The Unappreciated Actor Files #2: Busy Philipps

So I had a bit of a health scare recently. I went to the gynecologist for my annual exam, and he found a lump in my breast. I’ll cut to the chase here and tell you that it turned out to be a benign tumor called a fibroadenoma, but of course I had to go through a bunch of crap before getting that diagnosis. First the gyno sent me for a mammogram, and based on the results of that, the radiologist sent me for an ultrasound. Based on the results of that, they sent me to a surgeon for a consult on a biopsy. I ended up having what’s called a vacuum needle biopsy, an outpatient procedure during which they stick a large needle into the breast and literally vacuum out several samples from the lump for testing. This all happened over the course of several weeks, during which, of course, the possibility of cancer was hanging over my head, and it all proved somewhat taxing both physically and emotionally. The biopsy in particular kind of sucked; although I’ve definitely endured worse things, having a giant needle shoved into your boob--and I do mean shoved, as apparently I have very dense breast tissue, and the doctor had to apply considerable force to get the needle where it needed to go--is no fun at all. It’s been about a month and a half since I had it done, and it was only last week that the bruises finally disappeared, although I still have a lovely scar to show for it. I held off on telling anybody about all this while it was going on, because I had a strong feeling it would turn out to be something benign, and why make people worry unnecessarily? And now that it’s over and doesn’t really seem blogworthy on its own, I’m tucking it into this seemingly unrelated entry. Because it does lead into the subject at hand.

Having endured this minor ordeal, I figured I deserved a reward, and I decided to buy myself something from my Amazon wish list. I ended up getting the box set of Freaks and Geeks DVDs. Obviously I cannot tell you that F&G is my favorite show of all time (see previous entry), but I can tell you it’s in the Top Five. Probably also in the Top Five would be the only other shows I own on DVD, The Honeymooners and My So-Called Life. One notable thing these shows have in common is that they all ran for only one season, which means I can own the complete series without spending a small fortune. This satisfies both my obsessive-compulsive side and my miserly side. F&G actually lasted only 18 episodes, while MSCL managed 19, but of course they share more than just the ignominy of early cancellation: both were brilliantly conceived and written shows set in high school and featuring memorable, richly-developed characters. MSCL was more introspective and dramatic in tone, while F&G was essentially a comedy, but both explored the complex landscape of late adolescence, perhaps the fulcrum upon which our emotional lives pivot, with wit, heart, and unflinching honesty. Which one outranks the other on my list probably depends on which day you ask me.

I can tell you that while I solidly identified with Angela Chase’s navel-gazing and existential angsting on MSCL, it was F&G’s Lindsay Weir whose life more closely paralleled mine. I mean, just for starters, she was a high school junior in 1980; I was a sophomore that year. She was the “golden girl” who got straight As and always did what was expected of her, until she began to wonder if there was a more vital existence outside the prescribed boundaries and looked to hanging with the “freaks” (or burnouts, as they were called at my school, though the difference was in nomenclature only) as a way to venture beyond them, and ultimately to discover what she wanted from her life rather than what others did. That’s my adolescence in a nutshell right there.

So anyway, I bought the DVDs, and finally busted them out and started watching over the long Thanksgiving weekend. I hadn’t seen the show since it went off the air nearly a decade ago, but I’m happy to say it’s aged very well. (I almost wrote “like a fine wine” there, but that is one dusty-ass cliché. What else ages well?) I’m only four episodes in (I’m concurrently viewing the fourth season of The Wire as well as the British sitcom Spaced, and I tend not to watch more than two episodes of any one before rotating in another), and I may have more to say about the show as a whole when I’ve rewatched the entire series, but one thing that’s become immediately apparent is what a fucking amazing performance Busy Philipps gave as Kim Kelly.

First off, Kim may be my favorite character on F&G. For those of you completely unfamiliar with the show--and if you are, then get familiar! Did I not mention it’s on DVD?--I don’t know that I can do her justice. Some would likely call her “white trash”, most would likely call her a bitch, but if you called her either to her face she’d just as likely tear your head off and throw it over a fence. Loud, crass, ill of temper and sharp of tongue, volatile occasionally to the point of becoming unhinged, Kim Kelly is tough as hell and frequently, unquestionably mean, yet strangely likeable through it all. The show offers glimpses into her home life--the somewhat stereotypical neglectful mom, jerkwad stepfather, and do-nothing brother, the scent of stale cigarettes, liquor, and all manner of abuse hanging heavily in the air--no doubt as a way of explaining her demeanor and earning her sympathy from the viewer, but it isn’t really necessary. Everything we need to find her sympathetic is in the way her character is written and the way she’s played--especially the way she’s played.

All of the actors on F&G did fine work. Standouts for me would be Martin Starr as übergeek Bill Haverchuck and Jason Segel as goofy, rheum-eyed Neil Peart-wannabe Nick Andopolis. But Busy Philipps embodies Kim Kelly so thoroughly that when she’s onscreen I sometimes become conscious that her co-stars are acting. I find this to be particularly so in her scenes with Linda Cardellini. I’m not saying that Cardellini is a bad actor, and this contrast is never so great that it takes me out of the show, but obviously, since I’ve noted it, it’s notable. Maybe it’s the fact that I knew girls like Kim growing up--that I was afraid of them, that I was bewildered by them, that, like Lindsay, I at first disdained but eventually befriended and came to understand some of them, that makes the character resonate so strongly with me. But it’s exactly that familiarity that would make any false notes in Busy’s performance stand out, and there aren’t any. She is totally, scarily real.

I have to admit that I haven’t really seen her in much else. Post-F&G, she was on Dawson’s Creek for a couple of years. Never watched that show. She was on a UPN sitcom called Love, Inc., but it was a sitcom on UPN. No. She was on ER for a while, but do you know that even though ER actually began in the late ’50s, I have never seen a single episode? It’s true! Her filmography is limited, but would make a good start to a list of Top Five Movies I’d Have To Be Clockwork-Oranged Into Watching, including White Chicks and Made of Honor. Recently she had a small part on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which she filmed while apparently about 14 months pregnant, but it was not exactly a juicy role. (She gave birth in August to a girl weighing nine pounds, seven ounces, which…yeah, that’s a big baby.) The thing is, she’s not quite pretty or petite enough to be a leading lady in Hollywood, so she’ll probably be forever relegated to smaller parts and crappy movies. It’s a shame, because I’d love to see her in something really good again.

Still, we’ll always have Kim Kelly. Let’s take a look at a scene from the Freaks and Geeks episode titled “Kim Kelly Is My Friend”, the one in which we meet Kim’s family. This is the end of the episode, when Kim’s boyfriend Daniel comes to find her at the Weirs’ home, after Kim spotted him being a little overly friendly with Karen Scarfoli. Nice work from James Franco here as well.

What exactly do you meme by that?

Per Amy, “list six book-related things about [your]self….”

Really? That’s it? That seems awfully…unstructured. Or something. Not sure why that bothers me, but it does. Maybe because it makes it harder to judge whether I’m completing the assignment satisfactorily, and if I can’t judge myself--harshly--what kind of life am I leading? A better one, you say? Sssshhhhhh.

Anyway, here are six random things that come to mind when I think of the word “book”:

1. As a kid, I loved reading more than anything, with the possible exception of my stuffed animals. I read constantly and never went anywhere without a book. My parents actually used to get annoyed by it--my mom was forever telling me that it was a beautiful day outside and I should be out there enjoying it, and my dad was convinced I was going to ruin my eyesight. (I know that my dad’s point has no basis in science, but considering the crummy state of my vision, it’s hard not to wonder. Even so, I’d do it all again.) Speaking of animals, stories about them--stuffed or real, I suppose, but mostly the latter--were my first reading passion. My grandmother had a large collection of Thornton W. Burgess’s animal stories, which were among the first books I ever read. (That page describes them as “charming stories of well-dressed loveable creatures that captivated little boys and girls”, which pretty much sums it up.) I loved reading them over and over whenever I was at her house. That was the beginning of a lifelong fondness for animal fantasy, which I’ve written about before, with Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH being one of my adolescent faves and Watership Down one of my adult ones. But I also liked more realistic fiction, like the dog stories of Albert Payson Terhune (I thought it was cool that he was from New Jersey, and I thrilled when local landmarks like the Palisades turned up in a story; also, even though I adored our German shepherd, Sargent, I totally coveted a collie as beautiful as Lad) and, of course, Jack London. And then there was nonfiction: for several Christmases running, the aforementioned grandmother gave me one of James Herriot’s books from his series that began with All Creatures Great and Small; thanks largely to that series I wanted to be a veterinarian for the better part of my childhood. (That idea was briefly supplanted by the notion of becoming an astronaut, which lasted until I was 13, when it was in turn supplanted by the desire to become a rock star, which lasted until…well, pretty much now.) But my absolute favorite childhood book, without question, was Born Free. I could never hope to adequately convey the depth of my love for that book and for its leonine heroine, Elsa. Even though tigers were my favorite animal, I dreamed, literally, of having Elsa for a friend. Born Free is such a beautiful and amazing story that it seems like it should be fiction, but it’s all the more poignant for being true. I don’t know how many times I read it, but I do know that it’s the only book I’ve ever begun re-reading immediately after finishing it. I just couldn’t stand that it was over. Even today, even now as I’m writing this, just thinking about the ending, when the now-wild Elsa brings her new cubs to meet her human “parents”, makes me choke up.

2. One genre that I loved as a kid but never read as an adult is mysteries. I remember going to the library and walking down the rows of books looking for the skull-and-crossbones logo on the side that was the marker of mysteries. (I also remember being mad that you could only take out five books at a time from the children’s section. I’m telling you, I was voracious. Why can’t I recapture even a fraction of that passion now?) I would pull them out and scan the front flap to see if the protagonist was male or female. I would read stories with boys as the main character--I read all of my dad’s Hardy Boys books--but I definitely preferred books with girls leading the action. One that I clearly remember was by Phyllis A. Whitney and was called The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost--and look, it was set in New Jersey, too, amongst the horse farms in the northwestern part of the state. Another that I’m perpetually trying, and failing, to remember the name of was set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina--one of my favorite places in the world--and featured the ghost of Virginia Dare. I’m always fascinated by anything that has to do with Virginia Dare and the Roanoke Colony in general. Oh, and speaking of the tony northwest of New Jersey…

3. I’ve sold books to several famous--or at least semi-famous--people. The first bookstore I ever worked at, in the late eighties, was Brentano’s, in Bridgewater in Somerset County, NJ. Somerset County and the adjacent counties of Hunterdon and Morris all rank among the top ten wealthiest counties in the nation--basically, a lot of very rich people live in northwest New Jersey. While I worked at Brentano’s, I sold books to John DeLorean and Malcolm Forbes. Some years later I worked at Borders, also in Bridgewater, and there I sold books to Forbes’s son Steve (this was in 1996, when he was running for President) and to the then-governor of NJ, Christie Whitman. Finally, when I worked at Barnes & Noble on Astor Place in Manhattan, I sold books to Kyle MacLachlan. One time Madonna bought some books there, too, but I wasn’t working that day.

4. I don’t really have a favorite book. I mean, there are plenty of books I’ve greatly enjoyed, but while I’m OK with saying that Born Free was my favorite book as a kid, there’s no one book I feel comfortable calling, as an adult, “My Favorite Book”. It bugs me a little bit, because I feel like it’s a datum I should have on hand to present to people when asked. Things like a favorite book, or movie, or animal, or ethnic cuisine, or quote from The Simpsons, or Scandinavian footwear, or member of FDR’s Cabinet--what, you don’t have one? What’s wrong with you?--are pieces of information that others can use to quickly get a picture of who we are. Which I suppose is a large part of why I find it difficult to name a favorite, as I know I’m likely to be judged on it, and so concerned am I with how others perceive me that the idea of even trying to choose a favorite anything produces instant intellectual paralysis. (One notable exception: if asked my favorite album of all time, I can confidently reply that it’s the Clash’s London Calling. This is because I not only love the music and the band, but have carefully considered how this pick makes me appear to others and am satisfied with the result.) There are a few books I know I’ve referred to as “my favorite” at least a couple of times: James Joyce’s Dubliners is one, but that’s a collection of short stories, and I feel like one’s favorite book is supposed to be a novel. That also leaves out a nonfiction book I’ve tried on as a favorite, Susan Brind Morrow’s The Names of Things. (I do definitely recommend it to anyone who shares my love for linguistics, travel narrative, and lyric prose.) One novel I did call my favorite for a while in my twenties is Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf; while it passed the “How does this make me look to others?” test, I eventually decided that any book I’d read in translation could not legitimately be called my favorite, because no one has truly read anything unless they’ve read it in its original language, of that I’m convinced. Which brings us to number…

5. I’ve only ever read one book in a language other than English, and I’m inordinately proud of having done so. That would be The Stranger by Albert Camus. Or, to give it its true title, L’étranger--and having read it in French, I always refer to it as L’étranger, because I feel I have a right to, and because I am just that pretentious. As far as French novels go, it’s unquestionably one of the easiest to read, as it’s brief, and Camus deliberately aped the short, “muscular” sentences of Ernest Hemingway. It’s definitely no Hugo or Proust, but I’m still proud of having read it.

6. When I’m sick, I like to read plays. I don’t just read them, either--I put them on in my head. I cast them with people that I know and imagine them fully produced onstage. It’s just now occurring to me that this might be very weird. Anyway, it’s a good distraction when you’re feeling ill. It started when I was a teen--my mom was very active in community and regional theater, and as a result we had tons of scripts and collections of plays on our bookshelves. Also, I was active in the drama program at school and most of my friends were drama kids, so casting was never a problem. Comedies were preferred; specific plays that stick in my head are some of Neil Simon’s early works (The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, The Star-Spangled Girl, et al.) and Woody Allen’s one-acts “Death” and “God” from his collection Without Feathers. I also liked absurdist plays: Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is one I remember, and I swear I still recall some of my imaginary blocking for Arthur Kopit’s “Chamber Music”. Kopit is not what you’d call a household name, but he should be just by virtue of having written a play called Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad. Also, it has nothing to do with plays, but one book I always loved reading when I was sick was called The Reader’s Digest Treasury of American Humor. It was an anthology that included writers like James Thurber, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker--classic stuff, mostly from the first half of the 20th century. Over the years it somehow disappeared from my parents’ house, which makes me sad. My favorite story in it was called “Yvonne”, and I can’t remember who wrote it, but it was freakin’ hilarious. I’m going to briefly describe it on the off chance--the very off chance--that anyone knows who the author was, because I’d like to read it again. The narrator lived in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and there was a little girl with a deep bass voice who would stand on the corner of his street and shout, “Yvonne!” endlessly. He naturally became quite curious about who Yvonne was and why the little girl was looking for her. He’d hear her yelling and would try to run down and talk to her, but she’d always be gone by the time he got there. Over the course of the story his sanity slowly ebbs as he becomes obsessed with helping the little girl find Yvonne. Of course that description doesn’t do it justice, but you’ll have to trust me, it was funny.

The Puddle Flick

Isn’t it weird how sometimes, apropos of nothing, a random and seemingly inconsequential memory just pops into your head, with surprising clarity? That happened to me the other night. I’m sure it was at least partially triggered by having watched Mad Men earlier in the evening, what with all the smoking that goes on.

In the summer of 1982 I was 17 and had just finished my junior year of high school, the year in which I began my illustrious career as a juvenile delinquent. I failed two of my classes for the year and had to go to summer school to make them up. If you’ve never had to go to summer school, let me tell you, it bites. The only good part about it was that I could drive there: I was a newly-licensed driver and had inherited from my mom a red 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, which is a really great car to have as your first set of wheels. I loved that Bug, man. I could cruise for a week on two dollars worth of gas (of course, it was regular leaded gas and cost about 49 cents a gallon, but still), and park it anywhere, although the manual steering meant that parallel parking was a test of upper-body strength. I could even push it by myself if I had to, and sometimes I did. The dashboard had exactly two buttons on it, one for the lights and one for the wipers. It had an AM-only radio and a top speed of about 50 miles per hour. My favorite thing was the little triangular window in front of the regular window, which you could aim right at your face when cruising on a hot day. Like, for instance, on your way to summer school.

Awesomeness in vehicular form.

My first class of the day was English (yes, I’d failed English), and it was pretty much filled with other delinquents. The teacher had a “this is summer school, you don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, let’s just get through this with a minimum of effort” kind of attitude, so it wasn’t too terrible. I constructed all of my vocabulary-test sentences using the names of bands or songs (I remember that one of the words was credence, which I turned into a sentence about Creedence Clearwater Revival, which for some reason impressed the teacher), and I wrote a book report on No One Here Gets Out Alive.

My second class was Analysis & Trigonometry. There were only four other students, and they were all taking it as an advanced course, to get a jump on their next year. In other words, they were there--in summer school--voluntarily. Like, on purpose. The part of me that remains an eternal adolescent still cannot wrap her head around that. So there I was, the sole delinquent in a class of math nerds who actually wanted to learn. The class was like, two and a half hours long, so the teacher would periodically give us ten-minute breaks, before which he’d always say, “We’re gonna take a break, so go outside, smoke a cigarette, whatever.” It struck me as odd, because there was no way those goody two-shoes mathies smoked. I, however, did.

I’d taken up the habit the previous summer, when I was visiting my grandparents in upstate New York along with my cousin B., who had already started smoking. After they’d turned in each night, B. and I would steal some of Nana’s cigarettes and a couple of Pop-Pop’s beers, and we’d walk up to a church at the end of their street, where we’d sit against the wall and smoke and drink, and talk about how exciting it was to be cartwheeling on the brink of independence. Not explicitly, of course, but that was the underlying theme.

I’ve always said there’s only one reason people start smoking, namely to be cool, although I’m sure that’s not really the only reason. For instance, there are places, cultures, or times when smoking is simply de rigueur, like the early-’60s advertising world of Mad Men. In my case, however, I started smoking because I desperately wanted to shed my image as a bookish nerd. I wanted to be cool. So I kept smoking when I got back home that summer, even though it’s not an easy habit to get in the swing of. Seriously, you have to really want to smoke, because it is so gnarly at first. But I really wanted to.

Coolness didn’t come from simply being a smoker, though. There’s a process involved in smoking, and every part of that process contributed to the amount of coolness conferred upon you. None of it was ever made express, of course. You just had to figure it out as you went along. Obviously, the brand of cigarettes you smoked was first on the list, but that wasn’t too difficult to suss out: pretty much everybody I knew smoked Marlboros. Marlboro Lights were also acceptable, but definitely carried fewer cool points. So I started smoking Marlboros, which was nice because my dad also smoked them, and I could steal a couple from him when I ran out. I started out buying the flip-top boxes because that’s what my dad bought (and I have to point out that a pack of cigarettes cost 85 cents at the time. Eighty-five cents! Change for your dollar! It seems crazy now that something that brings so much pleasure could cost so little), but quickly learned that soft packs were cooler. To open the pack in the coolest way, you would pull the red tab around and take off the top part of the cellophane, but leave the rest of the cellophane on so you could stick a book of matches in there. The top of the pack was foil with a band over the middle, and you’d unfold one side of the foil and then tear it off, leaving a hole big enough for maybe four cigarettes. To get one out, you’d put your index finger over most of the hole and do a quick flick of the wrist that, if performed correctly, caused a single cigarette to slide about halfway out. You’d then put the end of the cigarette in your mouth and smoothly pull the pack away.

Lighting a cigarette coolly was a bit more complex. Your choices for lighting were, in ascending order of coolness, cardboard matches, disposable lighters, wooden matches, and refillable metal lighters. There were exceptions, though—if, for instance, you were one of those people who could light a cardboard match not by plucking it from the book and using three or more fingers to hold and strike it, but by leaving it attached and folding it over so that the match head met the striking surface, then flicking it with just your thumb to light it, you were awarded substantial cool points. (I was not one of those people.)

Once the cigarette was lit--well, then things got really complicated. The different ways of holding a cigarette, putting it in your mouth, inhaling and exhaling, flicking the ashes, etc., all of which probably seem to a non-smoker fairly straightforward, are in fact so byzantine that to enumerate them and their attendant coolness points here is a greater task than I’ve set out to accomplish. Let’s move on to what’s actually relevant to this post, which is putting the cigarette out. Again, to the uninitiated it probably seems pretty simple: stub out the butt and walk away. And indeed, you could do that. But where do you stub it out? In an ashtray? Sure, if there’s one around, but if not, where? On the ground? Against a wall? On the bottom of your shoe? In your hand? I’m kidding on that last one, nobody does that in real life. But all of the other ones are viable options, and there are many others, all with varying degrees of coolness.

Do you see how overwhelming all of this can be? Most of the time, I went with the “throw it on the ground and crush it with your shoe” tactic. A classic, to be sure, and nothing to be frowned upon in those days when no one cared about the planet except Woodsy the Owl and the Crying Indian--but nothing special, either. I wanted something better. Something cooler. I wanted to execute The Flick. And I don’t mean just any flick, either. Anybody can do a basic flick: rest the butt on the pad of your thumb and hold it in place with the nail of your middle finger, then flick your finger forward and send the butt arcing through space. Easy, right? But with The Flick, there’s no arc, and that’s the key: The Flick sends your smoldering remnant of tobacco-y goodness rocketing into the Earth with the speed and truth of an arrow from the bow of a fucking Amazon, to explode in a shower of orange sparks. It is, in a word, cool.

Making it even cooler was the fact that the people I knew who regularly discarded their butts using The Flick executed the maneuver in a totally casual manner. They barely seemed to impart any energy into their Flicks, yet those tiny cylinders were launched as if they’d been Flicked by the Incredible Hulk. And they’d always start to turn away even as they were Flicking, as though they’d become so accustomed to successful Flickage that it wasn’t a big deal. “What’s that, a cigarette smashing into the pavement at 90 miles an hour and creating a mini Fourth of July display? Like I haven’t seen that a million times. Have they refilled the vending machine with Ho-Hos yet?”

A variant of The Flick was The Puddle Flick. A Puddle Flick was executed just like a regular Flick, but was even more impressive in that the Flicker had to hit a clear target, namely, a puddle or other nearby collection of water. Properly done, The Puddle Flick instantly extinguished your butt with a satisfying fssst, and carried the bonus of insulating you from the opprobrium of indignant hippies concerned by a burning stub left on the ground: “Hey man, you could totally set the grass on fire, man.” It was my burning--pun totally intended--desire to one day execute a perfect Puddle Flick. I practiced often, but could never quite get it down. I think I focused too much on imparting enough force to achieve the necessary velocity, and not enough on finger mechanics, to the detriment of the entire operation. Typically it seemed that most of the force was directed at my thumb. Either that or it was directed too far to one side of the butt, which just sent it spinning miserably to the ground a few inches from my feet.

OK, so here’s the actual memory I was talking about before this enormous digression: I was at summer school, in Analysis class, and the teacher called a break. The math nerds all stayed inside to like, do extra credit or something. I went out to cop a smoke. When I got outside, there was a dude with a boombox. I don’t know if he was listening to a tape or the radio, but I clearly remember that the song playing was “Mr. Crowley” by Ozzy Osbourne. There was also a chick sitting on the steps. They were both smoking, of course. I didn’t know either of them--something I forgot to mention back at the top is that my high school didn’t offer summer classes, so I was taking them at another school--but this chick was like, a perfect specimen of genus Newjerseyus, species burnoutus, subspecies metalheadus. She had the look that I totally coveted but could never hope to achieve: her dark hair was feathered, as was the norm, but like most burnout chicks, and in opposition to the general female populace, who styled and shellacked their ’dos to within a inch of their lives, the feathers hung lankly in her face. Her eyes were lined heavily in black, but the rest of her face was bare. She had the kind of full-lipped pout that always looked sexy when smoking. Purple feather earrings hung from her lobes. She was wearing a faded baseball jersey, white with periwinkle sleeves; soft, well-worn Levi’s with big holes in the knees; and black moccasin boots with fringe that, oh my god, I totally saw on sale at Nordstrom the other day! I can’t believe they’re back in style after all these years! Since she was sitting down I can’t be sure, but I’m willing to bet there was a bandanna, probably red, in her back pocket.

I sat on the other side of the stairs and smoked my cigarette. I probably exchanged burnout-style pleasantries with my compatriots, but I don’t actually remember if I did. What I remember is that when I was finished, I stood up and prepared to extinguish my cigarette butt. As I did so, I realized that there was a small puddle perhaps six or seven feet away from me. My mind started racing; I knew that this was a perfect opportunity to attempt a Puddle Flick. If I failed, I was subject to unspoken derision from Boombox Dude and Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be. But if I succeeded, here were two people who had never known me as that bookish nerd, and would forevermore recall me only as a totally cool person. I teed up the butt. Straining to appear as casual as possible, while secretly freaking out with every molecule in my body, I Flicked. As if loosed from the bow of Hippolyta herself, the tiny missile flew speedily and unerringly to its target. Fssst. A perfectly executed Puddle Flick. Tens all around, except from the Soviet judge, of course. So stunned was I by the sheer perfection I had achieved that I almost forgot to turn immediately and head back inside. But I did, and as I turned I caught the eye of Girl That I Very Much Wished I Could Be, and she gave me the subtlest of subtle nods, as though to say, “I, who am indeed very cool, acknowledge your similar coolness.” Looking back on it now, I think it may have been one of the finest moments of my life.

The Greatest Three Seconds of Silence in the Universe

I bought a turntable this weekend! I don't know what it says about my life, but this is easily the most exciting thing I've done in a while.

I've been meaning to buy one for a long time, and now and again I'd stop in at various secondhand electronics stores looking for a good used one, but I could never find one that wasn't outrageously expensive given its condition. Apparently the hipsters are digging vinyl now, which I guess is driving up the cost of "vintage" turntables. I finally figured that function mattered more than form, and decided to just buy a new one. You can now get turntables with USB connectors and audio-editing software for digitizing vinyl records, which I thought was a nifty idea, so I went for one of those.

Now, I haven't actually owned any vinyl in nearly 20 years. You may have heard the sad, sad tale of how my entire collection--well over 300 LPs--was stolen from my apartment when I lived in Camden, NJ in the late '80s, a psychic wound from which I'll never recover. Since vinyl was putatively moribund at the time, I switched to buying cassettes (possibly the worst medium ever concocted for transmitting sound) and eventually, with deep reluctance, CDs. (Over the years I've come to a grudging accord with CDs, but my experience of them will forever be colored by the first one I bought: 10,000 Maniacs' In My Tribe. I remember bemusedly staring at my speakers as I listened to it, trying to figure out what was wrong. It sounded airless and cold, like each band member had been hermetically sealed in plastic during recording. And that possibly the recording had been done on the space station from 2001.) But I've been looking forward to the day when I could start amassing a collection again.

I've read that some bands are now forgoing CDs altogether, and releasing their new material on vinyl along with a code that allows the buyer to download the record in digital form as well. May I say that I am kind of in love with this idea? It's absolutely the best of both worlds, and I plan to buy all my new music in that form if it's available. (May I also take a moment to delight, as others have, in the fact that it appears vinyl records will outlive CDs after all, and the sweet, sweet irony therein?) But for the time being, all I really want to do is haunt every record store in Portland and sort through the bins of used LPs.

In fact, after setting up my new turntable, I immediately made a beeline for Everyday Music, which, along with Music Millennium, is where I generally do most of my shopping. I had $20 in cash on me and I made a deal with myself not to spend more than that, but considering that the average cost of a used vinyl record seems to be about two to six dollars, I figured I could get five or six albums with that. I started flipping through the stacks, and instantly I was flooded with memories of the endless hours I'd spent doing the exact same thing as a teenager. Just the sensation in my hands as I held the upper corners of the records and flipped them forward one after another made me weirdly happy. Real records!

The first thing I came across that I wanted was the Allman Brothers Band's At Fillmore East. Ooooh, how long has it been since I've heard "Stormy Monday"? Gregg Allman can sing the blues like no other white dude, and his brother Duane was one of the few guitarists who could make a ten-minute jam seem too short. Alas, it was new and not used--and "audiophile quality" at that--and would have taken all of the money I had to spend. I was too excited about leaving with an armful of records, so I moved on.

I made it up to "H" before I reached my spending limit, and here's what I walked away with:

-The Association, Greatest Hits. I've recently become interested in baroque pop--in fact I'm listening to Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra as I write this--and someone recommended the Association as worth checking out. I know their big radio hits--"Cherish", "Never My Love", etc.--but I'm looking forward to digging a bit deeper into their catalog.

The Bangles, All Over the Place. This is one that I used to own. The tale of the Bangles is a sad but all-too-typical tale: this, their first album, was a flop, and after it flopped their record company gave them a makeover (by putting them in garish outfits that were hideous even by 1980s standards, which is really saying something), pushing Susanna Hoffs as the main focus onstage and onscreen, and "polishing" (read: crapping synthesizers all over) their sound. I hate everything the Bangles did post-makeover, but I love this record. It's a great hybrid of garage rock and jangle pop, and would be worth buying even if it only contained their dreamily sublime cover of Katrina and the Waves' "Going Down to Liverpool".

Blondie, Eat to the Beat. Another one from the old collection, and probably my favorite Blondie album. "Dreaming" is such an incredible pop song, and--speaking of dreamily sublime--"Shayla" still kills me every time I hear it. I'm so glad to have this album again.

Ellen Foley, Nightout. Foley was known, if she was known at all, as a musical foil to the likes of Meat Loaf and Ian Hunter rather than for her own work. I've never heard this record but I've always thought she had one of the most amazing voices in rock. More on that in a future post.

Heart, Dreamboat Annie. The Heart that I knew growing up was the '80s Heart, with their gross power ballads and videos that used camera tricks in a vain and sad attempt to hide Ann Wilson's weight. Classic rock radio played their earlier hits from the '70s, of course, but it was impossible to extricate that past from the then-present, and...well, long story short, I never liked Heart. Then one day, several years ago, I was at a vintage clothing store in Berkeley and I heard a beautiful song playing. I asked what it was, and turns out it was the title track to Dreamboat Annie, their 1976 debut. I've had a mental note ever since to pick it up when I got the chance. This was the record I put on when I got home, and I must say it makes a perfect accompaniment to an autumn afternoon in the Northwest.

I never realized how much I missed the ritual of putting on a vinyl record. Pulling the sleeve out of the cover, slipping the record out of the sleeve and balancing it with my thumb on the edge and fingers on the label, slipping it over the spindle....

And then, lifting the needle. Hearing it drop with that deeply satisfying ka-thunk, followed by the greatest three seconds of silence in the universe. The silence in which I wait, electric with anticipation, for my soul to be filled with real music once again.

An Open Letter To The Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day

Dear Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day,

I don’t remember when it was that I first took notice of you, but I know that it was your style of dress that caught my eye. With your vintage/thrift store dresses, tights, and ballerina flats, you remind me of this girl I had a crush on when I worked at Brentano’s in the Bridgewater Commons Mall, some twenty years ago. Urgh, what was her name? It escapes me now. She worked a couple of doors down at the store that sold fancy stationery. Actually, you know what, when your hair was long and all one length, you reminded me a lot of early-’80s Natalie Merchant, and let me tell you, that’s a major compliment. I thought she was the coolest chick in the world back then.

Then you got your hair cut, shoulder-length and layered, with side-swept bangs. At first I was all, “Wha-huh?”, but then I saw how it enhanced your Eastern European features. Seriously, you have the most amazing face. You look like a lost member of the Romanovs--like you should always be sepia-toned and wearing a high lace collar. I wonder what your ethnic ancestry really is.

But mostly what I wonder about you, Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day, is why you are always late for the train. We take the same train every day, and every day it arrives at our stop at the same time. Yet every day you come speed-walking along the platform, heading for the ticket machine, while the train is already bearing down on the station. I have to admit I get all angsty on your behalf, especially knowing how peevish those machines can be. Sometimes as I step onto the train I catch a glimpse of you at the other end, bending over to collect your ticket from the tray, or even still feverishly pushing buttons, and I have to turn away, because I can’t stand the thought of that robotic voice intoning, with its grave finality, “The doors…are closing,” and you furrowing your side-swept-bang-covered brow in frustration as you stand there, freshly minted ticket in hand, while the train pulls away and its work-bound riders look dully on. This morning you were even later than usual, and actually had to run the last half-block to beat the doors. My breakfast of shredded wheat, banana, and soymilk was burbling around in my stomach as I nervously but silently cheered you on, and I was thrilled that you made it--but then I started to worry that because you hadn’t bought a ticket, you’d get a citation from a fare inspector. Fortunately (?), there’s almost never a fare inspector on our train. Thank heaven for TriMet’s poor planning, right? By the way, I liked your purple umbrella, and I made a little joke to myself, asking where your fifty-cent hat was.

But again, I’m wondering: why don’t you leave your house just a minute or two earlier? Look, I’m forever running late myself, so it’s not like I’m not sympathetic, but I know exactly how long it takes for me to walk at a comfortable pace from my house to the station, and no matter what, I make sure I’m out the door in time to arrive before the train does. Also, why do you continue to buy single tickets from the machine? Those machines were built by the minions of Mephistopheles. Since it appears that you work downtown, why not stop in at Pioneer Square or PSU and pick up a ten-pack, or better yet, a monthly pass? Seriously, I’m not saying this just because I work at a place that sells passes. It’s not like I get a commission or anything. But trust me, you will love having that pass in your wallet and knowing that you can hop on a train, bus, or streetcar anytime it strikes your fancy, without having to worry about buying a ticket. And this month they are a lovely pumpkin orange.

I know I work in alternative transportation, Cute Eastern-European-Looking Girl Who Rides The MAX With Me Every Day, but I am not proselytizing. I am thinking only of you.

Love,
Jenny

The Unappreciated Actor Files #1: Corinne Bohrer

Sometimes an actor who is just starting out in his or her career will, for one reason or another, make a big impression on me. Sometimes they go on to great things; sometimes they don't. But even if--maybe especially if?--their careers end up describing a shallower trajectory, I always retain an interest in them, noting whenever they show up in a movie or TV show and wondering why the Fates awarded them their particular destiny.

I first noticed Corinne Bohrer when she co-starred on the 1984-85 sitcom E/R. If you've heard of the show, chances are it's because you read an article about George Clooney, noting the odd coincidence that he starred in the sitcom E/R years before hitting the big time on the drama ER. E/R ran for just one season, but I seem to recall it was a fairly decent show. (It doesn't appear to be online anywhere, so I can't really be sure, and about the only specific things I remember are 1) Lou Rawls sang the theme song, and 2) the obligatory catchphrase was spoken by the intake nurse, who, when people got too close to her desk, would yell at them to "Stay back of the white line!"). Certainly the show had a strong cast; the lead roles were played by Elliott Gould and Mary McDonnell, and Jason Alexander was a member of the supporting ensemble along with Clooney.

But it was Bohrer, playing a pediatric nurse with a thing for Gould, who caught my fancy, with her big sunny smile and goofy charm. I thought she was adorable, and she became the main reason I tuned in to the show each week. When it was canceled, I thought for sure that goofy charm and her considerable screen presence would lead to her snagging a major role in another show.

Sure enough, she turned up a few years later as the star of a sitcom called Free Spirit. If you've heard of that show, chances are it's because you're a fan of Alyson Hannigan and you know that it was her first regular TV job. Hannigan played the middle child of a Saget-esque widower dad (seriously, check out the clip below--dude is totally Saget Lite) who hires Bohrer to look after his brood. Unbeknownst to him, she's a witch! But you know, the friendly, kooky kind. Throw in a hunky older brother and a precocious, bemulleted younger one, and you've got yourself the makings of a TV classic, right? Alas, Free Spirit could not even be called "fairly decent". It was dire, in that particularly '80s way. Mix together every sad, soul-killing sitcom cliché you can think of, throw in an extra handful of hideous hairdos and a retina-scorching fluorescent color scheme, and you've pretty much got the gist of it. Even the combined charm of Bohrer and Hannigan couldn't elevate it, and it was canceled midway through its first season.

There's no DVD set and there probably never will be, which actually bums me a little bit. I'd kind of like to revisit the show and see how it compares with the likes of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched, as all three series center on magical women, their relationships with non-magical men, and the difficulties that arise as the women attempt to suppress their powers and negotiate life in the "straight", patriarchal world. From a feminist perspective, there's clearly a lot of rich ground to be tilled there. But anyway, that's another post. For now, let's take a look at a clip from the Halloween episode of Free Spirit. This is actually the second act, which I'm showing you because it also includes an appearance by erstwhile child actor and current Rilo Kiley frontwoman and critics' darling Jenny Lewis. (By the way, Jenny: nice job having the same bangs for 20 years.) I thought about explaining the set-up of the episode, but if you've ever watched a sitcom, I think you'll figure it out.



My, Corinne was certainly rocking those tails, was she not? *Ahem* Well, clearly Free Spirit was not the big break it might have been for her, and since then her career has been a string of guest spots, failed pilots, and commercials. In fact, by my estimate she currently appears in approximately 75% of all commercials on the air. There's nothing wrong with that, of course--she continues to make a living in her chosen profession, which is more than most of us can say. But every time she's onscreen, I can't help seeing the wasted potential. E/R demonstrated her comedic skills, and recurring roles as the mother of a terminally ill boy on Joan of Arcadia and as Veronica's alcoholic, absentee mom on Veronica Mars showed she could be equally memorable in dramatic parts. I'll continue to take notice whenever she appears on my TV screen--and I'll continue hoping some producer or casting director will finally give her a role that's worthy of her.

The Cult of Personal-ity, Movie Edition

When I was growing up in the swamps of Jersey, WABC-TV in New York, a.k.a. Channel 7, provided a huge chunk of my movie education. In the days when TV news consisted of a half hour at dinnertime and a half hour at 11, and the rest of the time we had no fucking idea what was going on, Channel 7 used to have something called the 4:30 Movie. In between The Edge of Night (one of the few 30-minute soap operas) at four and the news at six each weekday, Channel 7 served up a movie, edited to fit into a 90-minute time slot along with plenty of commercials. Typically each week had a theme, like Godzilla week, Elvis week, Beach Party week, or--my personal fave--Planet of the Apes week. For some reason I could not get enough of those damn dirty apes. Anyway, for latchkey kids like my sister and me, a glass of Hawaiian Punch and the 4:30 Movie meant afterschool heaven. (If you remember it as well and are looking for a blast of nostalgia, or if you’re interested in learning more, there’s a site dedicated to it here.) The theme song to the 4:30 Movie was particularly awesome. Check it out…

…and tell me that doesn’t get you TOTALLY FUCKING JAZZED to see a movie.

As I entered my teen years, I became less about movie-watching in the afternoons and more about movie-watching in the wee hours of the morning, particularly on weekends. Fortunately, Channel 7 also had the Late Movie.

The Late Movie seemed to have a fairly small library of films, since the same ones would show up time and again. There were a few that I developed a particular affection for and would watch every time they were on; eventually the rhythm and flow of their scenes became as familiar to me as the songs on a favorite album. I’ve come to think of them as my personal cult movies.

Note that I’m not talking about Cult Movies with a capital C-M, which is to say, movies that are well-known and widely regarded as such. There are certainly a number of films considered capital-C Cult that would appear on my list of favorite movies, like Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Warriors, Dazed and Confused, and Office Space, to give just a few disparate examples. But what makes personal cult movies personal is that while they’re movies that I love, and that I’ve seen so often they have permeated my being such that I still remember and think about them even though I might not have seen them for decades, they’re pretty much wholly unknown to your garden-variety movie-watcher. In other words, while I know that there are others out there who love these films too, I am, among the general populace, and for the intents and purposes of this post, a cult of one.

Whew. Okay, have I explained it to death yet? Anyway, this list was going to be a traditional Top Five, but I’m throwing in a bonus movie, because while I was conflicted about including it, I think everyone deserves to know about it. So here we go:

Top Five Six Personal Cult Movies

#6) Mazes and Monsters. Or, to give it its full title, Rona Jaffe’s Mazes and Monsters. Like we’re supposed to go, “Oh, Rona JAFFE’S Mazes and Monsters. I thought maybe it was Jane Austen’s Mazes and Monsters.” This is the one I debated about including, for two reasons: one, it was a made-for-TV movie. But then I realized that there’s another TV movie on the list that I have no intention of leaving off, so that can’t be a disqualifier. Two, it’s the only movie here that I love ironically, and if there’s one thing I don’t want this blog to be, it’s a dank pile of irony-sodden hipsterism. There’s more than enough of that on the internets as it is. The fact is, though, I do love this oh-so-’80s movie (1982, to be exact), from its hysterical premise--role-playing games are an express highway to psychosis for weak-minded youth!--which, believe it or not, was a serious discussion topic back in the day, to the presciently over-the-top lead performance of Tom Hanks, fresh from Bosom Buddies and essaying his first dramatic role. I swear, check out this scene: you can draw a direct line from this to Philadelphia.

Co-starring with Hanks was the apparently-abducted-by-aliens-in-the-mid-’80s Chris Makepeace, star of Meatballs and My Bodyguard, and also known as the poor man’s Robby Benson. Seriously, whatever happened to that dude? Anyway, what makes M & M such a treat is its deadly earnestness in dealing with a threat that is so clearly ridiculous. I can’t resist giving you another clip--it’s only 30 seconds and it neatly sums up the tenor and tone of the movie.

There's a handful of other clips on YouTube, all of which are highly entertaining, but the entire movie is impossible to come by. I am assuming that Tom Hanks has done his utmost to track down and destroy any copies that might exist.

#5) Almost Summer. When Bruno Kirby died a couple of years ago, his eulogists remembered him for a number of roles: as Billy Crystal’s sidekick in When Harry Met Sally… and City Slickers, as the Rat-Pack-loving limo driver in This Is Spinal Tap, as the young Clemenza in The Godfather Part II. When I heard he had passed, the first thing I thought of was this flick. It was released in 1978, and to give you an idea of the kind of star power that illuminated Hollywood in those days, its main draw was Didi Conn, just off her role as Frenchie in that year’s blockbuster, Grease (which I saw four times in the theater, a record that stands to this day). Kirby plays a high-school politico who, when his hot and brainy ex-girlfriend runs for student body president, decides to take a nebbishy outcast and transform him into a powerhouse opposition candidate. That sounds kind of serious, but it takes place in Southern California, so there’s also bikinis and whatnot. What I like about it is that while it’s essentially a teen comedy, it has some interesting things to say about political maneuvering and how candidacies are constructed. As such, it mines some of the same territory as (the far superior) Election, but it lacks the satirical and farcical elements of that film, and so offers a more straightforward take on the subject. Plus, there’s an awesome domino-toppling scene.

This would be a great flick to watch during the current election season, but it is, of course, unavailable. Well, there’s a guy on YouTube offering a free download if you subscribe to his channel, but since I'm both paranoid and a firm believer in the maxim of “You don’t get something for nothing”, I’m a little concerned that that nothing might turn out to be something--like malware, for instance. Anyway, there is this one clip, but be forewarned that the first four and a half minutes is the opening credits, in which nothing happens.

#4) The Last of Sheila. This one’s actually on DVD! Made in 1973, it boasts a cast of all-stars of the era, including James Coburn, Richard Benjamin, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, and James Mason. Written by the rather odd pairing of Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, it’s a fiendishly intricate mystery tale set against gorgeous French Riviera locales. Rich guy Coburn’s girlfriend (the Sheila of the title) is killed by a hit-and-run driver after leaving a party; one year later, he invites six friends who were there onto his yacht for a Mediterranean vacation. Turns out he knows that one of them was the driver who struck Sheila, and he’s created a sadistic game that will force the killer into the open. There are twists and turns galore, and the whole thing is smartly written, well-acted, and highly entertaining. It’s especially fun to watch multiple times, as you begin to notice the many clues, both obvious and subtle, strewn throughout the film. I highly recommend renting this for a rainy Sunday afternoon. There don’t seem to be any complete scenes on YouTube, but someone has put together a six-minute “trailer” that gives you the flavor of the film:

#3) A Little Romance. Sorry to get all girly on you guys, but...well, pardon me for a moment while I squee: *Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!*

OK, I feel better now. Anyway, this George Roy Hill-directed confection from 1979 is one of the most beguilingly romantic movies of all time, no less so for concerning the first innocent romance of two thirteen-year-olds. Diane Lane (making her first appearance on-screen, as well as her first-but-not-last appearance on this list) is an American schoolgirl in Paris, with a neglectful actress mom, a love of books, and an off-the-charts IQ. She meets her intellectual equal in French boy Thelonious Bernard, who uses his gifts to handicap racehorses, and they fall in love. They meet up with a never-hammier Laurence Olivier as an elegant old gentilhomme (or so ’twould appear) who fills their heads with tales of romance, including the Venetian legend that a kiss in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset will seal their love for eternity. When Lane learns she’s being shipped back to the US, the trio sets out to fulfill the legend before the young lovers are separated.

I can’t even put into words how much I love this film, but I can tell you it was the first movie I ever bought for my personal library. It can be seen in its entirety on YouTube, but trust me, don’t watch it that way--with its spectacular French and Italian locations, it needs to be seen on a bigger screen than your computer monitor. It’s out on DVD and available through Netflix, and is more than worth a rental if you count yourself a lover of romance.

Oh, before I give you the trailer, I have to make note of the performance of Ashby Semple as Lane’s best friend. Apparently this is the only acting job she ever had, and man does she knock it out of the park, in one of the most hilariously genuine portraits of teen awkwardness ever drawn on film.

#2) Cotton Candy. This TV movie from 1978 (apparently a good year for personal cult movies) was the…um, illustrious Ron Howard’s directorial debut. It stars Charles Martin Smith (a truly underrated actor, if you ask me) as a high school loser who forms a band (called Cotton Candy) with a bunch of other outcasts--a nerdy keyboardist, a surfer-dude guitarist, a Chicano bass player, and a *gasp* girl drummer--in order to take on the local blow-dried, tight-panted, satin-jacketed rock stars at the Battle of the Bands. It also stars Ron’s brother Clint, who makes everything he appears in better, as Smith’s best friend and the band’s manager.

Now, that this movie is pure cheese from start to finish is inarguable. However, keep in mind that there are many types of cheese, and this is no cellophane-wrapped, neon-orange “processed cheese food”. No, not at all. This is like a top-of-the-line, well-aged, perfectly balanced, creamy French brie. It is the king of cheesy movies, and all other cheesy movies must bow to it. Cotton Candy may be an awful band, but they’re awful in the same way that Styx or REO Speedwagon is awful, which is to say that they’re not inept, or abrasive, or boring--they just write tepid arena-rock songs (minus the arena) that make you cringe when you hear them, or when, inevitably, you find yourself singing them days later. (I didn’t say they weren’t catchy. And I must admit, the last song they play in the movie, which I think is called “Born Rich”, is actually pretty rockin’.) On the other hand, their nemesis band, Rapid Fire, is just plain awful. But they’ve got the looks, whereas Cotton Candy, not so much.

It’s true that I will like almost any movie that concerns musicians, particularly if it documents processes like forming a band, writing songs, recording, etc. (except Once--man was that an overrated flick). It’s equally true that I’m especially fond of movies from the 1970s, so Cotton Candy already has two points in its favor. But there’s something special about this movie that’s hard to pin down. It might be that it’s just so genuine, proudly wearing its cheesy soft-rock heart on its polyester sleeve. It might be that the actors never take the project less than seriously--Charles Martin Smith gives an almost painfully real performance as the longtime loser who’s finally found something that he loves and is good at, and Clint Howard will kill you worse than corbomite with how hard he's selling it. Or it might be that this is a movie about something that holds deep meaning for me--the redemptive and transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll music. Whatever the reason, despite--and at least partially because of--its cheesiness, Cotton Candy is a movie that I love with all my heart. I’ve got a tattered copy of it on VHS that I finally transferred to DVD, and I still watch it at least once a year, preferably in the wee hours of a Saturday night/Sunday morning, as of old. It’s not available commercially, but you can watch the whole thing on YouTube--not my preferred method of movie-watching, as I mentioned, but if you can stand it, it’s totally worth it. In the meantime, here’s Casey Kasem with a 30-second rundown:

#1) Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains. The movie that inspired this list, it was not a Channel 7 Late Movie selection. Rather, it appeared on Night Flight, a mishmash of music videos, weird shorts, concert films, and the like that ran late at night on the USA Network on Fridays and Saturdays in the 1980s. The way it worked, at least as I remember, was that a four-hour block would be shown twice on Friday, and then the same block would be shown twice on Saturday. This meant that when they showed L&G,tFS--which they did every few months--it would be shown four times in one weekend, and I would watch it all four times. Simply put, this movie changed my life. I went into it a metalhead burnout who thought you had to be touched by God--or perhaps Satan--to play rock music, and came out the other side a radicalized punk who understood that what you said--or even just the fact that you said it at all--was more important than how well you said it. I went into it a hopeless daydreamer and came out determined to make those dreams happen. I went into it with nothing and came out with everything.

If that all sounds a little hyperbolic...well, I was a teenager, so it came naturally. The plot of the film also concerns teenagers, specifically three young women--Corinne Burns (Diane Lane in her second film, following A Little Romance); her cousin Jessica (Laura Dern, also appearing in just her second credited role); and her sister Tracy (Marin Kanter, who sadly seems to have disappeared after this movie)--living dingy lives in a dingy Pennsylvania coal-mining town circa 1980. Trying to stave off the dinginess, they form a punk band called the Stains (and give themselves awesome punk names that sadly are never used after the opening scene: Third-Degree Burns, Dizzy Heights, and Dee Pleted, respectively). When UK punks the Looters come to town as the opening act for washed-up rockers the Metal Corpses, Corinne talks the road manager into putting the Stains on the tour, despite the fact that they’ve only had three rehearsals. The band’s subsequent rise and fall redefine the term “meteoric”.

I had never seen a movie like Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains before--I had never even heard punk rock before--and I was totally electrified. There have been a few moments in my life, mostly music-related, where I swear I have actually felt my DNA being rewritten. The first time I saw the scene in which Corinne watches the Looters play was one of those moments. Even now it makes every fucking hair on my body stand on end. Watch this brilliantly shot and edited sequence, and watch the emotions that play across Lane’s face:

In case you weren’t sure who the band members were, that’s Paul Cook and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols on drums and guitar, respectively, Paul Simonon of the Clash on bass, and an almost unrecognizably slim Ray Winstone as Billy, the singer. Also featuring reggae artist Barry Ford as the tour manager, Lawnboy, L&G, tFS did not lack for musical credibility.

The film was never given a theatrical release, nor was it released on video. In the decades after its appearances on Night Flight, the only way to see it was on pirated VHS, or at one of its exceedingly rare festival runs. I never managed to catch it, and so, over the years, the memory of it grew great in my mind. I started to wonder whether, if I was someday able to see it again, it would live up to that memory. Would it be as good as I thought it was back then? When I read a few months ago that the film was finally, finally going to be released on DVD, I immediately pre-ordered a copy from Amazon. And seriously, I never get excited enough about stuff to pre-order it, so you know this was a big deal. It was released last week, arrived on my doorstep a few days later, and I watched it late on Saturday night, just like the old days. Was it as good as I remembered? Well, I have to say that it was not.

It was better. While the young punk inside of me still thrills to the music, the story, and the grubby punk aesthetic, the seasoned movie-watcher I’ve now become realizes that this is just a great fucking movie, on so many levels. Acting-wise, Winstone displays a swaggering confidence in what I understand was his first leading role, and Christine Lahti makes the most of her limited screen time with a gritty performance as Corinne’s white-trash aunt. Dern and especially Kanter ground their characters in teenage realism, David Clennon has a memorable turn as the Looters’ agent, and Fee Waybill of the Tubes is nothing short of awesome as the lead singer of the Metal Corpses. (On this viewing I also noticed for the first time a couple of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances by Elizabeth [E.G.] Daily and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner, hilariously mustachioed.) But it’s Lane’s movie, and she is absolutely riveting in a role that is diametrically opposed to her character in A Little Romance. If you’re a young actor, watch those two movies back to back and consider it a master class.

Equally impressive, though, is the screenplay by Nancy Dowd, which is littered with killer dialogue and insightful moments. It’s remarkable to realize that L&G, tFS precedes riot grrrl and subsequent movements by a decade, since it so clearly prefigures riot grrrl’s raw sound, confrontational politics, and deliberately contradictory aesthetic (see kinderwhore). Don’t watch expecting a screed or manifesto, though; Dowd’s script is much more sophisticated than that. While it lobs satirical grenades at the media (nothing new there, but I swear, it’s almost like a satire of media satires), music industry greed (see previous parenthetical thought), and bloated ’70s rockers (the scenes with Fee Waybill skewer rock-star stereotypes just as effectively as This Is Spinal Tap in like, one-eighth the time), the screenplay takes equal aim at the Looters, with their presumed genuine radicalism, and at Corinne and the Stains themselves. I don’t want to throw a bunch of quotes at you, but consider this exchange between Corinne and Billy after the Stains have leap-frogged the Looters to take over the headlining spot on the tour, and the multiple levels the script is working on:

CORINNE

You’re sooooo jealous. I’m everything you always wanted to be.

BILLY

A cunt?

CORINNE

Exactly.

The infamously jarring tacked-on ending, filmed when the actors were obviously older, still jars, but it’s one of the few missteps in this nearly flawless film. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains is obviously not for every taste, but now that it’s finally received a long-overdue video release, I feel certain that its cult is destined to grow. If you’re a fan of good acting, satire, swell trash, punk rock music, or all of the above, see it.

The Awesome List: A Top Five

Here is a list of the Top Five Cultural Artifacts I Currently Think Are Awesome. Rather than listing them numerically, I'll be choosing one winner in each of five categories.

TV Show: Mad Men.
Are you watching? If you're not, then stop. Stop not watching right now! With Battlestar Galactica on hiatus, MM is the best-written show on television. The casual misogyny and racism can be off-putting at first, but...well, a quote from Chandler Bing fits here: "OK, but you have to push past that, because it's about to get sooooo good." Seriously, we all know that in the early 1960s it was a white man's world, and MM wants nothing so much as to immerse you in that world, to envelop you in a gin-soaked haze of Lucky Strike smoke and Brylcreem fumes. And as I've watched, I've realized that the struggle of the female characters--strong, intelligent, ambitious women who today would be CEOs and Senators instead of secretaries and trophy wives--to carve a place for themselves in that world is, for me, the most engaging aspect of the show. Mad Men's backdrop is fascinating and its characters are richly rendered. The acting is top-notch, and the production design and art direction are nothing short of sublime. I actually look forward to Sunday nights now.

Music: Duffy.
I'm sort of putting myself out there with this one, because lately Aimee Duffy's songs have started to turn up in the kind of places--cosmetics commercials, chick flick soundtracks--that could lead to her becoming the next KT Tunstall or Natasha Bedingfield, i.e. a ubiquitous, vaguely "girl power" (yech)-identified pop singer whom I want nothing to do with by virtue of her ubiquity and girl-poweriness. But I'll have you know that I jumped on the Duffy bandwagon early, essentially the moment I heard her brutally catchy single "Mercy". After listening to "Mercy" at least two or three times a day, every day, for a week, I plunked down my fifteen bucks for Rockferry, her debut album. (At least, it's her debut album as Duffy. Apparently she made a record before under her full name, but I don't know anything about it, nor do I want to. I suspect it might be on the order of Alanis Morissette's pre-Jagged Little Pill work.) She's been compared to Joss Stone and especially Amy Winehouse (and all three have been compared to Dusty Springfield simply because they're British lady soul singers), but of that trio I think Duffy's the standout. I like Stone okay (really dug her re-working of the White Stripes' "Fell In Love With A Girl"), but something about her seems false, and I really don't care for Winehouse--her vocal affectations grate and her songs strike me as cynical pastiches. On the other hand, Duffy's tunes sound like lost classics: while I was initially disappointed that nothing else on the record has the uptempo intensity of "Mercy", I was quickly won over by soaring, string-drenched soul ballads like "Warwick Avenue" and "Stepping Stone". While I was listening to my mp3 player on random today (something I only recently started doing), the latter song came on after the Shirelles doing the glorious Goffin-King number "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?", and it didn't totally pale in comparison. That's pretty high praise from me.

Foodstuff: Julie's Organic Chocolate Ice Cream Bar Dipped in Dark Chocolate.
One of the things I miss most about smoking pot is eating while stoned. Even if you've never smoked marijuana yourself, you probably know that one of its effects is a perceived intensification of sensations, including taste. Put another way, pot makes food taste better. Since it also increases focus, when you're stoned and you eat something, you are all about eating that thing. I guess it's fortunate that I don't smoke anymore, since I'm sure my metabolism could no longer handle digesting a whole pint of Cherry Garcia or an entire loaf of toasted raisin bread, both of which I have eaten while baked. Anyway, I picked up these ice cream bars one day when I was upset about something and felt like I deserved a treat (they're kind of spendy), and they are insanely good. They are so good that, even though I have not smoked pot in well over a decade, I feel like I'm stoned when I eat them because the chocolate flavor is so intense. Unfortunately for you non-Oregonians, Julie's is a local company and they pride themselves on making ice cream in "small batches", so you probably can't find it anywhere else.

Website: Stuff White People Like.
Instructions:
1) Read.
2) Laugh hysterically.
3) Start to notice how many things actually apply to you.
4) Stop laughing and become concerned that you are too white.
5) Decide you don't care and go back to laughing hysterically.

Advertisement: Those commercials for Progressive starring "Flo".
At first I, like any human with a functioning cerebrum, found these ads annoying. But the more I saw them, the more they grew on me. (Ah, the insidiousness of advertising. Don Draper would be proud.) The fact is, it's all about Flo. There's just something ineffably sexy about the way she says "tricked-out name tag." And underneath all that clown paint, she's pretty cute.

Il était avec son chien.

Sixty-eight years ago on this date, a dog fell in a hole. In France. The dog's name was Robot.

You guys know that I'm a cat person, but it's a good thing Robot's master wasn't, since a cat would likely have noticed the hole and gone around it. But Robot, probably galumphing along after a rabbit or something, tongue trailing like Isadora Duncan's scarf, did not notice the hole. He plunged straight down and couldn't get out again.

To rescue the pup, Robot's master and his three friends clambered down into the hole, which turned out to be a cave, and a rather large one at that. It also turned out that les quatre garçons were not the first humans to have visited the cave. Some seventeen millennia prior, a number of highly skilled Cro-Magnon artists had covered its walls and ceiling with thousands of paintings of animals, for reasons that are still being debated.

The reasons, while they'd be nice to know, aren't important ultimately. What's important is that the Lascaux cave paintings are among the first expressions of the human spirit through the medium of art. They're also breathtakingly beautiful.

Horsie!

I've been fascinated by cave paintings ever since I took a two-semester survey of art history during my first year of college. (That course, by the way, remains one of my favorite educational investments. I love the fact that I can identify a Modigliani on sight, or point out the differences between Gothic and Romanesque architecture, or discuss the significance of the archaic smile. I love even more the fact that those things have actually come up in recent conversations.) When C.* and I went to France in 1996, one of the things I most wanted to do was see some actual cave paintings. Lascaux itself has long been closed to the general public, after it was discovered that the build-up of carbon monoxide from the exhalations of thousands of visitors was causing the paintings to fade. (And apparently there's a now a serious threat from fungi--see here. I haven't had time to peruse that site yet, but I definitely plan to. If there's anything we can do, we need to do it.) A replica cave was built down the road from the actual site, and it's supposed to be quite popular, but...if it ain't the real thing, I'm just not interested.

Anyway, I learned of another site near Les Eyzies (and if you're not in a random-link-following mood, the Les Eyzies tourist office would like you to know that it "proposes you to discover its local gastronomy" and "its lodgings of quality in hotels, campings and lodgings") that is not nearly as spectacular as Lascaux, but does offer the chance to view some actual Paleolithic paintings and carvings.

Well, to make a long story short, manipulating the French rail system to get where we wanted to go and do what we wanted to do in the time we had allotted proved too daunting a task. We ended up in a town about 10 km away from Les Eyzies called Sarlat. It has a gorgeous medieval center and great food (Southwest France being the truffle capital of the world, everything had shaved truffles on it--yum), and we stayed in the home of une très gentille dame who spoke no English, which meant I actually got to use my French.

The market square in Sarlat. Seriously.

On our one full day there, we decided to head out to the Dordogne River, some 5 km south, where we'd heard we could rent a canoe. We'd planned to just walk there, but once we got out on the road we realized how extraordinarily hot it was, and decided to hitch a ride instead. I remember almost nothing about the guy who picked us up or his car, because he proceeded to drive at such breakneck speeds that I was unable to unglue my eyes from the road that I was certain we were all about to be splattered upon. I do remember asking, in a vague attempt to engage him in conversation and perhaps get him to slow down, "Alors, est-ce qu'il fait toujours aussi chaud qu'il fait aujourd'hui?" or, roughly, "So, is it always this fucking hot?" His reply, in toto: "Non." Fortunately it was a short ride.

We got to the river in one piece, and got our canoe. There were several other parties who set out at the same time, but as everyone set their own pace we all drifted further from one another, and soon C. and I had the river to ourselves. The water was placid, the scenery was beautiful, the sky was cloudless, and the sun was...hot. I mentioned before that it was really hot, right? Well, now that it was midday and we were out on the water with no shade of any kind, it was really really hot. We started to talk about going for a dip in the river. But as the town where we'd started out fell behind, sheer cliffs began to rise on either side of us, and there was no longer any riverbank where we might beach our canoe. Also, we hadn't had the foresight to bring our bathing suits.

Not us, nor the actual spot. But you get the idea.

Then we rounded a bend, and saw a tiny half-moon of sand and gravel at the base of the cliffs on our right. Up ahead, as behind us, the river curved out of sight. We'd found our spot. We beached the boat, and quickly stripped off our clothes and plunged in. Can you believe that, until that point, I'd never been skinny-dipping before? And the sun was so hot, and that water was soooo deliciously cold, that even though I must've swum in scores of different rivers in my life, not to mention various other bodies of water, I can still remember how that particular water felt against my skin.

At first we were laughing and splashing around, as you do when you're naked in a river. But soon, for reasons neither of us did or could articulate, we fell silent. In fact, it seemed as if the whole world fell silent, except for the soft murmur of the river.

I looked up at the cliffs surrounding us and noticed for the first time that they were pockmarked with small caves. Was it possible, I wondered, that those caves had been used by the Paleolithic humans who'd flourished here so many thousands of years ago? Would they even have been able to reach them? How different was the landscape then, with Europe still emerging from an ice age? It didn't really matter. But for our canoe and our clothes, discarded behind us on the tiny beach, there was nothing of the modern world about. And we, naked under the summer sun, were no different than those who might have laughed and splashed there millennia before. I began to feel a presence in that gorge, as though the benevolent spirits of the long-vanished Magdalenians who had called this land home were looking down upon us from those ancient cliffs. Some of them could conceivably have been my ancestors, but even if they weren't they were my human sisters and brothers, connected to me across time by the same desires and curiosities we all experience. I feel like we generally imagine Paleolithic life to have been harsh, but the abstract of that Britannica article I just linked to indicates that the Magadalenians "lived a semisettled life surrounded by abundant food" and had leisure time in which to create their art, so the calm benevolence of their spirits doesn't seem strange.

It was an incredibly powerful and very real sensation, and I knew that we were both feeling it. We didn't speak for several minutes. We were spellbound.

Finally, the sound of voices from around the bend broke the spell. A canoe came into sight, its occupants chattering loudly. We crouched down to hide our bodies and, after the boat had passed, realized we'd better be getting on so we didn't arrive at the end of the course late and miss our ride back to the starting point.

I'd still like to get back and see the cave paintings at some point. But if I had to miss them, it was worth it for the experience I had on the river that day.


*From time to time there are people I need to talk about on this blog, but either I don't want to mention their names, or I worry that they might not want me to mention their names. So I've decided to do the coy initial thing.