Catchy but Creepy

"Come on Down to My Boat, Baby" by one-hit wonders Every Mothers Son is one of those catchy 60s tunes that so peppy and exuberant you don't realize how deeply disturbing it actually is.  But stop tapping your feet for a minute and listen to the lyrics.  Something is really wrong here.  

"She sits on the dock,
A-fishin' in the water, uh-huh.
I don't know her name,
She's the fisherman's daughter, uh-huh.


Come on down to my boat baby.
Come on down where we can play.
Come on down to my boat baby.
Come on down we'll sail away."


(So far, so good.  Boy meets girl, girl invites girl to ride in his boat.)

"She smiled so nice,
Like she wants to come with me, uh-huh.
But she's tied to the dock,
And she can't get free."


She's what?  Tied to the dock?  Can't get free?  What's going on, has she been kidnapped?


No, the truth is even worse -- "Father never lets her out of his sight."


So, this poor young woman is tied to the dock by her own father, but now that this young man knows of her plight surely he'll rescue her, right?  


Well, yes, eventually:


"Soon I'm gonna have to get my knife,
And cut that rope, cut that rope.
So we can go fishin' in my little red boat,
Make you happy in my little red boat."


Soon?? How about now, you spineless beach bum?  Come on, man, This girl is being abused.  Do the right thing, either cut her free or call the police or the Coast Guard or somebody.  Don't make it worse by taunting her, telling her how much fun she could be having if she was only free. 

Rob reviews "Apres Vous"

If you told me I could only watch movies from one country for the rest of my life I would without hesitation pick France.  French films so rarely disappoint.  (And not just because of my crush on Vanessa Paradis.  There's also Melanie Laurent.)  Even in genres that don't usually do much for me -- like suspense -- I love the way the French do it.  And when it comes to my favorite genre -- Romantic Comedy -- well, the French are the masters in my book.
Today I watched "Apres Vous" and loved it.  Every time I watch one of these French romcoms I hope nobody in Hollywood is doing the same, because I know they'll dumb it down, wring all the charm out of it, and remake it with Adam Sandler and Kate Hudson or someone equally lacking in talent.
Here Daniel Auteuil plays Antoine the head-waiter Chez Jean in Paris.  One night he sees a guy trying to hang himself in the park and he intervenes, saving the guy's life.  But you can tell that Louis (Jose Garcia) is not grateful, and you can tell that as soon as he can summon up the energy he's just going to try again; he's almost catatonic with grief. So Antoine takes the guy home, helps him land a job at Chez Jean, even tracks down the girl who broke Louis's heart. And all that might happen in an American comedy, but they'd have to establish that there was something wrong with Antoine for going out on a limb like that -- something lacking in his life or in his brain -- whereas here we get to see a fundamentally decent guy tries to help someone and ends up screwing his own life up pretty royally.  It's interesting to try and figure out exactly where he went too far.  It's also fun to try and see how all this is going to end up with anything like a happy ending
Another thing the French do that I so appreciate it their actors don't look like movie stars.  I mean they're not all drop-dead gorgeous as they are in American cinema.  In America everybody -- doctors, lawyers, serial killers, are all beautiful.  In France the movie stars look like real people.  Sandrine Kiberlain is not a classical beauty but by the end of the movie you've fallen in love with her because of who her character is and how she lives.  And somewhere along the way she becomes beautiful.
Watch how underplayed and erotic this realizing you're falling in love scene is:

Making Excuses
Après vous... — MOVIECLIPS.com

Rob reviews "Dans Paris"

Today I watched Dans Paris (allow me to translate for you "Inside Paris") starring Romain Duris, and Monsieur Duris is the reason I checked this out from Netflix.  Duris was the titular "Heartbreaker" in that movie starring Vanessa Paradis, and during the moments I was able to take my eyes off her -- well, I couldn't take my eyes off her, but during the moments she wasn't onscreen I noticed that Duris was a pretty good actor too.  I've seen him in several other movies "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" "Moliere" "Paris" "Russian Dolls" and pretty much anything else of his I could track down.  The London Guardian says " He does have a completely transformative smile, capable of changing his face in the flick of a lip: from sexy to silly, brooding to buffoonish."  And I agree.  Romain Duris joins William Powell as the only male actors who I will watch in anything.
Here he plays Paul, a man suicidally depressed after his girlfriend breaks up with him.  Why they broke up I am not sure.  French people break up some times for reasons that don't translate well.  Suffice it to say that he was not easy to live and she was only slightly easier than him.  He seemed a little depressed before they broke up actually, as in the scene where she nudges him with the car to try to get him to get in and he lies down in front of the car.  I can certainly understand his being depressed.  Joana Preiss is not a classic beauty but she is certainly sexy as she dances unselfconsciously here.



He heads home to Dad and little brother Jonathan (Louis Garrel) intending to wallow in self-pity, and maybe work enough gumption to kill himself, but they have other plans.  They know he's in trouble cuz he lays around the house all day in his underwear listening to Kim Wilde's "Cambodia" (without a doubt the saddest 80's synth-pop song ever).  Actually the whole family is still dealing with the fallout from the suicide of only daughter (sister) Claire several years previously.  Dad fixates on everyday chores -- making soup, buying a Christmas tree. etc.  Jonathan tries to help Paul; he makes a deal with his older brother that if can make it to Le Bon Marche in 20 minutes, Paul will put on his pants and meet him there.  It ends up taking him seven hours but only because he runs into an old girlfriend (Alice Bataud) and makes two new girlfriends on the way.  Naturally he has sex with all three.  This definitely seems like the healthiest way to deal with depression.
Near the end this movie contains one of the most amazing scenes I've ever seen, as this rather dark comedy turns into a musical when Paul calls his ex and they sing to each other.  Don't roll your eyes, it works.  I would include it here but you really need to see the whole movie to see why this works.
I'll give this movie 4 out of five stars -- docked one star because Vanessa Paradis is not in it.

Rob's restaurant reviews: Chick Fil-A

I love Chick Fil-A.  It is about the only fast food chain I patronize.  (Five Guys isn't fast food, is it?)

You can get a grilled chicken breast on a whole wheat bun, which is a nice healthy option and my usual entree.  I can also count on them to have some great unsweetened iced tea too.  Unsweetened iced tea is not an option at most places, and if they do offer it you can bet it's been sitting around getting funky for days.  But it's always fresh at Chick Fil-A.  They even have lemon slices to go with it.
So no complaints about the food, but that doesn't mean I don't have complaints.  Their motto (or slogan or whatever you call it) "We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich" bothers me in several ways.  First I don't believe it.  It's been three hundred years since the Earl of Sandwich gave the two-slice comestible its current title, and of course people have been eating sandwiches for thousands of years before that, they just didn't know what to call it.  Does it really seem likely that in all that time nobody thought to put a piece of chicken between two pieces of bread until some Georgia cracker in 1946?
And second, it's kind of patronizing, is it not?  Do they think we really might believe that Chick Fil-A invented chickens?  I mean, come on, chickens have been around for longer even than sandwiches.  That is not an urban legend that is crying out to be debunked.  "Oh, you poor lunkhead customers of ours, we did not invent chickens."
And okay, even if he did invent the chicken sandwich, there's a saying on the wall of most Chick Fil-A's that just makes me shake my head every time I see it:

Not exactly poetry, is it?  You have to eat so you might as well eat food that tastes good.  Wow, thanks, Mr Cathay, I was going to eat this pile of dog doo till you said that and made me think.  You're pretty smart.  Are you sure you didn't invent the chicken?
One more complaint. I always know when it's Sunday even without any other clues cuz that';s the day I crave Chick- Fil-A.  And it's the day they're closed.  I understand the Sabbath day stuff, but can't we compromise?  Have some Jews or Muslims or atheist teenagers run the place on Sunday   I mean, food is essential to life on Sunday too, is it not?

Rob's Reviews "Helena From the Wedding."

If they ever decide to teach a course in how to make a movie Robert Loy hates, the students will do well to study this turkey.  3 or 4 couples get together, they are all whiny and self-absorbed, and are all either having an affair, trying to have an affair, or dealing with the repercussions from the affair they just had.  Nobody really likes any of their "friends" (and who can blame them?)  Throw in a pointless fake British accent from Gillian Jacobs that fades in and out like an AM radio station at night, and an ending where two people who have a lot they need to talk about say absolutely in the climactic scene -- if a movie where nothing happens can be said to have a climax.  Ostensibly this is because they're too emotionally overwhelmed for words, but it feels like the writer and director were just lazy and wanted us to do their work for them.  (Most egregious example of this I can think of is "Lost in Translation"; they can study that one in this class too.)
Speaking of Gillian Jacobs, she is not pretty.  I don't care what anybody at Greendale Community College thinks.  I did watch some of the extras on this DVD just to see if the cast said all the usual "I just loved the script, it was so intelligent and different" and they did, with a straight face, which means they saved all their best acting for the extras reel.  Jacobs added that what she loved about her character was that she was an enigma.  That girl needs a dictionary, "enigma" does not mean "half-baked character from lazy writers."

Rob's Reviews "Home"

I watch a lot of French movies these days and not just because I've fallen hopelessly in love with Vanessa Paradis. Even though I've seen some English-speaking movies lately that I've really enjoyed ("Bridesmaids" was hilarious, Paul Giamatti was great (as always) in "Win Win" and I actually went to the theater and saw "Moneyball" and was not disappointed) the general level of quality in French films seems to be higher -- maybe because the real dindes don't make it to our shores.
Yesterday I watched "Home" which was about a very happy family that lived an isolated existence right beside an abandoned highway.Their idyllic lifestyle is ruined when they open that stretch of highway for traffic again.  In a matter of hours there's no way for the kids to cross the street to go to school without risking their lives and they have to go way out of their way and use a tunnel even though it's "full of creepies" according to youngest daughter Marion.  The poor cat, who's probably never seen a car is strangling himself tied to the clothesline pole.  And everybody starts to go a little crazy.



All Judith the oldest daughter ever wanted to do was sunbathe, chain smoke and listen to horrible French death metal music. Hard to do when truck drivers are honking at you every few seconds. Marion counts cars and is convinced that every mosquito bite is a cancerous lesion. The youngest kid, a boy, goes into a depression cuz the few friends he had around there all had sense enough to move. Mom may suffer the worst but she's the reason they can't leave. There's something unsaid wrong about her and this is the "only place she feels well". Dad tries to keep it all together but eventually his efforts to save his family end up endangering every one of their lives.
This light-hearted movie took a real dark turn toward the end but never lost his appeal. I thought it had some interesting things to say about home, how we get attached to places and also just how far we will go to take care of the ones we love.
My only complaint is that Vanessa Paradis was not in it.

Meanderings about math and music

I can't remember where I heard it -- probably on "Radiolab" the podcast that blows my mind every time I listen to it -- and I probably misinterpreted it anyway; but I sorta remember some mathematician somewhere saying there's really no such as random numbers -- or maybe no such thing as a random number generator. Anyway, I contend there's no such thing as random shuffle on an Ipod. Most of the time when I have mine on shuffle I don't really think about any underlying theme to the supposedly-random songs, but the other night I was driving and a song from the Monkees came on ("What am I Doing Hanging Round?")
followed by Eddy Raven's "I've Got Mexico."
I've got like 1600 songs on my Ipod. What are the odds that a song about a man who left Mexico and lost a girl would be followed by a song about a man who lost a girl and moved to Mexico? I was anxious to see what the next song would be, and it turned out to be Steve Earle's "Guitar Town" which has nothing to do with Mexico (although it does reference Texas and "San Antone" neighbors of Mexico. I got home before it could start another song but I'm sure it would have been Johnny Rodriguez's "Riding My Thumb to Mexico".
Unless of course the Ipod realized that I was onto this little game it was playing to amuse itself. I believe this is called the Observer Effect but I could be wrong and I'm willing to bet that I am. Today I got in the car, first song up was "Ragged as the Road" by Reckless Kelly,
and #2 was "Going Mobile" from the Who. And I thought to myself -- I might have even said it out loud -- "oh, so we're doing road songs, eh?" But then the next song was the mega-depressing Christmas song "In the Bleak Midwinter" by Dan Fogelberg, by no means a road song -- unless, and this just occurred to me, you count the road the wise men traveled to give the baby Jesus those useless presents they had for him. (A few songs later when the Ipod thought I had forgotten it did try to sneak "Highway 61 Revisited" by me.)

Rob's Reviews: "A Ship Made of Paper."

Scott Spencer writes about obsessive, all-consuming, damn-the-torpedoes Capital-L Love. That is why, although I recommend all of his books, he is probably never going to top "Endless Love", because that kind of love is most common to teenagers -- although most of them don't try to burn down their girlfriend's house to prove their love.
(I don't want to start talking about "Endless Love" because it's one of my favorite books ever, and I probably wouldn't get around to reviewing "Ship," but I will say this, whenever people look at me with confusion because I am unhappy that one of my favorite books is being made into a movie, well, here's a perfect example: "Endless Love" is a magnificent book, but a putrid motion picture. And more people are familiar with the film and when they think of Jade Butterfield they see Brooke Shields -- and that is a shame.)
In this book the protagonist is in his thirties, and living proof that when you chase after your heart's desire a lot of innocent people get hurt. Because of his obsession with a woman, this dude loses a girlfriend who really loves him, the love of his four-year-old stepdaughter, his house, his money, most of his law practice, the vision in one eye, and any semblance of self-respect. He also accidentally (no, really) shoots his girlfriend's husband in the throat with a bottle rocket, causing him to have a stroke. Ruined lives everywhere you look. And all for a woman whose appeal was impossible for me to see -- a woman he could never completely have, and he was okay with that. Well, as okay as this fool was about anything.
When I read "Romeo and Juliet" as a young man, I thought it was a tragedy of two star-crossed lovers whose love was too much for their narrow-minded world to contain. When I reread it now it seems like a tragedy of two knuckle-headed hormone-riddled teenagers who kill themselves rather than wait a week for their feelings to cool off. Sort of the same deal here, with David and Jade in "Endless Love" you understand those feelings -- heck, you've experienced those feelings at that age. But with the couple in "A Ship Made of Paper" you just want to shake these people and tell them to grow up.

One of the things that interests me is to go back to books I've read before and see what I underlined or highlighted. Sometimes I wonder what the heck I was thinking, and sometimes I think "Great line (or good point): I certainly am an astute reader." I picked up "Precious and Few: Pop Music in the early 70's."

It looks like I only highlighted two lines in this book when I read it a few years ago. This one I think because, even though it's about a horrible song "Seasons in the Sun," the point the Brothers Breithaupt make about it is valid and funny.

When the narrator admits to "Pa-pa" (emphasis on second syllable) in a repentant, defeated voice that he was the "black sheep of the family" you have to wonder just how much of bad seed this starfish-collecting, bird-watching, tree-climbing nature boy could have been.

This next line is about the O'Jays' "Love Train" and about how sincere people were peace, love and understanding, how sure they were that we could make a better world. ". . . not since the early 70's have statements like "form a love train" been made without irony." And I think I underlined this one for a diametrically different reason that the first one. This one made me a little sad.