The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
Sorry, folks, but once again, the Internet connection here at Casa Jaquandor has gone to shit. This time, however, we are actually in the process of switching over to FiOS, so hopefully this will be a thing of the past quite soon. I expect this process to take a few days, but I’ll post when I can.
EarthLink: Your days at Casa Jaquandor are numbered.
I have a hard time taking this video, made ostensibly by the Buffalo Niagara Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to market the city, seriously in any way.
The photography is excellent, I’ll admit: the video really makes Buffalo look beautiful. And really, Buffalo has a lot of beauty going for it. (Trouble is, it’s often hidden and hard to find because it’s behind some ugly stuff.) And I really like the logo they’ve come up with for Buffalo, which comes onscreen at the very end.
But everything else about this is crap.
Mostly, it’s because of the tone of the damned thing. There’s no hint of any excitement, and future, about Buffalo in this video. This is “Hey, have you ever wanted to live in a Ken Burns documentary? Move to Buffalo!” It’s Buffalo as the Land of Wilford Brimley, where every day starts with a big bowl of Quaker Oats before we slowly walk off to slowly work at our jobs before going home slowly to live our slow lives. Buffalo: where everybody always knows when Matlock is on.
I just hate the approach here — the constant drumbeat of “Buffalo is awesome because we’ve got loads of old stuff” that one listens to around here, for one thing, which is Exhibit A in this video. Look, when you’re Athens, Greece, you can play the “Come here for our awesome old stuff!” card. But when you’re a two-hundred-year old city in America, well…there’s old stuff everywhere.
I also hate hate hate hate this whole “Real America” business. To be fair, I hate “Real America” stuff in any context, whether it’s trying to sell a city or trying to sell a Republican candidate for something. I really dislike the attempt to sell the city on the basis that we appeal to the white-picket-fences mindset (with the only nod to non-white America being “Oh, and there’s a really old jazz club here, too”).
Someday Buffalo’s going to get it right. It has to. No losing streak lasts forever…right?
UPDATE: Oh, by the way, the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau has a really bad website. What an awful mishmash of stuff they have there. Wow.
“We are not who we are.”
Back when I was watching X-Files episodes on VHS releases that only included six episodes from each half-season, the episodes in those packages were chosen for either story (being part of the mytharc) or quality (being judged by the producers as particularly good). “Ice” was one of those episodes in the first set of tapes, and it’s a very memorable episode indeed, even if it too ends up being pretty derivative of an earlier film, in this case John Carpenter’s The Thing.
We open at an ice core research station way up in the Arctic, on a glacier-bound spit of land on the north coast of Alaska. Everyone in the station is dead, save two men, who are beaten and bloodied; these two end up with their guns trained on one another – before they each lower their guns. And then, still staring at each other, they both lift their guns to their own temples. Cut to an outside shot of the station, as we hear the two gunshots. After the titles, Mulder and Scully are sent with a doctor, a biologist and a geologist to find out what happened to the expedition. What drove the original group of scientists to kill one another? And whatever that may be, is it still there?
Well, this is The X-Files, so we already know that the answer to that second question is going to be “yes”. What results is a finely-crafted episode that follows the tried-and-true formula of locking our heroes in a small place, secluded from any possibility of rescue, and then giving them reasons to not trust one another.
It turns out that the scientists there had been drilling ice core samples from the glacier, which turns out to be on top of a meteor impact crater, and that something was in the ice: a worm-like parasite that invades a host and then causes it to become paranoid and aggressive. This thing got into the scientists and drove them to kill one another, and of course it’s still alive and kicking. This is made quite clear by the infection of the seaplane pilot who flew our heroes up there in the first place, when he is bitten by the dog who is the only remaining living thing in the station. Thus the episode plays out as “Who is infected, and who isn’t? Who can be trusted to still be themselves, and who cannot?”
“Ice” was written by James Wong and Glen Morgan, a duo who were behind a lot of the best X-Files episodes of the first few seasons, and who went on to be the main force behind the second season of Millennium and the creators of the Final Destination series of horror films, among other things. Their work is marked by excellent character writing and snappy dialog, and they manage to create just the right air of distrust among the principals, even between Mulder and Scully. Notable also is the episode’s supporting cast, featuring teevee stalwarts Xander Berkeley, Felicity Huffman, and Steve Hytner (later Banya on Seinfeld).
“Ice” is a terrific episode, one of the best of the first season and of the show’s early run.
That’s no lie.
That little girl is the daughter of two very dear friends of mine, whom I’ve known since college. In fact, I’ve known Krista longer than I’ve known The Wife! Anyway, they’ve made this video as an entry in some contest where they can win a trip to Disney World if their video gets a sufficiently large number of hits and comments. So, watch it. Watch it several times. You don’t really even have to watch it; just click it and let it play while you do something else. YouTube doesn’t know if you’re sitting there watching the video. But it is cute! And Aaron and Krista are awesome.
So watch. Do it for the child. (Literally. It’s for the kid!)
PS: If anyone else you know is entering this contest, well, screw them. This is war, people!
I love this. It’s a perfect rejoinder to something I invariably hear every single time another “Women’s History Month” or “Black History Month” rolls around — the complaint that “Gee, we should get to have a white history month.” So much greatness has gone before us, paving our way, that we don’t even know about. We’re lucky enough to realize that we stand on the shoulders of giants, but we’d do even better to make better effort to understand on whose shoulders we stand in the first place.
Now, if we could just get a zombie Carl Sagan to start enlightening us too….
Linkage….
:: If Jim Caviezel is to be believed, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a jobbing actor to play Jesus and continue to eat lunch in Hollywood. (This seems odd. As I started reading the article, I thought of a number of actors who played Jesus and then went on to other stuff.)
:: Well, I don’t know. Seems like one more corpse on the pile to me. Sorry, but this war, this decade of war has made me cynical. It’s made me not believe in just government on any level, and made me wary and gunshy of my fellow citizens’ glee. If we’re dancing in the streets either the Lakers won or someone’s dead. (I don’t really agree with this sentiment entirely, but I am able to sympathize with it.)
More next week!
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: According to some gonzo thing put together by a team of scienticians, men with longer ring fingers than index fingers on their right hands are better looking. Science finally establishes that I’m good looking. That would have been a useful scientific finding back when I was getting rejected by women on a regular basis!
Scientists have long wondered why the sherpas of the Tibetan Highlands can negotiate with ease elevations that cause some humans to become life-threateningly ill. Tibetans live at altitudes of 13,000 feet, breathing air that has 40 percent less oxygen than is available at sea level, yet suffer very little mountain sickness. The reason, according to a team of biologists in China, is human evolution, in what may be the most recent and fastest instance detected so far.
Evolution rules. I love evolution!
:: The last known combat veteran of World War I is dead. So ends at last one of the stupidest damn wars in history.
More next week!
Today was the something-somethingth running of the Kentucky Derby, a sporting event that seems so civilized even though it involves guys getting on the backs of four-legged animals and then whipping their arses until they run really fast in a big circle. But anyway, I’ve always thought the names given to racehorses are kind of odd. I mean, who names their pet cat or dog “Animal Kingdom”, “Super Saver”, “War Emblem”, or any other multiple-word name? I’ve never understood this, but I was inspired to go on Twitter and rattle off a bunch of racehorse names I’d like to see.
Wants To Kill You
Slept With Your Mom
Owns A Burmese Sweatshop
You Killed My Father Prepare To Die
Han Shot First
Pooped In Your Backyard
iPhone Users Are Losers
Kirk Kicks Picard’s Ass
Spittle-Beflecked Rapscallion
Dreams Of Trampling Puppies
Begin The Zombie Uprising
Who Controls The British Crown
That Old Sumbitch
Beans Beans The Musical Fruit
Nathan Fillion Kicks Ass
My Jockey is A Drunken Thief
Amanda Hugginkiss
This Underwear Chafes My Backside
Bob Barker Says Spay Your Pets
Everything Is Better With A Bag Of Weed
And last but not least:
Only Dorks Wear Overalls
I love movies. I always feel like I don’t see enough movies, but I have seen a lot of movies, so I don’t think I’m a complete blockhead about movies. Anyhow, Michael May and Jason Bennion both did this, so I need to do this as well. It’s just a list of one hundred memories I have from movies. Some are from specific movies; others are specific movie-related memories I have. This is not a “Top 100”, though, and the numbering is just an organizational thing, not a ranking of any kind. (Although not entirely…I’m sure, as I start writing this, that Number One will end up being related to Star Wars in some way.) If I write this list again tomorrow, I am sure that I could come up with another 100 things I love about movies. Movies rule!
Here we go….
100. “I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts!” (When Harry Met Sally….)
99. “How did you manage to give me flowers and be President at the same time?”
“It turns out I’ve got a rose garden.” (The American President)
98. The couple in front of The Wife and I at Titanic. The guy was sitting still, but the lady was all over him. It was really bizarre, the contrast of her enthusiasm for making out with his apparent ambivalence.
97. Puss-in-Boots throwing up a hairball in Shrek 2. (You can’t tell me that movie wasn’t written by people who live with cats!)
96. The Ride of the Firemares from Krull:
95. Sean Connery as King Richard I (the Lion Heart) at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
94. “I don’t understand pressure? Well, flip you!” (The edited-for-teevee version of The Breakfast Club, with “flip” substituted for “f***”.)
93. At the end of Witness, when the cops are all there on the Lapp farm sorting things out, an emotionally and physically exhausted John Book is leaning against a police car smoking a cigarette.
92. In ninth grade English class, we did a unit on mystery stories, reading, among other things, The Hound of the Baskervilles. I talked my teacher that year into showing Dial M for Murder in class. At first, my classmates tittered and giggled a bit at some of the “old movie” type stuff, but they got engrossed pretty quickly…especially when Grace Kelly grabbed the pair of scissors….
91. Seeing Pulp Fiction the day after I watched Siskel and Ebert rave about it on their show, but before word-of-mouth had taken hold of the movie: the theater was empty except for me. Seeing Pulp Fiction again, three weeks later, when word-of-mouth had done its work: the theater was packed.
90. Many, many hours spent perusing film music sections at record stores.
89. Movie scenes putting me in the mood for specific foods. One example: there’s a scene in The Fugitive where Harrison Ford is studying evidence he’s gathered over a carton of Chinese takeout. I went straight to my local Chinese joint after the movie ended.
88. Speaking of food: popcorn! Glorious, wondrous popcorn. My love of popcorn knows few bounds. I can barely process the notion of a movie without popcorn. (In an episode of Good Eats, Alton Brown was snortingly dismissive of the kind of popcorn popper that I own. Well, as much as I love Alton Brown…screw him! I love the popcorn my popper makes, and if that means that I own a one-task kitchen gadget — something I usually try very hard to avoid in my kitchen — so be it. Harumph!)
87. “I would never hurt you, Margaret.” (Dead Again, a wonderful thriller from 1991 that nobody seems to talk about much these days. Just a delicious film that I watched over and over again in college, each time making sure that someone was in the room who hadn’t seen it, so I could watch their reactions to the film’s revelations as it went on. Love this movie!)
86. “Desolated, Mr. Bond?” “Heartbroken, Mr. Drax.” (Moonraker, my first ever James Bond movie. I wanted to see it because it was set in space and had laser pistols. I ended up being a James Bond fan for life.)
85. Seeing The X-Files: Fight the Future. I liked the movie a lot, but it’s particularly memorable because it played in my hometown at a theater which I refused to frequent (because the theater sucked). So The Wife and I came to Buffalo to see it…and experienced stadium seating in a theater for the first time.
84. I can’t remember what movie I saw that day, but once I was exiting the theater after seeing an afternoon show, and on my way out, I overheard a theater customer demanding her money back from the manager, not for any technical mishap or service-related issue, but because she hated the movie she had seen. I thought that was pretty amusing; my attitude on such things has always been, “You takes your chances.”
83. The Palace Theater in Olean, NY. It was probably a gorgeous place at one time, but by the time we moved to the area, it was a run-down dump. I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark there for the first time. The Palace was eventually demolished when it was determined that it would take Trumpian levels of money to bring the building back into any semblance of compliance with local code. I can’t remember what’s on the site now — there’s a boring Eckerd’s or Rite-aid or some such thing near there, but I can’t remember if that’s the site where the Palace was or now. The Palace was also the one theater I can recall where I never once had popcorn during a movie, because their popcorn was dispensed by an ancient-looking vending machine.
82. The morning after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came out. I hadn’t been able to go the night before (because I was being punished for having done something stupid that I don’t recall…but I probably deserved it). Of course, every one of my damn friends who had seen it had to tell me how awesome it was. Jerks, all of them. Jerks!
81. The look on Charlie Allnut’s face when he wakes up and realizes that Rosie has poured all of his whiskey out into the river. (The African Queen…which I really really really need to see again.)
80. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Still my favorite of the Original Series films. I saw this in college opening night, with a couple of friends and The Girlfriend (later The Wife). But on that night we’d had a concert in Cedar Falls, IA — the second installment of Wartburg College’s annual Christmas with Wartburg pageant. When the concert was over we changed very quickly and high-tailed it to the theater in the nearby mall. I loved the movie, and I got positively misty at the end, when the film closes with the signatures of the original cast members appearing on the screen, one by one, ending with William Shatner’s.
79. The nerdy kid trying to buy a pint of liquor in American Graffiti.
78. The first time I ever realized, while watching it, that I was seeing a crappy movie: some flick with Gary Coleman as a homeless kid who could predict horse races. I’m not bothering to look up the title.
77. The first foreign film I ever saw was a Fellini picture called Ginger e Fred, which is about a once-popular dance duo (who made their name impersonating Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers) reuniting thirty years later for a teevee variety show. We saw it at an art-film house in Pittsburgh. I don’t really recall the movie much at all, but I don’t remember disliking it.
76. “Stop blowin’ holes in my ship!” (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl)
75. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“Because I knew what would happen. All ‘mergers and acquisitions’, no ‘lust and tequila’.” (Working Girl)
74. The second time I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there was a guy in his 50s in the theater a few seats away from me and up a row or two. He had the best time seeing that movie I’ve ever seen anyone have. He was laughing at the funny parts, he cheered the “hero” parts, and when the bad guy shoots Henry Jones Sr., he yelled out, “Get him, Indy!” It was hilariously awesome, seeing someone enjoy a movie that much.
73. When the Star Wars Special Edition re-releases happened in 1997, there was a guy at the ticket counter demanding a refund because he didn’t realize that these were re-releases of the original movies. He’d thought he was about to see Episode One or Episode Seven or something.
72. Sophomore year of college, the second time I watched Casablanca. Roger Ebert has long held that the second viewing of Casablanca is always more effective than the first, and I tend to think that he’s right. I liked the movie the first time I saw it, during summer between my freshman and sophomore years. Watched it again four months later, though — and was so blown away that I would watch it every Sunday, after the early football game, for the next month and a half.
71. “We grew up in peacetime.” (Hear My Song. A movie I really need to see again.)
70. My single favorite expletive of all time: “Oh, fuck-wank-bugger-shitting-arse-head-and-hole.” Delivered with sterling perfecting by Bill Nighy in Love Actually, a movie which I love to the point that if you say something bad about it, I will fight you. That’s no lie.
69. If you don’t think this is the best song ever, I will fight you. That’s no lie. (I’m of the opinion that Will Farrell could read aloud from an automotive parts ordering book and make it comedy gold.)
68. The Daughter was all of a month old, if that, when we went to visit The In-laws. The Wife and I decided to take advantage of a bit of free babysitting to actually go see a movie by ourselves, so we went to see the Disney Tarzan. Not a great choice for two new parents who are still skittish about the whole baby thing, because in the first five minutes of the movie, there’s a baby whose parents are killed horribly, and two parents whose baby is killed horribly.
67. “Well, there’s something you don’t see every day.” (Dr. Peter Venkman on the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Ghostbusters)
66. Demi Moore in Ghost. And not just the scenes where she’s wearing overalls, either. Loved her in that movie.
65. Buffalo Bill stalking Clarice Starling in his basement, seeing her through the night-vision goggles…and when his hand enters the frame, reaching out for her, from his POV. I’ve never heard so many people scream at once in a movie theater.
64. Se7en, which is a masterpiece until the ending, when it flies off the rails more spectacularly than any movie I can ever remember.
63. “Are you Hootie?”
“No, I am not Hootie.” (Jerry Maguire)
62. “I like to think that the last thing that went through old Norden’s head, other than that bullet, was to wonder how in the Hell Andy Dufresne ever got the better of him.” (The Shawshank Redemption. I could probably do a list of 100 Things I Love About The Shawshank Redemption.)
61. I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey at a science fiction convention in Portland, OR. I was nine years old, and I didn’t really understand the movie all that well. Or so I thought. Later on I would realize that I had understood quite a lot of it and just hadn’t realized that I’d understood quite a lot of it. This was my first experience with science fiction that wasn’t space opera. I still prefer space opera, but there’s room in my SF life for the other stuff.
60. I wasn’t all about space movies, sci-fi, and action-adventure as a kid. I went to see Coal Miner’s Daughter with my mother because I genuinely wanted to see Coal Miner’s Daughter. And I liked it, even being eight or nine at the time. I remember being terribly upset that the nice lady who helped Loretta Lynn early in her career, a Patsy something, died in a plane crash. That’s not fair, dammit!
59. Across the Universe. I adore this film.
58. Another sign that I was the weird kid: I saw Gandhi in theaters when it came out, twice. It made quite the impression.
57. Other movies I remember seeing at the afore-mentioned Palace Theater in Olean, NY: Blade Runner, The Right Stuff, La Bamba, The Princess Bride, Roxanne.
56. “Lina, you’ve never looked lovlier!” (Cosmo Brown (Donald O’Connor) to Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), after Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) has missed Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) with a cake and thrown it into Lina’s face instead, in Singin’ in the Rain.)
55. The swordfight at the end of Rob Roy.
54. All the scary scenes in The Exorcist, most of which are set in a brightly lit room. Who needs dark to be scary!
53. At the end of my junior year of college, The Girlfriend (now The Wife) and I went to see Far and Away for our final date until later that summer. (She stayed in Iowa because she had a job; I went home.) That’s the cheesy Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman “Irish immigrants achieve the American Dream” flick. I still have a soft spot in my heart for that movie.
52. I remember the crowd in the theater cheering at the sight of Cowboys coach Barry Switzer glowering after his team lost to the Cardinals at the end of Jerry Maguire. Heh!
51. I was dead set against going to see The Karate Kid. It looked so stupid and cheesy. I was angry at my mother when she dragged me to see it. And then I loved it. Oh well….
50. “People don’t commit murder on credit!” (Dial M for Murder)
49. “That guy’s cropdustin’ where there ain’t no crops.” (North by Northwest)
48. “It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a man. You take away everything he’s got and everything he’s ever gonna have.” (Unforgiven)
47. Watching Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke more than a year after I fell in love with its score (by Joe Hisaishi).
46. “You guys have dropped enough sonar buoys in the North Atlantic that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without gettin’ his feet wet, so can we dispense with the bull?” (The Hunt for Red October — perhaps the best script, dialog-wise, ever written for an action thriller.)
45. The impromptu “Tiny Dancer” from Almost Famous.
44. Drew Struzan, poster-artist extraordinaire:
43. “Oh, you English are sooo superior, aren’t you? Well, do you know what you’d be without us, the USA, to protect you? The smallest f***ing province in the Russian Empire!” (A Fish Called Wanda)
42. “Both knew this was a one way ticket
I love you wife” (The Abyss, which I will forever hold to be a criminally underrated SF movie masterpiece.)
41. Dori speaking Whale in Finding Nemo (still my favorite Pixar film).
40. “I Sing the Body Electric”, from Fame. (What Glee could be, if it had any guts at all.)
39. “Leave the gun. Grab the canoli.” (The Godfather — I’m not a fan of the “Mob flick” genre, but this is indisputably an amazing film.)
38. Bob Peak, poster artist extraordinaire:
37. “You Can Fly”, from Peter Pan
36. The first half of Braveheart, up to and including the Battle of Stirling. (The second half is very good, but the film does lose a bit of steam after that first huge battle.)
35. John McClane makes two bullets count at the end of Die Hard.
34. Jerry Goldsmith.
33. “Kirk, I thank you. What you have done–“
“What I have done, I had to do.”
“But at what cost? Your ship, your son.”
“If I hadn’t tried, the cost would have been my soul.” (Star Trek III: The Search for Spock)
32. “I’ll be right here.” (E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial)
31. “Was that over the top? I never can tell!” (The Riddler, Batman Forever — which is my favorite of the first group of Batman films.)
30. John Wayne in Stagecoach, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, True Grit.
29. Superman smiles at the camera, at the end of every Superman movie. (The first Superman is still my favorite superhero movie, ever.)
28. I don’t care if you laugh. I liked The Notebook.
27. Salieri takes dictation from Mozart, in Amadeus. An amazing scene.
This scene is astonishing — the way Salieri is both taking advantage of Mozart and providing him a service; he’s doing both good and evil at the same time. And the way he still has to struggle to understand what is, for Mozart, as clear as day — perfectly illustrative of the film’s theme of mediocrity contrasted with genius, and Salieri’s curse of being just good enough to know how bad he is.
26. “There’s a war on! How is it you are headed west?”
“Well, we face to the north and then real subtle-like turn left.” (The Last of the Mohicans)
25. “You don’t want to be in love, you want to be in love in a movie.” (Sleepless in Seattle)
24. The first appearance of Adult Tristan (Brad Pitt) in Legends of the Fall.
23. The last ten minutes of As Good As It Gets.
22. John Barry.
21. “What do I tell the kids?”
“Tell them I’ve gone fishing.” (Jaws)
20. The opening credits of Saturday Night Fever, which are done in the same font as American Graffiti and Happy Days, but in garish red instead of the happy yellow of the earlier film and teevee show, set in more innocent times.
19. “Go get ’em, Tiger!” (Spiderman 2)
18. “Spiderpig, spiderpig! Does whatever a spiderpig does!” (The Simpsons Movie)
17. The pod race, The Phantom Menace
16. Obi Wan Kenobi, private eye, Attack of the Clones
15. The first time we see Jack Sparrow. Captain Jack Sparrow.
14. The time warp: It’s just a jump to the left! (Rocky Horror Picture Show)
13. Miklos Rozsa.
12. Joe Hisaishi.
11. Yoda and Obi Wan, last of the Jedi, take on the two Sith Lords in Revenge of the Sith.
10. Luke Skywalker comes this close to turning to the Dark Side in Return of the Jedi.
9. “We’re the only ones who know! The only ones!” (Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
8. Howard Shore.
7. All of The Empire Strikes Back.
6. The Lord of the Rings. All of it. I could write a 100 Things post about LOTR alone. (Hmmmm…there’s an idea….)
5. “I love you. I know I’ll never find another girl like you. Will you marry me?” (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.)
4. “I Could Have Danced All Night” (My Fair Lady).
3. Casablanca, and as far as I’m concerned, the greatest single long close-up in movie history.
2. John Williams.
1. Was there any doubt?
