Little Big Man: A True Story

Howdy, people. Not much news to report these days. Broke my wrist biking on South Huntington Avenue in Boston. (Healed now, but ligament surgery awaits.) Regressing to my younger days by recalling and playing a lot of classic 80's music and video games, as well as watching lots of 80's movies; wondering if they'd hold up as well as I hoped they might. Some did, some didn't. Got me one o' thems "iPod Touch" deals. Like it a lot, especially for listening to 80's music and playing 80's video games. Still perfecting my homemade chicken soup. Hopefully evolving as a person. And recently, I introduced someone new to this blog. She went all the way back to the first post and reminded me that I'd mentioned early-on that this report would include discussions of film criticism, love, honor and the occasional dirty joke. "But," this new reader commented, "I don't really see any dirty jokes yet."

Well, I hate to disappoint people. So it's time for a kinda-sorta dirty joke, one which some of you might have heard before... but what the hell? The following is a true story.















Back in my post college days, I had a lot of terrible and meaningless temp jobs. Manual labor, mostly. Organizing and moving warehouse merch around, conveyor belt and truck loading gigs. That sort of thing. One such job was at the local Georgia Pacific housewares storage facility, unloading 18-wheeler shipments of window-sashes and door accents and various adornments for McMansions all over the state. Ten hour days, five days a week, starting at 7 o'clock every morning. It wasn't the worst job I'd had in those days, but I have to admit that I would often fantasize about jumping a fork lift off the second story landing and knocking down the first wave of bay window storage shelving to see if I could wipe out row after row of the warehouse's entire capacity like a giant million-dollar set of dominoes... A man can dream.

Some of my coworkers were cool, but one just plain sucked. "Freddie" was about my age. About 24 or so; fairly young for this particular shop. But despite being about a foot shorter than I was and without any sort of education or apparent need or desire for one, you could still refer to him as a blowhard. Talking loudly at every moment, full of sound and fury while signifying nothing, this guy thought of himself as the big man on campus, while some of us enjoyed referring to him as suffering from what we called LGS: Little Guy Syndrome. That is, the affliction under which someone behaves like a loudmouthed braggard of total idiocy in order to make up for being so small in physical stature. Sometimes I find it a pleasure to take people like this down a peg. And just a couple of days after starting this job, I'd decided to test this lame's personal waters.

"Hey assholes," he'd called out. He'd considered "asshole" the group nickname for those of us that were just temps. "I don't care what anybody else says in this place, okay? I gotta lotta shit that's gotta get done around here. When it's quittin' time, I go. Fuck overtime. My nights are mine. So no matter what they give ya' to do in the office... If I need ya' to help me out, ya' help me out. Remember that, fellas. No matter what, I always come first."

I just laughed and joked, "No wonder your girlfriend always looks so disappointed."

Hiyooooooooooo! :)


Theatrical Reviews
Brazil: The Director's Cut (1985) ****
Predators **1/2
Red **1/2

The Films of Akira Kurosawa
Sanshiro Sugata II (1945) ****
Rhapsody in August (1991) ***1/2
Madadayo (1993) ****

Films of the "1980's"
Miracle Mile (1988) ****
Brainstorm (1983) ***1/2
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) ***1/2
Big Shots (1987) ***
Outland (1981) ***
Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) **1/2
The Manhattan Project (1985) **1/2
Cloak & Dagger (1985) **1/2
Weird Science (1986) **1/2
Capricorn One (*1979) **1/2
Runaway (1984) **1/2
Cobra (1986) **1/2
The Philadelphia Experiment (1986) **
Silent Running (*1972) **
Dreamscape (1983) **
Spacecamp (1986) **
Firewalker (1986) *

DVD/Home Video
Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition ****
Midnight Run (1988) ****
The Long Goodbye (1973) ***1/2
Michael Clayton (2008) ***1/2
New York, I Love You ***1/2
K-20 (Japan, 2008) ***1/2
Oleanna (1993) ***1/2
The Girlfriend Experience (2009) ***
Goemon (Japan, 2009) ***
Timeline (2003) ***
Next (2007) ***
The Bogey Man (UK, 1992) **1/2
My Name Is Bruce (2007) **1/2
Deja Vu (2006) **1/2
Bangkok Dangerous (2008, USA) **
Babylon A. D. *1/2
Angel of Death (2009) *

Literature
The Rum Diary (Hunter S. Thompson) ***1/2
No Sleep Till Wonderland (Paul Tremblay) ***
On The Road (Jack Kerouac) ***


Music/Spoken Word
The Social Network (score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross) ***1/2
The Runaways: Music from the Motion Picture ***1/2
Hal Hartley: Soon (Music from the Play) ***1/2
The Blue Note 7: Mosaic ***1/2
Juliana Hatfield: How To Walk Away ***
Edy (score by Nils Petter Molvaer) ***
Bob Dylan: Modern Times ***
Lisa Gerrard: Departum ***
Chris Isaak: Mr. Lucky ***
Eric Clapton: Clapton ***
Assault Girls (score by Kenji Kawai) **1/2
Chris Isaak: Live at the Filmore **1/2

Video Games
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (PS2) ***1/2

Board Games
Back To The Future: The Card Game (Looney Labs) ***
Rory's Story Cubes (Gamewright) ***
Pass The Popcorn ***

Internet
Star Trek (2009) Review (Red Letter Media) ***