As I have mentioned previously in this space, I am a movie lover (actually, I just mentioned it in the column below, penned only yesterday, but I kind of like how this sentence starts; I'm intrigued to find out what I write next). I happened to run across Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the other day - not the most recent one starring Johnny Depp (who is a tremendous actor, loved him in The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, but he seems like he's trying a bit too hard as his version of Willy), but the classic version starring the immortal Gene Wilder (quick true story - I was hitting golf balls at a local public course this Fall and who should walk over and set up right next to me...yes, Gene Wilder! Apparently he lives close by, but, I mean, come on! Blazing Saddles!!!!, Young Frankenstein!!!!, Stir Crazy!!!!, The Producers!!!!!, Willy Wonka!!! standing right next to me hitting golf balls! I was speechless. He must be pushing 70 by now, and he was a little thin, but he hit the ball pretty straight, and he was nice enough to offer me the rest of his basket of balls when he was done hitting. Which, of course I accepted if only to have the chance to speak to him for a few minutes and thank him for all of the laughter he brought me for my entire life. Very nice guy.)
Anyhoo, I have few rules in life, but one of them is that if Gene Wilder is in a movie I have just run across - especially if that movie appears on the short list above - I am watching it. So, a few nights ago when Willy Wonka came on, I was in. And maybe it was because I was overtired, or maybe I just finally saw things as they really are, but I'm pretty sure Grandpa Joe was a drug addict who manipulated Charlie into taking him to the Chocolate factory to satisfy his drug jones. Think about it, the man exhibits all of the classic signs of a drug abuser - let's take them in order:
1. He was rail thin and pasty white - the fashion industry doesn't call this look "heroin-chic" for nothing.
2. He had no job, no money, and he was a freeloader who lied in bed all day, every day. How selfish is that? When the movie starts Charlie comes home from school, and his Mother comes home from her 14-hour day doing other peoples' laundry, while these four deadbeats are lying in the only bed in the house which sits right in the middle of the biggest room. Tell me that's not exactly what a crack den looks like. Grandpa Joe freely admits that he hasn't been out of bed in twenty years, so that means that Mom is emptying bedpans as well, which must be a great job when all they eat every day is cabbage soup. And how ripe does that crew smell? I hope Mom hits them with a hose every few weeks or the smell would be unbearable!
3. he has a willing enabler in his daughter (Charlie's Mom). I used to feel sorry for Charlie's Mom because she busts her ass all day, everyday, and when whiny Charlie hits the freaking candy lotto, he goes right for Grandpa Joe to share the prize! I'd have gone bullsh_t on him if he tried that! (And while we're on the subject, people talk about Veruka Salt's sense of entitlement, but what about Charlie's? The entire first half of the movie he's whining at whoever will listen that he deserves one of the five golden tickets because it would mean more to him. Well, la-di-freaking-da, don't we have a high opinion of our self!? Four billion people in the world, but he thinks he is top 5 most deserving! Jees, Veruka got a bad wrap, in my opinion). But back to Mom, I used to feel bad for her, but she's just an enabler at this point - another clear sign of Grandpa Joe's drug abuse. I mean, what person working 14-hour days, doing all of the cooking and housework, and eating nothing but cabbage soup while trying to raise a teenager wouldn't lose it on the four grandparents after a couple of weeks, never mind twenty years! Get off your asses and go get jobs as WalMart greeters you deadbeats!
4. Grandpa exhibited clear signs of hoarding. When everyone else was asleep (and went to sleep starving, by the way), Grandpa Joe pulls another Wonka Bar out from behind his pillow for he and Charlie. Way to plot with the kid while the rest of the family starves Grandpa Joe. Classic drug-seeking behavior.
5. Grandpa Joe always had a little money stashed for "tobacco" (he tells Charlie that he used his tobacco money to get Charlie the first chocolate bar). Yeah, pull this one Joe, it plays jingle bells. A little "medicinal marijuana" is more like it.
6. When Grandpa does finally get to his feet, it is to score some quick and easy cash and prizes. Yeah, you're too sick to get out of bed for twenty years, but as soon as the kid is throwing freebies in your face, you miraculously get better?! (another example of Mom's enabling by the way).
7. As soon as he stands up, Grandpa is staggering around like he is drunk.
8. When they get into Wonka's factory, he encourages Charlie to sign his life away, just so he (Grandpa) can get into the factory: "sign away Charlie, we've got nothing to lose." Yeah, maybe you don't Grandpa, you drug addled old coot, but Charlie has his whole life in front of him.
9. As soon as the coast is clear, he convinces Charlie to steal some Fizzy Lifting Drink so Grandpa Joe could get "high". Two signs of drug seeking here: encouraging others to commit crimes on your behalf, and using the stolen substance for your own pleasure. Man, they can write drug abuser textbooks on this guy.
10. Encourages Charlie to take the everlasting gobstopper to Slugworth - or, in drug parlance - switching dealers and double-crossing your first dealer when you think he has screwed you.
And you know what? Grandpa Joe played everyone perfectly because he scored the biggest prize in the end - the factory and all its contents. I wonder how long it took for him to sell the Oompa Loompas into slavery and bankrupt the company to support his drug habit? If they did a Willy Wonka 2, Grandpa Joe would have have looked like Al Pacino at the end of Scarface.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Do you go to the movies?
I am a movie lover. With three kids, we hardly ever actually go to the movies anymore but with 1800 channels on our cable system now, plus pay-per-view, Netflicks, and a DVR (digital video recorder for the uninformed - kind of a built in TiVo. And if you don't know what TiVo is, well, I don't know what to tell you), we can have our choice of movies right at home. In fact, I'm pretty sure going to the movies will soon go the way of the drive-in. I still manage to see every movie I want to, and I don't have to take out a home equity loan for two tickets, a medium popcorn and two bottles of water. (But, I really need to buy a fake movie theatre butter machine, because that is the only reason to go to the movies in a theatre anymore. A few pumps of that stuff and you have enough processed fat and chemicals to kill a horse and, of course, you need the equivalent of two Bounty rolls of napkins to get the grease off of your hands, and most of it sticks to the first few handfuls of popcorn on the top, so eating those couple of handfuls is like cramming a butter-soaked sponge into your mouth, while the rest of the bag tastes like chalk and sand balls because its been sitting in the popcorn-display-window-thingy since the first Jaws movie came out, but I defy you to find me something quite so delicious. But I digress.) Nor do I have to listen to five cell phone conversations as I try to watch the movie. Or stand up nine times because the idiot in the middle of the row feels the need to leave the theatre every five seconds. Or miss a key part of the movie because idiot #2 can't remember where he was sitting and stands in the aisle (right in my line of sight) for twenty minutes while he looks around. Or, the newborn the idiot couple (we'll call them #3 and #4 and give the kid a pass) brought asleep in a car seat baby bucket decides to wake up and scream (and idiots 3 and 4 are somehow shocked by this). Or if (read: when) my lovely wife (if you think for one second I'm calling her an idiot, you haven't been paying attention) has a question about the plot, I can pause the movie so we can chat while not missing any of the action. Yes, watching at home is a much more enjoyable experience. And I used to lament not seeing the next big blockbuster right away, so as not to be behind the times or out of the loop on the next great movie discussion, but I have found that pretty much all of our friends have young kids and they are in the same boat as we are. In fact, just last weekend we were talking about "Knocked Up" (very, very funny by the way), and all of us were talking about it as if the movie had just come out. But, it had been in the movie theatre six months before - we were only talking about it now because it was finally on cable, so we all finally saw it. So, if you can deal with the six month lag (and the aforementioned lack of movie popcorn butter, watching movies at home is quite a pleasant experience. The only downside to at home is finding the time to watch.
Fortunately for me, I don't sleep much. Actually, that is rather problematic because I love sleep, or, at least I used to love sleep when I got it. In college - once we were Juniors and had some schedule flexibility - my roommate Mark and I would schedule all of our classes in the afternoon just so we could go out late, and sleep in, and still make all (and by all, I mean, of course most. and by most, of course I mean many. and by many, of course I mean some.) of our classes. The other guys in our apartment started calling our room the Bat Cave because we were rarely seen before noon. And it was great, but I wish I could have seen myself 20 years later (I can't believe I was in college 20 years ago, but that is a whole other column) because I would have soaked it up and enjoyed that sleep so much more. Because once you have a job and kids, the very first thing to go is sleep and, near as I can tell, you never get it back.
I am very jealous of a person who can pop right up in the morning, wide awake, ready to tackle the day. I am not that person. If it were up to me, the day would start at, oh, 11:30ish. This lack of sleep is made worse (compounded, if you will) by the fact that I have always been a night owl. I have no problem at all staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning, even if I have to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 the next morning. And its not like I have a choice - I cannot for the life of me fall asleep until 11:30-midnight even if I turned off the light and went into complete shutdown mode. I used to do this and it would compound (exacerbate, if you will) the problem because I would toss and turn and watch the time tick by wondering when I would fall asleep. So, finally, I gave up and just went with the fact that I am a night owl; that's just how I'm wired.
But, one of the advantages to being a night owl is the chance to watch a good movie - and trust me, there is always a good, cheesy, or bad but so bad its good movie somewhere on tv (I think its a law). Last night, for example, I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which happens to be one of the top 10 greatest movies of all time (along with the two Godfather movies - yes, there are only two, despite what you may have seen or heard, Caddyshack, Animal House, The Quiet Man, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Sting, any James Bond film and the Star Wars movies. OK, some of the 10 have more than one film in the series, but you get the idea.) And what's great is I can't go five days without one of these movies being shown somewhere, especially Star Wars lately.
I have been on a Star Wars roll the last six months and I'm such a junkie, I can't turn them off no matter how often I've seen them. Maybe it has something to do with the Force as a concept that fascinates me. These guys are using a mystical power to move objects, knock people/things down, speak to the dead (or at least the no-longer-with-us-but-glowing-apparition-guys). Do you remember that scene in the first (well, third, well, original) Star Wars movie when Obi Wan is speaking to Luke from beyond the grave or wherever he is? (actually, you are probably not a geek, so you likely do not remember it) Anyway, Obi Wan is telling Luke to "trust his feelings" and "use the Force". Meanwhile, he's been "dead" for days, so this is a pretty neat trick - and Obi Wan showed remarkable restraint waiting so long to speak to Luke. If I had the powers of the Force, I'd be waaay to tempted to constantly interrupt people's lives. [At the deli counter just before ordering] "Luke, have the ham and cheese, the roast beef isn't good today." [On the highway] "Luke, take the Merritt Parkway, there's an accident on 95." [On the golf course] "Luke, there's a little wind up here, I'd hit the five iron." Do you think there is an on/off switch for this sort of conversation, because it would probably get pretty annoying after a while to have some old dead guy giving you advice from the great beyond: "Paul, its 1:30 in the morning, go to sleep already."
Fortunately for me, I don't sleep much. Actually, that is rather problematic because I love sleep, or, at least I used to love sleep when I got it. In college - once we were Juniors and had some schedule flexibility - my roommate Mark and I would schedule all of our classes in the afternoon just so we could go out late, and sleep in, and still make all (and by all, I mean, of course most. and by most, of course I mean many. and by many, of course I mean some.) of our classes. The other guys in our apartment started calling our room the Bat Cave because we were rarely seen before noon. And it was great, but I wish I could have seen myself 20 years later (I can't believe I was in college 20 years ago, but that is a whole other column) because I would have soaked it up and enjoyed that sleep so much more. Because once you have a job and kids, the very first thing to go is sleep and, near as I can tell, you never get it back.
I am very jealous of a person who can pop right up in the morning, wide awake, ready to tackle the day. I am not that person. If it were up to me, the day would start at, oh, 11:30ish. This lack of sleep is made worse (compounded, if you will) by the fact that I have always been a night owl. I have no problem at all staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning, even if I have to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 the next morning. And its not like I have a choice - I cannot for the life of me fall asleep until 11:30-midnight even if I turned off the light and went into complete shutdown mode. I used to do this and it would compound (exacerbate, if you will) the problem because I would toss and turn and watch the time tick by wondering when I would fall asleep. So, finally, I gave up and just went with the fact that I am a night owl; that's just how I'm wired.
But, one of the advantages to being a night owl is the chance to watch a good movie - and trust me, there is always a good, cheesy, or bad but so bad its good movie somewhere on tv (I think its a law). Last night, for example, I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid which happens to be one of the top 10 greatest movies of all time (along with the two Godfather movies - yes, there are only two, despite what you may have seen or heard, Caddyshack, Animal House, The Quiet Man, the Indiana Jones trilogy, The Sting, any James Bond film and the Star Wars movies. OK, some of the 10 have more than one film in the series, but you get the idea.) And what's great is I can't go five days without one of these movies being shown somewhere, especially Star Wars lately.
I have been on a Star Wars roll the last six months and I'm such a junkie, I can't turn them off no matter how often I've seen them. Maybe it has something to do with the Force as a concept that fascinates me. These guys are using a mystical power to move objects, knock people/things down, speak to the dead (or at least the no-longer-with-us-but-glowing-apparition-guys). Do you remember that scene in the first (well, third, well, original) Star Wars movie when Obi Wan is speaking to Luke from beyond the grave or wherever he is? (actually, you are probably not a geek, so you likely do not remember it) Anyway, Obi Wan is telling Luke to "trust his feelings" and "use the Force". Meanwhile, he's been "dead" for days, so this is a pretty neat trick - and Obi Wan showed remarkable restraint waiting so long to speak to Luke. If I had the powers of the Force, I'd be waaay to tempted to constantly interrupt people's lives. [At the deli counter just before ordering] "Luke, have the ham and cheese, the roast beef isn't good today." [On the highway] "Luke, take the Merritt Parkway, there's an accident on 95." [On the golf course] "Luke, there's a little wind up here, I'd hit the five iron." Do you think there is an on/off switch for this sort of conversation, because it would probably get pretty annoying after a while to have some old dead guy giving you advice from the great beyond: "Paul, its 1:30 in the morning, go to sleep already."
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Organic Guilt
From the home office in Tallulah, Georgia, I present the Top Ten Reasons I haven't blogged in a month:
1. I was attempting to honor the Hollywood writers' strike.
2. I forgot my log in ID and password.
3. After almost a year posting, I'm fresh out of original ideas.
4. I was caught up in the passion of Hillary's ideas and I've been on the campaign trail for a month.
5. Lost the will to write after witnessing another Red Sox World Series victory.
6. The guy I'm plagiarizing my stuff from hasn't posted in a while.
7. Recovering from breast-reduction surgery.
8. Mistakenly believed the story that the Internet was passe and everyone went back to communicating face-to-face.
9. Trying to catch up on my Oprah's Book Club list.
10. I have been traveling almost constantly for the past month and this is the first time I have found time to post since my journeys began. My apologies to the four people who read this blog.
But, since I'm here, I might as well write.
Hi. How have you been? I've been well, thank you - a bit haggard after my traveling schedule, but no worse for the wear. I don't really mind travel too much - I mean, being away from my wife and kids sucks, and the work piles up on my desk, but the actual travel never really bugged me...until now. And that is because the Green Guilt Police are making it so less fun to travel. And I know, it is very un-PC to say anything against the environmental movement these days, what with Al Gore quickly becoming more influential than the Pope, but the Green Guilt Police are starting to annoy me. And don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to doing my share to help save the planet from whatever ails her - after all, I now only bathe in rainwater I collect from my gutters - sure there is all manner of sticks, mud, dirt, dead flies, and disease-carrying muck, but I am all about doing my part. But what gets me is the all-consuming, I'm-going-to-influence-every-second-of-your-life theme to this latest environmental movement that has me annoyed.
For example, I was in the San Francisco airport the other day and I was washing my hands in the men's room, and when I went to get a paper towel, the towel dispenser had the following sign on it: "Take only as many paper towels as you need - do your part to help the environment." And I read this and I was thinking a couple of things: first, what if I have really big hands, or I got them extra wet and sudsy? Are people monitoring paper towel usage to gauge the effectiveness of the sign? But mostly, I was thinking, "Damn it!!!! How did they figure us out??? What kind of geniuses are these environmentalists??? For years, I have been recruiting a counter-environmental movement with only one purpose: to slowly kill the planet by using two to three (depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels that we didn't really need. It was the perfect plan - for years I had painstakingly convinced 1/2 to 3/4 of the six billion people on the planet (hard numbers are difficult to come by, what with the birth and death rates being so varied) that the earth was becoming uninhabitable, and that paradise awaited us beyond the grave. Well, that took a lot of convincing, I don't mind telling you - the language barrier alone was positively maddening at times. Just getting the first billion took like six months. And then there were the doubting Thomases of the bunch who kept asking me if I was committed to the movement, that they had seen me using the automatic hand-dry thing on several occasions (you know, to try to throw the environmentalists off my trail), and did I really have what it took to get this done. And trying to recruit three billion people to join my fiendish plot without word leaking out? Well, let's just say that I spent more than a few nervous nights scouring the Internet for word. And then there was the training - how to surreptitiously take two to three extra paper towels (depending on ...well, you know) without being scene; when to abort a mission; how to lose a suspected tail; what to do in upscale restaurants and hotels that had linen towels (three words: toilet paper rolls). But, in the end, it was all worth it. I had successfully recruited the (approximate) number needed to destroy the world using only extra (two to three, depending on size and thickness) paper towels. Our training was impeccable. Our mission clear. In only a matter of hundreds of thousands of years (well, possibly millions, but hey, I'm an optimist) we would use two to three (again, depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels each time we used a public rest room, and I WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD, HA HA HA HA (fiendish laughter)!!!! But, damn those environmentalists, damn them to hell. How could they have learned of my plan? How could they know? Well, they may have won the battle, but we'll win the war! (in fact - and don't tell anyone you've read this - what the environmentalists don't know is that I have a back-up plan to destroy the world in only several million years: taking an extra Kleenex and throwing it away without using it - they'll never suspect it - HA, HA, HA!!!!!! Take that Al Gore!!!
1. I was attempting to honor the Hollywood writers' strike.
2. I forgot my log in ID and password.
3. After almost a year posting, I'm fresh out of original ideas.
4. I was caught up in the passion of Hillary's ideas and I've been on the campaign trail for a month.
5. Lost the will to write after witnessing another Red Sox World Series victory.
6. The guy I'm plagiarizing my stuff from hasn't posted in a while.
7. Recovering from breast-reduction surgery.
8. Mistakenly believed the story that the Internet was passe and everyone went back to communicating face-to-face.
9. Trying to catch up on my Oprah's Book Club list.
10. I have been traveling almost constantly for the past month and this is the first time I have found time to post since my journeys began. My apologies to the four people who read this blog.
But, since I'm here, I might as well write.
Hi. How have you been? I've been well, thank you - a bit haggard after my traveling schedule, but no worse for the wear. I don't really mind travel too much - I mean, being away from my wife and kids sucks, and the work piles up on my desk, but the actual travel never really bugged me...until now. And that is because the Green Guilt Police are making it so less fun to travel. And I know, it is very un-PC to say anything against the environmental movement these days, what with Al Gore quickly becoming more influential than the Pope, but the Green Guilt Police are starting to annoy me. And don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to doing my share to help save the planet from whatever ails her - after all, I now only bathe in rainwater I collect from my gutters - sure there is all manner of sticks, mud, dirt, dead flies, and disease-carrying muck, but I am all about doing my part. But what gets me is the all-consuming, I'm-going-to-influence-every-second-of-your-life theme to this latest environmental movement that has me annoyed.
For example, I was in the San Francisco airport the other day and I was washing my hands in the men's room, and when I went to get a paper towel, the towel dispenser had the following sign on it: "Take only as many paper towels as you need - do your part to help the environment." And I read this and I was thinking a couple of things: first, what if I have really big hands, or I got them extra wet and sudsy? Are people monitoring paper towel usage to gauge the effectiveness of the sign? But mostly, I was thinking, "Damn it!!!! How did they figure us out??? What kind of geniuses are these environmentalists??? For years, I have been recruiting a counter-environmental movement with only one purpose: to slowly kill the planet by using two to three (depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels that we didn't really need. It was the perfect plan - for years I had painstakingly convinced 1/2 to 3/4 of the six billion people on the planet (hard numbers are difficult to come by, what with the birth and death rates being so varied) that the earth was becoming uninhabitable, and that paradise awaited us beyond the grave. Well, that took a lot of convincing, I don't mind telling you - the language barrier alone was positively maddening at times. Just getting the first billion took like six months. And then there were the doubting Thomases of the bunch who kept asking me if I was committed to the movement, that they had seen me using the automatic hand-dry thing on several occasions (you know, to try to throw the environmentalists off my trail), and did I really have what it took to get this done. And trying to recruit three billion people to join my fiendish plot without word leaking out? Well, let's just say that I spent more than a few nervous nights scouring the Internet for word. And then there was the training - how to surreptitiously take two to three extra paper towels (depending on ...well, you know) without being scene; when to abort a mission; how to lose a suspected tail; what to do in upscale restaurants and hotels that had linen towels (three words: toilet paper rolls). But, in the end, it was all worth it. I had successfully recruited the (approximate) number needed to destroy the world using only extra (two to three, depending on size and thickness) paper towels. Our training was impeccable. Our mission clear. In only a matter of hundreds of thousands of years (well, possibly millions, but hey, I'm an optimist) we would use two to three (again, depending on size and thickness) extra paper towels each time we used a public rest room, and I WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD, HA HA HA HA (fiendish laughter)!!!! But, damn those environmentalists, damn them to hell. How could they have learned of my plan? How could they know? Well, they may have won the battle, but we'll win the war! (in fact - and don't tell anyone you've read this - what the environmentalists don't know is that I have a back-up plan to destroy the world in only several million years: taking an extra Kleenex and throwing it away without using it - they'll never suspect it - HA, HA, HA!!!!!! Take that Al Gore!!!
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