...I use it as an excuse to review some fish & chips options around the Valley. This may be my favorite "Four Corners" yet, as fish & chips might just be what I'd order as my last meal before my execution.
Thursday, March 7, 2019
LENT TRAPS
The Lenten season is underway, so in my latest "Four Corners" column, in the March issue of Phoenix Magazine, now on the stands...
...I use it as an excuse to review some fish & chips options around the Valley. This may be my favorite "Four Corners" yet, as fish & chips might just be what I'd order as my last meal before my execution.
...I use it as an excuse to review some fish & chips options around the Valley. This may be my favorite "Four Corners" yet, as fish & chips might just be what I'd order as my last meal before my execution.
Monday, March 4, 2019
WITH MALLET AFORETHOUGHT
Last month my brother beat a coyote to death with a rubber mallet. It happened something like this:
My brother lives in Florida. After a long career as an airline pilot, he retired to the Orlando area with his wife a few years ago, mostly to be close to their daughter. But it happens that his wife's sister and her boyfriend live nearby as well.
So one day last month my brother was over at his sister-in-law's house, working on a remodeling project in the kitchen with the boyfriend. His sister-in-law was in the yard, doing some gardening. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a large animal wandering past. She looked over in time to see that it was a coyote, out in broad daylight, and that it was charging toward her. It lunged at her, and sank its fangs into her leg.
She screamed, naturally enough, and my brother and the boyfriend rushed out of the kitchen. The boyfriend grabbed the coyote and tried to pull it off her, but, perhaps fortunately for him, it refused to release her leg. My brother got a rubber mallet from his toolbox and beat the poor creature's brains in.
Needless to say, the sister-in-law has been made to undergo a lengthy and painful course of rabies shots, though my brother assures us that she's tough enough for them. He's seen her, he says, go straight from a chemotherapy session to babysit her grandkids.
These are the broad strokes of the story, related to me over the phone in unassuming, maybe slightly reluctant terms by my brother. I didn't press him for too many details; he was making jokes about it--saying that his new Native American name was Kills-With-A-Rubber-Mallet, for instance--but I could tell that the incident had shaken this soft-spoken, gentle-natured man.
Here's a thing about my brother: Like me, like several people in our family, he's a little on the OCD side. In his case this manifests, partly, as germaphobia. Out of any number of, to use Arlo Guthrie's phrase, "implements of destruction" that were near to hand, his choice of the rubber mallet to dispatch the coyote wasn't random. He picked it up, he told me, because he didn't want blood to fly. He knew you don't have to get bitten to be infected with rabies; simple exposure to bodily fluids can be enough. Even though blood didn't fly, the doctors considered ordering the shots for my brother and the boyfriend, though in the end they decided against it.
Here's another thing about my brother: He's been my hero since I was a child. He started earning his private pilot's license while he was in high school, though his ambition to be a commercial pilot seemed improbable because he wore glasses, which in those days was a disqualification. So for years he worked driving salt trucks, cement mixers, school buses. He worked building houses with a contractor cousin. He was even a weekend mail carrier in our Pennsylvania town (that's why I learned to drive in a jeep with right-hand steering).
Then deregulation allowed him to become an airline pilot after all, in his thirties and after he had gotten married. Years later I mentioned to him how gratifying I found it that he had been able to achieve his dream, and he told me that it wasn't as satisfying as he'd hoped.
He is, by his own account, a chronic worrywart. The weight of his responsibility for the lives of his passengers, his crew, even of people on the ground, had never been fully clear to him until he experienced it. In the last few years of his career, he switched to a ground job, working in a simulator, re-certifying pilots for duty. He hoped that this might relieve some of his worry, but no, it just extended it to the pilots he certified; their responsibilities becoming partly his.
"I don't want a tombstone when I die," he once told me, "but if I did, I'd want it to say 'HE FINALLY STOPPED WORRYING.'"
"Are you sure that's true?" I asked.
"No," he admitted.
My brother was slightly acquainted with Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after it collided with birds in January of 2009, saving everybody aboard. My brother told me that he's taken off from that same runway, and reflected, not optimistically, about one's options should an emergency landing be necessary in that area.
When I saw Clint Eastwood's film Sully, it brought me to tears, not only because it was an inspirational story but because it made me think of my brother, fretting about the people who had placed their lives in his hands, worrying about how he would save them if he had too. We all depend, probably far more often than we realize, on that particular brand of the kindness of strangers, and we can only hope that they take that duty as seriously as my brother does.
So I'm writing this, though I'm not sure I want my brother to read it, because I fear it might embarrass him. I'm writing it not because I love my brother, though I very much do, but because I admire him. He's a quiet, self-deprecating kind of guy, but if you need somebody to land you safely in an airplane, or to kill the rabid coyote that's attacking you, he's that kind of guy, too.
My brother lives in Florida. After a long career as an airline pilot, he retired to the Orlando area with his wife a few years ago, mostly to be close to their daughter. But it happens that his wife's sister and her boyfriend live nearby as well.
So one day last month my brother was over at his sister-in-law's house, working on a remodeling project in the kitchen with the boyfriend. His sister-in-law was in the yard, doing some gardening. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a large animal wandering past. She looked over in time to see that it was a coyote, out in broad daylight, and that it was charging toward her. It lunged at her, and sank its fangs into her leg.
She screamed, naturally enough, and my brother and the boyfriend rushed out of the kitchen. The boyfriend grabbed the coyote and tried to pull it off her, but, perhaps fortunately for him, it refused to release her leg. My brother got a rubber mallet from his toolbox and beat the poor creature's brains in.
Needless to say, the sister-in-law has been made to undergo a lengthy and painful course of rabies shots, though my brother assures us that she's tough enough for them. He's seen her, he says, go straight from a chemotherapy session to babysit her grandkids.
These are the broad strokes of the story, related to me over the phone in unassuming, maybe slightly reluctant terms by my brother. I didn't press him for too many details; he was making jokes about it--saying that his new Native American name was Kills-With-A-Rubber-Mallet, for instance--but I could tell that the incident had shaken this soft-spoken, gentle-natured man.
Here's a thing about my brother: Like me, like several people in our family, he's a little on the OCD side. In his case this manifests, partly, as germaphobia. Out of any number of, to use Arlo Guthrie's phrase, "implements of destruction" that were near to hand, his choice of the rubber mallet to dispatch the coyote wasn't random. He picked it up, he told me, because he didn't want blood to fly. He knew you don't have to get bitten to be infected with rabies; simple exposure to bodily fluids can be enough. Even though blood didn't fly, the doctors considered ordering the shots for my brother and the boyfriend, though in the end they decided against it.
Here's another thing about my brother: He's been my hero since I was a child. He started earning his private pilot's license while he was in high school, though his ambition to be a commercial pilot seemed improbable because he wore glasses, which in those days was a disqualification. So for years he worked driving salt trucks, cement mixers, school buses. He worked building houses with a contractor cousin. He was even a weekend mail carrier in our Pennsylvania town (that's why I learned to drive in a jeep with right-hand steering).
Then deregulation allowed him to become an airline pilot after all, in his thirties and after he had gotten married. Years later I mentioned to him how gratifying I found it that he had been able to achieve his dream, and he told me that it wasn't as satisfying as he'd hoped.
He is, by his own account, a chronic worrywart. The weight of his responsibility for the lives of his passengers, his crew, even of people on the ground, had never been fully clear to him until he experienced it. In the last few years of his career, he switched to a ground job, working in a simulator, re-certifying pilots for duty. He hoped that this might relieve some of his worry, but no, it just extended it to the pilots he certified; their responsibilities becoming partly his.
"I don't want a tombstone when I die," he once told me, "but if I did, I'd want it to say 'HE FINALLY STOPPED WORRYING.'"
"Are you sure that's true?" I asked.
"No," he admitted.
My brother was slightly acquainted with Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River after it collided with birds in January of 2009, saving everybody aboard. My brother told me that he's taken off from that same runway, and reflected, not optimistically, about one's options should an emergency landing be necessary in that area.
When I saw Clint Eastwood's film Sully, it brought me to tears, not only because it was an inspirational story but because it made me think of my brother, fretting about the people who had placed their lives in his hands, worrying about how he would save them if he had too. We all depend, probably far more often than we realize, on that particular brand of the kindness of strangers, and we can only hope that they take that duty as seriously as my brother does.
So I'm writing this, though I'm not sure I want my brother to read it, because I fear it might embarrass him. I'm writing it not because I love my brother, though I very much do, but because I admire him. He's a quiet, self-deprecating kind of guy, but if you need somebody to land you safely in an airplane, or to kill the rabid coyote that's attacking you, he's that kind of guy, too.
Friday, March 1, 2019
TAKING A BAO
Check out my "Friday Flicks" column, online at Phoenix Magazine, featuring reviews of the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts program playing this week at FilmBar, including the winner, Pixar's charming Bao...
...as well as of the old-school thriller Bullitt County...
...out this week on VOD.
Also, check out my short article on the 55th annual Phoenix Scottish Games...
...Saturday, March 2, and Sunday March 3 at Steele Indian School park.
RIP to the magnificent, sexy, hilarious, lovable Katherine Helmond, departed at 89.
Have a great March everybody!
...as well as of the old-school thriller Bullitt County...
...out this week on VOD.
Also, check out my short article on the 55th annual Phoenix Scottish Games...
...Saturday, March 2, and Sunday March 3 at Steele Indian School park.
RIP to the magnificent, sexy, hilarious, lovable Katherine Helmond, departed at 89.
Have a great March everybody!
Friday, February 22, 2019
INTRUDERS IN THE DUST
Check out my "Friday Flicks" column, online at Phoenix Magazine, reviewing Shawn Snyder's troubling but funny To Dust...
...plus a preview of the Sedona Film Festival, opening February 23 and continuing through March 3.
Have a great weekend everybody!
...plus a preview of the Sedona Film Festival, opening February 23 and continuing through March 3.
Have a great weekend everybody!
Monday, February 18, 2019
DOME SWEET DOME
Happy 89th Anniversary of the Discovery of Pluto!
Here I am hanging out with my pal Percival Lowell...
...who back in 1894 founded Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, site of the planet (or whatever we're calling it now) Pluto's discovery by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh on this date back in 1930. The Kid and I visited Lowell Observatory last month; check out my short article about the place, online at Phoenix Magazine.
Here I am hanging out with my pal Percival Lowell...
...who back in 1894 founded Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, site of the planet (or whatever we're calling it now) Pluto's discovery by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh on this date back in 1930. The Kid and I visited Lowell Observatory last month; check out my short article about the place, online at Phoenix Magazine.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
BROAD CANVAS
Check out my "Friday Flicks" column on Phoenix Magazine online, featuring reviews of the remarkable Oscar-nominated German saga Never Look Back and Happy Death Day 2U, the sequel to 2017's Happy Death Day.
Have a great weekend everybody!
Have a great weekend everybody!
Friday, February 8, 2019
A LEGO UP
Opening this weekend:
Whenever the subject of Legos comes up, as it does more and more frequently in popular movie reviewing, I feel the need to mention that I never had Legos as a kid, or particularly wanted them. Nor have I played with them as an adult. Even so, I've enjoyed all of the Lego movies I've seen.
Whenever the subject of Legos comes up, as it does more and more frequently in popular movie reviewing, I feel the need to mention that I never had Legos as a kid, or particularly wanted them. Nor have I played with them as an adult. Even so, I've enjoyed all of the Lego movies I've seen.
2017's The Lego Batman Movie was my favorite,
an on-the-money spoof of torturous, "dark" superhero flicks. But
2014's original The Lego Movie was a
charming, funny, unpretentious meditation on conformity versus individualism.
Now we
get the sequel to that film, The Lego
Movie 2: The Second Part, directed by Mike Mitchell from a script by Phil
Lord, Christopher Miller and Matthew Fogel, and set, appropriately, five years
after the events of The Lego Movie.
The locale, once again, is the vast Lego metropolis of Bricksburg. The name has
since been changed to "Apocalypseburg," however, after an invasion of
cutesy but lethal aliens has reduced the town to dystopian wreckage. Even so,
our hero Emmet (Chris Pratt) remains as upbeat and cheerful as ever.
When
aliens abduct Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), Lego Batman (Will Arnett), and several of
Emmet's other friends, taking them to the distant "Systar System,"
Emmet follows, intent on rescuing them. Along the way, he meets Rex (also Pratt),
a tough guy space mercenary—with a crew of dinosaurs!—who helps him summon
reserves of gritty resolve.
This is
only the beginning of the plot's twists and turns. Like its predecessor, Lego Movie 2 is a dense and complex
piece of storytelling. It's almost—though maybe not quite—as seamlessly thought
through as the original, yet it flies along with effortless speed and
precision.
As
before, much of the comedy derives from the limited range of motion available
to Lego figures, and there were gags that went over my head. I don't know why,
for instance, sequences of numbers appear onscreen when the characters are
building some new contraption, but I'm guessing this involves the technical
side of Lego-building. There are also endless, and amusing, references to pop
culture classics starting with Planet of
the Apes and 2001 and carrying on
through Jurassic Park and the Lord of the Rings movies up to the most topical industry gossip, and even a quick nod to RBG.
The voice
cast also helps, from Pratt's openhearted sweetness as Emmet and his jaunty
Kurt Russell-like swagger as Rex, to the tough but soulful heroine of Banks to
Arnett's growl as Batman. Most hilarious here is Tiffany Haddish as Queen
Watevra Wa-Nabi of the Systar System; her blossoming romance with Batman made
me feel protective of both characters.
Check out my "Friday Flicks" column online at Phoenix Magazine, with reviews of What Men Want and The Isle, plus a preview of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival. Also, check out my review of the Broadway version of Disney's Aladdin, playing through February 17 at Gammage Auditorium.
RIP to brilliant, funny Albert Finney, passed on at 82.
Check out my "Friday Flicks" column online at Phoenix Magazine, with reviews of What Men Want and The Isle, plus a preview of the Greater Phoenix Jewish Film Festival. Also, check out my review of the Broadway version of Disney's Aladdin, playing through February 17 at Gammage Auditorium.
RIP to brilliant, funny Albert Finney, passed on at 82.
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