Two days ago, I turned thirty-five. The Bible held somewhere (Proverbs, maybe?) that we were "allotted three score and ten," that is, seventy years, but the Bible also talks a great deal about smiting people hip and thigh with the jawbones of asses and such, so it's important not to read too much into things. Nevertheless, it strikes me that thirty-five, the "halfway point," is a good place to stop and take stock of my life so far.

I was born and bred in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and very early on developed a passion for history, which has stayed with me and arguably broadened even though I cut short the academic career on which I had determined as earily as high school. The reasons for this decision were several: unlikelihood of funding, disillusionment with the academic world, and a slight jerking around by superior forces (with an apology, I hasten to add), and growing disenchantment with my environment (in this case, Akron, Ohio). Moving to Ann Arbor, I had planned to go to library school, in order to make my master's degree more marketable (I still had ambitions to get my doctorate eventually, but it now seems so long ago), but soon realized that I just didn't understand library school and couldn't really get a handle on how one was supposed to study and develop theories on different ways of arranging information (this is said with all due respect to librarians, who I greatly admire; I have a similar sort of cognitive dissonance when it comes to acting).

I fell into cooking through a mix of fascination, intent and convenience. I'd worked at a fair number of restaurants over the years, and became intrigued by the work cooks did. About a year after I started working at Cafe du Jour (whose recent demise turned out to be more ignoble than I imagined), I managed to shift back into the kicthen, and then found myself, in a way. I often think that if the place had been better run and I were slightly better paid, it would have been a near-ideal situation. As it happened, despite my love for what I did, I had to make a change. Though I'm much better compensated at my present job, and have vastly increased opportunities to learn, I do miss the responsibility I had at my old job, but try to concentrate on the positive.

It's useless to deny that I'm at a much different place at thirty-five than I long thought I would be. Indeed, by certain contemporary standards, I could be considered a failure: I don't own a house (and have no desire to, except that it might be easier to do a vegetable garden), I don't have a car (mine became too expensive to maintain in grad school, and given the looming specters of peak oil and climate change, I figured I'd probably be better off without one), and I work an hourly service-sector job (which, given conditions across the country and especially in Michigan, I'm lucky to have). Thankfully, I don't consider myself one. Judged by present-day global and world-historical (and probably future) standards, I'm actually in an extremely enviable place right now. Though it's not an excuse for complacency, it's a useful thing to keep in perspective. Things aren't too bad, and I have to admit I'm thankful.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924): I saw the 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad, with Conrad Veidt and Sabu (partially directed by a young Michael Powell) years ago, and I have to say that it was one of the few times I've ever seen a remake come close to the quality of the original, let alone equal it.l Douglas Fairbanks wrote, produced, and starred in the original 1924 fantasy epic, and it's infused throughout with his energy and enthusiasm. Thief Ahmed (Fairbanks) falls in love with the princess on a burglary of the Caliph's palace, and after his unmasking as a fake prince in pursuit of her hand, has to win her over by triumphing over a number of supernatural and all-too-human obstacles. It's a spectacular classic, chock-full of the finest special effects available for the time, representing invisibility cloaks, flying horses, talking trees, and more. Fairbanks is a force of energy as Ahmed, and his at times over-the-top charisma combines with art director William Cameron Menzies to create a near-unique monument of the silent era. The best part is that character doesn't give way to effects--the story is always involving, with Ahmed's acquisitory zeal nicely linked to the main villain's, and the female characters bracingly defined (literally, in Anna May Wong's case) and refreshingly active for early fantasy heroines. It's a wonderful film to watch on one's birthday.

The Pied Piper (1972): I first read about Jacques Demy's sleeper in high school, with Leonard Maltin's necessarily brief review hinting at a grim, Angela Carter-like deglamorization of the already chilling German folktale. For years, it seemed unavailable until I found out about its Region 1 release last week. It was a fascinating experience, a sometimes depressingly realistic account of the Black Death in the small German city of Hamelin. At times it seems like a combination of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, with folk-pop singer Donovan's enigmatic performance as the title character adding more than a frisson of weirdness to the proceedings. The Piper drops in on a tangled web of social and political shenanigans involving the Church (Peter Vaughan's Bishop), the nobles (Donald Pleasance's Baron) and the townsfolk (Roy Kinnear's Burgomeister). A cathedral needs to be built, wars are fought by the Pope in Avignon against the Holy Roman Emperor, and life's a mess for everyone else, including the party of traveling players with whom the Piper falls in. The Black Death has been kept out of Hamelin, but a Jewish alchemist (Michael Hordern) and his crippled assistant (Jack Wild) warn that the danger still looms. An onslaught of rats drives the authorities to drastic actions and macabre consequences. The Pied Piper has had a generally negative critical appraisal over the years that I can't quite understand. Producer David Puttnam apparently disowned it, which seems rather odd given his stable of worthy but slightly dull prestige pictures of the early 1980s like Chariots of Fire. Demy was more famously known for gorgeous, bittersweet romances like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and though The Pied Piper somewhat qualifies, in other ways it's as different from Demy's earlier work as night from day. It was supposed to be some sort of family film, hence its "G" rating, but the adult treatment of the Middle Ages' dark side and the generally pessimistic tone (manifested in Peter Eyre's slightly fey pilgrim who eventually loses his faith in everything, if he ever really had any) clash with the film's supposed audience. The two impulses do sit rather uneasily alongside each other, but for me this adds to rather than detracts from the movie's power. Nothing is certain and nothing is really safe, and every time something happens that one doesn't really expect, the message is driven home even further. It helps, too, that the acting is pretty fantastic all around. Donovan's offbeat casting proves extremely effective; his songs may become annoying and creepy, but then so is the story of the Pied Piper--it's a perfect fit. Wild, so irritating in H.R. Pufnstuf, is outstanding as young Gavin (Gavin? In 14th century Germany?), the alchemist's assistant. John Hurt, as the Baron's son, is a terrifically nasty villain, and Michael Hordern gives one of his best performances as old Melias the alchemist, as genuinely moving and expert in The Pied Piper as he is obnoxious and miscast in Demons of the Mind. The realistically grimy set design is brought to life by Peter Suchitzky's photography, much of it filmed in the picturesque medieval city of Rothenburg-an-der-Tauber. Even the rats are real, with rat trainer John Holmes marshalling some quite unnerving scenes of rats marching in formation behind the Piper en route to their fate in the Weser River. Not a family film to be trundled out on the holidays, The Pied Piper is a perfect example of a cinematic curio--you can't quite fit it anywhere among its cheerier fellows, and I think that's its genius.

Happy Veterans, Remembrance, and Armistice Day! I hope it's pleasant and peaceful for all those serving before or since.

The blog hasn't had a good makeover in a long time, and it was overdue. I've been tired of the title for a while, and like this one a lot better. I may tinker with the layout a little over the next couple of days, but this'll probably stay for a good stretch. 

It's almost impossible to date the origin of my fondness for "bad" movies. I grew up in the eighties and early nineties, and the period offered a probably unprecedented smorgasbord of cinematic offal, so it's very hard to judge. In an early expression of my fondness for sci-fi as opposed to fantasy, I insisted that my dad and brother watch the 1988 sci-fi turkey Nightfall (based on an Isaac Asimov story and starring David Birney) with me instead of Willow. Afterwards, I thought it was a mistake, but then I saw Willow years later and... not so much. One of my favorite memories of high school was the series of "bad movie nights" my friends and I threw, which definitely set me on the path to becoming a fitfully obsessive cineaste. It should be stressed that these weren't bad movies so much as obscure ones or cult classics (okay, Caligula was bad--and even worse, boring--but Shaft wasn't, and Flash Gordon's one of my favorite movies of all time). I prided myself on a rather smug enjoyment of bad or weird movies until I started to wonder why exactly they were "bad" or "weird." An early fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I delighted in the snark delivered to the less accomplished cinematic works of yesteryear and thought little of it. My attitude probably started to change when I learned of the genuinely high critical reputation of 1955's sci-fi epic This Island Earth--our inaugural movie-fest flick in 1989 or 1990 and subject of the 1996 Mystery Science Theater movie. Things moved apace until I joined the British Horror Films forum in 2003. Under the probably unintended spiritual guidance of film scholar Darrell Buxton (editor of the upcoming review anthology The Shrieking Sixties: British Horror Films of the Sixties, probably due in early-to-mid-2010), I came to see films in a whole new continuum, with A-list monstrosities accorded the exact same critical chance as the most obscure sleeper. Along the way, I came to question my own strictures regarding a film's worth, and was reminded of my internal struggle by Canadian blogger Jaime Weinman in his recent post on the relative worth of different kinds of cinema. Weinman included a link to film scholar Chris Fujiwara's takedown of Mystery Science Theater, some of which touched on reservations of my own concerning my once-beloved TV show. It all combined to make my viewing of two fairly low-budget offerings a little different than it might have been otherwise.

 Blood Gnome (2004): I've long been fascinated by gnomes and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's due to their creepy ubiquity come holiday season, but they've long haunted my imagination, especially since I suspect they're less friendly bearded nature sprites than they are merciless, flesh-eating killers, intent on the destruction of humanity and the domination of the universe. My friend Karen in grad school was notably resistant to this idea, and probably still hasn't forgiven me for proposing it. I hope there's still some room left in the concept, as someone's gone and done a movie about the little sprats. Many of the cheapies that show up in my Netflix emerge that way because I have a wide-ranging interest in horror and sci-fi cinema, but I think Blood Gnome came to my attention simply because I had been researching movies that featured gnomes.* Fully inhabiting the "evil gnomes" groove, Joe Lechago's film is sort of a cross between The Adventures of David the Gnome and Hellraiser, with generous helpings of the second half of the Detroit Metro Times thrown in. A series of brutal, mysterious killings rock Los Angeles' bondage fetish community, and if you just stopped reading right there, you'll be sorry. Crime scene photographer Dan (Vinnie Bilancio) notices some visual anomalies in his pictures, and decides to investigate on his own, closely questioning bondage specialist Devinity (the lovely Melissa Pursley, who resembles a glammed-up Lili Taylor as voiced by Night Court's Selma Diamond) and discussing the ins and outs of the bondage fetish scene. Can he juggle a possible new girlfriend and a potential lifestyle reorientation with a horde of bloodthirsty, slavering invisible imps determined to keep him quiet at all costs? Though the subject matter makes things a little ridiculous (the bondage, not the gnomes, which should tell you a few sad somethings about the reviewer), Blood Gnome is actually quite an entertaining experience with bits of cleverness here and there keeping the story interesting (as does, of course, the generous nudity on display)--I was particularly fond of the near-abusive relationship Dan has with his boss Laura (Laurie Jamieson), who seems to be under the impression that she's his mother or older sister. At times it seems like half a horror thriller and half a BDSM instructional video, but the leads' sympathetic if occasionally erratic performances actually raise it above what I was expecting. Pursley in particular made me wonder, even given the uncertain climate in which movies like Blood Gnome are probably made, why she wasn't in anything else (maybe I just haven't looked hard enough). The (clean-shaven and capless) gnomes themselves are puppets, not CGI, an automatic plus (reminiscent in some ways of the tykes from Rock 'N' Roll Nightmare), and enough of their backstory is revealed to make things fairly comprehensible, even if things still remain vague at an admittedly ridiculous climax. All in all, Blood Gnome is an appealing example of how entertaining horror cheapies still have a place in this grotesque modern cinema of perpetual remakes and unimaginative big-budget knockoffs.

Planetfall (2005): It was a revelation; of all the cheap, unknown speculative films I've found through Netflix, Planetfall was by far the most imaginative, ambitious, and entertaining so far. The reviews were mixed, which intrigued me; often, if something doesn't look like it has the budget of Transformers or G.I.Joe (Jesus, what is it, 1984?), it'll get panned on IMDB and Netflix, but enough people were willing to see unexpected pleasures in this one that it sharpened my curiosity. Written by Michael Heagle and Matt Saari and directed by Heagle, it's a spaghetti western in space, to put it simply. Beautiful, mysterious gunfighter Lux Antigone (Heidi Fellner) warily faces down her equally winsome opponent Wendy (Leitha Matz) across an interplanetary landscape of fanatic religions, decaying imperialisms, and thoroughly corroded loyalties. Everyone's searching for a mysterious superweapon hidden on a barren planet, from the gunfighters to hardbitten mercenaries to renegade telepaths to the bottom-of-the-barrel conscripts in service to President Arch Stanton (sleaze icon Ted V. Mikels, on whom I have little personal opinion but whose casting was apparently considered a coup by the producers).** It's hard to quite describe the plot, as it's largely one huge run-around spiced up by treachery, gunplay, humor and sex. Out of many fun moments, my favorite probably came from an argument between mercenary Stark Sterling (played by Snype Myers, who's apparently some kind of award-winning physical trainer) and an angry superior. It's really an aesthetic crime that "consider yourself crossed, bitch!" isn't a nationally recognized catchphrase by now--and the best part wasn't even the phrase but the superior's deliciously over-the-top reaction. There are some cheesy computer and CGI effects, but just as many clever ones, and they all go towards making the thing feel larger and more expansive than it otherwise might. Another great thing about Planetfall is how seriously everyone concentrates on the little background touches, from the money and religion used to grease society's wheels to the frequency of popular interplanetary TV show "Bastard and Commando" (the snippets of dialogue heard--especially from "Channer"--are hilarious). In the end, everyone comes together for one grand confrontation which aimed at the mythic grandeur of its original inspirations--and they all get points for trying. Again, much of Planetfall's charm comes from the obvious care and pleasure everyone took in making it--the scruffy low-budget appeal is something that can't be duplicated.*** Best of all is Leitha Matz, for whom I instantly swooned and who's not only the star of the movie but also of the commentary track. So much of Planetfall is a pleasant surprise, but her low-key cool and unassuming beauty really put the thing over the edge (and she apparently fights the good fight, too). An exhaustive behind-the-scenes documentary gives the rundown on how it all came together, concluding with some endearing scenes from the Minnesota premiere--ironically enough, the same stomping grounds of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Not too long ago, I would have dismissed both of these as "bad" movies, probably citing their budget and straight-to-video status (despite Planetfall's theatrical premiere). Now, I'm happy to say, my changed attitude towards artistic endeavor in general--writing, music, cinema--has opened my eyes to the good in films like these, and the possibilities they embody (yes, even Blood Gnome). With small presses sprouting up as fast as they die off, local musicians and performers making word-of-mouth and the internet work for them, and small filmmakers carrying on their work despite the sneers of those with bigger budgets or studio backing, I'm optimistic for my own work and that of others probably like never before.

 *Available on Netflix? The Gnome-Mobile, a 1967 Disney curio starring Walter Brennan (!!!) as a Snuffy Smith-voiced coot who, along with the tots from Mary Poppins, tries to save a patch of wilderness from greedy developers with some "special help," if you know what I'm saying. Unavailable on Netflix? 1990's A Gnome Named Gnorm, starring Anthony Michael Hall as a streetwise cop trying to track down his partner's killers with some "special help," if you know what I'm saying (also starring Jerry Orbach and frequent Mystery Science Theater actor Robert Z'Dar).

**One's own blog offers a great opportunity to bloviate about one's pet peeves. If you're making a spaghetti western, not only set in space, but also with characters that roughly correspond to the three main characters in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly... you no longer have to try and convince me that you've seen said film. "Arch Stanton," fans will remember, was the name on the tombstone hiding Bill Carson's money. Invent your own names. Simply because high-profile directors like Martin Scorsese and Joe Dante pull this crap doesn't mean you have to as well. I remember reading a zombie piece in The Second BHF Book of Horror Stories that was nearly ruined for me by one of the characters' being named "George Romero." Of course you like zombie films, because you're writing about them (or zombies, anyway)!!!

***A few Netflix reviewers compared Planetfall to "Dr. Who-type TV shows," perhaps aware of the film's Who connection (which came as a complete surprise to me). John Levene, who played Sergeant Benton on the show during the late 60s and early 70s, and who's now a showbiz entity of some sort in California (his films as "Reverend Bernie Shanks" sound absolutely hilarious but sadly there's no sign of CanniBallistic! or Satan Hates You on Netflix... yet) voices "Angry Videophone Alien." Beautiful.

Chateau Fluffy closed down! Chateau Fluffy, of course, was Cafe du Jour at 117 West Washington Street in Ann Arbor, where I worked as a baker, sous chef, and occasional kitchen manager for four and a half years. The sign posted on the window blamed the closure on "severe economic conditions," which, though there had been more than a few problems in the past, sounds pretty plausible to me. I've been hearing weird rumors through the grapevine regarding what'll happen to the place next, but will keep them to myself for now as there's enough of that kind of thing on the Internet. It's a little sad, really; it was well past time for me to leave by the time I switched jobs in May '08, but much of what I know about cooking and the restaurant business I learned there and I wished it well (strangely enough, a slightly flaky girl who used to work there as well just walked past my front porch). I may learn more after a few chats here and there; I doubt the space will remain empty for long, and have to wonder what'll come next. There's an unexpectedly revealing look here at Ann Arbor food culture in which there's a brief shot of the storefront. One of my favorite things I learned to do there was make quiches (whence I migrated to tarts), and so here's...

Tarte Corfiote (taken from an existing recipe, but it didn't have a "tart" name, so I gave it one based on the ingredients' Greco-Italian nature, although tarte heptanese sounds even better--I'm guessing the recipe probably isn't actually native to Corfu):

1 tart pastry

2 tbsp olive oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 lb. leafy greens (any will do, but I used chard from our "kitchen garden" at work), coarsely chopped

1/4 cup chopped and pitted Kalamata olives

15 oz. ricotta

salt

2 large eggs

2 oz. ricotta salata or feta

Preheat oven to 400. Saute garlic in olive oil until soft. Add greens and cook until soft. Beat together ricotta, olives, greens, and salt, then beat in eggs. Pour mixture into tart pastry and sprinkle feta on top. Cook tart for 30-40 minutes until done. 

I found it a disappointment, to be honest. The Natural Area Preservation Volunteer Potluck for which it was intended quickly devoured it, and I hope people enjoyed it, but maybe this is just natural irritation on the part of the cook. The ingredients themselves prepared beautifully--the chard with garlic was spectacular, and the resulting aroma was brilliant. It was a little underseasoned (maybe a little more salt?), but I'm more of the opinion that I'm just not a ricotta kind of guy, at least in combination with these other ingredients. The texture was similar to vanilla ice cream, and there were even a few taste similarities, but overall it seemed rather blah in comparison to the all-too-brief tastes of the kalamatas and chard. I'm not quite prepared to give up on the recipe, though, and may try a more flavorful cheese in the very near future (especially as I still have a crapload of chard to play with).

Bo Schembechler's grave looks surprisingly picturesque from this distance (blogged much of this from my porch--it was a spectacular day).

Well, I screwed up the beet roesti, so that recipe's out. Some of the resulting hash was washed away in the sink, so the post title's at least vaguely fitting this time. I might try it later with vanilla ice cream. It's unclear where I stand on beets right now--they weren't disgusting, as I feared, but the rather nondescript taste really made me wonder why I'd gone to all the trouble of peeling and grating them. Lesson learned, I suppose.

The Visitor (2007): Thomas McCarthy is a writer, actor and director who has been seen in films from Meet The Parents to Good Night and Good Luck to Flags of Our Fathers, and more recently as the sleazy, ethically-challenged journalist on The Wire's final season. Richard Jenkins is an actor who almost anyone would recognize from somewhere--the acid-tripping FBI agent in Flirting With Disaster and Ben Stiller's psychiatrist in There's Something About Mary in particular. One directs the other in The Visitor, a jewel of a film about one man's curious education in multiculturalism. Walter Vail (Jenkins) is a professor at a Connecticut college who's essentially shut down since the death of his wife and conducts his career on auto-pilot. A chance errand to New York to give a paper at a globalization conference reveals that his city apartment has been rented-- unbeknownst to him--to two illegal immigrants, Syrian Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Senegalese Zainab (Danai Gurira). Less through kindness than through a simple inability to deal with the situation, Walter lets them stay and gradually befriends them, finding a bond with Tarek in particular through their mutual love of music (Walter's wife played the piano, Tarek plays the drums). When a simple technicality gets Tarek arrested and thrown into a detention center in Queens, Walter finds a purpose that had eluded him for years, especially when Tarek's mother Mouna (Hiam Abbass) shows up looking for her son. The Visitor is a marvelous film experience, making its points simply and effectively, and taking full advantage of its cast's abilities (sometimes remarkably so--this was apparently Gurira's film debut). Jenkins was nominated for an Oscar, and little wonder, as the experience of a quiet, reserved man awaking to what the world has to offer is matched with a stalwart character actor offered the chance to lead a finely observed film. The symbolism and ironies occasionally veer dangerously towards the too obvious--an economics professor working a market stall and a nearly displaced native-born American officiating at a globalization conference--but McCarthy's directorial touch and the cast's surefootedness (Jenkins and Abbass have fantastic chemistry) make The Visitor one of the best and most pertinent American films of the past decade.

Circle of Deceit (1981): Volker Schlondorff is probably my favorite German director by now, mainly on the strength of the magnificent The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975), a brilliant slice of political theater (based on the Heinrich Boll novel and co-directed by Margarethe von Trotta) in which an innocent woman is victimized by an uncaring system. I haven't seen 1979's The Tin Drum, but probably should, although I'm not the biggest fan of the book. Based on the memoir by Nicholas Born, Circle looks at the travails of German journalist Laschen (the always excellent Bruno Ganz*) sent to cover the war in Lebanon, by then into its fifth year and showing no sign of victory on the part of either Muslim or Christian militias (the Israelis would invade a year later). While there, he finds himself unable to connect with his job, wondering how he can accurately convey the suffering around him, especially with the distractions of an attractive widow (an incandescent Hanna Schygulla) and his earthier photographer colleague (Jerzy Skolimowski), whose taste for the jugular cuts across his own doubts. Much of the filming was done in and around actual combat zones, and the surreal nature of the fighting in Beirut is brilliantly captured on camera--in the DVD extras, Schlondorff reveals that he eschewed the obvious decision for handheld cameras in favor of a more traditional setup, as the situation was already "real" enough. A simple story at heart, Circle uses the political and cultural divide between Europe and the Middle East as a vehicle for larger personal questions, such as one's relation to violence and the conflict between reality and media illusion, if there even is one anymore.

 *The Downfall parodies on www.funnyordie.co.uk, so dependent on his remarkable performance as Hitler, were apparently made with his explicit blessing--along with his work in Wenders' The American Friend (1977), that makes him one of the coolest people working in films today, if you ask me.

It's been well over a week since I got Internet, and I must admit the connection has made a subtle impact on my life.  My mental map doesn't seem to revolve so much around the library anymore, and I'm not as cheesed off at staying late at work as I was (not that it was a huge deal in the first place) as I can always catch up on the news and such at home now. As I think I mentioned last time, it'll take some time for the implications of it all to sink in, but for right now, it's actually encouraged me to get out more, as I'm maybe all too aware of the dangers of staying in all day. Every time I try, guilt kicks in and I take the bike out for a couple of hours, as happened today.

So what have I been doing? Having BBC World News constantly available has been a delight, as have the various programs available on the iPlayer radio sites, especially those on BBC 7. Not only are they running a set of original Paul McGann Doctor Who audio plays (Sheridan Smith's funny as hell), but I also got to listen to the genius of Tony Hancock for the first time (an episode of Hancock's Half Hour from 1958) and a very interesting BBC 2 documentary on Frankie Howerd. The sheer international sweep and range of the stuff on offer is nearly intoxicating. It's not all foreign shores--I followed much of the Michigan game today on the hilarious live blog for mgoblog.com.

YouTube, of course, has been spectacular, especially for one who was hooked in his childhood on various historical miniseries. The soundtracks to Shogun and Jesus of Nazareth are both lovingly preserved by dedicated enthusiasts (especially the former's stunning "Mariko's Theme"). Both are by Maurice Jarre, the "third wheel" in my personal trinity of film and TV composers. Ennio Morricone was the head, John Barry was the heart... so I wonder where that leaves Jarre. He was probably the de facto favorite composer of my youth, as the music to the aforementioned miniseries certainly had a lot to do with my eventual fascination on both subjects. There are even clips from 1981's Peter and Paul and 1985's Christopher Columbus (the former has a great moment from the shipwrecked Paul--Anthony Hopkins--in Sicily, with Jon Finch as Luke and Gareth Thomas, of all people, as the centurion Julius, with some engrossing dialogue that doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence). The only disappointment is that there's only a NBC preview for 1985's Peter the Great (although the search led me to this hilarious amateur video on the Czar's life).

I'm sure I'll start using it for good eventually, but it's comforting to know that there's somewhere I can always go to listen to the theme music to Danger Man or Jason King.

My housemates decided to sign up for the Internet, and, considering the cost and that winter was coming up, I opted to join in. On getting a USB wireless adapter for my now rather stately Dell Dimension 2350, I found to my not-total surprise and shock that it was too old and out-of-date to accept what was apparently the most basic wireless technology available for our house. The next day, I went out, got a laptop, and joined the twenty-first century. It was time.

 For the first time ever, I'm typing this on a Compaq Celeron 900 which I got at Best Buy after finding that the Toshiba Satellite I was eyeing wasn't in stock at Office Max in Arborland. That was actually a bit of a relief, as Office Max was one of the Arborland businesses that hadn't come out against the bus stop closure (thanks again, Borders and Hiller's) and I was correspondingly loath to throw any business their way.

I wound up with a much greater bus journey than I had anticipated, which was fine by me. The day turned out to be a spectacular one, one of those endangered autumn brilliances (before autumn actually starts, no less), which was a shock to me, as I'd thought it was supposed to be somewhere around 80 and clear. The Best Buy guy was friendly and helpful, and the only dark moment came when I left my beloved wool hat (I'm not given to falling for wool hats, but this one had sentimental value beyond its purpose or function) on the #16 bus. It had gone missing often enough before, but this time it's for good. In a year with so much shakeup and change, maybe that's fitting. I'll probably keep the Dell around for word processing (that's all I used it for before anyway), as the new unit only has Microsoft Works. It's served me well over the years (though I've wanted to kill that mouse more times than I care to remember), but it's undeniable that an era has passed.

I'm now in my room, ready to go out and maybe ride around for an hour before I return and start seriously playing. Hopefully the new lifestyle won't take away from the variety I enjoy, and I doubt it will--I've already written around a thousand words today and nipped by the market for turnip greens and tatsoi (which I'll probably eat tonight with pizza and beer, but nobody's perfect).

Happy Wednesday!

Maybe it's all the fun I've been having at Plastic Passion, DJ Josh Burge's monthly 80s dance night at the Heidelberg, but I've suddenly found myself in an 80s nostalgia trip somehow. As someone who spent much of his time during the 80s wishing they would end, this is a little puzzling.

Pretty In Pink (1986): John Hughes' recent untimely passing occurred right as I was finishing a story inspired by 80s nostalgia, and if anything only increased the nostalgia value. I consider The Breakfast Club to be, in its way, one of the most overrated movies in cinema;it's not so much the relentless, talky teenage self-pity that turns me off as it is Ally Sheedy's disgraceful fate at the end. Was that supposed to be a joke? Ferris Bueller's Day Off, on the other hand, I'd adored ever since I first saw it in the theater, and it only gets better. Kevin Murphy's written elsewhere that the eponymous character could be an Aristophanes figure or Bugs Bunny, and I think that's behind why I love it so much. Even though he didn't actually direct it (and who'll remember poor Howard Deutch's name when discussing the 80s?), Pretty In Pink might actually be his most genuinely affecting movie, dealing as it does with the intersection of adolescence and class, even if the manner's sometimes cartoonishly extreme. I'd never actually seen it until about ten years ago, and didn't for whatever reason appreciate it (probably something to do with my continued relief, in 1997, that the 80s were still over), This time around, it was pretty good. Andi (Molly Ringwald), a poor teenager, falls for Blane (Andrew McCarthy), a rich teenager, to the horror of her best friend and secret admirer Duckie (Jon Cryer). It's all very believable and compelling, although Cryer can be a bit much at times (Two And A Half Men is in many ways an awful show, but his chemistry with Charlie Sheen is strangely reassuring). The plot moves in much the way one would expect, but sometimes in unusual, surprising ways. Though the conflict is cartoonish, none of the characters are, not even the egregious Steff, Blane's slimy "richie" pal played with industrial-strength smarm by James Spader. It's nice to see a bit of genuine nonconformity in an 80s movie that isn't played for laughs--Andi and Duckie are the movie's heart, with able support and advice from a couple of older, wiser characters: Andi's record store boss (Annie Potts), and her mournful, rumpled old father (Harry Dean Stanton, whose presence in one of the ultimate 80s flicks embodies, for me, a majestic middle finger to "the 80s"--hurray!). Though the ending may seem a little pat and cliched for some viewers, the fact that these questions were raised or explored at all is a welcome reminder of the decade's reality.

The Lost Boys (1987): Much less so, to say the least, is perhaps one of the most representative works of one of the most awful big-budget directors that this country's ever... "produced" is a polite word. I stayed away from this one forever, especially after I heard that Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark of the same year was much better. Vampires, to me, represent a mix of an unbridled, wholly selfish will to power and greed with a certain aesthetic snobbery. Fascism and aristocracy, essentially, and if you think that's cool, have at it. Of course, one might suggest this nature to be perfectly suited to cinematic treatment in the 80s, especially from the fetishistic director who later "gave"--again, a polite word--us Batman and Robin (I don't remember being able to watch it all the way through). The Coreys are in it, too. Lucy (a luminous Dianne Wiest, easily the best--and sexiest--figure in the film) and her sons Mike (Jason Patric) and Sam (Corey Haim) move to a sinister beach town in California which is being terrorized by a gang of biker vampires led by Kiefer Sutherland. Sam eventually enlists the aid of a couple of comic rats (including Corey Feldman) to defeat the forces of evil and rescue Mike and his new girlfriend (Jami Gertz; as with Sarah Jessica Parker, Square Pegs was the last time she wasn't annoying in anything) from the fate of the undead. It's terrible but at least it's mildly entertaining (unlike Lifeforce, on which see here). Edward Herrmann (looking rather similar to John Hughes, strangely enough) shows up as Lucy's potential love interest, and some of the special effects aren't bad. The pre-teen son of my housemate (who, in the grand tradition of my housemates creepily having their family members come to stay for extended periods, has been at the house for a couple of months; here's hoping he leaves once school starts, if he's even going) wandered in a few times and asked me what I was watching. As he looks slightly like Corey Haim if you toasted him lightly in the oven for a few minutes, I did get a few laughs out of the whole thing.

"The Rambo Experience" (1982-85): Due to the relentless--indeed Rambo-like--peer pressure from BHF chums and work colleagues, I finally chose to accept my destiny as a child of the 80s and see yet another of the decade's most emblematic films. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) was one of the decade's most influential and symptomatic works of art, and as a nascent liberal growing up at that time I loathed what it had wrought and avoided it like the plague. Now, after the admittedly safe distance of twenty-odd years, I find they're rather enjoyable. First Blood, of course, is actually a genuinely decent movie, based on David Morrell's novel of a troubled Vietnam vet who runs into hassle while drifting through a small town in the Pacific Northwest. The "troubled Vietnam vet" had been a staple of low-budget exploitation movies during the previous decade, but First Blood was pretty mcuh the first time they were treated--by and large--sympathetically. John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) comes into town looking for an old combat buddy, and the local sherriff (Brian Dennehy) doesn't like his looks. A few incidents snowball into a regionwide hunt for Rambo, whose skills in combat and survival effectively hamstring the National Guard pursuit. Aiding and (in my opinion) hampering the latter is Col. Trautmann (Richard Crenna), Rambo's former commanding officer and without question the most entertaining character in these movies. Interestingly, Trautmann was (I'm told) originally portrayed as the villain in Morrell's novel (superbly analyzed in Susan Faludi's still relevant 1999 Stiffed), and I thought I caught an echo if that in the film: he more or less seems to get off scot-free while this "killing machine" that he's created lumbers around the woods and causes havoc. Trautmann's "protesting too much" is, for me, the highlight of both Rambo movies, and can form an enjoyable party game if you're so inclined. Every fifteen minutes or so, some cast member will suggest yet another ineffective measure to stop Rambo (or, in the second movie, another possible obstacle he'll have to face), and Trautmann launches into this earnest disquisition on his "creation's" unstoppable nature, e.g. "You're sending two hundred men (or however many it was) against Rambo? Well, sherriff, you'd better have a good supply of body bags." This happens several times (not enough) during First Blood, and I daresay you can tell that Brian Dennehy and Bill McKinney might have been getting a little sick of it.* It's also great fun to watch frequent beatings administered to David Caruso. Rambo: First Blood Part II is wholly ridiculous, but also a lot more fun than I expected. Doing hard labor for his actions in First Blood, Rambo gets a visit from Trautmann, who wants him to infiltrate a camp in Southeast Asia still holding American MIAs. After being debriefed by the sleazy Murdoch (Charles Napier), Rambo's parachuted into enemy territory, is captured, escapes, and then proceeds to go on the most cartoonish killing spree I've ever seen. Maybe it's that the last half-hour or so pretty much influenced all the violence-porn of the present day, but it somehow felt familiar and almost cozy to me. When Weird Al Yankovic parodied Rambo's antics in UHF, I thought he was going over the top. Wrong. The "exploding guy" scene is rendered almost literally. Make sure to watch for Rambo's explanation of what "expendable" means (a great comic highlight) and the sight of Rambo (piloting a captured Russian chopper--oh, he's fighting the Russkies, too) blowing up nearly every single hut in the enemy village. I have yet to see Rambo 3, where Rambo helps out a captured Trautmann and the mujahedin (dedicated, apparently, to the "freedom-loving people of Afghanistan"). Whew!

*An edited collection of our attempts at work: "You think that's gonna stop Rambo? Man, he's hungry, and he's ready for it. He's hungry for pizza, sherriff. He's ready for a pizza party. He'll turn you inside out, rip the skin off your face and twirl it around in the air, and then he'll have his pizza party. With your face. And he's racist." 

My friend Leeann had her thirtieth birthday last week, and I decided to try a variation on a dish I'd made some time back for friends coming over to watch movies. The recipe was listed in my cookbook as "Circassian Chicken," a mix of chicken and a walnut paste from the Russian Caucasus that turned out very fresh-tasting but which still had a little something missing. A variation was given, a richer and thicker concoction called satsivi, which came from further south in Georgia.

 Here's the original recipe. Simmer a 3 lb. chicken in a large pan or pot with 2 quartered onions, 1 sliced carrot, 1 celery stic, and 6 peppercorns, for about an hour until the chicken is tender.l Leave to cool in the stock. Drain the chicken and reserve the stock. Tear up 3 slices of bread and soak in 6 tbsp of chicken stock. Blend in food processor with 2 garlic cloves and 3 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, adding 1 cup of remaining stock. Process until smooth, then transfer to a pan. Over low heat, gradually add more chicken stock to sauce, stirring occasionally until it thickens to pouring consistency. Remove pan from heat and season sauce with salt and pepper. Leave sauce to cool. Skin and bone cooked chicken, then cut into bite-size chunks. Place in bowl and add a little sauce. Stir to coat the chicken, then arrange on a serving dish. Spoon remaining sauce over chicken, and drizzle with walnut oil. Sprinkle with paprika and walnuts and serve.

With the satsivi variation I made a number of shortcuts and substitutions. I had quite a bit of chicken stock (made with Grana Padano rinds, no less) already, so I simply used Amish chicken thighs (they usually have the most intense flavor) instead. The same went for bread crumbs, of which I had a surfeit and used in lieu of soaking bread in chicken stock. The satsivi variation called for two chopped, sauteed onions to add to the sauce before pureeing, then to season later with cinnamon, allspice, cloves and coriander, and the top it before serving with paprika, cayenne, and "a drizzle of pomegranate syrup." All done, but I didn't have cloves or syrup and forgot the paprika and cayenne.

 Making the thing turned out a lot less onerous than I expected. I chopped and sauteed the onions the night before, and managed to work in a batch of cheddar-parmesan scones (now my official fall-back recipe) with it. The whole thing barely took two hours. When cooking at home, I tend to work at a leisurely pace, and so was rather proud of myself that it came in at such a good time. As with the Circassian recipe, my favorite part of making satsivi came with the sauce. Just like harissa, shawarma, or tagine, the name refers to the sauce or method of preparation rather than the actual dish. Once the food processor let the walnuts do their work and grind in the onions and bread crumbs (with help from the chicken stock), cooking the sauce in the pan was almost a joy, especially with the rather boring spectacle of the chicken thighs simmering in the pot nearby. Satsivi turned rather darker than the Circassian sauce, especially after the cinnamon and allspice went in. The smell was a superbly rich aroma that sadly dissipated after it cooled (the same went for the Circassian)--I need to try it warm sometime, though it's meant to be taken cold (and as such was a favorite Jewish dish--I got the recipe from a Jewish cookbook--because it could be made ahead and eaten on Shabbat). Stirring the sauce, watching the edges brown and the middle thicken, then adding more chicken stock and seeing the process begin anew, was by far my favorite part of this one.

I rode them over that day to Gallup Park on my bike in the middle of a gorgeous day--perfect conditions for a picnic. I hung out with Leeann and her family for a while and, at the partial suggestion of others, set down a written description of satsivi so I wouldn't have to keep explaining myself. Everyone seemed interested, but I'm pretty sure I had to throw the vast majority of the thing out at the end of the night--it might have seemed a little too outlandish, especially with vast quantities of fried chicken nearby. The scones proved quite popular, but I felt a little sorry for the satsivi, especially as it had sat outside for a few hours in near-eighty-degree weather and I didn't dare keep it. Next time I go to a dinner party or indoor potluck, I might try it again. For now, though, I'll have the memory of that afternoon. It was great to cook again, and I need to get cracking, especially as autumn nears and my soup skills might come in handy. 

Fear of some inchoate and nonexistent fate or nemesis prevents me from honestly missing the days when I used to be bored. Somehow the past month or so has seen my acvtivity skyrocket. The bike's certainly changed a great deal. Among other things, it's taught me to be more attentive to the grades of roads (on which I now ride generally exclusively) and swells which I'd never even notice while walking. Ann Arbor's not terribly hilly downtown, but once you leave, they start to buck and swell every which way, especially towards the Huron River. The bike, in turn, leads to my trying to swim every week. I finally went to Fuller Pool, which had kept me away with its alarmingly long lap lanes (100m, but keep in mind I hadn't swum regularly in some years), but it hasn't turned out to be a problem. It's a gorgeous place to be, especially in full sunlight, and the water feels great.

 Captivating as all this doubtlessly is, I think it helps to explain another long blog absence. Art Fair came and went with little bitching from me, this time, given all the other stuff I've wound up doing. Most of it's writing--no fiction, but at least a cover letter to send with a few stories to the handful of remaining venues out there, as well as a possible few book reviews for a local publication. There's also a collaborative artistic project on which I'm working, the details of which I can't divulge at present (long story, as you can probably imagine). As captivating as all that doubtlessly sounds, it's actually whittled my blogging subjects down to nothing. Hopefully next month will be less active and more contemplative. 

Oh God, what am I saying? 

A revolution in my affairs occurred earlier this week when Sara and I finally managed to wrench the rusted lock off her old bike whose frame doesn't suit her--as a result she never uses it--and it passed off the fence and into my possession. I haven't ridden a bike in sixteen years, and the sensible thing to do, no doubt, would be to take things slowly at first, getting reacclimatized to the rhythms and physical demands of cycling. A very silly thing to do, of course, would be to ride upwards of twenty miles the very next day.

I fully intended to follow the first course, really, I did. After doing my gardening at the deli, I had little intention beyond maybe making it to Argo Park and along the bike trail to Bandemer. One thing led to another, though, especially along the new Border-to-Border Trail the county developed along the Huron River to link northwest Ann Arbor to southwest Ypsilanti. First Riverside, then Fuller, then... I just couldn't stop myself. The trail starts at Bandemer, but I started at Argo and wound the trailway through the aforementioned, then Gallup before the trail nudged a "pass," so to speak, connecting Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, surmounted by riding a fairly steep grade across the Huron to connect with Dixboro Road and thence the campuses of Washtenaw Community College, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, and Eastern Michigan University before hitting Depot Town and Ypsilanti proper. I only made it to Depot Town, unsure of both my own capabilities and the specific route onward down the Huron. I lost the route past Rynearson Stadium (and it didn't help all that much that there was a fair bit of construction along Hewitt), backtracking along Washtenaw and Whittier until regaining the campus (not the route, whch I only rediscovered on my return trip thanks to an unexpected directional instinct). Despite the brief temptation to load my bike on the #4 bus and cruise happily back home on public transport, I went ahead and took the trail back, discovering the short cut that paralleled Whittier--and with no hills, to boot--on my return journey. By my reckoning, I did about twenty-two or twenty-three miles and crossed the Huron River eighteen times.

It was ninety degrees Fahrenheit, with frequent sun and a heat index of a hundred, and I'm certainly not eighteen anymore. I started to feel a little under-the-weather that evening, and woke up with a bit of a sore throat and feling a trifle feverish. All's well now, though I've learned a definite lesson about my limits (and another one, like I needed it, as to the unpredictably whorish Michigan weather--I got caught out in a furious gale the next day where the wind chill occasionally dropped to fifty, from what I could tell*). Still, it was totally worth it. Making one's way along familiar paths via bike as opposed to foot is a vastly different experience (and with my feet, a much healthier one--I was a little worried about that, but it turned out to be quite a blessing, as they feel great) and completely changes the landscape in many ways. This was quite noticeable around the Michigan campus, especially the Diag, but most of all in the actual parks, mainly Gallup and Riverside. The foliage and the water just zoom by, and there's a much better chance of spotting wildlife as the bike is much faster and quieter than walking (the chipmunks are all safe, in case you were wondering, although I really hope I didn't run over that butterfly). People seem to nod and smile more, perhaps because the "awkwardness window" is drastically curtailed (maybe one has less time to worry about how their smile and nod will be received--they're very uptight about that in Ann Arbor). It was interesting to ride through areas I was pretty sure I'd never seen before, such as the St. Joseph Mercy campus (where the "B2B" people have really done good work, with scenic overlooks over the Huron bluffs and gentle trails through heavily canopied woods where you could barely remember that there was any sun at all) and the grimly vital (vitally grim?) student ghettos of EMU. There were a couple of scary moments when I worried that my lock had rusted shut again. Margot had lent me some rust-remover and its application proved the magic touch that finally freed the bike in the first place, but I forgot to bring it with me. I was most worried at Beezy's in downtown Ypsi (where I probably caught that sore throat, as the air inside, where I bought my Faygo, felt like they had it down to sixty), but I think I've got the hang of it now. I had little trouble from traffic, although I kept mostly to the sidewalk until I know a little better what I'm doing. My only other major experience of biking was in Louisiana in the mid-eighties to early nineties (my bike was stolen in college and I never got around to getting another), mainly around the older suburbs of Baton Rouge and the LSU campus, and I can't really make any comparisons--I don't think the traffic patterns were any different. I understand that Washtenaw County is a much more bike-friendly location, although I'm still sticking to the sidewalks. I used to get annoyed at overly aggressive bikers who insisted on using the sidewalk, but maybe they had the same reasons I did (it probably helps that I'm not aggressive at all, at least not on this issue)--maybe I was just jealous.** All in all, it was a marvelous day, even with the possible sunstroke, and I can't get over how much this changes for me. It'll probably halve my bus usage, and I already made it to work (for gardening duty) before my foolhardy odyssey, and little problem there. The idea that I can get any number of places quickly, easily, and enjoyably in a healthy way without long-term podiatric inconvenience or using up fossil fuels is really quite intoxicating. The "voyages" I've planned (Delhi, Dexter, Saline) will probably have to wait until I'm a little wiser and fiter, but that they're possible at all gives me goosebumps (which, owing to the sunburn, made my lower thighs look like the Martian landscape on occasion).

My journey came towards the end of what's proving to be a wonderful month in an extremely positive year for me. As it's barely halfway done, knock on wood, but I'm still trying to focus on the good things. Our friend Dan came back to the area for a visit a couple of weeks ago (man, it feels like forever--that's how cool this month's been) and he, Sara and I drove out to Detroit with our friends Jon and Alain to visit Eastern Market, the historic downtown market that's been slaking the city's thirst for food beyond potato chips and Twinkies (Detroit apparently qualifies as a "food desert," a major metropolitan area with no decent grocery store in a certain radius of its population center, I believe) for over a century. I'd never been, and it was an interesting experience visiting the stalls and the shops, stocking up on produce (for me, blackberries, asparagus, tomatoes, and a few other things I can't remember right now, all of which I used up in a day or so) and having a fun lunch at an Ethiopian place on the corner (no doro wat, from what I could see, but the lamb stew was spectacular). Afterwards, we made a tour of eastern Detroit, visiting Belle Isle to watch an air-race (barely a week after I listened to Duran Duran's "My Own Way" at work and asked my co-worker, "who the fuck goes to air-races???") and Canadians driving across the river, and then Grosse Pointe, going past the notorious Manoogian Mansion along the way. At a Panera in Grosse Pointe (a Detroit satellite of fabled wealth and hoity-toityness commemorated in that slightly lame--like all John Cusack movies--John Cusack movie Grosse Pointe Blank--as well as Darren Star's unjustly cancelled WB sitcom that bore the town's name) , where all the houses are built like (and are probably intended to be) suburban bastides, I got a loaf of Asiago bread, which I scarfed on the way back along with half of the delicious olives I'd gotten at a Greek bodega near Eastern Market. The resulting coma was spent at home, which was just as well, as I was able to save up energy for Plastic Passion. Our friend Josh developed a sweet series of new wave dance nights named after the Cure classic before he went to Iraq, and has been itching since his return to get it going again. The Heidelberg's Club Above finally came around, and that night would be the inaugural for the new Plastic Passion. It was fucking mint. My coma forgotten, I danced like Dean Martin's marionette. The Eastern Market party, Alain excepted, were all there, joined by Nikki, Amy, her sister and brother-in-law (I think), and Sara's friend Ross from Natural Area Preservation (complete with "skinny tie" whose authentic 80s vintage added considerably to the evening's ambience). Be there the Fourth of July, people! I've already gone far in extolling the month's personal excellence, so suffice it to say, we had a great time.

As for the "now playing" song--I've said this a few times now--I prefer to remember the man's musical achievements rather than the confusing and often contradictory accusations swirling around his twisted later years. Forget Thriller; Off The Wall is one of the all-time great pop albums and what I'll always think of when I remember Michael Jackson ("The Love You Save" is probably my favorite on by the brothers). Those interested in an admirably impartial and nuanced analysis of the circus that followed his 80s hits should check out Jake Austen's terrific pop culture history TV A Go-Go (2005), which not only provides a bracing, thought-provoking examination of the symbiotic connections between the development of American TV and American pop music, but also manages a near-perfect synthesis of academic rigor and stylistic fluency, which few should be surprised to find is very rare; maybe as a result, it's pretty hard to describe. In any case, he has an entire chapter devoted to the Jacksons, and it's very engrossing reading indeed.

On a final positive note, this blog post is another reason why this guy is one of my heroes.

*Part of the reason was that I was riding out the storm beneath Nickels Arcade at State, where some gutterpunkette wearing comparatively next to nothing was having her way with a hula hoop. A number of rather alarming glances passed between us and I wondered for a split second if she was about to ask for money or worse. A good time to go, I thought. Of course, I then took refuge in the cavernous veranda behind the Hatcher Graduate Library, where that scruffy harmonica-player regarded me as if I had violated his lair--which in any case had been transformed into a wind-tunnel by the storm.

**Or maybe not; the only time in the past three days I've come close to being run over was by another biker at William and Thompson.