Trumpeting

When I used to go gambling in Atlantic City, my favorite place to play was Donald Trump's Taj Majal. This despite the fact that it was cavernous and soulless, understaffed, and hardly any of its restaurants were open midweek leaving us to the mercies of a goddawful buffet. Yet somehow I always had my best times there. The hall was suffused with chutzpah. The gaming chips bore the image of the emperor Trump, like the Roman coinage of old. Even the name of the place, Taj Majal, was unforgivably pretentious, but in a grand, flamboyant way. Too bad "Caesar's Palace" was already taken.

The same can be said, of course, for the Donald himself. It would be easy to condemn him as the King of Conspicuous Consumption and the Fattest of the Fat Cats. But he would take these titles as compliments, for his ego demands superlatives, whether positive or negative. I have mixed feelings about Trump, for I know that I would not especially like him personally, based on his Imperial attitude and snobbishness. Yet I also find him, like his gambling places, shamelessly entertaining.

Shameless is the operative word here. Some famous folks, especially in Hollywood, try desperately to maintain some semblance of privacy, especially when getting married. Trump not only parades his wedding (I'd call it a marriage, but it is certain to eventually collapse) for all the paparazzi in the world, and gives tacky interviews with Entertainment Tonight and its knockoffs. Of course the point of this is to showcase Melania. Ah, Melania, the trophiest of trophy wives. Even her name is majestic. And she really is stunning, almost blindingly so. So the Donald pulls off another superlative, despite the fact that his gambling interests in Atlantic City are in Chapter 11 (or maybe because of the fact). He's such a character.

He brings the same audacity to his reality show "The Apprentice," which is why I find the series so amusing, if ultimately inconsequential. The reality genre, for better or worse, is a major part of the video universe, but has yet to be critically deconstructed. We know farce, comedy, drama and tragedy, but where on that continuum does Reality programming fall? In the case of "The Apprentice," clearly it is comedy. "The Apprentice" is to reality shows what "Desperate Housewives" is to soap opera--practically a self-parody (like the Donald persona).

Mark Burnett must have realized it when helping to develop this effort. He realized that character counts more than anything else in locking in an audience's interest. Trump is like the Lou Grant of this nest of corporate toadies on different levels of their career tracks. He is the smiling curmudgeon, dangling the carrot of wealth but making his candidates dance through hoops almost as humiliating as those negotiated by contestants on the much more loathesome "Fear Factor." And then they bow and scrape to gain his favor. Since nothing seriously bad can happen to the apprentices-in-waiting, we do not agonize with their misery; we only wait for them to backbite each other and embarass themselves and eventually return to their cushy private employs, hopefully with a book deal. Even more ironically, the "winners'" are the least fortunate of all. They are contracted to actually work full-time for this egomaniac, and have to vacate that splendid penthouse like all the losers. Serves 'em right.

It takes several weeks of watching to get a handle on all the characters Burnett/Trump have gathered for their slow torture. Already some lively characters have emerged--Danny, the guitar-strumming geek; Kristen, the overly mascara'ed bitch. There's no way they will make it through to the end, but they will generate many enjoyable conflicts. I'm not surprised two men have already been dismissed; after selecting two male apprentices, I'm sure Trump would like to add another woman to his staff, and is probably getting a lot of shit about that from Caroline. As for Lieutenant Caroline, she has become my favorite "good cop" on the show. She may appear an ice princess but there is something engaging about her, and yesterday, when she thoughtfully saved a freaked-out candidate from quitting, she showed real humanity (though watch out...Trump may fire her if he reflects too much about this.) As for George, he is such a vinegary sort, he'd be perfectly cast as the mean uncle in "Nicholas Nickleby".

In fact, Charles Dickens--the satirist of "Bleak House" and not the humanist of "Oliver Twist,"--would likely have enjoyed this program immensely. That is, if he ever lifted his fingers from his word processor. A modern Dickens would be more like a Steve Bochco or David Kelly, churning out volumes of episodic scripts and thriving as well as the Donald. And I'm sure he would have no trouble digging up a Melania--or a Michelle Pfeiffer--to display to a gaga public.

What Would Elmer Fudd Do?

In the entertaining but wildly absurd "X-Men" movie series there is an academy for gifted young mutants, all of whom display bizarre one-trick talents of questionable value, such as bearing a forked tongue or walking through walls. All right, maybe the forked-tongued kid can grow up to be a Republican Cabinet Secretary, but I hadn't credited the walking-through-walls skill much utility until last weekend.

I was attending an informal meeting held in an immaculate law office when I wandered out of the meeting room for a break. When I decided to reenter I found myself running smack (and I mean "SMACK") into a very transparent and sturdy glass partition. I was stunned, of course, and instantly felt the bridge of my nose for signs of breakage (of which there was none, though it hurt a lot). Gratefully the others in attendance showed concern for my well-being, rather than laughing at me, which I felt was my deserved fate after doing something so dumb.

My head vibrated for about an hour, and while my nose showed no clear bruising, I could not tell if any misshaping had occurred. (Frankly, any reworking of my Maldenesque nose at this point would be an improvement). Five days later the area is still tender and I can feel some vaguely loose cartilage, so the medical side of this story may not be done yet. But beyond the discomfort my major emotion has been one of embarrassment. How could anybody walk into a glass wall? Wasn't that an act consigned solely to slapstick comedies and Warner Brothers cartoons?

But when I started, sheepishly, to relate the incident to some acquaintances, I found an interesting phenomenon--practically everyone attested to having a similar experience. "Oh, I've done that a lot," confessed one friend. A lot? Another told an even more harrowing story of having gone through a glass door as a child, leaving both bodily and psychic scars. I guess I am a johnny-come-lately to this event. How could I know that innocent phrases like "running into a brick wall" and "walking though a door" could have literal antecedents?

This all makes me wonder if other staples of physical slapstick comedy are occurring in real life more often than we know. For instance, do people really slip on banana peels? Or do they have to be Capitalists in big top hats or rich dowagers in gaudy furs to qualify for that kind of trip? That event has not yet befallen me; not a lot of careless pedestrians eat bananas in my neighborhood. (I have slipped on ice and trod onto dog shit, but those acts are too common to qualify as comic calamities). Nor have I been hit in the face with a cream pie, or been flattened by a giant safe falling on top of me from the eighth floor of a downtown office building. But I do live in Earthquake territory, so who knows what's going to eventually plop down on my head.

Snubs and Flubs

In the headlines, another thirty Marines die in an Iraq air crash (further proof of the GOP campaign reassurance that the war is going "splendidly," though they never quite specified for whom); a train derailment right near the Costco where I buy my toilet tissue cost another ten lives; and scientists now foresee an acceleration of global warning. But the big news today is of course the fallout from the Academy Award nominations.

Although I pretty much abhor Hollywood's desperate need for self-congratulation, as evidenced by the cancerous spread of Award shows, I've always enjoyed the brouhaha over the Oscars, and have limited my award radar to this event--one that actually takes place walking distance from my home, just like the U.S. Tennis Open to which I used to traipse as a kid in Forest Hills. Since the nominations are usually based as much on voter sympathies as on merit, I've usually been able to gauge comparative chances of the contestants pretty accurately. I once actually won an Oscar pool at a party by sweeping all but two of the award winners, and those in some very arcane category like short documentary feature (and how ironic that a near-relative actually won the Oscar in that category last year).

One of the silliest, and most common, features in post-nomination commentary are the Oscar "snubs," those omissions from the list of candidates that seem somehow unfair. For instance, Paul Giamatti was "snubbed" in the Best Actor category. I've always thought that was a stupid and misleading term, evoking the image of voters viewing his performance and holding their noses as they leave the theater. In fact, Giamatti was not snubbed; people universally liked him, just not as much as more heavily promoted candidates. He probably finished sixth, with Liam Neeson and Javier Bardem close on his heels in 7th and 8th. I do question the inclusion of Clint Eastwood as the nominee supplanting Giamatti; his performance was adequate, certainly, and his film was good, but I think the SAG voters overreacted to his tender tear-shedding moment. I suppose he is this generation's John Wayne, and his peers wish to pay tribute to the fact that he can register emotion, but he was already honored for "The Unforgiven." The enthusiasm over "Million Dollar Baby" does signal a likely Oscar win over its main adversary, "The Aviator."

As for true "snubs," they apply to films that were purposely ignored, usually for personal reasons. Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ," which I have yet to see because I do not wish to pay for anything that perpetrates antiSemitic stereotypes, was snubbed, for the Industry is largely philoSemitic. "Kinsey," my personal favorite, was probably snubbed by older voters still uncomfortable with its sexual frankness.

Rather than "snub," I'd prefer the word "flub" to those peculiar choices, or non-choices, that dot the Oscar selections. The most flagrant act was the inclusion of Jamie Foxx as a "supporting actor" in "Collateral." Now I understand how this evolved; the producers of "Collateral" did not want Foxx's performance to compete with his stellar rendition of "Ray"--he might then have fought himself out of any nominations. But to call his role in "Collateral" a supporting performance is as ludicrous as saying Clark Gable did a cameo in "Gone with the Wind." He was the heart, soul, and protagonist of that film, as he was in "Ray." What is fascinating, though, is that if one were to judge by merit, he should win the Oscars against both fields. That would be cool, unless you are Don Cheadle.

I was also disappointed with the exclusion of "Hotel Rwanda" from the top five (as I was with "Kinsey," though I expected that). But to be fair, the picture was not as well-produced as the candidates that did get nominated--it was just more meaningful. It probably finished 6th. I was also sorry that Sharon Warren's mesmerizing role as "Ray's" Mom did not get her a nomination, though I'd feel good anyway if I were her agent. On the whole, though, the selections were not as tiresome as in recent years, as when "Braveheart" and "Gladiator" dominated the awards.

My preliminary picks for winners are Martin Scorcese, for Most Overdue Director; Jamie Foxx for Best Piano mime; Annette Bening for Best Actress in a Movie because They Can't Give it to Hillary Swank Again; Thomas Haden Church for Best Supporting Actor for someone Who Usually Does Sitcoms; Cate Blanchette for Best Supporting Rendition of a Best Actress Winner; and "Million Dollar Baby," because everyone in Hollywood likes the sound of a million dollars.

Interruptus Interruptus

Last Sunday's "Parade" magazine, which is a poor man's supplement of the Sunday Los Angeles Times (itself a poor man's Sunday New York Times, but I'm getting too parenthetical here) published an essay by, of all people, Norman Mailer. The topic, appropriately big for a man of such repute, was How to Resolve the Major Problem of our Culture. This he defined as the dismal state of American education and literacy.

Fair enough. Arguments can be made for global warming and epidemiological threats, but it's hard to disagree that there's a declining level of education and achievement in America, supplemented by the glorification of ignorance and superstition and marginalization of the intelligent as nerds and geeks (unlike, say Japan, where academic achievement is actually respected). And as a Jew (speaking for both Mailer and myself), I have a particular respect for education, so fundamental to the success of our subculture.

Mailer's article was well-written (duh) and heartfelt, but his basic remedy is simplistic and ludicrous, relying on Rube Goldbergian logic. To summarize, our children are poorly educated because they are not motivated to read, and they are not motivated to read because of the distractions in their world that break their concentration and discourage committment to any extended material. The major culprit in this equation is commercial television; commercials have trained our children to ingest information in small bits that don't cohere because of all the interruptions. It's hard to follow narratives that are constantly being broken up by irrelevant demands to buy a Suburban SUV or sign up for Verizon cell phone service. Attention spans decline, which impacts on studying habits, etc. Ergo, the Big Fix: get rid of commercials.

Now I have muted respect for Mailer. He is an iconic American man of letters, even if his best writing occurred during the Truman Administration. As a cultural critic his record is more checkered. This was the guy who lauded the graffiti defacing the New York subway system as a model of urban art, and whose idea of coping with domestic discord was to stab his wife. And here his reasoning is equally specious. Of course, in a Utopian world, it would be nice not to have commercials. I personally refuse to watch any movie on a TV station that insists on commercial interruptions (goodbye AMC), and also resent it on episodic TV, though episodic scripts are often designed to accommodate commercial breaks with false climaxes and cliffhangers. This is why I have a VCR and others have bought TIVO.

What Mailer doesn't acknowledge is the economic realities of commercial television. It's a very simple system. Corporations pay networks for advertising, networks pay studios for program fees, and the studios pay the artists to create programs. No one does this for spec, Normy. Okay, there is public TV (which is also endowed by taxes and by corporations seeking tax breaks). And there's ad-free cable (supported largely by my $100+ monthly bills). "Free" TV, that most accessible to the poorest, who are most in need of educational uplift, still requires commercial sponsorship. I suppose a less obnoxious system would have commercials lumped together before or after a program, like Ford does when sponsoring "Schindler's List," but those ad blocks would be much easier for viewers to avoid or TIVO out.

Some situations obligate us to experience commercials. Sporting events, which need to be viewed live, force us into submission. The point then is to appreciate what artistry there is (for instance, in those snazzy Hewlett Packard photo ads) or to actually learn something (as in the Osh ads that supply helpful household hints, like removing a broken light bulb base with a raw carrot. That's cool). Wow--commercials can be educational too! Not to mention the PSAs (good when promoting reading, a bit less so when spouting War on Drugs propaganda).

I'll tell you what pisses me off--commercials prior to movies. This has given rise to one of the major euphemisms of 21st century cinema entertainment--the "Pre Show." $11 a pop to see a grainy Coke ad? Give me a break. Or in this case, don't.

Clutter

During the movie "Vera Drake," which I screened over the weekend, there's a brief scene when a woman confesses to a friend that she has accidentally become pregnant. The friend responds with what sounded to me like "You clod." I chuckled because the word was so Mad Magazine. Granted, this was a Mike Leigh film, whose characters are forever mumbling in an incoherent working-class dialect that eschews consonants, so she could have been saying anything. My viewing companion opined that it sounded like "You clut," perhaps a local 1950's colloquial portmanteau mixing "clod" and "slut."

A subsequent search on Google has revealed two meanings for "clut": one is a table signifying colors on a palette, the other is an acronym for "Charitable Lead Unitrust." Nothing idiomatic from mid-century Soho. But I'm growing to like the word because it sounds so filthy. If not a combination of clod and slut (as in "Paris Hilton is a clut") , then a blend of "slut" and some other four-letter aspersion offensive to woman, such as "c*nt" or the slightly less odious "clit," which for some reason is rarely used as a distaff version of "prick" or the more pointed "dick head." You never do hear the word "clut" uttered, though you do hear extensions of it, like "klutz" and "cluttered," whose meanings come nowhere close.

My tongue is firmly embedded in my cheek as I consider the addition of another dirty word to our lexicon, but the issue is of far greater import to those arbiters of cultural standards for whom taking offense is a livelihood. I'm sure the reps of all those dreary "Family Council" organizations, the ones who last week solemnly alerted the media that Sponge Bob Squarepants is a threat to the moral fabric of America, would be equally appalled if the usage of "clut" became rife. I can just see the subcommittees being formed in every Red State capital to draft voter propositions to ban the word from the airwaves. I'm sure they can make a compelling argument to those who find the degradation of English just one more sign that we are slouching toward the End Time. Hey who's that riding behind the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War, Pestilence, Hunger and Death? Lo and behold, the steed Profanity!

As Hamlet said (mockingly) to Polonius, "Words, words, words." George Carlin made a career from his famous "Seven Words You Can't Use on TV" monologue, but all of them have pretty much crept through by now, certainly to HBO, and even to non-pay stations like FX, whose "Nip/Tuck" is well, really really salty. Michael Powell notwithstanding, we have come a long way since Lucy Ricardo could not say the word "pregnant" on her show, and had to make the announcement by nodding at Desi as he crooned "We're Having a Baby."

After "pregnant" edged its way into acceptability, and TV also broke other shocking taboos by allowing Uhura to kiss Kirk and Archie Bunker to flush a toilet, it took a while for the next great breakthrough. That came in 1988 when a pilot for the sitcom "Uncle Buck" had a little girl declaiming to her annoying older brother "You suck!" This was during a period when Osama Bin Laden was our friend, so we needed something else to get up-in-arms about. And this really did spawn a controversy, so heated that the offending moment was deleted from the program. I was writing on another sitcom at the same time, and was told by our censor that you can have a character say "You suck eggs" or "You suck gopher guts," but not the two-word version which, as we may have forgotten by now, refers to oral sex.

Ten years later, of course, there was Monica, who popularized oral sex, at least as a topic of discourse. But by this time "suck" had become the ubiquitous substitute for "stink" and Bart Simpson was using it in every other sentence, not to mention most other characters in TV and in every schoolyard in America. By 2008 I would expect it to pop up in the State of the Union. So the outrage of 1988 seems as amusingly quaint as the 1950s gag on "I Love Lucy," when an elocutionist trying to coach Lucy tells her "There are two words you should never use. One is 'swell' and the other is 'lousy'." To which Lucy eagerly replies "Great, what are they?"

In the 1990s there was a breakthrough in language as audiences became inured to cable talk. Free TV tried to catch up a bit. Det. Sipowicz got to say "Bullshit." "Son of a bitch," "bastard," "asshole" and "damn" (but not "Goddammit," which is still bothersome to theists), have seeped into network TV. "Shit" is awaiting general acceptance, though "South Park" aired a famous episode when the word was mentioned 168 times (tallied by a counter in the upper corner of the screen) "Fart," a funny and blunt term, was long banned but has become almost as frequently heard as "suck."

"Suck" has gained such acceptance because it is phonetically funny. Words that have the "hard c" or "hard k", as well as the "Uh" vowel sound, appeal for some ineffable reason, to our funny bones (try it yourself: what is a funnier word, "mire" or "muck"? What is a more amusing town name, "Springfield" or "Keokuk"?) The study of word usage and acceptance is one of constant flux and reevaluation and interesting only historically. "Lousy," really meant, originally, "full of lice," but if it's used at all today, that definition is obsolete. Except of course for the Language Police, who are trying to earn their way up to heaven at Rapture time. I'd love to think St. Peter would encounter them at the Gate with a jaunty, "And how the Fuck did you get here?"

Not Everybody

I ran into a former colleague of mine at the local Trader Joe's (which says a lot about our mutual career trajectories, that we were doing our own shopping on Friday afternoons when we used to be in control rooms monitoring sitcom production). But hey, sic semper gloria and all that crap. Not the point. In the conversation he mentioned the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," which he claimed was the greatest one ever. I raised my eyebrows at this, given that he himself worked on some comedies with much stronger writing and more colorful characters.

It's worth a mention because today marked the final taping of "Everybody Loves Raymond," an event even noted on the morning news. This was not accompanied by the same fanfare as the conclusion of "Friends" last year, but there will be some instances of mourning among its adherents, of which I never was one. I know friends who swear by it, and others who shrug, like myself. Of course senses of humor are subjective; what I wonder is why I never caught onto its charms.

Did I miss something? The interplay of family guilt and sibling rivalry is good comedy fodder, I admit, and "Raymond's" fans attest religiously to its hilarity. I always thought the jokes were telegraphed from a continent away, and usually with such flatfooted delivery that you could fairly hear the rim-shot. But these usually were the fault of the two male stand-ups, Ray Romano and Brad Garrett, who declaimed their dialogue rather than acting it. The three other regulars, Patricia Heaton, Peter Boyle and especially Doris Roberts--a distaff Tom Poston--all trained comic actors, performed better. I've screened episodes for Emmy consideration and was usually bewildered at why the show earned such high regard. A two-parter about a trip to Italy was singularly unfunny. Another, about a sculpture that Marie made that resembled a...uh...twat, was an intriguing set-up but restrained in its execution. (It reminded me of the nude Laura Petrie portrait tale on The "Dick Van Dyke Show," from which all today's sitcom stories have descended, like from the African mitochondrial Eve).

The popularity of the show has guaranteed a long syndie run and gobs of change for Romano, whose movie career stalled after "Welcome to Mooseport" and might fare better as a voice-over character actor. (How many of these successful stand-up/sitcom stars have thrived after their TV run? Will Seinfeld ever bother to make a movie?) . But what this does for me is provide an opportunity to "re"discover the show in reruns, and give it another shake. An episode I watched this week was promising. Ray is stuck on a cruise ship cabin with his mother, when the cruise director visits with a list of activities. Ray reads it and says, "Skeet shooting sounds good. Sign me up as the skeet." I laughed out loud, which I rarely do, so "Raymond" finally gets some points with me. Now if I wish to self-indulge I can experience practically the entire run of the show as if it is new. Perhaps in my dotage the laconic style of humor will appeal more.

If not, there's always "The Simpsons."

Musical Chairs

Here's a useful new word: "thumbling." I thought it up as I was thumbing through the L.A. Times this morning, fumbling for a blog topic. Ergo, the portmanteau "thumbling." Anyway, after some effort, I thumbled upon a brief item in the entertainment section announcing that Mark Burnett, the megasuccessful Reality-TV mogul, is considering making a musical out of "The Apprentice." Burnett would write the book and lyrics, and fortunately not the music. After checking the date to be sure it wasn't April 1, I set the paper down to give the idea sufficient deliberation.

I like it, or at least I like its transcendent absurdity. In yesterday's blog I suggested jokingly that Scorcese could have turned "The Aviator" into a musical. Compared to musicalizing "The Apprentice," that would have been an act of genius. I mean, why "The Apprentice"? The Donald has shown no inclination in his show to place his contestants in a theatrical or production situation, much less ask them to hoof. What kind of songs would emerge, besides the obvious "You're Fired!" and some boardroom clones of "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better?" Maybe Trump just wants the ego experience of casting himself as attractively young and vibrant as he wishes he still is. Is Hugh Jackman available? How about Matthew Broderick? Please, no Nathan Lane or Harvey Fierstein here. But do bring back Omarosa--unless she's already signed up to do one of the witches in "Wicked."

Frankly I think that if Burnett has to go Broadway, it ought to be with the granddaddy reality show, "Survivor." It just smacks of "South Pacific." Plus it would have more varied costumes, opportunites for exotic set design, and if they can get tax-dodging Richard Hatch out of jail, some very intriguing nude choreography. Songs could include "He's a Snake but You're a Rat," "Don't Vote Me Off of the Island," "You're the Slug in My Breakfast," "My Grandma Died," and "You Light Up My Torch."

But putting aside the notion that a "Reality Musical" is a contradiction in terms, let's remind outselves this is the 21st century and we are living in the New Era of Stupidity. Moronic is in. Witness the startling success of a real-life Reality Opera based on "The Jerry Springer Show", a big critical hit in London and playing soon on our side of the Atlantic. Haven't seen it yet, but can easily picture the chair-smashing production numbers and the "Woo! Woo! Woo!" chanting from the rowdy, toothless chorus. From what I hear, the Second Act of the opera moves from the set of the show to Hell, which, to my mind, is not much of a transition.

I have to hand it to the creators of the show, who must have encountered profound ridicule when they pitched the idea, for truly having a finger on the pulse of American pop culture. I always found "Jerry Springer" appalling in the extreme, but somehow instructive. If one were to look at the yahoos in the audience who scream and rave at the even lower lives being paraded (usually in false set-ups) on the stage, one would get a good notion of who the people are who vote for President. Is it any wonder that the man taking the Oath of Office today is the person who most appealed to their sensibilities?

Spoiler Alert

In arbitrarily limiting my favorite 2004 films to ten I had to relegate some worthy efforts to also-rans, so let me pontificate a bit more on why some of the critical favorites of this year did not edge onto my list of elite. All of the following films (except for the last one, for which there is a spoiler alert) have some merit and are worth paying to see, although one of them ("Sideways") will probably fare just as well on the living room screen, HDTV or not.

"Sideways" suffers mainly from critical overpraise. It is certainly well-constructed and wittily written, and could well have supplanted "Spiderman 2" on my list but it just didn't pack the same emotional punch. Its characters, especially Thomas Haden Church's asshole, are somewhat off-putting, and their journey to self-knowledge is a bit laid-back for me. That being said, I did learn a little more about wine tasting (though didn't Pope write "a little learning is a dangerous thing?"), and the tale had interesting meanderings. The awkward stop at Giamatti's mother's house reminded me of the sad sack visit in Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger than Paradise." I do like Giamatti as the anti-leading man, for which he is creating a personal niche in Filmdom, but I despise 800-page self-indulgent novels, especially those that exist only on hard copy (like that tome that was scattered to the winds in "Wonder Boys.") Let's give some credit to modern technology! Still, a smart film, and the fact that as many of my friends disliked it as critics slobbered over it could suggest I'm speaking more from peer pressure than critical acumen.

"The Aviator" is big and brassy and entertaining and shows off Scorsese's filmmaking skills to the max, but I appreciated its set pieces more than the film as a whole. The plane crash into Beverly Hills? Wow. Yeah, we all love the director, and Hollywood needs to honor him, but has he made a really good film since the wonderful "Goodfellas?" The problem with making a biopic is always how close one needs to stick to historical accuracy without sacrificing story value. Here, Scorsese seems to have erred in his original casting decision to star DeCaprio. Hey, the guy's a decent actor, but that baby face just limits his credibility, for me, at least. Not until the last act, when Leo dons the mustache, is there any resemblance at all to Howard Hughes. Since this depiction then become more an impression, the same standard had to apply to the other actors--Cate Blanchette, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani--who barely resembled the iconic stars they were depicting. And if that's the case, then why worry about historical inaccuracy at all? Have Hughes start pitching "The Outlaw" ten years before he did so in real life. Turn the film into more a Hollywood phantasmagoria. Okay, but all the anachronisms were distracting. How accurate a tale is this in the end? If it's going to violate reality principles, then why not turn it into a musical? And come on, Marty, must every movie you make threaten the three-hour mark? That's a long time for my bladder to hold up.

"Finding Neverland" is a pretty movie of universal appeal, and in its loving detailed depiction of Drury Lane reminded me of Mike Leigh's terrific "Topsy Turvy." Both tales reveal the darkness in the soul of the theatrical creator, but "Topsy Turvy" was exhilarating, and this movie rather depressing. What a lugubrious tale--and it was much worse in reality, when the husband of the family James Barrie glommed onto suffered and died of throat cancer before the wife expired too. And later, most of "Lost Boys" encountered early deaths from WWI and suicide. Fortunately the filmmaker did not provide an epilogue scroll describing these ultimate fates. The moment when Julie Christie melts and claps for TinkerBell is certainly effective, but not worth the long wait. Johnny Depp, no longer Hollywood's most underrated actor (that title now goes to Bruce Willis), is capable but so restrained that he sapped the joy out of his character's whimsical imagination. I do look forward to seeing his Inner Child released as Willy Wonka.

"Closer" is equally as dark. In fact, not a lot of laughs the entire Oscar season. But this is supposed to be a comedy of manners, I guess. Mike Nichols does a workmanlike job of transposing this popular stage piece to the screen. The problem here isn't in the wit of the script, or in the intense performances, but in the dislikability of the characters. Nothing close to an audience surrogate here as this foursome dally in long-term sexual extortion with each other. I did get a kick out of Julia Roberts discussing the various flavors of semen, but the joy of that moment did not last through the unpleasantness of the proceedings. Nor did it aid my appetite when the film was done. Jude Law's ubiquity is becoming something of a joke (how did he not find a role in "Neverland"?) As for Clive Owen, if he is not the next James Bond, the Ian Fleming ought to rise from his grave and consume the brain of Albert Broccoli, or whoever is in charge of the franchise.

Finally, last and definitely least, my Worst Moviegoing Experience of the Year:

"Open Water": I paid for this turkey under the impression, gleaned from Indie reviews, that I'd be seeing a breakthrough terror film. The interval I spent in the theater was comparable in discomfort to a rectal endoscopy (look it up). SPOILER ALERT: Do not read unless you wish to save yourself an hour and a half of painful tedium. This attractive yuppie couple gets stranded in mid-Caribbean by a clumsy scuba-boat crew, then bobs and weaves for 24 boring hours, occasionally sniping at each other, until they founder and die. Yes, they die; they are not rescued. Fade out, roll credits, reveal the camera that one of their feeding sharks was not able to digest. Call it Ishmael. You know, after enduring 90 minutes of amateur filmmaking and dread I deserved a better pay-off than that. I did like the actors and would enjoy seeing them in a romantic comedy, say "Dangerous Liaisons" or "Virginia Woolf" or "Closer." But when I left the theater I was trying desperately to erase the previous 90 minutes of my life from my memory, like a bad blind date. Now, where are the scientists of "Eternal Sunshine" when I really needed them?

I Get to Make a Ten-Best List, Too

Well hell, it's my blog and I can take this initiative. So although my viewing roster this year is hardly as comprehensive as Roger Ebert's, I have experienced enough Oscar-bait films to justify a list of personal favorites (sorry, "Vera Drake," "Being Julia" and "Beyond the Sea," I'm saving you for cable). My criteria is as follows: how well did the movie execute its premise? Did I leave the theater emotionally drained, philosophical or musing on where to have dinner? The choice of ten is arbitrary and difficult, but it does usefully limit my grandstanding.

10. "Spiderman 2": Made for purely commercial purposes, it expanded the genre by imbuing the tale with emotional resonance. It provided plot twists and revelations that defied expectations of standard comic book fare. Spidey must be the only superhero to really resent his job, and he'd make a lot more as a Starving Student. Quibble(s): James Franco's friend/foe. You wanna slap him. And the Graduate/Rhoda wedding resolution was cliche.

9. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind": One mind that is hardly spotless is Charlie Kaufmann's. He rendered an impossible premise intriguing enough to suspend disbelief. Though I rate this movie only ninth, its originality may give it a longer shelf life as the classic from this year. It's always nice to see a restrained Jim Carrey (who was so terrific as Andy Kaufman in "The Man in the Moon." Hey--I mentioned two different Kaufmans in the same listing!) Quibble: Kate Winslet's crayola hair.

8. "The Incredibles": I viewed this on DVD so I didn't get the full cinematic impact; but I found myself so intrigued with the story that I forgot I was watching animated characters. Of the films on the list, the one which will see the earlierst sequel. (Of course there will be "Spiderman 3" but it will take some time to reunite the cast with their salary demands). Quibble: the weird Chinese fashion agent. Kinda racist in a Mr. Moto sense.

7. "Collateral": Michael Mann's rain-soaked glistening L.A. still has burned its image on my retina. A nerver-racking performance by Tom Cruise, who is always workmanlike but will have to wait till his "True Grit" to earn his overdue Oscar. And Jamie Foxx--what a Career Year-- thoroughly grips the audience. Quibble: the dovetailing of story lines and characters is a predictable and so convenient.

6. "Bad Education.": Almodovar is a great filmmaker, and this Chinese Box of a movie is both sumptuous to observe and intriguing to follow. I love films that demand my attention. His thoroughgoing cynicism is rough to digest, but there's no reason he should compromise with the nature of corruption. Quibble: Gael Bernal is revealed to be tinier than even a romantic hero ought to be. Either they used Peter Jackson's hobbit-camera or "Motorcycle Diaries" played loose with its lenses.

5. "Maria Full of Grace": The tender and riveting performance of its star was equalled by the audacity of the American director to portray the characters in their appropriate Spanish context. He managed to create a naturalist fairy tale. I'll never look at grapes quite the same way again (was there some unintended reference to the fractured child's rendition of "Hail Mary, Full of Grapes"?). Quibble: That really didn't look like Jackson Heights.

4. "Million Dollar Baby": Clint Eastwood's likely Oscar-winner was so wildly hailed that I was expecting to be transported to Heaven after viewing it. I've never been a big fan of boxing movies; the blatant brutality of the sport always repelled me. But this is a well-directed and affecting character drama, and while the moral dilemma at the end is handled satisfactorily, Eastwood really stacks the deck. Quibbles: Morgan Freeman's narration is a tad novelistic, and wouldn't somebody have told Maggie what her nickname means?

3. "Hotel Rwanda": The impact of the film still resides in its can't-miss tragic subject matter. Don Cheadle is terrific in a second-place Oscar effort as the African Schindler. There are a few jump-in-your-seat moments of terror, and the ending, also Schindleresque, does evoke the requisite throat lump. A worthy effort, and could steal the Oscar from Eastwood (who has already won) because of Hollywood's self-congratulatory affinity for Epics of Goodliness. Quibbles: Not quite enough depicted horror (by choice) to arouse the emotions. Despite all the bodies on the road, we never see any massacres close-up, which somehow shortchanges the victims.

2. "Ray": This has to be Taylor Hackford's best film; not just because of the subject, but because he elicits magnificent performances from all his actors. Who is that young woman who plays Ray's mother? She's staggering; a lingering, gut-wrenching performance that had better earn her a nomination, and will surely earn her a career. Then of course there's Jamie Foxx's amazing impression of Charles, to Don Cheadle's regret. A generous serving of musical and cultural history. Quibble: the murky back story of Ray's guilt regarding his brother seems uncomfortably shoe-horned in for emotional climax purposes.

1. "Kinsey": This is basically a movie about a statistical survey, yet it that was still fascinating from its inception. There was simply no film this year that was as interesting. It does much more for academia than "A Beautiful Mind," but it won't win nearly as many awards. It's also a document about personal liberation on a grand scale, and about cultural enlightenment, so meaningful today during an incresingly Retrograde Era. OK, sure, this is one of the great Blue State movies. Quibble: the Lynn Redgrave salutation-to-Kinsey coda was a little pat and feel-good. Didn't need it to tie the gift with a ribbon.

The numbers game has forced me to exclude other obvious candidates as "The Aviator," "Finding Neverland," "Closer," and "Sideways," of which I'll have something to say later, since only my jittery DSL connection can keep me from my appointed posts.

Double Plus Ungood

Seems I wasn't the only commentator responding to the surge of American Ignorance as embodied in some of last week's headlines. A few daring revolutionaries even wrote letters to my local newspaper regarding the concession that WMDs may not have ever existed--and not one of them argued that they were buried deep in some Syrian bunker. So there actually was a little outrage, for all the good it will do. Then there was an article by Arianna Huffington citing the same "Left Behind" mentality that I referenced in earlier blog as a scary indication that the Bush administration's policies are geared to ignoring a future that probably won't happen because the End Days are upon us. So what if the National Debt piles up higher than Everest? The only worthwhile souls will be lolling on high after being transported through the Rapture, spooning ambrosia with J.C. and the Saints. The rest of us will be so besmitten by tribulations that no social security checks will be able to compensate, so fuck it.

Then there's "Nightline." I really shouldn't be watching "Nightline." Perhaps I should enable the Parental Block on my TV just for that program. Of course it's a terrific and often compelling news show, but there hasn't been any terrific news lately, to put it mildly. In fact, there hasn't been one iota of good news since that woman distributed the butterfly ballots in Broward County in 2000. So I know if I switch it on I will be fed some disturbing item that will feed into my insomnia. Still, Ted Koppel is an anchor of common sense amidst a sea of increasing cultural bedlam, so he's worth viewing.

Last week he hosted two shows about favorite culture war items, bending over backwards to give both sides, the Ignorant and the Intelligent, equal respect. Frankly, there is nothing about Ignorance that ever merits respect, but Ted and ABC must consider ratings lest they hand over the time slot to Craig Kilborn or Jon Stewart (though the latter would be acceptable). The first episode focused on a young gay teen in an Oklahoma burg whose story was documented in the Washington Post. This aroused the ire of the Village and he was harshly ostracized by friends and family--until the town was invaded by the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Leviticus-inspired "I Hate Fags" ministry. The Rev and his Morlock adherents started picketing the church, demanding, I suppose, that the lad be drawn and quartered. Then the townspeople, deciding that picketing a church was even worse than admitting to one's sexual orientation, voiced their support of the sinner in their midst, and cast the protesters aside. Of course they still despise the pervert, but he's their pervert, and if anyone is going to devote their energies to making him feel subhuman, it's them. I suppose that pastime will keep the good townsfolk occupied until they get zapped to Heaven and he has to remain on Earth along with Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres.

This passes for a touching display of tolerance in Red State Nation. Not that I am deeply moved, but it's decidedly upbeat compared to the next evening's story, which visited a town in Pennsylvania--a Blue State, for Goodness sake--where the Evolution/Creationism debate has "divided" the populace. If my eyes rolled any more my pupils would be inside my brain. Then Koppel presented the following statistic: In America (not just the backwaters), 35% believe Evolution is a valid theory; 35% hold to "Intelligent Design" (an Orwellian phrase I would literally apply maybe to the Vietnam Memorial wall), and the rest were undecided.

Okay, I could blog on endlessly about the superiority of the Evolution theory, based on centuries of scientific study of concrete fossil evidence, versus a pretty but totally fanciful concept of a Supreme Being snapping his/her fingers and creating elephants and tarantulas and ragweed. Not worth protracting my point. What I cannot understand is that so many people who do respect the scientific method and modes of inquiry popular since the Renaissance can acknowledge the five billion years of Terran history and the skeletal evidence of Evolution but still hold fast to the Finger Snapping Creation. Yes, there are still some holes in Evolutionary theory, but we understand this process a hell of a lot better than we understand Dark Matter and Black Holes. And for those who hold dogmatically to Intelligent Design, I have a meaty question for them: What was God doing during the Jurassic period?

To hold to two contradictory thoughts at once and believe them both is what George Orwell, in "1984," labeled "Doublethink." That Faith can be so powerful that educated people are able to padlock their analytical resources is totally bewildering to me. How far have we advanced since the Church Fathers condemned Galileo for announcing that the Earth revolved around the sun? It took three hundred years to get a grudging apology from the Vatican, which didn't do the disgraced scientist very much good. But that's what he gets for thinking. Orwell was appallingly prescient about the manipulation of false ideas for public consumption. In his dystopic Oceania one of the Guiding Principles was "Ignorance is Strength." That must be very comforting to Lou Sheldon.

Next up: War is Peace (oh, we have that already, thanks Condy and Rumsfeld). Freedom is Slavery? Sounds catchy--look for that on the posters for when Newt Gingrich runs for Prez in 2008.

Holey Thursday

Back when I was an active sitcom writer I'd have given my right nut to have a script air on any of NBC's beknighted Thursday comedies. Even after I receded from the picture I stayed in thrall to Must-See TV. But now that standard has declined as precipitously as the San Francisco 49ers. What used to be a showcase of Hollywood's cleverest comic writing, from "Friends" through "Seinfeld," "Frasier" and "Will & Grace," has been reduced to a threesome of "Joey," "Committed," and the hoary veteran, "Will & Grace," now nothing more than a minstrel show of stereotypical gags (albeit occasionally sharp and witty).

I have been monitoring "Committed," out of a lingering desire for some network product to engage me, but it has certainly not bolted out of the gate. I've seen three of four episodes, and Tom Poston still hasn't logged more than a scene's worth of material. Last night he emerged for his longest stint, though he was not as funny as his prop--an oxygen tank he must lug around to survive. He really is dying, haha. The blonde sidekick (who has good timing, though she is cut of the same cloth as Will & Grace's Karen) eked some laughs out of the tokes she took from the tank. NBC's idea of a hip drug reference, I guess.

Meanwhile, the other sidekick, Nate's NFL linebacker of a business partner (also with good delivery) has been saddled with bizarre sexual "C" plots (which writers call "runners"). In one episode he discovers his Chinese ideogram tattoo means he is a gay, uh, receiver. He gets it changed to something signifying "Lemon Chicken" (which is supposed to be a Chinese-food joke but could certainly be a Mandarin idiomatic euphemism for a gay, uh, receiver). Yesterday he recorded a song to his mother that had worse than Oedipal implications. It turns out to be a smash with his church Gospel choir. (This series has already wandered into sexual territory uncharted by the antiseptic "Will & Grace.") The "A" plot had Marnie trying to extinguish a fictional dating relationship she'd concocted to prevent sexual harassment. As silly as this sounds, it is not totally implausible, given what howlers most people append to their job resumes. But the writers will need to anchor some of their characters in reality (with a small "r"--though it might be amusing to see Tom Poston dragging his oxygen tank on "The Amazing Race," maybe even teamed with the hulk with the gay tattoo).

Then there's "Joey." Ah, Joey, Joey, Joey. "People's Choice" winner for Best New Comedy (well, it beats Jason Alexander's effort). I really wanted to like this show. But I can't say it's actually a disappointment, because I didn't have high expectations. The history of spin-offs has been quite checkered since "December Bride" and "The Andy Griffith Show" began the tradition. By 2004 obvious patterns of success and failure have emerged, but no programmers seems to have the historical perspectives--or the guts--to make the correct decisions. From the choices made, there was little chance of "Joey" really working.

Spin-offs, which are basically sitcom marketing shortcuts, need to be rooted in either an excellent, rounded central character ("Frasier") or actually be about something ("Maude," "Good Times,"...mister, we could use a man like Norman Lear again.) "Joey" is neither. When lifting a character from a hit ensemble it's never a good idea to choose the one with the extreme characteristic. Remember Phyllis? Remember Klinger? How about The Tortellis? Joey, on "Friends," was the Dumb One, embedded in the mix to evoke our glee with his stupidity. There's one in every crowd, certainly every sitcom, for "stupid" is the easiest route to a gag. But this does not a Central Character make. The writers are striving to draw him into the center of the mental continuum in this cast, intellectually behind his genius nephew (right--like they share the same gene pool!), equivalent to his slutty sister and, seemingly, many gray cells ahead of his blonde neighbor who has been struggling all season to find a raison d'etre. But yesterday's runner, in which she meets, dances with and eventually breaks up with a potential lesbian lover without ever getting the slightest clue--uh-uh, sorry. Even Dubya would have caught on at some point. Also, oughtn't running gags culminate in some pay-off? We need to see her reaction when the truth dawns on her, otherwise there's nothing funny to the experience--even if Joey promised there would be.

Usually by midway in a writing season the staff has gained a better grasp of the fictional venue and the abilities of the cast, and gets into stride. But there's a lot of tripping (not the fun kind---or maybe it is the fun kind)---going on here. No one seems to know what to do with Gina. Drea deMatteo, a casting coup, is a powder keg of a potential energy but given little to do but joke about her tits. Nothing she's enacted has been as remotely as entertaining as her great barf scene at the FBI interrogation in "The Sopranos." Hell, she was funnier when she got popped in the forest. And why is a bimboesque character playing a bimbo? That's not funny, that's on-the-nose. She needs to be more of an idiot savant, with some incongruous mental acuity to contrast with her sluttiness--and which would help explain the astrophysicist son.

Her son has potential in his dynamic with Joey. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Sam/Diane mental mismatches. But they don't mine this for enough laughs. Other recurrent characters are hit and miss. Hits come from the gifted Jennifer Coolidge. Though she seems to overplay the ravenous agent, hey, I knew the infamous Helen Kushnick, and she's not far off the mark. As far as "misses" go, there's the shlubby neighbor who tried to glom onto Joey. Didn't see him in last night's episode. I don't miss him.

With ill-defined characters who relate unconvincingly to each other, the only way to salvage the series is to turn it into a satire of the Hollywood milieu and the travails of an actor. There is certainly material for that, as every writer and actor in the show could extract story lines from his or her journals. And giving Joey a network series gig is a step in the right direction. But it is also a familiar arena, made moreso by its current ubiquity on HBO, with "Project Greenlight," "Entourage" and "Unscripted" covering similar ground, and more grittily.

"Joey" is a moderate success because of its heritage, and will stumble its way into a 2005 pick-up. But like other Thursday hammocked duds such as "Good Morning Miami!" (with its weather nun), and the Kirstie Alley and Brooke Shields sitcoms, this one will be undergoing a lot of cosmetic surgery over the summer. If it were me, I'd take all these characters and relocate them to a cruise ship. Couldn't hurt, and there'd be more barfing.

Snarl or Snicker

It's not just the pre-catastrophe headlines that capture my attention, but sometimes the post-mortem articles, also buried among the myriad cell-phone ads of Section One, that deserve more attention than they get. For instance, I read today that our troops have officially given up the search for WMDs in Iraq.

Come again? Not to belabor the issue, but isn't that why we went to war? I seem to recall Ari Fleischer making that precise point when announcing our invasion that fine March afternoon. Now, it's, well, "never mind". As the Republicans used to cry during the horrible 1990s when everybody's apparent wealth and happiness was egregiously threatened by the horniness of our President, "Where's the Outrage?" Of course I am being facetious, for how can I seriously compare the trivial deaths of thousand of people and the inconsequential occupation of a foreign land filled with 30 million hostiles with the earth-shattering cum stain on a blue dress?

On the other hand, there is truly logic to the decision to forego further searching, since they are as likely to find WMDs in Iraq as they are to find the Lindbergh baby, Wiley Post, Jimmy Hoffa's pinky or Nicole Simpsons's real killer. So this is a concession to Reality, a word and concept heretofore alien to the Bush Administration. He may be evolving after all.

I don't know whether to snarl, like Michael Moore, or snicker, like Jon Stewart. I guess I should just sigh, like Al Gore, and return to the Private Sector. "All is Vanity" wrote one of the contributors to "Ecclesiastes," one of the smartest books of the Bible (and yes, I think the Bible is a great piece of literature, whatever my atheistic tendencies). Another incisive cynic, Voltaire, derided the simplistic, myopic world view mirrored in today's Neocon apologists through his character Dr. Pangloss in "Candide."

That work is fresh in my mind after I blissed out on a PBS "Great Performances" last night of said operetta by Leonard Bernstein and some of the great lyricists of the century. There is a song that Pangloss sings that deconstructs his insipid philosophy called "The Best of All Possible Worlds," and its lyrics often echo in my head when I encounter mindless optimism and blind faith. In explaining Evil, as embodied by the existence of snakes, he sings "''Twas snake that tempted Mother Eve/Because of snakes we now believe/That though depraved we may be saved from Hellfire and Damnation/(Because of snake's temptation)/If snakes had not seduced our lot/And primed us for Salvation/Jehovah could not pardon all the sins that we call Cardinal/Involving bed and bottle.../Now, onto Aristotle.

As an aspiring lyricist myself I am awed by the combination of clever rhyme scheme and ironic content. But even more incisive was his take on war, as specious as anything Bush's speech writers could concoct for his upcoming Inaugural Address: "Though war may seem a bloody curse/It is a blessing in reverse/When cannons roar both rich and poor by danger are united/Till every wrong is righted/Philosophers make evident the point that I have cited/'Tis war makes even, as it were/The noble and the Commoner/Thus war improves relations."

And no prevarications.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

[note: I shudder to think how few fellow bloggers out there will even get the reference from the title, and how few actually have downloaded Beatles songs to their Ipods. But my creeping geezerhood is subject for some subsequent rant.]

Like many contemporaries I still begin my day scouring the newspaper, in my case the LA Times. It's a 40-year habit that's difficult to break, and it helps me digest breakfast, but (aside form the crossword puzzle) it's largely a waste of intellectual energy. Since I'm concurrently playing the newsradio station, which is up-to-the-minute, there's very little novel information to be garnered from the dead-tree product. This exercise is occasionally interesting when, serendipitously, I am reading some sentence that is precisely echoed by the newscaster (usually because both are derived from the same wire-service report). But, given the ubiquity of the news media, in addition to the headlines trumpeted on the Internet server sites, most of what appears in print is hopelessly stale.

More interesting than what I find on the front page, though, are the buried news items that either don't seem important to the editors or broke too late for anything but inclusion on page 29. Usually these snippets are trivial space fillers, but occasionally they are early warning signs of some upcoming calamity. For instance, the 1981 NY Times article about "gay cancers mystifying doctors", or the 1972 oblique mention of some arrests outside the Watergate complex. Just two weeks ago on page 27 of the Times was a report of a major earthquake in South Asia. The next day it had graduated, of course, to banner headlines.

There's an item that's been popping up lately, in repeat mentions, that seems to be moving up in rank, commensurate with its potential importance. It seems airline pilots have been reporting increasing incidence of lasers being directed into their cockpits as they try to land. This is "potentially" dangerous the articles say, for it could blind the pilots and cause catastrophic landings. I say, uh-oh. Big uh-oh.

So, how long will it be before one of these dancing lights does its dirty work? While airport security still wallows in the inefficiency of the Federal bureaucracy, spending 90 per cent of its time amassing all the nail clippers in existence, and occasionally worrying about bazookas shooting at jets taking off, no one had considered the simple little laser beam pencil that can be purchased from any Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue. This is just the kind of relatively low-tech tool that terrorists can utilize for maximal devastation. How long will it be before some jet nosedives into the runway thanks to that little device? That's a concern worth some real shudders.

At least the Feds are looking into it, but I ask, how can they minimize the consequences of this kind of mischief? Why are such potent lasers so readily available? Why can't the windshields of cockpits be coated with some sort of reflective material that would absorb the intensity of these lasers? Until some answers are provided, we are going to be in for some bumpy rides, or at least many worrisome ones. Every flight I take now, however smooth and well-protected with x-ray security scrutiny and on-board marshals, will be haunted by the specter of some maniac off the runway possibly trying to sabotage the landing. And I thought the prospect of cell phone use throughout the flight was appalling enough to reintroduce me to Amtrak. Now I may not want to travel at all.

Ninety Six

During the continuous deluge last night--which has assumed at least semi-Biblical proportions, since it's lasted some 20 days--there was a brief power outage. That was a normal consequence of local stormy weather, so I wasn't too troubled, even in anticipation of having to reset all the clocks in my house. (It turns out that all items purchased since 2000 seem to have caches that preserve the original settings, so my task was even less onerous). I was concerned, however, that I might miss the airing of the second two-hour episode of "24". No TV is one thing; no VCR or DVR is much more debilitating.

It's a point of some embarrassment that I should be addicted to any particular TV program, but once I began watching the two-hour season premiere on Sunday, I was surprised at how absorbing this fourth-year show continued to be after an exhausting run of over-the-top seasons. "24" was a daring concept that, despite some laughable implausibilities, managed to sustain interest over the course of a season, becoming appointment viewing. I'm not sure if my interest lay in its labyrinthine storytelling or its campy histrionics, but it has always been entertaining.

What's impressed me with this season's entry is that ingesting two two-hour segments of the show--encompassing a purported four hours of narrative "real time"--did not produce the overkill of destruction, mayhem and penny-dreadful sub-plots that one might have expected from past hourly episodes. Much of the extraneous character-serving of previous seasons has been scaled back, leaving a slick pair of two-hour espionage thrillers as compelling as the best of filmdom's recent forays into the genre, "Collateral" and the "Bourne" movies. And dealing with two-hour blocks made me less aware of time inconsistencies, such as how Jack Bauer could drive from San Bernardino County to West L.A. in twelve minutes.

Kiefer Sutherland, whom I've unfairly resented since he stole Wil Wheaton's Yankee cap in "Stand By Me," is turning into one of the great television characters. While his roguish agent could be labeled Fascist at worst, and Schwarzeneggarian at best, I guess it's all right for me to suspend my political affinities to cheer him on while he performs acts that would make Gonzalez, Rumsfeld and even Curtis LeMay blanch. I'm still in denial that last year he decapitated a relatively unthreatening bad guy just to prove a point, and assassinated his superior in order to assuage a petulant blackmailer. If his name were Haj-al Jack Bauer-bin-laden, we might not have been as sanguine.

The premise of '"24," which is that the threat of terrorism requires measures that only a single-minded maniacal superagent can perform, is certainly politically incorrect, but, to paraphrase--or cite--a line from Oscar Wilde, that is what Fiction means. The espionage suspense genre is as valid, I suppose, as team sports, for cathartic release, and this intense show does seem to provide that. And this year we do not have to deal with the perils of Jack's annoyingly plucky daughter Kim, or the bizarre personal life of the President (though I did like Dennis Haysbert). There is a new Head of CTU, Erin, who has fired Jack and seems extremely resentful of his ability. She is, however, as pigheadedly incompetent as any Pentagon official in the past twenty years. Of course, if she weren't, there would be no need for Jack. On top of that, she has a schizophrenic daughter prone to calling her up during national emergencies just to induce a guilt trip. I presume that's this year's comic relief.

One bizarre development on the show this year is how the Bauer-less CTU has become almost totally feminized. With the exception of one senior agent, and a lisping neophyte (who will obviously play an important role later on), all the operatives are chicks. You may as well call the outfit Kappa Kappa Gamma. Apparently all the stouthearted male agents who wander outside, including Jack's successor, manage to get themselves shot before they can don their trendy sunglasses. Men are so lame. It's like the show has been reconceived by Margaret Atwood.

I will not exactly miss the characters dropped from the previous seasons, except for Penny Gerald's hoot of a monster Sherry, and perhaps Jack's nemesis Nina, who were both unfortunately, violently dispatched last year. Less violently dispatched was Kim, exiled by a line of dialogue to New Jersey (an even crueler fate), along with her beau, the aptly named Chase, who will apparently be chasing Tony Soprano. Former CTU chief Tony is probably still cooling his heels in the cooler after betraying the country to save his wife Michelle. I hope she appreciates it. Replacement regulars are William Devane, in high teeth-gnashing mode as a Secretary of Defense, and Jack's love(less) interest, who also is Devane's daughter and nepotistically inappropriate top aide.

I'm sorry the writers decided to retain only Chloe, the goofy emotionally retarded computer whiz, although they needed someone to remain loyal to Jack's memory. But it is unlikely that someone so twitchy could last in the button-down atmosphere of CTU. Then again, there's surly Bureau Chief Erin with her wacky offspring. The villains, again Arabs, are cookie-cutter, but it's nice to see that Iranian megastarwith the unspellable unpronounceable name...(oh, okay, Shoreh Aghdashloo?) who was so heartbreakingly sympathetic in "House of Sand and Fog" play such a psychopathic creep. Good villainess potential here, as she flips her luxuriant black hair and blithely poisons her son's nosy Valley Girlfriend.

This made me reflect that one of the weird offshoots of the 9/11 tragedy and the War on Terror is the increased role opportunities for swarthy middle-Eastern actors in Hollywood. They are the Sessue Hayakawas of the 21st century.

I expect that once the show returns to its original one-hour once-a-week format (albeit with no repeats for the rest of the season), some of the defects of the format will reemerge. There will be ridiculous plot twists and the entire storyline of the first thirteen hours is likely to transmogrify into something totally different in time for May sweeps. But even if "24" regresses into previous bad habits it will still probably hold me captive. For all its warts it is well-produced and engrossing, escapist fare that represents pulp fiction at its most satisfying.

Splitsville

It's been a WaterWorld weekend, with a local monsoon starting to undermine hillsides, collapse houses, and swell the otherwise moribund Los Angeles River into a hazardous Urban rapids, swallowing up stray autos and the usual careless thrill-seeking teens. The destruction is a very miniaturized version of the tsunami's devastation, which is still being documented on TV and the Internet from newly recovered tourist videos. But for all the harrowing events of the weekend, the local outlets were mostly obsessed with an item that could actually qualify as good news: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are getting a divorce.

I could launch into a tirade over our culture's undue engagement with celebrity lives, but that would be predictable and dull. I mean, so what? If it reflected some egregious deterioration of our National values, I'd be compelled to grumble, but I don't hold to that elitist bullshit. What civilization hasn't had a fascination with its stars, from Achilles to Alexander to Spartacus to the Borgias and through to today? Vicarious indulgence in the lives of the famous is a human characteristic; deal with it.

What intrigues me is that the Brad/Jen breakup is an almost universally positive development. It might have had a downside if they had had children, butI don't believe that's the case. (I'm a little uncertain here, as the fictional life of Aniston on "Friends" blurs into her actuality. She had a baby on the show, but didn't in real life; Courtney Cox Arquette had a baby in real life after not being able to in real life and on the show, in which she ended up adopting twins. Now did Aniston adopt in real life? Help). If there is any collateral issue from this marriage, they will be well-cared for, or at least well-endowed (in all possible senses).

But let's give the couple credit. They were married seven years. That is an Eon in Hollywood terms, especially for two folks who have graced more covers of "People" than there are grains of sand in the world. Under the constant glare of the paparazzi and with no shot for even a nanosecond of privacy, that seven years is a sensational run and speaks well of their stability. Showbiz marriages are notoriously shaky because the profession is so insecure, and unless the partners have equal degrees of success, jealousies and envies and schadenfreude will eventually erode the bond. It is of more than passing interest that this marriage deteriorated once Aniston's million-dollars-an-episode gig expired, and Pitt's "Troy" movie did not vault him back atop the "Sexiest Man in the World" lists.

But back to the reasons everyone should rejoice:

1. There will not be a nasty divorce war over community property. Each already owns a community or two.

2. Brad and Jen can date other people, guilt-free. Not paparazzi-free, but nothing's perfect.

3. Other people can date them. This is excellent news for the 300 lb. beautician in Sandusky, as well as the pimply computer geek (pardon my stereotype) in Lewiston, Idaho, who have been fantasizing over just this possibility.

4. The tabloids and the trash TV-entertainment news shows now have two lead characters for their headlines. Singles on the prowl are wildly more interesting than beautiful folks who get married. Just ask Rhoda and Joe.

5. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner can have some time out of the spotlight. By the way, I really think Garner is the next great star, sort of a pretty version of Julia Roberts, and charmingly self-effacing in public. Unfortunately for this couple, she is soon going to outshine Affleck, who needs to spend less time induging in Texas Hold-Em and Red Sox Nation self-aggrandizing and more in choosing film scripts that don't induce projectile vomiting.

Hot Stove I

The Jet Stream has decided to sag under its own weight this year, dragging the moisture track down into Southern California from the Pacific Northwest where it rightfully belongs. The result is the wettest January here in 40 years, and with the rain pounding outside and the windblown trees swaying and undulating like cheerleaders at the Hula Bowl, thoughts here turn naturally to baseball.

Well, why not? Even the thought of the term "hot stove league" is warming and palliative as a mocha latte. We're at the mid-point in that seasonal slough between the World Series and George 43 throwing out the first ball at a Washington baseball game. (That ought to be an interesting event on its own, and Bush's arm is probably his best asset--as the old song goes, "It's surely not his brain..."--for his most notable achievement in Term One was pitching a strike in Game Three of the 2001 World Series).

But I am mustering assorted thoughts, short of essay-length, and here they are:

1. "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" (which translates to "The The Angels Angels of Anaheim, but never mind), is a nomenclature so inane that it managed to unite the New York Times editorial department and right-wing cartoonist Michael Ramirez in equal modes of ridicule. Turns out the idea wasn't originally Art Moreno's, but comes from a Dodger farm team that labeled itself the Inland Empire 66s of San Bernardino. Frankly, I preferred the "Quakes," but some people are so sensitive.

2. Why is Paul DePodesta so determined to rid the Dodgers of the talented vet Shawn Green? I know why--because they look too much alike. It's like two Debs showing up at the Cotillion in the same taffeta gowns. Well I think if DePodesta wants to keep from being tarred and feathered and sent out on Amtrak to Azusa, Anaheim (of Los Angeles) and Cucamonga, he should at least get some value for Shawn. Trade him to the Mets and bring back Mike Piazza (whom I like to call anagrammatically "I Make Pizza"). Piazza outlived his welcome in NYC, and has show biz potential in TV land. Meanwhile Green would be the best Jewish outfielder in New York since Art Shamsky.

3. I am so glad the Yanks are not pursuing (as of this second) Carlos Beltran, although he is the most talented guy they could get for the next five years or so. The collection of talent has been as tedious as reading about Steve Wynn buying another Degas or Picasso for display to bored gambler's wives at the Bellagio. The reason they are not signing him, I guess, is that he has yet to defeat them in a World Series, unlike Tony Womack, Carl Pavano and Ugly Tall Lefty (for the record Randy Johnson). They are already too top-heavy with stars. Not that this doesn't create an exciting team that will be fun to watch all year, but it sets me up again for disappointment. If they do win, well, they oughta. If they don't, well they shoulda, and wasn't the season another vain waste of a good six months?

4. I still can't figure out if the Alex Gonzalez who just signed with Tampa Bay (what a coup for him and Lou) is the Alex Gonzalez who made the big error for the Cubs after Steven Bartman earned his immortality, or the Alex Gonzalez from Florida who homered, beating the Yanks in the 4th game of the Series in 2003. It's probably the former, because the Yanks of course want anybody that has wounded them historically.

5. I am delighted that Pedro Martinez signed with the Mets. He's one of the few athletes who seems to have a sense of humor about himself, and now he's no longer a member of the Red Sox Nation. I hope he has a splendid season and enjoys the press he gets. He's a real character.

Animal Magnetism

There was a series of small earthquakes this morning, emanating from the obscure suburb of Fontana. They barely registered 4 on the Richter, but I sensed at least one while lying in bed, around 6:30 AM. It was a very slight tremor, barely as substantial as my dog brushing against me, but enough to alert my seismic detectors. I guess they've been permanently instilled in my sensory consciousness like cookies from a website, ever since the harsh and abrupt Northridge quake of 1994 forever alerted me to the perils of living in this seismically active zone. I hope that they were minor rustlings of the jumbled strata, and not foreshocks to the Major Event that is inevitably going to hit, maybe sooner than previously fated because of the massive South Asia quake that, among other nasty accompishments, altered the Earth's orbit.

What surprised me somewhat this morning is that my dog Josie didn't seem to notice the temblor at all. Of course, sleeping is a major priority of hers, but one might expect a lower mammal to react more sensitively to subtle environmental changes, or what's the point to all those Urban legends (or Rural myths) about animals foretelling major quakes, and, most recently, of reacting sagely to the oncoming tsunamis by fleeing inland while the humans sat stupidly around waiting to be drowned en masse? Recent news reports, tiring of all the dreadful statistics, have sidebarred the story of animal survival as the feel-good angle of the catastrophe. Now the debate has begun as to how sensitive "lower" animals actually are, and whether their reactions to environmental cues represent innate sensitivities beyond human scope.

Supposedly in the mid-'70s the panic of animals inhabiting a Chinese city instigated an exodus that saved thousands of lives when an earthquake struck on cue. Conversely, no animal ruckus preceded a quake two years later in a nearby city that wiped out nearly half a million people, a mind-boggling event dwarfing even the recent tsunami in carnage. So what do the beasts know, and when do they know it?

I'm not sure whom to root for in this debate--the animal proponents or the skeptics, who claim that we can do as well if we just put our minds to it. Well, we haven't yet. Some animal behaviorists point out that animals are naturally very defensive, and will retreat in the face of any slight alteration of their environment. Perhaps so, but I don't know what those skeptics are afraid of, in conceding that other life forms have evolved their own survival instincts that don't include rational analysis. Don't birds have magnetically-charged regions in their brains that enable them to navigate? And what about bees, who can measure precisely how far a food source is based on its angle from the sun, and then dance about it to relay the information? Not only are we hopelessly arrogant as a species, but apparently jealous as well.

Not me. I'd be happy to attribute all sorts of mental and psychic talents to my pooch, if she ever bothered to show them. But Josie prefers to loll in her luxuriant stupidity and lift her radar sensors only in the direction of food and the Trespasser at the Front Door. She ignores earthquakes, lightning, vacuum cleaners and other fabled external threats. She is, however, sensitive to the dangers of other dogs--when a large mastiff named Jasmine who lives across the street emerges with her owner, even if we're a block away, Josie starts dragging me inisistently in the opposite direction, recalling that Jasmine once tried to bite her head off. Well, I would remember that, too.

But I do believe that there are sensitivities that animals have mastered that may be in the reptilian parts of our brains but have become vestigialized because of our dependence on rational thought. Not just the enhanced olfactory and aural abilities demonstrated by plain old Josie, who can sense a neighbor approaching ten seconds before I can. I also believe that they have advanced recognition abilities for such intangibles as emotions. I do not have to stare angrily or yell at Josie to alert her to my disfavor. There have been times when I've been watching a ballgame and silently registered disgust at an event, and Josie would suddenly leap from my lap and disappear into the bedroom as though I were angry at her. What makes her do that? Is there a subtle change in my blood pressure that she can detect? Possibly. But my theory, which I project science will verify some time this century, is that emotions generate actual energy that can be measured, like the electricity that emerges from brain activity or the eerie lights that constitute our personal auras. And I think dogs, and perhaps flies and horses and octopi ad infinitum, all are tuned into channels that have been blocked in our mental cable roster.

Commitment

The first week of January always brings a revival of TV network programming from the rerun-ridden doldrums of the Holiday Season, with brand new episodes and debuts of programs that just missed the September cut-off but hung around like vultures to replace the DOAs that the network programmers foisted on the public in September. This week we've been graced with several new shows, mostly following the recent lamentable trends of "Reality" variations and police procedural dramas. The former tend to be freakier and more tasteless as they try to push the envelope; the latter are somewhat involving, generally not stupid, but as forgettable as last Thursday's tuna sandwich.

The saddest development in TV this century is the decline of network comedy. I could attribute the fall of the sitcom to my departure from the arena twelve years ago, but that would only be part of the truth. It seems the programming heads, as usual, haven't a clue how to revive the genre. Their strategies usually involve cloning (or as we called it in the 1980's, "copying") formats that have generated some success. Now this repro approach does seems to work on the procedural "Law and Order:CSI:SVU:MI" efforts, thanks largely to name-brand recognition.

But it's not the same with sitcoms. NBC keeps on trying to foist "Friends/Sex in the City" replicas onto the public, intoning the "18-49 urban audience" mantra so as to shift responsibility to market theory from their own doubtful acumen. The latest attempt aired last night, called "Committed," which, given the looniness of its characters, was meant not only to suggest the demands of a relationship but also their potential assignation to Bellevue. Okay. The two leads are both hyper-neurotics whose flakiness would make Chandler Bing seem as stolid as Clint Eastwood. This is promising, conceptually, because sitcom characters need identifying traits and peccadilloes (great word) for easy audience recognition. Nate, the guy, is a packrat and almost as obsessive/compulsive as Howard Hughes. This is amusing but makes one wonder what hotel he'll end up at age 70 draping the walls with Kleenex. Marnie, the girl, is less defined but an overly sentimental good sport, who even agrees to let a dying clown reside in her hall closet.

Now the "dying clown in a closet" idea is the latest on crazier and crazier versions of the nosy neighbor or Sitcom Fame, but, come fucking on! I didn't care much for the originals of this staple character, who served largely as confidants for our leads and were forever barging through the only unlocked front doors in the city, always with a snappy entry line. A gimmick that probably harks back to ancient farce (and might have suggested to Larry Gelbart the title "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum").

But this venerable prototype has evolved scarily with the proliferation in the genre, spawning such variations as Carlton the Doorman, Kramer, Eldin the Housepainter on "Murphy Brown," and now this. I am glad that producers are still trying to give Tom Poston some work. I've liked him since he played the fortgetful interviewee on "The Steve Allen Show." But hey, he's married to Suzanne Pleshette, and he must collect almost as much in residuals as Neil Simon, so let's not feel too terrible for the old guy. Can't he retire gracefully, to make room for some other vet who could use the work? Paul Newman would make a great dying clown.

As a former writer of episodes and pilots I can well imagine how such a character might have slunk into the creators' consciousness, and about at what time of day (2AM, when most man-made disasters like Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez also were perpetrated). Hey, Showrunners, have you considered what you will do with this character 100 episodes down the road? How many "living in the closet" gags can you get, after a weekly reference to the same from "Will & Grace"? Poston's hang-dog face is amusing, but it also eerily suggests what Donald Trump will look like in 2025.

It's not fair to judge a show by its pilot, whose constituent collaborators include not only the writers but the studio heads, network execs, standards-and-practice lackeys, and the homeless and toothless who wander into the Preview House. In a pilot the characters are more concepts than people, so "bundles of neuroses" are a mite more interesting than "fat father, skinny wife, sassy kids." A relationship comedy badly needs character conflict and viewer-friendly charm, precisely balanced so as not to repulse but to endear itself to the audience. There will be a shakedown on this show as the writers and performers try to recreate the intangible character chemistry required for long-term success. I doubt that simply throwing oddball elements into the cauldron like the demented clown and the guilt-inducing paraplegic will result in a savory brew. But I guess I'm glad someone is still trying.

Chiliasm

"Chiliasm" is one of those useful Scrabble words that will send your opponents smugly to their Merriam Websters to learn that their challenge has backfired. It actually means "belief in the Millennium," and all the melodramatic consequences, sort of a pedant's "Y2K." And while its immedicacy has obviously declined since 2000 and it can be shirt-pocketed for another 995 years, the end-of-the-world projections are not off the radar scope.

Developments in the recent annus horribilis 2004 did little to dissuade one of potential catastrophe: our international imperialistic policies that have so agitated our worldwide neighbors; the awful earthquake and tsunami with its stunning swath of destruction; the incipient diseases from that region, such as SARS and avian flu, whose potential spread is enhanced by the destruction in South Asia; and the rise of Christian Fundamentalism as sanctioned and abetted by this Administration.

On the latter note, I wish to comment on a double-feature that I viewed on New Year's Eve. Subdued and as cynical as I was over the previous appalling twelve months, I felt a perverse need to bring the dreadful year to a fitting end by watching apocalyptic movies. Not fun thrill-rides like "Armageddon" or "The Day After Tomorrow," but deadly earnest films based on the unaccountably popular "Left Behind" series of novels that "document" the modern events that reflect the predictions of the Book of Revelations, written by the Apostle John around 90 A.D. when he was in a mood nearly as lugubrious as mine.

The two movies I watched were named "Left Behind--The Movie," and "Left Behind--the Next Chapter," though I'd have liked some other more imaginative title, such as "Left Way Behind" or "Left Behind Too!" or "Left Behind the Eight Ball." But cleverness was not in the filmmaker's agenda. The precipitating event in the first film is the sudden disappearance of about 140 million people who vanish in an instant, leaving their relatives, and neatly piled clothes, behind. This is the event called "The Rapture," an event much more movingly staged in an actually thoughtful religious film called "The Rapture," written by Michael Tolkin and starring a pre-"X Files" David Duchovny. There is great consternation in the World when 140 millions blink out, but you'd think the masses would respond more skeptically when the United Nations, led by the up-and-coming AntiChrist, deduces that the disappearances were caused by "radiation."

Now, as must be clear, I am not a believer, but if 140 million people all went poof at once, and all of them were either devout Chrtistian Fundamentalists or innocent babies, I might be the first one to dig up a Gideon Bible and scrape the mezuzah off my doorpost. It takes the major characters in this film a lot longer to See the Light. In fact about 70 minutes of the first 90-minute movie consists of facial contortions of the protagonists as they register grief, resilience, and finally glowing acceptance of Jesus. The main character, played by Kirk Cameron, can be forgiven his obtuseness, as his brain was likely fried after ten years of stepping on jokes on "Growing Pains."

Okay, the acting was wooden, the writing cheesy, and the special effects about as compelling as watching my Osterizer puree, but this was after all a religious propaganda film aimed at a non-critical audience, almost literally preaching to the choir. I did not expect "Goodfellas." Yet I did finally come to be offended by the end of the second film, whose climax involves the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem announcing in a press conference that all his research had led to the conclusion that the only true Messiah was Jesus Christ. It helped, in his case, that he was informed as much by two fire-breathing archangels standing sentry in their tallises at the Wailing Wall. So much for Shavuos. Bring me my rosary.

What's the point of this rambling? I guess that 40 million people actually believe this, and they all voted for George Bush. The support of Bush by the extreme Christian right (whom I need to distinguish from the millions of intelligent and decent Christian folk out there) is largely contingent on his stalwart support of Israel, but not because these zealots give a damn about the Jewish State. They believe that a Middle East rapprochement will lead to the reconstruction of Solomon's temple, the sign that the AntiChrist is upon us and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are at the starting gate. They actually want this to happen, because they will be raptured up to lounge in a very crowded Heaven (albeit shy of Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, etc.) The rest of us, left behind, have to contend with seven years of war, disease, famine and death.

And if this isn't bad enough, the Anaheim Angels have just been renamed the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Well, as long as the Angels are still here.

2004 in Memorium

Out with the New, In with the Old!

What I disliked about 2004:

1. Just about Everything
2. Inconsiderate neighbors who commit suicide.
3. The baseball season.
4. The glorification of the Red Sox Nation (frankly, I prefer Rwanda)
5. My bank account, which contracted, while
6. My prostate expanded.
7. Cell phones an airplanes, and everywhere else for that matter, which have led to
8. The Death of Privacy
9. Growing more jowls than Richard Nixon.
10 "Fear Factor"
11. Horrible natural catastrophes, and having to feel grateful it didn't happen to me.
12. Being the last one on my block to get an MP3 player, and feeling marginalized.
13. Dog owners who don't scoop up.
14. Subscription cards falling out of magazines.
15. THE ELECTION!!!
16. The Swift Boat Liars. Hey, don't get me started...
17. Mel Gibson
18. Kevin Brown punching out a wall (when there's always Mel Gibson).
19. My shrink leaving town.
20 Every Fucking Red State.

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT 2004:

1. I learned to appreciate salads.
2. A cute new grand niece.
3. My dog didn't die.