The Bests

I didn't notice this last time I was on Maui, but evidently the preferred form of advertising here is to claim you are the best at something.  This applies most especially to food.  Presumably the only way to check the veracity of these proclamations is to try said gastronomic champion and see for yourself.  I have not done this.  If I had, I would have been eating non-stop since my arrival on the island and would have barely made it out of the strip mall across from our condo.  (Buddy the Elf would be positively orgasmic.)



Well, there's competiton on the Ka'anapali coast of Maui, because Java Jazz (in my little strip mall across the street) also claims to have the world's best coffee......and smoothies.  So, I decide to check out a cup of the coffee and it's fine.  But hardly the best.  In fact, of all the coffee I've had in the world (and that's been a lot), it's pretty hard to top Stell's in Redlands or Zona Rosa in Pasadena.  So, I passed on the smoothies.

Java Jazz also boasts the "happiest hour" on Maui.  (And the angriest fellow behind the counter.  A guy who hates Carter, Reagan, W, and Obama...and can't quite remember if he loves Sean Hannity or hates him too.)  Hmm...

Right next door is Soup Nutz, which is hoping to draw customers with its self-professed "best breakfast, lunch, dinner, and cocktails."  Memo to Soup Nutz management: there's a fine line between confidence and cockiness.

Across the parking lot is Nachos Grande, home of the "best Mexican food."  Better than what you can get in Mexico?

A couple tourist shops later--none of which seem to be hocking the world's best snorkels and fins--and I'm standing in front Hula Scoops, whose "Famous Tiramisu" is purportedly the "best dessert."  The sign out front also announces that Hula Scoops is "now serving breakfast burrito," which is just what I want from my ice cream/tiramisu shop.

Similar culinary confusion next door at Pizza Paradiso, which advertises the "best cheesesteak on Maui."  Apparently, their pizza isn't so great.

I'm not an advertising or marketing professional, but this oversaturation of superlatives seems like, well, the WORST THING EVER.  My first impression of their message is, "You are dumb tourists who bought the toy ukulele and fake lei at Hilo Hattie, so maybe you're oblivious to our obvious hyperbole too."

You've noticed I'm a cynic?

It's probably not quite that sinister, though.  After all, they're all just small businesses struggling to get by in a sagging economy hoping against hope that someone can still afford the airfare to their island.  And if someone really wants a one-stop shop for tiramisu and breakfast burritos, then it's quite clear where he should go.

For now, I'm content to lie underneath the world's best palm tree (debatable) on the world's best beach (not quite, but close), sipping the world's best Diet Coke (they're all pretty much the same) next to the world's best wife (undeniable).  Vacations, in my book, are all bests.

The Statues

Last year I won my office Oscar pool having not seen any of the nominated films.  Proving that the Academy Awards have little to do with what was actually on the screen.  It's the same way this year.  Here are my picks:

Actor - Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Supporting Actor - Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
Actress - Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Supporting Actress - Mo'Nique, Precious
Animated Feature - Up
Art Direction - Avatar

Cinematography - The Hurt Locker
Costume Design - The Young Victoria
Directing - The Hurt Locker
Documentary Feature - The Cove
Documentary Short - China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
Film Editing - The Hurt Locker

Foreign Language Film - The White Ribbon
Makeup - Star Trek
Original Score - Up
Original Song - The Weary Kind, Crazy Heart
Short Film Animated - A Matter of Loaf and Death
Short Film Live Action - Kavi

Sound Editing - Avatar
Sound Mixing - Avatar
Visual Effects - Avatar
Screenplay Adapted - Up in the Air
Screenplay Original - Inglourious Basterds

Best Picture - Avatar

The Advernewsment

This is what subscribers to the Los Angeles Times woke up to this morning:

The entire front page of their Saturday newspaper co-opted by a giant advertisement for the new Disney film Alice in Wonderland.  They've done stuff like this before at the Times.  The most egregious of which came last May when an ad for the ill-fated NBC series "Southland" appeared on the front page in the guise of a news story.

The advertisement even included a line about "this reporter," and described his "experiences" during a "ride-along."  Journalists everywhere squirmed.

Marketers love these things.  Not only do they have a prominent ad on the front page of a major daily, but everyone talks about it too.  And, as they say, any publicity is good publicity.  Or, as the NBC marketing execs put it, the attention stirred up by the ad helped "magnify" the message.  (It didn't work out so well for Southland, which was cancelled by NBC after six weeks.  The show just got picked up by TNT in January of this year, but so far, no plans for a second season.)

The Alice in Wonderland ad isn't quite as bothersome as the Southland ad.  And frankly, we should be used to this: after all, Google and Facebook ads lie in wait for us constantly on the internet, pouncing after our every click.  Corporate marketers (especially drug companies) film fake news packages and send them to local TV stations for use on the air.

But newspapers...the printed media, should be a bastion of unadulterated  coverage.  The wall between a media organization's advertising department and the news department has been crumbling in so many places.  Let newspapers be the last stand.

LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan did his part.  Two days before today's ad, he wrote a not-too-friendly review of the film.  (See if you can find it among all the ads.)

Of the giant Johnny Depp adorning the fake front page, LA Times editor Russ Stanton said it best: "Obviously, it was not my decision."  But it should be.  The editors should get to decide what goes on the front page.  Then again, inept management at the LA Times is nothing new.

The Quote

"I have nothing to say.  I am saying it.  And that is poetry."

--John Cage

The Dreamless

My wife insists she doesn't dream.  Or when she does dream, she never ever remembers it.  I dream.  Two or three different ones every night.  The best is when the dream is a really great story that continues after I wake up and then fall back asleep.  The worst is when I really want to know what's going to happen next, I wake up, and when I fall back asleep it's a totally different story.  (Well, really, the worst is when the alarm interrupts the dream and it's time to get up.  Still not very good friends with morning.)

I dream, but I don't have a dream.  If you were to ask me what the perfect life scenario would be for me, I would have no idea how to answer.  No financial, geographical, professional, or relational constraints?  No idea.

Sure, I'd like to not have to ever think about having enough money, but living within certain financial limits inspires avoidance of excess in other areas of life.  I'd love to be able to point to a spot on the globe and move there, but I also rather like where I am right now.  I wouldn't mind turning my hobbies into my livelihood, but then they wouldn't be recreation anymore.

The slacker's creed says: if you don't aspire to anything you won't be disappointed.  But this is America, damn it, the birthplace of the dream.

I don't consider myself dreamless.  I already married the girl of my dreams...and go to work every day at a dream job.  Rather, my world is filled with many micro-dreams.  But those aren't the subject of great oratory.  I dream of new tile in my kitchen; I dream of someday owning an old VW Karmann Ghia convertible; I dream of a world without 24-hour cable news networks; I dream of a grand jam session with mandolins and banjos and harpsichords and cellos and drums...and maybe a washtub bass.

Sounds easy enough.  Now, could you please hit the snooze button for me?

The Not

It all happened in the backyard.  I was five, maybe six years old.  There were ants.  And they were powerless to stop me.  I held dominion over them.  

It started with an innocent stumbling over their anthill.  I knocked a bit of their architecture askew and they instantly came scurrying to rebuild.

The next time it was on purpose.  And I got all of the anthill.  Wiped it out completely.  Take that!  Scurry, scurry, scurry.

Oh man, was that fun!  I went looking for more.  My mom must've wondered what I was doing traipsing around the backyard, looking at the ground, kicking periodically.

I didn't exercise my option to kill as much as one might imagine.  The fact that I had the power at any moment obliterate the entire colony was enough for me.  Mostly, I just damaged their handiwork.

It was really only a fleeting moment that I wondered if the devastation I engendered was ever traumatic to my victims.  But I often wondered if they saw it coming.  Especially when I would whip out the garden hose and douse the suckers.

I think it was the first time I encountered the problem of perception versus reality.  Inside these anthills are there little ant freeways, little ant houses, with little ant living rooms?  Are there little ant T.V. stations with little ant weather forecasters and did my giant human shadow holding the garden hose nozzle show up on their Little Ant Super Doppler 7000 Radar screens as a hurricane?  Just how vast is ant infrastructure?

What about me?  Are clouds and raindrops and thunder and lightning simply the machinations of some giant six-year-old playing his giant parents' backyard?

As a kid, I never quite grasped the paradox of perception being a direct access to reality.  At age six, I never got as far as the Sense-Datum, Adverbial, Intentionalist, or Disjunctivist theories of perception.  (Still working on those, actually.)

It all makes me wish René Magritte were around for a chat.  I fell in love with that guy's work the moment I saw it.  "Everything we see hides another thing," he said.  "We always want to see what is hidden by what we see."  

Images from his The Human Condition series.  The Treachery of Images is Magritte's iconic example of the problem of perception.

"This is not a pipe," the canvas says.  Magritte, for his part, offered this nugget: "Could you stuff my pipe?  No, it's just a representation, is it not?  So, if I had written on my picture, 'This is a pipe,' I'd have been lying."


I still wonder about the ants.  And the sky.  And I wonder about all of the nots in life.  Can a not ever become an is?  I think not...er...

The Script

On the silver screen, is it really all about the performance?  I often find myself wondering why some actors seem to always end up in good movies and others have hits and misses.  Think about it: folks like Tom Hanks, Leo DiCaprio, and Meryl Streep almost always hit it out of the park.  (No, this isn't an exhaustive case study--it's a blog.  I realize not every single film these guys have been in has been cinematic art, but it's a very high percentage.)

And why do some really good actors/actresses end up with a lot of ups and downs in the theater?  Samuel L. Jackson comes to mind.  (Snakes on a Plane...seriously?)  So do Halle Berry (Perfect Stranger) and Robin Williams (Flubber, et al).

We've seen all of these people in great roles in great movies.  So, why are some winning percentages much, much higher?  It can't be all about the performance.  Because even a great actor/actress can't save a bad script.  

So often critics or fans make excuses for these flops: "Oh, he got some bad advice on that one."  "I can't believe her agent would let her take that part."  Or..."He must really need the money right now."

But doesn't the buck ultimately stop with the performer?  At some point, don't they have to read the script and either take the gig or pass?  I think the great intangible skill--that can't be taught at any acting school--is the ability to read a script and visualize first, the role, and then ultimately, the film.

Right now, Leonardo DiCaprio has 27 projects "in development" on IMDB.  Halle Berry has four.  Tom Hanks is signed on for "How Starbucks Saved My Life," based on a true story about a fired corporate who takes a job at Starbucks.  Robin Williams has something called "Wedding Banned."

I'm not saying DiCaprio and Hanks are better actors than Berry and Williams.  I'm just saying, to be a great actor, it takes more than great acting.