The Niceness

We've Moved

2009-02-13T23:09:00.002-05:00

After nearly five years, we're heading down the road. Moving into a new neighborhood.

Nice knowin' ya, Blogger.

If Arizona Were a Woman, Her Hair Would Be Auburn

2008-11-29T17:38:00.006-05:00

The waitress with the bee-hive hairdo and a fleck of ruby lipstick on her teeth didn't know it, but she was serving me my birthday breakfast a day early. Tomorrow would be the most memorable celebration of my birth simply because it was unlike any other year. I would wake up in a Phoenix motel, finish off the last two slices of cold Dominoes and spend the remaining day in airports around the country.

That time would come.

This morning, Sedona was exactly what I had wanted it to be.

Just 12 hours before, sidewalks on either side of Route 89A were a mess of tourists shuffling in and out of shops that sold personalized toy six-shooters and custom leather tops with tassels. Families milled about on sidewalks, taking pictures of street signs, storefronts and other similarly ordinary scenes to fill their respective photo albums. In a place this stunningly beautiful, even the mundane appeared unique.

Now, at a little after 7 a.m. on September 14, the tiny section of road that will lead me to Route 179, then I-17 and ultimately to Phoenix is quiet and hauntingly empty minus a few local trucks and the coming sun. The mountains surrounding this little resort town, come mid-afternoon, will shine an autumn-leaf red, and Bell Rock -- one of many named buttes, will throw shadows over rocky, auburn slopes. From my booth at the "Hitching Post Restaurant", only the highest peaks see sunlight.

An hour before, I awoke in a chilly tent up the road at Manzanilla Campground. Norm and Natasha, my drinking buddies from last night, were still asleep in the next site over when I hopped in my rental car and took off for town.

The waitress, the one with the hair, brought my pancakes, refilled my coffee and reconvened with her coworkers near the bakery display.

Thinking of my anonymity and independence produced a haughty surge and a smile. No one knew me -- like this waitress -- and they certainly wouldn't see me again. This was both exciting and strangely sad. I had met others along the way -- like Norm and Natasha -- establishing whatever connection one could make in a brief moment. Then, it was done.

In another day, this trip would be, too.

Soon after my first hike into the Grand Canyon earlier in the week, I wondered how I would possibly entertain myself for five more days. Quite suddenly, the thought of those days, of aimless wandering, sparked a minor panic. This different place with nowhere to go, no set plans. This was before the overnight hike to the bottom, the sight of a muddy Colorado River surging forward to somewhere, the stark glow of countless stars at 5 a.m., the ensuing nine-mile hike out with 12 ladies from Boise, a day of rest and a spontaneous trip to Flagstaff.

Surprisingly, time was up. I had a two-hour drive to the University of Phoenix Stadium, where I would witness the hometown Cardinals completely dismantle my beloved Dolphins, the only blemish on an otherwise perfect trip.

No big deal, though, as this jaunt was no more about football than it was about finding myself. No. Far more simpler than that, I wanted to see and experience the Grand Canyon, to stand in awe of a cathedral altogether as holy as the world's oldest and most sacred temples. Then, I would walk into it.

In the weeks leading up to my departure, I had faced the same question -- "You're going by yourself?" and then, "Why?". This was typically followed by some nightmarish story of someone they knew, always a friend of a friend, who proudly ventured into the great abyss only to dehydrate, starve, beg for mercy, lose consciousness, collapse.

They offered advice, too -- "Drink lots of water", "Bring your phone", "Get in shape" and, more pertinent, "Don't die".

The magnitude of this potentially dangerous trip, the challenge, hit me only when others openly expressed their concerns or responded to my ambitious plans with a look of utter shock. It was easy to feel confident. Perspective typically doesn't present itself in travel books.

Yet, as my eyes took in the massive crack in the Earth from atop Bright Angel trailhead, I had my perspective. That little point all the way down, that dark colored rectangle I could barely see, that was Indian Garden -- the halfway point at 4.6 miles. My end point was somewhere beyond the visible apex of Plateau Point trail, which ran at more than six miles. This would be difficult, but in my excitement to hit the trail and in awe of the panoramas, I could muster but one word -- "Sweet".

When I walked out a day later, soaked and filthy, there wasn't an epiphany or a moment of self-realization, no euphoria.

"Sweet," I said as the Boise ladies, who had beaten me to the top an hour earlier, clapped and cheered.

More than the personal satisfaction of tackling a fairly significant task, I had the experience, to say that, yes, I have been to the Grand Canyon, and I took a long walk to the bottom, too. There, at elevation zero, surrounded by ominous walls of rock in the fading light, I was keenly aware of the oftentimes suppressed desire to scratch and claw for life in my finite time. It was still there, thankfully. I hadn't gotten complacent or fallen asleep to the everyday humdrum.

It was a clarity of sorts, I thought, pushing the accelerator on my Honda rental. Around me, Arizona opened up again, the highway cutting through wide expanses and scapes. To my right, miles of earth and mountains. To my left, powerline towers appearing like matchsticks in the distance, tattered roadside billboards and, of course, mountains.

Driving was a breathtaking event in itself, and I had a little over an hour more this, of an unfolding canvas at the crest of each hill. I was free and clear for miles and miles and miles. Clear like the crystal, beacon lights of heaven in a black, pre-dawn Arizona sky, glowing at the bottom of everything.

* * * *

FYI: Future Subjunctive Tense?

The One(s) That Got Away

2008-10-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

It’s happened to the best of us. We let Mr. Right slip through our fingers, and we’re left wondering what might have been. The memories we could have made together, the touchdowns we could have scored, the three pointers, the championships… What were we thinking? How did we let you get away? I’m talking, of course, about athletes.

As the 1978 NBA season was winding down a deal was in the works between NBA Lawyer David Stern, Buffalo Braves owner John Y. Brown, and Boston Celtics owner Irv Levin. Going into the season, the Braves did not meet attendance expectations, selling less than 4,500 season tickets, which resulted in the franchise receiving an escape clause in their lease. In Boston, Levin, a California businessman, was set on moving his team to the golden state. But, of course, the NBA would never allow their cornerstone franchise, one of the greatest dynasties in basketball history, to leave Bean Town. So what to do?

Stern proposed a swap. Levin takes the Braves. Brown takes the Celtics. Straight up. Well, sort of. Also, as part of the deal, the Celts received Tiny Archibald (who had missed the 1977/78 season with an Achilles tendon injury), Billy Knight, and Marvin Barnes. The Braves received Freeman Williams, back-up center Kevin Kunnert, and power forwards Kermit Washington and Sidney Wicks. No draft picks were requested in the deal, which allowed Boston to retain the draft rights to Larry Bird, the number six choice overall in the 1978 NBA draft.

It didn’t really matter anyway though, did it? I mean, the Braves, now the Clippers, were already in San Diego and finished the 1978/79 season with a winning record, 43-39, nine games back of that season’s NBA champion Seattle SuperSonics. The Celtics finished 25 games back, dead last in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. Oh, and that draft pick, Bird I think it was? He decided to stay at Indiana State and play his senior season in college anyway, not entering the NBA until 1979, when he became the league’s Rookie of the Year narrowly beating out his longtime rival Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Larry Legend went on to become one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players, winning three NBA championships with the Celtics, and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1998.

Of course Bird would have never played as a Brave. Hell, he probably would have tacked on a post-graduate year at Indiana State had he been drafted by Buffalo, but the deal was already done making that an impossibility regardless. The reality is: the closest the Queen City would have ever come to sharing in the glory of Larry “Legend” Bird would have been as posthumous Buffalo Braves fans, three thousand miles away watching on television as the San Diego Clippers struggled through season after NBA season.

Buffalo is a football town anyway, and the Bills would never let “the one” get away, right? The 1990 NFL draft saw the number 16 and 17 picks go to Buffalo and Dallas, respectively. The Bills selected James Williams, a defensive back from Fresno State, who became most famous for being the first Buffalo player to wear the number 31 jersey (it had formerly been retired as being representative of “the spirit of the Bills”). With the 17th pick in the NFL draft, the Dallas Cowboys selected Emmitt Smith, running back from the University of Florida.

By 1990, Thurman Thomas, the Bills’ running back, was posting career numbers after being drafted in the second round in 1988. In fact, he ended up leading the AFC in rushing in 1990, ‘91, and ‘93. In 1990 though, he almost led Buffalo to their first ever Super Bowl win rushing for 135 yards, one touchdown and catching five passes for 55 yards. There was even talk of Super Bowl XXV MVP honors going to Thomas even though the Bills had lost the game to the New York Giants 20-19.

In 1991, Thomas was named NFL most valuable player while he helped lead his team to a second straight championship game, Super Bowl XXVI, where the Bills were defeated by the Washington Redskins. In 1992, the Bills found themselves in a third straight Super Bowl, where, ironically, they met the Dallas Cowboys. Before the game, Thomas put his helmet on the 40 yard line, a pre-game ritual, lost track of it during the National Anthem subsequently resulting in his absence from the first two offensive series for the Bills (Kenneth Davis botched a handoff on the first series), and the Bills were trounced by Emmitt Smith and the Cowboys 17-52. The next year, Buffalo and Dallas met again in Super Bowl XXVII. Thomas only produced 19 yards rushing, though he did retain his helmet’s whereabouts throughout the pre-game festivities, a moral victory nonetheless. Dallas won the game 30-13, and Emmitt Smith took MVP honors.

Thurman Thomas was arguably the greatest running back in Buffalo Bills history (O.J. Simpson did not have the offensive line to support him early in his career, though he was the first player in NFL history to break the 2,000-yard single season rushing mark in 1973 with 2,003 yards). Thomas, though, rushed the Bills to an unprecedented four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. Though he never got the Bills over the hump, he gave Buffalo something to cheer about throughout most of the nineties.

Emmitt Smith finished his career with three Super Bowl rings, one Super Bowl MVP award, a league MVP award in ‘93, and he was named offensive rookie of the year in 1990. Smith was a postseason juggernaut who amassed 1,586 yards, 19 touchdowns, 7 consecutive 100-yard games, and 9 straight games with a touchdown. An impressive resume no doubt, but the one postseason record he does not stand alone on, total playoff touchdowns (21), he shares with Thurman Thomas.

Hindsight is 20/20. Who knows what Smith would have done as a Buffalo Bill? Would we be the three or four or five-time Super Bowl champs? Or would Smith’s talents have been wasted as a backup to Thomas’ already impressive resume? Was the trio of Aikman, Irvin, and Smith truly that much more potent than that of Kelly, Reed, and Thomas? Super Bowl history leans toward yes, but oh, what might have been?

Probably closest to our hearts and minds, at least those of us who attended St. Bonaventure University, is the Bonnies basketball career of Mike Gansey, a six-foot four mop-haired all-purpose shooting guard from Ohio. In two seasons (2001-2003), Gansey quickly became the future of Bonnies basketball. The Bonnies’ great white hope, if you will. A new kind of guard, a scrapper, to fill the void of losing Caswell Cyrus, David Messiah Capers, and Tim Winn, all integral members of the 2000 squad’s NCAA tournament birth (the team lost in a double-overtime first round game to Tayshaun Prince and the Kentucky Wildcats). Mostly a bench player as a freshman, Gansey became a starter in his sophomore season averaging 13.9 points, 5.0 rebounds, and shooting over 40% from three-point range.

And then there was the scandal. In 2003, St. Bonaventure’s basketball program was rocked by the involvement of the university’s president, athletic director, and men’s basketball coach in the forging of credentials of transfer center Jamil Terrell. Terrell was admitted to St. Bonaventure University with only a welding certificate from Coastal Georgia Community College. He was forced to leave the team. Athletic Director Gothard Lane, president Robert Wickenheiser, and coach Jan van Breda Kolff were either dismissed or resigned. With them, so went Gansey.

Gansey transferred to the University of West Virginia where he continued to be a hustling crowd pleaser after sitting out the 2003/04 season as stipulated in transfer player rules. In just two seasons, Gansey “had the 18th highest career scoring average (14.35), the ninth best field goal percentage in a career (52.6%), the third best 3-point field goal percentage in a career (39.4%), the seventh most steals per game in a career (1.75) and the 12th most minutes per game in a career (32.12)” for the Mountaineers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Gansey).

Perhaps Gansey was the only athlete that Western New York ever really had a shot at truly loving. After all, he was ours, if only for a short time. Larry Bird was just a fantasy. And Emmitt Smith could have broken our hearts just as easily as any other running back. Besides, Thurman Thomas gave us some of the best years of our lives. We cannot change the past, dwelling on what might have been, but we can always be grateful for what we had.

JHurls
The Niceness

Easing Into The Sweet Surrender of Aging Backwards

2008-10-01T14:07:00.003-04:00

The nurse spoke casually of “off-campus” dining as if they really had a choice unless my mother was there to sign them out. But that was neither here nor there. We had furniture to move.

I rode with my uncle in his truck, and we followed my father in his truck around the parking lot to the side entrance where the maintenance woman was holding the door open. There was: the bed (the frame in four pieces, mattress, and box spring), a mini refrigerator, two end tables, TV stand, a 27-inch television, two lamps, two dressers, the kitchen table and two chairs. My mom brought shelves, photographs, and the rest of the decorations in her car.

On the first trip my dad and I carried the mattress down the hallway. Room 124 was all the way at the other end of the building next to the emergency exit. We passed Aunt Jen’s room. We passed the common room. Next door, hanging on the knob of room 123, there was a laminated door hanger with a picture of a kitten in a wicker basket and the words “Beware, Attack Cat on Duty.” I smiled and pointed it out to my dad.

My mom was pacing the floor, fresh Berber carpet, in the 11x9 room. “The window faces the woods?” was my first thought as we entered.

“Where are we putting the bed?” my dad asked her.

She stopped and looked at her feet. We got the frame and ordered my mom out of the room. She went to find my uncle in the lobby to start the paperwork with one of the nurses.

The bathroom is directly to the right, in a separate room, when you walk in. The bed would be straight ahead in front of the closets. Already, there were two brand new La-Z-Boy chairs, a recliner for my grandfather and a stationary one for my grandmother, and a couch that my grandmother had picked out. They were against the window wall. My father said what I was already thinking: the bed was going to take up too much room. We put it up anyway. My mom came back and stared at the bed from the doorway. “It’s too close to this wall,” she said as she ran her left hand along the outside of the bathroom wall. Her wedding band made a “zip” sound up and down the wallpaper. I suggested that we do the living room first.

The couch started against the left wall. It moved under the window and then to the right wall and finally back to the left. That’s where it stayed. The chairs started on the right, went to the center and then right back where they started. Grandma’s chair went next to the window; she liked to watch the birds outside. The TV went on the stand in the corner between the couch and the window.

My mom put shelves and knickknacks on the walls, hung pictures, and opened a fresh box of Kleenex and put it on the table between the La-Z-Boys. Then she went to get her parents.

My father and I wandered the halls only half-looking for my uncle. There was a courtyard outside. It was hot and the flowers needed water; they mostly looked like stalks of straw with a hint of green and wilted color at the ends. It was clean, but the pavement of the round walk was cracked and circled around a parched two-tier fountain in the center. The bench on the opposite side could have used a fresh coat of paint. But all in all, the courtyard would do.

The common room was filled with chairs and tables with half-started puzzles lying out and decks of cards and board games stacked on stands in the corners of the room. A TV was centered in front a couch with love seats on either side for socializing. But the room was empty, it was noon; almost lunch time.

We passed the dining hall, where residents started to gather in shifts. It looked like a home-style diner, square tables with four chairs, place settings and brown coffee cups turned up thirsty for hot coffee. That made me relieved, and I smiled at the nurse as we passed her office, which was across the hall from the beauty/barber shop, before we got to the lobby. There was more life here, in front of the big windows where light flooded the room. Residents waited with spouses or friends for the mailman. Out the window we saw my mom pull into a parking spot with her parents. A Hershey’s ice cream sign was attached to the wall above a white marble counter that segregated a dessert nook in the lobby. The concise flavor list was hung on the back wall above the ice cream cooler: chocolate, vanilla, mint ting-a-ling, rocky road, pistachio, coffee, and cookies-n-cream. A small cardboard sign on the counter read: “Ice Cream 50 cents.” My dad raised his eyebrows and grinned as he held the door open for me. He said, “Fifty cents? I’m going to start coming here on my lunch breaks.”

Nics at the Dolph

2008-09-06T23:39:00.003-04:00

Is it just me, or was Rachel Nichols (Nics) looking rough on her 11:37 p.m. EST (recorded earlier that day; it was sunny) ESPN report at Dolphins (the Dolph) Stadium?

Let those bangs down, Nics. And stop drinking all night before on-camera appearances. Damn.

Hurls
The Nice

Grind

2008-09-04T15:09:00.003-04:00

"We're out of napkins!" I yelled to Leanne from the condiment bar. "How the hell can we be out of napkins? That's, like, up there in priorities for a food-service business."

We'd been out of close to everything this month.

"See?" Leanne said from behind the counter. "We're dead in the water."

We had this talk every Thursday night, Leanne and I. Our shift, from 2 to 10 p.m., had slowed to little more than a few customers an hour. It was strange, too, considering the surrounding restaurants, night club and movie theater were buzzing. Thursday was live music night and still our take was minimal.

"But you spoke with Rachel, right?" I asked. "And she said it was just a rumor. Everything was fine; it was just a little slow."

"Yeah, but this is crazy. What have we had, like, two customers since 4? And we barely have any desserts left."

She was right. I'd seen it for myself. The usual cakes, pies and cookies were replaced with store-bought goods. Junk with gourmet prices. Refrigerators once stocked full were slimming. Meats were going bad. We were running out of coffee beans. It's a Grind was dying.

"They would tell us, right? It's, like, not a huge deal, but it would be nice to know."

Leanne laid her head on the counter and shrugged her shoulders.

Come the following Monday morning, the place was dark and vacant. No customers. No workers. Lights out.

Typically, Rachel, the manager, manned the register; Jewels ran the hot bar and waved as I passed. Sometimes, I'd saunter in, sweaty and panting, to pick up my paycheck.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," the sign read on the door. "We Are Closed."

I passed a man in business attire clicking away on a laptop. If the Grind had been open, he'd surely be inside, plopped in one of the semi-elegant plush chairs.

Rachel called me at home a couple hours later.

"Last night was the last day of business for us," she said, matter-of-factly.

I told her that I understood. I saw it coming, I said, lying.

My barista days were over. And, sure, I would certainly miss the extra couple hundred bucks each month. More than that, though, was the realization that our little community of regulars was no longer.

Joe, Stefan, Aristotle Nate, Mary, Dean and His Lady, Xavier, Double Macchiato Woman, the Large Coffee with Hazelnut Kid -- see ya. Closed shop. Go home.

Tuesday was something like a memorial. Five of us former employees convened out in front. Joe was there, bright white hair and crocodile loafers, sitting in his usual afternoon spot at one of the outside tables. He smoked a cigarette in between sips of a 24-ounce iced coffee...from Starbucks.

"It's a shame," he said. "I hate Starbucks."

The corporate folk who owned the plaza had changed the locks.

Joe said Ron, my boss, was months behind on rent, and the landlords didn't want him coming back to claim anything. It wasn't his anymore.

We watched as one after the other walked head-down toward the shop, looking up only after tugging on the locked door.

"What the ..." one guy said, pointing and looking dumbfounded.

"Closed," Meredith said. "Like, for good. We're done. We're in mourning."

We just nodded in agreement, shrugging shoulders.

"Yep."

"So sad."

"It's really a shame," Joe said.

Then there's Frank, another regular, who eyes me from across Panera as I write this. He walks over.

"Hey, man. What happened to the Grind?"

And I tell him all my theories -- the rent did us in, not a ton of profits selling coffee, the new ice cream place, the fancy "dessert bar".

"I did hear another coffee place is going in," I said.

"I heard that too."

"So maybe I'll catch you over there when it opens."

"See you there."

"Yep, man. See you there."

* * * * *

Inspired by "The Last Night at the Lobster"

Bros

2008-08-25T19:36:00.004-04:00

For the typical tourist, a pleasurable Philadelphia experience would probably consist of 35 mm shots of the Liberty Bell or a jaunt around the Old City. Something like that. Sitting around a small, plastic garbage can in a downtown hotel room wasn't in the itinerary. Yet, there we were. All eight of us, from different spots on the East Coast, all still astoundingly close, in the heart of a city ironically known for its brotherly love.

Tossing beer cans into a Rubbermaid bin wasn't on the itinerary because there wasn't an itinerary. The way we saw it, trip agendas succeeded only in choking off spontaneity, as if vacations needed a workday framework of two hours here, one hour there, and then lunch. Our weekend getaway involved but three essential orders of business: Get tickets to the Mets series, get to Philly, find a place to sleep. Everything else was trivial. Personal interests were sacrificed, too. No one was going anywhere without the other seven.

Dudes.

Bros.

The weathermen had said rain all weekend, but the sunshine coming through the ceiling-high windows said otherwise.

Finn, from Pittsburgh, tipped his head back far enough to get the last sip of Tecate, the beer that Heath bought in Essington earlier in the morning.

"Dollar says I make this."

Briar acted quick.

"I'll take that bet."

"Me too," Flave said.

"F$% all you queers. I'm drilling this mother-f%$#, you watch. Eggs, you want in or what?"

Eggs, one of the four that flew up from Charlotte, responded quickly, like he was waiting for someone to ask.

"Sure, dollar says you miss."

Finn appeared dumbfounded, insulted.

"Bro, what the f -- "

"OK, OK," Lenny said from the pull-out couch. "We got three to one. Anyone else want Finn in this one?"

"Eh, eh," Rage interrupted, slowly removing a handful of bills from his pockets. "T'ree dollars on Finn."

"Yeah, that's right, Rage. None of these pussy mother-f#$ ..."

Finn held the can out in front of his eyes, practicing. It was no more than a three-foot shot, child's plays. Bucket Three in Bozo's "Grand Prized Game". Winner gets a RadioFlyer full of board games and a great, pink birthday cake.

Finn let it fly with a flick of the wrist and missed by a foot.

"F$#%!"

   "ooooohhhhhhhhhhh"

   "oooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

   "Nice."

"Man, what the f#$?" Rage said.

Empties littered the room's maroon carpeting, PBRs and Tecates under the desk and beds, in piles by the door, in the closet, in the bathroom, under the sink, in the shower. By the looks of things, it was as if we were still susceptible to some of our boyhood impulses, like the one that involves making filthy that which was once orderly for the sake of a good laugh.

Old stories came to life again, leaving us roaring and bent at the gut, gasping for air.

Someone said, "We heading to the game now, or do we want to check out the city?"

"Eggs, grab that map. Independence Hall is right down the street, right?"

"Uh," Eggs said, flipping pages. "Yeah, yeah, here it is."

He began to read.

"Wait, wait, wait," Finn interrupted. "A buck says Eggs can't read this next paragraph without f#$#ing it up. Who's in?"

"I'm in," Briar said. "You won't read it 'cause you're Thad Fordon's cousin, and he couldn't read s#@!"

The room erupted.

Eggs got 20 seconds in and got crossed up.

"Mark Twain would've f#@ed that up," Finn said. "Now, give me my money."

"We leaving soon? Where's Flave?"

"He's ironing his shirt."

"Wait," Briar said. "Did you just say he's ironing his nuts?"

Heath was sprawled out on a double bed, his back propped against a mound of pillows and comforters so he could drink without choking to death.

"I'm ready," he said.

We turned to Heath, who was shaking an empty between his fingers.

"Who wants this bet?" he asked.

"From the bed?"

This was Bill, the big guy from college. He's living in Baltimore now.

Heath sat up and pointed to the floor.

"From right-f@#ing here."

"There's no way."

"No f#@ing way."

"Who's in?"

"No way," Rage said in his Boston dialect. "I'll give you 20 to 1 odds. Twenty bucks against your dollar says you miss."

"Wow."

"F@ck."

"Damn."

No one spoke as Heath followed through like a free-throw shooter.

He drained it.

   "F@#!"

   "S@#!"

   "Oooooo!!!!"

   "Un-f@#ing-believable!"

   "No way."

   "Holy sh@t."

   "Miserable."

Rage reluctantly forked over the 20 bucks.

* * * * *

We took the Orange Line to Pattison to get to Citizens Bank Park. We did this for each game. The Phillies took game 1, but the Mets won the next three games, winning the series.

It didn't really matter.

Shades

2008-08-21T10:51:00.002-04:00

I could never figure out how he could see wearing those dark sunglasses always taking the stage after dark in an over-sized usually black button down shirt and baggy jeans, his typical uniform. The always cool, laid back look of the one-man brass section, LeRoi Moore, who brought the jazz-infused sound to the eclectic Dave Matthews Band.

But it won't be the band anymore.

Sadly, LeRoi Moore, only 46, passed away suddenly in Los Angeles Tuesday evening after unexpected complications from injuries he sustained in an ATV accident earlier this year.

It was a ritual that began with a baptism into the world of music, one that occurred in 2000 at Ralph Wilson Stadium. As we walked to the stadium from our $10 parking spot in an Orchard Park backyard, we were greeted by the drunken chants and howls of a thousand fans anticipating something we had no idea of yet, something some of them had experienced perenially since as far back as 1992.

Over blaring car stereos, I asked, "Why are they listening to the music of the band that they're going to see?" The other two in my party only shrugged; the three of us from St. Bonaventure's paint crew having skipped the sweaty workday to make our trek to our first Dave Matthews Band concert. We had no idea.

It had rained, and being our first major outdoor concert, we had no idea if the show would go on. But it did. Thousands packed into the narrow entrances of the football stadium, slipping cameras, glass pipes and lighters in purses and pockets past security check points.

We marched up level after level, ramp after ramp to the top section of the stadium, stage left. It was high. Around us illegal substances were exhaled in small puffs of smoke and then disappeared into the damp dusklight as the opening band played to a handful of disineterested fans holding their spots at the front of the stage.

As the rain fell on the aluminum bleachers around us and the sun went down, the crowd grew, filling the floor, moving from beer stand to bathroom to folding chair seats in a type of ritual like tie dye ants. And then the music stopped, the crowd hurried back to their seats and cheered on the way, and the lights went out.

And then the band took the stage, Dave, Carter, Boyd, Stefan, and LeRoi. And the sixteen beats on the snare drum to start "Ants Marching," that night's opener. And over the roar of the crowd, Boyd's violin. And Dave and Stefan's battling banjo jam intro. And finally LeRoi's clarinet improv warmup.

All the sounds: the crowd, the ping of the rain on the seats, those instruments that shouldn't really go together, they all hit our ears at once and as a tingle ran from my feet up to the back of my neck, I smiled. I became a fan.

And while I would go to college later that fall, and everything around me seemed like it was changing, a tradition started. Each summer since that initial June evening at Ralph Wilson, I bought a ticket to a Dave Matthews Band concert. And summers grew to winters and fall tours, indoor stadiums and amphitheaters. A drive to Buffalo transformed into tri-state college treks without tickets and paid off with scalped floor seats in Ohio or hours spent in the cold hoping for a glimpse of band members leaving soundcheck in Albany.

There have been many memorable shows, songs I thought I'd never hear live, unbelievable performances, surprises every time, and always fun. My last show, in Irvine, CA in 2006 ended the same way my first had begun: with the lights going down, my five favorite band members taking the stage in the dark for their encore, and LeRoi stage right in a black shirt and dark sunglasses blowing the notes to "Ants Marching." And me, somewhere in the back smiling, still wondering how LeRoi could see through those shades.

JHurls
The Niceness

Revival

2008-08-18T18:59:00.004-04:00

We parked our cars in an open field surrounding the grounds of City of Light Church. Couples, singles, children, grandparents -- entire families -- walked up the hill leading to the main stage where the man was to speak. Crowds had already reserved their spots, laying blankets down, arranging lawn chairs and applying sunscreen. Those best prepared brought jackets. The revival was to extend well into the night.

City of Light Church is other-worldly, a glorious center of worship and spiritual learning big enough for its own zip code. People live here. A girl I know is a teen leader there. She calls it "the base", which sounds dangerous, like some underground league of guerrilla survivalists, huddled in musty bunkers, awaiting the Second Coming.

Surrounding the towering hotel and banquet halls, various castles, like something out of a fairy tale dream, convey a theme park ambience. The castles were the former pastor's idea, they told me.

I met up with them at the concessions and retail areas, near the big blue castle and projection screens.

T-shirts were on sale, black ones with the word "Shaba" written on them. They told me this was the word the man used when speaking in tongues, when delivering God's healing.

We found a spot for our blanket among the sea of cheering thousands.

Ray -- the speaker, the main event -- didn't have the prototypical look of an evangelist. He was covered in tattoos and wore loose-fitting blue jeans, a black t-shirt with an enormous gold silk screen and a watch the size of a coaster.

"Ray, this is Sandra, who is responding to your word of knowledge regarding cataracts in the right eye."

The man speaking was probably an assistant of some kind.

"What did you feel?" Ray asked.

The woman stammered and spoke words in short bursts, directionless yet joyful.

"When you called that word of knowledge... I, I've had cataracts in the eyes for 18 years, but when you gave that word of knowledge, I felt a warmth. A warmth coming over me."

Ray folded his arms while she spoke. He looked almost skeptical.

"So. Cataracts for 18 years?"

"Yes."

"Tonight you feel a warmth?"

"Yes."

"You prayed to God and said, 'Let me see', and you can see?"

"Yes."

"No pain?"

"No pain."

A smattering of applause arose near the stage and grew loader. The woman raised her hands to the heavens and wobbled at the knees. If a stage escort were not at her shoulder, she would have fallen over.

"It's the glory!"

Shouts of "Amen" came from the left, right, front and back.

"The glory! The fire!"

In a single violent motion, the man threw his right arm toward the woman.

"BAM!"

The woman shook and tumbled backward, eyes closed, limbs everywhere. A man caught her, leading her to the ground.

"The glory!"

On the ground, the woman convulsed. The crowd applauded and cheered.

They came with a variety of afflictions: Nerve damage in the finger tips, heart valve defects, liver damage, colon degenerations, back spasms, cancers, bull legs, crooked knees and legs, epileptic seizures, deafness, blindness, issues of blood.

"Wait. Wait," Ray interrupted. "An angel just showed me a vision -- a man with a growth on the face. You've had it all your life. It's a growth or a defect you've had from birth, and it's...it's...it's a discoloring of the skin around the face, something like a growth. You're being healed this second. If that's you, I want you to raise your hand right now, wherever you are. Just raise your --."

Someone raised a hand.

"Sir, Amen. I want you to come to the stage right now. Praise God."

A line was forming just off stage. These were the healed, excited to share their testimonies of faith and deliverance.

"Steve, what do you have for me?"

"Ray, this is Donna. She's had pain in the ankles for...How many years?"

"Thirty-plus years," she said.

"Thirty years?! For 30 years, you've had pain in the ankles. Then what happened?"

"She said she feels no pain."

"No pain," Ray said.

Roaring applause surrounded us.

"Jump up and down," he said.

The woman bounced awkwardly in her white tennis shoes.

"BAM!!"

She leaned backward and fell gently and more controlled than Sandra. Ray muttered something in tongues, but it wasn't "Shaba".

"An angel just spoke to me and said there's a woman named Cathy to the right of the stage who has a heart condition."

He paused to scan the crowd.

"Cathy, where are you, honey? Just raise your hand. A woman, the angel said, by the name of Cathy. You've had a heart problem or issues in the chest. Cathy?"

Someone raised a hand.

"Ma'am, are you Cathy? No. The angel specifically said 'Cathy'."

The testimonies continued. A child with eye issues could now look into the light without pain. A young woman, who wore a leg brace to the revival, removed it on stage and handed it to Ray.

"This woman...What's your name, dear?... Kelly. Kelly is responding to your word of knowledge regarding a leg brace."

"Glory!"
"Amen!"

"Hallelujah!"

"Praise Your name!"

"Father!"

"Amen!"

"Glory!"

"We will receive a double portion from the Holy Spirit tonight!" Ray yelled.

Pockets of people began to lay their hands on one another, whispering prayers, while notes from the electric piano came through the PA speakers.

"Ray, we're being told that healings are happening right now in the overflow room in the congregation."

"Amen! Amen! Let's give praise for those in the overflow room, in the church, who are being healed by the second."

The sun had set, and portable spotlights were being set-up behind us. Those healed kept coming.

Sometime later, Ray left the stage to the sound of synthesizers and distorted guitars. Headlights from slow-moving vehicles could be seen in the fields. Some stayed behind to pray while others quickly bagged up their leftover snacks and hurried out. Whole families hugged one another. Husbands kissed their wives on the forehead.

The glory, the anointing of the Holy Ghost, had come. Word was He had to catch a plane to Spokane.

Hollywood Weather Report: "Summer Edition...

2008-08-12T23:37:00.003-04:00

...Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Admit That I Hate Jeff Simon*"

It was Sunday, and it was raining. The streets and yards of West Seneca were flooded with rain water and my brain saturated by countless reviews of Judd Apatow's latest opus "Pineapple Express." Niki had a wedding shower (irony, I know) to attend so I was on my own, and since she had shown no interest up to that point of seeing the stoner/action/comedy, I decided that there was nothing else to do but check it out.

Venue: Walden Galleria's brand new Regal Cinema. Seats are amazing there, concessions ridiculously priced.

Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, writers of "Superbad," had penned Pineapple's script, so I had pretty high (no pun intended) expectations going in, especially with indie darling director David Gordon Green ("George Washington," "All The Real Girls," "Undertow") at the helm. Rogan plays the lead, Dale Denton, a disguise-wielding process server by day and stoner, well, pretty much every other second of the day. His dealer, a loveable long-haired stoned-all-the-time goofball, Saul Silver, is played Apatow cronie James Franco. Franco and Rogan, reunited for the first time on the big screen since their roles as high school students on Apatow's one-season only television venture "Freaks and Geeks," definitely have on-screen chemistry. A bro-mance if you will. And they make a good hero and sidekick combo as they go on the run after Rogan's character is witnessed witnessing a murder while delivering a subpoena to a drug dealer's home (played effortlessly by Gary Cole).

Along the way, they encounter "emotionally complex" hitmen (thank you Tarantino, see also "Pulp Fiction") and another sidekick of sorts, Red, played by Danny McBride. McBride steals the show as the oft left-for-dead informant connection between good and evil. Upon their first meeting, the three engage in one of the funniest fights I have ever seen on screen.

Green handles the dealer/buyer relationship of Denton and Silver with delicacy, especially when they decide to "hideout" in the woods after going on the lam. Silver is seeking friendship, but Denton is only concerned with finding a way out of his mess.

The laughs are plentiful and some of the scenes side-splitting especially that fight scene (I was in tears). Overall, it's a fun summer movie. Suspended disbelief is a must heading into this one, afterall, how serious can you expect to take an action film about stoners?

Score: Three and a half stars out of five. (whatever the fuck a star represents). If you're in the mood to laugh, go see it. How's that?

Other movies and scores:

The Dark Knight (excellent, four and 1/2 stars)
Get Smart (funny, three stars)
Hancock (better than not going to the movies, three stars)

Movie Script Update: The latest feature I have been working on is underway. It's loosely structured, based mainly on any New Wave film that I could get my hands on over the past two years, but all original material. It's fun, it's serious, it's a love story, it's emo, it's called "Shut Up and Listen" (for now). Do it.

In other news, I went to The Original Soup Guy restaurant in Williamsville last Friday. The store, a small shop sqatted in the center of a strip mall, is quaint to say the least, but it is in fact one of the chain of restaurants opened by the man from NYC that Seinfeld based the "Soup Nazi" on. The soup is delicious, and expensive. I tried the Veal Goulash, per the greeter/cashier, Tim**. The soup, served over a bed of rice optional, is served with a french roll, slice of watermelon, and miniature Reese's peanut butter candy. Although pricey, the soup was a great choice for a rainy afternoon.

Finally, some sporting news. I played my first full game of Kan Jam Saturday. Kan Jam consists of two cylinderical pieces of plastic, 2 and 1/2 feet high, 1 foot wide, with a slit in the front large enough for a frisbee to enter spread ten to fifteen yards apart. Much like "Bags" (or "Cornhole" or whatever the hell you call it) teams are made up of two players each, one at each end of the court. Teams take turns throwing a frisbee back and forth at the cylinders. If you make it, unassisted, you win the game, which I actually did once. If your teammate is able to jam it in the cylinder you get three points. Two if the frisbee hits the cylinder on its own. And one point if your teammate makes it hit the cylinder. Game's to 21. It's a very fun game, get it, play it, be it.

My throat is sore. I still don't have health insurance. I'm tired, I'm going to bed.

*Jeff Simon is the movie critic for the Buffalo News. I read his reviews weekly, and he always has something stupid to say. It's as though he only watches movies because it's his job and not because he likes them. Can't stand him.

** Tim liked to chew his gum while he talked.

J Hurls
The Niceness

Satanism in the Southern Tier

2008-08-11T17:29:00.003-04:00

It was during an innocent bike ride around Olean three weeks ago that Hightops reminded me of our hometown's dark, secret past. For a time in the mid-90s, satanists owned Olean.

In third grade, Jason told me devil worshippers sacrificed dogs in Cherry Pit. He lived close by so I believed him. He heard the terrifying howls from sacrificial lambs and saw the wolves, too -- savage, white-fanged wolves that scoured the surrounding area and attacked curious, church-going children. How a horde of wolves had anything to do with satanic worship was beyond my 8-year-old intellect, but, at the time, wolves and devils were synonymous with malicious intent.

"Why would they kill dogs?" I asked.

"Spell dog backwards."

It made perfect sense, and still today, it seems like a justifiable reason for a satanist to slaughter puppies in the name of Beelzebub.

Jason said he once ventured down into the pit during daylight. A plastic bag was hidden behind some shrubs. Jason peeked inside.

"It was nothing but gray slime and fur."

I stayed away from the pit.

Stories involving satanic sacrifice popped up for the next few years. As children, we didn't know much about them, only that they hated dogs and usually convened under trussels, in heavily wooded areas with bike trails, or abandoned buildings with structural inefficiencies. Truth was none of us had actually seen a devil worshipper, but apparently they'd been spotted.

The Constitution Avenue Trails were allegedly a hot bed of black magic activity. Homer Hill, too. Brook Street, sometimes. Gargoyle Park, on the other hand, was reportedly cased with black mages, a hotbed for communion in the name of the Prince of Darkness. No kid set foot in Gargoyle at night. You go; you die. I didn't go; I'm still alive.

There was more, Jason said. Never, under any circumstances, should you leave your dog outside at night, especially during Halloween. "Devil's Night" saw a surge in dog kidnappings. They steal your dog right off your porch and carry them to an awaiting car. Destination -- Death.

Each Halloween, I made sure Barney and Gizmo went to bed early.

Spell "God" backwards.

Curse the linguistics.

If by some arbitrary fate, God spelled backwards was "litter", Olean would've been the cleanest town in America. Instead, dogs were decomposing under our sniffling noses.

Of course, it was all a vicious lie, just one of many nightmarish myths that always seem to correlate with youth.

I asked Hightops if she'd ever visited the famous dirt ramps behind the now-demolished St. Francis Hospital.

The trails, located in a patch of woods between the town's Nature Trail and a nursing home, were the end destination for summer bike rides. During our BMX phases, Kid Beem and Rowdy M. would lead the brigade of Dyno VFRs into the trails where, once there, we'd awe at the two and their bunny-hopping abilities. Kid and Rowdy could fly. When bored, they'd blow up aerosol cans and smoke Swishers. We'd run behind trees to escape the shrapnel. Those were kick-ass times, and considering that Hightops lived just up the road, I was sure she'd been down there.

"Nah," she said, catching her breath between pedals. "My mom always said there was, like, devil worshippers that met down there."

"Your mom bought into that shit?!"

"Wait...what?"

Was it a vast parental conspiracy? A fibbed mind-fuck to keep us from potential harm?

Curious, I asked, "Where else did she say devil worshippers hung out?"

"Just at those trails," Hightops said, confused. "Why do you ask?"

"Have you ever seen a devil worshipper?"

"No, and thinking about it now, I don't see why they seemed so threatening at the time. Something tells me they wouldn't appear so hostile."

"They probably look like us."

"Right... You don't worship the devil, do you, Lou?"

"No, you're safe."

"Cool. Just checking."

Crutch

2008-08-04T15:23:00.003-04:00

A door popped open behind me. That familiar metal click of a thumb-pressed handle -- a memorable sound to a regular of the Russell Jandoli Building -- shot through the empty hall. Who else would be here? It was summer after all, and the journalism professors at St. Bonaventure University -- my old profs -- should have been back in their writing dens penning the next great novel, bickering about free speech issues or critiquing the steady stream of dailies.

I had hoped the building would be empty, leaving me to aimlessly wander. I wasn't in a chatting mood. I wasn't much for courtesy questions, either. The kind that make you seem interested when, really, you couldn't care less.

The whole dynamic between acquaintances seemed incredibly forced and clumsy, void of genuineness. Also, my pride needed a story, a professional accomplishment to hang my hat on. I didn't have one.

I guess I could have run, but instead I kept my eyes locked on the school's bulletin board, the one with all the latest achievements of j-school grads. Those bastards.

My peripheral vision picked up the man's light-orange shirt and medium height.

Faculty member. No doubt.

The man leaned on a cane. There were just a handful of journalism professors, but I didn't remember a prof old enough to need a crutch.

Curious now to actually look, I eyed his dark-framed glasses. His buzzed hair was brushed with gray.

Professor Dr. Denny Wilkins.

I hadn't seen him since I graduated nearly three years ago. He looked a touch thicker than I remembered.

He was two steps from turning the corner and disappearing down the hall when he stopped. The slightest tilt of his head brought his eyes to mine.

"Can I help you?"

Those smooth, sonorous words -- more chilling than energetic -- pronounced with a keen, calculated precision. He had the pipes of a veteran NPR disc jockey.

"Just wandering around the old stomping grounds," I said, as if caught in a lie.

He pivoted on his good leg and crept toward me in a lumbering gait. His subtle laugh could have been mistaken for a cough.

I pointed at his foot, which was encased in a black nylon brace.

"You see," he started. "I broke it recently and just had surgery. Should be in it for another few months. Now, what brings you back to town?"

Back to town? It was too specific a question. Did he know me? Did he know I was an alum? He couldn't have known who I was, I thought. After all, I never took one of his classes.

But I knew him. He was a legend. To students, his name carried with it a peculiar mix of excitement and dread -- the opportunity to learn from a grammar guru of old-school print at the cost of a few inevitable jabs to a budding writer's ego. His students were dedicated, too. They seemed to love the guy.

"I'm visiting my family," I stammered. "We're having, like, this family reunion type thing."

"So what have you been doing?"

The question dropped out of his mouth in succinct syllables. I scrambled to form a clever veil to the disappointing truth, but I couldn't lie.

"Uh, just, uh, working a couple part-time jobs in Charlotte?"

"Where at?"

"Uh, I work at a library and a coffee shop," I said, almost boldly. "And I write for myself when I can. I'm trying to find some writing gigs, but it's not going so well."

I felt foolish as I spoke. A librarian and barista with a writing degree from a great school.

I was expecting an astonished look of disappointment or a condescending smirk. Instead, he spoke with a clarity and compassion that conveyed an honest understanding, a willingness to relate.

"That's good. That's good."

He nodded while he said this.

"You know, more and more graduates are taking on that kind of workload. That seems to be the order of things for recent grads. For me it was different. I graduated and went straight to the newspaper. Today, students like you are finding jobs to pay the bills and furthering their writing on the side."

He mentioned a '03 graduate in Syracuse who worked part-time jobs to pay bills while he hosted a radio show devoted to the New York Yankees. Next week, this kid was interviewing teammates of Bobby Murcer, Denny said. Wasn't making a dime doing it.

Then there's the graduate who went to work for a couple market-related Web sites. She writes two blogs each day, and that pays her bills why she does other things.

"Yeah," I said. "But sometimes it's just frustrating, ya know? It's --"

"Yes, I do," he said, speaking now with delicate intent. "But understand that you have a skill set to do great things. If there's one thing I can tell you now, if there's one piece of advice I can give you, it's this: Just keep going. That's it. Keep writing. It will come."

A simple "yeah" was all I could muster.

"It will come."

He motioned toward the door of his office.

"I'm gonna get started on a few things," he said. "Take care."

"Thank you."

"You bet."

I stood in the hall, linoleum tile so freshly waxed the overhead lights reflected off in bright yellow orbs. Keep going. I didn't think to move. And then from somewhere in Denny's office came the tap of computer keys, lines of prose, presumably rich in depth and wisdom, declaring victory over a blank page column inch by column inch.

I bet it comes easy to him now, this writing thing. But I bet he hits that Delete key every once in a while, too. And I bet he questions whether or not people read his words as passionately as he's written them. And I bet that, like myself, he's forced to acknowledge the love/hate relationship with his pen. And I bet at one time he asked himself just what in the hell he was doing.

But whatever it is that keeps us coming back to our keyboards, our pencils, our rambling journals, our fickle blog posts, our dog-eared pocket notebooks -- whatever it is, it's in us both.

Keep going?

Thanks to guys like you, Dr. Denny, I can't stop.

Ten Out of Tennessee Tour

2008-07-25T19:46:00.002-04:00

We hadn't any plans of taking in a show. Our sole purpose two nights ago was to grab some dinner at Cabo Fish Taco, the keystone eatery in North Davidson -- NoDa -- the "arts" district. NoDa is the kind of vibrant and magnetic neighborhood where show flyers are stapled up everywhere and, if you listen closely enough, you're sure to hear the pop of a snare drum somewhere close by. (i.e. NoDa is rad).

Wandering about, we spotted a friend who spoke enthusiastically of the night's upcoming show at the Evening Muse. "It's going to be amazing," he said. "You both should come."

The cover charge wasn't on the sidewalk sign out front of the venue. If I'd known it was $15, I probably wouldn't have shuffled in. But the night's bill sparked some interest. Ten artists from Nashville touring together as one, big collective band of gypsies. Cool concept.

Katie Herzig . That name looked familiar. I thought I had seen it in this month's Paste Magazine. As for the others, nothing.

The Ten Out of Tenn. Tour was in Charlotte Wednesday night, and it was one of the best live shows I've ever witnessed -- the kind that's both inspiring to a musician yet utterly infuriating, songs so good I wondered why I'd even picked up an instrument and tried to write something that resembled a song.

We walked in as Butterfly Boucher was in the middle of "All of the Things", and for the rest of the night we were left speechless.

For each song, one of the ten would rotate into the front man/woman role and the others would jam along. Those left instrument-less banged on tamborines or sang back-up while some headed off stage for a beer and a smoke. Sometimes, it was a duo -- like in the case of Erin McCarley, who was accompanied by a few random piano notes. Andy Davis took a unique approach to a backing band, using a drum loop from his iPhone.

The general sound from all ten was undeniably pop. Each song, regardless of the performer, was well-crafted, intelligent and remarkably catchy. Jeremy Lister, for lack of better words, was stupid-good.

By the time Katie Herzig hit the first chorus of "Hologram", I was convinced these guys were just showing off. When Matthew Perryman Jones strummed the final chords of "Save You", I was appalled at their levels of talent.

On the drive home, we turned off the car radio. Music, it seemed, had redefined our own tastes.

So, officially, thank you Ten Out of Tenn. -- you bag of douches -- for being so damn good.

Weezer "The Red Album"

2008-07-23T13:45:00.003-04:00

For us resolute Weezer fans, let's cut the momentary anticipation. As a whole, "The Red Album" sucks. We weren't expecting anything less, were we? Still holding out for a Pinkerton-esque release? Really?

I understand, though. I can't help myself either. I need to hear it for myself, too, to listen for any promising, subliminal bursts of niceness hidden beneath the lyrical wreckage and musical laziness so apparent on Weezer records as of late. I need to hear what Rivers is up to. I need to scan the tracklisting. I need to see what the band looks like now. And, undoubtably, I'll wonder -- What if? What if this record doesn't suck as much as "Make Believe" or "Maladroit" or, to a lesser degree of crapdom, "The Green Album".

I need to make a categorical decision about "The Red Album".

After the first track, which is suppose to set the tone for the entire record -- the crucial, make-or-break for the band to make a significant impression on the listener, I had one. "This record is going to suck," I thought. "Hard."

I was partially correct.

There is a ton of filler here. Seven out of the 10 songs aren't worth mentioning.

That leaves a few highlights. "Pork and Beans" is a great song and definitive Weezer -- catchy and guitar-heavy. Elsewhere, the jumbled mess of parts in "I Am the Greatest Man..." includes the richest moment on the disc -- a nearly 30-second choral arrangement that would be a perfect musical accompaniment to a Notre Dame recruitment video. The last track, "The Angel and the One", ends the record on a much-needed positive.

It's no surprise "The Red Album" doesn't impress. The record is about as textbook and formulaic as past releases. It's all there -- the color-themed title, the glam-shot cover, the single-page, uninformative CD jacket, the quirky first single and the ridiculously silly lyrics.

If the record accomplishes anything, it proves that the band is genius. They've figured it out, the secret to success and longevity in the music industry. Nearly 15 years after their classic debut, Weezer is topping the Billboard charts with their latest. They're still around. That's fucking incredible for a nerdy niche rock band from the post-grunge era. That's genius.

Geniuses that put out shitty records that I can't resist.

Download "Pork and Beans", "I Am the Greatest Man That Ever Lived", and "Angel and the One." The others aren't worth the few MBs on your hard drive.

Hollywood Weather Report 7/1/08

2008-07-01T12:05:00.006-04:00

"O.P.P."

I've been listening to NPR while driving in my car. Does anyone else listen to NPR? I love the news stories, and you can't beat the smooth jazz playing at all other times. It's channel 88.7 FM in Buffalo.

Everytime I watch "The Puffy Chair" it gets better.

Lou, I know we talked about this film after we each viewed it once but I think you owe it a second and third viewing, at least. The Death Cab song doesn't annoy me anymore, it actually makes sense. These aren't guys trying to be hip by using Death Cab, they are us. They used music that they like. And the "Say Anything" tribute: "You've got my Peter Gabriel CD!" is fucking genius. Stereotypical at times, I think that's why I love it so much.

"Get Smart" is my favorite movie of the summer so far ("Ironman" was fucking great, but that really came out in the Spring). Hilarious movie. Very entertaining. Go see it.

Since the indie film scene sucks in Buffalo, and "The Fall" only played for one week at the Eastern Hills Mall theater, "The Dark Knight" is next on my list of GO SEE THAT RIGHT NOWS.

I will be viewing it on IMAX the weekend of July 18th. That's no joke.

I just mailed out 10 CDs to 10 friends, a project that the bassist of Native June, Tristan, set up. We each had to choose 11 songs that were important to us, burn them to CD and include an explanation. In about a week we all get our CDs and get to listen to other people's music. It was a really fun and challenging project. Try fitting only 11 of the most important songs of your life on a CD. It takes a lot of weeding out. And it taught me a lot about myself like: 1) I'm a musical retard* and 2) my playlist is laughable at best.

Here is my playlist sans descriptions:

1. "Jump" by Kriss Kross
2. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana
3. "Fuck Wit Dre Day" by Dr. Dre
4. "Basket Case" by Green Day
5. "Buddy Holly" by Weezer
6. "Intergalactic" by Beastie Boys
7. "Crush" by Dave Matthews Band
8. "Dammit" by Blink 182
9. "Roxanne" by The Police
10. "The New Year" by Death Cab for Cutie
11. "What A Fool Believes" by Doobie Brothers

*The first time that Hunter, my roomate in Cali, saw my movie collection his exact words were something like: "Your movie collection sucks. Did you not start watching movies until 1996?" And the more I think about it, he was right. I only recently started watching classics. I hadn't seen "Gone With The Wind" until 2006. But it's comments like that that challenge me to be a better movie watcher and lover. I didn't really explore music until I lived w/ Dave, Lou, and Haggs. So when I think about songs that I liked during the times when I was growing and changing (mainly in the late nineties and transitioning to college), they were mainstream and sucky. I'd like to think my horizons have been broadened musically and film wise.

"Post Office" is hilarious. I love reading that book.

Two days until the baseball trip. I've got a semi.

JHurls
The Niceness

Post Office

2008-06-25T14:00:00.003-04:00

Now that you work at the mail box, and assuming, Hurls, that you are capable of reading two books at the same time, you must now read (or re-read) Bukowski's "Post Office". Get going if you have yet to acknowledge the fact that you are now living the factotum life, which, as mandated in Article V, Graph VII, Line XXVII of "The Niceness Proclamation of All Things Spice" (In stores summer 2009), entitles you to an extra "Jerry" high-five the next time I see you.

...

queer.

Hollywood Weather Report 6/25/08

2008-06-25T12:10:00.004-04:00

I don't live in Hollywood anymore, but the report has returned.

A few updates:

CAREER: Career wise, I'm flourishing. And I say this with every ounce of sarcasm that I can possibly ring from my soul. I am currently employed by UPS (Buffalo, NY Hub) where I load/unload semi trucks with the packages that American citizens send one another. It's part time, Mon-Fri, and pays $8.50. Going in, I thought, 'sounds easy enough.' Holy shit. It is four and a half hours of straight pain, no joke, with one 10-minute break at 8 p.m. (I work 5:30p-10:30p). I can honestly admit that it's the hardest work I've ever done in my life. I leave the Bailey Avenue warehouse a soggy mess every night. I compare it to playing an entire Town Team basketball game in the old gym (that's upstairs at HCS directly over the boiler room, I think, and it's hot as balls in there). Two Gatorades every night to stay hydrated. My upper torso is bruised and scraped, and I wake up sore as hell every morning. At least I'll be in shape in two weeks.

LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: My uncle is letting me stay w/ him in Hamburg while I make the transition from Hinsdale to Buffalo. I'll need another part time job, but I'm postponing that as long as I possibly can. For the record, all my shit is still in cardboard boxes in my parent's garage from my move home from Cali.

PERSONAL: Niki and I get to see each other more often now. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to go from not seeing one another for months on end because we lived 2700 miles apart (she in Buffalo, me in LA), to not seeing one another for weeks on end and only living 60 miles apart. No excuses, but gas costs $4.25. That sucks. Buffalo seems to be where it's at, and maybe I can finally get to the bottom of this Buffalonian Hipster culture that is so mystifying. Admittedly, yes I wear Levis jeans and I own these sneakers:

The good news is, I'm wearing a scruffy ass beard again (one that is see through and I have no business wearing, but fuck it.) I also haven't cut my hair in several months. Yes, I'm balding but again, fuck it. I do pushups every other day, a routine provided by the Perfect Push Up handles that I bought from Dick's. Apparently they were devised by an ex-Navy Seal. Do they work? Who knows, but they've got me doing pushups every other day.

MOVIES: Of course all things Mumblecore. Most recently I bought and viewed "The Guatemalan Handshake." Real weird, but cool. My obsession for the better part of this past year though has been French New Wave films. "Breathless" is of course my favorite, but "Band of Outsiders," "400 Blows," and "Jules and Jim" are right up there. A couple that I'm looking forward to checking out very soon are "Early Summer" (a Japanese film not French New Wave) and "Hiroshima Mon Amour." Yesterday, I purchased a used copy of the documentary "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls" about the independent film movement in America in the late 1960s and 70s. So inspiring.

BOOKS: Still reading "Underworld" by DeLillo. Hey, I'm a slow reader and I put it aside for a while when I was working 70 hours/week at the greenhouse. Amazing read.

MUSIC: Lately, it's been whatever I feel like downloading. This week, it's been Tokyo Police Club. Favorite song: Centennial. Also been listening to Fleet Foxes, Ola Podrida, The Black Keys, and The Wave Pictures. I kind of like Deer and the Headlights, but I've only heard a few of their songs from their myspace page.

CREATIVE: Writing is coming along slowly. I get these bursts of energy and I write a lot all at once and then put my script away for months. I'm having one of those bursts lately, so "Z" (we'll call it for now) is coming along nicely. Two more ideas have wormed their way into my brain as well.

FOOD: Mornings are usually started with a small bowl of Wheaties (about 1 cup) a little milk, a glass of OJ, and some sort of fruit. I eat a turkey sandwich on multigrain bread every day. No cheese, just mustard. About 12-15 baby carrots, and water all day. Dinner is either sushi now that I live in Buffalo, or a PB&J sand. An apple on the way to work. Maybe a granola bar in there somewhere. I feel good.

Really excited for this baseball trip which goes down in just about 8 days. For the record, the Mets lost 11-0 to the Mariners last night. Uhhh boy.

JHurls
The Niceness

Facebook vs. Myspace

2008-05-12T10:00:00.002-04:00

Has it all of a sudden become the Facebook Age or am I, and pretty much everyone else that I know, just bored with Myspace?

It seems like all my friends are using Facebook now. I don't know when it became trendy, sometime last fall I suppose. I've had an account for several months, dating back to last summer if I'm remembering correctly. It's kind of hip I guess, but why the sudden backlash against Myspace? Afterall, the former mentioned social networking tool came first, right?

In college I thought AOL Instant Messenger was the greatest thing since sliced bread. (You know where that saying came from? Me either, but have you every tried to slice a single slice of bread from a full loaf? It's going to look really f'd up, so that's probably where) Away messages became love notes to forgotten lovers of one night stands, reminiscent of groggy walks home after sleepless nights in foreign dorm rooms. Check the info and you could find picture links, party photos, evidence of the previous night's shenanigans. Plus you could talk to your friends without picking up a telephone, because let's face it, when we started college in 2000, under 70% of the students had cell phones in their pockets. Now, I would be that it is 100%.

I didn't discover Myspace until 2004 (or was it 2005?) when I was working at a production office in Santa Monica. I thought it was cool. A stalker website to keep tabs on those lost lovers and college best friends that got strewn about the country in a post-college job tornado. (Ironically, it seems that most everyone landed in North Carolina, actual Hurricane country). I signed up for an account, and it wasn't until several months later that I changed my profile. I tried to find witty quotes, changed my name several times, began posing for ridiculous, often times incriminating photos, to post on my profile. On top of all the fun, Myspace turned into a pretty serious networking tool, especially in the entertainment industry. I talked to friends about jobs, found jobs, posted "work" videos and scouted locations using Myspace photos. To some level, Myspace served a better purpose than just looking at photos of boys and girls during slow work hours.

Of course there was the backlash, pedaphiles, and teachers posting drinking photos, all the things that are wrong with the world corrupting a seemingly perfect web of friendships, loves, and artists. "With great power comes great responsibility." Thank you Spiderman.

But with all the fun of Myspace, the huge effect it has had on musicians, record sales, and advertising for live shows, it has had it's problems. The server will be down, it's too slow, pictures won't load properly. It got frustrating. Then came Facebook, and all those worries went out the window.

A watered-down version of Myspace, everyone's Facebook profile is uniform with applications and quizes that you can add as you please. Originally, if I understand it right, I think the Face was created as a strictly college network, but didn't really come to fruition until after we had graduated in 2004. So I wasn't privy to this new technology until, to my surprise, I was allowed to start an account last year while trying to communicate with my sister.

I'm excited to see if video and music applications will be added to compete with the Myspace technology so artists can expand as they did with the former technology. And it seems as though most of my friends and friends of friends are making the switch as well. It's never slow, my pictures upload with ease, and it's easy to find exactly what I'm looking for. My only complaint is that my keyboard doesn't work on the Scramble game application when I'm using my Mac (I still haven't figured that one out yet).

I will still check my Myspace page, and I will definately search for new music on a regular basis using Myspace, but when socializing, I think I've found my new home at Facebook. Of course there is still instant messenger and ichat, but unless I'm working in an office, I don't touch the stuff. AOL uneasy face.

Jeremy the Magic
The Niceness

(->) (->) (->) C

2008-04-19T10:47:00.003-04:00

My bedroom window faces the Village -- a party/plaza that I've described a number of times all ready. On most weekend nights, if I can stay up long enough, I can usually become witness to an ass-kicking. Last night was one of those nights.

Like most party spots, things at the Village start off swell -- sips of wine on the patio, light jazz playing over the speakers, women dressed to the nines. It's the cat's pajamas, if you will. By midnight, the facade of sophistication begins to wane, to teeter. By closing time, it's a shitwreck. Men and women -- husband and wives, who knows -- are yacking in the parking lots, slapping each other around, and calling each other names ("You fat fucker" is, by far, the most common insult yelled during altercations. We don't really grow up. We just pretend to.) Couples get in fights. The lady storms off, super dramatic.

Typically, a group of fruity wanna-bes with waxed chests shout at each other for ten minutes until someone steps in and tries to mediate, at which time one dude, playing hero, goes absolutely ballistic. This time it was different, but I'm not sure why. Maybe because the parking lot was empty, and it was rather quiet. Regardless, anytime the words "fucker" and "bitch" are audible over cars squealing out of the parking lot, then I know it's on.

I peaked out my bedroom blinds (Yeah, I have those. No more garbage bags duct-taped around the window panes. Crazy, right?), and there were two gentlemen -- Party #1 -- by their car, and they were yelling back at someone I couldn't see. Dude #1 in said party (We'll call him...uh...something South...something private school..."Grayson" will work) was working his drunk friend (Using the same criteria, we'll call Grayson's friend ... fuck it ... let's just call him "Yolanda") into Grayson's convertible. Grayson was chirping with someone I couldn't see. He appeared to have his head on straight. He simply wanted out.

"Look, man. I don't want any trouble! We're leaving!"

Yolanda, on the other hand, was a waste pile. From the passenger seat, Yolanda yelled "bitch" a number of times, one of those the-guys-are-leaving-but-he-can't-let-it-go-so-he'll-just-get-in-one-last-verbal-jab jabs.

Grayson turned around, "Shut the fuck up, dude. We're leaving! Shut the fuck -- No, No! Shut the fuck up, dude. Shut. The. Fuck. Up."

Suddenly, from the left side, out from behind some shrubbery that obstructed my view, appeared a stocky gentleman with a southern drawl.

"Get 'em da' fuck out her', main."

"We don't want any trouble! We're leaving!"

"Well, git in da fuckin' car!"

Yolanda continued with his foul, sailor talk. Southern Drawl stepped closer ... pointing ... mocking ... daring ... dancing ... darting ... more words that start with "D".

Grayson was quite close to taking a rabbit punch for his buddy. That was until Yolanda stumbled out of the car.

Then all hell broke loose.

Out of nowhere, some friend of Party #2 -- Team Lynard Skynard -- ran some 50 yards and, no shit, Lui Kang drop-kicked Yolanda to the ground, and then stomped on his head a couple times for good measure. Yolanda was, as expected, down for the count. Meanwhile, Grayson was doing his best to keep blood off his starched shirt. He kind of just stepped off to the side and let Yolanda have it. You can't blame him, really.

And with that, Lynard Skynard hopped in a vehicle and sped off. In the convertible, Grayson told Yolanda to "Shut the fuck up" about eight more times, then they were gone.

Back in my darkened bedroom, I laid back into my pillows (goose feathers; Target TM; $9.95).

"A drop kick? Really?"

"Very unorthodox style ... especially for a Southern man."

"A drop kick ... hmm ... How about that?"

I drifted off some time later, knowing that, somewhere, some dude with a woman's name was applying gauze to his kung-fu'ed face.

Bread

2008-03-28T14:41:00.003-04:00

"I'm not there, so I guess I'm here."

Two days ago, she was asking me if the newspaper on the table in front of me was mine, if I was reading it. I had my headphones on so I could have just pretended not to hear her, but I wasn't listening to anything. I do that sometimes so no one asks me questions. I told her, "No."

She said, "Oh, I forgot to take it up to the front desk after I was finished with it." I smiled, and she took the paper to the front desk.

She was tall for a woman, about 5'10" I'd say, thin with good posture for her age. She looked very fragile with shorty curly gray hair, wearing mom jeans (no shape to them really), probably Rider or Faded Glory from Wal Mart; they weren't old jeans, they looked nice, but she was had no concern for fashion, or no sense of it maybe, with a purple turtle neck under a light-weight green canvas jacket. And she was thin, perhaps fit in her day, but that was past now and she was spending more time in the library. So was I, but I'm young and unemployed and she is old and unemployed. There's a difference. She was there because she had done her work, and I was still looking for mine.

I left the library and as I squished through the muddy lawn to my car on the street I thought: 'The people who live near the Olean Public Library must be very hungry all the time.' North 2nd Street is one way on that block and takes you past the Stroehman's bread factory on the corner of West State, where all traffic must make a right turn at the stop sign. 'They might be fatter, too' I thought, because I learned on the Today Show last week that people who regularly sniff peppermint eat on average 3000 less calories per week. So what happens when you wake up and go to bed sniffing fresh loaves of bread and hamburger rolls and hotdog buns?

Yesterday, she was there again. We didn't speak or make eye contact, but I was at my same table and she took one of the four chairs at the round wooden table in front of me. She had the day's paper and slowly flipped pages letting them take the library air like a ships sails in the wind.

An elderly man with slicked back silver hair and gold wire-rim glasses approached her and greeted her, "Hey, Doris, how are you doing?"

Doris wears a light-weight green canvas jacket in the winter, and I cannot figure out how she isn't cold.

"You looking for this," she asked the man. "The Times Herald?"

He wore thick brown cotton slacks and kept his brown hyde jacket zipped up all the way to his chin. He was slightly hunched and had a hobbled walk; not a shuffle but barely a stride. And he held himself up with both hands on a chair while he talked. They could be the same age, but time had treated Doris better if that was the case.

"Oh," is all he said. Old friends perhaps, or just friendly acquaintances?

"Let me just check and see if my name's in the obituaries," Doris told him, smiling.

He couldn't help but snicker, and maybe it was just to be polite. Fully aware of the human condition, over the age of retirement, perhaps Doris found comfort in joking about her own mortality? However, I sensed that he was caught off guard and failed to appreciate the absurdity of her comment, not allowing himself to absorb the truth of the joke.

She actually looked. I could not see the page, it could have been the classifieds for all I know. Or maybe I was witnessing a true comic talent at work here in the magazine section of Olean's tiny library? Or maybe she really needed convincing herself? But she didn't see her name. "I'm not there, so I guess I'm here," she told the man in brown and handed him the paper.

He sat at a separate table.

The three of us, Doris in her green canvas jacket, the old man in brown, and me with my headphones on, sharing a private joke at three separate identical round wooden tables with four chairs each.

Under the table, I saw his brown boots. The sole was pulled down away from the leather covering his right foot, and I wondered if he still wore them because he liked them that way, weather worn with a little character or if it was because he couldn't afford a new pair, or maybe he was too old and didn't care either way?

"Boy, it's a light paper today," he said weighing the news in his hands by lifting and lowering the folded pages. He adjusted his glasses with his thumb and forefinger and looked down his nose at the words on the page.

Doris smiled and stood up. She pushed in her chair and left the library. And I wondered if she was hungry for bread on her way home as she turned right down West State Street going to wherever she was going?

JHuls
The Niceness

Sh#t!

2008-03-27T10:08:00.002-04:00

No big deal. This was only on Gus Macker's website seen by everyone who knows what Gus Macker basketball tournaments are...

...aww crap.

JHurls
The Niceness

Illusionators

2008-03-26T15:33:00.003-04:00

Okay, this is just getting out of hand. It seems like all of my posts now include a video clip. I couldn't resist this one. After last week's Human Giant episode which featured the Will Arnett sex tape, I had to watch this week just to be sure nothing really funny happened. Well, it did. It's probably wrong that this is funny, but just watch. You'll laugh. But you shouldn't:

Human Giant is funny? Me thinks, yes...

JHurls
The Niceness

How abyout this... (No really, that y is supposed to be there)

2008-03-26T09:43:00.002-04:00

This was just too funny not to post:

Is that for real? Thank you filmmakermagazine.com.

JHurls
The Niceness

City On A Hill

2008-03-22T12:19:00.004-04:00

I don't know much about this one other than 1) it looks awesome and 2) DeMorge Brown (YR episode 5's Michael Jackson) is the male lead.

Sink your teeth into the indie goodness of "City On A Hill":

http://www.strikeanywherefilms.com/coah/

Rock,
JHurls
The Niceness

Is it just me, or did it just get really Indie in Here?

2008-03-20T10:35:00.003-04:00

Sorry to keep posting video blogs on your asses, but I can't resist when I see something awesome. Welcome to the 21st century, you're going to love it here.

First up is the trailer for "In Search of a Midnight Kiss." It stars Scoot McNairy, who also was one of the stars of a short film I worked on in LA a few years ago called "Entree." It's a modern-day love story shot in Los Angeles. Check it:

Next, the trailer for "Medicine for Melancholy." No this is not a movie based on the Ray Bradbury stories of the same title. This is also a modern love story set in San Francisco. It stars Wyatt Cenac, who any "Yacht Rock" fan will recognize as James Ingram from YR episode 11 'Footloose.' Also in the movie, is fellow Yacht Rocker, "Acceptable TV" star, and all around great guy, *Demorge Brown (YR episode 5's Michael Jackson). This was shot guerrilla style in San Fran and tackles the dilemmas of two 20-somethings dealing with the "conundrum of being a minority in a rapidly gentrifying" city (thank you imdb.com). Check it:

Both look indie-riffic. The latter of course being a more DIY project, and thus more appealing to mumblecore fans like myself. I hope both of these films do awesome, and I can't wait to see both.

*DeMorge also starred in a Channel 101 project with Hunter Stair, Dave Lyons, and myself called "Burnt Rubber," which is currently being re-edited and hopefully submitted to Channel 102 this summer.

JHurls
The Niceness

This Gets Romantic

2008-03-19T11:16:00.002-04:00

Last night at 11 on MTV, Will Arnett guest starred in the opening skit for a new episode of "Human Giant." I don't normally watch the show, but it is pretty funny. Arnett plays himself in "Will Arnett's Sex Tape," one of the funniest things I've seen on cable television in a long time. Not safe for work.

JHurls

Good Morning Miss Bliss

2008-03-12T09:33:00.003-04:00

"And an everything bagel toasted with cream cheese please."

The Dunkin' Donuts lady almost stumbled back because it was usually just the small black coffee. She took a step forward to the register and added the bagel and the forty cent cream cheese and then got my food and drink. Plus it was pretty busy this morning. I arrived at the coffee shop almost two hours before I normally did, just because I had some serious writing to get through and an early start was the only solution.

It was even before this, something that happened last week actually that had held my attention until I watched the episode of "Saved By The Bell" this morning where Zack and Screech find the old radio station in the school's basement and use the equipment to hold a fund raiser and save The Max (Slater saves the day, even though he reads the sports stories like a Harry Carrey stroke victim, too soon?, and The Max is saved. One review in a local paper, as read by Jesse Spanno, said, "A.C. Slater stinks, someone should wave a skunk in front of his face." Ouch!). It was a fairly early episode, as far as SBTB goes; an early Bayside Tigers episode.

TBS really mixes things up in the morning in the 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. time slot where SBTB airs Monday thru Friday. You might get a beach resort summer job series one week, College Years another, or a few of the lesser seen "Good Morning Miss Bliss" episodes, which just so happened to air last week on the Super Station. Apparently only 13 episodes of this were ever filmed and it took three years to do that. According to IMDB, Hayley Mills (Miss Bliss) was "tired and out of place with the likeable youngsters" plus the show was a flop. Several characters were axed (Milo, the black janitor, Niki, and Mikey, that annoying teacher friend with curly brown hair, along with Miss Bliss), but Mr. Belding stayed and Jesse, Kelly, and Slater were added. We know this, it's common knowledge. But what I didn't realize, until I saw the episode of GMMB where Miss Bliss wins the "Teacher of the Year" award is that these first 13 episodes took place at John F. Kennedy Junior High School in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Just like the addition of Torrey, the edgy biker chick, after the sudden and unesplained departure of Jesse and Kelly in the High School year's final season, the move from the Midwest to the West Coast goes unmentioned. It seems as though creator Peter Engel works behind the "just do it and no one will notice" curtain of the Oz that is Saturday Morning TV. And somehow that works, or worked. I don't really care. Hell, the show stopped taping 15 years ago after only four seasons (the real show, not the College years). If you try to find the truth in the series, it will only frustrate and confuse you. Even Chuck Klosterman, who brought the Torrey year to light, didn't really have a problem with the unexplained absence of two main characters because he was still searching for a sense of self in those remaining characters in the re-aired episodes after school. Because that's what "Saved By The Bell" was really about: helping kids, teens, young adults relate to problems like peer pressure and social awkwardness, even if it was in a cheeseball on-the-nose type of storytelling. It never really mattered which state the show was set in. Did Bayside ever really feel like California anyway? Not until Mr. Carosi was the boss for a summer in Malibu, really. Even then it just reminded us of summer vacation. And Miss Bliss, well she reminded us of our own over-worked, caring, every-woman teacher in our own small-town USA high school, wherever that was.

JHurls
The Niceness

Buffalo. Friday.

2008-03-07T13:31:00.002-05:00

It's Friday again already, and I drove back to Buffalo. It's snowing. All the news stations are calling for a huge winter storm and placed a "Winter Storm Warning" in affect until Sunday morning for most of the counties I care about. I just went home to Hinsdale on Tuesday, and I'm back in West Seneca already. My car has over 102 thousand miles on it.

I have to drive back home again Sunday morning, and then I'm planning (and dreading) another trip back to Buffalo for next Friday to attend an open house for a company that I worked for when I first moved home to New York. Next Saturday morning I will drive back to Hinsdale because I have my last town team basketball game that night in Hinsdale at my old high school. Gas costs just under four dollars per gallon now.

Last weekend was really fun; I've been working on a short film with a group of young filmmakers from Buffalo. We worked 21 hours straight last Sunday. I never really sleep any better than when my whole body is tired and aches with muscle cramps and a sore lower back and barking-dog feet. There's nothing like production work, if you like it that is. I swear a lot on set, I find. It seems like, at least this group, doesn't find it as therapeutic to fire off frequent F-bombs as I do. Just as much, they don't seem to take offense to my cursing. There just isn't much production work in Buffalo, especially not any that pay real money.

We're supposed to shoot tomorrow (Saturday), but I just checked my e-mail and it looks like the shoot is getting pushed until Sunday. That's bad because I need to leave Sunday morning for a commitment I have in Olean that afternoon. Hopefully it stays on Saturday. My dad drove to Amherst yesterday for a meeting and returned via the 400, which I do each time I travel West Seneca/Buffalo. He found it quite curious how when heading toward Buffalo, you are traveling North, you pass through Wales and then South Wales. How can South Wales be North of regular Wales? It really doesn't make any sense. I asked him if the "LOST GERMAN SHEPHERD" sign, spray painted in bright hunter orange on a scrap piece of plywood still sat propped in the median facing South-bound traffic just before the East Aurora exit, but he said that he "didn't see that one." It must not be there anymore. It's not the kind of thing that you just miss, even pushing 65 mph. More peculiar is how someone would lose a German Shepherd on a highway nowhere near an exit. I imagine that it had to have jumped from a moving vehicle. That's the only logical explaination. Then again, how do you not notice your dog leaping from your vehicle? It's sad to think this, but I'm pretty sure that I could tell by the sign why no one noticed the dog was missing from their vehicle. The edges of the plywood were too jagged and too haphazardly broken away and the handwriting was too messy for that dog to ever get found.

I hope all the weather people were wrong and we don't get too much snow and precipitaion over night. Last weekend we shot outside for the first half of Saturday. Even though I wore a pair of my dad's boots, my toes still froze, and I actaully got a little afraid that the second toe on my right foot, my longest toe of all ten, had frost bite. I drink a lot of coffee on set too. Saturday, mostly, it was to warm up and then once we got to our second location it was for an energy surge. Sunday we didn't have a lot of coffee on set, and since it's Lent I'm not drinking soda for 40 days. My girlfriend told me that I should only give something up or do something extra each day that would benefit others. I couldn't think of anything and just did the soda thing like I do almost every other year. I don't really miss it that much. Coffee does the trick. Plus it's winter, so cold drinks normally aren't on my agenda anyway. I don't even like my bottled water cold. Room temperature. I drank my first ever full can of Red Bull Sunday night around ten. I was amped until three in the morning. There's something about Red Bull that makes me nervous like I'm going to have a caffeine overload and my heart's going to explode. I'm sure coffee is just as bad for you. Luckily, we're shooting inside this weekend. It's been snowing since I hit the 400, and it probably won't stop until Sunday when I have to drive home. It's 65 miles to where I live from where I'm staying this weekend. That's not that far.

JHurls
The Niceness

infinite wisdom

2008-02-27T11:11:00.002-05:00

Dear friend,

"I'm writing to you because she said you would listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have..." begins American novelist Steven Chbosky's first novel "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." It was written, as a series of letters to an anonymous party and signed "Love always, Charlie," and published by MTV in 1999. I picked it up on Monday in the St. Bonaventure library and Tuesday afternoon I finished page 213 with an uneasy smile on my face.

Chbosky explores teenage sexuality, drug use, abuse, and family feuds in a surprisingly realistic look at high school life. Charlie is an emotionally confused Freshman in his first year in high school. He quickly befriends two seniors, Sam and Patrick, step brother and sister, and tries his best to fit in with their crowd. Chbosky definitely channels J.D. Salinger while creating a sensitive style all his own.

Throughout Wallflower, Chbosky reveals his influences through Charlie's English teacher, Bill. Bill assigns Charlie a new book each week, including: "To Kill a Monckingbird," "This Side of Paradise," "The Catcher in the Rye," "On the Road," "Naked Lunch," "The Stranger," and "The Fountainhead," Charlie's final assignment. Bill also suggests Charlie watch "The Graduate," "Harold and Maude," and "My Life as a Dog." While he works diligently on his special projects, gaining pop-culture sensibility, Charlie also attends a weekly screening of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" with his friends.

Wallflower captures the essence of high school-dom by combining the highs of being included in student clicks and the lows of being excluded just the same for being different in what we wear, think, say, and feel. Over the course of his Freshman year, Charlie finds himself, loses it all, and finds a fresh start, sort of, by finally learning to accept himself and others.

It's a very easy read, if you have four hours to kill one day, you could definitely finish it in one sitting. It's a compelling, nostalgic in it's own way, and tender tale of high school teen angst. Unlike Charlie, Chbosky never loses his way and keeps you wanting more, especially when it's over. I hope this isn't the last we ever hear from Charlie.

JHurls
The Nice

The All New Toyota Corolla Commercial

2008-02-27T10:37:00.002-05:00

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the all new Corolla..."

...set to 'Mambo Number 5'... Huh? Something all new set to a song that was (pulling collar away from neck, clearing throat) popular in the early nineties? I mean, yeah, the lyrics have all been changed to car features, but who thought this was a good idea? Really. Did Toyota get this song royalty free (probably)?

This "new" commercial just struck me as downright absurd. Fuck you, Toyota. Catch up! A billion people are carrying around iPhones and you're selling cars to Lou Bega's greatest hits? Give me a break. I hope, for your sake, this was a leftover advertisement and nothing on your car has changed in 15 years. That is the only forgivable explaination for this turd of a commercial. Either that or sarcasm. But I just don't think you have the latter in you, do you?

Blah.

JHurls
The Nice

Jimmy Kimmel, You Funny Motherf@#$er!

2008-02-26T10:45:00.002-05:00

I haven't been keeping up with my late-night talkshows as of late. Conan and I used to be boys back when I was a night owl. And Kimmel, his weekly tribute to the FCC bit every Friday night is one of the funniest bits on television. But this New York winter has given me a case of the sleep-earlies, and I haven't been paying attention when I should have been.

If you know Kimmel's show, he apologizes for not having time for Matt Damon at the end of every show, an inside joke that occurred, I'm guessing, after Kimmel really did have to bump Damon and it's just gone on in good fun from there. Kimmel has since had Damon on the show and they joke about it. Fine. Well, recently, Kimmel's girlfriend, comedian Sarah Silverman, made a video called "I'm F@#$ing Matt Damon" as a joke present to Kimmel. In retaliation, Jimmy Kimmel made and aired on his show two nights ago, the video posted above entitled "I'm F@#$ing Ben Affleck" as revenge. The video includes cameos from Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt. It's very funny. Enjoy.

JHurls
The Niceness

The National

2008-02-25T20:47:00.001-05:00

Oh. Ok. I get it now.

Please excuse my tardiness.

George Pringle is an Artist...

2008-02-25T16:03:00.003-05:00

...and a damn beautiful one at that. I know what you're thinking, 'two blogs in one day? This guy's going to need a nap!' Does anyone listen to George Pringle? She, yes she, actually Georgina, is an indie princess who attends Oxford and in her spare time spouts off teen-angst filled pop culture poetry against Garage Band beats on her Powerbook. Her shows have been described as a twist on karaoke where everyone is in on the joke except you. Plus she's strikingly attractive.

I discovered her this afternoon on www.rcrdlbl.com (Lou, if you don't ever visit this site, you should start). Although she has only performed live a few times, and released a single album, "Poor EP, Poor Ep Without a Name," Pringle, 22, is making a name for herself.

Most noteably, Pringle also used to sing with the Oxford group This Town Needs Guns, formerly unknown to me. Upon investigation, I have found a band that is not unlike another one of my favorites, American Football. Guns, when asked what they sound like, admit "We sound a bit like Owen sucking on the toes of Owls, while Maps and Atlases look on approvingly getting freaky with themselves." Weirdos. But they are really fucking good. Key track: "26 is dancier than 4." I recommend them. But probably I'm just way behind on my music and you guys have been listening to TTNG for years.

JHurls
The Niceness

Ear Worm

2008-02-25T10:45:00.003-05:00

I made a mix tape with your song on it. It's a short mix, with a few songs that I can't get out of my head that I drive around listening to over and over burning the lyrics and music deeper into my subconscience, enough to wake up from grinding my teeth all night singing their choruses in my mind.

Up first, an Americana pop-folk number called "Frankie's Gun" by The Felice Brothers. "My car goes, Chicago, every weekend to pick up some cargo..." begins the lead singer, sounding like young Bob Dylan's ghost. This is really catchy.

Next, it's the "Paper Flower" demo by Louiston. A tasty middle meat for my three-song sampler sandwich. A million guitar parts, a dash of tambourine, and some pretty killer lyrics in a pleasantly surprising taste of country pop from the moppy-haired singer/songwriter. Favorite lyrics, "...you're the rose from the vine and a thorn in my side."

Finally, in a banjo-laiden cover of Grizzly Bear's "Plans," Band of Horses harmonize for GB's collaborative "Friends" album. There's also a dash of piano in a song that seems to be a love letter to some chica the band met and left on the road in South America. "...I caused more than I got. If you trust in me, if I could or would be there..." This one's a toe tapper.

Rock.

JHurls
The Niceness

Some Truck Stop

2008-02-22T14:41:00.002-05:00

This isn't a story of connection or some deep impressions left on the human soul. It's about a town called Gibsonville or Gibsontown, something with the name of the famous manufacturer of the Les Paul guitar. That's how I remember. Otherwise, it would've been just another spot along the interstate, where desolate towns with assumed histories become tourist attractions in the time it takes to fill a gas tank, to grab a sandwich or take a leak. Though some call Gibsonville home, to me and countless other drivers it's just an exit number with colorful, towering signs marking gas stations.

This particular stop boasted of its travel station -- a hotbed for hungry, horny truckers and traveling minivan families with smiling children. The plaza was just off the exit and this meant a quick get-away, which was convenient since I had no intentions of furthering my knowledge of Gibsonville, its rich culture and indigenous people. I needed food. The six-hour drive from DC to Charlotte was getting to my stomach by hour four, and the signage a few miles back was full of various culturally diverse options that included: Popeye's, Subway, Burger King and something called the Country Times Restaurant.

The travel center wasn't as big as I imagined, just a glorified gas station built on a hill overlooking the highway below. Gas pumps separated the lots. Truckers were on the left; cars were on the right. Each lot was full, which could have meant either Gibsonville Truck Stop was a happenin' place or the lots were just too small. It was the latter. Drivers took to the grass, leaving their vehicles sinking in the mud, and the BK drive-through was barely accessible because of the lot's dimensions.

Inside the doors, to my left, was typical of what one might see in a truck stop: Confederate memorabilia, cassette tapes from Willie Nelson and Hank Williams, rows of packaged foods and ATM machines touched too many times by dirty hands. To my right was the restaurant section with miniature versions of American food franchises, sized just small enough to stuff within the building. Men with heads damp with sweat and bellies swinging under t-shirts moved about. A table of about four Spanish-speaking people were conducting some sort of important meeting. One of the men opened a manila folder and turned it to the woman in front of him, saying "Aqui. Aqui."

I settled with Burger King because there were seats available. Each step seemed to be catalogued. My sandwich and I took a seat in the center of the room -- the best vantage point for some serious people watching.

Here, a human couldn't walk without its limp, even the BK employees. All shuffled about with some undetermined ailment.

Silence was everywhere. No one said a word because, really, what connection can one make at a place like this, where, in just a few moments, we'll take to our vehicles and continue on as strangers? It wasn't necessarily a sad realization. I was cool with it, nodding at my truck-stop enlightenment before finishing off my meal.

A big, bearded guy in a flannel shirt looked up from his newspaper when I headed to the trash can. A sad, old couple watched, too. Then I was out the door and in my car, weaving around a rig running idle near the exit. With a quick right turn, I was gone, down the on-ramp of I-85. Forty. Forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five. Sixty. Sixty-five. And Gibsonville, fading in the distance, welcomed another poor, road-worn soul to its expanse of parking lots. Like me, they too won't utter a farewell when they hit 70 and merge left.

LAD

"Flashing Lights"

2008-02-20T10:46:00.006-05:00

Kanye West likes to think of himself as a trend setter. He wears ridiculously flashy outfits to the Grammy's, he always has great CDs, and his videos usually follow suit. Not much has changed. The "Jesus Walks" videos, all three versions, were spectacular. As is Kanye's latest venture, the world of sex and violence.

In his latest video, "Flashing Lights," Mr. West is seen only for a few seconds, gagged and bound in the trunk of a black mustang, before he is seemingly bludgeoned to death with a shovel off camera. His captor, former Playmate and model, Rita G., is, well, I think the only word for her is voluptuous. The video itself is one long slo-mo tracking shot and clocks in a little under three minutes. West co-directed it with auteur filmmaker Spike Jonze.

The video is ambiguous in meaning. If you listen to the lyrics, I guess you could come to the conclusion that Rita G., used to life's luxuries, is a woman scorned and West, her sugar daddy, is paying for his infidelities. Whatever those may be. It's intruiging, sexy, and violent. If creating controversy was Kanye West's mission, I think he has succeeded once more. Great video and song. Check it out.

JHurls
The Niceness

Not the Most Shocking News

2008-02-14T12:32:00.003-05:00

This week, we've learned the wrecking ball is inching closer to AJ's, a bit of disconcerting news reported by friend and former colleague -- Mr. John T. E.

Well, we can't say it's a total surprise. The eventual demolition of our beloved -- and thoroughly endorsed -- AJ's Bar has been hanging over our collective heads since we can remember. In fact, I believe my first exchange with the Gary The Bartender* went something like this:

Gary: "What can I get ya', young man?"
Me: "I'll take one of them big Miller's, please."
Gary: "OK. One Miller Big Ass and the rights to AJ's Bar. That'll be $350,002.50, please."
Me: "I'll just take the beer, sir."
Gary: "You sure? This is one great piece of property."
Me: "Sir, I still deliver newspapers on my Dyno VFR."
Gary: "Think about it. Go Cubbies."

Walgreen's, which I believe to be another pharmacy, right?, will eventually occupy the corner of 24th and West State streets and reaffirms what we already know about Olean City Council's loose stipulations for incoming businesses: (1) "Does said business sell 'stuff'? Yes? OK, swell. Sign here. Ya know what? Forget the signing part." (2) Shake hands. (3) Say "Thank you". (4) Head home and watch a DVR'd episode of "Extreme Home Makeover".

We had some great times at AJ's. That's all I'll say before this post turns into another bloated, wordy tribute, stuffed to the margins with hyperbole. God knows this blog is the bar's No. 1 source of free advertising, but, the funny thing is, Gary and Barb have no idea the Niceness actually exists outside of our (The Niceness staffs') physical bodies and in digital, bloggy form**.

But, I'm staying optimistic. A move to Allegany and into the college scene is a slight possibility. Not to mention this Walgreen's deal isn't finalized just yet.

Either way, good for the Linkerward's (last name changed to protect identities. In the event that a Gary and Barb Linkerward own a bar called "AJ's" in Olean, the Niceness apologizes...kind of...but not really.)

Boys, it's the end of an era.

*Note the capital "T" in "The". Gary is a very special man, whose greatness exceeds the laws of grammar.

** Actually, this isn't true. I just liked the way that last sentence flowed. Gary and Barb were humored, touched, etc., by this post, which they later printed off, framed, and hung by the men's bathroom.

Miley Cyrus Doesn't Wear Seatbelts And Neither Should I

2008-02-14T12:31:00.005-05:00

My achy breaky heart goes out to Miley Cyrus a.k.a. Hannah Montana this morning after two days of tongue lashings from hordes of teenage fans' parents after appearing in her new box office record-breaking concert movie WITHOUT A SEATBELT... in the back seat...

Hannah Montana stars in a big-screen version of her concert series, a tour that is easily the hottest ticket in town, so popular in fact that one parent wrote a fake letter in a contest to win tickets to one of the tour stops saying that he lost his spouse in Iraq. He won the tickets, and then he lost them along with his dignity, his child's trust, self esteem, and hopefully his job. What a dweeb. (If you're reading this pal, don't blow your brains out on my account, I just think you're a huge loser with too much time invested in your teenage daughter's so called "role models.") Which is exactly the point of this tirade. Why do I see a headline for a Miley Cyrus apology on the internet movie database when I check today's stories? Her father, Billy Ray, came up with a great idea for a show for the Disney Channel* and now his career as a country pop star** has been resurrected and his country pop star daughter's career launched deep into the heart of the country music universe. She's a huge hit. She's fifteen. And now she's a role model?

There used to be a great Nike commercial with Charles Barkley back in 1993, when Barkley was 30 years old, an olympic gold medalist, and a seasoned veteran of one of the most popular professional sports leagues on the planet. The round mound of rebound threw elbows into camera, breaking down all hopes of retaining the fourth-wall dynamic of advertising. He slapped the ball hard in the air when he grabbed rebounds. He jab stepped, right at you! Scary stuff. And he kept telling us, "I'm NOT a role model." Boy did he have it right. This afterall, is a man who played a no-blood-no-foul one on one pick up game against Godzilla.
He clawed for rebounds, scrapped for points, and dunked over Godzilla with his nuts hanging out of his tiny cloth shorts, resting them on the terrible lizards chin basically saying "Role Model THIS." Charles Barkley, you were NOT a role model. But Miley Cyrus, hiding your secret identity as a world famous pop singer from everyone but your dad, your aunt Dolly Parton, and your best friend, YOU are a role model. All fifteen years of you. So buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Britney starred in that naughty school girl video when she was 16. You're at least a year ahead of the game. You're a lottery pick. You came straight out of high school. Grown men will kill their fake wives for you, not really but just in their fantasies, so that their kids might have a chance to see you lip-sync in a blonde wig for a couple of hours. Parents will stand in line for hours and help break pre-sale box office records so they can see video of you lip-syncing in a blonde wig for a couple of hours. But they WON'T tollerate you climbing into the backseat of your huge SUV, the one where if your hired professional driver while he's trying to dodge pimply autograph seekers in a tiny parking actually builds enough speed to crash into something you might break a fingernail at worst, without fastening your seatbelt. If Britney doesn't buckle her babies in, leaves the baby basket on the hood while she drives, spills coffee on her baby's crotch, chalk it up to crazy. She had her time to shine. Miley on the other hand, you're supposed to set the example. You're the new face on the block. How could buckling up, when you have a camera crew in your face all week, screaming fans young and grown, producers, scripts, and paparazzi slip your mind? How dare you? And you call yourself a role model? Oh wait, no you don't. We do. Oops.

This morning, Billy Ray issued the following statement: "We got caught up in the moment of filming, and we made a mistake and forgot to buckle our seat belts. Seat-belt safety is extremely important." Why are we so quick to crucify pop stars?

"Just because I dunk a basketball, doesn't mean I should raise your kids." Thank you Charles Barkley. Leave Miley Cyrus alone. She has it bad enough, her dad wrote and sang "Achy Breaky Heart" afterall.

*I have no idea if Billy Ray thought up this show.

**Was he really that popular? I can't remember.

JHurls
The Niceness

Hater

2008-02-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

I had to post this article by Dana Stevens from the Slate.

Hating Juno:
How the Backlash Started

Now that Juno has been nominated in four major Oscar categories (best picture, best actress, best original screenplay, and best director) and become the highest-grossing of the five best picture nominees (last week, it passed the $100 million mark; the next in line, No Country for Old Men, is at just above $55 million), it's become a movie that one must take a position on. When Juno came out, I saw it as a flawed but fun indie, a film that, despite the screenplay's overreliance on grating banter, somehow snuck up on you by the end and made you like it. Not everyone needed that much persuasion. The movie made more than 175 top 10 lists and was declared the best movie of the year by the likes of Roger Ebert and Andrew Sarris. Some critics' praise sounded as if they were gazing upon the Pantheon: "A confluence of perfection in every aspect," wept the San Francisco Chronicle. A film "almost too unique for description," marveled Film Journal International.
But Juno is also unique in its ability to get on people's nerves, especially now that its Oscar momentum is building. Vanity Fair's Oscar blogger, S.T. VanAirsdale, concedes that he likes the movie just fine but is put off by its nomination alongside heavy-hitters like There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men: "Frankly, I don't want to see Juno within a thousand feet of the Kodak Theater. I want her and her twee champions stopped at the metal detector. I want her turned away for being underdressed." Jim DeRogatis, music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, gives a blunter assessment in a review of the soundtrack that quickly spirals into an anti-Juno screed: "As an unapologetically old-school feminist, the father of a soon-to-be-teenage daughter, a reporter who regularly talks to actual teens as part of his beat and a plain old moviegoer, I hated, hated, hated this movie."

Then came the anti-backlash backlash. The day the nominations came out, Simpsons writer Tim Long piped up meekly, "Is it so wrong to have liked Juno a little?" Alone among the movies of 2007, Juno is a movie you adore or revile, attack or defend, and maybe change your mind about—not just after a second viewing, but halfway through the first.

Even the most convinced Juno lovers tend to agree that the movie's first quarter is excruciatingly arch. Scanning the critical response to Juno, I was struck by the near-universality of this observation: Though initially off-putting, the movie eventually worms its way into the viewer's heart. Many critics, including me, pointed to the 20-minute mark as the point when irritation gave way to affection.

On a second viewing, I could clock more precisely the movie's trajectory from coy to bearable to genuinely moving. The nadir of cuteness is the much-reviled opening, in which Ellen Page's pregnant teenage heroine trades stiff quips with a convenience-store clerk (Rainn Wilson): "Your eggo is preggo"; "Silencio, old man!"; "This is one diddle that can't be un-did, homeskillet." Soon after comes the too-cute early scene in which Juno breaks the news to her best friend, Lea (Olivia Thirlby), on her hamburger-shaped phone, provoking such interjections as "Honest to blog?" and "Phuket, Thailand!"
Juno may not have had me at hello, but it managed to win me over by the time Juno's carapace of cleverness finally shows its first chink, as she admits to her disappointed father (J.K. Simmons), "I really don't know what kind of girl I am." Maybe it was Ellen Page's luminous face and brazen self-confidence, or the unexpected transformation of Jennifer Garner's character—beautifully played by Garner and, yes, beautifully written by Diablo Cody. Michael Cera's exquisite comic timing makes even his underwritten character come alive. And I know I'm supposed to sneer at the precious indie-rock soundtrack, but some of those songs are really catchy. I tried to approach a second viewing in the mood of critical dyspepsia capable of inspiring one-liners like "[Juno] is a vintage lunch box purse with nothing in it." But I have a hard time despising this sweet little movie, even if much of the acclaim being heaped upon it (best director? best picture?) feels like overkill.

At this point, it's difficult to separate Juno hatred itself from a more general ennui inspired by the film's marketing campaign. There's the maddening ubiquity of the movie's pseudonymous author (say it with me now: stripper turned blogger turned Oscar-nominated screenwriter!). Cody is now writing the back-page column for Entertainment Weekly (I'll leave the question of whether her writing there is groundbreakingly sassy or painfully self-indulgent to be battled out in the feature's bloodthirsty comments section). Then there's the faux-humble Oscar push that's trying to position Juno as the "little movie that could," even as Fox throws the full weight of its marketing dollars behind it. Juno's unexpected groundswell among young viewers has even been compared, with a straight face, to Obamamania: "Look at the political world," says Russell Smith, one of the film's producers, in this week's Entertainment Weekly cover story. "If you say the word 'change,' everybody gets up and applauds. That's where we are: We're dying for something different." Good luck hitching your wagon to that star, Russell. But if anything, the sharply split popular opinion on Juno, and the depth of loathing it's capable of inspiring, seems more reminiscent of Hillary Clinton. Both ladies are heading into a hotly contested election; it remains to be seen whether their champions or their haters will win the day.

I don't really know where this article goes to at the end, but I thought it interesting enough to post here since I still can't make up my mind whether I liked (LIKED not loved) Juno or absolutely DESPISE it.

JHurls
The Niceness

Scenes From A Donut Factory

2008-02-05T12:51:00.000-05:00

While dining at the Dunkin' Donuts on West State Street in Olean, the location across the street from St. Bonaventure that shares the same tiny one-in-one-out driveway with the Microtel and not the location next to Breadstix Cafe, which on a sidenote I'm pretty sure steals its wireless internet access from said donut shop, I sunk deeper into my huge puffy leather arm chair as a mustachioed gentleman bellowed into his phone from the bar over top of me, "My mouth was full of donut. Just then, I took a bite of peanut donut right when you called!" With peanuts coated in his smoker's breath saliva surely about to spray over the counter, I covered up my laptop and gave a look of disgust up toward the faux oak counter adjacent to my leather throne.

Our local realty specialist sauntered into Dunkin' Donuts around ten thirty while I was halfway through an everything bagel toasted with too much cream cheese, enough extra slightly sour dairy caked on for at least an entire fresh half of bagel, and a small coffee. He looked around, didn't order anything at first, and immediately got on the horn to someone in his office about some 17-inch flat screens that were supposed to be ordered. I assumed he was from Dunkin' Corporate and was just sizing up the place. Come to find out, he's in the business of buying local real estate and had his eyes set on two Napoli Pizza joints, which are apparently in tax trouble according to my mediocre evesdropping skills. He wasn't happy with the service, playing games with the business. "Worst pizza I've had in a long time," he joked with his associate on the other end of the line. "I called them back, and I said send me over two cases of Dr. Pepper and a case of Mt. Dew. He said, 'We don't have Mt. Dew, we only carry Coke products.' Are you nuts? No one drinks Coke in this town! I'll just call Tasta, and I hung up." he gurgled his gnarly phlgem filled laugh taking another sip of his coffee. "That's a veteran move right there!" he boasted.*

In case you can't tell, I thought this guy was gross. He was plump, donned a salt and pepper mustache full of peanut donut when we finally had an encounter, and peeled back his worn out pleather jacket at the waist where he placed his hands when he talked. He had that Buffalo accent, real serious long A's and a phlegm frog dancing in his throat all morning. He had rings on his fingers and probably listened to the Mix 101.5 in his silver 1998 Ford Taurus. And don't think that I judged this man on his physicality alone, but remember that I sat two feet, perpendicular to this man while he conducted business with local merchants on his cell phone like a turn of the century oil baron putting down local eateries and hard-working blue collar family men, anyone in his path, in pursuit of the perfect Pepsi-pushing party-sheet pizza depot, as if it wasn't hard enough to run one in a tiny tax-local-business-to-the-limit Western New York town full of them.

I caught him peeking over the counter at my screen. "I was just checking to see if you were using wireless or if you were plugged into a land line," he reassured me. "It's slow here. I'm trying to download our master bases here, and I'm supposed to be in a ten thirty across the street," he told me. "Good luck with that," I said. We talked about the Giants Super Bowl win for a second and then I think he left soon after.

I think I'll stick with the wireless at the Olean Public Library. They don't have bagels but that's probably better news for my heart anyway.

*Verbatim, I swear to God, Lou.

JHurls
The Niceness

Olean Burglar on the Prowl

2008-01-29T14:52:00.000-05:00

Some upsetting news from the homeland: A savvy burglar is on the loose in Olean, and he's targeting the big money, the lucrative hot-spot that can only quench the thirst of a diabolical klepto. That place, of course, is the "Custom Shoe Repair" shop on Union Street.

There are a couple sources of humor in this report, and, in case you're a stone-faced prude, I -- the critical, little turd, will point them out for you. I can do this because Olean is my hometown, the place I love. It's different when I criticize Bradford, Pa., for being a skid mark on the underpants of the Southern Tier. It's then that I'm just being an asshole.

Let's jump in:

(1) Have you (yes, you) ever, and I mean EVER, seen, lived near, heard of, or even considered visiting a shoe repair store? Like, ever? I'll answer that for you, young man. The answer is no. Why? Because the year is fucking 2008, not 1943. Taking this elsewhere -- How about a vacuum-cleaner repair shop? Think long and hard...anything? Never, right? You've never seen one. Funny thing is Olean has both shoe and vacuum-cleaner repair shops. This just in: "Tom's Custom Dinosaur Saddle Shop" making its way to the Economic Development Zone, located on Constitution Avenue. Congrats, Olean!

(P.S. That joke was too easy!)

As reported, nothing was taken from the shoe repair bonanza store. Surprise to anyone? Anyone? You're a burglar. You, oblivious to common sense, foresee great wealth inside the walls of, again, a shoe repair store. Can you imagine your utter disappointment when, following your lock-picking tactics, you discover the Promised Land of shoe horns and soles and, if you're really lucky, maybe a stack of $10-worth of quarters laying on the counter because the owner of the shop (We'll call him "Dan"), upon closing, thought to himself, "Fuck it. Nobody's breaking in. After all, I do work at a shoe repair shop."

If only I were a fly on the wall when that poor bastard removed his Buffalo Bills ski mask to find absolutely nothing of value. Serves you right, you brain-dead idiot.

(2) A couple, nice semi-funny quotes from the OPD.

Like this one: "They're smashing the windows out, we believe, with a hammer," Capt. Rowley said.

Good detective work, captain. We at the Niceness would have also accepted: "They're NOT smashing the windows out, we believe, with copies of ABBA's 'Super Trouper' LP" or "The 'They' I'm referring to could or couldn't be, we believe, the 'Wet Bandits' from the box-office smash, 'Home Alone'".

And this one: "The break-in at the shoe repair place we thought at first was just vicious criminal mischief."

Of course. Why, in the name of Poor Cow Leather, would anyone suspect otherwise? Again, seriously, who busts the windows out of a shoe repair shop for any other reason than to scratch that boyhood itch to break glass?

Dammit, I love Olean.

Oscar Picks 2008

2008-01-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

Every year around well now, I write a blog about which movies I've seen and why all my favorite people and filmmakers should win the Oscar for best whatever and if they don't then the Oscars are a joke, but let's face it, the Oscars are kind of a joke no matter how I look at them. Still, it's my Super Bowl, so here are the nominees and my picks for 2008.

Best Actor:
George Clooney - "Michael Clayton"
Daniel Day Lewis - "There Will Be Blood"
Johnny Depp - "Sweeny Todd"
Tommy Lee Jones - "The Valley of Elah"
Viggo Mortensen - "Eastern Promises"

My Pick: Daniel Day Lewis. One of the strongest single performances I've ever seen captured on film. He drinks your milkshake. Enough said.

Supporting Actor:
Casey Affleck - "The Assassination of Jesse James"
Javier Bardem - "No Country for Old Men"
Philip Seymour Hoffman - "Charlie Wilson's War"
Hal Holbrook - "Into the Wild"
Tom Wilkonson - "Michael Clayton"

My pick: Javier Bardem. No contest. He is the baddest bad guy, the meanest mean guy, and the most devilish devil to grace a western picture. All are good, and it would be nice for Hal Hollbrook, but Bardem deserves the statue with more screen time; he carries the film.

Best Actress:
Cate Blanchett - "Elizabeth"
Julie Christie - "Away From Her"
Marion Cottillard - "La Vie en Rose"
Laura Linney - "The Savages"
Ellen Page - "Juno"

My pick: Marion Cottillard, probably. I think she won the Golden Globe, or was it Julie Christie as a woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease? Either way, I'd like to see Ellen Page win for "Juno" because I don't want it to win any other awards.

Supporting Actress:
Cate Blanchett - "I'm Not There"
Ruby Dee - "American Gangster"
Saoirse Ronan - "Atonement"
Amy Ryan - "Gone Baby Gone"
Tilda Swinton - "Michael Clayton"

My pick: Cate Blanchett. Haven't seen the film or any of her competition, but she plays Bob Dylan, come on. Amy Ryan could give her some stiff competition though.

Directing:
"The Diving Bell and The Butterfly"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country For Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

My pick: "No Country." Of course I'd like to see Paul Thomas Anderson pick up the prize for "There Will Be Blood," but I think No Country was a better film. However, I don't know how the panel feels about co-directors, so this is the award that I will anticipate most. Critics love "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," but I think the Oscar stays in America with one of the Westerns.

Best Picture:
"Atonement"
"Juno"
"Michael Clayton"
"No Country For Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

My pick: "No Country." Again, I'd like to see "Blood" pick this one up, but I just don't think it measures up to the Coen Brother's bloody thriller. I wouldn't be shocked if "Michael Clayton" pulled off an upset, but I don't think "Atonement" will make a dent in the big show. For the record, I'm shocked by Juno's nomination in this category.

Writing (Adapted Screenplay):
"Atonement"
"Away From Her"
"The Diving Bell and The Butterfly"
"No Country For Old Men"
"There Will Be Blood"

My pick: "The Diving Bell and The Butterfly." Haven't seen it, but I have a feeling. "No Country" could be the other front runner for this one. If "Atonement" is going to win one, it will be for writing. What PTA did with "Blood" is astounding, but he only uses the first half of Upton Sinclair's sprawling novel about the turn of the century oil baron as his screenplay's model, so I think it's out.

Writing (Original):
"Juno"
"Lars and the Real Girl"
"Michael Clayton"
"Ratatouille"
"The Savages"

My pick: "Michael Clayton." I'd love to see "Lars" take this one home, hell even "The Savages" but it will probably be "Juno." God, why do I hate Diablo Cody so much?

My favorite part about these blogs is going back several months later and reading my picks. I'm never right on any more than two of them, and sometimes I'm never right. I could possibly pick zero right again this year. Plus, I've only seen about half of these movies, so I'm basically talking out of my ass anyway.

On that note, I might go see "Atonement" this afternoon; doubtful. Either way, I'm not changing my picks even if it blows me away like Daniel Day Lewis in "There Will Be Blood." By the way, Lou, if you have a chance and three hours to spare, go check Blood out. It's just one of those performances that you have to see, and that you can't get out of your head once you do.

JHurls
The Niceness

Back Pocket Scribe: A Haiku From the Stacks

2008-01-21T16:07:00.000-05:00

Mr. Hurlburt, on slow days at The Niceness, or when I'm simply just too busy with something else, I'll pull out the pocket notepad -- my little, battered catalogue of ideas -- and post something from it. Most of the time, the small, lined pages are full of silly reminders (Where I parked at the airport) or books to read ("Watchmen of the Western Empire") or a line or two to throw in a song. Sometimes, though, something I write makes me happy, and it certainly doesn't do a damn bit of good just sitting in my back pocket. So, what the hell, here it goes.

"Work Hours", written sometime in October 2007

It begins at nine

then eight, then seven, then break

day is almost done.

Shelve til noon, eat dust

read poetry in the stacks

get lost then come back.

Do this five days straight

so long as the paychecks come

I'm a golden boy.

My Boy, Stephan

2008-01-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

I didn't actually meet Stephan the first time I saw him. There was no reason to believe that we would become bros in the coming months, even as he sat just three feet away from me at a Panera one afternoon, reading the latest fiction thriller while I typed away on some project. He was, with all respect, a regular old dude who I would've normally seen and forgotten in the same moment if it not for an intriguing ball cap he sported over his thinning salt and pepper hair. White and the simple, it read "Jack Bauer".

Though a perfect ice-breaker for conversation, I passed on that first chance to meet Stephan. A few weeks later, on a deathly hot Saturday, I headed down to the pool, and who's there but Mr. Jack Bauer Hat, shirtless and sprawled out on a beach chair with several small coolers by his side. I was sitting on the pool's edge and there he was. "Hot as hell today, ah?" This cat didn't have some cute Southern drawl; he spoke the language of the city -- Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn. This cat was a Yank, no doubt, and, sure enough, he was a Brooklynite. He loved the word "fucking" and said it regularly, even while families held hands and jumped together, as one, into the pool. He had a quick temper but said hello to everyone and expected others to be cordial with him; though, not everyone was as nice as he would've hope, and he despised these people. I know this because he always told me about so-and-so who "never fuckin' says a word ta me." From day one, I knew that Stephan liked to bitch to anyone who would listen. The local newspaper (The Charlotte "Disturber"), the absence of casinos ("No live games"), the bussing system ("A fuckin' joke"), all of the these seemingly trivial matters became Stephan's primary concerns. Sometimes I would hear him on the other side of the pool, yapping about the same things, oftentimes repeating verbatim what he told me earlier. Weird cat.

Born and raised up North, he was a gin drinker, a bar regular and a devoted Yankee hater, one of those old-time Dodger fans who remained devoted despite the team's then-new allegiance to Los Angeles. We talked baseball, specifically the 1966 World Series -- the mighty Dodgers with Koufax and Drysdale swept by the underdog Baltimore Orioles with Palmer, McNally and the unlikely hero, Moe Drabowski. "You know baseball," he said. "I'm impressed." And, even today, that is our jumping off point each time we see each other -- "You see Clemens? He's a fucking fake, a fraud, a phony." "Pay-Rod, that fucking fake, fraud, a phony. Did you see the kind of money he was asking?"

My boy, Stephan. An unlikely friend, who, just a few minutes ago, stopped at my table in a crowded (and rather quiet) Panera to talk about his slumping Celtics*. I listened intently, not so much to gain any insight on the Boston Celtics but to anxiously await the moment when he would let loose with a few uncomfortable "fuck"s. He kept it PG-13 and took off. "All right, Lou. Take cair. Gotta go do some walkin'. The docta' says my cholesterol's up."

"All right, Stephan. We'll catch ya' later."

"Good talkin' which ya'."

*Side bar: They've lost a demoralizing two straight games.

You're From Buffalo, Aren't You?

2008-01-15T11:59:00.000-05:00

I love the way people talk, especially those fortunate souls who hail from the Southern Tier. Lou and I discussed this over some Busch beer* at Grinchfest this past December 23rd. He loves it when people call him out on his long-A accent that is just as much a part of him as his Italian Fest t-shirt (why don't you just get it tattooed on your upper torso, asshole?), A&J's sub stink (in college), and moppy black hair.** I find it a little more annoying. Where I lived after college, CA, no one is actually from there. There are plenty of accents, but apparently mine was the only funny one. I got Canada, Ohio, and Wisonson a LOT. But I'm learning to embrace it, especially now that I moved back to Hinsdale. I love the way people talk. Here are a few of my favorites.

Say these first two to yourself, or out loud if you're not embarassed, with a nice long-A Buffalo accent.

1) While at the Beef N' Barrel last Friday, my sister heard some guy say the following:

"He woofed down his sandwich and then slammed a pop."

2) After two movers helped my mom bring her new couch into our house two summers ago, she offered them some water to drink. One of the movers responded with:

"No thanks, I've got a pop in the truuuuck."

This last one really doesn't have anything to do with a Buffalo accent. I listen to 107.7 The Lake mostly because it's the only radio station besides The Pig that I get in Hinsdale. Plus, The Lake always has pre-recorded transitions between songs to help promote the station. Most of them start out with ambient sound, some "lake noise," water splashing against the shore or side of a boat. And then the DJ comes on, and in a gentle voice delivers some ridiculous line about why listening to The Lake is awesome. A stock recording is: "107.7 the Lake, come on in, the water's fine." For some reason, I find these completely ridiculous and hilarious. While driving today, I heard my new all-time favorite:

(Lake noise). "They say noise scares the fish. But, with the radio on, I'm pulling in some pike! 107.7 The Lake."

This is getting long and stupid.****

JHurls
The Niceness

*There was a mixture of beer served at Grinchfest 2 this past year. Those served toward the end received Busch beer because I think Gary ran out of Keystones. Another bummer was the fact that there were no plastic shot glasses handed out this year. It was up to you, personally I was two big asses deep at this point, to take shot-sized sips from your dusty dented Busch (not even Busch Light) cans every time the bell rang. I call shenanigans.

**If I had to guess, I'd say Lou is a Pert Plus man. His hair always has sheen and volume. What a queer. Nice shampoo faggot.***

***That was totally out of line.

****This post is quickly filling up with way too many footnotes.

Emotionalism: The Avett Brothers

2008-01-11T13:31:00.000-05:00

I'll be the first to admit that I'm a sucker for banjo. I love bluegrass music. When I was a kid, my dad's friend Bill, whose two sons Will and Luke I was friends with, not by choice but because their dad was my dad's best man in his wedding, used to host parties at his home in the boondocks of Hinsdale. For the most part those days, for me, were filled with hours upon hours of swimming in their pool, having hide-and-go-seek fake gun wars with the other kids, and inevitably getting yelled at to get in the car because it was late and time to go home. Bill's house was a huge log cabin with acres of wooded land and yard to play in and a large barn/garage with a cement slab and basketball hoop in front. Before the parties ever got broken up, Bill, whose nickname was UConn, his brother Bruce, who I think was dubbed Squirrel or Woodchuck (all of my dad's friends have awesomely bad nicknames like Rope, Chipmunk, etc. but that's a separate blog all together), and a couple of others would set up shop in the garage, where the acoustics were terrible echoing off of the cathedral ceiling and bare lumber walls, and they played bluegrass music. Bill was a wizard on the fiddle, I think Bruce played banjo, someone would shake a tamborine, another wailed on a harmonica, and someone else rounded out the sound with an acoustic guitar. Soaked in beer and smoke and summer sweat, the makeshift band would jam on some bluegrass classics. It was loud and fast and truthfully a lilttle scary to witness as a child first hand. But that has always stuck with me and I wish I could visit a jam session in Bill's barn every summer, but they are no more.

I discovered the Avett Brother's while flipping through a magazine in the Olean Center Mall bookstore/Hallmark store. It was a blurb about the band, they were a bearded and flannel-clad trio in their picture, and the magazine, which one I can't recall, named them to be one of the top five bands to watch. It also mentioned that they played bluegrass, country, folk, grunge, punk, rock and roll tunes with banjo and acoustic guitar. When I went to the library later that day, I checked out The Avett Brothers, hailing from North Carolina, on their myspace page. I dug their tunes and picked up their latest CD "Emotionalism" the next time I was in Borders for $9.99.

Emotionalism starts out with an up-tempo acoustic guitar driven love song called "Die Die Die" and states "nobody knows what lies behind, the days before the day we die..." The songs, sung by all three members: Seth and Scott Avett and bass player Bob Crawford, seem more like confessions to ex-lovers than love letters, but they are tender and mostly sincere. A few of the tunes are very catchy, sometimes cheesy like "Will You Return," but all of them work as a collection of love-sick confessions from a trio of North Carolina twenty-somethings experienced in the game of love on the road.

"The Ballad of Love and Hate" chronicles the rocky relationship of a confused young man and the woman who loves him still. It's slow and sweet with a hopeful acoustic backing. Immediately following that track is "Salina," which starts by begging the question "So I know I'm as nowhere as I can be, Could you add some somewhere to me?" accompanied by piano.

My favorite track, "Go To Sleep," starts with banjo plucking, fiddle, fills in with upbeat guitar strumming and builds to the eventual chorus "Lay back, lay back, go to sleep my man, Wipe the blood from your face and your hands, Forgive yourself if you think that you can, Go to sleep, go to sleep my man," another song about boozing and life on the road.

Not the best album I've bought in the past twelve months, but Emotionalism has mostly quality songs about love, booze, fighting, traveling, and redemption. If you'd like one, I'll burn you a copy. Otherwise, be satisfied with what you can find on the internet. I'll give it a three out of five stars on the Jeremymeter. But what the hell do I know about music other than I'm a sucker for banjo?

JHurls
The Nicenss

T-Shirt Dedication

2008-01-10T11:57:00.000-05:00

I'm forever indebted to my T-shirts. I must be, or else my dresser drawers and closet hangers would be wiped clean, tossed out to make way for something more grown-up, more with-it. I think of this every morning as I rummage through the clean pile on the floor and the "nicer" T's, those that are stain-free and durable (i.e. without some kind of hole). They earn a spot on a shelf. There are white T-shirts I own that have been in the wardrobe mix for nearly a decade. I don't wear most of them, but some kind of weird devotion keeps them hanging around like a box of worthless baseball cards or some Christmas gift from your grandmother that, if you tossed out, would bring on a guilt comparable to pushing said grandmother down several flights of stairs. A little over the top, yeah. But it's the principle, ya know?

Today, it's a long-sleeved polo, polyester something-or-other, stripped, with a blue horse embroidered over the right breast. Its length hits my lower back and goes no further. Presumably, this lovely top was designed for a 5-foot, flat-chested woman with terrible taste and great confidence and not for a chiseled, all-American dreamboat with pecs to kill*. Hurls, you gave me this shirt in college, and I wear it regularly. Thank you.

When I was home, I came across some old pics with buddies who I haven't seen in a good five years. One in particular was taken sometime around 2000. In it, I'm wearing a terrible, gummy smile and a blue No Motiv shirt. I still have that one, too. One pic is definitely from 1999 -- an old friend and I at a former place of employment. My work shirt for that day? The Pittsburgh Pirates National League Champions 1992. Now, THAT one I wear bi-weekly. Ditto for the Amer-Italia Society and Ithaca Radio shirts.

Blame it on my father, who, when one of his T-shirts couldn't possibly be worn for another day, simply cut the sleeves off and wore it for six more months. Then, he chopped them up and used them to wash the car. That's not cheap; that's efficiency, mother fuckers.

*I just flexed both well-oiled arms and kissed each bicep. You love it.

The National

2008-01-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

The National's "Boxer" is a cool album, but I'm just not getting the overwhelming hype that has followed since its release. No. 1 record of the year? Hmm...

David Lynch on the iPhone

2008-01-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

I had to share this. It's short, less than 30 seconds. David Lynch, a genius film director, who recently made the switch from film to digital recording and vowed never to go back, and released a masterpiece of a film in "Inland Empire" on the digitial format, talks about viewing a movie on a phone. I fucking love this guy. Enjoy.

http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2008/01/david-lynch-on-iphone.php

Hurls

Tunes

2008-01-08T12:27:00.001-05:00

These are always fun. A buddy of mine let me jack his external hard drive while I was home. He had a ton of great stuff that I either planned to get in the near future or would have never given a chance unless it was free. We'll break down some of the bands and place them into categories based on my listenability.

Daily Listen:

Explosions in the Sky -- every possible MP3 off their Web site.

Instrumental band, heavy on spacey guitar and tons of layering. Think Pinback, minus a bass player and, of course, vocals -- with monster build-ups. Think music that takes you to a place, that paints detailed landscapes in your mind. OK, I got it. Picture this: You're in a car, driving across the country. You set off from one state to another, admiring the scenery as it rushes by your driver's side window mile after mile. Though some places look similar, they are never the same. These places you see evoke different emotions as well, but your foots still on the gas. So is the music of Explosions in the Sky. I've been listening to "The Rescue", which, from what I've read, is a rare LP the band put up for download.

Panda Bear -- Person Pitch

One guy, what I can only imagine to be some vintage samples, and Beach Boy vocal stylings. This is currently my favorite record. It's a good-times record, an anytime record, a "clap your hands, sing out loud and creep out everyone around you" record. For the past couple weeks, I've been caught habitually singing, "I don't want for us to take pills, take pills...take them all...not that it's bad..." (From "Take Pills") or "...always to have a good time...good time... good time... good time... good time ... (Lou, stop)... good time ... good time..." (From "Comfy in Nautica"). Great stuff, and it would made a perfect soundtrack to the 70s, surfing documentary "Endless Summer".

Weekly Listen

Eddie Vedder -- Music from "Into the Wild"

I never was much of a Vedder guy. Grew up with "Versus" and "Ten", and then I divorced Pearl Jam after the "Vitalogy" release. Perhaps it's the record's affiliation with the movie, which I was really pumped about. In fact, yes, that's probably it. Joni Mitchell could have made this record and I still would have bought it on purpose alone.

Owen -- Entire library

I went for months on a handful of Owen tracks, knowing full well that I would love an entire album's worth of material. Now, I got more songs than I can deal with. "I do Perceive" is still the front runner for best record, in my opinion, but "Femme Fatale", "Sad Waltzes..." and "One of These Days" are keeping his latest record -- "At Home with Owen" -- in the mix. There's always a very fine line between being honest and being so honest that it's wicked cheesy. For me, Owen is leaning slightly toward the latter. Oftentimes, the lyrics are straight-up bullshit. That's OK, though, because his guitar-playing and, less conspicuous, his recording, laying and editing skills are impeccable.

Deftones -- Saturday Night Wrists

The Deftones have always put out solid, hard records, and because of that, I've been a loyal listener. What's incredible to me is the band's ability to make unique songs out of the most unlikely and dissonant chord combinations. People say this a lot about their favorite bands -- that what appeals to them is the unpredictability of the song. Deftones are like that for me.

Maybe Some Other Time

The Decemberists -- Crane Wife

"O Valencia" was the single. It sounds great. However, the 11- and 12-minute songs are intimidating, and most of time I'm waiting for something cool to happen. One of these days it'll get a solid listen...maybe next month.

Wow, This is Awful.

Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah -- s/t

The guy's voice is killing me.

American Gladiators gets Lypo

2008-01-07T14:01:00.000-05:00

Let's face it, it was a notch in the win column for our generation the day ESPN Classics decided to begin re-airing the Larry Csonka-era "American Gladiators". Huge. For years, the likes of Siren, Ice, Hawk, Gemini and others had suffered at the mid-afternoon time slot on the Lifetime Network, a channel notorious for straight-to-television dramas, heavy on love affairs and vengeful murders. Then somehow, ESPN picked up the re-runs. Mike Adamle and Zonk were back for another go-round. Now, by only the grace of God, the Gladiators returned to syndication last night for two-hours worth of programming. I, like many, was skeptical. Can they bring this show back from the dead and pitch it to a whole new generation or are they simply rehashing the same show, with hopes of riding its nostalgic appeal? Following hour one, it was obvious the answer is the latter.

For starters, the original Gladiators aired on Saturday mornings. The show's targeted demographic was anywhere from 5-year-olds to teenagers. Squeaky-clean dialogue, good sportsmanship, and, oh yeah, the concept of American Gladiators -- superhero-type guys with silly names competing in living-room games -- wasn't exactly rivaling U.S. sports in popularity. It was a novelty, and it was fun. Last nights return aired from 9 to 11 p.m., One thing was clear: Producers figured they'd pitch the same show to today's adults who grew up watching the old show. Forget youngsters. They're already asleep. Surely, given its new time and revamping, all that "He's a great competitor" nonsense would go out the door for some bleeped-out f-bombs and R-rated taunting. Nothing. Hulk Hogan and Leila Ali -- the new hosts -- did the same embarrassing question and answer thing with the competitors, who tried desperately to say some poignant one-liner. I felt bad for some of them in the same way I would feel some compassion for someone who botched the National Anthem during pre-game shoot-arounds.

Case in point, when Female Competitor #2 lost her sanity following her "Eliminator" victory and screamed, "I'VE NEVER FELT THIS FRIGGIN' GOOD IN MY WHOLE LIFE!!! (semi-sobs) I'M SO GLAD TO BE HERE!!!!" Lots of other great dialogue, like, for instance, the FDNY firefighter who claimed that he grew up "idolizing these guys". Or Dude Competitor #2, who proclaimed that being on "American Gladiators" was the third greatest moment of his life behind having kids and getting married.

What changed? As expected, there were a number of new courses, but for the most part, the classics -- "The Wall", "Powerball" and "Assault" -- are still some of the featured events. The most significant change involved the Eliminator -- the wonderful, glorious f#$ing Eliminator. Just picture the original Eliminator with added obstacles like a lake of fire and this crazy barrel-roll thing. Some of the contestants couldn't even finish the damn thing.

If I remember correctly, new Gladiator names include Titan, Wolf, Militia, Toa, Siren, Crush, URfuked, DckNose, BabyEater and Taliban. I give it an A for effort, but as a whole, B-. Nix the silly, post-event questions and don't get nuts with the editing. Way too many "quick shots". Don't get fancy.

For a real entertaining waste of time, check out wikipedia's entry.

Town Team: Another Season, Another Dream

2008-01-07T11:57:00.000-05:00

Saturday evening the Hinsdale Bobcats under-thirty alumni basketball team faced off against the Allegany-Limestone Gators under thirties at Limestone in the opening round of this year's Town Team basketball league. Starting for the Bobcats were 6'1" guard Jeremy Hurlburt, 6'1" swing man Marc Gaylor, 6' guard Alan Pantano, 5'10" guard Brad "Sand Man" Sanderson, and 6'5" token black guy, big man Jared "I could have played D-1 college basketball if I had a better work ethic in high school but thank God I didn't because the Town Team would really suffer without me" Corbett.

On the other side of the ball Limestone started five tall white scrappy white guys. Two of the players had beards and were thus quickly dubbed "Beardy 1" and "Beardy 2." Another had a mohawk and was called "Mohawk." There was "Tall Guy," and finally, "Big Guy," who was rotund.

Out of the gate, Limestone set the stage for a scrappy up and down basketball game, winning the tip and converting on its first posession. Much of the first quarter was fast-paced free for all, with both teams trading baskets until Hinsdale managed to escape the quarter with a four point lead. Only minutes into the second quarter, with Hinsdale up only a few, the scrubs started to check into the ball game.* Limestone, more physical and much faster than the Bobcats played a high 3-2 zone and quickly tied the ball game. Sticking to their man-to-man defense, Hinsdale called a time out to regroup and check the starters back in. Fired up, the Hinsdale starting five broke down the Limestone zone with a high and low post attack with Corbett and Gaylor working the inside positions respectively. Hinsdale also had the outside game working as guards Hurlburt, Pantano, and bench contributer Don "I'm 31 but the old guys won't give me any playing time so since I'm really fast the young guys don't really mind if I play for them" Harris leading a three point swish basket assault that built the lead to a dozen by the half.

Keeping up the pressure, Hinsdale was able to build a 24 point lead by the two minute mark in the fourth quarter thanks to a strong inside presence from Corbett.

"It was a physical game," said Hurlburt, who was the instigator in two pushing incidents. "With only one ref out there, especially one who didn't run baseline to baseline, there were a lot of very questionable calls. (It was) a very physical match from both teams. I think we just outplayed them."

Late in the first half, after a loose ball pile up, Hurlburt shoved opposing big man "Tall Guy" for throwing the ball at Pantano.

"I was just standing up for one of our guys," Hurlburt said after the game. "The other time, I was breaking the press by myself. We were all getting hacked to pieces out there. I did a spin move on my guy twice, and after I was fouled, he got in my face and said 'If you put your elbow in me one more time I'm going to punch you.' I simply responded by mockingly asking him what I was doing several times to which he responded to by elbowing me in the stomach over and over until he realized I was making fun of him. Nothing was going to happen, and I apologized after the game explaining I wasn't elbowing him on purpose."

Hinsdale moved to 1-0 on the season. Next up for the Bobcats is a home game against long-time rival Ellicottville Eagles in two weeks.

The rest of Hinsdale's schedule looks like this:

Game 3: Home vs. Little Valley Tigers**
Game 4: @ Franklinville Panthers
Game 5: Home Championship Tournament (Finals)

*The term scrub is used loosely here. The five starters are the only five on the team who actually played varsity high school basketball. The bench does have some good players who work hard, but in crunch time, they don't necessarily make the right decisions to get the job done.

**Little Valley was last year's champion in the under 30 league.

JHurls
The Niceness

"Where is da boo-k?!"

2008-01-05T16:32:00.000-05:00

It's a late afternoon at Joe's Library, corner of Reaper Road and Route 15. So far, the eight-hour work day has breezed by without a hitch. Lunch -- a turkey sandwich and homemade mac n' cheese -- was a tremendous choice, and now, it's my turn to work the phones. To my right sit two employees, each one in front of a computer, scanning in books, chatting about so and so. Their names are Max and Helen. Max -- a 30-something ex-poet -- lives for rock bands and films. A good attitude and personable, he's "Barry" without Jack Black's elitism. Helen is the library's hammer, quick to correct those who are wrong and ruthless in explaining the new "Express CheckOut" system to baffled patrons.

A telephone rings.

"South County Regional Library, this is Lou Dogg. How can I help you?"

"Hell-o, yes I return book yesterday and today I check and I have fine. Where's da book?"

Russian? Polish? Scandinavian? The lady on the phone is one of these.

"Welp, let's have a look. Do you have your library card in front of you? Could you read me the numbers off the back?"

"2-3-1-1..."

"OK, let's see. Says here you have $1.40 in fines for the book, 'Body Chemistry'".

"No, I return book yesterday. It says I have fine. Where's da book?"

She pronounces it "boo-k", with a strong, Eastern European emphasis on the "boo" part. It's annoying.

"Welp, says here that you renewed it yesterday. Are you sure you returned the book to this library?"

"Yes, I bring it with a number of other boo-ks! Where's da boo-k?!"

"Well, ma'am. If you brought it in, we would have scanned it and you wouldn't have a fine."

...

"Hello? Ma'am?"

...

"Hell-ooo?"

...

"Where's da book?!"

"I have no idea. You renewed it. You tell me."

"I bring it back! What was the name of da book?"

"It's called 'Body Chemistry'."

"I bring it back, and now I have fine."

"Well, apparently, you didn't. What we can do for you, ma'am, is a Lost Item Search, where we take this particular book out of the system for four weeks. If someone were to try to take it out, the computer would notify us. Then you'd be all set. Your fines would disappear. Poof."

"Where is da book?!"

"Don't know."

"..."

"Ma'am, do you want us to do a Lost Item Search?"

"What is dis Lost Item...?"

"I just told you...we take the book out of the system for four weeks..."

"I brought book back!"

"I see you have 12 books out currently. Could you have possibly brought back the others and not 'Body Chemistry'?"

"I bring back books all at same time!"

"OK..."

"Where's da book?!"

"I have no idea..."

"..."

"Ma'am?"

"..."

"Ma'am, you there?"

"What do we do about dis book? I bring it back."

"Ma'am, I've told you what we're going to do. Now..."

Round and round it goes for, honestly and truly, a solid five minutes.

"Where's da book?!!!"

"All right, you know what, we're doing a Lost Item Search on 'Body Chemistry' for the next four weeks. That's the only thing we can do. Anything else I can help you with?"

"..."

"Hell-oooooo?"

"Hello...yes. Where's da book? Why do I have fine?"

"OK, I'm real busy here, ma'am. I gotta go. We'll do a Lost Item Search for the next four weeks."

"Sir --"

"OK, yep. Lost Item Search."

"Bu -- "

"Yep. Have a good day."

I'm Self-Conscious About My Finger Nails*

2008-01-03T13:51:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I admit it -- I think everyone is staring at me. I tend to think everyone has some level of self-consciousness, even prominent leader types or veteran public speakers. I think mine is a mild form in that it only flares up in particular situations or settings. Places that come to mind include crowded restaurants or, the absolute worst, a packed movie theater before the lights have gone down. Not the Carmike Cinema "Enter From the Back" theaters, but the more contemporary, stadium seating, where the hallways lead viewers out in front. Once through the doors, I usually stand like a jackass in front of the screen, possibly doing something useless with my hands like itching my nose (which doesn't itch) or fiddling with things in my pockets (they're empty). Then, my temperature goes up and I get that itchy feeling on top of my head, which means, if this nightmare were to continue, that I'd be wiping sweat from my forehead. Luckily for me, it never gets that bad. It's only temporary. I'll spot an open seat and tread up a number of stairs. It's when I begin ascending the wide, dummy-proof stairs that I word some prayer, hoping that I don't suddenly catch a bout of amnesia and forget 20+ years of walking.

I'm reminded of my recent flight to Buffalo over the holidays. As a stand-by ticket holder, I was the last one on the plane. This is usually the case for airline cheapskates like myself -- we have to wait until every good, paying, blue-blooded passenger has taken their seats before we're even considered. Basically, everyone is waiting on me. When I take my first few steps onto the plane and hit the aisle, I have 180 sets of eyes peering over the tops of seats and at my 5'7" frame, capped with an unkempt mess of brown hair. I check my seat -- "24B". Middle aisle. More commotion to anticipate. Shit, Shit, Shit. I make a point to carry my bag in front of me so not to drill some seated bastard who looks visibly pissed off. Of course, I'm thinking the worst. In my mind, everyone is breathing out an impatient sigh or whispering to the person next to them something along the lines of, "There's always one of THESE guys on the plane," or "Anytime you want to sit down, buddy, that would be GREAT!" Somewhere in the back, a group of teenagers are bargaining over who will get the chance to belt out a "You suck" in my direction. I know it. It'll happen any minute.

I get through the uncaring eyes of business class. Good people, those guys. Now the moment of truth -- 20 some odd rows to my seat. By row 14, my head is starting to itch. Why the hell did I wear a sweater? Slow down, Lou, you antsy mother fucker. Breathe. Christ, if I didn't know you, I'd think you were a huge bitch. I get to my seat and, fortunately for me, some moms are up and down, throwing diapers into the overhead bins. Coats are spilling out. It's a wonderful scene, one which takes some of the attention off myself. My row is empty. Could someone possibly be as late as me? Whatever. I take my designated seat in the middle and start to cool off. Before I can even enjoy the thought of all this space on the hour-and-a-half long trip, a dude my age approaches and points out his seat by the window. I unbuckle my seat belt and start to move into the aisle. But before that happens, I underestimate the height of the overhead compartments and drill my skull into the light fixtures and air vents. It's a loud, head-on-loose-plastic sound. "Watch your dome, bro", the guy jokes. I start sweating. I don't look anyone in the eyes. I give off a smile that says, "I'm such a clumsy guy, but I'll make a great husband and father." I sit back down, fast. Tim -- the guy at the window seat -- and I talk baseball for the duration of the trip. He's a Giants fan and loves Bonds. They've got a great, young starting rotation but are in desperate need of bats, he said, and I tend to agree.

*This post was intended to focus on my finger nails, more specifically those on my right hand. Plucking acoustic guitar strings with one's nails sounds great as opposed to just striking the string with the fleshy end of a finger. That explains why the nails on my middle and ring fingers and thumb are slightly longer. And, yes, I'm aware of some of the conclusions that could be drawn from my guitar hands. With that said, I'm not a creep. I take showers regularly, and I don't deal crack.

Klosterman on Bujalski

2008-01-02T10:31:00.000-05:00

This article appeared in Esquire Magazine around May of 2007. I just stumbled upon it now. It is an article about one of our indie heroes Andrew Bujalski (Funny Ha Ha, Mutual Appreciation) written by another of our indie icons Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs). Enjoy.

What's (Not) Happening!

Something's happening in the movies made by young director Andrew Bujalski, but what it is ain't exactly clear. Therein lies their beauty.

By Chuck Klosterman

There is a particular kind of movie that is made (and remade) several times a year, and it consistently fulfills a specific cinematic role: It serves as the hardest kind of film to see and the easiest kind of film to criticize. These are the movies in which "nothing happens." These are the movies in which youngish, lazy hipsters sit around and talk about their lives in abstract, self-conscious ways. They are always independent movies directed by people under the age of thirty, and they frustrate critics (who often find them self-indulgent and cloying) without appealing to mainstream audiences (who always assume they will be pretentious and unentertaining). These are the films that make 10 percent of America annoyed and 90 percent of America bored.

These are the films that are always my favorites.

Most of the time, these projects fail. But when they succeed, they inevitably become the most interesting movies from any given month or year or era. It's virtually impossible to reflect generational sensibilities on purpose, but sometimes that can happen by accident; sometimes you watch a seemingly nondescript movie and find yourself thinking, Fuck. This is how people talk. I have seen movies like this before, but this is different. For reasons that remain elusive, certain directors can shoot unfamous people talking about themselves and make it feel like they are explaining the contemporary experience of being alive. These directors are able to produce a very rare thing: They are able to make documentaries that are works of fiction.

It appears that Andrew Bujalski is one of these directors.

Andrew Bujalski just turned thirty years old. He sports a bushy "experimental" beard and drives a Toyota 4Runner. He lives in a neighborhood of Boston called Jamaica Plain, although he notes, "There are no Jamaicans here, and I live on a hill." He went to Harvard, worked as a substitute junior-high teacher, and still lives with a roommate, simply because his first two films have yet to earn money. But those two films -- 2002's Funny Ha Ha and 2005's Mutual Appreciation -- are the best depictions of semi-intellectual middle-class bohemia since Slacker. Now, I realize such a description will make a certain kind of person recoil. I do not care. These are great goddamn movies, and they address issues that have nothing to do with socioeconomics or political privilege or whiteness. Bujalski's work is mostly about ethics.

"Morals and ethics on film are very different than morals and ethics in life," he says while drinking a Bass. "People watch films in order to pass judgments on characters, which they probably would not do to their friends. We watch movies because we want to judge actions." Bujalski drinks very fast (faster than me), but he stops after four beers so that he can go home and file his taxes. He is a soft-spoken, nervous vegetarian, predictably similar to the people he portrays on film. (He plays supporting roles in both his movies.) He claims to be unable to sustain romantic relationships, and it is difficult to gauge his true confidence about anything. Those last two qualities seem central to his screenwriting.

Explaining the plots of Bujalski's films somewhat misses the point, but I feel an obligation to do so: Funny Ha Ha is about a boozy woman named Marnie (Kate Dollenmayer (1)) who searches for a temporary job while trying to forge a romantic relationship with a friend from college. Mutual Appreciation is about an egocentric musician (portrayed by Justin Rice of the band Bishop Allen) who thoughtlessly complicates the lives of all those around him. Both films are shot on 16mm and feature unprofessional actors (2) who are often Bujalski's acquaintances. Because the dialogue is neither scripted nor improvised (it falls somewhere in between) and because the camera shots are primitive, Bujalski is typically compared to John Cassavetes. It's often noted (usually dismissively) that the characters in his films hypersaturate their dialogue with vocal fillers such as "like" and "you know," which is always a funny criticism; linguistic curmudgeons have now been complaining about young people overusing the word like for thirty-five years. There are a lot of scenes that simply show people lying on beds and having fuzzy, stonery conversations. For a time, Bujalski sardonically embraced the term "mumblecore" to describe his filmmaking style, but it did not catch on.

Viewed superficially, none of this should be important. But here's why it is: All these characters are mumbling about morality. And it's a specific kind of morality. It's "onset morality." The people in Bujalski's films are actively constructing their ethics. These are people who are beyond college but unprepared for life. As such, their ideals and principles are still up for grabs. Certainly, Bujalski is not the first artist who's tried to examine this experience. It's more that he just seems to be the right person to be doing so at the moment that is Now.

There is a scene in Mutual Appreciation in which the musician tries to drunkenly tell a smothering female admirer that they can't have a romantic relationship (or even a friendship). She responds by unconvincingly arguing that she never wanted to be his girlfriend. Yes, he says, "but I can't even do that thing where you're not my girlfriend and I'm just making out with you." The clarity of that statement is remarkable. Here is an unbalanced human condition that everyone can understand immediately. It's probably the most complex interpersonal situation virtually everyone experiences (at least once) during their early twenties. For some, it represents the first mature attempt to reconcile the relationship between action, meaning, and responsibility. And this, I suppose, is what morality is. At first, it seems like it should be a straightforward question: "What does it mean if I kiss this person?" But that answer is always situational and rarely clear. This is the kind of quiet conflict Bujalski's characters deal with constantly. "What I see in life," he tells me, "are people with twenty conflicting motivations for every decision they make."

Considering his worldview, it should not be surprising that Bujalski is writing the adapted screenplay of Benjamin Kunkel's critically adored boy-genius novel Indecision. (3) He's currently on a third draft. It appears likely that Bujalski will also be asked to direct Indecision, which would be his first studio film with recognizable stars and a legitimate budget. He remains skeptical about the likelihood of this possibility. In fact, he is so nervous about this that he asked if I would not even mention Indecision in this column; he fears that mentioning the title in print will somehow stop it from happening. Bujalski is extremely superstitious. This summer, (4) he will begin work on a third independent movie that stars two identical-twin women, one of whom is confined to a wheelchair. Yet he declined to tell me the working title for that script, and he could not really explain why he would want to keep this information secret.

I do not know if Andrew Bujalski will ever become authentically famous. It feels equally unwise to suggest that his voice is somehow representative of an entire generation, because such designations are always idiotic. But still, this dude seems remarkably close on both of those counts. He's figured out something about how modern people think, and he understands how modern people talk.

"You make movies for yourself. That is true," Bujalski says. "But somehow, you want 'yourself' to be universal." If this is the goal, it appears to be working. Technically, he is making movies in which nothing happens. But something is happening here.

Footnotes

(1) Dollenmayer was a former roommate of Bujalski's and worked as an animator on Richard Linklater's Waking Life. She's wonderful in this movie, but she appears to have almost no interest in an acting career. Dollenmayer is the female Wiley Wiggins. Return to story.

***

(2) Though scheduling made it impossible for him to appear in the film, author Jonathan Lethem screen-tested for a role in Mutual Appreciation. Return to story.

***

(3) Indecision is about a twenty-eight-year-old IT worker who takes an experimental mood-altering drug in hopes of shaking a debilitating lack of assertiveness. Return to story.

***

(4) Bujalski says his next movie will either be filmed in Boston or Austin. One of the complications with shooting in Austin is the heat: During filming, all air conditioners need to be turned off, lest they interfere with the audio. This is a problem I had never even considered. Return to story.

Juno

2008-01-01T17:51:00.000-05:00

On a scale of one to ten, how indie is Juno? First, the script was penned by Diablo Cody, yes that's a pen name, an ex-stripper and blogger who seems to be the breakout screenwriting sensation of the decade according to Entertainment Weekly and various publications around the internet. In one article from the Playlist.com (http://theplaylist.blogspot.com/2007/11/meet-diablo-cody-hollywoods-hottest.html), the author quotes Juno's director, Jason Reitman, as comapring reading Cody, 29, to reading Quentin Tarantino script for the first time in the early nineties. Wow. That is a bold statement. Tarantino is probably the most prolific screenwriter, and arguably one of the greatest writers of dialogue in cinematic history. To compare the newcomer Cody to QT may be an overstep being this her first feature. However, she has won several screenwriting awards and been nominated for Independent Spirit and Golden Globe awards for screenwriting. As for my opinion on the script, Cody comes across as a sharp-tongued newcomer well versed in coming-of-age summer comedies of the late 80s and 90s. Given their track records this isn't necessarily a good thing and that's where I seem to place it. It is witty, at times very tender, and several laugh-out-loud moments; my favorite delivered by Juno's father, played wonderfully by J.K. Simmons. Overall, however, I felt that Juno, relentlessly being touted as this year's Little Miss Sunshine indie darling, doesn't live up to Sunshine's Academy Award winning standards.

Directed wonderfully by "Thank You For Smoking's" Jason Reitman, Juno works as a coming of age comedy with a bite. All the elements are there, vintage wardrobe, vintage production design, and a killer cast including the lead Ellen Page. Page and Simmons are the standouts for me. Page is nominated for a Golden Globe and MIGHT see an Oscar nod, but I doubt it. But the rest of the cast is great, and in no way does the film lack. Reitman holds the audiences attention and keeps his directorial style in tact telling Cody's story with ease.

The marketing is pure indie, the soundtrack (hit or miss if you ask me) works well, and the acting flawless. And a very good ending.

So on a scale of one to ten, how indie is Juno? I'll give it a seven. Good try. Funny and tender. If you're bored on some Sunday, go check it out. Or wait for video. But watch it. Ellen Page's performance makes it worth it.

JHurls
The Niceness

**A couple of notes on this post. After having a night to cook in my brain, I'm thinking more and more about retracting this review. It bugs me that Juno is touted as an indie film. It's a studio film. And the line is "Thundercats HOOOOOO!!! Not Thundercats are go. Thunderbirds are go! How did that slip through the cracks? (You'll know what I mean when you see the movie).

happy New Year niceness

2008-01-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

12/30/07
Me: "So Lou, what's the plan for the new year?"
Lou: "Well, I'm going to try and not just sit around and get older."
Me: "Wow, that sounds great. I feel pretty terrible about being 26."
Lou: "And I think I'm going to finish buying everything I need to record an album."
Me: "Atta boy."
Lou: "I mean I just got that Powerbook. Step one complete."
Me: "That's what I like to hear Lou."
Lou: "What about you? What are you going to do?"
Me: "Well, first I'm going to try and not get older, like you."
Lou: "Okay."
Me: "And I'm making a fucking movie this year. I don't care if it's shitty and I have to use my shitty camera to do it. It's happening this year."
Lou: "Yes!"
Me: "And I'll pretty finish up that sex dungreon I've been working on."
Lou: (Inaudible Laughter) "...sex dungeon!"
Me: "Yeah, I just got a load of sheet raaaaock and some quarter-inch dry waaall in my truuuuck. Figured I'd better finish up that dungeon and make some filthy snuff films down there."
Lou: "That's awesome."

Another year, another beer. So what will 2008 bring? By the way, that conversation actually happened between me, on the phone in the Olean Center Mall parking lot (Main Entrance) and Lou on the other end somewhere in North Carolina. We had a talk last year that went somewhere along the lines of: "...this is the year. We're gonna make it happen this year! 2007, woo!" So what did we accomplish? Lou, as I mentioned before is now steadily employed in North Carolina living in what I hear from Dave and Haggs to be a pretty sweet bachelor pad. Lou is ambitiously pursuing his music career. He recently purchased a Mac Powerbook computer that he will use to record an independent album (hopefully sooner than later for all of us Louiston fans left with our mouths watering after that Horse EP recorded what seems like decades ago). Lou strives to be a DIY indie rock God busting his chops at open mics in North Carolina clubs.

And I've left California. I live at home with my parents in Hinsdale. I have warm meals every night and a warm bed to sleep in. All my things are there and safe, albeit in my garage. But who can complain? The move, which I made to be closer to my girlfriend and my family, was a tough choice but it made me think real hard about my life so far and my career in the future. I have high hopes for 2008. Could a Panasonic DVX-100B mini dv camera be somewhere in my near future? I hope so. It would make this resolution of making a film this summer much easier. Even if I don't get my hands on that camera, I'll make it happen somehow. Just like all my friends helped me do in 2003 when we pulled together for that crazy short film we shot over Christmas break at St. Bonaventure, I'll find a team of people and we'll make something happen. My beard is gone, ironically enough I shaved it down to just a mustache per Lou's previous post. It's funny though, as my beard came off, a fresh idea came over me, a much smaller story than the one I had been writing for months. Something easier to shoot on no budget; and today I start work on a screenplay about an old gym teacher. The idea is rough and I have no idea where it will take me, but this came to me for a reason. So this will be my first feature-length film. And in 21 days (on Jan. 22nd), I will have a first draft of said script. Right now though, I only have a computer, an idea, and a new year to turn that into something.

Happy New Year Niceness readers. Keep it nice this year. Make it happen. Afterall, it's 2008 for God's sakes, and this is JOURnalism people!

JHurls
The Niceness

A Mustache-tical Retort

2007-12-20T12:33:00.000-05:00

Lou, check out this guy's website. He's an indie filmmaker/blogger and was the still photographer on Aaron Katz's "Quiet City," a mumblecore whose DVD release on Jan. 29th I am eagerly awaiting. Moreover, he's in the scene and I think he has a nice little blog, is well informed, and has interesting things to say.

http://chadhartigan.wordpress.com/

As for your mustache piece. I like it. I agree, mustaches are usually only ironically cool. Having lived in the hipster epicenter for three years, participating in the Channel 101 hipster/geek culture clash competition monthly, and even succoming to the pressures and wearing a pencil-thin mustache for the better part of a month on more than one occassion (see me as the soundman in Yacht Rock 8 ((or was it 9?))), I have seen more than my share of upper lips peppered with the patchy peach fuzz aspirations of young men (and women alike). Hunter even wore a mustache for a couple of months, and he wore it well. But I get your point, it sucks. In this indie DIY culture, anything that catches on immediately sucks and something new needs to be invented. This either keeps us fresh or we're elitist dicks who will never be satisfied and run out of ideas and recycle our culture every ten years just like the generation before us. I'll admit though, I think mustaches are cool. I watched Magnum PI every day at 3 p.m. for about 4 months while in Hollywood. Mustaches are catchy but so are crabs; ironically the hipster culture is probably responsible for spreading both more than anyone else. However, I can't really grow one, so chances are if you decide to don one for the holiday season, I may give you a high five or at the very least a silent kudos. Then again, you'll already know you're cool, because you have that mustache, cock.

Side bar, a kid on my cousin's 7th & 8th grade basketball team is that kid with a mustache. No shaving for him. He wears old-school street ball sneakers with a velcro strap around the top and runs real slow with his arms slightly bent and wears his pants most of the way down his ass so you can see his boxer shorts so he looks really cool. I want to hit him in the face with a chest pass so bad.

Nice Mustache, Dick

2007-12-19T17:41:00.000-05:00

Indie rockers hit a cultural home run of sorts with mustaches. We know this. However, even as popular media (particularly television) picks up on the handle-bar hilarity, we could probably assume the popularity wave of the mustache has reached its crest and is losing steam. But allow me to interject further.

What started off as a requirement for nearly every jaded musician with a partiality for an obscure, borderline-awful form of "shoe-gaze" or "ass-shake" or "dick thrust" or "what-the-fuck ever", has now infected pop culture*. Suburbanites, "young professionals", Adam Morrison fans -- a lot of folks are wearing hair on their lips. Some are terrible, seventh-grade pube staches while others are full, dark, rich. What's remarkable about said 'staches, more than any other trend that comes to mind, is the fact that it's rooted not just in being "cool" or "with it" or having one's "finger on the pulse of awesome-ness". More than that, it's rooted in humor. Think for a minute: You don't look at a guy in girl's jeans and say, "That bro's got a swagger. I like it." or "Those pants are all things spice." Furthermore, I'd be inclined to think that rarely do you take in a dude's faux-hawk and think, "Bro, I bet that guy likes to bowl and drink PBRs." However, a mustache says, "Hey, I may have a lot going for me, but you wouldn't know it. One thing that I'm assuming that you do know, based on my facial hair, is that I'm a funny guy with a personality."

I can appreciate that.

Good talk

* Now, of course, one could make an entirely accurate case that indie rock, contrary to the opinions of the "purists"**, is in fact part of pop culture. Just roll with it, rubberneck.

** These idiots only exist behind computer screens.

Palahniuk interview

2007-12-19T17:39:00.000-05:00

Found this in Writer's Digest.

Read it, Hurls. Good insights here.

December -- A Time to Think Way Too Much About Things

2007-12-14T15:24:00.000-05:00

December is the sweetest of months. Reflection, anticipation, nostalgia -- seasons from years past, clear and vivid; some more than others. Of course, each December leaves me yearning for the blustering, biting winds of western New York, where snow accumulation isn't measured with a ruler but a yardstick. It's like stepping into a different world. Red faces everywhere, wrapped in pounds of wool clothes, shuffling along the salted sidewalks looking for the next warm stop. Maybe it's home; maybe it's the store; maybe it's a bar. Whichever the destination, chances are it's been there long before you or I were even a thought, a setting for a million great stories we've never heard.

This is what I think of right around Christmas -- Olean and all its weather-worn homes, meeting places with shaky foundations, apartments that anywhere else would be considered eye-soars and likely candidates for the wrecking ball. I wonder how the hell they even remain standing, how families or friends inside stay warm. No complaints. It is. Been doing it for years.

And I'm here, in the New South -- a beautiful 65-degree Friday afternoon, Dec. 14. Ballantyne Village -- a sweeping landscape of concrete parking lots curving in and out around storefronts and well-lit fountains. Businesses here in the "Red Hot Center" cater to the elite -- cigar bars, male salons, wine and sushi bars, a five-star, white-tablecloth restaurant, a jewelry store, massage parlors (?). Dumpsters are hidden. Where no more parking spaces could be accommodated, trees and various shrubs were brought in. Everything is engineered around convenience, elegance and uniformity. A crew of cleaners and maintainers keep the sidewalks clear of leaves; they water the plants; they pick up beer bottles and discarded food, replace burned-out lights and, if, for instance, a tree begins to whither, they uproot it and bring in another one. It's as beautiful as a plaza could be.

Johnston Road, 20 feet from where I sit, is manicured in the same fashion. The medians could pass for fairways.

It's still a strange land, too new to have an ounce of character but old enough to have established a reputation as a posh stomping ground for clueless suburbanites. I can't say that's a fair assessment. Chances are, the people who feel that way are lazily adhering to the common stereotype that says all rich, successful people are pricks. Nah. People here are friendly and cordial, willing to spark up a conversation on a variety of topics -- sports, one's profession, family. They are excited to hear where you're from because, chances are, they moved here from up North. Pittsburgh, Virginia, Detroit, Buffalo, NYC -- you'll get any one of these answers.
Fact is, this is about as cool of a place as someone like me could walk into. (Speaking of which, ever been to Jersey? You haven't? Good. Don't go.)

Olean and Charlotte -- on the surface two homes worlds apart in terms of similarities but completely the same. Same performers, different stage.
They're reserved, quiet, then open and talkative; they're compassionate, defensive, caring, arrogant, prideful, sarcastic, confident, haughty, cocky, closed-minded, open to just about anything; they litter, cuss, have children, want the best for their children, shop for the cheapest bargains, smoke incessantly, write letters to the editor, watch sports on the weekends, complain, pick fights, bicker, give openly; they read Bibles in public places, share their faith openly, drive SUVs, exercise daily and give the finger to careless drivers; they speak different languages, bark into telephones, wear cotton t-shirts, pay their bills and clean up after their dogs. They ride the school buses, speak in innuendo, flirt with sex, wear the latest fashions, listen to loud music, drink alcohol and laugh; they take their spouses to the movies and get pizza afterward; they call the babysitter; they pay their library fines and don't smile enough; they cheat on their wives; they get old with the ones they cherish, and so on and so forth.

As completely free as my at-home schedule will be, one of the things I look forward to the most is a simple walk downtown and through the politically correct holiday lights of Lincoln Park. I'll probably turn down to Union and make note of the Christmas tree decor on each lamppost -- the tacky, back-from-the-dead decorations that could only mean that the holidays have arrived in Olean. Then, with my shoulders hunched over in the cold, I'll say something aloud like, "Yep, pretty cool", put my hands in my pockets and walk swiftly back to my car. That's it. Should take me all but five minutes. Afterwards, each of us will shuffle into the cold and down to some buried establishment where everyone is smiling, eager to hear just what in the hell went on in the past 11 months.

Lou

Soundtrack to this post: Explosions in the Sky, "The Rescue"

Reapplying Oneself to the Niceness

2007-12-14T15:20:00.000-05:00

Dudes.

I've made a conscious decision to better apply myself to the Nice. A few months ago, I came to the realization that writing for my other gigs was a whole lot easier when I started my day off here. Then creativity went on hiatus and I, like a true wuss, just gave up and said I would only write something when the moment presented itself. That's how writing works: sometimes ideas just come up and you roll with it. Other times, nothing happens. You write a sentence, check ESPN.com, come back after a half-hour, write something, think it sucks, erase it, and then check your e-mail. It's all a vicious, time-killing cycle.

Truth is, as a writer, when you force yourself to be creative, you can sometimes surprise yourself. So I'm once again making the Niceness one of my priorities, even as no one reads this outside of Hurls and I. That's OK.

Really, I don't know how the hell I'm gonna find the time, but, as some truly wise jag-off once said, "It's amazing what you can do when you have to."

Truth.

Mumblecore

2007-11-27T15:23:00.000-05:00

Friends, hello and welcome. I wanted to share this article with those of you who might give a damn about DIY indie filmmaking. This article, written by Dennis Lim, was published in the NY Times on August 19, 2007. Lou and I have spoken about this movement dubbed "Mumblecore" before and this article really sheds some light on the films and filmmakers that created this most important independent film movement of the past two decades. This is the future. This is fucking indie...

"A Generation Finds Its Mumble"

By DENNIS LIM
Published: August 19, 2007

RECENT rumblings — perhaps one should say mumblings — indicate an emerging movement in American independent film. Specimens of the genre share a low-key naturalism, low-fi production values and a stream of low-volume chatter often perceived as ineloquence. Hence the name: mumblecore.

More a loose collective or even a state of mind than an actual aesthetic movement, mumblecore concerns itself with the mundane vacillations of postcollegiate existence. It can seem like these movies, which star nonprofessional actors and feature quasi-improvised dialogue, seldom deal with matters more pressing than whether to return a phone call. When the heroine of “Funny Ha Ha” (2002), the film that kicked off the mumblecore wave, writes out a to-do list, the items include “Learn to play chess?” and “Fitness initiative!!”

But what these films understand all too well is that the tentative drift of the in-between years masks quietly seismic shifts that are apparent only in hindsight. Mumblecore narratives hinge less on plot points than on the tipping points in interpersonal relationships. A favorite setting is the party that goes subtly but disastrously astray. Events are often set in motion by an impulsive, ill-judged act of intimacy.

Artists who mine life’s minutiae are by no means new, but mumblecore bespeaks a true 21st-century sensibility, reflective of MySpace-like social networks and the voyeurism and intimacy of YouTube. It also signals a paradigm shift in how movies are made and how they find an audience. “This is the first time, mostly because of technology, that someone like me can go out and make a film with no money and no connections,” said Aaron Katz, whose movies “Dance Party USA” and “Quiet City” will be shown as part of a 10-film mumblecore series at the IFC Center that begins Wednesday and continues through Sept. 4.

Boosted in the last two years by enthusiastic word of mouth at film festivals and on blogs, movies like Mr. Katz’s have gained a following in the hipster enclaves where they are often set. Depending on how you define mumblecore, the category now includes 10 to 20 films. There have been a few commercial success stories and even the odd Hollywood flirtation. Jay and Mark Duplass’s “Puffy Chair” was released jointly by Netflix and the distributor Roadside Attractions and, thanks to aggressive promotion to Netflix subscribers, did well in theaters and even better on DVD. Andrew Bujalski, whose “Funny Ha Ha” and “Mutual Appreciation” are the best reviewed of the crop, is to write and direct an adaptation of “Indecision,” a novel by Benjamin Kunkel, for the producer Scott Rudin.

But for the most part mumblecore has stayed small precisely because it can. The need for traditional distribution deals is diminished when production costs are often as low as a few thousand dollars. “These filmmakers seem remarkably free of the anxiety you see in indie film directors who have brought their higher-budgeted films to festivals and are praying for them to sell,” said Scott Macaulay, a veteran indie producer and the editor of Filmmaker magazine, which recently ran a cover story on mumblecore. “The films feel more like dialogues between filmmakers and their audiences and less like calling cards to the studios.”

Alert to the business implications of the “long tail” theory about niche markets, the mumblecore crew has approached not just production but also distribution with a D.I.Y. mind-set. Mr. Bujalski’s first two films were self-distributed. Many of the directors have sold home-burned DVDs online.

Mumblecore’s origin myth locates the watershed at the 2005 South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tex., which screened a cluster of small, superficially similar films (including “The Puffy Chair” and “Mutual Appreciation”). The filmmakers hit it off. At a bar one night Mr. Bujalski’s sound mixer, Eric Masunaga, coined the word “mumblecore.”

“It was an obnoxious name nobody liked and it was meant to be a joke,” said the director Joe Swanberg, who was at the festival that year with his first feature, “Kissing on the Mouth.” “But we haven’t been able to get rid of it.”

It was Mr. Bujalski who first publicly uttered the term in an interview with Indiewire.com. “I should apologize for that,” he said recently.

It’s only fitting that the etymology should be a point of contention, since the films in question often deal with the fraught process of identity formation. Journalists and bloggers have floated other tags, including the self-explanatory “bedhead cinema” and “Slackavettes,” in homage to the patron saint of American indie auteurs, John Cassavetes. The IFC Center series, despite using “mumblecore” in its publicity materials, is officially called “The New Talkies: Generation D.I.Y.”

Mr. Bujalski, speaking by phone from Austin, where he had just finished shooting his third feature, objected to the very idea of a movement. “It makes perfect sense for bloggers to sift through the films and pluck out commonalities,” he said. “But the reductive concept that we’re somehow the same — that bugs me.”

There are indeed striking differences among the so-called mumblecorps. Mr. Bujalski, 30, is the elder statesman, and his movies are the most artful and sophisticated of the bunch, not least for being shot on film instead of handheld video.

Mr. Swanberg, 25, is the most prolific and the most committed to improvisation. His new film, “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” which will have a weeklong run during the series, was shot without a script; he shares writing credit with the actors. The creator of “Young American Bodies,” a Web series on Nerve.com, he is much more sexually candid than his colleagues. In a notorious scene in “Kissing on the Mouth,” he actually masturbates on camera.

Mr. Katz, 25, is more sensitive than his peers to the aesthetic limits and possibilities of digital video and has a more poetic sense of place. Frank V. Ross, 26, has received less exposure than the others, perhaps because his films are rougher-hewn and emotionally harsher. His latest, “Hohokam,” features slightly older, sadder characters and plays like a sober sequel to the first-generation mumblecore films.

As in most artistic movements, there is cross-pollination and tacit one-upmanship. Mr. Swanberg said he made “Kissing on the Mouth” partly in response to Mr. Bujalski’s “Funny Ha Ha,” whose characters he found passive-aggressive.

But the prevailing spirit is of friendly collaboration. Two of the three male leads in Mr. Swanberg’s “Hannah” are played by Mr. Bujalski and Mark Duplass. Mr. Katz edited the film’s trailer. Mr. Swanberg appears in Mr. Katz’s “Quiet City” and Mr. Ross’s “Hohokam.” Since most of them live in different cities — Mr. Bujalski in Boston, Mr. Swanberg and Mr. Ross in Chicago, Mr. Katz in New York — film festivals function as social hubs, networking events and de facto casting sessions.

While many of these movies have screened at festivals, mumblecore is the sole significant American indie film wave of the last 20 years to have emerged outside the ecosystem of the Sundance Film Festival. (“The Puffy Chair” is the only one to have screened at Sundance; Mr. Bujalski and Mr. Swanberg have had films rejected by the festival.)

For credibility purposes the perception of the mumblecorps as underdog outsiders, too indie for Sundance, is hardly a bad thing. Especially not since South by Southwest, which takes place in March, two months after Sundance, has stepped up to serve as the movement’s unofficial headquarters. Matt Dentler, the producer of South by Southwest, said that a few years ago he resolved to “find films that bigger festivals wouldn’t be able to take a chance on.”

Despite the anti-Sundance image, mumblecore has ancestors in American indie cinema. Given that the films are often anthropological studies of 20-something mating rituals, attuned to the halting rhythms and circular digressions of actual speech, Richard Linklater is perhaps the most obvious forefather. (“Quiet City” is a scruffy cover version of Mr. Linklater’s meet-cute romance “Before Sunrise,” substituting the F train for the Eurostar.) Some critics have suggested loftier reference points like the French masters of talk Eric Rohmer and Jean Eustache.

For potential haters, mumblecore offers plenty of ammunition. The films are modest in scope, but their concentration on daily banalities can register as narcissism. Despite the movement’s communitarian ethos, from the outside it can seem incestuous and insular. Hardly models of diversity, the films are set in mostly white, straight, middle-class worlds, and while female characters are often well drawn, the directors are overwhelmingly male.

To their credit, most of these films offset their navel-gazing tendencies with a dose of skepticism. The filmmakers view their characters with empathy but don’t let them off the hook; Mr. Swanberg and Mr. Bujalski often assign themselves the least flattering roles available. “A lot of that is actual self-critique,” said Mr. Swanberg, whose “LOL” is a withering portrayal of masculine self-absorption in an age of high-tech addictions.

Mumblecore’s inherent emphasis on the transitional periods of life should in theory save it from an ignominious middle age. Even as this generational sensibility expands its reach — Mr. Swanberg spent part of the summer in London acting in a British mumblecore indie — its pioneers have already begun to outgrow it.

Mr. Katz is working on a ’70s-set screenplay that he said would be ill-suited to micro-budget methods. Mr. Swanberg got married this year and wants to explore new issues, “more societal and less personal,” he said. “If I have to watch another conversation on a couch, I’m going to kill myself.”

His fatigue also has to do with having made four films in three years. At the heart of the mumblecore movement is a utopian impulse: the merging of art and life. The danger, as Mr. Swanberg has found, is that the art can get in the way of the life. When he wrapped his fourth film, “Nights and Weekends,” he said, “I realized that because I’d been producing so much work, I hadn’t changed enough as a person between projects. At that point I couldn’t make another movie even if I’d wanted to, because I hadn’t had a life for so long.”

JHurls
The Niceness

Welcome to New York (Or How I Escaped From California)

2007-10-25T13:11:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in the Nevada desert, while you’re speeding north up US Route 15 at 85 mph in a car with ninety-two thousand miles on it and leaking coolant, after you’ve already visited the Hoover Dam and fueled up on cheeseburgers with your best friend just outside Arizona in a family-style diner that happens to be across the street from a motel room that is being searched by six Nevada State Troopers who arrived in three Nevada State Trooper cars, with enough red and blue lights flashing to make the inside of the diner and most of the town look like the inside of Studio 54 anytime during the late 1970s, this is when you’ll lose all your radio stations. The best remedy for this is to crank up the volume on one of the handful of CD’s you managed to cram into your car, which for the most part is overflowing with laundry and Nintendos and plants and goldfish. Shortly thereafter, I think around track four, you’re going to check the song list on the back of the case just to make sure that you’re hearing it right, because that’s when you’ll realize the irony of “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” and “New York State of Mind” being back to back on Disc One of Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that it’s also a coincidence that you started reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” approximately one week before departing for New York from California on a cross-country road trip with your best friend Marc for the fourth and final time in four years, like you’re some sort of genius author incarnate and it was destiny that you picked up this novel when you did. Keep in mind too that Kerouac did this trip first, a long time before you were even imagined, and he made the trip with his thumb, not a V-4 twin cam engine, four doors, power everything and air conditioning. Try to imagine the country back then, routes 40, 66, and 80 all sending you sliding across the country down southern, central or northern routes respectively, like unkempt red-lined waterslides to the west. Try to remember that there was no sixty-foot tower, officially making it the world’s tallest mini-mart, in Baker, California before you cross the Nevada border to let Kerouac know that it was 94 degrees at two thirty in the afternoon just like this particular Wednesday. And forget about all the Flying J truck stops along the way, where the average price of gas will be two dollars and seventy-five cents per gallon. He didn’t have any of that, but you will so just hammer down and make the best of it.

By the time you’re in Utah it will be late and you’ll just want to get through it and on to Salt Lake City where your first overnight stay is scheduled. You’re going to start asking Marc questions like “How did we ever do this in less than two days?” and “Are you sure we can make it to Salt Lake City tonight?” This would be a good time to insert Band of Horses debut album “Everything All the Time” and crank track six: “The Great Salt Lake,” while you climb the cold dark mountains of Utah. When you finally reach 8,000 feet, you’re close and you’ll want to keep your eyes peeled for an exit with a hotel that looks cheap enough to make a two a.m. check-in and a 9:30 a.m. checkout seem reasonably economical. The overnight desk clerk will have a wiry gray comb over hairdo and thick bifocal glasses and you’ll ask yourself, as this guy simultaneously registers you for a room and creeps you out with child-molester glances, “I wonder if this guy is Mormon?” And even though it doesn’t really make any sense, you might ask how much the room is and the night clerk will tell you seventy-eight dollars to which you’ll respond to with “Do you have AAA discount?” With one of those creepy smiles he’s going to tell you that the room will cost eighty-six dollars with the discount and that the first price he gave you is the manager’s special rate and the cheapest that he can offer. At that point you won’t care if he’s Mormon because now you’re pretty sure that he’s hitting on you. Carry your three fish to your room so they don’t freeze overnight on the floor in the backseat of your car, brush your teeth and fall asleep faster than you ever have before in your life.

In the morning, wake up on time and refuel on bagels and English muffins and bananas and orange juice and coffee. When you reach Wyoming, keep your eyes peeled for big-horned sheep grazing near flocks of fenced-in fluffy regular sheep mowing the mountainsides with more wool showing than grass in the gaps between animal and land. And even though you’ve dined on its flesh once before at the Old Library Restaurant, you might not be able to remember the name of horned caramel candy colored creatures that roam freely on either side of you for most of the state. If this happens, fish through the plastic AAA bag that rests at your feet and find the thick paperback traveler’s guide labeled Wyoming and search the “Sights & Sounds” section, but don’t be shocked when you realize that you’ve been looking at antelope this whole time. Remember to laugh though and start to sing that song, the one that you had to sing on stage in seventh grade when you played Linus in the Hinsdale Central School drama club production of “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown,” to Marc while he drives. “Home, home on the range, where the deer and the ANTELOPE play!” All the inflection goes on the antelope part. And don’t forget that you’ll need to raise your voice to sing over whatever song is playing on the country station that Marc has blaring by this point to drown you out even though you don’t listen to Country normally, but the rule is it’s driver’s choice on this trip so top-volume singing is necessary if maximum annoyance is desired.

And when you finally hit Nebraska, you’ll get excited to be one state closer to the finish line as you fly across that nub that hangs out over Colorado like the plank of a pirate ship, but take heed: close your eyes and set your cruise control to 90 mph. It’s a good idea to make sure that the passenger’s side of the car is fully stocked at all times with David brand original sunflower seeds and the cup holder supplied with a reliable ‘itter.* If you do this, you just might make it through the vast empty plains of the corn husker state, late in September when the corn stalks are at medium length and the green leaves of the land have started to fade to duller tones, in one piece five our six hours after switching from Mountain to Central time and sopping up all the loneliness that the dullest state in the Union has to offer. Only then is it safe to assume that plowing across the highways of Nebraska from Pine Bluffs, Wyoming, on the long journey toward Lincoln and eventually Omaha, is a feasible one-day trip.

*An ‘itter, as described to me by Marc, the other person responsible for this cross-country excursion, is what some folks, especially those found to be residents of Western New York, call the receptacle in which one deposits waste and salivation through oral secretion whether it be chewing tobacco (dip**) or empty sunflower seed shells.

**See also dipper.

Des Moines, Iowa will probably be your next target. After Nebraska that welcome sign will be a sight for sore eyes when you pass into the Hawkeye state. More corn, sure, but at least it isn’t Nebraska and it’s dark and Des Moines is only three more hours. You’ll be antsy and hungry. Any restaurant will do now that any semblance of your pact to only eat at local eateries was left somewhere way back in the Nevada desert. You’ll start to think it’s snowing until the first splat, and then you’ll cringe in realization. Your headlights change pterodactyl-sized insects into huge stars rushing at you from space transforming your vessel into the Millennium Falcon while you’re Han Solo at the wheel left to navigate through the swarm at warp speed. No matter what, you will need to make at least one stop to scrape the layer of bug guts off of the windshield that accumulates over a matter of only two hours making you wonder if it’s possible to single-handedly wipeout an entire species of insect in a single night; a lucky few, however, zip over the hood with a rush of air and spin out of control behind you in the night, still in tact. You could try your brand new Anco wiper blades with a splash of wiper fluid, but that just might spread the goop around creating a layer of blinding yellow paste so you’ll settle on the gas station with the Dairy Queen attached to it. It just so happens that your stomach will rumble just as your windshield becomes unusable. Four squeegees of dirty blue gas station-formula windshield sauce later and you might be ready for a Hot & Spicy Flamethrower Gillburger, but beware: the Dairy Queen grill closes at 8:30 p.m. CT after summer. And since ice cream won’t quell your hunger pangs, you’ll press on to the next time you need gas and take refuge at the first Wendy’s you see settling for a Spicy Crunchy Chicken sandwich, medium fries, and a Dr. Pepper.*** In a few more hours, Des Moines will be sneaking up on you. Get out of the city and look for the first exit with a Motel 6 logo on the sign. It won’t be as nice as the Best Western in Salt Lake City, but the shower is bigger and 55 dollars later you’re head will be on a pillow and your mind wandering somewhere between there and Hinsdale. Before you sleep though, remember to check the Mets, Phillies, Red Sox, and Yankees scores on Sportscenter and joke to Marc about eating deep-dish pizza in Chicago by lunchtime the next day, proud that you’ve made it this far in less than 38 hours.

***You’ll want Coca Cola Classic, but whatever the brown syrupy substance that gets dispensed from the fountain machine that night will taste like flat Diet Coke, so just order the DP up front and save yourself the trouble.

Get the fuck out of Iowa. One Egg McMuffin, with bacon not sausage, and a bottle of water later you’re back on Route 80 no more than five minutes before you realize that you haven’t had a cup of coffee yet and you’ve been awake for more than 30 minutes. Pull off the first exit, grab a medium gas station coffee and get back on the road. Make sure you slip an extra Styrofoam coffee cup over yours so you have a fresh ‘itter until your next stop. Be on the lookout because coming up is the world’s largest truck stop. As advertised, it’s BIG. From the outside, the I-80 truck stop looks like a regular-sized truck stop with gas pumps in front, but the parking lot is huge. Inside, you’ll find three levels of trucker heaven complete with a movie theater, dentist, showers, and truck accessory warehouse. Once it’s decided that you don’t need any new chrome for your 2000 Oldsmobile Alero, you take a leak and hit the road because Iowa isn’t that interesting.
You will skip Chicago. You will not eat deep dish in the Windy City. Traffic will be busy and you won’t want the hassle.

Don’t go to Gary, Indiana. Fuck Opie. Fuck the Music Man. Fuck Gary, Indiana. Don’t go there. Stop at a different exit, even if you are dangerously low on fuel and hungry and tired from driving. Don’t pull off the freeway, even when it’s riddled with construction and rush-hour traffic. Don’t go to the Burger King. Don’t only order two cheeseburgers and then wait for 20 minutes while the girl at the counter serves everyone in the restaurant, including the people who ordered after you, and the entire drive-thru until there aren’t any more cars in sight for five miles in any direction. Do give her dirty looks until the kitchen staff takes a break and she goes to the cheeseburger making station and stares at an empty wrapper, at which point you will be forced to assume that she is trying to wish a cheeseburger into existence. Do tell the manager that you only ordered two cheeseburgers. Do accept his apology and the free large French fries that he offers. Do get the fuck out of Gary, Indiana. Do yell and refuse to take phone calls. Do eat your two cheeseburgers in silence and then fall asleep for an hour and a half and try to forget everything you experienced in Gary, Indiana.

When Ohio hits, you will realize what you’re doing. It will be late and you tired. This is the no turning back point in the trip. Grin and bear it. Don’t get nostalgic. You’ve been to Ohio plenty of times. You know the drill: head down, hammer down, and figure out how you can possibly make Pennsylvania, that blood sucker of a state to drive through, fun. Resist all urges to stop at a Steak & Shake. It’s been a long two days and your body will appreciate the break on the greasy foods.

And Pennsylvania. Stop and load up on beef jerky and Coke Zero and Baby Ruths, and be sure to give the store clerk exact change; don’t feel embarrassed for the guy in the Timbaland’s next to you who is negotiating with the store clerk to “owe you fifty cents tomorrow, okay?” so he can take the lukewarm 40 oz. in his hand home and forget about why he can’t afford the Silver Thunder malt liquor in the first place while you count your change. On the way back to the freeway, you’ll have to detour one exit back because the on-ramp will be under construction. Just welcome all obstacles with a smile, because your mission is almost complete.

Welcome to New York. You know it’s only another 90 minutes until you see your family and your girlfriend when you see that sign. You’ll probably be all smiles. Just after the final checkpoint, you’ll remember the CD that you forgot to make: the one with Ace Freely’s “Back in the NY Groove,” the only listenable track on all four of the Kiss member’s solo albums (a fact which you only know because your two best friends in California were borderline genius/annoyingly well-versed nerds in the history of Rock-n-Roll, a trait that you secretly envied and revered, especially at moments like this), looped to signify your return to NY and planned to play non-stop until reaching your driveway in Hinsdale. Check on Marc to make sure he is okay behind the wheel and then decide that you have to stop in Salamanca to pee. The restroom at Burger King will be no different than any other truck stop you’ve been to after dark since Utah, and that feeling of terror every time you hear the leaky faucet drip thinking it’s someone taking another step toward your stall to kick it in and murder you so close to your home because you’ve seen one too many horror films in your time won’t go away either. But you’ll make it out alive and drop your best friend off just before 1 a.m. on Saturday morning at his house on the now quiet Route 16 before driving past the well-lit but not open 24 hours anymore Crosby’s mini mart. And down the back road under the two Route 86 bridges and over the railroad tracks and right on the back road again, through the dark bitter air of your hometown; pitch black under the clear sky and every star you’ve ever known in your lifetime, you’ll soak this in as you make a left turn at the stop sign on the curve of Gile Hollow Road next to the red barn. You will see lights in the living room of your house at the end of the road and your girlfriend’s car parked in the driveway. You’ll want to rush in and fall right asleep or talk to the people you love the most, but you won’t. You’ll put the car in park in your dark driveway, before your sleepy father turns on the driveway light, the one he installed ten or twelve years ago so you could practice your jump shots in the dark on warm summer nights, and everyone meets your at the backdoor to greet you and hug you and kiss your cheeks, you’ll take just one second for you and breathe all of this in.

This is where you’re from, not who you are or what you’ll be. This is not where you see yourself three years from now or where you saw yourself three years ago, nor was California though and you know. These three and four year bursts of life are hard on the head and heart: high school, college, and the first part of the rest of our lives. All that moving in and out of dorms and houses and apartments and states, all those new people you meet and fall in love with only to leave again when your bonds are at their strongest. This is just another one of those. But you’ll be safe, home, and you’ll have a story to tell.

JHurls
Niceness

BOH

2007-10-02T15:32:00.000-04:00

Louis,

Nuts? Good. Band of Horses is playing Raleigh, NC on November 1st. I recommend you search for a ticket, you loser.

Hurls

Would You Shit Your Pants for a Nintendo Wii?

2007-09-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

Fifteen more minutes. That's when I start asking myself, "How smart was it to eat half a sugary blueberry muffin and wash it down with a tall black Starbucks coffee an hour and a half before this store opens?" while I held my spot, second in line behind a Mexican gentleman and his two sugar-laced children, all three of them wearing Kobe Bryant #24 jerseys, the father's white and the little boy and girl's each purple, at Best Buy on a hot Sunday morning in hopes of finally securing my very own Nintendo Wii.

This all started because last weekend, Drew (Oats from "Yacht Rock") spoke favorably of "Resident Evil 4" for the Wii. I believe his exact words were, "Resident Evil 4 for Nintendo Wii is the best game every made." Better than Mario Kart 64 or even its predecesor? Better than Contra? Better than Goldeneye (easily my favorite first person shooter game, sorrrrrry Doom; AOL uneasy face)? A claim that was confirmed two days later by Lou, proud owner and operator of the PS2 version of the same title. But that's not really why I wanted to buy a Nintendo Wii is it? I mean, this really started because Nintendo released a new product that said "Fuck you" to high-end graphics cards and concentrated on making its system fun, revolutionizing the gaming world practically overnight.

Ten more minutes, and my conscience finally kicks in. Since eight thirty in the morning, I'd sat on a dirty sidewalk reading "On the Road," a book that is everything that I should be doing and every example why not to sit inside and play video games, sweat soaked, stinking in the clothes that I had slept in the night before so that I could finally get a little piece of this gaming goodness that everyone lucky enough to find this system has been raving about for months. What else could I spend this $250 on? The camera that I've been drooling over for almost as many months as this game console? Gas to get me home to Hinsdale? *New underwear? But these systems are virtually impossible to find, and I happened to ask a Best Buy employee if there were any Wii's in stock, and he happened to tell me that there would be a few in on Sunday, this Sunday September, 16 2007, on sale as soon as the store opens at 10 AM. I would be crazy NOT to buy one, right?

Five more minutes and the people in line start dancing, standing on tiptoes to peek at the employees busily marching behind the locked glass doors where the 25 (the little boy in front of me counted 12 people in line, including us, and told his dad, "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, twelve people and twenty five Wii's!) Nintendos waited for them at the Customer Service counter. And I start to rationalize. I have some money in the bank. I'm moving to Buffalo, where it's going to be cold as balls for the next eight months, so a little indoor entertainment to keep me from going stir crazy in my first real winter in three years isn't that bad of an idea. Not only should I get a Nintendo Wii, but I deserve one. My mom won't buy me a game system for Christmas, but she will give me money toward my camera; buy the Wii and get your camera next month. Instead of borrowing Robear's N64 this Christmas, so my drunk friends can play MK64 until all hours of the night on my parent's big screen television, I can download the game and play with my new wireless controllers. I'm buying a Nintendo Wii.

And it's in these last 15 minutes that I remember riding four hours to San Diego (normally a two-hour trip without rush-hour traffic on the 405 South) Friday night, and the two and a half hour trip home the next day, hungover feeling more like I was walking home with a bag of dicks strapped to my back while someone punched me in the face every step and breathing Haggs' farts every other breath. Remembering that I ate Subway and then went straight to Dave's house until three in the morning to listen to records and drink a six pack of Tecate each. Remembering going home to sleep on the brown couch that's easily twice my age and wrecking my back every second I'm on it. And that's when I thought about all the beer and shitty food that I had eaten for the past four days and how sometimes, when I'm least expecting it, usually after I've had a cup of coffee, I've been known to come down with a serious case of explosive diarrhea, the kind that you unbuckle your belt on the way to the bathroom for. As a matter of fact, I just had a cup of coffee, and I was nervous and excited becuase it's two minutes until the doors open at Best Buy, and I'm second in line for a Nintendo Wii, and all I can think about is if I'm overcome by the sudden intense sensation of explosive diarrhea in the next five minutes, would I stick it out? Would I shit my pants for a Nintendo Wii? Probably not. Then again, where the hell is the nearest restroom anyway? So probably.

*(Somehow, I managed to pack ALL of my underwear and socks in the moving truck that has been charging toward Hinsdale, New York since Friday morning.)

"Forever" TC and a Myth From Left Field

2007-09-13T12:31:00.000-04:00

I got a text message a couple weeks ago from an old friend. It read simply, “TC works at Uni-Mart.”

Terry Collins -- TC. If you’re from the Olean area, you are aware of the power these initials hold. Not really, though. TC was a former Little League and Senior League umpire in Olean. He had it rough, I presume, but he made the most of it.

Side note: The Olean Board of Legends (i.e. Me) has tabled his induction as an Olean Legend and will vote on the matter in the next coming days. Whup…Hold on…we’re getting word…Yes, TC has been certified Olean Legend Status. Congratulations*.

I shared the news of TC’s recent employment with a friend (We’ll call him Damon Stedman), not to poke fun but to spark up nostalgic stories of youth baseball and such. Fact is it sucks that ol’ TC works at UniMart, in an “Ah, bummer he couldn’t find something else” sort of way. In a perfect, undying Cattaraugus County, TC could continue calling games for Olean’s youth, but the fact of the matter is things change, and to further my point I’ll direct a widely held stereotype at our youth…(read the next sentence in a spiteful, crotchety old-man voice) Kids these days like the videogames and the comp-pooters and boogieing on the Webs with their e-mails. Where was I going with this?

Of course, any conversation involving TC quickly turns to his supposed dabbling in beastiality. If you’re from Olean, upon your birth at Olean General, the doctor slapped your ass, handed you over to your mother, she oodled over you and your chubby cheeks, the doctor took you back in his arms, put you in a “Buffalo Bills Fan For Life” Machine TM (It was broken on September 15, 1982), pressed “Go”, took you out, placed you back into your new mother’s arms, where you then obliviously listened to the story of TC trying to fuck a cow and how the cow retaliated by kicking him straight in the jaw. “Dearest child”, your mother and father said, “that's the reason why TC’s teeth are so jacked.” You listened intently, unknowing in your infant mind that this story would stick with you well into adulthood.

And this story would continue year after year, baby after baby, corrupting and damning TC in the minds of the area’s youth. At age 10 – of whatever the Little League age was – you began to hear whispers of the mysterious umpire’s past, stories that awakened something in you. Something you couldn’t identify, but you could have sworn you’d heard this story before. TC – who punked you out on a third strike call that was clearly out of his generous, pitcher-friendly strike zone – fucks cows. In Senior League, when players are supposedly more mature, teammates would chuckle at the sight of TC behind the plate and share shamelessly exaggerated stories, as if attempting to penetrate a cow wasn’t shocking enough.

Damon remembered a time when one of his teammates suited up to play catcher, and the rest of the team warned him, jokingly, to beware of TC’s advances. Surely, he would try to anal rape you. That’s what he does. TC fucks cows, they told him.

On Field 8 – I think it’s eight – the Angels (sponsored by Askew Supply) and led by Archie Deming, could hear faint moos off in the distance, across the river, far up into the hills of the Alleghenies. Even coach got into the action: “Uh oh, TC’s on the prowl.” It brought down the house. “HAHAHA!!! TC fucks cows!!! High-fives all around!!!”

Fast-forward a decade later. Damon and I are sitting in his home in Cornelius, NC, discussing these memories when, during a brief silence, he asks a very logical question: “Wait, How does one fuck a cow?” And with that question, everything you thought was true comes crumbling down. You see, if we as 10, 14 or 20-year-olds would have pondered this question for, say, 15 seconds, we could have possibly come to the conclusion that TC’s unfortunate claim to fame probably wasn’t true.

Let’s talk science: TC’s a small guy. Cows are rather large, so that would mean TC would have needed a step stool of some kind to “reach”, and although he probably hasn’t had the best of luck with the ladies, I refuse to believe that he went to such lengths to get off. Now, in regards to getting bucked (Ladies and Gentlemen, a cowboy term), if TC did, in fact, get kicked in the teeth, that would mean the cow was either (A) insanely tall, which would make “reaching” all the more difficult, or (B) possessed Peleian kicking ability, like, rainbow-kick shit. Impossible.

I’m no cattle rustler, but I’ve never seen a cow kick. Furthermore, I’ve never witnessed a cow kick higher than its back.

Conclusion: TC didn’t fuck a cow. It’s scientifically impossible. All those stories were false. Maybe he just had bad teeth. He didn’t floss. Whatever.

So officially, a decade later: Sorry, TC, for laughing at a completely false story involving you and a cow. What can I say, really? Kids are cruel. With that said, your strike zone was always bullshit.

Lou

* TC now joins "Forever" No Sweat Joe (RIP), Wendell "Forever" the Wizard (RIP?), Tony "Forever" Masacio, "Forever" Drunk Santa (RIP?) and Larry "Forever" Ordway as Gold Members of the Olean Legends. Acknowledging TC's contributions to the Olean area, I, accordingly, will now refer to him as "Forever" TC and request that you do the same. Here Here.

Applying Oneself to the Nice

2007-09-12T15:02:00.000-04:00

There's a large part of me that misses telling a good story on the ol' blogger.

"Man, Phil" (I call myself Phil), I say to myself. "You haven't blogged on the Nice in a few weeks. Not only that, Roy (That's what Phil calls himself), you haven't told a good story in years. And don't pretend like you don't have one because you do. Now get going and make sure it's the spice. Got it?"

After some thinking, there are plenty of things that are Niceness worthy, so expect some frequent words.

Here goes.

Olean, NY. One small town in a nation full of them. I'm forced to reference a Bon Jovi song, "You can take the boy from his home, but you can't take the home from the boy", or something really poignant like that. It's totally true. Jovi's like a fucking prophet, a blond-highlighted Messiah. I will always compare things in Charlotte, or wherever the hell I end up, to something O-Town. Baby, I'm Brook Street all the way.

I'm gonna play a little game today, Hurls. It's called "Which Olean native does this Panera customer look like?" I do this a lot unintentionally, and I've never written it down. I need a blog, but I'll refrain from name-dropping those who may someday wander upon this site.

Here's what I'm talking about: There's a gentlemen in a blue golf shirt, gray hair, and he's dropping his Panera garbage into one of the receptacles. He returns the silverware to its appropriate compartment, takes a sip of his drink, takes a last glance at the remaining diners and shuffles out the door. This guy looks like Mr. Mahar, owner of the Park n' Shop groceries, located on West State, Front and whatever that street in Allegany is called. Yeah...that...there's one there too.

Old man just walked in...looks similar to Jim Boser, one of Allegany's good guys.

The lady sitting next to him looks like Audrey, my old boss from A&J's sub shop.

The younger woman, sitting behind me on a leather sofa, is what I would imagine Kerry Creeden to look like today.

Elderly guy in scrubs who is pouring himself a combination of sweet and unsweetened tea -- hmm...one of my grandfather's friends, Phil Massie.

Attractive business woman -- Richie's mother.

I didn't know Mr. Block lived in Charlotte.

There goes Justin Kettle -- tall, lean, white-shirted, probably has a hell of a fastball.

Rick Ocasick just got himself a Pepsi, but I don't think he's from Olean.

I'm bored. Over.

Things that are Nice...

2007-09-11T14:33:00.001-04:00

1) The Samurai Trilogy: Musashi Miyamoto, Duel at Ichijoji Temple and Duel at Ganryu Island. Sasaki Kojiro might be the baddest mother fuckers in terms of villian-ness.

2) Rock records from female artists, particularly Tegan and Sara's "The Con", and Eisley's "Combinations".

3) The NFL season

4) Balls

5) Your Face

Best Buy

2007-09-11T02:54:00.000-04:00

I went to Best Buy today. I bought an iTrip, a device that plays my ipod (and charges it) through my car stero on an empty station. Bullshit. It sucks. I'm taking it back. I also purchased new headphones for my ipod, ones that will stay in my ears while I jog.

While shopping, three employees approached me and asked if I needed help finding anything. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. Everytime I go to Best Buy, I spend most of my shopping time searching for a sales associate to steer me toward the printer cartridge aisle. Needless to say, I was shocked.

You're winning me back Best Buy.

T-minus 8 days until I start my journey to Hinsdale.

Happy Patriot Day.

Hurls
The Niceness

A Woman Under the Influence

2007-08-27T17:21:00.000-04:00

John Cassavetes just broke my heart for two and a half hours. And then in two minutes it was all okay because I had a smile on my face. Of course I was fine. Afterall, it was just a movie. I'm okay, but those characters, Nick and Mabel Longhetti, played by Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands respectively, they're doomed.

"A Woman Under the Influence" (1975) follows Nick and Mabel's marriage as Mabel has a nervous breakdown. Nick is overworked by the city water department and Mabel, a mother of three, is a stay-at-home mom. When a watermain breaks in downtown Los Angeles, Nick is called into work all night breaking his promise to have a romantic evening with Mabel and this proves to be the final straw. Gena Rowlands, nominated for an Oscar and winner of a Golden Globe for her performance, crumbles before your eyes in long relentless takes that force you to absorb every frustrating second.

One of the saddest yet most real scenes I've ever seen in a movie comes after Mabel races her children down the block after picking them up from school. They all sit on the porch and Mabel asks her kids what they think of her. They say that she is pretty and smart and fun. Mabel tells them, "You know, I never did anything in my whole life except make you and you and you?" Instantly, Mabel is real and I'm fighting for her life just as much as she is.

Mabel throws a party for her children on a Monday afternoon after school. She invites two of her kids' friends and their father, who is immediately suspicious of Mabel's behavior as she dances and sings to the music in her head. She tells the kids to go put on some costumes so they can play and all hell breaks loose. Nick comes home to find half-naked children and a panicked friend of the family. The family doctor is called and Nick is forced to commit Mabel.

Peter Falk is tremendous as Nick. He's angry becuase he's lost his grip on his life. His wife is not the woman he married, and he desparately wants her to be normal and have a normal life. He must choose between what is right for his family and what is right for Mabel. No matter what, someone is getting hurt.

Six Months Later: Mabel is set to arrive home from the hospital. Nick, in his quest for normalcy, invites forty of his closest friends and family to the house for a surprise welcome home party. With the help of the family doctor and his mother, he comes to his senses and asks everyone to leave except for the family. Mabel returns home, more unsure of herself than ever, and reveals to the family that she underwent shock-therapy treatments while in the hospital. She quickly resorts to her old ways, and Nick forces the family to leave. Mabel runs to the bathroom and tries to cut her wrists with a razor, but Nick grabs it away from her and smacks some sense into her.

And then the dust settles. Mabel comes back to Nick. He washes her bloody hand and puts a tiny bandaid on it. They clean up the house and get ready for bed while the credits roll. Even at the conclusion, you're never really sure if Mabel is truly crazy or if she's just exhausted.

The bandaid scene wraps it all up. From the start, this film was a gushing vein; a bloody mess of emotion and lost love. Mabel spiraled out of control, and the only thing Nick knew to do was put a bandaid on it. Every step of the way, I felt Nick's frustration and Mabel's desparation. This is a very real movie that will resonate with me for some time. One of Cassavetes' best.

JHurls
The Niceness

Shadows and Faces

2007-08-24T19:05:00.000-04:00

"The film you have just seen was an improvisation..."

Here's how this is going to go. I'm going to copy and paste the plot outline of each one of these films from the imdb page and then I'm going to talk about how much I love Cassavetes and why he's so great in these films. Actually, I'm just going to tell you my favorite scene in each one and try to keep this short.

"Shadows" (1959)
written & directed by John Cassavetes

"Cassavetes' jazz-scored improvisational film explores interracial friendships and relationships in Beat-Era (1950s) New York City.
Benny's a hipster, moving in and out of Manhattan's beat scene, aimless, maybe close to trouble. His sister Lelia, who looks less African-American than White, is vulnerable and about to fall in love. Hugh, their older brother, is a struggling singer whose agent, Rupert, may be the only person with faith in his talent. The story moves back and forth, like jazz, among the three of them and what seems at first to be separate lives. Lelia meets Tony, and lets herself hope this is true love. Then he meets Hugh and prejudice gives Tony an excuse to cut and run. Can family and friendship bring solace for her hurt, purpose for Benny, and belief in Hugh? Is life more than shadows?"

Favorite scene: After making love to Ben for the first time, Leila tells him "I never knew it could be so awful." Funny, shocking, and embarrassing all in one. Not only that, but it gives a pretty amazing insight into what a woman is thinking after sex (at least what Cassavetes thinks they are thinking after sex).

"Faces" (1968)
written & directed by John Cassavetes

"An old married man leaves his wife for a younger woman. Shortly after, his ex-wife also begins a relationship with a younger partner. The film follows their struggles to find love amongst each other.
Richard Forst has grown old. One night, he leaves his wife for Jeannie Rapp, a young woman who does not like friendship. Meanwhile, Richard's wife, Maria, is seduced by Chet, a kind young man from Detroit... A film about the meaningless of life for a certain kind of wealthy middle-aged people."

Favorite scene: After showing off his dancing skills for a group of married women at a dance club, Seymour Cassel's character Chet is invited back to one of the wive's home for after hours drinks. He puts on a record and dances with the oldest of the four women proving his virility. Although they try to calm him, Chet sings some tunes acapella and coaxes the most uptight wife to dance with him by insinuating that she is too old to dance. There is just something about watching a woman dance for a man in an intimate setting, especially with the desparation of trying to appeal to this young man, that is simply beautiful.

After Lou's blog about how "indie" writer/director Andrew Bujalski's second feature "Mutual Appreciation" I immediately recognized what the "new kid on the block" (sidebar Lou's fav NKOTB was Jordan) is more like my favorite director than I'd like to admit.

"Shadows" is in black and white, as is "Faces." There are long takes and conversations that seem to go nowhere but end up revealing character. Where as Bujalski may have saved some money on production design by shooting in black and white, Cassavetes used the medium as a way to set the mood of the film.

"Shadows" is a shorter film, but it doesn't strike a chord like "Faces." The former is explores the relationship of a younger couple and the latter an older couple. Cassavetes made movies about real life situations and relationships, just as Bujalski is attempting to do. It makes me happy that new directors are brave enough to try this now, especially with the summer blockbuster standard that has set the bar very high for young Hollywood hopefuls.

JHurls
The Niceness

No Hard Feelings

2007-08-23T17:28:00.000-04:00

Former NBA and college coach "Butch van Breda Kolff, 84, died Wednesday afternoon at a nursing home in Spokane, his daughter, Kristina van Breda Kolff, said. His son, Jan, also played professionally and coached at Cornell, Vanderbilt, Pepperdine and St. Bonaventure." (yahoo.com)

According to his Wikipedia page: "Jan Van Breda Kolff's tenure at St. Bonaventure ended abruptly in controversy late in the 2002-03 season. SBU admitted junior college transfer Jamil Terrell with only a welding certificate in lieu of necessary academic credentials. VBK denied any knowledge of the scandal. After learning that their team would be required to forfeit all games involving the ineligible player, SBU players elected to also forfeit their last two games."

Former SBU President Robert "KKK" Wickenheiser joked, "Hey, Jan said he needed these guys to get a little more "arc" on their shots. I just didn't know he was talking about welding arcs!" Wickenheiser was later booed out of Angie's Restaurant where the press conference was being held with reporter Jim Malero over two plates of french fries, a meatball sub, and a large sausage pizza. Wickenheiser had a salad.

The Coastal Georgia Community College Welders released the following statement: "Coach van Breda Kolff will be missed. He was a tremendous athlete, basketball coach, and all around good person. It's too bad that his legacy was tainted in the twilight of his career with the whole "scandal" thing... What? Oh, Butch died? Jan's still alive? Oh, well, I didn't really know Butch. But that's unfortunate. Jan sucks."

It was reported that in early 2004 Jan was offered the head coaching job at CGCC but was dropped early from the running after allegations of inelligible recruits swirled around the athletic department. "I'm glad we caught this early on," said CGCC athletic director Gerald "Please Don't Use My Real Name" Cox. "Jan tried to bring in a couple of players from Olean, New York on scholarship. We found out early that they didn't even have their GED's, just "Participation" certificates from an eighth grade field trip to the BOCES nature trail." Cox also added, "This is off the record, right?"

On April 25, 2007, VBK was named as one of three finalists to become the new head coach of UC Riverside's men's basketball program.

My heart goes out to the van Breda Kolff family for their loss.

JHurls
The Niceness

Hall in Full Demand

2007-08-23T14:54:00.000-04:00

How fitting this is, on Pitchfork Media no less -- a site that prides itself on its hipster-dom. Who knew that Daryl Hall would be such an influence to so many?

Yacht Rock Fans of the World, Unite!

2007-08-22T20:08:00.001-04:00

If you check out the Yacht Rock myspace page, there is a bulletin for a YR event in Los Angeles. The first one here at home. I'm excited to go. Accompanying the bulletin is an article about Hall & Oats giving YR credit for reviving their career. Pretty sweet. Enjoy.

Hall & Oates Are Living, Harmonizing Proof That There's No Such Thing as Ironic Hipster Kryptonite
Ten years after the Yacht Rock incident, the first mashup album is here.
By Jennifer Maerz and Ben Westhoff

In one of 2005's finest Internet-video vignettes, smooth-pop staples John Oates and Daryl Hall get into a shoving match, with Oates screaming, "No more songs about Sara! Get your dick out of your heart....Turn up the power!" It wasn't a real argument, of course, but rather one of many moments of friggin' genius from the Yacht Rock parody powerhouse, a comedy troupe satirizing the creation of buttery chardonnay hits of the late '70s and early '80s. The thing is, though, two years and bazillions of page views later, Hall & Oates are having the last guffaw. The No. 1 songwriting duo of all time has its singles playing in the jukeboxes of hipster dives across the country; Band of Horses covered "You Make My Dreams" on their 2006 tour; and Spin featured the pair with a quote from Killers frontman Brendan Flowers saying, "Everything you need to know about writing a hit song, it's in 'Rich Girl.'"

Speaking from his home outside of Aspen, Colo., Oates credits Yacht Rock for rekindling interest in his band—and lowering the overall age of Hall & Oates' fan demographic. "I think Yacht Rock was the beginning of this whole Hall & Oates resurrection," he says. "They were the first ones to start to parody us and put us out there again, and a lot of things have happened because of Yacht Rock." The aftereffects include a Georgia woman's college film all about Oates' mustache (sent to the singer-guitarist's home), a London DJ named "Father Oates" who takes "disco confessions" at a popular '80s club, and a busty blonde named "chloeisreagan" lip-synching "Maneater" on YouTube for more than 548,000 viewers. And musically, it means that the time is ripe for a Hall & Oates mashup album—the first of which is in the works from Gym Class Heroes. The indie hip-hop act has already toured under the banner "Daryl Hall for President," and more recently connected with underground Brooklyn producer J.J. Brown and his engineer partner, Dan "The Deacon" Maier, known for merging Ludacris vocals with Jackson 5 samples.

At the request of Gym Class Heroes frontman Travis McCoy—and with Hall & Oates' blessing—Brown and Maier hunkered down in the studio for weeks, emerging with a light-as-pastry compilation that combines H&O instrumentals with the vocals from As Cruel as School Children, the Heroes' Billboard-annihilating latest effort. The a cappella version of Gym Class Heroes' "Clothes Off!", for example, rests atop melodies from "Out of Touch" and "Family Man" and percussion samples borrowed from "Crime Pays" and "Missed Opportunities." The songs will make up the bonus material of a Gym Class Heroes live DVD, and will likely come out in the fall, Brown speculates.

Oates calls the final product "the most unique steps I've heard coming out of hip-hop in quite a while," and says he'll give permission to anyone to use his music, so long as the intentions are good. "Once you make a record, it's out to the world. Who cares?" Oates says. "For the most part, people are really creative and they do some interesting stuff. If I heard something crappy, I wouldn't be happy about it. But otherwise, why not let it happen? We already did what we did."

Loyalists are also encouraged to reinterpret Hall & Oates videos, as the band hosts a contest featuring both the sincere and the satirists on its Web site. Our favorite, of course, is "Video 23," featuring a bunch of college-age kids goofing around in cheap wigs to "You Make My Dreams." There's just something inherently entertaining in the wiggle of the guitarist's Oates-ian lip duster.

JHurls
The Niceness

"Mutual Appreciation"

2007-08-22T16:38:00.001-04:00

Balls, How goes?

Hurls had recommended this obscure indie flick a few days ago, and not missing a beat, I found it among the 13 comedy DVDs at the local library, which just so happens to be one of my current employers.

Anyway, I'll keep this somewhat brief, Hurls, because I know my deep insights and stellar prose with not only leave you speechless but also with no original and enlightening thoughts of your own. Basically, I will have covered everything that would need to be said, hence you'd be left holding your balls. Got me? Let's avoid this.

"Mutual Appreciation" is so fucking indie I call smell the indie body odor of the indie director. It's so indie, I can see Rachel Clift's unshaved arm pits (I'd still do her). It's so indie, I can hear Justin Rice belittling me and exploiting the depths of my idiocy for not knowing who Common Cold is. It's so indie, I bet director Andrew Bujalski writes words upside down because, ya know, what is normal, ya know?

But it is indie, and that's OK. My thoughts:

First, the script. In terms of a plot, it's completely unconventional. There is no plot other than Rice's desire to "make it" in the indie scene in NYC. There are no subplots, just paper-thin conflicts and lots of loose conversation. There are no obvious points or commentary on the current culture. It simply is. The opening scene shows Rice and Clift sprawled out on a bed, talking about iron deficiency. There are no wide-angle shots or cinematic, string-accompanied crescendos that add to the moment. Hell, the fucking movie isn't even in color.

Later in the movie, we have several 10 minute dialogues about nothing : Conversations about Rice's recent show; a "party scene" that involves an excruciatingly long drunk talk with Rice and four other random chicks, and a few typical "I like you but I'm afraid to say it" talks between Rice and Clift. Which brings me to this: More than any other film that has tried to portray a sense of normalcy in terms of dialogue, "Mutual Appreciation" is the hands down winner. Oftentimes, I wondered whether the movie was simply a documentary of three friends. In that sense, the acting is flawless. The most notable scene for me was Rice's first practice with his new drummer. Everything from his explanation to what we was looking for in a drummer, to the little idiosyncrasies of voice inflections and the awkwardness that comes with trying to explain one's music to another. It was so spot on.

Shots: Every shot in the movie is up close. Like I said, there are no wide-angle shots. This is brilliant. Why? Because it gives the viewer the sense of closeness (not the word I'm looking for but, whatever) that comes with NYC. Though I've never lived there, I imagine everyone is in close quarters, a tight space. Solid.

Characters: You'd think that the lack of a hardcore plot or, more precisely, even a few minutes of character development would leave the three friends flat and uninteresting. Surprisingly, that's not the case. Without said development, we are -- in the most meaningful sense of the word -- viewers. Viewers who must decide for themselves whether so-and-so is appealing or not. I went from relating to Rice's character, to hating his guts, and then to appreciating his spirit. With Clift, I fell in love with her, and all she did was talk. Nothing deep. Nothing introspective. No colossal insights.

Through the first half hour, I thought the film dragged way too much, but with the seemingly hallow conversations and near-random sequencing, it worked. It wasn't boring. To sum up "Mutual Appreciation" using a tired cliche that tells you absolutely nothing: Less is more.

Lou

Time to Get Ill

2007-08-21T02:33:00.000-04:00

Nothing happening. It's hot. Ashamed to say that an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" that I've already seen just came on CBS. And then my phone rings. It's Dave Lyons, who I haven't talked to in a couple of weeks. Dave tells me that his friend has two extra tickets to the Beastie Boys concert at the Greek Theatre tonight and asks if I'd like them for FREE. Hell yes.

I raced to the venue, paid $15 to park, gave Nate (the guys w/ the tix) $20 for the two tickets, which were priced at fifty dollars each, and found my seats. I heard "Brass Monkey" on my way in, and I could hear on my walk from the parking lot that I had missed about three other songs, but that was it. I got to my seats in the famous amphitheater and watched Ad Rock, Mike D, and MCA rock the stage for the next hour and a half.

"Hello Nasty" changed my life in 1998. I think I've said that in one of my blogs before. Before that album, I was very much into the Beasties, but that one was special. My friend Morgan and I would drive around the hills of Hinsdale in her sky blue Chrysler K-car all summer blasting Nasty on her cassette player. I could probably rap most of that album from memory. Of course "Licensed to Ill," "Paul's Boutique," "Ill Communication," and "Check Your Head" were in my CD collection, but Nasty smacked me in the face and made me realize the genius of the Beastie Boys for one reason or another.

Tonight was a dream come true for me. I never thought I'd get to see the Beastie Boys in concert. In fact, I had no idea that they were even playing a concert in Los Angeles tonight. From what I can remember I got to hear the following classic Beastie Boy songs live in concert tonight: "Paul Revere, Brass Monkey, Shadrach, Pass the Mic, So What'cha Want, Gratitude, Heat Attack Man, Sabotage, Sure Shot, Root Down, Intergalactic, Body Movin', Remote Control, 3 MCs and 1 DJ, Time to Get Ill, Triple Trouble, and Ch-Check It Out."

Mix Master Mike is fucking disgusting on the turn tables, and the three punk rockers-turned rappers still know how to rock the mic. Nothing to do on Monday night turned out to be a great evening spent with the Beastie Boys.

God Bless You, Mr. Apatow

2007-08-20T03:07:00.000-04:00

Judd Apatow saved summer with dick jokes.

Apatow's latest, "Superbad" was released this Friday (August 17th) to good reviews and ended up number one at the box office. Who cares? Numbers and reviews aside, the producer, director, and writer, whose previous films include "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and this summer's other saving grace "Knocked Up," has revived a genre that had been beaten to death: the coming-of-age teen comedy.

"Superbad" stars Michael Cera (George Michael from one of the greatest television shows ever created, the short-lived "Arrested Development"), and Jonah Hill, whose other credites include "Grandma's Boy" and "Accepted." Cera and Hill's characters, Evan and Seth respectfully, are improvisational wizards in a straight-forward story about three high school friends trying to get laid on the last day of school before they must part ways and attend different colleges. Their sidekick "McLovin" (we've all seen the commercials) has a fake ID and is recruited to buy alcohol for a big party where everyone could potentially get laid. Seth Rogan and Bill Hader play police officers on a mission to have the "greatest night ever" with McLovin. At first this subplot is a little strange, but the cops turn out to be well-rounded funny characters creating even more laughs.

I know what you're thinking, 'I've seen this movie eight thousand times.' No you haven't. Well, maybe a little. But the jokes are hilarious and relentless. The script was written by Seth Rogan, who also starred in "Knocked Up," and Evan Goldberg. They story goes that Rogan and Goldberg actually penned the script together when they were 14 years old. Ten years later, after several rewrites, it's on the big screen. And thank God.

Apatow is a hot ticket. After creating and producing two of the most underrated television series ever ("Freaks and Geeks" and "Undeclared") Apatow found his nitch in the film world. "The 40 Year Old Virgin" blew up and since then everything the producer touches is gold. I'll be honest, Virgin was not my favorite film the year it came out. But "Knocked Up" is genuinely funny and just a good movie, and "Superbad" met all my expectations.

Go see "Superbad." I've seen it twice since Friday. The "dick" and "fuck" count has to be somewhere close to 200 in the one hour and fifty-four minute comedy. Oh, and did I mention that the soundtrack kicks fucking ass? The raunchy, R-rated, teen comedy is back in full force. Thank you Judd Apatow.

JHurls
The Niceness

Blazed

2007-08-16T12:52:00.001-04:00

Irony. How's this for irony: Not 12 hours after I posted a pat-on-the-back to my non-gaming ways, Haggs had to get all cute. You see, he's moving in, and last night he stopped by for a back rub -- I mean, to drop off a few things. One of those things was his fucking Nintendo 64. Another of those things was fucking Mario Kart, which could possibly be the world's best multi-player, "Let's just get a 30-pack and play this all night" game.

I have since lapse into my gaming ways, regressed once again into the euphoric buzz of 64-bit smack. Thanks, Haggs.

Madden '08

2007-08-14T14:24:00.000-04:00

It's right around this time each year when I get the itch -- the feeling that I presume to be similar to a woman's desire for a new dress, a craftsman's urge for a new tool belt, Haggs' want of a set of chaps. It's Madden Season, the second week in August. The annual release date of the newest Madden game.

I've been clean for two years. During that time, I haven't metaphorically snorted the dazzling pixelated versions of simulated football. I haven't injected franchise seasons into my gaming veins. I haven't freebased on the fleeting sense of fulfillment that comes with a 2,000-yard season with my star running back. *

I won't be purchasing the new Madden. I didn't buy '07 either. I'm OK with this. During my junior year in college, a time when the roommates and I had a three-team franchise going the entire year, we played somewhere in the vicinity of 30 days worth of Madden. This is true, and that fact is pretty embarrassing considering that there was plenty of more efficient ways in spending my time, like, say, going to class.

After my junior year and several (and I mean several) Super Bowl Championships -- including a 62-13 shellacking of Haggs' putrid Browns team in the AFC Championship, a game in which Dolphin middle linebacker Doug Reed (#57 from UNLV, drafted in the sixth-round, pick 32...all of this information is true. Self-worth Meter dropping...) picked off Browns quarterback -- whoever he was (he's probably jobless...or dead) -- a then-record three times and racked up 10 tackles...If there was a virtual Madden Hall of Fame, Doug Reed would be there in all his grainy glory...Anyway, yeah, after my junior year, my Madden playing tailed off considerably.**

During my pack-up in the Dirty Jerz, I broke one of the damn plug-ins for my PS2. "Well, suck me dry," I thought to myself. "What the hell am I gonna do now?" Little did I realize that my misfortune would turn to a glorious blessing. Since that day in Wharton, NJ, my Madden gaming -- and gaming in general -- has ended. I've retired with an embarrassing amount of wasted time, but several (and I do mean several) Super Bowl Championships. I'd like to think I went out a winner.

* OK, you got me. I had a franchise going in Madden 2005 at the beginning of the year, and yes, I enjoyed creating a Virtual Lou, who would later rush for 1,000 yards and accumulate 1,000 receiving yards in the same season. All this before Virtual Lou converted to Islam and changed his name to Alou Ali, news which drove a spike between his relationship with both teammates and coaches. (Management would later accept Lou's...er Alou's life choices and sign him to a long-term deal worth a reported $10 million per year.) That's neither here nor there. Let's move on.

**Allow me to point out that the paragraph you just read fails to adhere to basically every rule involved in writing. Run-on sentences, these things "...", plenty of parentheses, several ideas crammed into one, long sentence. Check, check, check, check. I'm the new fucking Faulkner.

Into the Wild

2007-08-03T15:32:00.000-04:00

I was pumped when I read the following bit of news, and since no one I know typically cares, I thought I'd mention this to you, Hurls.

I've been telling you for quite some time to read "Into the Wild" -- my favorite book of all time. It's real short; it's based on a true story, and it's always one of those books included in a "Buy 2 get 1 free" promotions at Borders and Barnesies so it's easy to find. Here's a brief synopsis: Dude graduates college, gives all his money to charity, travels around the country, ends up dead in Alaska.

Anyway, I'd heard some time ago that Sean Penn was directing the film adaptation. Well, after once again slacking off completely, I checked up on the latest Kaki King news and lo' and behold, she's doing some music for the film, which will come out this fall. I googled it, and there it is on IMDB. Vince Vaughn's in it? Weird. "Hot damn", I thought to myself. "Who can I tell this bit of news to?" That's where you come in, Hurls.

I'm telling you, I haven't been this pumped for a movie ever. Do yourself a favor and read the book before it hits the screens. Hopefully it (the movie version) won't suck.

Ripped From the Headlines

2007-08-01T12:12:00.001-04:00

Every summer, my dad likes to make a few trips to the tennis courts at Hinsdale Central School to play some light tennis matches against either my sister, my mother, or his friend Mark Ash (yes, he's one of the John Ash Cleaners Ashs). He also likes to brag about how good he is. Here's an e-mail that he sent to me yesterday. It's a news article that he wrote about himself. It cracked me up, and you all (ya'll, right Dave?), so I thought I'd throw it up on the blog. Enjoy.

"It's Alive!"
by Robin Hurlburt

Hinsdale, NY-

Too bad there was so much going on last night and you missed it. The crowd was pretty light (one guy walking his dog and four cars went by) but the streak is alive and well at the HCS Tennis Center . Dad Hurlburt kept his undefeated win streak going last night in a beautiful sun washed evening victory over Mom Hurlburt. This July match was much closer than either the lopsided victory in May over "Arthur" Mark Ash or the classic June Fathers Day match up with upstart Em “rat” Hurlburt. The two year undefeated streak is starting to get some attention. With nearby St. Bonaventure University recently announcing the naming of their new basketball floor “ Bob Lanier Court ”, some are calling out to see “Dad” spray painted on the asphalt at the tennis stadium to honor this local legend. “I’ve heard the buzz around town” said Hurlburt, “and I would obviously be honored, but it might be a bit premature. Each match is getting tougher and much like Barry (Bonds) I’m feeling it.” Hurlburt went on to say that a recent week of baking his grapes (raisons?) in the Gulf heat along the Florida coast may have been a factor in his play last evening.

No announcement has been made concerning the August match date or opponent. Early predictions are that it will be a rematch of last night.

That guy is funny.
JHurls
The Niceness

Sturgis, South Dakota

2007-07-30T15:34:00.000-04:00

Wednesday I'll be in South Dakota. Friday I'll be sorrounded by thousands of bikers for the largest motorcycle rally in the United States, and probably the world.

Normally, I like to travel and shoot shows, but this time I don't really want to go. I'm not sure why. I've been working for a productin company helping with commercial shoots all the while getting paid way more money than I probably should, but this time I don't want to do it. Perhaps it's because I'm being paid less than half of what I made on those commercials, or the fact that I have to do shitty Production Assistant work? I don't know.

We (me and about five other people) are going to follow four Harley Davidson clients around the events that make up the motorcycle rally for HarleyDavidson.com. It could turn out to be a lot of fun. I'll get to see Mt. Rushmore, Badlands, more bikes than I could ever imagine, and possibly Poison live. I hate flying, and we're flying Northwest Airlines, one of the worst. News on the yahoo homepage shows approximately 400 flights cancelled over the weekend by the airline because of pilot shortages. Wonderful. Everyday should turn out to be an 18 hour workday. So that will be fun. And I'll probably get sick like I normally do when I travel for a show. Production wrecks your body. Long days, only a couple hours of sleep, stress, eating one meal a day wears you down. Your muscles ache, your brain hurts, and basically you hate life. But you get to see cool shit. So it may be worth it. I'll let you know.

JHurls
The Niceness

Just so ya know...

2007-07-26T15:08:00.000-04:00

Here's a tip, boys. When making a first impression, avoid using racial epithets in your conversation. Old-man Charlie, who introduced himself while perusing the Business aisle, didn't get the memo, apparently.

Giving and Receiving The Bird

2007-07-23T17:53:00.000-04:00

Sunday afternoon was spent five rows up from the field just inside the foul pole soaking up the sun at the Mets/Dodgers game at old Chavez Ravine. My friend Matt and his girlfriend Melissa went with me. It was a lot of fun, the Mets came back from a 2-4 deficit to win 5-4 in the 10th. Jose Reyes hit a triple to the corner right in front of us, unfortunately I was standing in line to get a soft pretzel, which ended up tasting like balls, so I missed it. However, Matt Kemp dropped a fly ball in right helping the Mets chances of winning, so we got to hear some good heckling.

The second half of the game was filled with tension as the Mets fans in my section got rowdier and presumably drunker under the hot LA sun. Dirty looks were exchanged and arguments had but nothing escalated into a fight though. Good thing.

On the way home, we took a back street to stay away from traffic on Sunset Boulevard. One car ahead of us was a big black SUV that decided to do a U-turn right in front of us in the middle of an intersection. I pulled up into the intersection and had to stop. We all gave the driver a look as if to say "what the fuck are you doing?" Without much hesitation, the driver turned, saw us, and threw up his middle finger. Why did I get flipped off? I felt like I got kicked in the nuts and then the guy who kicked me called me an asshole for slamming my crotch into his sneaker. It was ridiculous, there was no retaliation. I gave the bird back to him briefly and then laughed at him. What can you do in that situation? Who gives the middle finger these days? What a jerkoff.

JHurls
The Niceness

Remember?

2007-07-18T12:33:00.000-04:00

Remember Ryan Cabrera? That was his name, right? He was that guy with the spikey hair who sang tired pop songs to milk the teen market. Remember how talented he was? Remember those new emotions that Ryan so eloquently uncovered with his deeply enlightening lyrics?

Here, let these words wash over your heart:

"Down, down, down. You're all I wanted. You're all I needed. And I won't forget the way you loved me. All that I wanted. All that I needed."

I had a heart of stone until Ryan melted it with his subtle croon and "innocent" yet oddly forced prose. Oh, Ryan, you little pistol, you.

Remember his dabblings in television? On MTV no less. What a surprise, huh? Remember that show he had where he and his choad bandmates would help two songwriters/contestants write a song for the hot blond? Remember how the producers dared not to stray too far from the show's obvious and shameful script? Remember that formula that went like this:

(1) Ryan introduces contestants

(2) Have contestant play his song idea

(3) Choad bandmates ridicule contestant because his song "sounds exactly like (place questionable song comparison here)." This was a very important step. That's why the producers put the text in bold.

(4) Choad bandmates use inflated music terms and recommend two chord changes that somehow transform contestant's "rip-off" into a "pop-rock classic".

(5) Contestant complies

(6) Plays song for girl

(7) Girl uses words like "stunned", "flattered", "not bad, not bad", "great" or simply, "Ahhhhhhh".

(8) Renniw skciP lriG. This step was the least important of all. That's why the producers wrote it in backwards, with hopes that Ryan would become rattled and just skip ahead to...

(9) Ryan looks into the camera

(10) Ryan smiles

(11) Ryan reads funny, maybe even "cheeky", comments from a cue card.

(12) Ryan smiles

(13) Lunch at Sbarro

Remember how that show was an immediate and overwhelming success? Remember how its success catapulted puppy-dog Ryan's career into the American forefront and into the annals of pop-music stardom? Oh, how his image was/is branded into our subconscious.

Remember the depths of his talent?

Yeah, me neither.

Lou

Hurls, Please excuse my snob-like demeanor. I had a recent spell of it this morning, and I feel it has since passed.

Husbands

2007-07-18T05:20:00.000-04:00

"We used to be four and now we're three, and you want to be alone?" -Ben Gazzara, "Husbands"

It opens with the noise of a pool party, kids splashing and playing. Adults laughing and talking in the background. And all the while, these four shirtless men, grown men, play and pose for pictures puffing out their chests and flexing their muscles for the camera. A series of still photos, and then we cut to a funeral procession.

The opening of John Cassavetes' 1970 film "Husbands" is damn near perfect and certainly is haunting. Photographs of these grown men, strong as a herd of oxen showing off their muscles and then we are immediately reminded of their, and our own, mortality.

Starring Cassavetes, Peter Falk, and Ben Gazzara as the three title characters, "Husbands" is the journey of three men in the days that follow the funeral of their fourth counterpart. Lifelong friends who know one another better than anyone should know anyone, the three band together rehashing their glory days by participating in a series of childish acts.

First, they stay up all night drinking in my favorite movie scene of all time, a 18-20 minute scene that has the husbands and other grievers taking turns in a singing contest seated around a table filled with stacks of empty glasses and pitchers in a dimly-lit tavern. It is one of the most beautiful and brilliant scenes I've ever had the pleasure of viewing.

Some more adventures include a race between Cassavetes and Gazzara, fast walking, no running allowed. That's quickly followed by some quick basketball and then a swim at the YMCA. The trio tries to work in the morning, but that plan is quickly abandoned when Gazzara, who plays an abusive soon-to-be divorced husband, decides they should go to London instead.

We only get a glimpse of their family lives, but in the end you're filled with the sense of understanding when examining the necessity of their adolescent romp.

The acting is tremendous, and you never really know if any of the film was actually written down on paper or if Cassavetes just grabbed a camera and some actors and said "Let's shoot." This is a must see for any man, with or without a wife and kids. With every viewing Cassavetes films become less story telling and more of a study of the human condition. I've never quite understood the nature of men and women better than after watching one of Cassavetes movies. A true master.

The sad part about this blog is that most of you will never see this movie because you can't find it. It's out of print, just like all of his movies (except the five in the Criterion boxset, which I highly recommend). I am lucky enough to own a bootleg version with French subtitles that was ripped from the internet. The titles are annoying at first, but if it's the only way I can own this movie then so be it. This is my favorite movie.

LAPL.org

2007-07-16T20:13:00.000-04:00

Officially, I made my last trip ever to the downtown branch of the Los Angeles Public Library. I'm going to keep this rant short, because I already believe my blood pressure was raised about two points this afternoon. The way that the Los Angeles Public Library system is set up is books are spread out over different branches all over the LA area. If you want this book go to the Westwood branch, if you want this one go to the Hollywood branch, the North Hollywood, the West LA branches, etc. It sucks. But the one that has everything you want is located downtown. So that's where I went two and a half weeks ago. My books are due the 19th, so I decided to take them back a few days early.

I had planned to spend my afternoon writing tucked away in the corner of a not-so-busy floor in the largest library that I have ever been in. A quiet afternoon soon turned into mayhem as usual when traveling anywhere in Los Angeles. The parking structure is a nightmare, seeing how it also includes parking for the surrounding skyrises that house large corporate offices and fancy business men and women. Finally, on level 4 I found a parking spot.

Two elevators for the entire six (give or take a few floors) story structure. I get in, drop my books at the drop slot, and head to the third floor. I find a desk and have two hours of uninterrupted writing time to myself. I have to pee, so I leave. I pee on that level, where someone had recently Waffle-Housed the single stall. I went down one level and the next escelator was broken. I found the elevator, waited again for at least five minutes for it to get to my floor. I get my parking validated.

I make it back to the parking elevators. I push P-1 because even though I parked on P-3, there is a machine that validates parking on the first level. The elevator did not stop on P-1, instead it took the other passenger's to P-3. I got off, put my bags in my car and hoofed it up two flights of stairs to the robot that validates my parking ticket. Last time I didn't do this and was dismayed to find no parking attendant on duty therefor having to reluctantly put $1.00 on my credit card to make the plastic yellow arm that stood between me and a traffic jam raise up to fit my car under. I inserted my ticket and it said four dollars. Confused, I asked one of the valet guys who told me it was right. "But the sign says "$1.00 all day." To which he responded with squinty-eyed 'are you a fucking idiot face/voice' "ALL DAY for a DOLLAR?!!!!" Fuck you parking guy. I've got better shit to do than get talked down to by your undersized maroon vest and your exhaust fume breath. Four dollars to park at the library.

I escaped, finally only to almost get hit by about five other drivers on the way home. I'm not driving anywhere for two days. And I'm sure as shit not going to that library again. I'll stick to the Hollywood branch. So it has about 3 million less books. At least I can walk there.

JHurls
The Niceness

Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism Among Children

2007-07-12T14:15:00.001-04:00

I don't appreciate The Onion as much as I should. In fact, I don't read it at all. With that said, I was doing some work for the other blog and came across this Onion article from 2001. I haven't read something this funny in a long time.

In light of the recent Harry Potter hub-bub, I'm putting this up in full because it's just great. Check out the entire article with pictures here

LOCK HAVEN, PA--Ashley Daniels is as close as you can get to your typical 9-year-old American girl. A third-grader at Lock Haven Elementary School, she loves rollerblading, her pet hamsters Benny and Oreo, Britney Spears, and, of course, Harry Potter. Having breezed through the most recent Potter opus in just four days, Ashley is among the millions of children who have made Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire the fastest-selling book in publishing history.

And, like many of her school friends, Ashley was captivated enough by the strange occult doings at the Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft And Wizardry to pursue the Left-Hand Path, determined to become as adept at the black arts as Harry and his pals.

"I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School," said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of hell. "But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies."

Ashley is hardly the only child rejecting God these days. Weeks after the release of Goblet, the fourth book in J.K. Rowling's blockbuster kid-lit series, interest in witchcraft continues to skyrocket among children. Across America, Satanic temples are filling to the rafters with youngsters clamoring for instruction in summoning and conjuring.

Over protests from Christian Right leaders, who oppose the books for containing magic--and, by extension, Satanic religious beliefs--millions of children are willing their bodies and souls to Lucifer in unholy blood covenants. In 1995, it was estimated that some 100,000 Americans, mostly adults, were involved in devil-worship groups. Today, more than 14 million children alone belong to the Church of Satan, thanks largely to the unassuming boy wizard from 4 Privet Drive.

"The Harry Potter books are cool, 'cause they teach you all about magic and how you can use it to control people and get revenge on your enemies," said Hartland, WI, 10-year-old Craig Nowell, a recent convert to the New Satanic Order Of The Black Circle. "I want to learn the Cruciatus Curse, to make my muggle science teacher suffer for giving me a D."

"Hermione is my favorite, because she's smart and has a kitty," said 6-year-old Jessica Lehman of Easley, SC. "Jesus died because He was weak and stupid."

But as wild as children are about Harry, no one is happier about the phenomenon than old-school Satanists, who were struggling to recruit new members prior to the publication of the first Potter book in 1997.

"Harry is an absolute godsend to our cause," said High Priest Egan of the First Church Of Satan in Salem, MA. "An organization like ours thrives on new blood--no pun intended--and we've had more applicants than we can handle lately. And, of course, practically all of them are virgins, which is gravy."

With membership in Satanic temples reaching critical mass in some areas, many children have been forced to start their own organizations to worship the Lord Of Lies. Houston 11-year-old Bradley Winters, who purchased Goblet Of Fire with his own allowance money at the stroke of midnight on July 8, organized his own club, Potterites To Destroy Jesus, with his neighborhood pals. An admission fee of $6.66 grants membership to any applicant willing to curse the name of God and have a lightning bolt carved into his or her forehead with an iron dagger.

"The Harry Potter books are awesome!" Winters said. "When I grow up, I'm going to learn Necromancy and summon greater demons to Earth."

It's more than just the kiddie set and Satanists, however, who are rejoicing over Harry's success. Educators nationwide are praising the books for getting children excited about reading.

"It's almost impossible to find a book that can compete with those PlayStation games, but Harry Potter has done it," said Gulfport (MS) Middle School principal Frank Grieg. "I have this one student in the fifth grade who'd never read a book before in his life. Now he's read Sorcerer's Stone, Prisoner Of Azkaban, Chamber Of Secrets, Goblet Of Fire, The Seven Scrolls Of The Black Rose, The Necronomicon, The Satanic Bible, The Origin Of Species--you name it."

Less pleased are Christian leaders, who see Pottermania as a serious threat to their way of life.

"Children are very impressionable," said Dr. Andrea Collins of Focus On Faith, a Denver-based Christian think-tank and advocacy group. "These books do not merely depict one or two uses of magic spells or crystal balls. We're talking about hundreds of occult invocations. The natural, intuitive leap from reading a Harry Potter book to turning against God and worshipping Satan is very easy for a child to make, as the numbers have shown."

"These books are truly magical," Collins added, "and therefore dangerous."

But such protests are falling on largely deaf ears, especially in the case of Harry's creator.

"I think it's absolute rubbish to protest children's books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan," Rowling told a London Times reporter in a July 17 interview. "People should be praising them for that! These books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic Son Of God is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes, and will suck the greasy cock of the Dark Lord while we, his faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory."

Why We Fight

2007-07-12T13:58:00.000-04:00

Does the war in Iraq give you a false sense of safety? Are you more comfortable setting foot on an airplane? Do your palms still sweat when you see a man of Eastern origin kneeling to pray in the airport lobby? Or are you confident, head held high, not crippled by the fear that your state could be the next New York City because our troops are in the desert fighting the war on terror?

Rarely do I wax political, especially not on this blog (at least to my recolection), but when I woke up this morning, flipped open my computer to the Yahoo! homepage, the headline that greeted me was: "Al-Qaida has regained strength, US warns." In the article, the Associated Press writers explain that the terror group, with the help of the Taliban, is even stronger than they were before the 9/11 attacks, with new training bases along the Pakistan/Aghanistan border.

*(click on the map for a better view)

Now what? The support for prolonged engagement in Iraq is crumbling in Capitol Hill, we're one year away from an election, and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has a "gut feeling" that the US will be attacked again this summer. This war in Iraq, war on terror rather, has inexplicably become someone else's problem. The new administration has its hands full with President Bush handing over a presidency marred by a war that is being fought in the wrong place. A fight that President Bush proclaimed "Mission accomplished" too many months ago. Just because there's sand and oil there, does not mean that we're in the right spot. There is a giant country in Iran that separates where we are and where we should be; a country by the way, that is no friend of ours.

The most troubling part of this is the fact that I have friends fighting in Iraq. I support them. I thank them every time I see them when they're home once every 18 months. Kids, my age and younger, that I attended high school with are killing Iraqis in hopes of setting up diplomacy in a foreign land, but why? It is not because of 9/11. Al-Qaida is not there, they're in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Why aren't we?

Songs For the Dead

2007-07-11T00:41:00.000-04:00

"Barry: Top 5 songs about death. A Laura's Dad tribute list, okay? Okay. Leader of the Pack. The guy fuckin' beefs it on his motorcycle and dies, right? Dead Man's Curve. Jan & Dean.

Dick: Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Gordon Lightfoot.

Barry: You bastard! That's so good - that should have been mine... The night Laura's daddy died. Sha na na na na na na na na! Brother what a night it really was. Mother what a night it really... angina's tough! Glory be!"

Everything dies. I think about dying all the time when I write. It's a common theme in my stories. It's a common theme in a lot of stories, especially independent films. I don't consider myself a morbid person, but the subject fascinates me to no end. When writing, I'm always thinking about songs that would go on the soundtrack, or in fact, I compile playlists to listen to while I write particular stories.

Here are a few songs that have been on my playlist as of late:

"The Funeral" by Band of Horses
I was fortunate enough to catch a live version of this last weekend (7/7/07) at the Hollywood Bowl when BOH opened for The Decemberists. It starts off slow with lead singer Ben Bridwell's high-pitched sad howl and then blasts into a killer, no pun intended, rock song before mellowing out again toward the end. Sweet but rockin'.

"Clinically Dead" by Chad VanGaalen
Canadian indie-rocker Chad VanGaalen's song starts with the line: "Clinically he was dead/but the motor inside his head was still spinning/so they hooked him up to a machine/and let his brain dream." His whiney voice reminds me of Neil Young for whatever reason. Check out the video for his single on Youtube; he's also an animator and makes cartoons for his songs. Pop-rock, guitar with some trashy drums to accompany.

"Shotgun" by Dave Matthews Band
"Why did you go/all the way inside my head/and take away control..." mutters Dave Matthews in most likely improvised lyrics on June 10, '06 during the band's summer tour. This song has not been released yet, but it is my favorite of their new material. There have been rumors of a new album hopefully to be released next Spring. Until then, I'll listen to the bootleg version that can be found at the fansite: www.antsmarching.org. The song explores the possible homicidal or perhaps suicidal tendancies of the singer's inner demons. Matthews did after all write the spooky song for the end of this summer's new thriller "Joshua" produced by Matthew's ATO label. Not album quality material, but still an interesting song to say the least.

"I Will Follow You Into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie
Possibly the sweetest death ballad ever created. Singer Ben Gibbard sings the story of a lover pledging to follow after his significant other passes; together for eternity. And if you have not seen the video with the rabbits on youtube, you need to go there right now. It is hands down the saddest cartoon to accompany a song ever. I didn't cry, but I was close, which is just one more shred of evidence that I may in fact be a robot.

"At the Wake" by The Format
Off a release entitled "EP" (at least to the best of my knowledge), comes a slow piano-driven song about saying goodbye. "You know it's such a drag/to live your life for a heart attack." Need I say more? Great tune.

"Star Witness" by Neko Case
I don't know if this song is actually about death, but it starts with the line: "My true love drowned in a dirty old pan of oil..." The music itself sounds like a country song haunted by Johnny Cash (does that even make any sense?). I can listen to this over and over. It reminds me of crime in a small town. Something like a Cohen Brother's movie (maybe "Blood Simple"?) mixed with a Gus VanSant movie, (*see "Bubble").

That's it. There are a ton of other ones I'm sure, but these are a few of my favorites to listen to while writing.

I'll try to make the next blog a little more uplifting. I've been writing and I listen to sad bastard music when I write. It's inspiring for some reason.

"Songs at my funeral: 'Many Rivers to Cross' by Jimmy Cliff, 'Angel' by Aretha Franklin, and I've always had this fantasy that some beautiful, tearful woman would insist on 'You're the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me' by Gladys Knight. But who would that woman be?" ~ Rob Gordon, High Fidelity

JHurls
The Niceness

"Stray Dog"

2007-07-09T13:49:00.000-04:00

(Well, everybody else is doing it, so here's the latest viewed Criterion...)

"Stray Dog"...not to be confused with "Straw Dogs", starring Dustin Hoffman, or "Black Dog", starring Patrick Swayze, or "All Dogs Go to Heaven", featuring two show-stoppers -- Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise.

This is Kurosawa's "Stray Dog", a story of a rookie cop's stolen gun and the crimes said gun is used in. Rookie cop becomes obsessed with finding it, hits the streets, entertainment ensues.

One of the better films from the Criterion Collection and Kurosawa.

Though, with each Japanese movie, I'm reminded of how ridiculous and over-the-top some of the acting is. Some of my favorite scenes include Japanese actors trying desperately to convey (1) shock and (2) deep sorrow. Hilarious.

"Stray Dog" is probably in your local library. Give it a go, Sizzle Chest.

Lou

Saved By The Bell

2007-07-05T23:04:00.000-04:00

Casey Kasem: "How does it feel to be in the biggest band in the world?"
Zack Morris: "It sure beats algebra."

I didn't want to have to do this because we all know how great "Saved By The Bell" is, but there is a station out here in Hollyweird called KDOC-TV that shows episodes Monday through Thursday nights at 8 p.m. I know, big deal right? Well, it is a big deal because this station only shows the best, most clliche episodes ever. And I'm eating up every second of it.

Tonight is the "Zack Attack" Friends Forever world tour episode. Kelly Kapowski's ass has never looked better in spandex. In the past two weeks I've seen the episode where the gang goes to The Attic called "Fake IDs", Screech playing the Russian in chess in "Check Your Mate", the one where Zack falls for the Girl Wrestler, Cut Day, the one where Zack falls in love with the new school nurse, the date auction, the one when Zack gets a higher S.A.T. score than Jesse, and "There's No Hope With Dope" NBC special episodes.

Looking back, every episode is great but these eight episodes that I've seen have re-fueled my thirst for Zack, Lisa, A.C. Slater, Kelly, Jesse, and Screech. By the way, where the hell is Jesse in the "Zack Attack" episode?

The only thing that can come of this will be me breaking down and finally buying the box sets of Saved By The Bell. Oh darn.

JHurls
The Niceness

Shichinin no samurai

2007-07-05T12:10:00.000-04:00

Last night at the New Beverly Cinema, the same theater that I cut my teeth on exploitation films, I saw for the first time Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai." (1956)

From the conversations that Lou and I started having late last year about the Criterion Collection, one movie always seemed to be brought up. Lou had bought the super ultimate "my dick's bigger than your's, if you don't believe me check out the packaging and extra features on this dvd" edition of Samurai and had nothing but good things to say. Many a time I had walked the foreign film aisle of Blockbuster fingering the case to Kurosawa's masterpiece but never stepped up to the counter with it in hand.

Two weeks ago, per Lou's suggestion, I started borrowing movies from the Los Angeles Public Library. I've seen a string of films for free that I otherwise wouldn't rent, and they have all turned out surprisingly satisfying. Again though, I found myself holding the empty case to "Seven Samurai" and again putting it back on the shelf only to check out a different film. But this time I had a legitimate excuse: "Seven Samurai" was to be shown at the New Beverly Cinema July 4 and 5, 8 p.m. only with an intermission. I decided that was how I was going to spend my Fourth of July evening.

Lou had warned me that Samurai was a long movie (TRT: 207 minutes); it comes in at around three and a half hours. Knowing this, I took a nap. I felt energized driving to the theater. Finally, I was going to see "Seven Samurai," on the big screen no less, and it was only going to cost me seven dollars. I took my usual seat, popcorn and Coca Cola Classic in tow, and looked around the theater. Only about a dozen other people decided to spend their evenings with me, and that made it even better. I felt like all these people knew this movie and that I was part of some Kurosawa club meeting.

The lights dimmed and the movie rolled. From the first credit, as the soundtrack boomed drum beats, I was floored. I quickly noticed that the dialogue, although in Japanese with English subtitles, was surprisingly modern and funny. As characters were introduced I dove deeper into Kurosawa's world. Each time the audience laughed, I felt like I was hearing a joke that only a select crowd would ever understand. And before I knew it, intermissioin had arrived.

Samurai is about a village of peasant farmers whose homeland is perrnially raped of its crops by bandits on horseback. For fear of starving to death, the peasants send three men into a neighboring town to enlist the services of seven Samurai as protection. The task proves more difficult than first thought as the peasants have nothing to offer other than a spare supply of food. Seven are finally found and they travel back to the peasant's village to prepare for the big battle.

During intermission, as I waited in line for the two banger (that's what we call a double bathroom on Hollywood movie sets Lou), I noticed that James Franco ("Spiderman" movies, "Freaks and Geeks") was standing next to me. I overheard him telling his friend that he had never seen Samurai on a bigscreen before.

After the break, the final act played out. I decided at that moment that "Seven Samurai" was hands down the best action movie I had ever seen, but quite possibly the best movie I had ever seen. So many movies draw from this one that I do not even know where to begin. I will note, however, that I noticed the slow motion scenes of violence and death. Director Sam Peckinpah became famous for his stylized violence, but now I see where he learned that style: from Kurosawa.

If you've never seen "Seven Samurai," go rent it today. It's long, so watch it in parts if you must, but you will love it. It is every Western you've seen packed into one movie. It's smart, it's very funny, and extremely touching. Samurai is one movie that everyone should see once.

JHurls
The Niceness

Jimi Hendrix - Star Spangled Banner

2007-07-04T09:08:00.001-04:00

Happy 4th.

Ladies and gentlemen, arguably the greatest moment in rock history.

Fuck the Beatles.

les diaboliques

2007-06-30T03:51:00.000-04:00

The Devils. That's what "Les Diaboliques" (1955), the Criterion Collection French thriller translates to. Henri-Georges Clouzot directs a near masterpiece, in what some call the greatest movie Alfred Hitchcock never made.

Devils follows two women, the wife and former mistress of a school master, in their plot to murder the principal. Everything goes as planned until the principal's body disappears. Now the two women don't know what to do.

The first hour of this film moves a little slow, but the rest will have you on the edge of your seat and guessing all the way to the end. Clouzot manages to build a tension that I've really only ever experienced when watching Hitchcock. In fact, on the back of the DVD packaging, the notes state that Devils was an inspiration for "Psycho."

Watch this movie. "Les Diaboliques" is a near-perfect thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock.

JHurls
The Niceness

What's That Smell?

2007-06-29T13:54:00.000-04:00

Friends, allow me to tell you of a wonderful discovery that I stumbled upon this morning. Then, you too may try this on your own time and see for yourself.

It was right around 9 a.m. I had just used a spatula to transport a two-egg omelet (with cheddar cheese) onto one of the plates from my dish set, which I purchased from Linens N'Things (on sale for $29.99). I admired the fresh omelet, two pieces of toasted wheat bread off to the side. The keen positioning was aesthetically pleasing and nearly gave me an erection.

Like always, I quickly took the hot frying pan, threw it in the sink and ran the faucet. The cold water and sizzle sound -- a beautiful thing. Here's where I strayed from the norm: I actually scrubbed the hot pan with soap, and the aroma that permeated from said pan smelled exactly like...are you ready?... a pack of 1987 Topps baseball cards.

Try it. It's fucking crazy.

the bad sleep well

2007-06-29T01:27:00.000-04:00

A vengeful young man marries the daughter of a corrupt industrialist in order to seek justice for his father's suicide in Akira Kurosawa's 1963 film noir classic.

The Criterion Collectioin cover art, a red X marked on the white building, had me intruiged at first sight, and I couldn't wait to figure out the meaning. It moves slowly at first (TRT: 151 minutes), but by the first plot point you should be hooked. Kurosawa is notorious for using elements of Shakspeare and in this thriller, Hamlet is the play du jour.

The Bad Sleep Well is not the most thought provoking or shocking film noir every filmed, but it is just plain good and therefor worth checking out. Some of the story elemetns you will pick out right away as Hamlet-esque, but then there are other recognizable themes like the guilty main character's reluctance to consumate his marriage with his new bride.

Yuzuru Aizawa's cinematography is beautiful and the director's long takes make for a few tension filled moments that are sure to hook any Kurosawa first timer, like myself.

Check out the Criterion Collection's The Bad Sleep Well at your local library.

JHurls
The Niceness

Junebug

2007-06-28T04:45:00.000-04:00

The prodigal son of a North Carolina family returns home after three years from Chicago with his new wife in Junebug (2005), a dramedy from director Phil Morrison.

Morrison takes us on a journey into the life of a newly-wed husband and wife, played by Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz respectively; the wife an art dealer and her husband, well it's never really clear what he does. After discovering a new artist whose raw talent is exactly what she is looking for, the couple drives to the artist's home state of North Carolina, which just so happens to be the husband's birthplace.

Amy Adams, nominated for an Academy Award for this role, plays Nivola's very pregnant sister-in-law and wife to the OC's Benjamin McKenzie, who gives a convincing performance as an anguished high school dropout trying to provide a living for his former high school sweetheart while still living at home. Adams eagerly awaits the arrival of her new family member imagining what she will be like while the son's nervous mother spot cleans and smoke cigarettes, her husband hidden away building birdhouses in the basement.

Upon second viewing, I realize how subtle yet poignent this film is. Adams' characters zealous attempts to know and emulate her older sister-in-law is mesmerising; both pathetically naive and humorous. The sister-in-law (Davidtz) is both charming and awkward around her new family whom she is meeting for the first time under somewhat stressful circumstances.

Establishing shots of a quiet country neighborhood and meager interior set dress sets the stage for a southern slice-of-life picture that is able to touch a nerve on more than one level without ever poking fun at its subjects. The writer, Angus MacLachlin, having grown up in Winston Salem where the movie was filmed, almost flawlessly captures the small town lifestyle and projects the torment of the characters trapped in that world not free to capture their hopes and dreams as they once had planned.

I definitely recommend this movie, especially for you North Carolina-ians reading this.

JHurls
The Niceness

Ice Cream Man

2007-06-27T18:33:00.000-04:00

I'll wait in my living room, both patio and front door wide open breeze blowing through anticipating that jingle bell shaking on the front of the hand-driven freezer on wheels outside. Since Sunday I've been waiting for the ice cream man. Each day I miss him, and each day I crave ice cream more. I want one of those strawberry crunch bars on a stick. Vanilla ice cream wrapped around artificially flavored strawberry ice cream covered in delicious crunchy crumbs. To make it worse, after returning home from the gym late Monday night, around 11 pm, while checking my mail I glanced down to find a strawberry crunch wrapper at my feet. My stomach growled, and I swear I saw the wrapper flip me off.

It's a rare occassion that I purchase food from street vendors but living on the corner of a busy intersection I find the urge more tempting than ever. Several months ago, I bought corn on a stick; a delicious recipe of paprika, two cheeses, and butter slathered over an ass-pierced cob of corn sold out of a cooler full of old luke warm water. Almost every day, a Mexican gentleman sets up shop on our corner selling nuts, oranges, cherries and mangos. A produce truck with its horn set to "Lacucaracha" parks across the street three times per day. And then there is the ice cream man. The man who pushes frozen treats under my nose daily, calling out to me with his tiny bell to come cool off with a Spiderman freezy lolly, Nutty Buddy, or push-up pop.

Growing up in Hinsdale, we didn't really have ice cream men. Once a month, the Schwan's guy would stop and deliver some ice cream as scheduled in his industrial-sized pale yellow dump truck freezer on wheels. There was never a happy tune dancing from a speaker atop a white cube truck or the piercing jingle of a tiny bell to warn me that frozen cream on a stick was passing by when I was a kid. But today I will hear that jingle, and I will have my dollar ready, and I will enjoy my strawberry crunchy thing on a stick.

JHurls
The Niceness