Television and Movies: Truths, Theories, Metaphors and so long, Jeanne Cooper.

Well, I finally broke down and ordered HBO and Showtime from my cable company. I guess I missed Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire too much. Plus, my co-workers have bombarded me for being un-American because I have never seen a second of Homeland. My response....I'm cheap, sue me. My way of thinking goes like this: That $17.95 could buy eight cups of Starbucks coffee, four "peanut butter surprise" smoothies from GNC (they are probably 5,768 calories but I don't care), forty eight cannolis from Medonia Bakery, fifteen songs on ITunes or one "Old Orleans" cocktail from Gramercy Tavern. (Still the greatest drink ever made, hands down). Frankly, I spend very little time in front of the television. I have never been into video gaming either. Anyone who knows me well can vouch for my inability to hold still for more than ten minutes. Most television shows are not THAT entertaining and I lost interest in video games when they started having plots. Give me an Italian plumber stomping on evil, walking mushrooms any day. When I have to type in codes, buy gaming books with tips about Level 324 and wear a headset so I can talk to a 12 year old in Portugal about how we are going to take a digital foxhole by force.....I'm done.

I would be remiss however not to mention the passing of Jeanne Cooper, who played Katherine Chancellor on the Young and the Restless for 39 years. Why does that matter to me, you ask? When I was younger, I stayed with Neen every single day of the week while my folks were at work. Neen did NOT miss Young and the Restless or the Price is Right. Seriously, Cassville could be invaded or be waylaid by an F5 tornado and Neen would be like, "I wonder if Victor and Katherine are going to talk to Cricket about her lovelife today." It got to where I would actually get into the show with her. It would end dramatically and we would have an "are you kidding me?!?!" moment. A five year old boy and a fifty five year old woman going to pieces over worthless daytime soap operas. Then we would calm down, eat our turkey sandwiches and hope Bob Barker would lead the next contestant to the Plinko board (always our favorite game). Goodbye, Jeanne. I am sure Neen met you at the Gates with a turkey sandwich or a milkshake.

Television has taken an interesting turn in my lifetime, however. The emergence of reality TV has marked primetime channels for over a decade now. We now have shows that talk about reality shows. We have another channel that discusses celebrity gossip exclusively. MTV no longer shows music videos. The sitcoms that run now are just modern versions of old ideas. The only difference is that middle aged white guys are cast as hopeless romantics, goofy morons, and/or have an inadequacy about them that is magnified to the Nth degree. No more Gary Cooper smoking a cigarette and saying awesome things like, "what's the big idea?" No more Ozzie & Harriet. No more Andy Griffith. Now, it's "my kids run all over me, my wife badgers me to death and I am scared of my boss." I tried to watch a few of them on a rainy day, courtesy of DVR, and I lost interest about ten minutes into the show. AMC hit a homerun with "Walking Dead," "Mad Men" and "Hell on Wheels" but those are novel ideas with plots that change as quickly as the identity of a Kardashian's "significant other."  Not to mention, they are late night shows with an "M" rating because only mature adults watch them, of course. (excuse me while I watch the twelve year old next to me call up the famous Basic Instinct scene on Youtube over and over)

Movies are still in my wheelhouse for the most part. I have seen some pretty God-awful films in recent years but not any more than in the past. For every "Gigli," there is "The Departed." For every "Bring It On 3: All or Nothing," there is "Steel Magnolias."    Honestly, I have watched some of the "classics" from the old days and I found them boring. "Citizen Kane" is consistently ranked in the top 5 of every movie critic's list of "best movies ever." My eyes were glazed over with boredom for the entirety of the film. Same goes for "The Maltese Falcon," "A Streetcar named Desire" and "Lawrence of Arabia." I kept waiting for something great to happen and I just waited...and waited....and waited.  I hate getting my hopes up like that and then wasting two hours of my life. By the time you realize you hate the movie, you are already invested, so you stay with it. I can think of five similar situations:

1) Having Georgia Tech football season tickets. I mean, really? You just have to be a glutton for punishment.

2) Waiting in line for McDonald's "food" for more than 13 seconds. After seeing the pink concoction that becomes a Chicken McNugget on Dateline NBC, I would rather just eat a live chicken.

3) Braving I-75 traffic in Cobb County to go to Chili's on Barrett Parkway because, God forbid, you cannot get jalapeno poppers anywhere else.

4) Any visit to the DMV anywhere, ever. The black hole of life. They say cigarettes take seven minutes off your life with each one, well, a visit to the DMV takes a year off. I swear, the application to work there must have the description: "Must be expressionless, useless, rude, and your knuckles must drag the ground and/or you speak only in grunts."

5) Listening to a Kenny Chesney CD post-2001. You keep hoping that  he will return to the old redneck, flannel wearing Kenny and then he comes out with something worse than the last one. I am waiting on a rap album from him at this point.

My movie collection is quite enormous. I have some classic movies, some action, some comedy, some drama, and some that are regarded as "bad" by many others, but I cannot help but enjoy them. I like "Twister" better than "Gone With the Wind." I like "Rambo First Blood: Part II" better than any Woody Allen movie. The acting is nowhere near as skilled but the absolute absurdity of those two movies just resonates with me. Every movie does not need depth, sometimes you just gotta imagine you are ten years old again and one man CAN take on the Vietcong, rescue forgotten POWs, fly back in a busted helicopter and physically assault a government official with a bowie knife. The movie represented a full dose of patriotism with a heaping helping of "blame your local senator" for the twelve years we languished in southeast Asia. And who doesn't want to chase tornadoes in a bus while listening to Deep Purple? I still contend that Philip Seymour Hoffman's greatest role ever was Dusty, the comic relief to the Bill Paxton/Jamie Gertz/Helen Hunt love triangle. Every time they threatened to take over the movie with their "I'm an almost divorced, conflicted weatherman/ I'm attached to my cell phone sex therapist/I want this machine to fly" drama, he would derail it with a comment or a music clip from inside his converted bus/weather center, aptly named "The Barn Burner." The director was trying to tell us that no matter how bad things get, you can always find humor. I think we all need a "Barn Burner" in our lives.  When life throws an F5 tornado your way, you need a place where you can wear Hawaiian shirt, a hat with two beer can holders, with speakers blaring your song of choice. (see, you can analyze any movie, even the stupid ones. Take the F5 reference for example.....it's not just a tornado. It's also a button on your computer that refreshes the webpage you are currently visiting. It wipes away the old and recreates the new. An F5 tornado completely wipes away anything and gives you the opportunity to start anew, whether you wanted to or not, thereby hitting a "refresh" button in your life. Metaphors, baby......I could do this all day.)

For all my years watching my movies, analyzing them in my own way and digesting what they mean to us as a society, I have derived five absolute truths about the movies I own:

1) Beech Nut chewing tobacco completely missed the advertising boat when it did not immediately employ Jesse "The Body" Ventura as its spokesperson after the helicopter scene in "Predator." Never has there been a more ringing, less politically correct endorsement for tobacco use in the history of man. Jesse could have gone on to promote the eating of red meat, the wearing of fur coats, the furtherance of sweatshops in Bangladesh and ownership of high capacity-magazined, automatic weapons. (especially after they gunned down an entire rainforest without hesitation. How insensitive/awesome was that?)

2) Say what you want about Charlie Sheen. Judge him repeatedly. Analyze his personal life, his drug use and domestic problems. "Chris Taylor" and "Ricky Vaughn" will always be two of the best movie characters in cinema history.

3) Arnold Schwarzeneggar simply cannot go without an awkward climactic line in any movie, post-Terminator. My personal favorite: "You're luggage." -to a dead alligator. Eraser, 1996.

4) Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) was rife with so much starpower, that it simply cannot be contained. Kristy Swanson, David Arquette, Luke Perry, Rutger Hauer, Paul Reubens, Hilary Swank, Donald Sutherland, Ben Affleck, Seth Green, Ricki Lake and Stephen Root. All we needed was Morgan Freeman and this was an Oscar shoo-in. This flick was ahead of its time. Vampires, afflicted teens, high school drama...sound familiar? Yeah, I'm looking at YOU, Twilight. This movie destroys Twilight. Kristy Swanson is hot. Luke Perry gets to say "now, you are a coat rack" after stabbing a vampire. It's like Clueless and Teen Wolf with a side of Breakfast Club. Cha-ching.

5) Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent have an unspoken rivalry that is still notched at 1-1. In Goodfellas, Joe (Tommy) beats Vincent (Billy Batts) to a pulp with Robert De Niro, throws him in the trunk of a car, drives to his mother's house, eats lasagna and cuts up with his friends before leaving to take care of the body. Realizing Batts is not dead, they shoot and stab him repeatedly before burying him in a remote part of upstate New York, cracking jokes the entire time. In Casino, Vincent (Frankie) turns the tables. He is employed by the Boss, Remo, to dispatch Pesci (Nicky) in a most horrific fashion. He bludgeons Nicky and his brother with baseball bats for several grueling minutes, then buries them in a cornfield alive. It is easily one of the most disturbing scenes ever made. So, it is Pesci's cold indifference vs. Vincent's outright brutality. Something has gotta give. Quentin Tarantino needs to get on this immediately.