A Different Annual Review

Almost any website has the potential to ensnare me... I have to be very careful at baseball-reference.com, for example, because any player page or team page I visit always leads to 2 or 3 more, and so on, and so on...

Another fun read is at tvtropes.org. This site defines a "trope" as follows: "Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations." For example, in sitcoms everyone's familiar with the bumbling dad, the precocious kid, etc.

Practically every movie trailer is built around tropes, captured brilliantly here:

One you hear with some regularity in a movie ad, often quoted from the reviewer for the Cedar Rapids Weekly Shopper, is "If you see only one movie all year, make it this one." Of course, this is really relevant to me because the over/under on the number of movies I attend in a given year pretty much is 1, especially if you discount anything with talking animals and/or animated characters.

So when I do decide to go to The Cinema, particularly for the Valentine's Date, there's a certain pressure there... and as a result, I was particularly gratified to score an absolute bullseye with my choice.

I also found it interesting that the night after the movie date, I watched a movie on HBO that was the complete antithesis, and in fact the movie that serves as a virtual graduate course in tropes: Valentine's Day.

OK, I'm not saying it's not an entertaining movie. It's pretty fun in its own narrow genre, and hey, it's a romcom, it's really not meant to be a documentary. I am finding it slightly ironic that the ultimate disposable, forgettable movie has obsessed me for several days -- but as is so often the case, that may say more about me than it. You were ahead of me on that one, weren't you.

In the movie, there are a bunch of couples -- it's easy to lose track -- and along the way there are the usual misadventures and misunderstandings, but by the end every single couple gets their happy-ever-after moment; several Life Lesson Speeches are delivered. Each couple fits a particular demographic, of course, and somehow they all connect with each other in the course of the single day depicted in the film. But what struck me the most about the movie is that from start to finish, there's not a single instance of behavior that represents the way people actually behave in real life.

Try this: 2 high school girls, basically acquaintenances, are trying to find a time to have a meeting. One says, "I can't do it at lunch, I'm having sex with my boyfriend for the first time today."

Or how about this one: a man is visited by his fiancee in the morning; she's obviously having second thoughts but he's so excited he's oblivious to it. At lunchtime he goes home to find her moving out, and she breaks up with him; by midnight, he's kissing another woman who he realizes is his true soulmate.

Fortunately, that's not the movie we actually paid for*. And by the way, just let me say that I know I live in the past; it's true that in my head, you can buy a pair of Levis for $18 and a nice pair of shoes for $30, maybe even a new car for 10 grand. I fight against that kind of mindset every time I walk into a retail establishment... still, I was astonished to pay twenty-one dollars and fifty cents for 2 movie tickets.

* I have to admit that, with as little as we watch HBO, it probably cost even more than the one we "paid for".

I did have lots of time in the theater to recover from the shock, between the commercials and the coming attractions and the continuing harangues about not talking or texting (I'm no expert, but is it really impossible to text in a movie theater without disturbing anyone?), and then at long (long, long, long) last we got to see The King's Speech.

Just a lovely, lovely movie about relationships, with people who act like real people act. And filled with marvelous performances; it's a treat to watch actors who can show you what they're thinking and feeling just with facial expressions, communicating just as clearly as any big chunks of clunky dialogue.

I know it's already been around the block, and might even be difficult to find in the theater. But if you haven't seen it yet, it's worth your while to hunt it down, at least if you enjoy movies that are not explosion-based. Maybe I'll even be inspired to try to shoehorn a SECOND film into 2011.

You Kids Get Off My 50-Yard Line

A few weeks back, my daughter was annoyed at me for some reason -- it's possible she didn't even know herself, of course -- so as she came down the stairs behind me, she made a disparaging remark about a relative scarcity of hair on a certain spot that was directly in her line of sight. Don't get me wrong, I'm aware of what's going on back there... but I am content to keep it behind me (much like some of my hairstyles from days gone by).

In similar fashion, I'm as aware as anyone who sees me that I'm middle-aged, but as long as I stay away from mirrors and try not to exercise too much, I don't have to face up to the grisly facts all that often. In my mind, I'm still... I don't know, mid-thirties?

So it's pretty annoying when it gets flung at me as it did yesterday. I can remember when the Super Bowl was the biggest football game of the year, rather than a national holiday. The first one I can recall watching was Super Bowl VII, when the Dolphins beat the Redskins. As far as I know, 100 million people were not online immediately afterwards, debating the quality of the commercials; just to see exactly how much things have changed, note the following, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The pregame show was a tribute to Apollo 17, the sixth and last mission to date to land on the Moon and the final one of Project Apollo. The show featured the crew of Apollo 17 and the Michigan Marching Band.

Later, the Little Angels of Chicago's Angels Church from Chicago performed the national anthem.

The halftime show, featuring Woody Herman and the Michigan Marching Band along with The Citrus College Singers and Andy Williams, was titled "Happiness Is".

As far as I could tell yesterday, Andy Williams did not appear in the halftime show -- although there's no way to prove he wasn't one of those people with the white suits and LED lights (if you can get a jumpsuit over one of those wintery sweaters he seemingly favored). I read Entertainment Weekly, so I know who the Black Eyed Peas are; while I don't have a vast collection of their music, I actually do have a will.i.am song, thanks to the kids -- his version of "I Like to Move It", from Madagascar. It's fun, and I was thinking the halftime show might be kind of cool...

Then they came on and in about 2 minutes I was transformed, against my will, into my father. I instantly became the "you call that music?" guy. "That's not singing, it's yelling!" I could almost feel my hairline receding as I watched. Plus there was a part of me that was crying out, "No! Please don't be that guy! You're still youthful (pay no attention to that hair exodus)!"

I have since regained a little of my equanimity, finding that I was not the only one who was, ah, underwhelmed. And I'm not really calling for a return engagement for the Michigan Marching Band, or even Andy Williams. It's just... I love my dad, and I respect him, and for someone to say I reminded them of him would be an honor. But this wasn't the way I had in mind. Fortunately, instead of blaming myself for What I've Become, I can blame the Black Eyed Peas for yanking it out of me involuntarily.