At another tavern, we met a guy who’d lived in Galway his entire life, and his family had lived there for something like the past 1400 years. He regaled us with an Irish history lesson, most of which we already knew about, but it was interesting to hear it from a lifelong resident. He talked about the seemingly never ending struggle between Northern and Southern Ireland, the unrest caused in the past and present by British occupancy, and the struggle between Catholics and Protestants for control of the island that has gone on since The Tudors. It was somewhat depressing, but an all too familiar story of religious groups fighting over land, like the Jews and Palestinians in the Gaza strip, though in this case it’s a question of one stupid version of Christianity supposedly being better than another stupid version of Christianity. Religion, in this case, is all tied up with nation pride, and it doesn’t seem likely it’s ever going to be completely resolved. The guy we were talking to was resigned to it, and he told us that he simply would never go to Northern Ireland in his life, because the people there would hear his accent, shoot him in the head, and dump his body in a river. He’d never be seen again. To hear him talk about it so casually was a little chilling, for us three Americans who were just there to get drunk, have a good time, then return safely to our own country. It’s not like there aren’t places in America that are dangerous, and racism and xenophobia and homophobia exists here just like religious intolerance exists there, but still, I’d like to think that we’re gradually working on getting beyond these things. I’d like to think that we’re moving largely in the right direction, and it was disheartening to me to see someone who had just accepted the situation for what it was and couldn’t ever conceive of it really changing.

Overall, I liked Ireland very much and enjoyed experiencing different parts of it. In many ways it’s just what it’s made out to be: the accents, people decked out in green, potatoes with most meals, soccer, and pastoral, sheep-covered land that hasn’t changed a bit in hundreds of years. But it was also noteworthy that the religious struggles that have likewise existed there for hundreds of years are still very much in evidence, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

I think we really need to question the motivations of the backers of this controversial  mosque. Governor Patterson may be a lame duck, but I like some of the things he’s done the last few months. He called out the politicians who were dragging their heels, on vacation instead of delivering a budget for New York, and he suggested something in regards to the mosque that seemed entirely reasonable to me. Why not meet with the backers, reinforce how sensitive this issue is (as if they didn’t know already), and suggest to them another site for the mosque that won’t be so controversial? The backers refused this request outright, and I have to ask the question, why would they do that? I don’t want to assume the worst about anyone, but I have to say, why react in that way, unless they wanted to thumb their noses at those who suffered and died in 9/11? It suggests a real thoughtlessness in a best case scenario, and a monumental show of disrespect and disdain in a worst case one. There are plenty of other places to put this mosque. Why does it have to be here?

Maybe I am just intolerant. I’ll admit, I hate (and yes, that’s a powerful word, and I’m using it anyway), any kind of fundamentalist religion. Any religion that tells you what to eat, what to dress, when to pray, etc. is doing more harm, in my book, than it could possibly be doing good. But as long as people are keeping it to themselves, and not trying to force it on anyone else, I’m okay with it. This mosque, it appears, is going to be forced down the throats of New Yorkers. It’s just a bad idea, plain and simple, like having the trial of the alleged 9/11 conspirators here in New York, in Manhattan, no less. If this mosque gets built, no good can possibly come of it. And the fact that those responsible for it are aware of that fact, and are choosing to deliberately ignore it, makes me very nervous. I’m not a violent person, and I’d never express my displeasure and disappointment that such a thing as the construction of this mosque is even being considered, through violent actions. But there are others who might not feel that way, and I fear the direction of where these proceedings are headed. Yes, it’s the right of the property owners to put whatever they want at that location. But let me be the first to say now: don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here’s the main problem with this movie: it all builds up to the “big reveal,” that being Duval’s admittance of whatever it is that happened all those years ago, at his funeral party. But we aren’t invested enough in the character to care, or at least I wasn’t. We already have a pretty good idea, from all the clues, of what it was that happened. And since the reveal is supposed to be the most engrossing part of the movie, and it doesn’t really pay off, the rest of the time we took to get there doesn’t seem worth it, especially since the journey just wasn’t all that interesting. Spacek, Duval, and Murray are all great talents, but they seem to be phoning it in here just a bit. Murray is underutilized, and even though it’s a worthy performance from Duval, who gets plenty of screen time, I’ve liked him better elsewhere. This is sort of just an extension of the crazy old man type character he played in his cameo in The Road last year. I also felt like this played a little like a rehashing of the Clint Eastwood flick Gran Torino, where the central character just doesn’t like the changes he’s seeing in a world that has essentially passed him by. Eastwood at least was slightly more coherent; here we have to deal with Duval twitching and muttering to himself for a lot of the time. It gets tiresome, and there just wasn’t enough else going on to keep my interest. At the end of an hour and a half, it felt like the idea behind this movie was better than the actual execution, which is a shame, when you have as much talent available as appears here. It’s not all bad, by any means, but I think I could have gotten most of the same elderly angst by visiting any local old folks’ home. The only difference between that and this would have been the period costumes. Ultimately, I left with feelings of general bemusement and disappointment; a team-up between Duval and Murray should have been a goldmine, but this one never really panned out. My rating: 5/10.

Confused yet? I sure was, and I’m going to have to see this at least two or three times more, I think, to catch everything. Even then, I still might not. This is one of those movies that continually asks you what is real and what isn’t, right up until the end, and since we’re dealing with the mind, and dreams, they’re valid questions. What are dreams? We have theories, but we don’t really know. The examination of that question is part of what this movie is about, and since we don’t know all the answers, there’s no easy answer to what sort of movie this is either. On the surface, it’s part action movie, reminding me, at times, of the Matrix trilogy; the visuals are somewhat similar. It’s a drama, as we continue to learn the secrets about DiCaprio and his ex-wife’s death. It’s suspense, as we are left guessing, at every turn, how things are going to come out, and there are even some well-timed comedic elements, as some of the team member’s personalities clash, with good effect. This is a really masterful cast, from DiCaprio on down, and they play off each other well. I won’t reveal what happens in the end, and whether our heroes (antiheroes?), mission is successful, but suffice to say, Nolan accomplishes what he wants to here, making us think, and guess, and puzzle, for every moment we’re subjected to this phenomenal bit of storytelling. Often the best movies are the ones that won’t be categorized, and this is one of them. Nolan demands intelligence and sophistication from his audience, and the fact that he expects them, I think, is a nice complement. This is in every way worth seeing. It is compelling all the way down the line, from the concept itself, to the visuals, to the dialogue, to the acting. It’s all there, the stuff of classic cinema, and yet some of the stuff done here on screen could only have been done in the modern era…and with a $200 million budget. Since The Dark Knight did so well, Nolan had the money to throw around, but he’s going to make it back here, and then some. Bottom line? Run, don’t walk, to see this movie, one of the best of the year, so far. My rating: 7/10.

Artscape also gave me an opportunity to get a good look at Baltimore, a city where I’ve had limited past experience. I remember getting lost there once with my friend Tiffany some years back, and sort of driving aimlessly around for a few hours, through neighborhoods that looked increasingly more dicey at every turn. This time we were sort of in downtown, I guess…we were right by Camden Yards, where the Orioles play, and whatever the hell the stadium is called where the Ravens have their home games. As I mentioned, the area where the event itself was taking place seemed to be bustling with life. There were several clubs and restaurants that were still in full swing when we packed up at ten o’clock, and it seemed like even if the festival was officially done for the night, things were just getting started. Of course, we were too exhausted to do much but go back to the hotel and crash. The whole place seemed to be very gay friendly, which I liked. I saw many male and female couples making the rounds with no bother, the same as in New York. But with that being said, I also saw many homeless. Stopping at red lights on the way to and from the event, panhandlers shuffled about among the parked cars, some of them very aggressive, holding their hands out right up against the windows. Though I’ll sometimes give if I’m in the right mood, rolling down a car window in traffic to try and help someone out seems like a bad idea for a variety of reasons. But what really struck me about Baltimore (it’s probably wrong to pigeonhole based on observances of just a couple of neighborhoods, but still, there it is), came as we were driving back to New York Sunday night. We’d made our last few sales, loaded up the car, and the G.P.S. was sending us back to the highway via the most direct route. The route it gave sent us cruising through a neighborhood that I remember thinking at the time looked like images of war-torn Baghdad. There were blocks after blocks after blocks of boarded up tenements, all of them looking condemned, broken glass and piles of trash in vacant lots. There were no businesses open, except, and I’m not even kidding here, a couple of liquor stores and fried chicken restaurants. But even in the buildings where most of the windows were boarded up, there were a few lights on, and there were people sitting on the steps of some of them, in some cases smoking weed right out in the open. I’ve been through some pretty rough neighborhoods in my life, but this was just another level…it was the ghetto, plain and simple, and it was incredibly saddening to me that people had to live in a place like this. What struck me the most was just the lack of commerce. Where there are no businesses neighborhoods can’t really thrive, and that seemed to be the case here. I wondered if things were like this before the economic collapse and the hard times of the past couple of years, or did the condition of this area predate that significantly?

Overall, I had a really nice time over the weekend. I enjoyed my birthday, spending time with Megan, and seeing a new city that I didn’t know a whole lot about. I’d like to go back to Artscape next year, if I get a chance, and there’s no reason to think that we wouldn’t, as it was profitable. There seems to be a lot about Baltimore to recommend it. But I also could hardly turn a blind eye to what, to me, appeared to be a city in financial trouble. I know that economics are cyclical, and what the condition is today may be different in a year, or five years. I just hope that the city can ride out the bad times, because what I saw was sobering. It was not desperation that I saw in some of the faces I passed. Rather, it seemed more like resignation, which is what comes when all hope is truly gone.

This time around the hero is Royce (Adrian Brody), a mercenary stolen from Earth and airdropped onto a foreign planet, along with six other assorted combat vet/assassin types, plus That Seventies Show’s Topher Grace, presumably as Predator bait. The most recognizable of the other actors is Danny Trejo, who finally, after putting in twenty years as a Hollywood set piece, will get his long overdue starring role in Machete, due out soon. It doesn’t take long before Royce and the crew figure out that the planet is a game preserve, and they’re being hunted by interstellar baddies. They band together, but human nature being what it is, there’s tension among the group due to different priorities, mindsets, etc. It’s a bit formulaic, borrowing from “The Most Dangerous Game” short story and about two dozen other Hollywood action flicks roughly based on it from the past three decades. Still, what makes things work pretty well here, for the most part, is the sense of anticipation built up before the appearance of the first creatures (they don’t show up for close to an hour), fine cinematography, and the ability to avoid overly cheesy dialogue. Adrian Brody isn’t exactly miscast as Royce…everyone keeps saying he’s “playing against type” in this film, but does Brody really have a type? He’s a chameleon, and he tackled an action role successfully in King Kong, lest we forget. Still, having him growl into the camera and act like a tough guy feels a bit strained at times…I’d like to buy it but I just can’t…and having him take his shirt off in the last few minutes of the movie, presumably to show off his chiseled abs, wasn’t doing me any favors either. Sex symbol this man is not. But aside from these minor gripes, everything progresses swimmingly. There’s a Predator vs yakuza fight sequence that pretty much makes the movie, we get some new insight into Predator mythology, we’re introduced to their canine-like attack critters, and they’re packing some fun new technology. We even get a great cameo from Lawrence “Morpheus” Fishburn, who must not have had anything to do some weekend.

If you’re a fan of the action and sci-fi genres, bottom line, you’re probably going to like this. I felt like the last third of the movie probably suffers most (I especially thought the last twenty minutes could have used a good re-write), but there’s a lot more working here than isn’t. The sense of a human protagonist fighting something that is so alien to us and so frustratingly superior that dominated the Schwarzenegger classic is back again, and taking it back to the jungle, albeit on a different planet, was a wise decision. Is this high art? No, and it wasn’t meant to be. Let’s face it, if you go see a movie like this, you know what you’re getting yourself into. If you don’t think too much, and you’re looking for violent, testosterone-laced entertainment, this is the way to go. My rating: 6/10.

This time around, transition and the finding of one’s place in the world are the over-arching storylines; though these themes were touched on in the first two films also, it avoids feeling redundant. Andy, the owner of the principle toys, Buzz LightYear (Tim Allen) and Woody the cowboy (Tom Hanks) is going off to college, and the toys are wondering what’s planned for them. Mistakenly sent to a daycare center when they were intended for the attic, they encounter a sinister toy conspiracy headed by a rotund pink Care Bear lookalike named Lotso. Lotso was lost by his owner years before, but feels that she abandoned him. Bringing some bullying lackeys around to his way of thinking, he uses them to control the daycare center with a fuzzy fist, forcing the new arrivals into playtime with the youngest child denizens, who batter and bash them mercilessly as toddlers are apt to do. Buzz and Woody launch a plan to escape, with help from Mr. Potato Head, Barbie, and the various other principles from the first two. It all leads to a trip to the town dump in the third act, where the wayward playthings come this close to toy purgatory, in a scene that is as frightening and emotionally disturbing as anything the adult “horror” genre has produced lately. This movie is really anything but lighthearted, and although the animation is as bright and shiny as everything Pixar produces, the themes remain as profoundly adult as those in Up and Wall-E. There are some harsh lessons to be taught here: abandonment is a very real possibility, even for innocent, trusting toys, a warped mind is sometimes simply beyond redemption, and sometimes the best of friends can outgrow you. But it all turns out alright in the end, and the rescued toys are given a good home, with a young girl whose sensibilities and creative spirit mimic Andy’s own.

The most important lesson to be learned from these movies is actually an inadvertent one, though. The lesson is, it’s a damn good thing that toys don’t have feelings, and souls, because if they did, then each and every one of us would be doomed to hell for abandoning them and breaking their hearts as we grew up. I found myself thinking longingly of toys long forgotten during the course of this movie, and even though there’s a happy ending, I was left feeling as saddened as I was nostalgic. The only real fault I can find with it is that at times it went just a little too far tugging at the ol’ heartstrings. Pixar is shamelessly manipulative; they even sort of mute the colors at the particularly sappy bits to cue you in on the parts where you’re supposed to be tearing up. But with that being said, this is in every way a successful venture, funny, frightening, and colorful: what every good playtime should be. Not as original as the first of the three, which still gets my nod as one of the better animated kids movies I’ve ever seen, but absolutely worth seeing on the big screen, whatever your age. It’s all the stronger because it comes in a summer that’s been largely devoid of legitimate blockbusters. Recommended. My rating 7/10.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer, and trying not to get too insanely freaked out by the millions of gallons of oil that continue to spill into the Gulf. That’s a matter to be concerned about, certainly, but right now I’ve got problems closer to home that are getting most of my attention. I’ve mentioned here before on the site how the bad economy actually isn’t something that I’ve been too bothered by, since my level of poverty was about the same regardless of how everyone else was doing. No matter how much people were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, I was doing approximately the same as I always had for most of my adult life. But now, sorry to say, there are actually some direct changes to my life that are coming about as a result of hard times. The most recent are the so-called “doomsday cuts” that the MTA officially implemented this past weekend. The doomsday cuts mean that several train and bus lines are being discontinued, to try and close a 750 million dollar budgetary gap. I just want to ask, how does one even incur a 750 million dollar budgetary gap? How is it even possible? I’ve spoken before about how I’m less than knowledgeable about how the economy works, or the stock market, or things of that nature, but how is it that the MTA has been so heinously mismanaged that they’ve had to implement the biggest transportation cuts in New York since the 1970’s? It boggles the mind! And yes, I’m personally effected; the V, which I took to my Park Avenue job site on Thursday and Fridays, has been discontinued, meaning that I need to transfer to the F at 34th St, adding another ten minutes at least to my daily commute. And the N, which is basically the only train that stops near my house, has been hit with a triple whammy. It no longer runs express in Manhattan, ever, it isn’t running as often, and some of the passengers from the other trains that have been discontinued are now going to be using the N, meaning it’s going to be more crowded than ever! I was trying to mentally prepare myself since I first heard about this a few months ago, but now that it’s actually in effect, man, does it ever suck. I more or less live my life on the N; I take it everywhere, it seems like a dozen times a week, no exaggerating, and waiting longer for it, stopping more often, and being packed in with even more people, is just flat out awful. I really wish that Meg and I hadn’t come here at a time when things were better, transportation-wise, because now, we’re mourning the passing of something that, in all probability, will never come again. This is just the way things are going to be, from now on.

There’s more. They’re threatening to close our local library down; the library systems are in trouble too, and unless they come up with 20 million, or something like that, our local branch is on the chopping block. It’s not like it’s a huge, well stocked library to begin with, but it’s one of the nicer things about this neighborhood, and it would be a shame to lose that. It kind of makes you wonder, what’s next? The summer heat is upon us, and it seems like it’s just a season of aggravation. Transportation issues, a possible library closing, a disappointing summer movie season, and temperatures that’ll have you sweating buckets the instant you step outside. Where will it end? I can’t claim to know what mother nature, incompetent state agencies, or Hollywood has in store next, but I have to say, strangely enough, I’m still feeling fairly optimistic. Even though we can’t completely afford it, Meg and I just ordered an air conditioner, and it should be here today. As of this afternoon, both my Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees lead their respective divisions. What I’m trying to say is that things aren’t all bad, and that despite the aggravation of possibly having to go farther afield for books and having to be a little more patient waiting on trains and getting to my destinations, I’m still feeling pretty good. I’m going to a Yankee game tonight, a TNA wrestling show on Friday, and there’s still quite a bit to look forward to this summer. So let them close the library, and let the MTA honchos implement the most diabolical cuts their warped little minds can conceive of. I’ll be staying optimistic. Good thoughts come from an internal source, and it’s one that no amount of incompetence or difficulty in the outside world can touch. With that in mind, such minor distractions will continue to remain exactly that.

In addition to everything I mentioned, I also have tickets to nine different Yankee games between now and the end of September, part of the eleven game ticket package I purchased a few weeks ago. Last night I was at The Stadium to see the Yankees thump the Phillies again; it’s really getting to be a habit. That rivalry has heated up considerably as a result of the Series last year, and I saw several fights, ejections, and one guy puking in a urinal. Good times. With the Yankees and Reds  both tied for first in their divisions going into today, my dream of a Reds/Yankees World Series doesn’t seem quite so far fetched. But I’m sure the Reds will collapse in between now and then. Unfortunately, it’s what they do. Still, despite some minor aggravations in my life right now, I’m feeling pretty good. You’ve no doubt noticed, if you’re a regular reader, that I haven’t had anything published recently. That’s because I’m hard at work on the new novel, and I haven’t had time to work on shorter things or send them out. It’s a worthy trade off, I think. The notoriety and small amounts of money I receive from getting published in lit mags is nice, but it would be nothing compared to what it would mean to get a novel picked up…and that, of course, remains my long term goal. When this one’s finished I’ll be shopping it around, and also, God willing, looking for an agent again. Sooner or later I’m simply going to need to get one. The new novel is progressing nicely, though. I’m approaching the 200 page mark, and I’m happy with the pace I’m setting.

Well, that’s it for now. It’s hard to work four days a week and still keep the “summer frame of mind.” At the Park Avenue site, looking out the windows at each beautiful afternoon, adjusting my clip-on tie, it’s easy to get fidgety. But as I mentioned, there’s plenty in the way of leisure activities to look forward to, so that should get me through it. I hope everyone is likewise enjoying their summer. Stay cool, more soon.