The Sure Thing

The Sure Thing (1985)

“It’s funny how young lovers start as friends” – Elton John’s song “Seasons”

Incoming college freshman Walter “Gib” Gibson (John Cusak) is clueless about girls…and I mean CLUELESS. At an end of summer party he asks a girl if she’d like to have a sexual experience so intense, it could conceivably change her political points of view. While his best friend, the ever confident Lance (Anthony Edwards) heads west for “waves and babes”, Gib heads to a New England college where everything…stays the same.

Finally convincing a girl in his writing class, Alison (Daphne Zuniga), to help him as he’s flunking, you know he’s going to blow it before whatever “it” is starts because, while dressing, he’s wondering if his opening line: Did you know Neitche died of syphilis is too obscure or if he changed it Shakespeare if she’d know it wasn’t true. I wanted to scream into the screen, “Hello? It’s not the person, it’s the line.”…and so, of course, he does.

Being invited to California by Lance for Christmas break to meet “a sure thing”, he immediately finds someone on the ride board to split gas with and is on his way, except…the couple who’s driving, well…he introduces himself as “Gary Cooper, but not the one who’s dead” and they sing show tunes, constantly, and…Alison’s copped the same ride to visit her steady boyfriend going to school out there.

Quickly tiring of Gib and Alison’s constant bickering that leads him first to utter, to his horror, the word ‘dang’ and then to a run-in with police, he throws them out of the car in the middle of nowhere. So, now, it’s the road movie of opposites: He, the unstructured, irresponsible mess who eats pork-rinds and shotguns beer for breakfast and she, the WAY-too-structured, we too tight, spontaneity-has-its-time-and-its-place.

Do they fight and argue and deny and come to rub off on each other and realize they’re in love over their adventure to California? It’s a romantic-comedy, so yes. BUT, the makers of the film do what most romantic comedies (especially now) don’t or can’t do. They show them fall in ‘like’. They show them become friends…which is what is needed, in life, sure, but especially in these movies for, at least me as an audience member to care about them. Now, they show them meet and then suddenly they’re in love, and I don’t remember them even liking each other.

As far as what happens when they reach California with “the sure thing” and Alison’s boyfriend? Well, I’m going to leave that to you to find out when you rent this.

INDISPENSABLE: Tim Robbins in his hilarious turn as Gary Cooper, but not the one who’s dead, Nicholette Sheridan (in her first role) as “The Sure Thing”, who, in a seemingly thankless task, manages to create a real person behind the brain-dead California girl…and mostly, the writing teacher. She is simply exceptional. Just listen to her read Gib’s paper at the end. Amazing. Felt like I was there for it…and I wasn’t. No one is. They don’t show this part so her reading is crucial.

Lastly…the great Ray Charles singing the ending-over-credits-song. Magical.

I dare you to not enjoy yourself watching this.

Sounds Of Silence - Simon & Garfunkel (words by Paul Simon)

A little more than jsut the words this time...

So, rock magazines come out with lists like Top 100 Albums Ever, Top 100 Guitarists Ever, etc, etc, and so on and so on and so on and so on...and now that I've grown bored doing that I'll move so on.

All these lists are meant to stimulate arguments, so that, guess what, people will buy magazines, just because they can't believe it and will have the physical prove when they show their friends and say: I can't believe it!

I get it. I'm hip. I'm diggin' on their trip...and many other 60's-70's long since buried slang phrases...though they may be dead for so long now, they're actually alive.

Anyway, I see this magazine with the Top 100 Worst Lyrics Ever and this, my friends (I hope you don't mind if I refer to us as friends) is beyond argument stimulating. These people are plain and simple looking for a fight. I don't know if someone has a pain fetish there, but I'm talking an old fashioned ass-whooping.

The song (and words) in question:

Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds Of Silence". Now I personally think Paul Simon (who wrote the song and words) is a true poet in general but I would like to submit for your approval (any Twilight Zone fans out there?) these particular words...and remember, way, way high up on the list of worst lyrics ever.

Anyway, here they are:

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seed while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walk alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath a halo of an 'A' Street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night and touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
10,000 people maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
And no one dared disturb the sound of silence

Fool, said I, you do not know
Silence like a cancer grow
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said the words of the prophet
Are written on the subway walls and tenement halls

...and whispered in the sounds of silence
-------------------
Now, this is not about me attempting to convince you Paul Simon's great. That would be as futile as trying to shovel smoke with a pitchfork in the wind (John Lennon line). But WORST!!! W-O-R-S-T?!!!!

They're looking for a fight. And I'm going to give it to them. I'm going to find them, put up my dukes the way they did in the late-1800's, early 1900's and say 'Put 'em up'...and after they give me the ass-whooping I predicted above (I meant me in case there was some confusion), I will thank them for calling an ambulance and then get the last laugh when I shout out just as they close the doors and pull off:

Says you!!!

Seriously though, WORST? I write and am proud to say I've stolen from him on more than one occasion, this song particularly, and wrote these words repeatedly when I was supposed to be paying attention in class.

Anyway, to borrow a line from "Leave It To Beaver"...It just got me sore is all.

My Used Car Dealer

I was in the process of buying this used car many years ago, when I was but a wee lad, looking some over, test driving and all that when one night on a local news show there was a story about a big art heist at a Worcester, MA art museum…and who do I see but my car salesman discussing, very expertly, how they probably did it, why the took the ones they did and left others. It was really, really impressive.

The next day I’m back checking out the car and tell him I saw him on the show and how impressed I was and ask if he used to be an art thief investigator, and hand to god, he tells me:

No, I used to be an art thief.

I’m not certain of the complexities of the human body and it’s working system but I imagine it must have been something akin to how a snake unhooks its mandible when it’s about to swallow prey and thusly my jaw was able to do what it did: which was literally hit the ground.

So later that day, my friend asks me how the car purchase is going and I tell him my car salesman’s a thief and he goes ‘oh, they all are.’ I say, no, I mean that literally. My used car salesman actually IS a thief.

When his mandible didn’t unhitch and his jaw hit the floor, he told me that only works if it’s the actually person’s car salesman. He was a med student. He knows things. And he said besides: At least the guy’s honest. He did tell you.

Very true, I thought. I’m buying a used car from an honest thief.

To be fair to the man: he paid his debt for his old ways with many years in prison and had become a consultant to the police to help apprehend art thieves. He truly had been rehabilitated.

So, I bought the car. This tiny little thing with a stick shift – my first manual – so I got to act like Speed Racer or ‘Obey The Speed Limit, Stop At Every Stop Sign And Yellow Light Racer.’…or, if you ask a psychologist, so I could have a substitute penis in my hand.

This little, used car, for some odd reason, had KILLER speakers, so listening to music was pure joy. I just loved it. Then one day, a woman cut out from a small strip mall parking lot, smashed into me, and totaled it.

No humans were hurt, but my car. I just loved that little car. (Note that at this point a tear is forming in my eye as I write this – my allergies are acting up something fierce – BA-DUM-DUM. (Yes, I stopped to tell that bad joke just for you. No thanks are necessary. Hey, now. No raspberries are necessary, either.)

So, anyway, I did. I loved that car. We fit like peanut butter, banana, and fried egg sandwiches – at least I imagine they fit, you’ll have to ask Elvis. That was his deal.

I looked into pursuing a suit with the woman to recover the cost of it but quickly dropped the idea when I found out if I pursued the claim, according to the Blue Book value, I would actually owe her money.
The moral of this story: None. The point: Can’t think of even one….but it killed some time.

Let’s face it. The supermarket is a complex roadway system, and woe be to the person who shows up at rush hour. There aren’t two lanes for each direction, one a slow lane for people searching for a particular street, say Coffee and Tea Street.

If it were up to me, were my world, I would have them build a very elaborate walkway from the ceiling covering the whole store wear a person could walk around and, like a radio helicopter, give traffic updates:

I might want to stay away from aisle 4, as there’s a huge olive oil spill. If you’re heading to aisle 5, be ready to confront some jerk-off cart-driver whose decided to take their half out of the middle. It’s still slow going by that three cart pile up in frozen foods, and, if you’re having any ideas of heading over to produce, I’d abandon them now as that special on Provolone cheese in deli has bottlenecked all the way back to the cantaloupes. If, however, this is a must, I suggest you get off at vegetables by the string beans and work your way around backrows to radishes and oranges.

Anyway, that’s what I’d do if it were my world.

According To Someone Else's Watch...(The Christmas Ballte Begins)

IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME AGAIN, and while for many of you that means visions of sugar plums and dreams of chance meetings with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt under the mistletoe, for me it means hunkering down in my bunker busily preparing yet another defense against yet another onslaught from my family, the enemy as I affectionately refer to them, and their demon gift.

See, dating back to days before I even have memories, my family has been trying to get me to wear a watch. They’ve prodded me with everything from “you never know when you may need to know” to “you never know when someone may ask you” to “how will you know when your two minute egg is done?” A traipse through my photo album reveals an endless array of devises forced upon me under the guise of “gift giving holidays” from Easter to Arbor Day to the odd Thursday in February when the climate would grow unseasonably warm and my family would proclaim it “Up We Go Spring Day,” all in hopes I would, one day, do something very strange and actually wear one of them.

After years of mental maneuvering so deft and precise, however, my family gave up, retreated, quit like a yellow backed puppy up against a pit bull…only to return two years later with “The Annual Christmas Tradition” (I thought since Christmas only comes but once a year, the use of the word “annual” was a bit redundant, but that’s probably something best discussed with a linguist).

Anyway, after a few years of guffaws and jaw drops and near side steps of the full court offensive, leaving, only momentarily, my wrist naked as the day it was born (or is it the day I was born? I mean, did it just come with me or…? Reminder to self: ask mother for refresher course on birds and bees), at least naked as god intended, I finally decided to become simpatico with the other side, telling the giver du jour they were right. It was time I started wearing a watch.

Lo, though, every year, I always, mournfully and regrettably found something wrong with whatever kind of watch they had chosen and suggested I bring it back to the store for a more proper model, deserving both of the title Christmas gift and Chris’ first watch, and every Christmas I have been doing just that.

Braving enormous crowds, horrendous weather and the periodic urge for an ice cream just to flip the bird in the face of winter, I return to the store, and every Christmas I regurgitate my tale of woe all over the customer service representative with the surprisingly cheerful demeanor and every year I return, once again, to hearth and home… with a series of new compact discs, claiming they were out of watches.

This was my piece de resistance, my Sistine Chapel, the one scam with which all would remember me by…until last Christmas, that is. For last year, plainly, honestly and without a hint of the subtle humor we’d grown to love and expect from him playing about his eyes, my uncle questioned the plausibility of my argument, being that said article had been purchased at an establishment called The Watch Store.

I saw, now, a fatal flaw in my defense, a fly in my ointment, a chink in my armor, some chocolate in my peanut butter, a…well, I’m sure you understand, and so, unfortunately, did they. This pit bull had become a mouse, a mouse crawling unavoidably closer to his trap.

And, so I sit, hunkered in my bunker, less than a month from battle, and no closer to a plan. I have even intercepted transmissions revealing the possibility of a pocket watch as this year’s choice, leaving my “Naked Wrist Defense” by the wayside like so many broken leaves on the highway of time (or some such pretentious metaphor).

It seems it’s time, once again, to invoke my Great Granpappy Johnson who declared proudly while a young man entrenched in a foxhole in Europe, the enemy baring down, “When your back’s against it, quit,” thus laying the foundation of the Johnson legacy for future generations to come. (Great Granpappy Johnson never did make it out of the foxhole that day, though no one could ever discover how it was fifteen separate bullets were found in his body…all American).

In the end, who knows? Maybe Angelina Jolie’s a watch person, maybe my future wife will walk up to me on the street, naked wrist lay bare, and ask me the time, and maybe, just maybe come December 25th, I will have the best two minute egg I’ve ever had.