Godspeed, Jason.

It's always sad when a youngster suddenly dies, for whatever reason. We hate to see a life full of promise cut short before its prime. Yet at the same time, you have to kind of smile when someone passes away engaged in doing something they love. When you hear about the retired gentleman who has a quiet heart attack on a golf course, you have to admit that if you have to go (and we all do), it's best to go doing something that has meaning to you. I believe that to be the case with this young gentleman from Riverside, California, who died this past Saturday at a supercross race in San Diego, the first fatality ever for the sport: AMA Press Release on Jason Ciarletta.

My deepest condolences go out to his family. Jason, say hi to God for me.

More later...
Paul

Hollywood Giveth and Hollywood Taketh Away.

Life is funny. A week ago, I saw a movie that literally took my breath away and restored my faith in cinema. Then this weekend, against my better judgement and ignoring the warnings of those in the know, I went to see another film. That one brutally reminded me of all that is wrong with this thing we call Hollywood.

First, the good film: “21 Grams”. I went to see this one with some close friends at a little art house in Encino on a Saturday night. The place was packed front to back, and I think the average age of the patrons had to be in the mid-to-late 30’s. It was a tiny theater (I overheard one guy say “my TV is bigger than that screen!”), but the audience was knowledgeable and appreciative. More to the point, however, is that the movie was so engaging that the theater itself quickly shrank in significance. I was transported into the story; I was no longer in Encino.

Now for the bad film: “Torque”. I checked this one out on a whim after work one day, catching an early evening discount showing in Glendale. I went in expecting the worst and was surprised that it was even worse than I expected. This film was screened in a very large theater. The screen had to be 100 feet wide, and the joint had something like 500 seats. Yet there were maybe 6 people in the place. Oh well, room to stretch out…

“21 Grams” featured everything one might want in a movie: a compelling storyline that progresses in an unpredictable fashion; attractive young actors at the top of their game; a risk-taking director that actually has something to say besides “show me the money”. And Hollywood (and by “Hollywood” I mean the major studios that control American cinema) saw fit to shunt this fine film off to the netherlands of little bitty art houses, to duke it out with all of the other so-called “independent” films. One wonderful fact of life is that good films somehow seem to find their audiences, if given half a chance.

“Torque” was jam-packed with all of the ingredients that any formula action film should have: lots of action, lots of gratuitous cheesecake (and beefcake), lots of special effects, and little to no plot. Let me make it plain here: this movie sucked. This was one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen, and that includes “Biker Boyz” and “Bad Boys 1 & 2”, and that’s saying A LOT.

You’re not going to see this, so I’m gonna give it away right now: Here’s what it was about: NOTHING.

This guy comes into some hick town in the desert…apparently he’s been away. Whatever. He looks up this chick he left behind. So what. Some people are pissed at him. He’s wanted by the FBI. The chick stays mad at him for about 30 seconds. Some people fight. One guy gets killed. A few chase scenes, a few shootouts. The guy and the chick ride off into the sunset (literally!) The end.

I was pissed that I even paid the evening discount price for this garbage.

I’m not going to give away “21 Grams” because I think most film lovers should see this flick. I will tell you that Sean Penn and Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro do FANTASTIC jobs and make this film most watchable. Sean and Naomi have great chemistry together, especially considering the twists of the plot. The basic story is this: Sean is a Math professor with a bad heart. He’s on the transplant waiting list, and it’s looking like he won’t make it. Naomi is a happily married mother of two beautiful girls. Benicio is an ex-con on the mend who apparently has trouble driving his big 4x4 truck. ‘Nuff said.

What’s really funny (in retrospect, of course) is that BOTH movies will move you to tears.

I’m not finished ragging on “Torque” (sounds like “Fork” as in “we got your money, hahaha….FORK YOU!”): action movies often require a certain suspension of belief on the part of the audience. In order to fully enjoy the movie, the viewer must be willing to engage in fantasy. “The Lord of the Rings” does not operate in our everyday universe, but we’re usually willing to go there with the filmmaker as long as there is SOME type of parallel with the reality that we live in. “Fork” is no different, but man, do they ask a lot of the viewer. Really, the movie insists that you are okay with the following concepts:

1) Speeding motorcycles generate shockwaves that can cause cars to spin out.
2) Motorcycles, in the hands of skilled operators, are able to stand on one wheel like horses, and pivot as the pilot desires.
3) San Bernadino Sherriffs will NOT immediately beat down belligerent black motorcycle gang members who give them attitude at the scene of a murder.
4) It’s okay to carry a loaded gun without a carry permit. Or, everyone has a carry permit.
5) If you abruptly abandon your longtime girlfriend and then come back 6 months later, she will not only take you back within 5 minutes, she’ll sleep with you in 15 minutes, even though you are wearing the same nasty leather pants and dirty t-shirt you were wearing when you left. In fact, those are all the clothes you own.
6) The FBI will allow a 28-year-old “special agent” to wear thrift store suits and Converse sneakers…and give him a Hummer H2 with custom wheels. Just because.
7) The same agent will kill (or attempt to kill) his partner over $1million worth of drugs.
8) The same agent will “forget” that his partner wears a bulletproof vest. Right.
9) It’s possible to ride a motorcycle at over 160 mph WITHOUT a helmet or goggles and STILL BE ABLE TO SEE.
10) People can have normal conversations while riding, even though they are wearing full-face helmets, their bikes have loud exhaust systems and people are shooting at them.
11) All black motorcycle gang members intrinsically hate all white people. Again, just because.

Just because WHAT? Just because this film was made by extremely lazy, opportunistic filmmakers who care not one whit about motorcycles or racial relations or even making a good movie. They just wanted to get paid. Voila.

Meanwhile, I don’t know the deal, but I would be willing to bet that Sean and Naomi and Benicio willingly cut their pay in order to make “21 Grams”. And it’s going to pay off for them in more ways than just filling their mutual funds. There’s talk of an Oscar for Ms. Watts. And that’s another column altogether.

More later…
Paul

Is this amazing or what?

D.C. United, a professional soccer team, selects a 14-year-old boy as the first pick in the Major Leage Soccer draft: Yahoo! News - Freddy Adu First Pick in MLS Draft.

Guess I'll be wearing a D.C. United jersey with the number 9 on it this spring.

I'm happy for the kid and his family, but I don't get how he qualifies to play a professional sport and he hasn't even finished high school! There's no question that the boy is qualified, but he's just a ...boy! His childhood is officially over. I hope he has good parental support, because the Michael Jackson story could serve as a warning to those who attempt to gain superstardom at such a tender age.

Good luck Freddy. Don't forget to have fun.

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Paul

What can I do?

A former neighbor and friend of mine is a wonderful lady. She is so very proud that her son finally sold a script to Hollywood, and they actually made the movie. Unfortunately, this is the movie: Yahoo! Movies: My Baby's Daddy (2004)

Sooooooo, what should I say to her? I knew way back when she told me that Eddie Griffin was the star that there was a more than good chance that the resulting movie would be embarrasingly awful. But I feel an obligation of sorts to go see this thing, and then be nice to her about it, even if it turns my stomach and makes me run out of the theater, simultaneously wretching and screaming...which is not an easy thing to do, by the way.

I guess I should give the movie a chance, ignore the critics and just go see it with an open mind. But there's one review that I cannot forget: a guy said it would have been better if they just took your money, sat you down in the theater and flashed the word "Sucker" on the screen for two hours.

Ah, the things we do for friends...

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Paul

What color are you?

You may not be the color you think you are. Check out this story: CBSNews.com: Air Passenger Code Plan In Motion

In the near future, if you get on a plane, someone will make a determination and mark you by your perceived "threat level". The big question is, what information will they use to make this judgement? Where will they get the info? And what happens if YOU happen to be classified as a "medium" threat? Will the flight attendants be instructed to look at you funny?

Another bad idea becomes reality. Will it ever end?

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Paul

Yikes.

It's sometimes easy to forget that the U.S. Constitution does not extend to visitors: Yahoo! News - U.S. Begins Fingerprinting Foreign Visitors. But this new program is going to be a nightmare, at least from a bureaucratic standpoint.

What will be next? DNA samples from all tourists?

More later...
Paul

AMA Supercross, circa 2004.

On Saturday night, January 3rd, I attended my seventh consecutive opening round of the AMA Supercross series. As a diehard motocross fan, I think it is a MUST to attend the first race of the indoor motocross season. This year, I cut my East Coast vacation short just to make sure I was back in California in time to make the short drive to Edison International field in Anaheim, California to see the world’s best supercross racers hit the track for the first time this year.

It was a great race. The current World Supercross Champion from Australia, Chad Reed, took the 250 cc Main event on his factory Yamaha, suprising many since he is just coming back from a recent shoulder injury. And the 125 cc Main was won by New Mexico’s Ivan Tedesco on a new Kawasaki 250 fourstroke. Yeah, for the uninitiated it will seem strange that a 250 would be allowed to compete in the 125 class, but that’s old news to MX fans, and I’m not even gonna get into it here. Google it if you need to know more.

So the folks at Clear Channel Entertainment, the promoters of the series, got my disposable entertainment dollar for another year, and once again I think they missed a few great opportunities to make a good event even better. If anyone cares, here’s a few things that bugged me about the event:

Spectator access to the stadium. I still don’t know why they only let spectators exit and re-enter the stadium through one gate. There are bag checkers and pat-down people at every entrance, so why do we have to herd around one gate to get back in? We spend a long day at the race, and the parking lot scene is part of the draw, with a large number of people having tailgate parties with their friends. How is security enhanced by limiting exit/re-entry to one gate? I think that stadium management is trying to make exit/re-entry too much of a hassle, in order to discourage tailgate parties and force people to pay for the overpriced stadium food and drinks. Dream on guys, it’ll only happen if you find a way to make it illegal to bring food and drinks into the parking lot.

Parking fees. Seems like they’re just getting higher and higher. Blame it on inflation if you want to, I think it’s just opportunism. $10 is starting to get extreme. Make people happy and cut it in half. We’ll be more willing to buy your souvenir yearbook if you can save us money on the parking.

The souvenir yearbook. Hey, I buy this every year, religiously. I buy it as a keepsake, something to look back at over the years. I also buy it to get a listing of the racers’ names and numbers (not phone numbers…bike numbers). But in recent years, they only list the top 100 racers. CCE, we need to get a current listing of ALL riders competing in the event, especially the three-digit pros who struggle in the qualifiers. A good portion of the audience shows up early enough to see these guys fight it out in the afternoon portion…at least you could tell us who they are. A simple one page print out, handed out with each souvenir yearbook, is all you need. Heck, charge a buck for it ($6 total for the package), and then dedicate 50 cents from each sale to a special top non-qualifiers purse. At the very least, tell the kids you employ to sell the damn things that they are NOT selling “programs” to the night’s event.

Non-creative use of downtime. Guys, hire a band or something. The KTM Junior supercross event is not enough. Give the audience something to see between races. The bullshit “interviews with sponsors” are not appreciated. The Mickey Thompson award presentation was surreal…and not in a good way.

The KTM Junior supercross. Sure, they’re cute and if I had a kid I’d want him or her to ride this event, but there’s too much time given to this mini-spectacle. I was quite surprised to see them ride the entire track (that in itself says something about the difficulty of the track), but I was NOT surprised to hear the interview questions of the winners. Like most in the stadium, I used that time to go take a leak. This little race doesn’t have to go away, but it doesn’t deserve the pressure of being the ONLY between race entertainment.

The monster truck “preview”. I get that it’s a business, and it’s another series promoted by CCE and they will actually be in the very same stadium next week and all of that jazz. But if you’re going to promote the event, the DO it. I found it interesting that the field officials used BULLDOZERS to block off sections of the track, to limit where the monster truck guy could drive. Tease. You could tell who the real motocross fans were in the crowd…they were yawning when the truck was pulling wheelies. The people cheering for the truck…more power to them. They can see more next week…after they shell out $10 for parking, of course.

Blah, blah, blah. The announcing was more subdued this year, much to the credit of the promoters. Same lame team, though. None of it mattered up in nosebleed; we couldn’t hear most if it, especially when there were bikes on the track. It just seemed strange that they would play music right before the start of each main, AND try to talk over the sound of the music and the revving engines. Maybe one of these days the organizers will figure out why people go to see races, and then re-format their announcing structure to support that.

Fourstroke noise. Now, this is not the promoter’s fault, but the sound of the 125 events have changed the nature of the game for the worse. Gone are the days of the “ring ding” and the sweet smell of “castor” oil. The little 250 thumpers are just as loud as their 450 big brothers, if not as “deep” in tone, and their interminable drone made me miss the sound of twostrokes. I actually found myself daydreaming of a twostroke-only class.

Wow, that’s actually not a bad list of gripes. The truth of the matter is that CCE is doing a pretty good job of putting on what is actually a very tough event. And the audience left the stadium smiling, which is really what it’s all about. It’s just SO CLOSE to perfection, that it’s a shame that they don’t go all the way. One day I hope they will. All I know is that I will be there.

More later…
Paul