Category: Culture

A Few Words About Movies

filmPeople get old; there’s no sense in getting all pissy about it.  First of all, there are tons of benefits, like a seat on the bus. Second, you’re way smarter (in most cases) than you were at 25; and third, most importantly, the alternative is a total bummer.  However, there is one tragic downside to getting old.  And since this is Cannes Film Festival Week, I thought I’d point it out.
If you live long enough, you get to see a lot of movies more than once.

Some would say this is a good thing.  For example, I’ve seen Casablanca so many times I know the dialogue — all of it — and I’ve never regretted the time spent.  But, believe me, there is a darker side.

** SPOILER ALERT **

1 — The M. Night Shyamalan Effect
You just shouldn’t watch some movies more than once.  These are the twisty ones that leave you gasping at the end, with your mouth open.   I’m looking at you, The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense and The Crying Game.  These are fantastic films, and sometimes you might think you’d like to see them again.  Don’t!  Watching a surprise ending movie twice is like trying to lose your virginity — a second time.  When you know what’s about to happen, it’s just not the same.

2 — OMG! What a piece of trash!
Some movies have added significance because we saw them at a particular time and place in our life.  (Puberty, third dates and your sophomore year in college are notorious for this.)  The problem is when you see them again, you realize they’re crap.  In this case, disappointment is the least of your worries because, invariably, you also remember the stupid stuff you did because of the feel-good contact high.  Like the time you went to see Two Of A Kind with Matthew Stilwell’s roommate Veronica Thompson (not their real names) and it felt totally cool ’cause it was right after Grease and had a decent sound track.  But then you went home and slept together — ’cause somebody said “It’s over between us.” Except it wasn’t, and then you had to spend the entire semester trying to get rid of those two psychos.  Er — uh — anyway, stuff like that can happen, and every time that movie comes back on TV, ya hate yourself — all over again.

But the very worst is:

3 — The damn thing still doesn’t end the way it’s supposed to.
In any good movie, you start cheering for the characters.   It’s perfectly natural.  You want Sean Astin to play in the big game, Kirsten Dunst to fall in love with Toby Maguire and somebody — ANYBODY — to finally kill that bastard with the British accent.  However, sometimes, despite all the emotional currency you have invested in the film, it all goes sideways.  This happens because writers are dicks.  They take perverse pleasure in writing a perfectly great script and then toying with us.  For example, we all know that Scarlett Johansson is way too flaky for anything long-term with Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz.  Okay, fine!  But what about Rebecca Hall (the real story’s about her, anyway) so why doesn’t she give it a go?  She’s a way better fit in that relationship — totally more interesting.  Besides, she wants to, he wants her to, I want her to, my wife wants her to and Penelope Cruz doesn’t care.  But, no!  She settles for Chris Messina, gets on the plane and commits herself to a life of perpetual beige.  WTF?  Every time I see that movie, I think “God, Vicky!  Juan Antonio’s standing right there.  What’s your problem?”  Woody Allen, you’re such an asshole.

3 Things That Rule The World

buildingsWe live in a marvelous age.  We carry the sum total of all knowledge in our pockets or our purse.  We can communicate around the world with the tap of a finger.  We can travel across time zones like a striding colossus and enjoy the styles and flavours from half a world away at a whim.   And even though we don’t do it, we have the ability to feed, clothe and house every person on this planet — 3, 4. 10 times over.  In short, we are the masters of our universe and sovereigns of all we survey.  Yet even though we live in a techno-Disneyland, our society is based on three simple inventions that haven’t fundamentally changed in well over a hundred years.

The Piston Engine — Find something that moves on this planet and chances are good it’s propelled by a piston.  Whether it’s internal combustion, hydraulic or steam, the piston is the thing that drives our world.  Trucks, buses, cranes, boats, trains and all the other mighty machines that shape our destiny (including the ubiquitous automobile) are all piston-powered.   Yet the contemporary piston mechanism hasn’t changed that much since James Watt radically improved the design of the steam engine in 1775.  Even that all-powerful genie in a fragile jar, nuclear power, is actually nothing more than the fuel that heats the water of a very conventional piston-powered steam engine.

The Dynamo — Turn the up-and-down motion of a piston in a cylinder into rotating motion by the use of a camshaft, and not only can you move things forward, but that same spinning rod can literally turn magnetic fields into electricity.  Michael Faraday discovered this in 1831, and by the late 1860s, industry had perfected his rudimentary dynamo to produce usable electricity — and the basic mechanics of that hasn’t changed since.  Today, 99.99% of all electrical energy on Earth is generated by some modern version of the 19th century dynamo.  And the simple fact is without electricity, our society would collapse within hours.

The Flush Toilet — It’s impossible to imagine modern megacities without the flush toilet.  The logistical nightmare of waste disposal without an automatic system would make contemporary urban life inconceivable.  In fact, the flush toilet was the product of the first megalopolis, London.  In the mid 19th century, London (like all cities in England) was a cesspool — literally.  Human waste was handled by “night soil men” who collected it, carted it through the streets and disposed of it in huge evaporation fields — or simply threw it into the river.  The whole place stank, and disease was rampant.  The flush toilet changed all that, and more importantly, forced governments to build modern sewer systems.  Today, every home has a flush toilet (sometimes 2 or 3) but the actual mechanism that makes it work is virtually the same as the ones perfected by Sir Thomas Crapper (and others) 150 years ago.

And the moral of the story is if you want employment in our contemporary world, forget the ever-changing technology market and go be a mechanic, an electrician or a plumber.  Those jobs are going to be around forever.

Foods That Lie

foodThe holier-than-thou among us — and Internet nerds — like to point out that our food is woefully contaminated by all manner of terrible crap.  Yeah, so what?  We all know that Grape-Nuts cereal doesn’t actually have any grapes in it — or nuts either, for that matter.  (It’s made of wheat and barley.)  And any European will tell you that American cheese might very well be American, but it certainly isn’t cheese.  In fact, it’s so far from cheese that the manufacturers — yes, manufacturers — have to call it a ‘cheese product.”  And that’s the thing.  These days, various government regulations make certain we’re aware of what we’ve about to put in our mouths, so if you don’t want to eat tridisodiumonotoneglycirodium phosphate or whatever? Simple solution:  don’t.  However, there’s still a lot of food out there casually strolling through legal loopholes to masquerade (“scam” is such a hard word) as something it’s not.
(BTW, this isn’t about GMOs.  That’s a whole different kettle of faux fish.)

Orange Juice — “100% pure orange juice” is orange juice.  However, in order for your breakfast beverage to survive the month or so it takes to get to you, the OJ people actually remove the oxygen from it.  This prevents the orange part of the juice from turning green and the juicy part of the orange from getting slimy.  Unfortunately, removing the oxygen also removes the smell and the taste.  Both of these are artificially reintroduced during processing.  This isn’t a nefarious plot to con you out of your orange juice.  Use your head!  It’s just a very long journey from the tree to your table.  If you want pure orange juice, buy oranges and squeeze them yourself.

Tuna — If you’ve been to a sushi restaurant lately and ordered tuna maki, tuna roll or tuna anything else, chances are good you didn’t actually get tuna.  You probably got escolar, a cheap and plentiful fish that’s been “substituted” for tuna (and not just in sushi restaurants) ever since overfishing devastated the wild tuna stocks.  The truth is the only way you can be sure you’re getting real tuna is pay the big money or buy it in a can.
And while we’re on the subject…

Wasabi — The hot green condiment that’s a staple of Japanese cuisine — except mostly it isn’t.  Real wasabi is prohibitively expensive (it only grows in a few places in Japan) so most sushi restaurants use a combination of horseradish, mustard and food colouring.  They call it wasabi because people like me don’t know the difference.

Olive Oil — You get what you pay for.  Real olive oil is mega-expensive. Anything else is a combination of other oils (soy, mostly) that have had olives carefully described to them.

Honey — Not all honey is created equal.  Some honey is created by bees in a hive.  However, other honey is created by folks in a factory who take a small amount of honey (enough to justify the name) and add fructose, sucrose, glucose and any other -ose they happen to have kickin’ around.  Technically, this is still honey, but in actual fact, it’s syrup.  The way to tell the difference?  The busy bee sugar is pure honey and will start to crystallize the minute you open the jar. The other stuff is too lazy to bother.

Blueberries — The only similarity between consumer blueberries (found in cereals, muffins, cakes etc.) and real round blueberries is both of them are blue.

Coffee — Most consumer brands of coffee have a small percentage of foreign bits and bobs hidden away in the grind.  Basically, this is just part of the harvesting, roasting, grinding process.  No big deal — it’s still coffee.  However, some of the cheaper brands actually add things like grain, soy beans and corn to the mix — just enough so they don’t have to claim them as ingredients on the label.  Coffee?  Kinda, but if you’re devoted to real coffee, buy the beans.

What it comes down to is pure food is all about the money.  Either ya pony up the big bucks for the good stuff, or ya shut up and eat your tridisodiumonotoneglycirodium phosphate.

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Technical Difficulties

I seemed to have hit the wrong button and now WordPress won’t let me like, reply or even acknowledge comments.  We’re working on the problem.  I hope we can fix it very soon but until then I want everybody to know I’m not ignoring you.  Cheers WD