Recent Reviews
The Cagneys
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
Something to Sing About (1937)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
A Lion Is In the Streets (1953)
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)
Never Steal Anything Small (1959)
Shake Hands With the Devil (1959)
Thursday June 30, 2022
M's Beat O's in Fun Fashion, and How OBP Can Be Lower than BA
Yesterday I saw my first in-person M's win of the season (I was 0-3), and it was pretty definitive, 9-3 over Baltimore. All the damage was done in two innings.
In the second, off starter Austin Voth, whose name sounds like something out of “Star Wars”—some mix of Hoth, Darth Vader, and the western themes of “Boba Fett”—we got a one-out double from Abraham Toro, and then relied upon pee-wee baseball from the opposition: E-5, E-5, and the O's catcher hoping J.P. Crawford's dribbler would go foul. Add a sac fly and we're up 3-0.
Two innings later, it's 3-1, and the O's sub out Voth for another V pitcher, Vespi, Nick, a 25-year-old rookie who sported a nifty 0.79 ERA and a similar 0.794 WHIP in 11.1 innings. So I guess he was due because the M's made it seem like he was throwing batting practice: double, single, double, SF, HR, single, double, and that was all she wrote for Vespi. In came Bryan Baker, who promptly threw a wild pitch plating another run. Then a walk and another sac fly made it 9-1. Toro, who began the inning with his second double, finally ended it with a pop-up to second. It was a fun inning. The homer, by the way, was from rookie Julio Rodriguez and it was a jaw-dropper: upper deck, left field, and not just down the line, either. It was halfway to center. The kid's fun.
This team is fun. M's are still, whatever, five, six games below .500, with seemingly no shot at the postseason, but I actually look forward to seeing players now. You have a choice as to favorites. Hell, they're having fun with the music at the park. The walkup music for journeyman Sam Haggerty (28 years old, .580 OPS) is the theme from “The Godfather,” they riffed on Paul Simon's “Me & Julio” for our rookie star, while we got a nice mix of Seattle icons: a couple of Hendrix songs, a mashup of Nirvana's “Smells Like Team Spirit.” More Seattle, please. And less John Fogerty. They played his '80s hit “Centerfield,” whose opening riff always make me think we're about to get “La Bamba.” (Did the Ritchie Valens estate ever sue?) Just play “La Bamba.” Go to the source.
By the way: those E-5s in the 2nd inning? That was O's third baseman Jonathan Arauz, a recent waiver pickup from Boston, who, for the season, sported the statistical oddity of having an OBP lower than his batting average. I'd forgotten how that was possible until I looked it up online. It's the sac flies. They don't count toward BA but do toward OBP. Add in zero walks in 24 plate appearances and you get that anomaly. Sadly, for him, none of his numbers were any good. At the start of the game, his line was .136/.130/.273, and then he went 0-4 with two errors. Ouch.
Tuesday June 28, 2022
Twitter Needs More Mr. Spectors
“When I was a boy, I had a religious-school teacher named Mr. Spector, whose job was to confront us with the peril we presented to ourselves. ... He seemed to take our moral failings for granted and, perhaps as a result, favored lively argument over reproach or condemnation.”
-- from Michael Chabon's essay “Secret Skin,” from 2008, on The New Yorker site
Monday June 27, 2022
Movie Review: Nomadland (2020)
WARNING: SPOILERS
In the beginning I thought of “Brokeback Mountain,” then, throughout, of John Mulaney. At the end, I was onto Nietzsche.
I’ll explain the middle part first.
In 2018, John Mulaney hosted the Film Independent Spirit Awards with Nick Kroll. That year, Frances McDormand was up for lead actress for her performance in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” which she would go on to win (her third Spirit award), along with the Oscar (her second), and based on her character in the movie, and a certain vibe McDormand gives off, Mulaney said the following joke: “I bet a fun way to commit suicide would be to cut in front of her in line and then go, ‘Hey lady, re-lax.”
But before he says that, he says she’s great. And before he says that, he says, “Frances McDormand, you are no bullshit.”
That’s what I kept thinking throughout this film. Frances McDormand is great. And Frances McDormand is no bullshit.
Down the road
The movie begins in the place where “Brokeback Mountain” ended, with a survivor smelling and hugging the shirt of a loved one who passed. Fern (McDormand) is picking through the items in a storage locker in Empire, Nevada, a former company town of 700+ people working for US Gypsum, which the company closed in the wake of the Global Financial Meltdown of 2008-09. She’s deciding what to take with her and it’s not much. She takes a plate with a pink pattern around the edges—something you might see on your grandmother’s table. She seems unsure, and alone, and wholly vulnerable.
We’re told about the closing of the company town and the loss of its zip code, and later Fern talks about the death of her husband, and whether she should’ve helped him die sooner, but otherwise we don’t get much background on what they had, what they lost, why she has so little. We just know she’s unsure, alone, living a precarious existence in a van.
She gets a seasonal job at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, boxing up the shit that we all order, then is invited down to a kind of camp in Arizona. It’s run by Bob Wells, who is played by Bob Wells. The movie is based upon Jessica Bruder’s nonfiction book of the same name, and many people play themselves: Bob is Bob, Linda is Linda, Swankie (who has cancer, and an outré personality) is Swankie. They teach Fern the ropes. They teach her how to survive with not much.
It’s an episodic film, as Fern travels from place to place, with the seasons, to get work and survive. We brace ourselves for something bad happening to her—Hollywood has conditioned us for such things—but the bad thing is just the American economy: not the Financial Meltdown version of it but how it generally works. She gets job at Badlands National Park, and at a Wall Drug in South Dakota, and at a sugar-beet processing plant. She’s making it, sure, but if something goes wrong she’s screwed. And something goes wrong. Her van breaks down and it needs repairs she can’t afford. She has to borrow from her sister’s family. She has to take the money on their terms, which is “You have to listen to what we have to say about you.” But it turns out to be almost a bonding moment. It’s “Why did you leave us? I needed you. I would’ve liked having you around.”
She also begins a friendship with another nomad, Dave (David Strathairn, the only other real actor in the film), and the two wind up staying at his son’s place in California. Dave says he has feelings for her. He also says his son is letting him stay there permanently. We see a resolution to her problems. But she doesn’t. It’s not what she wants. So she leaves.
To where? She watches the Pacific Ocean in winter. She gets the Amazon Fulfillment Center gig again. She does a jigsaw puzzle in a laundromat. Then it’s the camp in Arizona again. Her life is cyclical now but with inevitable changes. Swankie is dead, and they all toss rocks onto a fire for her because she loved rocks. Bob tosses one in and says “See you don’t the road.” That’s his philosophy: not goodbye but “see you down the road.” Later, he and Fern talk about the losses in their lives his son, gone five years now, and her husband Bo. Initially it feels like a simple sharing, this non-actor playing himself, and the great, no-bullshit actress doing her great, no-bullshit thing. But she’s in a search for answers and he’s not. His philosophy is so cohesive it’s almost like a religion:
I've met hundreds of people out here and I don't ever say a final goodbye. I always just say, “I’ll see you down the road.” And I do. And whether it's a month, or a year, or sometimes years, I see them again. And I can look down the road and I can be certain in my heart that I'll see my son again. You’ll see Bo again. And you can remember your lives together then.
I like the search better. I like uncertainty better than certainty. Particularly as it relates to down the road.
Enough
But is this the thing that finally helps Fern? He says “You can remember your lives together” because she’d quoted her father, “What’s remembered, lives,” and she adds that maybe she’s spent too much of her life remembering, i.e., not living. She doesn’t have much but she’s still holding on to too much. And in the next scenes, she finally lets go. She returns to Empire, the town that died, and she gives up the stuff she’d been keeping in storage. That’s when I thought of Nietzsche: “He who possesses little is possessed that much less.” (It’s like Marie Kondo without the PR.) Then she tours her old house, with no one there, with no one remotely interested, and heads out onto the road again. And that’s where it ends.
Question: Is that enough?
The movie is certainly atmospheric. It’s both depressing and—well, not exactly uplifting but it has a glint of some possibilities, of life lived in the moment; of a felt life rather than an artificial one. But then there are those Amazon Fulfillment Centers and Wall Drugs to work in, that slow death of the American soul. Is hanging outside the RV at the end of the day, around like-minded folks, enough to counteract that?
“Nomadland” is well-directed by Chloe Zhao, who won an Oscar for it. The movie won best picture. Frances McDormand won her third Oscar.
But is there enough of a story? Enough of an epiphany? Wisdom? Would I ever want to return to it?
Then there’s the fact that the movie was released a year into the pandemic, when we were all still hunkered down, and it was not a good time, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see this movie without thinking of that time. It's not a time I want to return to.
Sunday June 26, 2022
Astros No-Hit Yankees!
So there's still some good news in the world.
Yesterday, the Houston Astros no-hit the New York Yankees, who have otherwise been rampaging through the league this season like Biff Tannen on a bender. It's not exactly a David-and-Goliath story (the Astros have been perennials since 2015, won the World Series in 2017, and infamously cheated throughout), and it wasn't even a true no-hitter, with one pitcher standing tall throughout. Astros starter Christian Javier went 7, struck out 13 and walked 1, but by then he'd thrown a career-high 115 pitches and Dusty Baker pulled him for an inning of Hector Neris (20 pitches, 0 Ks, 2 BBs) and an inning of closer Ryan Pressly (15 pitches, 2 Ks, no BBs). Now normally I'm not down with combined no-hitters but in this case I'll take it. For a day, the New York Yankees were shut down and shut up. There's joy in that.
When was the last time the New York Yankees were no-hit? Turns out, June 11, 2003, also by the Houston Astros, and also with a combined no-hitter: six pitchers back then. Before that, you'd have to go all the way back to 1958 when the Orioles' Hoyt Wilhelm beat them 1-0. He's the last single pitcher to no-hitter the Bronx Bombers.
There's a very helpful website detailing all of this. The Yanks have only been no-hit eight times, and by some sterling names: not just Wilhelm, but Cy Young and Bob Feller. They were no-hit three times in the deadball era (before they really became the New York Yankees), and then not again until Feller in '46. Then Virgil Trucks in '52 and Wilhelm in '58. Those are truly impressive no-hitters, since those Yankee teams were, like this Yankee team, dominant. That may be the most interesting aspect of all of this. The Yankees weren't no-hit in, say, 1966, when they finished last in the American League, or in 1968, when no one could hit, or during the early '90s when they were rebuilding. They were no-hit in seasons when they went 87-67 (and finished third), 95-59 (and won the World Series), 92-62 (and won the World Series), and 101-61 (and won the AL pennant). These were no-slouchers getting no-hit.
So how does the eight times the Yankees have been no-hit stack up against other teams? Fairly well, according to the website. The Dodgers and Phillies hold the record with being no-hit 20 times each. The fewest has been the KC Royals, who came into existence in 1969, with two (one vs. Nolan Ryan, which is like a bye). Meanwhile, my Mariners, who are 75 years younger than the Yanks, have been no-hit about the same number of times, seven, and, again, and oddly, not during our horrific beginnings, but in, say, 1996 when we had a Hall of Fame lineup Griffey, A-Rod, Edgar, Buhner, etc. Five of the seven have happened during the last 10 years, and four since 2019. I was at one of them. All of that makes sense. We've been hitless wonders, emphasis on hitless.
Of the original 16 franchises, the Cubs, of all teams, have been no-hit the fewest times: just seven.
Anyway, for a day, there's joy in Mudville, the mighty Yankees have struck out. In this season, and in this year, I'll take it.
Saturday June 25, 2022
Indict the Sumbitch Already
Yesterday afternoon, after a day spent reading about SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade 6-3, and how Justice Thomas' decision bodes poorly for other precedents like gay marriage (and interracial marriage, Clarence?), I walked over to Lake Washington on a sky-blue day listening to Ezra Klein and Jamelle Bouie have a smart conversation about the Jan. 6 hearings and whether Donald Trump can and should be charged with crimes.
Main takeaways:
- We're as much a nation of norms and formalities as we are a nation of laws, and Donald Trump shattered those norms and formalities. They're out there for anyone to use and abuse now. They don't go back in.
- Bouie in particular goes into how the founders hedged their bets on democracy by building into the process, for example, the electoral college, with state electors, rather than we the people, casting the true ballots. This is one of those formalities that Trump tossed into the dungheap. “Oh, there's no law preventing an elector from switching their vote? It's just on the honor system?” That's a wide-open lane for someone like Trump who has no honor.
- The two go into the whole right-wing “We're not a democracy, we're a republic” bullshit, and what's being truly said.
- They also talk about how indicting a former president sets a dangerous precedent; and how, given everything Trump has done, it's much more dangerous to do nothing.
Anyway, smart conversation on another dumb day for America.
Wednesday June 22, 2022
Quote of the Day
I like that Ostlund could be talking about himself. At the least, with films like “Force Majeure,” “The Square” and I assume “Triangle of Sadness,” he's not interested in pleasing the audience. He's not interested in giving us a wish fulfillment fantasy—a vision of ourselves as younger and braver and humble and free, as Joe Henry sang. He's the opposite of that. And that of course makes him very interesting.
Tuesday June 21, 2022
Early Superhero Sighting: Green Lantern, 1934
From “The St. Louis Kid,” 1934, starring James Cagney.
The superhero with that name was created six years later, July 1940, by Martin Nodell and Bill Finger, then recreated in his current incarnation in 1959 by Julius Schwartz.
Monday June 20, 2022
Movie Review: The Big House (1930)
WARNING: SPOILERS
Hollywood’s ur-prison film depicts a system, like in “Les Misérables,” that reduces a man to a number—or a series of numbers. This, for example, is Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery):
- 48642
- 265
- 10
That’s his prison number, cell number, and the years he’s serving for vehicular manslaughter.
We first see Kent after the opening credits (shown against the machine-like clomping of prison feet), when a van pulls up to a vast, concrete prison—an obvious matte drawing—and three men get out. Two are guards. The third is Kent and we immediately sympathize with him. He’s clearly out of his element: dazed and scared. He’s surprised that he has to call the guard “sir,” semi-stunned when they take his possessions after frisking him, stunned that his body is no longer his own. I like the moment when the initial guards leave and he watches them go as if he's a kid whose parents have left him at camp.
We get more numbers from the warden (Lewis Stone): 3,000 and 1,800. The latter is the cell accommodations in his prison; the former is how many prisoners they actually have. “They all want to throw people into prison but they don’t want to provide for them after they’re in,” he tells a guard. “You mark my word, Pop, someday we’re going to pay for their shortsightedness.”
The first to pay is Kent.
The early “Les Mis”-like theme.
Boldness cowardice blame
They stack him atop two other prisoners in cell 265. These two just happen to be the toughest men in the yard: Morgan (Chester Morris) and Butch (Wallace Beery).
Even with this open, though, with Kent wholly gaining our sympathy, and Morgan and Butch the tough guys, they becomes the film’s heroes while Kent becomes its villain. A key line comes from the warden:
Remember, this prison does not give a man a yellow streak. But if he has one, it brings it out.
That’s Kent. Early on, a rat named Oliver takes him aside and gives him some advice, and you can see the movie setting itself up. Will Kent be on the side of Oliver the rat, or on the side of Butch and Morgan, cons but decent joes? I assumed the latter. I assumed, hey, it’s Robert Montgomery, he’s handsome and sympathetic, he’ll side with the decent joes. Nope. It’s an interesting twist, given the open. But at this point in his career, Montgomery (Elizabeth’s dad) wasn’t yet a star. He’s actually fourth-billed here, after the warden.
The stars are Morris and Beery, and they’ve got great rapport. Morgan, easy-going and handsome, but with steel in his eyes, is the only one who calls Butch on his bullshit—who’s got so much it’s hard to sort out. At one point, Butch tells Kent he’s the guy who wiped out the Delancey Gang—and he probably did. He also talks about how well he does with the ladies—and maybe he does? He has a repeated phrase when called on his crap: “Who, me?” He’s that ne’er-do-well kid found out, the lovable mug with an “Aw shucks, I didn’t mean to try to kill ya” demeanor. It’s a fine line but Beery walks it like a pro.
There’s a great early scene. In the yard, Butch gets a letter from a girl named Myrtle and begins to read it aloud to the boys. She tells him she misses him, how he’s “it.” Then he leaves off. Amid jeers, he says the rest is just for him and Morgan and they go to their own corner of the yard—where Butch hands Morgan the letter to read to him since he can’t read. Turns out there’s no Myrtle. “If I even knew a dame called Myrtle, I’d kick her teeth out,” he tells Morgan. No, the letter is from a fellow gang member, Tony Loop, who lets him know his mother was sick and now she’s dead. It’s nicely underplayed. Morgan gets Butch to talk about her and he does, a small smile on his face, absent-mindedly running gravel through his hands, about how she was “as big as a minute. And game.”
But the movie doesn’t pretend Butch isn’t also brutal and a cheat. Basically Butch’s boldness causes problems that Kent’s cowardice exacerbates, and somehow Morgan gets the blame.
Example: The guards are searching for Butch’s knife, so in the prison mess he passes it down the line and Kent winds up with it. When they do a cell search, he panics and stashes it among Morgan’s stuff and it’s found. So instead of parole, Morgan gets another year, plus solitary, and vows revenge against Kent. To this end, he breaks out of jail to pursue Kent’s sister, Anne (Leila Hyams), a looker. If that doesn’t make much sense, well, you’re right. Anne was originally supposed to be Kent’s wife, so Morgan would’ve been cuckolding him. But women in preview audiences didn’t want a matinee idol like Chester Morris doing dirty like that, so they reshot scenes to make Anne the sister. It mostly works but it means Morgan’s motivation here is a little odd.
Of course, he falls for her, and she for him, but he’s spotted by a cop (Robert Emmett O’Connor, Paddy Ryan from “Public Enemy”), and sent back to jail. There, we get that boldness-cowardice-blame dynamic again. Butch plots a prison break, Kent snitches, and when it turns violent Morgan is blamed for the snitching. Amid gunfire, and a WWI Army tank(!), our two heroes go gunning for each other. After they're both plugged, they crawl toward each other:
Morgan: Sorry, Butch. Did I get ya?
Butch: I’m on my feet, see?
Morgan: Don’t lie to me.
Butch: Who, me?
Morgan: Yes, you.
A guard then lets Butch know it was Kent—already gunned down—who was the snitch. At this point, the two men should’ve died in each other’s arms. Theirs is the movie’s true love story. Ah, but those women in the preview audience wouldn't like it. So Butch dies, Morgan survives, and is suddenly and nonsensically pardoned. He leaves the prison and into Anne’s arms. Who, him? Yes, him.
I like the penultimate scene, where the warden asks Morgan about his plans. “I thought I’d go to the islands of some new country,“ he says, ”and take up government lands.” That was still a thing back then? To just go to a place and just get land? Oh, to be free, white and 21.
Call and response
The role of Butch was originally intended for Lon Chaney, but he died suddenly in 1930, so Beery, who’d had trouble making the transition to talkies, got the nod. It not only resurrected his career, it supercharged it. He was nominated for an Academy Award for lead actor, losing to George Arliss (“Disraeli”), but a year later he won for “The Champ.” He made a series of popular films with Marie Dressler, starred in many of the early classic MGM ensemble films (“Grand Hotel,” “Dinner at Eight”), and played everyone from Pancho Villa to Long John Silver to P.T. Barnum. During the first four years of Quigley’s Top 10 Box-Office Champions (1932-35), he was one of four stars listed every year. The others were Joan Crawford, Will Rogers and Clark Gable.
“The Big House” was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two, including best writing for Frances Marion, the wife of director George W. Hill, who became the first behind-the-scenes woman to win an Oscar. Apparently she visited a prison to get a sense of what it was like. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where the sharp details of the opening scenes come from.
Speaking of: There’s another good numbers scene there that made me do a double-take. Kent is being given his (what turn out to be) ill-fitting prison clothes, and we get a kind of sing-songy call-and-response, as one prison official lets another know the sizes:
- Coat, 36 (coat, 36)
- Underwear, 4 (underwear, 4)
- Pants, 5 (pants, 5)
- Shirt, 16 (shirt, 16)
- Hat, 7 (hat, 7)
A year later, Warner Bros. ripped off this riff in “The Public Enemy” when Tom Powers first gets a suit. It actually makes more sense—and is more effective—here, since it plays into the whole reduction-of-a-man-to-a-number theme. In “Enemy” it’s just a slightly homophobic moment showing Cagney rise.
The Anne angle aside, “Big House” is an amazing early film. There’s a documentary feel to scenes, a power to Beery’s performance, and even a great tracking shot (Morgan visiting Anne at her parents’ house) that demonstrates that not all cameras in early talkies were stagnant.
The star turn: Beery filling a whole prison with the force of his face.
Sunday June 19, 2022
A Special Paul McCartney 'Known For'
What is Paul McCartney known for, according to IMDb?
- Yes
- No
- Yes
- No
Thanks for coming.
Why “Vanilla Sky” by the way? Because Paul did the title song.
What could go in place of “Vanilla Sky”? I don't know. “Help!” maybe? “Let It Be”? The new “Get Back”? How about “Live and Let Die”? He did the title track to that one, too, and the song was a top 10 hit in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. “Vanilla Sky”? It went to No. 62 in Japan. That's it. Charted nowhere else. Nowhere. Else.
Happy 80th, Paul.
Saturday June 18, 2022
Paul McCartney Turns 80
Bob (left) and Paul (right)
I took this photo of a framed photo of my father with Paul McCartney when I flew to Minneapolis last January for Dad’s 90th birthday. The photo hangs in his basement study next to his computer. It’s of him and another journalist standing in line to get Paul’s autograph during an event for Paul’s film “Give Me Regards to Broad Street” in 1984. These were guys who never did that kind of thing. They never asked for autographs from people they were covering, and they certainly didn’t stand in line to do it. Just wasn’t professional. But they did it for Paul.
Well, Dad did it for me. In my teen years in the late ’70s and early ’80s I was still Beatles-mad, and Paul was my favorite, so he asked Paul to sign his reporter’s notebook to me. I still have it. That's here, too.
Paul McCartney turns 80 today. Eighty. Seems like yesterday I wrote about Paul’s 70th. Yesterday and a million years ago.
My friend Adam recently tweeted about this article, with musicians from all over the world breaking down favorite Paul tunes. I asked Adam which one he’d take a shot at and he said he wouldn’t ignore the greats: “Hey Jude,” “Let It Be.” I liked that. My first thought for me was “Listen to What the Man Said.” It was the McCartney song that was charting when I first began to listen to the radio, and I used to listen to various stations for hours just to hear it. I still like it. A lot. It would be fun trying to figure out why.
This isn’t true of other solo McCartney efforts. I recently heard “With a Little Luck” for the first time in, I don’t know, decades, and I was still sick of it. And I’d forgotten all about “Take It Away” and “No More Lonely Nights” until I looked up his discography. And “Arrow Through Me”? From the album “Back to the Egg”? Back to the Egg? What the hell was Paul thinking?
I kept going back and forth on his albums. Yes to “Venus and Mars,” no to “At the Speed of Sound.” Yes to “London Town,” god no to “Egg.” I bought “McCartney II” but … nah. It was “Coming Up” and not much else. “Tug of War” was his first post-John album, and it was supposed to be a return to form, a more mature work, and it kinda was, but it was just too uneven, and I look at it now and think the laudatory critics were engaged in some serious wish fulfillment there. Which I get. I was the same. I kept listening and wishing and willing it to be better. Same with “Pipes of Peace.” C’mon, Paul, you can do it!
And then he tried the movie, “Broad Street,” which I began with hope and ended with an eyeroll, and he was onto symphonies and things, and I was onto other music, and now it’s now and Paul is 80. But today, in honor, I listened to the whole of “Venus and Mars” for the first time since probably 1980-81, and maybe it's the '70s baby in me listening to one of the first contemporary albums I ever bought, but it's pretty good: from “You Gave Me the Answer,” his throwback to throwback songs like “When I’m 64,” with a lovely little line: “I love you/And you, you seem to like me”; and the “Oh, Darling!”-esque “Call Me Back Again,” and “Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People,” another Paul song about the aged (he was the only rocker doing that, wasn't he?), as well as “Crossroads,” the instrumental snippet at the end with the “Abbey Road” vibe. Plus of course “Listen to What the Man Said,” which still sounds good to me, and which I’d forgotten I'd bought back then, as a single, until my older brother, who keeps everything, gave it back to me a few years ago. He'd kept it all these years and he gave it back to me, and it’s been sitting on my shelf ever since, sparking joy.
Happy birthday, Paul.
Saturday June 18, 2022
Dreaming of Ed Norton's Summer Blockbuster
I was reading an entertainment magazine about the new big summer franchise movie starring Ed Norton. It was ... no. Except he didn't see it as a sequel. And it wasn't a sequel. It was just a big movie starring Norton and directed by the same director of that summer franchise movie. They were being reteamed for the first time. In fact, they'd already made the sequel to the franchise movie with a different director, and Norton implied he thought it was better with a different director, and kinda sorta disparaged this new movie. but I was thinking the opposite. I liked the new movie better than the sequel to the summer blockbuster.
I was reading all of this in a small movie room—one of many. They were like the old MTVs of 1980s Taipei, with framed posters and pictures of movie stars on the wall. One room was dedicated to Heath Ledger. The girl who ran it got weepy at the thought of him.
Friday June 17, 2022
The Pardon List
“I've decided I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.”
-- attorney John Eastman, the so-called legal architect behind the Jan. 6 insurrection, in an email to Rudy Giuliani after Jan. 6., as revealed during the Jan. 6 hearings
Of course it quickly became a meme. (The above is my favorite example so far.) And it deserves to be a meme. It's an astonishing sentence. Both the casualness of it and the sense of privilege. I've decided? How nice when one gets ownership over one's own absolution. And the whole “if that's still in the works,” indicating they'd all already talked about it, indicating they all knew they were involved in activities that needed presidential pardoning in the first place. Which they did. From The New York Times:
Mr. Eastman also admitted in a private conversation with Mr. Pence's top lawyer, Greg Jacob, that if the Supreme Court ever had to rule on the legality of a vice president deciding the results of an election on his own, the court would unanimously vote to toss the matter, Mr. Jacob testified. But more important, Mr. Jacob told the committee in a videotaped deposition — snippets of which were played during the hearing — that Mr. Eastman had admitted in Mr. Trump's presence that the plan to pressure Mr. Pence violated an 1887 law known as the Electoral Count Act. According to Mr. Jacob, Mr. Eastman acknowledged the illegality of the scheme in front of Mr. Trump on Jan. 4, 2021, just two days before Mr. Pence was to oversee the certification of the election.
What fucking assholes. At least he never got the pardon. I guess it's still in the works.
Thursday June 16, 2022
0-5 for Buxton, 5-0 for the Twins
I went to the Mariners game yesterday, a Wednesday afternoon getaway game against the Minnesota Twins, expecting not to see Byron Buxton.
You see, whenever I've gone to Twins games in the last few years—in Seattle when they're playing the Mariners, or in Minnesota, which I visit often—no Buxton. He's injured or resting or something. They've been resting him a lot this season, too, hoping he doesn't get injured again, and DHing him even though he's one of the best defensive center-fielders in the game, so I expected more of that. He'd played Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday was a getaway day, so I assumed no Buxton. If I'd checked I would've seen he actually played the entire previous series against the Rays, and the series before that against the Yankees. The last game he'd sat out was Sunday, June 5, against Toronto, which is an eternity in Buxtonville, an unbreakable Lou Gehrig-like string of consecutive games played. The point is I'd been chasing Buxton, one of the most exciting players in the game, for years, and never caught him.
Yesterday I finally caught him. Not only was he in the lineup, but he was leading off and playing center field. I felt like I'd been handed a gift.
And then he went 0-5: groundout, strikeout, groundout, strikeout, groundout. He did make a nice catch in center field early in the game, but he was one of only two Twins who went hitless. I was bummed.
“Are you rooting for the Twins?” my friend Hal asked early on.
He knew I was from Minnesota. And it made me wonder: Am I rooting for the Twins?
“Well, the Twins have a better shot at the postseason,” I said. “They're leading the AL Central, while we're near the bottom of the AL West.” Pause. “I guess I'm rooting for Buxton.” Another pause. “Also Luis Arraez, this kid from Venezuela who's leading the league in hitting. He's kind of a throwback. Hits singles everywhere. I don't get why he's not leading off, to be honest. They got him batting fifth? He doesn't have much pop. You'd think you'd want him to bat before Buxton and Correa and Sanchez so they could drive him in.”
Arraez's position in the batting order was just one of the things I didn't get about the game. I also didn't get why they closed the roof in the middle of it. It wasn't raining and wasn't scheduled to rain. Was it the glare? It was vaguely glarey out. Did someone complain? Some hitter? So they could hit better. If that was the case, it worked—for the Twins. In the top of 7th, shortly after they closed the roof (which always closes to the sound of the Imperial March/Darth Vader theme in my head), the Twins broke up the scoreless game with a two-out single. Starter Marco Gonzalez had begun the 7th, but with one out he gave up a single and a walk, then, I think, he nearly got a double play but just got the force at second. Either way, it was two outs, men on first and third, and they pulled him for Paul Sewald. Who gave up the tie-breaking single to Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers. This was almost a replay of the last M's game I went to, Sunday, May 29 against Houston, when Marco was pitching into the 8th in a 1-1 game, gave up a one-out double, and was pulled for Sewald, who untied the game with a two-out single. Marco got the loss in both; they were his runners.
But it made me wonder why we kept going to Sewald in those situations. (I guess his 0.85 WHIP, Erik.) More, when I got home, it made me wonder why “Inherited Runners Scoring” isn't a more easily findable stat for relief pitchers. It's often the whole ball game.
This game was lost in the 8th when M's manager Scott Servais tapped double-unique reliever Penn Murfee and his sterling 0.79 ERA to keep the game tight. He didn't: single, K (Buxton), RBI double (Correa, forever booed), 5-3, BB (Sanchez), which brought up the oddly placed Luis Arraez. A wild pitch moved both runners into scoring position.
“This isn't good,” I said, apparently rooting for the Mariners at this point. “I saw footage of a game where Arraez just kept hitting singles to left. One of those here, it's 4-0.”
He hit one of those there. It was 4-0. So maybe fifth in the order for him was a smart move?
By the 9th, my main wish was just to see Buxton again. He was due to bat fourth in the inning so the Twins just needed one un-erased baserunner. And they got him and more: walk, double. And Buxton was announced by the Mariners PA announcer Tom Hutyler.
“Wait, Buxton?” I looked at the scoreboard, the runners on base, then back to the scoreboard. “Didn't they just get two guys on? And nobody out? So how could that be Buxton?”
It wasn't. It was the Twins No. 9 hitter Gilberto Celestino.
“That's embarrassing,” I said.
To his credit, Hutyler sounded a bit embarrassed when, after Celestino's RBI groundout, he announced Buxton again—correctly this time. I think it was Hutyler's second slip-up of the game but I don't recall the first. I know my friend Tim has complained about Hutyler in the past, and I guess I have, too. He seems like someone paying nominal attention. I guess in this way he seems like the typical Mariners fan: someone rooting more for hydro races than pennant races. But you want more from your PA guy.
Anyway, that was the final score, 5-0. Nice seeing Buxton, even if he went 0-5. Nice seeing Arraez. Good luck, Twins. It's June 16 and you're the only team this month to beat the New York Yankees, who are on pace to win 120 games.
Monday June 13, 2022
Movie Review: King of the Underworld (1939)
WARNING: SPOILERS
This is the movie that Humphrey Bogart made between getting plugged by James Cagney in “Angels with Dirty Faces” and getting plugged by James Cagney in “The Oklahoma Kid,” and for once he gets star billing. Apparently Warner Bros. was punishing its star, Kay Francis, so they took her star away and gave it to Bogie. But she’s the hero. And he still gets plugged.
Lousy title, by the way. Why not “The Napoleon of Crime”? Or “The Gangster and the Lady Doctor”? Why not anything to do with the story?
It's a lousy movie anyway. And short. It’s the old Alvy Singer joke: terrible, and in such small portions.
Doctor’s widow
“Underworld” packs a lot into its 67 minutes. An elder doctor counsels a younger doctor, Niles Nelson (John Eldredge), not to perform a risky operation, since, if you don’t do it, it’s not your fault. (Dude puts the hypocrite into Hippocratic Oath.) He’s ignored and the surgery works. Turns out the patient is a gangster, and the gang leader, Joe Gurney (Bogie), shows up at the downtown office of the young doctor to say thank you and here’s 500 smackers for your trouble. He also starts dispensing advice. Spotting Doc’s racing sheet, he says betting on the horses is a sucker’s game. Then he looks around.
“I don’t get it. A guy with a pair of million dollar hands in a dump like this. Yeah, you’re wasting your time down here. You oughta be uptown with the big dough.”
Based on the first minute, we assume the doctor will toss Bogie out on his ear. Nope. When Doc’s wife, Dr. Carole Nelson (Francis), shows up, he repeats everything Gurney said as if they were his ideas. Next thing you know, they’ve got a fancy pad uptown, but now the Doc is hooked on horses and booze. Plus he’s a lazy bastard. When Gurney calls with another favor, he’s ready to bow out until Gurney gets an edge in his voice. So he goes, in the middle of the night, to pull another slug out of another body. Except now the cops are watching, and they come in blasting. Goodbye, Doc. Don’t have to worry about his story no more.
So it becomes her story. It become melodrama.
It’s odd what slips through the Hays/Breen Office in these Production Code movies. The cops in particular come off badly here. Not only do they kill the Doc while letting all the other gangsters get away, they then give the third degree to Carole. She keeps saying “Ask my husband” until they finally let her know, sorry, we already killed him. Oh, we’re also going to charge you with crimes based on no evidence. The public wants a show, the DA says, “and they’re going to get it.”
The press isn’t much better.
It’s as if she’s not a doctor herself.
She’s acquitted, of course, but her name is besmirched; so when she hears Gurney’s gang has been seen near the town of Wayne Center, NY, she decides to set up shop there. I guess she hopes to run into him and clear her name? Anyway, with Aunt Josephine (Jessie Busley), who veers between comic-relief fearful and brassy, she takes on some of the small minds of the small town—such as the established, elderly doctor who doesn’t like the competition—but mostly she fits in. The local grocery guy has her back, for example.
As for Gurney? He and his men are driving along when their tire blows out. Or was it shot out? And who’s that guy in the woods, standing and smiling benevolently? Obviously a tire blower-outer! No, he’s just that staple of 1930s cinema: the literary British love interest (cf., Leslie Howard). This time it’s Bill Stevens (James Stephenson), a smart, affable and self-effacing author. Also down-on-his-luck. Wait, isn’t that like exactly Leslie Howard in “Petrified Forest”? I’m sure some Warner Bros. exec said “Hey, get Bogie another Leslie Howard. That worked before.”
Stevens happens to be a Napoleon scholar, and that just happens to be the historical figure Gurney is fixated on, so he becomes pals with him. Then he asks Stevens to write his autobiography. Stevens tries to tell him the difference between bio and autobio and we get this nice exchange:
Stevens: What you want is a ghost writer.
Gurney: Nah, no mystery stuff. Just plain facts.
In the end, Carole saves the day with her smarts. Gurney has an infected eye so she gives him, and his men (and Stevens), eyedrops that temporarily blind them—just as the feds show up. Most of the men give up, but not Gurney. Blinded, he stalks Carole and Stevens throughout the house, with Carole protecting the blind Brit. Gurney gets his from the local sheriff. Then more good lines:
Gurney (dying): I guess … you’ll have to finish my book without me.
Stevens: The finish was written long ago.
I like that he says it sympathetically.
The best of Seilers
Is this my first Kay Francis movie? She’s fine, just … pristine. Under glass. Did she really work at Warners?
One of the comic-relief dudes in the gang—who isn’t that funny—is Charley Foy. He wound up narrating “The Seven Little Foys,” with Bob Hope playing his father, in 1955. Though he lived another 30 years, it’s his last credit.
The director is Lewis Seiler, who directed quite a few movies in his day (1920s-1950s) and not many winners. On IMDb, if you sort his feature films by rating, the first is a 1928 film he co-directed with Howard Hawks, and the second is a 1929 film called “Girls Gone Wild,” which probably got elevated by the recent adult entertainment franchise. The most famous Seiler-directed film is probably “Guadalcanal Diary.” He took very little interest in this film, according to IMDb. “According to various cast members, he would show up to set and start blocking scenes without having read the part of the script that was to be shot on that day.” It shows.
Meanwhile, the screenplay was adapted from a story by W.R. Burnett, who helped begin the gangster cycle with his novel “Little Caesar” in 1929, and then helped remake it with his novel “High Sierra” in 1941. He and John Huston helped adapt the latter one for the movies, and the star of this one became the star of that one. It changed Bogart's image, his career, his life.
Friday June 10, 2022
Quote of the Year
“Tonight I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”
-- Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), during the opening night of the Jan. 6 hearings. The New York Times includes 5 Takeaways but the biggest one for me was how formidable Cheney is, and how expertly she laid out everything. Her tone was exactly right. Her storytelling was exactly right. We agree on almost nothing politically but we agree on Jan. 6 and Trump and the GOP's cowardice and culpability; and, save climate change, that's still the biggest issue today. It's still the gravest threat to American democracy.
ADDENDUM: Good stuff from James Fallows.
Thursday June 09, 2022
Why 'Night and the City' Got Made
“[Darryl] Zanuck's attitude toward the blacklist was sublimated fury, if only because someone was basically telling him who he could and could not hire. The director Jules Dassin was among the people about to be blacklisted, and Spyros Skouras, the new chairman of 20th Century-Fox, wanted him off the lot. Zanuck showed up at Dassin's house one night, which took Dassin by complete surprise. 'Coming to my house was like visiting the tenements, because I lived on the wrong side of town. He said, ”Get out. Get out fast. Here's a book. You're going to London. Get a screenplay as fast as you can and start shooting the most expensive scenes. Then they [the New York office] might let you finish it.“ That was Night and the City.... I really respected the guy.'”
-- from “20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio” by Scott Eyman
Monday June 06, 2022
What Is Thomas Dixon Jr. 'Known For'?
Here we go again.
So what is Thomas Dixon Jr. known for?
If you ask that of most people, they’d go “Who?” But if you ask that of someone who knows a little something of film history, not to mention racial history, they might say, “Isn’t that the guy who wrote the book that became ‘The Birth of a Nation’?"
Yes. In 1905, Thomas E. Dixon Jr., a lawyer-minister, published a celebratory novel of the Ku Klux Klan called “The Clansman,” which D.W. Griffith adapted into the 1915 epic “The Birth of a Nation,” one of the most innovative and controversial films of all time. It was screened at the White House and Pres. Woodrow Wilson called it history written with lightning. It expanded the boundaries of what filmmakers could do. It also helped resurrect the Klan in the 20th century, leading to untold death and misery. When Dixon died in 1946, the headline of his obit in The New York Times read: THOMAS DIXON DIES; WROTE ‘CLANSMAN.’ It is what Thomas Dixon was, and is, known for.
Except, of course, on IMDb.
Because apparently a day hasn’t gone by when we all haven’t argued about the legacy of “The Mark of the Beast.”
So how do the other movies rate ahead of “Birth of a Nation”? According to IMDb, the algorithm that compiles its “Known For” titles weights various factors in a filmmaker’s career, including:
- The importance of the job (director > production assistant)
- The frequency of the credit (if you’re mostly a writer, writing credits matter more)
- The type of title (movies > TV shows)
- The popularity of a title (based on page views/awards/user ratings, etc.)
- The importance of the credit (starring > supporting)
I assume it's those first and fifth factors that are screwing up Dixon's result, since he directed “Mark of the Beast” and “Fall of a Nation.” He also produced “Beast.” It’s his one production credit. So he wrote, produced and directed “Mark of the Beast.” So, by the algorithm’s logic, it must be important. Meanwhile, “Birth,” directed by D.W. Griffith, was only adapted from Dixon’s novel. He didn’t even get the screenplay credit for it. So, per 5) above, it takes a ding.
You know which of the five isn’t weighted enough? That fourth one. I think IMDb is ignoring its own data. Here are the numbers for those top “known for” credits for Dixon that indicate user and cultural engagement:
Title | Quotes | Trivia | Photos | Connec-tions* | Critic Reviews | User Reviews | |
1. | The Mark of the Beast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2. | Gods of the Machine | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
3. | The Fall of a Nation | 0 | 4 | 11 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
4. | The Birth of a Nation | 26 | 80 | 87 | 256 | 79 | 379 |
* I.e., references in other movies and TV shows
I mean: Holy fuck.
And here’s what makes it all worse. The three movies ahead of “Birth”? They don’t exist. There are no extant copies of “Beast” and “Fall.” As for “Gods of the Machine”—you notice there’s no date on it? That’s because it was never made. It’s classified as “in development,” from someone named Matthew Collins, who made one short film called “War!” in 2014, and who supposedly based his characters for “Gods” on some of Dixon’s characters. That’s why Dixon gets a credit. Because some guy who made one short film in 2014 said his new movie includes Dixon’s characters. So when are we going to see this epic? Who knows? It was last updated five years ago: April 3, 2017. I doubt it will ever be made
Yet somehow, according to our preeminent film site, Thomas Dixon is known for this non-existent movie more than he’s known for one of the most famous movies of all time.
What a fucking joke, IMDb.
Sunday June 05, 2022
The Birth of a Poster
- Nice!
- You like it?
- Powerful! Except...
- What? You think your name should be bigger? Or higher?
- No, that's ... No, I'm thinking of the connotation.
- Connotation?
- That the nation began when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.
- Oh. Right. Huh.
- Some people might not cotton to that. No pun intended.
- Although ... isn't that the point of the movie?
- No, not at all. The point of the movie is the nation began once Southerners heroically fought back against the Negroes that were ruining us. That's the point.
- Right. So ... you want me to change the image?
- Well, I like it. It's powerful.
- How about if we add a disclaimer?
- What, like, “Don't worry, this isn't the birth of the nation”?
- No. Something about how much the South liked Lincoln. How Lincoln was the South's best friend.
- Wow, that's some bullshit. You think we can get away with it?
- We got away with the rest of it, didn't we?
Friday June 03, 2022
Movie Review: Kongo (1932)
WARNING: SPOILERS
1932 was a helluva year for jungle horror movies in which a crazed martinet terrorizes secondary cast members, two of whom fall in love, and who wind up escaping even as the martinet is killed by the local population he once controlled with an iron fist. At least that pretty much describes “The Island of Lost Souls” and this. “Lost Souls” is better.
Both have literary pedigrees—sort of. “Souls” is based on an H.G. Wells novel, while “Kongo” came from a 1926 Broadway play, written by an actor (Chester De Vonde) and a producer (Kilbourn Gordon), which starred Walter Huston as “Deadlegs” Flint, the martinet. Two years later it was made into the silent film “West of Zanzibar,” starring Lon Chaney. Four years after that, this, with Huston again.
Since then, nobody's touched it. For a reason. You know about revenge being a dish best served cold? This is a tale of revenge served old. And odd.
Sins of the father
Flint is a scarred man in a wheelchair in the middle of the African jungle who nevertheless controls huge swaths of territory because he’s convinced the local, dominant tribe, via magic tricks, that he’s some kind of god. He’s got two white servants, Hogan (Mitchell Lewis), tall and potentially menacing, and Cookie (Forrester Harvey), a squat comic-relief Cockney, as well as a Portuguese hottie, Tula (Lupe Velez), wearing a sarong, sweat and not much else. He controls them because he controls the booze supply, the fortune in ivory they have stashed, and the tribe. “The cripple can stop anyone from getting in or out of the juju circle,” Tula says. “I know, I’ve tried.”
He’s also got a sign tacked to a wooden post, “HE SNEERED,” below which he marks off time. Biding it, you could say.
Eighteen years earlier, a man named Gregg (C. Henry Gordon) had an affair with and impregnated Flint’s wife, then beat him up and crushed his spine. While he was doing the crushing, he sneered at him. Thus the sign on the wooden post. Flint has been planning his revenge ever since.
He should’ve planned it better. The revenge will fall mostly upon the child from the affair, Ann Whitehall (Virginia Bruce of “Winner Take All”), who, all but orphaned, has been raised in a convent in Cape Town. Flint sends Hogan to retrieve her, and the next thing we see, she’s crazed, crawling and booze-addicted like everyone else. Then we get another arrival: a Brit doctor named Kingsland (Conrad Nagel, playing Brit), who was once a gentleman (“FRCS,” he says). He came to the jungle to help those who were byang root-addicted but got addicted himself. Flint keeps him around because he wants him to operate on his back. He has no hope of walking, he just wants Kingsland to relieve the pain.
Of course, Kingsland falls for Ann, and helps relieve her jungle fever. Then Tula gets Kingsland addicted on the byang root again. (Don’t get her motivation here.) Then Flint uses the leeches in the swamp to cleanse Kingsland of his addiction so he can operate on his back. Along the way, Ann falls for Kingsland, too.
It’s all pretty stupid. No one acts against Flint when they should, and everyone tells Flint what they shouldn’t. And all of it leads, finally, please finally, to the showdown with Gregg.
Oddly, Gregg barely remembers him. (Just how many men has he cuckolded and crippled?) Then Flint reveals Ann, who’s crazed and drug-addicted again. He tells him it’s his daughter. He tells her tale with relish:
Forced through the squalor of a night house in Zanzibar, dragged here through the swamps, fed germ-laden water seeped in brandy, and here she stands before you—fever-ridden, broken, hopeless, degraded! I did that, Gregg! Do you hear?
Hearing all this, Gregg collapses. A few moments later, he rises, laughing. Because it’s not his daughter. The timeline is wrong. It’s Flint’s daughter. He did this to his own flesh and blood.
Which … of course. I mean, even if Ann had been Gregg’s daughter, it was a lousy plan—punishing the child for the sins of the father. And why suppose Gregg would immediately love the grown-up offspring he’d never met and didn’t know he had? And that her degradation would cause him immense pain? Part II was also nonsensical. He planned to kill Gregg, and, per native custom, his offspring, Ann, would then be burned alive. The majority of pain and suffering is again on Ann.
Instead, it’s Flint who immediately cares for Ann, who feels pain for all the suffering he’s caused her. But by now Gregg has been killed trying to escape and the natives are gathering for Ann. So Flint tells Kingsland about the tunnel to safety—that old bit. Then he holds off the natives with some hocus pocus and unga-bunga talk, stands, collapses, is killed. Everyone else gets away.
I like how, on the train home, Kingsland talks of marriage while Ann eyes him with something like doubt in her eyes. She almost looks trapped. Not sure if Virginia Bruce is a worse actor for this, or better. No word on whatever happens to Tula.
Anyway, I get why they don’t remake it anymore. Won't even get into the racial politics of it all.
And by god he knew voodoo
An MGM film, “Kongo” was directed by William J. Cowen, assistant director on the silent classic “The King of Kings,” whose own career didn’t go much further. “Kongo” was his third feature and he only directed two more. And then? Did he go into theater? Radio? He was married to Lenore Coffee, a successful writer, but most of his bio is about his WWI heroics.
I found more on the aforementioned playwrights. As an actor, Chester De Vonde was kind of a big deal in the late 1890s and early 1900s, had his own stock company, etc., but at some point he supposedly went into the jungle, came out with knowledge of voodoo, and then wrote this play with Kilbourn Gordon. Because of that, I assumed Gordon was a writer. He wasn’t. He was a producer. His biggest hit was “The Cat and the Canary,” which helped jumpstart the whole “reading of the will in a creepy mansion and people start dying” trope. He was also responsible for a string of 1920s plays that feel like they influenced comic book writers a decade later: “The Bat,” “The Spider,” “The Green Beetle.”
In a 1927 Wilmington, Del., Evening Journal profile, Kilbourn expounds on his artistic philosophy. It wasn’t very artistic:
“Somehow for a period, playwrights seemed to think that so-called artistic drama was the essential meat for the public and they wrote that sort of play. Just when that era was at its height I came upon ‘The Cat and the Canary’ and it proved by its success that they were all wrong. Then I encountered Chester De Vonde, actor and playwright these many years. Mr. De Vonde, with my collaboration, wove out of his experiences in Africa the play called ‘Kongo.’ And that scored.”
Though De Vonde died a year later, age 55, Gordon lived for another 50 years, until 1975; but for his final four decades there’s almost no mention of him in the newspapers—just society-page stuff about his children and grandchildren getting married. I can’t even find an obit. For decades he watched his legacy fade. One wonders how the “so-called artistic dramas” he disparaged fared during this time.
“The cuckolding and crippling I don't mind. But sneering is beyond the pale.”
Thursday June 02, 2022
Throwback Fan Day
Warning: This will be an old guy's lament.
After going to the Mariners game on Sunday and being surrounded by people who didn't get the ettiquette of baseball (waiting until the at-bat is over before returning to your seat), or ettiquette generally (it's kind of rude to stand for a confab when you're blocking people's views), or baseball generally, I thought about the days when it felt like the stands were filled with real fans—people who knew something-something about the game. I thought of the time before my time, when men in suits and fedoras would show up on weekday afternoons, probably straight from work, probably playing hookey from it. And I thought: That would've been interesting to have been part of that. How do we make that happen again?
Maybe a promotion? You know throwback unis for players? Why not throwback unis for fans? Show up in suit/tie and get half off. Add a fedora for another quarter. I don't know. I just like the idea of it.
But mostly I like the idea of going to baseball games with baseball fans.
Opening Day, early '60s, around the time I was born.