekend by watching The Food Network; this Dimsdale act always ends up with me devouring a 1,700-calorie sack of almond M&Ms. At any rate, I was lying in bed when my least-favorite show, Everyday Italian, promised me some creative uses for leftovers.

For those of you who have never seen Everyday Italian, it stars rail-thin Chef Giada De Laurentiis, who obviously eats very small portions of her cheese-encrusted concoctions and says obnoxious stuff like “spA-GHET-tie.” You’d just have to hear her to get it. De Laurentiis’s definition of “everyday” doesn’t quite synch up to my reality, either, in so much as I don’t have $20 bucks and two hours to spend on making a sandwich every day.

At any rate, she advertised a nice-looking “spA-GHET-tie” pie, so I thought why not? I’d have to burn about half a calorie to change channels, anyway.

Come to find out, her “leftover” ingredient was dried spaghetti. Not already boiled, mind you – the dry stuff, right there in her $100 Pyrex pasta cozy. What the hell is leftover spaghetti? It goes bad? That’s like saying you have leftover gas in your tank after driving to the grocery. No such animal.

Her second dish was based on leftover cookies. Huh? At my house, that’s breakfast, sister. The recipe called for some kind of imported yak cheese and, of course, the use of a $2,000 table mixer.

These shows baffle me. Do people really have this much energy, time and money to spend on routine meals?

Here’s an “everyday” recipe from the MeanOldMan archives. I came across this in college, and my old roommate Greg and I still toast its memory, from time to time. I also published it in a daily newspaper where I once worked as my favorite recipe. In many ways, that’s still true.

Bachelor Goulash

Ingredients
1 box store-brand macaroni and cheese dinner
1 can Hormel chili, no beans
Pete’s Texas hot sauce, to taste
NO MILK, darn it

Directions
Figure it out

Cost
About two bucks, depending on sales

Calories
1,200 or so, assuming you can hold this stuff down

What did I do to deserve this?

philosophical tripe

I'm sitting here with the makings of a terrible cold, waiting for my pal Joe to show up so we can start our five-hour road trip to St. Louis for the Cards' Final Four showdown with Illinois. Yep, for the first time in my ill-begotten career as a basketball duffer and fan, I'm going to the Final Four.

Only a rush of completely undeserved good luck – some friends stumbled across a pair of great tickets and offered them at a ridiculously reasonable price – landed me in this most enviable spot. So now it's five hours of good (but somewhat grumpy) company on I-64 to the games, with an estimated return time of about 5 a.m. tomorrow morning, I'd guess. No rooms to be had in St. Louis; one character wanted $500 a night for a last-minute B&B vacancy that listed for $125 on her Web site. Ah, no.

The only thing in my craw at the moment is this cold, which is gonna get nasty, I can tell. And the fact that I am just hammered at work right now – much of the trip is going to be spent with my laptop on my knees, whacking away at newsletters (and a stray blog post or two, I'd imagine). Why is it that even flashes of good fortune always come with some kind of irksome bill?

Now I'm complaining about not being able to complain.