Thanks To The Makers of Tron:Legacy, You've Ruined My Childhood

The movie isn't even out yet I think Tron: Legacy sucks complete donkey balls. And the makers, whoever the hell they are have completely ruined what's left of my childhood (George Lucas, The Police and the rest of The Who being the others). Why am I being such a cranky pants about this? Well, because 1) it's obvious that Hollywood has completely run out of ideas and 2) Tron was the last movie I truly treasured and a imperfect masterpiece (yes, I know that this is a contradiction). Anyways if you've seen the trailer, sorry, but I just know this movie is going to be horrific. Worse than Brokeback Mountain, worse than Haiti, worse than the floods in India (where in the hell were the celebs for that?) Am I going too far with that analogy? Probably, but fuck it, no one reads this shitty blog anyways. Anyways here are the reasons this movie will be worse than Obamacare. Alright that was too far, nothing is worse than that. Anyways...

1) The George Lucas Principle

Basically the makers are cashing in on my generation nostalgia just like Lucas did with his reprehensible episodes I - III. And since they are doing this the makers know that they can trudge any sort of shitty writing out there as long as everything looks really fucking cool. And if all goes well (marketing) numbnuts with worn out Ghostbusters shirts and mortgages will belly up to the window and fork over 100 bones to see it. See, when I first saw Episode I - III I basically told myself it was good because Star Wars was my favorite thing in the whole world and I couldn't believe George Lucas would put out such sub-standard work just in the name of profit. Well he did, and once I actually hit my adulthood (age 35), I realized that episodes I-III were really, really awful. Now, I'm not going to be fooled again, no way fucko!

2) It's Really Shiny

The original Tron was truly a labor of love. The fucking thing was really hard to make. Seriously, look it up. It took 5 years for the damn thing to be made because this was basically the first true CGI movie. And it was almost all done by hand and without the aid of huge computers with shit-ton of memory and graphics. It was done by rotoscoping and really....big computers. Well with 1/10000 of the processors we have today. Plus the writers of the movie had the script first, then worked on the really cool graphics. Now all the attention will be towards the graphics and when all that is done they might spend a little time on the script. Just like every big market Hollywood movies today it's going to be all bark and no bite.

3) Daft Punk is doing the Soundtrack.

No explanation needed.

4) Everyone's a Sellout

It's true, there is truly no Indy movie or movie star today, and if there is they're surely almost dead of a heroin overdose by now. Money truly speaks, just ask Leonardo "private jet, stop global warming" DiCaprio, Michael "$4500 a day for a spa, capitalism sucks unless it applies to me" Moore. And especially ask Sean "I love murderous dictators and making shitty lib movies" Penn. And now ask Jeff "the dude" Bridges. Seriously Jeff, you look ridiculous, please stop. I want to watch True Grit if only to watch you shoot Matt Damon and skull-fuck him.

5) It's Been Waaaaaaay Too long Between Movies

Seriously, 18 years. They called in Cindy Morgan and subsequently wrote her out of the script. They called in David Warner and they dragged in a corpse that looked similar to David Warner. They had to CGI the fuck out of Jeff Bridges to make him look presentable. Plus, it's already firmly entrenched in my brain that Tron (the original) is one of the best nerd movies of all time, It's part of my childhood experience, the good one this time, there is absolutely no way you can make the sequel better than the original. Ask the makers of Alvin and the Chipmunk movies, the Squeakwul was a complete shitstorm compared to the awesome original.

6) Cliches

In the trailer the dialogue is horribly cliched. And I believe I heard someone yelling "WOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" when driving the tank. Umm....no. Fuck that. This will suck. There will be suckdom.

Reliving A Classic - R.E.M - Eponymous

About this time of year a couple of things break out of my arsenal of movies and music for spring. One is Major League, you know, just in time for baseball which my wife watches at the beginning of spring training but I hold out until the start of the season and a little gem from R.E.M, Eponymous. Before I begin to break this nugget down.....

My Thoughts Of R.E.M Now

Ever since Green I've pretty much stopped listening to them. While Automatic For The People had a couple of decent songs it was nowhere (is nowhere one word?) near the creamy goodness of the old days. At least that's my own drunken opinion. And we all know what happens when you become popular and people are kissing your ass non-stop, loss of objectivity and reality AND sanity. Ask Sean Penn, Keith Olbermann, Rush Limbaugh. Total disconnect with normal society. Anyways to a certain degree this what happened to R.E.M. and their music started suffering as a result. Once bands start doing the ol' I want to inform people of important issues I start tuning out. I long for the days of Led Zeppelin, total cock rock with nothing on their minds except drinking and blowing people out of the stadiums, in a non-sexual way. Once Michael Stipe started wearing shirts reading "Wear A Condom" I pretty much left them behind and started listening to Rush. Oh wait, I was doing that anyways. But I still love their old stuff, they WERE college radio. They were the best mix of pop and punk, they were the beginning of alternative. And Eponymous was the best example of this time.

Eponymous

I first got hold of this album in mid 1989. I was a shitty baseball player on my J.V. baseball team in Mathews in the middle of nowhere Virginia. BEAUTIFUL country but it was really in the middle of nowhere. I had one neighbor a mile away. The town of Mathews was 15 miles away. My bro lent me album when he came home from the Merchant Marine Academy in Long Island, NY. He was pretty much my connection to the music world beyond popular radio. When he came home in the spring of '89 he lent me this little gem. I used to listen to this album on bus trips when we traveled to games (we always had to travel at least an two hours both ways to any game.) I would listen to this and to Signals (Rush, duh.) and I loved them both. The best thing about R.E.M. was the fact that they were a little band from the country, I was from the country, they were intellectuals, I thought I was an intellectual, I had a great connection with this band, and this album was my little intellectual fuck you to the rest of the "hicks" at school. I read Ray Bradbury, I played Vivaldi, I was smart dammit. Anyways, this album is still my favorite and I still play this thing this time every year when spring comes callin' again.

Now, I didn't realize until a little later that this album was pretty much a best of (again, I thought I as an intellectual.). R.E.M. being the different blokes that they are didn't name it "best of...so far" so I was thinking this as a regular album. I just thought Peter Buck was nuts or drunk, or both.

1) Radio Free Europe - My favorite song of the album, remixed version from my second favorite album Murmur.
2) Gardening At Night - About taking a leak in the forest. "Gardening...at night". Get it? Again, when you live in the country you pee any goddamn where you please.
3) Talk About The Passion - About hunger. A great tune, very soulful and moving.
4) So. Central Rain - Another emotional song and moving song.
5) (Don't Go Back To) Rockville - While the meaning of this song is totally different from my interpretation, it was was a great little tune. To me it meant don't go back to your little town, which to me was Mathews. At the time I hated Mathews and wanted to escape. Since living in the "city" I actually want to go back there. Hey, sometimes I hate people.
6) Cant Get There From Here - No apostrophe in the title, weirdos.
7) Driver 8 - Now this was the shit. I love this song. This seriously reminded me of country living, especially when I saw the video. Refers to the Southern Crescent. It runs through West Virginia. If it's anything like me, it never stops in West Virginia.
8) Romance - A quirky little song that was the closest thing to a toe tapper in the group.
9) Fall On Me - The video of this song always sticks out to me. The funny thing about R.E.M. When they were young, they never showed themselves much in their videos, now that they are old, fat and/or ugly, they do nothing but show themselves.
10) The One I Love - A great tune, one that I thought the backing vocals were top notch.
11) Finest Worksong - Another remix that I thought was better than the original.
12) It's The End Of The World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine) - At one point in my life I actually knew the entire lyrics to this song, which prompted my dad to say, "you know the words to this song but you can't remember any mathematical equation you just studied!" Yep, I thought I was an intellectual.

I got ahold of Murmur a little later which I thought was the bomb, but it was nowhere near the album this was. Through and through a great album, not one song that sucks.

Michael Stipe - Vocals - not a pretty boy by any means. Not exactly a great vocalist but it works for this band.
Peter Buck - Guitars - Not flashy but decent.
Mike Mills - Solid Bass, very good backing vocals.
Bill Berry - Drums - Left the band in 1997, not exactly Neil Peart but he was was able enough.

Nostalgia Run Amok - My Favorite Year

A couple of weeks ago friends of my wife came to town and wanted to go drinking, well gee, that's right up my alley. So we went to the nearest pub that served decent beer on tap, thankfully not far. In the course of the evening the conversation turned from politics (we were all hoping Obama would succeed, now were all Libertarians), to music (Creedence Clearwater is awesome) to death (don't ask) and finally to film. My sister in law asked the latest film that I watched. Max Payne, but I didn't finish it because it was fucking awful. Then I finally realized that the last two films that I have seen were Hellboy 2 (meh) and No Country For Old Men. It's really not because I'm old and I think all new movies suck, wait, that's exactly it. Well, we all love old movies and basically spent the rest of the night discussing the best of the best. The next night while I was downing down ice cold beer (the hair of the dog that bit me) I stumbled upon one of my favorite films, My Favorite Year (1982). I remember seeing this as a kid and thought it was great, even though my brother had to explain all the jokes to me. Well now 27 years later I watched it again and enjoyed the shit out of it. I enjoyed that fucking movie so much that I actually thought about humping the TV which I did after watching a documentary of Kay Parker. Look her up, just not at work.

The movie starred Mark Linn Baker. You might remember him as Cousin Larry from Perfect Strangers. That's right, now that shitty 80's song is coursing through your skull. The years have not been pleasant to Larry and he looks like father time has thoroughly beaten the shit out of him. He was pretty good as a rookie writer handling and looking after a drunken, womanizing yet charming Irishman Alan Swann.

Peter O'Toole was awesome as Alan Swann. You remember him from Supergirl, right? Anyways the one liners were plentiful and great. Here is a sample.

"I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star!!!"

(looking at a broken bottle of liquor), "That's a sad sight."

(After stumbling into a ladies room)
Woman: This is for Ladies Only!
Swann: (unzips fly) So is this madam, but every once in a while I have to run a little water through it.

(realizing that the skit he's doing is live)
"I haven't performed in front of an audience in 24 years. I had one line! And I forgot it!"

I know I'm an old man but I don't care. Movies suck donkey balls nowadays and I wish they made more movies like these. Who knows, maybe one day my born again son will tell me that they don't make movies like Pineapple Express anymore. That day will suck. But let me enjoy this day and this movie dammit.

Goodbye, Yankee Stadium

The Yanks played their last game tonight at the old stadium. I have never actually been inside the stadium though I've seen it from the outside a couple of times when my brother attended the Merchant Marine Academy (the un-armed force) in Long Island. I serioulsy regret not being able to get out there to actually see a game from the first team I ever remember rooting for as a kid. But hey, all good things must come to an end and I say a fond farewell to Yankee Stadium. The first series I remember as a kid was the 1981 world series where a pudgy rookie named Fernado Valenzuela stymied the Yanks. I pretty much suffered through the 80's with the Yanks always finishing second (or third) to Boston, Detroit or Toronto. Of course, there was the late 90's and early 00's Championships from the likes of Bernie Williams, Paul O'Neil, Andy Pettite, Mariano Rivera and the captain, the biggest man crush I've ever had, Derek Jeter. From David Cone's and David Wells' perfect games, to the shocking world series win against Atlanta in '96, to Derek Jeter's hustle, to Jim Leryrit's top of the sixth shocking homer off Wohlers in '96, to Bernie Williams bambi like trot, to Paul O'Neil's bright, red ass urging the Yankees on, to Mo Rivera shutting it down in the ninth. There are just too many memories to rip through. I actually think ESPN did a fantastic job covering the last game tonight. Even though they are complete Boston homers they did a fabulous job and I commend them. It was kind of cool to see Babe Ruth's granddaughter to toss out the first pitch, to hear the legendary announcer Bob Sheppard belting out the starting lineup, to hear Frank Sinatra's New York, New York, and of course, to hear The Captain's last message to the faithful crowd. Goodbye, Yankee Stadium, she sure stinks like hell but I'll miss her, like all my girlfriends (Farva!)