Exit The Critic: Terry Lawson
Reading Defamer earlier today I came across a post about the Detroit Free Press' decision not to replace film critic Terry Lawson, who took a buyout offer late last year. I could go on about the death of film criticism, but I want. For the record, I think there are plenty of fine critics out there and plenty of people reading them. But there is a problem with newspapers and the fact that a paper like the Free Press can't keep Lawson around says everything about that problem.

I grew up reading Lawson when he wrote for Dayton's Journal-Herald and later the Dayton Daily News. (A merger brought him from the city's morning paper to its only paper.) He was a tough, fair critic with a personable prose style who wasn't afraid to criticize a sure-to-be popular movie if he didn't like it or champion one he liked even if it didn't look to be a popular favorite. (I remember his four-star review of Robocop making me feel like I had permission to think of a really great genre film as just a really great film. Period.) He was also a local. I remember attending a Sunday-afternoon art film series in 8th grade where he would show up for Q&A sessions after the film.

Other reviews that mattered to me: His declaration of Hannah And Her Sisters as a masterpiece meant a lot. I saw the film in junior high and loved it. I'm sure I didn't get all the nuances—-Why would Allen need to buy white bread and mayo to convert to Christianity?--but I'm with A.O. Scott in thinking that it's okay for kids to stretch out of their comfort zone. His review of Jean De Florette brought me downtown to my first foreign film.

I don't want to write about the guy like he's dead. Hopefully he'll keep writing for someone else. But I also hope the Freep and all the other papers trimming back their local arts coverage realizes what they're losing by getting rid of their local arts sections and replacing their critics with, say, the semi-ubiquitous, widely syndicated Orlando critic Roger Moore. There's no sense of connection there. As a budding film buff, it felt important to have a guy who was just as passionate and a lot more knowledgeable about the things I loved in town. It felt like these things were important to where I was and not just something that happened somewhere else.

And, yeah, I recognize the irony of me saying this as someone who's mostly read online and published in a newspaper distributed in 10 cities. Why should someone in our Denver edition feel like I'm writing for them? I don't know. But I only hope that someone reading me develops a passion for what I'm writing about of the sort Lawson prompted in me. Even if I did like Cloverfield.

The Mysteries Of Chicago: The identity crisis bookstore
On Belmont St. over by the old Onion office there's a fine little bookstore that, for as long as I can remember, has done business under a sign saying "Town Cleaners."

I can't even remember the real name most of the time since it's pretty dull. It's The Gallery Bookstore I've always thought of it as the Town Cleaners Bookstore. It reminds me of a character from Grant Morrison's run on Doom Patrol named Danny The Street. Danny was a transvestite street. On the outside he featured Guns and Ammo stores and other macho fixtures. But on the inside he was all nice boutiques.

I'm pretty sure the Town Cleaners Bookstore was just too cheap to have the original sign removed, however.

The Mysteries Of Chicago: Cafe Muppet
What is it? How can it exist in a copyright-intense business culture? Why does it barely show up on Google? (All I could find was a Yelp entry from someone who had never eaten there.) Some questions may never be answered. (Click to enlarge and you'll see that, yes, that's a little Kermit on the sign, or you would if it weren't so blurry.)

PERMANENT RECORDS REMOTE: The Feelies' The Good Earth (1986)

We put our Permanent Records feature on hiatus over at The A.V. Club so of course I find an album I have to write about. The feature will probably be back in some form later on, but I need to say some words about The Feelies' The Good Earth, the New Jersey band's second album. Released in 1986, it followed their debut Crazy Rhythms by six years. Crazy Rhythms is often, and rightly, cited as an influential albums. It jittery, post-punk jangle can be heard in countless subsequent bands from '80s college rock on. But it's The Good Earth that I love. I parted it with it in a cash-strapped CD purge somewhere between high school and gainful employment. I don't know how I could ever have let it go. It's fallen out of print in subsequent years but thanks to eBay and a part-time wholesaler in Thailand I now own a copy again.

R.E.M. was among the bands wearing out their copies of Crazy Rhythms and Peter Buck repaid the favor by producing The Good Earth. The band had a slightly different line-up by then and a slightly different sound. R.E.M. had listened to them and clearly they'd listened back. The Good Earth mixes the jangle and countryside spirituality of early R.E.M. with a Velvet Underground drone but the sound is all its own. Here's a favorite track:

Always a cult favorite, never a popular success, The Feelies signed to Warner Brothers, put out two more albums, then called it a day. I don't have those but I suspect eBay does. But I might wait. The Good Earth is pretty much all I want to listen to right now anyway.

REMAINING BOX OF PAPERBACKS BOOKS

Hunter Adams, The Man From Planet X: The She-Beast

Brian Aldiss, Starswarm

James Blish, A Life For The Stars

James Blish and Robert Lowndes, The Duplicated Man

John Boyd, The Last Starship From Planet Earth


Ray Bradbury, Chad Olivr, and Theordore Sturgeon, Three To The Highest Power

Edgar Rice Burroughs, The People That Time Forgot


Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mad King

John Coleman Burroughs, Treasure Of The Black Falcon

A. Bertram Chandler, The Alternate Martians

Gordon R. Dickson, Naked To The Stars

Gordon R. Dickson, None But Man

Philip Jose Farmer, Down In The Black Gang And Other Stories

Philip Jose Farmer, A Private Cosmos

Philip Jose Farmer, The Green Odyssey

Philip Jose Farmer, Flesh

John M, Faucette, Crown Of Infinity

Ian Fleming: Thunderball, The Man With The Golden Gun, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Doctor No., Thrilling Cities


H. Rider Haggard, Cleopatra

Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint, The Blind Spot ("The most famous, fantastic novel of all time," according to the cover.)

Robert Heinlein, The Puppet Masters

Nat Hiken, Sergeant Bilko

Robert E. Howard, Wolfshead

Otis Adelbert Kline, The Outlaws Of Mars

C.M. Kornbluth, Not This August

A. Merritt, The Metal Monster


Ed McBain, Vanishing Ladies

Larry Niven, Neutron Star

Larry Niven, World Of Ptavvs

Andre Norton, Lord Of Thunder

Andre Norton, The X Factor

Philip Francis Nowlan, Armageddon 2419 A.D. (The original Buck Rogers Novel)

E.E. Doc Smith, Grey Lensman (2 copies), First Lensman, Children Of The Lens, Second Stage Lensmen

Cordwainer Smith, Space Lords

O.F. Snelling, James Bond: A Report

George R. Stewart, Earth Abides

Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human

William F. Temple, Battle On Venus


Jack Vance, The Five Gold Bands / The Dragon Masters (Ace Double)

Jack Vance, Space Opera

Various Authors, The Avengers: The Passing Of Gloria Munday, The Avengers: The Afrit Affair


Various Authors, The Alien Condition

Jules Verne, The Demon Of Cawnpore

A.E. Van Vogt, Slan

H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man

Leonard Wibberley, The Mouse That Roared

Leonard Wibberley, The Mouse On Wall Street

DIVIDED BY A COMMON LANGUAGE
I interviewed Michel Gondry yesterday in advance of the terrific new film Be Kind Rewind and it was a terrific experience. He was an engaged, thoughtful interview subject and I found the whole experience quite pleasant. He's French and has a pretty good command of the English language, even though he sometimes needs to take the roundabout way to get to his point. He also has a distinct French accent, which, of course, only makes sense. When I'm talking to someone who's not a native English speaker, I find, as I'm sure everyone does, that the mind naturally adjusts to meet them halfway. It just kind of happens.
If you're not there, however, it can be baffling. I passed the audio file on to one of our new interns who started work on the 38-minute conversation at 10am. I got busy and didn't check on him until around 2:30 and I asked him how he was doing. He said, "It's tough." I said, "How far into it are you?" (Because, you see, it kind of has to be done soon to make the deadline for our Sundance issue.) He said, "Twelve minutes." And here's a sample of what he had done:

AVC: It’s seems to me, maybe I’m making the wrong connection here, but was this in any way influenced by Dave Chappelle’s Block Party?


Gondry: Yeah, completely. And in that, she’s(?) the ground basically. I had this concept for years, the fact that this kid remakes these movies. Uh, it’s as if(?) someone fears if he got a concept that had, for years, if he couldn’t keep it up he put it down for 10 months(?) and then he doesn’t do it itself, because there are needs. And the film would not have to be typically achieved, because it’s like watching a home movie. You don’t watch it for the technique or aspect, you watch because it’s reminiscent of the good men known to these parts(?) as your friend, or it reflects who it belongs to.

It's beautiful, in its way. And completely unrunnable. I ended up doing the transcript myself.
And I don't blame the intern at all. I probably would have transcribed it the same way if I weren't a participant in the conversation. Funny how that works.
Also funny: Gondry's parody of the popular "Will It Blend?" clips that float around the Internet that doubles as a commercial for his film The Science Of Sleep.

OLD NOW. OFFICIALLY
I'm 35 today. Yay? At least, as usual, Frank Sinatra has prepared me for the coming year, which will surely be a year of blueblooded girls and riding in limousines. (Their chauffeurs will drive.) Well, maybe not. But with any luck it will be a better year than this last one.

THE MOST CHRISTMASSY PLACE ON EARTH
When you spend the holidays in Florida, it's occasionally easy to forget that it's Christmastime, especially if you grew up in the often snowy, always cold Midwest. Fortunately, there are people down here who work to will Christmas into the tropics. And nobody works harder than the folks at The Oakdale Christmas House in St. Petersburg. Operating since 1977, it's a massive, front yard display of shiny Christmas doo-dads. Very little of it is original work. Mostly it's toys and lawn decorations from the past few decades set up in a series of brightly lighted, almost shrine-like displays. The front yard, for instance, features a Teddy Ruxpin, helpfully labeled "Talking Teddy Bear":

The house combines items pretty randomly. One display features a pair of angels spinning in the air as they book end Minnie Mouse:

There are some original characters however. Meet Mr. Slush and his family. And their disco ball:

But it's not all cartoon characters and inflatable snow globes. Peppered throughout are reminders that Christmas is a celebration of Jesus' birth. Often in the most unexpected places:

Honestly, the whole thing can't be properly experienced unless you're there. So I'll try for the next best thing. Here's a video. Note the clip of a televangelist playing in the background. I didn't realize until I finished taking the video that the display had a TV at the top but it's in frame at one point. Merry Christmas!

Update: Stevie also blogs about this.

WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY: THE FUTURE OF DRY HANDS
Last night I went to a screening of The Great Debaters, a Denzel Washington-directed film about a groundbreaking '30s debate team from a Black college in Texas. The movie was earnest/well-acted/forgettable but I'll always remember the night as my first encounter with the Dyson Airblade, a new-ish mechanical hand drying system that emphasizes air speed over air temperature. It's like sticking your hands in a cool jet stream. It truly is a wondrous age.

Below, someone (not me, obviously) enjoys the Airblade.

INCHING OUT OF BLOG LIMBO
Some clips must be shared. I saw this on the generally terrific (if too infrequently updated) hip-hop site Oh Word. It has nothing to do with hip-hop and everything to do with two old guys going at it on live TV. Oh, word!

THE KIND OF PHONE CALL I DON'T GET ENOUGH
It's by design that my work number isn't the easiest thing to track down. After years of working in the Madison office where anyone could walk in off the street and tell us about his hippie jam band playing at some coffee house, I've tried to limit unwelcome access as much as possible. When I do get a call it's usually from someone I want to talk to or someone tenacious enough to figure out my extension. I rarely get calls from famous puppeteers out of the blue.
But that changed yesterday when Bob Baker of the Bob Baker Marionettes called to talk about the Disney Inventory Noel and I wrote last week. We had a nice talk about his time with Disney, where he worked in the special effects department after WWII. It was great to talk to someone who was there, especially after being immersed in Disney stuff after reading Neal Gabler's bio. Baker's well known in his own right, though. He was head animator for George Pal's Puppetoons and worked on everything from Star Trek to Close Encounters to George Ulmer's Bluebeard. And his marionette company has entertained L.A. kids for years. Like the title of this post says, I wish I got out-of-nowhere calls like this more often.

CD SHELVES FOR SALE

If you've ever been to my current place, or any place I've ever lived, you've probably noticed that it's overrun with media. It's the best fringe benefit of my job that a lot of books, CDs, and DVDs float my way for free. But the cumulative effect of doing this for a few years is that the room disappears fast. Factor in that I spent years prior to turning pro squandering my paycheck on media and a personality that gets sentimentally attached to objects and you're left with, well, a mess. And given that our place, while spacious, is still very much a big city condo something had to give. For the last couple of weeks, it's been giving. Stevie and I did a large book and DVD purge last weekend that left us with a little more pocket money and still way too many books and DVDs. For the past few days I've been packing up my CDs.

I know people, people who are wildly enthusiastic about music, who have taken advantage of the glorious age of digital music we're now living to sell their CDs. I can't do that. I just can't. I've been building my collection since I was 16 and can still tell you the first four CDs I bought and when I bought them. (First: Green by R.E.M., purchased during a marching band trip on the first week of its release in 1988 before I owned a CD player.)

I get attached. I can remember poring over liner notes for albums and staring at covers. I once saw an interview Bryan Ferry where he complained that CD listeners lacked the "tactile" relationship with their music that vinyl fans enjoyed. If he only knew what was coming. I'm pretty sure I'm from the last generation to grow up touching music. But I don't really touch it anymore. I rip, peruse the liner notes, and go. I still look at the covers, but it's usually when they appear in the corner of my screen.

I don't really miss playing CDs, to tell the truth. I love the digital age. I listen to music just as deeply and more broadly than ever. I take my iPod with me everywhere. My laptop (and an external hard drive) allow me to keep a considerable library at my fingertips and a large hard drive at home houses a collection in excess of 200GB. That said, I still love my CDs. And packing them up hasn't been easy. I kept hitting little sentimental trapdoors. I mean, I can remember a couple of weeks in December of 1998 when the Townes Van Zandt album High And Low And In Between felt like the closest friend I had.

Nonetheless, they have to make room. So, apart from a few we listen to in the car on a regular basis, down to the basement they go, secure in the finest plastic tubs Target stocks. I guess I could get rid of them, but I keep thinking about the dream house I'll maybe own down the line, one with a wall of shelves for all my CDs that my as-yet-still-imaginary kids, who will never rebel against their dad's great taste in music, will be able to look at, and listen to, and touch.

THE FRUSTRATIONS OF FLYING WHILE WIRELESS

I've been flying more than usual lately (see previous post) and as anyone who's spent anytime at O'Hare already knows, nothing is free. To use the wireless you have to sign up for a service called Boingo. Which, whatever, as a captive audience who compulsively checks his e-mail, I'll pay for the privilege. But Boingo was apparently set up around 1994 and signing up for it requires finding a username that
a) Isn't taken and
b Is between 5 and 10 characters

That's not as easy as it sounds and around attempt 12 I came up with a username that I thought was perfect. Of course, it didn't work.

WHAT I HAVEN'T BEEN BLOGGING ABOUT WHILE I HAVEN'T BEEN BLOGGING

So, hi. It's been six weeks since I've posted here and for once I have a good excuse. On Monday, August 20th, my father was in a car accident near his home in Englewood, Ohio while taking some vegetables to his sister-in-law. His car collided with a dump truck. The driver of the dump truck going full speed and died at the scene. My father was able to make a call to my mother using his cell phone while others waited for him at the scene. Accounts vary as to whether or not he exited the car himself or was pulled because of a small fire. As to who was to blame, I'd rather not get into that issue apart from saying that my dad had a lifetime of frustratingly overly cautious driving. This seems to have been the day he made a split-second mistake at a backwoods intersection known for poor visibility, a history of accidents, and neighbors who have raised the issue with the town council more than once.

My father suffered broken ribs, a punctured lung, a fractured knee, and fractured upper vertebrae, all serious injuries for a 29-year-old, much less a 79-year-old. He was taken first to one hospital then to another, the latter being known for its trauma center. He was declared to be in serious but stable condition.

He was still in much the same condition when I arrived the next day, there being no good, short-notice flights the day of the accident. We also decided that I simply couldn't do that much to help on the day of the accident, anyway. It was a feeling I'd come to know all too well.

When I first saw my father, he was in bad shape. When I left, two weeks later, he had improved only slightly. When I returned the weekend after that he was still not well enough to be released from the hospital and into a nursing home. This was deemed necessary as the next stage of his recovery since he would need almost constant care upon release.

Complicating matters: he's kind of a danger to himself at the moment. That's the thing I haven't touched on yet. The accident left my dad with a broken, slowly recovering body. It seems to have left his mind in similar shape. For the first ten days or so he was virtually incomprehensible, a trend that bottomed out during a terrifying trip to the ICU. He would hallucinate, grab at imaginary car keys in the air, and talk about things that the dog was doing. Since then he's been better, but it's a deeply qualified better. He can talk about the accident in horrifying detail but has to constantly be reminded where he is. Asked what year it is and dad will always respond, "Now wait a minute..." before replying with something that's not even close.

And that's more or less where we are now. I've yet to go back since my dad was moved to a nursing home last week. I get daily reports from mom. She's wildly encouraged by the slightest signs of improvement and crushed by any setback. I'm due to go back again next weekend. I don't expect any major improvement. The way I see it we're on a journey of many miles that my dad can only travel in inches.

I really appreciate everyone who's been asking about him. I'll start posting updates in this space. I'll try to be better about keeping in touch but it's kind of been hard to get back to everyone. If you'd like to send cards or anything, my dad can be reached at:

Friendship Village
5790 Denlinger Rd.
Trotwood, OH 45426

Stay safe and well.

SILENCE: BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY
As anyone still reading this all to infrequently updated blog probably knows I did a piece for Slate a couple of weeks back about Popeye. I'm not sure I have that much more to say on the subject, but I'm using it as an excuse to test out some software that rips, converts, and uploads clips from DVDs. Here's a moment of early Fleischer brothers insanity in which Popeye will stop at nothing to create a quiet environment for a baby. (Not Swee'Pea, by the way. This is pre-Swee'Pea.) Enjoy.

ALL THE FUN OF MYSPACE, NONE OF THE CAM-WHORES
Just as everyone else soon will, I now have a Facebook page.

HOW WILL THEY REMEMBER YOU?
Keith: Merv Griffin died, did you hear that?
Stevie: Yeah. [Pause.] He was the one with the big penis, right?
Keith: [Confused.] I think you're thinking of Milton Berle.

"ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS NOTHING"

I once considered writing an article on why I thought there has never been a bad version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. I'm glad I didn't. This new one isn't so much bad as half-hearted. There are plenty of current events (well, current as of when it was shot for an intended 2006 release) floating around in the background to acknowledge that there could be some political subtext to it, but it never commits. There is at least [minor spoiler] one truly daring idea that it plays with, the notion that maybe the invaders have the right idea, that humanity is a self-destructive species that might be better off if someone else would take a firm hand to it. And it backs it up by not making that strong of a case for humanity. There's also much that could have been done draw parallels with an outside force invading the U.S. for our own good. Unfortunately, all that stuff just sort of lays there and the action doesn't compensate for it. And, man, can you tell that this thing is patched together by different hands months apart. It's been edited to the bone and the style changes virtually with each scene. Avoid. (I do like the line I've used for the title, however. Pretty chilling coming from Jeremy Northam, even if I did spend the whole movie thinking he was Todd Field.)

DELIGHTFUL AMAZON WEIRDNESS
I could tell you how Amazon decided I wanted to purchase some kind of American flag and Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land but I think that would spoil the fun.

WHAT I'M READING NOW: HOW THE WORLD ENDS

Here's what I don't need to read next: Anything suggestive of the apocalypse. In the past two weeks I've read Don Delilllo's latest, Falling Man and, like the rest of the Oprah-instructed nation, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. (Hey, I was going to read it anyway. And now she's chosen one of my favorite books of the last decade or so, Middlesex as her next project. Please stop reading my mind, Oprah Winfrey.)

Both were excellent / terrifying. I just finished the McCarthy today and it's a vision of the world after some sort of apocalypse as pitiless as it is plausible. He never gets around to detailing what's made the sky turned grey and the buildings melt just enough to lose their bearings but it doesn't matter. It's a picture of the world gone off the cliff, the kind we always fear leaving to our kids. By McCarthy's relucant admission it was inspired by his relationship with his young son (McCarthy's 75 with an 8-year-old kid) and it's filled with a desparate need to preserve what's good and human in the face of times that's misplaced the value of such qualities. It's relentless until an ending that's a tiny bit of a cop-out. Thank heavens.

My review of the Delillo book posts Thursday so I won't repeat myself. But I'll add a couple of filmic references by saying that nothing's captured the tone of what it felt like in the days, and now years, after 9/11 so well since The 25th Hour. I wouldn't put Lee in charge of the film version, though. I think only Kubrick could have really caught the sense of unease stirring beneath cool surfaces that he does so well.

Now I need to read something about resource girls who raise money for animal shelters or something.