Boooooo-ya.
They just don’t make scary movies like they used to. Maybe it’s because the ’10s are hell of a lot less dingy than the ’70s and early ’80s — or maybe it’s just because people ran out of ideas. Each time this year I am reminded one of the scariest movies of my youth — the 1983 b-movie (classic?), Curtains. Any movie involving a creepy porcelain doll and quite possibly the most terrifying mask I have ever seen deserves a second look. Even the trailer, cheesy narration aside, is pretty chilling.
While you’re at, check out this fantastic Modern Halloween mix tape (and some excellent holiday observational commentary) compiled by my blogger friend Steve Mavi. Some choice selections on here for the season.
El Milagro’s Dirty Secret
El Milagro may make some of the best corn chips on the planet, but the packaging reveals a few dirty secrets. Forget the fact that the brown paper bag is prone to rips, tears and splices that make the chips go stale in nanoseconds (I often resort to transferring the chips into a few, one-gallon Ziploc bags)–but if you go that route, please, take a moment to read the back of the bag. Have you been enlightened? It’s quite possibly some of the worst POP copywriting I’ve ever seen. How do they get away with this shite? And the fact that there are copywriters out there employed to write this bullcrap really grinds my gears. Are they serious? Is this for real?
I’ll get on those dip ideas too. Just awesome.
Cabbage Soup Cleaning Party (in 3-D?)
The cabbage soup diet is billed as a diet ready-made to shed pounds quickly, efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately for people like my mother, it is not a seven-day stint of slurping a bland mixture of stock and veggies but rather a way of life–as if she may be preparing for nuclear war. I found the official Cabbage Soup Diet site on the Internet and was taken aback by the list of pros and cons. Case in point:
* You’ll lose weight fast
* The diet should not be adhered to for more than seven days
* The soup is bland
* People have reported feeling light headed, weak and have suffered from decreased concentration
*It provides a kick start to a moderate diet
Which is all precisely why my mother brews the soup on a bi-weekly basis and stock piles it in plastic tubs in the freezer. The eating is ritualistic. Soup has been a staple of her kitchen well before I came back to Chicago via Milwaukee. My girlfriend Tracy, before she moved to New York, used to amuse my mother by coming over and eating the cabbage soup, which I at first thought was equally amusing, but later found out that she actually liked the soup, with all of its nonexistent flavors and textures. Imagine.
More freezer burn.
The other day I found six tubs of it stacked amid an array of cleaning products including Pledge, Windex, some orange colored spray with Mr. Clean on the front, and a bottle of Simple Green. The juxtaposition struck me as both odd and obsessive. I immediately wondered if the two notions of “antiseptic” had aligned themselves in a blast of cosmic perfection. Did my mother spray the living room coffee table with waxy wood shine while juggling a bowl of soup in one hand and a rag in the other? My mother’s penchant for cleansing the system with cabbage can work congruently with such notions of cleaning the cabinets with Lysol. Then I began to wondering, “She has been doing this for so many years, hasn’t her life become as flat as the soup itself?”
Need salt?
I’ve tried the soup. It’s not bad after you shake about 30 hits of salt into it, some hot sauce and fresh ground pepper. Fresh slices of zucchini, carrots, onions and, ehem, cabbage all float their way around a flavorless broth. And while its freshness certainly stands on its own, I question the routine that she grinds herself in — cabbage and cleaning products alike. Is this a two or three-dimensional life? Sometimes I wonder. But then I think there has to be more to her private life than the demands of rigorous routines. After examining the soup, I went into the living room and started examining her self-styled DVD collection (which she is slowly upgrading to Blu-Ray). What I found was a laundry list of movies with dark undercurrents entrenched in sex, drugs, murder–hardly two-dimensional and bland at all. Among the head turners: Bright Lights, Big City (“There’s something I just connected with when I watched that movie,” she told me once while babysitting The Guys in Oak Park). Sure. Piles of coke, Keifer Sutherland, vodka martinis on lunch, 6 a.m. nightclub stints–very cabbage-centric, I see. Jagged Edge, The Door in the Floor, Against all Odds, Fatal Attraction–all of these titles are far exploratory cries away from the blandness of frozen soup or sponges.
So, what’s really going on underneath? Perhaps they are reminders of places I’ll never really see. Perhaps they are preludes to places she really wanted to go. But under the constraints of cabbage and cleaning and ticking time, I doubt either of us will ever see any of it fully realized. My mom’s been collecting cabbage soup for seven years–not seven days–too long to change now. Were there places she really wanted to go, ideas she wanted to explore? I only hope to never live with those same regrets. I’m working on it.
Pockets. It’s Happening.
Why does this place exist? I am, of course, talking about the fast food chain, Pockets, with its clever marketing tagline, “Fresh Food Fast.” I’m overwhelmed by the creativity. I understand that in addition to drive-thrus (you can thank Wendy’s for that invention), Darwinism essentially spawned the notion of “pocket food” to support our on-the-go lifestyles. But at least in the ’80s and ’90s they were doing it with some finesse. Case in point: Hot Pockets, the original pocket food. Remember this clip from a time way too long ago? Maybe you even lived it out as part of your after school fantasy. I know I sure did.
I’m offended that in the naming process of the different Hot Pocket species, the talent glaringly left off BBQ Beef–the original, indigenous Hot Pocket, whose shelf life was masterful. Of course, it was frozen. But I never witnessed a case of freezer burn on it once, no matter how long it lurked in the freezer (which, if I knew about it, probably wasn’t for very long). In fact, the other day I bought a box of them and hoarded them in my freezer until I finally got the gutso to heat one up in its little crisper sleeve and sample it, bite by bite, hoping to relive my childhood in slow-mo. The sad part was, it tasted pretty frickin’ good–so good, in fact, that I found myself trying to practice some degree of restraint with the Hot Pocket, taking small bites at a time and then sealing it up in a Ziploc bag to save for later. That little pocket lasted me a good four days, because who wants to get overwhelmed by their childhood memories all in one rush (or develop disgusting Hot Pocket Thighs in the process)? Not me.
Splat.
Pockets as a restaurant concept is far fouler and less endearing. While I tend bar at a spot kitty corner from the joint, I have purposely never ventured inside. Today, I did on a whim because I was tired of everybody spinning tales of the grossness. The calzones, they say, are abominable– cheezy, gooey masses that shock the system like caloric bombs. I decide to start with the basics and order up the Original Pocket–awesome shredded iceberg lettuce, green peppers, shredded carrots, mushrooms and mozzarella. The entire thing is tossed into a brown, prison-esque lunch box and piled between two pieces of dry, wheat bread that still manage to defy science. One bite, and the texture is bouncing around your mouth like rubber. The lettuce is slightly browning, the carrots more muted than bright, and the sad packet of fat-free Italian dressing they give me looks as if it comes straight from the failed salad campaign launched by Burger King in the ’80s.
Dressing, circa 1986.
I can only imagine what the more complicated Pockets taste like. Some of the names can be easily converted into “Pocket Porn,” so to speak–The Asian Pocket, Bam Bam’s Pocket, The Greek Pocket (gold medallion chain sold separately) and of course the awesomely appetizing Tuna Pocket. The restaurant’s few saving graces include some canvas oil paintings of Pocket meals–a pretty ballsy move, if you ask me, for such stale, sickly food. To elevate wilted vegetables into a quasi art project is commendable. So props.
Straight from the Louvre
Additionally, I notice several bottles of Cholula strategically (thankfully) placed near some of the garbage bins, which work wonders in masking the taste. Good thing I spent a lot of time going there during my brief stay. A couple of bites and the garbage had my Pocket’s name on it.
A brilliant disguise.
Integrity at its finest.
So much for the Pockets Pledge, I guess. If the world must revolve around where-we-need-to-be-next and food is the ultimate adaptation, I’ll take a frozen Hot Pocket any day of the week. Bring on the beef (one small bite at a time, of course).
Thank God.
It’s like you want the sundown to come here and get here, and stuff
Kings of Leon are set to release their new album in mid-October. Thanks to my esteemed music compadre Steve Mavi, I was able to get an advanced copy of the underwhelming album (more on that later). For now, click and check out a video clip interview Mavi posted on his blog of the highly articulate Kings of Leon boys talking about the name of their album, “Come Around Sundown.” Watching it, I am reminded of several scenes from the Brock Landers documentary in Boogie Nights — especially the pontification of one Reed Rothchild (aka Chest Rockwell). Hysterical.
The best part is the band is absolutely serious. If their creative process for this latest album was anything like the way they went about choosing a title, everything is really starting to make sense now–which in this case, is unfortunate, because I have really liked this band for years. Full review coming soon.
Self Indulgent? Meh.
Whatever, shock value. I was pretty stoked to see director Casey Affleck’s suspected faux-umentary, “I’m Still Here,” which chronicles the fame-induced freefall of actor Joaquin Phoenix. And while Affleck waited until after the film was released to officially come clean on whether the piece was fact or fiction, I purposely waited out the verdict until after I saw it. The only other pre-disposed opinions I had came from Roger Ebert’s review, who suggested that the film was not actually fiction, but instead a scary depiction of a talented actor with a career on the skids.
After a butt-aching screening at the old Logan theater, I wondered how such a perceptive film critic like Ebert bought Phoenix’s tailspin as fact. And he really did. That’s not to say that Phoenix’s job on-screen is poorly played–but knowing the talent that he is, the depth of his performance is certainly believable. Unlike a lot of the reviews I read afterward, scenes riddled with vomit, defecation, hookers, and coke neither disgusted nor shocked me. Instead, I was left indifferent because I saw how far Phoenix was trying to push himself, even as he tailgated P.Diddy in hopes of producing his hip-hop album.
There is a scene where Phoenix and Diddy sit in the recording studio preveiwing his demo. A pensive Diddy dials in, scanning the room, uncomfortably unsure how to react to the badness hurling his way. The badness, of course, spills over beyond a few stilted hip-hop lyrics because Phoenix himself mumbles in a series of bad lines and if the movie were real, we would all have good reason to feel straight bad for the guy.
Unlike Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune who gave the film zero stars (he really did hate this movie), I didn’t necessarily see Phoenix’s performance as an exercise in self-indulgence, although to take a character that far, some has to exist. I am the first one to dismiss self-indulgence, but knowing how much it continues driving social media trends in general, I also have to get used it. Hell, I’ve been equally guilty. But watching the film, Phoenix pushes boundaries of both craft and the community who processes it–and the creative aspect of that is electrifying and exciting and shocking, much more so than the material itself.
I didn’t know for sure if the movie was a hoax before I saw it, but a quick read of Phoenix’s opening scenes and I had no doubts. Are we seeing the future of film–a mash up of reality and fiction, much like we see on television? Perhaps it took film longer to find a way to make it work. And in an era filled with ’80s remakes and tacky-sitcoms-turned movies, I’ll take it–especially from an actor who knows exactly what he’s doing.
It will be great to get the “real” Joaquin back on screen. Because who doesn’t need a little bit more creepy in their lives, especially at the show?
**Ebert did follow up his review with a long form blog that broke down which critics nationally bought the film as fact or fiction. Perhaps he needed to explore why he was duped?
Santa’s Village: An Era of Lost Time
It seems as if the graveyard that was Santa’s Village is resurrecting its classy image with newfound glory. This week, the defunct amusement park in East Dundee, Ill., better known for snow globes and hayrides (I am not sure how the two ever converged) reopened as Azoosment Park. The latest article in the Chicago Tribune describes it as boasting, “an aviary, pony rides, and an assortment of exotic and domestic animals.”
When I heard the term “exotic animals” in correlation to the park, I immediately thought of an ex-boyfriend who I now fondly refer to as “exotic pet guy” even though I hardly held him in any kind of fond regard at the time of the break-up. He kept a boa constrictor in his bathroom, a sting ray by his nightstand and some reptilian thing near a glass bust of a human head. Maybe I was harboring resentment that “exotic pet guy” never took me on a date to Santa’s Village, because at the time, it was certainly still operating in all of its 1970s-inspired glory. Or perhaps it was ’60s inspired. Regardless, the last time I remember going there with my grandma and grandpa, it was well into the early ’90s, and by that time, grass and weeds and wildflowers had already started growing between the pavement of the concourse. Rides, like The Tarantula ( you may have ridden on its squid-like cousin, The Octopus, at the former Kiddieland Amusement Park in Melrose Park) creaked with squeaky movement, thirsty for oil and a new paint job. The sad eyes of the ride were chipped in at least 14 places. Not even the latest, garbled static from Paula Abdul could soften the noise.
But I didn’t care. I was 12 years old and all I wanted was to have my stomach turn again and again on old rides that made me laugh, even when I rode them by myself, which was often. The Tarantula had these curved, mechanical arms with spinning cars attached to the end of each one. The ride itself was supposed to resemble a giant, hairy arachnid. But framed by houses with faux icicles and plastic-snow dusted roofs, the big bug just looked dated and dead. The cotton candy machines (god, I HATE cotton candy) didn’t help. Everything smelled saccharine and sweet and I couldn’t help but wonder why no one had bothered to give any love back to such a mismatched place of themes and rusted rail cars.
Ornament Ride, a mid-summer day's dream.
The park, I remember, was divided into three distinct “worlds“ that had nothing in common: Coney Island (hot dogs, a hazardous roller coaster and balloon-dart carnival games); Old McDonald’s Farm (because who doesn’t love a good pig race?); and the flagship Santa’s World, which was always the most dated and freakish world of all. Plastic reindeer looked as if they could melt beneath summer heat while Christmas lights blinked in irregular beats even in bright daylight. And instead of Spinning Teacups, Santa’s World featured Spinning Snowballs that were painted in a powder blue and accented with exaggerated dark sparkles that reminded me of a family outing at Amling’s off of North Avenue. The snowballs had not been painted in years either, and I would watch as maybe three or four people boarded the ride each time, leaving a slew of empty cars rotating on empty time.
I almost forgot about the creepy snowman.
I use the term empty time here because going to Santa’s Village reminded me of lost time. And lost time, of course, is empty because there is no way to refill it. I suspect that the latest incarnation on the former Santa’s Village site will not carry such mismatched and unloved allure. I suspect it will be plastered with brightly colored signs, serve food from corporate food vendors and probably smell like poop. I suspect I won’t be paying a visit and instead keep my memories of me, laughing alone on The Tarantula, always safely guarded.
Santa sure looks hot to me.
**I should note that sometime in the early ’90s, Santa’s Village added an outdoor water park called Racing Rapids to its offerings. The park consisted of about five ice blue slides built straight onto the concrete parking lot. My brother and I shared many good memories waiting in line to ride the slidewinder for the 28th time. But that story is for another time too.
Wall Street 2.0: Styled for the Times
There is a scene from the original Wall Street, where Charlie Sheen–then a lean, darty version of broker hotshot Bud Fox–is making sushi in a New York high rise behind an operatic backdrop. Girlfriend Darien Taylor, played by a forgettable Daryl Hannah, serves up stilted, one-line dialogue while fumbling with ’80s inspired hors d’oeuvres for their evening dinner plans. In retrospect, the scene is a one-dimensional slice against Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” which packs a much more layered punch than its 1987 predecessor. And in an era that is undoubtedly filled with more distractions and technological complexities, it serves the movie right. The question is, does it make it a better film?
Wall Street 2.0 opens with fallen mogul Gordon Gekko exiting an eight-year prison sentence for insider trading and collecting possessions that once defined him. A gold watch, a monstrous mobile phone, an engraved ring–all of his belongings look and wilted and dated, much like Gekko himself. When he returns to the buzzing trenches of New York City, he finds a far different landscape than the one he left. Talk of sub-primes and hedge funds dominate The Street, along with a new network of financial impresarios that are seemingly shot in dark light throughout the entire movie. Leading the crew is Charles Schwartz investment firm front man Brentton James, played by a furrowed Josh Brolin. Unlike the slick-talking stride of Gekko, Brolin plays a much more subtle villain, engaging in calm, verbal sparring with enterprising broker Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf).
The characters and their alliances in this film, we learn, are tricky. LaBeouf, while outwardly appears to reprise the Bud Fox role, is more multi-dimensional than money hungry. Call it a reflection of the times. Unlike the gritty go-getter attitude audiences saw in Sheen, LaBeouf exudes a kind of idealism that has come to define the Millennial generation. Its members are eager, confident but also act in the vested interest of a greater good. LaBeouf openly talks about his need to achieve success the clean way–not through insider trading but through his own resourcefulness and ultimate greatness. He flaunts the equally clean concept of fusion technology in front of Chinese investors and trusts Brolin to take his well-plotted plan all the way to the bank.
But who can LaBeouf really trust? Upon hearing Gekko speak during a book promotion tour, he becomes instantly attracted to his reformed, matter-of-factness–especially in relation to money. “Jail certainly taught me a lot,” he tells LaBeouf over dinner at a Japanese restaurant. There is a muted sadness below his eyes, while problems simmer even deeper underneath. LaBeouf, we learn, is also dating Gekko’s estranged daughter Winnie, played by an often weepy Carrie Mulligan. Winnie resents her father, whose hunger for money landed him in jail, left her abandoned, and ultimately created more undo drama. Mulligan and LaBeouf exchange a series of tear-laden scenes, creating a new sheen of emotion absent from the first film. The relationship between the two is far more exploratory, if not sometimes tedious, than Sheen and Hannah’s, which served as a sideshow to Gekko and Sheen’s power plays.
In that respect, Stone turns out a more human follow-up to the overt brashness of his first film. But sometimes, a bit more grittiness could serve it well. The movie does a fantastic job centering on the modern financial upheavals, chronicling the chaos of Lehman Bros. weekend while referencing the first film through a series of stellar cameo appearances and some all-too-familiar camera work. David Byrne and Brian Eno’s musical score adds an element of retro-futurism, bringing chilling modernity to a complex web formed by four powerful characters that turn several twists all the way to the bank.
But it’s Douglas who still captivates as the focal point of the film, with his character portrayed in a more human light than ever before. No longer simply a slicked-hair, cigar smoking caricature of himself, Gekko is a shaggy, haunted man, mocked by an industry that once revered him. But Gekko is resourceful–and by the time he makes his on-screen exit, it seems “Money Never Sleeps” may be the most fitting title for Stone’s surprising sequel.
3.5 stars
