The Story About the Pants That I Am Wearing

It was while I was having coffee with the Japanese businessmen this morning that I realized just how baffling the last twelve hours had been. By this point my pants were soaked from the knee down due to the torrential downpour that had begun well before dawn, and had yet to cease. My feet were also soaked, and worse, beginning to itch. I thought it best not to mention this fact to my new Japanese friends, who were still engaged in conversation amongst themselves over a question I had just posed:
"Would you consider it racist to yell 'Godzilla' at Japanese people?"
As they dissected the concept with their poised Eastern wits, I reflected on my pants situation and how pants had factored prominently in my adventures up until that point. Pants more or less started the whole mess that had led me to that coffee shop.

The pants in question are a pair of fairly nondescript khakis (you wouldn't be able to pick them out of a line up--unless all the other pants were ethnic) that I purchased on sale at Wal-Mart. They were inexpensive khakis, being on sale, but unfortunately a little too long. Despite this fact, I bought them and promptly began wearing them with reckless disregard for the appearance of my heel to ankle region. Then I met Rebecca, who among other things, possessed the necessary skills to trim my trousers. For a trifling fee (in this case the admission price to a Tarantino film) she claimed she could alter the length of the pants in question to the proper, respectable length via a process mysterious called "hemming", for which Ernest is named.

Thus I relinquished my pants into Rebecca's care and went on about my life in the usual sort of way until I received word via helpful woodland creatures (far more reliable than Verizon) that the pants had been successfully "hemmed" and were ready to once more don my sub-torso. A rendezvous was therefore established at a predetermined time and place, with great care taken in the planning to ensure the security of the exchange. It was decided that a public place was best, during a casual gathering of other friends, family, and close associates who would have no prior knowledge of the "hemming." Team trivia at Rocky Mountain Pizza was the agreed upon rallying point and it was understood that both I and Rebecca would bring along enough non-pants related personnel to make the team trivia scenario convincing.

At this point in my reminiscing, the Japanese businessmen informed me that they must be getting to their "business" and so sadly depart, having failed to conclusively resolve the conundrum which I had posited earlier in the story. I too decided that it was well within my rights as an American citizen to go to my place of employment, sodden as I was and now quite tardy. It was while at my desk some short moments later that I return my mind to the saga of the previous eve.

The pants transaction was a success, but not a flawless one. Rebecca was careless in the hand off and suddenly all of our other "teammates" became aware of the farce in which they were unwitting participants. However, their ire was easily assuaged once Rebecca showed them just how masterfully she had been able to "hem" the khakis. Awe quickly replaced our teammates anger, and soon the pants were out of sight, out of mind and we gave trivia a solid run, coming in fourth but nearly achieving victory by as little as a single point.

Post-trivia, it was clear that though the pants exchange had been a bit compromising, it was a decided success. Rebecca, the notorious agent provocateur Shanerton, and I felt that surely a celebration was in order. To our mild dismay, four of the other players in our maddening charade had call to part (as lovers are want to do from the company of beguilers.) Thus we bid adieu to Brent and Delaina, who I had brought along as part of my cover, and also Mark and his girlfriend (who in a strange twist of coincidence are both Brent's and Delaina's roommates respectively.) The four having departed, Rebecca's intrepid younger brother Robert Lee led us towards his dwelling where, my pants in hand, we would be meeting with more conspirators to whisper sweet seditions long into the night.

In a room filled with mirrors, we met with Rebecca and Robert's sister and the second part to the globe-trotting duo, of which Shane was the other, code named "Shetty", Hetty. The house was determined to be safe enough for the pants to be brought inside, and Hetty was soon leading us in conferencing about the nuances of New Zealander folk musicians along with the renowned comedian and saboteur, O.D., and the supposedly innocent roommate, Ashley. Apparently, prior to our arrival, a dance party had been in the works, but as the proverb states "pants and dancing are a deadly combination", and as the pants to people ratio was currently skewed in the favor of pants, the dancing was put on standby.

Before long, the sounds of a nearby fiesta came wafting to our ears on the night breeze and it was determined that Rebecca, Shane, and I were duty bound by the Awesome Code to infiltrate (or in the modern parlance, "crash") said soirée. Robert, Hetty, and Ashley were not up to the task, presumably due to lack of respect for the code or possibly insufficient training, and O.D. uncertain as to how best he should proceed. We left him to his indecision and walked across the street armed with warm cans of Natty that Ashley had strategically placed in our care in order to more easily subvert the partiers suspiciousness.

It did not take long for the three of us to assess the situation: the party was a Georgia Tech "kegger" populated by clearly underage frat boys and petite Asian girls; a veritable visual stereotype. Our infiltration was achieved quite easily, and before long Shane and Rebecca were engaging the frat boys in their traditional, though nonsensical custom of "beer pong." I however was suddenly aware of my blatantly obvious lack of pants. Almost stricken in a moment by panic, I realized that I had left the package back at the house, carelessly endangering my friends. To my great relief, it was at that very moment that I received a phone call from O.D. asking me (very discreetly) if one of us had left a bag of pants. In hushed tones, I explained the situation to him and he agreed to traffic the pants to the party himself. Once he arrived, all was once again right in the world...if only for a brief time.

Shane and Rebecca would go on to win a round of beer pong as O.D. and I studied the awkwardness of our surroundings. At some point an impromptu dancing lesson took place as Rebecca attempted to instruct me in something known as "swing dancing" and Shane and O.D. took it upon themselves to, and I quote the poet, "boogy."

I barely escaped alive, the last thing I remember hearing being "It's my duty to please that booty." A few short hours later the storm broke and I found myself having coffee with the Japanese business men wearing a pair of pants that had more history to them than any one article of clothing should.

The Funny Thing About Funny People

I was not entirely surprised to learn, after its opening weekend, that Funny People had failed to have the draw that Judd Apatow's earlier efforts had boasted. I thought, perhaps, that the long run-time would have something to do with that, as well as all the hold over summer nonsense films that continue to rake in cash against all reason (i.e. G-Force, Ice Age 3, Harry Potter, etc.) I also recognized that the tone was significantly more somber in Funny People than in Knocked Up or The 40 Year Old Virgin...yet I didn't initially think that this was an issue.

Therefore it came to me as quite a shock when many of my friends began to get around to seeing the film and expressing their utter disdain for it. On more than one occasion I was confronted by a friend who absolutely detested the film. Why was this such as shock? Chiefly because Funny People is one of the most full-on moralistic parables in recent memory. For people (like my friends) who more-or-less uphold traditional moral values in relation to marriage and family, Funny People should have come as a welcome to surprise. It certainly did for myself.

In an even odder twist, an op-ed in the Times picked up on this thread and developed some very astute conclusions about the conservatism of Apatow's films and how Funny People demonstrates where moralism starts to cost people, and how Americans apparently (if judging by the box office as well as my friend's reactions) just don't care for that sort of confrontation.

The entire, fantastic article can be read HERE, but two quotes that really stood out to me are as follows:
"No contemporary figure has done more than Apatow, the 41-year-old auteur of gross-out comedies, to rebrand social conservatism for a younger generation that associates it primarily with priggishness and puritanism. No recent movie has made the case for abortion look as self-evidently awful as “Knocked Up,” Apatow’s 2007 keep-the-baby farce. No movie has made saving — and saving, and saving — your virginity seem as enviable as “The 40-Year Old Virgin,” whose closing segue into connubial bliss played like an infomercial for True Love Waits.

"But “Funny People” is a Judd Apatow movie — endless penis jokes and all. It’s just a more grown-up one, in which doing the right thing comes harder, and bad choices aren’t easily unwound. The way it’s been received suggests that his fan base isn’t ready to hear this kind of story yet. But it’s also reminder that Americans of all ages tend to like their social conservatism much more in theory than in practice."

What then, I wonder, did my supposedly morally conservative (read Christian) friends find so unappealing about the film? Was the issue, as the Times writer postulates, that they only want to be handed the "sexy", easier to digest values of life, love, and marital bliss? Could it be that when the rubber meets the road (to borrow the colloquialism) too many "social conservatives" are ready to frown and abandon ship?

A Return to Form

Free-Lancing in Dublin town.

Having completed a grand European excursion wherein I acted as Ambassador of Goodwill Towards America in the fine countries of Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France I returned home and found at once that I was "blogged out." The reason for this blogging exhausted relates directly to the fabulous chronicle of my journey that I kept up at YANKS ACROSS THE POND. If you didn't read along, shame on you. However, there is always time to go back and read bits here and there at your leisure, for the blog will remain up indefinitely and, as is this one, is fully searchable. Try typing random words and phrases into the search and see what comes up. You never know.

Now I return to the Free-Lancer, at long last. In the time since I took my European hiatus I have seen many of the big summer tent-pole pictures that Hollywood has rolled out, and none impressed me more than Public Enemies. I must, as it is long since past due, abstain from writing a full review. I will state this for the record: Public Enemies is the best film to have come out this year and is one of the best period pictures to come out since 2007's The Assassination of Jesse James (of which many of you know that I find to be one of the best movies ever made.)

I saw Funny People and found it reasonably entertaining, but over-long. There is a considerable amount of depth to the picture, and Sandler gives one of the best performances of his career--let alone of any "comedic" actor-turned-serious. I would warn you that if you are going into the film looking for the goofiness of Sandler's standard fare, or the crude humor of Apatow's other work, you will likely come away disappointed. Funny People is a much more mature film making endeavor, and it should be approached as such.

Finally, my full endorsement of any film yet to be released this summer must fall squarely behind Moon, which if you are not familiar with the picture, is a sci-fi drama staring Sam Rockwell and directed by first-timer Duncan Jones AKA David Bowie's son Zowie Bowie. The film is beautifully crafted in both story and cinematography, and marks a return to form for the "serious" science fiction picture (something that was almost achieved two years ago with Sunshine, though that movie unraveled catastrophically in the end.) Rockwell is amazing (as he usually is) and the film is gripping and thought-provoking while also managing to keep a under current of humor, mostly due to Rockwell's incredible on screen charm.
Here is the trailer:


Rolled out in a limited release fashion, I believe Moon has gone wide now and if you hurry, you should still be able to catch it in theatres. Forget the travesty that is G.I. Joe (a heartbreaking affront to the joys of my childhood) and shoot for the Moon.