Sunday, May 31, 2020

Cinema Sunday: Big

For today's Cinema Sunday, I'm going to discuss the movie Big, the comedy about twelve-year-old Josh Baskin who makes a wish and turns into an adult. 


I actually saw Big in the theater when it came out in 1988 and several times later of video or on cable. 


A week ago, all four of us (me, Andrea, our daughter Randie and our dog Rosie) were in the living room at the same time and decided at random to watch Big.  

When Big first came out, it was one of several body swap/age switching movies that were released around the same time. If I remember correctly, Big was among the last of these that came out, risking that the whole premise would be played out. But Big is the most fondly remembered of these movies. A lot of credit goes to Tom Hanks' performance as the adult version of Josh.  Tom Hanks deftly threads a needle to capture a 12 year old mind in an adult's body while having Josh not act completely weird. Josh lucks into a job a toy company where his being a literal 12 year old boy gives him an advantage over the other market research driven adults in understanding what kids actually want. The trick is for Josh to still have a sense of wonder and naivete but not so much that the other adults around him think he's brain damaged.  

Tom Hanks as the adult Josh calls to mind Peter Sellers from Being There as Chance the gardener whose limited knowledge is frequently discerned as wisdom which elevates him in Washington DC society.  Josh isn't stupid but his knowledge is limited by only being 12 years old. In many ways, this limitation makes Josh a better adult than the other real adults around him. A lot of pressures are applied to us in our teen years that tends to poison the well of what made us good people when we were young. Skipping from 12 to adult, Josh has avoided the indoctrination of what we must do to succeed in a career, to achieve dominance, all the grown up stuff that destroys the wonder and innocence of our youth.  Adult Josh still has that which is very appealing to Susan. 

Susan Lawrence is the epitome of high level success for a 1980s woman with shoulder pads, skirts and heels. An executive at the toy company, she is fully dedicated to the quest for success and dominance in business.  Her encounters with Josh expose her to a new way of thinking. 

Like the fun one might have on a trampoline.  







This is the part of the movie that comedians love to make fun of nearly 30 years later: Susan's budding romantic relationship with Josh who we will remember only has the body of an adult Tom Hanks but is really a 12 year old boy. OK, Josh has a birthday while transformed so Josh's inner boy self is now 13. So being 13 doesn't really make it completely better. It's still weird. 

Josh also realizes he's missing out on growing up. (Yelling at the TV that no, he's not missing much doesn't help.) And he has a mother at home who is frantic with worry as she believes her young son was abducted by some weird pervert who looks like Tom Hanks wearing Josh's underwear.  

So Josh reverses the wish, turns back into a boy once more while Susan will spend several years working through this in therapy. 

One other point: Big was directed by  Penny Marshall, becoming the first woman director to make a film with a gross more than $100 million at the U.S. box office. 

Big is a sweet, charming movie with a very important lesson about what it really means to be an adult. 


Saturday, May 30, 2020

Songs For Saturday: Travelling Wilburys, Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Prince, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, U2 and the Roots

Time to slap on the ol' Bat Head Phones for another weekly edition of Songs For Saturday! 


Today's song selection is based (sometime emphatically and sometimes loosely) on the theme of Super Groups! 

A few decades back, a group of notable musicians got together not for some grand purpose but just for the pure joy of it and ended up producing some really good music. 

Those notable musicians included Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison and Roy Orbison and they collectively dubbed themselves the Travelling Wilburys. 

They album of music they assembled, Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1, did not have one  bad song on it. Here is my favorite tune from that album, "Margarita".   




It's sad to think that three of these awesome musicians have passed away. Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and George Harrison.

It was a tribute to George Harrison for our next epic assemblage of musical talent. In a performance of "My Guitar Gently Weeps", here are Steve Winwood, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and others including Prince. Never mind any gently weeping, Prince makes his guitar how with rage. 




I'm starting to get bummed out about another theme to today's songs: musicians who are now dead and way too soon.  Prince was taken from us much too soon.

OK, let's stay on this macabre path I appear to be on. In advance of a tribute concert to the late Freddie Mercury, next up is a rehearsal clip with Brian May and the rest of Queen backing up Annie Lennox and David Bowie (oh my God, he's dead too now) with George Michael (also dead now, I'm so depressed) lurking in the background.  Here is "Under Pressure".  




OK, too many dead singers. I need to end this post on an upbeat note. 

I'm kind of stretching the definition of super group but this performance by U2 of "Ordinary Love" on the Tonight Show is one my favorites and I'll use the addition of Questlove and the Roots to include this in today's "super group" theme. 



I hope you enjoyed today's music despite the undercurrent of morbidity running through the first 3 clips.

Remember to be good to one another and always keep the music alive.   



Friday, May 29, 2020

Pluto Is Too A Planet, Dammit!

Yesterday, I mentioned I was caught up watching classic Doctor Who on Pluto TV. 

What pray tell is Pluto TV? 

It is a free streaming service.  The shows on Pluto TV have ads. 

Which isn't too bad. Unless you don't want to see that Pampers ad with the new born baby. What I've seen, Pampers is the only sponsor on Pluto TV.  

OK, it could be worse. The first time I watched Pluto TV, the primary sponsor appeared to be The Committee To Re-Elect the Fucking Moron.  

Which did not endear Pluto TV to me at the start.  

It is a streaming service filled with lots of inexpensive crap.

And Doctor Who.  

Basically, scrolling through the menu for Pluto TV is like scrolling through your garden variety cable TV guide except with lots of cheap programming.  

Under Binge Watch are channels for specific shows.

There's a channel which plays nothing but episodes of COPS.

And a channel for RuPaul's Drag Race.

And Mystery Science Theater 3000.

And Unsolved Mysteries. 

And the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders.  

And This Old House. 

And so forth and so on.

And Doctor Who. 

Basically these TV channels work like regular broadcast TV. You watch whatever episode happens to be on.  

Which is fine by me.  

The problem for streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime is the plethoria of choices can be very overwhelming.  Pluto TV alleviates some of that stress. I can choose to watch Doctor Who at any time of day but the choice of watching the 3rd Doctor or the 4th or so on is one less choice I have to make. Terror of the Autons with Jon Pertwee is on? Then I'm watching Terror of the Autons with Jon Pertwee.  Or is it Peter Davison in Earthshock? Well, I guess I'm watching Earthshock with Peter Davison then.  

Outside of Doctor Who and MST3K, there's not much that has caught my interest.  

I've also found navigating around Pluto TV to be a bit difficult.   

And the channels are not HD. 

But you get what you pay for. And since I don't pay for Pluto TV, I can't complaint to much. And it is a great way to sample the classic Doctor Who episodes of my youth. 

In addition to be a TV streaming service, Pluto is also a planet, I don't care what scientists say.  

Thursday, May 28, 2020

The Doctor On Pluto

OK, I'm up too damn late watching Doctor Who on Pluto TV. 

It's 1:30 AM and I'm in the middle of Earthshock, the classic 5th Doctor battle with the Cybermen.

And Adric dies.

I'm on a Moebius strip of classic Doctor Who and I can't escape!

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

A "My Face Hurts" Update

Last week, I was complaining about how my face hurts.

How did that all turn out?

Well, I'm dead. It was a face tumor and now I'm dead. 

I hope you're all happy. My suffering amused you and now I'm dead.

Totally dead. 

I mean, would I lie about that? 

OK, clearly I'm not dead. How could I be writing this? 

I guess it was just my usual bout with a sinus pain. I just bumped myself up to a stronger pain medication than regular ibuprofen. In this case, I took Excedrin for Migraines and that did the trick. Once my pain eased off, I was able to get some rest and within a day or two, I was feeling better.

The plus side of being out of work is that I didn't have to worry about missing work to give my body a chance to rest and recover. 

There are a lot of people in this world who do not have that opportunity. I know I am lucky in that regard.

I wonder how much healthier people would be if they could give themselves time to get healthy instead of being expected to push through illness.   

One thing I've had extra time to do is read my own blog. 

Oh God, there are so many misspellings and grammatical errors. 

I feel faint. I may need to lie down.

Got this graphic from Ken Levine's blog: 



The only attention my misspellings and grammatical errors get is from my daughter Randie.  

New Doctor Who Is On the Way

 The news broke last week at that the new season of Doctor Who will be debut on Saturday May 11th on the BBC. Doctor Who on Saturday as it...