Kiss Me Deadly

I'm not sure I understand the reverence for this "classic" 1955 Mike Hammer movie. It's notable for probably being the inspiration behind the glowing briefcase in "Pulp Fiction," but the movie itself was bad, BAD. It felt like a T.V. show - and a BAD one.

Still - it was the kind of bad that, once we realized HOW bad it was, we could sort of enjoy ourselves.

The key to its baddery is, unfortunately, the acting. Followed by the writing, and then let's round it out with the directing. Besides Cloris Leachman's brief scenes at the beginning (and in her film debut), and also Strother Martin's (I believe uncredited) tiny scene, the acting was so awful I started to wonder if maybe Mike Hammer had a learning disability that I didn't know about. I seriously started to wonder at the 45 minute mark - 'Is Mike Hammer illiterate? Was he known as, maybe, the Idiot Detective?'

It's an honest question; this was my first Hammer movie and I'm unfamiliar with the character. It certainly made the movie more entertaining to think of it as one detective's struggle with his own idiocy. Plus his issues in dealing with idiot assistant Velda. And the idiot Chief of Police.

At one point Hammer marches up to a hotel clerk and defiantly holds up a key. "WHAT IS THIS?" he demands, and my impression wasn't that he was asking what lock it went to, but that he was unclear on the concept of a "key."

Later this hotel clerk is randomly slapped around by Hammer, who did a lot of random slapping in the film. Much is mentioned about Hammer's cruelty by the critics, but very little about his dim-wittedness.

Other oddness:At one point a man escapes Mike Hammer by - and I am not kidding - quickly swallowing a bunch of sleeping pills so that he can sleep through the interrogation.

The Chief of Police has a little monologue at the end that I want tattooed on my chest, upside down, so I can always look down at it and marvel at its brilliance:

(From the invaluable film site called.... FilmSite.org.) A few scenes. Just a few harmless pictures strung together. But put them in a certain order - and va va VOOM what a bad movie.

We did get to see a "recently discovered" ending that allows Hammer and his idiot secretary to live after escaping the atomically exploding house, so that's of note. And two of the actresses in the movie were in attendance, so there's another.

You know, forget that this movie was bad. You HAVE to see it. If you have any interest in noir, you MUST.

A Simple Correlation

Friend Ben sent something around suggesting an action that can be taken on the gas prices. And it's not just a "Don't Drive Anywhere Day." The idea is to stop buying gas from Exxon-Mobil completely.

I don't know what they're up to where you live, but here prices are a bit above $3. You know, politics aside, and just on general principle: if the company charging those prices can afford to give retiring CEO Lee Raymond "one of the most lavish exit packages in history, a bonanza worth an estimated $398 million total," (From TomPaine.com), AND they posted record profits last year? Yeah, I think it's worth it to drive a few more miles down the road to the next station.

Suddenly those Blue Buses with their shoddy debit card reloading action are looking a bit better.

And bringing politics back into it, please to check out these simple, easy-to-read charts at This Modern World. The correlations are SUPER-easy to follow: Gas prices. Exxon-Mobil profits. Industry political party affiliations.

What do these people have to do to get kicked out of office? Put a ban on Jesus and football? Would even THAT do it?

How convenient... for YOU

Dear Cingular,

I got my $50 rebate from the cell phone I recently bought from you. Thanks! I believe that was quicker than the 9-12 weeks you said it would take.

I see, however, that instead of sending a check or crediting my Mastercard with the amount, you've opted to send me a separate debit card loaded with the funds.

How convenient! For you, I mean.

So now all I have to do to use my money is carry a separate plastic card around and use it in place of cash, or in place of any of the other cards I already have. And, lucky for me, all I have to do is keep a separate running total of how much I've spent on it, or otherwise face having a sales clerk say THERE'S NOT ENOUGH MONEY ON THIS.

And let me guess what happens when I get down to about $7 on this thing - eventually I'll just put it away and lose that last amount rather than have to worry about NOT HAVING ENOUGH.

Thanks! This is a really great system! For you, I mean.

McClellan Requiem

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has stepped down, and soon that Sunset Orange Pearl-colored Honda Element will leave the Executive Parking lot for the last time.

Soon he'll be off to whatever enormously overpaid job his betters have arranged for him. Yes, there'll be a book, as soon as the Deciders find someone to write it for him. He'll be featured on the cover in a jacket and open collar.

They'll arrange a few appearances on some of the pundits' shows, but not many; Scott needs a definite script, and a short one at that.

However, removed from the immediate sphere of the Deciders, he will simply fade away, as his type does. He is not a James Baker or an Alexander Haig to periodically, disturbingly resurface.

I have always found (and I hope you find this at least slightly ironic, as I do) that McClellan has left me a bit inarticulate. Not in a general sense - I am not literally dumbfounded by his dumbassery - but specifically in the sense that I have never been able to settle on a label for him. No particular epithet seemed to fit perfectly.

Even a search of the President's humorous staff nicknames doesn't yield one for Scott. Maybe W. was stymied as well.

McClellan was always a very unique type of White House administrative stain, one that came specifically out of a group of chuckling, satisfied cronies at the top of the income brackets handing out jobs to their most loyal, unquestioning friends. And to the sons of their friends. And to their friends' sons' slightly slow cousins. Certainly he seemed unquestioning and obedient, but there was more - or less.

No definite words come to mind when considering Scott McClellan, only impressions. I always got the feeling no matter how much you shoved him, he'd probably rock back up to upright position, like a piece of sturdy gym equipment. I got the sense he could be eventually taught not to touch a hot stove. I assume that when he was growing up he was the one the other kids got to taste cat food for the first time.

My impression of our former Press Secretary was always that the senior frat boys had posted their most pliable, eager pledge at the front door of the house to deflect difficult questions. Like when school officials came around to deliver the bad news about their collective GPAs. Or when the police came by to arrest whoever was dealing roofies on campus.

He wasn't stupid - but he wasn't someone you'd call into the room to help figure out what to do about a dead hooker. Well, you'd eventually call him into the room - when it was time for someone to fetch the pizzas and beers. MOVE, pledge.

"Sycophant?" No, although certainly he'd be in that same phylum. "Prick" was the first label I tried on McClellan, but that never fit because it implies a certain potency, doesn't it? And that is not what comes to mind when watching him.

These two words also implied a certain level of cunning, too, that I never saw. It always seemed to me McClellan was able to deflect queries and logic not through a cunning grasp of the inform / deflect dance every Press Secretary has done - but out of some sort of obstinancy that came out of a blank ignorance. It's possible our current administration could not have possibly had a better spokesperson.

"Lackey?" "Lapdog?" "Toady?" Well - all of those, but not exactly. Any word I came up with seemed to imply a sort of knowing gleam in the eye, a gleam I never saw in him.

It's an ongoing investigation for me - which, unlike Scott, I am happy to comment on.

Scott McClellan is gone. Long evade Scott McClellan.

A First-Reel Bond Girl

Although Michelle Malkin has not yet achieved Anne Coulter or Rush Limbaugh status as a Professional Hater and Sayer of Mean Things, she of the gorgeous face and coal-black heart is inching up on the title.

Her latest feat: Some students at UC Santa Cruz protested a group of military recruiters on their campus. Malkin got a hold of the students' personal phone numbers and posted them on her site. Now, just as she no doubt intended, the students are being inundated with death threats.

How proud she must be.

Check out Ezra Klein's fantastic meditation on what motivates someone like Malkin here. He even spares a little pity for her. It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for her.

Such a beautiful woman - and so evil. When I see her I am put in mind of a James Bond girl. Not the one he ends up with, but the one they send after him in the first reel, that he dispatches fairly easily. Sure, he'll spend the night with her, but in the morning he'll use her as a human shield or let her drop out of a window.

The Peeps Have Spoken...

... and their message is clear: YOU WILL EAT US AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.

After I put up my last post about Peeps, within short order I found that I'd been enrolled in the Peeps Fan Club and was somehow sending out Peeps eCards to the whole I.T. team. The included messages ranged from I HEART PEEPS to I LUV PONIES N' PEEPS.

Embarassing enough, but more disturbing in the way it spoke to the Peeps' deep influence over our lives, was that every computer I logged onto Friday had a Peeps-themed desktop that could not be changed. Ominous. Subtle.

How strange that of all the heresies I have uttered on these virtual pages, it would be a denunciation of Peeps that would have the most effect.

Do the Peeps have collaborators within the I.T. organization here? Clearly yes, but why focus on their betrayal? They are just as victimized and terrorized as the rest of us. Who knew the Peeps were such a powerful underlying force in society?

I'll Have No Truck With Peeps

Here's a perennial favorite I'll have no truck with: PEEPS.

People, Peeps are not candy. They are the industrial run-off from candy.

Peeps are the marshmallow leavings from some other confection, and one day some GENIUS of the novelty candy world got the idea to catch the hot sugary drippings in a mold that is somewhat shaped like a baby chick. Pass that glob under the Pink Glitter Machine, throw a few dots on there for eyes, BINGO - you've got Peeps. I bet they're stale before they leave the conveyor belt.

Peeps are the pigs-feet of the sugary holiday treat world - they are the last thing that can be used from that product. Creating them was a matter of pride for some manufacturer, not invention. Whatever warehouse they roll out of, there is a big sign somewhere that says ZERO PERCENT SUGAR WASTE!

Peeps are Easter basket space-filler - that's it. They are the packing peanuts of the Easter Candy world. They are one step above the asbestos grass that comes along in the basket, and not one big step at that.

Last week I tried Peeps again for the first time in five years or so to be sure - nope, nothing's changed.

Related: From McSweeney's, HELPFUL TIPS FOR FIGHTING AND WINNING THE WAR ON EASTER.

Things What I've Seen and Heard

Screenplay #5

Almost five and a half months later, there is a first draft of my slam-it-out-in-one-month screenplay. It is called (currently) "The Curse of the Wandering Hand," and true to my standard practice of making something so bizarre as to be virtually unsellable in any known market, it is a period horror-comedy, done in the style of the old British Hammer studios, but as if written by Monty Python.

Perhaps just to make sure no one ever buys it, ever, I should translate it into Dutch while I'm at it.

Much rewriting to be done on this, but it IS a complete draft! Champagne and Hersheys Kisses all around.

1,973 years later, the plot thickens

According to CNN, an ancient manuscript has surfaced in Egypt which reveals that Jesus asked Judas to betray him:

The manuscript was actually discovered in the 70s, and was believed to have been written in the 4th century. I am on record as thinking Judas got a raw deal in the Gospel narrative - maybe someone else felt that way all those years ago too.

I'd like to think this ancient author, whoever he was, was the Tim LaHaye of his time, and that his scrolls were sold at the check-out counter of the Temple right next to "Chicken Soup for Your Camel's Soul" and the cat calendars. (Cat calendars have ALWAYS been adorable, in every era.)

Of course, I place the importance of this new information only slightly above the recent decision by the Vatican to update "Limbo."

And as everyone knows anyway, the REAL benefit the world stands to gain from this is something else entirely: DA VINCI CODE II!

Point of note: I see on the Left Behind site that the Rapture is expected on June 6th of this year, or 6/6/6. I can't tell if that means Rapture the Book, or Rapture the End-Times. Either way I'm sure it'll be a windfall for LaHaye.

"Big Love," so far

We're four episodes in and no one was more excited about this show than me, but it's not working. All the elements are there for it to be VERY interesting with great characters - but each week this show seems to want to be nothing more than Bill Paxton stumbling back and forth from house to house, forgetting whose night it is, always exhausted, like a libertine in a French farce.

I get that there are rivalries between the wives. I got that now. I get that it's a hectic household and the kids all have to have their costumes sewn for the school play, and that chores get handed down from wife to wife. Got it. Four episodes and that's been the main thing every show. Move on.

How about stepping up the conflict with the super-fundamentalist prophet Roman a bit more? How about more with Bill's squeaky-clean son? Their scenes are great. Or the ne'er-do-well brother? The oldest daughter and her new LDS friend are a promising subplot, too. Get on with it.

I'd like more Bill and son, more Roman, less Chloe Sevigny. I'd like to see some moments where having three wives is working out for him, not just an endless comedy sketch.

I'd like to see that these guys have a competent plan for dealing with their neighbor's suspicions rather than being caught red-faced and unprepared whenever someone knocks on the door.

In some ways "Big Love" is very much like the "Sopranos," with its the underlying theme of families. The best "Sopranos" involve Tony caught between his two families - mob and Carmela. And Bill in "Big Love" seems like a man caught between two sorts of families as well - his new one, and his old, fundamentalist Juniper Creek one. More Juniper Creek, please.

Note to the lady at my nearby coffee shop who is clearly an agent of Starbucks

OK, I get the message. You don't want me in your shop. Most every day I come in, and I notice a good bit of chit-chat between you and the other customers, but not so much with me. Not a lot of smiling either. OK, no problem.

You always ask me if I want it to go and I say "no," then you give it to me to go.

Your latte man BANGS the filter against the garbage can, I mean BANGS THE HELL OUT OF IT, and I can't believe no one else is jolted harshly out of their morning daze by that, but then maybe it's a private signal just to me.

I notice you post the JOKES TOLD BY KIDS every day on the cash register, which is cute, and then one day it wasn't there, and I smiled and asked about it, and you looked at me blankly. Then I repeated the question, again smiling and being as pleasant as possible, and you said, face as serious as possible, "They do not come out in Saturday's paper." As if I was seriously inquiring; as if I wasn't just making small talk.

Then you looked at your latte man, as if for help, and I looked at him, and then he repeated what you said to me. Just as serious.

Just so you know: it was just chit-chat. I don't really need to start the day with the JOKES TOLD BY KIDS column.

As soon as I sit down there's a lot of you moving around cleaning up, SCRAPING THE BIG METAL CHAIRS ACROSS THE FLOOR instead of picking them up like I do, OK, I get it.

There's a Starbucks four more blocks down. Not as convenient, and I try to avoid the chains, but would that be better for you? I'm getting the hint that it would. It would? OK, I'll go elsewhere.