Good or bad movies that are good or bad because they are good or bad.

Right now, I’m so pale that I feel like I need to justify it. How does one justify being pale? Blog about movies. That’s about as “indoors” as it gets.

There aren’t simply good movies or bad movies, there are many shades of gray (like my skin right now-which is a nice ash color). Bad movies can be good, and good movies can be bad. I’m fairly certain each and every movie can fit into one of the categories below, but I’m willing to consider adding more if we come across some uncanny peacocks that don’t fit anywhere.

Bad movies that are good:

• Wanted
• Jumper
• Underworld 2
• X-Men 3
• Live Free or Die Hard

Bad movies that are bad:

• Cheaper by the Dozen
• Fool’s Gold
• Definitely, Maybe
• Pink Panther 2
• Spiderman 3

Good movies that are good:

• Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• Into the Wild
• The Dark Knight
• Rachel Getting Married

Good movies that are bad:

• Braveheart
• Mulholland Drive
• The Horse Whisperer

Movies that are sad because they are bad:

• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Transformers
• Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• From Hell

Movies that used to be good, but became bad:

• Napoleon Dynamite
• Crash
• South Park

Movies that are awesome:

• Road House
• Teen Wolf
• Pirates of Silicone Valley
• Repo Man
• Waterworld
• Predator
• Space Jam

These lists, if you ruminate on them long enough, might be important to you or a family member. Then maybe I can justify having a hue that falls somewhere between “zombie” and “recycled notebook paper”. I require sunshine, but there isn’t any to be found.

-John

john@addictedtowords.com

Posted in All, Movies | 3 Comments »

Probably something less dramatic.

For whatever reason, more than 17,000 people visited Addicted to Words today.  I have no idea why, but rather than let this present surprise become ATW’s dying gasp, I have rallied to put actual words and thoughts down.  A Prime Leader Zanramon original if you will.  Let’s party like it’s November 2007.

My pen’s a bit rusty, so this probably needs lots of editing and probably some self censorship, but here goes…
—

2008 will be remembered for many things.  The worst US president since Andrew Johnson is leaving office.  The Olympics will be held in communist China.  Gas got ridiculously expensive.  Britney Spears went bat shit insane.

All certainly notable things, but when it is all said in done, 2008 will be remembered as the year of nostalgia.  Everything old has become new again.  The Boston Celtics handily beat the Los Angeles Lakers for the NBA Championship.  19 years after the last one, a new Indiana Jones movie was released.  American Gladiators made a comeback.  Even Beverly Hills 90210 has been remade.  Ideas from decades past seem fresh and young, (arguably) ready to take the world by storm.

Nostalgia is a powerful weapon.  It is the reason people continue to buy a new boxed set of Star Wars DVD’s each year, despite the fact that the only new feature might be that Darth Vader’s light saber is tinted 3 degrees more red.  In the right hands, it can spread joy, good cheer, and free spending ways.  In the wrong hands, nostalgia can be boring, mundane, or even depressing.

There are three kinds of nostalgia.  Two of them are enjoyable, one of them is somewhat more tolerable than eating shards of glass.  They are each embodied in current nostalgic presences in pop culture: the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the re-emergence of New Kids on the Block, and the remake of Beverly Hills 90210.

The release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:  The first kind of nostalgia is the most enjoyable and commercially successful kind.  It has been 19 years since the last Indiana Jones movie, the Last Crusade, was released.  It was one of the strongest of the three movies, and Indy presumably hung up his hat, whip, and adventurous zeal, on a high note.  As time passed, history smiled upon the Indiana Jones movies.  People that were not even born yet when the Last Crusade came out discovered them.  There is literally not one person in the world who does not absolutely love Indiana Jones.

Thus when word came out that George Lucas, Steven Speilberg, and Harrison Ford were getting the band back together, excitement began to build.  Most people assumed that the new Indiana Jones movie would be the best movie of all time, which probably is not a fair assumption.  Simply because of how beloved the previous Indy movies were, there is no way that this one could live up to expectations.

Yet, it came close.

For one, as previously mentioned, it has been 19 years since a Indy movie came out.  Each year that went by, the nostalgia surrounding Indy simply kept growing.  Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford could probably put on a shadow puppet play, and as long as it was called Indiana Jones and the Something of the Lost Something, obscene amounts of people would go out to see it.

So Indy has a significant built-in audience, which is the first ingredient of successful nostalgia.  The people love Indy and have been waiting an extremely long time for this, they are coming out to see it no matter what.

The second ingredient of this nostalgia pie we are baking here, is Harrison Ford.  Of course, not everything has to have Harrison Ford to be successfully nostalgic.  It is how Harrison Ford is still thoroughly Indiana Jones through and through.  Yes, he is much older than he was, but he can still do everything he used to be able to do.  If anything, Ford seems to solve puzzles and beat up Socialists easier in KOTCS than in any of the other three previous movies.  Seeing how much Ford has aged could easily make us all feel old, and make the movie feel depressing, but he has not slowed at all.  It ends up making us feel younger.  Age is just a number for Indiana Jones, why can’t it be for me?  This is why old cartoons are the most successfully nostalgic thing ever.  They never age, and take us right back to how we felt when we originally watched them.  Despite dealing with real live, aging humans, Indiana Jones has somehow achieved something similar to this.  The same goes for Madonna.

The re-emergence of New Kids on the Block:  The New Kids on the Block had some popular songs that were awesome in that ironic VH1 sort of way, and they wore some clothes that probably were the same.  Mark Wahlburg was somehow involved in the early days, and he was in Boogie Nights, so that seems significant.

After a rather long hiatus, in which TNKOTB presumably were hanging tough, they have re-emerged.  Nobody expects them to do anything of note anymore, I’m fairly certain that they don’t either.  This is why they are successful, they know that they were ridiculous in their prime, and they know that they are much older now, and they know that doing what they were doing before except for being much older is one of the most ridiculous things ever.  And they know that run on sentences are sometimes appropriate.

It is all a big joke, and we all feel in on it because we were around for the first incarnation of TNKOTB.  Everybody likes a joke as long as they get it.  Like a fine wine, Indiana Jones got better with age.  TNKOTB are like Franzia, it spoils with age, but drinking Franzia is kind of funny in the first place.  If anybody drinks that spoiled Franzia, it will be hilarious.

The re-make of Beverly Hills, 90210:  Beverly Hills, 90210 is being remade for 2008, rebadged as simply 90210, maybe to seem more modern.  It doesn’t matter, the re-make of 90210 is a terrible idea.  This is where nostalgia fails, where it hits the proverbial 5 second mark of “2 Girls 1 Cup”.  Admittedly, the old 90210 was not ever anything I really appreciated.  Any time I spent in my youth and early adolescent years watching TV was almost always spent watching cartoons or sports.  I missed out on a lot of shows people my age consider important TV.  Full House, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and of course 90210 got the short end of the TV watching stick.  I never really watched any of them, and other than the ability to recite the entire Fresh Prince theme song, I am not aware of any details about any of them.

If I were to guess, Full House would be about a house where a few too many people live leading to lots of hilarious incidents involving somebody taking too long in the shower, the Fresh Prince would be about Will Smith’s remarkable odyssey from being wrongfully accused as the antagonist in a fight to sitting on a throne in Bel Air, and 90210, of course, would be about the glitz and glam of that famous zip code.

The fact that I don’t know a lot about 90210 doesn’t hurt my point in the slightest.  It was a successful and popular show in it’s heyday, which seems to lead television execs* thinking it could be a successful and popular show today.  Problem is, in the 2008 version of 90210, nothing is the same.  All of the actors from the original show are too old to reprise their characters, lest it take place in a world where all high school students are pushing 40.  Some of the original actors, most notable Shannon Doherty**, will have cameos in the show.  As adults.  Kids are adults now, which isn’t nostalgic, it is pretty darn depressing.  It reminds us that we are growing old, that our lives are finite and our time in this world is short.  Or probably something less dramatic, but equally as ineffective at creating that nostalgic feeling.

The only constant in the new 90210, as compared to the old 90210, is grown up kids.  That doesn’t take us back to better times, and is absolutely useless at creating that warm nostalgic feeling.  People will tune in to relive the good times and tune out feeling every one of their twentysomething years and unfulfilled potential hanging over them.  (Am I self-projecting too much here?)

In a year where nostalgia reigns over the land like smog over Beijing, 90210 simply does not make the grade.  2008 won’t stand for such drivel, I won’t stand for such drivel, and you should not stand for such drivel.  Three drivel’s should properly illustrate my point.

-Zanramon

zanramon@addictedtowords.com

*In the biz, we like to shorten executives to execs.  We also like to say “in the biz”, in the biz.
**I claim that this is the most notable fact due to Shannon Doherty being one of the only people I’ve heard of in the new 90210.

Posted in All, TV, Movies | 2 Comments »

You don’t have to spend a fortune to make a differencce.

Probably not the triumphant return you had hoped for from me, and I swear up and down I’ll start writing again soon, but this photo of President Bush a the Olympics is just too much to pass by without some second thoughts.  I’m generally tired of making fun of W, mostly because it became too easy, but I just wish I knew what was going on here.Discuss. -Zanramonzanramon@addictedtowords.com

Posted in All, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Kicking and screaming and kicking.

I swear I’m not dead, I’ve just been extremely busy pondering whether an NFL player or a bear would win in a foot race, and trying to sell babies on eBay.  I will resurface one of these days.
-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com  

Posted in All, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Looking for luxury cars.

Conventional wisdom tells us that drinking alcohol is an activity solely for miscreants and rabble rousers. People that contribute nothing but pitchy renditions of “Danny Boy” to society, the veritable scum of the earth. Sometimes it seems that drinking is a worse crime than say, arson, or even public nudity (all three of which can go hand in hand in hand).

Well it’s currently 6:03 AM, and what I am about to tell you is going to fly in the face of everything you may think you know about imbibing freely and plentifully. I can say to you with reasonable certainty that your paradigm will be shifted.

As stated, it’s approximately 6 AM. I realize that this is not an unreasonable hour for many human beings to wake up and begin their day. My father has usually ran 5 miles, read a novel, cooked a turkey, and saved 8 orphans from almost certain death by 6 AM on most days. Even I have been through a multitude of phases in my life where I was consistently getting up at 6 AM. Be it voluntarily, such as when I would inexplicably show up for high school an hour early every day during my sophomore and junior years, or completely by force, such as when I worked* at a parking garage one summer.

However, as my life stands now, there is almost nothing that would cause me to get up at 6 AM. My earliest class is at 9, and that’s only once a week. My days are assuredly late-afternoon/evening heavy when it comes to activities that aren’t sleeping. So, to what do I attribute the fact that I am up, alert, and productive** so early this morning? I attribute it to alcohol. It may not make sense yet, but bear with me.

Last night, I attended a baby shower for a friend of mine, thrown by another friend of mine. Such as is often the case in situations like that, there are usually lots of friends of mine present. Needless to say, we all had a few drinks***, and a few laughs, and as most of us are 21 or 22 and graduating college in less than 2 weeks****, some of us had more than a few drinks. I was somewhere in between “a few drinks” and “more than a few drinks”.

It is assumed that waking up after a night of moderate to heavy drinking leads to a state often referred to as being “hung over”. This is absolutely true. As I’m sure many of you know, being “hung over” is brutal and incidentally is also the only time I’ve ever felt like my head had gotten stepped on by one of those morbidly obese Americans. I’m not sure if you’ve heard but they’re numbers are growing at an alarming rate. Possibly in preparation for an invasion. I digress.

But it’s not always true. There’s another phenomenon tied to drinking copious amounts of alcohol that occurs just as often as being “hung over”, often at the same very same time. This phenomenon doesn’t have a catchy title like “hung over” (although it clearly needs one). It’s non-catchy title that most people use, simply for the absence of anything else, is something like “waking up way too fucking early and not being able to fall back asleep despite the fact that I went to bed at about 4:45 in the morning”. Alcohol has a funny way of passing you out, and then far too soon afterwards; waking you up and keeping you up.

Common sense tells us that getting up “way too fucking early” gives you a few more hours during the day to get things done, or in my case, shift paradigms. I alluded to it in the previous paragraph, but this is almost never true due to the fact that those few more hours are almost invariably ruined by the fact that you are “hung over” and completely incapable of accomplishing anything other than eating greasy food or laying in bed staring at the ceiling trying to figure out how your shirt sleeve got ripped off the previous night, and who has it now.

This is not always the case though. Not everybody believes me, but there is a vaunted state in which you drink the precisely correct amount of alcohol, which activates the early hour of rising, but not the effects of being “hung over”. Suddenly you are wide awake at 6 AM and feeling great. This is extremely difficult to do, but today I managed to mix the chemicals right and achieve bliss.

In light of this new information, alcohol needs to stop being viewed as the root of all evil. When used properly it can be harnessed as an alarm clock that somehow eliminates all tiredness (until about 3:30 PM). From now on, each and every night I will drink the elusive perfect amount of alcohol to add hours of production to my day. I’ve done some admittedly exhaustive calculations to discover this perfect amount for me. Unfortunately, the perfect amount differs from person to person and also varies heavily depending on the type, color, and strength of the particular alcohol you are consuming.

(Pro tip: Mixing types of alcohol will unquestionably ruin any chances you may have had to find the perfect amount.)

When I’m drinking each and every night throughout my life, I fully expect lesser people to call me such grating names as “bum”, “loser”, or “alcoholic”. Even without the “I’m rubber you’re glue” rhymes I plan on throwing back in the face of the naysayers, none of the labels pinned on me will be true. Because, despite the fact that I will be somehow surviving on an hour and fifteen minutes of sleep every night, each morning when these people are sleeping or lazily attending church or going to school or doing whatever petty activities they do, I will be fully awake and shifting paradigms.

Like I just did yours.

-Zanramon

zanramon@addictedtowords.com

*I mean this in the loosest sense of the word. One of my tasks was cleaning the garage and one fine day a few weeks into that job I discovered discarded needles and cotton balls in what I can only assume was a small lake of urine. After that I spent very little time cleaning and lots of time wandering up and down the parking garage looking at cars. I invented a game where I would stop on each side of the parking garage on each floor and look out over the side at the cars driving by until I spotted a BMW, a Lexus, and a Mercedes. Then I would proceed to the next side on the same floor, when all sides were completed I would proceed to the next floor down. It was really quite productive and fun.

**This is debatable. There’s a growing contingency of people who think that reading anything I’ve written is in no way productive, and may in fact be counterproductive. I know, I don’t understand it either.

***Although not the mother to be. Drinking while pregnant can lead to Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, which should not be confused with Fecal Alcohol Syndrome.

****Holy shit.

Posted in All, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Stovepipe

There’s something oddly compelling about that hat. Not only would it make Abe Lincoln proud, but it also seems to have an ill-advised level of transparency for a hat that tall. Leyland becomes a monolith while wearing it, a veritable reach to the Gods. It makes a statement, but not an overt one, nor one that I can comprehend. What is the deeper meaning and how can I discover it?

(Also bonus points for perfectly melding into the ATW color scheme.)

Via The Ugly Baseball Card Blog.

-Zanramon

zanramon@addictedtowords.com

Posted in All, Sports | No Comments »

My sin is pride.

My high school makes me proud.  Every time we get in the national news it is for something absurd like this, when I was there it was for the “sleep in” in protest of us having the shortest school year in the developed world.  How that is determined, I have no idea.  Lincoln High School students exist on a different plane. Here’s the Death Star of senior pranks, in a good way…

From the Smoking Gun, Portland Prom Prank Probed:

APRIL 24–Oregon educators want law enforcement officials to probe who was responsible for mailing parents a letter on school letterhead suggesting that they supply students with alcohol at post-prom parties. The letter, a copy of which you’ll find below, was sent this week to families of students at Portland’s Lincoln High School. Recipients of the missive were urged to consider opening their homes this Saturday for parties as “a safe, secure place for students to have fun,” adding if adults “provide the alcohol, you can have peace of mind knowing that they did not acquire it illegally. Condoms were included with the letters–which were written on Portland Public Schools stationery–since “STD epidemics have spread through other high school communities and we want to prevent such an outbreak as best we can.” The letter was purportedly written by “The Lincoln High School Faculty and Administration.” Officials do not know how the letter’s creator(s) got access to school mailing lists. And while rather well written, the letter did include obvious clues that it was a hoax, including a supposed recommendation from the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. The state agency, the letter claimed, “stated that a fifth of alcohol, like Hennessy Cognac, is sufficient supply for at least 8 adults. One can assume that for 17 to 18 year old individuals, one fifth can probably be spread out to 4 students. Considering our reputation (Drinkin’ Lincoln), in some cases one fifth is only enough for a single person.”

Click through to see the letter.  It’s even well written.

-Zanramon

zanramon@addictedtowords.com

Posted in All, Portland | 5 Comments »

We Dance Together

As I type this, the Phoenix Suns are losing by 19 points to the San Antonio Spurs.  It looks like they are going to go down 0-3 in this first round best of 7 playoff series, and in all likelihood, they’re season is, in the immortal words of some unspecified girl on either Laguna Beach, or the Hills; “Dunzo”.  A Greg Norman syndrome of sorts.

It’s inherently sad for me to see these Suns struggle.  They represent all that is good and noble in the NBA.  They embody fun, seemingly effortless basketball.  They try and score as much and as fast as possible, and they deal with the consequences later, a veritable college student drinking heavily on Cinco de Mayo.  They’ve had all kinds of regular season success, and even moderate to strong postseason success, but can’t seem to grab that championship.

Their qualities alone are enough to make my heart frown when the Suns struggle, but even moreso, the rise and fall of the Suns parallels my college career, and to witness their last stand brings to the forefront the fact that I’m graduating in about 3 weeks.  Appropriately, my college years will die with these Suns.

Let’s hope in our DeLoreans and drive* back to July 14th, 2004.  An 18 year old version of myself had just graduated high school and was enjoying the rest of the summer before falling down the coast to college.  The Phoenix Suns, coming off a 29-53 season, signed Steve Nash when the Mavericks weren’t all that interested in trying to bring him back.  Both of our futures were bright.

The next four years saw the Suns win 62, 54, 61, and 55 games, arguably the most successful run in their history.  The same could be said for me, I learned a lot, had a few drinks and laughs with friends, enjoyed the company of probably a few more beautiful women than I deserved, traveled around the world, and even fell in love once.  The Suns and I both inhabited a charmed, higher level of existence.

This season, faced with their inability to get to the NBA Finals, the Suns made a bold, borderline reckless, trade.  They traded Shawn Marion, a swiss army knife of a basketball player, and backup point guard Marcus Banks, to the Miami Heat for Shaquille O’Neal.  It was unclear at the time whether or not Shaq was still alive.  (Like I said, it was a bold trade.)  The trade meant the end of the Suns as we knew them.  Suddenly decision making was needed, sobriety was required.  There were some half court sets, and definitely more throwing the ball into the post than anybody was comfortable with.  The Suns were growing up.

So was I.  I knew this was my last year.  I did stuff solely for the sake of my resume. I added the extra internship and classed up the wardrobe.  I had one foot on the next step and one foot still on the ground floor.  I still would run and play, but always washed my hands afterwards.  Suddenly decision making was needed, sobriety was required.

Now the Suns are crashing and burning, and if Game 1 was any indication, quite spectacularly.  Steve Nash is getting old, Grant Hill is held together by scotch tape and Elmer’s glue at this point, we now know that Shaq is alive, but he’s certainly staring his own mortality right in the eyes.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see some big changes for them this summer.  The prevailing sentiment seems to be to make some trades and build around Amare Stoudemire and Leandro Barbosa.  I like to think I’m not crashing and burning, but my college years certainly are.  They’re just about over, it’s sad solely for that reason, but also because, like I said, their story played out a lot like the Suns did.  Plenty of success, but ultimately their potential was never reached.

I don’t regret anything, but I know I could have stood out a bit more, really made my mark.  Sometimes I was too content to do well enough, the equivalent of lots of regular season success and less post season success.  I didn’t fail by any means, but I didn’t necessarily come through in the clutch.  I imagine the Suns feel the same way, in no way do they regret anything, but they’ve got to feel a bit whistful about what could have been.

Both the Suns and I face uncertain times this summer and on.  We’ll both be ending a really great chapter and hoping to write an even better one.  I imagine J.K. Rowling felt like this after she wrote Half Blood Prince and felt Deathly Hallows looming.  The pressure is formidable, and I hope I am too.

-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com

*Or fly, I’m not really sure.

Posted in Magical Things, All, NBA, Sports, Books | 8 Comments »

Redemption vs. Masturbation

In an effort to get as little accomplished as is possible for a human of my mental prowess, I’m watching my eighth NBA game this weekend right now. And by this weekend, I don’t mean the vast undefined span of “weekend” which always includes Fridays, often includes Thursdays, and frankly can sometimes include any day other than Tuesday. No, I’m using the traditional definition of weekend, which is simply Saturday and Sunday. In two (2) days I have watched eight (8) NBA games. Admittedly not all of each one, but certainly more than 79% of all of them.

I guess the reason I’m explaining all of this is sort of to trick myself into finishing the weekend off with a bit of homework or pontificating or whatever else productive, but mostly because I wanted to share some ideas about redemption and masturbation.

As stated, I’m watching my eighth (8th) out of eight (8) possible NBA games this weekend. Currently, the Boston Celtics are playing the Atlanta Hawks. More than most teams in the NBA, these two teams embody the theme of redemption. The Celtics were awful last year, and after trading for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to join Paul Pierce this last offseason, have been rolling up wins like Del Taco workers roll up burritos, quickly, efficiently, and fairly easily. Vegas has them as the favorite to win the NBA title this year, which would almost certainly mean redemption for Allen and Garnett and Pierce, who are three (3) of the NBA’s best players yet have never had much postseason success.

The redemption theme with the Celtics doesn’t stop with the players either. Their coach, Doc Rivers, was considered a very poor coach last year, despite the fact that his nickname would suggest a rather high level of competency. It was painfully apparent that he wasn’t a real doctor. He’s done a markedly better job this year, surely garnering some votes for Coach of the Year. Danny Ainge, the Celtics’ general manager is cruising happily on the fresh asphalt of Redemption Road as well after having what can gently be called rather limited success as a GM, not to mention being fleeced by Kevin Pritchard to take Bassy Telfair for what became Brandon Roy.

The Hawks on the other hand, managed to end the NBA’s longest current playoff drought this year. Atlanta has not qualified for the playoffs since 1999, where they lost to the Knicks and promptly traded Steve Smith for Isaiah Rider, a man who once kicked the female manager of a sports bar. I can only speculate to what type of kick Rider prefers. A dragon kick? A two footed jump kick to the chest? A Ryu/Ken sweep kick straight out of Street Fighter II? I digress. As a rule of thumb in life I like to avoid kicking managers in general, much less managers who are women. I don’t think anybody would disagree with me classifying that trade as a mistake. Thus, even though the Hawks finished 8 games below .500, at 37-45, qualifying for the playoffs at all has to be considered redemption.

This raises the question though, with all these obvious redemption themes weaving like a drunk driver all over this playoff series, why did I just hear “Dancing With Myself” over the PA system during a timeout? Isn’t that just about the least logical song to play during a playoff series like this?

Dancing With Myself is a song by Billy Idol that is ostensibly about masturbation, possibly while looking at yourself in the mirror. I fully understand that playoff series’ don’t have official themes, and the PA DJ’s probably aren’t really concerned about that type of thing anyway, but let’s put that aside for the sake of this essay. Dancing With Myself doesn’t fit the theme of redemption at all, and might even be the worst choice possible.

Masturbation is what one resorts to when they do not have an actual other human available for sexual pleasure, redemption is all about redeeming yourself. Maybe if Dancing With Myself was played a lot during timeouts last year, and I have to assume it was because it’s far too random of a song to just casually throw on the playlist this season, an appropriate song this year might be “Cradle of Love” (if we are sticking with Billy Idol) which not only was as high as number two (#2) on the charts, but is also blatantly and boldly about hooking up with a hot chick. Thus redeeming yourself if you spent all of last night masturbating.

With a little bit of forethought, Boston’s PA DJ’s could have firmly entrenched themselves in the upper echelon of PA DJ’s, but they squandered the opportunity. They certainly deserve credit for involving Billy Idol at all, and not sticking to such drivel as the Baja Men, but I just can’t ignore the magnitude of the opportunity. This redemption theme, so obvious it might even embarrass that rat at the end of “The Departed, should have continued to have been built upon. It wasn’t, and we’re left with a two (2) story split level rather than a Pearl Tower, a tragedy indeed.

-Zanramon

zanramon@addictedtowords.com

Posted in All, NBA, Sports, Music, TV | No Comments »

The Lycanthrope Protocol

I watched Teen Wolf the other day for the first time since I was probably about eleven (11). I had forgotten both how awesome this movie is, but also how almost nothing in it makes any sense as far as werewolf, or more correctly, lycanthrope, lore goes. I’m absolutely willing to concede that I need to suspend my disbelief on some level in order to make most movies work, and I’m going to go ahead and concede the existence of werewolves. Problem is, this movie cuts down all standards we have established for werewolves. Teen Wolf knocks down all expectations we have of how a werewolf should be. As I said, it’s a deliciously awesome movie, but I want some effort on the believability scale. I know I should embrace pioneers, or we would have no George Washingtons, no Amelia Earharts, No Ansel Adams, not even any Krangs in our world, but for whatever reason, this perturbs me.

WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #1: Werewolves can’t control when they change from human into human-wolf.
Other than the first time it happens to him, Michael J. Fox’s character, Scott Howard can change into the wolf whenever he pleases. Everybody knows that werewolves can’t control when they change into wolves, the moon controls it. Unless they are in Harry Potter, and that’s only because of a potion. Presumably, Howard didn’t have access to potions because there doesn’t seem to be any magic in his world. Except werewolves, which makes this weird quandary. How is this possible that werewolfery is the only magic in Howard’s world? I have no explanations, and to be frank I can’t think about this for too long because it’s far too confusing.

WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #2: When werewolves are not in their human form, they are totally out of control.
When Howard turns into a werewolf he doesn’t go on any killing or maiming rampages. He doesn’t really hurt anybody at all, except for arguably Boof, but that has nothing to do with his wolfery, but rather his penchant for hot blondes. In fact, Howard’s only discernible difference, personality wise, when he becomes a werewolf is that he is far more confident than when he is a human. This really makes no sense to me either because if I were to become covered in hair and sharp teeth and claws it would not boost my confidence. It would most likely lower it. I doubt I would be comfortable in my own skin, as it were, anymore.

WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #3: Werewolves dress poorly.
In almost every case of werewolves throughout history, they either wear no clothes, or just throw on some tattered rags and call it a day. The werewolves in Underworld sometimes have ripped pants (the Incredible Hulk look), but usually have nothing. Professor Lupin skips clothes all together. Animals generally skip clothes, lest they be considered whimsical. Disney is the gold standard for animals wearing clothes, and I highly doubt most animals want to be pigeonholed into the Disney stereotype, thus, they don’t wear clothes.

When Howard is a wolf he either wears his regular clothes, his basketball jersey, or an awesome Vanilla Ice Cream pimp suit. The suit needs no further explanation, as it is plainly and obviously awesome.* But even when wolf Howard rocks his basketball jersey, he does it in style with a headband, presumably as a tribute to one of my top ten (10) favorite NBA players of all time: Clifford “Uncle Cliffy” Robinson.

WEREWOLF STANDARD BROKEN #4: Werewolves can’t play basketball.
I’m not sure if this is a standard or not, but it should be. Werewolves basically just maul stuff and bite people, which is not conducive to holding a basketball, much less dribbling like Zeke, dunking like ‘Nique, and shooting like Thunder Dan Majerle.** It’s inconceivable that Howard turning into a werewolf would actually make him better at basketball. I could see if it would make him faster and able to jump higher, and maybe he’d even have quicker reactions. I just can’t see a werewolf putting it all together to become the best prospect since Harold Miner. And we all know how well that turned out.

I guess what I’m saying is that we really need some sort of standard set of rules when it comes to magical creatures. A veritable Montreal Protocol of the fantastical. Especially if we want them to ever have a chance of being accepted as something that sort of seems real, but ultimately isn’t. Like the abominable snowman, or of course, the chupacabra. Werewolves just want a chance, which takes us full circle, as that is sort of the underlying message of Teen Wolf. Give werewolves a chance, even though they are different. Give Boof a chance. She isn’t like a werewolf, yet she is still different. It’s the theme, it’s ok to compare girls to wolves. Just this once.

-Zanramon
zanramon@addictedtowords.com

*Maybe it does need a bit more explanation, he is not a pimp when he wears the suit. I apologize if I portrayed that Teen Wolf somehow involves prostitution and pimping.
**Sorry for not continuing that rhyme, but I couldn’t resist the chance to drop a Dan Majerle reference. I had a folder with him on it in 3rd grade.

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