indefinite articles

In August of 2001, I went on vacation with my parents to Hawaii. For some reason, my parents’ itinerary focused mostly on towns and shops, rather than taking in God’s green-blue earth, and since most Hawaiian towns seem to consist of the same six stores repeated ad nauseam, I was a bit bored. So, I ended up spending the trip reclining on hotel balconies, eating Goldfish crackers and reading.

I finished four books over the course of the vacation, and their character gives some indication of what a moody bitch I was that week: American Psycho, The Monk by Matthew Lewis (one of the original Gothic novels), Notes from the Underground, and Chuck Palahniuk’s Choke. Basically, I was being a little dick, and I was proud of it.

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Like anyone trapped in a state of suspended adolescence, I’ve made a name for myself in realms as far-flung as Zebes, Castlevania, Floating Island, and the Mushroom Kingdom. I’ve pillaged Bowser’s fiery keep more times than I can count — though, granted, it helps that he always leaves an ax standing behind his rickety suspension bridge. But through it all, I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that I’m not actually a fan of video games. I’m a fan of Mega Man.

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Less than a year after the release of No Country For Old Men, perhaps the best movie of 2007, the Coen brothers are back with Burn After Reading. The last time there was such a short lapse between films, Los Bros Coen gave us their worst film,The Ladykillers, so there is reason to be concerned that their latest endeavor might leave something to be desired.

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Robert De Niro and Al Pacino seem, in many ways, to be interchangeable, peddlars of the same unique brand of high-art ultraviolent cinema and Academy Award-winning gravitas. Through them, we have been able to vicariously live all of our sickest immoral power fantasies. It would seem obvious then, to have long ago put them in a movie together. After all, wouldn’t the power fantasy then be twice as good?

On the contrary, it seems as though their mutual kinetic energy, like some kind of opposing magnetic force, continually pushes them apart — perhaps, a la Time Cop, if their flesh were to touch they would spontaneously cease to exist. Yet at the same time, another force, albeit a much weaker one, seems to be pulling them ever closer together, one small step at a time.

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Quick, what do you get when you cross the protagonist from any high-grossing movie from the past year, a pop culture celebrity, and a cliched comedic trope? If you’re one of the millions who have seen one of the many spoof movies penned by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer over the past several years, you probably already know the answer to this one. The response of the millions of viewers who have seen Date Movie, Epic Movie or Scary Movie 3 has been nearly unanimous: “a steaming pile of crap.”

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This Preemptive Strike is part of a cross-post between Indefinite Articles and The Eaten Path. You can read Jake Mix’s full review of Chili’s here.

In March 2008, Men’s Health Magazine unveiled its declaration against the twenty worst foods in America. The announcement arrived as part of a marketing campaign for editor-in-chief David Zinczenko and nutrition editor Matt Goulding’s new book, Eat This, Not That!, which sets America’s most frequented fast food and family restaurant chains in the crosshairs of the simplest of nutritional analyses. Fans of modest self-improvement hailed Eat This, Not That!’s approach as a shield against the disorienting avalanche of fats, salts and sweets that make it nearly impossible for American consumers to navigate the uphill struggle towards a healthier lifestyle.

The most salient revelation of Zinczenko and Goulding’s efforts, however, lies in the fact that eight of the twenty worst foods in America are served at restaurants owned by Brinker International. Currently the world’s second largest casual dining corporation, Brinker has managed to construct a multinational bad taste obesity empire fueled by America’s very tendency to eat That!, not This.

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There was a time when the first few notes of the Star Wars theme song would get me high. My heart would beat faster, my eyes would dilate, and my mind would go completely blank in preparation for nirvana. I was a junkie, and George Lucas was my dealer. So what happened? Prequels, that’s what happened.

As if Episodes I-III weren’t already the crack to the original trilogy’s cocaine, we now have meth in the form of the CGI film Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which is not to be confused with Star Wars: Clone Wars. Well, I guess it’s only appropriate that The Clone Wars is the Star Wars death rattle for me, considering that the introduction of computer graphics was the beginning of the end.

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You’ve experienced it before. The acting is broad and exaggerated. The situations are absurd, and keep getting more and more ridiculous. There’s a comedian in the lead role, so you look at the back of the DVD case to see whether the movie’s supposed to be filed under comedy. You start looking for things that are supposed to be jokes or gags, but they’re not there.

You’ve entered the world of the uncanny comedy. While some dark satires — Brazil, Southland Tales, anything authored by Bret Easton Ellis — may deliberately use the devices of an uncanny comedy for unsettling effect, and to lampoon social constructs and vices, other films fall into this universe unintentionally. Films like Gung Ho. Hudson Hawk. An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn. And, perhaps, Tropic Thunder.

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It’s been six years since The X-Files, the proto-Lost that never managed to figure itself out, went off the air. And as far as I can tell, it’s been ten years since anyone actually watched it, or could bring themselves to care. And yet, on Friday, the second film spawned by the show, is coming out in theaters.

The subtitle, I Want to Believe, reads to me as a reluctant admission to the questionable timeliness of it’s release. At this point, the show seems like a relic, its deadpan seriousness from an era when TV was seemingly divorced entirely from style. Clearly, there is something deeper going on here, some invisible hand with a hidden agenda silently pulling the strings in the shadows. But who? And why?

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I suppose I should start by admitting that my knowledge of Batman, and comics in general, is minimal. Furthermore, I confess that my interest in expanding my knowledge on the topic is lukewarm at best. On my list of Things to Do So I Can Be Awesome, it is above learning to play the ukulele, but below mushroom hunting. I am hopeful, however, that my naivete might provide for some interesting insights on the matter of the Batman.

Television was the foundation of my childhood existence. In the summers I’d lie in my plastic pool pretending I was somewhere far away until I got tired of imagining and wandered into the refrigerated comfort of the den. There I would sit on the cool wood floor in my towel and wait for the TV to take me somewhere my imagination couldn’t.

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