Colonization from Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch

SARAH:  I'm going next week.

JO:  You're going to a football match?

SARAH:  Yeah, I thought I should.

JO:  Whoo, girl, I tell you, you better watch yourself.  Soon after Tim and I split up, I woke up one morning and realized I could remember his batting average from the previous season.  

SARAH:  That's harmless enough, isn't it?

JO:  No! It's all a sinister form of male manipulation.

SARAH:  (laughing) Rubbish, ...

JO:  It's true! You get colonized.  Your native culture gets driven out, and it gets replaced by stuff that you don't like and don't even want to know about.  They're like bloody missionaries. They bore you stupid until you cave in, and then they fuck off.  

I love Nick Hornby, all his books, and all his films.  

We hosted the wonderful Nick C

Why anyone would have a vodka martini is beyond me.

Last night, drinking Martinis (Renee with Hanger One Vodka and olives, dirty.  Nick C and I with Anchor Gin and a twist.)

We ate pizza from Pizza Antica in Lafayette.  Nick C and the Wife enjoyed caesar salads, too.

We watched the Baba O'Riley sequence from Fever Pitch, which I will give you a taste of, and then the Blind Banker episode of Sherlock, and then a brill episode of Jeeves and Wooster.

Fiesta ware is the best.

Great Jeeves and Wooster quote? "It's like Shakespeare.  It sounds really good, but it doesn't really mean anything."

Kisses,
Ardent

Really should not rub it in

(but I suppose I will anyway) but the weather here in the beautiful Bay Area is like Spalding Gray says, "A giant piece of calendar art."  We live right by a 9 hole public golf course.  All the sections of the condos are named after golfers, aficionados of the game, tournaments, whathaveyou.  We live in Masters Court.  I am doing laundry right now so as I walk to the laundry room presently I see fit white-haired folks lining up their fairway shots on the 5th.  I see fortysomething ladies in bikinis by the pool.  Folks are grilling, one family is listening to Holiday by Madonna and pushing the Hoover o'er the carpet.  It is that kind of a Super Bowl Sunday in Walnut Creek.  Lovely.  

Honestly, I do not give a flying fudge aboot today's "game."  My only small, vested interest in the game itself is I bought a square in a pool and I would like to win some money.  My numbers are Green Bay 9 (not so great) and Pittsburgh 4 (very good.)  I would not mind in the least if the CBA does not get resolved and we went a year without the NFL.  Would love it, actually.  Pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks.  

(The Rangers are trying to trade The Face and his $14 million salary.  I do not know how to feel about this.  We have got to get that money off the books so we can sign CJ, Josh, and Nellie but Young is the Rangers to the rest of the world.  And I loved how Young stood up to the media after the Washington cocaine flap, told them we believe in Wash, he and the team had his back, and everyone else needs to back the fuck off.)  

Really I am here today to do a large movie wrap-up.  

Ruth Gemmell works in the West End, as well.

I have never seen Fever Pitch from soup to nuts.  I am talking about the original UK Hornby written version, not the Drew Barrymore Boston Red Sox US remake.  I have always caught Fever Pitch on cable in mid-stream.  So, I netflix'd it and watched it a couple of nights ago.  It is not a great film.  There are all kinds of problems with it.  Where should I begin? Colin Firth's horrible wig, perhaps? Or the terrible original score? Or the sappy "cute" ending and kiss? Still, despite these obv rom-com faults, the film will always be v special and crucial to me.  There is still a lot to really like about it:  The Baba O Riley terraces montage stands out.  So does Firth's performance.  The film was made in 1997 and Firth already looks haggard, droopy and shattered about life, as he should.  And Ruth Gemmell with her hair pulled back and her smart, static-clingy skirt and pantyhose brought back all my 8th grade English teacher desires.  But the real star of the picture is Nick Hornby who wrote the screenplay, which is based on his Arsenal memoirs.  

Nick Hornby is so crucial to me.  He proves you can love Arsenal (the Rangers), Ella Fitzgerald, The Sex Pistols, and still hold your own at the party when folks start talking about Hannah Arendt or "Bunny" Wilson; that you can love Keats and the Steelers at the same time.  Plus, Hornby reveals that there are hidden, insidious, selfish, benefits to sports obsessiveness, such as I have discussed in this very space.  The film (maybe better than the excellent memoirs) does a brill job at discussing the, "Well, although, it seems really stupid and insignificant to you, it is something that really matters to me," gulf that exists in couples all around the world.  

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TCM is doing their 31 days of Oscar bit, natch.  I watched Five Easy Pieces and dvr'd The Last Detail, which I have not seen yet, ever.  I first saw Five Easy Pieces around 1990 and lapped it up voraciously.  Even then I recognized that it was episodic in structure, practically a sketch-film.  And at that point of my life I really loved films like that.  I called them "Pop Films." They were films that were hung on a few great scenes.  I suppose that at that time I was more interested in single glorious moments in films than the whole package.  And my "Pop Film" phase lasted throughout the nineties and a goodly portion of the aughts, as well.  Thus, my mad appreciation for Wes Anderson.  Rushmore and Bottle Rocket will always be among my favorite films but that episodic/sketch-film style is just not my bag anymore, I think.  

Renee hated Five Easy Pieces.  And I totally understand.  Sure, the big moments still popped but there are so many other scenes that are completely unbelievable or laughable.  I do not for a second believe today that Jack and Susan Anspach would share even a single afternoon in bed together.  It is a joke.  And the last scene with Jack and his father is an abomination, completely forced and unbelievable and unseemly.  This film with its' prodigy family is obv a huge influence on Wes Anderson's work, along with Hal Ashby, and pre-Shining Kubrick, of course.  Five Easy Pieces is not a masterpiece by any stretch.  It is a disconnected "Jukebox Film."  Playing piano on the moving truck, the Triumph t-shirt reveal, the diner scene, the last shot are the best tracks on what is ultimately a fairly lackluster LP.  

************

Last night I watched Separate Tables (1958) which has a splendid cast:  Deborah Kerr, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, Dame Wendy Hiller, Burt Lancaster, etc, ... The film is based on a Terence Rattigan play of the same name.  Rattigan actually co-wrote the screenplay, too.  I have never seen the play but I doubt that I would like it anymore than the tepid film I saw last night.  Hayworth mails it in; Niven is good but certainly did not deserve an Oscar; Kerr was still sexy as the plain girl (but that is prob just me) and it is not one of her best performances; Hiller did deserve the Oscar she won, she and Burt Lancaster were the only really good things in this "who cares" drama.  Lancaster, with his linebacker build, American accent, and strength of presence totally lights up the screen whene'er he enters.  The great "scandal" of the Major's is so ridiculous it does not even need to be mentioned here.  It got loads of Oscar nominations, incl Best Picture.  Must have been a slow year, 1958.  Yuck.  

Dame Wendy played the West End, too.

And that is it for me today, my lovelies.  Please be safe today and very special sweet to your special lady friends today.  Even my gay friends today! 

Mwah, ... 

The Rangers are the 2010 American League Champions

Here are a couple of Eric Nadel's calls.  h/t BBTiA.

Where to start? Thank you those folks that sent me texts and emails.  One of my favorite sports books of all time is Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby.  Hornby is obsessed with the London football club Arsenal.  He sees every home game, lives just blocks from the stadium.  Arsenal are very good now but he suffered through many long long seasons where they were not very good at all.  The chapters are organized by games he saw live or on TV, most live.  This quote is from The King of Kenilworth Road Luton v Arsenal 31.8.87.

"With football, there is none of this randomness:  you know that on nights like the '89 Championship night, or on afternoons like the afternoon of the 1992 Wrexham disaster, you are in the thoughts of scores, maybe even hundreds, of people.  And I love that, the fact that old girlfriends and other people you have lost touch with and will probably never see again are sitting in front of their TV sets and thinking, momentarily but all at the same time, Nick, just that, and are happy or sad for me.  Nobody else gets that, only us."

ESPN made a documentary about the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team.  (The whole jingoistic angle is played a little too heavy for my taste but it is a good doc about those kids.)  And after hearing  John Sterling's very classy call when the Rangers clinched, it made me think of that doc and an interview w/ one of the Russian players who lost.  He posited that the Russians were so used to winning that it was a marvel and wonderful to see the pure unaffected joy of the Americans, something he and his teammates had not felt in a v long time.

Lastly, there is something I have been wanting to post on facebook and here for a v long time but did not (worried about jinxing the Rangers post-season run.)  I was going to post it during World Cup.  This is it:

"The only thing more stressful for me to watch than this US Men's National Team would be if the Rangers ever made it to the World Series.  And that will never happen."

Well it did.  Get ready Giants.  The Rangers fly in to SFO Monday night.

Lots to talk aboot

Right now.

Renee & I had a v groovy, laid back 4th.  I opened up my prize, the 1998 Le Petit Cheval, which seriously took a long time to come around but was really good eventually.  It was a bit more earthy or dusty than I expected but was chock full of blueberries & menthol, totally right bank Bordeaux, which I love.

We were gonna do a Miles from Sideways kind of thing & eat burgers with it but Renee decided to make BBQ chicken instead, with a corn hash kind of thing of corn, natch, red peppers, and shallots.  It was all around good.

We watched North by Northwest, I kept up with the Rangers (they lost on the 4th), & Renee fell asleep before the fireworks, which we could barely hear anyhoo.

Did the 3 dvds for 2 at Barnes & Noble yesterday & got some delicious stuff:  A Single Man, which I liked even more here at home than I did in the theater.  Yeh, it is eye-rollingly ponderous at times, weighty, and there are a lot of bells & whistles but the film really grabs me.  When Colin Firth lets loose on "fear" at one of his lectures to a bunch of disinterested students I really got the sense of his gravity of age & maturity and not just his character's maturity but Firth's as well.  And I remembered him back in Fever Pitch & Pride and Prejudice and I got the sense that I had grown up with him, yes? Whereupon, all day today I've been thinking about my growing-up and the way age reflects itself on my body, the eyes, my voice, posture, the chest, etc, ...

But it is not just that scene.  Firth's performance throughout is exemplary.  The scene where he learns about his lover's fatal car accident deserves special mention here, as well.  He plays the whole event seated in a chair and in just a few minutes conveys to us the entire history of his relationship with this man, and their dogs, whilst remaining near mute and mostly static.  Stunning.  (It smells faintly of Method, honestly, which generally I abhor, but, hey, what works, works, right? [Though Firth is English and Limeys are not typically big on Method, preferring a more technical style of acting, one I employed as an actor myself, and one I prefer to see.])  Now, the director, fashion designer, Tom Ford, (his debut, mind you) has already given us glimpses of Firth's lover & the dogs (a rookie mistake to me, though I have not read the novel the film is based on) and it is possible that I'm giving Firth too much credit.  Ultimately, having thought about this for a while now, I think Ford did Firth and his audience a disservice.  I believe that if folks watched that scene in the chair cold, and divorced from the rest of the film, most would express the same feelings and word-pictures that I have.  I could be wrong but it is likely the high point of Colin Firth's film career (I've never seen him on stage.)

Where Ford's bells and whistles do shine is in the bank scene, his use of a changing palette to contrast youth/innocence (the naughty [Lolita?] neighbor girl and her Mom) and age/resigned wisdom (Firth) does work a treat.

The one scene that most certainly worked better in the theater was Firth's scene with the always wonderful, Julianne Moore.  It worked better in the theater mainly because I finally heard Booker T & the MGs, in glorious mono, through big-time movie speakers.  Those guys in that group knew how to rumble your ass and get you off your seat and dancing.

And, to boot, not only did I get to grow up with Colin Firth, I got to watch Nichlolas Hoult, from About A Boy (a film I like a lot, novel too, Hornby, Fever Pitch, An Education screenplay, etc, ... ) grow up.  You know, his North American accent was not bad.  (For those who care, here is a little Nic Hoult porn for you.)  But, so far, this is how I most like to remember him.

I also bought Junebug.  Junebug is the slyest, most perfect little jewel box of a comedy.  It is moving, hilarious in parts, honest, and supremely faithful to the communities in which it inhabits (something the Cohen bros. always seem to fuck up, with the exception of Lebowski. Even Fargo, a great film, the Cohen bros. finest, abuses their hosts at the dinner table.  They are [v talented, mind you] carpetbaggers of the worst kind.  Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men bore and frustrate me to no end, ...      ANYHOO, ... )  Amy Adams, sadly, might never be this good again.  I hope she will ditch the Leap Year poop and return to her Indie roots or do big-time lavish musicals, but I fear that will not happen.

Speaking of Amy Adams, I finally saw Doubt.  This was good but not great.  One scene did remind me of World Cup (or the World Series, whatever) in the sense that I was thrilled to be watching three World Class actors (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Streep, Adams) sharing a scene.  Meaty, fun stuff.

I love In Bruges, it is based on a play, but I haven't seen it in ages, so I will re-watch it soon and comment on it then.

It is time for the Rangers, anyhow.  I listen to the Ranger radio guys on the computer.  Eric Nadel was the color guy for the club way back in the late 70s/early 80s and I remember his article in (sadly) defunct Sport Magazine about how he came up with his home run call (which is, "That ball is HISTORY!" ) Nadel is the main guy now and has been for ages.  He is one of the best going and the Rangers are lucky/smart to have him.

A couple of days ago, though, this happened.  The guy is fine, a firefighter, and he got to meet Nolan Ryan.  I was listening to the game myself when it happened and recoiled when I heard the crowd gasp like they did.  I had never heard anything like that, personally, at a sporting event.  Spooky.

Good night.