September 2007 Archives

September 5, 2007

Now Running MovableType 4.0

Which means maybe I’ll get some control of this spam. Or not.

I had a real, bona fide entry all saved up for the big switch, but for awhile I’m going to be playing around with all the new features and maybe even putting forth the effort to create a unique page style. I’m taking bets on which will come first: a new style or a new, legitimate entry. Any takers? I’ve got $50 on “he’ll just abandon the blog for good!”

Also: it’s gonna look pretty funky until I get the time to make sure all the new templates are working right (so far, they aren’t).

Edit, 9/8/07: Wow, I’ve created both a new layout (not much more than a modified version of my original layout from oh-so-long-ago) and a new post. I’m still tweaking the design, but for right now it’s pretty reasonable in comparison to MT4’s horrific default templates.

Posted by Stan on September 5, 2007 9:23 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Random Musings

September 11, 2007

The Fake Fiancé, or: Show a Little Faith?

I have an obsessive nature and a strong desire to turn into Jim Rockford. These personality traits don’t mesh well with my sea of largely dishonest friends. The fact that all but a small few of my friends are notoriously full of shit probably speaks more to my character than to theirs. Nonetheless, I want to trust my friends. It’s difficult when you catch them in lies; it’s even more difficult when you catch them in repeated lies, especially when they’re lying repeatedly about the same stupid things. However, I get some sick pleasure from grilling them on the lies and watching the whole fabrication spiral out of control until they either admit they are bullshit artists (but I’m better!) or run away. And by “run away,” I mean “hang up on me” or “sign off of Instant Messenger,” because many of them have a hard time lying to my face — that’s usually how I figure out they’re lying.

Such is the case with my old friend Kelly, who I’ve known since junior high, and since that time she’s been full of shit. On top of that, she’s loud and abusive, pathologically hostile and emotionally crippled. These things might make you wonder why I’d be friends with her, but if you’ve ever read this blog, you understand we’re two peas in a pod. Except for all the lying.

I accept many forms of lying. There are a lot of shades of gray to dishonesty, many purposes for deceit, and in fact quite a few acts of bullshittery can be considered morally just and ethically sound.

For instance, I recently watched the M. Night Shyamalan movie Unbreakable for the second time ever, and the ending was as shitty this time as it was the first. I watched it with my dad, who borrowed it from a friend at work. It’s this guy’s favorite movie. Ever. He’s watched it dozens of time and is so enthusiastic he lent my dad the DVD. We watched it and agreed that it was actually a pretty good movie — by far Shyamalan’s best, which maybe isn’t saying a whole lot — until that stupid ending. Even the melodramatic “You should have known because they called me Mr. Glass” monologue worked. The “twist” is the only Shyamalan twist that holds up under repeat viewings. But those stupid title cards just ruin everything. Everything. It’s like, “Bruce Willis called the cops, and Samuel L. Jackson spent the rest of his life in a nuthouse.” Did some studio executive get all freaked about its sequel possibility and add those? They come out of nowhere, they obliterate the “show, don’t tell” rule, and it’s just fucking stupid to end your movie about a superhero discovering his power with, “He pussied out and called the cops.” The fuck?

My dad and I agreed on this point, but then he did something I would have never done: he told his friend, who loves this movie, that we both hated the ending. There are really only two consequences to this unnecessary honesty: either the friend gets angry and decides you’re full of shit, or you get to watch the wounded look on his face as he realizes you’re absolutely right. Enter the white lie: “Oh shit man, I loved it — I wish they made a sequel.” Because see, then you’re subtly suggesting maybe the ending was a little off because it was clearly designed as a franchise if you ignore those title cards, but you aren’t ruining his life by dumping the cooler of icy Hatorade all over him.

Lies with purpose can be used for the powers of good. Sometimes they can be used to hurt and torment, and while that can be fun depending on the person, when the lies have no apparent reason to exist, I get frustrated. This brings us back to Kelly. She’s kind of had a habit of manufacturing boyfriends out of — well, “thin air” is an unfair assessment. Let’s say it’s like that heavy, humid air of midsummer, just before a storm, that seems to have thickness and a physical weight. Kind of cumbersome, but more accurate. These boyfriends are real people who exist on this planet, people she knows but assumes we’ll never know and never know anyone who knows them; so she’s doing what clever liars do, mixing reality with her bullshit to make it sound more convincing. She’s been doing this since junior high, when she told us this dorky guy kissed her in the playground near her church. We didn’t know him at the time; when we met him in high school and he vehemently denied it, she had the typical excuse of that era: “Of course he’d deny it — he doesn’t want anyone to know.”

Considering it happened with at least four people I knew at the time (and was the subject of at least 10 Brady Bunch episodes), I guess it’s fairly common to manufacture lies about dating at that age. It’s cool to date, but few people actually do, and the lies about needing to keep things a secret are pretty reasonable since many parents I knew of wouldn’t let their kids date until high school, and even then it was a risky proposition. So even in high school, the idea of “secret dating” was kind of reasonable, although if a person got caught lying they risked utter humiliation.

Other than the made-up kiss from junior high, I can’t recall a time when Kelly made shit up about boys. I have a foggy memory about her saying “something” happened with a friend at a dance, but hey, maybe that actually did happen. I don’t remember it well enough to know, but you better believe if I had confirmed the stench of bullshit I would remember and document it here.

No, Kelly waited until college to start a boyfriend-manufacturing assembly line. It’s an awkward “you’re way too old for this” type of situation, but with one exception I managed to confirm that every boyfriend she had was not her actual boyfriend. See, it’s easy to fool people when you’re going to school hundreds of miles away; problems arise when you ignore the fact that the people you tell these lies to might have other friends at that school. It gets even rougher when one of your friends at this school happens to be your best friend.

That’s right, I talked to Kelly’s best friend a lot. In fact, we were all part of the same circle-jerk of friends, so most everyone I was friends with from high school was some degree of friends with Kelly. The two of them lived in the same dorm (not in the same room, though), hung out a lot, moved into a house together in their second year — so she’d have the dirt. She was the one who confirmed most of the fake boyfriends; the only two she didn’t confirm were the “real” boyfriend and this guy who was friends with her brother (and still in high school), who some of my still-in-high-school friends mentioned she was stalking. It’s hard to blame her when I essentially did the same thing with a different girl, but at least I didn’t pretend like I was dating the girl. I was merely optimistic that we’d get together when she was telling all my friends she wanted to file a restraining order. (The joke’s on her — I was 250 miles away and still able to frustrate and terrify her!)

The thing about Kelly is, I can pretty much tell when she’s lying. There’s an indescribable difference in the way she talks, her body language (like I said above, it’s rough on her to lie to my face, so if we’re out and I ask questions, she gets a little weird), her tone — things you can only pick up when you’ve known a person for more than a decade — so when she tells me things, I can always tell when she’s being completely honest, when she’s exaggerating for comic effect, and when she’s flat-out bullshitting. When she tells me things about teaching, I believe her. When she tells me thing about many of these boyfriends, I didn’t. Confirmation is nice for the sake of proof and peace of mind (not that I ever called her on it; the situation makes me a little depressed rather than angry), but I could pretty much tell just from talking to her that she was lying.

With the case of the “real” boyfriend, even though they only went out once, the whole situation was a lot more believable because of the way she talked about him — ignoring the fact that she forwarded me e-mails and text messages for my expert “guy” opinion, there was a whole different vibe with this guy. She was detailed but not too detailed, didn’t strain or evade when I asked “tough questions,” and the barely perceptible differences in speech and body movement all showed me she was telling the truth. Either she became a much better liar, up to and including manufacturing fake evidence of this guy, or it was true. I never confirmed it one way or the other, because by this time she was in grad school with nobody I knew, but I believe it was all true.

The question lingers: why all the fake boyfriends? This is something I have a hard time understanding. I’ve speculated that it roots back to her best friend, who share what I’ve inexpertly taken to calling the “hot-girl/ugly-girl” dynamic, which is not to say Kelly is ugly — just, in comparison to the utter hotness of her best friend, she can’t compete. Not even slightly. Spending her adolescence watching dorky idiots like me have their hearts broken by her best friend, all the while ignoring her, can’t be healthy. Kelly has always had somewhat of a “keep up with the Joneses” attitude; when she finds out something about one of her girlfriends, Kelly has to do the same thing only better, even if it means making up bullshit to keep up. I kept up with this theory for a long time, until I realized she wasn’t telling her girlfriends about these fake relationships; for a long time, she was only telling me and my friend Doug. Now she doesn’t seem to talk to Doug much, so she’s only telling me.

What’s up with that? The new speculation, the only possible rationale I could think of, is that she harbors long-standing crushes on both myself and Doug, and she was trying to make either one of us jealous in a rather juvenile effort for us to step up and win her blackened heart. She lives in a world where the guy always has to do the asking-out, which is not something I do. And at the time she was at the height of this fakery, Doug and I were both in relationships. Maybe that had something to do with it. It would have been awesome if she had turned us against each other in some sort of blood-soaked battle royale to get her, but that didn’t happen.

Along came a new guy, about two years ago. Going back to thing where I can tell whether or not she’s lying, when Kelly brought this guy up and told me about their initial rendezvous, I believed everything she said. When they spent a weekend in St. Louis with a bunch of her college friends, I believed everything except the part where he left a Post-It note on her forehead saying “Call me” because she was still asleep when he had to leave (it was just a little too cutesy and Cameron Crowe-esque). I believed her when she said she didn’t think things would work out because he’s an ultra-right, Bush-supporting Republican who — gasp! — isn’t Catholic, leading to a rant about how she’d never marry anybody who wasn’t Catholic (hint?!!) so what was the point of getting involved?

That was that. Or was it? Within a few months, Kelly announced she and this guy were still together (after not mentioning him for weeks), and then I started to see a new side of Kelly. Gone was the morally confused “let’s drink and smoke weed but no sex before marriage” girl I had grown up with; in her stead, somebody who was spending all her time at her new boyfriend’s apartment — so much time, in fact, that he was trying to convince her to move in with him. This really wouldn’t surprise me, since the transition from “this sex thing is dirty and not for me” to “oh wait, it’s kind of awesome” happened to pretty much everyone after high school. It took her a little longer, so was this a sign of her first real long-term relationship?

Maybe, but I had my suspicions. Fortunately, I…just couldn’t give a fuck at the time. She was happy, or said she was, so I was content to be happy for her. I wasn’t quite believing the relationship was as perfect as she acted, but that’s not uncommon with most people I know; the only one who is consistently honest is Lucy (often too honest — when I’m hearing the intimate details of a vagina I am not interested in plundering, I start rooting through my desk for leftover painkillers). I also wasn’t sure I believed how “conflicted” Kelly was over whether or not to take the plunge; the source of the conflict, she said, were her uptight Catholic grandparents. Much as she enjoys denying it, I know she’s the only uptight Catholic in her family (at least when it comes to stuff like “living in sin”). I’m still not sure how that happened.

The whole thing grew steadily less believable around the time she announced her engagement. I’m not saying she needs my approval or anything, but it struck me as bizarre that I’d never even met him, despite us having been out a dozen or so times since they started “dating.” Any time I brought up meeting him, or of chillaxin’ in their apartment, she’d get evasive and say something noncommittal like, “He’s really busy, but maybe next time.” Wanting to believe in the honesty, or at least the positive nature of her lies, I thought maybe he was the jealous type and wouldn’t like her gallivanting about town with somebody as cool and latently homosexual as me. Suddenly she was engaged, though, and I felt my willingness to suspend disbelief near its end. Who, exactly, was this guy? When were they getting married? Why did she always seem so full of shit when she talked about him?

The engagement itself supposedly happened in a way that creates a “romantic for people who aren’t interested in romance” vibe; he proposed last Christmas Eve, seemingly at random, without much fuss (or a ring), just a whim-like thing. “You look lovely in the light of the tree — let’s get married!” It’s not that it’s impossible to believe; it just seems more like something Aaron Sorkin would write than something that would happen in reality. It could have happened, and I was prepared to believe it — until the practicalities of an impending wedding (or, at the very least, of repeatedly putting off the wedding date) never crept into her life. No complaints about his uselessness in planning. No complaints about coming up with themes or color schemes. No bitching about costs (though that, at least, could be explained if her parents decided to pay; considering her parents’ cheapness, though, you’d think there’d be bitching about them insisting they keep costs down). Not even references to negate all the potential complications with something like, “We want a simple ceremony with just a few friends and family members.”

And then, out of nowhere…they bought a house. A struggling teacher who barely found a full-time position for this fall — and doesn’t exactly have tenure — and a guy trying to hustle through DeVry grad school bought a $250-$350,000 house? Unless they benefited from the subprime mortgage clusterfuck, this was the lie that broke the camel’s back. All the little bits and pieces of bullshit I had collected over the past year and a half came flooding back, and I became obsessed with proving the lie, to the extent I considered tailing her from her school to see where she was living and who (if anyone) she was living with. I checked the public home-sale records, but they updated very slowly. I didn’t find out until July that their house, supposedly bought in mid-May, doesn’t exist. From the time period she gave me, nothing was sold in either of their names, nor any “corporate” purchases or anything from parents. Unless one of them has wealthy relatives with Latin or Indian names, she was full of shit.

I still felt uncomfortable using this lack of information as my “smoking gun” — it’s too easy to prove wrong, and besides, what if they did like a “rent-to-own” thing that I’m not sure would register as a “sale” at first? I didn’t really believe any of that because when I asked pointed questions (“When are you moving?” “How are you settling in?” “Should I send you a link telling how to match duvet covers to curtains?”) she entered evasion mode. I needed to dig up more dirt. I used all the Google-/Myspace-/Facebook-stalking methods at my disposal to dig up dirt on her or her future husband but found very little worthwhile information…

…until Sunday. You see, it had been a month since I’d heard from Kelly, so I punched her name into Google and found…a court docket from Phoenix, listing her name as someone who faced an arraingment the day after Labor Day. I decided it was a coincidence, but it seemed suspicious that somebody with the exact same first and middle name, coupled with her long Polish last name (spelled in exactly the same way), would exist. It weirded me out, especially when combined with the lack of communication from her, but what am I supposed to do? Ask her what she did in Phoenix and why? Like everything else, I decided to just let it go, assuming it was just an unlikely coincidence or maybe a relative for whom she was named.

But it did encourage me to continue the stalker quest. After the suspicious home sale, I looked up her supposed boyfriend on MySpace. I found a page for him that hadn’t been logged into for over a year. It stated he was single, despite the fact that this would have been after they were dating. Then again, there were no friends but Tom, so maybe that was just the default option. But when I looked up the name on Sunday — I found him, along with some suspicious differences between what he says and what Kelly says about him.

1. He says he still lives in Orland Park (where the apartment they supposedly shared was), not Flossmoor (where Kelly claims they bought their house). This is despite the fact that this page did not exist until after they would have moved. Oh, and for those unfamiliar with the local geography, this towns are not nearly close enough to be interchangeable.
2. Despite what I said above above him deciding to buy a house while he’s still going through grad school, I didn’t hear that from Kelly; she has claimed on more than one occasion that he finished grad school before she did, even though his MySpace page says he started it after she was finished and is still attending.
3. It says he is in the IT field, which makes me wonder why Kelly still comes to me for computer troubleshooting advice (especially when I’m so out of touch, technology-wise, that I haven’t had a clue what the fuck I’m talking about in five years).
4. He doesn’t have many friends, but the overwhelming majority of the ones he does have are hot chicks (real ones, too, not the fake porn-spam ones). To top that off, the only indication of personality on his sparse profile is that he’d like to meet Danica McKellar. This tells quite a different story than the girl who claims to have this guy on one of those dog-training choke-chains.

Smoking gun? Yeah, not quite. I talked it over with Lucy, who has been keeping up with (and in many ways perpetuating) my obsession, and while she’s believed ever since the house incident that Kelly is full of shit, she didn’t suggest I present this profile as my smoking-gun because it’s pretty easy to poke holes into:

1. Two points: first, maybe she only lied about the house, and everything else is true (or at least, if confronted she might admit the house lie but not the others). Second, she has made several big deals about the uptight-ness of their parents, especially his “downstate hick” parents. True or not, here’s an easy bluff: since his sister is a MySpace friend, he needs to keep the house a secret. Home ownership is a pretty big lie to maintain (what if they decide to come for a visit?), which makes you wonder why they’d buy a house if they needed to lie about it until after they’re married, but hey, it’s plausible as a lie.
2. For as long as I’ve known her, Kelly has seen level of education as a status symbol. I remember getting really pissed at her when she suggested one of my friends was an idiot because the friend’s parents didn’t go to college. She also, in a lot of ways, has a confusing 1950s mentality about relationships, so it’s plausible to me that she’d consider having more education than her future husband an embarrassing secret that must be kept hidden, like how my grandma is five years older than my grandpa but insists she’s five years younger even though everyone knows the truth.
3. It’s unlikely but possible that Kelly, concerned about us drifting apart, comes to me with bullshit computer questions because she’s afraid at some point we won’t have anything else to talk about. Also, since he’s an IT guy for the army she might think it makes him look like a pussy that he’s defending our country by keeping computers running at a VA hospital in Illinois. (Not saying I agree, but considering her obsession with classical masculinity, I could see her trying to hide this. Besides, Lucy was the one who came up with that sub-point.)
4. Lastly, while it’s hard to believe his only friends in high school were hot women, it’s pretty easy to believe that Kelly exaggerates the tightness of the leash she has him on. She can’t control who he befriends on MySpace, or who he ogles in “men’s magazines,” no matter how much she wants us to believe she can.

Most of these points are kind of flimsy to me, but Lucy’s point stands — if I present this “evidence,” it’s easy to come up with bullshit defenses off the top of your head. It’s harder to show someone a smoking gun when they can make a good case that there’s no powder residue and a still-burning cigarette in the room. Feel free to applaud the absolute worst metaphor I’ve ever concocted.

“Fine,” I said to Lucy. “The next time I talk to her, I’ll ask specific questions about what’s going on with her beau.”

“Yeah,” she said, “and ask about the wedding date.”

Oh yeah, that. It’s been almost a year since the engagement and, to my knowledge, they’ve bought a house but not set a date. If any of it is true, it’s still weird.

Turns out, I talked to Kelly last night. It’s weird, because somehow I ended up even more suspicious, even though in theory the conversation should have allayed my fears.

It started simply enough, with her complaining she wasn’t feeling well. I prepared myself for the “unceremonious breakup” section of her fake relationships; in the past, she usually breaks off contact completely for a month or two (maybe fearing I’m too close to the source of the bullshit trail I’ve been following), then reappears miraculously over a breakup that happened in her absence from my life.

Kelly shook things up a bit this time, perhaps realizing that an engagement and home-ownership make it harder to walk away from this fake relationship. But it was just…so weird. She started off telling me that she and her fiancé went to the beach for his birthday and stayed at a hotel in the city, and while she was there she hit her head on an awkwardly placed hand-rail in the shower, which required stitches and, when she started complaining of the worst headaches she’s ever had, she ended up having a CT scan.

I tried to play coy in an attempt to potentially shake up the situation and catch her in a lie. “Why’d you stay in a hotel? Did you go to the Indiana Dunes or something?” I marveled at my handiwork. I’m imagining this type of thing happens in other cities, but what the fuck do I know? I’ve lived in many major cities, but I’ve never really noticed this same phenomenon. If I’m wrong, here’s the deal: it’s pretty common for suburbanites from the Chicagoland area to go and stay “in the city” for a romantic weekend or a vacation or something, because most of them neither have the time nor the inclination to go into the city unless they absolutely have to. I knew all this but feigned ignorance to subtly prod more details out of her.

“Oh no,” she said. “We went to North Avenue Beach, had dinner reservations at [some restaurant whose name I’ve already forgotten] and booked a room at the Drake. Of course, we ended up spending around four hours at Northwestern Memorial and didn’t get to dinner until 9:45. After that, we went to a jazz club.”

Maybe this is because one of the rare occasions where I’ve taken interest in things she says and does (Jesus, that sounds so mean — guilty!), but she doesn’t usually gush forth with such specific, unasked-for details. The first clause of the first sentence would have sufficed, and yet, here I am knowing all her evening plans including the trip to the emergency room and the specific hospital she went to. I could pick apart minor details like if it was a crowded restaurant in the Loop on a Saturday night and they missed their reservation, there’s no way they could just show up and get a table, or that if I banged my head so hard it required stitches and complained of headaches for the next two days, the last thing I’d want to do is listen to brass instruments.

Making the conversation even more bizarre, she decided to go and get some rest, then signed online a few minutes later. She said she was on her laptop but didn’t think she’d be able to get on the wireless network her fiancé set up without a password (which she didn’t have), but he apparently didn’t secure it. This is the first reference she’s ever made, in the entire course of this relationship, to him having any interest in or knowledge of technology. Then, about four seconds later, she started talking about how great The Wonder Years is — raving about this long-finished show while she watched one of the nightly reruns on a local independent station. It seemed like weird timing to me that the day after I find the guy’s profile, she’s making sudden allusions to it. Maybe it was a coincidence?

For some reason that I can only assume was accidental (if she is toying with me somehow, I have to give her far more credit than I do), she initiated a “Direct IM” session, which flashed her IP address. Of all the things she could have flashed, this would have been near the bottom of my list, but it did give me some valuable information. I punched it into a geolocation service:

ORLAND PARK, IL

H…uh.

I’m not prepared to suggest she was still living with her parents. Living in an apartment, alone, maybe, but this took me by surprise. Still, could this be a coincidence? When we found the original MySpace profile, the one that hadn’t been logged into for ages, Lucy suggested Kelly made it herself. The timing of the last login matched the approximate time Kelly announced they were “still together.” But this new profile — could this be fake, too, but with a little more effort put into it? It’s sparse, but if Kelly has decided to go the route of “retconning” to add some new quirks to her fake future husband, an equally fake MySpace profile would go a long way… The only reason I find it hard to believe, other than the insanity, is that she doesn’t even have her own MySpace profile. Unless she’s just that good…

At the very least, I know she was lying about the house purchase. I’m not sure what to make of the rest of it. Unless she’s a mega-stalker, putting even my best work to shame, I can’t accept this as a coincidence. Would she really end up living in the same town as this guy, when there are places cheaper and closer (to her school) to live, for any other reason than that she’s dating him?

The past dishonesty prepared me for the worst, but now I don’t even know what to think. Lucy suggested the next time I talk to her, I really grill Kelly hard about the wedding plans. I can’t think of another strategy, but when I’ve made the effort in the past she usually just changes the subject. Where in the past that would have led me to assume she’s bullshitting me, now I can’t help wondering if maybe there’s a little more to it. Upset because he won’t commit to a date? Angry because maybe they settled on a date but he won’t help with the arrangements? I had a lot of circumstantial evidence that could just as easily point to honesty, if I’d just look at it that way. Then again, if she didn’t have such a lengthy history of big, pointless lies (including the house!), I’d take it all at face value.

If anybody has any advice on how to deal with this situation (even if it’s just “shut up, she’s not even lying, you retard”), I’m all ears.

Posted by Stan on September 11, 2007 10:26 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

Killer Bees!

Nothing terrifies me more than insects and spiders. Little creepy crawly piles of shit. You hear things like you swallow an average of five spiders a year (in your sleep), or that flies use you as a toilet, and it reduces my comfort level to 0. I know I shouldn’t be afraid of something tiny and mostly harmless, but you know what? I don’t like things touching me that I haven’t specifically asked to touch me. This isn’t limited to insects and spiders, but they seem to be the ones with no regard for other living objects, especially ones with rolled newspapers and fly-swatters. I’m pretty sure it goes deeper than that, though. Dogs jump on me and try to lick my crotch, and it doesn’t bother me. Cats look at me like I murdered their parents and will pay for my crimes, and it doesn’t bother me (P.S.: I no longer eat cats). Animals of all kinds have unusual perceptions of space (including humans — what is up with fuckers crowding you in line at the grocery store?), but most of the time if you do something like gently push a dog away from your penis so you can try licking it yourself, or saying to the guy behind you to take THREE FUCKING STEPS BACK before you stab him, they will take the hint. Not so with insects.

Also, every time I see one — even if it turns out to be a piece of lint, or something — I get a queasy “fight-or-flight” feeling, and my typical instinct is to RUN FOR MY FUCKING LIFE. From something 5000 times smaller than me. I may have had some insect-related trauma in my past, because that kind of instinct doesn’t even kick in when I see a vicious dog, foaming at the mouth, with no owner in sight and no fence to keep us apart. I get into my Mr. Furley karate stance and it’s fucking on.

A few years ago, I got stung by a yellowjacket. Shortly thereafter, I launched a misguided water-based assault while in a Vicodin haze (there would have been a link there, except I apparently forgot to blog it; enjoy this, instead!). This hasn’t improved Stan-insect relationships at all.

At lunch today, I sat in my car reading. Usually I go for a vigorous constitutional and return more in love with my job than ever, but I haven’t been able to do that so far this week. Here’s why (that’s right, you’re getting two blog entries for the price of one — brought to you buy Laziness™):

I work on a street that curves around, sort of like an L but with a reeeeeeeally curvy corner. I usually park on one end of the curve, so I have to clear traffic on both sides, causing quite a bit of head motion. Also, I lack depth perception (seriously!), so I sometimes have a rough time doing things like walking without looking down at my feet to make sure the ground is still there. And, to add insult to injury, the shoddy lawn curves downward, so the curb is a lot higher. These forces of nature, combined with traffic coming in my direction from either side of the curve, led me to trip on the raised curb and tumble into the middle of the street.

I staggered to my feet, waved the cars (both of which had to stop) past while I stared down like the embarrassment that I am, and limped to my car. Did I mention I was wearing a pair of jeans I’ve had since high school, which have become so threadbare they’re basically a loose conglomeration of patches with bits of the original denim in key, load-bearing areas? Yeah, so those broke apart without much difficulty, resulting in me scraping the shit out of my knees. Also, I scraped one elbow as my arms valiantly attempted to protect my valuable, valuable face from the asphalt.

The drive home was a little difficult, with all the vibration and the blood and pain. I bandaged the shit out of myself, but Friday was pretty miserable. I had to limp all over the place. It was good to have the weekend to recuperate, but I’m still not at 100%. The knees, with their annoying flexibility, are not the easiest body parts to heal, considering it’s not easy to keep them from moving around. I’m taking it a little easy on the “power-walking” until I don’t need to, you know, re-dress each wound every day.

So I was reading, and it’s a pretty nice day — cooler than it’s been in months, sunny, with a nice breeze blowing. After awhile, I got a little tired of the turgid prose of what I’m reading, so I got out my iPod and, I’m only partly ashamed to admit, cranked up some of my own disgusting songs, since I can’t very well listen to them during work hours. About halfway through this song, a particularly strong gust blew something into my car. It landed on the door handle. I turned to look at —

A bee. One inch from my arm.

I panicked and began thrashing around like the autistic boy who proved Fermat’s Last Theorem.* I’m pretty sure this is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do when faced with a nearby bee, but I can’t help myself. I react, do stupid things, then either apologize or complain about how nobody will accept my insincere apologies.

I rolled into the passenger seat, got all tangled in the headphone cable (with the iPod somehow finding itself behind my back, whipped open the passenger door and rolled out on the grassy knoll next to my car. I whirled around to get a visual on the bee —

— which hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Is it dead?” I wondered, considering the slight (disgusting) coolness factor in having a bee die, fall out of the air, and be pushed by the wind into my car.

Then I saw it move. Nausea rose. I had no idea what to do. I considered trying to shoo it out, but I thought it would either get confused and end up deeper in the car, or worse, turn on me. The first thing I did, to keep up the appearance that I’m not a creepy weirdo, was whip out my cell and dial Lucy, to give the impression I’m just a normal guy making a call, unable to get a signal from inside my car. Yeah, it’s weird, but it’s less weird than standing outside of a car for no apparen reason.

While I yammered, it occurred to me that I felt excruciating pain coming from the general knee area. Oh, that’s right: when I rolled my ass out of the car, I ended up slamming my semi-injured knees all over everything — adrenaline took over, but it was gone now, replaced with pain and a mild oozing sensation. Clearly, the scabs were obliterated. Lucy pretended to be sympathetic, even though I knew she was laughing on the inside, and then announced she had to hang up. I muttered some obscenities as a goodbye.

I went over to the driver’s side and whipped my jacket over the window, in an attempt to thwack the bee and either kill it, drag it out, or set it in motion so it got the fuck out of my car. When I removed the jacket, I peered into the car, and found…nothing.

The fuck? I checked the jacket out and saw neither bee guts nor a carcass fall out. I saw nothing fly away. I opened the door and gave a cursory examination around the area it would have fallen if it had, indeed, died. Nothing there.

Was it, perhaps, a ghost bee?

No, you idiot.

It might have gotten wedged under my seat accidentally. It might have flown away when I was distracted.

I left my windows cracked a little so it could fly or crawl out if it is indeed alive, but I’m dreading the drive home.

*I may have made up the autistic boy.

UPDATE, later on 9/11/07: Here’s an unusual conclusion. When I decided to crack my windows, I put my jacket and backpack into the trunk so my eggplant-colored 1993 Chrysler Concorde with the missing door panel wouldn’t entice any criminals. I drove home without incident, with the windows open as wide as possible (just in case). When I got home, I popped the trunk, pulled out my jacket — and saw a yellow streak blast off toward an evergreen. The fucking bee was on my jacket and just sat there, on the jacket, for four hours. I’ve been told my sweat has the distinctive odor of brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tarts. Could this have lured the bee to my jacket?

Posted by Stan on September 11, 2007 2:14 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (2)  | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation

September 7, 2007

The Mountains of Indiana: A Story of Disdain

Long-time readers know I have a tendency to act bitter and vindictive mostly for entertainment purposes; sometimes I really am bitter and vindictive for various reasons, but usually I just enjoy being mean. Not mean-for-meanness sake like Bluto or something; I just don’t take life seriously enough to get worked up over much, yet I find it entertaining when others do, so I try to provoke those feelings. It’s not one of my better traits, but it is one I’ve tried to work on (often with unfortunate results). Once in awhile, though, people stumble into my crosshairs and turn into an arch-nemesis, usually without even knowing it. Would I really announce an arch-nemesis to the person? That’s not how I roll; I prefer to quietly plot their demise while maintaining a ruse of friendship. I believe it’s a strategy laid down in Machiavelli’s The Prince, but I might have that confused with Crazy from the Heat by David Lee Roth.

I’m sure it won’t surprise anybody that I managed to gain an arch-nemesis I’d never even met. Back when I was reading for The Manager, he sent me two or three scripts by this particular writer — certainly, all of them were bad in a variety of ways, but one in particular has gone down in history as the worst script I’ve ever read. Worse than Monster Truck Madness, even. There’s no denying the shitastrophe of MTM, but at least it made sense. It justified its existence as a clothesline for lazy jokes and gave off an overpowering “Rob Schneider star vehicle” stench that made me suspect that it really could get made.

The script by this writer — nobody could make it, because everybody involved in the project would lapse into a coma when it came time to unravel the storyline and figure out just what the hell is going on within those pages. I am a big — huge — fan of conspiracy stories, but this shit didn’t even attempt to make sense. It garnered from me a tour de force of coverage, epic in length and attention to detail, featuring an explosive commentary that undid every attempt at a plot twist, every false characterization, every baffling loose end — something I’m so proud of to this day that I would like to believe the very mention of this coverage prompts a weary moment of silence, with anyone in earshot quivering with either terror or ecstasy (maybe both).

I don’t mind spilling the secrets of the “plot,” but I am trying to keep things on the down-low. It’s already easy enough to tie me back to The Manager, so spilling the names of his theoretical clients, the titles of the work, character names — any easily Googled keyword — will be stripped. I don’t trust myself in going the extra mile to alter significant plot details with a similar lack of coherence — I don’t want to be accused of going over the top or of libeling someone when it’s my own crappy writing and not his, so here it goes:

SYNOPSIS: Ten years ago, 17-year-old JOHN watches his father LARRY make a drug deal with mobster VITO DELFINO. In the present, TED GREENWALT works at a car wash. He’s poor, his wife SARAH is fed up with him, and it seems most of his life is spent at a bar with friends LUKE and ETHAN. When Ted forgets “date night,” Sarah locks herself in the den, leaving Ted to sleep alone. He has what he thinks is a dream of going to an exclusive yacht party, driving a Mercedes, owning a mansion, and sleeping with gorgeous MAYA. Everyone keeps calling him “David,” and he runs into Vito Delfino at the party. When Ted wakes up the next morning in the mansion, he realizes it’s all true. He also realizes gunmen are after him, though he doesn’t know why. He leaves Maya and goes back to his “real” life — except with the Mercedes, which he shows off to all his friends and co-workers. In the Mercedes he finds an address scratched on the back of a business card. This starts an investigation — at the address he finds MONTGOMERY, a singer from the party the previous night. Montgomery doesn’t know who he is or what he wants and asks Ted to leave. Ted tries to piece together the events of last night, revealed through flashbacks. He also recalls through flashbacks the events of 10 years ago — getting into a car accident with his six-year-old son Mark and Larry’s son, John.

To impress angry Sarah, Ted shows her the Mercedes and takes her to the mansion. He claims an uncle died and left it all to him. Sarah finds a receipt for the Olympic Hotel and demands an explanation. Ted lies, saying he wanted to give her the option of a mansion or a cheap motel. Later that night, Ted gets a call from Luke. Ted meets him at the bar, but when he mistakes an attractive girl for Maya, he freaks out and leaves. In the Mercedes, a Town Car with a Gunman driving pulls up alongside Ted. This leads to a chase, from which Ted narrowly escapes. Back at the mansion, Sarah’s gone — she found Maya’s bra from the previous night and left an angry note. Ted goes to spend the night at Luke’s. He’s awakened a few hours later by COPS who have come to check out the noise. Ted leaves the others sleeping and sneaks out the back door. At his apartment, Ted finds an angry message from Sarah on their answering machine. He also discovers it’s being watched by the Town Car. Ted sneaks away in the Mercedes and goes to the docks where the yacht party was held. He bribes the VALET for information, and he gives Ted Maya’s address. The Town Car shows up and Ted makes another difficult escape. He goes back to his apartment and has an awkward moment with Sarah. Ted drives to Malibu to find Maya. She says odd things that imply she knows more about the situation than she’s letting on. Two ATVs chase after them. Ted and Maya hop in the Mercedes and outrun them to the freeway. The ATVs fire rockets at them. Ted takes a downtown exit, and Nina forces them to stop—right in front of the Olympic Hotel. He realizes Maya is probably in on the whole thing when he recognizes her shoes — a pair identical to one he saw at Montgomery’s home. They come across Sarah at the hotel. She’s not pleased to see Ted with Maya. They argue, and she stalks off. Ted and Maya take a cab to Montgomery’s house and find it empty, abandoned. A HITMAN comes to take them out. Ted manages to get away, but Maya isn’t so lucky.

Ted goes to the police, a SERGEANT BECKER, to report getting shot at. Becker points out Ted’s picture on a wanted poster, with the name “DAVID HARBOROUGH,” wanted in connection with the death of Vito Delfino. Ted convinces Becker that he has the wrong man — Ted isn’t “David Harborough.” Becker runs Ted’s license and grudgingly lets him go. Ted — at this point looking like a bum — manages to get a lawyer’s business card. He goes to a department store to buy new clothes, gets himself all decked-out and smooth-looking, and returns to the police station. He speaks with DETECTIVE SAMSA, saying he’s Delfino’s lawyer. Samsa doesn’t believe him. Ted returns to the apartment, where Sarah shows him separation papers. She’s kidnapped almost immediately. The police bust in and search his place. They find the bloody knife that killed Delfino. They arrest Ted, who calls Luke and has him use David Harborough’s financial resources to bail him out. Once out, Ted realizes several things: he actually did kill Delfino (but was set up), when he was in the car accident that killed Mark and John it was because John had stolen drugs from Larry that belonged to Delfino, they were run off the road by Montgomery (who worked for Delfino) — and Larry is behind the whole current setup. Ted finally has to spill the beans — apparently he told Larry that John ran off to join the navy, and he told Sarah that Mark was kidnapped. He admits what happened, then pins it all on Montgomery (who’s helping Larry). Larry is so angry that he causes another car accident. Ted wakes up in the hospital, with Sarah in the next bed. Maya shows up, explains that she helped because Larry was her father, and emphasizes that Ted should be paying attention to his wife.

ANALYSIS: On the positive side: the opening exposition that establishes Ted’s character — his daily routine, his habit of lying, his marital problems, etc. — that all works pretty well. The reappearance of Sarah periodically to continue that conflict also works, building toward that resolution where Ted can finally value his wife at the end.

However, this screenplay is packed to the gills with logic problems that render the story first incomprehensible, then just plain frustrating:

• When Ted wakes up to the sounds of gun-toting scumbags beating on his door and has to make a deft escape, why does he think it’s a good idea to take his wife back there? Especially when he didn’t even bother to remove the “evidence” of his infidelity the night before.
• If I understand the basic conspiracy, it goes like this: to avenge his son, Larry wanted to not just frame Ted for Delfino’s death — he wanted to get Ted into a drugged state where he’d actually commit the crime. The ultimate goal, one assumes, is so that Larry can get some justice. It’s never really clear why Larry wants Delfino dead, why Montgomery would go along with his father’s murder, or why they’d send people to try and kill Ted when their main goal is to have him arrested and convicted of murder. Is that not their goal? If not, what’s the point of setting up the whole conspiracy in the first place? Why not just kill Ted?
• In the same vein, what’s the purpose of providing Ted/”David” with a mansion, a fancy car, credit cards, etc.? All he has to do is exactly what he does: go back home, go back to work, realize this is a “fake” life. They go to great expense to get Ted to “accept” this fake life, but they don’t think he’d be curious enough about how he got this life to find out any information? Even if he has no interest in details, sending mercenaries to hunt Ted down seems like it’d make even the least curious person just a little bit interested in what’s going on with this fake life.
• They also provide Ted with just enough clues to put together the whole conspiracy, which seems like it’d be the antithesis of what they want. People going to the trouble and expense of creating an identity out of thin air (especially a “wealthy playboy” identity) would hopefully be smart enough to tie up loose ends like having key players’ addresses written down, hotel receipts in pockets, etc.
• The mysterious house in the Hollywood Hills. It seems like an odd setup that’s never cleared up. Is this where Montgomery actually lives? Did he clear out as soon as he knew Ted was on to him? As written, it’s an intentional layer of mind-fucking, but to what end? The visits to that house are more helpful than any other clue in Ted figuring out the conspiracy, so what’s going on there needs to be made clear.
• Sergeant Becker scoffs at Ted for giving what he assumes is a fake ID. When he runs it and finds out it’s real, he gets angry but lets Ted go. He doesn’t think that, perhaps, “David Harborough” is an alias? Or that “David” pasted his picture onto Ted’s real driver’s license (therefore all the information would check out)? Or that a guy accused of murdering a known mobster would have the resources to create plenty of legitimate-but-fake IDs in police databases? Why would Becker let him go?
• From the beginning of the script, it’s clear that Ted lies constantly, but he’s possibly the worst liar I’ve ever seen. It’s very difficult to believe he could have kept the charade involving John and Mark going for any length of time. Even if he did — why? Obviously Larry is fond of blood-vendettas, but considering how easily he accepts that Ted was pushed off the road by somebody else because John had his cocaine, Larry could put two and two together and realize Ted’s telling the truth. Ted can feel guilty all he wants, but he wasn’t responsible for the accident. Even the police (who obviously handled the situation; Larry mentions a police report) didn’t find him responsible/negligent, so why the big cover-up? I’m not saying he doesn’t have to cover it up or lie about it, but (a) make him a better liar, and (b) make it clear exactly why he felt he needed to lie to both Sarah and Larry about their kids for a decade.
• Big loose end: Ted actually killed Delfino (didn’t he? if not, that’s unclear). Sure, he survives and unravels the conspiracy, but he’s still got a murder rap to beat. Considering Ted actually did the crime, this might not be easy. Where’s the resolution?

Aside from this, another big problem pops up on page one: the short scene involving John, Larry, and Delfino. It makes everything too obvious — we know it’s going to come back to those three in the end. By the time we realize John is most likely dead in a car accident (which is obvious long before it’s fully shown to be true) and Delfino was murdered recently, the Larry reveal is pretty obvious. There’s nobody else it could be.

It seems kind of silly that Montgomery is Delfino’s son, and as I pointed out it creates a logic problem as far as why he’d allow Delfino’s murder to take place. Making him hired muscle, willing to do anything for the highest bidder, makes it far more believable and loses the necessity for an explanation for why he wants Delfino dead; his only loyalty is to money, so Delfino doesn’t matter. It’s also a little too neat and tidy that not only is he Delfino’s son, but Maya is Larry’s daughter. It oversimplifies the motivations — both Montgomery and Maya are willing to commit crimes (or force others to commit crimes) out of nothing but family loyalty? It diminishes their characters by not giving them any ulterior motives or shades of gray.

I don’t usually go on that long. It’s usually two or three short paragraphs for the synopsis, then one or two paragraphs of analysis. When a story relies on so many little details to make it such dreck, you need the detail or else the feedback makes no sense. I also wanted to get the point across, this being the third and worst script I had read from this writer, that he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. Here is one area where the bitter-‘n’-vindictive kicks in. I’ll admit a slight tinge of jealousy that somebody so bad could be a “client,” while I was slaving away as an “intern.” Of course, the more I found out about The Manager, the happier I was keeping my distance.

If nothing else, The Manager took the hint — I never received another script from this writer. Also, my friend Mark got a rewrite of this same script that incorporated many of my suggestions, but it was still a disaster. Poor feedback, or poor writing? You be the judge!

Why did I get so angry, though? Surface-wise, I’ve read worst scripts — scripts written by people whose grasp of the English language (despite being born-and-bred Americans) is so poor that trying to figure out what they’re trying to say is an act of futility, comedies so unfunny I can’t even fathom the mind that would put the “jokes” to paper, action scripts that try to coast on a brilliant first 15 pages while circling the drain for the next 60 before just bottoming out. I’ve managed to read an entire gamut of awful shit sent to shady men with no credentials, only because “accepts unsolicited material” is written in the ad. The problem with this script, the reason I got so angry, was the raw potential. The man can string together a sentence. He can write decent dialogue. He even has a fairly good sense of characterization, and a shitload of ambition crammed into his scripts. The end result is messy as hell, and adding insult to injury — he doesn’t learn from mistakes. Each screenplay I read had the same kinds of problems, over and over again, despite the feedback I (and others, I’m sure) gave.

After I quit reading for The Manager, I tried to keep track of some of the more memorably offensive authors (some of whom were general submissions, not “clients”). Most of them have blogs and/or MySpace pages I can read for the bitter-‘n’-vindictive, but it came as a huge, coronary-inducing shock that the author of the screenplay mentioned above had a novel coming out.

A novel?! From this guy?! How?! My first thought was that he is as depraved and deceptive as I am, creating a fake publishing company (in fact, he’s the one who gave me the idea) to perpetuate the myth that he’s published. No dice — this is actually a real place, to my unending horror.

Weeks passed between my discovery and the novel’s publication, and my rage and confusion softened. It was replaced with an odd, dewy sensation I’ve come to know as “hope.” Yes, I put my prejudices aside and reminded myself — this guy is a fellow writer. Maybe screenplays aren’t the medium for him; maybe he needs the the authoritarian control and added details only the novel form can provide. All the elaborate twists and confusing characters will make sense thanks to the magic of internal thought and droning, ponderous explanations — material bad screenwriters think of as excess fat (Syd Field agrees!) and good screenwriters know how to work around.

In a show of meaningless solidarity, I bought the book the day it came out and started a-reading.

And it was a-awful.

My change of heart made me want it to be good so badly that I tried to ignore the initial flaws and hope he’d find his groove and by the end, I’d be waiting breathlessly for his sophomore effort. About 50 pages into it, I was already ready to give up. Let me describe the very, very basic plot: a disparate group of people from all over the U.S., for various reasons, set out to find a girl. They don’t know why, but they feel compelled to search for her, if only to figure out why she’s turned into the object of their obsession.

At the very least, it’s an interesting premise. Here’s the biggest problem: there is no real plot (for 300 of its 330 pages, it’s just people wandering around for no clear reason), which is fine if you can rely on interesting and unique characters to carry the story. You…can’t. He gives each character one (maybe two, if we’re lucky) trait that carries them through the book. They aren’t even interesting traits. “This guy’s a secret cutter.” That’s his entire character. We find out little else about him, or anyone else, over the course of the book. It’s supposed to be a journey of discovery, I guess, but it fails so spectacularly there’s a tacked-on epilogue explaining to us, in blunt terms, how they changed.

Aside from that, there are big story and character questions that all pretty much boil down to: why would anyone, real or fictional, do that? With no explanations, we’re left to guess, and most of my guesses ended up as “sloppy writing and no research.” I could go on and on, in detail, but none of it is terribly important. I’ll sum up some of the typical goofiness by using as an example a few early scenes:

One of the characters dials a phone number for no apparent reason (in fairness, it’s not apparent to the character, either — that much is fairly interesting). When he gets somebody on the line who sounds like she’s been kidnapped, he calls the cops. Later, a police detective forces two uniforms to break into his home while he’s showering. Again, to his credit, he at least questions the legality of them breaking in — but never explains what would motivate them to do this. It’s an unnecessary (and, again, illegal) action, made even more confusing by a few questionable police procedure actions. Now, I know not every detective has a partner, but this doesn’t mean the ones who don’t are given uniformed cops as foot soldiers to break and enter for them or act as secretaries. In a later scene, these same uniforms show up at his office…to take him upstairs to a conference room where the plainclothes detective is waiting. Why? Don’t they have parking tickets to hand out?

It’s compounded by the illogic of what happens next: the guy goes back to his cubicle, and his boss tells him if the police show up again, he’s fired. This is a man who hasn’t committed a crime, who is helping the police as a concerned citizen, and the whole exchange makes it more difficult to believe the uniforms have any purpose for being there (other than to cause this dust-up). I could understand the boss getting flustered if the dude had a record, or if he was getting arrested, or if the boss had it in for the character — there are plenty of explanations for all of these things, but we are provided with none. It’s difficult to maintain suspension of disbelief when there is little attention to detail, and we can’t believe the broad strokes we’re given.

And then there are the mountains of Indiana. You heard me right, and any Illinoisian who has driven to obscene corners of that rural state looking for the finest illegal fireworks and unconventional (some might say “physics-defying”) pornography knows full well: while there may be more than corn in Indiana, there sure as hell aren’t mountains. Yet, the climactic point in the book occurs in a small town nestled in “the mountains of Indiana.” Look, I’ve read a couple of reviews that make the (misguided) case that anything that doesn’t make sense (plenty of it!) can be chalked up to a David Lynch-like surrealism. How can you read anything about mountains of Indiana and not agree that it’s a mess of poor research and inattention to detail? The book does nothing to draw attention to the strageness of this imagery (or any of the other notable examples of “surrealism”), and the story could easily take place in a region that is authentically mountainous. I’m a big fan of ironic throwaway lines, or even a placid little, “Such-and-such had never been to Indiana and didn’t realize how mountainous the terrain was” if he wants to maintain the leaden, Bergmanesque seriousness. Just something to address the fact that the author clearly has no idea what he’s talking about: he’s never been to Indiana, he’s never even heard of the stupid knobs!

I don’t know what he was trying to accomplish. If this was supposed to be a dream-like meditation on…something, there’s too much reality; if it’s supposed to be real, the book is sloppy and riddled with implausibility. My reading on it is that he was going for something along the lines of “magical realism,” in the very vague sense that “everything’s real until it’s not.” The book is loaded with very obvious moments of strangeness, heightened reality, things that can’t or shouldn’t happen — but it mostly tries to remain grounded in reality. Tries.

You might notice problems in this novel that crop up in the screenplay I talk about above. This is the main source of frustration: in the few interviews I’ve discovered online, he keeps mentioning how frequently he writes, but what does it mean if he’s not allowing himself to improve the craft? I’ve read four full pieces of work by this man, and all four of them have the same plausibility issues, lack of continuity, lack of payoff, and lack of authentic character development. It’s hugely disappointing and makes me a little happier to continue having this guy as an arch-nemesis.

I won’t deny this: part of my reaction comes from jealousy. He got published, legitimately (even if it’s a tiny press who will undoubtedly fold after this misstep), and I didn’t. But go back and re-read the part where I wanted this book to be good. Obviously I’m pissed because he got a piece of shit published, but not as much as you think — it actually makes me optimistic. Rather than going with tricks and fakery, this hunk of junk has me convinced I could get a legitimate novel published, at a bigger and better place. No, I think I’m really mad because I think this writer does have talent (I wouldn’t have made it through 330 pages if he didn’t); he just can’t or won’t learn from his mistakes, and he has an uncanny knack for generating a lot of goodwill at the beginning, then squandering it all by the end.

Posted by Stan on September 7, 2007 6:45 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (2)  | Career-Based Rambling, Classic Issues

September 23, 2007

A Touch of Frost: Seasons 11 & 12

The one and only CSI: Original Recipe episode I watched all the way through featured a series of serial killings of women in restrooms. The killer would paint messages in blood on the stall doors, and the big third act twist had Gil Grissom (William Petersen) figure out some important facts: all the stall doors came from the same manufacturer, because they were from the same chain of department stores in the Southwestern United States, meaning (somehow) the killer was a trucker who delivered to these stores. But how could he figure out who the trucker was? They needed to find his route, but how? Then Gil gets that steely, studly look on his face, and with a flourish of editing and awful music he whirls around all the stall doors into geographical order—and there’s the route, complete with a superimposed map of I-15. This is portrayed as utterly mind-blowing brilliance on the part of Gil Grissom, even as the brains of every single audience member repeat, “Duh, duh, duh,” the tragic mantra of moronic American police procedurals.

I’d never seen A Touch of Frost before receiving my review copy. David Jason’s performance struck me like an embittered barfly after a Cubs loss, all surprising toughness and intense focus. The remarkable thing about Jason as Detective Inspector Jack Frost is the apparent personal derision he has for the perpetrators of crimes. Sure, plenty of cop shows feature men and women who want to stop murderers, kidnappers, and thieves—but Frost isn’t angry about the crimes, isn’t mad about the victims. David Jason plays Frost who is personally offended that someone would commit a crime and try to cover it up. He wants to solve the crimes not for the sake of justice, but for the sake of saying, “You’ll never get one over on me.” He delivers most of his lines with a sort of exasperation and disappointment that sloppy criminals think they can get away with anything. They always make mistakes, and Frost will always be waiting in the wings until it’s his turn to uncover the mistakes and pounce.

The writing of the series operates in a similar fashion, cutting between Frost’s criminal investigations and subplots with never-before-seen average Joes. You know they’re up to something, you know it has to connect with the crimes—but it takes quite awhile to put together the relationship. Even when the relationships and motives are dredged up early, one of the nice things A Touch of Frost portrays that very few American cop shows won’t, is more frustration: Frost knows who did it, the audience knows who did it, we all know why they did it—but the evidence just isn’t there. If Frost arrested them, they’d go free. He has to spend more time uncovering dirt just to prove what he already knows through instinct and/or circumstantial evidence.

A Touch of Frost shows a nice balance of character development, showing Frost’s life as a humdrum cop, spending more time filling out paperwork and yelling at subordinates than investigating. In fact, sometimes his personal life even helps him solve the case, as when he uses a lollipop to tie several clues together and discover a motive. It also makes us sympathize a bit with the guilty by showing us their lives, their motives, what they’d gain by committing the crime and what they’d lose by getting caught. This is the kind of thing Americans, right now, can only get on HBO’s The Wire. Others have attempted, with varying success, to show the criminal perspective—NBC’s Boomtown and Homicide: Life on the Street, for instance—but it’s a rare thing. Maybe it’s rare in the UK, as well, and maybe that’s why A Touch of Frost is (according to the packaging) their #1 detective series.

The writing is satisfactorily twisting, David Jason’s performance is top-notch, and every supporting character (cops and criminals) gives it their all. Did anything about this DVD set disappoint me? Only this: it only contains three episodes. It did, however, encourage me to load up seasons 1-10 on my Netflix queue.

Posted by Stan on September 23, 2007 4:09 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

Chancer – Series 1

For the first three episodes of Chancer, I listened to a great deal of high-finance jargon and dry British wit, witnessed obscene actions of manipulation and deceit, but if asked to explain the story I would have stammered and stumbled and given up. I had no clue what was happening or why. I had to plunge forward for the sake of the review, however, but if it had just been me, catching a marathon of reruns at 2 a.m. on BBC America, I would have shut it off in frustration.

I couldn’t tell you if the show made sense to British audiences in 1991; maybe the intrigue and confusion of the high-finance world appealed to that post-Wall Street era more than it does to a person living in the collapsed rubble of the e-Conomy bubble. But as the characters formulated and as the dust and debris of the machinations of the first three episodes settled, Chancer turns into an enjoyable epic of corporate corruption, city “ethics” versus country morality, and globalization.

The story begins with a fire at Douglas Motors, a small company that manufactures luxury Leopards (I assume this is a play on Jaguar) selling for ridiculous amounts of money. Each Leopard is hand-crafted, but decades of automation and decreasing car prices are leading Douglas to collapse. To the bank, the fire is the last straw. Robert Douglas (Benjamin Whitrow, giving perhaps the strongest performance on the show) refuses to let his company die like this. His son-in-law, Gavin (Matthew Marsh), offers to talk to his business consultant friend in London.

Enter Stephen Crane (Clive Owen), a manipulative risk-taker who somehow manages to come out on top, every time. Even after some light insider trading during the first few episodes, Crane joins up with Douglas Motors and offers himself a huge salary to consult without having anything like a business model, a strategy to cut the competition, or investors. Who needs them?

The first half of the series revolves around Stephen Crane’s brash, citified business anti-ethics getting in the way of Robert Douglas’s close-knit, family-operated motor company. When Douglas finally accepts that Crane has the best of intentions, the series shifts more to focus on how Crane will manage to keep the company afloat by doing fairly illegal things while trying to avoid getting caught. It’s especially difficult when business rival Piers Garfield-Ward (Simon Shepherd) and former boss Jimmy Blake (Leslie Phillips) are out for blood.

The story builds to massive payoffs in the last three episodes. Each is constructed as a nearly standalone thriller as Stephen Crane’s past misdeeds catch up to him, and he has to deftly maneuver to stay ahead of businessmen who share his craft and cunning but have the added emotional investment of crushing Crane, and by extension Douglas Motors. The angst boils over until the series froths to its depressing, existential conclusion.

Once the show lays down its business ground rules and gives the impression of what it will be about, Chancer is a wildly entertaining, unpredictable series. However, it has the occasional misstep in the form of soap-opera subplots that go nowhere. Perhaps this is what audiences went for at the time (maybe it’s what audiences still go for now, if the popularity of Grey’s Anatomy is any indication), but it mars an otherwise complex, interesting show. We have the mysterious story of the prodigal son, Jamie Douglas (Sean Pertwee, giving an alternately bizarre and irritating performance), returning to the family for the first time since his mother’s death four years earlier. Other than giving Benjamin Whitrow some great material to work with, it doesn’t add up to much, and Jamie’s pretty much forgotten by the writers a few episodes after he leaves.

There is a similar preoccupation with romantic entanglements. Gavin cheats on his wife with a store clerk in town (among others); Stephen Crane dumps kindred spirit Joanna Franklyn (Susannah Harker) for Robert Douglas’s tedious, egotistical daughter Victoria (Lynsey Baxter). Joanna gets involved with Crane’s rival, Piers. At best, these tacked-on stories reveal new insights into the characters. I still wish they’d done more to justify their existence, considering the way many of them peter out without satisfactory conclusions. Victoria simply waltzes off to a new job in America and Crane forgets her almost immediately. Gavin’s story leads to a lot of melodrama and goofiness.

Joanna’s relationships with both Piers and Crane are probably the most interesting, nuanced, and necessary romantic stories. Her father is a tycoon investing in Douglas Motors whose role grows more and more prominent as the show progresses. Joanna is also a co-conspirator in Crane’s insider trading early in the series. She shares a chemistry with Stephen Crane unmatched by Victoria, who wants to while away the hours arguing with Crane while a “look how cute I think I am” smile creases her face. I’d rather have the histrionics of selfish Gavin shouting at his wife Penny (Caroline Langrishe) than that.

Still, these subplots can’t keep Chancer down. They pad the proceedings a bit, but in the end it’s a series well worth watching, especially for Clive Owen fans. Although Benjamin Whitrow’s Robert Douglas has King Lear-esque shades of depth and vulnerability, the show belongs to Owen. He starts the series as an unabashedly unpleasant grifter, but by the end, audiences will find themselves cheering for him and his misanthropic actions. That’s no small feat.

Posted by Stan on September 23, 2007 4:15 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

Cracker: A New Terror

Perhaps wanting to distance himself from international success as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies, Robbie Coltrane returns to his other famous role, Dr. Eddie Fitzgerald, an abusive, insecure, alcoholic forensic psychologist. A New Terror takes a “ripped-from-the-headlines” approach by drawing parallels between America’s War on Terror and the terrorist acts in Northern Ireland and England. I know some about this political situation, but not much, and that’s kind of the point.

Like A Touch of Frost, Cracker: A New Terror cuts between Fitz’s domestic woes (he’s come back to England from Australia, where he and his wife have lived for 12 years, for his daughters wedding) and getting roped into a murder investigation, and the life of the soon-to-be murderer, a former British soldier named Kenny Archer (Anthony Flanagan) who suffers from post-traumatic stress in the wake of his own involvement in quelling Northern Irish terrorist forces. He plays Russian roulette while on the phone with suicide hotlines, saying things to the social worker like, “If I don’t kill myself, it’ll be somebody else.”

True to his word, he kills an American stand-up comic who makes a series of obscene, on-the-nose jokes comparing al-Qaeda to the Northern Irish. Archer is, by coincidence (I assume?), in the same bar getting trashed, and he decides it’s an appropriate time for murder. But the plot thickens: Archer is a cop, and the stand-up comic is the son of a wealthy American businessman and his socialite wife. Let the commentary begin!

Yes, Cracker: A New Terror features an overwhelming amount of angst over American foreign policy: globalization, the War on Terror, our cultural ignorance about happenings abroad. It’s pretty harsh, and unfortunately pretty true, but let this serve as a warning for folks who might not take criticism of our country lying down: watching this won’t make you happy.

Archer’s actions excel, especially when he’s assigned to protect the wealthy American family. He kills the father, tries to make it look like a robbery, but it strikes Fitz as a little too suspicious. It’s perhaps inevitable that Fitz will get his man, which is why the writers pad the episode with trouble involving his wife. I’ve never seen the original Cracker series, but it appears his wife wanted Fitz to retire for a reason; she’s not pleased about him getting dragged back into the underworld of murder and depravity when he’s supposed to be spending time with his daughter and grandkids. The conclusion of the procedural aspects probably won’t surprise, but the ending of his domestic woes are a bit more shocking.

Fans of the Cracker series regard this as a mediocre-at-best “episode” of the series, but I found myself enjoying it quite a bit. If this is mediocrity, I look forward to checking out the original Cracker series.

Posted by Stan on September 23, 2007 4:14 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

Poirot: The Classic Collection 2

But fundamentally it is the same careful grouping of suspects, the same utterly incomprehensible trick of how somebody stabbed Mrs. Pottington Postlethwaite III with the solid platinum poniard just as she flatted on the top note of the “Bell Song” from Lakmé in the presence of fifteen ill-assorted guests; the same ingénue in fur-trimmed pajamas screaming in the night to make the company pop in and out of doors and ball up the timetable; the same moody silence next day as they sit around sipping Singapore slings and sneering at each other, while the flatfeet crawl to and fro under the Persian rugs, with their derby hats on. — Raymond Chandler

Like the late Mr. Chandler, I take serious issue with the inconceivable, deus ex machina resolutions to many classic English detective stories. This is not a reflection on Agatha Christie specifically (although she was, in her apparent quest to write no fewer 40,000 books per year, at least occasionally guilty) or on the English in general; after all, the story that arguably invented the “goofy, inconceivable detective story solved by a man with OCD and way too much time on his hands” genre was written by an American, Edgar Allan Poe. Yes, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” where the genius Dupin solves the improbable murder by identifying orangutan hair on sight.

My bias against this type of story prepared me to dislike Poirot. However, it surprised me to discover how many movies on this Poirot set had complex storylines with satisfying—but not baffling or inconceivable—conclusions. True, there’s the occasional “he created a fake pattern of serial killing, killed three extra people and would have kept going if he hadn’t been caught, tried to pin it on someone else, all so he could inherit an estate from his brother” solution, but many of the mysteries rely on complicated relationships and motives rather than convoluted schemes with thin motives. I’ve read some of Agatha Christie’s short stories and novels, though I am not familiar with the sources of any of these particular mysteries. I don’t know if the adaptations are revisionist tales that differ wildly from the source to fit the post-hardboiled world, or if the more famous Christie stories are famous solely because of their preposterousness. While it at least seems Christie told the same story over and over again (nearly every mystery revolves around self-absorbed rich people killing over inheritance), the level of quality and satisfaction in the resolutions vary wildly from story to story.

The success, even in the goofier mysteries, likely comes from the grounded performances of the usual supporting cast—David Suchet, of course, as M. Hercule Poirot; Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings; Philip Jackson as Chief Inspector Japp; and Pauline Moran as Miss Lemon. Suchet, in particular, has a knack for playing Poirot as fastidious and uptight—but not arrogant and condescending (in contrast to his portrayal in many of Christie’s stories). With one exception—Murder at End House, where Poirot spends much of his time mocking Hastings’s lack of instincts, intelligence, and refinement—he plays Poirot as a pleasant fellow fascinated by a good unsolved crime and obsessed with finding the culprit. The cast members have a great rapport with one another, and each uses his or her skills to contribute to the ultimate solution of the case. Oftentimes, the strange cases take a backseat to entertaining subplots involving the characters (such as Japp staying with Poirot while his wife is away).

The Classic Collection 2 contains nine feature-length movies based on Agatha Christie novels (Classic Collection 1 features 36 50-minute episodes), each of which shares a strong attention to detail in evoking 1930s London. If you like Agatha Christie or the character of Poirot, this DVD set won’t disappoint. If you, like me, have some reservations about the qualities of the mysteries, the movies featured on this set will surprise you.

Posted by Stan on September 23, 2007 4:12 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Reviews

Slings & Arrows – Season 3

I feel no shame in saying the first season of Slings & Arrows struck a serious chord with me, so serious in fact that I’m willing to declare it a perfect, if truncated, season of television. Perhaps the perfection comes from its abbreviated episode count; where other shows might have a few more episodes to breathe, every single second of Slings & Arrows counts. Overstuffed with entertainment and insight, the six episodes feel like 13 or even 22. Funny, heartbreaking, well-acted—I can’t say enough about the quality.

Setting the bar so high with the first season could only lead to disappointment in the second, and it did—but not by much. It had a few missteps, like the lack of development on the couple playing Romeo & Juliet and Richard’s misguided subplot at a cutting-edge PR firm (which started funny but went a little too long and broad for my tastes), but in the end it came pretty close to capturing the genius of the first season.

I felt myself looking forward to the third. Would it match the consistent brilliance of the first season, fall just under with the second, or slip even further?

Turns out, it bounced back pretty seriously, doing what Slings & Arrows does best: counterpointing the real lives of the actors, technician, and administration of the fictional New Burbage Festival with the play they are putting on this season. Even more than that, they counterpoint the Shakespeare group’s King Lear with an original musical called East Hastings, a mutant combination of the unbridled optimism and grunge of Rent and the goofy “urban” theatricality of West Side Story.

Riding high on the success of last season’s Macbeth (which, as we begin, has just finished a successful run in New York), artistic director Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross) wants to put on King Lear starring legendary actor Charles Kingman (the late William Hutt). The only problem? Kingman has brain cancer and a heroin addiction. When Geoffrey learns this, he’s put into a difficult situation: shut down a production that rapidly becomes a trainwreck, or continue it to fulfill the wish of a dying man. Geoffrey keeps Kingman’s secret at the expense of nearly everything—the actors’ and technicians’ increasing frustration when Kingman blames them for his own line and blocking mistakes, executive director Richard Smith-Jones’s (Mark McKinney) increasing apprehension in light of Kingman’s erratic behavior, and Geoffrey’s relationship with Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns).

Of course, the relationship with Ellen is already complicated by another problem Geoffrey faces: the emotional issues stemming from his brief insanity and his seeing the ghost of Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette) have led to impotence. Combined with Ellen’s annoying TV star friend Barbara (Janet Bailey) moving in, Geoffrey decides to leave.

Meanwhile, Richard teams up with notoriously difficult Darren Nichols (Don McKellar) on East Hastings, while three newcomers (Sarah Polley, Melanie Merkosky, and David Alpay) fight over housing arrangements and become embroiled in a romantic triangle and an endless “Shakespearean actor” vs. “musical actor” argument. These younger characters get much more development than last season’s Romeo & Juliet stars, but they aren’t nearly as well-drawn or interesting as the first season’s Kate McNab (Rachel McAdams) and Jack Crew (Luke Kirby). It’s a pretty minor nitpick, though—their storyline falls flat once or twice but ultimately matches the quality of the rest of the show.

The DVD includes special features: interviews with Paul Gross and Susan Coyne (Anna), extended scenes of King Lear, a blooper reel, deleted and extra scenes, a trailer, production notes, a photo gallery, song lyrics, and cast filmographies. The interviews and production notes are nice, but a few episode-length commentary tracks would have been nice.

The third season stands higher than the second but doesn’t quite match the first—of course, it’s comparing apples and apples. The three seasons, combined, form one of the best shows ever aired on television. It also builds to a difficult but satisfying conclusion to the series as a whole. When we’re given characters as rich and interesting as the men and women of Slings & Arrows, it’s difficult to say goodbye, but the finale serves as an emotional, well-earned capper for an excellent series.

Posted by Stan on September 23, 2007 4:11 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Reviews