Passing on seconds

Late the other night I was flipping through cable channels and I saw John Travolta chomping mighty heavily on some scenery, so I decided to see what the movie was. Come to find out it was the remake of The Taking Of Pelham 123.


Now, I'm a fan of the original with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. It was smart. Well-acted. Sly. And cast with a lot of unknown-at-the-time actors as well as more famous ones. But since I didn't see this remake in the theater, I decided to plant my big bahooki down on the couch and give it a chance.

                              Just the same way I gave the remake of Psycho a chance.

                                              And the remake of The Pink Panther.

                                                 And the remake of The Stepford Wives.

Here's the thing - I'm not one of those cinema elitists who don't think movies should be remade. I think many times remakes have done justice to the spirit of the original while improving on it by giving it a more contemporary spin.

Little Shop Of Horrors. Dawn Of The Dead. The Fly. The Thing. True, all horror and sci-fi examples, but still, better for the remaking.

And then, there are the movies that don't need to be remade because the original was so perfect.  Movies like the ones above. And Arthur. And Rosemary's Baby (both of which are being remade).


There's probably a treatise to be written on the dearth of ideas in Hollywood, and the constant returning to the well of proven properties to wring the last bit of cash out them (yes, I used the word "dearth"). 


But I'm too tired to write it now.


Maybe I'll just copy one that's been written before.

Now making his final descent

Steven Slater isn't a folk hero. He's an asshole. And an angry one at that.

You may have heard about him today: he's the Jet Blue flight attendant who apparently "snapped" after he asked a passenger, who was trying to take his luggage out of the overhead before they reached the gate, to have a seat.

The passenger cursed him, and apparently they got into a small shoving match. Afterwards, Slater was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore.

He marched up to the front of the plane, went on the p.a., and cursed out the passenger who cursed him. Then he grabbed two beers, opened the door to the plane triggering an emergency inflatable slide, slid down and drove home where he was later arrested.

The news channels all show him being led away, wearing handcuffs and the very definition of a smirk you want to wipe off his face.

Here's the problem I have with all the Facebook fan pages he's getting for doing something so stupid. Flight attendants? Rude passengers? What do you need, a roadmap? It comes with the territory. It's covered in the training. And if, in fact, he's been in the industry for twenty-eight years like he says, this most definitely wasn't the first time he's been called a few names.

By opening the door and slide, he scared the hell out of the remaining passengers on the plane. He alarmed the pilots and other crew members. And he could have easily injured or killed any of the ground workers who could've been struck by the slide, which deploys at 3,000 pounds per square inch in seconds.

It's not like he's a waiter who just walked out (slid out) mid-shift. He has a bigger responsibility than that.

This, after all, is one of the people you would be depending on in a real emergency to help you get out alive. And by real emergency, I mean something a little more life-threatening than having his feelings hurt because someone swore at him.

If we all stormed off our jobs when we had a really bad day at work, there'd be a lot of jobs to fill.

Steven Slater deserves to lose his job and be charged with reckless endangerment. He does not deserve to be called a folk hero, or get the adoration of anyone - at least for this action.

The real folk heroes are the flight crews who, day in and day out, do their jobs professionally and reliably even in adverse situations. Even with unruly passengers.

Where are their fan pages?

All that jazz

The mistake was naming him James. I should've named him Miles. Or Dizzy. Or Cootie.

I went for the traditional, solid, timeless name. But had I known my son would love playing jazz trumpet as much as he does, and be as good as he is, I might've chosen differently.

I like that one minute he enjoys the music you'd expect a boy in his early teens to like, and the next he's down the hall, in his room trying to work out Two Bass Hit or Boplicity.

He recently joined a jazz workshop group that actually plays gigs around the city. I've seen him play four times now. Each time he's more accomplished and natural than the last.

I love that he's found something he's so passionate about at such an early age. And the fact he happens to be so good at it is just icing on the cake.

No funny wrap up line here. Just extremely proud of my boy.

Training wheels

A long time ago, on a bike far, far away, I was in shape.

Pause for laughter to stop.

No really. I used to live at the beach - I mean at the beach - in Santa Monica.

I was bike path adjacent.

I'd ride my bike far and often, sometimes down to Redondo Beach, sometimes up to Malibu.

It wasn't hard to get motivated riding along side the edge of the continent, listening to the waves crashing into the shore. And bikes crashing into pedestrians.

But since I moved away from Santa Monica (don't get me started), I've been somewhat undisciplined about keeping up my biking regimen.

That fact catches up with me every year as I get ready to go for our annual trip to Coronado. We always bring our bikes and ride around the island almost every day. In order to do that, I begin training for it about three weeks before our trip.

I always make sure I have the things I'll need to make the ride more enjoyable and worry free. Helmet. Water bottle. Bike lock.

And this little accessory. Fortunately it has its own wheels so I can take it along for the ride.

We interrupt this program

It's the grand experiment we try every year. This time, August drew the short straw.

For the next 31 days, we will be a television-free household. Well, technically the next 29 days since I did watch True Blood, Mad Men and Entourage last night. But what self-respecting month starts on Sunday anyway?

So starting today, we're going on hiatus until September.

I'll admit the fact that most of the network shows are in reruns for the summer makes it a lot easier. And because all the cable shows I watch are being TIVO'd, my sense of entertainment loss is somewhat lessened. But the important thing is the example we're setting for the kids.

Yeah, that's it.

We're teaching them that there's more to life than the Disney Channel (for my friends who work at Disney, that's just what we're telling them).

We're teaching them that sometimes sacrifice, carefully measured sacrifice, sacrifice that comes with an end date can be beneficial.

Then there's all that uninterrupted quality time we're going to be spending with each other. Time for sharing. For learning. For finding out the details of each others day. Time to ask the questions and say the things we can't because the TV is always on and....

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHERE DID I HIDE THE REMOTE!!!

The age old question

I've been accused of a lot of things, but being an optimist isn't one of them. And yet, for reasons unknown to me, that's what I've been feeling like lately.

If you read a newspaper (old school) or listen to the news, all signs point towards pessimism, skepticism and cynicism (they were having a sale on "ism" so I picked up a few).

But this time I'm choosing to ignore the signs.

I get this feeling so rarely, at first I thought it was just gas. But then I noticed a few uncharacteristic signs, subtle though they were.

My outlook is a little cheerier. I'm smiling a little more often. I'm not dwelling on wrongs and injustices of the past. I'm enthusiastic about what the future holds.

And while I'm not singing Put On A Happy Face, Don' Worry Be Happy or Zippity Do Da - yet - people have noticed the change.

They say things like, "What's gotten into you?" and "I hardly recognized you with that smile on your face." I think I can explain the reason for all this positivity.

I got paid. A check in the mail. A big one. One I'd been waiting for. And as any freelancer will tell you, nothing puts a smile on your face and a skip in your step like getting paid.

Any freelancer will also tell you that the money was spent long before it ever got here. But the point is it got here. Christmas in July.

I know this will sound like a pessimistic thing to say, but I don't expect this optimistic feeling to last. In fact, it already started to subside after I deposited the check today. The reason is because I realized that, while a big number with plenty of zeros, it didn't come close to covering the amount I was into Balance Plus for.

I will say it was nice while it lasted.

So as I descend back into my pessimism, and endure the endless wait for other checks for the invoices gathering dust in my accounts receivable folder, I ponder the picture here and ask, as only a pessimist can be relied upon to do, the age old question.

Who the hell drinks water out of a glass anymore?

We have Contact

The image many people have of John Hurt is of him thrashing around on the dining table of the space ship Nostromo with an alien bursting out of his chest.

Or maybe it's his grotesquely disfigured form in The Elephant Man, as he proclaims to Anthony Hopkins he is not an animal, he's a human being.

Younger moviegoers might know him as Mr. Olivander from the Harry Potter movies - including the next two of them.

But his one performance I think I enjoy most is one most people didn't see. His role as eccentric, reclusive, terminally ill billionaire industrialist S.R. Hadden in the Robert Zemeckis film Contact.

With a keen interest in space and extra-terrestrials, his character is compelling, creepy and brilliant all at the same time (not unlike a few creative directors I know).

I quote the line at the end of this scene all the time. Scares the hell out of my kids.