LGM

Brad Silberling's City of Angels has been playing on TV for the past week or so. You may remember it -- Nicholas Cage plays an angel, Meg Ryan plays a surgeon (!). What you may not know is that it's actually a remake of a German film by Wim Wenders called Wings of Desire. In that version, the angel falls for a circus worker - an acrobat, I think.

Anyway, Suzy and I saw City of Angels in the theater and enjoyed it enough to buy it on VHS back when that was the thing to do. I've sort of thought of it as one of "our" movies since then.

So it occurred to me when I saw it the other night that it was a perfect role for Nic Cage - to play something not quite human, a little cold and distant, wanting to be normal but not being able to pull it off. It also occurred to me that City of Angels might be the last good movie Nic Cage was ever in. He seems to have just given up and gone from interesting, sometimes experimental actor to professional paycheck whore. I mean, have you seen some of the stanky stank bombs this guy has been in over the last decade? It's like he's not even looking. He just gets driven from one set to another, fitted with one terrible (and I mean terrible) wig or another, is pointed toward the camera, and someone yells, "Action."

So I look on IMDB and find that the actual last good movie NC was in (if you are generous with your definition of the word "good") was either 2005's World Trade Center or 2003's Matchstick Men. So, at best, it's been seven years since Mr. Cage has appeared in something that didn't drip a rich and robust lame sauce.

Out of curiosity, I looked up a couple of other former greats who have floundered, sputtered, or otherwise petered out. Harrison Ford? His LGM was What Lies Beneath (2000) and before that, Air Force One (1997). Not a good track record for the last twelve years.

Mel Gibson. Ol' Mel, as you may recall, was one of the biggest stars in the world in the 80s and 90s. He was cool on screen and off. A family man with with a kajillion kids and the same wife he started with. He's totally blown that and just gone bonkers, but what about his acting career? I'll go ahead and say that Apocalypto, his Mayan chase movie, is totally awesome. It's bloody for sure, but also absolute proof to me that someone with a brain and a budget could make really great movies out of the Book of Mormon if they wanted to. Anyway, he only wrote and directed that one so it doesn't count. I'm talking good movies that people want to see this person in. What was Mel's LGM? 2002's Signs which, coincidentally, is also director M. Night Shyamalan's LGM. Ten years of crappy for both of them.

Fascinating, isn't it? For some people's careers, you can point to an exact date in time and say, "Yep, that's the last time they got anything right."

So, what actor can you confidently point to that has a distant LGM?

The Answer

I was messing with Avery earlier today. She was putting her earrings on in the hallway mirror when I called her into the room. I had on my best "this is serious, you are potentially in huge trouble" face and told her I needed to ask her a question. She looked a little troubled and said, "Okay."

"I want a straight answer out of you about this, do you understand?"

She nodded.

"This is important."

She nodded again, less certain.

"What I want to know is...." dramatic pause "how are you so cool?"

I watched her expression change from slightly scared to "Are you seriously my dad?" and it tickled me endlessly. What was even better was her response. Without missing a beat, she replied, "It's because I wear mustache-shaped earrings." And she left the room. I laughed for a good five minutes.

So there you have it, people. Cool = mustache-shaped earrings. Now we know.

Whew

So, as predicted, this last semester was hectic. Lots of driving, juggling, squeezing, scraping, and running. And, as of today, it's over. I submitted all of my final grades this afternoon, and now it's done until next year. I always experience a combination of relief and sadness every time a term ends. On the one hand, having the anvil weight of papers lifted off my shoulders for a few weeks is a wonderful feeling. On the other hand, I often look back at the previous sixteen weeks and see a wide variety of my own screw ups. Sometimes I have classes that I feel really confident about, like I really helped students get valuable knowledge and skills they wouldn't otherwise have. Other times, I feel like a Borscht-belt comedian who spent the last four months bombing in a tough room. "I just flew in from my office upstairs. Boy, are my arms tired!"

One of the nice things about this semester was going to work with Suzy. We both taught at IVCC's satellite campus in Ottawa three times a week, so we were together, driving, talking about teaching, having lunch together literally all the time. And it was fun. I liked it. While neither of us liked the time and cost of driving to Ottawa all.the.freaking.time. I enjoyed having Suzy as a colleague - trading stories about students' ridiculous excuses, discussing the virtues of Blackboard, gossiping about coworkers - how many spouses ever get that? Most people, I imagine, go off to work for eight or nine hours, come back, and say, "Yeah, it was fine." It was a unique experience to sit side-by-side with Suzanne in the work room, grading quizzes, making copies. While much of this semester can lie down in the snow and freeze to death as far as I'm concerned, I liked working with Suzy and will miss that aspect of Fall 2012.

A lot has happened in the world, and, of course, no one is poorer for a lack of my comments about any of it. We had an election and a subsequent wave of Mormon weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Internet so profound, you would have thought Church leadership said something other than "We support the President and pray for him. You should too."

We had a Frankenstorm hit the east coast. It makes me more and more sure that the ocean is cool to visit but nothing I'd ever want to live next to.

Of course, last week's events are just too terrible to even contemplate. I have had to be careful about how much coverage I watch about what happened in Newtown, Connecticut because I have a surprisingly low tolerance for it. It's simply one of the worst things I can think of. There aren't really even any words for it. It makes me deeply sad when I think about it.

I do much better when writing about silly movies and books. I'm better with snark than sentiment.

In news closer to home, it has been a season of birthdays for us. In September, Parker turned 3, and Avery turned 10. Just this last week, Maryn turned 12. I remember the last 12 years -- it's not like I blacked out in my first year of grad school and then woke up with a 12 year old daughter. (Although that sounds like a failed ABC drama produced by J.J. Abrams doesn't it?) I just can't figure out why those twelve years have gone so fast. There were so many days when I've thought, "Holy crap, will this day ever end?" How could have so many days like that and so many years that seem to have just clipped by?

Parker is maturing, but it's taking some work. She's very smart, quite verbal, and playful - but she also has a naughty streak in her. Staying put, listening, not running like crazy in the opposite direction when I tell her to "come here!" are not her strong suits right now. She is pacifier free and sleeps in a big girl bed. She can go potty in the toilet when she feels like it - the problem is that she rarely feels like it. We will work on that over Christmas break.

Avery is still the tallest kid in her class. We went to their Christmas concert tonight, and she's always in the back, in the middle because she towers over every other person. It makes it easy to forget that beneath all her physical maturity and bravado is a very tender heart. She's a sensitive kid, but she covers it up with a lot of bombast. She knew I'd had kind of a crappy afternoon and so, before bed, she offered to show me all the embarrassing choreography she learned but didn't end up having to perform for the Christmas concert as a way of cheering me up. She knew it would make me laugh, and so she put herself out there a little because she wanted me to be happy. She's a sweet kid, despite what she'd have you think.

Maryn is becoming a young woman, and it is freaking me right the freak out. Occasionally, she'll come around the corner and I'll just be struck by how mature she looks. She's still a goof  and likes to play dress up and snuggle with her dad, but she's also officially in the Young Women program at church and will be attending the Sunday School class I teach to the teenagers. There's a boy who has a crush on her at school - and she doesn't mind. I like to tease her about it, and, frankly, the idea of a boy liking her kind of gets my hackles up a bit. But she said something really important the other day when I was giving her some good-natured fatherly grilling about this kid. I asked why she liked him back and she said, "Because he's nice to other people. He's not like the other boys, always trying to be cool or tough or funny or whatever. He's just nice." If we can keep her on that track, valuing kindness and decency in a boy, through the rest of her life, I will be thrilled.

In pop culture news, I am woefully bereft. We've barely seen any movies at all, and I've hardly read a book worth mentioning in months and months. Television has been my big pleasure this semester. We like all the soapy stuff -- Revenge, of course, and our new find, Nashville. Downton Abbey is coming back in a little less than a month, and I'm happy about that. The thing the girls and I have really loved is watching the BBC show Sherlock on DVD. I'm a fan of Sherlock Holmes and of re-imagining classic characters in alternative settings, and this show is both wonderfully faithful and brilliantly re-envisioned. I could definitely do with more from Dr. Watson -- Martin Freeman isn't given enough to do, I think. But, other than that, my only complaint is that they keep pushing season 3 back and back and back.

There are good things for movie nerds on the horizon - but I undoubtedly will end up watching most of them on DVD rather than in a proper theater. Ah well.

I hope to make some progress on my prospectus over Christmas break and to get a few small things done around the house. I'm going to keep my goals small this time around. I will also try to write a little more often here so that cobwebs don't accumulate on my blog.

See this in 3-D? Yes, please.