Month: July 2010

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Dirty Water Dog 2

Another stay-at-home vacation day, another hike! Maybe it’s another sign of whatever mid-life-ish thing I’m approaching, but when I thought about stuff I could do today, like go to the city, or see an art flick, or wander around a used bookstore, or even survey the retail landscapes of northern NJ, I decided to pack the dogs in the car and try out a trail I’ve never walked. On the way, we made a stop at Rusty’s Place, our local pet store, to pick up some doggie-cleanup bags. I do not lead a very exciting life. (NOTE: if the Yankees had an afternoon home game yesterday or today, I’d have gone to the Bronx for that.)

Yesterday was Ramapo Lake; today was the Long Pond Ironworks state park (this area has a ton of Revolutionary War history). I had the idea, based on my trail map, that we — Rufus, Otis, and I — could hike on Monks Trail from the north boat launch in the Monksville Reservoir area down to the south one. According to the map, it looked to be around two-thirds of a mile each way (there and back), with some significant (but not hazardous) climbs. Most of the trail was pretty narrow, so it was a challenge to navigate all the rocks and tree-branches and keep the dogs from tangling in their leashes. It’s very rare that I’ll let one of their leashes go when we’re out like this. They’re pretty focused on the walk, but I’m afraid one of them (Otis) will see a chipmunk or something and take off after it.

They did a great job in fact, keeping a strong pace even when we made the one major uphill push. They panted. I was winded. But the weather was much milder than yesterday, and we were in shade for most of the trail, so they didn’t get too overheated.

The problem came at the end of the line, when we reached the south boat launch. I should say, “when we got near the south boat launch.” See, the map made it look like the trail opened up by that parking lot, but it actually never does so; it arcs away through the woods, with no actual exit/entry point at the boat launch.

This meant we’d have to break off the trail to reach the parking lot and the reservoir, so they could cool off. I didn’t want to turn around and go through another .66 mile of this stuff without giving them a break. Luckily, we found a semi-blazed trail that seemed to lead right to our destination. And then it stopped. Ten feet from the parking lot. Right above a short ravine filled with thorn bushes.

I made an executive decision, and that led to the three of tumbling down a short ravine and into a wall of thorn bushes, but we made it through that with a minimum of scratches and no yelping, remarkably. From there, the boys made a beeline to the concrete ramp of the boat launch, and trotted right into the water. I took my shoes and socks off and walked in with them, so they could get deep enough to cool down.

Well, Otis didn’t go too deep or bow down the way Rufus did, so I splashed water all over him to chill him out a little. I also spent some time pulling thorns and burrs from their fur. And feeling guilty. Once we finished up, I tried to figure out how we were getting back to our starting point. I couldn’t find any entry point to Monks trail, so I took the only visible trail, which I thought might lead down to our car or intersect Monks Trail. It wasn’t on my map, but it was very well-cleared.

Sadly, it didn’t work out. The trail led back out to the road we drove in on, more than a mile from the north boat launch. I wasn’t looking forward to walking with the dogs for along a pretty well trafficked road that had 6″ wide shoulders. Luckily, Rusty’s was only a quarter-mile up the road, so I brought the boys back to the store, and asked Chuck, the owner, if he could look after ’em for 10 minutes while I walked on down the road to get my car.

Chuck and I got the dogs into the Room Of Dog-Beds and put a folding crate against the door as a gate.

“Have they peed?” he asked.

“Yeah, all through the hike,” I told him. “Frankly, they’re exhausted and will probably just lie down once I’m gone. If you have a bowl, they could use some water, I bet.”

I thanked him and headed out. He told me they didn’t make a peep while I was gone. I know Petco or Petsmart or whichever chain store may be cheaper than Rusty’s, or have longer hours, but they’re no substitute for a local vendor who knows your name, and that’s why I go to Rusty’s.

I’m bummed out that we had to risk life and limb to get to the reservoir today, and incredibly thankful that Otis didn’t freak out when he hit the thorn bushes. He tends to yelp when he brushes against them while we’re on walks. On the upside, the boys were so pooped, they lay down moments after I started the car, and spent the 10-minute drive Conked Out.

There’s another route on the map that might work out better, but I don’t think it’d be dog friendly, so I’ll have to hit it on my own sometime. I promise to take pictures. Meanwhile, you can click on either of the pix or here to see the rest of this photoset.

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Dirty Water Dog

I’m taking Thursday and Friday off and having a mini-stay-at-home-vacation. This morning, I took the dogs for a hike up to Ramapo Lake. I thought the weather was mild, but then I’m not covered in fur. Well, not as much fur as they’re covered in. So when we got to the lake, Rufus decided it was time for a dip . . .

. . . in some brackish water. Click through that pic for some more shots from the set.

In all, we covered around 2 miles of trails and rocks, with enough hills that I started getting winded. They’ve barely moved since I got ’em back in the house 4 hours ago. I’ve run a couple of local errands, but really, I’m just gonna chill the hell out.

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Movie Review Tuesday: Steroids, Ivies and Comics

Time for another installment of movie reviews! All documentaries this week!

Bigger, Faster, Stronger: This is a documentary about the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes in America (well, North America, since Ben Johnson’s 1988 Olympics disqualification gets some play). The documentarian, Chris Bell, is a young man whose brothers — one older and one younger — are both on the juice, trying to build careers in pro wrestling and professional weightlifting. The narrator brings a folksy, light touch to the film, discussing the myriad hypocrisies in our legal policies toward PEDs, their demonization. I do think he bites off more than he can chew when he tries to make the point that the beautiful people in advertisements are a big factor in people’s decisions to use steroids and the like. That segment is also the one where he models for both the “before” and “after” sections of a fake nutritional supplement ad in one day, to show how misleading those ads can be. The saddest but best part of the film may be the segment where he interviews the father of “steroid suicide” Taylor Hooton, poster corpse for President Bush’s bizarre anti-steroid announcement at the 2004 State of the Union address. Despite his child’s other risk factors, including use of an anti-depressant known to cause suicidal ideation in teens, the father declares that he “knows” steroids killed his son, and doesn’t care what science or research has to say. The filmmaker treads the difficult line of showing the man’s willing ignorance without overtly humiliating him (or getting his ass beat). Overall, it’s a pretty entertaining documentary about a culture obsessed with getting over.

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29: And then there was a documentary about a 1968 game between a couple of Ivy League schools. I knew nothing about this game when I picked up the DVD, except that Tommy Lee Jones was on the Harvard team that year. The movie rounds up a ton of players from both sides, and a weird trend emerges as they’re introduced: while the Yale players fit the stereotype of WASP-ish legacies and other wealthy scions, many of the Harvard players come from hardscrabble, public school backgrounds. (Which made me think Harvard had lower admission standards for its team, but also made that team a bit more sympathetic than the blue-bloods of the Yale squad.) The filmmakers make virtually no direct intrusion into the film, instead alternating between interviews and footage from the game itself. There’s an attempt at framing the game in terms of tumult of its 1968 milieu, but the story of the game itself, Harvard’s incredible comeback, and the personalities of a few of the players — Harvard’s backup QB Frank Champi, Yale’s QB Brian Dowling (inspiration for Doonesbury’s B.D. character), and Yale’s lineback Mike Bouscaren — sweep the film along. Bouscaren, in particular, illustrates a certain type of self-delusion that must be seen to be believed. Most of the men, 40 years later, are capable of stepping back and saying, “It was just a football game, not life and death,” but you can tell how much resonance that November afternoon had in all their lives.

In Search of Steve Ditko: This is British chat-show host Jonathan Ross’ hour-long documentary about superhero cartoonist Steve Ditko, the man who (co-)created Spider-Man and Doctor Strange for Marvel Comics, then inexplicably quit the company. Ross, a lifetime comics fan, treats Ditko’s legacy with reverence and interviews many subjects about both Ditko’s work and his life, focusing on Spider-Man, but also taking a trip into Ditko’s bizarre Mr. A stories and his Ayn Rand/objectivist fixation. The twin culminations of the documentary are Ross’ interview with Stan Lee and his attempt to meet Ditko at the latter’s Times Square studio. I was touched by how reverent Ross was, and how so many of the interview subjects geeked out over the same passage we all did: Spider-Man’s struggle to get out from under a giant machine in issue #33. The biggest drawback of the show was the inane decision to render all text in Comic Sans. If you’re a comics fan, you really oughtta watch this documentary sometime.

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What It Is: 7/26/10

What I’m reading: Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, Bob Colacello’s bio of Andy Warhol.

What I’m listening to: Stankonia, Mind How You Go, Night & Day, and a whole ton of random stuff while I’ve been incorporating another giant iTunes library into my own.

What I’m watching: Bigger, Faster, Stronger, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, and the In Search of Steve Ditko, the Jonathan Ross special about a comics recluse/genius (reviews coming tomorrow). Also, the Captain Phil tribute episode of Deadliest Catch, which contained an anecdote about Phil’s father Grant that would qualify for an installment of “You, Sir, Are Bad-Ass” if I could find a summary of it online.

What I’m drinking: 209 & Q-Tonic

What Rufus & Otis are up to: We drove out to the annual Vernon Dog Wash on Saturday, so the boys could get baths and have their nails clipped. The vet accidentally cut one of Rufus’ claws a little too close, leading to a little bloodshed. Of course, Ru being Ru, he didn’t actually react or show any sign of pain. He just left little drops of blood on the floor, prompting the vet to use a “liquid nail” sealer to take care of it. Also, someone in town apparently detonated a bomb a few nights ago. Ru doesn’t react well to thunder, guns (we have hunters out in the woods) or firecrackers, so the explosion sent him into “Bye, everybody! Don’t forget to tip your waiters!” mode, trotting down the hall. I thought he’d gone his usual spot in the guest bedroom, and went to check up on him 10 minutes later. There was no sign of him in there. So I looked in my home office, but he wasn’t there, either. He wasn’t on either of the dog-beds on our bedroom floor, so I got nervous. Then I noticed the reflection of the hall-light off of his eyes. He was so scared he broke with tradition and jumped into our bed (Amy’s side) and curled up against the pillow. Otis had no comment.

Where I’m going: Nowhere! Although I am planning to take a vacation day today, so I oughtta do something with it.

What I’m happy about: Getting to spend an hour of Saturday evening on the deck overlooking the woods, and enjoying a cigar, a G&T and that Ditko documentary on my iPad. Also, my buddy Tom Spurgeon won an Eisner Award for his work at The Comics Reporter! Go, Tom! I hope there’s video of your acceptance speech!

What I’m sad about: I didn’t get up to the Met on my day off Thursday. But at least I got to spend some time at the Frick.

What I’m worried about: That I was often guilty of being a topic hijacker. I’ve tried really hard this year to listen much more to the other person in a conversation, but sometimes I’m afraid the pendulum has swung so far in that direction that I don’t really give an impression of what I’m thinking or feeling. Combine that with my occasionally inappropriate or blank facial expressions, and it’s a marvel I haven’t been arrested on suspicion of something sociopathic.

What I’m pondering: Well, Amy was wondering, “How different would Synecdoche, New York have been if the lead was played by Paul Giamatti instead of Philip Seymour Hoffman?” so you can ponder that along with us.

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Movie review Tuesday

Since I’m on a movie-viewing kick for the moment, I figured I’d write about the flicks I watched over the previous week. I’d have included them in yesterday’s What It Is, but it’d get too long and unwieldy, and take attention away from the all-important gin section of the post. So here’s what I saw and what I thought:

(500) Days of Summer: Nice germ of a story, completely wasted by a lack of faith in itself. See, the story’s meant to be out of sequence; we’re shown different days of the 500-day span of when the protagonist knows The Girl. On its own, this could’ve made for an interesting structure for a movie. It’s no Betrayal, that awesome flick by Pinter in which each scene goes back 1 or 2 years from the previous one, so that the opening of the movie is really the end of the relationship that we subsequently see unfold. In the case of (500) Days of Summer, the film-makers decided that, in addition to the “non-linear” sequence, they’d hedge their bets by including

a) an omnipotent voiceover that intrudes at critical points to tell the viewer things that the writing and acting are too shoddy to convey, and

b) flashbacks!

Why flashbacks, of all things? For God’s sake, the only novelty of your movie is that you’re telling the story “out of order,” so why on earth would you then have characters tell stories from the past to fill out the “present” scene? Wouldn’t you be better served actually including a scene from that day, instead of cheating by showing it within another day? You’re conceding that your structure doesn’t stand on its own, so your movie’s one unconventional element is really only a worthless gimmick! But, hey: good thing you have that omnipotent voiceover to tell us when something important is happening. A total failure of storytelling.

Up: Maybe it’s because I was watching this at like 2 a.m., but I found it pretty boring and trite, as far as Pixar flicks go. Was there some point at which the viewer was supposed to think, “This cantankerous old man is going to abandon the little kid, lose the goony-bird to the aged villain, watch the dog get mauled, and not live up to his dead wife’s memory?” Sure, it was gorgeous, there was plenty of action, and the “growing old” sequence at the beginning was deft, but the whole exercise felt formulaic. Maybe it was the best movie of 2009, like some people were saying, but that’s damning with faint praise.

Once In a Lifetime: Impossibly entertaining, but that may be because I was a Cosmos fan as a kid. Still, I think a casual viewer would find the story pretty amazing, in terms of what soccer was like in the U.S. in the early ’70’s, what Pele’s arrival meant on the world stage, and how Giorgio Chinaglia could succeed in New York as an egotistical Italian who spoke English with a Welsh accent.

Inception: It was a mind-blowing visual spectacle, but I’m struggling with what to make of it. With a day’s distance, I find myself bothered by the sheer orderliness of the dreams that the characters invade. Maybe it’s because there’s an “architect” character who creates dream-structures, but they all seemed Escher-like at best, not surreal and identity-shifting, the way we tend to dream (right?). That is, the dreams seemed ordered and logical, which contradicts my (and I assume everybody’s) experience with dreams. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a fantastic flick, but I think “dreams” really means “movies” in Christopher Nolan’s world, and that this was a movie about the layers of imagination that go into our movie-watching experience.

Part of it is that there’s a lot of time spent explaining “the rules” of being in dreams. I used to complain that the Sandman comic book would occasionally pull some dream-rule out of its ass as a deux ex machina. In this flick, you get all The Rules spelled out, but there are a ton of them, and they still seem a bit arbitrary. The most important one, in terms of storytelling mechanics, is the differing experience in time for dreams within dreams. Thus, Nolan’s able to have one event take place in “level one” incredibly slowly while the dream one level deeper is moving more quickly. (This piles up in a fantastic way. It reminded me of the moment in the Rush documentary, when someone talks about the song Spirit of Radio, and marvels over how the song repeatedly changes time signature, and yet manages not to lose the audience.)

Early in the movie, I thought the most apt comparison would be Synecdoche, New York, as the discussion of layers of reality, consciousness and artifice were in the fore. By the end, I realized the closer comparison would be to another Charlie Kaufman-written movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Both movies center around an “invasion” of the mind, and have unconventional story structures. Kaufman and Gondry’s flick has all the heart that’s lacking from Nolan’s extravaganza, but that’s no knock; I think Eternal Sunshine is one of the best movies about love in the past 20 years. What Nolan made is a movie less about dreams and memory than about movie-making, and maybe a specific type of blockbuster movie-making. That said, it’s a hell of an experience, and the fight scenes in the hotel, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt battles security goons in a hallway in which the plane of gravity keeps shifting, are worth the price of admission. (However, the visual hat-tips to Keanu Reeves and The Matrix kept reminding me that this was a movie about movies.)

It’s a monstrous achievement, but I’m not sure I’ll be reflecting on it years from now, or even a few months from now.

So that’s last week’s movies (not including American Splendor, which I’ve seen 5 or 6 times already). If I watch anything good this week, I’ll try to pontificate about it for you.

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What It Is: 7/19/10

What I’m reading: Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Close Up, Bob Colacello’s bio of Andy Warhol. I found that I couldn’t do much reading on the iPad. The Kindle app is fine, but I was sorta undone by the sheer amount of other stuff that the device can do. I mean, why read an e-book when I can catch up on e-mail, or RSS feeds, or watch a flick, etc.? So I think I’ll bring my Kindle with me on trips, too, just so I can focus on reading instead of multitasking the way the Pad invites one to.

What I’m listening to: Sir Lucious Leftfoot . . . The Son of Chico Dusty, the new Big Boi record.

What I’m watching: Thanks to my iPad, I find I’m watching more movies, esp. on that five-hour flight home from Portland on Wed/Thu. On the way home, I watched (500) Days of Summer, Up, and about 40 minutes of Once In a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos. I rented Greenberg from iTunes while I was in Portland, with the notion of watching it on the flight home, but a 7-year-old girl and her dad were in the seats next to me, and I felt that might not be appropriate viewing if the kid sneaked a peek in my direction. And on Saturday, Amy & I went out to the IMAX theater to watch Inception. Instant reviews? No chance! You’ll have to wait till tomorrow! (On TV, we watched another 2 episodes of Louie on FX, which is so fantastic that it’ll surely be canceled, and the latest Deadliest Catch, in which Captain Phil gives up the ghost. And we watched American Splendor Sunday night to commemorate Harvey Pekar’s death last week.)

What I’m drinking: Well, now, that’s a story. For some reason, almost every restaurant or bar I visited in Portland turned out to be well-stocked with both local boutique gins and other lesser known brands. So I managed to have G&Ts of Bols Genever (the spiciest gin I’ve ever had), Dry Fly (the dominant note is Fiji apple, of all things), Organic Nation (clean, with nothing else to recommend it), and 12 Bridges (is that pine needle?), as well as the local brand Aviation, which I’ve had several times already. Given all that, you’d think I was wasted for the whole trip, but I managed to pace myself well, at least until the last day, when I had a little too much time on my hands and no driving to do.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Missing me, and trying to stay out of the heat.

Where I’m going: Nowhere! Congratulate me! Although I am thinking of taking a day or two off this week and maybe hitting NYC to visit the Frick, Met, etc. I’ll let you know.

What I’m happy about: Getting to see some old friends while I was out in Portland, and also getting to visit Powell’s Books and Winn Perry, even though the latter was “between seasons” and I had to talk myself into picking up a Hentsch Man shirt and a tie.

What I’m sad about: That some of my friends seemed to be almost exactly who they were 15 years ago, in terms of subjects of conversation, art/books they’re interested in, etc.

What I’m worried about: That they thought the same thing about me.

What I’m pondering: Whether that’s the case. I like to think it’s not, and that I’ve changed in some unpredictable ways since 1993 or thereabouts, both in terms of emotional maturity and in aesthetics. I wonder if it’s possible that I’m more of a snob now but also less pretentious than I was back in my college years.

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What It Is: 7/12/10

What I’m reading: Not a lot; just some Scott Pilgrim comics. I was kinda zonky all week with lack of sleep, pain from that root canal, etc.

What I’m listening to: Songs from the Capeman, Songs from Venice Beach, and some other songs.

What I’m watching: Shutter Island, some episodes of Louie (wow!), and The Horse’s Mouth and Up In The Air. I’m sorta astonished at the utter hollowness of Up In The Air, compared to the novel. The movie pays almost no attention to what The Traveling Life is really like, focusing instead on Firing People Is Soul-Destroying. The romance was inane, compared to the apocalypse of the narrator’s affair. And while Clooney’s starting to age, a man his age who travels that much should’ve been much sallower/puffier. The skin turns green from all that airplane air & light, people! But that’s nitpicking. The real problem is that the story they chose to tell was barely an echo of what made the novel a surprisingly good book, and instead became a George Clooney vehicle and a muddled statement about corporate America that couldn’t criticize any particular company because the studio relies on them for subsidies and product placement fees.

What I’m drinking: Bluecoat & Q-Tonic, but I didn’t drink too much last week; I was taking mega-ibuprofen to help treat that root canal, and didn’t want to risk stomach bleeding.

What Rufus & Otis are up to: Ru’s still getting over that blister on his paw-pad, so he didn’t go anywhere during the week. Otis has gone stir crazy and now runs up and down the hall at high speed, throwing his squeaky toys in the air and acting like they’re alive.

Where I’m going: Flying home on the redeye Wednesday/Thursday, and I hope to go nowhere else for a while.

What I’m happy about: Getting an iPad last Friday. Holy crap, is this a fantastic device. I decided to pick it up before the Portland trip to see if it could replace my laptop for a light work-week (that is, a trip in which I wouldn’t be doing heavy-duty “live from the conference” posts for my magazine’s website, or processing photos). I packed along a bluetooth keyboard for writing longer form stuff like this, but it’s just been fantastic so far. I watched Horse’s Mouth and Up in the Air on the flight out here, and only ran down about 12% of the battery. Go, future!

What I’m sad about: Something better will come along.

What I’m worried about: Whether I’ll have time to get to Powell’s, Stumptown, and Winn Perry while I’m in Portland. I’m also hoping I get to meet up with my various friends (that is, friends from all different portions of my life) who live out here.

What I’m pondering: Whether Spain is really better than the Netherlands. All I can say is, I had much more fun in my weekend in Amsterdam than I did in 5 days in Madrid.