Idea Deprivation

When I was a kid, our family had the Monopoly game and played it regularly. (I preferred the race car token, but I also liked the shoe, the iron, and the little dog.) It was a fun game for my brother and sisters and me and a good way to while away a cold, rainy day.

Now I read that Hollywood is trying to make Monopoly into a movie. In fact, it has been working on the board game as a film property for more than a decade. The big news recently is that the same people who made the Barbie movie have signed on to the production team.

I had one reaction to the news that Monopoly might be made into a film: why?

The answer seems to be twofold, according to the Hollywood Reporter article linked above. First, a statement by the Barbie production company explained: “Like all of the best IP, this game has resonated worldwide for generations.”

In other words, Monopoly is a known commodity, and the movie can capitalize (Monopoly pun intended) on the fact that millions of people have played and enjoyed the game.

Second, another member of the production group referred to Monopoly as an “historic piece of popular culture” and added: “As one of the most iconic games in the world, Monopoly provides an incredible platform for storytelling opportunities.”

In other words, producers won’t have to work very hard, because the concept, at least some of the characters, and the basic story lines are sketched out already. With a simple script set in Atlantic City, a story involving the guy with the old-fashioned moustache wearing the top hat and at least one character’s trip to a jail, and the right actors, the moviemakers hope that they can pass Go and collect $200 from a family of four.

I’ve previously bemoaned the lack of creative energy in Hollywood, with its endless output of superhero movies, CGI-laden action movies, exhausted “franchises,” and ill-advised remakes of classic films of the past–but a Monopoly movie reaches a new low. Can’t anyone in the film industry do anything fresh and original any more?.

Definitive Characters

I was saddened to read yesterday of the death of Carl Weathers. A talented actor whose long and successful career spanned decades, Weathers died in his sleep at age 76. 

Actors who work in action movies and comedies don’t seem to get their just due in their profession; actors who participate in what are viewed as more “serious” films tend to get the respect and the award nominations. But whether the vehicle is an action movie, a comedy, or a “serious” drama, an actor’s challenge is always to create a multi-dimensional character who takes the script and elevates it to a different level. Carl Weathers had a definite knack for doing that, and defined some truly memorable characters along the way.

Consider two of my favorite Weathers creations: Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies and Chubbs Peterson in Happy Gilmore. Apollo Creed could easily have been a loud-mouthed, cardboard cutout bad guy, but Weathers gave him a depth that many actors would not have found–and of course, he was terrific and entirely believable as a professional boxer in the fight scenes. One testament to Weathers’ acting skill is that, even in the first film before he befriended Rocky Balboa, I found myself liking Apollo Creed and rooting for him not to lose. 

Happy Gilmore showed that Carl Weathers wasn’t a typecast action film guy. Chubbs Peterson was a professional golfer who lost his hand to an alligator and sported perhaps the world’s worst prosthetic limb. Many actors would have portrayed Chubbs as an over-the-top, ridiculous character, but Weathers really played him straight, with a gentleness, sense of humor, and respect for the game of golf that made him memorable. Any golfer who has faced a key putt has probably heard Chubbs’ voice in his head, softly urging “just tap it in, tap it in” (followed by a frustrated Happy saying “just give it the old tippy-tap, the old tap-tap-taparoo”). Happy Gilmore is a silly movie, of course, but you have to credit Weathers’ deft practice of his craft.

The Academy Awards judges obviously think actors portraying sullen lords and ladies in 1830s England are more deserving of recognition than actors who bring to life a character with a comically bad fake hand, or a heavyweight champ with a flair for showmanship. But you’ve probably forgotten most of those “serious” roles that harvested the Oscars, while there aren’t many big-screen creations that are more memorable than Apollo Creed and Chubbs Peterson. That’s a pretty compelling legacy for actor Carl Weathers. 

The Groundhog Divide

It’s Groundhog Day! And in my head, I can hear Phil Hartman, the egotistical Pittsburgh weatherman cursed to relive Groundhog Day, over and over, until he becomes a better person, say: ”Well, its Groundhog Day . . . again.” Come to think of it, I’m hoping that I can find Groundhog Day, one of my favorite films, somewhere on TV tonight so I can watch it again. I’ve probably watched the movie almost as many times as Phil Hartman, so perfectly played by Bill Murray, reexperienced Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. 

But I digress. The point I was going to make is that Groundhog Day creates a bit of division in our country. Across the northern part of the nation, when February 2 rolls around people have been exposed to seemingly endless weeks of cold, wet, sloppy, gloomy, soul-crushing winter weather. They care about whether Punxsutawney Phil emerges from his tree stump on Gobbler’s Knob to see his shadow because they desperately hope that he won’t see his shadow–thereby predicting an early spring. 

In the southwestern desert areas, however, there’s really not much attention paid to Groundhog Day. There aren’t any groundhogs out here, for one thing, and in any case it’s typically sunny, and there’s not the prolonged exposure to crummy, dispiriting winter weather that makes otherwise rational people even consider the notion that a furry rodent might be able to accurately predict when spring will arrive. You could draw a line across the southern part of the country, sweeping in south Florida, the desert southwest and southern California, and call it the Groundhog Divide.

For the record, this year Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, so you can bank on an early spring. Be mindful, though, that this beloved rodent doesn’t exactly have a stellar prediction track record.

A Christmas Movie With An Impact

You can argue for hours about the best Christmas movie ever made. It’s A Wonderful Life, or A Christmas Story, or one of the versions of A Christmas Carol, or White Christmas, or Christmas Vacation, or Elf, or one of many other candidates–the debate will rage forever. You can even argue about whether a movie is properly classified as a Christmas movie. ; I’m one of those who thinks that Die Hard is, in fact, a Christmas movie, and we should all put a Twinkie for John McClain on that plate of cookies we’ll be leaving for Santa tonight.

But when it comes to which Christmas movie had the biggest impact on our household, that’s an easy call: it’s Home Alone. Kevin McCallister’s battle to protect his house against the “Wet Bandits,” and his befriending the old salt-spreading guy in the neighborhood in the process, was a film that we watched countless times after it went to video. Our kids were fascinated by the traps Kevin set for the greedy, stupid robbers, and for a time you really had to watch your step around our home to avoid stumbling into would-be trap experiments.

Home Alone remains a holiday favorite, featured on many Christmas movie marathons, and I think the film still holds up as a funny, feel-good Christmas movie. But it’s also got a really good underlying message. It’s a scary scenario, of course, but little Kevin refused to be a frightened victim when he found he was inadvertently left alone by his harried parents. He drew upon his resources and showed inventiveness, toughness, self-reliance, and a willingness to venture out of his comfort zone, and learned a lot about himself in the process–in addition to catching the bad guys. 

You never know what shapes a person, and how much is genetic versus experience–but in retrospect I’d say those hours repeatedly watching Home Alone decades ago were time well spent. If kids understand that they can stand up for themselves, that’s a long step in the direction of emotional adulthood. It’s a small price to pay for being wary of traps. 

The Cosmic Question Mark

The James Webb Space telescope was just doing its job. It was taking photographs of two young stars that were being formed in the Vela Constellation, some 1,470 light years from Earth. But at the bottom of the stunning photo of the two stars-to-be, well in the background, somebody saw the object above–and suddenly the two new stars in the Vela Constellation were forgotten because of this weird question mark in space.

What is it, exactly? Fans of The Matrix think it is glitch in the computer program that controls all of our lives, similar to when Neo saw a black cat walk past a doorway twice, or perhaps it’s a sign from The Oracle that the time has come to start asking “what is the matrix”? If you’re looking for a more scientific explanation, however, a precise answer is: nobody knows for sure. According to this article in The Smithsonian, scientists think this Cosmic Question Mark doesn’t have the characteristics of a star in the Milky Way, but they don’t know even the basics about it–such as whether it is billions of light years away, or very close and obscured by dust.

Careful study has led some scientists to determine that the Cosmic Question Mark seems to be two distinct objects, with the top being separate from the dot at the bottom, like your grade school teacher emphasized when you were practicing penmanship. But they don’t know if the two objects are far apart and just happen to have lined up into a perfectly formed question mark (Matrix fans won’t buy that one, I’m guessing) or are related in some way, and could, for example, be showing a spiral galaxy merging into another galaxy.

It’s pretty interesting to see what kinds of galactic phenomena are being discovered by the Webb Space Telescope. I think we need to start scanning its photos for other objects, like numbers, letters, exclamation points, and ampersands. Who knows–maybe the universe is trying to give us an email address or some kind of password, and its IT director is insisting on using punctuation marks like the Cosmic Question Mark to make it a “stronger” password and more secure.

Thanks to Richard for calling out this curious development!

The Oppenheimer Heat Test

Yesterday we had tickets to see Oppenheimer, the new film about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” I had reserved seats for the 70mm showing of the film at the Gateway Film Center on the OSU campus. I knew there would be a full house, because the only seats available when I made our reservations on Saturday were in the second row from the screen–but we wanted to see the movie, so what the heck?

When I got to the theater yesterday, however, I was greeted by a pleasant young woman who told me that, regrettably, the air conditioning at our particular theater wasn’t working very well. Technicians were working on it, she explained, but right now the temperature in the theater was about 79 degrees. She gave us free passes for a future film, to account for the inconvenience, but said it was totally up to us to decide whether to try to watch the film now, given the current conditions.

So: do you go see a movie that you really are interested in seeing, and sit in a theater that starts out at about 80 degrees?

We voted no. We figuring that even if only some of the ticketholders went, the accumulated body heat would cause the temperature in the room to soon rise above the 80-degree mark, and I hate being in uncomfortably hot, sweaty rooms. Add in the fact that Oppenheimer is fully three hours long, and that one of the reasons you go to a summer movie is to get away from the heat, and it wasn’t a hard decision to give the movie a pass.

Kudos to the Gateway Film Center, though, for handling the situation very professionally. In addition to the free passes, a helpful employee in the ticket center reversed my purchase order, and they were apologetic and cordial as I left.

I wonder how many people in that full theater decided to try watching the movie under those conditions? I still want to see Oppenheimer, but I’ll wait for the chance to watch it in true, air-conditioned comfort.

“The Great Grift”

“Grifting” is defined as the act of obtaining money or property illicitly, as through some kind of a confidence game or fraudulent scheme. “Grifters” are typically thought of as small-time swindlers, like the Robert Redford character at the beginning of the film The Sting.

So when the Associate Press called its story about the theft that occurred in connection with federal programs designed to provide COVID-19 aid funds “the great grift,” there’s a bit of a disconnect–because the AP reports that the total amount that apparently was swindled from two programs administered by the Small Business Administration, and thereby from U.S. taxpayers, amounts to more than $200 billion. Even by the colossal spending standards of the modern federal government, that’s a lot of money.

According to the inspector general for the SBA, the money came from two COVID-19 programs: the Paycheck Protection program and the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. The inspector general’s investigation concluded that at least 17 percent of all of the funds of these two programs were disbursed to potentially fraudulent actors. The SBA itself contests these figures and contends that the inspector general’s report overestimates the actual amount of the fraud, but the Associated Press has independently reported that fraudsters stole about $280 billion from these two SBA programs and a third program intended to help workers who suddenly became unemployed due to the COVID shutdowns. The AP concludes that another $123 billion was wasted or misspent.

The disagreement over the amount of fraud comes because the SBA points out that the U.S. government doesn’t have a generally accepted system for assessing the impact of fraud on federal spending programs. The SBA inspector general says his report “utilizes investigative casework, prior (inspector general) reporting, and cutting-edge data analysis to identify multiple fraud schemes used to potentially steal over $200 billion from American taxpayers and exploit programs meant to help those in need.”

It’s amazing to think that, in these days of enormous federal budgets, there is no accepted way of assessing how much federal money is procured by fraudsters–and it’s also galling to think that nearly one in five dollars spent by two emergency programs designed to help people and businesses hurt by the COVID pandemic went to swindlers. Congress loves to pass sweeping spending bills and say that its job is done, but the SBA inspector general’s report shows that the devil is in the details. If our legislators were really serious about getting spending under control, they need to do the heavy lifting, and develop mechanisms designed to ensure that federal money actually goes to the intended recipients, not grifters.

The Reminder Series

Last night I went to see a movie at the Ohio Theatre as part of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts Summer Movie Series. As I sat in the huge theater, listening to the organist play the “Mighty Morgan” that descends into the stage when the film begins, I decided that the CAPA Summer Movie Series should actually be called the Reminder Series, because it brings back what it used to be like to go to the movies.

Towering red velvet curtain. Big screen. Spacious, comfortable seats. A crowded theater, a smell of popcorn in the air, and a sense of anticipation at watching a great movie from Hollywood’s golden era. Last night’s film was the classic Rear Window, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpieces starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. I’ve seen it before, of course, but I enjoyed watching it again. For only $6, the Summer Movie Series is a bargain.

The Summer Movie Series, which has been a mainstay of Columbus summers for more than 50 years, has an impressive line-up of movies for its abbreviated season this year–almost as if it were calculated to make you wonder why Hollywood doesn’t produce movies like these anymore: The Maltese Falcon, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Goldfinger, Citizen Kane, The Thin Man, The Lost Boys, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Empire Strikes Back, Do The Right Thing–and that’s just part of the lineup.

In 25 years, will the Summer Movie Series be featuring anything from the current, CGI-dominated crop of limp remakes and predictable superhero movies? Somehow, I doubt it.

Cruisin’ Cbus

A big part of the plot of the classic film American Graffiti centered around the car culture of early ’60s America. The social life of a small town focused on teenagers cruising the main street, showing off their rides, listening to rock ‘n roll on the same radio station, stopping for a cheeseburger, engaging in youthful hijinks, and getting into the occasional drag race.

I can report to you that cruisin’ culture remains alive and well in Columbus, except instead of candy-colored cars and hot rods the cruising traffic consists of motorcycles, decked out pickup trucks, and the occasional three-wheeled vehicle. The cruisers like driving up and down High Street, revving their engines and seemingly trying to create as many backfires and engine rumbles as possible. And music remains a big part of the scene, too, except rather than Wolfman Jack and Buddy Holly and the Coasters, hip hop played at maximum volume rules the day. If you live along High Street you know the cruisers put on quite a show starting in the spring and continuing through the fall, when the weather is best suited for a drive through town. It’s entertaining to sit outside and watch the parade, so long as your eardrums can take the noise level.

Why does the cruisin’ culture still thrive in downtown Columbus? I think one of the main impulses that motivated the kids in American Graffiti–to proudly display their vehicles, in a place where they thought everyone would see them–still lurks out there. If you’ve got a fancy chopper or a high-end, chrome-plated, big-engined pickup, you could use them to run errands, pick up the groceries, or go for a quiet ride on a country road . . . or you could drive them through the center of the city, knowing there will be people on the streets and sidewalks to look your way when you rev your engine and crank up your sound system. The existence of traffic lights every block encourages the revving and backfires, and the tall buildings lining High Street ensure the vehicle noise echoes to maximum effect. In short, if you want to cruise in your ride, High Street is a pretty good place to do it.

This isn’t a great thing if you live in one of the buildings along High Street, of course–but it’s interesting that there is still a part of the American social landscape that likes going for a very public ride as in days of old. No drag races yet, though.

The Future We’ve Got

When we think about the future, we tend to take current realities and project them forward to develop our vision of what is to come. At the height of the Apollo program in the late ’60s, the Moon base and voyage to Jupiter in 2001 were entirely plausible. When the world was concerned about The Population Bomb and the perils of overpopulation, Soylent Green seemed like a grim, but possible, future. And to an America in the grips of car culture in the early ’60s, of course the future would have those cool flying vehicles in The Jetsons.

But the actual future has a way of turning out differently from the forecasts of even the most dedicated futurists. There aren’t any Moon bases–not yet, at least–and the mass starvation and terrible poverty that were supposed to accompany the exponential growth of humanity didn’t happen; instead, the birth rate reversed itself in many places, and now many countries worry about not having enough people, rather than too many. And regrettably, there are still no cool flying cars that make those soothing, blurbling sounds that George Jetson heard every morning on his way to work at Spacely Sprockets.

Why are our visions of the future so frequently off base? At bottom, it is because modern human society is simply too complicated to try to model and project into the future. There are too many imponderables, from the actions of power-hungry individual leaders to the impact of new unexpected technology to the abrupt social and cultural developments that change the nature of basic human interaction–among hundreds of other variables. And unknowable curve balls, like the COVID-19 pandemic, produce shifts that no one could foresee, which then have ripple effects of their own. I don’t remember anyone forecasting that, seemingly in the blink of an eye, the American workforce would, in many business segments, move from office-based to home-based, with all of its vast implications for social interaction, the commercial real estate market, energy use, and technological dependence, among countless other areas.

It makes you wonder whether it makes any sense to even try to forecast the future. Perhaps the better course is to commit to personal flexibility in outlook, remain willing to learn and adapt, and be amenable to accepting the unexpected changes that inevitably come our way. The future seems more manageable if you take it one change at a time.

Into Bond Villain Territory

The villains in the James Bond movies of the ’60s and ’70s all had spectacular lairs. Be they extensive island fortresses, undersea citadels, or private space stations, pretty much every Bond bad guy had somehow secretly constructed an elaborate, impossible feat of engineering–one that would inevitably be blown to smithereens by Bond as he miraculously escaped with the female lead at the end of the movie.

I thought about Bond villains when I read about the announcement of plans to build an “underwater space station of the ocean” and saw a depiction of the proposed structure, above. You can almost see an evil guy with an eyepatch bent on world domination surveying his domain from one of those windows, can’t you?

The plans for the underwater space station are actually pretty cool. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Proteus Group, working together in a joint venture, propose to build it near the Caribbean island of Curacao. The habitat, which will be called PROTEUS, will allow scientists and researchers to live underwater for extended periods of time and study the ocean in a way that has never been possible before. The inhabitants will eat plants grown in hydroponic pods–although presumably fish will be part of the diet, too–as they perform their work.

The plans also contemplate that private citizens will be able to spend time at PROTEUS. That sounds like an interesting trip, but if you’re considering it I suggest minding your own business and staying away from any live shark tanks or piranha pools.

Out Of It On Everything

I didn’t watch the Oscars, and haven’t for years, but I saw the news stories that the film Everything Everywhere All At Once won the award for best picture, as well as a bunch of other honors. Coincidentally, that happened to be one of the few films we saw at a theater last year.

The AP story on the Academy Awards describes Everything Everywhere as a “metaphysical multiverse comedy,” but I would describe it, instead, as a surreal, confusing, and in large part disturbing movie that I have no desire to see again. Although the movie claims to be a comedy, I don’t think I laughed at any point during the film’s two-hour-and-19-minute running time, and mostly wished it would finally, blessedly end before another strange character and incident was inflicted on my senses. The movie was creative, I’ll give it that, and at least it was an original screenplay and not a superhero movie or one of the remakes that Hollywood routinely churns out these days, but those points exhaust the positives in my book.

The Academy Award decisions are always debatable, but for years, I’ve wondered what criteria are used in deciding who wins what at the Oscars. It’s stumped me at least since a boring snoozer like Out Of Africa beat Witness, a taut, engrossing drama with some great comedic moments, in 1986. Witness has stood the test of time, Out of Africa hasn’t. But at least I could somewhat understand how, in some views at least, the cinematography and settings and sweep of Out Of Africa put it in contention. I’m flummoxed at how Everything Everywhere All At Once was even considered a contender on any grounds.

This is further evidence, if any is needed, at just how out of touch my tastes have become. It’s also a reason why our trips to the movie theater have winnowed down to virtually none.

“Red Collar” Crime

Yesterday, in connection with a discussion of the Alex Murdaugh case, I saw a reference to “red collar” crime. If, like me, you hadn’t seen that phrase before, it refers to instances of “white collar” crime–that is, crimes of a financial nature, like embezzlement, Ponzi schemes, or fraud–when the criminals turn to murder in an attempt to cover up their conduct. White and red collar crime are distinguished from “blue collar” crime, which always involve some act of violence against person or property.

Red collar crime isn’t as unusual as you might think. The article linked above notes that Frank Perri, a criminal psychologist, studied 50 reported cases of red collar crime and found that there were some common behavioral elements in the criminals involved that made them resort to violence, either by pursuing murder themselves or, more commonly, by hiring a “hit man” to kill people who the criminal feared might alert the authorities to the underlying financial crime.

Analysts believe that true extent of red collar crime might be vastly underreported, because a random murder occurs and police and prosecutors might never make the connection between the murder and an unsuspected financial crime. That’s not surprising, since many financial crimes go undetected. (The murder of the Patrick Swayze character in Ghost, for example, was a red collar crime that would never have been connected to underlying financial crimes if it hadn’t been for the help of a determined ghost and a psychic.)

I’m not sure it’s all that helpful to draw clear lines between types of crimes, because financial crimes are just as criminal as other crimes. They can be devastating, too–as anyone who has been cheated out of their life savings by a fraudulent scheme or identity theft can attest. Perpetrators who have a criminal impulse probably aren’t very good about respecting clear boundaries when they feel cornered and at risk of their misdeeds being discovered.

Apocalyptic Porn

We’ve been watching The Last Of Us, the new HBO series in which a few human survivors remain in a horrific alternative world. In this show’s grim vision, fungal creatures have taken over Earth and turned infected humans into bloodthirsty, blind zombies controlled by some all-encompassing fungal network, and the hardy remnants of the human race live (for the most part) in brutal, quasi-military zones in the bombed out shells of old buildings.

In short, The Last Of Us is about par for the course in terms of how TV shows and movies tend to envision the human future. The vast majority of depictions of the world to come in popular culture seem to be incredibly bleak. In these shows, every conceivable disaster–nuclear holocaust, climate change, alien invasion, artificial intelligence deciding that humans should be killed off or used as power cells, global pandemic, zombie attacks–plunges civilization into chaos, most humans perish, buildings collapse, the world as we know it ends, and the survivors live hand to mouth in a grim world, marveling at the glory that once was part of daily life.

And it seems like the producers and designers of these TV shows and movies love to present compelling pictures of just how far the human race has fallen. Gutted, collapsing buildings, overgrown urban landscapes, bad food, gross zombies. fascist governments–no detail of future bleakness is ignored. Is it because they want people to understand how much worse things could be, or do they just enjoy the challenge of presenting fallen civilizations–or is there some other reason? It’s as if some people revel in a kind of apocalyptic porn.

It’s interesting how science fiction took a turn for the worse. In the Star Trek universe, the future world is a hopeful place in which nagging societal problems have been solved and humans have become noble creatures seeking peace and progress in the galaxy. But how many Star Trek-like visions of the future do we see these days? The pessimists are dominant.

Imaginary Voyages

The Austin airport is pretty darned cool, with some little touches that bored travelers who are walking around while waiting for their flights will appreciate–like this mock “Interimaginary Departures” board found at Gate 14. It changes just like your standard departures board, only the destinations are fictional locations from literature, film, TV, comic books, video games, and other elements of popular culture. The airlines are fictional too, of course, but very cleverly named. And all flights leave from Gate Infinity.

For example, you could catch a flight to Gotham City on DystopiAir, or head to Hogwarts on Spellbound Airlines, or visit the Hundred-Acre Wood on Wistful. I’d avoid the flight to Isla Nublar on GossAmerica, myself. On the other hand, I admit to being tempted by the chance to experience the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the known universe, so I would probably grab a seat on the 11:07 to Tattoine in order to check out the Mos Eisley spaceport.

I’ve included photos of two of the many boards with this post. Somebody obviously had a lot of fun with this great idea.

The destinations on the “Interimaginary Departures” board are a kind of litmus test of your awareness of different elements of popular culture, and I am sad to say that I am not aware of many of them. How many of the references do you recognize? And, like me, if you see a destination you haven’t experienced through books or movies or comics, are you motivated to check them out?