balding angrily

You might remember that I wrote an issue of The Dope Sheet for Filmspotting, way back when it was Adam and Sam, not Adam and Matty. You don’t know that I wrote a second Dope Sheet, hoping Adam would publish it. That didn’t happen because The Dope Sheet stopped happening. It went the way of the crows. Or magpies or whatever.

So here it is, The Dope Sheet that never was.

A Good Critic Will Eat Your Opinion for Lunch

Have you tried reading Moby Dick lately? Ooh-wee, T’Shane. That’s nappy-time you can hold in your hand.

Later on, I’ll tell you why I’m so comfortable writing that. For now, let its sophistication hit you between the eyeballs and enjoy a story that led me to it. No, no, no. The story didn’t lead me directly. That would be much too easy; this will require your patience.

In college my professor pointed to a sculpture and said, “Look how beautiful that is.” It was, in my eyes, quite ugly – all angles and rust. He followed that declaration with, “Of course there’s an objectivity when you look at art. You see something and it’s beautiful or not.” I looked at the sculpture again and thought, “Huh.”¹

A few years ago Adam said the following in response to some harsh feedback, “Well, all criticism is subjective. Anyone who says otherwise…well, that’s just foolish.” You can see how this statement doesn’t jibe with my professor’s.

Two weeks ago, Jerry responded to an argument for subjectivity in a review of a local exhibit. He said, “Well, of course there’s good and there’s bad in art. Everyone knows the difference.”

“But we see movies and we disagree,” I challenged him. “You loved Little Miss Sunshine. Me? Not so much.”

“But you’re talking about a work that’s at a higher level then say, a home video of two girls dancing to ‘Fergilicious’,” he said. “We enjoy something like that, but we agree it’s bad. It’s an amateur thing.

“Once you get to higher levels, judging goes from objective to subjective,” he continued, “it’s much harder to get everyone to agree. You start getting into how a work touches on the viewer’s past experience, as how a person can just prefer traditional design to modern design. At that level, everything gets grayer and harder to parse; there’s a criticism that requires more analysis.”²

I respect Jerry; I think he’s smart. I’m going to use his theory to work back up to that first statement. Follow along; there’s cake at the end.

Criticism is inherently subjective at higher levels, requiring finer analysis. That’s Jerry’s statement. I don’t do “earnest,” so it scares the hell out of me. Let me lay it flat and work on it a bit.

Analysis is “This thing is made of these other four things. And these four things inform each other, rub against each other like sandpaper, and give contrast to each other. And further, these four things are made of these smaller eight things. And looking at just one of these eight smaller things, one can see it as a seed or miniature of the overall big thing.”

Opinion is much different; opinion is “This thing is bad.”

Now look at the thick border between analysis and opinion. “Shaun of the Dead, an increasingly common combination of slapstick comedy, societal commentary, and horror, succeeds at none of the above.”³ That place is dangerous; it’s the area where the critic sits, an area that makes for tummy-aches. That’s the center of the rotted wood bridge through which Rudger-hunting soldiers fell in Ladyhawke. I don’t like that place; I’d rather opine.

So that’s how I got to that statement way at the very tippy-top. It’s so much easier to leave out all that cumbersome, muddy analysis. Leave the intelligent criticism to Adam and Sam.

And the part about the cake? I lied.

¹I’ve since come to love angles and rust.

²I’m paraphrasing; I don’t think Jerry has ever used “parse” in conversation.

³That’s an example only. Don’t get your nose hairs in a twist.

Jen-An, Owen, Jerry and I went to Chicago last week. The highlight of my time in Chicago was fulfilling a lifelong dream of mine. Family Guy stole my dream and made it a parody, so you may already know where this is going. I wanted to sit in front of Georges Seurat’s masterwork at The Art Institute and listen to The Dream Academy.

In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I identified with Cameron. I never wanted to be Ferris. I wanted to be - and be with - Cameron. He wasn’t my first movie crush, but he was important. The scene where the camera switches between Cameron’s eyes and those of the little girl in Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grande Jatte was powerful for 14-year old me. I understood the longing in that exchange.

A little later, I started exploring Sondheim and rented the PBS performance of Mandy Patinkin in Sunday in the Park with George. I didn’t know it was about Georges Seurat’s famous painting until the end of Act I or that it was a multi-Tony-nominated musical; I thought I was making a discovery. The story is about the character of Seurat who isolates himself in pursuit of his art. That’s what I got out of it anyway.

Again, there’s that theme of loneliness with this painting. As a lonely little fella, I connected with this painting.

It’s breath-taking in person, and I nearly cried sitting there looking at it. I feel like Seurat painted it just for me, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels like that scene is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was filmed just for me. Or that “Sunday,” the song from Sunday in the Park with George, was written just for me. Or that Seth MacFarlane and Co. wrote the parody in Family Guy just for me.

I’m sure that these things are loved by many, many, many people. How Eleanor Rigby of us.

In case you missed the first “I’m peeking at you,” I commented on the search terms people most typed into Google to get to my site. Here’s the April edition; my hosting peoples start me fresh at the beginning of the month, so I thought this would be the perfect time. Following are the search terms with the number of times people typed them in to get to Balding Angrily.

Always with the bullets.

• alex knesnik (10) - Who dat? Over the past month I’ve slowly come out of the closet about the website to my loved ones. These are all people to whom I’ve said, “Yeah, I have a website, but I don’t want you to read it because I’m embarrassed about the stuff I write about.” So. Hi mom!
• alex balding (7) - Who dat else? Let’s think of all the other balding Alexs. Alex P. Keaton wasn’t; he’s shaky but not balding. Oo, a Parkinson’s joke. That, ladies and gentlemen, makes me a bad person. But really, it doesn’t make me love him any less. I think Katherine Hepburn was the most beautiful and talented actress in the history of cinema, but she was a bit shaky.
• kiefer sutherland (4) - I Googled Mr. Sutherland after I saw this to see how far down the list Balding Angrily was. I got to about page 6 and gave up. You must be pretty hard up for Kiefer bits if you get here using that search term. You must need a Kiefer drip. “Really, this is the last website. After this, I’ll shut down the computer. I just want to see if this next site has just an itsy-bitsy, minute, barely visible slice that I couldn’t get from the other 200 websites.”
• frequency kenneth gay (4) - How often does Kenneth get gay with his work buddies? Twice a week? What does Kenneth do when he gets gay with his work buddies? Over-the-underwear activities? Does he have a martini party? Does he match the towels in the executive bathroom to the bathmat? And who’s curious about poor Kenneth and the frequency with which he gets gay? What kind of friends are those?
• jcrew employee discount (4) - Hm. Sorry I didn’t provide an answer before. I believe it was 50% except on special items. That discount applied to sale items too. I have a pair of pants in my closet that were originaly $120. I got them for about $20. If you were wondering if you should apply, I’d say, yeah. If they still have that discount.
• batman spanking robin (3) - My favorite part of this exercise is finding out about people’s little quirks. Some would call them sicknesses, but I won’t. At least 3 people want to see pictures of Batman spanking Robin. That’s cool. I think, though, to be fair you should also want to see pictures of Robin spanking Batman or Superman spanking Batman or Aquaman spanking She-Ra or Skeletor spanking Man-at-Arms. To limit it to just pictures of Batman spanking Robin seems incomplete, like you’re just not committing fully to your sickness quirk.
• get to know you questions deep (2) - Who is judging how intimate I should be with my questions? Who is telling me that me and my questions should go to a happy hour and spend three hours discussing our common loves and losses? I’m happy with the relationship me and my questions have right now, thank you very much. Maybe in a couple of months we’ll want to take it to that next level, but, you know, we just met. Why rush things?
• balding suicide (2) - I told you before the last time you did this; Jesus loves your bald head. Actually, this is a little more serious than the others. It makes me sad if someone out there is considering suicide because they’re going bald. There are many, many, many, many other things in this world that are more depressing and worthy of anxiety than a chrome dome. Do me a favor. Tell those other pretty-boy, skinny, black-hearted queens that their spiked, bleach-tipped hair looks ridiculous. Tell them they look like a porcupine run over by beauty supply van and their Armani WW1 flight goggles/sunglasses make them look like a Devo music video from the 80s. Tell them that you are a real person from the top of your shiny head to the tips of your unpainted toenails. Tell them to kiss your (more than likely) hairy white ass and not to come up for air until they are ready to recognize that bald is beautiful. That Bruce Willis gets more tail then they’ll ever hope to get. That Mr. Sexy-Ass-Kiss-Me-In-The-Morning-Then-Just-Walk-Away Jason Statham could tranport their sorry kneecaps to the backs of their legs. That the mother fucking King of Siam told you to tell them that “they be only womens and Christians and therefore unworthy of Buddha’s interest,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• tailoring shirts tight pecs (2) - This sounds like a dance. It’s all in the hands and arms with this one. In the first part of the move, the “tailoring shirts” part, you put your arms in front you and make like you’re threading a needle, and in the “tight pecs” part, you feel on your breasteses in a circular fashion but with opposite hands, forearms crossed. Do it with me. A one and two and tailor shirt, and three and four and tighten pecs. Do whatever you want with your legs. Hopefully you’re close enough on the dance floor to the person you want to have sex with that they’re not looking down at your legs. And who cares anyway? He’s drunk. If you’re doing the Watusi with your legs, it wouldn’t matter because your beautiful, perfect, hairless head says to him that you are virile; you could last hours in the sack.
• batman spanking robin’ (2) - Now with apostraphe! For added possesiveness.

Happy Feet: With the Robin Williams voices, the amount of pop-culture songs, making it Moulin Rouge On Ice, the important social issues crammed in, and the meandering plot, I am surprised that I can recommend this movie, especially given that the rest of my family either fell asleep or berated me for my unabashed love of computer-choreographed, penguin-shaped Gregory Hines as lavish spectacle.

Wild Hogs: I recommend this movie to ONLY the following groups: sons and daughters of 50/60-something fathers that bought Harleys within the last year and whose fathers have changed into an amalgam of The Village People, the AARP, and man-boobs, said fathers, people that want to witness how John Travolta is the definition of hammy, those that fantasize about Dr. Cox’s nicely-shaped ass, those that fantasize about William H. Macy’s pasty, flap-jack ass, those that crave a hollow shadow of the Martin-era, on-screen chemistry between Martin Lawrence and Tichina Arnold, and those that can’t get enough of Ray Liotta laughing evilly.

This is the inaugural episode of a feature that I hope to evolve over time to explore what constitutes a sentence. I love, love, love long rambling, twisting-and-turning, run-on sentences, and I hope to make one or two of those in the future.

Here it is, with links to the most official site I could find, if you want more information.

A Fair To Remember: I really wanted more hard facts and less animated archival photographs that made me feel like I was watching The Secret Life of… on Food TV.

Beings: If the movie had stayed as weirdly impressionistic as the first ten minutes instead of devolving into actors walking funhouse hallways for what felt like three hours, I wouldn’t have hated it.

Man in the Chair: Movie reference, Christopher Plummer being grumpy, movie reference, unrealistic portrayal of youth culture, movie reference, plot instigator, Kaposi’s Sarcoma, rats in retirement homes, ham-fisted dog catcher metaphor, conflict, resolution…all done well enough to hook me.

Living and Dying: If you are going to have a rape scene in a made-for-TV movie, you better be damned sure that it’s the best made-for-TV movie in the history of made-for-TV movies, hacky jerks.

Borland: I think a boy fell down a sewer pipe in this snail-paced but really enjoyable meditation on Small Town, Texas, but I’m not sure.

Hi. My name is Alex. Not the Alex that runs this wonderful site, but a different one. You may know me as Junior. The other Alex (old Alex as I will now call him) asked me to put up a couple of posts while he was chillin’ with his family.

A few things about me before we get started:

• I am a 19 year old male
• I go to college for engineering, but I will switch to something that is not dumb next semester
• I work with Lynch on Watch This Vid.
• Old Alex gave me the Junior nick name when people got confusicated on the Filmspotting boards.

Ok. Thats enough about me. On to the actual post…

I am not a movie snob, but I like to watch a lot of movies. I do not have very refined tastes but I like what I like. So, here is something that I like. Or, at least I like the trailer. Its called Grindhouse.

I’m dumb and don’t know how to use this fancy technology, so just go here to see the trailer. Sorry…

I know Old Alex doesn’t want to see this movie. He said it was for dumb straight people, and the leg is stupid. “Well”, I responded, “it probably is for dumb straight people, but since I am both, it will be awesome. And the leg gun is the best idea ever. Ever.” Since his feelings on this subject are so wrong, I felt it was my duty to present it here for your consideration. Consider it presented.

A warning about this post. It’s not funny or meant to be, and it’s pretty specific to the U.S. However the issues behind the specifics are being discussed in other parts of the world.

I’ve been rolling Rights (with a capital R because it’s big and important) around in my head the last couple of days because of Gizmodo’s RIAA Boycott. I got interested in fair use, copyright law, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) when I bought my iPod video last year and tried to put my purchased DVDs on it. I wondered why iTunes comes with a “Import CD” button but not a “Import DVD” button. That’s when I discovered that unlike CDs, DVDs come encrypted. In order to download the electronic file stored on the DVD, a person must remove the encryption. (I’m sorry if this elementary to you. I’m taking you through my process to show you how I got interested in this subject.) Then I found out that if iTunes were to include an “Import DVD” button, they would be breaking the law because according to the DMCA, it is illegal for Apple to sell or provide software that makes it possible to remove encryption. Further, it is illegal for me to remove encryption using software legally available outside of the U.S.

Then I remembered hearing somewhere that it was considered legal, back in the days of vinyl and cassette tapes, to copy an album or CD for your own personal use onto a cassette tape. It was illegal to sell the cassette, but it was legal to make the cassette to use on your Walkman. This, under copyright law, was called fair use. Fair use protects certain instances in which people that do not have permission to copy copyrighted material. As in the example with the cassette tape and CD, it protects, among other things, educators who wish to excerpt material for their students, critics who wish to review a book, movie, piece of music, or game, and anyone who wishes to parody a copyrighted work.

Hopefully, you see where I’m going. It is illegal to remove encryption from a DVD, but it is legal to make a copy of copyrighted material for your own personal use. So, I’m fucked with my DVD-to-iPod situation, if I wish to not break the law…but fair use says that I wouldn’t be breaking the law. To me, this is a conflict between my consumer rights and greedy movie studios, companies who wish to re-sell the same material to me in a different format.

So, I’m asking you to write your congressperson to support any legislation that will allow me to watch my legally purchased movies on my iPod on a long flight to Sundance. I should also ask you to write your congressperson to support my right to marry Jerry, but, you know…one step at a time. Today: watching O Brother, Where Art Thou on a 2 1/2″ screen; tomorrow: my right to inherit Jerry’s Social Security should he fall down a mountain in Sundance.

Oh. And sorry for the lack of funny.

Before Netflix fixes this, please check out the cover art for Fast Food Nation. I prey there is a hacker out there in the world with an awesome sense of humor, not that the Netflix computers just have a case of the hiccups.

-Update-

If Netflix fixes their boo-boo, this clever fella or fellete took a screenshot.

-Update-

Netflix fixed it, but the clever fella with the screenshot still has his up.

We invited a friend-couple to Oscar Night explaining that we aren’t the type of gays to throw a blow-out, gold lamé gown-required celebration of pomp. We’ve read about those. We have people over, eat Frito Pie, and make fun of the celebrities. The guy part of the friend-couple wrote back.

i have never, ever, ever gone thru the pain of watching an ‘oscars.’ it simply does not seem to be a very manly thing to do.

and like at t’giving, where ‘the girls’ played house while ‘the boy’ watched sports, will there be anything else for me to do?

damn, this sounds wimpy. so i will need to consult ‘the ticket’ before i can commit. they have a segment called ‘gay or not gay’ where they offer advice on perplexing dilemmas of this sort

i will post you accordingly…

He has an aversion to capitalization. I asked him why, and he didn’t give me a satisfactory answer. He also writes, “thru.” He’s not a smart person.

I wrote back.

If you do come, I suggest you brush up on your stars and starlets in the tabs. A lot of the time will be spent deconstructing the fashion choices of said stars and starlets. Look at it as a new kind of sport. The Superbowl and Oscar night share some of the same things: behind-the-scenes drama, disappointment, loss, tears, triumph, Cinderella stories, a mad fascination by the media, the chance that you might see a nipple-slip, if you’re at our house maybe some yelling at the television for a bad call, and unfortunately LONG stretches of very little happening.

Last year I yelled at the TV because Brokeback Mountain lost. Jerry also responded to him.

I can’t wait to hear the advice offered up by the enlightened brotherhood of The Ticket listeners. I’m certain it will be profound!

You can bring all of your back issues of Sports Illustrated to flip through. And, while we drink cosmopolitans we will serve you a very dark and heavy lager (out of a bottle - no glass). Oh, and you can scratch and burp and fart at your leisure.

He answered today.

based on your two very persuasive responses, how could i possibly say no to such well-meaning individuals.

by the way, i’ve checked with the guys at “the ticket” and they have told me i can go. but i cannot breathe a word of this to anyone!

and yes alex, you can quote me if you wish…

Gay panic.

“That’s Candace,” said Lisa.

Griffin wanted to hit himself on the head to adjust the picture. You see actresses you love, movie stars, powerfully talented, panicked by the injustice of the punishment for age lines, who go to the wrong plastic surgeon and destroy their careers more completely than death by making themselves look like female impersonators of who they used to be, their lips puffed as though attacked by swarms of bees from an organic hive, eyelids stapled deep into the sockets, beach-ball bosoms, and forehead frozen with Botox into an emotional unintelligibility useful for the championship of the World Series of Power. No, what happened to Candace Netter Ginsberg, or what she had chosen to have happen, this was way, way On Beyond Zebra, this was supermarket tabloid-cover kidnappers from outer space meet Egyptian cat god, an Egyptian goddess made in their own image by the aliens from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the squared chin and high cheeks and broad nose of a cat, with the tilted ovoid eye sockets an enlarged forehead of a true believer’s idea of wise beings from ancient galaxies. The reconstruction had severed every nerve in her face, so that nothing moved, or even twitched, except her eyes and her jaw. She spoke as though her teeth were wired shut. This was everything that’s wrong with everything. But…but…but…this creature was Candace Netter Ginsberg, and Griffin knew her and loved her from her book. She suffered and the stunning, clear, and forgiving eyes of a dying sacrificial victim whose endurance of suffering would bring her torturers to repentance, if torturers have souls.

[Griffin] wanted to tell her that her freakishness challenged all who looked at-well, upon, yes, who looked upon her-who looked upon her to see, instead of punished vanity and its scars, yes, to see within the lifted horrifying face an icon of the risen Christ, even if it was a little like the face of crucified Christ on a Mexican-restaurant bleeding-Jesus-crown-of-thorns hologram, with the three dimensional eyes that follow you around the room.