I cringed when I read in the newest issue of Entertainment Weekly that the upcoming sequel to The Punisher would be released in December without Thomas Jane in the title role.
The first Punisher film was outstanding in every way: compelling action sequences, well-drawn characters, satisfying story arc. There wasn’t, in fact, anything I would have changed about it, apart from the extremely over-the-top scenery chewing of John Travolta’s villain. But, as the film’s source was a graphic novel, some comic book exaggeration could certainly be tolerated.
Thomas Jane “made” that movie, however, much the way he carried the HBO film 61* with his sympathetic portrayal of Mickey Mantle (Thanks for reminding me of that, TommyT!). It is really hard to imagine either film with anyone else in those roles. But the replacement of Jane with actor Ray Stevenson might just work.
Stevenson is known to me only through his prominent role in HBO’s mini-series Rome, though I’ve only seen two episodes of that show, at most. From some of the publicity shots circulating around the internets, Stevenson certainly looks the part.
Here’s hoping the film – and Ray Stevenson in the title – do not disappoint. I’m really looking forward to this one.
Jon Hamm reprising his TV role in “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women” on the 1 November 2008 Saturday Night Live. Familiarity with AMC’s Mad Men may be necessary for the fullest appreciation.
My bags were packed the day before, early the day before. I boarded the cats with the veterinarian and his staff, who treat them like their own. In a way, it’s a vacation for the cats, too, who really do seem to enjoy their infrequent stays at the animal hospital. My clothes for the day have been laid out. All I have to do is shower, dress, lock up the house, and drive the three or four miles to the airport. I leisurely put some coffee on to brew, straighten up the signs of my activity so that I will return to a fresh house, all the while listening to the morning’s headlines on NPR.
My flight is at 10:50, so I’m taking advantage of a wide window of time. At about 9:00, I’ve had enough relaxation, and head over to the airport. Parking is a cinch, there are no lines at the check-in counter. It is a sunny, clear day, and the morning light is streaming through the great panes of glass in the airport lobby in solid dusty shafts. Nearly idyllic, if airport lobbies can be described that way. I breeze through the security check without incident and amble, like the Merry Wanderer, through the terminal toward my gate. I stop at the gift shop to pick up a copy of the New Yorker.
I see the evidence of my earliness, as there is no one waiting or standing at the gate for my flight. One female flight attendant is standing at the counter. She nonchalantly waves at me to go ahead through the gate, then continues quietly at her computer screen. I can hear my steps as I walk the lonely gangway toward the door of the plane. An auburn-haired stewardess checks my ticket with a very friendly “Good morning!” I turn to step into the cabin and am greeted by a plane full – literally, full – of morning commuters. How very odd! It’s over an hour before the scheduled departure time! I fall into what appears to be the one last empty seat on the plane, a window seat, next to a middle-aged couple.
“You almost didn’t make it!” the man says, leaning over the woman who is sitting between us. She is staring straight ahead at the headrest in front of her.
I look at my watch. 9:45 a.m., it reads. “But it’s only 9:45,” I say.
The woman harrumphs. “Flight leaves at 9:50, you know.”
“I thought it was 10:50. Are you sure?” I pull the flight ticket out of my satchel. 9:50 a.m., right there in plain numbers and Latin abbreviations. I feel like an idiot. “Well, I’m glad you all waited.” Mentally, I thank whoever it was that trained me to arrive early at airports.
Diane and Walter, my new travelling companions, are married and live just south of Birmingham. It takes me fifteen to twenty minutes to extract this information from them. Good thing I’ve brought a book with me. I pull my copy of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly from inside the bag and begin reading. This is one of the rare instances when the movie has encouraged me to read the book. Usually, I use the film as an excuse to avoid reading the book – a visual Cliffs Notes, of sorts. This movie was so, so good, however, that I felt compelled to explore its source.
As I begin the second paragraph of the book, Walter leans forward. “Have you been to San Diego before?”
“Yes, I grew up in that area,” I tell him. My thumb is holding my place in the book.
“Oh.” He leans back in his seat and begins re-reading a copy of the Wall Street Journal that was occupying his lap. I open my book and begin Paragraph Two again.
I turn the page. “We’ve never been to San Diego,” offers Diane. She continues to look directly ahead. “It’s a beautiful city,” I reply, and we have a short conversation – in fits and starts, all three of us – about interesting historical spots, beaches, and regional food. I start talking about Mexican food.
And it is like – as Groucho Marx once described the loquacity of one of his co-stars – I’ve been injected with a phonograph needle. I have been telling everyone how excited I am to be returning to California for the first time in eight years, and how one of the things I am most looking forward to is the Mexican food. “Mexican food” has become my summer mantra, and a fish taco my imaginary talisman. In my mind, there is a vision of a menu coated in plastic. I continue to burble on and on to Diane and Walter about the gastronomic riches to be found in the cantinas and taco shacks of San Diego County. On and on and on. It eventually wears us all out.
Exhausted, I return to my book. Diane and Walter remove a very expensive-looking portable DVD player from one of their bags. I watch them out of the corner of my right eye, pretending, somewhat ridiculously, not to notice what they’re doing. She unveils a DVD copy of Babel, still in its shrink-wrapping. Maybe she can tell that I haven’t turned a page in my book for awhile. “We bought this in the airport gift shop. Have you seen it?” Well, at least she didn’t ask me if I liked it. “Yes, I have seen it,” I answer, not elaborating.
“Is it good?”
Doh. “It’s very serious. Heavy.” I leave out the part about having to watch it over three nights because I kept falling asleep. I decide not to tell her that the film made me want to step out into busy traffic. No matter, she sees right through me. “Oh, it is? Walter, he says this is a dark movie.”
“It’s the only one we’ve got. We have to watch it.”
How odd, I think. “We” have no choice but to watch a depressing movie on this crowded airplane ride. I guess friendly conversation is completely out of the question. I go back to my book while Diane and Walter don their noise-cancelling headphones and fire up their disc of despair.
(continued at Reunion Journal: 31 July 2008, part 2)
So, the election is over, and you’re watching the results. Or you’re eager to put two years of presidential politics behind you, but wonder how much of it is still stuck in your giant brain. How does a quiz sound?
The political nerds at MSNBC have created a forty-question quiz to test your campaign memories. With questions such as
Which primary candidate’s father ran for the Republican nomination in 1964?
and
A former Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee also played in a rock band. What is its name?
you’re definitely in for a noggin twister. But don’t be afraid…it’s multiple choice! To take the test, go here. I’ll post my score here later…
I thought I’d get to the polling place by 6:00 a.m. and be the first in line, or close to the first. Then, last night, it dawned on me that I would have the privilege of waiting just as long at the #1 position as I would at #56. So I take my time getting to the community school polling place, arriving at around 6:20. Coffee mug in hand, I step into the line. I am indeed #56.
In front of me is a young black woman, wearing orange hospital scrubs, sipping on a Minit Mart coffee cup through a plastic stirrer and speaking in a very low voice through her Bluetooth earphone. Arriving right after me, as #57, is a tall, thin white guy in a meticulously pressed white shirt and tie, the knot perfect and symmetrical. In his hand, he cradles a BlackBerry. I greet him with a nod. He responds by lowering his head and commences a non-stop series of text messages, maybe e-mails, with dueling thumbs. Clickclickclickclick…
At about 6:35, the poll director comes out to the line, which by that time had snaked out past the school auditorium, across the parking lot, and to the street. “Be sure to have your ID ready when you approach the poll!” she announces in a loud matronly tone. “And don’t forget that you can vote straight party on this ballot, for all Democratic or all Republican candidates. If you do that, if you fill in the straight party option on the ballot, and you then vote for an individual candidate, that individual vote will override your straight party choice. I mean, the voting system will let that vote override what your straight party choice is.”
I never liked this particular announcement. This woman does this at every big election and, to me, it just sounds too suggestive. I have voted straight party in a couple of elections, not because I felt the need to support one party’s domination over the other, but because my favored candidates all happened to be members of one party. In those instances, I never filled in the “straight party” option on the ballot, instead going through the process of filling in each oval with a deliberate finality. I picked up this habit from my mother, who always told me that if the machine screwed up her ballot with only one box marked, then the whole ballot would be lost. I can’t argue with that.
At 6:45, someone near the front of the line decides to divert the first forty or so people in line down a breezeway attached to the auditorium. This moves us all forward. I am now standing within ten feet of the entrance to the polling place. Shortly after the line settles into its new formation, there is a bustling toward the rear of the group, at about #100. An elderly woman with a convertible walker comes rolling past us with careful stepping, but at a steady pace. Her companion says, to no one in particular, “I hope you won’t mind, she’s 97 years old.” I chime in with the scattering of agreeable nods from the line. “Put her at the front of the line!” I say. That, of course, was already the plan. She gets to the auditorium door and sits down on the walker’s seat. “They told me I’d never walk again, and that was at 92!” she says to the former #1, who is cradling a hardback novel under her arm.
Poll Lady comes out a few minutes later. “I have a clarification to make,” she begins. “About straight party voting. If you choose to vote with the straight party option, and then you vote for an individual candidate in that party, it will mess the machines up, and your vote won’t count.” Them’s fightin’ words, Poll Lady, especially on Election Day. “So, don’t vote straight party and also fill in a box for an individual in that party. Only fill in the box if the individual you are voting for is in a different party than your straight party choice.” She iterates this a couple times, each go-round with slightly different wording, just to keep everyone guessing.
“Why even mention straight party voting?” I muse to the couple standing on either side of me in line. White Guy keeps on clicking, not even stopping his thumb dance while he utters these words plainly: “It’s their constitutional right to screw up their own vote.” I look at him. He doesn’t look up. Clickclickclickclick… “I don’t think it’s worded that way in the constitution,” says I. The clicking continues, now with a peculiarly rarified drone.
Black Woman starts talking to herself. For a moment, I actually do think that she is talking to herself. Then I remember that she’s wired into the ether. She’s on the telephone. “Is your hair messed up?” she asks someone. “Make sure you brush it before you leave.” She must be talking to a child. “I’ll see you when I pick you up.”
Finally, the doors open, and everyone is civil and patient as they file in. There are four tables inside the auditorium, each covering one-fourth of the alphabet. Oddly, the shortest line is at my table, L-R. I am now fourth in line. When I get to the table, I surrender my driver’s license to the first poll worker who, seeing my last name – Osuna – does a double take. Yes, he’s my cousin, I think of saying, although I do not. She crosses me off her list and directs me to the second poll worker at the other end of the table, who just happens to be my next-door neighbor. She is focused like a laser on the job at hand, crossing off or writing in names with the precision of a Catholic nun, which she happens to be. “Good morning!” I say to her. She is warm and gregarious, as always, and reaches to hand me a ballot. I consider asking her for two, as a little joke, but determine that the humor level of that particular quip is pretty low.
I submit my ballot, with a fulfilled sense of purpose and pride. At last! The ballot-sucking machine tells me that I am #16.
On the way out of the auditorium, I pass a neighbor who lives a block up my street. She is standing in line with her adopted son, a little boy of Latin American heritage. He looks at me, sizing me up. With complete seriousness, he asks me, “Did you pick John McCain?” I look at her, I look at him. “I’ll never tell,” I say with a sideways, knowing glance that is a bit too grandfatherly for my own comfort. What a wuss, he thinks to himself with a look that says to me, Oh you adults and your games! “I like Barack Obama!” he says forthrightly, raising his voice for all in line around us to hear. A big smile forms on his small brown face. I look right at him and, catching his contagious grin, say “Me, too.”
The Birmingham News’ John Archibald writes a thrice-weekly column of opinion, most often about the happenings at Birmingham’s City Hall and the Jefferson County Commission. His writing is usually pointed, insightful and well-reasoned if, at times, a melodramatic match for the political histrionics he’s observing.
Today’s “Archiblog,” as his column is called, veered unpredictably toward the illogical. In “The reasons I won’t vote today,” he attempted to explain why he intends to sit out today’s election. At first, I thought he might be shooting high, with a spirited homage to Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” What thinking person, after all, would refuse to exercise his sacred right to vote? (If you have been reading Spitball Army lately, you have a pretty good idea of my thoughts on this matter.) Archibald’s seemingly winless argument against voting evaporated any Swiftian comparisons I may have wanted to make, however. The text is a loopy, poorly-reasoned rationalization defending the need for a reporter’s privacy and impartiality. It is a stunning rare moment of muddled logic and defensive posturing.
You can read John’s column here, at the Birmingham News’ al.com website.
Meanwhile, the Birmingham News decided to re-arrange the list of U.S. Presidential candidates on its printable sample ballot on Sunday. Instead of an alphabetical list of choices – they list five – there is a list beginning with Republican nominee John McCain, followed by the other four in alphabetical order (you know, “those ones”). This should come as no surprise to readers of the newspaper; the News gave their tepid endorsement to McCain almost two weeks ago. It was an almost apologetic recommendation based squarely on the shoulders of the paper’s long-held self-perception as a pro-life organization.
Somewhere in the middle of these extremes, between the editorial board’s insistent urge to announce their loyalty to a religio-political platform and a writer’s stubborn reluctance to have a political opinion at all (as if any of his readers truly believe that!), there might be a journalistic enterprise comfortable with its choices and its voice. I guess we’ll just have to keep reading the newly 75-cent daily to find that out.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day.
I will not sleep through Election Day….
Want to send this video to people you know? Just click here and you can personalize and e-mail it to as many voters as you can think of with your giant brain (it’s as easy as typing in their name and e-mail address).
The following sight greeted me as I made my morning trek through the backyard, and I could only imagine the drama that had occurred in this spot during the night.
The stray cat who uses my yard as his highway to the rest of the neighborhood must have been the hunter. I just finished re-building a part of the fence that crosses the property line behind the yard, and made a point of “sealing” it, in an effort to reduce that traffic. Feral Sam, as I call him, left this message, I guess as a cocky raspberry directed at me.
