Niiiiiiiice.

~

(Is this a classy dude or what? Ohio’s finest. Yark. I’m sure he’s great and his mama loves him, but he just always looks dirty to me.)

Seems Big Ben is in a lil trouble again for pushing hisself on the ladies. Dandy hanky there, sport.

So the Thriller and I watched 2012 last night. For a doomsday movie, it felt surreal. I mean, I found myself thinking, “Is it OK to laugh here?” Faced with his house and entire street being swallowed in seconds by a massive earthquake, Jackson (played by quirky/cute John Cusack) jumps behind the wheel of his limo, family in tow, and makes wisecracks about his wild driving. I guess the director felt it was necessary to pad the horror with a little comic relief.

The story’s reality walls are thin at times (e.g., the world is crumbling but we still have all communication/internet/satellite services up and running perfectly?), but the special effects are beyond cool. Check out how they did it. It will impress you, even if the incredibly convenient date of “12/12″ doesn’t. (Notice the dyslexic gaffe in the graphic.)

So, totally over the top in every way, garishly dramatic while keeping smart-aleck lines in tact, probably a metric ton of Chicken Little hogwash thrown in for good measure….yeah, I liked it OK.

On the Rat-O-Meter movie scale of five cheeses:

Happy weekend, fiends. Yay!

The dramedy and the romantic drama-fantasy.

Here are two of my fave TV shows from the 80s, when I was a young mom and TV time at night was a restful reward after a crazy day with two energetic boys.

For the younger Finkites: Moonlighting was Bruce Willis’s launch to fame. He was pretty much an unknown until he landed the part of David Addison, the wise-cracking but cute-as-a-puppy detective working for Maddie Hayes (played by 60s fashion model Cybill Shepherd). The seriousness of solving crimes was always interspersed with silliness, like this, for instance, and the romantic tension between Shepherd and Willis was always stretching, stretching, stretching…and once they declared their love (as often happens in real life), things were just weird from then on.

Once Shepherd had kids and Willis made the first Die Hard movie, the series was pretty much over. And they chose the most bizarro way of ending it, too: the crew just came in and started dismantling the set.

Beauty and the Beast falls into the category of Serious Suspension of Disbelief. But I loved it anyway, and refused to miss it. An impossible romance combined with detective plots made this show totally irresistible for me. Catherine (Linda Hamilton) and Vincent (Ron Perlman) were the star-crossed, tragic soulmates. Vincent always appeared at the crucial moment, either to save Catherine or to comfort her. Again with the unresolved tension. I was so sad when it was canceled after only three seasons. Apparently, so were a lot of other people.

Time was (strangely, in my lifetime), when a show was canceled, it disappeared for years until syndication caught up with it. Now, shows go immediately to disc/online, so there’s no waiting. These two programs are now available on DVD in their entirety.

*sigh*Reminiscing about a simpler time…

“They took the job I loved most. I just wanted to be a cop, and they took it away from me.”

Reading the Times yesterday, I had a “whoa, I remember that movie” moment. Sad story, too. It surprised me to learn that Frank Serpico — a zealous New York cop who blew the whistle on his corrupt colleagues back in the 70s — is now living in a cabin a hundred miles from the city. (Read the article while it’s still free — it won’t be for long.) It’s the basic disillusioned good cop story, but with tons more angst and righteous indignation. Frank Serpico was what the Times review called an “anti-cop cop.” He refused even the slightest insinuation of a kickback or bribe; he wouldn’t even accept a free meal out on the beat.

When he discovered that his fellow police officers were on the take, he was outraged. He tried to alert his superiors on several occasions, but the writing was on the wall: NYC cops don’t squeal — they just take the deal. When Serpico was shot in the face during a drug bust in Brooklyn in 1971, his fellow officers wouldn’t even call for an ambulance. He was taken to the hospital — bleeding profusely from his wound — in a squad car. Brutal.

While recuperating, he received cards from his colleagues, telling him to rot in hell.

I remember seeing the movie Serpico with Al Pacino (yaaay) in the late 70s. It was his first starring role, and he won a Golden Globe for it. I must watch it again soon, and I highly recommend it to you.

I just wish the real story was as satisfying. But hey…he appears to be happy, so it’s good. Living in a one-room cabin in the middle of the woods seems to suit him well. But he still carries a lot of pain (see opening line). His recollections are still, after almost 40 years, laced with bitterness and anger.

I say you should watch it sometime, if for no other reason than Al Pacino is dreamy.

Now, since my phone did not ring this morning, telling me I don’t need to drive into school in the snow, it is time to hit the shower and the frozen tundra.

FO

Last Saturday, Kim Peek died at 58 years old. Known as the inspiration for the film Rain Man (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and earned Dustin Hoffman a Best Actor Oscar), Peek inspired the medical community as well. Theories regarding his savantism (although he is not thought to have had autism) and his astonishing ability to store and recall facts abound, though not a whole lot is known.

According to the article in the New York Times, Kim was amazing his family at a very young age. Dismissed by doctors in the mid-1950s as profoundly retarded, his father knew better. By the age of six,

‘Kim had read and memorized the first eight volumes of a set of family encyclopedias,’ his father said. He received part-time tutoring from the age of 7 and completed a high school curriculum by 14. He spent great swaths of time absorbing volumes in the Salt Lake City Public Library.”

The journal Scientific American did a feature on him in 2006. In it, they said:

He knows all the area codes and ZIP codes in the U.S., together with the television stations serving those locales. He learns the maps in the front of phone books and can provide MapQuest-like travel directions within any major U.S. city or between any pair of them. He can identify hundreds of classical compositions, tell when and where each was composed and first performed, give the name of the composer and many biographical details, and even discuss the formal and tonal components of the music.

Of course, someone always has to cast a pall; throw a monkey wrench; pee on the birthday cake. The Daily Mail paints quite the different picture of the level of inspiration Kim actually provided the star of Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman. Reportedly, Hoffman remembers little about their initial meeting, and counted Kim as only one of several “inspirations” that contributed to his development of the Raymond Babbitt character.

No matter. It still doesn’t cancel the “amazing” factor. If I can tell someone my birthdate, and within one second, he tells me the day of the week it fell on and what the weather was like in Zion, Illinois, well, I’m impressed.

And the blackjack scene from the film still makes me laugh. Interesting trivia here. Cool.

FO

Photo credit: AP; 20th Century Fox

It’s the first day of my Christmas vacation. I love it. Well, I loved it until 5:30 a.m., when I stepped out onto my back porch to let Rousseau out, and promptly fell down the stairs. It was fantastic.

So I decided to treat myself to some coffee and extended quiet time, along with a huge dose of feeling sorry for myself and my sore ribs, janked back and neck, and smashed-up ankle. I ended up on FolkStreams.net, and got lost in a wonderful wildernesss for two hours.

I believe it’s crucial that our myriad social customs in America — age-old and often passed down by oral tradition only — be preserved before they’re irretrievably lost. The people at FolkStreams have put together a large collection of documentary films about anything and everything having to do with the American experience, and they’re all available for viewing online. Easy to disappear for hours, at least for me. From their site:

Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities.”

This morning, I watched three films. One featured a group of black girls on a playground in 1968. The dynamic of play and interaction between them was fascinating. Then I watched a storyteller/singer spin the tale of Frankie Silver, a North Carolina woman who purportedly killed her husband and was hanged in 1833. Finally, I learned about gandy dancers on the railroads during the first half of the 20th century. Amazing stuff.

I highly recommend this site to anyone with an interest in little-known components of American cultural history; anything from old carnival barks to a cappella ballad singing in the Appalachians, to the Sacred Harp or Delta blues traditions. In some cases, these films — with priceless interviews and vintage film footage — are all that’s left.

I know it’s not Avatar or Sherlock Holmes, but satisfying and educational nonetheless. Thumbs up.

Happy Saturday — I’m off to replace the ice in my sock.

Fink ouch.