Arrive Early, And You Will Pay

As I left for my weekend in the city Friday, I listened to Block Party's new album A Weekend In The City, because aside from loving things that connect, I'm capable of astounding acts of unoriginality. Darker in tone(both musically and lyrically), Weekend is the perfect Empire Strikes Back to Silent Alarm's Star Wars. BigYawn covered it in detail already so I won't rehash, but if you enjoyed Alarm you will love the follow up. The first two tracks, "Song For Clay (Disappear Here)" and the post-9/11 society commentary "Hunting For Witches", are ripping tunes.

I also took in Menomena's Friend Or Foe, a stunning piece of indie rock with everything from power chords to saxophones. I loved the opening track "Muscle N Flo", as well as "Air Raid", "Weird?", and "Rotten Hell". Again, over at BigYawn Chris Daly does a better job exhorting the albums merits than I ever could.

I had some interesting times during the long weekend, which I'll get into later. I saw Ghost Rider.

To make up for that, I saw Breach. A gripping yet understated thriller. Chris Cooper was excellent as the walking paradox Robert Hanssen, who appears to be sincere about serving God and Country while betraying both that and his family, friends and colleagues. His final scene in the movie is chilling. Ryan Phillippe was equally excellent as Eric O'Neill, the young agent-in-training the FBI planted as Hanssen's clerk during the last two months of their investigation. Phillippe still suffers barbs from critics who hate the genetically blessed; every review I read took pains to point out his supposed shortcomings that Cooper and the script made up for. Which is a bunch of shit. I'm not saying Phillippe is an excellent actor, but he is certainly -- at the very least -- competent. Phillippe, like Keanu Reeves, could turn in a performance worthy of Peter O'Toole and it would still be shat upon by critics from the east coast to the west. Beautiful actors, when they miss, are ostracized for only having their faces and bodies to offer us. By that reasoning, if Steve Buscemi ever turned in a sub-par performance, he would have to be labeled as one of the worst actors ever.

It was fun to hear New Yorker's gasp in amazement when Laura Linney's character uses her cellphone on the Metro, something you can't do in NYC yet. The movie was almost ruined, however, by the banal commentary of a man who thought of himself as some sort of spy buff. Sitting next to me, this smelly know-it-all laughingly intoned "Welcome to the agency!" after O'Neill's first verbal thrashing from Hanssen. Too bad both Hanssen and O'Neill work for the FBI, which -- unless my grasp of the alphabet has atrophied considerably since Kindergarten -- has no word in it that begins with an "A". It's the BUREAU, jackass.

A common fixture of movie theaters today are the "First Look" shorts that run before the previews. Extended looks(ads) of upcoming movies and television shows, I find them a little more entertaining than the slide-show of ads and repeated trivia that used to play until the lights dimmed. They are at the very least just as easy to ignore...most of the time. One preview, which aired before Ghost Rider and Breach, froze me in my cushioned seat, though not exactly in a positive way.

The preview was for the Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs. The host runs around with a water snake expert chasing water snakes, which I gather are non-poisonous, since one bites the host in the arm and he doesn't die. As the snake digs in deeper the host growls about how he hates his job, he cries out and the snake lets go and flayed flesh falls from it's fangs. Red strips of skin clearly fall to the ground. The camera then treats us to a close up of the hosts bloodied forearm, the wounds matching the discarded skins scraps like puzzle pieces.

This wasn't the worse part.

After that, in the safety of a lab the host forces a water snake to throw up. And, on a fifty foot screen, I and everyone else who arrived early so we wouldn't miss the previews(one of the best parts of going to the theater) were treated to watching a water snake vomit up a slimy, still recognizable fish.

"...That's just weird," the host says, looking at the glistening, half-digested carcass.

No. No, it's not just weird...it's fucking disgusting. I was trying to eat nachos, now I can barely sip my coke without my gut reeling. If I wanted to see that, I would be at home watching the goddamned Discovery Channel. Who thought this was a good idea to show a few dozen potential concession stand patrons? I haven't seen a more disturbing display of puking at a movie theater since The Exorcist was re-released, but at least that was in the movie. Shit.

I'll still arrive early, but damn, I may take an early trip to the bathroom.