You mean spunky Sandra Bullock and laconic Keanu Reeves have no chemistry??!!1!! What about Speed? Surely you fell asleep and just dreamed the ending.
Ooo, that looks as though he's trying to kill her by eating her face. Yow.
He'll eat her face right after he crushes her head.
Serious smashing.
Do you never feel, after watching a movie like that, that life is too short to waste an hour or two on it? The 60 seconds of that kiss were worth watching, but I think I'd regret the time spent watching the whole thing.
I often find that the umbrage I take at having wasted my time on such a film makes up for the waste of time. Sometimes it takes a really crappy cultural product to get a good head of steam going.
And yet Keanu Reeves in Speed was dreamy, in a mildly developmentally disabled sort of way.
Wow, that really is a truly awful kiss. I thought you had to be exaggerating.
Have you ever seen "A Walk in the Clouds"? A favorite Keanu Reeves chick flick of mine. I think there's three points at which you think "okay, this movie's finally over!" only to find out you're wrong, and each time it gets worse.
What's really astonishing is that they were, you know, producing a mainstream movie. Presumeably there were other takes, or there could have been, and this was the best they could get.
I watched that movie with my mother and my brother.
Hey, the lake house itself is/was pretty interesting.
But dude, did you not think the, um, scene halfway through where they're dancing outside during a party, and trying not to kiss, was kind of not too bad?
I only vaguely remember this movie. They smashed faces at the end because they were so damn tired by then of all the false endings.
I love bad Keanu Reeves movies. Other favs: Little Buddha, Devil's Advocate (which has the bonus of also being a really bad Al Pacino movie), Dracula, Even Cowgirls get the Blues (which I really liked, dammit), and the ever-fabulous Point Break!
The comments to the linked youtube clip are awesome.
What's wrong with that kiss? Why do the women I sleep with all cry?
But seriously folks, it's a desperate kiss, born of long suffering; he's overcome, not exhibiting his best technique. You people have no appreciation for Cinema.
I saw a cardboard stand-up poster for Johnny Mnemonic in a video store once. Someone had put a sign on it that read "Keanu wears his good acting helmet!"
Poor little Keanu. So pretty, and yet.
It's the peck-peck-peck of it that disturbs me. I guess it's hard to get across a "love" kiss that doesn't come off as an "Oh my God, I want to fuck you" kiss, but I'd far prefer if films erred on the side of the latter.
10:Keanu has made some terrible romances. Sweet November, A Walk in the Clouds. In fact I can't remember a good one. He is good with Weisz in Constantine, which I have watched 500 times. Weisz can be a "buddy" though.
Not really a chemistry kinda guy. I don't think he is gay, just distant in a friendly way.
I think I killed the blog. Was mine the nuclear comment?
Devil's Advocate is a fantastic "good bad" movie. And I'll forever remember watching Point Break in a van in Australia late at night driving back from The Great Ocean Road (having just visited the beaches where they surf in the movie). (Also, that memory is much less lame than it sounds. Had to be there.)
And B is right - the YouTube comments for that clip are great.
The really sad thing is that I didn't get any more work done with the blog down -- checking to see if it had come back consumed an awful lot of attention.
We think there's something up with the Unfoggedbot. That's the second day in a row that the blog has died right around this time. We're going to keep it off for a few days and see if the problem is related.
A Walk in the Clouds had some very nice cinematography with the burning vineyards.
I forgive a lot for that. (I am remembering the right movie, no?)
6: Keanu is mannequin good looking. Clearly fantastic looking, but I feel like I see guys who are that good looking all the time. As opposed to someone like Johnny Depp, who's great looking in some rarer, more indefinable way.
No love for My Own Private Idaho, yet? That was the only Keanu movie that I could halfway stand.
23:Couldn't say;only surfed parts of it and read reviews. I watch lots of chick flicks, romances and romantic comedies, but not ones with Keanu as the lead.
Was looking for bad Keanu movies at IMDB and noticed he is 43. Fuck. I am not sure I want to live in a world where Keanu Reeves is fifty years old.
Also looked at his bio; probable hippie baby. Do Winona Ryder, Keanu, the vaster than empires Phoenix menagerie have a particular weirdness in common? Shouldn't have given the toddlers shotguns, I dissaproved in the day.
I don't think Keanu is aging well.
disapproved, I am pre-literate not wholly ignorant. Or just a slob.
24: SCMT, are you sure you want to discuss the looks of Keanu vs. Depp? With women in the house?
Suffice it to say that this:
Johnny Depp, who's great looking in some rarer, more indefinable way
reveals that you do not understand.
16: You watched Constantine 500 times?!?
Remain where you are. Alan Moore is flying across the Atlantic right now with his basement snake god totem to smother you with his magic beard.
As I'm sure I've mentioned, I like Keanu Reeves. I really have no idea whether he can act or not, but he's fine in a lot of his roles. Matrix, Speed, even the Lake House. I mean, there are people with that affect in real life, so why the hell not?
And yet Keanu Reeves in Speed was dreamy, in a mildly developmentally disabled sort of way.
Wait, isn't that supposed to be AWB's line? You're supposed to be the one who likes the smart homely guys. I'm so confused.
29: That was probably a mistake, and maybe we shouldn't go down that path. I stand by my judgment that Depp is much better looking than Keanu, though.
I remember there was a weird girl on my freshman dorm hall in 1997 who never spoke, but was always mysteriously laughing at everyone. I feared and loved her. One day I walked into her room and saw her computer, which had that scrolling-text screensaver on it, reading:
ALEC BALDWIN HAS REALLY LET HIMSELF GO
Cracked me up. Much as I like AB, I think of her disdain whenever I see him.
Do you never feel, after watching a movie like that, that life is too short to waste an hour or two on it?
I realize that the question wasn't addressed to me, but yes, most of the time.
reveals that you do not understand.
I don't understand either, O oracle.
32, 6: We all know LB is our great lookist. She makes me look positively deep.
Were I in the same room with Keanu, I would become tongue-tied and insecure, to the point of refusing to speak to him. That doesn't mean he's not very pretty to look at.
reveals that you do not understand.
Hm, I myself am a woman, but I find it very very easy to come down on the side of Johnny Depp. I recognize that Keanu is handsome, but he does not attract me in the slightest.
Clive Owen, though, I feel we should all be able to agree is dreamy indeed.
I mean, there are people with that affect in real life, so why the hell not?
In real life, there are people whose faces betray their constantly impacted bowels, too, but we don't cast them to star in movies. He was great in Point Break, Matrix (I), and Bill and Ted's, and fine in Speed. Other than that: painful.
Sounds like half my romantic life to date -- long, soulful pining followed by massive disappointment. I do enjoy the pining, though.
Do you think Sandra Bullock had it in the contract that Keanu couldn't give her any tongue?
Also, who would have thought there'd be such a vast Youtube cult for The Lake House?
Right. I end up doing the developmentally disabled hot ones, but I prefer the smart average-looking ones. LB is a disaster around hottness, though she prefers it to the brilliance she's swimming in.
Must be that the reason I never got laid when I was young was that I was just too smart and good-looking.
This is starting to sound like a sitcom.
I have not watched the clip, but could it really be as awful as the rolling around in a meadow scene between Anakin Skywalker and Princess what's-her-face? That was the worst thing I've ever seen on a screen.
29: is someone actually claiming Keanu Reeves is better looking that Johnny Depp? A woman is claiming this?
Do Winona Ryder, Keanu, the vaster than empires Phoenix menagerie have a particular weirdness in common?
Yes?
Phoenix? River Phoenix?
My Own Private Idaho was great. Keanu has done good things. He and his cohorts play(ed) on androgyny.
And Point Break, great movie. And the Matrix, and Speed.
46: Absolutely. Next week -- the episode where LB is too nervous to talk to the really hot guy, so AWB feeds her the lines through some wacky technological gadget. And since DaveL is both smart and good looking, AWB winds up falling for him herself while feeding LB lines. Not clear if the episode ends in bloodshed or a threesome.
Actually, the plot as Becks describes it, doesn't sound so different from the situation in which I lost my V. When I met him, he was married and I had a boyfriend. We pined, secretly, flirted when we got the chance. A year later, when he was divorced and my bf and I had broken up, there was all this tension and longing. How to do it? How to make that leap? We admired each other, blushingly, respectfully, full of tension and oh-no-it's-so-wrongness. Then we got really grotesquely stoned at a house party and ended up having terrible sex.
In retrospect, because it was so awful, it's hard to remember that we wanted each other desperately for well over a year.
I'm much more intimidated by beauty than smarts. Smarts is just rational, beauty magical.
32:Just an approximation. Just mindless eye-candy, the passive equivalent of Tetris or the word-game y'all were playing with last night.
I am not sure what makes for a comforting relaxing piece of trash. Rachel Weisz helped in Constantine a lot.
I watched Alison Anders' Things Behind the Sun for about the tenth time last night all the way thru. I put myself to sleep with 1-2 movies every night, and except for weather channel about the only tv I watch. But 500+ movie viewings a year is a fair guess. Many repeats.
And since DaveL is both smart and good looking
44 was deduction, not representation or warranty.
Not clear if the episode ends in bloodshed or a threesome.
This sort of ending would be an improvement to most sitcoms.
54: We'll have make-up people and writers. You'll be just fine.
33:
I stand by my judgment that Depp is much better looking than Keanu, though.
I've been gravely misunderstood. Depp is a god who makes me smile, a lot. Keanu is a looker of sorts.
49: and Joaquin, and Summer, and there are more.
As opposed to someone like Johnny Depp, who's great looking in some rarer, more indefinable way.
Depp is vastly more interesting than Canoe.
Oded Fehr (when he has the long hair) is good-looking.
max
['Better than either of the other two.']
55: For the Unfogged demographic we might need to go in a more Chinese cinema sort of direction: circumstances prevent the threesome and everyone dies in the end. But the cinematography is gorgeous!
So, bloodshed rather than threesome. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.
60: My role will be mostly listening at the door.
Awkward, but I'll bet less awkward than - has anybody actually ever seen this?
No! His character is named "Strip Harrison"? Geez. Is it fun?
31: Jesus H. I choose to believe that you are kidding about this, because I have to. Dude. Did you see Coppela's disgrace, aka, Dracula? Keanu has been good in two movies*, The River, in which he plays a retarded**, pretty, teenager, and My Own Private Idaho, in which I wasn't paying any attention to him because River Phoenix was there. What makes Johnny Depp more attractive is that he isn't an idiot, and picks more interesting roles.
The only actor who can even compete with him for cinematic dealbreakerism is Nicholas Cage.
* Also, I'll admit that I liked The Matrix. But it would have been even better with less Keanu dialogue.
**for those who haven't seen it: not really
48:
is someone actually claiming Keanu Reeves is better looking that Johnny Depp? A woman is claiming this?
I feel the need to repeat this: No.
Just so we're clear.
Carry on, then.
64: Maybe only you. But, wow.
From the IMDB quotes section:
Trisha Rawlings (Lily Tomlin): [clasping her hands worshipfully] Ohhhh... STRIP!
I feel like I see guys who are that good looking all the time. As opposed to someone like Johnny Depp, who's great looking in some rarer, more indefinable way.
Oh, puhleeze. Keanu is beautiful.
Now, Johnny Depp is both beautiful and charismatic, plus he looks intelligent as hell. So yeah, he's way beyond Keanu. But Keanu is definitely not "I see guys that good looking all the time" good-looking, I am sorry.
Cereb, there's no contest between Depp and Keanu along any axis; all I'm saying is that I like Reeves for some reason. I recognize that what he's doing seems vapid and wooden, but it just doesn't strike me that way, probably because it comes naturally to him, so he doesn't seem like a wooden actor, but a wooden person, and I love all god's children.
65: Alas, AWB, I've never seen it, and it's not out on DVD.
His character is named "Strip Harrison"
Now I get it.
Someone should do a Youtube clip of the most awkward kisses in movie history.
72: Great IMDB user review:
Wretched, empty romantic drama gives the word 'shallow' a whole new face.
I recognize that what he's doing seems vapid and wooden
Shorter ogged: Keanu doesn't give me wood, except that he does.
67: Aww, come on. Dracula's much better than Much Ado About Nothing, in which he (and everyone else) is so bad that you can't even enjoy the badness.
The only actor who can even compete with him for cinematic dealbreakerism is Nicholas Cage.
Correct. There's been like 5 movies recently that I wanted to see before discovering that Nicolas Cage played a major role.
(let's see if I can back up that statement...yep, there was The Weather Man, Lord of War, Matchstick Men, Bringing Out the Dead, and Snake Eyes).
The same is generally true of John Cusack, but I choose to instead watch the movie and think of how much more convincing any number of actors would be in his role. c.f. The Ice Harvest.
I like Reeves for some reason. I recognize that what he's doing seems vapid and wooden, but it just doesn't strike me that way, probably because it comes naturally to him
Yeah, me too. I seem to enjoy movies he's in, Constantine, Matrix, and such, but it's hard to articulate why I like his performances.
I also like that one of its IMDB tags is "handjob". Excuse me?
77: oh man, I know. Why do I even consider going to see Nicolas Cage movies anymore?
But he's been good before, the bastard!
Oh, and how could I forget? Dangerous Liasons. Where Malkovich rips up the scenery being evil, and Keanu stands around like a dumbass. Which admittedly is his role, but still.
I like Keanu too, obviously. He's so pretty and seems so earnestly well-meaning in a kind of dim way that you can't not, really.
I agree with Ogged here. I thought Constantine would be a good movie, I thought Reeves would be good in it, and both were true.
Depp was definitely more interesting in his equivalent movie, The Ninth Gate. But whose fault is that?
Yeah, Nicolas Cage--whatever happened to him? He started going downhill with ConAir (another bad movie I totally love).
he doesn't seem like a wooden actor, but a wooden person, and I love all god's children
Exactly, great comment. That's why Keanu comes off as sweet and attractive in his way. He's authentically wooden. He's not faking anything or holding back from us. But he truly doesn't have much to give.
83: Wait, are you claiming that the Ninth Gate was an actual good movie, as opposed to a hilariously overwrought good/bad one?
Yeah, Keanu is great as Danceny. The book is a lot more upsetting and radical, but the movie does the job.
The ultimate dealbreaker, as I've mentioned before, is Tom Hanks. Worst actor of his generation. Bar none! None!
Nicholas Cage used to have a loose, untidy swagger, but now he's practically fucking corporate, and I'm pretty sure he's had some face-stretching plastic surgery that just made him look bad.
71:Good for you. I'll defend Keanu, although his salary make my defense unnecessary. Keanu reminds me a little of Gary Cooper, any brains aren't overt and obvious. So much for brains, they are way overrated.
Keanu has a little bit of cool and and an innate kindness. A non-judgemental righteousness. And Keanu is a star. Why him & not Jason Patric or Depp before his recent hits?
Why Sandra Bullock for that matter?
Multiply pwned.
Like AWB, I thought Keanu was perfect for Dangerous Liasons, the role called for exactly his shallowness.
89: Well yeah, Tom Hanks is the antichrist. Keanu is just a pretty boy who seems kinda dumb.
My Own Private Idaho was genuinely a good movie, though, it has to be admitted.
91: Right. A similar casting would be Tori Spelling in The House of Yes. I loved her in that.
Why him & not Jason Patric or Depp before his recent hits?
Depp has always been a star, but took smaller roles. Jason Patrick is cold to the touch, man.
Nick Cage was good in Adaptation and little else. My own opinion is that he should take roles where he's kind of a failure rather than a hero. Suits him better.
A friend of mine joked about the badness of Keanu Reeves for years, it was kind of his nasty signature thing. Of course his big break came playing opposite Keanu, after a long process with lots of meetings where everyone talked about how wonderful Keanu was, and didn't he think so too. And they did this long shoot together, with Keanu being extremely nice to him the whole time. Karma.
Why him & not Jason Patric or Depp before his recent hits?
Obviously because Depp picks his roles, and "Speed" is not the kind of role he takes. And Jason Patric isn't really pretty; he's handsome, ish, in that way-overdeveloped-jawline kind of way (and I'm a jawline girl, so if I'm saying that, it's pretty bad).
Give Keanu a break. He's middle-aged.
This has got me thinking about the opposite, those actors that you imagine must be really intelligent and witty, who you then see in interviews are practically idiots. Heather Graham was my first serious girlcrush, until I saw her interviewed. Whew, what a dumbass.
Amazing: A subject on which everybody has an opinion except me. I think the only Keanu movie I have ever seen was Much Ado. In that time I've seen Depp in maybe five or six.
Keanu reminds me a little of Gary Cooper
Maybe, a little, but comparing the two leads one to think America has really gone downhill.
95: Ahem, have you seen Leaving Las Vegas? He's great in that. And he was a charmer in Moonstruck, too.
Wait, are you claiming that the Ninth Gate was an actual good movie, as opposed to a hilariously overwrought good/bad one?
No. But it was really the last 10 minutes that made it bad, so watching it is almost entirely an enjoyable experience before the inevitable WTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTFWTF.
99: Cameron Diaz, I'm sorry to say.
103: Hee. Totally. There were a couple of really great scenes that I now can't even remember, blocked out as they are by the WTFWTFWTFWTF.
I did not want to know that about Heather Graham. She seems so sly and subversive!
Keanu is beautiful.
Especially for 43. If I only I was going to look like that four years from now. Unfortunately, I think the actor I most resemble is John C. Reilly.
77: I liked Weather Man and Lord of War. Matchstick Men was an ok throwaway.
Y'all have such high standards. I agree with Sturgeon's Law, but I ain't gonna kill myself over it. "Just ok" is all I expect.
103: What made it really bad for me was the scene (I think AWB and I have talked about this before, probably on this blog, even) where he's smoking while looking over a unique book that's supposedly hundreds of years old. WITH bare hands, even. I got the giggles in the theater.
have you seen Leaving Las Vegas?
I was going to include this film with Adaptation, but my high-school viewing of LLV was basically a high-school makeout session. So I don't really have a firm opinion of the film. But the makeout: woo!
Obviously because Depp picks his roles, and "Speed" is not the kind of role he takes.
As far as I can tell Depp has been in exactly 3 movies for the sake of his career rather than artistic interest, and they all worked perfectly for him. (Chocolat, Finding Neverland and the whole pirate thing)
Give Keanu a break. He's middle-aged.
I love this kind of comment.
Wouldn't that be exactly 5 movies?
111: You made out. During that film. Which, admittedly one of the most romantic movies ever, but so, so not makeout worthy.
Was it the scene where she's raped, the scenes of him vomiting, or the scene where she fucks him as he dies that got you going, hmm?
Was LLV actually any good? I'm pretty sure that I thought in retrospect that it was silly. Didn't guys like it just because of Elisabeth Shue?
my high-school viewing of LLV was basically a high-school makeout session
wow, it looks like Gaijin Biker was wrong.
There's a rape in LLV? God, I have such a bad memory.
Um, the rape is kind of central to the film, actually.
Keanu comes off as sweet and attractive in his way. He's authentically wooden.
See, this is what I thought when I saw River's Edge. "Wow, that actor pulls off brain-dead teenager affect so convincingly, he must be really talented. And also, kinda hot." And then, with each new movie, I realized, oh, that's just him. Flat affect, and kinda hot. I love all most of god's children too, but I don't want to pay money to see them all on screen. I'd forgotten he was in Dangerous Liasons, which I liked. But that's the same deal as River's Edge. Pretty and dumb was the role.
As for cinematic dealbreakers, I forgot about Tom Cruise. That's a more recent one, though.
117: No, though she helps, obviously. Cage used to be a guarantee of something interesting. Not so much anymore.
Unfortunately, I think the actor I most resemble is John C. Reilly.
That guy's great! Ok, I've got to see Boogie Nights again.
Ogged may be thinking of Honeymoon in Vegas, which also had Nicolas Cage, and was silly, unlike Leaving Las Vegas. It was one of my favorite movies when I was 12 or so.
have you seen Leaving Las Vegas? He's great in that. And he was a charmer in Moonstruck, too.
Not to mention "Raising Arizona". But in general he chooses fucking horrible movies, even though he has talent and all.
Cage kind of went the Harrison Ford route--yeah, one could act, but why bother? Just take the roles and cash the checks, man.
After seeing Hard Eight I decided Reilly was the guy I'd most like to have play me in my life story. Of course by the time that movie gets made he will be pretty old.
Was it the scene where she's raped, the scenes of him vomiting, or the scene where she fucks him as he dies that got you going, hmm?
Our high-school reptile brains ignored these scenes, for we had Teh Elusive Parents' Couch Make Out.
Have I yet told the story of going to movies with my HS girlfriend, and realizing after about a year that we had yet to see a single movie without scenes of rape or torture? To compensate, we went to see that horrible Scorcese movie about NY society types in the 19th century, and also possibly Robin Hood. Heck with that! It was back to the torture and rape.
83 et alia.
Depp was definitely more interesting in his equivalent movie, The Ninth Gate.
I am not sure why some people keep saying just that Depp is more interesting.
Yes, he is. That's undeniable.
Those who keep mentioning this, though, seem to fail to note that he's also just really gorgeous. You see. Even though he's middle-aged.
Is 119 serious?
Sadly, yes. My mom is always on about how I should see a doctor about my memory.
Not to mention "Raising Arizona".
Oh, yes. This one, too. He's a failure in that one, too. Fits my prescription. Does Cage read this blog? I can save his career!
130: Where the hell were you when I was getting my ass reamed over the claim that there's a lot of rape and torture (of women) in movies? HMPH.
that horrible Scorcese movie about NY society types in the 19th century
Not being one of the lit professors here, I'll just pass over this.
Just about all the movies I've seen on first dates or dorm-room first-date equivalents have been completely inappropriate and mostly horrible. Random Hearts, Small Time Crooks, Brazil, and (with my now-fiancee) Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Can't remember others.
I met Tom Cruise once
Truly? What was he like? I recently read that book "The Game" and it makes him out to be a terrific person.
Mr. B.'s and my first date was Crocodile Dundee.
Confession: in 8th grade, I made out in the theater during Dangerous Minds. Anyone else want to pony up, or am I a bad-movie-making-out person?
"Been spendin' most our lives / making out at inappropriate times"
Oh, also The Mothman Prophecies. That movie spent the whole time building up to something that was going to make my date and I jump and hold each other, but nothing ever happened.
133: He was pretty good in Valley Girl, too, if I recall.
Well, we were seeing some pretty strange movies. Man Bites Dog was kind of queasy, but the real kicker was seeing John Woo's Bullet in the Head in the theater, complete with extended scenes of Vietnam War era torture, escape, and privation. My GF, I should mention, was Cambodian, carried over the rice paddies by her mother in a desperate bid to escape the Khmer Rouge. Guess that's why they call it escapism!
On the other hand, the first time we made out was while watching Silence of the Lambs, so I guess she couldn't have been surprised.
110:
where he's smoking while looking over a unique book that's supposedly hundreds of years old.
Dude, we remark upon that, once. Then we overlook it. It goes toward character development: he's a *dealer*, see. In the old days they used to smoke in the presence of antiquarian tomes. Really.
144: You went to see Man Bites Dog on a DATE???
Truly? What was he like? I recently read that book "The Game" and it makes him out to be a terrific person.
Yeah, truly. Briefly and by chance while I was on holidays and he was filming with a small crew away from the main set. I ain't saying we sat down and had a beer and chatted about L. Ron or anything. Main impression: boy, you are short!
144 was to 134, and s/b "who says I don't want you getting your ass reamed?"
Also should've mentioned the extended urine drinking scene in the cut of Bullet in the Head that I saw.
On the other hand,
132: You should just go ahead and become a pothead.
I have a frustrating memory. I can still rattle off all my high school friends' phone numbers that they had in high school. Not only do they not have those numbers, almost none of their parents even live there anymore. Totally useless information just taking up space, and apparently taking up the very neurons where I'd otherwise remember the location of my keys and wallet.
I accidentally hit post!
On the other hand, Stanley, got your back.
Ogged, are you high?
If you are, keep posting!
I think I'm supposed to be offended, but I can't remember.
Raising Arizona was great.
Yeah. More movies with Holly Hunter.
You should just forget that whole exchange right now Apo, because he slammed you.
Dave Barry is rich, does very little for his money, lives in a giant mansion in Miami, and doesn't have any talent. Next you're going to accuse apo of being Marv Albert. "Oh, no, I like sodomy and watch sports for a living! You cold-hearted bastards!"
Three unsigned comments in the last 40. Is there a mystery person here again?
Another Stanley HS-make-out classic: The Thin Red Line.
But! eekbeat and I courted each other by watching Kieslowski's Troi Couleurs and a bunch of other foreign films over the course of a month. Then we finally kissed in a non-Keanu way. And: we've been together for a year tomorrow, so you all owe me cookies.
Three unsigned comments in the last 40. Is there a mystery person here again?
On the evidence of 136, probably Tom Cruise.
157: Unfortunately, these comment threads are one of the other things I inexplicably remember.
A year? I've had sneezes last longer than that, kid.
Another Stanley HS-make-out classic: The Thin Red Line.
You make out for the sheer joy of not being dead. She makes out because they always get the hottest young guys to play soldiers.
A year? I've had sneezes last longer than that, kid.
Aw, thanks, ogged. You, specifically, warm the cockblockles of my heart.
I've never liked Cage much. Leaving Las Vegas irritated me, left me impatient, for some reason, and I now have little to no memory of it. But I saw it a very long time ago, and don't even remember the circumstances. So.
I'd venture that some of us are more likely to remember movies, some to remember novels, and so on.
I have an indexing functioning in my brain, see. Some things I index, some I don't. I can't, or choose not to, file it all. I don't consider it worrisome if don't remember something I didn't care much for in the first place.
I don't think I've ever made out during a movie, other than porn. I get annoyed enough when people talk during movies. Now she's going to block my view too?
156 was me rooting for H. Hunter and forgetting to sign. The rest are T.Cruise.
158, he's actually retired now. He spent roughly 1995 to 2004 doing very little for his money. Before that he was funny.
Humor dates incredibly badly, because humorists keep building on each other to make the previous guy seem predictable and not-fresh. But I do think all his books about actual topics, and his first three collections of columns ("Bad Habits", "DB's Greatist Hits", and "DB Talks Back") are brilliant.
HMPH
Homos Make Pussies Hungry.
Her Majesty's Pussy Handlers
max
['They use white silk gloves.']
"Dave Barry Does Japan" was very funny, and some Japan-familiar people I know swear by it.
It's hard to be a humorist. People have only so much of the funny in them, once it's gone they're stuck in this weird career.
I don't think I've ever made out during a movie, other than porn. I get annoyed enough when people talk during movies. Now she's going to block my view too?
This was my experience during Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Meanwhile her experience was "Slow movie, nice background music --> makeout is inevitable".
OT: This brief is going to kill me. I'm trying to summarize a rambling hundred and fifty page complaint objecting to every facet of about a dozen complex deals in a punchy, clearly understandable ten pages or so and I can't go home or sleep until I'm done. This pile of shit goes to the client tomorrow, and then I get to spend the weekend figuring out another pointlessly complicated deal turning on who's son-in-law screwed who by being bribed to talk his business partner into waiving his nonexistent right to block a deal for the redevelopment of a parking garage continent on the payment of a large contribution to the business partner's eponymous place of worship.
I'd really like a day off sometime soon. I took Labor Day weekend, but other than that I've been in the office every day since early August.
all his books about actual topics
up through 1994, I should say. I liked the Cyberspace one too, especially the roman a clef at the end about his adulterous romance.
"sneezes" s/b "tumors."
Pure speculation, sir.
I don't think I've ever made out during a movie
I keep retelling stories today, but sometime in high school, my "girlfriend" at the time jumped me during a movie and we necked for a few minutes and she said, "now we missed that scene" or something like that. Then I repeated all the dialogue we'd missed back to her. Some romantics are born, not made.
176: LB, you make this stay-home-mom gig seem better and better. Thanks!
a parking garage continent
That's a big f'in' parking garage.
176: holy shit, I couldn't even follow that comment. I can't imagine summarizing the whole brief. My sympathies.
You make me feel good about my job, LB, though I'm sure not about my salary.
I'm looking into Buddhism. Hermit sounds good. "Life is a fountain." I could do that.
Sorry, LB. Can they let you work from home some, or is that implausible?
LB -- Just think of the complaint as one long comment thread and knock it out in one pithy retort after the other. (That's partly serious advice, actually. And now I feel guilty about not being done with my motion so I'll be going now...)
My views are pretty much 181's, LB.
And now I feel guilty about not being done with my motion
Uh ... oh, you mean you're a lawyer too. Never mind.
You know what I hate? The tax code. All the litigation I deal with involves these fucked up crazy deals that are fucked up and crazy for tax reasons. The fuckedupness is rarely what they're actually suing over, but it makes figuring out what happened so you can tell why people are aggrieved maddening.
My first real date ever (not a dance or a coffee-shop thing) was with a boy my freshman year of college. We went to a movie theater with no idea what we would see. I recommended a movie I'd already seen, and that I figured he'd already seen (he had), but I lied about not having seen it so he wouldn't feel bad about missing most of the movie to a hott makeout. I was a late bloomer, but a very conniving one.
Before that he was funny.
He gave good postcard.
LLV: I went on a date to see that movie. Boy, that was... no making out was involved as we were the only ones in the theatre but were too embarrassed for the Nicolas Cage character to be distracted from the screen.
max
['Wow... that was... horrible. In a good way. Sorta.']
183: They would, but I can't. Put me in a dwelling place with my husband, my kids, and a bed and I'm probably going to be asleep (I bet I could sleep for about fortyeight hours straight if given the chance), but if I'm not asleep I'm certainly not going to be focused on work. In the office, I have a shot of getting something done.
You know LB, this is kind of weird, but why don't you look into a way to get into the businessey deal-making end of things yourself? You know, work in-house with one of the businesses doing that, come up with deals, etc. It's got to be more fun to be one of the predators yourself than trying to clean up their messes, which you can't possibly give a damn about. Right now you have all the most annoying parts of their business and not the fun stuff.
I'm just saying this because I'm sure you've thought of all the standard non-profit type exits from your work. And I feel liberal intellectual sorts who get stuck in the lawyer trap don't consider the business type exits enough. It's not immoral -- believe me, a liberal-leaning business tycoon can do a whole hell of a lot of good in this society.
Just a random late-night though, probably tons wrong with it.
Doesn't everybody and their mother wish for an in-house job?
You know LB, this is kind of weird, but why don't you look into a way to get into the businessey deal-making end of things yourself? You know, work in-house with one of the businesses doing that, come up with deals, etc. It's got to be more fun to be one of the predators yourself than trying to clean up their messes, which you can't possibly give a damn about. Right now you have all the most annoying parts of their business and not the fun stuff.
It hella is, I am learning.
Ooh, LB, I totally have an idea for you. Hm. Maybe a bit less remunerative. But you totally should do ______.
193: not me. I've worked from home before, and I neither worked not particularly liked being home.
I saw Apocalypse Now on a date once, which you'd think would be a bad idea but actually was pretty great.
193, 195: Inhouse isn't work-from-home, Tweety, it's working for a corporation rather than a lawfirm. And yes, I'd love a job like that and I have resumes out, but litigators aren't terribly desirable inhouse, they want dealmakers. Anyone knows inhouse litigation opportunities in NY, you've got my email. (And a vivid sense of my work ethic.)
195: No, "in-house" in the legal profession means "directly for the client (as opposed to employed by a firm)" rather than "from home." The myth is that the in-house guys have better hours. I don't know if it's true or not.
194: yeah, unsolicited advice makes you look like a patronizing jerk I guess. Whatever.
Damnit. LB even procrastinates more efficiently than I do!
but litigators aren't terribly desirable inhouse, they want dealmakers.
Ah. Applies quite vividly to the socially salubrious idea I had for you.
201: what? No. I really had an idea, but can't mention it on the open blog for precious, precious pseudonymity's sake.
For god's sake, marcus, if I'm going to insult you, I'll be less subtle than that. Have you forgotten last night already?
Again, if you know someone who's hiring, shoot me an email.
they want dealmakers
That's what I was saying in 192 -- is it possible to become a dealmaker?
It's scary to think that in the law profession, merely being at work at midnight doesn't win you any points for diligence.
Maybe we should let LB finish her brief so she can go home, and Sifu can tell her all about her dream job off-blog.
Christ, I just realized it's after midnight on the east coast. Madness.
206: To get hired, I've got the resume I've got, and it's not one with lawyering experience on the dealmaking side -- my only professional experience is as a litigator. I figure I can do basically anything I can get hired for (and plenty of things no one would hire me for), but I'm unlikely to be hired by someone who isn't thinking 'litigators' as the sort of people they want.
208: Yeah, I suppose it is a little late in the evening to be procrastinating still. On horrendously boring tasks like this, I sometimes have to get to a point where I'm so tired I haven't got the energy to avoid it anymore, which usually hits a little after midnight.
204: oh, OK, it was quite the incomprehensible comment, and my low self-esteem causes me to assume anything I don't understand is a put-down.
When I bring work home at night, I lay everything out on the kitchen table, then walk over to the computer and comment here until 'til I fall asleep in the chair. Then I pack it all up in the morning and take it back to the office in exactly the same state as when it left the office.
I do like being at home, though.
until 'til I fall asleep in the chair
Which apparently is happening already.
I have this translation project at work that has a deadline. I've been postponing the bringing-it-home part, but the hour is nigh. Bastards!
apostropher, you might be able to do the same amount and quality of work with less stress if you became a volunteer.
i remember when nick cage's career took off, thinking to myself that this was further confirmation that i would never, every be able to understand what constitutes attractiveness in men.
i mean, i thought i had developed an algorithm that worked in at least some cases. take robt. redford, or brad pitt, or one of the pretty-boys: it's at least possible for me to imagine how a female version of them would be attractive, and then i can extrapolate from that. but jesus, cage just seemed repellent in every respect. and yet, there he was being touted as hotsville.
some things i don't understand, i accept as matters of field observation. for instance, i accept that male warthogs find female warthogs not only attractive, but sexually desirable. i don't think it's like the male warthogs are out there on the savannah, wishing they could get some gazelle action, but they have to settle for female warthog once again, dammit. no; presumably they just see something i don't.
so too with guys; i have to accept, as a matter of natural history, that women actually are attracted to men. baffling, but apparently so. still, even accepting that fact leaves nick cage's career inexplicable.
gilding and staining, baby, gilding and staining.
I'd really like a day off sometime soon. I took Labor Day weekend, but other than that I've been in the office every day since early August.
I guess one of the partners in your firm must have run across this? Or maybe you just jinxed yourself. Either way, sorry to hear it.
And I read 192 not as suggesting you should go in-house as a lawyer, but that you should become some sort of corporate titan yourself. Which is, you know, a fine plan, but maybe missing a few key details.
216: Except then I wouldn't have a home to take my work to.
missing a few key details
Step 3. Profit!
218: Yup, the deluge hit right about a week after that comment.
217: Nick Cage used to be very attractive. Something bad happened to his face, but Moonstruck-era Nick Cage? Mmmm.
I've been making an concerted effort over the last several months to leave the office much earlier and bring work home with me in the evenings. I never do any of it. Ever. On the other hand, the change has improved my life dramatically. Today I left the office at a quarter to five.
223--
there; you see? it's exactly moonstruck era n.c. i first saw.
baffled me then, baffles me now.
how do you feel about warthogs?
a fine plan, but maybe missing a few key details
No doubt about that! I guess my reasoning, such as it is, is that I've known a lot of lawyers who A) hate their jobs, B) make business contacts through their jobs, but C) never even consider going the actual business route. I kind of feel like business pays just as well as the law (sometimes better) and is more fun. And a really smart person who busts their ass (which describes LB, except perhaps for the occasional blog commenting) can do really well in it.
I sometimes have to get to a point where I'm so tired I haven't got the energy to avoid it anymore
I've done that. If it's a big enough deal, sometimes around 5:30 I'll get hyperproductive, and by 7:30 I'm making coffee again. So all you need is a little patience.
220: He showed up in a Youtube compilation clip of babies eating lemons that I found linked at J-Walk. I was watching this clip and thought, "Man, that video I shot of Noah eating a lemon was funnier than these." And then there he was, the last one in the clip.
It was a little unsettling, actually.
Mr. Pher, we've seen a sample of your son's work, and we'd like to see the rest of his portfolio.
compilation clip of babies eating lemons
I saw that! Meal ticket, baby.
230--
right, so nc's attractiveness at that age is not even like a minority view or something. no--how could it be? the guy was a movie-star, after all. baffling.
not that i am not sometimes baffled by what the star-making machinery offers up by way of women. susanne sommers? christ, most of you weren't born then. take my word for it, she was considered a looker long ago, not by me.
but even when i feel no attraction to them myself, it's never hard for me to see *why* the starlets are starlets. but some of the guys? i mean--bruce willis?
I think Bruce Willis was hot for his voice, and the way he looked in an undershirt. Plus, remember that male "attractiveness" in films is not really about whether they're hot to women; film execs don't really care about that. The question is whether they're the kind of guy men wish they were, which has a much broader range of possibility than the reasons women are put in films, which is to be the kind of woman men want to do. Thus, male film stars tend to be much broader in their ranges of appeal than women film stars.
227: I won't dispute anything about what the lawyers you've known have or haven't considered, but as a lawyer on the deal side I can say that a large number of lawyers on the deal side would like to move to the corporate side. And they're very often tuned into the relevant job markets. And when openings appear, they flood them with resumes. And every now and again one gets hired and crosses that bridge. But most of the positions end up being filled by someone perceived to have more direct business training/experience. Businessfolk often think lawyers are smart and capable, but don't think they'd necessarily make good businessfolk. In many cases this is an accurate assessment.
234 is not complaining. I actually like that men in films are so various in their appeal. I just wish there was more variety in the appeal of women in films. They're all basically riffing on the Meg Ryan thing from the 80's: just clever enough to get your jokes and respond to them, occasionally baffled, pretty but a little disheveled.
Was it the scene where she's raped, the scenes of him vomiting, or the scene where she fucks him as he dies that got you going, hmm?
Hellooooo, spoilers!
234--
interesting theory. some male movie stars aren't attractive to women.
that certainly covers john wayne. probably some other heroes of the action genre, maybe including willis. box-office draws for guy films.
as opposed to matinee idols.
I think Bruce Willis was hot for his voice, and the way he looked in an undershirt.
When he was younger he had an oddly sensual thing going with his eyes and lips too, sort of a cute mischevious vulnerability under the machismo. Mel Gibson had this too.
Yeah. My impression of lawyers in business is that either (1) they never practiced law -- they had a business career waiting for them and got the law degree for background education (that is, generally people with family money or businesses to manage) or (2) they were hired as inhouse lawyers, not on the business side, and gradually, after a significant time doing inhouse lawyering, started picking up non-lawyering duties until they really weren't functioning in a primarily lawyering role. The second route is possible, but not fast, and you need to get the inhouse lawyering job to do it at all.
236--
are there any women that you think are cast as female aspiration models? i.e. the kind of women that women wish they were, independently of whether they're attractive to men or not?
or is it just asking too goddamn much of the entertainment industry to even consider those two qualities diverging from each other?
The question is whether they're the kind of guy men wish they were
Which is why I would totally fuck Ewan MacGregor. Most major actresses, though, aren't that hot, they're just stand-ins for the idea of hot.
239: Yeah, another one who's appeal hasn't lasted well as he aged. Moonlighting-era Bruce Willis, while not the pinnacle of male beauty, had a certain something that lasted about to the first Die Hard. After that, he turned into a bullet-headed block of flesh.
Now, Tina Yothers?
She was hot.
Also, remember that Bruce Willis broke in through Moonlighting. That was basically a romantic comedy that depended completely on his appeal to women. He was very good looking then and definitely had plenty of romantic charm and sex appeal.
John Wayne, on the other hand...sort of repulsive.
I can't even think of an actress who exudes qualities I admire or aspire to. FM is right; they're just ideas for hot, which is why toward-male-oriented folks ultimately win out on the situation in 234. The attractiveness of male actors is more specific.
Leaving Las Vegas irritated me
Me too. I actually hate that movie. Depp's hot and talented and amazing. Keanu is (not so) young, dumb, etc. But Cage. If Cage can become a star, anyone can. Rumble Fish, Raising Arizona, and Red Rock West are the only really good movies he's been in--maybe two or three more at most. The rest of his career has just been ears and forehead.
243--
i've got this theory that people are generally more sexually attractive in their 20s and 30s than in their 40s and 50s.
i don't really want to claim too much for it until we can test it out on warthogs.
If my connection wasn't so damned slow I wouldn't have been pwned just then.
241: Maybe someone like Sigourney Weaver? Also hott, but at least sometimes (all right, I'm thinking of Aliens) cast as who you want to be, not who you want to fuck.
241:
are there any women that you think are cast as female aspiration models? i.e. the kind of women that women wish they were, independently of whether they're attractive to men or not?
This is a joke question, right?
Catherine Keener is usually considered cool. Susan Sarandon is cool, but she's also totally hot. Frances McDormand, maybe.
250: Death and the Maiden, maybe? But seriously, The Year of Living Dangerously is the only movie in which I've found Ms. Weaver attractive.
Yeah, Catherine Keener works. But among the big-big movie stars? They're rare.
This is a joke question, right?
Are we to infer that you think some women obviously are cast that way, or that no women are?
Susan Sarandon is cool because of one fucking role, and, to paraphrase Priscilla Presley, she was young and needed the money.
If Cage can become a star, anyone can.
Anyone whose real last name is Coppola, at least.
The best part about Keanu Reeves is that apparently he got his big break by reliably showing up to the set a) on time, b) sober, and c) with his lines memorized. This was such a switch from the typical actor and made the director's life so much easier that his inability to act was more or less irrelevant.
I'm not sure where I heard that, maybe here, but it really restores my faith in humanity.
Is the blog being really slow, or is it just my internet connection?
Wow. Keener is 48. What a fox!
Is the blog being really slow, or is it just my internet connection?
It's been slow for me too.
Is the blog being really slow, or is it just my internet connection?
It keeps going down; we're trying to figure it out. Well, Ben and Becks are, when they have time.
a) on time, b) sober, and c) with his lines memorized
He's Canadian, you know.
Anyone whose real last name is Coppola
I didn't know that. (Now go make out or something, teo.)
I'm skipping down the entire thread to say that although Keanu was perfectly fine in Speed and Li'l Buddha, he really seems more like a minor character in Zoolander than an actual human. Whereas Dead Man is the best movie ever, and Johnny Depp therefore the best actor ever. In retrospect I almost regret never watching 21 Jump Street or whatever it was.
The reasoning in 265 is solid. Dead Man is the rhetorical bomb from which no movie discussion can recover.
I think there are plenty of female stars who have aspirational appeal to women, but the whole "aspirational" role in women's culture is much more fraught and complex and competitive than the "guy's guy" role in male culture.
Hopefully it's too late and this thread is already too long for this assertion to create a giant foodfight.
266: Ghost Dog! Ghost Dog! Forrest Whittaker is teh hotness! Aiieee! Battlefield Earth!
Cage's wikipedia shot shows his mileage. Perhaps he'll have a budding late 50s career as Emerson in the film adaptation of Substantific Marrow.
I dunno, Marcus. What's to aspire to? Most male movie stars project cool, smart, masculine virtue that no real man can live up to, so they are looked up to. Most female movie stars project lithe, feminine, uh, femininity that I guess some women are interested in living up to, but most of us are too busy having actual lives that involve, like, work and thinking and stuff.
Yeah, it is a bit slow.
re: Keener: so hot. Pretty disturbing given that she's five years younger than my mom.
re: Sarandon: nothing in particular against her, except that my ex's mom had a poorly disguised crush on her. Her films were like fantasy authors and Republican presidents in that they started out so well they could only go downhill.
Most male movie stars project cool, smart, masculine virtue that no real man can live up to, so they are looked up to. Most female movie stars project lithe, feminine, uh, femininity
Which is why Steve Buscemi is the greatest actor of the day. Wicked gender-role pwnage.
Though I do think of Buscemi as a sort of Woody Allen 2.0, sometimes. "Everything's so awkward!"
Stanley, did you just intend to call Steve Buscemi lithe?
271: It may shock you, ms. awb, but very few of us males defuse bombs, and those of us that do generally wear shirts.
but most of us are too busy having actual lives that involve, like, work and thinking and stuff.
I dunno, I think this cuts against male movie stars as well. The main male movie-star attributes that guys want to have are the attention of millions, random sex with hot actresses, and shit-tons of money. Personal growth, thinking, and working don't feature highly.
275: Isn't that the point? It's cool and fun to wish you were defusing bombs shirtless. There's slightly less potential for admiration and identification with someone whose primary quality is being really really pretty.
270 was glib. What I mean to say is that, for example:
There's some new abomination out called Good Luck Chuck, featuring Dane Cook and Jessica Alba. The general dudely population is interested in Cook's appeal as the sort of guy who would be their coolest friend, if he was their friend. He's witty, but manic, bold, fairly relatable, etc. (I've met Dane Cook when he was auditioning for the college events board I sat on. He's capable of being pretty nice and laid-back.)
Alba, however---what could any woman think of her except, "That's a cute shirt. It probably wouldn't look good on me, but it's cute." She's relatively nice-seeming and all that, but no great feats of intellect or personality there.
And while Alba is absolutely concupiscent, Cook is vaguely good looking, but not really sexually attractive.
That's all I meant. This balance is pretty true all-over.
255:
Are we to infer that you think some women obviously are cast that way, or that no women are?
Damn. I didn't think my comment even showed up.
It's kind of silly to spell it out. No, no women are "cast as female aspiration models" apart from their sexual desirability unless they're older. Once they're older, then sure.
I think of counter-examples like, oh, Sally Fields. Admired. A role model for women who watch her films? Maybe. Also considered cute.
I'm taking the original formulation at 241 seriously:
are there any women that you think are cast as female aspiration models? i.e. the kind of women that women wish they were, independently of whether they're attractive to men or not?
The question is whether Hollywood has a narrative for women about what we might wish to be that edits out attractiveness. I don't think it does, no. Unless we're older.
I am repeating myself.
276: I think you're mixing up movie star with leading role. Wanting to be Bruce Willis is different from wanting to be John Wassisname the Die Hard cop.
Also, I would like to point out that while LB is valiantly procrastinating, I just saw a random name that rang a bell and spent a couple hours reading about the heydays of the CMU Netrek and Magic: The Gathering scenes with which I was tangentially associated.
One of my coworkers who occasionally annoys me wrote the guide to flying the "Ship of Lose" known as the DD. And the term for mass suicide attacks was "ogging."
Anyone care for a nerd-off?
Don't make me summon my nerd ninja army, Jake.
Huh, when were you at CMU, and in what department? If Comp Sci in maybe 93-95, did you know S/a/sha W/ood?
I dunno, Marcus. What's to aspire to?
Elegance, grace, beauty.
most of us are too busy having actual lives that involve, like, work and thinking and stuff.
There's a sense in which "work", "thinking" and "stuff" are all somewhat overrated. For men and women both.
The food fight can start over the assertion that grace and beauty are worthwhile qualities to desire compared to the drudgery of "actual lives". It's too close to the "men do, women are" thing that's a potentially serious sexist sore spot. But beauty and grace are forms of doing. See Johnny Depp for a movie star who understands this, and integrates beauty into his masculinity.
See also America's Next Top Model -- admittedly trashy pop -- for a show that takes aspirations to beauty seriously as something achieved.
CS, 94-98. Name doesn't ring a bell. Is this her? Heh.
Um, no not her. Big tall pretty fattish curlyhaired blond woman with an Australian accent? I'm pretty sure she should have been there in 94. What about Dave Ma/ltz, who I think was also at CMU at the same time?
primary quality is being really really pretty.
Being really pretty is closer to just a genetic quality, and that's all Jessica Alba has. But charm and grace are different, although they often require genetic gifts of beauty too.
This all comes out more clearly with the classic mid-century stars. Greta Garbo or Bette Davis were recognizably playing the same social game as Cary Grant -- they were *carrying themselves* a certain way, being a certain way, a way that began with their looks but did not end with them.
Stanley, did you just intend to call Steve Buscemi lithe?
I merely implied that he had a certain thespian flexibility. Mind of Sifu: out of gutter, post haste.
__
And that Cook/Alba movie is a great example (I think) of what we're talking about. He's a dudish dude (just like you and me, dudish dudes! score!); she's drop-dead gorgeous.
she's drop-dead gorgeous
And, as even marcus admits, basically nothing else.
LB, I think you can call the keeper of the fat acceptance usenet group FAQ "fat." Seems she's S/asha W/ood-B/radley now, or at least, there's someone by that name in Australia.
Now I'm going to bed and you will please to finish your damn brief.
Yeah, but Dane Cook is not a movie star, any more than Jim Belushi or any of the other lunkheads who play opposite hot women in the various TV marriage sitcoms. Just a vehicle for ordinary-guy wish fulfillment, which is different. He's there precisely because he has so little charisma anyone can identify with him.
I'd really like a day off sometime soon. I took Labor Day weekend, but other than that I've been in the office every day since early August.
Holy shit. We gotta find you a job, my imaginary friend.
I didn't figure it was. And while you'd think that such a person would be pretty attention-getting in the 80% male department that was the CMU school of computer science, I am pretty clueless about such things. I also mainly hung out with the swimmers, as that took up pretty much all of my spare time, especially after I discovered beer and subsequently gave up gaming.
It looks like M/altz was a graduate student when I was there.
As for being vs. doing, I mean, it sounds plausible, but what the hell do I know about what women want to do? Do they all want to be Sigourney Weaver in Alien/s, or Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies, or Starbuck or Boomer on BSG?
It's probably just my impression, but it seems like the tv ads for Good Luck Chuck refer to Alba's character exclusively either in predicate adjectives "cute" "adorable" "dangerously attractive" or as an object of a sentence "falling in love with her is easy." This ad runs constantly during the Simpsons reruns I watch. There are probably other ads.
The only exception I can think of is someone like Charlotte Gainsbourg in Science of Sleep, which was all about how she was ridiculously cool but ultimately not attractive enough for Bernal's character. I hated his character, but did actually think, "Oh wow, I wish I was more like her. She's so smart and together and great." It's too obvious to point out, but if you had a film in which Alba's character was just not interested in Cook's, because he's just not sexually attractive to her, it would be a movie about what a snobby bitch she is.
Many parts of Dead Man kind of pissed me off, but then, I was only watching it because I wanted to hear the soundtrack.
It's cool and fun to wish you were defusing bombs shirtless.
Maybe for you. Me, I hope they get their pert asses blown to hell. As I mentioned earlier, I'd rather be Mark Renton than John McClane. Anyway, actresses: in my apparently minority opinion, very few professional actresses are hot. They look like they're made of plastic.
Move to dispense with the term "hot." It lacks meaning. It is too new. It is too vague.
Honestly.
Many parts of Dead Man kind of pissed me off, but then, I was only watching it because I wanted to hear the soundtrack.
Sometimes, late at night, when ben calls me, I seek refuge in the dulcet tones of his sweet alto, but, lo! I am blessed with perfect pitch, and that motherfucker B Flat. Must be his shoddy speakers.
I would like to forcefully assert that in no way was I ever involved in the programming Becks describes. History of Vlad? Certainly. This tripe? It's fall—I'm watching football.
Or, in addition to Gainsbourg, Julie Delpy. There are a few non-American actors who project a sort of fascinating female cool that a woman could admire.
I really like Dead Man and its soundtrack, but I've seen it a few times and each time there are always things that don't quite sit right with me, but I'm not sure how to describe why.
297: But I like plastic chicks!
Plastic men have problems too, you know!
And the fucking Statement of Facts is done, or at least done enough to go home and move on to the next thing tomorrow.
You know, the really pathetic thing is that if I didn't dislike this shit so much I can't focus on it, I wouldn't need to work until 2 am.
As I mentioned earlier, I'd rather be Mark Renton than John McClane.
And as a man, you have the option of choosing these and many other very different types of men as role models in film. Women aren't so lucky.
304 should contain a link to this. (NSFW)
The ultimate dealbreaker, as I've mentioned before, is Tom Hanks. Worst actor of his generation. Bar none! None!
you think you hate Tom Hanks? I can tell you that the loneliest place in the word is the middle of a cinema in Soho, at the end of Philadelphia, cheering.
re: 302
Isabelle Adjani, also?
And there are some who do it in foreign films but not when acting in English, e.g. the Penelope Cruz who appears in films like Volver versus the one who appears as eye-candy in US-made studio pictures.
310, 302:
I do not understand this. Wasn't the question about women who are *not* closely associated with their sexual desirability?
Penelope Cruz? Isabelle Adjani? And 302's Julie Delpy. All hot chicks by many standards.
Wasn't the question about women who are *not* closely associated with their sexual desirability?
No, it wasn't a requirement in my question, because we were talking about the context of someone like Ewan MacGregor, who is both sexy and cool. Mainly, I was interested in women whom at least women could see as something other than sex objects.
Mainly, I was interested in women whom at least women could see as something other than sex objects.
Okay. There are tons of them, I would think.
I've been losing comments left and right all night with the site slowdown, but again, I was looking for an answer to KidBitzer's original formulation at 241 about whether there were women presented as role models completely aside from their attractiveness to men.
I tend to think this is a non-starter.
Christ! How did this thread get so long so quickly?. Blech.
FYI. The Lake House is actually a remake of a beautiful little Korean film called Il Mare (IMDB, Wikipedia). In fact it is probably my favourite Korean film. Please watch it instead of this Hollywood shite. Jun Ji-hyun is one cute little mynx.
I will not see The Lake House. EVAR. Sandra Bullock makes my teeth hurt.
259: I'm not sure where I heard that, maybe here, but it really restores my faith in humanity.
Yeah - the idea that Keanu Reeves can be a movie star means that pretty much anybody can be a movie star. This is the same inspiring message that we get from George W. Bush regarding the presidency.
How is it NSFW? We can't all abide by the draconian standards of the sweatshop you toil in, Brock.
309 is indeed very funny.
the idea that Keanu Reeves can be a movie star means that pretty much anybody can be a movie star
Uh, no. See the last sentence of 70, and the fact that several people in this thread find the guy appealing. Appealing is not so easy to pull off.
Appealing is not so easy to pull off.
Especially when, like Keanu Reeves, you seem unable to speak more than 5 words per minute. I'd really like to see him in the salesroom of Glengarry Glen Ross going "uh-- but-- yeah-- dude!!?!" And then Alec Baldwin would fire him.
Kate Winslet is a British actress, but at this point a star in America, who has the quality AWB is naming.
Kate Winslet's good, especially in Eternal Sunshine.
265: Whereas Dead Man is the best movie ever, and Johnny Depp Gary Farmer therefore the best actor ever.
"You interrupted a very romantic moment there, William Blake!"
I do love the woman in 285. OKAY! I GETT SOME HIGH WASTED SHORTS YOUR TOTALY RITE!
I had a comment that I wanted to post about Keanu Reeves last night, but I couldn't, because the blog was broken. (I am not sure whether I needed to put a comma before "because" in that sentence. Any thoughts?)
1.) On the subject of Keanu Reeves
(a.) I am somewhat ashamed to admit this, but I love A Walk in the Clouds. I know of one guy who loved it too--enough to call girl friends, potential girlfriends and ex girlfriends at 2 or 3 in the morning to tell them that they had to get up to watch it. I am even more ashamed to admit that I liked (as a TV movie; wouldn't pay to see it in the theater) The Replacements, the movie about a bunch of scrappy failures who manage to succeed as football players. They're basically scabs, but the regular team is such a bunch fo jerks that you have to root for the underdogs. Keanu's character is the one who might have been able to make it before for real, but he'd been injured or something.
(b.) Keanu is definitely beautiful, but I don't find him attractive. He's a bit like a marble statue: I want to stare at him from afar, but I don't want to kiss him.
2.) On memory
apo, I remember comment threads too. I was actually thinking of your comment about your experience with the woman who'd been scarred by cigarette burns, when I used that as a hypothetical yesterday. I have an amazing memory for conversations, and these are basically written conversations. I can remember bits of Plato and a book like Castiglione's Courtier much more easily than a straightforward exposition like Machiavelli's Prince.
3.) On LB's job prospects
(a.) I had a professor for Business Organizations, Securities Law and International Business Transactions who went in-house after only a few years of law-firm practice. He felt that he made the move too quickly, but he did rise to become Chief Counsel for Star/kist.
(b.) Have you ever considered becoming a literary agent? I don't think that it pays what you make now, but I think that it's enjoyable. People with legal backgrounds are desirable, because they can understand contracts. It's a lot more remunerative than working in publishing. There's usually some editing too, since a lot of the publishers don't employ as many editors as they used to, so agents have to get manuscripts into sellable shape.
287: A case could be made that with pop-culture/teen starlets, there's a specific kind of personal grace and effortraining going on that goes beyond just being pretty. Alba in fact does project "cute" and "dangerously attractive" because she's carrying herself in a certain way, and making it look deceptively easy to do so.
And just what is "effortraining" you ask? I'm not telling.
Any thoughts?
Comma is not necessary there, IMO, but no foul either way.
I was actually thinking of your comment
I wondered.
Is it the movie-watching equivalent of saying you don't own a tv to say you've never seen, and never wanted to see, most of the movies mentioned here? I probably never had a habit of just going, and now I see mostly offbeats. Age is part of the answer but only part.
Maybe I was born old, but shirtless-deffusers-with-prettiness-along was a kind of movie I had no interest in by the time I was twenty. I really don't understand literate people in their thirties and forties watching these movies, yet some apparently do, and not just to "sell their hono[u]r for a glass of inferior sherry."
And just what is "effortraining" you ask?
The training manual is quite short.
Eh, "Let's watch pretty people blow things up" is not a deep taste, but it's one compatible with adulthood. I don't get to a whole lot of movies (they just seem to take a lot of time), but I have an inexhaustible appetite for light reading in the same genre. I'm pretty sure everyone likes some types of crap entertainment, and which kind it is doesn't necessarily say that much about you.
I don't get to a whole lot of movies
You must have children or something.
I'm pretty sure everyone likes some types of crap entertainment I'm not remembering any I've been able to stick with. I feel this as a social deficiency, as an isolating and alienating characteristic, and make periodic attempts to develop an interest to talk to people about. Mostly I feel like a faker, though. I can watch a series like House or Mad Men with my wife to keep her company, but wouldn't alone.
crap entertainment I'm not remembering any I've been able to stick with
You've been here for several years now.
I thought of that, but didn't want to say it.
It's also not passive, and the kinds of consumption I was thinking of are.
everyone likes some types of crap entertainment, and which kind it is doesn't necessarily say that much about you.
Just keep telling yourself that as you make sure that the TiVo caught the Very Special "Just Shoot Me" episode.
NASCAR
You know, I haven't been able to watch that in about a year. And that's something of keen technical interest and powerful memories to me, about which I know a great deal. Were it broadcast differently, maybe.
No, this site and its satellites are it, if they qualify. But it's not enough, because you run out of things to say when so many reference points are alien.
319: Appealing is not so easy to pull off.
Yeah, well, I guess my Bush analogy falls short, too. After all, the sumbitch is the son of a president. Thanks for bursting my bubble.
i'm surprised there's been no loving for/hating on either john cusack or george clooney.
i forget what i first saw cusack in, but i liked him in that role. and then the other movie, where he played that same role--that was pretty good, too. okay, the guy has no range, but i'd be interested to hear what the women think of him. was he considered to be of tom hanks' generation, or younger? it's hard to judge these things a few decades out.
clooney i only saw in intolerable cruelty, and i actually thought he was a blast. his infinite fascination with his own good looks was very funny, and brought to mind cary grant, and i don't say that lightly. (since, in the world of aspiration, there has only been one actor that i've looked at and thought 'i want to be him', and that's cary grant. 'i want to move like him', sure, fred astaire, but no temptation to *be* him).
I love trashy literature [good quality trashy literature, mind, Dan Brown can fuck off] and thriller-type movies. I don't really see that as incompatible with the fact that my taste in music tends towards the higher-brow end of things, or that I have a lit degree and have read pretty widely in the 'canon'.
re: 339
My ex loved Cusack. He was pretty much her dream man. So, he has a following. People seem to either love him or hate him.
339: I'm fond of both of them. And while Cusack doesn't have incredible range as an actor, he does good work with what he's got -- I found him absolutely chilling in The Grifters, despite the fact that he was on some level playing the bumbling nice guy he usually plays.
Weird to see those actors spoken of in the past tense; realistic I suppose, in terms of impact and significance, not that they might not work for years yet.
i'm surprised there's been no loving for/hating on either john cusack or george clooney.
77 to 339.
345--
250 comments ago?
come on, ned, this is hollywood: if you haven't been mentioned in the last 100 comments of the thread, your career is over.
there has only been one actor that i've looked at and thought 'i want to be him', and that's cary grant.
Every man wants to be Cary Grant. Even Cary Grant wanted to be Cary Grant.
347--
sure, that's what he said. secretly, he wanted to be me.
Cusack
A real prick in HS. Still owes me money. I recognize that he has good professional standards, and like some of his movies, but I need to make a conscious effort to separate the work and the person. A few of the production people he works with are nice though.
#348. Seems like you all could've swapped once in a while, then.
A real prick in HS.
Maybe you deserved it. How would we know?
350--
except that his desire to be me was the one feature in him i found entirely unworthy of emulation.
Clooney's the opposite of Nicolas Cage as far as selecting his movies goes. I'm not sure he's a better actor, but he seems to have a track record of picking good movies like Cage does of picking bad ones. (He is, of course, much more attractive. Off the top of my head, he & Clive Owen are the two movie stars I find most appealing. Also Viggo Mortenson if you catch me in an epic mood.
I find that people's stock goes up and down based on their talent as well as their looks--if I think someone's a lousy actor I don't find them attractive.
I'm also disconcerted when a talented actor turns out to be just dumb.
A real prick in HS. Still owes me money.
That makes me really sad. He seems so personally appealing.
I don't really see that as incompatible with the fact that my taste in music tends towards the higher-brow end of things, or that I have a lit degree and have read pretty widely in the 'canon'.
Of course it's not incompatible; rather the reverse. For a long time now, most literary people and intellectuals have been "and," not "or." So much so that someone lacking the taste and stamina, so that genre fiction and popular entertainment are statement-of-facts-at-2-am work for him, begins to doubt himself, his basic competence. I'm sure that the context of life, even as it gets into serious literature, more-and-more passes me by.
354--
whoa, whoa--if the standard is "was never thought to be a prick in hs", then no one is going to make the cut.
christ, do you know what a prick mother theresa was in hs?
Fabulous women actors who I genuinely admire for reasons other than how they look (e.g., smarts, professionalism): Cate Blanchett, Rosie Perez, Charlize Theron, Lily Thomas, whatsername--the other lily, the indie chick, Queen Latifah, Holly Hunter, Whoopi Goldberg, Catherine Keener, Ruby Dee. Off the top of my head.
329: Actually it's ephor training. Alba just missed out on a breakout role as a dude in 300, Zack Snyder said she was too "curvy."
341: No strong feelings about him. He's pretty good in Grosse Point Blank and The Grifters. And some other stuff too, I guess. ISTR he played a pretty decent Cruel Lawyer Type in something-or-other, or maybe that was someone else.
I'm a little surprised Christian Bale hasn't come up. Surely he must owe somebody money from HS.
Of things to worry about, not having a taste for lowbrow entertainment seems really low on the list. Kick back with a beer and some Bach, or whatever non-lowbrow entertainment you unwind with, and chill.
Oh, and Joan Cusak. Love love love her.
A real prick in HS. Still owes me money.
Two dollars?
357--
that seems interesting and apposite and yet....
so many of those women are deeply gorgeous. i just wonder how easy it is to filter out the aspiration to be cate blanchett from an awareness of her looks.
yeah, some of the others, clearer cases.
(lily thomas = tomlin?)
Surely [Bale] must owe somebody money from HS.
He murdered them all years ago.
the other lily, the indie chick
Taylor.
I kind of know what IDP means. I like a fair amount of genre/lowbrow stuff, but it's not predictable--it's not like I like SF, or mysteries, or action movies, reliably; instead I like a small % of each. So when I want something easy & fun it's actually tricky to figure out what.
That makes me really sad. He seems so personally appealing.
On the plus side, I believe he's rumored to be well endowed. Focus on that.
I continue to love his stuff, though of late he's suffered from Nick Cage-ism. "Better Off Dead," "One Crazy Summer," "Gross Point Blank," "The Grifters": love them all.
I don't really read anything about what actors are like in real life, aside from the David Poland and Ken Levine blogs. From what I knew of the drama people vs. the sports people in HS and college, I feel a lot more comfortable presuming that an actor would be likeable than his athlete counterpart. But perhaps I'm wrong.
Once when Keanu was being interviewed, he said that his favorits word was gravitas. That's one of my all-time favorite blowhard answers.
363: Tomlin, right.
Well, yes, some of them are gorgeous: Blanchett, for instance. But part of what I like about her beauty is that she wears it very casually. And I mean, how many admirable male actors are really not good looking? There are more character roles, but even so.
I think that one of the criteria for being interestingly attractive is (usually) to have something about you that is pretty unconventional: Rosie Perez's overbite, for instance, or Joan Cusak's long face. LB, I think, made a comment upthread about Bruce Willis's way of using his eyes and mouth, back in the day--that's the kind of thing you notice when you're looking at someone who isn't Keanu Reeves or Johnny Depp good looking. Of course, if you're JD, you are both gorgeous *and* interesting to look at because there's character in your face, which I think is true of Cate and Charlize (who has gone way out of her way, actually, to take "character" roles).
Of things to worry about, not having a taste for lowbrow entertainment seems really low on the list
No. You have the taste, and don't feel deprived of the vast social dimension of entertainment. And have you been to a classical concert lately? Every second person with an oxygen cart, it seems; metaphorically apt.
Oh, tell me about it. Finding a reliable new vein of thrillers is terribly difficult, and the same with SF/fantasy. I keep on thinking I should get to like romances more, because it's an area of crap entertainment I haven't mined out yet, but while I don't mind some, and am really kind of fond of Georgette Heyer, I have a hell of a time locating much that meets my standards for crap in the genre.
368--
the main difference is that by now, your most successful friend from the drama club in high school is a slightly bitter real estate agent in ca, whereas your most successful friend from the varsity football team is a drooling lump of brain damage.
speaking of which: how much of willis' loss of appeal could have been caused by the heavy diet of steroids he probably went on in order to bulk up for his conversion into action-hero-man?
that stuff has got to have other effects, right? on facial morphology, e.g.?
re: 370
We watched Notes on a Scandal recently, and I was struck as much by Blanchett's voice as her appearance. I've seen her in loads of films, and liked her work [and she is beautiful] but I'd never noticed her voice quite as much before. It's quite extraordinarily deep at times, without sounding masculine or affected.
re: 374
He's not that bulky. It wouldn't take steroids to turn from a slim-ish 30-something guy to a moderately muscular 30/40-something guy.
What's with the consensus that Bruce Willis has lost it? I think he's still charismatic, and he looks just fine for 52. A lot of his appeal is his voice anyway.
375 - Tilda Swinton is also a pretty prominent art collector, isn't she? (I had thought it was Blanchett, but some digging suggests that I was el wrongo.)
Maybe you deserved it.
Certainly did. But my assessment isn't just based on personal interactions. I could still be wrong or be a poor judge of character, of course, but I don't mean "we disagreed" or "he done me wrong" when I say this. Sometimes people change, but the couple of times I ran into him in the 90s, he had an entourage going, and those superficial interactions didn't make me suspect that he had suddenly grown some interpersonal decency.
Maybe it's an ill-considered remark, we certainly weren't close, so who knows what's at the core. He has kept superficially decent people around him for some time, and chooses what to work on with discretion and taste. Perhaps that's enough to warrant adopting a generous attitude.
Charlize (who has gone way out of her way, actually, to take "character" roles).
This is not to fault Charlize, but a huge pet peeve of mine is when directors go out of their way to make beautiful actors ugly for a role, instead of hiring one of the millions of phenomenal actors who are ugly. Naturally ugly. Use them.
Yeah, I think Bruce Willis is kind of odious, but he's got adorable crinkly eyes, a fine torso, and a great voice.
Also, 378 is right. He's rocking the bald thing well.
I'm struck by how few [as in a vanishly small percentage compared to the general population] 30/40-something actors are receding or bald. Willis seems to have chosen not to go down the minoxidil/hair-implants/toupee route.
Has lost it, generically? I dunno. But I found him appealing as a younger man, and not as a middle-aged man. It's not that I wouldn't watch a movie with Bruce Willis in it, necessarily -- it might still be a good 'blowing things up' movie -- but any element of watching it for an appreciation of his hotness has been gone since right about after the first Die Hard.
There may be other women out there who find bulletheaded slabs of flesh attractive, and I say more power to them!
377--
yeah, i'll take your word for it, neither knowing the before-after changes in detail, nor the chemistry, either.
but notice
239:
"When he was younger he had an oddly sensual thing going with his eyes and lips too, sort of a cute mischevious vulnerability under the machismo."
and
243:
"he turned into a bullet-headed block of flesh."
those might both describe a kind of brutalizing hypertrophy of masculine characteristics. but beats me.
372: I used to read romances vetted by my mom & older sisters for being good-enough crap. I think the overall quality average is probably worse than SF or mysteries--there were a couple authors I used to enjoy but they either got worse or it became so obvious that they used the same formula to write every book that it got boring.
Never tried Heyer. She has a better reputation than most.
Even if you find an author you like you can't necessarily stick with them. I enjoy some of Ken Follett's stuff, but there was one thing that has to be the worst 500+ page book that I've ever actually read. You'd think it being called "A Place Called Freedom" would've tipped me off that this was not going to get better, but no.
Maybe it's an ill-considered remark, we certainly weren't close, so who knows what's at the core....Perhaps that's enough to warrant adopting a generous attitude.
When ogged says "maybe you deserved it" in HS, the appropriate response is "I'm sure a former high school bully would think so."
Willis seems to have chosen not to go down the minoxidil/hair-implants/toupee route.
I think there's some stuff in Bonfire of the Vanities about the era before he embraced the bald.
363 - Character s/b spoon and figgy pudding.
If you're looking for crap, and like romances at all, Heyer's definitely worth it. (And wrote 3.2 x 10^14, books, or thereabouts, so there's plenty.) Fluff, and comically clean by today's standards, but fun.
"I'm sure a former high school bully would think so."
I was a junior-high bully. Only a couple of fights with friends in high school. Made some people cry in class discussion, but that's different.
390--
are you sure you meant "363"?
i wrote that one, but i can't make heads or tails of your 390, even after checking the link.
392: That doesn't change the fact that you and Cusak could be BFF.
392
by "former high school bully" he meant
"someone who, by high school, was a former bully".
or possibly not.
new vein of thrillers
If crime-y thrillers are OK, Patricia Highsmith, George Pelecanos, and George V Higgins are all really good, IMO. And the Travis McGee books are the Herb Alpert of crime thrillers. Also Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö.
386 makes no sense to me.
What chemistry is there to understand? It's not like he's some freakishly huge 'roided out muscle monster. His shape changes are comfortably within the range of 'has chosen to work out a bit more than formerly'.
those might both describe a kind of brutalizing hypertrophy of masculine characteristics
Or, perhaps, ageing?
Pelecanos is really excellent. His best stuff is quite a long way above the run-of-the-mill crime thriller. He also seems to write about a milieu which, to an outsider like myself, I've never really read anyone else writing about.
I'm not even sure bitzer is thinking of Bruce Willis.
Continuing my Georgette Heyer threadjack: I have a theory that Bertie Wooster was a fan. There's a bit in one of the Jeeves novels where Bertie is modeling himself on the hero of some book he's just read: "laughing down from lazy eyelids as he flicked a speck of dust from the impeccable Mechlin lace at his wrists." On writing style, and on who was a best seller at that time in that genre, Wodehouse is doing a Heyer pastiche in that line.
(This is not literary scholarship, just a surmise. But I offer it freely to anyone writing their dissertation on PG Wodehouse.)
Pelecanos also works on The Wire. Have I mentioned The Wire?
399--
alright, smartass, i know who willis is:
http://www.hulklibrary.com/hulk/images/hulk-from-the-movie.jpg
381: What's worse is when filmmakers use non-Natives to portray Native people. I watched Shadow of the Wolf the other day, and it features Jennifer Tilly as perhaps the least convincing Inuit woman in the history of film. (I love Jennifer and all, but just... no.) After you've seen Atanarjuat it just seems quaint and ridiculous.
397: Yeah, I don't mean to say that Willis is unsightly, or that he's objectively unattractive for his age. Just that the ageing process has moved him out of the category of men I personally find appealing.
396 - I duno, Pelecanos got awfully samey-samey after I had read a couple of his books. Supercool to see my old stomping grounds of Silver Spring represented in crime fiction, though. I'm a big fan of Richard Stark's Parker novels, which are what Donald Westlake bangs out when he's wearing his hardboiled hat. (Westlake's early Killy, written under his own name, is fantastic, too.)
re: 403
Memoirs of a Geisha being another memorable example. Although I was inclined to cut them some slack on that, as Gong Li and Michelle Yeoh are both preternaturally hot.
405--
"my old stomping grounds of Silver Spring"
where'd you go to h.s.?
re: 404
Yeah, what we find hot is what we find hot, after all.
I was just querying the 'he's a roided out freak with hypertrophied masculine characteristics' view from kbitzer.
"You interrupted a very romantic moment there, William Blake!"
It's true that Gary Farmer is awesome, and has most of the best lines, if not all of them. "It is strange that you do not remember any of your poetry, William Blake."
Gary Farmer is even better in Smoke Signals, which is a great movie.
Ben Affleck and James Spader both have really nice moms.
408: Someone else commented that he'd thickened up as he got older, and I characterized him as a slab of flesh. I think kid ran with that without really having a picture of him.
410: Love Smoke Signals. "This isn't Dances with Salmon!"
408--
okay, but look: that's not what i said.
i said: people noticed a change in his attractiveness.
the change coincided with his moving into the action-hero genre and bulking up.
bulking up, in hollywood, is often achieved with drugs.
hypothesis: maybe his loss of je ne sais quoi was related to the drugs.
the original change to be explained--a certain loss of charm, an increase in stolidity--was apparently subtle. drugs can have subtle effects, too. you're the one who said "freak", not i.
this, via sullivan's site, is oh so unfoggedable:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22439156-5012895,00.html
LB, you and Ogged are both nuts. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is an awesome, awesome book, but Smoke Signals is dreadful.
407 - Up in Howard County, but I lived in Takoma Park between 2000 and 2005.
brutalizing hypertrophy of masculine characteristics
Suggests something non-subtle to me.
[It was me who used the word 'freak', though]
Late to this thread, but I believe I am this blog's original Nicholas Cage defender.
Also, remember when it was funny?
403 is making me think of Tantoo Cardinal. I actually watched some really bad movie once just because she was in it.
406: Even weirder, though, that one. Does Japan really lack for charismatic actresses?
(I mean, maybe it lacks for actresses with international starpower; come to think of it I can't really name any contemporary Japanese actresses. But that's not the same thing.)
409: It's curious that one of Depp's best films is one of the few of his films that I could see working just as well without him... but I couldn't see it working without Farmer.
fair enough.
but "brutalizing" can suggest direction rather than degree.
Smoke Signals is dreadful
Is this compared to the book, or on its own? I loved it, and everyone I've recommended it to has loved it. John Wayne's teeth, hey-a hey-a...
418: Oh yeah! Wild at Heart! Yay!
It's curious that one of Depp's best films is one of the few of his films that I could see working just as well without him... but I couldn't see it working without Farmer.
No, it couldn't work without Farmer, but I think Depp is doing a lot of fairly subtle work in that film. I can't imagine who could replace him, but that might just be my crush talking.
Sweet: the John Wayne's teeth bit is on YouTube.
What's cool about the link in 415 is that they don't "find they love each other," like that pina kolada song we were execrating a few weeks ago, but realize that their differences are really incompatible.
419: Tan/too is good shit, though she seems to irritate some people in the film community. She's great in North of 60 (CBC television drama).
I don't think Smoke Signals is dreadful, exactly, so much as amiably, but severely, clunky. I can image that if one hadn't read The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, being exposed to that material in any form at all could be pretty charming.
Yeah, what rfts said in 428. It's just gratingly amateurish (as you might expect from a first-time screenwriter and a first-time director), and IIRC when watching it I felt that a lot of shots were lifted from other movies. Read the book, though! And Alexie's Indian Kiler was also pretty good, I thought.
I was struck as much by Blanchett's voice as her appearance.
I'm really glad to hear that, because I just saw the movie recently too, and liked it very much--more than the book, actually. Anyway, one of the things in the book that was supposed to be really attractive about that character was her voice, and it's cool that Blanchett brought that into the role in a way that didn't seem performancy (which is what always bugs me about Meryl Streep).
I haven't seen Smoke Signals yet, alas.
Made some people cry in class discussion
I *really* want to know more about the specifics here.
Gary Farmer is even better in Smoke Signals, which is a great movie.
Gary Farmer was great in movies before there were any movies.
How odd that we can post so much on the subject of great female actors - especially great female actors respected for something beyond good looks - and not mention Streep. Granted, it's been awhile since she's done anything super-unbelievably-brilliant, but gosh, who in this era compares?
As usual, I am coming in way too late on a thread, but ick, ick, ick. Keanu is a talentless and blank-faced stick of wood. (No, not that kind.) He is to male actors what Andie McDowell is to female actors: affectless, movie-ruining, non-swoon-inducing, displaying an emotional range of A to A-and-a-half, and just generally annoying.
That is The Truth. It cannot be contradicted.
(And Johnny Depp rocks my world.)
430: All right, so B beat me to mentioning Streep.
You should have seen the guy farm.
His "Harvest the Rest" scale was a nice touch.
I liked Dead Man a great deal, but I think it would be hard to defend as a movie. I'm surprised people are so down on A Walk in the Clouds.
What's cool about the link in 415 is that they don't "find they love each other," like that pina kolada song we were execrating a few weeks ago, but realize that their differences are really incompatible.
There's probably too little there for us to really know, but it's hard to see it as finding out they were really incompatible when they were smitten by one another's personalities when under the impression they were talking to someone other than each other. Sounds to me like two people who have such insurmountable ill-will toward one another that they can no longer see each other objectively.
(It hopefully also taught them both a lesson about taking, with a grain of salt, the things other people say about their horrible spouse -- there's always another side to the story.)
435--
gotta second sir kraab's take on andie mcdowell. i found her presence in movies utterly baffling, too.
440--
naw, i think the basic problem was just the huge disparity in ages.
what Andie McDowell is
She was pitch-perfect in Muppets from Space.
That restates what I thought I said, but I guess "incompatible" bears too much weight the way I used it.
No good at law school exams for the same reason.
I think it would be hard to defend as a movie
Why? It's got everything we go to the movies for: Free-form plotting, Lance Henriksen eating people, Johnny Depp shooting people, Gary Farmer's buttocks, and Haida canoes.
443--
oh good--can we get back to talking about *real* movie stars, like the muppets?
miss piggy--aspirational role model, or merely a pork-object?
guy smiley: hotter than kermit?
443: Didn't we recently do a "Which muppet are you?" thread here? If we made it a which muppet would you date, I'm going for Rolf. But in reality, I always end up with Fozzy.
Actually Andie McDowell was very good in that James Spader movie, too. The ability to blush on cue? Impressive.
I would say Andie McDowell is an almost perfect parallel to Keanu -- pretty, absolutely wooden, and yet somehow often in decent movies that her woodenness doesn't spoil. It's not that she can act, but her woodenness didn't do, say, Groundhog Day a bit of harm, and a better actress in the ordinary prettyperson range might actually have been more of an object and less of a person in the role.
I liked Dead Man a great deal, but I think it would be hard to defend as a movie
Maybe I'm missing the sarcasm here; Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a book praising it.
440: I think it just demonstrates the difference between what you like, and what you can live with. My folks roundly disliked being married to each other for 25 years -- from who they comment on, though, if they hadn't both been so scarred by the experience as to avoid the opposite sex completely, they probably would have ended up dating people similar to each other. The marriage wasn't an inexplicable mistake, it was a fundamental mismatch between their desires in a partner and their needs out of a relationship.
"I'm going for Rolf. But in reality, I always end up with Fozzy."
"I think it just demonstrates the difference between what you like, and what you can live with."
451: Those situations are common but mysterious to me. Any general thoughts or relevant examples?
what Andie McDowell is to female actors: affectless, movie-ruining, non-swoon-inducing, displaying an emotional range of A to A-and-a-half, and just generally annoying.
Andie McDowell is widely regarded as the most talented actor--some say the most talented person--ever to come from Gaffney, SC.
I thought Smoke Signals started out very good and got steadily worse. The ending was just ridiculous.
On a related note, snarkout's reaction to Pelecanos sounds a lot like my reaction to Hillerman.
453: I think what LB is describing is (similar to?) the pretty common dynamic of being attracted to people who aren't good for you. I'm learning that people (I... ) often have this instinct to keep being drawn to the same sort of narcissistic jerks as sort of a subconscious quest to try to "fix" what went wrong. There's a definite dissonance created when a relationship crashes and burns and a definite temptation to try to recreate the failure in the belief you can make it work "this time."
I found Bruce Willis attractive in Moonlighting, but I think that that was his best acting, aside from (possibly) Pulp Fiction.
I thought Smoke Signals started out very good and got steadily worse. The ending was just ridiculous.
This is fair -- I loved the first half of the movie, and can't really remember anything that happened after they got off the bus.
snarkout's reaction to Pelecanos sounds a lot like my reaction to Hillerman.
Hillerman, I think, really went downhill. The first five or six, maybe, of those were very readable, although I have no opinion at all as to authenticity. Four or five ago they got dull, and I have an almost infinite tolerance for repetitiveness, if it's the sort of thing I like -- I've read all thirty thousand identical Nero Wolfe stories, with undiminished enthusiam from start to finish. If I get sick of the later books in a series, it's because they've gotten worse, not because I've lost my taste for more of the same.
miss piggy--aspirational role model, or merely a pork-object?
I know small persons who greatly admire Miss Piggy. I'm not wild about this idea, but she makes a nice counterweight to the Princesses.
I, myself, took her as a role model at a formative age. There was significant karate-chopping.
Hillerman, I think, really went downhill. The first five or six, maybe, of those were very readable, although I have no opinion at all as to authenticity.
I can see that; I've only read a few (mostly early) ones, and that was enough for me. They got very repetitive very quickly.
The authenticity is excellent, btw, which is a refreshing change from the absurd romanticism you often get in writing about the southwest.
She's very *loud*. Some of us are quiet.
his best acting
That would be Unbreakable.
the absurd romanticism you often get in writing about the southwest
But I liked The Milagro Beanfield War
Willis belongs to a relatively small set of actors I viscerally dislike but have to confess I nevertheless liked in more than one or two movies. Brad Pitt too. (Guess I liked Twelve Monkeys.)
Actually Andie McDowell was very good in that James Spader movie
I agree. Affectlessness and passivity were perfect for the role, but that turned out to be the only role she can play. IMO.
Gary Farmer's buttocks
DS is banned!
The authenticity is excellent, btw, which is a refreshing change from the absurd romanticism you often get in writing about the southwest.
I'm glad to hear it -- I find the early ones very attractive and convincing in their localism, but I haven't got the local knowledge to know if I'm being successfully bullshitted.
But I liked The Milagro Beanfield War
I liked it too, but that's exactly the example of successful bullshit I was thinking of in contrast to Hillerman. That and Death Comes for the Archbishop.
466: Agreed. On the strength of that one film I held out a belief for ages that she was actually good. It took a long time for me to realize that well, she isn't.
462: Powerpuff girls? Emily Strange? (She's quiet.)
431: If some people didn't include the teacher, he's just a little punk.
Have I mentioned The Wire?
Has anybody heard when they'll be releasing the season 4 DVDs? Because I feel like I got left hanging.
Somebody needs to get to work on turning the story in 415 into a romantic comedy immediately. Of course, it needs to be rewritten so they fall in love again at the end.
I'm trying to think of "aspirational" actresses, as in "hey, I could be that guy, and that would be ok" only not a guy. I love Charlotte Gainsbourg and Cate Blanchett et al but it's not like I could be them. The only American ones I can think of are Lily Taylor and Martha Plimpton. (And in I Shot Andy Warhol they have scenes together, for aspirational awesomeness.)
P.S. It will star Keanu Reeves and Jessica Alba. Or perhaps Lily Tomlin and John Travolta.
"aspirational" actresses, as in "hey, I could be that guy, and that would be ok" only not a guy
I don't think aspirational means you could actually be them, it means the fantasy of being them is pleasant. It's not like men believe they could actually be George Clooney.
This is not to fault Charlize, but a huge pet peeve of mine is when directors go out of their way to make beautiful actors ugly for a role, instead of hiring one of the millions of phenomenal actors who are ugly. Naturally ugly. Use them.
We had this American star come up to Canada looking for someone to play her sidekick in a movie about two mentally challenged women. The casting agents specified: x star is sensitive about her height, so no one under 5'5. x star is sensitive about her weight, so no skinnies. Sidekick should not look like an 'actor', must be kind of homely. And a really good actor. My agent finally flipped out at the casting director, and said she would have a roster of those people to send in if the casting director could guarantee that they would ever be seen at any of her other auditions, ever.
Yeah, the word "aspirational" is used wrong in 475, I believe. Maybe it should be "identify-with-able".
the fantasy of being them is pleasant
Ah well, in that case, all the women mentioned above, and I'll add Juliet Stevenson.
It's not like men believe they could actually be George Clooney
Wait, what? I have to cut him slack in the pointless cleverness area, but otherwise, all copacetic. You?
a movie about two mentally challenged women
It seems like this should only describe like three or four recent movies, so discretion alert? And yet I can't even think of one that it might be describing.
I can think of movies about one mentally challenged woman.
I need to stop thinking about things like this. Never mind.
We had this American star come up to Canada
Penny, mein landsman! Ogged is keeping book, you know.
Somebody needs to get to work on turning the story in 415 into a romantic comedy immediately. Of course, it needs to be rewritten so they fall in love again at the end.
We could do it like one of those writing exercises where everyone takes turns writing the story one sentence at time.
She pondered the screen for a long while, trying to settle on just the right screenname...
The twitching brought on by his belching again during their shared meal was starting to subside.
Made some people cry in class discussion
I *really* want to know more about the specifics here.
Surely the similarity to this is not entirely a coincidence.
the fantasy of being them is pleasant
I don't think that's the burden of "aspirational role model" either, but whatever. Apparently it's hard to focus on this.
(Jodie Foster, Meryl Streep. Women whose roles may or may not have anything to do with their attractiveness. Helen Mirren. Emma Thompson.)
discretion alert? And yet I can't even think of one that it might be describing.
It got made, no idea what happened to it after that. The audition room was full of us with no makeup, big shoes and ski sweaters.
Hi IDP! How many Canadians here?
IDP, I think I looked up Penny's IP address a while back so her Canadianness has been noted in the building. She seems to be in the same place as another semi-regular Unfogged commenter. Y'all (they'all) should have a meetup.
How many Canadians here?
I'm going to forget some, but off the top of my head:
Penny, I don't pay, DS, Invisible Adjunct, girl27, bald lurker Chris, Alif Sikkiin. Who else?
I thought you were joking about Ogged keeping track. Sure, meetup somewhere in Canada! Or 2 person meet up in my tiny town, good too.
Has anybody heard when they'll be releasing the season 4 DVDs? Because I feel like I got left hanging.
Apparently not until just before the next season is aired next year. But I have it all Tivo'ed; just come over. Bring the wife and kids! Bring McManly and Rah, too!
delurking for LB in 458:
I've read all thirty thousand identical Nero Wolfe stories, with undiminished enthusiam from start to finish
If so, then you might enjoy the whole Georges Simenon oeuvre including the Maigrets. Bonus: his output trumps Stout's.
And, though I'm ashamed to admit this, the J.D. Robb fantasy police procedurals are fun and plentiful.
back to lurking ....
You know, its warm out, it's a nice day, I'm just gonna walk down to the post office and scream "who wants to sex Motumbo?" and see what happens. I'll be right back.
That's the spirit. I'm determined that the Littlecanuckvillites have a meetup.
Meetup in Banff! In October! At the Aurora!
355 and previous:
I'm sure that the context of life, even as it gets into serious literature, more-and-more passes me by.
332:
I feel this as a social deficiency, as an isolating and alienating characteristic, and make periodic attempts to develop an interest to talk to people about. Mostly I feel like a faker, though.
328:
Is it the movie-watching equivalent of saying you don't own a tv to say you've never seen, and never wanted to see, most of the movies mentioned here? I probably never had a habit of just going, and now I see mostly offbeats. Age is part of the answer but only part.
By the by, I thank IDP for voicing this. It's an age thing, in part, sure, but only in part.
Since I'm right at the cusp of identifying with people both younger and older than myself, the (mostly younger) people on this blog continually demonstrate something that fascinates and repels: being plugged into the latest happening, and valorizing that general approach to things. Something like that.
I ask myself whether I did that when I was younger. Undoubtedly, but only to an extent; but I was always a bit of a luddite (read: DFH), so you can't generalize from my case.
I really appreciate IDP's honesty in using the terms "isolating" and "alienating". When you don't recognize a good portion of people's references, you have a choice: look it up. Or not. How important is this? It's an interesting question.
Anyway, lunch is on.
Meetup in Banff! In October! At the Aurora!
This is funny.
When you don't recognize a good portion of people's references.... How important is this?
In the worst case, you could end up like my dad, who enjoys supernovae, the middle ages, and rare plants; not a bad fate, but he's at a disadvantage when brought into contact with people who live in this century. I read In Style and similar crap magazines regularly to try to keep in touch. Also, pay close attention to commercials the first time you see them. Think of it as homework to keep you in synch with the land of your birth, from which you are now separated by an uncrossable river which grows wider with each passing day. Like any sort of isolation, allowing buildup makes recovery and reconnection harder. At least that's what I tell myself.
493: Thanks, Klio -- you know, I don't think I've ever read one of those.
Sign me up for the sexing of Motumbo.
I liked the first half-dozen J.D. Robb books, mostly because I found the futuristic setting plausible and not overly intrusive or annoying.* And the central relationship is not bad.
After that, it started to feel redundant. Also gory.
(*Not bashing fantasy and sci-fi as genres, here, just admitting that I often don't have patience for lots of description and world-building.)
When you don't recognize a good portion of people's references.... How important is this?
It depends on whether or not you aspire to be an eccentric.
I imagine that the more stable you are in life and work and friends the less it matters if your drift out of touch with the rest of the culture (this approximately describes my parents, who are not particularly eccentric, but have accepted that they don't make an effort to stay connected to American culture). On most days this seems like a very nice life.
497: I grew up without a lot of pop-cultural references, so these days I'm just tickled pink to get anything. Really, I'm very easily delighted.
I don't actively try to keep up, but the bits that interest me (what is this thing called reggeaton?) end up caught in the seine of the mind. It can be extremely helpful for cross-cultural communication.
I miss a whole lot of the pop culture stuff myself. While I like plenty of lowbrow entertainment, current music (or any other music, really) is a closed book to me, and I'm really bad with celebrities generally. I fake it to some extent, trying not to look eccentric, but I'm not really keeping up.
Think of it as homework to keep you in synch with the land of your birth, from which you are now separated by an uncrossable river which grows wider with each passing day.
There are two ways to look at this response: is it assuming that (a) being out of touch is a bad thing simply because you gradually lose the ability to communicate? This would be true across the ages; it was ever thus.
or (b) is it assuming that you're actually, really, missing out on something of value if you don't keep in touch, as it were? I mean value content-wise. I mean,
It is not just an age, or aging thing: I happen to be one of those freakazoids who believes we're completely internally fucked, that our culture and media, in its pressing of consumeristic behavior, infantilizes us, that we have done this to ourselves -- I hope I don't need to spell this out -- and that resistance to it might actually be a political act as well as a personal one.
The last clause there is pompous. What I mean is: I don't see much of a problem with lw's dad, as described: "supernovae, the middle ages, and rare plants; not a bad fate"
If we aren't able to converse with people outside our idiom, we're not good for much.
It's funny to me that Parsimon sees Unfogged as a place where you find a lot of valorization of being super on top of the latest in pop culture. Quite the contrary, was my impression.
well, the flip side of this is that some of us near-retirees are actually here, on this very site, to try to keep up with what the young kids think is cool.
(or, 'bad'. no, i mean 'rad'. no, i mean 'totally grody'. actually, the surprising thing is the relative diachronic stability of 'cool'--it has had a much longer shelf-life than i would have predicted in the 60s.)
because of the internets legendary dog-disguising properties, i can hang out with people less than half my age plus 7--indeed, less than a third of my age--and more or less have a conversation, except that sometimes i say things that sound really stupid, and sometimes you say things that sound so appallingly young i can't believe it.
but i guess i agree with parsimon's summation:
current pop culture? not important.
talking with others? important.
508:
It's funny to me that Parsimon sees Unfogged as a place where you find a lot of valorization of being super on top of the latest in pop culture. Quite the contrary, was my impression.
Yeah, I've figured that out. People sometimes comment about the unfoggedtariat being oddballs. I have to compute that, because a lot of the commentary here seems very mainstreaming to me. I did not quite say "super on top," by the way.
Apparently I have absolutely no idea what really being on top of the latest in pop culture would be.
There are blogs devoted to that sort of thing, if you're interested -- The Superficial, Perez Hilton, and so on. Unfogged is a bunch of geeks who on a semi-regular basis note the existence of pop culture, not a set of real pop culture obsessives.
Hmm... I wonder what type of pop culture people follow, though. The new thread is chock full of references that I can only assume are mostly to movies or TV shows, as I recognize none of them. Now this may be partially my tendency to forget dialogue and lyrics unless they're especially hilarious, but it still seems odd to be surrounded by that many unfamiliar pop culture references.
Nah, it's just a stupid thread, Po-Mo. And endless list of references people think are obscure enough that only one or two people will ever get them is a boring list.
516: Well, true, but I'm usually a person who makes similar references. Almost never to dialogue, usually to analogous situations or characters as I have a much better memory for those. I suppose that's what threw me off.
Also, we rarely have music pop culture discussions, which surely can be some small consolation to parsimon, IDP, and others.
Bitzer: To find out what the kids think is cool these days, I've started keeping a list of band t-shirts I have seen on campus, and who is wearing them. The bands I've seen so far are almost all weirdly old.
Fall Out Boy (f)
Grateful Dead (m) x3
ACDC (f)
ACDC (m) x2
Blue Oyster Cult(m)
wolfmother (m)
velvet revolver (m)
Bob Marley (f)
Bob Marley (m)
Misfits (m)
corruption of blood (m)
Nine Inch Nails (m) x2
Iron Maiden (m)
Skavenger (m)
Deftones (m)
Note: It took me a while to realize that all the shirts I saw a few years ago that said "dickies" were not about the 70s punk band.
I am kind of puzzled by how to play. The idea is a googlewhack of Unfogged commenters -- get something that one other commenter, but no more, will understand? I can't imagine how to aim for that.
519: But how much of that could be due to current band shirts being difficult to recognize as such? Out of my extensive closet of such shirts, probably the only ones that are recognizable as a band shirt without knowing the band or recognizing the shirt are Menomena (which looks like a Metallica shirt anyway) and Junior Boys.
Maybe a couple others that I can't think of now, but the vast majority are design-dominated or just difficult to recognize as band names.
Unfogged is a bunch of geeks who on a semi-regular basis note the existence of pop culture, not a set of real pop culture obsessives.
Yes, I know.
We need some clarification. Somewhere along the line what I said was turned into a reference to pop culture obsessives.
Ah. I said this:
being plugged into the latest happening, and valorizing that general approach to things
I wasn't talking about whatever Paris Hilton is doing. I was talking about technology geekery, which is not exactly unknown to me, and, well, yes, the celebrity talk to an extent, and also the talk about whatever's obscurely cool.
You know what unfogged hasn't had for a long time? A Larry Summers thread.
Canadian lurker popping in to note Season 4 comes out just in time for christmas. And Vancouver would be the place for UnfoggedCanCon, duh.
the talk about whatever's obscurely cool
Cock jokes never go out of style.
515: it still seems odd to be surrounded by that many unfamiliar pop culture references.
It gets odder and odder as the years go by. I don't get many of the references to the current pop culture and people much younger than I am don't get my references to the past.
Now, I'm at a considerable advantage over other people my age because I'm comfortable with computers and always did enjoy looking things up. That carried to having strong Google-fu quite nicely. However, what looking things up can't provide is the emotional context, so there's still much missing from the communication.
For example, I doubt any of you have the same gut reaction to "duck and cover" as I or any of the people here who lived through and paid close attention to the Cuban Missile Crisis as it progressed.
I dunno, in the eighties in NYC public school we were lining up in the hallways for blast drill. Not all that often, and I don't remember if the nuclear war related purpose was explicitly explained, but we were at least edgy about it.
Tyler Cowen is real eccentric about movies. According to his new book, he walks out of so many movies that he often goes to movies at 2:00 when he has a meeting scheduled for 3:00. If he likes the movie, he cancels the meeting.
Cock jokes never go out of style.
I love you, Apo. Word is that that's alright.
527: I was just twenty-one during the CMC, living just across the NYC border in Nassau County and working at Albert Einstein in the Bronx. That was one hell of a scary time for someone who was current on A-weapon tech and had already read lots of apocalyptic SF.
In any event, I'm sure here are some counter-examples to anything I pick as an example. What's true tho, is the increasing gap as one ages. Almost any ref to the Simpsons sends me to the computer, I've never watched a complete episode, and Have Gun, Will Travel won't mean much to most of y'all.
And once I commented 527, I realized I was being a jerk -- 80's fear of nukes was on a different level than the CMC.
Wire Paladin.
528: It must be strange to be constantly maximizing your utility every second of your life. I try to establish a lot of principles for how I should behave in certain situations, so that I don't have to be constantly making decisions about what time to set my alarm clock for, which staircase I should go up, whether I should try to sell something that I'm unlikely to use in the near future, etc. In this case, I envision Cowen updating himself every thirty seconds or so to say "Should I leave this movie or stay? Is this the point at which the movie has gotten bad enough that I leave?" He wants maximum freedom of decision at all times, basically for its own sake, because if everyone behaved that way then economists' models would be accurate.
521: I thought of that. Mostly I've been on the look out for unusual word combinations that might be band names. When I get back to my office I google them to see if I'm right. For instance, I didn't know that wolfmother was a band, but I figured, why else have a t-shirt that says "wolfmother" on it? Maybe if you are Ben w-lfs-n and you want people to take your last name literally.
Oh, is this where the people who think the other thread is lame get to hang out? Cool.
Except that this thread is too long, and the other thread's post seems like I was being mocked, so, you know.
535: Really? I thought it was pro-you.
Who knows. Ogged is weird.
Oh good, alterna-thread. I can't play that other game at all.
533: And despite what Wolfmother sound like, they are actually new. Though that may be obvious, as I'm not sure anyone would have been so willing to imitate Led Zeppelin so completely back when they existed.
I think the other thread is meant to bring back the old, injokey Unfogged.
Vancouver would be the place for UnfoggedCanCon, duh.
How about UnfoggedWestCon? I like Vancouver.
Nothing's more rewarding than a healthy in-group/out-group barrier.
And 537 is the turning point for this thread, I can feel it.
First you get the Heebie, then you get the whimsy, then you get Unfogged.
I'm seriously considering posting references to my own personal thoughts about things and claiming victory because no one will get them.
Which really, would operate the way most of my jokes usually do, come to think of it.
And I'm seriously wondering what happened to the Friday afternoon Bottecelli. I liked that game, it was fairly accessible to most people (apart from that one time someone chose Kirov, and the clues perfectly matched Khrushchev), and it's not as if I get work done on these afternoons anyway.
Brace yourself for whimsy!
...um, I got nothing. Except that lately I've been plagued by the urge to drop "This thread is making me sooo wet" in all kinds of threads. I just think it's hilarious but I'm too embarrassed to actually do so.
You said that already, Heebie. IT'S NOT FUNNY THE SECOND TIME.
536: My perspective is off. I wrote earnest things earlier, and it sometimes seems that one has to try to get away with that. Eh. I'm oversensitive right now. In-group, out-group, kind of stupid.
I know, I said it elsewhere. But I've had the urge to say it in like ten different threads and exercised restraint. (Like kegels!) It's funny to me.
Also I have the urge to do all sorts of uber-obvious references in the other thread, like, "Cowabunga, dude!" or "What we have here is a failure to communicate" or "YOU'RE the next contestant on The Price Is Right!"
But you've exercised your restraint incorrectly, and ended up only meta-saying it. Now you'll never get to actually say it in a thread, as it's old news and you wasted your one shot on saying that you wanted to say it. Poor comment, dying before its time.
Also, I'm doing kegels now, which probably feels particularly odd because I'm male.
You're saying I blew my wad on talking about getting wet?
551: Yeah, me too. In fact, all I can think of is really obvious references.
But what's important is that you're always ready to go again right away.
553 is one of my "available" chat messages. How'd you know?
554, 556: Also important, having enough changes of underwear.
Who knows. Ogged is weird.
I'd guess that he doesn't want to be in charge, misses the old days, doesn't like listening to what sound like critiques of the blog, maybe because there are better ways to spend your time.
On preview, y'all are devolving.
This thread is making me sooooo wet.
546: Tia hosted it, and she stopped posting. I liked the games too, but I've been too harried to post, and have been a little panicked about posting in relation to having been slightly busted by friends -- the potential of work-outing feels slightly realer.
Heebie, ever since I started reading your blog, I've got this oozing wetness. I think maybe I caught something?
On preview, y'all are devolving.
I don't believe in devolution.
563:
If it smells like chicken, keep lickin.
If it smells like trout, get out.
While I'm griping about stuff, look at this sentence:
The Plaintiffs' claims of reliance in their fraud case of action are insufficiently vague and conclusory as to be plead with sufficient particularity.
Wouldn't that break your heart? First, it's word salad -- I don't think there's any way to make the grammar work -- and second to the extent it says anything, it's precisely backward of what it should mean. I didn't have time to mark it up and give it back to Junior so he'd know what the problem was, I just rewrote and shoved it in the brief. Should I give him a markup anyway, just for the educational value of it?
562: Well, it should be easy enough to get some poster to put up the first post, even if they need to find some other main commenter to host the game, right?
565: Ok, I'm having steak for dinner tonight.
Should I give him a markup anyway, just for the educational value of it?
Just to vent your irritation at him? Yes, yes you should.
having been slightly busted by friends
ZOMG!
Should I give him a markup anyway, just for the educational value of it?
Are you going to have to work with this clown again? Does your firm reward you for training your juniors in any way that's valuable to someone who's looking to get out as soon as a plausible opportunity comes along? If not, why the hell would you want to make extra work for yourself?
Should I give him a markup anyway, just for the educational value of it?
No, you don't have time. You should hand it to him with a check mark next to that and any other godawful stuff and say that you don't have time to correct his grammar or point out when he's saying the opposite of what he means.
Should I give him a markup anyway, just for the educational value of it?
A markup is a marked-up version of the thing, like a graded paper?
It's horrific and disgusting, so if you have the time, yes.
This is rather appalling -- mostly that these people are, from what I understand, making what I consider to be quite a bit of money.
Yeah, I'm just wondering if it's what a decent person would do -- I probably won't bother.
(Fun story: the statement of facts I was languishing over all last night? Was for a draft of the brief going out to the client today. The NY partner on the case has had me writing most of the brief, but told me on several occasions over the course of the week that he was writing the Preliminary Statement. At around 2, I circulated a copy of the completed brief, shy one preliminary statement, to my partner and a partner in Dallas who's going to actually send the blasted thing to the client, with a perky email saying "I'm here for the rest of the day, tell me what else I can do to help this get out the door!" At six, I get an email from Dallas, copy to my partner, asking if we want a preliminary statement on this thing or if it's going out the door without one. My partner is Jewish, and is incommunicado until tomorrow night. I responded by saying that my guy was unavailable for holiday reasons, and if Dallas guy wanted I could throw together something quick and dirty, or it could go out with a "to be inserted", his call. And now it's been forty minutes, no response, and I can't really go home until Dallas guy either puts me on the hook or lets me off it. I'm a little peeved at my partner for setting me up like this.)
I'm just wondering if it's what a decent person would do
Personally? I think it's the kind of thing someone who is way overinvested in being "nice" would do. It's not your job to copyedit his shit for him, it's not your job to teach him how to write. It's *his* job to produce things that are helpful to you, and it's your job to give him useful feedback.
Telling him that his writing is ungrammatical and says the opposite of what he means--which is a li'l bit of a problem for a lawyer--is useful feedback. He can do his own damn homework to figure out how to identify and fix that.
574 gets it right. Let him know that it's a big problem, and he can figure out whether he wants to fix it or continue being useless.
What's astonishing to me is that I don't think I could have written a sentence that bad by seventh or eighth grade. How on earth did this guy come to be working for NY Biglaw?
Although, if I were more invested in my job:
It's not your job to copyedit his shit for him, it's not your job to teach him how to write.
This is kind of false. It's conventional to get copyedited markups back from senior lawyers, so that you correct your own errors -- it kind of is supposed to be my job to teach juniors I work with how to write. Just usually not from this kind of a baseline.
Ah, you didn't say before that it actually is your job to do this.
576: Why, by way of being a highpowered consultant before law school -- glad you asked.
You have got to be fucking kidding. Which implies pretty strong undergraduate credentials, doesn't it?
578: The thing is, conventionally I'd bounce it back to him marked up, and make him fix it before I used it -- I didn't have time for that. A markup for purely educational purposes is unconventional. (I did bounce back an earlier memo the same day where for some entirely banal point of law, he gave me five cases, four from the 1930s and one from the 1950s.)
580: Ivy undergrad.
582: Well, that's the problem. He said it right someplace else -- repetitively and clunkily, but right. So he knows the answer, just screwed up the sentence.
How long do I have to wait after sending an email asking what I should do before I call and ask?
How long do I have to wait
On Friday afternoon/evening? Not at all.
Is the bot permanently broken now?
581: Have you given him back marked up stuff before? If so, is it really so wrong for you to give this back to him and say that you don't have time to mark up this one, but he needs to bone up on his grammar on his own time, or something?
Agree with slol: just call, already.
I think Ogged said he was going to give the bot a couple days off.
I don't think you have an obligation to actually rewrite. It might be helpful to underline the most egregious stuff and say: look, you can't give me things in this condition, give your work a careful edit & proofread before you send to me.
I'm usually fairly sympathetic to lackeys, & I've made dumb typos when I write quickly, but that's ludicrous.
Is this guy by any chance named something like Chet Cabot VII?
566 is embarrassing. When I was teaching, I had that sort of stuff from students (rarely, but it happened). Sometimes it's clear it's just an editing mess-up or they were tired, the person otherwise writes good prose and you cut them some slack. Sometimes they are bullshitting, and don't have a clue, so they're churning out their version of vague academic prose and then you (metaphorically) hammer them.
It might be helpful to underline the most egregious stuff and say: look, you can't give me things in this condition, give your work a careful edit & proofread before you send to me.
Yeah, I've said this three or four times already. Admittedly, I've been focusing on his formatting, citation format, decisions to switch fonts mid document, and so on, and hadn't really zeroed in on his prose style.
I'm tempted to let loose and see if I can make him cry, but that's mostly because I'm really tired.
decisions to switch fonts mid document
As was said at the time, that's just beyond fucked. That's so dumb/lazy/disrespectful it's weird.
I'm tempted to let loose and see if I can make him cry
It's a testament to your decency that you haven't done that already.
you (metaphorically) hammer them.
Why metaphoric?
Seriously, LB, if you've told him three or four times that he has a problem, and he's still making the same mistake--especially if he's not being proactive about checking things with you or asking for help--then either he is incompetent or he is insubordinate. If it's the latter, he deserves to cry. If it's the former, he deserves to lose the job.
Shithead partner in Dallas is writing the preliminary statement himself, and said "Oh, I guess I should have answered your email." Fucker.
re: 592
Why metaphoric?
Because no actual impact of metal implement on flesh is involved. I can be* quite a hard bastard on students I think are taking the piss but I draw the line at actually beating them.
* or was [with thesis revisions, etc., it's been a year or so since I did any teaching]
Go home, LB. Pick up a good bottle of wine or something on the way if you have the energy; otherwise ask Buck to run out and get you one.
I draw the line at actually beating them.
See, you're just making more work for the rest of us this way. Damn you.
591, 592: I'm really, really inhibited about losing my temper with people in person (not that you'd know it online). I get very precise and analytical and vicious, and whoever I'm unhappy with gets very very hurt. That seems like a bad idea management-wise, but being reasonable doesn't get through to this guy.
593: The fundamental problem with working for a living is that you have to deal with way too many assholes. This problem is compounded when you do your working for a living in a law firm.
Going home now. Good night everyone.
I hope you don't read this until Monday, LB, but re. 598? Being inhibited about losing your temper with people is something that occasionally will get taken advantage of. I think from what you say this guy is taking advantage of it. He needs precise and analytical and a little bit of vicious, to let him know that he really wants to respond when you ask nicely, would probably not hurt him.
Anyway, he's a LAWYER. Give him something to put on his blog, already.
"Oh, I guess I should have answered your email."
"My imaginary friends thought so, yes."
Yeah, I've said this three or four times already
See, this is just so far beyond unacceptable I think you've got to find a way to end it. And talking to him politely obviously hasn't worked, and unlike the meanies here I don't think you're under any obligation to get nasty with him (though it's probably justified at this point). Can't you just politely ask the partner (or the staffing coordinator, or whoever handles this sort of thing at your firm) for a different junior lawyer to work with, noting very bluntly that you've gotten work from him that's consistently far below the threshold for acceptability (and that you've tried repeatedly to address the issue to no avail)?
Oh, and LB, if it makes you feel any better about your work life, I'm spending my weekend drafting a stock purchase agreement for an acquisition that my client decided today will be structured as an asset purchase. (Rendering the contract I'm drafting mostly useless.) On the phone today I said "great, I'll put together an asset purchase agreement" and they said, "no, let's go ahead and put together the stock purchase agreement anyway". (The other side wants it to be an asset purchase; my clients are conceding the point. They think somehow that by showing up at the table with a stock purchase agreement ready to go the other side will be more accomodating in negotiating the asset purchase agreement. Which seems somewhat silly, and not likely to work. I wanted to remind them that this is costing them money, but whatever.)
In conclusion: you know what sucks? Being a lawyer.
Happy to have heard this from other people before ever considering going to law school.
I can be quite a hard bastard on students I think are taking the piss but I draw the line at actually beating them.
Some Scot you are.
400: Continuing my Georgette Heyer threadjack: I have a theory that Bertie Wooster was a fan. There's a bit in one of the Jeeves novels where Bertie is modeling himself on the hero of some book he's just read: "laughing down from lazy eyelids as he flicked a speck of dust from the impeccable Mechlin lace at his wrists." On writing style, and on who was a best seller at that time in that genre, Wodehouse is doing a Heyer pastiche in that line.
Nope. That's almost word for word from Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel. Similar genre, but ever so slightly more "respectable."
Based on my limited experience, it doesn't seem to suck at all to be a nonprofit or gov't lawyer. Not that it's easy to get those jobs of course.
Can't you just politely ask the partner (or the staffing coordinator, or whoever handles this sort of thing at your firm) for a different junior lawyer to work with, noting very bluntly that you've gotten work from him that's consistently far below the threshold for acceptability (and that you've tried repeatedly to address the issue to no avail)?
I think this is the best way to handle the problem.
608: Dammit.
603, 610: Yeah, if I were more invested in the firm, I should go to the partner. This is weird for me, though, because this is literally the first time I've supervised a junior associate (first firm, I was junior; second firm even though I was senior enough that in a larger firm I would have been supervising junior associates, there weren't any, and in the two and a half years I've been at my current place, everything I've been staffed on until now has been me and a partner, or on two cases me, a partner, and either a peer or an associate senior to me.) I'm a little edgy about going to the partner when I've got literally no baseline for comparison.
Wow. I've had relocating kind of absolutely off my list of possibilities (schools, friends, my family, apartment we own, all here in NY) but that's a heck of an opening.
I'm kind of tempted to apply (although with no clerkship, and some but not buckets of appellate experience, I'm probably pretty low odds) and think about whether I'd take it if I got it later.
I'd give the guy a mark-up.
The other day, CJ Roberts told a story about getting a draft marked up when he was a clerk to Rehnquist. "A sea of red." Roberts argued back, so Rehnquist told him to put the stuff he'd slashed into footnotes, and then do another draft. Roberts dutifully complies. Rehnquist looks the draft over, says 'now delete all the footnotes.'
Folks, as she says, it really is LB's job to train the guy. And many of these things shouldn't be that difficult: from "I was really looking for more recent authority on that" to "if you don't give me text I can insert into the draft that we're sending to the client -- who, by the way has hired a topnotch law firm and is paying a damn lot because they want to be able to expect it all to be done right the first time -- you're not doing anything at all." Neither of these things is necessarily obvious, and certainly neither is taught in law school.
Isn't the job Charley links about keeping people in Gitmo?
614 -- I'm having trouble deciding whether you're dead to me now, or whether you'll only be dead to me if you take such a job.
616: One presumes that LB will be tasked by our friend Charley with the job of sabotaging those efforts.
LB, observe the behavior of your young assistant, for you will have to become him in order to gum up the works at the appellate office.
The smile didn't come through. I've long thought that LB ought to be in the SG's office. Ideally after January 20, 2009, but if this is the road that gets her there, I'm all for it. The government's position is so screwed up that even LB won't be able to save it.
To the non-lawyers who wouldn't already know: SG's office = premier appellate shop in the land.
Oh, he did come back with more recent authority after I bounced that one back to him. And this: "if you don't give me text I can insert into the draft that we're sending to the client -- who, by the way has hired a topnotch law firm and is paying a damn lot because they want to be able to expect it all to be done right the first time -- you're not doing anything at all" I've said to him a couple of times in almost those words, although admittedly I only went as far as talking about the client and her needs, not explaining how expensive we are. I will say his citation form was cleaner on the last couple of things, after I told him that he couldn't cut and paste directly from Westlaw, and illustrated with hand gestures how the parens go around the court and the date, and the comma goes after the case name, which is in italics.
And I was kind of serious about the Gitmo job -- if you're in the right, having decent honest people on the other side only helps. I'm not talking about sabotage, but if the best, most legally defensible position your side has is a loser, it's a loser.
I will say his citation form was cleaner on the last couple of things, after I told him that he couldn't cut and paste directly from Westlaw, and illustrated with hand gestures how the parens go around the court and the date, and the comma goes after the case name, which is in italics.
Jesus Christ, three years of law school and $200 K annually for doing that? Isn't that what secretaries are for?
You know, I've never run into a secretary who could reliably clean up citation formatting. God knows why, it's not terribly difficult, but it's not something that generally seems to be expected of them.
LB, you're revealing too many guild secrets! Next thing, you'll tell people that the only good thing about law review is that people learn the Blue Book. Well, and the resume entry.
Maybe that's why I was so popular as an academic law secretary (via a temp agency).
Not having been on a journal means that my own Blue Book-fu is shamefully weak -- I am lost in those arguments about whether a given period should properly be italicized or not. What's killing me about this guy is that sloppy citation format that stands out when I of all people look at it is citation format that might as well have been typed by a half-trained lemur.
625: Yes, yes it was why you were so popular. This is why I was telling Frowner to be a legal secretary -- there are all sorts of weird little mindless tasks that lawyers do because for some reason secretaries don't. A secretary that could and did pick up that stuff would be worshipped like unto a goddess.
"And I was kind of serious about the Gitmo job -- if you're in the right, having decent honest people on the other side only helps. I'm not talking about sabotage, but if the best, most legally defensible position your side has is a loser, it's a loser."
But they don't just litigate Boumedienne before the Supreme Court, right? There's also the question of low grade "oh, don't worry your honor, of course you can trust us to ensure that the Tunisian gov't won't torture this guy" motions.
But if that's a frivolous position, surely my fear of Rule 11 sanctions wouldn't allow me to take it. Oh, I'm being silly, but if all the lowgrade government positions were filled with people with a sense of the legal and personal ethics involved, you have to think that the litigating on your side would suddenly be a lot easier and more straightforward.
(not that you shouldn't be in the sg's office & not that I haven't drafted deportation decisions I wasn't psyched about. But I've always found the "someone's going to represent them, it might as well be me & I'll trust the system to sort it out" argument not quite personally convincing.
Then again, the election's not far away, & I'd bet a lot of money that your poker face is better than mine).
My poker face is, in fact, awesomely impenetrable. I have no corresponding actual poker skills, but they call me Ol' Stoneface.
My general sense is that there's a lot of daylight between what's legally frivolous & what I am ethically comfortable arguing, & I wonder how much discretion an entry-level person has about making calls about the latter ("sorry, boss, I can't file the declaration you've filed in every other habeas case, because I think it's deceptive and unethical?!?). But I really know nothing about how that works at DOJ.
632: Yeah, come to think of it I really was fantasizing about sabotage, and realistically you're completely right. I blame sleep deprivation.
