Month: January 2016

Movie review: Concussion

Director/co-writer Peter Landesman was trying to explain WHY and HOW Dr. Omalu went on this crusade.

Concussion-Movie-PosterThe Daughter, an avid news watcher she is, thinks it’s weird that I was watching football on Week 17 of the National Football League. She thinks it’s a stupid sport, where the chances of getting a concussion, or worse, is quite great.

She’s not entirely wrong. The Wife and I returned to Oneonta on New Year’s Day and got to see the movie Concussion the following day at their mall. It’s about pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith, looking just slightly not like himself) discovering the linkage between brain damage in football players who suffer repeated concussions in the course of normal play.

It’s a steady, unglamorous process, as science is wont to be. The cast is solid: Albert Brooks and Paul Reiser, almost unrecognizable as other doctors, and David Morse as Pittsburgh Steelers retired center Mike Webster, who is the initial driving force of the film. Alec Baldwin, as retired Steelers team doc Julian Bailes, ALMOST ceases to be Alec Baldwin.

The reviews are lukewarm in that the critics thought, perhaps correctly, that the story should have been more about the exploration, and perhaps less about his budding relationship with a woman from church (Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Prema Mutiso), but I think director/co-writer Peter Landesman was trying to explain WHY and HOW Dr. Omalu went on this crusade when he didn’t even know about American football.

I think it’s a good, solid film, 3 stars out of 4. Will Smith deserves his Golden Globe nomination. Yes, the film could have been more dramatic. Still, the National Football League comes off as obstructionists, not looking out for the safety of its current and former players. And it does address the fact that I was watching the NFL that weekend, not because of the mindless violence of the sport, but because of the poetry in motion.

8 Things I Am Too Old For

Just as get to the point that I don’t care, I have to figure out what someone else would consider a guilty pleasure.

keenp_01In the HuffPo, Michelle Comb, who owns up to be 52, suggests there is an octet of things she’s too old for. “Time does change a person and I am finding that it is easier to accept these changes than to fight them.

“These are things for which the ship has sailed:”

1. Shutting up. There IS something about 50. I started this blog at 52, and I think people know that I have opinions, and I’m willing to share them. (Whereas some people who read my Times Union blog are willing to attribute to my thoughts that I did not express.)

My current feelings about politics and religion are rather clear, with the caveat that they can be changeable. However, writing about things sometimes codifies my thoughts, such as why Daylight Saving Time is stupid (doesn’t save energy, causes accidents, and heart attacks).

The librarian’s caveat is that I try not to go off half-cocked about an alleged injustice that is easily disproved in Snopes. There are a LOT of problems in this world, and I don’t have time for tilting at imaginary windmills.

2. Worrying how I look to others. For some reason, my receding hairline, or graying hair and beard has seldom been a source of distress.

I realized a long while back that I’m fat, and that fat people on bicycles are funny to some passersby.

3. Guilty Pleasures. Just as get to the point that I don’t care, I have to figure out what someone else would consider a guilty pleasure. Listening to ABBA? Nah.

Maybe it’s watching the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, still. I remember one summer, when my family was at his family’s house, when Fred Hembeck explained how he was loyal to shows, no matter how much off the rails they went. He was probably talking about Desperate Housewives. Well, Grey’s is my DH. It has an absurd number of regulars whose characters have been killed off

4. Uncomfortable shoes. Going back at least to 7th grade, my feet have always been a problem. I’d been wearing sneakers, usually Chuck Taylors, for years. If I had to wear something more formal, they’d still be Rockports. Now, at the Wife’s suggestion, I wear a couple of pair of Keen shoes (pictured), which are more like sandals.

5. Making excuses for my messy house. This is slightly trickier because my somewhat younger wife is still holding on to the notion that the house can be neat. And we have different senses of “neat”; her papers on the kitchen counter is clutter to me, while the pile of clothes in the corner of our bedroom is problematic to her.

6. Accumulating stuff I don’t need. This is definitely true. Except for books. And an annual Hess toy truck.

7. Spending unnecessary time with people I don’t like. This doesn’t seem to be an issue with me at present.

8. Finding the good in every person I know. Well, not EVERY person. But I DO see good in a lot of people with whom I vigorously disagree. I don’t think that is the issue.

One of my sisters was having an issue with someone, and this other person, ancillary to the primary conflict, started inserting himself in the conversation, attacking her on the phone and in email; I’ve seen the latter. Oh, yeah, he’s a “pastor” of some sort. And he’s a tool. I COULD say he’s being a friend to the other guy, but he’s just feeding him poison.

Music Throwback Saturday: What Do You Want from Life?

‘What Do You Want from Life?’ climaxes in a ‘hard-sell’ monologue by Fee Waybill, which name-checks celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Paul Williams and Randolph Mantooth,

tubesWhat DO you want from life? Somehow I totally forgot about a song I own on vinyl until I saw a recent mention of it on Facebook. What was old becomes new again in social media, evidently.

After repeatedly hearing just one song on the local radio station Q104, I acquired the 1975 eponymous first album by a San Francisco area band known as The Tubes, produced by the legendary Al Kooper. According to Wikipedia, “The Tubes formed in 1972 in San Francisco from two Phoenix bands after they both relocated to San Francisco in 1969. The Beans…and The Red White and Blues Band…

The band’s loud, heavy jamming style didn’t attract attention and in order to make money the band would go back to Phoenix and sell-out shows to make rent.”

The album had other notable songs, notably White Punks on Dope, but it didn’t grab me as much as another tune. “The album track ‘What Do You Want from Life?’, which became another of the Tubes’ signature songs, satirizes consumerism and celebrity culture and climaxes in a ‘hard-sell’ monologue by [Fee] Waybill, which name-checks celebrities such as Bob Dylan, Paul Williams, and Randolph Mantooth, as well as well-known products of the period, including the Dynagym exercise machine and a host of American vehicles such as the Winnebago and the Mercury Montclair.” It is a peculiar song that I found rather funny, and now, a peculiar time capsule.

The band would gain greater commercial success in the following decade. “In July 2015, they started a 40th-anniversary European tour, including dates in Germany, Sweden, and the UK. Dates in the U.S. followed.”

LISTEN TO What Do You Want From Life HERE or HERE.

Eggs trordinaire

I never tried Green Eggs and Ham.

RussianFabergeEggChris E. asked: “Do you like eggs?”

No, no, no. I LOVE eggs.

Eggs were the first thing I could cook on our gas stove at home when I was growing up, using a cast-iron skillet. It meant that wouldn’t be destined to eat cold cereal for the rest of my life.

Eggs are versatile because I could scramble them or fry them or make an omelet. The best thing to put into the omelet are sauteed onions and/or mushrooms, or fresh spinach.

Eggs can be poached. Our household had this aluminum pan that allowed for three eggs to be cooked, with the water between the bottom of the pan and the trio of cups. Now, I just poach them in boiling water and utilize a slotted spoon. Now that I think of it, I haven’t made poached eggs in a while.

For the longest time, when my choir was having a party, I would bring deviled eggs, always. Secret ingredient: dry (powdered) mustard.

When I go out to eat, I often have eggs, especially a Western omelet, that has many different ingredients, because it’s too much work to keep all of those items fresh at home. I’ll even eat an Egg McMuffin if I were in a hurry.

I’m told that, despite scares about it, when dietary intake of cholesterol is decreased, the liver compensates by producing more cholesterol, leaving total cholesterol levels relatively unchanged, and vice versa. So one should be able to eat a reasonable number of eggs each week.

Growing up, I proved to be pretty good at the raw egg toss; I had soft hands in catching the oval projectiles.

Hmm: The CEO Obsessed With Making Eggs Without Chickens.

Culturally, I deeply mourned the terrible death of Humpty Dumpty. I never tried Green Eggs and Ham, but I own the book; it’s GREEN, after all. When I sing in excelsis, it sounds more like “in egg shell cease”. I groaned at Jaquandor’s eggscelent pun he swiped from Facebook.

And of course, I AM the eggman.

I also like the chicken, which came first, but that’s for another day.

Movie review: The Big Short

The Big Short is based on a Michael Lewis book that he was frankly surprised that was optioned to be a movie.

big-shortI walked into work at the same time as a colleague and told him I had seen The Big Short the night before. As it turned out, so had he, at a different cinema. I asked him what he thought of it. He said, “It pissed me off.”

I could quit there, I suppose, but need to mention that the movie is about that very real credit and housing bubble that collapsed the economy, and not just in the United States, in 2008. The big banks were greedy and lacked foresight. The government failed to do oversight. The characters here not only predicted it, but they also profited off of it.

The Big Short managed to take an amazingly dense, inherently boring topic and make some detailed sense of it, in part by using folks such as chef Anthony Bourdain, singer Selena Gomez, and Australian actress Margot Robbie (in a bubble bath) to explain some basic concepts. And, in spite of being often infuriating, the film was also rather funny.

This is an imperfect analogy, but it’s like how John Oliver will take a topic such as net neutrality (SNORE) and make you entertained enough to actually care.

There is great acting by Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, and Brad Pitt, among others. There are odd little vignettes of Pharrell videos and “real life”, there, I think, as a palate cleanser between big concepts, and to show how the world was going on as usual while the system was undermining people’s lives.

The Big Short is based on a Michael Lewis book that he was frankly surprised that was optioned by Brad Pitt and others to be a movie. I’m told Lewis does a great job at making a dense subject understandable and human, though a very different animal. Adam McKay, the writer/director of Will Ferrell movies such as Anchorman and Talladega Nights directed this film and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Randolph.

The tags near the end suggest that we may not be safe from this disaster happening again. In fact, Michael Burry, Real-Life Market Genius From The Big Short, Thinks Another Financial Crisis Is Looming.

And now for some venting

On December 30, I went to my favorite venue, the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, specifically to see SPOTLIGHT for the 6:15 pm showing, meeting my wife right after work. But, for some reason, it was preempted by another showing of the new STAR WARS, a movie already showing there. Some group had apparently rented out a theater.

Don’t know where this fact was noted, but I felt blindsided, as did others. The ticket seller did not even know until he was told by another unhappy patron. I know this situation wouldn’t have happened under the previous ownership, who would have noted it on their weekly broadsheets well in advance.

And preempting for STAR WARS? I could almost see some special local film. But a film that has grossed domestically, as of that date, $629,034,583, and over a billion worldwide?

Landmark Theatres, you have really ticked me off. The fact that I found a decent film to see in lieu of SPOTLIGHT does not mitigate the dreadful customer service in this situation.

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