Life Day Celebration at Gardena Cinema

Last time it was for the Temple of Doom.

That was two years ago, back in November of '23. This year the invite was for an endurance double feature, our boy Mike, the erstwhile comic shop owner, current comic-book writer, comic book writing professor, and drug counselor, having the itch to return to his friend's family movie theater.

In 2023, it was Mike's favorite movie, Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom. Last year he had festivities at a different location. This year, the party was a few days after the proper birthday, and the first film of the double feature was "A Disturbance in the Force." This is a very entertaining documentary about the infamous "Star Wars: Holiday Special."

I learned so much. I picked up a bootleg of the Holiday Special at a comic convention back in 2012 as a gift for my brother. I watched as I drank gin, and, if you read the link above about that bootleg, you'll see all the cliches about trashing that program. Had I seen the documentary, I would have said different things.

Not to spoil ALL the conclusions from the documentary, but: back in 1977, when the movie became the biggest things EVER (it seemed), studios had very low opinions about audiences and, therefore, had the characters and costumes and masks in all sorts of shows that are, eh, regrettable by how serious the universe is taken today. Some were laughable (Donnie and Marie), some cringy (all of them, but Lawrence Welk!), and some made sense (Richard Pryor and the costumes of Mos Eisley).

Anyway, two groups---George Lucas and the filmmakers team vs the variety show team---began work on the project. Lucas was there for one day, for a total of 12 hours, and they were, by all accounts, very productive and inspiring. It didn;t take very long before all of the filmmaking side were gone, and the variety show people were the only ones left.

In the end, the length of the special went from an hour (so, about 46-47 minutes of content), to an hour and a half, to two hours. Yikes! Harvey Korman plays 3(!) separate characters! Bea Arthur sings a song! Art Carney saved the production when he was sober!

So, after this funny and engaging documentary, we sat and watched the Holiday Special, having the knowledge of what was happening and who was making the scenes and the feelings of most people who worked on it...and it wasn't terrible!

Okay...it's kinda terrible. But it isn't as incomprehensible as I remember. It follows a structure that makes a level of sense, and isn't so wrong as to wreck the sacred canon. It's not...good, but it's certainly not as bad as my post about the bootleg makes it sound. And seeing it on the big screen was a treat.

The lava lamp intermission count-down screen was pretty dope.

If you have a local independent theater near you, and you like movies, you should go and give them your patronage as often as you can. They will surely appreciate it.

Happy Life Day!

It's almost official now!

Bowling!

Bowling has changed a bit in the ensuing years since I last went. I, um, don't even remember the last time I went bowling...it may have been with an old pal Dylan back in Sac between '99 and heading back to San Luis in '00. Anyway, it got expensive!

Corrie found a Group-On and we made a Saturday afternoon of it.

One of the cooler changes was about the bumper lanes. Maybe this is old hat to all the bowling enthusiasts out there, but you can program the bumper lanes to show up for any individual bowler automatically, and then they'll pop down as needed to return the game to the normal gutter-ball-is-allowed play.

Cass did pretty well for his first time. We played two games as a family, then Camille and Corrie went off to the arcade to play (as per a Corrie promise). Cass was locked in and played most of the game we played together without bumpers (which lead to some gutter-balls):

Corrie and I both had a few strikes and a few more spares, and my second game was the best score of the day, at 145 or so. Camille was awesome, cradling the ball like a spherical baby, running towards the line, and launching it with both arms.

We had so much fun! I could see us making a routine of it somehow...is there a club instead of the drastic and severe pricing? Family fun time!

Low-Fi Halloween Decorations

If you stroll around the big-box hardware stores---Home Droots; Lowe's, etc---or other big-box department stores, the Halloween decorations can get crazy...big animatronic displays, priced in the hundreds of dollars. These things are awesome, but they seem very baroque.

Sometimes the most charming decorations are some of the lowest tech versions...like the ballon tied to the drainage gutter in the neighborhood where we take the kids to trick-or-treat:

There were hundred of kids out in this neighborhood last night, as it's a very popular place for the holiday. You can check this post from last year to get a sense for the Candy Zone 3 for Apartment Families. But, even in our neighborhood, across the street, we've had a presence keeping watch for a month now:

As for us...I finally had a costume I felt interested in wearing for the first time in years...Bob Ferguson, from One Battle After Another. Camille was an axolotl and Cass was a Roman gladiator.

Corrie wore one the softball team shirts from my mom and brought her whistle, and played "softball coach" while we followed around the kids. One person recognized my outfit, and that made it worth it.

Anyway, I've got game 7 on in the background, and it'll probably be over by the time you read this. World Series, Game 7. Somethings are pretty wild.

Busy Weekends, Part 918

Is 918 really the edition we're on for this heading? Why not...

Friday night was a volleyball game at the Blue Pyramid:

But that's more of an establishing shot of our little burg. Up close it's a little more imposing:

Inside is pretty cool:

The seats we had were general admission, and they were great:

Long Beach State battled University of Hawai'i, but 'battled' may be a bit of a stretch, as LBSU swept the match 3 games to 0.

The next day, Cass and Corrie had a volleyball game of their own, and since all the players from the VolleyRaptors, their awesome team name, were at the Pyramid with us, they all got to see each other again a few hours later.

Since Camille was adamant about not going, we chilled at home and got ready for the No King's protest we would bike to once they got home.

Civic action  at its finest: with the youth fully involved.

But, the ocean was in view, which was nice...

Sunday could be my busiest day of the week generally speaking, what with laundry, grocery shopping, the floors (on a good(bad?) day), on top of whatever other cool family stuff we're doing (cashing in free lunch prizes; going to the beach; more bike riding; et al).

Anyway, as busy as it gets, I wouldn't change it for anything...

What are we watching here?

I've been watching baseball for a long time. I've been a fan for possibly longer, and growing up in a Yankees household from my dad, and a Dodgers household from my mom, lead me to being overtly familiar with "Evil Empires(TM)" charges. But...

I've been blessed with watching Jeter kick ass forever in the highest leverage positions. Watching Big Mo kill it every single time except for one. Watching Matsui go-go-Godzilla it in 2009. I got the complicated extra-inning Grand Slam from Freddie last year, matching the excitement of Kirk Gibson back in '88. The Maier-assisted home-run...the Flip Play...Mr. November stuff---and that's all from Jeter.

But what are we seeing now?

I wrote last year about hyperbole and Shohei Ohtani, and somehow this past Friday he topped himself. He had...what, the BEST single game someone can have? Maybe it wasn't clinching the World Series, but holy hell!

First inning, as the starting pitcher, he was on the mound. He walked the first batter, then promptly struck out the side. Three strikeouts in a row. I captured a screenshot showing just how crazy his pitches can be. This was the called third strike for out number 2:

I mean...what can you do with that? Lower outside corner, 100 mph...Seriously WTF? Out number 1 was a swinging whiff. Out number two was this called third-strike above. Out number 3 was another swinging whiff. 

Okay, so far so good. Lots of pitchers have been ass-kickers and dominant to open a game. Big deal. Well, none of them did what he did next: Shohei walked over to the dugout once the top half of the inning was over, dropped his glove, put on his elbow armor, grabbed his helmet and bat, and strolled out to the batter's box to lead off the game for the Dodgers.

Then he hit a 400+ foot homer. His next at bat he hit a homer out of Dodger Stadium. Out of the stadium. The number ascribed to the homer was 469 feet, but it felt like 600. THEN HE HIT ANOTHER HOMER.

In the end, Shohei Ohtani gave up less hits as a pitcher, 2, than homeruns he hit as a batter, 3. He struck out 10 batters, which has happened maybe a dozen times in playoff history. He hit 3 homers in a playoff game, which has happened less than a half-dozen times.

But he did it in the same game.

I'm not sure how long it will take after he retires for us to truly appreciate his game, but I'm going to try to appreciate it right now, as he looks like Babe Ruth mixed with Walter Johnson, being the best of both types of players.

This is really happening...going 50-50 last year and winning the World Series in his first year with the Dodgers was not the high point...?

Cinematic Car Chases

I've yet to go see "One Battle After Another" for a second time (but I'm trying to figure out how to take Corrie with me), but I've been ruminating on the car chases. 

Before seeing the film I'd heard about the wild and original take on a car chase, similar to hearing about the journey through music that we take in Sinners before seeing it---when it happens, I remember thinking, 'Oh, here it is.'

But there are two visceral car chase sequences, one very early, and another much later, likely to become known as The Chase. The first one is less about being chased than it is about getting away, if that makes sense, but you feel it as you watch it. Later on, The Chase is on a whole different playing field, and has callbacks to Bullit.

But that whole enterprise got me thinking about some of movie's better car chase scenes. Obviously Bullit ranks as the originator of the vocabulary, or at least gets credit for it. How it gets filmed, though, is practical and original, and so exciting to see in context in a film that shows its era: it demands you pay attention. When the follower becomes the followed, and the driver snaps his seatbelt, you're tense with anticipation---you know it's going to get crazy.

When Gene Hackman as Popeye is chasing the J train's elevated tracks down Broadway in Brooklyn in The French Connection, you can feel the true danger, since they filmed it without permits. The exhilaration comes from that real peril.

I've see the opening chase scene in Baby Driver, and while I think the cinematic nature of the chase looks nice, I find the getaway highly annoying. He keeps running into cops! He never gets away until the maneuver with the two other red cars and the overpass. I heard about it and saw it very soon after the opening chase sequence in Drive, which I found far superior as a realistic approach to chase scenes goes. It's how it would play out in reality, or at least I could be convinced as much. It's not flashy, a full daylight bank robbery getaway like Baby Driver...Drive is the dive bar that pours its gut-rot scotch into the PBR can for the five-dollar boilermaker, while Baby Driver is an overpriced bar at a themed restaurant in Las Vegas.

Maybe my reaction to the realistic quality in Drive contrasts to the glee I get watching all the cop cars that get destroyed in Blues Brothers. Or how about the general entire movies that are essentially car chases, besides Blues Brothers: Smokey and the Bandit; Road Warrior and Fury Road; all the Cannonball Run movies...

But that brings me back to realism and originality, two things I found in Bullit, The French Connection, Drive, and this new classic, One Battle After Another. All four of these look nothing alike, and feel both realistic and original.

Got My Copy

The news dropped about its eventual release on my birthday, and today was the release:

It got me thinking about the last Pynchon release and my life at that time, about crushing it in a few days...maybe a couple weeks. This book is certainly shorter than Bleeding Edge,  and it may even be shorter than Inherent Vice.

Also, it's been a heavy Pynchon dose recently, what with my recent trip to see One Battle After Another. I have some things I want to say/write about that, but I feel it may be necessary to either see it again or talk it out with a Pynchon head...or both. It's intense, and it seemed so unlikely a movie that like would ever get green-lit in this epoch.  But here we are.

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction!