Super What?

When the Super Bowl kicks off, I won’t be among the 100 million viewing the game this year. Football bores me, an admission that’s tantamount to proclaiming myself a leper in American culture. But each year the Super Bowl reminds me of the last time I saw even part of the game: 2001 in New Zealand. Those were the early weeks of the Bush administration. I should have known then that we were in for some tough times.

I saw bits of the 2001 game because I was coerced into attending a Super Bowl party. At the time I was a Fulbright scholar living in Wellington, New Zealand, and got a formal invitation from the U.S. Embassy to come watch the game. Less formally the local Fulbright office was told it would be a “good idea” for all American scholars to attend. We were supposed to project solidarity before nervous New Zealanders, since the Super Bowl came just weeks after the Supreme Court anointed Bush the victor in the stolen election of 2000. His impending reign was dreaded in Wellington; most Kiwis liked Bill Clinton, and they positively adored Carol Mosley-Braun, his ambassador to New Zealand. New Zealanders had hoped that a Gore victory would mean that Mosley-Braun would stay on in New Zealand.

Super Sunday did not begin well. In a harbinger of what would become Bush’s paranoid style in international affairs, I was accosted by a U.S. Marine for taking pictures of the outside of the embassy. Nine months before 9/11 some genius determined that my photos were a “security risk.” Inside the embassy the mood was one of startling contrasts—officious members of the Bush transition team looking like Stepford diplomats with their painted-on smiles and matching flag lapel pins on one side of the room, and the skeletal remnants of the Clinton staff hanging out with dazed New Zealand staffers on the other.

Someone had gone to trouble trying to make Super Sunday a “typical” American event, but that proved hilariously hard to pull off in a place 7,100 miles from Los Angeles. There was, for instance, a platter of hotdogs, which became one-bite items left on plates. Seconds were politely refused when offered by uniformed waiters, and with good reason. The wieners were what one might get if a bratwurst was crossed with corrugated cardboard. But they were positively scrumptious compared to the “rolls,” rock-hard zeppelins that might have been fresh a week or so earlier. They were also several inches longer and thicker than the hotdogs. The less said about the ketchup and the relish, the better.

Then there was the problem of the game itself. To say that academics are not your typical football crowd is an understatement; if they follow sports at all, most prefer baseball’s cerebral dimensions to football’s brute physicality. I had to ask who was playing and was surprised to learn that one of the teams was the Baltimore Ravens; I knew that the Colts had fled Baltimore, but I had no idea there was now a club named for Edgar Allen Poe’s poetic feathered foil. But I was an expert compared to the local embassy staff. For them, “football” was soccer and the rules of “American gridiron” as incomprehensible as the intricacies of cricket are to Yanks.

Most of the Fulbrighters gathered outside the TV room chatting about their respective projects, while the flag-lapel crowd hooted and booed in the wings. The day improved dramatically when we engaged the baffled New Zealanders huddled by the food table. One young diplomat asked me the charmingly phrased question, “Who do you favor in the gridiron match?” When I admitted I had no interest in the outcome and was far more interested in learning about New Zealand life, his face brightened and the verbal floodgates opened. Others joined in and conversation ensued over national idiosyncrasies, film, books, and cultural misunderstandings. The food came under the microscope, with New Zealanders proclaiming the baked beans tasty, the “crisps” (potato chips) too salty, and the hotdogs and coleslaw inedible.

One New Zealander looked furtively over his shoulder and confessed that he and other local staffers also had been ordered to attend the event, and that none had ever before seen American football. Anxiety ran deep over the highhanded attitudes of the incoming American staff. As our chats gravitated toward politics, every one of the Fulbright scholars was asked to explain the Bush-Gore election. (None of us could!) Every now and then a few staffers popped into the adjoining room for appearances’ sake, but the only part of the broadcast that received favorable comment was the halftime extravaganza; Britney Spears was then all the rage in New Zealand as well. I don’t recall who actually won the game, but I do remember an impromptu lesson on the glories of Jonah Lumu and New Zealand rugby, a sport I came to appreciate during my time in Wellington. To this day I follow New Zealand’s national rugby team, the All Blacks, more than the entire of the NFL.

So I’ll be skipping the game on Sunday. I might, however, cook a really lousy hotdog and slap it into a stale bun just for old time’s sake.

Rabbit Hole Raw, Honest and Real

Rabbit Hole (2010)

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell

91 mins. PG-13

* * * *

What would you do if the worst thing in the world happened to you? What would happen to the other relationships in your life? How much tolerance would you have for triviality and fools? How would you pick up the pieces of your life?

Hollywood has kept the tissue industry in business for decades with its “weepies.” But it’s okay because we know that in typical Hollywood fare something miraculous or marvelous will eventually happen to restore the characters. Except it doesn’t work like that in real life. Kudos to David Lindsay-Abaire for writing the play and screenplay Rabbit Hole, and kudos to director John Cameron Mitchell for filming it in a way that is deeply affecting and tugs at the heart strings, yet stays on the honest side of sentimental/sentimentality line.

Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play Becca and Howie Corbett, the essence of a power couple—well-heeled, attractive and living the dream life in a big house tucked snuggly in the leafy, safe, and serene suburbs. Until, that is, their world is shattered when their young son runs into the street and is killed by a teenaged driver. When we meet the Corbetts their sorrow weighs upon them like lead, and their interactions with others is equally leaden. Their marriage is coming apart at the seams, they know it, they want to stop it, but they are so deeply mired in the murk of despair that each is dead to any emotion other than rage. They attend couples grief counseling and all they feel is boredom and disgust. Becca can’t even talk to her mother, Nat (the always wonderful Dianne Wiest), without flying into rage when Nat compares her sorrow over losing her drug-addled adult son to Becca’s loss.

Enter redemption—sort of. Howie finds a kindred spirit in Gaby (Sandra Oh), who can do something he’s forgotten how to do: laugh. Becca’s path is trickier. She stalks, and then befriends, Jason (Miles Teller), the guiltless but not guilt-free young man who struck her son. He has something Becca needs to relearn: compassion. Rabbit Hole is a complex quadrangle that’s full of surprises, many of which come from not doing what most Hollywood films would do. John Cameron Mitchell isn’t afraid of complexity or darkness, as he has demonstrated in previous directorial efforts such as Shortbus (2006) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). Smilarly, Linday-Abaire’s script is uncluttered by clichés or blinding revelations. Don’t expect any of those over-the-top histrionic speeches that make for high drama, but are as phony as a politician’s tears. Don’t look for pat endings either. Those are for fairy tales; life is generally more ambiguous. Even God takes it on the chin in this film.

The acting is superb. Kidman continues to mature and her acting chops have begun to match her luminous exterior. Eckhart, for once, does not play a smarm king, and he proves capable to showing subtlety. He excels as a man facing numerous options and incapable of seizing any of them. The film’s revelation, though, is young Miles Teller. He is letter perfect as a man-child forced to confront adulthood when he’s still emotionally stuck in the comic-book fantasies of adolescence. It is absolutely criminal that Teller didn’t garner a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his portrayal of Jason.

Many films ask the question “How do we move on?” but Rabbit Hole has the courage to ask, “Can we?” It is a hard film in places, but one that is infinitely more human because it doesn’t gift wrap emotions. Some viewers have complained that the film doesn’t offer hope. I couldn’t disagree more. The film is loaded with messages, but some of them are as enigmatic as the riddles in Lewis Carroll’s anti-fairy-tale-fairy-tale Alice in Wonderland.

The Low Anthem an Indie Enigma

THE LOW ANTHEM

Oh My God, Charlie Brown

Nonesuch 519598-2

*** ½

As the Sundance Kid once queried, “Who are those guys?” This Providence, Rhode Island-based quartet gets classified as “indie folk,” mostly because no one knows how else to pigeonhole them. What else do you do with sweet country harmonies (“OMGCD”), trippy folk (“To Ohio”), and punk-tinged rock (“The Horizon is a Beltway”)? They seem to be all of these and a few other things as well. What they’re not is ordinary. Tell me you’ve seen lots of bands that throw a pump organ, a singing bowl, oboes, horns, cardboard box percussion, and a musical saw into the instrumental mix. I enjoyed this CD quite a bit and their live performance even more. Apparently David Letterman likes them too as they appeared on his show on January 12. I’ll just call them an intriguing enigma and encourage you to check them out for yourself. Their stuff is all over YouTube. Listen and if you’ve got a better handle for them, let me know.

Two for the Queue

We just got hammered by another big snowstorm and thoughts of hibernation are rising like a grizzly on its hind legs. If you share my desire to stay in for a time, here are two very underrated films to push to the top of your video queue: Following and Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Christopher Nolan is a hot director now, having scored with intelligent

and enigmatic films such as Memento 2000), The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), and Inception (2010). Back in 1998, when he was an unknown with just a short under his belt, he made a small film called Following. It was made in London for chump change and is just 69 minutes long, but in it we see Nolan working out many of the techniques he’d later use in big budget movies: hand-held camera action, non-linear storytelling, id/superego battles, confused reality….

Following was shot in black and white and dressed and toned like an early 1950s film noir thriller. It follows an unnamed character (Jeremy Theobald) who stalks people--not to harass or threaten them, but because he’s a struggling writer who lives vicariously through second-hand experiences that provide fodder for his

not-so-active imagination. One of his marks, Cobb (Alex Haw), unmasks the writer and draws him into his world--Cobb is a psychotic burglar who robs for thrills more than gain. Like most Nolan films Following unfolds in non-chronological vignettes, but it does have an arc: the writer’s descent into danger and self-entrapment. This small film is as creepy as a horror film, has as many twists as Inception, and feels like a 50s cocktail party gone horribly wrong. No wonder the studios gave Nolan some cash with which to work; he did more with a few grand in Following than most directors do with 60 million.

If you want a film about real people that’s weirder than fiction, check out the 87-minute documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010). It’s a horrible title that has only the thinnest connection to the film’s content, but its director is none other than Banksy, the world’s most famous and elusive guerilla street artist. His identity is unknown, but the film’s protagonist is very public indeed. He is Thierry Guetta, a French national living in Los Angeles; in part because La-La-Land is about the only place on earth that’s surreal enough to contain him. Guetta began filming street artists, including luminaries such as André, Space Invader, and Shepard Fairey (of the red, white, and blue Obama poster fame). Guetta gpt his footage by going on late night graffiti runs with the artists and risking life, limb, and arrest alongside them. He even got access to Banksy, something no one had ever done. So Guetta’s film told the truth about street artists, right? Actually, Guetta hadn’t a clue about how to make a film--he just liked to film things! When Bansky tells him to bugger off and go make his own art, he does--and becomes the overnight darling of the Los Angeles art world. Thierry is a world-class eccentric, but is he a genius or as crazy as a March hare? You watch and decide. Parts of the film are laugh-out-loud hysterical and others will make you wonder if Thierry is more sane than art critics, sensation-seeking hipsters, and the media that glorified all three.

Annie Gallup Weather Album a Portent of Intelligence

ANNIE GALLUP

Weather

Waterbug 0093

****

If you can imagine what Beat poets might have sounded like if they were singers and preferred string quartets to bebop jazz, you get an inkling of Annie Gallup’s latest. It’s a literate and introspective collection of poems, spoken word presentation, and song. The music is arranged by Asia Mei, a classically trained pianist and composer with the soul of a jazz gypsy. If you never thought that a string quartet could have edge, listen to this recording and get back to me. The songs and poems are at once deeply personal and reflective of Gallup’s musings of living in a nation at war, an experience she approaches with equal parts disgust and sorrow. Along the way she also touches on the passing of cultural icons Janet Leigh and Suzanne Pleshette—sort of. Like everything on this intelligent album, the surfaces serve to tantalize you to scratch them and probe more deeply. And, yes, Weather is an ironic title. Think Bob Dylan’s dictum “You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.”

Beatlemania Again a Competent Effort

BEATLEMANIA AGAIN

Calvin Theater, Northampton, MA

January 22, 2011

So how do you feel about Elvis impersonators? Is there a difference between a tribute band and one that tries to inhabit the persona of a group? Is it better to cover or to copy? Do all cover bands suck? (Before you answer the last one let me remind you that Dark Star Orchestra is something The Grateful Dead never was: good every single night.)

How you feel about dressing up and make believe largely determines how much you’d enjoy or gag at a show such as Beatlemania Again. So let’s get it up front: I found the show a lot of fun. It was great to hear so much of the Beatles repertoire in one place at one time. The quartet performing it--Bob Fitch (Paul McCartney), Dave Pal (John Lennon), Tom Godsman (George Harrison), and founder Rich Morello (Ringo Starr)--is talented and charming. Do they sound “just like” The Beatles? No. Did their performance creep me out? On occasion, yes, though I was far more disturbed by the picture-taking and autograph-signing after the show. It’s one thing to play a stage role, but when the curtain falls, it’s time to take off the grease paint.

If you’ve not been following the story, Beatlemania was such a Broadway musical triumph from 1977 to 1979 that various touring groups put “The Beatles” back on the road again until the real group’s Apple Corps sued. That’s never a good idea; groups simply re-form with names that adhere to the letter of the law, but not its spirit. Beatlemania Again was not part of the legal wrangling; they’ve only been at it for 16 years. That’s long enough to become very good at casting a stage illusion of The Beatles. Key word: illusion.

Beatlemania Again is a show with three acts and costume changes (and one intermission). We first see the lads in the Meet the Beatles days of 1964, when they first hit New York and played the Ed Sullivan Show. This is actually the sharpest part of the show---dressed in mop tops wigs and Edwardian suits the quartet strikes all the right chords with a mix of sugary pop, rockabilly, skiffle, and watered-down blues. After the intermission we see the band in their Sgt. Pepper regalia and it doesn’t quite work. The costumes look like a mash-up between choir robes and Joann’s Fabrics and the music itself lacks the trippy and mystical dimensions of the original. The ship is righted when the band segues into the final Get Back days. The last part of the show has good energy and it features some blistering guitar work from Godsman channeling Harrison.

Godsman is the best of the lot, in part because Harrison never hogged the limelight so there’s more room to invent his character. Fitch and Pal are perfectly competent, but if you’ve seen the original McCartney and Lennon, neither would ever be confused with them. Pal doesn’t really capture Lennon’s mannerisms or his ego, and Fitch lacks McCartney’s dulcet high tones and his body type. As for Morello, his problem is different: he sings way better than Ringo ever did (or has). The four make very good music and it’s a solid approximation of The Beatles. But several things betray Beatlemania Again as Beatles in drag. First, they play a lot songs ever so slightly too fast. Many Beatles songs seem so innocent that it’s easy to neglect how tightly constructed they were, until we hear someone else do them. We also hear differences in both the harmonies and in the high ranges. Fitch’s attempt at “Hey Jude” was a low point--what McCartney made sweet and effortless came out as labored.

Would I recommend that you catch the show if it comes to your neck of the woods? Sure--why not? Just understand that though lots of tasty desserts can be made from carob, none will rival real chocolate.

Snooki a Novelist? You'se Must Be Kidding!

Two "novelists?"

Confession time: I have never seen a single episode of the MTV show Jersey Shore and have no intentions of ever viewing one. I have no idea if its star, Nicole Polizzi, is a good actress or a putrid one, though a nickname like “Snooki” leads me to suspect that she doesn’t take on many Meryl Streep-like roles. I’ve never read or heard an interview with Polizzi either, so she might possess the intellect of Albert Einstein for all I know. (Did anyone ever call old Albert “Snooki?”)

Polizzi would have ever remained one of the many pop tarts I routinely ignore save for one thing: newspapers confirm the rumor from last fall that Snooki has written a novel, which will be released in 2011. First of all, I doubt she has “written” anything at all; a ghostwriter (or two or three) is likely responsible for whatever golden nuggets will appear. I’m even okay with that. What I’m decidedly not happy about, however, is Polizzi’s statement that she’s only read two books in her entire life. She did not say whether those two books were from her pre- or post-Beatrix Potter years, but I infer from this that we should not anticipate that her literary talents will be viewed as the next coming of George Eliot.

I could continue jumping up and down on the lampoon bandwagon, but my main feeling about all of this is one of sadness. Literature, it would appear, is indeed dead. There has long been the axiom that a good writer begins as a good reader, so you must excuse me if I offer the prejudgment that Ms. Polizzi lacks the qualifications and gravitas to call herself a novelist, even if she employs an army of ghostwriters. To call her such cheapens the craft of novel writing, one in which many highly skilled writers have toiled for years with little commercial success. The latter is distressing because the one thing we know for certain is that Polizzi’s “novel” will sell quite a few copies before it is remaindered and pulped and the next pop idol releases his or her “novel.” The buzz guarantees it.

At this juncture I should admit that my own last book took about five years to write and has yet to earn a nickel in royalties, but there’s more than sour grapes at stake here. The saddest thing about the Snooki novel is that it’s the latest confirmation of the anti-intellectual dumbing down of American society. It’s bad enough that more people vote for American Idol than in Congressional elections, but now we’ve entered the age in which anyone who has ever Tweeted thinks he or she is an “author.” No aspirations cast on Ms. Polizzi--they’re all aimed at her handlers--but she should be ashamed to attach the accomplishment “novelist” to her résumé. Sorry, but you need to read before you can write. Might I suggest starting with Middlemarch? --LV