Iron Man 2

I finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 last night at the drive-in theater. (Lauren also saw it with me last night, but of course "finally" isn't a word that naturally corresponds in her case; "begrudgingly" is probably closer to the truth.) I went into it benefitting somewhat from having read early reviews and knowing what to expect. For instance, I knew the following facts up front:

• It's unfocused
• It lacks the charm of the original
• It's a fairly blunt set-up for the upcoming Avengers movie

These are all true-blue bullet points. The original Iron Man had more on offer, both in thought and action. But, crammed behind the steering column of a Saturn Ion, this wasn't what bothered me about the movie. What really burned me up was how most of the cast seemed so unhappy to be there. Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, and Don Cheadle all completely phoned it in. And, to a certain extent, it's understandable; not everyone is as enthused with comic books as Samuel L. Jackson and Nick Cage, and it's gotta be slightly embarassing to deliver lines as thoroughly cornball as those written into Iron Man 2.

But then, on the other hand, we shouldn't forget that they are being paid a veritable assload of cash. Maybe have some fun with the role? Instead, Don Cheadle steals the joy from every scene he occupies; Gwyneth Paltrow is constantly on the verge of pouting; and Scarlett Johansson, for all the sex appeal she's got on display, acts like she's trudging through a bad blind date. As director, Favreau should have let these folks know that when their characters have names like "War Machine" and "Black Widow," it's OK to play it a little loose.

Robert Downey Jr. though is, as always, riotously good. Sam Rockwell makes good with little as the antagonistic arms dealer Justin Hammer. And Mickey Rourke likewise succeeds in making an interesting villain, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the writers gave him virtually no backstory, character, or lines in English.

Comic books, even more so than fantasy novels and heavy-metal music, are knowingly campy. For it to work, you have to know it's ridiculous -- but you also have to love it. Next time around, let's hope people can remember that in casting.

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

The upshot to having a hip younger sibling is that you yourself will never have to read exasperating Pitchfork reviews. I vastly prefer a highlighted micro-review as filtered through my tuned-in relative: "Here, listen to this. It's pretty cool."

Last time I was home I pillaged a bunch of my little brother's CDs. I'm still sifting through my ill-gotten gains, but already one album is sticking out to me. The Monitor is probably as close as I'll ever get to having Bruce Springsteen get angry-drunk, piss himself, and pass out on my basement floor. I suppose it's punk? Whatever the genre assignment, the arrangement is great, and the lyrics and concept warrant repeat listening. I foresee this one holding my attention for some time to come.

Save-The-Date

Lauren has been consumed with wedding planning of late. The main thing for her so far has been maintaining her venue/catering spreadsheet, into which she seems to feed more data continually. It's like a black hole, a once-great star that turned cold and collapsed inward from its own bloated mass; and yet even now she feeds it yet more names, more contact numbers, like sacrifices to some mad god.
Knowing what I do of singularities, my main concern has been staying the hell away from the whole thing. If I seem unwilling to help with the wedding planning, let it be known that it's only because I know exactly where I stand with respect to the event horizon of this particular gravity well.

Of course, I am excited to be planning a wedding. But my version of planning conveniently skirts issues of actual importance and any potential decision-making. Yes, my contribution to the team has mainly been coming up with ideas for save-the-date cards and wedding invitations. Behold, my screwing around with GIMP 2!

I am having fun just getting acquainted with the software, so if folks have ideas for additional cards, be they just-for-fun like these or legit DIY ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Mission Basically Accomplished! Except, of course, for the grueling feats of endurance

News across the wire is that Eric "Winjlin" Winokur has just exceeded his fundraising goal for the Boston Marathon. So at this point he's raised a paltry $8,637 for Dana Farber. Yeah, no big deal, just eight thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven dollars. It's smashing news, and I'd like to take a moment to recognize this achievement in philanthropy.

Now all that's left for Eric is a 26-mile marathon. It's barely worth mentioning, I know, but since we were on the subject of unimpressive numbers I thought, What the hell?

So, anyways, congratulations Eric for accruing a truly astonishing amount of ice for an extremely worthy cause. We'll all be pulling for you on race day! Make sure to drink plenty of fluids, and also don't die!

(For anyone wishing to donate who hasn't yet -- do you really need me to tell you to? Just click here)

The Financial Lives of the Poets

Just posting a quick mini-review for Jess Walters' latest novel, The Financial Lives of the Poets, which I read a few weeks back and highly enjoyed. It's a funny and occasionally surreal story of middle-class collapse; collapse in matters financial, marital, and spiritual. The main character is a poet and reporter who left the newspaper business to pursue an ill-advised and ill-fated venture: Poetfolio.com, where stock tips meet rhyme and verse. After realizing his folly (and expending his savings), he returns to reporting just in time to find out -- SURPRISE! -- newspapers are dead. What then follows is his tale of desperate unemployment, a chronicle of failing marriage and bad decisions made in dire straights (read: weed trafficking).

What's surprising about all this is how light-hearted the whole thing is. The subject matter is simultaneously soul-crushing and banal (in that way that's so peculiar to middle-class decline), but our protagonist is clever and funny, and the story moves quickly, so we aren't given over to dwelling on the reality of the situation and how it's reflective of so many in America


Pot features heavily in the book, both as it's used by the main character and as a scheme to save his home and family, and at times it seems like the book is going to veer into Weeds territory. Thankfully, it manages to stick to its own course.

Beyond chronicling the sudden demotion of the middle-class, the book does two things fantastically well that I think are worth mentioning:
1. Marital decay: It's gut-wrenching in its lack of drama. Unspoken recriminations and disappointments, guilt and regret, suspicion, insecurity, apathy: it's all there, but it's subtle. It's spoken in the language that couples develop between themselves, and arrives as translated by the main character. He watches it happen, he actively participates, and yet he feels like he can do nothing.
2. The space he devotes to the newspaper business is priceless, and includes some of the book's funniest moments. Referring to the budget-hack his publisher hired to restructure the newspaper he worked for:

Oddly, M- seemed to have no real interest in the city his newspaper was supposed to cover; his only passion was the business itself, a thing he called newspapering, and he constantly made us all uncomfortable by professing a creepy, nostalgic love for this made-up word, a love he seemed to mainly show by wearing a '40s-movie fedora and getting weepy whenever he reflected back on the fourteen months he spent as a libelous reporter waterboarding the English language. 'The man loves journalism the way pedophiles love children,' we used to say.

If that last line doesn't sell hardcovers, I don't know what could.

I highly recommend this book. As a closing note, though, I should mention that this is really more a book for men, in the way that High Fidelity was a book for men. Certainly women like to read! And I wouldn't discourage women from reading this book. But this is a virtual catalog of male insecurities, so best know that it may not exactly resonate in the same way for y'all of the fairer sex.

The Prodigal Son Refuses To Acknowledge Fault

It's been brought to my attention that I have not, in fact, posted to this blog since May of 2009. Which is utterly irrelevant if you think about it, because whether or not I posted to this blog in particular, I have in fact been writing. I really had every intention of posting here, and y'know, it's not like anyone was knocking down my door to let me know that it wasn't being updated, being like, "Where are our updates?" (Also, and not like I have to make excuses, but things have been really busy around here -- like, really busy.)
In fact, if you want to know the truth, I really thought that I was posting to the blog! Yes, that's right! Every day I was working tirelessly to ensure this blog's continued relevance and success, and every day my posting was thwarted. By whom? It isn't clear at this point, and we may never know for sure. But the point is, I'm back, and while some of you may have noticed some "service outages" over the last 11 months, all we can do now is try to move forward.

The Prodigal Son Remembers His Blog

Another day, another blog post. I have to apologize if the posts these days seem a bit fluff, but that's the nature of the beast -- when you write as often as I do, it can sometimes feel as though you're forcing volume at the expense of concentration, watering down the sweet nectar of one's thoughts until they seem like so much bargain-brand lemonade mix. Really, though, if anyone is to blame it's you, dear readers, for your voracious appet-

Wait, I'm sorry. What? No, I can't see the timestamp of my last post from here, but what does that matter? Yeah? Yeah, okay, but - alright, hold on. Let me check. BRB.