Passing Lives

In the great big city, or the burbs nearby at least, you get ideas and impressions of people you never actually see just by driving by their houses. You speculate on who people are based on how they do (or don't do) their lawn, holiday decorations, and so on.

For years we passed a little house on the corner of Lurline and Saticoy, both small streets, though Saticoy has over the years become a lot heavier trafficked. (There are really no streets any more that are unbroken over any distance that haven't become wall-to-wall cars at some point during the day.) Though a modest house (as most are around here, with the glaring exception of a few McMansions put up during the height of the craze), it was very well cared for, with a white picket fence, and a white lattice work archway over the gate, always adorned with roses.

You know that the owners of the house were the original buyers, a young post-war couple who had settled in the land of milk & honey & aerospace during the '50s. And when the house went up for sale, you knew that there was no chance the next owner was going to love it like the original owner had over four decades, and that the those roses would go away (they did) and maybe even the lattice work would be deemed too hard to keep up (it wasn't).

On the other hand, there's a fellow we affectionately refer to as The Machine. This fellow puts up decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas--short-break--Valentine's Day, Saint Patrick's Day and Easter--then things slow down a bit until Memorial Day and Independence Day are upon us. Then the guy takes a breather for a few months until October starts the cycle up again.

And not just a few decorations. His lawn, his windows, his roof--all plastered with seasonal trappings. His neighbor gives him a run for his money around Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but there's no contest otherwise.

Except last year, he missed the 4th. There were a lot of cars and somber looking folk milling about.

It was natural to assume that he had died. Right?

Halloween rolled around and nothing.

But then...bam! Pumpkins, ghosts, inflatable Frankenstein monsters...

So was there some other serious occasion that deflected him? Or maybe not serious; people can look pretty grim around weddings and baby showers, too. Maybe he did die and someone is carrying on the tradition.

These are things you don't know when you're driving by someone's life at 35 mph.

Mammoth-ries?

Regular readers (both of you) will know I've decided to defy the demand for pointy breasts, last week with Jane Russell's magnificence(s), and this week with the lovely Carole Landis.

A rather tragic figure, Landis appeared in an early blog post here about Turnabout. Her comedic work in that movie is marvelous, aping John Hubbard's (exaggerated) masculinity, often while in this flowing nightrobe that displayed her femininity (insofar as movies of the time were so allowed).

However, Miss Landis' breakthrough role was in the original One Million Years B.C., also for yukmeister Hal Roach. For better or worse, her performance here has long been over-shadowed by Racquel "fuzzy britches" Welch's in the remake.

Nonetheless, it seems fairly clear that Landis' talent (to say nothing of her talents) was squandered.

Landis' co-lug for B.C. was the large-headed Victor Mature (whose only excuse for his name is tht he was born with it). Landis and Mature would later star with Betty Grable in the proto-noir I Wake Up Screaming.

"Real" Wealth

As a native Southern Californian, I know more about real estate than any normal person should. But I've seen three boom-bust cycles in my life and lived in five different houses before I was 20. Real estate prices have always gone up over time--though I've read enough Megan McArdle to know that she thinks the prices are going to go down as the boomers move into retirement homes. (I suspect we'll open the borders pretty wide before anything like that happens.)

Those who have been around longer than I have assured me that the boom-bust recycle predates my corporeal presence.

The first time it really hit home for me was when I was looking to get out of the renting game. I was fairly young and making good money, considering my age and financial footprint. But there was nothing on the market for less than $200,000 except for a few meager condos. Out of the question. I wasn't going to pay that for an apartment that somehow fit a legal definition that allowed it to be called something else.

Well, then came the bust part of the cycle, and an earthquake, and a few years later, houses are going in the mid-to-low-100s and, and you could even get a castle with some nice land for $600K. This coincided pretty nicely with the tech bubble, allowing me to purchase a modest home at a reasonable price.

Now, the cycle always leaves prices higher than before so, just as with the stock market, if you're in it for the long haul, you can always come out ahead. A buddy of mine bought a house recently at near peak prices--just as the market was falling--and it will be years before the market returns his value but he didn't buy it as an investment, he bought it as a home. (Even so, there will be another spike that pushes the house up past what he paid for it long before it's, you know, actually worth that.)

So, watching my own house quadruple in value, something like this doesn't surprise me. In fact, I basically expect prices to drop to something higher than what I paid ten years ago. Maybe 40-50% higher. Which is still 40% of what it was going for at its height.

I have been expecting this to happen no sooner than early next year, after the next Pres takes office, barring an earthquake, but it might happen sooner. Right now I've been trying to refinance to a ridiculously low interest rate, but I'm racing against falling housing prices.

I'm guessing they'll stay bottomed out for 2-3 years. Now all I need is another tech bubble.

The Other Adam Carolla Project: The Hammer

If you don't like Adam Carolla, you can stop reading this now. Seriously, there's nothing here for you.

I've found Mr. Carolla amusing since his Loveline days on MTV. His working class-style approach often made a lot more sense to me than Dr. Drew Pinsky's educated opinions. Reasonably, a guy who spent a big part of his life as a boxing trainer before and a carpenter before becoming a comedian has made a funny movie about a carpenter who has a chance to box in the Olympics.

As might be expected, the hero of the film, Jerry Ferro (played by Carolla) is basically a loser. But he's not a loser because he hit hard times or was ground down by someone. No, he's just a loser because, well, it was easier and more fun to get high and play video games. This is probably truer to life than most similar stories, and keeps it from the typical melodramatic pitfalls.

The story begins when, on his 40th birthday, he loses his and his pal's (crap) job and his girlfriend, but manages to channel his frustration into his boxing. This turns into a shot at the 2008 Beijing Olympics--or does it? Boxing is a young man's game, generally speaking (and as near as I can tell, the age limit is 36) but the movie gives us certain expectations without dealing to heavily in fantasy.

Joining Carolla on his 88 minute journey are his Nicaraguan buddy Oswaldo (played by Oswaldo Castillo, Carolla's real life construction pal) and cute-as-a-button Heather Juergensen, as a Public Defender with a love of underdogs. Old timer Tom Quinn, looking and acting like he'd been born to play the role of tough-as-nails boxing coach Eddie Bell, also coaches a deeply religious flyweight (Jonathan Hernandez) and Carolla's much younger rival played by Harold House Moore.

Adam has chemistry with everyone, and the only time I felt he overplayed his hand a bit was on a date to the La Brea Tar Pits. Apart from that this movie is tight, funny, even suspenseful--you don't know how far he's going to get--and gives us enough back to where we feel rewarded for rooting for the guy, but not so much that we feel pandered to.

It's a delicate balance.

It's also a good reminder that you can make a good comedy/drama for under a million bucks.

It should get a wider release.

Hillary Makes A Joke

Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama to a bowling match after his disastrous (but it was only eight frames!) 37-point game.

I thought it was sort of amusing, if you set aside the fact that I'd have my lab-mutt lead the country rather than any of the three candidates currently in the public eye.

But strategically, I think it was a mistake, especially with offering a two frame handicap to the 46-year old man. I'm guessing HRC hasn't been hitting lanes much--ever, most likely. It's going to be much easier for him to boost his game into the 100+ score than it will be for her look not uncomfortable on the lanes. We won't even go into the dangers to her hips.


Just sayin'.

And now, a good list.

Mahalo has a list of the best fictional brands, starting (resaonably) with ACME and including an assortment of advertisers both memorable and obscure.

Mooby's, Hudsucker, Brawndo....

But they are all recent. I think the oldest ones are Hudsucker and, oh, there's Soul-Glo from the '80s movie Coming To America.

Spoofing advertisers pre-dates the '80s, though. I imagine it dates approximately to the, uh, first advertisers.

Heaven Can Wait (the original) featured the Strables who were...pork kings? There was a jingle for "Strable on the table" that Don Ameche liked to mock. Or his grandfather did, perhaps.

Rod Serling liked to skewer advertisers, though he never really paid them back for trashing his shows. I remember distinctly the contempt dripping from Static, where inane commercials for chlorophyll accompanied equally inane programming. (The protagonist rushes to his magic radio, which plays 20 year old radio programs. Heh. Radio commercials were awesomely stupid, too, but nostalgia is nostalgia.)

Just off the top o' my head....

This Would Be Perfect If Only You'd Go Away

A few days ago, Althouse commenter Icepick wrote a rather harrowing tale of a home invasion.

I've been sitting on it for a while because there are a lot of horrible, personal things in there. It's not hard to imagine the white-hot rage one would have after having one's mom threatened in such a way, after being a victim of bigotry, after seeing a place one once loved go completely to hell. Especially when you consider the impotence factor: Someone you love is in a dangerous situation but completely refuses to change that situation.

What's more interesting to me, however, is the underlying sentiment.

I've always considered myself lucky to have grown up where I did, in the San Fernando Valley. It was almost rural here when I was a kid. Although I've lived in Los Angeles all my life, I'm not much of a city guy. I'm not a big fan of traffic, crowds, complicated parking rules (I hate valet parking), and as a lifelong earthquake surfer, I'm particularly suspicious of tall buildings and parking structures.

So the SFV in the '70s and '80s was perfect for me. You could get to downtown or the west side in 15-20 minutes, the Fairfax district in 30, and after seeing the play/movie/museum/whatever, you could leave it behind, grateful that you didn't have to live somewhere where every street is a major thoroughfare.

I spent a couple of years downtown in the '80s, during my college days, which really confirmed my personal biases. I would turn out onto Western Ave (near Olympic) at 5PM and see an unbroken sea of cars leading to the Freeway on-ramp, two miles away. Gridlock was the norm. It took about half-an-hour to drive that two miles.

(I have this general reaction to traffic: Why would anyone willingly suffer it on a daily basis? I've done it, of course, but only temporarily. I work odd hours and schedule things in such a way as to avoid traffic.)

Later, in the early '90s, we lived back in the Santa Monica Mountains. For those of you who don't know Los Angeles, the city has a massive mountain range running through the middle of it. (Colloquially referred to as "The Hill".) So we had this little shack that the original owner of the land had built tucked away in the hils, yet which was two miles away from Ventura Blvd and the freeway. (It took ten minutes to drive that two miles, not because of traffic, but because the roads were hilly and serpentine residential streets that called for caution.)

This was about 90% cool--because we were fairly isolated, we got to see bobcats and deer and owls on a regular basis, and we were still close to civilization--and about 10% lame. The 10% was partly that any trip you wanted to take had a 10 minute overhead (bopping off to the shop for a pint of ice cream was a half-hour journey). But most of the lameness was embodied by coming home to find eight fire trucks in our driveway once. Yes, those hills do tend to catch afire.

Anyway, while living there, I corresponded with the woman who had lived in the place and whose husband had built it. And I mentioned that it was nice, but really, only as long as they didn't keep developing around it.

And what she said struck me: She said she wasn't the sort of person who, once she was some place, said, "OK, now nobody else can come here!"

Huh.

Interesting point.

She had lived there when there was no one else there. (I was friends with her son and remember driving up the dirt road to see him just ten years before.)

Now, I come from (at least partly) Nebraskan farm stock. If someone set up a homestead within visual range, the reaction was something like "There goes the neighborhood."

Though, I have to imagine the Nebraskan Indians who took potshots at the house as they rode by felt the same way.

And, of course, the original white people crazy and desperate enough to come here in the first place certainly felt Europe had been ruined.

I sympathize with Icepick because I've seen the SFV, over the past 10-15 years in particular, be vertically developed--i.e., to promote greater population density. It was never built for that and, of course, the infrastructure isn't being shored up to support it. If I crest Winnetka and Oxnard at 5PM these days, I see an unbroken sea of cars that reminds me a whole lot of Western and Wilshire in the '80s.

I can't say I like it. And unlike the neighborhoods that Icepick is talking about, this development has all been pretty upscale. I don't doubt that the Laemmle theater I regularly patronize offers the fare it does because the population density has gone up. And so on.

But it does give one pause. At what point do you say "Stop! Enough!"? On what basis do you do so? How much of this sort of thing is rapacious capitalism and how much is meddling government? And is any of it every-man-for-itself libertarianism?

At heart, I'm an open borders kind of guy. I think people should be able to live and work where they please. But during the last go 'rounds of amnesty, all I heard from my side was "Anyone who disagrees with us is RACIST!" On the other side, I heard good points about whether the socialist state we've evolved into could handle the influx (in some places it can't), why it was fair to depress the standard of living for the lowest economic rung, why we had to take everyone who snuck in, even over those who had filed legally, on what basis can we claim to have a country if we can't control who comes here, etc.

Those questions (writ small) are not much different on the local level. Some of the nicest counties in the state have very, very strict laws about expansion. But are those good?

Anyway, I don't want to detract from Icepick's cold fury over his very real situation with my abstract questioning. But it's just a good, fundamental question:

What right do the current residents of a location have to keep that location from turning into something that they don't like?

XX v XY

I lived with just my mother and sister from age 10 onward. The classes in the schools I went to were 80% female.

Women are not now, nor have they ever in memory been, mysterious to me. I mention this because the blogosphere seems awash in dating advice (Ace) this morning (Althouse) and to me it is all so much hieroglyphics.

After 4-5 years of hormonal torment--some of which could have been disastrous had I acted on one set of impulses rather than another set--I decided that my best bet for happiness was to get my own self together and not worry about having a relationship with someone else. (In contrast with the times, and perhaps dysfunctionally, I was more interested in finding a life partner than a sex partner.)

A few months later, I became best friends with a girl. A few months after that, we started dating. A little while after that came marriage and not too long after that, children. I'm glossing over some of the messier details and completely eliding the romance; such things are hackery and puffery when you consider that the story arc I'm describing is pretty close to the way previous generations operated en masse (in situations where one was allowed to choose one's mate).

The stuff I read--the dating advice, the stories of dating, the game playing, the unhappiness and lack of fulfillment, the questing for some mythical other that will, one way or the other, keep a person from having to get his own self together--makes me think we made the right decision lo those many years ago. Life has had many challenges, to be sure, and to have gone through them together has created a shared experience that is really otherwise unattainable.

It gets really weird for me when Allah and Ace talk about alpha males. They paint a picture of the beta male that wants but cannot have because of the alpha male. I'm no biologist, but animals (specifically chimpanzees) who are beta defer to the alpha. They bow down, they appease, they propitiate. They essentially fear the alpha male, and this keeps their behavior (and presumably their weak-ass genes) in line.

The beauty of being a human--especially one in a society without governmentally-backed royalty--is that you never have to defer to anyone. Right? Isn't that what all those old westerns were really about? A Man for All Seasons? Horton Hears A Freakin' Who? They talk about being beta as if it were their genetic birthright, but if you're a man, isn't it really always a choice? (A choice with some occasionally hugely horrible consequences, like beheading or being made into beezlenut stew, but if it were easy, it wouldn't be particularly admirable, would it?)

Maybe I'm oversimplifying. It's worked for me.

Something In Common

What do these people have in common?

Philosopher Rene Descartes, "golden age" porn starlet Vanessa Del Rio, Presidential candidate Al Gore, author Nikolai Gogol, schlock producer Robert Lippert, Japanese avant-garde director Nagisa Oshima and actor Christopher Walken.

Fading Stars

IT IS interesting to me while watching TCM to note which of yesterday's stars have faded from memory, and which seem (in retrospect) to make you think "What was the big deal?" versus which oversights seem tragic.

Jean Arthur, in the latter category. A silent actress who made the transition to talkies, and starred in such classics as Only Angels Have Wings, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (and reprised virtually the same role in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington), and later in her career, Shane.

It's probably because she was never a sex symbol and retired early. Whereas, say, Katharine Hepburn worked and was fairly visible well into recent years, and, say, Rita Hayworth was a sex symbol.

I thought of this because Warren Beatty is 71 today. Over in the Althouse bad movie thread, we were talking about Ishtar, which probably deserves to go in the "forgotten mediocrities" category rather than the "greatest disasters of all time category".

Despite the negative pre-press (which was extensive, including absolutely vicious attacks on Elaine May), the movie opened at #1, probably due to the staggering drawing power of Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. (I can't even tell if I'm being facetious at this point.)

However, I gotta believe that Warren Beatty's drawing power at that point was limited to those who remembered his break-through role in the late '60s (Bonnie and Clyde) and his few notable other films through the mid-'70s.

Those whose earliest experience was the pleasant (but not astounding) remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan confusingly titled Heaven Can Wait--and the original, classic Heaven Can Wait was on TV often enough for that to happen even among younger viewers--or worse, the 3-and-a-quarter hour commie-love epic Reds were unlikely to be turning out in force for Mr. Beatty.

At some point, movies and movie stars fall into the category of "old". It has less to do with their age and more to do with their activity level. Like Mac Culkin could be seen as "old", as could Pauley Shore or even, to a lesser extent, Haley Joel Osmont. Any of these guys could come back and start a new career that put them (and intriguingly, their old movies) back into the light, like, say, Virginia Madsen or John Travolta (several times!) but if not, or when they get past the point of no return (say, by dying, as even Don Ameche, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy had a revival in the '80s that brought their older movies back into the light), then they just become answers in the big book of movie trivia.

I think Warren Beatty's window was really quite small. He really appealed to a segment of the Boomer population for a few years, and that carried him through for the next couple decades of turning out the occasional, largely forgettable flick. And a lot of that "carriage" may have been due to his sex symbol status, and probably tons of favorable press generated by his politics.

Compared to, say, Jack Nicholson, whose 71st is coming up in a few months, and whose drawing power has been considerable for 30 years. It seems likely that in a few decades, both will fade from the consciousness, though hard to imagine that Beatty will be more of a footnote, and Nicholson's penchant for delivering memorable movie moments ("You're not gonna pull that hen-house shit today, are you?", "Honey, I'm home!", "You can't handle the truth!") will keep him elevated above Beatty.

But you never know. Jean Arthur should be better remembered, shouldn't she?

Another Day, Another Dumb-ass List

Here's a list from Popular Mechanics of the 10 Most Prophetic Science Fiction Movies Ever (via Instapundit).

I really need to get me one of them jobs where you get paid to write crap. (I do get paid to write crap for tech 'zines from time-to-time, but it's crap that takes a whole lot of research and time.)

The best thing about this list is that a great many of the ones that he picks are simply movies that reinforce his current prejudices. His #1 pick is GATTACA.

Genetic engineering is still centuries away, but the opportunity to decimate free will, by way of well-intentioned genetic early warnings, has already arrived.

Proposals to intern "likely criminals" go back long before GATTACA. Genetic analysis is just the latest in the series of excuses used. And genetics, of course, was the justification behind Hitler's happy fun-time camps. What's different now? Oh, right, we have the science to actually identify genetic markers. Except of course, we don't really.

In other words, it's still science-fiction. Just like Minority Report's cumbersome user interface.

Santana would be rolling over in his grave with his pick of Soylent Green. Climate Change is a reality, while overpopulation isn't? But we had computer models of overpopulation proving there would be 40 million people in New York! SCIENCE!!

In fact, the big irony is the use of today's junk science to proclaim the hits and misses of yesterday's junk science. Blade Runner gets high marks for the constant rain, apparently. (It's going to make New York a perpetual summer but L.A. a perpetual rain forest or something.)

Once again: Bah.

Gray In L.A.

When it's gray in L.A.
I sure like it that way
'cause there's way too much sun around here

I don't know about you
But I'm so sick of blue skies
Whenever they always appear

That's Loudon Wainwright III singing from the Knocked Up soundtrack. Not his best work, but I cut the guy some slack. He's written over 200 songs by now and there's very little duplication. (I've seen him respond to fans who point out that one song is like another by saying "Yes, all of my songs are the same." Still, how should one respond to something like that? I suppose I'd say, "It's good enough for Vivaldi, it's good enough for me.")

Anyway.

It's gray today here in the city, which is sort of a relief. The heat here has been almost summery (in the '90s!) and it was unbearable to think we were going to go the next six months with nothing but blue skies and heat.

Thank you, Global Cooling!

Ikariam Goes Pro

I've been playing Ikariam all month and sort of wondering the whole time whether or not I actually enjoy it. As I marveled here, the fact that it was free amazed me.

A few days ago they upgraded to version 0.20, which included a new "ambrosia" feature. Ambrosia is a thing with wondrous powers, and it costs cold hard (real) cash to get. So there's one mystery solved.

At the same time they did this, they introduced a bug which makes the game nearly impossible to play. And a dubious feature that made it harder to expand (and expanding was hard any way).

An unfortunate bit of synchronicity.

Greatest Talk Show Guest Ever?

Michael Baden on Red Eye.

He's not entirely comfortable, sitting upright in his blue suit. But he clearly finds it amusing, and it must be a nice change from constantly being asked about corpses.

He's funny, too.

Worst. Movie. Ever.

Althouse has a post up about bad movies, featuring a quot from someone who has very specific ideas about what it takes to be worst.

"Bad" is interesting. Take, for example, the After Dark Horror Fest. If you asked a group of people who saw the movies, they'd agree that some were quite good and some were among the worst movies ever made. This IMDB thread for Lake Dead illustrates it quite nicely.

For me, it's all about the boring. I'm never bored in real life. Not since I was a kid have I been bored. Even in "bad" movies, I can usually find something to entertain me. So Lake Dead was almost unbearable because there was so little original in it.

But others have different criteria. For example, a movie that is undeservedly (in the critic's eyes) popular seems to irk people enough that it earns the sobriquet "worst" for some people. For Trooper York, the mere presence of Robin Williams will do it, while others feel that way about Hugh Grant or Barbra Streisand. Reader_iam cringes at the thought of John Wayne playing Genghis Khan, so in her case, mis-casting is the worst.

There isn't anybody I hate enough to allow ruining a whole film for me (not even Robin Williams, who ruined the otherwise sublime Adventures of Baron Munchausen or Barbra Streisand, who ruins everything when she's not singing).

Mis-casting can also be highly amusing, as can bad acting.

A movie's message can kill it for others, including me, but I can overlook a bad message if the movie is otherwise entertaining. Conservatives have to do that a lot. I suppose liberals have to do that with, I dunno, Heinlein, or something. Actually, Heinlein's a good example of someone I can't read at all because his message (which is something like "everyone should have sex with everyone else") intrudes on otherwise good storytelling.

So...what punches your buttons? What pushes something into the "worst" category for you?