First coherent thought that ran through my head after finally watching Star Wars II: Attack Of The Clones: “Holy Steaming Crap, am I glad THAT’s over!” First emotion I felt: Relief that I would never again be tempted to rent, or see in a theater, any more of the Star Wars movies. Whatever enthusiasm I had for this movie franchise was killed deader than the acting ability of the petulant punk who took over the part of Anakin Skywalker.
Well, that’s unfair; I’ve never seen him in anything else. And Ewan McGregor has been entertaining in other movies, but he was flat and boring here, too; same goes for Natalie Portman. I think the biggest crime ever perpetrated by George Lucas was to take an actor as talented and pretty as Natalie Portman and make her boring. Like the previous movie, Portman went through dozens of costume changes, but in stark contrast she paraded around this time in fantasy lingerie and clingy gowns. Nice try, Lucas, but still boring.
Unlike the previous movie, this one didn’t even give me cause to hold out hope for something interesting. The previous movie brought stunning visuals to the screen, even if the story was flat and awful. Clones was just flat and awful, as well as being unimaginative. The chase scenes through the lanes of flying cars in the crowded city? It looked just like Bruce Willis’s chase scene in The Fifth Element, and Bruce was a lot better at this kind of thing. Dodging crushing hammers and chopping blades in the android factory? All I could think of was Sigorney Weaver in Galaxy Quest facing a run through the choppy-chrushy things and shouting, “Well, Screw That!” Even the return to Tatooine, where Star Wars began twenty-six years ago, was just a reminder that it had all been done before, and much better.
Sean’s getting over his grump-on. He tried a daredevil stunt on his bike while he was riding to the bank yesterday - saw a ditch he thought he could jump over, just like all those trick bike riders, only he’s got a ninety-dollar Huffy, not a trick bike, he’s never ridden a trick bike, and there’s an actual roadside museum in Spot Weld, Kansas, filled with the bicycles he’s wrecked. He’s not what you’d call the world’s most successful cyclist.
So he headed straight for this ditch, thinking, I suppose, the happy thought that would vault him high into the air, which could have worked, except that Mother Earth was at that very moment thinking about the gravitational constant of the universe. Instead of grabbing any kind of air at all, Sean's front wheel immediately headed for the center of the planet, and so did Sean, head-first. Physics: There’s just no getting around it.
Continuing in the happy thought mode, Sean tried to dust himself off and continue on his bike ride, until he found that his helmet was demolished, his right arm was covered with road rash, and one of his big toes had been ground to hamburger, so he wisely dragged himself to the emergency room. The doctors easily fixed up his toe, but when he found that he couldn’t move his arm very well, one of the doctors asked him a series of diagnostic questions to determine if the arm was broken, one of which was, “Can you do a push-up?” Sean couldn’t because his arm was, in fact, broken.
I’ll add parenthetically that the doctor in question is an avid skier, and that I often see him on trips with the local ski club. Skiing and broken bones are a given, and I’ve spent the past few days imagining the scenario: I see this guy face-down in the snow, moaning for help, I pop out of my skis to render first aid. Wrenching his arm behind his back, I ask, “Does this arm feel broken?” It’ll be like a scene from Wrestlemania.
Sean didn’t have a complete break, he had a compression fracture, which was explained to me this way: “It’s like when the bone gets squished together.” He’s not wearing a cast, but his arm is in a sling. He could have played that for sympathy and gotten all kinds of mothers and other girls to coo over him, but instead he decided to be grumpy and insist that it didn’t hurt. Some day he’ll figure it out.
Sean threw a party for his friends from school. Barb bought all the party food and games, and I got the job of cooking up all the hamburgers and hot dogs on the Weber grill. There is nothing better than being put in charge of the fire. First, we had to get a Weber grill. Not at all difficult; the BX carries every kind of supply for grilling that you can imagine; there’s nothing more American than burning some burgers. Then, I had to make sure that I wasn’t going to get rained out, so I climbed up on the roof and hung a tarp over the patio. Next, I lit the barbeque and set fire to the tarp. Just kidding.
Barb make some of her famous salsa for the chips, and to make sure there were enough chips for everybody, she went out and bought a truckload, then she sent me back to buy another truckload. I’ve never seen so many different kinds of chips at a party. We had Ruffles, and Doritos, and plain Tostitos, and Tostitos dippers, and white corn Doritos, and pretzels, and everybody stuffed themselves until they never wanted to dip a chip ever again for the rest of their lives.
When Barb took Sean out to help her carry back all the party food, she also scooped up some party games. Barb’s a whiz at setting up parties. She picked up some hula-hoops, and some Frisbees, and a couple six-packs of Mr. Bubbles. Sean was so blasé that he couldn’t believe she was wasting her money on that stuff. “My friends aren’t interested in that,” he said; “They’ll never touch it.” And what do you thing was the first thing they did? If you guessed that they had a hula-hoop contest, go to the front of the class. And later on, some of the girls even got Sean to blow some bubbles. Sean’ll do anything if a couple girls ask him to. “Eat these worms,” they might say, and if they giggle and add a coy look, Sean will not only scarf them down, he’ll remark how it even makes sense to eat worms because they’re high in protein. Tasty as a pizza topping, too.
I spent last weekend watching two unbelievably depressing movies.
The first one, Love Liza, was the amazingly, stupefyingly depressing story of a man who turns down the road of self-destruction after his wife commits suicide. I mean, this guy didn’t just go completely to pieces, he packed in the gunpowder, set the blasting cap, and lit the fuse. There was no happy ending. It was the most literally awful, emotionally draining film I believe I’ve experienced in years. So if you’re interested in a well-made, well-acted, and extremely well-written movie that paints a picture of self-destruction so perfectly that it would make you feel relieved to stick both barrels of a shotgun in your mouth and pull the trigger, Love Liza is your movie.
Why did we watch it? It was critically acclaimed. Won the Golden Palm at Cannes and a thoughtfully composed review from Ebert. Plus, it was marketed as a “tragicomedy.” We searched desperately for the comedic aspect. There was no comedy. Nothing in this movie was funny.
The second movie, The Pianist, was depressing, but in a different way. First, and most important of all, the lead character wasn’t trying to whack himself. He was a Jew struggling to survive World War Two while hiding out in the Warsaw ghetto. Awful things happened to him every day, it seemed, and still he struggled to go on. One of the most poignant scenes of the movie featured him walking alone down a street littered with abandoned baggage, as if he were the last man on earth. The ghetto had been cleared of the old men, children, and women, and he bawled his eyes out as he picked his way among the bodies of those who resisted, but somehow he managed to go on.
The contrast between these two emotionally wrenching movies couldn’t have been more pointed. One of them made me want to throw myself on the funeral pyre, one made me want to celebrate every moment I stand living on the earth. Film is a weird thing.
I finally have an electric toothbrush. The state of the art has advanced to the point that the battery-powered models are sold for three and a half bucks in a blister pack at the supermarket. It’s one of those kid toys I never had and always wanted, so when I saw one while I was shopping for groceries with Barb the other day, I grabbed it on impulse and threw it into the shopping cart. Barb grabbed one, too.
I probably should never have bought one. Using the gadget reminds me of visits to the dentist, and at this point in my life, I’ve made lots of trips to the dentist to think about, most of them pretty unpleasant. I went just about a week ago, and had my teeth cleaned by a technician who was about a year older than Sean, and spoke a language that was similar to American English, except something was missing. I felt as though I couldn’t detect any verbs in his speech. He cleaned my teeth very quickly, almost frantically, as if he thought the police were going to break down the door and drag him off to the hoosegow at any moment, and he wanted to make sure he got my mouth good and soapy before that happened, at the very least.
His performance was nothing compared to the visit before that, though. The technician who cleaned my teeth then spent the hour rushing through everything, too - they must emphasize speed in technical school - but she got almost none of my “prophy” done, after flossing my teeth, and putting that gritty stuff on a few of my molars. All the rest of the time, she seemed to be prepping for something else that she never quite got around to doing.
I’ve got to go back shortly, to have a cavity filled, which means they’ll have to stretch a sheet of green rubber over my face and fix it to my teeth with a half-dozen steel clamps. Then they’ll start my mouth on fire and ask me a lot of questions that require more than a yes/no answer. Why do dentists do that?
I always thought electric toothbrushes were pretty cool, but when anything brings back memories like this, it sort of loses its appeal, which is why I probably shouldn’t have bought one. When I thought of electric toothbrushes before, it was with a Beaver Cleaver kind of nostalgia, but now I think of guys with hairy knuckles sticking ice picks in between my teeth. And so another youthful longing is extinguished.