Recent Events

What a run of twists and turns the world has thrown at us.

Ed McMahon died, but that wasn't a major surprise. He'd had health problems the last few years. He was the best sidekick to the best late night host of all time. He hosted Star Search, which has somehow been forgotten in TV history. It was a good show, and have you checked out the list of people who performed on it? And of course, McMahon was the face of Publisher's Clearinghouse, which led you to wanting him appear on your doorstep unexpectedly. His was an eclectic career, and as they say, "We will not see his like again."

Farrah Fawcett died today, which was also no surprise, as she had been dying of cancer for a while. Growing up, "Farrah Fawcett" was one of those "names" that I heard ALL THE TIME, even before I had any idea who she was. It was along the lines of "Farrah Fawcett = beauty." She was a reference point for hotness.

The biggest story--and the biggest surprise--is that Michael Jackson died today. I need not tell anybody who gets notified of a new blog post what it was like growing up at a time when he was the biggest star in the world. Not just the most popular singer, but probably the most well-known person on the planet. He came from a musical family, was a child prodigy singer in a very successful group, and then hit even greater heights going solo. He could moonwalk!

Somebody asked what some memories of him are, and I came up with these: 1) Seeing "Captain Eo" at Disney World (in 3-D, no less). 2) Hearing people say, "I remember when Michael Jackson was black." (you know how when you search for something on youtube and it has some suggestions as you type in the keyword? Once I got to "Michael Jackson o", it automatically suggested "Michael Jackson over the years", which is what I wanted to search for. People have typed it in so much, it's an autofill suggestion now) 3) The beat to "Smooth Criminal". 4) The "Thriller" video scared the crap out of me (not linking to it, because if you haven't seen it, you ain't never gonna see it). 5) Weird Al doing "Eat It" and "Fat" parodies of "Beat It" and "Bad."

Jackson was a guest voice on the "Simpsons" back in Season 3, playing Leon Kompowsky, a man who claimed to be was Michael Jackson. Note #1: They're in Season 20 now. Note #2: By my count, of the celebrity guest stars who have appeared on the Simpsons, Michael Jackson is at least the 21st to die. Ed McMahon was the 20th. I could be wrong on the count, but I'm not interested in going through to see if anybody from Sonic Youth has died lately. I counted at least 21.

And now: sports!

The Mighty Tigers of LSU defeated Texas to win their sixth NCAA College World Series championship. As a former participant in the Skip Bertman Baseball Camp at LSU, I feel like I deserve a little credit for the program's success. Three years ago, LSU fired a coach who was running the program into the ground and hired Paul Mainieri from Notre Dame, who had actually taken a Northern team to the CWS. For reference, the eight teams in this year's CWS were LSU, Texas, Arizona State, Cal State Fullerton, Arkansas, Southern Miss, North Carolina, and Virginia. Teams from the West Coast, Southeast, and Southwest tend to dominate the sport, so taking Notre Dame there is impressive.

Mainieri recruits well, seems like a really nice guy, and manages his players very well. Here's to him sticking around for a long time.

I won't bore you with a lot of names of who played well, but I will mention this one player: Jared Mitchell. Mike Patrick, Orel Hershiser and Robin Ventura spent a good portion of each game talking about his "tools." Mitchell is also a wide receiver on the football team who was drafted by the White Sox in the first round. He's a great athlete, and the announcers couldn't say enough about his tools, his tools, and his tools. The first two games of the 2 of 3 finals, I played a game where I had to do a shot every time they mentioned "tools" in reference to Jared Mitchell. The bottle didn't even make it to the third game.

In international soccer, the U.S. defeated Spain 2-0 on Wednesday to advance to the finals of the Confederations Cup. Spain is ranked #1 in the world, had won 15 matches in a row, and had not been beaten in 35 matches. The U.S. will face Brazil in the title game, after a late goal put them past South Africa. ESPN2 is showing the replay of that game, and I managed to catch the national anthem of South Africa. Listening to it, I was wondering if it would be in Zulu, Afrikaans, or English. The answer is "yes" with two others thrown in. It runs through Xhosa, Zulu, Sesotho, Afrikaans, and English. You can see the video here. If you ever watched the Shaka Zulu miniseries on TV--and I know you did--you heard the word "nkosi" a lot. The song translated it as "lord", but I tended to understand it as "king" on the show.

Note #3: Brazil's national team is known as the Seleção ("the select"), while South Africa are Bafana Bafana ("the boys"). A list of notable team names can be found here. Among my favorites:

The Eagles of Carthage (Tunisia)
Indomitable Lions (Cameroon)
Super Eagles (Nigeria)
War Elephants (Thailand)
The Clockwork Orange (Netherlands)

It's an Interesting World

Quite a few people had driven down from Natchitoches to attend, a testament to his popularity.

Father Roy could be very strident in his opinions on any topic. He would stop by the house unannounced and have dinner. If you invited him for a Thursday, he'd tell you he'd be there Saturday. He sat in Daddy's chair and commandeered the remote. He called people by nicknames that nobody else thought of using for that person. It was tough to hold a conversation with him, because at any point in your side of things he would break in and just talk right over you. All of this makes it sound like he was hard to get along with or even unlikable. So why was the cathedral standing room only?

a) He told the greatest stories you ever heard, in the most entertaining way you ever heard them. He had a great Mansura, LA accent. I don't know how to describe it, but it was really fun to listen to. He would dominate the conversation, but you'd be laughing so hard that it was okay. He was willing to make fun of himself along the way. He said that when he moved to a new town, the first thing he did was make 21 friends. That way, he could eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a different place each week.

He hated the song "Amazing Grace." I remember him saying that a funeral he conducted had the "Singing Fontaine Sisters", who "sang all 48 verses of Amazing Grace", who "couldn't find key in A1 lock factory", and "should have been singing tenor--ten or twenty miles away."

He was going to take a helicopter tour in Hawaii, but they charged extra for anyone over 250 pounds. He didn't mind paying the regular price, but when he weighed himself that morning, "the scale said 'To Be Continued.'"

b) Whatever he said or how he acted, you could tell that there was no malice in him. I can't begin to imagine how hard that is to pull off. He was a genuinely good man, and that made him a popular priest.

Back to the funeral. Like I said, I don't usually get upset. I would have been fine, but at the end his brother (also a priest) came out to thank everyone for coming and to say goodbye. And his brother sounded...just...like him! I don't mean that in the "yeah, they must be related" or "they must be from the same place" kind of way. I mean he spoke and sounded EXACTLY like Ken Roy. He started talking, and I actually said, "Wow" out loud. My mom said I should have seen the look on my face. The sound, the tone, the accent, the mannerisms--everything was the same. Listening to him was like experiencing a Ken Roy homily, from the sounds to the way he read from the paper in front of him, to the way he adjusted his glasses, down to how he ended his sentences. I have never seen or heard anything like it, and it really got me.

Just My Luck

Last Sunday I went to St. Louis Cathedral for 11 o'clock Mass. It's a nice place, and is featured in tons of photos of Jackson Square, which it overlooks. It's been a long time since I've been there, and it's a bit smaller than I remember. It's always neat to me whenever a bishop is doing the service and at the point where a regular priest would be saying a prayer for "Sam our bishop" or whatever the bishop's name is, the bishop says, "and me, your humble servant" or something similar.

The second reading was from the fifth chapter of Galatians, and was a very ironic one for my first weekend living in New Orleans. The section in question deals with sins of the flesh. You don't have to stretch your imagination to guess the writer's position. Let's just say that witchcraft, drunkenness, orgies (there goes Tuesday), and selfish ambition are out (joke's on them--I don't have ANY ambition, much less ambition of the selfish variety) and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are in. I think I can handle up to eight of those.

----------------------------------------------------------

In case you missed one of my previous facebook statii, here it is:

My N.O. driving experience so far:

"S***!" "
"Aw, son of a b****!"
*maniacal laughter*
"I'll turn around he--no, that's a one-way street, damn."
Garmin: "Recalculating . . ."
"Was that a stop sign? I can't see anything."
"Can I go? Can I go? What does that line mean? I'd like to go. Can I go?"
"S***!"

It's been much better lately. It's not that people drive crazily or traffic is terrible, because neither has been true so far. I just often don't have any idea what I'm doing. As one of my coworkers pointed out, "You can't take a left turn anywhere in the city, but you can U-turn the hell out of it."

----------------------------------------------------------

I was chatting with a friend from high school the other day and stated that Hulu is much more dangerous than youtube. Hulu can give you videos of a much higher quality, the videos aren't limited to ten minutes, and they have permission to publish copyrighted material. If I miss Simpsons, Bones, or Chuck, I can just check Hulu. Lately I've been looking at a veritable tresure trove of old SNL skits. After indulging in the Celebrity Jeopardy skits (Suck it Trebek), I'm currently looking at at older, pre-1995 skits. The Chris Farley motivational speaker video had me laughing out loud, at least until I realized that 40% of the cast in that video, Farley and Phil Hartman, no longer set mortal foot upon earthly soil.

----------------------------------------------------------

I'm not doing a bunch of souvenir shopping in New Orleans, but there is one thing that I'm looking for:


I saw this handsome devil in a souvenir shop in the French Quarter in Spring 2005. I wanted to buy him, but didn't think I could conveniently transport it back to D.C. by plane. I ducked into probably half a dozen shops this afternoon, but nobody has anything close. I will find you one day, Mr. Skull. I will.

Note: this was in the days I was still getting my hair cut by the nice Korean lady who had a setup on the ground floor of my apartment building in Alexandria. Same haircut every time. More her idea than mine, but I didn't mind.

----------------------------------------------------------

In my last movie post, I forgot to mention Come Drink With Me, considered an important classic of Chinese martial arts movies. Cheng Pei Pei plays Golden Swallow, who must defeat the bad guys in order to save her brother. The movie was produced by the Shaw Brothers, who owned a huge studio they used to film all sorts of movies. The fighting is a little jerky, but they do some interesting things.

CDWM comes to us from 1966, the same year that gave us A Man for All Seasons (one of the all-time greats), Alfie, The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (intriguing title, no?), The Sand Pebbles, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's usually interesting to sort through some of the old Oscar nominations to see what was going on. Best Cinematography for that year went to Fantastic Voyage, a film where a submarine is shrunken down and inserted into a diplomat's bloodstream in an attempt to save his life. The Simpson did a takeoff on it in "Treehouse of Horror XV", titled "In the Belly of the Boss."

New Orleans

On May 28th I moved down to New Orleans for the summer. My graduate program requires that we have a heritage-related internship this summer, so I'm working for Save Our Cemeteries. The work is good, the people are nice. I've already traipsed into St. Louis Cemeteries 1 and 2 and Lafayette Cemetery 1. I'll see a few more before I'm done. The SOC office is a few blocks away from the French Quarter, where I ate lunch every single day this week. Johnny's Po Boys, Viola, Coop's Place, and someplace I'm forgetting right now. My parents were in town over the weekend, and I had a roast beef po boy at Mother's, the Pork Tchoup with jambalaya at Ye Olde College Inn, and a ham omelet at the Camellia Grill.

Note: There's a street named Tchoupitoulas, which is where the Tchoup gets its name. Some people just say "Tchoup" instead of "Tchoupitoulas."

I've also had pretty good pizza at a place called Reginelli's near my apartment. I'm in a good neighborhood in uptown, close to Audubon Park and Audubon Zoo.

Of the nicknames associated with New Orleans--the Big Easy, the Crescent City--my favorite is "The City that Care Forgot." I like it because it sounds sort of easygoing, but it's also a little ambiguous. Does it mean that the rest of the world doesn't care about New Orleans? Does it means that New Orleans doesn't care? Actually, I could see some people thinking it's a bit depressing. But I think it does a good job of expressing something about New Orleans that I've noticed for a long time: New Orleans lets you be who you are. You can be as uncommon or eccentric as you like, as long as you don't hurt anybody with it. And if you get a little extreme in your eccentricity, that's okay.

Jazz musician Ernie K-Doe may have died in 2001, but "thanks to his wife, he maintained a schedule of public appearances via a life-size, fully costumed, look-alike mannequin. Mrs. K-Doe referred to the mannequin as "Ernie." Link. If you want to experience New Orleans from afar, there's no better way to do it than reading the columns of Chris Rose in the Times-Picayune. Here's his story on Antoinette K-Doe's funeral.

Movies, Movies, and more Movies

When I posted about Iron Man last time, my intention was to do a post for each of the movies I'd seen recently. Change of plans. Instead I'll just do a short bit on each one. This will save you some reading time, as well as allow me to start writing about New Orleans sooner.

After Iron Man came Incredible Hulk, which was okay. Hulk movies have the same problem as Superman movies, in that it's tough to create real drama because you never doubt that the Hulk is going to smash the bad guys in the end. Ed Norton is solid, Liv Tyler is about as good ("meh" good) as Jennifer Connelly was in the Hulk movie they made about half an hour before this one. One advantage the prior movie had was its inventiveness with the screen, where they split it up to make it look more like a comic book. I did like William Hirt as the scheming-yet-probably-not-altogether-evil general. Tim Roth acted the part of the Hulk's opponent well, but I've seen The Legend of 1900 too many times to see him as anything but a piano player.

After Hulk came Get Smart. Expectations were low, as I'd watched and enjoyed the TV series when it ran on Nick at Nite ages ago. The show was quirky and funny, with a good deal of inventiveness to offset the standard Cold War storylines. I just didn't think the movie version would measure up in any way. I was wrong.

They managed to plug in just enough homages to the old show--shoe phone, "Missed it by that much!", "Would you believe . . ." while at the same time updating the storylines and character attitudes for today's audience. You wouldn't have had to see the old show to enjoy the movie, but you would have enjoyed it more. The villains aren't scary or malicious, but Get Smart isn't a seriously intense world. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway are good as Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. I was very pleasantly surprised with Carell, who managed to meld the Don Adams original Max with his own quirks and personality. It was marvelously done, in fact. I laughed and laughed.

For a period of time, one of my movie buddies in DC was a college friend who enjoyed going to the theater as much as I did. One more than one occasion we doubled up and saw two movies in a day, and on one memorable day we saw not one, not two, but three movies on one day. I think one was a Star Wars movie and another a Scooby Doo. The third escapes me at the moment (and likely for eternity). After she left for another part of the country, my cousin Catie became my movie buddy. This greatly helped her case in being named my favorite cousin. (though I don't think we ever doubled up. She had things like "a life" and "friends" to take care of...)

Alas, I am 1200 miles and a whole time zone away from her now, so I've had to find a new buddy. Or in this case, buddies. Three of my Sylvester cousins are remarkably reliable on short notice when asked "Hey, do y'all want to see Wolverine this afternoon?" So off we went. In short, it's all right. I think they massaged some of the timeline to update it, but I'd have to look into it to be sure, and I don't feel like, and it's not terribly important anyway. The fight scene at the end is pretty good, and I wish it could have lasted a bit longer.

Note: I just can never buy Ryan Reynolds as a tough guy. I've seen Smokin' Aces (and regrettably heard a girl on the metro say, "That was such a good movie." No, it wasn't. It was good for four minutes, then bad for the next five. Good for three, bad for four. Good for four, bad for three. You get the point. It could've been so much better) and Blade: Trinity, and I just don't buy it. If the ladies and alternate lifestyle gentlemen want to rave about his abs, that's fine. I just don't feel the tough guy.

I Netflixed The Departed and was prepared for a solid movie that went nuts at the end. This was based on the buzz and commentary I'd heard about it. The commentary was right. "Wha...??" I don't mind twists and yowza moments to wind down a film, but my gripe is that they should always make sense within the context of what's come before. You don't have to tell me it's coming, but I should be completely blindsided by someone who's been on screen for maybe 120 seconds till now and suddenly shows up to change the whole world, either.

It won Best Picture, though I thought The Queen was better. Scorcese won Best Director, but a lot of people said it was more of a lifetime achievement award than for this one. the story's a little shaky, but on the plus side, I felt like it was extremely well-acted. It's tempting to dismiss Leonardo DiCaprio as an actor because we may think of him as a pretty boy, but he's been really good in some really good movies, going back to at least What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Note: DiCaprio's IMDB page shows 21 titles "under development" for him at the moment. Is that high? I have no idea. Anyway, one of them is titled "Akira." As we all know, Akira is one of the classics in anime film, based on a manga of the same name. The movie is great. If they're remaking it or making a live version, they'd better strap themselves in, because they've got their work cut out for them.

Additional note: A FB friend of mine (who I didn't speak to or even know the whereabouts of for at least the last 20 years, and don't speak to now except to comment on a status update or posting--you know the drill) posted a list of movies that have remakes planned:

Alien, Predator, Vally Girl, Romancing the Stone, Karate Kid, Cliffhanger, Red Dawn, Fright Night, True Grit, The Thing, The Crow, and Total Recall.

I strongly advise against trying to tackle the following:

Alien: it's a classic of sci-fi horror and doesn't need "updating" with any special effects, and you're not going to improve on the story. You'll only confuse things if you try.

Predator: You'll never be able to replicate its Arnoldness.

Romancing the Stone: Come on! You think you can make a better romantic adventure movie than Douglas/Turner/Devito? I repeat: Come on!

Karate Kid: The ghost of Pat Morita will haunt you. Besides, there's no Japanese actor who can pull it off right now. Ken Watanabe? Too big. Mako? Dead.

Red Dawn: Don't you dare. Don't you bleeping dare. What are you going to do, have terrorists take over the town of Calumet, Colorado? I enjoyed this note from wikipedia (some of which might be accurate):

"Red Dawn was the first movie to be released with a Motion Picture Association of America PG-13 rating.^[1] At one time, Red Dawn was considered the most violent film by the Guinness Book of Records and The National Coalition on Television Violence, with a rate of 134 acts of violence per hour, or 2.23 per minute."

Really? Red Dawn as the most violent movie? Nightmare on Elm Street came out the same year, Texas Chainsaw Massacre ten years before, Friday the 13th in 1980, and thousands of war movies before that. And Red Dawn was the most violent movie?

The Thing: Already been remade once. My dad tells the story of going to the theater in Natchitoches in 1951 (he was 7) to see the original. When he got home, he latched onto the housekeeper's leg and wouldn't let go.

The Crow: Cursed. Jason Lee will haunt you.

Wrapping up The Departed, I noticed that Mark Wahlberg was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and as far as I can tell, it's for his ability to curse in rhythm whenever he's on camera. Thank goodness for Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine.

I went to see Star Trek the weekend before I left Natchitoches. Good movie. Probably a really good movie. It does a great job of setting up characters and their relationships. Like Get Smart, it includes a good bit of the catchphrases people want to hear. They even have the throwaway guy go on a mission with Kirk and Sulu, so you can guess what happens to him. (I always heard him described as the "Ensign Johnson" character. "We're sending an away team to battle the hordes of man-eating monsters on Chronos 9. The team is Kirk, Spock, Bones, Chekov, and...Ensign Johnson." Guess who gets eaten?)

It's smart, funny, and enjoyable. The villains aren't terrifying, but that's sort of a secondary element in a movie like this. They did a pretty good job of tying things together without being herky-jerky about it.

Finally, Angels and Demons. I hadn't planned on seeing it, but the Sylvesters texted me at 9pm one night asking if I wanted to see the 9:30 show. As I was only busying myself by bowling perfect games on the Wii, I agreed to go. Solid movie. I don't think you'd need to have read or seen the DaVinci Code to get it, but it might help to be familiar with the Robert Langdon character. It moves quickly and doesn't get bogged down with symbolism out the wazoo. Well-acted for the most part, and it manages to use our assumptions about character types and turn them against us. It's got a good amount of excitement and daring-do to keep you entertained.

That should be it with the movies for a while, though I hear that Up is outstanding.