Japan, Packers and the Red Scare

Well, there's lots to discuss. So, no hor d'ouvres (how does one spell that? and why?), instead, let's to the meat and potatoes:

I spent most of November Learning to Bow and happily, too. Bruce Feiler's swiftly moving account of the Japanese education system as seen through the eyes of an American teacher, abroad for a year, cuts quickly to life behind the screens. I surprisingly enjoyed it... only surprisingly because it had been required reading for a high school history class, and I guess I never did read it, until now, when I don't have to, but choose to. It's funny how that works, reading and doing things when one doesn't have to instead of when one does have to... but that's life, right?

The point I want to make, though, is how EXACT Feiler is with his account. Little, of course, do I know about the Japanese, but during the proverbial (?) busiest travel weekend of the year, I found myself sharing close quarters with a lovely Japanese woman on an airplane (yes, I was one of the 1.8 million who passed through O'Hare this weekend). All I did was offer to help her with the coat and large purse she was holding, and she bowed to me, arigato, arigato. She was so kind, so polite, so by-the-book. I don't know, I was happy to be there. Call me crazy.

Packer Country
My job has taken me to Green Bay this weekend. What a crazy little place ... the actual city of Green Bay is sparse by any account of a city of such name recognition: a few shops, bars and banks, but mostly nothing. Drive less than ten minutes to Lambeu Field and you'll find a wealth of restaurants, movie palaces, luxury hotels, shopping meccas and the like. But hey, that's why people come here, right? Lucky for me the game was out-of-town this weekend.

Clooney Does Murrow
While near one of those movie palaces, having unloaded some of that cash that keeps growing on trees at a shopping mecca, I stopped in and caught a matinee of Good Night, and Good Luck. The theatre was TINY ... less than 90 seats and a screen small enough to rival my iPod screen (which, by the way, is supposed to be that small). The 90-minute film was also tiny. The beginning of the film used scrolling text to explain some narrative material -- hello? Anybodys home? It was like a high-school film class project... in fact, I think the one JJ and I did was better (perhaps someday I'll tell you about our experiences shooting Pocket Change). The choice of silence as the soundtrack was unnerving and made me squirm - I want a score! Give me a score! Oh, he sort of listened... the jazz crooning seemed out of place and--perhaps?--used only to extend the length of the flick? I dunno. I guess I just didn't get it.

I did, however, see some other movies this turkey day week: Walk the Line was fabulous! Shopgirl okay, Ice Harvest worse than anything I've ever seen in my life. Yech.

Apologies for no links or pictures this post. Maybe it's because you've been bad boys and girls. Coming when I have 'net access next: time zones, a dough boy commerical... and, if you're good, strangers in bathing suits.

Big Wednesday

CHICAGO griping

No, I'm not IN Chicago. I'm watching it. On Bravo. And huffing and puffing at the television industry. The dubbing in this film on its made-for-television edition is atrocious. Apparently it's fine to show skimpy costumes, lots of skin and suggestive "dancing," but we can't hear the word "ass"? Come on! Bastard, ass, God-damn, Jesus Christ, shit and screwing are just some of the words not allowed -- instead, we hear "blockhead," "butt," "gosh darn," "Joan of Arc," "shhh," and "seeing." OK, that's insane. First of all, this is cable. And a film. We are allowed to hear all of those words on network TV, but not on cable? And worse, they ruined one of my favorite lines in the film: "I don't mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let's just say things would have turned out differently." Instead, the TV audience hears about Billy Flynn changing the life of Joan of Arc? Goodness.

Oh, and they sure pick terrible times to take commercial breaks. In the middle of Mama Morton's big number! Three bars into the intro of "Nowadays." Sheesh!

A Lovely Cheese Pizza, Just for Me

I guess I'm making it a tradition to watch this classic John Hughes/Chris Columbus film each holiday season, although, perhaps I've done it too early this year. Thanks to TBS and a weekend without commitments, I had the tube on while this holiday prankster of a flick played. I've seen this, oh, probably a dozen times and still laugh out loud at Daniel Stern climbing through the window and stepping, barefoot, unknowingly on to a carefully arranged assortment of breakable Christmas tree ornaments. Ha!

What makes us watch this movie over and over again? I have no idea, actually. I guess it's not really too dated, but it's not exactly the big-budget extravaganzas that the studios are putting out recently. Perhaps it's just the fun we have with the silliness of it. Goodness, it IS fun, isn't it?

Here's a sign of the times, huh? Fifteen years ago, when this comedy came out, this sort of tagline worked to promote a movie: "When Kevin's Family Left For Vacation, They Forgot One Minor Detail: Kevin. But Don't Worry... He Cooks. He Cleans. He Kicks Some Butt." Yikes! If they used that nowadays, no one would go see it.

That's all. Just a couple of paragraphs about the first movie of the day. Now, A Mighty Wind on Comedy Central. More from Detroit in the coming days.

Live! from Cincinnati

Greetings from Dayton, OH

Philly on Sunday

The Old City Philadelphia was great today, a beautiful sunny Sunday - almost 70 degrees. The top picture is Independence Hall, from the back, moments before I stepped in horse poop. The bottom, the tomb of the unknown soldier in Washington Square, dedicated to those who fought and died in the Revolutionary War. I enjoyed my little history lesson time this afternoon.

Ticky, ticky, tock, Bankok/What a sight and what a city
More, though, I enjoyed the Philadelphia Theatre Company's world premiere production of Christopher Durang's Adrift in Macao. My first impressions: "Brilliant. Silly. Putting the comedy back into musical comedy." A takeoff of the film noirish classics, the musical boasts zany presentational insanity. Everything from a maltese falcon to smuggled diamonds, opium, McCarthy-ism, an undercover agent, a drag queen, and full audience-participation sing-a-long, Durang and Peter Melnick's magical new masterpiece receives a first rate production by the PTC.

In a delightful, laugh-out-loud show, it was difficult to choose a highlight. However, I did, just for you. At my first glance at the playbill, I was distraught [no, really!] to see Michael Rupert without a song to sing. Luckily, he was too. 3/4 of the way through the show [about time for an eleven o'clock number], he was left onstage alone in a blackout. He called up to the booth, asking for lights, pulled sheet music from his pocket, handed it to the conductor and explained to the audience... the authors didn't develop his character enough to provide him a song, so he took it upon himself to hire another composer to write him a song, which he sang, which was about the fact that he didn't have a song. It was Durang and Rupert at their best.

Michele Ragusa, too, was great, although channeling the great Donna Murphy... her Dorothy moment ["I wanna go home, I wanna go home"] brought the house down.

Music direction to a "t" by Fred Lassen; witty, funny and genius choreography by Christopher Gattelli and slick direction by Sheryl Kaller makeAdrift in Macao an absolutely winning combination of theatrical brilliancee. My thoughts? GO SEE IT. SEE NOTHING UNTIL YOU SEE THIS SHOW.

17th and Spruce, Philadelphia

Travels to Philly by way of Jersey

Day One with the Grand Caravan

Still unnamed, our minivan served us well. We drove through New England in the most beautiful season. Bridgeport, CT [seen here, and the location of PT Barnum's Clockwork factory. He later founded New Bridgeport on a swamp.] is stunning as the foliage hangs over the interstate. Our travels also took us through the north end of the isle of Manhattan. Holy kielbasa, I didn't realize there even was a north part of the island, let alone how it looked. North of Washington Heights is a beautiful park and nice area near the GW Bridge. As we got into Jersey, however, things changed as the landscape failed to impress. A totally industrialized state, Jersey seemed like a dirty, flat, boring, lazy, awful place, save for the mansion I spent the night in.

Question: why are motorists in the Garden State [and why on EARTH would anyone name it that?] not permitted to fill up their own tanks? Instead, we are required to wait in lengthy lines at the pump while the attendants take their sweet time. Alas.

Blood on the Tracks...
Rode the PATCO "highspeed" line tonight from Cherry Hill, NJ into Philly. Not at all like the NYC subway, that's for sure. The "regular" train took 30 minutes to leave the NJ station, sticking me in the middle of downtown Philly at T-30 minutes until curtain time with no tickets. The conductor stopped the train at one point and started honking. What?! Turned out to be construction on the tracks. A woman sitting in the front seat on her cell phone: "The first hour I'm home is theirs ... yeah, I wouldn't want to shit on top of my shit either" [ah! must be the cats].

Beauty and the Bad Actor
Now, I don't want to make waves, but the current Philadelphia production of B&B is not exactly excellent. Belle was fantastic, but the Beast wasn't qualifying anything, his choices and instincts were not giving the character any depth, not that it needed much, but come on! She was brilliant though - making excellent musical choices. Lumiere was very good, but channeling Nathan Lane in voice and physicality. "Be Our Guest" was terribly anticlimactic. The choreography was sloppy, the backstage noises numerous, the audience feisty. All the important moments were rushed, and the throwaway information slowed down. Are you kidding me? If I wanted to read the lines, I could have done it myself instead of paying, well, only $10 for a ticket.

Then, nothing was open after the show, only 10:30pm. On a Saturday night? Wow. But, I did find a cheese steak joint. It was fine - could have used more steak and more cheese. That's that, I guess.

Come on! "Arrested" in Trouble

"Whenever I get nervous, I sing a little tune," explains Mrs Featherbottom. Well, she'd rival Callas, I think, at news of Fox's decision to cut back its already small order. This, Arrested Development's third season, will now just be 13 episodes long, and we've already seen five of them. It is absolutely brilliant, and I don't understand the problem here. How are people missing the boat here? AD is one of the funniest series on television, and nobody's watching it. Oh! I know, FOX doesn't promote the show, first of all. It says it loves the show, but it is not promoted enough. I'm fuming over the news. Come on! These are some of the hardest working actors in the business -- not only are they doing their collective job and doing it so well, but they are doing their collective job and doing it so well. Here, maybe for the last time, Mrs Featherbottom spends quality time with her wife, Lindsay, and brother-in-law Michael, cooking bangers-in-the-mouth for breakfast.

Ever Witness Genius Before? AD Rocks!

Genius! They're all geniuses. Back tonight after a month-long hiatus, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT was brilliant in two back-to-back episodes. Watch it. Mondays @ 8pm on FOX. DO NOT MISS THIS. It is pure hilarious genius at work. Not only should you not miss it, but you should go out immediately and buy seasons one and two on DVD. I did.

West Desperate Anatomy: My Sunday Night

[Katherine Heigl as Izzie on GREY'S ANATOMY. Isn't she gorgeous??] What is there to say about spending three hours in front of the boob tube in a little house in the middle of a thunderstorm? Thank goodness the storm didn't knock out the antenna before the end of THE WEST WING, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES and GREY'S ANATOMY.

In a special LIVE production tonight, Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits faced off as presidential hopefuls in a national debate on Aaron Sorkin's THE WEST WING. Now, at least they tried. I really only enjoy the show in reruns, as I have found the new storyline boring and a poor attempt at trying to continue the show's run past the Bartlett administration. However, at least with tonight's episode they tried to gain back some fairweather fans (myself included). Unfortunately, it was a no-win situation.

I found the premise of the episode (two candidates actually agreeing to disagree on the rules of the debate and instead hold a more "open" discussion) silly. The camerawork was shoddy, the scriptwriting uninventive, the performances bad... in all, I can't believe I watched the whole thing. It was uninspired and poorly executed. There was no pivitol moment, unless you count the candidates' discussion on health care when they both asked for hand-held mics and stepped not only in front of their podiums, but down a few steps.

The episode did make me think, though, how exciting it would be to have a weekly sit-com that actually was live. Wow! Now that I would watch. But Mr Sorkin, a suggestion. How can you get more viewers interested and make sure that you keep your show on the air? Let your viewers vote for the next president! Give us an American Idol-style voting system and have viewers call in, in another live episode, and elect a winner! Great and exciting season finale, eh?

At 9pm, I was again disappointed in creator Marc Cherry's DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. After a knock-out premiere season, it seems the series has run out of steam. The storylines are the same old thing each week, or else just pretty stupid. Further, this was the first episode in weeks where the actresses actually appeared in a scene together, and that was in the last seconds of the show. Come on. Mr Cherry, you are definitely losing viewers. And again, the writing is piss poor, except for tonight's one LOL moment:
Susan (Teri Hatcher): "I mean, a murderer is living down the street and we can't do anything because you've been convicted of a felony and I burned down a house over there."

One would think that after two hours of mindless entertainment, I would have turned in for the night. Way wrong. Last season's mid-season starter, created by Shonda Rhimes, GREY'S ANATOMY has won every possible award in my book. Excellent storytelling, scriptwriting, editing, scoring, directing, acting... you name it, it's fantastic. There have been a few series that I have enjoyed with such conviction as this (remember THE PRACTICE and SEAQUEST DSV), but this takes the cake. I have fallen in love with Ellen Pompeo as Meredith Grey, and am tickled each week by the antics of all the other interns around her.

This week, a bitchy old lady on her fifth heart attack caught fire during open heart surgery, induced by the bottled-up frustration of her patient husband. When he hears of her recovery, he begins laughing uncontrollably, announcing that the "mythical monster" will never die. So he leaves her. Ha!

And, so sad to watch Meredith deal with the loss of Dr McDreamy each week. Sniffle, sniffle. I cannot WAIT until next week.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from People Who are Smart

Today, I break my rules and provide actual real insight into my life via this excerpt from my personal and apparently not so private anymore journal:

There are people. And they think that because they have been awarded a position of authority [most probably on the basis of someone else’s poor judgment or inability to make a good decision], they must be right. It is these people about whom I grudge today.

They think that they are right in all ways of everything. They think that, because of that mistaken case of worthiness for their job, since they have this position of “authority,” I should want to listen and learn from them. In fact, I don’t. In fact, I don’t want to learn anything from them, let alone be required to sit diligently on the floor of a small, contained room [yes, there is a window, but it opens up to a wall—ha! the fun Freud would have had with that] painted a brilliant vibrant shade and have to simply listen. NO. I have listened to many people in my life—some by choice, some by requirement. Many of those people actually had important, relevant and worthy information for me. Then there are those people, of whom I am writing about, that spout completely and totally bogus information. “Diarrhea of the mouth, constipation of the brain” is how someone I once knew [wearing a tacky toupee] used to explain it.

There, out in the darkness

I paused today. I took another walk. The trails here are breathtaking, even better with an iPod in pocket. So, there's some things to think about. Nature. Spending all summer in New England, and now being here again for a few weeks has really made me see things. Like the stars, for example. Nowhere I've been [in my limited log of places I've been] have I seen a night sky like I've seen here in New England. These people up here sure know how to turn off the lights and see the sky. It's breathtaking--thrilling--beautiful. I enjoy every second of it.

The iPod. What a damn invention. Now we truly can have a soundtrack to our lives. I remember this one time, a friend [JJ Gittes] and I were at our buddy's [we'll call him Rice] home. He was having a bad day and we happened to stop by to ask for a casssette that he had recorded for us. Well, things hadn't gone well with the recording session, and eventually he did get the piece recorded. Problem was, he couldn't get the tape out of the recorder. Long story short, the whole recording device fell to the ground, smashed and broke into a dozen pieces. Rice picked it up, told us "this would be a good time for you to leave" and slammed the door shut. JJ and I stood on the doorstep, heard Rice lock the door, saw him close the blinds and we thought aloud, "wow, I guess he's serious about it." So, we walked to the street, across Rice's newly diagonally-[in both directions]-mowed lawn and got into the car. When we turned on the radio, a terribly sad saxophone solo played on the jazz station. It was the first time I knew I had a soundtrack to my life.

God bless the iPod. Today, I didn't need to cross my fingers that the jazz station would play the right tune. As I walked through the woods, hands in pockets and nifty winter cap covering my ever-growing hair, I listened to some splendid sounds :) Hoorah for alliteration.