OF A GOLDEN AGE

I cannot praise Chris Jones’s deep, magnificent profile of Roger Ebert (in the new Esquire) enough. It moved me in every familiar way and some I never expected. Ebert’s passion for his life’s work shows in every detail:

Ebert scribbles constantly, his pen digging into page after page, and then he tears the pages out of his notebook and drops them to the floor around him. Maybe twenty or thirty times, the sound of paper being torn from a spiral rises from the aisle seat in the last row.

Jones also cleanses the palate of the notion that Ebert has gone soft in his reviews — Yes, he assigns higher ratings to more movies, but Ebert has explained that he judges movies based on what they’re aiming for, not where they fall in an objective continuum of all moviekind. Jones also makes it clear that Ebert’s changing life of surgeries, illness, and steely resolve has effected if not his taste then his attitude. As in all cases, I support people’s publicly changing opinions as their circumstances change, and I appreciate without bounds anyone who is willing to admit a change of heart.

I thought the Jones piece was the end of it, and then Ebert wrote an equally magnificent response. He is more gracious than can really be believed and it is a suitable end to the story Jones began.

The New York Times reported that Kim Peek died of a heart attack a week before Christmas. Peek was a savant of nigh unprecedented abilities and the inspiration for Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man:

Mr. Peek had memorized so many Shakespearean plays and musical compositions and was such a stickler for accuracy, his father said, that they had to stop attending performances because he would stand up and correct the actors or the musicians.

“He’d stand up and say: ‘Wait a minute! The trombone is two notes off,’ ” Fran Peek said.

(This is, I think, how my friends imagine I feel when I see typos or grammar errors. They’re wrong, by the way.)

The article is a lovely tribute, and the contrasts in Peek’s mental state — brilliant in some ways, completely incapable in others — create moments of dark humor:

When Kim was 6, another doctor recommended a lobotomy. By then, however, Kim had read and memorized the first eight volumes of a set of family encyclopedias, his father said.

Rain Man is one of my family’s favorite movies, something from which we quote incessantly. Raymond — the character inspired by Peek — communicates almost entirely through nonverbals, and Tom Cruise’s character must learn to read between lines that aren’t present. He undergoes a now-classic Cruise transformation from crass to humbled, from uncaring to involved.

When the economy flounders and so many talented people find themselves out of work or underemployed, I think it can be tempting to lament that we aren’t all a certain way or haven’t followed a certain path. I love Kim Peek’s story because he spent most of his adult life giving presentations and making public appearances, helping to shore up the self-perceptions and confidence of other adults who faced challenging mental circumstances.

With great brain power comes great responsibility, usually at the sacrifice of some other part of one’s life or personality: our most beloved artists, scientists, and any of those who make important waves for humankind have discovered this firsthand.

Obama heavyweight and hometown hero David Axelrod made a funny as a guest on George Stephanopoulos’s first episode of Good Morning America:

[Stephanopoulos] questioned Mr. Axelrod about the health care bill; the president’s plans to badger “fat cat” bankers about bonuses; and the economy. Mr. Axelrod presented him with an alarm clock permanently set to 3:30 a.m., a gift from, as he put it, “your friends in the White House.”

And apparently something’s rotten in the state of cohost rapport between Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts:

After noting that surveys suggest that women view Mr. Woods less favorably than men do, the new anchor said dryly, “Well that’s a shocker, huh?”

Ms. Roberts, using a “Romper Room” tone that suggested that she didn’t realize he was kidding, replied, “We’re learning something new every day.”

With a name like Robin Roberts, I can see why this person may lack a sense of humor.

My original plan was to see now-confirmed-poofest 2012 on my birthday, which happened to be the movie’s opening day, but when I found out it was TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG and the friend with whom I’d intended to go turned out to be busy, that plan went out the window. Instead, by pure serendipity, I learned ATHF Live was happening and the 7:30 show was not sold out. A prompt excited text message was sent.

The Lakeshore Theater is small, and they packed us in one party at a time to avoid people leaving a seat between themselves. My knees bumped the seat in front of me and a cupholder dug awkwardly into my leg the whole time. They were also rather liberal with some blinding disco lights and a smoke machine. The “preshow” previews, shown on an automatic pulldown screen from a projector in the back, were embarrassingly bad in every way: unfunny comedians, poor video quality, even worse postproduction. They also wedged in a dumb intermission about 3/4 through the show for no reason. In other words, I hated this venue and would have to be lured back with another incredible act or group.

“Why isn’t Frylock here?” Dave Willis and Dana Snyder asked, rhetorically, at the beginning. They said something about appearance fees, and it may have been a joke and maybe not, but really . . . Three out of four ain’t bad. Dave does Meatwad and Carl and Dana does Master Shake, so there was plenty of voice variety, and a Meatwad voice contest at the end of the show where the best contestant was voted out because he admitted that he’s an auditor. Whoops.

There is something wonderful, surreal, and certainly memorable about seeing regular people and hearing your favorite cartoon characters coming out of their mouths — At first I couldn’t stop laughing even when nothing was funny, because of the plain incongruity. Dana (here on the right; picture from online) wore a tuxedo and Dave had on bright green preppy pants and the whole evening had a good feel to it. The Meatwad contest was judged using kazoos.

Dave and Dana showed two brand new episodes that won’t air for a few months, and they were both amazing. A guy in a porkpie hat stalked around the theater yelling at people for taking photos or recording during these, and Dave made a throwaway remark about them ending up on YouTube tomorrow.

There aren’t a lot of things I like or think about that my parents aren’t at least passingly familiar with (recent exception: My Halloween costume was a Fraggle, and they don’t know Fraggle Rock at all), but besides vaguely knowing that Adult Swim exists, they didn’t know anything else about it — so I found myself explaining about Aqua Teen and hearing it in my head and thinking, “This all sounds so ridiculous.” Which is, I think, its appeal.

Those of you who know me know that I am very fond of Jewish literature, mostly American. My friend Nathan is a Twin Cities Jew whose mother grew up in the same suburb as the Coen brothers — St Louis Park, or “St Jewish Park,” Nathan informed me.

Mild spoilers. Read at your own risk.

The Coen brothers set their movie A Serious Man in St Louis Park in 1967, when Nathan’s mom was a girl and would have seen a similar landscape in her everyday life. And after their more spectacular movies, relatively speaking, this is a small character piece. Very little happens — main character Larry, an uber cerebral physics professor, has a sudden onslaught of bad luck and attempts to find a reason why. He ventures through traditional Judaism, the crazy-seeming mysticism of his sad brother, and pure science.

Near the beginning of the movie, a student who has failed Larry’s physics midterm tells Larry he understands all the anecdotes but did not realize physics involved actually doing the math. As Larry struggles to convince the student that physics IS the math, not the stories, it’s clear that he’s about to learn some kind of lesson.

Once my boss described me by saying I hate it when people aren’t logical, and in a way, that’s dead accurate. To dig into it deeper, I am really frustrated when people act without any regard or thought in a world that already makes no sense most of the time. Nathan probably feels the same way, and I think the movie hit home for both of us because we share this attitude. You can see it on Larry’s face when the events in his life confuse him, and he can’t even make enough sense of them to get angry. Near the movie’s end, Larry’s brother has an emotional outburst and says a lot of what Larry hasn’t articulated for himself yet, and it’s a wonderful, purgative moment. Larry’s life perplexes him because he has done everything right, accurately, or at least unexceptionally; when it begins to fall apart, he has to rethink all of his actions.

This movie is thick with references to Jewish life and culture, which I really enjoyed — I told Nathan, no movie I can think of has spent this much loving detail on American Judaism: Hebrew school, bar mitzvahs, Yiddish phrases, a mezuzah in every doorway.

A recent New Yorker featured an interview with Wes Anderson, inadvertent king of the near-autistic movie genre we now describe as “quirky.” Anderson’s movies mostly feature preciously upper-class people in unrelatable situations (wealthy people with thirtysomething ennui because of their failed personal genius? Seriously?) and this is kind of his trademark. As the interview notes, Anderson is a harbinger of the “Stuff White People Like” era.

There are mild spoilers in this review, so don’t make a big deal about it.

Sitting opposite Anderson on the spectrum are movies like Jack Nicholson’s Five Easy Pieces, a relatively small movie by a writer and director of whom I’ve never heard, about an unhappy, dissatisfied grunt worker named Bobby. His girlfriend is sweet, kind of dumb, and uncouth; their two best friends are thrilled to hear that Bobby’s girl is pregnant by accident, after the foursome spends the evening bowling.

Bobby’s father falls ill and he returns to the homestead, telling his girlfriend she must stay behind at the motel so he can “check things out,” when it’s clear he’s embarrassed to bring her to his family. They’re all intelligent, well educated, talented people, and Bobby is their bizarro remittance man: living away in order to shirk all of their money. At the same time, he’s flighty and antsy, and does not seem as though anything will truly satisfy.

This is a great movie, and the difference in feel between Bobby’s life and his family’s life is pronounced: He dresses differently to go meet them, walks into their museumlike house. His father’s health has left him unable to speak, and in a climactic scene, Bobby has a one-sided conversation with his mute father. It doesn’t seem to cure whatever ails either of them.

For years, creepy men stalked the date when Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen turned 18, and I found it extremely distasteful. Since then, the Harry Potter cast have aged up, thankfully to a less lascivious response. But I was not at all prepared for how handsome and grown-up the child actor from About a Boy became. He’s 19 now, 6′3″, and according to this New York Times article, a sensation in England because of his role in a TV show. But look:

It always impresses me when casting people somehow see that children will become photogenic adults. The cast of Degrassi: The Next Generation alone must prove some kind of law of selection.

Chances are good you’ve never even heard of Drop Dead Diva, because you probably don’t watch reruns of Frasier on Lifetime and thus didn’t see teaser ads for DDD for months leading up to its summer premier. Your loss on both counts. DDD is a dramedy (what a word!) about Deb, a barely-twenties model killed in a car crash and somehow redeposited into the body of Jane, a plus-sized thirtysomething lawyer. Brooke Elliott plays Jane.

Oh, holy cow, I can’t even tell you how much I like this show and look forward to it every week. The legal side is the same old ridiculous TV nonsense (frivolous lawsuits much?), but Jane and her colleagues and friends are made of compelling stuff. One of the show’s most poignant early moments came when Deb-cum-Jane realized she had lost a decade of her life in the switch, and for the first time something made her more upset than the idea that she was now a size 16. Because of the character’s natural straightforwardness and warm personality, she admits openly that as Deb she could get by on vegetables but as Jane she wants a bear claw. She is busy and intellectually rigorous, which Deb learns is as exhausting as her best friend’s booty-sculpting elliptical habit.

Tara Parker Pope praises the show in today’s Well — deservedly. Yes, the show portrays a very realistic, interesting, brilliant woman who happens to be a size or two larger than average, but its appeal goes way beyond that. Deb’s personality as it shines through Jane is admirable. She is no skinny blond mean girl and never was, and she quickly realizes the advantages she was handed in her previous life. Deb’s best friend is a ditzy blond but knows herself and her situation well and is equally warm and lovely. Really, there are almost too many genuinely likable characters on the show to keep track of (what I like to think of as House syndrome).

A recent episode dealt with Jane’s disappointment upon learning — because why would she need to know this before? — that a favorite boutique only carries up to size 10. Jane appeals to one of her colleagues to represent her in a lawsuit, and the shrill, thin woman tells Jane to stop whining or go on a diet. Ironically, this is an idea thought often but stated rarely by all kinds of people, and it is ballsy of the show to put it in the mouth of a character who has the intellectual prowess to be a driven, successful attorney.

frog design has a funny and somewhat provocative essay on the Star Wars universe and its, well, terrible aesthetic choices. It focuses on greebles, needless details added to futuristic objects in order to make them seem bigger, more complex — think of the ornately rendered Borg cube from Star Trek TNG.

The original Star Destroyers were an exercise in selective greebling, extraneous parts protruding everywhere on the overall form to give the effect of scale and drama. The Millennium Falcon is essentially one large greebled serving plate. The desire for an imperfect form is a quest for more believability, based on the idea that, as humans, we respond and empathize more with imperfection than the perfect sculpted object.

The starship Enterprise is enormous, with, well, varying quantities of greebles over the years. It still manages to be somewhat simple among its peers in the world of science fiction.

I am quite prone to tears, mostly because I am easily moved and connect with the world on a very visceral emotional level. Here is a quick roundup of the things I remember that made me tear up this week.

1. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (seen this at least one dozen times previously)

2. The episode of My So-Called Life where Angela says, “Sometimes someone says something really small . . . and it just fits into this empty place in your heart.” (seen this probably four times previously. Even thinking about it just now made me tear up again.)

3. Nearing the end of Bernard Malamud’s A New Life: Anxious, failing main character Seymour Levin uncomfortably reaches to stroke his beard, and remembers that he has shaved it off the week prior. He mentions wanting to let it grow back but it has gone gray under immense stress.

4. Many parts of (500) Days of Summer.

5. Remembering a story involving my school classmate Jacob Zuniga and then remembering that he is dead.

6. Seeing the second beautiful lady cardinal of the week and wondering if it was the same one. (Cardinals were my grandfather’s favorite bird and, since they’re not terribly common, I am thrilled every time I see one.)

7. When I peeled the price tag off the corner of a beautiful vintage silk scarf I’d just bought, and the silk underneath came right apart with the tag. (It is only a tiny corner, and I am now planning to frame the scarf, so I got over it.)

ADDENDUM: Also, this episode of M*A*S*H.