Pun Salad

We've been inundated with TV-season finales, end-of-semester craziness, and social obligations, so the Netflix DVDs kind of got pushed aside for awhile. But (since we were unwilling to battle the first-weekend crowds for Into Darkness) we cued up this one.

Here's the deal: A skilled sniper kills a bunch of folks in an unnamed Midwestern city. Thanks to a masterful crime scene investigation, the cops immediately corral a suspect, an ex-Army guy named Barr. But the Army guy just says: get Jack Reacher.

Reacher is Tom Cruise, an ex-MP, and a skilled investigator. He shows up on his own. His immediate reaction is: yeah, Barr is as guilty as hell. But little details nag at him. He is importuned by Barr's beautiful defense attorney (Rosamund Pike) to check out the case. And before you know it: fisticuffs, car chases, more murder, gunplay, explosions, …

I should note that this movie is based on the novel One Shot, which I just read back in November, and I still remembered the details. So the movie/book comparisons were inevitable, and (in my case) the movie suffered. A major plot twist is given away right at the beginning. A lot of backstory is left out. Characters are left out. Action sequences are crammed in. I kept wondering: would this make any sense to someone who hasn't read the book? (Mrs. Salad confessed confusion.)

Reacher's creator, Lee Child, blessed Tom Cruise as a credible actor for the role. Fine, but I beg to differ. I've always imagined Kiefer Sutherland in the role while reading the books, and Mr. Cruise's performance did not sway me from that opinion. (Although he did a pretty good job otherwise.)

Finally: I don't know what the deal is with the flag imagery on the DVD box over there. Although I like patriotism as much as the next guy, there's not very much to inspire it in Jack Reacher.

A new Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker was the source of much joyous celebration at Pun Salad Manor. But Mr. Parker died, and his estate and publisher decided to continue the series with author Ace Atkins. The first of these efforts, Lullaby, was good enough to get me to invest in a Kindle version of the second one, Wonderland. And guess what? Wonderland is even better. My take was that Lullaby was 90% faithful to the Spenser universe; Wonderland is up around 98-99%. Ace has hooked me for the duration.

Henry Cimoli has been a minor character in the novels for decades: he's the owner of the gym where Spenser originally trained as a boxer, and where he and Hawk continue their fitness regimens. But now, Henry has a problem: a shadowy organization wants to buy the condominium complex where he lives. And they've been sending thuggish types out to mildly threaten the holdouts.

This is right up Spenser's alley: he's been out-toughing hired thugs forever. He and new apprentice Zebulon Sixkill make short work of that, and Spenser tries to work out who's pulling the strings. He nails that down pretty quickly too, and things seem to be working toward a speedy conclusion, … Waitaminnit, we're only like 35% done with the book? What can happen next?

Well, a body happens. Actually, a head, minus the rest of the body. I was surprised at the victim's identity. I did not see that coming.

Here's an example of the kind of thing I liked. Spenser is discussing a meeting with an ex-Harvard prof Rose with Mass State cop Healy:

People have been telling Spenser that he's not as funny as he thinks for, well, decades. I've been accused of the same. It's nice to see it in print again.

If you've been reading many of these movie blurbs, you've probably noticed that a good 50% of my movie-preference DNA is strictly Teenage Boy. So I went into Iron Man 3 enthusiastically and uncritically, and I was not disappointed.

Tony Stark is still feeling the aftereffects of saving the world in The Avengers; apparently the shawarma didn't get things back to normal for him. So he's neglecting his (now) live-in girlfriend, Pepper, and is spending an inordinate amount of tinkering-time in the basement of his flying-saucer home on the Malibu cliffs. He gets the occasional anxiety attack.

Despite all his tinkering, he's dreadfully unprepared to deal with the threat of The Mandarin, an international terrorist bent on blowing up Americans. There are a number of strangely glowing people wandering around doing nefarious things. Worse, Tony's inconsiderate conduct from a dozen years previous is about to bite him in the ass. He spends most of the movie a couple steps behind his enemies.

What sets the Iron Man series apart from its genre is overall braininess. As a geek, I appreciate that. There is, of course, the normal slam-bang boom-boom action, but Tony's scientific/engineering expertise gets him out of any number of situations where the armor isn't doing the trick. (He's out of his suit for most of this movie.) Tony also shows some pretty mean detective skills here, as he struggles to figure out what's going on.

Robert Downey Jr. is (as before) just about perfect as Tony Stark, hitting all the right notes of arrogance, hubris, and cynical humor covering some inner vulnerabilities. Gwyneth Paltrow, as Pepper, has more to do here than in the previous movies, and she handles her expanded role very well. Mrs. Salad usually bypasses superhero flicks, but she accompanied me to this one, enjoyed it, and I think Gwyneth (plus a cute, smart kid in a key role) contributed.

It's time once again to look at one of "Carol's Columns", the latest in a series of pieces from my own CongressCritter and perpetual toothache, Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH01).

This time around, Carol's column is titled is "Make It In America". To put the most positive spin on it: it's about revitalizing the USA's manufacturing sector. Carol's for that. Yay!

But, in reality, her column is yet another incoherent mess, full of fallacies, economic illiteracy, and bad policy proposals. Carol is, as always, and despite all evidence to the contrary, devoted to her core belief that a Government Fist (when wielded by Democrats, anyway) can produce better results than the free market's Invisible Hand.

Bushwa. But let's look in detail.

Carol's column appears at her government-provided website and residents of NH01 may see it at some point as an op-ed in their local papers. I am reproducing her entire column here, lest I be accused of quoting out of context. Carol's words are (appropriately) on the left with a lovely #EEFFFF background color; my comments are on the right.

A short and punchy Harry Bosch mystery from Michael Connelly. It was originally published as a 16-part serial in the New York Times Magazine, but was expanded for the book version. It's fast-moving, taking place (roughly) over the course of a day, and there's a domestic terrorism angle; dink a few things, and it would make a marvelous season of 24.

Harry's called out from home at midnight to a crime scene at the "Overlook", a scenic spot in the Hollywood hills. A Porsche is parked with its hood up; the owner, Dr. Stanley Kent, is on the ground nearby with a couple of .22 slugs in his brain.

What makes it possibly more than an everyday homicide: Dr. Kent's specialty is handling radioactive material at various L.A. hospitals; if that material should happen to get into the Wrong Hands, it could be part of a dirty bomb that would kill a lot of people and render a significant portion of the sunny Southland uninhabitable for centuries. So the FBI gets involved almost immediately, in the person of Harry's onetime lover, Rachel Walling. And, sure enough, it's discovered that a large amount of cesium-137 has gone missing.

Harry is, as always, obsessed above all with bringing the killer or killers to justice. Everyone else, however, is concentrating on finding the cesium. Harry needs to spend nearly as much time fighting to keep his hand in the case as he does investigating the crime.

Back in 2011, Pun Salad coined the verb "to harpootle", and proposed the rough definition: "to attack someone in a way that reveals the attacker as foolish, petty, vile, and/or stupid."

It was derived from the name of Dick Harpootlian, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, who attempted to make a big deal over the fact that the (Republican) Governor of South Carolina, Nimrata "Nikki" Randhawa Haley, was listed on SC voter rolls as W, as in White. When obviously, um, at least as evidenced by her name, she is not!

That meaningless "scandal" did nothing but cement the image of Harpootlian as an old white southern pol trying to stir up racial animosity at some uppity minority attempting to "pass."

Dick (or as his friends call him, "Dick") stepped down from his position as SC Dem Chair, but managed to Harpootle one last time on his way out:

The linked article also refers to Harpootlian's comment last year about Gov. Haley's interview in a basement television studio. She was, Harpootlian said, "down in the bunker a la Eva Braun."

I can recommend you buy this book using the link at right (no, your right), because the author, James Lileks, is a good guy, a fine writer, and amply deserves whatever slice of the low, low $2.99-for-Kindle price Amazon cuts him.

But I can't, unfortunately, recommend that you actually read it. Sorry. He's a fine writer now. Back in the 80s, when the book was written, not so much. (And there are other problems, see below.)

It starts out promising: protagonist Jonathan Simpson is a society reporter for a dinky local newspaper in Valhalla, Minnesota, the Lacs Standard. He is visited by Trygve, the servant employed by his rich Aunt Marvel from Minneapolis. Or, rather, his late Aunt Marvel, who has perished from—literally—falling up the stairs. (Involving getting her foot caught in the stair lift while simultaneously punching the "up" button.)

Funny! Unfortunately, that's pretty close to the beginning of the book, and it's downhill from there. Simpson inherits his Aunt's mansion, and (not quite coincidentally) submits a column to the Lacs Standard slandering a good part of the community of Valhalla. So it's off to Minneapolis, where he runs into a dark conspiracy run by the Alimentary Information League, a radical group demanding an end to processed foods; their tactics involve mass poisoning. He also runs into a bunch of women, most of whom he manages to sleep with. I couldn't care enough about them to keep them straight. The tone gets uneven, the hero gets whiny and irritating, and the whole thing just drags on way too long.

The other problem is that the Kindlizing of the print edition did not go well. There are typos galore, and the paragraphs are consistently messed up so badly that it's often difficult to tell who's saying what. Even for $2.99, it's tough to tolerate.

A decent little musical comedy. It's Maine (heh) attraction is Anna Kendrick, a very good young actress born up in Portland. She got an Oscar nomination a few years back for her role in Up in the Air. I forsee more, albeit not for this.

Ms Kendrick plays Beca, whose life ambition is to go out to LA and get into the music business, specializing in her mad DJ mixes. You can, in theory, make a living doing that, I guess. But her professor dad insists that she get a college education first, and she enrolls unenthusiastically at Barden College.

In addition to DJ skills, Beca is a decent singer, and she gets recruited into an all-female a capella group. Its leader, Aubrey, is a bit of a tyrant, obsessed with winning the a capella competition held yearly at Lincoln Center in NYC. (They were cruelly denied the previous year when Aubrey regurgitated impressively in the midst of their performance.)

So, yeah: it's like every other musical-competition movie you've seen. Or, for that matter, every other sports movie you've seen. Will the underdogs triumph?

But it's PG13-funny along the way, doesn't take itself seriously, and—see above—Ms Kendrick is always worth watching even when she's in a clichéd role in a clichéd movie. Also good is Australian Rebel Wilson playing Tasmanian "Fat Amy". (She calls herself that "so twig bitches like you don't do it behind my back.")

In addition, John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks pop in on occasion as ESPN-style announcers for the televised a-capella competitions; their banter is hilarious. The competitions actually exist, although the finals weren't at Lincoln Center this year, and I can't find any evidence they are televised.

Another occasional foray into reading Serious Literature; The Adventures of Augie March is on most Official Lists of the Greatest Novels Ever. It was a slog, though; I finally waded through it on my third checkout from the fine library at the University Near Here. The checkout period is 4 weeks, so it was "only" about 20 pages/day. But they are very dense pages.

Here's an example, the first paragraph of chapter XI:

No, it's not Finnegans Wake. But it's not Lee Child either.

My guess is that the initial reference is inspired by one of these Monet paintings, probably the one housed at the Art Institute of Chicago, but I wouldn't even have gotten that if not for a dim recollection of paging through an art book years ago. But that's only the start of unwinding the paragraph. One could spend maybe an hour puzzling out the allusions and sussing out references. I didn't have time, and probably not the depth of knowledge required either, so I probably missed a lot.

Unlike the edition of Lolita I read last year, the library's copy of Augie was unannotated, and this is a book that could use annotations. But I muddled through, got the "good parts", and enjoyed it.

It starts out in early 20th century Chicago, with Augie's already-dysfunctional family: absent father, a simple-minded mother, a tyrannical scheming grandmother, two brothers, one "born an idiot". Augie has to scramble to make a living, and this causes him to interact with no end of colorful folks, some of whom rope him into "adventures" of varying legality. One of the more successful enterprises has him shoplifting expensive books and selling them to university academics. But another scheme, hatched by the clearly reality-challenged Thea, involves an odyssey down to Mexico with a young bald eagle, which Thea hopes to train to catch giant iguanas; Augie goes along because he's hopelessly infatuated with Thea. It winds up in post-WWII Europe, with Augie still doing borderline-shady stuff, with a wife hoping to break into film.

I don't disagree that it's a great novel. But I'm ready to read more fluffy stuff again.

One of those movies where I could see the flaws, but managed to like it anyway.

It's about—guess who?—Alfred Hitchcock, spanning the time between July 1959 (the opening scene is the North by Northwest premiere) and June 1960 (things wind up with the premiere of Psycho). Although insanely popular with audiences worldwide, Hitch is somewhat concerned that he's reached the end of his (heh) Rope, creativity-wise. He wants to do something new and scary, and finds (to the skepticism of nearly everyone) the very thing in the book Psycho, by Robert Bloch, which in turn was inspired by the gory 1950s Wisconsin crimes of Ed Gein.

Hitch has problems, though: He thinks his wife, Alma Reville (played by Helen Mirren) is getting way too chummy with the dashing, womanizing screenwriter Whitfield Cook. (She, in turn, is getting a little put out with her husband's obvious infatuation with the aloof blonde starlets he keeps casting.) Their personal fortune is at risk on the success of Psycho, and the production is mired in problems. The censors are on his (ample) ass. So are the studio execs. Plus, he eats too much, drinks too much, and smokes burrito-sized cigars.

But it all works out.

Anthony Hopkins plays Hitch; they don't get the physical resemblance very close, but the voice and mannerisms are pretty good. And his macabre quips are nearly all funny. ("Oh by the way, try the finger sandwiches. They are real fingers.") Helen Mirren is wonderful as Alma, and Scarlett Johansson is decent as Janet Leigh, around whose performance the movie-within-the-movie depends. And gee that actress playing Vera Miles looks familiar! I had to wait for the credits to find out it was that nice Jessica Biel.

One problem is shared with most biopics: the script uses dialog for exposition. (Movies should should either bring in Basil Exposition for this, or find another way to do it.)