04 July 2009

At the movies: Public Enemies

Johnny DeppAs America mourned the death of the world's most famous child molester this Independence Day weekend, we went to the movies (or "the show," as we say in Chicago) to see the new Johnny Depp movie. Depp channeled the King of Pop for his role as Willy Wonka. This new movie, appropriately called Public Enemies, is about neither The Gloved One nor Dick Cheney. Rather, it is the story of the last days of the Golden Age of Bank Robbers—Pretty Boy Floyd, Babyface Nelson and John Dillinger. Johnny Depp is John Dillinger. Call him J2D2.
I have a great interest in movies about gangsters, Chicago and gangsters in Chicago. This film is a mish-mosh, a crazy quilt, a pastiche, if you will, of scenes from the last 35 years of Chicago crime movies, from The Sting and The Blues Brothers to The Merry Gentleman and The Dark Knight. Public Enemies borrows cliches from these and others.
Christian Bale (Batman) returns to Chicago (the setting of Gotham), this time as Melvin Purvis, a half-hearted FBI agent who pursues Johnny. Batman isn't as gung-ho as J. Edgar Hoover (played by Billy Crudup) wants his GMen to be. Christian is a real gentleman, much like Kevin Kostner as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. Batman carries Marion Cotillard to the ladies room (just like that scene of Richard Gere and Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman). Johnny Depp is John Dillinger. Call him J2D2.Nor is Christian Purvis as dogged as Tommy Lee Jones who pursued Indiana Jones through the South Side and Near North Side of Chicago in The Fugitive.
Frank Nitti shows up, which confused me because I was sure Eliot Kostner had tossed him off the roof of the old public library (now the Cultural Center).
This movie is a period piece, full of Buicks and DeSotos with running boards, candlestick telephone sets, fedoras and news reels. But O, Brother Where Art Thou was better at setting the mood of the Great Depression. The soundtrack has scratchy Billie Holiday songs, which put me in mind of scratchy Edith Piaf songs in Edith. In that movie, Cotillard played the title role. Here, she's Dillinger's half-French, half-American Indian moll, Billie Frechette. She does a great job hiding her French accent. Thankfully, her voice coach did not school her in a Wisconsin accent. Billie pulls a trick out of The Blues Brothers, sending the cops to a false address on Addison Street when a dirty Chicago cop demands to know where J2D2 is hiding. Similarly, the Blues Bros. sent the cops to Addison and Clark, which is the location of Wrigley Field.
Dillinger must have been a charismatic figure, but we see few examples of that in this movie. There is an impromptu press conference where he regales the reporters before he is locked up in an Indiana jail. That scene recalls Robert "Al Capone" De Niro in The Untouchables. Lili Taylor (JoJo the waitress in Mystic Pizza) is the jailer, made up to look like Frau Farbissina from the Austin Powers series. Dillinger breaks out of jail with a gun he carved from a block of wood, but the movie doesn't divulge that little interesting fact. Dillinger had some sort of weird homing instinct because he returned to the Midwest after every big score. He should have done like the early Woody Allen comedy about another bank robber: Take The Money And Run.
Depp is surprisingly flat. We get no sense of Dillinger's charisma, personality or likes/dislikes. There's no flamboyance, à la Pirates of the Caribbean (John does fondle his pocketwatch with the cameo of Billie, like Jack Sparrow fondles the compass). We see no sensitivity, à la Benny and Joon. As my wife said, "Anyone could have played this role." George Clooney, where are thou?
In the end, J2D2 is sitting in the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue, thinly disguised in sunglasses and a Clark Gable moustache, watching Gable star in Manhattan Melodrama. Dillinger is gunned down after leaving the show, in what is suggested as a mob hit. Dillinger was bad for (illegitimate) business because the federal government was passing laws about the commission of interstate crimes. There is an interesting scene in a wire room (à la The Sting), where Nitti tells Dillinger that the real money from now on is in wire fraud. Robbing banks is nickel-and-dime stuff.
We were expecting Fourth of July fireworks, but as it turns out, Public Enemies is a dud.

03 July 2009

Graphic design I like

Chicago Botanic Garden fundraising collateral
This is part of a fund-raising package from the Chicago Botanic Garden. I like how the message "i will" comes out of the "Plant Science will save the planet."

30 June 2009

More "Top Moments" of '09

You know how newspapers have their top stories of the year? I decided to issue my top moments of the quarter. At the end of the year, I'll submit my top 10 list. So, these were my top moments of the last three months:
Trip to Ecuador. To celebrate our upcoming 25th wedding anniversary, we decided on a special trip to the Galapagos Islands wrapped with a visit to the mainland. The cruise took us up close to blue-footed boobies, frigate birds, tropical fish and sea lions. We learned about the geology and the botany of the islands, as well as the zoology. The Andean highlands at the end of our trip were amazing. I'd definitely return there to hike. Another highlight: straddling the equator.
Watching a nephew graduate. My older brother's son graduated with honors from Boston University with a degree in psychology and is working in Boston (maybe Cambridge) now. My brother and his wife threw a party for their son, his roommates and friends, and their parents. At least 50 people attended. I don't get too many chances to see that branch of the family, so I was very excited to be able to share this milestone with him. Here's a sign that we (the older generation) are in good hands--none of those kids at the party were drinking light beer. I didn't see any light versions of Bud, Miller, Coors or Amstel. That's good. 22-year-olds should not be fixated on calories or carbs. There was only premium beer in the cooler. Now, it could be that it was the parents who bought the beer, and that their kids were mooching. If that's the case, then I retract that "good hands" statement.
I started volunteering at the Chicago Botanic Garden in May. I'm in the fruit and vegetable garden (or fruit and veg, as we call it). Last year I was in the model railroad garden. I decided I needed a change. So far, I've given out zucchini and tomato plants, worked on the tool-sharpening cart, manned the compost station and talked about edible flowers. I like the interaction with the visitors, and I'm learning gardening tips and techniques (like the sharpening).
Reading more good books. I liked "The English Patient" and "True North." I just finished "Maus" by Art Spiegelman. Very, very good. It's a graphic novel about his father's survival in the Nazi death camps.
Writing this blog for year. I made it through one year of blogging. Thanks for reading. This is my 214th post. That's about equal to writing four days a week. I can usually find something to blog about: a movie we saw, a meal we ate, a book I read, or a silly anecdote from my "yout."
See Top Moments of 2009 (so far) for highlights from the first three months.

29 June 2009

The year of a blog

I started this blog on July 1, 2008 when I returned from riding in the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure. My first posts were about GOBA. Since then, I've written about movies and books I like; family; travel; fashion; gardening and other topics. You can see the entire list, What I've Written About, on the righthand side.
The url for "What I Like" begins "beelohgee." I wanted to name it "myblog" or "theblog" or something equally clever. Those names were taken. (So much for thinking myself original.) I ended up with beelohgee, that is, the letters "Be", "El", "Oh" and "Gee." I quickly realized how unwieldy it is. And it's not that intuitive, either.
I blog under the name "B. Logger" because I want to maintain some anonymity. I have another blog which I use for business purposes, and there I use my real name.
I wanted to learn how to use Google Analytics and Google Ads. Analytics allows me to glean information about traffic to this blog. For instance, it identifies number of visitors, repeat visits, length of time, country of origin, and other information. Don't worry: it doesn't identify individual users, so you can continue to read me anonymously.
After one year of blogging, "What I Like" has earned a page rank of 3 out of 10 on Google's rating. Just a couple of months ago I was at 2. So I'm moving up, thanks to your readership.
One bit of info that interests me from Google Analytics is called "Top Content." That report shows the most-viewed blog posts. Here are the top 10:

  1. Simply Red Valentine's Day gallery
  2. Key Ring Thing
  3. Porter, the raccoon
  4. Galapagos trip (day 1)
  5. Vera Vade
  6. Family (any postings with the label family)
  7. Mail order food
  8. Slumdog Millionaire
  9. Birthdays
  10. Travel (any postings with the label travel)

My Valentine's Day photo gallery is five times more popular than the second topic on the list. Can it be true that pictures of Scarlett Johansson, Pink, Simply Red, King Crimson and Heart resonate more than my book reviews? I know that just by referencing this page, it will continue to draw readership. Maybe I'll start a separate Valentine Day's blog.

28 June 2009

Sunday breakfast

This was a perfect Sunday morning. Clear skies, warm and dry, and a cool breeze blowing through the kitchen window.
Instead of the usual fare (an English muffin or a bowl of Cheerios), I pulled out all the stops and made a big breakfast. I turned on the radio and tuned into the Country music countdown. I felt like I was 23 again and in my first apartment.
Back then, I used to make a big pancake breakfast (by way of Bisquick) with bacon and coffee in a stove-top percolator (the kind with the little glass knob on the lid). I tuned into Casey Kasem's top 40 countdown, with its long-distance dedications. My friends were listening to more sophisticated music, but I loved that show and rarely missed it. (We saw the movie "Away We Go" last night. Maya Rudolf tells her boyfriend John Krasinski that he is using a""Casey Kasem" voice.)
This morning, I pulled out the old cast-iron skillet which I had acquired in my senior year of college. I shared an apartment with two other guys and we found this rusty old pan in a cabinet. We split up after graduation and I acquired the pan. I read about how to care for cast iron, how the pan has to be "seasoned" first and how to scour it with salt to clean it. That pan has served me well for 30 years.
We bought potatoes at the farmers' market yesterday. They are small--about the size of a golf ball. I quartered three of them and browned them in the skillet for five minutes. I found half of a roasted onion in the fridge and added that to the pototoes. Then I moved the pan to the oven to roast the potatoes for 20 mintues.
Meanwhile, I chopped up half a yellow pepper and sauteed it in another pan until soft, then I tossed in a couple of soy sausages. I prefer the Bocas to the Morningstar Farms. When the peppers and sausages were done, I melted butter in the pan, and poured in four whisked eggs. I added a handful of shredded cheese and folded the omelet in half, more or less. I know better, but I was impatient this morning. I didn't let the pan get hot enough so I didn't get a good "crust" on the eggs.
I arranged all the food on two plates and garnished them with farmers' market strawberries. Delicious! We'll be at the ballpark later, watching the Sox beat the Cubs (we hope). This breakfast should keep us going at least until the third inning.

26 June 2009

That's unfortunate

Acedemics come third on the list of priorities for the home-schooled Glory for Christ Football League.From today's New York Times (June 26, 2009): "The Glory for Christ Football League in Georgia grew out of a desire to provide an option for young men who are home-schooled but cannot play in local football leagues." Photo: Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

25 June 2009

The summer of '74, redux

I heard from Fred, my Cape Cod camping buddy. He filled in some of the gaps in my memory. We agreed to the trip the night of our senior class party, not the prom. He had a Toyota, not a Volvo. And we did see each other after that trip. He visited me in college in Evanston, and I spent a spring break with him in Galesburg.
Stay tuned for more thrilling tales of yesteryear!