A LONG-ANTICIPATED WEEKEND NEARLY RUINED

Jared and me, at his 2011 birthday shindig.

As I write this, I'm in Rockland County for my old friend Jared's annual birthday cookout, the summer event that I most look forward to all year, and the weekend almost commenced with a disaster.

My friend Daisy​ was driving down from Rhode Island to pick me up for the trip to Jared's — our shared journey in her car is a yearly highlight — and when she was relatively close to my apartment, she called to let me know she'd be arriving soon. I had three bags packed — a large Ikea bag containing my barbecue tools, assorted food items, a spare blanket, and a six-pack of Mexican Cokes; a duffel bag with enough changes of fresh clothes for four days, plus a bag containing my toiletries and meds; and lastly but definitely not least, a large black backpack containing my laptop and its power cord, my CD burner, a box of blank CDs, and a good number of books to be given out as gifts to some of the coming attendees — and had brought the bags down to the front stoop of my building to await the imminent pickup. After a few minutes I realized I'd forgotten the sack of quarters that I'd meant to bring for tolls on the way back, so I figured it would take me less than sixty seconds to run back up to my second floor apartment and return with the coins. Looking at the broad-daylight street, the only people in sight were one of the nicer Stoop Louts, who was across the street with two friends, so I figured my stuff would be safe for less than a minute.

WRONG.

When I returned in the predicted less than sixty seconds, of the three large bags, only the one with my clothes remained on the stoop. I instantly shifted into hawk-like focus mode and immediately spotted a short Hispanic guy with a bike led by one hand hurrying across the street, struggling to keep my Ikea bag over his shoulder. I yelled "HEY!!!" in my loudest, most ominous voice and he stopped dead in his tracks. "That stuff is mine!" I yelled, as I barreled across the street in a state of Hulk-esque rage. When he lifted my stuff during the seconds in which I was gone, he probably expected the luggage to have been left by some woman or by someone who would not make it back down the stairs in time to catch him, but the look on his face made it clear that he did not expect to be nabbed in the act by an irate black man of nearly six feet in height and nearly 230 pounds. He was clearly terrified but he kept himself together enough to try and weasel out of a crippling ass-kicking by claiming that he thought the bags were garbage that had been left out for anyone to take. I fought back my urge to tear off his head and floss my teeth with his spine, and as he handed my my Ikea bag I narrowed my eyes and said "And the black backpack." The pack was not visible, as he had hidden it behind a nearby car, but he could see the murder in my eyes and he immediately produced it. As I checked my stuff to make sure nothing had been stolen — the backpack showed signs of having been opened for inspection; that was the bag with my computer — the thwarted thief made every effort to ingratiate himself to me, again claiming to have thought it was just garbage and saying "Hey, I wasn't trying to rob you, man," to which I called bullshit and noted that he'd opened the backpack. At that he dropped some of his obsequiousness and had the nerve — THE FUCKING NERVE!!! — to start to lecture me on "In New York you don't just leave stuff lying around..." I angrily cut him off, called him as a liar and a scavenging opportunist, and when he saw how much angrier I was getting he tried to give me a soul-shake and said, "God bless, brother!" before beating the hastiest retreat I've ever seen.

With my stuff retrieved, I slowly began to wind down and by that point the Stoop Lout was paying attention to the scenario. He's one of the Louts who's seen me as a daily presence for eighteen years, so he's used to Nice Bunche and was appalled to see Anger Bunche for the first time. As I noticed him staring at me in disbelief, I asked him if my stuff looked like garbage. He swiftly shook his head and unequivocally stated "NO!!!" and apologized for not paying closer attention as the guy made off with my bags. When Daisy arrived, I told her what happened and had her pick up my bags in order for her to see how heavy they were. I'm convinced that my standard habit of packing heavy is what thwarted the disaster mare than my speed in returning; I tend to pack for maximum preparedness and bearing heavy objects is what my ancestors were bred for, so carrying heavy backpacks and bags has been second nature since I was a child. I don't even think about it when I'm carrying them. Needless to say, Daisy was appalled on my behalf and she noted that she also would have left her stuff if she knew she would only be gone for seconds and there was no one on the street, but she was equally glad that everything turned out alright.

BOTTOM LINE: I learned a strong lesson during this incident and that your stuff is not safe on the streets of NYC for even sixty seconds, so don't be a lazy piece of shit and not bring the items into the locked safety of your building's lobby, especially if you know for a fact that the residents all look out for each other's stuff as an unstated rule of common courtesy and do not rip each other off. Not even relatively-posh Park Slope is free of parasites who cruise around on bikes in search of things to steal and people's good vibes to ruin without a care in their larcenous little worlds.

ROCKIN' WITH THE ULTRAS

A QUICK WORD ABOUT ANT-MAN

Just got back from ANT-MAN and I'm glad to say that Marvel has added another winner to its expanding cinematic tapestry. A hoot from start to finish, it's a movie that I never would have imagined getting made but the same was said for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY and that was also a hell of a lot of fun. Heartwarming, funny, briskly-paced, featuring some music cribbed from the soundtrack to the Pam Grier classic COFFY, and loaded with really cool sequences that make the most of just how amazing the ability to shrink and control ants would be, it's fun for the whole family.  I'm opting to review it in maybe a week, in order to let all of you see it for yourselves and not have me spoil it delights, so stay tuned. Oh, and make sure to stay through to the very end for two Easter eggs, the latter of which led several audience members to wonder why it was included in an Ant-Man movie...

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.

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.

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.

THE BOOK OF MORMON on Broadway

This afternoon I finally saw THE BOOK OF MORMON on Broadway and, if I'm being totally honest here, I was not as impressed with it as I had expected to be. 

The show was certainly fun and I liked it but I found it to pretty much be "South Park Lite." A good number of the themes had been explored on SOUTH PARK over the years and the musical numbers, while undeniably well-performed and amusing, mostly couldn't hold a candle to almost any of the musical segments from the TV series or the feature film SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER & UNCUT. The ending came off as rushed and the instantaneous conversion of African warlord General Butt-Fucking-Naked from a sadistic, murderous, female genitalia-mutilating despot to a doorbell-ringing proselytizer did not work for me at all. I'm willing to bet that a good percentage of the Broadway audience and the tourists who flock to shows on the Great White Way are not watchers of the series, so they go to THE BOOK OF MORMON and are happily shocked by its content, which is admittedly a lot more profane and potentially offensive than everything else currently running. 

For me, the highlights were the set designs and the excellent "Hasa Diga Eebowai" number that advises curing one's blues by repeating the titular phrase (which translates as "Fuck you, God"). And seeing my ultra-religious mom laugh her ass off at the religious offensiveness and profane songs was a treat. If nothing else, seeing THE BOOK OF MORMON now has her interested in checking out SOUTH PARK.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (2015)

Metal heavy: Ultron (James Spader) gives Earth's mightiest heroes a run for their money.

Three years after the global box office success of MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, the Earth's mightiest heroes are back and this time the "gathering of the fellowship" stuff is out of the way, so the films drops the audience straight into super-powered action and mayhem. On a mission to the Eastern European country of Skovia, the Avengers take down a Hydra base where the powerful scepter used by Loki in the first film is held by Baron von Strucker and used upon human subjects in experiments intended to generate Hydra-controlled superhumans. Only two humans have survived the testing, twins Pietro and Wanda Maximoff (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olson), and they utilize their respective gifts of super-speed and mind-control/telekinesis/magic to hinder the Avengers' efforts and grant Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), aka Iron Man, a horrifying vision of his comrades laying defeated and dying as a fleet of extra-terrestrial conquerors head to the Earth through a wormhole in space. That grim tableau greatly rattles Stark and upon retrieving the scepter and taking it back to the opulent Avengers tower in Manhattan, Stark and fellow uber-brain Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) utilize the alien scepter's advanced tech to craft Ultron, an artificial intelligence meant to act as a preemptive defense system for the planet. That quantum leap in A.I. is arrived at without the knowledge of the other Avengers — yes, it's Stark once again proving himself to be an entitled, arrogant prick and a power unto himself, despite being a member of a team — and in no time flat it manifests as a seven-foot chrome megalomaniac whose twisted agenda does indeed amount to solving all of mankind's security issues, though in a way that Stark and Banner absolutely did not foresee. As all hell breaks loose in several international locales, the Avengers must marshal every bit of their skills, powers, wits, and unbridled badassery to handle Ultron and his army of deadly robotic doppelgangers.

Writer/director Joss Whedon pulls off the seemingly impossible by upping the ante from MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS with wall-to-wall action and sequences that give all of the featured characters solid things to do while allowing each to shine as more than just cookie cutter action figures brought to life. Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is fleshed-out into more than just "short guy with bow and arrows and bad haircut," glimpses into the back-story of the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) add a poignancy to her fighting proficiency, Captain America (Chris Evans, in the role he was born to play) once again leads the group while butting heads with Stark, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) remains the resident Viking powerhouse, and Bruce Banner's struggle with his "sulky, kinda bulky, kinda Hulky" rage-fueled other half is given and interesting new wrinkle (that I will not spoil). Wanda and Pietro, though never referred to as the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, are a lot of fun, and both War Machine (Don Cheadle) and the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) are along for the mayhem. But the movie is stolen by James Spader's voice performance for Ultron, a character that I never enjoyed in his many comics appearances but whose unexpected interpretation in the movie was a triumph of assured villainy. There have been numerous robotic/A.I. threats throughout cinema history but Ultron comes from out of nowhere to stand among the very best of his antagonistic automaton brethren.

A lot goes on that is best left un-described so the viewer can be caught up in the story's events and surprised by what unfolds, but I will say that it's exactly what I wanted from a super-hero spectacle, and then some. The only complaints I had were with the generic musical score (a problem I had with its predecessor) and the latest design for Iron Man (which all-too-obviously looks like the already available action figure), but those are very minor quibbles that in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the movie. The only other things that I would like to add are the following considerations that you need to know ahead of time:

• Get all bathroom needs out of the way before the film starts. The movie is two hours and twenty-one minutes long and you won't want to miss any of it. And I don't know if this is how they'll handle it elsewhere but the theater I saw it at listed the showtime as 7pm but made sure to tell all of the ticket holders that the movie proper did not start until 7:20 because there were twenty minutes of trailers. They were not kidding.
• Do not waste your money on seeing it in 3D. The 3D appeared to have been added in post and it adds absolutely nothing to the film. There is not one sequence that was designed to be seen in three dimensions.
• Contrary to some early reports, there is an Easter egg at the end of the film, only it comes early during the end credits. Once the list of the cast and the title are out of the way, the Easter egg happens — you can't miss it — and after that you can walk.
• There's the customary Stan Lee cameo but also look for comedy legend Buck Henry among the guests at a party at the Avengers tower.
• I advise seeing it during a screening when it is unlikely that very young children will be present. Parents at the show I attended brought kids as little as a few months old, so there was crying, kids asking loud questions, and many cases of parents and kids walking in and out of the theater for bathroom breaks and distracting the audience in the process.