Friday Film Quiz

I feel like the previous FFQ was a little too easy. When you have multiple people saying, "I know what it is but I'm not saying," then I know I've gone too soft. So here's something a little tougher. I'll give a few hints: it's in black and white, it's considered one of the first of its kind, and it features at least one quote (not this one) that is still part of the popular vernacular. Good luck.

"When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere."

The Calm Before the Storm

Next week is the last full week of regular class for this semester. Finals will be after that but most of my work begins on the last day of classes when I collect everyone's big assignments. For the moment, I only have a few creative writing assignments I need to read and grade. Other than that, things are quiet work-wise.

It feels good to have the foreign language exam off my back. It clears the way to focus just on my prospectus and dissertation. Admittedly, the feedback I received from my committee earlier this month dealt a real blow to my confidence but I'm feeling better now, more clear-minded and ready to tackle this thing and get something workable written.

I'm taking the summer off to write and it's a weird feeling. I haven't taken a summer off since high school. I would say it feels indulgent, but it doesn't. It's not as though I'm going to lay around in a bathrobe and eat bon-bons while watching Oprah. I'm going work five days a week, reading and writing. I haven't decided if I'll be doing it at home or at my office here at the school. Our office at home is in the sun room which has lots of natural light, nice views of the yard, and our cool new IKEA desk/shelf combo. The only problem with it is that it has a door that leads to the rest of the house - a house with TVs, kids to play with, and a wife to help. When it comes to working at home, I have the attention span of a goldfish. (I'm surprised by the plastic castle every time.) A particular problem is Miss Parker. If I'm in the sun room and she's in the kitchen, she comes up to the gate we block the door with and screams, drools, flirts, jabbers, and does everything short of clinking a metal cup along the bars. She's like a force of nature. Trying to ignore her and keep working is like saying, "I'm going to keep reading while this tsunami washes around me. It will be fine." Doesn't work.

The problem with working at the school is kind of the polar opposite. I'm not at home to help. Maryn and Avery will be at home along with Miss P and that's a lot for one parent to handle solo. If I'm off at the school, I have fewer distractions but I'm also somewhat isolated from my family who may need me. Yes, I leave for six or seven hours each day now but summer is a whole different bird. Three daughters running around, the older two fighting and bickering over stupid stuff, the younger one doing her Mussolini impression, is a lot.

So we'll see what works out. It may be that Suzanne wants me to go to the school regardless. She's apprehensive about me taking the summer off because, frankly, she doesn't relish the idea of me being around all the time. I think it's that retirement anxiety people go through - your partner has been at work for 8 hours a day for the last forty years and now, all of a sudden, they're going to be in your house, in your face all day every day? I think she likes me okay but she doesn't like the idea of me being at at the house all day.

Speaking of Suzy, this Friday is her 37th birthday. Be sure to wish her well via facebook.

In other news, I hope to have my second issue of IVCC's literary journal, River Currents, out and on the proverbial newsstands before graduation. The student designer should be sending the file to the printer today. Fingers crossed. It took all last summer for the first issue to come out and I don't want a repeat of that freaking TRUCUS (three-ring circus). We shall see.

In the last three weeks, I've been asked to be on the hiring committee for the new head librarian this summer, to participate in an AWP panel about student publications at two-year schools next year, to serve on the board of the Association for Mormon Letters, and to present a paper at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference in Scottsdale, AZ next October. Suddenly, I'm popular.

The semester is coming to an end. I'm glad.

Briefly Then

Last Friday I missed the Film Quiz because I was in a room on the fourth floor of the Manoogian Building at Wayne State University translating a section of El Amor En Los Tiempos Del Cholera into English. Through hard work and a stroke of dumb luck, I pounded that sucker out and was done in about three hours. I won't know officially if I've passed for a couple of weeks but there isn't any doubt in my mind that I did pass. The section I was given to translate was exactly the section I had already translated on my own AND had reread that morning over breakfast. So I'm grateful to be able to say that I rocked that bad boy. One more PhD-related hoop successfully jumped through.

Due to our computer being a big piece of suck, I still do not have the Admiral's fabulous prize. I'll get to it. But here's Suzy's:




He seems to be saying, "Why hello there, Suzy. My name is Hugh. You're turning 37, you say? You don't look a day over 24. Why do I glisten like this, you ask? I always glisten around pretty girls such as yourself. Would you like me to hook up your VCR or repair your Internet connection? Those are just some of the services I provide."

Who knows? Maybe Admiral Brad would like this as his prize too?

Friday Film Quiz

Here comes a slow pitch right down the middle. If you have won in the last three weeks, please let the other kids have a turn.

"Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, 'I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.' Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people."

Random Updates and Rants

Our computer failed once again this week. It's in the computer hospital, hopefully undergoing some permanent reconstructive surgery that will remove whatever board or chip that makes it suck so bad. As a consequence of said crappy computer, the Admiral's fabulous prize will have to wait for next week. It'll be a doozy.

The quiz is still on for tomorrow though so be on the lookout.

Does anyone else besides me watch Justified?

Lazy, unmotivated, flat-out dumb students make me crabby. Why does it take an assignment due date coming and going for them to say to themselves, "Hmmm, I might need some help here"? Why not before the assignment is due? Why not well-before it's due? If they put half the energy they put into begging for extensions into just doing the work in the first place, they'd be terrific students.

I think obscure, esoteric Facebook updates are obnoxious. They are the digital equivalent of dressing all in black and prominently displaying your Moleskine notebook while wearing horn-rimmed glasses while sitting at the fair-trade-only vegan coffee shop while reading a copy of The Stranger. It's like begging someone to point out how fascinating and mysterious you are.

Clearly, I'm feeling a little ranty. Maybe I should get back to grading papers.

A Monday Morning Laugh

I'm pretty sure Bill Hader is a comedy genius.

Friday Film Quiz

The star of this film had a heart attack during production and the director hid that information from the studio for fear they would be shut down. Principal photography took over a year to complete (whereas an average Hollywood movie usually takes two or three months) and the project was beset by bad weather, uncooperative actors, an unfinished script, and general mayhem. A hint: it's not Waterworld but the two films share a common actor. In fact, it was the guy who said this:


"Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll... uh... well, you'll say 'hello' to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you. He won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say, 'Do you know that "if" is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you'... I mean I'm... no, I can't... I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's... he's a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas."

A Poem For Today

Why I'm Here

Because my mother was on a date
with a man in the band, and my father,
thinking she was alone, asked her to dance.
And because, years earlier, my father
dug a foxhole but his buddy
sick with the flu, asked him for it, so he dug
another for himself. In the night
the first hole was shelled.
I'm here because my mother was twenty-seven
and in the '50s that was old to still be single.
And because my father wouldn't work on weapons,
though he was an atomic engineer.
My mother, having gone to Berkeley, liked that.
My father liked that she didn't eat like a bird
when he took her to the best restaurant in L.A.
The rest of the reasons are long gone.
One decides to get dressed, go out, though she'd rather
stay home, but no, melancholy must be battled through,
so the skirt, the cinched belt, the shoes, and a life is changed.
I'm here because Jews were hated
so my grandparents left their villages,
came to America, married one who could cook,
one whose brother had a business,
married longing and disappointment
and secured in this way the future.

It's good to treasure the gift, but good
to see that it wasn't really meant for you.
The feeling that it couldn't have been otherwise
is just a feeling. My family
around the patio table in July.
I've taken over the barbequing
that used to be my father's job, ask him
how many coals, though I know how many.
We've been gathering here for years,
so I believe we will go on forever.
It's right to praise the random,
the tiny god of probability that brought us here,
to praise not meaning, but feeling, the still-warm
sky at dusk, the light that lingers and the night
that when it comes is gentle.

Jacqueline Berger

Shalee's Fabulous Prize

She said, "Surprise me," and so I tried to think of something that I know she really, really likes. Here it is:

Tombstone

Released in 1993, Tombstone was the result of a long, chaotic journey. Originally, the film was supposed to star Kevin Costner as Wyatt Earp and to be directed by Kevin Jarre. The two disagreed about the focus of the film -- Costner thought the film should center entirely on his character -- and eventually they parted ways. Costner went to his Silverado director, Lawrence Kasdan, and developed the appropriately titled Wyatt Earp.

Jarre cast Kurt Russell as his Earp and tried to get Willem Dafoe as Doc Holiday. Even though this was nearly five years after it came out, Dafoe was still stigmatized for his role in The Last Temptation of Christ and so the film wouldn't have been able to find distribution if he was in it. Ironically, Val Kilmer, far and away the best part of the film, was a second-choice consolation prize.

Jarre envisioned a sprawling Western epic and his screenplay for the film would have clocked in at close to three hours. Once the production was two weeks behind early on, the studio jumped at the chance to fire Jarre and hire George P. Cosmatos. Prior to Tombstone, Cosmatos was most known in America for directing Sylvester Stallone in both Rambo II and one of the low points of 80's action films, Cobra.

After Cosmatos died, Kurt Russell claimed that he actually directed the film using nightly meetings and a private sign language during the day to guide the shooting. I'm not sure what to think about that. Russell doesn't have a reputation of being unusually crazy or grandiose so I'm not sure how to interpret this claim of his.

Either way, the film came out around Christmas 1993 and did pretty good business, 56 million domestic gross, and, as I mentioned earlier, did well on video. Though it is a popcorn Western, noted for its entertainment value more than being an "important" movie, a lot of people (myself included) thought Val Kilmer deserved an Oscar nomination for his performance as the tubercular Doc Holiday.

Six months later, Costner's Wyatt Earp came out and performed poorly at the box office, earning only 25 million on a 63 million dollar budget. It did earn nominations - five Golden Raspberry Awards for, among other things, Worst Picture, Worst Actor, and Worst Couple. Costner won for Worst Actor and the film won for Worst Remake or Sequel.

On a personal note, I'd pay good money to be able to grow a Wyatt Earp mustache like the one Kurt Russell sports in this movie.

Film Quiz Friday

This week's quote comes from a film from the 90s that had a troubled production history of swapped-out directors and a studio-led final cut. As I recall, it performed alright at the box office but then took on a second life as a video/DVD favorite. Another film covering the same subject material came out just six months after this one was released.

"You die first, get it? Your friends might get me in a rush, but not before I turn your head into a canoe, you understand me?"