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Saturday, June 27, 2015

TODAY I AM FIFTY

Kissing my forties goodbye with two staunch pals whom it is my distinct honor to know..

Dear Vaulties,

Despite many years of assorted idiocy, Yer Bunche somehow managed to live to see my fiftieth birthday and I'm quite pleased to say that I did. I have stuff to do today but I wanted to note that the big day is here and that I will be reporting on my entry into the half-century club over the next few days. STAY TUNED!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME


THE PERFECT SONG FOR MY 50th BIRTHDAY

This one speaks for itself.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

R.I.P. PATRICK MACNEE (1922-2015), TV'S JOHN STEED

My hero.

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of the one and only Patrick Macnee, who has left us at the age of 93.

THE AVENGERS is one of the classic cult TV series from the 1960's spy craze, earning its place in pop culture history for introducing the badassed female to the screen, and for its eccentric, veddy British quirkiness/surreal aesthetic. Anchoring the show throughout its original run and 1970's revival was Patrick Macnee as foppish gentleman secret agent John Steed, a charming, urbane, witty bon vivant who was the antithesis of government-sanctioned school bully with a license to kill, James Bond. Admittedly something of a caricature of complete and utter Britishness, Steed was a breath of fresh air to American audiences who had never before seen his like, and to me he was the greatest of all the '60's super-spies. Bond may have gotten more pussy than a litter box, but Steed was the one who could offer a companion quality conversation spiced with a genuinely dry sense of humor without Bond's decided mean streak. Capable, smart, and classy almost to a fault, John Steed was — and is — my kind of hero, so three years ago I felt it was finally time to write to Macnee and express my admiration for his work in general and for Steed in particular. Macnee was getting on in years (he was 90 years old when I wrote to him) and I figured my window of opportunity was rapidly closing, thus I sat down and composed what can best be described as a well-worded gushing love letter to Steed and the man who played him, and what he meant to this now-grown American black kid. I then went to Macnee's website to order one of his personalized autographed 8 x 10's and sent the letter along with my request. About a month later, the treasure seen above arrived in the mail.

Raised by his lesbian mom in a country house with her rich lover and forced to wear kilts to feminize him, booted from Eton for selling pornography and being a bookie for fellow students, gaining pop culture immortality as the constant in THE AVENGERS, and appeared in both THIS IS SPINAL TAP and LOBSTER MAN FROM MARS, Patrick Macnee, you were truly awesome. Rest well, sir.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

JAWS AT 40

There are some movies that are sheer perfection when seen properly projected, and JAWS is one of them. Arguably the first true summer blockbuster, as we have come to understand the form, the film has been re-released for limited screenings during this, its fortieth anniversary, so I hauled myself to the temple of the flickering image to take in an all-too-rare revival of a horror masterpiece.

Seeing it on the big screen (at the Union Square multiplex in Manhattan) for the first time in 40 years transported me right back to being a few days shy of turning 10 and my embracing of it as my favorite movie for a couple of years. In my early years I had my career goal set on being a marine biologist with a concentration on shark studies and I dragged my parents to every shark-related activity that I could gain access to, so seeing JAWS was an inevitability. Though rated PG, the film's poster featured the ominous tacked-on caveat, "MAY BE TOO INTENSE FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN," which only guaranteed the attendance of this budding gorehound, so considering that and the fact that it all boiled down to a story about a huge goddamned shark merrily munching its way through summer season beachgoers (and a hapless dog), you had a recipe for perfect entertainment. (And as long as we're keeping it real, whatever would transpire onscreen couldn't be any more intense or emotionally scarring than the daily witnessing of my parents' marriage rocketing down the bowl.) And when I finally did see JAWS, I fucking loved it. It was a perfect "man versus force of nature" yarn, sort of an ancient seaman's legend writ for the late-20th century, and it's that primal simplicity of the narrative, coupled with some stunning sequences of suspense and stellar characterization, that so resonates. 

It was great to see JAWS again with an audience and when the lights went down, it was like settling in as a skilled elder storyteller wove a yarn to scare and enthrall kids while also instilling in them the strong and basic lesson of taking what lurks in the depths seriously. There were some audience members who were clearly veterans from the first go-round but the majority of attendees were thirty or younger, most of whom had seen the movie numerous times on cable or DVD, and the few who who had never seen it before were easy to spot, thanks to their sudden vocalizations of shock in all the places that scared the motherfucking shit out of us back in the summer of 1975.

The horror from the deep revealed.

For the record, my favorite moment is still the part where Brody chums the water and meets the shark — sea monster, really — face-to-face, after which he backs into the Orca's interior, his face a frozen, stunned mask of horror as he matter-of-factly states, "You're going to need a bigger boat..." Also of note, you could have heard an amoeba fart during Quint's chilling recounting of his experience following the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, so all-consuming was the silence in the auditorium. The moment when Quint describes reaching over to wake up his friend, only to have the man tip over to reveal that he had been devoured from below the waist by one of perhaps a thousand tiger sharks... *SHUDDER*

Quint (Robert Shaw) makes with one of the most riveting and horrifying speeches in the annals of cinema.

Seriously, if it's playing anywhere near you, hie your ass to the theater and pay your respects as a true cinephile by seeing JAWS again as it was intended. I'll never watch it again unless it's projected and you can bet your ass I'll be there for the 50th anniversary.