erik lundegaard

Sunday October 30, 2022

Remember Menus?

I met some friends at a Wallingford bar the other night and we wanted food with our drinks. And they served food; they had a kitchen. The problem was ordering it.

The bartender told me I couldn't order through him, that I had to scan the QR code on the bar and do it that way. I looked at the thing. “What if somebody doesn't have a phone?” I asked. “Doesn't have a phone?” he said, then made a face. I told him, “Last week I went to the Chris Rock concert where they made you put your phone into one of those locked bags, so I just didn't bring it. But at the restaurant beforehand, it was a QR code for the menu so I was SOL.” The bartender told me some girl recently claimed she didn't have her phone, but she did; he saw her using it later.

Anyway, that's where we are now. Menus have apparently been around since 1100 A.D. but in less than 15 years the smartphone has all but wiped them away. At the pre-Chris Rock dinner, when I said I had no phone, they didn't bring me a menu; they brought me an iPad.

Still a few bugs in the system, too. QR stands for Quick Response but sometimes it's not quick nor a response. At the Wallingford bar, my friend tried to order for our table via the QR code but after he inputted all the orders it kept asking for our table. He would respond and it would ask again. He's the calmest person in the world but after 10 minutes he began to curse a blue streak. One of the people who worked there owned up: “Yeah, it's not you. It doesn't work right sometimes.”

In the end, we downed our drinks and walked over to Chutneys Bistro, which still has physical menus, and where I had some of the best Indian food I've had in years.

Posted at 08:48 AM on Sunday October 30, 2022 in category Technology   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 29, 2022

How Long Since Your Team Went to the World Series? Part II

I should've posted this yesterday, before Game 1, but got too busy.

Ten years ago, Oct. 23, 2012, I wrote a post called “How Long Since Your Team Went to the World Series?” which is pretty much just that. Apparently I was curious if every AL team had been to the World Series since the Mariners came into existence. (They had.) I also included each team's World Series record in parentheses. And at the bottom of each list were hapless teams like the Cubs, Nationals and, yes, my Seattle Mariners.

And now after 10 years, what does the list look like?

Here's what's happened to the bottom five of the 2012 list:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

  • Minnesota Twins: 1991 (3-3)
  • Oakland A's: 1990 (9-6)
  • Kansas City Royals: 1985 (1-1)
  • Baltimore Orioles: 1983 (3-4)
  • Seattle Mariners: NEVER (est., 1977)

NATIONAL LEAGUE

  • Los Angeles Dodgers: 1988 (6-12)
  • Milwaukee Brewers: 1982 (0-1)
  • Pittsburgh Pirates: 1979 (5-2)
  • Washington Nationals: NEVER (est., 1969)
  • Chicago Cubs: 1945 (2-8)

A lot more movement from the Senior Circuit. And this is how those lists look now: 

AMERICAN LEAGUE

  • Houston Astros: 2022 (1-3)
  • Tampa Bay Rays: 2020 (0-2)
  • Boston Red Sox: 2018 (9-5)
  • Cleveland Indians: 2016 (2-4)
  • Kansas City Royals: 2015 (2-2)
  • Detroit Tigers: 2012 (4-7)
  • Texas Rangers: 2011 (0-2)
  • New York Yankees: 2009 (27-13)
  • Chicago White Sox: 2005 (3-3)
  • Los Angeles Angels: 2002 (1-0)
  • Toronto Blue Jays: 1993 (2-0)
  • Minnesota Twins: 1991 (3-3)
  • Oakland A's: 1990 (9-6)
  • Baltimore Orioles: 1983 (3-4)
  • Seattle Mariners: NEVER (est., 1977)

Only five teams moved up: Indians and Rays went once, Royals and Red Sox twice, Astros four times. Effin' Astros. And the NL?

NATIONAL LEAGUE

  • Philadelphia Phillies: 2022 (2-5)
  • Atlanta Braves: 2021 (4-6)
  • Los Angeles Dodgers: 2020 (7-14)
  • Washington Nationals: 2019 (1-0)
  • Chicago Cubs: 2016 (3-8)
  • New York Mets: 2015 (2-3)
  • San Francisco Giants: 2014 (8-13)
  • St. Louis Cardinals: 2013 (11-8)
  • Colorado Rockies: 2007 (0-1)
  • Miami Marlins: 2003 (2-0)
  • Arizona Diamondbacks: 2001 (1-0)
  • San Diego Padres: 1998 (0-2)
  • Cincinnati Reds: 1990 (5-4)
  • Milwaukee Brewers: 1982 (0-1)
  • Pittsburgh Pirates: 1979 (5-2)

The Cards and Giants, atop the previous list, immediately went again (2013, 2014), plus some middle-drought teams (Mets, Braves) went in 2015 and 2021, and—even better—the teams with the longest pennant draughts (Cubs, Nats), those most cursed of franchises, finally captured titles in 2016 and 2019. Plus the Dodgers, who were bottom five back then, went three times (2017, 2019, 2020) while the Phils this year. So eight in all.

One day, I hope to move my boys out of that bottom position. 

Posted at 10:11 AM on Saturday October 29, 2022 in category Baseball   |   Permalink  

Thursday October 27, 2022

Dreaming of Being a Bit Player in Shakespeare

Sitting in the corner of a cramped kitchen, I come to realize that I have a bit part in a production of “Hamlet,” I don't know my lines, and the first show is that morning. “Are we allowed to hold the script?” I ask. Why did I think that was allowed? I'm scanning the book for my lines. I have one early, and I mark it off in pink highlighter so I can find it easier when I'm on stage—if I'm allowed to hold the book on stage—and I repeat it to myself, but panicky, without remembering it at all. My brain is a sieve. I'm leafing through the book for the rest of my lines, also panicky, and wondering if there's an electronic version I can download and just search for my character name. I'm getting nowhere and time is ticking away. 

My brother Chris is in the living room and he's been checking out my part. He's way more calm and reads the first line to me. I read it back, but I'm just reading the text. “No,” he says, and he sings the first five words. Oh, I think, it's at a funeral. Oh, I'm delivering a kind of euglogy or hymnal. For someone named Giles. That's interesting.

“Giiiles,” I begin to sing. 

Chris shakes his head. “Hiiiiles” he sings.

It's written Giles but pronounced Hiles? How did Chris know? But I begin to sing it that way, holding the note, “Hiiiiiile...” and then, mid-note, as I realize what I'm singing, I jokingly raising my arm in a Nazi salute. Chris cracks up. “You should do that. No, you shouldn't do that.” “No,” I agree, as I begin to rush upstairs. “Imagine the headlines: BIT PLAYER DOES NAZI SALUTE IN LOCAL SHAKESPEARE PRODUCTION.”

The rest of the dream is trying to figure out what to wear as time is ticking away and I still don't know my lines. 

Posted at 06:47 AM on Thursday October 27, 2022 in category Theater   |   Permalink  

Tuesday October 25, 2022

Elia, Zero

I've been reading Elia Kazan's “A Life” off and on for a few weeks now, and my initial thought was this: Has any memoir more ill-served its author than this one? He's just such a dick in it. Let's begin here:

My “womanizing” saved my life. It kept the juices pumping and saved me from drying up, turning to dust, and blowing away, like some of my friends.

It's not even the calculation, or the quotes around “womanizing,” as if it's not a thing. It's that final, wholly unnecessary dig at “some of my friends.” I guess his friends were steadfast, like saps, so they dried up, turned to dust and blew away. Thanks ... friend.

And he keeps doing this. As he's writing his memoir, Lillian Hellman dies. He named names, she didn't, and she wrote a book about the period called “Scoundrel Time,” which is very good, and I forget if he shows up in it as a scoundrel but if he didn't he should have. But this is what he says about her: “Lillian was a person I did not like, but since this is being written on the occasion of her death, de mortuis nil nisi bonum.” And then he speaks ill of the dead, speculating on her sex life. Later in the book, he implies she all but propositioned him. Later still, she invites him over for dinner, gumbo, and tells him the cook/servant/whatever is away for the night, but no, no, please, he just can't. Poor Lillian. Didn't she know he slept with Marilyn? 

And, sure, that's an enemy. But here he is on a friend, or a one-time friend, Arthur Miller, after the success of Death of a Salesman:

Art began to relish the joys of being right. A supposed rebel, he lived the life of an establishment god, and he liked it. There is a danger for an artist of becoming a man who sees his role to be teaching others and pronouncing judgment on one and all.

As Kazan pronounces judgment on this one.

Joseph Mankiewicz was head of the Directors Guild during that scoundrel time, who, with Kazan by his side, fought against a right-wing takeover of the org by the likes of C.B. DeMille and Clarence Brown. A hero! But let's get some digs in anyway:

Joe Mankiewicz, at that time, was a handsome man in that nonmuscular way many women prefer; he enjoyed the gift of his sexuality and an abundant scoffing humor. To scoff in that society was to demonstrate good sense. ... Now, at age seventy-eight, his hair thin above a face plumped by ease, he lives, on money he made long ago, in a handsome home in the elite backcountry of New York's Westchester County, looked after by a gracious and understanding wife and guarded by his four Oscars.

And self-pitying? Read this about his cheating:

As always, there was a price. I led a double life and became a double person. It marked me. This took—as one analyst pointed out to me repeatedly—an enormous amount of my vital energy. But I didn't know and don't now know the solution. Even though my mendacity was confined to one area, it made me a different kind of man than I'd like to have been. It also hurt someone else, which resulted in the guilt I've carried all my days.

I cheated. It sapped my vital energy. And now I carry this guilt. All my days. 

But I suppose it's better than memoirs where you talk in superlatives about all of your contemporaries. My father hates those. And it's not poorly written. Plus he's brutal with himself, too. The following vignette is powerful. 

My favorite [cast member during the filming of “Panic in the Streets”] was Zero Mostel... I thought him an extraordinary artist and a delightful companion, one of the funniest and most original men I'd ever met; I never knew what he was going to say next. I constantly sought his company. He liked me too—one reason being that he was one of three people whom I rescued from the industry's blacklist, which was already in effect.

For a long time, Zero had not been able to get work in films, but I got him in my film—and so earned increased admiration from “our side.” I was a political hero as well. After the film was done and forgotten, I didn't see Zero again for several years. In the meantime I'd changed my mind about many things, including my feelings about the investigation into communism in this country. To the horror of a few of my best friends, I testified friendly to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. One winter's night, on 72nd Street near Columbus Avenue, I ran into Zero. By that time I'd hardened myself against the disapproval some old friends were giving me and didn't much care what people a good deal closer to me than Zero thought. But for some reason I did care what he thought. He stopped me and put an arm around my neck—a little too tight—and said in one of the most dolorous voices I've ever heard, “Why did you do that? You shouldn't have done that.” He took me into a bar and we had a drink and then another, but he didn't say much and I didn't say much. All he did was look at me once in a while, and his eyes were saying what his lips were not: “Why did you do that?” I never saw him again.

Posted at 08:18 AM on Tuesday October 25, 2022 in category Books   |   Permalink  

Monday October 24, 2022

Swept

The 2022 Yankees are done—swept in the ALCS by Houston: 4-2, 3-2, 5-0, 6-5. They led for a half an inning in Game 1 and for 2 1/2 innings yesterday and that was it. Whenever the Yankees went on top, Houston scored right back—like the Yankees used to do. The Astros beat them in the ALCS in 2017, 2019 and 2022. They keep breaking their hearts—the way the Yankees used to keep breaking ours.

Their hitting was anemic. Sure, hitting has been at a premium this postseason, what with these great starters and monster bullpens—these no-name middle relievers who come out for an inning and throw 100 mph with 90 mph breaking stuff, only to hand the ball over to the next no-name guy who can do the same. But even with that, the Yankees hitting was anemic. Here are the four LCS teams:

  • Astros: .238/.326/.429
  • Phillies: .237/.296/.494
  • Padres: .202/.256/.333
  • Yankees: .162/.232/.269

The Phillies slugged nearly .500, the Yankees couldn't slug .300. They weren't even close to .300. And sure, Astros pitching. But in the ALDS, against the same guys, and despite that 18-inning shutout, the Mariners still had a better line: .195/.265/.313.

Just think about where they were earlier this summer. In mid-June, I was resigning myself to another Yankees pennant and probable title. They had a .750 winning percentage, were projected to win 122 games, were seemingly unstoppable. And then they were stopped. Judge kept soaring but the bottom fell out on the rest of the team. He held them up. But not here. In four games, he went 1-16. The one was a single. He was booed by the hometown fans. Not sure what that does to his value. Before, I couldn't imagine the Yankees not trying to sign him. Now? “What does he do in October?” That's the Yankees fan question. And the most recent answer for Judge is 1-16.

We're in historic territory. These are the three longest pennant droughts the Yankees have had since they bought Babe Ruth for $100k on Dec. 26, 1919:

  • 11 seasons: 1965-1975
  • 13 seasons: 2010-2022*
  • 14 seasons: 1982-1995

*active

I'll enjoy it while I can. Take us out, Carey. Start spreading the news.

Posted at 10:53 AM on Monday October 24, 2022 in category Yankees Suck   |   Permalink  

Sunday October 23, 2022

Famous Last Words: Walter Kiesling

“He'll never become anything.”

-- 1950s Pittsburgh Steelers coach Walter Kiesling about the young, third-string quarterback he'd recently cut from the team—a guy named Johnny Unitas. Per Joe Posnanski's countdown of the 101 greatest players in NFL history. Unitas, befitting his jersey number, comes in at #19.

Why did Kiesling feel this way? Apparently he liked running up the middle. This Unitas kid was supposedly a hot-shot passer and he saw no point in that. He also didn't seem to see much point in winning. During his three years with the Steelers, the team never had a winning record, nor finished higher than fourth of six. Posnanski adds a footnote about the general ineptitude of the Steelers of that era: “In a short span, the Steelers passed on Johnny Unitas, Lenny Moore and Jim Brown, and they drafted but released Len Dawson. That's impressive.”

Posted at 09:23 AM on Sunday October 23, 2022 in category Sports   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 22, 2022

Movie Review: Outside the Law (1920)

WARNING: SPOILERS

Tod Browning’s “Outside the Law” starts convoluted, becomes interminable, then does what movies do best: wraps up with gunfire. 

It both honors Chinese culture (Confucianism) and doesn’t (yellowface). It’s got an early dual role for Lon Chaney and one of the first screen appearances by Anna May Wong, but it’s mostly a vehicle for a little-remembered actress, Priscilla Dean, who was a star during silents but didn’t handle the jump to talkies well—though I can’t find out why. Did she sound like a truck driver? Did she lisp? Maybe she aged out? She’s 24 here but looks about 40. 

Good with the glower
It opens with a book, “The Sayings of Confucius,” and this plot device: a Chinese wise man in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood, Chang Low (E. Alyn Warren), is helping reform notorious gangster “Silent” Madden (Ralph Lewis) and his daughter, Molly, aka “Silky Moll” (Dean), by using Confucianism. Right, that old gag.

A rival gangster, “Black Mike” Sylva, aka “Blackie” (Chaney), doesn’t see this as the opportunity it is—to take over his territory without a fight. Instead, like an idiot, he decides to set up Madden in convoluted fashion: He starts a gun battle, kills a cop, plants the offending weapon, and has his stooge, Humpy (John George, a successful little-person actor of the era), point it out to the cops and say he saw Madden hide it there. An intertitle lets us know the results:

Lack of evidence saved Madden a life term — Yet, “because he was there,” he must serve eight months — and the prophecy of “Black Mike” came true.

Wait, the only evidence against him is Humpy’s say-so? Who was the guy that told Madden to head toward the shooting? And is part of Black Mike’s gang? Silent Madden needed a better lawyer.

Anyway, now Black Mike can take over Madden’s territory. Done and done.

Nope, not yet. Now Blackie plots a jewel heist with Molly and “Dapper” Bill Ballard (Wheeler Oakman), but the real plot is to betray Molly—to have the cops catch her with the jewels. Why? Apparently Black Mike just doesn’t like this family. He's the anti-Corleone: It’s not business, it's personal.

Except Dapper Bill betrays Blackie. He lets Molly in on the plot, and together they steal the jewels from the safe in the mansion and make their getaway together. Why does Dapper Bill—who’s not that dapper—do this? He loves her. There’s just not much onscreen heat. We hardly see them embrace, and Molly glowers a lot. It’s like they skipped the fun stuff and went right to “married for 20 years.”

Molly uses that glower to good effect during the interminable middle of the movie, when the two are hiding out in an apartment on Knob [sic] Hill. She’s trying to play it cool but he’s champing at the bit. He wants out.

But guess what he does to amuse himself? No, not that. He helps the boy across the hallway (Stanley Goethals) build a kite—as mobstsers are wont to do. He really really really loves this kid, who has a Dutch boy haircut and an overly cute way of talking via intertitles: “Oo don’t love me like him do, does oo?” (No, kid, she doesn’t.) The kid so warms his heart that Dapper Bill wants to become a dad, too. This leads to more scowls from Molly, of course, until finally Bill can’t take it anymore. He goes for a walk around Nob Hill, damnit.

Two things happen as a result. 

One, he’s spotted by Humpy, who, yes, seems to be everywhere.

And two, the fucking kid comes over again, this time with puppies, and hangs around despite Molly’s scowl. At one point, he finds Molly’s gun between the chair cushions and points it at her. She grabs it and yells and he cries. (At this point I’m like: Where are this kid’s parents?) Then he demands to be hugged. Then he hugs Molly. And that’s the thing that finally turns her frown upside-down. She melts. And when Bill returns from his walk, she says, yes, she’s ready to have kids, too. Done and done.

Except, whoops, that's right, they're jewel thieves. What to do with the jewels? She wants to keep them as their nest egg, he wants to give them back so they don’t spend their lives looking over their shoulders. He also seems to think if they just give them back they won’t be charged. So obviously not a law school grad.

What finally convinces the scowling Molly to see it Bill’s way? Sitting in her chair, brooding, she notices the shadow of a cross along the floor of their living room. Turns out it’s what’s left of the tattered kite, which is stuck to something outside their building. But that’s what does it. The shadow of the cross. Done and done. 

Actually, we have a half hour left of this 75-minute movie. I didn’t lie when I said it was interminable.

Humpy spotted Bill, remember, so when the two go to leave the apartment, with a blast of quite-effective music, they find Black Mike hanging in the hallway.

Bill tries the triple-cross, saying he was just waiting to find out where Molly hid the jewels so he could bring them back to Black Mike. At this point it gets a little confusing, partly because there's missing and damaged footage. Suffice to say, Bill and Molly get away with the jewels and return to Chang Low’s place. And guess who’s there? “Silent” Madden, who’s out after eight months with bitterness in his heart. He wants the jewels as a kind of payment, Chang Low says no, Blackie and his men show up outside, and we get a big gun battle.

In the end, Blackie and most of his men die, and Chang Low convinces the cops not to prosecute. The chief: “You’ve won, Chang Low — you’ve got the right dope. Keep up the good work.” 

So obviously not a law school grad.

Cagney connects
A few things of interest to gangster movie fans—or maybe just James Cagney movie fans. Humpy seems a forerunner to Snitz Edwards’ Miller from “The Public Enemy”: height-challenged, loyal to the gangster we don’t like, third-reel snitch of the protagonists’ hideout.

Then there’s the “Public Enemy” publicity photos of Cagney that look a lot like Chaney here.

And finally, this intertitle card from Blackie:

Chaney is good here—I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Chaney and not been impressed—but it’s an unnecessarily dual role. Besides Black Mike, he plays Ah Wing, Chang Low’s servant. Still trying to sort out the yellowface thing. It seemed to lean toward leading men and heroic portrayals. If they were comic relief, sure, give it to the real Chinese guy. It also feels like Asian women were more often cast as Asian women. Anna May Wong’s career was stunted, but she actually had one.

Priscilla Dean, meanwhile, made her last movie in 1932, “Klondike,” fifth-billed to Thelma Todd and Lyle Talbot, then she got out of Dodge. She died in 1987 in Leonia, New Jersey. I know people who lived there then. They never heard of her.

SLIDESHOW


  • OUTSIDE THE LAW: The movie opens with a book—and Confucius, that ol' troublemaker.

  • I like the exteriors of Chinatown. I assume this is the real thing and not the Universal Studios backlot. The film shot in both places.

  • Chaney as Black Mike. Always impressive. 

  • And in his dual and unnecessary role as Ah Wing. And did they really have to gunk up his teeth so much? C'mon.

  • I love this silent film convention when introducing characters, nudging us, “Hey, by the way, this is the star.”

  • And here she is, a matronly 24.

  • During the jewel heist. 

  • And displaying her trademark scowl. She looks like this for half the film. 

  • I like the gender-role reversal. His paternal instinct is huge, her maternal instinct is nonexistent.

  • Until it isn't.

  • A brief, uncredited scene with future star Anna May Wong. She was 15.

  • Blackie's gang plots the final gun battle. 

  • Most of the final battle takes place in this apothecary shop. Can you imagine what Jackie Chan could've done with this?  

  • Leaving Leonia. *FIN*
Posted at 09:03 AM on Saturday October 22, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - Silent   |   Permalink  

Wednesday October 19, 2022

Movie Review: Shadows Over Shanghai (1938)

WARNING: SPOILERS

So this is where Edward Woods wound up.

In case you don’t know his story: Woods lost the starring role in the 1931 gangster flick “The Public Enemy” when, a few weeks into production, the writers, the director and eventually the producer realized, “You know, this Cagney fellow has some verve and snap to him,” and switched their roles. The decision relegated Woods to second banana, which seemed to seal his fate. For the rest of the decade, he was mostly fourth-billed in increasingly cheaper productions, until this final straw, his last film role: sixth-billed in a shitty Poverty Row production and acting opposite a woman so wooden she could attract termites. 

He plays Peter, the deliverer of the film’s maguffin. His sister Irene (Lynda Grey, the wooden one) works at the Woosung Refuge for War Orphans, and one day she and a gray-haired elder are talking paternalistically about their Chinese charges when a plane flies overhead. No, two planes. She assumes it’s Peter and a friend, but it’s not a friend. It’s the movie’s villain, Igor Sargoza (Robert Barrat, with a bad Russian accent and worse Leninesque goatee), who shoots down Peter’s plane. There’s a crash landing but no fire. Bandaged and awaiting greater medical attention, Peter pleads with his sister to complete his mission: something about getting an amulet to friends in San Francisco. “Whoever has that amulet can either help or rob China,” he says. “I gave Hoy Long my word that China would not be robbed.”

Hoy Long? Yeah, we never see him.

Passport problems
Later we find out it’s half an amulet, and someone in San Francisco has the other half, and … you know the rest. It’s such a hoary premise that when our hero, newspaper reporter Johnny McGinty (James Dunn), hears about it, he says that it’s like something out of the comics. It’s the screenwriters mocking their industry. Or themselves. 

Anyway, that’s why Sargoza shot down Peter. And why he follows Irene to Shanghai. He wants the amulet, too. Which begs the question why he shot down Peter in the first place. Isn’t that risking the thing he’s after? Or is the amulet fireproof?

In Shanghai, Irene and McGinty meet when he fights off the men attacking her, then again at the Café Hotel, since, in a helluva coincidence, he’s friends with Howard Barclay (Ralph Morgan), the very man Peter told her to seek out if she ran into trouble. Her trouble? She didn’t have a passport.

She: Do I have to have a passport even for an evacuation?

We also get a semi-creepy scene in the hotel room when the three leads meet up: 

Barclay: Would you believe I used to dangle her on my knee when she was a mere infant?
McGinty: Mmm. That’d be alright about now.

There’s a secondary villain, too, Yokahama, played by Paul Sutton in yellowface, and our heroes are captured, released, captured, escape, etc. Much of the movie has a cheap, movie-serial feel to it, and much of the action involves where to hide the amulet: first in McGinty’s camera, then in an incense burner. Except, oh no, that’s an explosive device that kills Sargoza. So much for the amulet. Except, oh phew, Barclay never put it there. He still has it. And he gives it to Irene and McGinty as they prepare to sail to America. But … without him? He’s not going?

Believe me, Johnny, there’s nothing in the world I’d like more. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Statue of Liberty. In fact, it’s a long time since I’ve seen … liberty of any kind.

And that’s that.

Everything about the movie has a sad defeated air. Everyone seems to have started out in better places and wound up here.

The other Warner
The movie was made by Franklyn Warner Productions, which was responsible for seven cheapies between 1938 and 1940. Three of them, including this one, were directed by Charles Lamont, who directed 87 features in his day. He started out in silent comedies with Mack Sennett, then went on to do Donald O’Connor teen flicks, the Ma and Pa Kettle series, and a few latter Abbott and Costellos. Apparently he’s also been credited with the discovery of Shirley Temple. The girl, not the drink.

As for our boy? We only see Edward Woods in the first 10 minutes. After he sends sis on the mission, Sargoza shows up, demands the amulet, searches him, and then goes to the Chinese orphans standing in the window. He asks them if the girl got the amulet. One of the kids replies, “I saw nothing. Nothing,” like an ur-Sgt. Schultz. That made me smile.

Sargoza figures it out anyway. “Girl was here,” he says to Peter. “Did you give to her? Did you?”

Peter’s answer is silence. And that’s the last time we ever saw Edward Woods on a movie screen.

Posted at 08:09 AM on Wednesday October 19, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Tuesday October 11, 2022

Movie Review: Hot Saturday (1932)

First starring role for some guy named Grant, but most newspaper ads touted Carroll. 

WARNING: SPOILERS

“He seems like a fine fellow.”

That’s Cary Grant’s talking about Randolph Scott’s character, to whom he might lose the leading lady, Nancy Carroll, in “Hot Saturday,” directed by William A. Seiter. Since in real life Grant and Scott became housemates shortly thereafter and for much of the 1930s, with the 21st-century assumption that they were longtime lovers, ironies abound.

“No A-name draw in its cast.”

That was Variety’s take on “Hot Saturday,” which was the first starring role for Grant, and for which Scott, who shows up more than a third of the way through, is third-billed. Considering what both men—particularly Grant—became, ironies abound.

Roaring ’30s
It’s an odd little film—an adaptation of a 1926 novel but set in July 1932 as if the Great Depression wasn’t happening and people weren’t suffering. Its concerns are ’20s concerns: young people in roadsters, free-spirited women and the ruin small-town gossip can bring.

It’s set in the town of Marysville, in the state of wherever, and Ruth (Carroll) is the cute little flapper who works at the bank to whom all the men flit and flirt—including Archie (Grady Sutton), a fat bank teller who’s apparently all hands but who seems gay, and Conny Billop (fourth-billed Edward Woods), the reedy-voiced, hair-combing BMOC. In finally landing the date with Ruth, he also gets to say the title line: “Shall we we make a hot Saturday of it?” And we know what Gene Cousineau says about title lines. 

Into this picturesque berg, which a title graphic tells us has “one bank, two fire engines, four street cars, and a busy telephone exchange,” comes wealthy playboy Romer Sheffield (Grant), who scandalizes the community by apparently living in sin with Camille Renault (Rita La Roy). I assumed we’d get some innocent explanation to shame the gossips—she’s his sister, etc.—but this is pre-code, and, yep, apparently they are living together. But ol’ Romer’s like every other boy in town and has an eye for Ruth. He even goes into the bank to flirt with Ruth, leaving Camille to stew and steam in the car. The movie treats this as Camille getting her just desserts but it’s rather caddish behavior, and soon Camille is off to warmer climates. “Good,” Romer says, “she’ll probably get a nice coat of tan.” A nice coat of tan. Never heard it said that way before.

When Romer gleans Conny has Ruth locked up for Saturday night, he invites all the kids over to his lakeside estate for an afternoon party, then horns in on Conny’s time. He takes Ruth for a long walk along the lake, and by the time they return most everyone is gone, and now it’s Conny’s turn to stew and steam. At the lakeshore dance hall, Conny rents a boat, makes a pass at Ruth, is rebuffed, then motors them into a private cove to attempt worse. When Ruth escapes onto the shore, Conny abandons her there. She is forced to walk back to Romer’s place. Unlike Conny (and Archie, and…), Romer isn’t all hands. He’s calm and understanding—handsomely fixing her a drink and listening to her travails. He’s basically the perfect gay boyfriend—the man from dream city.

So who gets in trouble for Conny's loutishness? Ruth, of course. Her rival, Eva (Lilian Bond), sees her being driven home very, very late by Romer’s chauffeur, Conny lies about what happened, and soon the gossip mill is churning about her and Romer. Within 24 hours…

  • Two neighbor ladies close the window to her
  • Two bank customers snub her
  • The Women’s Social League kicks her out
  • She's fired

It’s very “The Trial,” isn’t it? Someone must have traduced Ruth B., for without having done anything wrong… Except her mother (Jane Darwell, playing awful, well) thinks she has done something wrong—partying the way she does; hanging with the crowd. Her father, whom everyone calls “Senator,” is calmer and more understanding.

Ruth not so much. She panics. Feeling sullied and trapped, she looks for a way out. Hey, a family friend, Bill Fadden (Scott), has recently returned to town to do a geologic survey for an oil company, and he’s always liked her. So she runs to see him—through a downpour, gets lost, collapses, and he has to rescue her. He also has to remove her wet clothes (off-screen) and put her under a heavy blanket with just those bare shoulders showing. But he’s aw-shucks about it, and looks like Randolph Scott, so it’s cool. 

Anyway, the town, or at least Eva and Conny, are not done with her. Ruth and Bill have an engagement party to which they invite all the awful town gossips, including Eva and Conny, and to which Eva and Conny invite ol’ Romer. It's a scheme, see? Since he’s there, everyone talks, Bill overhears the rumors and is scandalized. He all but calls Ruth a whore. Elsewhere, though, the tide is turning. Everyone thinks Eva and Conny were pretty low inviting Romer. 

So which gay guy gets her in the end? The perfect gay boyfriend, of course. He’s top-billed. He was just beginning to be Cary Grant but he was still Cary Grant.

Seventh-billed
A few notes.

At Romer’s, there’s an Asian bartender, Archie speaks to him in pidgin English, he responds with the Queen’s version, and Archie all but goes “Whaaaa?” to the camera. So they were doing that bit back then.

Listerine is referenced. So is Marlene Dietrich, a Paramount star with whom Grant co-starred the year before. The script ain't much, but I like this phone conversation Ruth has with a customer as Romer waits in the wings to talk: 

Yes, Mr. Smith. The balance is correct. Perhaps you failed to deduct the government tax. …  Yes, there's a two-cent tax on every check you write. … Oh no, no. Not just for Democrats. The Republicans have to pay it, too.

You have to feel for Edward Woods. Two years earlier, he was tapped to star in “The Public Enemy” but lost the role to James Cagney. Here, struggling to stay on, he loses the girl to Cary Grant. Someone should’ve let him know both actors would wind up kind of iconic. Even today he gets no respect. I don’t know who chooses IMDb avatars for dead actors, but Woods’ image isn't his face but a photo of “Ted Lewis on Broadway,” with, in the right-most third, a poster for this movie: “Hot Saturday.” His photo on the poster is looking up at Nancy Carroll. Despite being fourth-billed, he’s not even mentioned among the six listed actors.

Posted at 06:44 AM on Tuesday October 11, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Sunday October 09, 2022

This Team

My wife is traveling through Ireland with her brother and sister-in-law this month, and yesterday she sent me a text, telling me about leaving Ennis for Doolin and from there to Dingle, and adding a joke about the names of the towns, and how she’s having a great time but misses trees. Then she asked what was going on with me. Here’s my series of texts in response:

  • I’m at a bar with Jeff for the Mariners game.
  • Buckley’s in lower Queen Anne. 0-0 in the 2nd.
  • Mariners down 2-0.
  • 3-0. And there is a table of Blue Jays fans here.
  • 4-0.
  • 4th inning. We have zero hits.

To which she wrote, “OK, things could change” and added the fingers-crossed emoji. And she was right. They did change. My next text: 

  • 8-1

In another bar on the other side of the world, she texted me a trio of cat-crying emojis.

These were my next three texts, sent at various times over the next 90 minutes:

  • 8-5
  • 9-9 in the 8th. This team.
  • Final score, 10-9, Mariners. We advance to the ALDS.

This is how that looks in win probability.

We later learned that only two previous teams have ever come back from down 7 or more runs to win a postseason game. In the 1929 World Series, the Chicago Cubs were beating the Philadelphia A’s 8-0 in the 7th inning of Game 4, and the A’s came back and won it 10-8. And in 2008, the Red Sox were down to the Rays 7-0 in the 7th of ALCS Game 5 and won it 8-7.

And now this team.

I predicted Adam Frazier’s hits, by the way. Jeff can corroborate. I began the 5th inning by saying that this is when fans begin to take notice of the no-hitter. If the starter—here, Kevin Gausman—gets through 5 with the no-no intact, a hum develops. People begin to talk. They point to the scoreboard. I didn’t really know Gausman. I assumed he was young but he’s a journeyman, 31 years old, finished sixth in the Cy Young voting last year for San Francisco, signed as a free agent by the Blue Jays Dec. 1. His 2022 numbers were good but not DeGrom good: 12-10, 3.35 ERA. But he led the league in FIP, or Field-Independent Pitching, i.e., the elements of the game that a pitcher can be said to have control over: walks, strikeouts, HBP and homeruns. He’d struck out 205, walked just 28, gave up 15 homers in 174 innings. Since we tended to strike out a lot, walk not much, and rely on the long ball, Jeff figured this was a bad matchup for us. He wasn’t wrong.

Adam Frazier led off the 5th for us and took a strike. “He’s going to get a hit,” I said. For most of the year, I didn’t have much feeling about Adam Frazier one way or the other. He was one of our bland middle infielders, hit between .200 and .250, not much pop. He was another journeyman, 30 going on 31, who’d spent most of his career with the Pirates. We’d gotten him in a trade with the San Diego Padres last Nov. 27 for some minor leaguers, and his 2022 numbers didn’t exactly leap off the page: .238/.301/.311. I remember being shocked when Scott Servais had him lead off against the Angels in early August when Julio was out. I wasn’t wrong.

But I had a feeling for him now. He had a lean hungry look. Mostly I had the feeling that it's the pesky middle infielders you have to watch out for—the Mark Lemkes and Jeff Reboulets of the world. Those are the guys that can break up a no-hitter; and those are the guys who can do damage in the postseason when you least expect it. “He’s going to get a hit,” I said again.

Which is when he lined a single to left.

“Nostradamus!” Jeff yelled at me with a smile.

I had a feeling for the next batter, too, Carlos Santana, since he’d come through with so many big hits for us early in his stay. But this feeling was earlier, in the final week of the season, and even during Game 1 on Friday. There, he’d swung through everything and looked so helpless at the plate that I lost the feeling. I didn't have confidence. I didn’t think he was going to do anything for us. He was the exact wrong guy to have at the plate.

Which is when he doubled off the top of the wall in center. They doublechecked to see if it was a homer but it wasn’t, but now we had two men on and Jarred Kelenic at the plate—the former top prospect who blisters Triple-A pitching and hits .150 in the Majors. He’d looked good in September, not in October, and too tight at the plate during the post. I wanted to send him a pizza laced with Xanax. He hit a little blooper to left, not deep enough to score anybody. “At least he didn’t strike out,” I said, and as I said it, they sent Frazier. And the throw was not good. And we had a run.

And then Toronto scored four more.

I was kind of surprised when Gausman went out to pitch in the top of the 6th. I figured they’d save him for Houston—if necessary—since this game was obviously over. They didn’t need him. I was also surprised they left him in after he gave up three straight singles. And I was further surprised that when he got Mitch Haniger to strike out and Frazier to pop out that they pulled him then. Did Blue Jays manager John Schneider want to bring in a lefty to turn Santana around? I just looked at the numbers. Batting left against right-handers, Santana, in 2022, had 16 homers; batting right against lefties, he had 3. Fewer at-bats, sure, but by about half, not 1/5. So I assume that was Toronto’s thinking. They wanted to keep Santana in the park.

They didn’t.

When Gausman left to a standing ovation, he was a hero: 5 2/3 IP, 7 Ks, 1 BB, 1 run. That’s a 1.59 ERA. He’d saved their season. Three pitches later, as he sat on the bench, his game ERA had ballooned to 6.35. That's got to be tough to watch. To Santana, reliever Tim Mayza threw:

  • a wild pitch (1 run scored)
  • a swinging strike
  • a 3-run homer (3 runs scored)

And just like that we had a chance again.

They tagged on an insurance run in the 7th, and in the top of the 8th we got one back (Suarez double, Raleigh single), and then loaded the bases with two more singles and nobody out. Fun! With Santana up again? More fun! Of course he strikes out on four pitches, and Dylan Moore, our other nondescript middle infielder, strikes out on six pitches. And who do we have left? J.P. Crawford, whom I love, our team leader, but who hasn’t exactly been hitting well lately: .218 in August, .195 in September, .100 in October, and 0-for the series. And on the first pitch he bloops one to center. We’re all yelling “Get down, get down, get down!” hoping beyond hope. The good news: none of the fielders seem to have a bead on it; it seems to be heading toward the no-man’s land in the middle of them all. Which is where it lands as they crash together—center fielder George Springer has to come out of the game—and all of our baserunners score, “Everybody scores!” I yelled in Rick Rizzs homage, and everybody at Buckley’s goes nuts. Everyone is high-fiving in this late-stage pandemic era, and a guy in a corner booth gets out a trombone and starts playing a tune and we all cheer.

Bottom of the 8th was a tough one. I’d already forgotten how tough it was. Andres Munoz, he of the 103-mph fastball, the lights-out dude who shut the door the day before, wasn’t as sharp. With one out he walked Bo Bichette; then Bo stole second. Vlad Jr. grounded out, but that brought up Alejandro Kirk, their catcher/DH, who looks like a little Oompa-Loompa but was an All-Star earlier this year at age 23, and sported a nice .285/.372/.415 line for the season. And in this series he felt like The Guy: 3-7 with a walk. Fouled off everything. But here, on a 3-2 pitch, he grounded to second. It was his last at-bat of the season.

Which brings up my second Adam Frazier prognostication. The Blue Jays went with reliever Jordan Romano, 2.11 ERA in 64 innings, and he got Eugenio Suarez on three pitches. But then Cal Raleigh—Cal Raleigh again!—lined a double to right. I was wondering whether we should pinch-run for him when Mitch Haniger flied out to center. Two outs. Now it was Adam Frazier. And for some reason, I had that good feeling again.

“He’s going to get a hit,“ I told Jeff. ”We’re going ahead here.”

Afterwards, tons of Mariners fans posted how the date was Oct. 8, which was the exact day in 1995 that Edgar Martinez lined a double down the left-field line that scored Joey Cora from third and Ken Griffey Jr. from first to win Game 5 of the ALDS against the New York Yankees—the most famous hit in franchise history. This one was another line shot, also for a double, down the right-field line this time. And it put us ahead.

Over the din at Buckley’s, Jeff again shouted “Nostradamus!” at me, but with slightly more awe now. “Adam Frazier Whisperer!” he yelled at me, almost accusingly, as we went around high-fiving people in the joint—pandemic schmandemic—including two Asian guys who sat politely and quietly at the table in front of us for the entire game and now looked around at the celebration in amazement. But could we tack on insurance runs? We couldn’t. But would Scott Servais stick with Munoz, go to Erik Swanson, whom we’d seen warming up, or maybe go to fourth starter George Kirby, a rookie, our first pick in the 2019 draft, and the August 2022 AL Rookie of the Month? He went with Kirby, who issued a one-out walk to Matt Chapman, then got an eight-pitch strikeout of goggle-eyed catcher Danny Jansen. Then he got Raimel Tapia to fly out into the soft glove of our Rookie of the Year Julio Rodriguez in centerfield. And that was the game and the series. It was over. They had done it.

This team.

When I left the bar, the city was slightly greyish from wildfire smoke, the sun a hazy red ball hanging over Puget Sound, and I decided to walk along the waterfront, hoping for fresher air, but just floating, buzzing inside, and high-fiving the people I saw wearing Mariners jerseys and with similar dazed, happy expressions on their faces.

Over the last couple of days, I’d spoken with baseball friends about our chances in this series, and the more they knew about baseball the less chance they thought we had. I think I left the door a little more open than they did. I thought there was light coming through it. I knew we'd done well against Toronto this year. I knew the other numbers, too. We had the third-worst team batting average in the Majors. We kept winning way more one-run games than is theoretically feasible. We shouldn’t be here.

I think of the San Francisco Giants. In the 1960s, when they had Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and Juan Marichal, all Hall of Famers, all in their prime, they couldn’t win it all. They went to one World Series, in ’62, and lost in 7. San Francisco didn’t get its World Series championship until 2010 when, sure, they had Buster Posey, who might go to the Hall, and Tim Lincecum, the Cy Young winner back then. But mostly they won with Freddy Sanchez and Andres Torres, Aubrey Huff and World Series MVP Edgar Rentaria. In baseball, you just never know. And maybe that’ll be us, too. In the 1990s, when we had Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez and Alex Rodriguez, all in their prime, all Hall of Famers or would-bes, we didn’t even get to the World Series. So maybe what gets us there is Cal and Ty, Eugenio and Julio. And Carlos, J.P., and Adam.

Either way, I’m going to be enjoying this floating feeling for the next few days.

Posted at 01:20 PM on Sunday October 09, 2022 in category Seattle Mariners   |   Permalink  

Friday October 07, 2022

Movie Review: City Streets (1931)

WARNING: SPOILERS

Here’s the three-act structure in a nutshell:

  1. C’mon, join my Dad’s mob!
  2. Oh no, why did you join my Dad’s mob?
  3. Oh my god, don’t fight my Dad’s mob. They’ll kill you!

If you were pitching it today, you’d say it’s “Sergeant York” meets “Little Caesar.” A nice-guy, sharpshootin’ country boy who works at the county fair and is known simply as The Kid (Gary Cooper), is dating the daughter of a prohibition gangster, Nan (Sylvia Sidney), who thinks the beer racket is just fine and wants her boyfriend to join up. He’s not interested.

“You’ll never do a day’s time,” she insists. “Trust Pop. You play ball and the mob won’t let you down.”

So: You can’t trust Pop and the mob will let you down. Oh, and you’ll do time. Or she will.

Good with a gun in the first act
Despite all that, there’s real artistry in the early going, and I guess the credit goes to director Rouben Mamoulian, whom I knew little about, but whose movies are in the directors section at Scarecrow Video—meaning he’s considered something of an auteur. Though his name sounds vaguely French, he’s Armenian, born in 1897 in the old Russian empire, then moved to England, then to the U.S. in the 1920s.

Early on, involved in nefarious activity, Pop drives by and winks at Nan. She winks back. Then we get a straight-on shot of her winking. Turns out she’s now at a shooting gallery at a fair, taking aim at the targets … and missing. Everyone’s missing. They’re all no good. And one older gentleman takes aim across Nan until she takes the rifle out of his hand. “Hey, look out!” she says. Because he’s almost going to hit the guy in the white hat running the stand. At which point, we get a close up of the white hat from behind. And the wearer of the white hat turns around with a little cigarette in his mouth and smiles right at the camera. It’s Gary Cooper.

What a great fucking movie-star intro. Put it up there with Rick in “Casablanca” and Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean.” And dozens I'm forgetting. 

You know that whole “Find someone who looks at you” meme? Well, find someone who looks at you the way Sylvia Sidney looks at Gary Cooper in this movie. It’s almost like there’s a little electric current running through her, she’s so giddy with love. At the same time, their early conversation feels natural—during the funhouse mirror scene, and with the hot dogs, and some part of the beach scene. It almost feels adlibbed. Was it? Maybe that’s just good acting and directing.

Again, she wants Kid to joins Dad’s mob but he’s no way. Then mob boss Big Fella (Paul Lukas) orders Pop to kill their colleague, Blackie the bootlegger (Stanley Fields), over a girl. He does, then passes the gun onto Nan; but before she can dump it in the river, she’s caught by the cops, charged, winds up in prison. And where’s the mob? Nowhere.

But just as she gets disillusioned with Dad’s work, Kid is convinced to join up. Oddly, his sharp-shooting ability never comes into play. That feels like a missed opportunity. We see him on the passenger side of a beer truck, urging the driver to ram a blockade, and whooping it up when he does. Then he’s visiting Nan in prison wearing that 1930s gangster staple, a long coat with a fur collar. She’s so happy to see him she doesn’t take in the coat until about a minute later. They argue, kinda. Once again she’s urging him in a direction he doesn’t take, but this time it’s the exact opposite of her first-act direction. Love that.

The third act isn’t as good because it doesn’t follow from what’s happening; it adds to. When Nan gets out, the Big Fella suddenly has a thing for her. It’s out of nowhere. The movie is basically thesis/ antithesis/ 11th-hour addition.

Worried about Kid, Nan tries to take on Big Fella herself, with a little gun in her purse, but he senses the weight and takes it from her. Then he tries to take more from her. She’s only saved because his previous moll, Agnes (Wynne Gibson), who’s been told to scram, can’t bear to lose the Big Fella, doubles back, and shoots him. Now it becomes a kind of Whodunnit, with Kid trying to prove Nan’s innocence to the other gangsters. He doesn’t really, just takes three of them for a ride and leaves them to walk back home in the morning light. Meanwhile, another gang member finds Agnes’ suitcase, meaning Big Fella did tell her to scram, meaning she lied. Meaning she did it.

Morning light
This was Sylvia Sidney’s first starring role—it was supposed to be Clara Bow—and I’m sure she was a revelation. Cooper does his aw-shucks thing to perfection, and the two have great chemistry. I feel like Lukas as Big Fella is miscast—not gangster enough—while Guy Kibbee, usually so reliable at Warner Bros., overacts for this Paramount production: broadly smiling with his eyes so wide they practically pop out of his head. 

Remember when you were young and you’d stay up all night with friends, partying maybe, or just hanging out, maybe expecting something to happen and usually not getting it, and in the morning light everything would just kind of dissolve in weary fashion? That’s kind of what the ending of this movie feels like. It’s not bad, it just doesn’t tie everything together. And maybe that’s nice for a change. It’s just the two stars, in the morning light, safe again, driving back to the city in his 1929 Lincoln, with the POSCL MOTOR CAR RADIO on, as birds take flight.

SLIDESHOW


  • “City Streets” contains one of the great movie star intros: a white hat at a carny shooting gallery, “Hey, watch out so you don't hit him,” and then the white hat turns around and smiles at the camera. I imagine women in '31 fanning themselves.

  • Here's the first wink: the deal is done.

  • Leading to the second at the shooting gallery. Is it also a “Great Train Robbery” homage from Mamoulian?

  • The funhouse mirror scene. Some sweet, deft filmmaking here. 

  • Find somebody who looks at you the way Sylvia Sidney looks at Gary Cooper in this movie.

  • I love this kind of detail. Radios were newer than cars but car radios were very new at this point. 

  • The morning light. 

  • FIN
Posted at 09:22 AM on Friday October 07, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - 1930s   |   Permalink  

Thursday October 06, 2022

Lint

I was already enjoying Marc Maron's recent podcast with writer-director Tony Gilroy, who was on, one assumes, because of the new “Star Wars” thing on the Disney channel, “Andor,” which he created, wrote, executive-produced, and which I've heard is good. But Maron doesn't care much for the “Star Wars” thing; he wanted to talk about “Michael Clayton,” which Gilroy wrote and directed back in 2007, and which Maron is obsessed with. That's fun. There are no weeds too deep for Marc Maron on “Michael Clayton.” You could tell he was having a great time talking about it.

But we also get Gilroy's story—how his dad was a playwright, etc., how he write this and the other, including “The Devil's Advocate,” with Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron, and what exactly was the hook in that film that finally worked for him as a screenwriter. Also the insanity of it. Its bigness. Al Pacino eating up scenes. He and Marc are laughing about it when we get this exchange:

Gilroy: Oh my god, and the Trump shit.

Maron: Yeah. [Pause] Was he in there?

Gilroy: Fuck, man, that's his apartment. The killer real-estate dude, the killer real-estate molester, we shot in his apartment, Trump's apartment. We needed the ugliest, most garish, horrifying, real-estate developer apartment you could possibly have, and Trump threw his apartment at us.

Maron: That's right. Ohhh....

Gilroy: And we didn't have to—if you look at the movie, that's his fucking shitbag apartment, with all the Versailles gilt, and then the high-rise windows. It's just so perfect. And he came by the set every day. 

Maron: Really?

Gilroy: Oh yeah. Poke around. 

Maron: What was your impression of him? At that time. Obviously the apartment's the apartment, but--

Gilroy: Look, he was a clown. I grew up in New York. I'd been in New York since 1979, I sat at a table in the China Club with he and Bo Dietl. I'd been around him. Just a fucking clown. You know, just that clown.

Maron: Grifter.

Gilroy: Grifter-clown, kind of loser-outsider. A pretend rich guy. Because, you know, if you live in New York, and I'd been there all this time, and the kids go to school, you're really around titans. 

Maron: Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Gilroy: There's some really big arterial power and money. He was not any part of that. 

Maron: And they looked at him like, “Look at this guy.” 

Gilroy: He's lint.

Maron: So you had a deal with him on Devil's Advocate.

Gilroy: He would come by. He would come by on the way down to the office or wherever, peek by, try to see Charlize or whatever the thing he was trying to do. Everyone's laughing at him. Laughing at his apartment. 

Maron: It's so funny he was part of the “Devil” movie. Of course he was. 

A few thoughts.

One, Gilroy sounds a little like Sidney Pollack's character in “Michael Clayton”: I know where the power lies and how the game is played, and these other schmucks don't. And one of those schmucks is the former president.

Two, I love that Maron is interviewer enough to just ask the open-ended question “What was your impression of him?” He's talking about the great villain in Maron's and my life, but he doesn't impose any of that on the question. He pulls back and opens it up. That's the way to do it.

Three is simply a question: Does Donald Trump hear the laughter? Does he do what he does to silence the laughter? Did we all go through the horrors of the last six years, and however many years going forward, because the Tony Gilroys of the world laughed at this dumb, dumpy real estate developer? 

When I first heard this exchange, I wanted to get it in front of all of those idiots who continue to see Trump as a great man, a great businessman, a moral examplar. The 74 million absolute idiots that voted for him. Listening again as I transcribed the above, I realized it was probably the only moment in the last six years where I felt anything close to a pang of empathy for him. 

Posted at 10:49 AM on Thursday October 06, 2022 in category Politics   |   Permalink  

Wednesday October 05, 2022

Movie Review: The Tong Man (1919)

WARNING: SPOILERS

They never say why Louie Toy doesn’t just pay off the Bo Sing Tong, do they? He’s an opium smuggler, they’re the Chinese mafia, why not just pay the tribute? Doesn’t he know what will happen? It doesn’t seem like a power move, either. He’s not machinating. And he doesn’t cry poverty. So what is he doing? I guess furthering the plot? I guess creating the plot?

“The Tong Man” is basically Romeo and Juliet in Chinatown if Romeo were a hatchet man and Montague lusted after Juliet. It’s a 50-minute feature that mixes gangster elements with old-timey melodrama. Tropes I’ve only seen in cartoons or satires are displayed here straight-faced. My favorite: When the leader of the Bo Sing Tong, Ming Tai (Marc B. Robbins), first sees Sen Chee (Helen Jerome Eddy), the beautiful daughter of Louie Toy, he smiles villainously and literally rubs his hands together.

There’s yellowface, of course, but with a difference. The romantic lead, Luk Chan, is played by silent film icon Sessue Hayakawa, and the film is made by his production company, Haworth Pictures. So among the leads, the two Anglo actors I mentioned above are the only examples of true yellowface. For the other main characters: Toyo Fujita plays Louie Toy, and future director Yutaka Abe is Lucero—“a Lascar sailor” and helpmate to the romantic couple. Plus Hayakawa.

So is this a kind of yellowface? They’re all Japanese actors playing Chinese characters. I know it’s 1919, but, given Hayakawa, etc., you’d think a story about the Chinese in Chinatown would include some Chinese actors.

Slow boat
The plot: The Tong gang decides to kill Louie Toy for the aforementioned nonpayment, the joss is consulted, lots are chosen, and Luk Chan, a “highbinder” and the most feared hatchet-man in the Tong gang, gets the assignment. Unfortunately, he’s in love with Toy’s daughter. So even though he has ample opportunity, and even though he himself will be killed if he doesn’t go through with it, he can’t kill Toy.

At this point, I assumed we would get machinations from Ming Tai. I assumed he would go to Louie Toy and say, “Hey, Chan is going to kill you, watch out,” so Toy would kill Chan instead and go to prison for the crime, leaving the girl unguarded. Instead, Ming Tai is fairly upfront. He tells Toy that the Tong will let him live but he has to give up his daughter. Toy looks shocked (the actor often looks shocked) but agrees, then locks the distraught girl in her room. There, she decides to use the poison incense girls apparently kept lying around back then. Lucero overhears, gets Luk, and the two men save her; then they escape (from both the Tong and the cops) over the rooftops of Chinatown.

The next day, Louie Toy says he’s had a change of heart about giving his daughter away. Ming Tai isn’t exactly understanding: He kills Toy and blames it on Chan. Then he and his men kidnap the girl—bag over the head and everything. Back in his lair, he fans her awake so he can sexually assault her. Watching from above, Chan crashes through the skylight (a nice stunt), battles the Tong gang, and delivers a hatchet to the face of one assassin (a nice, early special-effect). Then they escape.

The couple winds up hiding in the (metaphoric and literal) belly of the beast. In the Bo Sing Tong headquarters, which—I think—is part of Ming Tai’s gambling and ‘hop’ joint, there’s one of those paper-mache dragons you see at Chinese festivals. That's where they go. But when Ming Tai shows up to pray to the joss, Chan thinks it’s Lucero returning with news and reveals himself. Ming Tai is taking aim when he himself is shot in the back by Lucero. (Seriously, Lucero does almost everything in this thing.)

After that, they get on a slow boat to China—with Lucero. We see the lovers in silhouette against the moon. They embrace. The End.

Tong in Hong Kong?
I know, but I like all the historical tidbits. Silent films were still in that phase, for example, when they would include the stars’ names on the intertitles.

Marc Robbins, who plays Ming Tai, gets this treatment, too, though he hardly seems like a star. But at least his yellowface make-up is better than Helen Jerome Eddy’s. She hardly looks Chinese. I kept thinking, I don’t know, dowdier sister of Olivia de Havilland.

The whole “Tong” thing is fascinating. It was written up a lot during the period—in newspapers and in fiction. Ditto hatchet men. Edgar G. Robinson would play one 13 years later. Did Hollywood ever attempt a more serious film on this topic—the Tong Wars from the turn of the century? Has Hong Kong ever tried it?

The director is William Worthington, an actor who took up directing (1915-25) before returning to acting for the last 15 years of his life. The movie is based on a 1912 novel, “The Dragon’s Daughter,” by Clyde Westover, which is still available on Kindle. A 1922 article describes Westover as a “short story writer, author of odes, dramatiser, script builder, playwright, jingler, novelizer, official greeter and secretary of the [San Francisco Press] Club." A survivor, in other words.

Posted at 08:33 AM on Wednesday October 05, 2022 in category Movie Reviews - Silent   |   Permalink  

Saturday October 01, 2022

Stay Fair! 21 Long Years of Frustration End as Seattle Mariners Make the Postseason

A second later, everyone knew.

I was at the game. My friend Erika's husband got tickets from work, and they had an extra. Did I want to go? This was Thursday morning, I said “Yes!” then began to do the math. The M's had been so-so, middling to blah, since those great series against the Braves and Padres in mid-September, but the Orioles had been worse. In the past week they'd lost four of five and now the Magic Number for the M's was a mere 3. After Thursday's games (O's loss, M's win) it was down to 1, and the O's were in the Bronx against the mighty Yankees, 4:05 PST start, and we were playing the lowly A's, 6:40 start, and Logan Gilbert was going against a pitcher sporting a 7.15 ERA. Odds were pretty good, I thought, that I'd be at the park when the Mariners clinched a playoff spot for the first time since 2001.

M's fans on social media yesterday were rooting for the O's. They wanted us to do it on our own, not back into it with another team's loss, but it was more of a shrug to me. I mean, yes, we should do it. At the same time, the M's had last been knocked out of the playoffs by a Yankee victory, Oct. 22, 2001, Game 5 of the ALCS, so it wouldn't be unseemly, and maybe even a little poetic, if we were knocked back into the playoffs by a Yankee victory.

I crunched other numbers just for fun. The last time the Mariners were in the postseason ...

  • The Dow was at 9,200
  • The #1 movie in America that week was “K-PAX,” starring Kevin Spacey
  • Mark Zuckerberg was captain of his fencing team in high school
  • Barack Obama was in the state senate in IL
  • TIME magazine was about to name its “Person of the Year” ... Rudy Giuliani

You could do this forever. Most of the guys in our starting lineup were toddlers, our starting pitcher was 4 years old, our rookie star wasn't even 1. I'm turning 60 in January and I was in my 30s the last time the Mariners were in the postseason. Twenty-one years is a long time, basically. It's a quarter of a life. If you're lucky. 

I arrived 20 minutes early. The seats were great seats, section 119, row 11, seat 10, close to the Mariners dugout, the area where Mariners players toss baseballs coming off the field. That gets a little sad. The greed. The battles for tossed baseballs. At the same time, I saw a few adults giving them to kids. That warms the heart.

In the Bronx, the Orioles were winning 2-1 in the 8th.

For a moment it looked like it would be a breeze. In the bottom of the 1st, Dylan Moore led off with a single, stole second, and Ty France drove him in with a double. 1-0. Nice. And then nothing. Then Ken Waldichuk turned into Roger Clemens. He struck out the next two, got a ground out. He allowed a leadoff walk in the 2nd and a one-out double in the 4th but no one even got to third. And in the 2nd, Logan Gilbert gave up a two-out, two-strike, towering homerun to rookie catcher Shea Langaliers that tied it.

And the Orioles won it in the Bronx.

By the time Waldichuk left after 5, he'd lowered his ERA by nearly a run. Each inning we got an A's pitcher with a better ERA and an equally ridiculous name: Waldichuk ceded to Pruitt, who was replaced by Puk, who gave way to Cyr. Thankfully, A's batters weren't doing much, either. Their No. 3 hitter Jordan Diaz led off the 4th with an infield single that should've been an E-6 (J.P. Crawford pulled Ty France off the bag), which was their third hit of the game, and which turned out to be their last hit of the game. Gilbert went 8 full. 

And in the bottom of the 9th, the A's brought in Domingo Acevedo, 6'7“, 240, a mid-3.00 ERA and a WHIP below 1.00. Leadoff hitter Mitch Haniger went to a full count before striking out swinging. Carlos Santana went down on three straight pitches. I'd been hoping for a homer, an emphatic final yes, but those were the guys to do it. The next hitter was Luis Torrens, our backup catcher, whom we'd sent down mid-year, and he wasn't exactly Johnny Bench. Erika and Chris said every game they'd been to this year went into extras. The M's won them all, but none of them finished after 9. It seemed like we'd get that, and the stupid ghost-runner rule, again.

And then Cal Raleigh came to the plate to pinch-hit for Torrens. 

From the looks of him, I'd always assumed Raleigh was a kind of journeyman, someone who'd knocked around for lesser teams in the N.L. for, say, 10 years, but no, he's just 25 and he's always been ours. We took him in the third round of the 2018 draft from Florida State, and he made his debut in July 2021. His debut year numbers don't exactly leap off the page (.180./.223/.309). and this year his OBP is still below .300; but he's great behind the plate and he keeps hitting homers. I read the other day that he's the first catcher with 1.5 defensive WAR and 25 homers in a season since Johnny Bench? Nice company. I'd wondered why he wasn't starting but apparently it was a thumb thing? 

Against Acevedo he got two quick balls on him and I was hoping, with that 2-0 count, that hitter's pitch, for a nice sendoff, but he swung through it. It's fun checking out the pitches against him and what he did with them. The slider was the trouble pitch. Cal swung through the first two he saw. On 3-2 pitch, he fouled off the third one. And Acevedo tried it one more time. 

If you look at the footage, he's almost on one knee. He was ready for it. He would not swing through it again. 

Off the bat, even from my unfamiliar seat, I knew it had the distance but I couldn't tell if it would stay fair. Rick Rizzs, with way better seats, thought the same. ”Stay fair!“ he cried. For once the baseball gods listened. And 21 long years of frustration was over.

That's Dave Niehaus' line, of course, from the '95 clincher against the Angels. His was 19 long years of frustration, and back then that seemed forever, even though I'd only been following the team and suffering with them for ... four years? Really only three years: '93 was when I became a true M's fan. But the M's had never made the postseason, and there they did, and miracles kept happening. And it was joy. It was pure joy.

So is this, but I feel slightly removed from the greater Seattle celebration. The M's finally made it back to the postseason with a pinch-hit walkoff homerun with two outs and on a 3-2 count. Not only doesn't that happen every day, it's never happened. The crowd went nuts, the team celebrated, they did their little circle celebration dance with like everybody, including trainers, or at least people in street clothes, and hardly any of the fans budged from their seats. They stayed and cheered. They wanted to keep celebrating. The team went into the locker room, they came out again, they high-fived fans around the park. But by then I'd already left. It was partly to beat the crowd, it was partly leftover pandemic concerns, and it was partly because, well, as great as the end was, the game was kind of frustrating. Playing the worst team in the A.L., facing a pitcher with a 7.15 ERA, we did nothing for eight innings. It's a reminder that, while the M's have good defense and a solid bullpen, they also have the third-worst batting average in the Majors. That's why they have trouble with the likes of Waldichuk, Puk and Cyr.

I guess it's like Joe Posnanski's rejoinder for people who say baseball is boring: ”Baseball is boring. Until it isn't." The M's are a frustrating team ... until they aren't.

Goodnight, Mr. Niehaus, wherever you are.

Posted at 01:19 PM on Saturday October 01, 2022 in category Seattle Mariners   |   Permalink  
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