I Watched THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL And Then The Red Sox Won The World Series

"The party's starting now..."

I was a senior in college when the Boston Red Sox won their first world series in 86 years.  The season before we had lost the ALCS to our longtime rivals the New York Yankees in a Game 7 heartbreaker, so when we were able to turn the tables and pull off an unprecedented come-from-behind victory over the dreaded pinstripes after trailing three games to none, suffice it to say the town went ballistic.  Literally.  Victoria Snelgrove, a classmate of mine at Emerson who was there covering the celebration as a student jounalist, was shot and killed after police in riot gear started shooting "non-lethal" rounds into a crowd in Kenmore Square and she took a pepper pellet to the eye.  It was an awful dagger of tragedy that slashed through what should have been a joyous occasion. The Sox would go on to sweep the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals and I've always maintained that the only reason the city of Boston didn't burn to the ground that night in October was because everyone felt so shitty about Victoria and because the clinching game hadn't actually taken place at Fenway Park.

I'll always remember that night.  I actually had a ticket to Game 5 and I was in the car with a bunch of friends heading down to St. Louis.  We'd gotten a late start so we were just passing through Worcester and listening to the game when the eighth inning rolled around and it became clear that Game 5 wasn't going to happen.  Someone in the car knew a guy who lived nearby, so we pulled off the highway and invaded this guy's living room in time to watch the bottom of the ninth.  Sox closer Keith Foulke fielded a ground ball to the mound, tossed it to first, and we promptly went apeshit in the middle of a stranger's home.  We jumped up and down, screaming and hugging for about two minutes before piling back into the car and tearing ass back towards Fenway.  We made record time back to the city and joined the masses in Kenmore Square until the police formed a barricade and forced the crowd down Beacon St. and Comm Ave, in the opposite direction of my apartment.  When people refused to move, tear gas canisters were tossed in to disperse the crowd.  I'm still not entirely sure how it happened, but somehow I ended up outside Gate B by the statue of Ted Williams placing his cap onto the head of a small boy with cancer.  (Williams was a fierce advocate for The Jimmy Fund.)  I just stood there, still blinking away tears (from the gas...) and reveling in a moment that I might never see again, when the hometown heroes and perennial losers overcame unbeatable odds and were crowned champions of the world.

I have a very strong connection to the Red Sox.  Of all the sports teams in Boston, the Sox were my favorite growing up and easily the team I got see play in person most often.  Just a month before that 2004 World Series victory I had worked as a production assistant on the Farrelly Brothers film Fever Pitch, starring Jimmy Fallon as a die hard Sox fan who falls in love with a baseball neophyte played by Drew Barrymore.  It was the first time I'd ever been on a professional film set and it was an absolute dream come true.  Not only did I get the chance to experience Hollywood filmmaking up close and personal, but I got to spend two weeks with an all access pass to Fenway Park.  I even got to watch a game from the owner's seats on the right field roof deck, with Fox picking up the tab for all our food and drinks.  That was a magical season, and a few weeks after it was all over, with my  move to L.A. looming large on the horizon, I went to Harvard Square with a buddy and got my first tattoo: the Red Sox "B" right at the top of my spine.  I'd always wanted a tattoo but had never been able to settle on a design I knew I'd still be happy to have in my twilight years.  Suddenly it seemed like a no-brainer.  Not only was it a symbol of the team and their incredible accomplishment, but of the city I loved and would soon be leaving behind.  I've spoken before about our community of Boston ex-pats in Los Angeles.  It was a huge part of my identity in that place and when the Sox somehow managed to pull off another championship victory in 2007, we were absolutely flabbergasted.  We all wanted to be home celebrating, but we didn't mind being 3000 miles away because we had each other.

I moved back to Boston in 2010 and the Sox continued to be an active part of my life.  Over the course of our friendship and subsequent courtship, Jamie had become a bonafide member of Red Sox Nation, especially since New Orleans doesn't have its own baseball team.  When it came time for me to propose to her, Fenway seemed like the ideal location, although I knew that going to a game and proposing on the jumbotron in frot of 37,000 fans would give her an instant panic attack and might result in her passing out before she got the chance to answer me.  So shortly after the season had ended I talked to a friend who worked for the team and told her my plan.  She got us in under the guise of a private tour and once we got up onto the Green Monster, I took out a cupcake with an engagement ring placed atop the frosting.  Obviously that worked out pretty well for me.  A few months later the same friend hipped me to a job opening in the team's IT department and before I knew it I had quit my job at the Apple Store and had an office overlooking the concourse behind third base.  I only stayed with the team for about half a season, but it was a helluva rollercoaster ride.  The team started the year 2-10, then clawed their way to the best record in baseball by the All-Star break. That's right around the time I was lured away from Fenway by the promise of higher pay and shorter hours at my current place if employment.  I loved working for the Red Sox and I learned a lot in a short time, but once the season kicked into gear I was working about 70 hours a week for a paycheck that would have been fine if I was working half that.  And with my nuptials right around the corner and some intimidating credit card debt hanging over my head, I had to make it all about the money.  It really pained me to leave and I still feel bad about it even today, but I ultimately made the right choice.  This site certainly wouldn't exist if I hadn't left.

Sadly that season ended in misery and scandal, with the team going 7-20 in the month of September and just barely missing the playoffs.  It was the season that drove beloved manager Terry Francona out of Boston after it came out that some players had been drinking and eating Popeye's in the clubhouse during games.  It will forever be known as The Season Of Fried Chicken And Beer.  And the less we say about the following year's trainwreck under Bobby Valentine, the better.  Suffice it to say, when GM Ben Cherrington traded most of our expensive free agents to the Dodgers and hired former pitching coach John Farrell to take over the team, the Fenway Faithful prepared themselves for another "rebuilding year."

Man, we were WAY off.

It's been an unbelievable season, with the Sox grinding out wins all year long.  They were never very flashy about it and at first a lot of us didn't even realize what was happening.  After all, we had the Bruins making a serious bid for their second Stanley Cup in three years, then a special Senate election to fill the seat left by John Kerry when he was named Secretary Of State.  And then there was the Marathon bombing.  The team always plays an early game on Marathon Monday, and for a lot of folks it's a yearly tradition to leave Fenway and head down to Copley to watch the runners cross the finish line.  When those twin explosions rang out on Boylston Street and shook the city down to its foundation, it was the Sox and the Bruins who were there to prop us all up and remind us why Boston is one of the greatest cities in the world.  They helped raise money for the One Fund, the players visited victims in the hospital and the team invited first responders and civilian heroes onto the field to throw out the opening pitch, drop a ceremonial puck onto the ice or kick off an afternoon at the ballpark with a rousing, "Play ball!"  The Sox held a ceremony before the start of the first home game after the attack, where David Ortiz grabbed the mic and thanked the city officials who worked so hard to sort out the aftermath and bring those responsible to justice.  And then he gave Boston a rallying cry:

"This Is Our Fucking City!"  

As time marched on the team's wins increased with the length of the beards until suddenly we were running away with the entire American League.  And after the Bruins had come up short, it seemed like the Sox were destined to win it all once more for the city that loved them so.  They made short work of Tampa Bay in the divisional series and then faced down Justin Verlander and the aces of Detroit with an unrivaled temerity.  It looked dicey there for a minute, but after Big Papi's game-tying grand slam in Game 2 that sent Tori Hunter flipping over the bullpen wall while Officer Steve Horgan raised his arms in triumph, well there was just no turning back.  I was really hoping for a Sox-Dodgers World Series, if only so that all my Boston friends still in L.A. would get the chance to see our boys at Dodger Stadium, but the boys in blue eventually fell to St. Louis in the NLCS.  So just like in 2004, it would be the B's versus the Birds once more.

We all joked that the Sox should just throw two games so that they could clinch the series at Fenway for the first time in 95 years, and after Jim Joyce's obstruction call it was assured that the boys would in fact be coming back to decide their fate on their home turf.  The series will be remembered as a pitching duel, with most games still tied 0-0 or 1-1 heading into the sixth or seventh inning.  Lackey and Lester were virtually unhittable, and Clay Buckholtz turned in one of the gutsiest starts I've ever seen, using precise pitch control to confound batters after a sore shoulder had robbed him of his usually dependable fastball.  And oh yeah, let's not forget about closer Koji Uehara, who was supposed to be a setup guy and morphed into the most dominant closer the team has ever seen.  The man is absolute strike machine, stonewalling one hitter after another and throwing only a single walk since the All-Star break.  While the Sox bats were often slow to get started, each time it was the unlikeliest of heroes that stepped up at a crucial moment.  The largely hitless Johnny Gomes smashed a three run homer to tie the series after coming in as a last minute replacement for Shane Victorino, who would return three days later and knock a bases clearing double in Game 6 after sitting out the last two games with a sore back.  And Big Papi was an absolute BEAST, hitting for a jaw-dropping .770 in the series and coming up with one clutch hit after another.

Jamie and I really wanted to be in the city when we clinched it, so Wednesday I left work and immediately headed toward Fenway to scout out the bar situation.  At 5:15 the place was already a mob scene, with lines around the block for every watering hole in a two block radius of the park.  I walked around a bit, got myself a hot dog on Landsdowne street as well as a souvenir program, a World Series pennant and some rally cards, then hightailed it back to Boylston Street and slipped into McGreevy's before the lines started there too.  Jamie was meeting me there along with Lauren and Bryan, two friends who are regulars at my Tuesday night trivia show, so it was up to me to find us a spot and then hunker down until reinforcements arrived.  I missed getting a booth by about ten seconds to a pair of crafty girls named Liz and Katie, but they took pity on me and let me hang with them until another table opened up.  One guy paid a group $100 to let him take their booth after they left, and at that point everyone was settled in and nobody was leaving until the game was over.  But by then Liz and Katie and I had become fast friends, and when the rest of our respective groups arrived we all shared the table and cheered together between pitchers of Octoberfest and shots of Dr. McGillicuddy's.  When Uehara came in for the ninth, we knew it was all over.  When he struck out the last batter, the place erupted into chaos.  Witness, and enjoy gazing down my screaming throat.

After about ten more minutes of sheer madness, we finished our drinks and exited the bar.  Instead of turning right and fighting our way into the celebrating hordes of Kenmore Square, we turned left and walked down to Copley Square, cheering and high-fiving passing pedestrians.  We reached the Boston Public Library and stopped at the Marathon finish line, where a crowd was already starting to form.  Cars drove through, flashing their lights and honking their horns while the passengers leaned out their windows with big dumb smiles on their faces.  People laid their jerseys down on the pavement and took pictures in front of the blue and yellow concrete.  Jamie and I were no exception.

Six months ago this had been the site of a horrifying tragedy.  Tonight it was bathed in euphoria.

I can't wait for next season.

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OH RIGHT!  I almost forgot.  Before the game started I watched the original House On Haunted Hill.  Vincent Price is totally awesome but I was disappointed at the lack of actual ghosts.

The bit with the skeleton is also super fun.  I wish I could have seen it in the original Emergo.



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Title: The House On Haunted Hill
Director: William Castle
Starring: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long, Alan Marshal, Carolyn Craig, Elisha Cook Jr.
Year Of Release: 1959
Viewing Method: Amazon Prime Instant Watch

KNUCKLEBALL Chases Away My Stanley Cup Blues

"You've gotta have the fingertips of a safe cracker and the mind of a Zen Buddhist."

I am terrible at sports, but it's practically impossible to live in Boston and not be a diehard fan of at least one team.  The Red Sox, Patriots, Bruins and Celtics have won a staggering seven championships in the last twelve years, which is pretty much unheard of these days.  When I was living in L.A. I could only watch my teams by either A) shelling out big money for all the different league packages (and you couldn't even get baseball unless you had satellite) or B) finding a local bar that would show more than just local games.  And since there are an overwhelming number of ex-pat New Englanders living in Los Angeles, there are a couple of fantastic Boston bars scattered around town, including Little Bar in Hollywood, 4 F's in Hermosa Beach and the infamous Sonny MacLean's in Santa Monica.  I've mentioned this before, but there was nothing more comforting when living on the other side of the country than being able to go to a place full of people with a common ancestry of sorts, and the easiest way to bond with strangers or make new friends is to drink beers and cheer for a team that most of the town ignores and/or disdains.

In that light, Monday night was pretty rough.  The Boston Bruins have had an incredible post-season run, overcoming a daunting late-game deficit in Game 7 against the Toronto Maple Leafs, beating back the New York Rangers and then utterly slaying the Eastern Conference's #1 seed, the Pittsburgh Penguins.  The Stanley Cup final against the Chicago Blackhawks proved just as exciting, starting off with an epic triple overtime battle royale in Game 1.  The series lead shifted back and forth each game, and with less than two minutes left to go in Game 6, it looked as if the B's would hold on to send the series back to Chicago for one final showdown.  It was a hot, humid evening in Boston and the ice was a mess, so the puck had been bouncing around the rink in an ugly fashion all night, but the black and gold put forth a gutsy effort all night long.  Then, all of a sudden, Chicago managed to sneak the puck past goaltender Tukka Rask.  Then the unthinkable: seventeen seconds later, they did it again.  And like that, our Stanley Cup dreams were dashed.  It's never fun to see your team get so close and lose, but after the Boston Marathing bombing it seemed as if the entire city had rallied behind the Bruins, hoping for a bit of emotional catharsis in the form of hockey glory.  This loss was therefore particularly painful.

As soon as the game ended, I immediately turned off the television and walked out onto my deck.  I took a deep breath, looked out into the darkened sky, listened to the Blue Line train rumble along the tracks behind my house and the airplanes taking off from nearby Logan Airport, and thought to myself, "Okay.  It's officially baseball season."

After all, the Red Sox are leading the A.L. East by 2.5 games.

And so, to banish my hockey demons I came home from trivia on Tuesday night and put on Knuckleball!, the documentary about the small brotherhood of major league pitchers who specialize in one of the most peculiar pitches in the game.  There have only been a handful of professionals who have ever used this pitch and the film was shot during the 2011 season, following the last season of longtime Red Sox knuckler Tim Wakefield as well as the rise of the Mets' unlikely star R.A. Dickey, currently the only active knuckleballer in Major League Baseball.

Wakefield played for the Red Sox for more than half my life, so I've grown up watching his pitches dance through the air of Fenway Park.  I love the guy, and that last season was dominated by his quest to reach 200 career wins.  (He was also in spitting distance of tying the Red Sox franchise record of 192 wins.)  As it just so happens, I was actually working in the Red Sox IT department during that 2011 season, so I remember it very well.  Since then I've also become familiar with Dickey, a pitcher who bounced from team to team for years and was facing the end of a lackluster pitching career when he made a dramatic shift and became a full-time knuckleball pitcher.  (Wakefield has a similar backstory: he started as a first baseman with the Pirates but moved to the mound when he had trouble hitting with a wooden bat.*)

The methodology and the history of the knuckleball is pretty fascinating.  Pitchers grasp the ball with their fingernails and attempt to throw it with reduced speed and absolutely no spin.  When it works, the ball will drift and dance through the air, leaving batters utterly bewildered and swinging at empty space.  When it doesn't work, the pitch turns into a floating meatball that batters will typically crush into the upperdecks.  After surviving the Bruins' heartbreaking loss, I was none too pleased to see the film linger on Wakefield's 11th inning pitch to Aaron Boone in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS that ended Boston's campaign for a World Series victory.  But I loved watching Wakefield and Dickey spending time with former knucklers Charlie Hough and Phil Nierko, playing golf and swapping war stories. Despite playing on different teams and in different eras, they really do see themselves as a fraternity of sorts. When Dickey first started to develop his knuckleball, he reached out to Hough, Nierko and even to Wakefield, who was still an active starter at the time, and they all offered advice and guidance. While they were technically competitors, Wake knew his career was nearing its end and he wanted to ensure that there was someone there to pick up the slow-moving torch when he was gone. The sense of camaraderie and legacy is strong among these men. Over this past off-season they even recruited a couple of former quarterbacks to learn the pitch and get a shot at attending the Arizona Diamondbacks training camp on a reality show for MLB Network. Despite my disdain for reality television, I watched the whole thing because Wake was the judge, one time Red Sox goofball Kevin Millar was the host and former BC and Patriots quarterback Doug Flutie was a contestant. If he had won, I would have instantly scoured the internet in search of a Flutie Diamondbacks jersey.

If you're a fan of Wakefield or Dickey, or even if you're just curious about this crazy, rarely thrown pitch then Knuckleball! is a very endearing 93 minutes full of familiar baseball faces and all the love and drama inherent in America's pastime. And for everyone else still coming to grips with Monday night's hockey game, this movie is a great way to get primed for baseball season. 

Bruins, thanks for an amazing season. 

Go Sox.


*In college ball they use aluminum bats, which are lighter and generally give the batter more power.


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Title: Knuckleball!
Director: Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg
Starring: Tim Wakefield, R.A. Dickey, Charlie Hough, Phil Nierko, Tom Candiotti
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (TV)

National Lampoon's VACATION Is The Hilarious Chaser To An Emotional Day

"I think you're all fucked in the head!"

When I was a kid, Chevy Chase was the definition of "not funny."

It's all a matter of timing.  When I started to really become aware of individual actors in that way where their very presence influences your desire to see a particular movie, Chevy's career was in the doldrums.  He was churning out unwatchable crap like Cops And Robbersons and Man Of The House.  He really didn't turn it around until his memorable arc as a major villain on NBC's Chuck, which of course led to his fantastic work as Pierce Hawthorne on Community.  In fact, the last time Chase was the lead in a truly great movie was 1989's Christmas Vacation, which means we're talking about roughly twenty years (a.k.a. most of my life) of appearing in wall to wall cinematic garbage.

Thankfully, at some point in high school or college I discovered Caddyshack.  And Fletch.  And Spies Like Us.  And the first season of Saturday Night Live.  And I remembered he was one of The Three Amigos.

It was like a slap to the face.

"Ohhhhhhh, this guy used to be HILARIOUS!  What the hell happened?"

I never watched any of National Lampoon's Vacation movies growing up because, on the surface and in the context I understood Chevy Chase at the time, they sounded like more middle of the road, whitebread family comedies.  (Again, this was before I had seen Animal House and really understood what to expect from the Lampoon.)  I had absolutely no idea how subversive these movies really were.  And even when I did finally get into the Vacation series, I did it all wrong.  I think I saw Vegas Vacation first because it was the only one I actually remember coming out in theaters.  That was followed by European Vacation, which I liked but didn't love, and eventually Christmas Vacation.  In a lot of ways, Christmas feels like the safest one of the bunch; at the end of the day it's still a warm and fuzzy Christmas movie, but it's also flat out hilarious.  And somehow, after all of that, I had still never gotten around to seeing the original Vacation...

To give a little viewing context, the day I watched this movie was the Friday of the "Boston Manhunt," when I woke up to discover that the entire city was on lockdown while police officers went door to door through Watertown searching for marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  I was lacing up my shoes to go to work when I got an alert that the T (subway for you non-locals) was not running and I flipped on the TV to see what was going on.  Jamie and I spent the next 12 hours essentially glued to the television, watching and waiting for some kind of development in the pursuit.  Work was cancelled for the day, but I simply could not bring myself to turn off the local news in favor of my daily film, so I got a little writing done instead.  Eventually my parents and my sister came over and we watched as police cornered Tsarnaev on that infamous boat and eventually took him into custody a little after 8:30 PM.  At this point we were starving for dinner, so we all piled into the car and headed to Terry O'Reilly's pub in Newton, which is one town over from Watertown.  (We could see the police lights as we pulled off the Mass Pike.)  The crowd at the bar was small since they'd only been allowed to open after the lockdown was lifted, but we were boisterous and relieved, applauding the cops on the TV and raising our glasses while listening to every song from or about Boston on the jukebox.

We got home around midnight and Jamie and I were so exhausted that we immediately crawled into bed.  I lay there for about three minutes, at which point I said, "Oh shit."

Jamie turned to me, already half asleep.  "What's wrong?"

"I haven't watched a movie yet today."

And so I pulled myself out of bed and out into the living room in search of something to watch.  I checked the DVR and remembered that I had recorded Vacation on HBO a few days prior.  Humor seemed appropriate for the day, so I dove right in.  There's simply no need for me to go through the plot at this point, but I will say that the movie lived up to it's reputation.  It's a very sharp comedy, which is no surprise coming from director Harold Ramis and writer John Hughes in their respective primes.  Honestly, if someone had told me that those two guys were largely responsible for this movie, I would have gone out of my way to see it a lot earlier.  The strength of the family dynamic really holds the film together, so no matter how insane things get, you really believe in the bond that keeps these characters together.

The exception here is the subplot with Christie Brinkley as the hot blonde in the Ferrari.  Make no mistake, all of Chevy's long distance silent flirting is wonderful, and I love the way that Clark Griswold can instantly transition from nerdy family man to charming rake.  (Those oversized glasses really help.)  I even buy it when, after fighting with Ellen and feeling like his family has turned on him, he struts into the hotel bar in those incredible white shoes and actually ends up having a drink with the mystery girl, which leads to some late night skinny dipping in the pool.  It works because she's the instigator and Clark is largely following her lead, testing the boundaries of his fidelity and seeing how far he can go before his own morality kicks in.  The way he gets caught is also very funny, but it's the aftermath I couldn't get on board with.  Ellen sort of pouts for a few moments, and then turns on a dime and leads Clark back out to the pool for their own naked swim time.  I'm sorry, but I can't think of any woman I know, (my wife chief among them) who would catch their boyfriend/husband naked with another woman and not only forgive him in under five minutes, but then basically suggest they go bone in the hotel pool.

Otherwise the movie is filled with excellent gags, especially the entire ordeal with Aunt Edna* and her poor, poor dog.**  Considering how big a role he would come to play in all of the Vacation sequels, I was surprised that Randy Quaid's Uncle Eddie didn't make more of an impact.  He's certainly one of the best things in Christmas Vacation, but he's also bugnuts crazy in that movie.  Here Eddie seemed positively tame.  (Oh, and hello young Jane Krakowski!)  I'm always a sucker for outdated computer gags, so I loved the scene with the Atari at the beginning.  The old west saloon is a well executed bit and I'm always happy to get a solid scene from Brian Doyle-Murray in a funny hat.  The end at Wally World is pretty perfect, the kind of insanity that so typifies 80's comedy and simply can't be pulled off today.  Plus John Candy just kills through that entire sequence.

I admit that after an emotional rollercoaster of a day, (see what I did there?) I fell asleep on the couch right as they got to Wally World and had to watch the ending three times before I got all the way through it, but I'm glad I finally checked this one off the list.  Much like The Monster Squad, this feels like a movie that I probably would have enjoyed far more if I had first seen it when I was Rusty's age.  There have been a few attempts to revive the Vacation franchise, most recently with Ed Helms playing a grown up Rusty Griswold and Christina Applegate as his wife taking their own family on vacation.   The project seems to have been shelved for now, but I'm curious if the family road trip premise is something that can still strike a chord with audiences.  Is that something that people still do?  My parents certainly took us on plenty of trips, but we never spent days driving from state to state.  It would be interesting to see how a reboot/remake would handle that aspect of the story.  I'm guessing iPads would be heavily involved.



*Yes, I had an easier time believing they would strap a dead woman to the top of their car, then leave her in their cousin's backyard in the rain than I did believing in that pool scene.)

**This scene destroyed me.

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Title: National Lampoon's Vacation
Director: Harold Ramis
Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron, Randy Quaid
Year Of Release: 1983
Viewing Method: HBO HD

IRON SKY, Because Moon Nazis!

"Remember me?  The moon spook you turned into a snow flake?"

I was getting ready for work this morning when I got an automated call from my office warning me that MBTA service had been suspended.  Moreover, Boston residents were advised to remain in their homes and only open the door for uniformed, identified law enforcement officers.  I immediately checked Twitter and turned on the local news to discover that, after photographs of the two Marathon bombing suspects were released by the FBI yesterday, the two young men shot and killed MIT police officer Sean Collier before stealing a car and fleeing to nearby Watertown.  There they engaged in a shootout with local authorities, firing assault weapons and tossing explosive devices (including another pressure cooker bomb) out into the streets.  Officers shot and killed one suspect, 26 year old Tamerlan Tsarnaev of Chechnya, and there's currently a massive manhunt underway to find the second suspect, Tamerlan's 19 year old brother Dzhokhar.  (Both have been living in Cambridge for a number of years and Dzhokhar became an American citizen last year on Septemeber 11th.)  The entire Boston area is on lockdown at the moment, so Jamie and I have been home watching TV nonstop since 8:30am.  It was going to be a pretty slow day at work, so I had planned to play some pretty serious catch up today.

So much for that idea.

It's been a few hours now and there haven't been many developments.  As the hours pass, it's starting to feel more and more like this thing might drag on through the weekend, which is a fairly daunting prospect.  Watching TV has never been so exhausting.  I've seen some friends start sharing funny videos and livestreams of kittens, looking for some kind of entertaining alternative to the insanity taking place on outside.  So if you're like me and you're starting to suffer from news footage fatigue, allow me to make a suggestion: Switch over to Netflix Instant and throw on Iron Sky.  If you're looking for something fun and maybe a bit silly, this fits the bill pretty perfectly.  Don't believe me?  I have four words for you:

Nazis...FROM THE MOON!

Let me be clear: this is by no means a "good movie."  However, credit where credit is due: they really fucking go for it.  Remember when Snakes On A Plane was a thing?  The premise sounded so good that the internet went rightfully bonkers for it.  Unfortunately the movie itself was pretty disappointing.  In many ways it was reminiscent of a Syfy Original movie starring the likes of Debbie Gibson and Lou Diamond Phillips, something based entirely on a funny title with no actual filmmaking taking place.  But Iron Sky doesn't rest on the laurels of its hilarious premise, that of a group of Nazis who took refuge on the dark side of the moon and are planning an invasion of Earth despite knowing next to nothing about the last seventy years of humanity.  Yes, there's some very self aware humor, particularly everything having to do with black American astronaut James Washington, but it's also got something to say about political propaganda and American foreign policy.  But at the end of the day this thing knows on which side its bread is buttered; the Nazi death ship is powered by cell phones and the story culminates in a completely absurd international space battle.

The movie's tongue is planted firmly in its cheek, but director Timo Vourensola clearly isn't setting out to make a shitty movie.  All things considered, the effects work is actually pretty decent and while the dialogue often leaves something to be desired, the story moves along at a pretty good pace and escalates in a way that really does not disappoint.  Plus you have to be impressed at any movie that somehow manages to turn the Nazis into sympathetic heroes.  Unfortunately, the weakest link here is the cast.  The great Udo Kier, playing Hitler's lunar successor, is surrounded by a group of moderately talented unknowns, and while it's not enough to fully derail the movie, it's pretty hard to ignore.  Julia Dietze and Gotz Otto are serviceable as our lead Nazis and Stephanie Paul does a caricature of Sarah Palin that's on point but feels incredibly dated and ultimately goes nowhere.  The weakest links are definitely Christopher Kirby as astronaut Washington and Peta Sergeant as campaign spinmaster turned military general Vivian Wagner.  They get by far the broadest, most over the top material but tragically they lack the chops to really sell this stuff.  For example, Sergeant gets an incredible costume change in the last half hour, but the whole thing ends up falling pretty flat because she clearly has no idea what to do with herself.  It's a real shame.  With a proper cast and minimal tweaking, Iron Sky could have been something truly special.

In the end, all that really matters is that it's FUN.  It might not be a top notch film, but it's certainly not for lack of trying.  Plenty of movies fall short of their potential, but there are too many mainstream studio releases that just feel straight up lazy.  You have to give these guys points for putting in the effort to make the best Moon Nazi movie possible.  Everyone is working so damn hard that despite the film's obvious flaws, Iron Sky ends up being downright endearing and more than a little bit adorable.  So grab some friends, pour some drinks, and fire up the Netflix.

After a week like this, we could all use a few laughs.


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Title: Iron Sky
Director: Timo Vourensola
Starring: Julia Dietze, Udo Kier, Christopher Kirby, Gotz Otto, Peta Sergeant, Stephanie Paul
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (TV)

BACHELORETTE Is A Welcome Distraction From The Marathon Aftermath

"I got you to smile...that's something."

As of this writing I'm still about a week back on articles, but in light of recent events I'm going to jump forward to the present and then I'll circle back tomorrow.  It seems silly to ignore the most dramatic attack on my hometown in my lifetime, but it feels even sillier to wait a week to write about it just because I've been busy lately and fallen behind schedule.  Besides, this is my project, I'll make the rules.

Anyone who knows me knows that my Boston heritage is a huge part of my personality.  My mother's family is Italian, my father's family is Irish and almost all of them still live within an hour of the city.  I may not have an accent, but I'm about as Boston as they come, and during my five years in Los Angeles, my hometown roots became a badge of honor.  In fact, that is quite literally true: before moving I got a tattoo (my first) of the Red Sox "B" logo, which I've always felt transcended its baseball context to symbolize the entire city.  L.A. is about as far away as you can get from Boston, but even there I found myself at the center of a wonderful little east coast ex-pat community, filled with high school and college friends who, like me, had gotten their fill of frigid winters and were lured by the promise of constant sunshine.  I had a collection of Sam Adams bottles on the shelf in our living room, a stolen Dunkin Donuts rug at the front door and a Wally The Green Monster doll sitting in a chair next to the TV.  We may have been 3000 miles away, but it still felt like home.

Since moving back east three years ago I've fallen back in love with Boston in many ways.  I've rediscovered the pleasures of actually walking in a downtown setting and riding a bike through the city streets.  L.A. taught me to love good Mexican food, but man is it nice to live in a place with great pizza on every corner.  Yes, the winters still suck and the summers tend to get oppressively hot, but autumn and spring simply cannot be beat.  And since my wife isn't a local, it's been a lot of fun to both introduce her to all of my favorite places and to discover all the great new bars and restaurants that have cropped up since I graduated from college.  I'm sure that we'll move on to another city in a few years and when we do I'll certainly be excited to go.  But, just like when I went to California, I'll also be sad to leave.

I won't try to summarize why Marathon Monday/Patriots Day is such a big deal around here, as plenty of others have already done so at great length.  (Personally, I think that Film Crit Hulk put it best.)  To be honest, my relationship with the holiday has always been a little off kilter; unlike most everyone else in the city, I've almost never had the day off from school or work, so I've never actually gone down to stand along the Marathon route and cheer on the runners.  Even still, the energy around town is as infectious as opening day at Fenway Park.  Everyone just seems...happier.  Even when I was on the west coast, I would lament missing out on Marathon Monday, despite never having had a chance to properly celebrate it in the first place.

It's been three days since twin explosions rang out on Boylston Street and there's still far too much that we don't know.  There have been fluctuating injury counts and death tolls, rumors that the government shut down cell service downtown (they didn't) and that five unexploded devices were discovered spread throughout the city (no such devices exist).  We've seen the best the city has to offer, with doctors and nurses who had already completed the grueling race jumping into action to treat those wounded at the scene while still other racers ran an extra mile and half past the finish line to nearby Mass General Hospital in order to give blood.  Unfortunately, we've also seen far too many surrender to humanity's worst instincts, looting a table of unclaimed marathon jackets and quickly adopting rumors that the perpetrator was a Saudi national.  We still don't know who did this, and yesterday afternoon was extremely frustrating in that regard: over the course of an hour the AP reported that an arrest was imminent, then CNN claimed that a suspect was in custody, only to find out that in reality no arrests had been made and no suspect had been identified.  Don't get me started on the state of modern journalism, but it's extremely frustrating to see the people whose only job is to inform the public casually sacrifice the veracity of fact (I'm looking at you, NY Post) in the rush to break the story first.  You'd think CNN would have learned their lesson from the Obamacare/Supreme Court debacle, but apparently not so much.

Thankfully all of my loved ones are safe and sound.  I had one aunt, a woman to whom I owe so much, who was running in the Marathon, but thankfully she was stopped at mile 21 and I was able to get in touch with her pretty quickly.  Facebook and Twitter became absolutely crucial that day, the easiest way to let friends and family know who was okay.  In fact, my old a cappella group instantly started a thread so that all the current and former members could check in and it became incredibly comforting as the day went on just to see an outpouring of love and care from some of my closest friends.  And that's what's struck me in the days since this horrible travesty shattered what should be a day of pure joy: this city has come together like I've simply never seen before.  I walked down to Copley Square yesterday and found a barricade on Boylston Street at the corner of Berkeley.  While reporters spoke quietly into their cameras, a silent crowd gathered in the street, reverently staring down the usually busy thoroughfare, now eerily empty.  There was a growing collection of flowers, candles and notes at the foot of the barrier, with a few men admirably maintaining the memorial by rearranging items, keeping the candles lit and taping down cards so that they wouldn't fly away.

Last night the Bruins played their first game back in the Garden, and this happened:

For me, it really sunk in Tuesday night.  I hosted my regular pub trivia show at Terry O'Reilly's and I was more than a little nervous.  Surely the desire for beer and whiskey would persist, but did people really want to go out in the world and be social?  I had visions of a mostly empty room, playing host to a few scattered folks who mostly just wanted to drink in peace and had little patience for my silliness.

I could not have been more wrong.

The place was PACKED, the biggest night of trivia we've ever had there.  All of our regular teams were there in full force, as well as dozens of unfamiliar faces in search of a respite.  Everyone was in great spirits, ready to laugh and escape from the nightmare that was still unfolding just few minutes down the road.  Usually I get a few teams that play for a couple of rounds and then go home, but at the end of the night we still had a full house.  Trivia night had become a haven, a safe space for people to gather together and lose themselves in a few pints, obscure pop culture and, most importantly, a sense of community.  After that night I truly felt that this was my trivia family, and in truth I was just as happy to provide a distraction as they were to have one.

Anyway.  Bachelorette...

I left work on Monday to find Jamie home on the couch absorbed in the local news.  She's on vacation this week, so she had basically been frozen there for most of the afternoon.  We watched the press conferences by Governor Deval Patrick, Mayor Tom Menino and President Obama before finally deciding that we needed to change gears.  I was initially thinking of a really dumb action movie, something full of mindless spectacle that would let me unplug my brain for a few hours.  (The top contender was the Total Recall remake with Colin Farrell.)  However, Jamie really wanted to watch something upbeat and funny, so after a quick scan of the Netflix queue we settled on Bachelorette, a female driven hard comedy in the vein of The Hangover.  Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan and Isla Fisher star as three bridesmaids who, after a few too many drinks and lines of coke, accidentally ruin the wedding dress of their old high school friend played by Rebel Wilson's American Accent.  With only a few hours to get the dress fixed before the wedding starts, needless to say that some hijinks ensue.  It's easy to see how this movie got greenlit, but also just as easy to see how it ended up as a primarily VOD release.

The film clocks in at just under 90 minutes and the pacing feels a little all over the map.  I'm curious if there's a longer cut somewhere that flows better, or perhaps has some darker/over the top set pieces that just didn't land.  I don't necessarily think that would make for a better movie, as I actually liked the smaller scale here compared to the batshit crazy antics of The Wolfpack, but even in a landscape full of bloated comedies it's hard to escape the feeling that there's something missing here.  It has the swagger of a raunchier film filled with sheer lunacy, despite being fairly grounded in reality.  The three leads are all great, (even if Isla Fisher's accent tends to drift) and I laughed out loud early and often.  Plus it has James Marsden as a charming asshole, a.k.a. The Best Marsden.  Most importantly though, Adam Scott plays opposite Lizzy Caplan, a pairing that any fan of Party Down can tell you is pure magic.  They have a scene in his childhood bedroom where they simply look at each other and he calls her by the nickname that only he ever used...it's a really beautiful moment, demonstrating the kind of simple human connection that Jamie and I both needed to feel that night.

Mostly though, Bachelorette was simply a welcome diversion, an excuse to smile and laugh in the face of irredeemable horror.  When it was over, we immediately decided that we wanted something inspiring and flat out awesome, a movie that showcases the very best that humanity has to offer.

There was really only one choice.

Because even after that terrible day, I still believe in heroes.


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Title: Bachelorette
Director: Leslye Headland
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, Isla Fisher, Rebel Wilson, Adam Scott, James Marsden, Kyle Bornheimer
Year Of Release: 2012
Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (TV)