A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Married to the sea

APCB is on something of a hiatus this week, as the family is vacationing in a spacious beach house in Galveston, courtesy of the lovely and talented CS family. She Who Shall Not Be Named is up to three visits a day to the beach, where she demonstrates her true loyalties by showing no distress when Mom or me leaves her with The Father-in-Law to be pummeled by the waves.

Dinner tonight was courtesy of the plethora of sand trout we caught of the jetties earlier. Now it's a cigar and a cocktail or three on the deck overlooking the ocean. The Gulf may not be the prettiest body of water, but on a breezy April night it'll do just fine.

See you next week.

"Mr. Simpson, under Nevada law, bigamy - or "Mormon hold 'em" - is perfectly legal."

We have a cleaning lady who comes over to the house every two weeks. Now, before you start lobbing any bourgeois cracks, I will say that - before certain other circumstances arose - the tidying up of our house was the only real source of conflict. As in, a certain member of this matrimonial union (the one who doesn't have a blog) rarely did any.

Of course, like everyone else who's too chincy to pay for it on a weekly basis, we spend a decent chunk of time the night before "pre-cleaning," a practice so stupid I could barely put it into words:

Pete [sweeping the kitchen floor]: Why the fuck am I doing this when the maid is coming tomorrow? This is material for a bad stand-up routine.
The Wife: We need to become Mormons.
Pete: Buh?
The Wife : So we can get another wife.
Pete: That's not the LDS, it's the FLDS, and you...you really wouldn't have a problem with this?
The Wife: Oh, she'd just be doing the cleaning. But yeah, I'd give up Diet Coke for that.
Pete: That would be pretty sweet. I'm not wearing a tie, though.

And you'll pry Central Market's Kauai blend from my cold, dead hands.

Spiritus sancti

A few things rub me the wrong way about The Spirit teaser that showed up recently:

Look familiar? I can't decide what chaps my ass more: that the whole thing is billed as "based on the comic book series created by Will Eisner" - who actually wrote the damn thing for close to 40 years - or that Lionsgate and Frank Miller seem to be presenting this as more or less a sequel to Sin City.

Or that Scarlett "Are My Boobs Distracting You From My Inability to Perform Even the Most Rudimentary Acting Techniques?" Johansson is in it.

And is it "chaps" or "chaffs" "chafes" my ass? I can never get that straight.

"Why always Boris?"

Just about every time I see a movie at the Edwards Marq*E the ticket taker is this interesting fellow named - for purposes of this discussion - "Gavrilo." Gavrilo is of indeterminate European origin, though his accent leads me to suspect Slavic ancestry. He's in his mid-40s and looks like a cross between Eastern Promises vintage Viggo Mortensen and that big bastard Bruce Willis kills in the elevator in Die Hard 3. He has a flattop, meaty forearms, and a number of distinctly homemade looking tats, leading me to believe he's either:

1) A Soviet-era gangster on the lam from Jim Belushi and Arnold Schwarzenegger, or

2) Ex-Serbian Special Forces. His sentence for wartime atrocities? Working as the only guy over the age of 25 in an American movie theater.

Still, the dude says 'hi' to me and waves me in without question whenever I show up for a screening, and I suspect he'd do the same even on non-promo nights. I'm not too keen on testing that, however; because he remains, along with Not Suge Knight from Mission Burrito, one of the only elements of potential danger in my lame Wonder Bread life.

With apologies to Rick Blaine

I don't mind a sexual predator masquerading as the spiritual head of a Christian school, I object to a cut-rate one:

Tamiku [Robertson] is talking about her conversations with the co-founder of Parkway Christian School in Spring. Lavern Jordan offered to waive $300 in enrollment fees at Parkway Christian School in exchange for sex.
[...]
Jordan: "Excuse me and I don't mean to be so blunt but I am talking about f------ you, Tamiku."

Robertson: "You talking about what?"

Jordan: "F------ you."

Jordan: "For the $300 I would expect maybe we could get together several times, you think?"

What balls. Not only does the guy prey on mothers who want to get their kids into Parkway, he's haggling over how far those three bills will get him. Later on, Jordan also balks at actually getting a hotel room, suggesting they just "park out back" of the local La Quinta.

I love this town.

Maybe it was something I said

In case it isn't readily apparent from my crappy digital camera's output, two of our neighbors are selling their houses:

It's a bummer, because we're friends with both households, especially the next-door folks. Trey and his family have been regular guests at our cookouts, and I've drank many a beer and lost many a hand of poker at his table. They'll be missed.

But not so much that I'm going to stop screaming "Allāhu Akbar! out the window every time he shows someone the house. That's payback for four years of annoying barking dachsund.

He's gotten pretty quick about hustling prospective buyers inside.

Sweet little XVI

Pope's ahoy:

Pope Benedict XVI tempered his praise for American religious tolerance on Wednesday with a warning that U.S. society can quietly undermine Catholicism by reducing all faiths to a lowest common denominator.

Addressing the nation's Catholic bishops, the German-born pope said the U.S. Church could not drop its guard against relativism just because faith plays a larger part in public life in the United States than it does in more secularized Europe.

A strong individualist streak in American culture leads some Catholics "to pick and choose," following Church doctrines they like and ignoring others, he said during a long speech on challenges facing Roman Catholicism in the United States.

"Picking and choosing" being less forgivable than the more or less constant state of revision the Church itself has been going under since the 1950s, I suppose.

"Faith becomes a passive acceptance that certain things 'out there' are true, but without practical relevance for everyday life," he said. "The result is a growing separation of faith from life, living 'as if God did not exist."'

"We have seen this emerge in an acute way in the scandal given by Catholics who promote an alleged right to abortion."

All evidence to the contrary, we're not a religious state a la The Vatican. So I'd thank his pontifness to respect the fact that there is still an actual right to choose in this country.

But while he's bringing up scandals:

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday addressed issues ranging from the sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church to the easy availability of pornography to the "alarming decrease" in Catholic marriages in the United States.
[...]
Benedict said the sexual abuse of children by priests has caused a "deep shame" and called it "gravely immoral behavior."

"Many of you have spoken to me of the enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed ... their obligations," he told the bishops.

Responding to the situation has not been easy and was sometimes very badly handled, the pope admitted.

"Sometimes." Because hush money and relocation weren't indicative of a focused strategy by the Church itself. Got it.

The pope then turned his attention to a different concern involving kids.

"What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?" he asked.

Benedict urged the media and entertainment industry to take part in a "moral renewal."

Way to pass the buck: "Sure, we had still untold numbers of clergy molesting children, but what about you people with the HBO/Showtime packages from DirecTV? Isn't the fact that 13-year olds can sneak out of bed and watch Shannon Tweed take a shower the moral equivalent of institutionally supported abuse?"

I kid. Obviously some good has come from Catholicism.

Meet the new Boss

Good as the old Boss.

Saw Bruce Springsteen at the Toyota Center last night. Maybe it was because we had seats in the section with its own bar, and maybe it was because everyone around us was actually a fan (unlike when we saw him on the Rising tour in 2002), but it was a fantastic show that hit on all cylinders, and easily one of my favorite concert experiences in recent memory, if not of all time.

The setlist:

"Cadillac Ranch" - A nice rollicking opener, even if this one's probably in my secondary tier of Bruce songs.
"Radio Nowhere" - Bruce knows to stick with the more popular new stuff. Most of the crowd recognizes this one and gets into it.
"Lonesome Day" - No drop off, as they continue with one of the better tunes from The Rising
"Atlantic City" - And then...one of my all-time favorites is the fourth song in. Dallas got "Prove it All Night," I'll take this.
"Magic" - I didn't know this one right off the bat. Several people go for beers.
"Because the Night" - Bit of a surprise, but a welcome one. Please reclaim this from Natalie Merchant.
"Candy's Room" - The first down point for me, but only because I've never been that fond of it.
"She's the One" - Or this one.
"Out in the Street" - Wa oh ah oh oh...now we're on the trolley.
"Living in the Future" - The first song Bruce sings to the poor bastards behind the stage. Also the first (that I heard) to elicit some groans from some nearby old white people for his leftist commentary. If you paid $90 for a ticket to see the Boss without knowing his political leanings, ain't you de fool.
"The Promised Land" - Just great. The high points continue.
"Girls in Their Summer Clothes" - Or not. Not a bad song, but playing "AC" and "BtN" early on has whet my appetite for older stuff.
"The E Street Shuffle" - Played by special request. Haven't heard this in eons.
"Terry's Song" - I had to tell one of our concert companions to shut up for this one, which might be my favorite from the new album.
"Devil's Arcade" - Not bad, but everyone knows the big guns are just around the corner.
"The Rising" - A rousing number, especially when combined with...
"Last to Die" - Presented with little commentary, but riveting just the same.
"Long Walk Home"
"Badlands"
"Thunder Road" - Wow. You know, you could close out a show with those two and not many people would complain. We weren't even two hours in at that point, however.

"Always a Friend" - w/Alejandro Escovedo
"All Just to get to You" - w/Joe Ely - These were great surprises. I was a True Believers fan back in the day and it was great to see Alejandro back in the saddle, and Ely is great fun live. These songs were a real high point.
"Rosalita"
"Born to Run"
"10th Avenue Freeze Out"
"American Land"

Not much to add to that. Closing out with those three plus "Land" was just awesome.

Here's a thumbnail of the official list, which can be found at brucespringsteen.net. Looks like we were supposed to get "Point Blank," and "Murder, Inc." instead of "Because the Night," but I'm not complaining.

I'm bummed there was no "No Surrender," which he's played at a number of dates this tour, or "Darkness on the Edge of Town," but that's mere nitpicking. Just a great, great show. Even at 58, the dude rocks harder than guys a third his age - including yours truly, who has a sore throat from bellowing along with "Born to Run" - and acts like he's having a hell of a time doing it.

To quote Rob Gordon, "Thanks, Boss."

For Your Review - 4/11 - 4/13

My review of Street Kings went up yesterday. 1.5 stars out of five. Keanu Reeves does a poor Martin Riggs, and corruption runs rampant in the LAPD. Who knew?

Also, in response to the rising number of movies opening with no advance press screening, We've started a new feature called "Sight Unseen," where I offer a speculative account unblemished by actual, y'know, facts. The first installment is for Prom Night, which I bet you didn't know was Ingmar Bergman's final film:

The climax is a special effects spectacular that - in spite of the profusion of exploding heads - still retains that je ne sais quois of Bergman's.

You get the idea. The tricky thing will be keeping online review aggregators from picking it up. Speaking of which, I better go check Metacritic.

"Just so you don't hear any wild rumors, I'm being indicted for fraud in Australia."

Settle an internal debate for me:

Yes, I know it's AC/DC, slashes apparently screw up PollHost's code.

"Someone else" can include anyone but Silverchair, Divinyls, and Wolfmother, because they suck. If you choose this answer, please elaborate.

"It's the cops!"
"Worse...the Police Cops."

Saw Street Kings - that new bad cop/bad cop movie starring Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker - tonight. I commented to a fellow critic that it seemed to have been written in 1988 to capitalize on the Lethal Weapon franchise. He replied that casting Eric Roberts and Don "The Dragon" Wilson could only improve the finished product.

Yeah, it wasn't good.

There was one curious incident, however. At one point, Reeve's character is questioning a gang member (played by rapper The Game) about the murder of his ex-partner, augmenting his questions with multiple (like, dozens of) blows from a phone book. Now, tonight's screening was sponsored by 97.9 The Box, a local hip-hop radio station, and the audience was not so coincidentally about 75% African-American. The overwhelming response to a fairly blatant depiction of white cop on black suspect brutality? Wild cheers and applause. I was a bit surprised, especially since a Rodney King reference had already been made.

Maybe there were a lot of 50 Cent fans in attendance.

Bad TV Ponderings - High School Reunion

I blame the writer's strike.

We weren't that much of a reality TV household, really. There was the first season of Survivor, and the odd episode of Top Chef, and of course my long-standing love of COPS, which isn't so much a "reality" show as it is an art form unto itself.

So while we were casting our viewing net a little wider, we reconnected with some old favorites (No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain), discovered some mediocre fill-ins (Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares), and hit upon one charity case, namely High School Reunion.

Having fessed up to this, I feel I should present my excuses. First, these people graduated the same year I did (1987), and I must confess no small amount of morbid curiosity regarding relative levels of fatness and hair loss among the cast. Second, they're also from Texas. Granted, Richardson (a suburb of Dallas) is whiter and more affluent than College Station ever was, but Lone Star State solidarity counts for something.

Or it did. Until I started watching these douchebags.

I'm not a complete idiot: I realize that so-called "reality" shows are always edited to make things more interesting than they actually are while not-so-subtly trying to get us to side with certain personalities. So naturally they're going to make the Jock with the recently deceased wife the sympathetic protagonist, while the Drama Queen will - of course - be a drama queen. The Stud "surprisingly" shows glimpses of self-awareness, the Bully is slower to anger, and the Lesbian may only be bi-curious, etc. And I guess it's hard not to lapse into familiar high school territory (drunken hot tubbing, non-penetrating makeout sessions) when you're back with your old chums, but this is the first show to come along in a while that actually makes me resent myself for watching it. And I watch Cheaters.

The thing is, I can't decide if I'm honestly put off by the cast's obvious shallowness or if it's one of those "staring into the abyss" things.

Two of the "storylines" are, admittedly, mildly engrossing. For example, there's the Pipsqueak; one of those late bloomers who came into his own after graduation and wastes no time here hooking up with the Popular Girl he always had a crush on. But as great authors like Thomas Wolfe and...Erma Bombeck...have taught us, wanting something is often more satisfying than having it, and the Pipsqueak proves himself a normal guy in more than stature as he does his best to engineer a poist-coital withdrawal.

Then there's the token Geek, brought into the mix midway through the season, to confront the Bully who terrorized him throughout his teen years. Unfortunately, the prospect of Jolt-fueled vengeance quickly dissipates when the nerd allows himself to be assimilated by the popular clique, undermining the cause of victimized dweebs everywhere. Worst of all, it culminates in his playing golf with them. I almost tore my copy of Dieties and Demigods in twain out of rage (barely in time did I remember it was a rare first edition).

For a while I blamed John Hughes for the ongoing trend of reducing high school to simple personality archetypes, but apparently he wasn't too far off the mark. More likely, the ones that allow themselves to be easily categorized make for better TV.

At any rate, it's comforting to know that the high school lesbians in Richardson had to fake interest in guys just like their College Station counterparts. Specifically, the ones I dated.

I wish I was joking.

For your review

I saw two of this week's openers, and the reviews are up for your scorn and derision.

Leatherheads *** - In my eyes, Clooney really hasn't done wrong since Ocean's Twelve. This is, as Douglas Adams might say, "mostly harmless." And as an added plus, Zellweger isn't all that annoying.

The Ruins ** - I can't tell if reading the book made me harsher on the film than I normally would've been, but then I remember author Scott Smith also wrote the screenplay, so likely had some measure of control over the uninspiring finished product. I'm not mad; I'm disappointed

I've also been dicking around with a new feature at Film Threat that should be debuting in the next couple weeks. I'll be sure to nag you with news of its arrival when the time comes.

"You're going to have to go back and suck the poison out."

Excerpt from a recent visit to the doctor:

Dr. F: So just wear loose fitting shorts for a while. Anything else?
Pete: Nope. Well, actually, I've been getting these twitches around my eye.
Dr. F: Any pain or blurred vision?
Pete: No, it's just like a tic. I thought it had to do with how much time I spend looking at a monitor, but it happens on the weekends sometimes.
Dr. F: Yeah, that's not uncommon.
Pete: How do you treat it?
Dr. F: The usual...get more sleep, cut back on caffeine...
Pete: ...so, you're saying it can't be treated.

I've since discovered that having a couple of extra drinks each night take care of the problem. Take that, Baylor College of Medicine.

"Dad, those are all from the same animal."
"Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal."

I see the Citizens Against Government Waste have again released the Pig Book, their annual list of barn sides to fire rounds at:

A watchdog group critical of pork barrel spending released its latest findings Wednesday targeting the top Congressional "porkers."

Some of the pork projects, according to the group, include a Lobster Institute; the Rocky Flats, Colorado, Cold War Museum; and the First Tee, a program to build young people's character through golf.

Members of Congress requested funds for all these pet projects and thousands of others last year, according to the latest copy of the annual "Pig Book" released by Citizens Against Government Waste.

"Congress stuffed 11,610 projects" worth $17.2 billion into a dozen spending bills, the group said in the report released Wednesday.

The "Pig Book" names dozens of what the citizens group considers the most egregious porkers, the lawmakers who funnel money to projects on their home turf.

And what are some of the highlights of the CAGW's exhaustive search, according to the CNN story?

Fruit flies - Mike Thompson (D-CA): Thompson requested $211,000 for olive fruit fly research. The olive fruit fly has infested thousands of acres of California's olive crops.

The First Tee - James Clyburn (R-SC): Added $3 million to the defense appropriations bill for an initiative to teach "life lessons" to young people through golf. 48 states have chapters.

Sheep - Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Jon Tester (D-MT): The Montana Sheep Institute gets almost $150,000 to develop and implement strategies that will increase the competitiveness of Montana's lamb and wool industries.

Lobster - Thomas Allen (D-ME), and Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME): $188,000 for the Lobster Institute to "sustain both the lobster resource and a viable lobster fishery through conservation, outreach, research, and education."

Walking Tour - Virgil Goode (R-VA): $98,000 for a historical walking tour in the town of Boydton.

Excuse me, I'm having a Capt. Renault moment again. Look, I know that it's unbelievably offensive to our sensibilities that elected representatives funnel money to their respective districts/states, and that $17.2 billion spread out across 11,000+ projects comes out to, like, a lot of money. But has anyone from the CAGW been to Montana or Maine? These states actually depend on sheep and lobster for their economic well-being, so maybe throwing a few hundred grand at University-sponsored initiatives to make sure the industries stay viable isn't such a ca-razy idea. And a walking tour? Encouraging historical activities? Does $98K cover more than a few tour guides and materials? I think not.

Okay, the golf thing does sound pretty lame. But $3 million for something that spans 48 states doesn't sound that egregious.

The funny thing - no, really, you'll laugh your ass off - is that $17 billion is only $5 billion more than the Iraq War costs per month (not counting interest on the national debt, of course). The CAGW is all up in arms about ivory backscratchers, meanwhile the tab on Bush's war is likely going to end up costing taxpayers close to $3 trillion.

Think of how many lobster studies that could fund.

"I've given out my share of bad reviews."
"Oh, the only bad review you gave was to a slice of pizza you found under the couch."

Can't say this is much of a surprise:

Nathan Lee, one of The Village Voice's two full-time critics, was laid off last week by Village Voice Media, a large chain of alternative weeklies that has been cutting down the number of critics it employs across the country.

The week before, two longtime critics at Newsday -- Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour -- took buyouts, along with their editor. And at Newsweek, David Ansen is among 111 staff members taking buyouts, according to a report in Radar.

They join critics at more than a dozen daily newspapers (including those in Denver, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale) and several alternative weeklies who have been laid off, reassigned or bought out in the past few years, deemed expendable at a time when revenues at print publications are declining, under pressure from Web alternatives and a growing recession in media spending.

Given that movie blogs are strewn about the Web like popcorn on a theater floor, there are those who say that movie criticism is not going away, it's just appearing on a different platform.

A different, cheaper platform.

I've been the mainstream movie critic at Film Threat for...four years now, and while I enjoy the fact no one butchers my reviews and I can pretty much call my shots in terms of upcoming releases, I'm under no illusions about the financial viability of my hobby.

And a hobby it will remain, apparently. Lee (who I enjoyed reading) and Ansen are were pretty big names in the world of film criticism. At this point, I don't know what's more disturbing: that some of the heaviest hitters in the field are being forced out, or that Pete Hammond's expulsion from Maxim wasn't a response to years of public outrage but simply a cost-cutting move. And one that was ahead of the curve at that.

Despite Samuel Butler's long ago suggestion that critics arrive at their occupation because of their general unfitness for anything else, they can be a cultural good, championing films that lack crowd-pleasing content or the financial wherewithal to muscle their way into public consciousness. Mr. Lee, for example, named "Southland Tales" the best film of last year. Never heard of the postnuclear, semi-futuristic portrait of Los Angeles directed by Richard Kelly ("Donnie Darko")? That's very much the point. "Criticism is treated as a kind of product, and that is inevitably going to favor bigger national releases," said Owen Gleiberman, a critic at Entertainment Weekly. "That The Village Voice doesn't want to pay for two staff movie critics is a joke," he added. "There is so much to cover."

Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, said in an e-mail message that the company, which owns 17 newspapers, continues to have a serious commitment to covering film.

Print media critics remain the only ones whose opinions really have that kind of impact. A groundswell can start online, but it isn't until folks like Ebert or Hoberman or Scott pick up on it that it has any significant impact. On the other hand, no amount of negative criticism can derail some movies, whether it's on a web site or the nation's biggest print daily.

Which is why Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, and Brett Ratner still have careers.

But are print critics really so all-important and sacrosanct with the Web full of debates about all manner of film in places like indiewire.com, cinematical.com and blog.spout.com?

"Honestly, I think that a lot of the viewers of serious films have already migrated to the Web," said S. T. VanAirsdale, a senior editor at defamer.com and the founder of thereeler.com, a site devoted to coverage of the New York film world. "Serious movies can always be helped by a boost from anywhere, but almost anyone who is interested can find plenty of information about a film before it even opens because of all the coverage in the blogs about festivals and screenings."

Both areas have their strengths. With print criticism, you're more likely (though certainly not always) to be exposed to someone with more than a few years' experience who can actually construct a fucking paragraph. The article's likening of movie web sites to popcorn on a theater floor is apt not just because of their sheer number, but because almost all of them are unpalatable. And I admit it galls me a bit that, well, Robert Wilonsky says it better than I could:

They and people like them--say, Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles, who accepts studio-funded trips to movie sets and is still taken seriously by movie execs as a film critic, despite being quasi-literate--are why the studios can trim the "interview" time from 60 minutes to half an hour. They know they'll get good pub regardless of the setup--an hour in a restaurant, a handshake in a hotel room, a howdy on a movie set. Those bearing cameras and recorders are just happy to breathe the rarefied air of celebrities, collect their goodie bags full of logo-covered crap and share the same prepackaged quotes that spread like Colorado wildfire the days before and after a movie's release

But for continuing and more or less immediate coverage of festivals and movies the studios want to hide from the press, the web is the way to go. What's that, DreamWorks, you're not screening The Ruins until 10 PM the Thursday before it opens? Yeah, that'll suck for newspapers, who have to put their issue to bed at 8:00, but we doughty online types can bang out a review and have it up by 1 AM West Coast time.

Or we could, if our Leatherheads review wasn't running on Friday.

The apparent demise of the print critic isn't just because of the dire financial state of our nation's newspapers and the influx of cheap online labor from Mexico, but because the studios have been making a concerted effort for several years now to eliminate the industry itself. They've already proven that withholding almost every horror movie and a sizeable chunk of comedies from reviewers doesn't affect opening weekend grosses in the slightest, so that trend is only going to widen.

Meanwhile, some critics have realized a modicum of fame can be garnered by peppering their reviews with gushing quotes that may (ohpleaseohplease) get picked up in a film's print of TV ad campaign.This, unfortunately, doesn't get them fast-tracked onto the "must hire" list for the Los Angeles Times. But who knows? Maybe it gets them invited to that mystical junket that only "special" critics are allowed to attend; where stars and directors grant 3-hour exclusive interviews and they even get a special "thank you" during the closing credits.

Yeah. Guess I need to keep working on that novel.

"Who's the U-boat commander?"

I realize 'stina's entry about manual transmissions had more to do with the hazards of driving in the Bay Area than my formative years, but indulge me:

My father, you see, was a Porsche driver in our formative driving years, and at some point before I got my license, we made the huge, huge mistake of showing him Risky Business. As a result, he made sure that none of us, while we were teenagers at least, had a clue as to how to drive a standard transmission, lest his beloved 928 end up at the bottom of a pond.

The only car I've ever driven that didn't have a manual transmission was my first one (the previously mentioned Brown Battleship). I find they offer superior mileage in these expensive times, and encourage drivers to actually - you know - pay attention to what they're doing.

But what I really want to talk about is Risky Business.

For starters, it's clearly Tom Cruise's best movie (The Wife would argue for A Few Good Men, but she - like so many of our generation - are afflicted by a blind spot for Aaron Sorkin). Directed by the enigmatic Paul Brickman, who went on to helm a grand total of one other movie, it's a flick with something for everybody: a naked Rebecca De Mornay, Guido the Killer Pimp, dreams of failing your finals, that Tangerine Dream score, Curtis Armstrong's movie debut, the rampant symbolism (Basshole - wasn't it your brother who wrote the term paper about the use of red, white, and blue?), "Looks like University of Illinois!" Great stuff.

And my fondness for it has a lot to do with when I first saw it. Risky Business was released in 1983, which was my 8th grade year. Normally, such R-rated fare would've flown under my radar until it showed up on HBO and I had the chance to sneak out of bed at 3 AM to watch it. Dad did take me to a number of "restricted" films during that time, but he favored less down-to-earth genres (e.g. The Road Warrior and Pink Floyd: The Wall).

My friend "Putnam's" dad wasn't quite so discriminating. He was a dean at Texas A&M and a known eccentric (his collection of neckties was famed across the South), so I don't know whether his decision to take four of us to the movies as part of Putnam's 13th birthday festivities was informed by honest concern for his son's impending manhood or simple cluelessness. Whatever the case, there we sat, four boys on the verge of high school and one allegedly responsible adult, as the lights dimmed for what most of us believed to be a fairly harmless comedy.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly when Putnam Sr. probably started coming up with excuses to tell his wife. Hell, the opening scene ("The dream is always the same") is pretty risque. But for me, I like to think it was when the Goodsens' French doors blew open and Lana's dress came off. At the very least, it would've coincided with all of our awkwardly exchanged glances, as we wondered how many microseconds it would be before we were yanked out of there and made to promise we'd tell out parents we went to see The Fox and the Hound. To Putman's dad's credit, he stuck it out. And to this day I believe that all of our relatively successful adulthoods are due in some small part to the lessons imparted by young Joel.

Mark, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.