Double Yoi!! 1929-2008

      Like most of the country on February 27th, Pittsburgh was eulogizing an admired commentator and eloquent wordsmith. But it wasn't William F. Buckley (I can scarcely imagine anyone more incompatible with the esprit de Burgh), it was Myron Cope--sportswriter, raconteur, beloved oddball, and the former voice of the Pittsburgh Steelers. You can read all about his unlikely reign over the Pittsburgh sports airwaves here, but unless you actually heard his very colorful color commentary during a Steelers game, you won't be able to appreciate what's been lost. You can hear some snippets of Myron dissing Cleveland, describing the artistry of Jerome Bettis, and telling the ugly truth.
      Myron's unabashed partisanship, childlike enthusiasm, stream of consciousness non-sequiturs, and down-home catchphrases (if your "down-home" happened to be around Murray Hill in Pittsburgh) enlivened even the most boring blowouts, and if things got really exciting, Myron, like any good fan, was often hypered to the point of unintelligibility: "DI-DI-DI-DI-DIDJYUH see the Bus PANCAKE that poor Bungles cornerback who tried to come up in the hole dahn 'ere? YOI!!" I never listened to a single national TV commentator for a Steelers game while I lived in Pittsburgh--I would always turn down the TV's volume and tune in Myron and Bill Hillgrove on the radio.
      So get out your Terrible Towels, fire up a Stogie, crack open a 40 of Iron City and pour some out on the ground for Cope. No one like him will ever be allowed near a professional sports team's microphone again. Alas.

Seeking His Moral GPS--Michael Clayton (2007)

      In the first few minutes of "Michael Clayton," we learn a lot about the title character (George Clooney)--none of it good. He plays cards for high stakes, but not well. He's tried to open his own restaurant and bar, and failed. He's an attorney with a high-powered law firm, but has the kind of position that requires him to show up at a wealthy client's home in the middle of the night and make a hit-and-run accident disappear. Obviously fed up with such duty, Michael informs the frustrated client that he's not the "miracle worker" the firm promised to send. "I'm a janitor," he explains, a cleaner-up of messes. Clearly, somewhere along the line, Michael Clayton has lost his way.
      And just in case the viewer hasn't realized that yet, writer and first-time director Tony Gilroy decides to illustrate the point; as Michael drives through the dark, his dashboard GPS navigation system flickers and fails. Oh look, Michael's lost his way. I sighed to myself at that point. "Well, fooey," I thought, "this guy Gilroy's going to have a pretty heavy hand." Happily I was wrong; Gilroy's hand with the thriller genre proves light and deft. It turns out that there's a very good reason for the loss of Michael's electronic map and compass, or rather, a very bad one. But that comes much later.
      First there must be a crisis, and that's provided by Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), Michael's friend and the firm's heavy hitter. Arthur has spent the last several years spearheading the defense of U/North, a powerful agri-chemical company facing a class action suit, but their obvious guilt has driven him to a crisis of conscience and a nervous breakdown--he strips naked at a deposition and proclaims his love for one of the litigants. Michael and U/North's chief counsel Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) are called in to clean up the mess.
      With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, nothing good can believably happen to Arthur at this point, and nothing does. What makes this thriller work is not so much the plot--though that is believable and artfully framed--but the skill with which Gilroy and the principals trace the intersecting velocities of each character's personal moral journey.
      On one axis lies Arthur. As we hear in a rambling but passionate voiceover, Arthur views himself as a man reborn, and Wilkinson's performance skillfully balances the giddy zeal of the newly converted with the savvy of a battle-hardened trial attorney. On the other axis lies Karen, portrayed by Swinton with a deer-in-the-headlights, jittery brittleness. Promoted to the very limits of her capabilities, she lives in terror of failure. She compulsively rehearses all her professional presentations and still gives in to sweat-soaked anxiety attacks in her office's restroom. Crippled by her fear, she falls back on a misplaced sense of loyalty, committing herself to a downward spiral of ever-worsening moral compromises.
      And finally, in the space between, there's Michael. Unable to join Arthur in his leap of faith, but unwilling to throw him beneath the bus for the sake of the firm, Michael chooses a middle path. The ending, though not disastrous, feels forced--tacked on to satisfy an audience that needs to see evil punished and good rewarded. Michael Clayton does its best work not at the poles of black and white but in the middle, in the gray, where Michael and most of the rest of us are forced to find our way.

Artists, Craftspeople, and the Mysterious Gulf Between

      Not too long ago, some friends and I had an extended discussion about art and craft and exactly where the distinction between the two lies. Is it possible through instruction and practice to "uplift" a talented craftsman to artistry? Are artists simply born that way, inherently different than those of us who might be very good at something, but never great? Obviously we didn't settle the issue in one evening, but I was reminded of our discussion last night, when a different pair of friends invited us to a night at the NC Symphony featuring Neil Sedaka.
      Neil Sedaka is not someone that I ever would have sought out on my own--his biggest hits came before I was born or in my early childhood--and I might even have been tempted to scoff at his particular brand of schmaltzy, Vegas entertainment. But what was made perfectly clear by Sedaka's performance last night was that, even if your taste in music does not normally embrace his bubble-gum pop aesthetic, you'd have to be either dishonest or stupid not to recognize that when it comes to pop music, he's an artist.
      As he belted out hit after hit in his familiar and still surprisingly-strong high tenor, I could feel the joy of recognition rising in the people around me. The Billboard Top 100 doesn't define artistry, nor does mere popularity of any kind, but sometimes it at least recognizes artistry. When you've created a parade of songs that will make any random room full of people of a certain age smile and nod and sing along--"Oh Carol," "Where the Boys Are," "Calendar Girl," "Solitaire," "Breaking Up is Hard to Do," "Laughter in the Rain," "Love Will Keep Us Together"--then you're an artist.
      I still don't know why. But you are.

Say it Now, and Say it Loud, I Like "The Fifth Element," and I'm Proud

      I just watched "The Fifth Element"(1997) again on DVD, and you know what? I still love this cartoony mess of a Frenchman's idea of a big budget scifi film. Is that a sneer I sense? A sniff? Fine. Sneer away. Inhale as loudly as you please. This is good stuff.
      It seems to me that a great deal of the critical bemusement that still hangs around this movie--even ten years later--can be laid at the feet of false expectations. After taking the "Pygmalion" story to its darkest limits in "Nikita"(1990), and one-upping John Woo's "The Killer"(1989) with his thrilling and surprisingly touching shootemup "Léon"(1994), Luc Besson was riding high. Unabashedly commercial, but capable of exploring legitimate psychological depths, Besson undoubtedly had critics excited about what he might bring to Cannes in 1997 after being handed a very-American $90 million budget for his next project. Or perhaps, in the time-honored tradition of critics, French and otherwise, the previous success and the big budget may simply have pissed them off. At any rate, what he offered them was "The Fifth Element," a convoluted fantasy that he first conceived as a teenager, starring one-note action star Bruce Willis, and a virtually unknown model/actress, Milla Jovovich. Eyebrows were raised, and a few knives were sharpened.
      With "Nikita" and "Léon" fresh in their minds, what many viewers seemed to miss, or ignore, or unfairly fault "The Fifth Element" for, is the fact that almost nothing in the movie is meant to be taken seriously. Oh sure, there's the brief, misguided attempt at sermonizing when Leeloo encounters man's inhumanity to man, but Lucas and Spielberg have both pawned off worse drivel without paying too harshly for it (unless you look up some of Alec Guinness's comments on the dialogue he had to deliver in "Star Wars").
      I know nothing about Besson's adolescent years. Based on his age I know that he never read a "graphic novel" (they didn't really exist yet), but after watching "The Fifth Element" I can say with near certainty that he read plenty of comic books. If you don't already know, there's a big difference between the two, if not always in execution, then at least in aspiration. "Sin City" is a graphic novel movie, and pretty bad. "The Fifth Element" is a comic book movie, and pretty good.
      There's Bruce Willis as Korben Dallas, a super action hero whose cab driver secret identity throws him into the plot, and who has a few manga lying around his apartment just so you don't miss the point. There's uber-villain Zorg, the evil billionaire, a role that offers Gary Oldman the rare opportunity to play his second scenery-chewing psychopath in a row for the same director, and to have both characters get blown up by hidden bombs that they haven't time to defuse. There's Ruby Rhod, Chris Tucker's manic but spot-on vision of what "Entertainment Tonight" will undoubtedly devolve to in the (not-so-distant) future. There's the priest who really knows what's going on, there's the super girl with bright red hair, there's the art direction by French comic book creator "Moebius," there's...well... You get the idea.
      It's a comic book, people. Relax. Make some popcorn. Watch Bruce Willis do that one thing he's really good at. Have fun. Yeah, it's a French movie. But not that kind of French movie.

Copying the Copycat

      Having seen my friend Ken give in to the "what's in your iPod?" question on his blog recently, I will go ahead and add derivation to derivation and post my own. Ken's list of songs on his iPod beginning with the letter "A" certainly exempts him from the accusation of affecting a hipster pose, but nevertheless includes some strong stuff from The Kinks, Sting, Springsteen, and--stepping into this century--Dar Williams, while offering only a few possible embarrassments easily excused by Ken's coming of musical age during the early 80's, as I did.
      However, since I've been collecting mp3's a lot longer than Ken, a complete list of my iPod's songs that start with "A" would quickly become tedious. Instead I've opted to copy the "Random Rules" feature from the "AV Club" at the online version of "The Onion." They regularly ask much more interesting people than I (musicians mostly) to set their iPods on shuffle and talk about the first ten songs that pop up--no skipping allowed. So here goes...

• "From Her to Eternity" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Not necessarily one of my favorite Nick Cave tunes, being one of his more jarring, less melodic songs, but it wins points just for the title.
• "The Needle Has Landed" by Neko Case. Ahhhh, Neko. No surprise that she should turn up. There are more than 2,500 songs on my iPod right now, and several dozen of them are Neko's. Crank up the reverb, Ms. Case, and belt it on out.
• "Yellow Bird" by Chris Isaak. This one is from his "Baja Sessions" album where he focused on a lovely, beachy, mellow California sound. And he finally stopped fighting the Roy Orbison comparisons and covered "Only the Lonely." Beautifully.
• "Fools on Parade" by The Jayhawks. A sort-of un-Jayhawks song, being more traditionally rock and roll than most of their stuff. At least until the bridge hits with its unmistakable Jayhawks harmonies. Like the Eagles when they were good.
• "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House. Wow, speaking of the 80's. What a fantastic song. Someone like Sixpence None the Richer recently did a totally lame cover that made no attempt to reinterpret the song or add anything of the artist's own stamp to it at all. What's the point? I've seen concert footage of Neil Finn performing this song, and eventually he simply stops singing and lets the crowd take over. That's when you know you've written a SONG.
• "Hole in the River" by Crowded House. I hate when the shuffle function hits two songs on the same album back-to-back, but as the emperor in "Amadeus" used to say, "Well, there it is." A good showcase, however, for Crowded House's use of funky rhythms and minor chords.
• "Homesick" by The Finn Brothers. Weird. My iPod seems to be channeling the Finn boys. Could be worse. It could be three consecutive songs by "Air Supply." Ken.
• "Gridlock" by the Pogues. A rollicking, driving instrumental piece complete with horns that, like Gershwin, musically captures a city in motion. Reminds me of the factory music from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. Joyous.
• "I've Been to Memphis" by Lyle Lovett. I love this entire album. I remember some time in the final years of Johnny Carson's reign on "The Tonight Show" he brought out this freaky little man in a white suit with hair like a rooster who totally stole the show with his comic big band song--"on second thought, make that...a CHEESEburger." Johnny was totally smitten, and I too have loved Lyle ever since.
• "A Rush of Blood to the Head" by Coldplay. I like Coldplay, but not in the gushing way that a lot of music critics seem to. There are some good songs, but they seem to repeat themselves a bit. This one, however, is one of my favorite ones. Maybe because it sounds like Radiohead.[:)]

So shuffle your iPods gang, and let me know what you come up with. Remember, no skipping allowed.

Night of the Living Crosstitch, or The Project That Would Not Die!

      After languishing half-completed in a drawer for years, the crosstitch project I had left for dead in 1993 resurfaced back in 2006 and demanded reanimation. After fourteen years, only a few months of which actually involved active stitching, I finally finished it. Then...it went back in the drawer.
      But now, thanks to my Valentine, it finally enjoys the light of day. Donna sneaked it out and had it framed for our anniversary/Valentine's Day. It's from a chart called "Rooftops" by "Graphs by Barbara & Cheryl, Inc," who acknowledge its adaptation from artwork by Douglas Grier at Sea Island Art Gallery, Greenville, SC. If I do say so myself, it looks pretty great. The stitched area is about 7.5" by 11.5" and the chart measures 170 stitches by 270 stitches (I'm pretty sure the fabric is 22 count). Based on my best guesstimate that the empty sky represents about 25% of the entire area, I stitched about 34,425 little "X"'s, not counting the extensive backstitching. You may now stand in awe of my dogged dedication or gape in horror at the shocking waste of time. Your pick.

Curmudgeon's Corner (4): Straining the Limits of Beer Credibility

      Smokey Burner, the Broken Stove's resident curmudgeon, loves beer. Smokey sometimes brews his own, and always enjoys the opportunity to taste something new in the world of fermented grains. Smokey has standards, but has never been a beer snob, and is generally willing to evaluate unfamiliar beers on their merits, withholding judgment till he's pounded a few.
      But. There. Are. LIMITS.
      Today Smokey was happily wandering the beer aisle at his local distributor of comestibles and potables when his eyes were drawn, infelicitously it turns out, to a new label. The fine folks at Michelob have now produced for our delectation not one, but three new versions of their nearly transparent and virtually flavorless Ultra variety. From now until Labor Day, Michelob will be favoring us with Michelob Ultra "Tuscan Orange Grapefuit," Michelob Ultra "Lime Cactus," and Michelob Ultra "Pomegranate Raspberry." Smokey is not opposed to fruit in beer, per se (is cactus a fruit?). Smokey loves a Tecate with lime, any Hefeweizen with orange, and a handful of highly poofy but tasty Belgian lambics. But Michelob is abusing Smokey's fruity beer goodwill.
      Smokey has tried plain old Michelob Ultra. Once, at Smokey's brother's house, when the real beer ran out, Smokey, in desperation, tried one of the beers being drunk by his brother's calorie-conscious wife--Michelob Ultra. You know what? Smokey doesn't want to revisit that. Just pretend Smokey never brought that up.
      Here's the deal. First, if one more thing in this country that has no resemblance to anything Italian is marketed as being "Tuscan," Smokey believes that residents of that particular region of Italy would be justified in changing whatever the Italian word for "fattening and tasteless" is to "Americano." Second, Smokey doesn't even need to try any one of these three beers to know that they almost certainly taste like flavored seltzer water that has been colored yellow. Third, if Smokey finds out that any of his friends, family or casual acquaintances have given their hard-earned cash in exchange for one of these fruity urine samples, Smokey will be very cross indeed.
You've been warned.