Team USA's dreams of World Cup victory came to a screeching halt yesterday, which I suppose means that most sports fans' attentions will swing back to focus once again upon the great American pastime of baseball. In a baseball town like Boston that's pretty easy business, even if the Red Sox are currently looking pretty dismal in fourth place. But for those of you who need a little reminder why baseball is so damn great, Netflix has got you covered.
Starting next week you'll be able to stream The Battered Bastards Of Baseball, a documentary about the independent minor league Portland Mavericks. It's a great underdog story about a bunch of muttonchopped, mustachioed dreamers who just wanted to play ball. It's even got some star power in the form of the one and only Kurt Russell, who once played for the team that was owned by his father Bing Russell after a long acting career of his own back in the glory days of the Hollywood western.
At this point it seems inevitable that we'll eventually get a narrative adaptation with Russell playing the role of his father. It remains to be seen if that will play as fun as Mario Van Peebles playing his father Melvin plus Melvin's onscreen alter ego Sweet Sweetback in Baadasssss! Unlikely, but you never know.
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:
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.
--------------------------------------- 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
"It will cost you sweat and tears and perhaps...a little blood."
I'm gonna keep this short and sweet because I'm fucking exhausted. This is the time of year when sports has the ability to slowly take over my life. Right now there's college football, NFL games, the start of the NHL and oh yeah, THE RED SOX IN THE WORLD FUCKING SERIES. On top of all that, I've still got to watch a movie a day. And write them up.
Yikes.
This past weekend was a busy one, with USC playing Notre Dame on Saturday night at the same time that the Red Sox clinched the ALCS, followed on Sunday by the Head Of The Charles Regatta and a Patriots loss to the Jets in a controversial play that still has analysts scratching their heads. Somehow amidst all that testosteroniness I managed to squeeze in viewings of the silent vampire classic Nosferatu as well as Shadow Of The Vampire, a fictional account of Nosferatu's production based on rumors that the title character was played by an actual vampire.
There is shockingly little vampire stuff in Nosferatu. Max Schreck's Count Orlok is utterly fantastic with a creature design that is singularly creepy, from his giant rabbit fangs to his spindly fingers and long nails. Tragically, he's AWOL for too much of the movie, spending a big chunk of the story locked away in the hold of a ship bound for Germany. In the meantime we get a lot of Hutter the estate agent falling down while trying to beat Orlok back to his wife Ellen, who's largely stuck at home with neighbors while getting psychic premonitions about her husband's doom. When Orlok does arrive he brings a herd of plague rats with him, while also putting Hutter's boss Knock under some kind of spell that turns him into a raving lunatic despite never actually sharing a scene with the vampire. The townsfolk decide to sacrifice Knock in order to bring an end to the plague (?) while Hutter returns home and warns Ellen that Orlok is out to get her, leading Ellen to eventually sacrifice herself in order to distract the Count the rising sun. Day breaks and and the monster is disintegrated, which also magically lifts the plague from the land.
Considering that the whole script hinges on the lethal effects of sunlight, it's astounding just how much of this movie was shot during the day while pretending to be night. In fact, when Hutter first meets Orlock, the Count immediately complains about the late hour and claims that it's after midnight, a statement that's immediately followed by the two men walking across an open courtyard while casting shadows on the ground. It's pretty distracting, although the restoration I watched on Netflix Instant did an admirable job at recreating the original color tinting; the film was obviously shot in black and white, but most day scenes are colored yellow while night scenes are colored blue to help compensate for the wonky lighting. Also, I have to wonder if most audiences were functionally illiterate in 1922, as most of the title cards remained on screen long enough for me to read each one about four times. Has average reading speed increasing over the last 90 years? Were they catering to people who couldn't read very well? I'm curious only because it really grinds down the pace of the film - trim the title cards down to reasonable lengths and the movie would probably be about 15 minutes shorter. The effects are truly impressive for the time, including one scene where Orlok appears as a transparent spectre and another where he climbs into a coffin and then levitates the lid into place. And all the use of Orlok's freaky shadow is awesome. But mostly I just wish that Nosferatu had a little bit more actual Nosferatu.
In that regard, Shadow Of The Vampire does not disappoint. The always great Willem Dafoe stars as Max Schreck and it's a supremely creepy performance. Apparently it was his work here that helped land him the role of the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, and it's little wonder as Schreck and the Goblin bare a striking resemblance to each other. In fact, I wish that Raimi had used some of the Schreck prosthetics instead of that silly metallic mask, as Dafoe might then have had even a nominal ability to display human emotion. Dafoe plays Schreck as a tragic character, an evil beast grown somewhat weary with age who finds motivation in his obsession with Greta Schroder, the film's leading lady. She's dangled in front of his face like a carrot by the obsessive F.W. Murnau, played with a kind of manic focus by John Malkovich. There's an admirable effort to recreate many of the shots in the original film, right down to grain of the film stock. Unfortunately, the Shadow Of The Vampire vacillates between true horror and pure camp. It's almost as if Dafoe and Malkovich are in one movie while Cary Elwes and Udo Kier are in another, and poor Eddie Izzard is stuck somewhere in the middle. It's odd to say the least. Then again, it was produced by Nicholas Cage.
Still, I feel like I haven't done enough justice to some of the horror classics this month. We're about a week away from Halloween and it's becoming clear that I'm just not going to get around to any of the Universal Classic Monsters, which is a real shame. Hopefully I'll get a chance to dive into a few before my year is up.
--------------------------------------- Title: Nosferatu, A Symphony Of Horror Director: F.W. Murnau Starring: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schroder, Alexander Granach Year Of Release: 1922 Viewing Method: Netflix Instant (TV)
--------------------------------------- Title: Shadow Of The Vampire Director: E. Elias Merhige Starring: Willem Dafoe, John Malkovich, Udo Kier, Eddie Izzard, Cary Elwes, Catherine McCormack Year Of Release: 2000 Viewing Method: Netflix DVD
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.
