Month: September 2006

Here are the rules of the demolition derby at the 150th Vernon County Fair, as explained to me by the 68-year-old lady who sat to my left for the evening’s entertainment.

1. No hitting the driver’s side door; all the doors are painted a different color from the rest of the car to help with following this rule.
2. If a firefighter shines you with a flash light, you’re done. The last car moving wins.
3. If the firefighters wave red flags and the trucks flash their lights, then stop – they have to put out a car fire.
4. Umm…

That’s right, the 150th Vernon County Fair ‘s demolition derby. I’m not quite sure how many of the 150 years have featured the demolition derby, but my dad remembers sneaking into them as a child in northeast Wisconsin, so it could be almost 50.

This year, the power system overloaded and we had to wait a half hour until they decided to just position the fire trucks around the track and use their spotlights to illuminate the track so they could get the thing started. We sat in the grandstand in the dark, soaking up the smell of fried foods that is all too familiar to Minnesotan fairgoers. Don’t they know that stuff should come on a stick?

Some highlights:

– I guess I didn’t expect this at a demolition derby, but the National Anthem was sung, and loudly.

– Two in the first group (called a heat) of cars raced full throttle at each other in reverse. The impact crushed their trunks like beer cans.

– One of those cars continued to compete without a trunk or rear axle until the firefighters decided it was too dangerous to have cars repeatedly slamming into the back of it with only the back seat to protect the driver.

– The third heat was won by a woman in a Beretta that was christened “The Queen Bee” (stinger included), and whose seat broke while backing into her final adversary, prompting the announcer to yell: “I think she ended up in the trunk on that one!”

– The announcer. On someone stealing tools: “If you catch that guy don’t tell the cops. Give him some self justice.” Even the locals looked around uncomfortably, until he corrected himself, “I guess that’s a good way to get the cops mad at me.” On the social utility of firemen derby officials: “They get valuable experience for dealing with highway accidents.”

– The lady sitting next me saying that there was no way one of the drivers was 70 years old (as the announcer had claimed) because she’d gone to grade school with him and “If I’m 68, he’s 68”.

Next year I’ll have to follow the lady’s advice and come back for the tractor pull.

Some photos:

New Friends

Firefighters in Training

Action

The Science of Sleep, 2006. Written and directed by Michel Gondry. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Moiu, and Emma de Caunes.

Now showing at the Uptown Theater.

Hello class, my name is Mr. Fresno and I’m your substitute for today. What do we have here–this is Health Education? You guys are, what… 13, 14? Sophomores? OK… they tell me this is a sex education class, but I’m assuming you guys know the biological score, yes? You in the back row, pull those out of your ear and turn off that iPod! What I have to say is important, and then you can watch this movie called The Science of Sleep. This lovely thing is about being in love with someone–something you cats probably don’t know shit about. This freaking little gem is about how you boys can win the love of a woman, and for you girls, it is about what you should demand from your man. It’s sexy–you kids wouldn’t know sexy if I locked you in a room with P.J. Harvey. Watch this movie and you will. The Science of Sleep will not be sunny and have a sugary ending like those J-Lo crapfests, but it will be mysterious and bizarre and painful, which is really what love is all about. And anyone my age should know.

The Science of Sleep is about a young man, a hunk to you girls, this fellow named Gael Garcia Bernal. You may remember him from Y Tu Mama Tambien, a film that every high-schooler should see–especially boys. Girls too: listen, if you can’t get a one of these lunks to go down on you, then don’t let him into your pants. If I could get every teenager to follow that advice we’d certainly have a lot less ‘accidents’, if you know what I mean. Anyway, The Science of Sleep is about young Stephane, returned from Mexico to visit his mother in Paris. He is a fabulous artist, a real crazy dude, whose dreams quite often follow him into the day. On his first morning in Paris, he meets the new girl next door, Stephanie, played by the ravishing Charlotte Gainsbourg. Unfortunately for this lug, he is at first attracted to her friend Zoe. When he overhears Zoe suggest that the landlady (his mother) is a bitch, he decides to lie about living next door, which is a great comic twist. Soon, he realizes that it is Stephanie who is his true love, although his subconscious thwarts this by making him sleepwalk naked in the night, slipping a note under Stephanie’s door that concludes by asking for Zoe’s number. See, Stephane–that’s the hunky boy, pay attention!–has such powerful dreams they interfere with his daily life. He loves Stephanie, but can’t quite figure out if Stephanie loves him or not, and he’s too chickenshit to really find out. So what does he do? Anyone? You there in the back row… well, no, he doesn’t bust her cherry. Damn, you kids these days, no respect. Boy, you’re on the short track to a lousy marriage, let me tell you.

Now I want you kids to pay close attention to Ms. Gainsbourgh. See, the guy, Bernal, is a typical Hollywood-style hunk. He’s ripped, nice face, be around for a long time. But the girl is simply beautiful. Here’s a picture of her, pass it around, but you better give that son of a bitch back or I’ll kill you. You can see she’s not some Jessica Alba-type you young studs typically appreciate. But Gainsbourg, lovely Charlotte, probably can’t find a decent job in Hollywood because she’s not conventional enough. In the movie she even acknowledges having less-than-ample breasts, though any man would give a pirate’s fortune to be acquainted with them. Excuse me for saying that: anyway, Stephane still falls in love with her, despite her not looking like a starlet, and wants to make love to her badly. Because–pay attention!–she is beautiful and this movie is about lovemaking instead of raging sex. This actually happens in real life! Men falling for women who don’t look like Chalize Theron! Charlotte has wit and strength and anger, and she’s got beautiful legs and that face… well, kids, that’s beauty. Boys, look around you. There are Charlottes walking everywhere around you. There aren’t too many J-Lo’s. One’s real, the other’s plastic.

And no, guys, there’s no nudity. Well, I take that back: you get to see Bernal’s ass. Calm down, girls, it’s brief. I don’t have a clue why it’s rated R.

Listen: So Stephane tries to talk with Stephanie, and tap into her intelligence. He knows that being with her will be a challenge, that his own powerful imagination will grow by mingling with hers. But the poor sap blunders along the way, many times. In fact, and there’s so many miscommunications between them, you wonder if they will ever get together. Sound familiar, kids? If not, that means you have never tasted the bitter draught that is a serious relationship. See, both are artists, and the artist is a temperamental soul, children. Both seem to communicate with each other in a way that is very special, with little gestures that do not go unnoticed, with each person feeding the other the best parts of themselves, saving some for later, actually, to use a silly old term, wooing one another. On the other hand, they also pay close attention to each other’s every move, cautiously, so as to protect their own hearts. She doesn’t want a boyfriend; he does not want to be rejected.

This movie is a charmer! That’s right, charm! You know, being yourself and encouraging the best in one other! Ladies, young women, please, pay close attention: Stephanie is not bug-eyed over this guy because of his crazy little tricks and his dashing looks. A guy’ll do that to you every time, show off, look like he’s a genius and then bam! Once he’s got you, it’s back to being a jerk. I see you nodding, you know I’m right. Well, Stephanie doesn’t let him walk all over her, doesn’t let him have all the magic tricks–she’s got quite a few of her own, thank you. And soon he’s reeling.

Stephane’s a crazy character. He’s someone who can barely hold a job for the dreamworld he’s stuck in. Stephanie clearly loves him, but she wants him to stop being such a dip. He’s terribly confused, cries easily, doesn’t know what he wants. Give him this: he’s persistent. And his dreams are too cool to ignore.

The Science of Sleep gives you cellophane streaming out of kitchen faucets, gives you cardboard cars and trains, and wacky little toys that jump and play on their own. But that’s just the tobasco in the Bloody Mary, kids: the real substance, the liquor if you will, is the characters. Stephane, Stephanie, Zoe, the lascivious Guy… like life, it is the people who make the day shine.

The Science of Sleep will teach you how to make nervous small talk when you meet someone new. It will instruct you on the value of friendship and conversation. A man throws his television into the river, a great lesson for all you tubeheads. Guess what? It also shows you how to party, how to treat your mother, how to be bold and how to retreat. The Science of Sleep proves there’s still imagination in the world. You could almost make this movie yourself from stuff laying around your McMansions–its special effects are cheap and contain more imagination in one frame than Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Narnia thrown together.

Look, guys, if you can just slow down for a moment, pay attention and let a movie soak into your brain, let it be this one. The person who wrote it and directed did so with love in his heart. Michael Gondry has an imagination and he trusts that you do, too. Trust is good, right? You kids get sick of the fact that no one trusts you with the car, with a credit card, with booze–this Gondry guy, he trusts you’ll get him. I think he made this movie for everyone, but especially people your age. He wants to give you a roadmap through this treacherous time in your life. He wants to show you something beautiful, to do for you what the movies did for generations before Star Wars and Shrek ruined everything. Some movies are meant to waste two hours of your time, give you an excuse for greasy popcorn and a cheap date. Sure, it’s often good that you get a break from having to actually talk for two hours. But this one’ll shut you up, too… but it will make your heart quicken and you might just look over to your date and see the silver reflecting off their face, their reaction in the dark. And afterward, you might talk, really talk, and good things will happen. Jesus, if I had this movie to win the heart of that Laura girl back in the day, I’d probably have three kids by now. But forget that: The Science of Sleep might just make you look around in wonder at this awful planet, and realize that it is good to be vulnerable, and that it takes two hearts to endure. Michael Gondry made this movie because he cares about his audience! He loves you.

You! Please turn out that light. Thanks. That’s enough talk. Enjoy the The Science of Sleep, kids, let its beauty and humor and wisdom feed you for the next couple of hours. At your age, you need all the love you can get.

The rest of the world is at war

Everything’s ok in America as long as we have our celebrity journalism

Newsweek has a great story on how we are now losing not only in Iraq, but in Afganistan, too. It’s the cover story on their international edition.

Here in America, though, we’re more interested in someone who photographs Angelina Jolie for a living.

And, bad news for Jesus Fans in the Strib today. The headline read: Wisconsin cheese workers rubbed Buddha statue prior to Powerball win.

My grandmother, L. Josephine Schilling, “Jo” to those who didn’t call her Mom or Grandma, passed away last week at age 89. What does this matter to anyone who reads a movie blog? Nothing, really, except to the writer of said blog, so maybe it will have a passing interest to you. For this kind lady introduced me to the movies, one of many wonderful things she gave me over the years. My father later whipped that love into the near-frenzy it became in later years, when, as a sullen teen, I would eventually distance myself cruelly from my Grandma. I wanted to see The Hunger more than Harvey, the De Palma Scarface over the Hawks version. No Grandmother worth her salt would sit and listen to so much cursing and endure such onscreen gore. And I wasn’t going to waste my precious teenage years with any more Capra films. I was better than that. Now I know I’m the worse for not spending the time with her.

This last week found the family in Saginaw to attend to her funeral. Our family is haunted by movies: my father and I spent our time with the usual banter, over Truffaut, over L’Atalante, and, inexplicably, debating the merits of Talladega Nights. Grandma had piles of John Wayne films, and I remember last year buying her Red River, and what a chore it was trying to find a version on VHS. I still remember being shocked to the core that my cousin asked for and received Queen of the Damned for Christmas one year, and I’m not concerned with its pagan message, either. One of my aunts has a very personal, obviously distant and fantastical relationship with Mel Gibson (though she’s cooled on him lately). Everyone on that side of the family is daffy for movies, and seeing them together isn’t as static as you might think. Arsenic and Old Lace was the nonpareil, however, and I can’t forget seeing it on a snowy night at the Temple, with fresh popcorn, creaky seats and the wheezing organ. The gales of laughter that came out of Grandma and my Aunt Mary were almost as hilarious as what unfolded on the torn screen. Grandma used to flip over Cary Grant and Arsenic, cackling for days afterwards and fancying herself one of the murderous biddies (that was her term). We would talk about that movie for days, us kids at times pretending to be the old man who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, charging up and down the stairs as he did (and shouting “Charge!” at the top of our lungs). Or Peter Lorre or Raymond Massey, the creepy serial-killing brother of Cary Grant’s Mortimer. And their house, right next to the cemetery! Why, it was just like Grandma’s house… without the dead people next door (though we could pretend).

Later, I would come to dismiss that movie as cloying and unwatchable and beneath me. If someone has a time machine to loan me, to go back and kick that pompous ass in the behind, I’d sure appreciate it.

In the afternoon following the service, pops and I drove around Saginaw, a town that has somehow managed to look worse in the fifteen years since I’ve wandered its streets. The Temple has been saved by some local multimillionaires, and it is a gorgeous thing, with new red-velvet seats, a restored organ, and the scent of mildew has been driven out. But not showing movies much anymore. Dad said it looked better than when he was a kid. But it’s among blocks of dying buildings: who goes to see movies in a ghost town? Ghosts?

The Green Acres Cinema is closed, and the Court Street Theater has one 7:00 showing of a two-buck feature, and the Quad, our mall theater, is also a second-run house. And worse: the mighty neon bunny, the logo of the Jack Rabbit Beans silo, is now dark. The rabbit used to greet us as we left the Temple for the warmth of my Grandma’s home.

I haven’t a clue where I’m going with this piece, other than to say that a movie isn’t just something to waste a couple of hours, but it can be as rewarding an experience as, well, the proverbial baseball game with the proverbial father and son (though I enjoyed that experience… with the same Grandma). Just do these simple things: listen to the laughter that surrounds you in a favorite film and remember the feeling of the hand you held in the dark. Take the time to see the movies you don’t want to see that make another person happy, especially if that person is your mother or father or grandparent.

Even if it’s Arsenic and Old Lace.