"Lone Ranger," "Grown Ups 2" & what's wrong with Hollywood

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The admission, I know, makes me appear petty, but I always have a spring in my step the Monday after a really big budget movie bombs.

This runs contrary to my every instinct to exalt creative people in whatever they’re endeavoring to do.

I encourage struggling artists, musicians and writers, even as I know I’d be better off if every other writer simultaneously decided it was time to just give up.

But when a $225 million movie like “The Lone Ranger” earns just $45 million, I have to keep from razzing out loud: “Good for you, you bums. You stink! I hope you trip on your next red carpet!” 

Some experts are blaming the bomb on their belief that the movie is a Western and Westerns since 1975 have underperformed. A USA Today article lumped “Lone Ranger” in with Will Smith’s “Wild, Wild West” (1999) and “Cowboys & Aliens” (2011) as indicative that movie goers disdain Westerns.

Well, take it from someone who for about two hours every weekend manages to find time to enjoy some vintage John Wayne movie, nothing about the three above mentioned flicks seems Western to me.

They were action films, little different from ones about cartoon superheroes. I saw Johnny Depp as Tonto and thought, “Oh, joy, it’s old Jack Sparrow on a pony. Not for me.”

True Westerns include the recent blockbuster remake of Wayne’s “True Grit,” and “Django Unchained,” a Western I skipped it because I don’t want to endorse Quentin Tarantino’s brand of hyper-violence that by comparison make zombie films seem dainty.

No great Westerns since 1975? Horse poop.

I still watch “Unforgiven,” (1992), “3:10 to Yuma” (2007), “The Outlaw Josie Wales” (1976), “Pale Rider” (1985), “Tombstone” (1993), and think “Silverado” from 1985 is as entertaining a Western as anything ever filmed by The Duke.

And who could forget the one of the greatest TV miniseries of all-time, the sublime “Lonesome Dove,” and, yeah, I still get the shivers every time I recall the hanging of Jake Spoon.

I think the thing that infuriates me about Hollywood is there is no real minor league.

Fail repeatedly at any other job and you get demoted or fired. A beloved slugger gets sent to the minors when he can no longer belt the curve; floors in an architect’s building cave and it’s back to designing Taco Bells; writers who come up with too many loser book proposals get banished to the literary underbelly of blogger irrelevance.

And, hey, thanks for stopping by!

My point is life is a meritocracy.

Just not in Hollywood.

If it was we wouldn’t this week all be overexposed to Adam Sandler, who is everywhere giving us a perfect example of precisely what’s wrong with the film industry.

I thought there must be some mistake when I saw a promotion for “Grown Ups.” That stinker was three years old. Then I realized there had indeed been a mistake -- and Hollywood is making it.

This is “Grown Ups 2!”

I couldn’t believe it. 

The original 2010 movie did well at the box office. Of course it did. It starred Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock and David Spade. But I detected no cultural groundswell of movie goers clamoring for a sequel to a movie that scored 9 percent on www.rottentomatoes.com.

Yet, that’s exactly what we’re getting.

Have these people no artistic integrity? 

Apparently not.

It would be one thing if I could ignore the movie, which I’ll certainly do. But it will be impossible for anyone to ignore the promotion.

This morning the cast was yukking it up on the set of ABC’s “Good Morning America.” It wasn’t just a guest promo either. They were on for the whole show. So, clearly, whomever owns ABC has a vested interest in “Grown Ups 2” succeeding.

We are suffocating from a conspiracy of mediocrity.

I think I’ll write a screenplay about a has-been Hollywood actor who gets busted down to re-appreciate his craft by running a high school drama club out in the middle of nowhere.

It’s going to have a happy ending, I promise.

He’ll never be heard from again.

Related . . .

Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Fall movie potentials

Trouble with the Curve? Trouble with the critics

Hollywood’s best year? 1993

A Brad Pitt-y party

The future of Edward Snowden

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As Edward Snowden begins his third week as the world’s least interesting most wanted man many are still thinking about secret courts, potential asylums and on-going threats to privacy.

Me, I’m thinking about a deceased Evansville, Indiana, attorney named John Clouse. He died in 2008 at the age of 82.

Married and divorced seven times, Clouse to me was the brightest and most fascinating man I’ve ever known. He fought the Battle of the Bulge and spent the rest of his life living up to the self-made promise if he survived the carnage he’d live an entirely original life.

He became the world’s most traveled man. That’s how I made his acquaintance.

I was doing stories for National Enquirer in 1994 when I read that he’d been to 344 of the 345 of the world’s countries, islands and territories. I knew “World’s Greatest Globetrotter!” was a cinch Enquirer story and I was right.

What I didn’t know was over the next 10 years, Clouse would become my go-to guy anytime I needed an interesting anecdote for any offbeat story. 

When Maxim asked me in 1999 to do a story on what it’s like to eat testicles, I figured I’d call Clouse and ask if he’d ever eaten any.

His question back to me: “What kind?”

An adventurous gourmand, he’d dined on about six or seven testicular varietals. Anything outlandish, I asked.

“Well, I ate some elephant ball soup once -- and, no, it didn’t come in a really, really big bowl.”

And he proceeded to tell me about the night in Berlin in 1968 he enjoyed a warm bowl of what was called Elephant Soup Burundi.

See? He was just the most relentlessly entertaining man I’ve ever known. My next book should be about him. Hell, my next four books should be about him. 

Declining his many invitations to come meet him for a drink in Evansville is one of my greatest regrets. I mean it.

I did a story -- actually a Q&A (not the Q&A) -- about him for Playboy in 2005 that allowed me to pose 20 questions about some of his greatest hits. You know, favorite city? Best meal? Loveliest women? Here’s a link.

But Snowden’s escapade had me thinking of one question I recalled from a previous conversation: Favorite disgruntled hijacker story?

He said: “I used to run into these old hijackers in Cuba back in the ‘70s. Everyone of them thought they’d arrive in Havana and become kings. Well, that would last about a day. I met one guy and he said a day after he’d arrived they handed him a machete and put him to work chopping sugar cane under the blazing sun. After a few weeks of that, he’d run away, get caught and sent back. He told me a dozen stories and every single one of them ended with  ‘. . . and then it was back to chopping that 'goldanged' cane.’”

(I'm substituting 'goldanged' for what the erstwhile hijacker really said so as not to offend any NSA readers who might be of a prissy bent.)

Anyway, I think that’s sort of what’s in store for Snowden.

Maybe I’m suffering from almost 12 years of post-9/11 outrage fatigue, but I can’t muster even mild pique that the NSA is using the same investigatory techniques young singles deploy before agreeing to a blind date.

Personally, I like the thought of NSA minions sitting around reading my blog -- and it helps to think of them as actual minions like the ones from the “Despicable Me” movies (we saw and loved the sequel this weekend, by the way).

The idea of privacy in land of ubiquitous smart phones, social media and street corner surveillance cameras just strikes me as doily quaint. And I like the idea of these tools being used to thwart terrorist attacks.

I guess the best advice to those furious about the deconstruction of these once monumental walls comes from another old spy, Austin Powers, who used to wisely council, “Oh, behave!”

I feel bad for Snowden. Like those old hijackers marooned in Cuba, he thought he was going to be hailed a hero.

He’ll likely never to see America as a free man again and I bet he’ll live out his life wondering if there was a less sensational way for him to express legitimate concerns.

And I’ll bet he’ll have  a lot of time to think about it.

I imagine Venezuela right now has a bumper crop of sugar cane that needs tending.

Related . . .

“All Are Bored!” Why I prefer trains

Bonding over spy sex scandals

Depressed over suicidal animals

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I always thought the Suicidal Squirrels would be a dandy name for a back up band for some hot young rock honey.

You know, “Now, give it up, Cleveland, for Bettye Badass and the Suicidal Squirrels!”

Yay!

I’ve pondered suicidal squirrels for almost as long as I’ve been driving motor vehicles. I remember seeing a spot-on commercial -- auto insurance, I guess -- from one of the Super Bowls a few years back.

It was very realistic. The squirrel stands there in the middle of my lane and you can almost see the little cartoon balloon above his head that says, “Goodbye Cruel World!”

I’m approaching at about 50 miles hour thinking, “It’s not too late. You’re still young. You’ve got a lot to live for.”

I say a small, fast pray that the great squirrel God intervenes with a miracle.

Then with my fender about 15 feet from the crest of its little head, the squirrel dives left. Then right! Then left again! And then finally it dodges my passenger side tire by inches and launches to safety into the road side scrub.

And I’m trying to will myself not to have a heart attack.

It’s very upsetting.

I’m such an animal lover I’ve nearly killed myself in vehicular accidents trying to save the life a squirrel who clearly doesn’t give a crap anymore.

What’s worse is now it looks like the birds are getting in on it.

Have you noticed?

Maybe it’s a result of climate change, but I’m noticing more birds are flying in perpendicular to traffic inches from my grill. It’s like they’re acting on double dog dares from some depraved finch.

Most of us seasoned enough by life know men and women who’ve killed themselves, giving into a despair so deep they’re sure it’ll never level off.

But squirrels? Sparrows?

What? Are they upset they can’t afford a new iPad?

Dead snakes are often squashed up and down the street that runs through the woods outside our home. I can understand a snake wanting to kill itself, weighted as it should be by guilt over its historic role in original sin.

But every female descendant of Eve shares the blame in that, too, and I’ve never once heard a woman apologize for that great big Biblical oops.

Maybe the most confounding animal suicides are those of the mighty whales.

Happens all the time. The evening news breaks in with a story about a marooned leviathan. And humanity always does a collective little jig anytime it works out that they’ve saved the whale.

Me, I can’t help but wondering if the whale is even more morose and thinking sarcastic things like, “Gee, thanks for saving me. I’ve still got all the same problems I had before you saved me ‘cept now my friends are all awkward around me. Really, now I feel like slitting my wrists. Oh, if only I had wrists!”

I guess we need Dr. Doolittle, someone who can talk to the animals and learn what troubles them and what we can do to help.

Maybe someone needs to buy them my book!

It’s very confusing.

The Disney movies always portray woodland creatures as carefree and cheerful, at least right up until the moment a hunter guns down Bambi’s mom.

For squirrels especially to repeatedly show so much suicidal behavior makes no sense.

I think it would be great fun being a squirrel. You sail through the trees. You chase your buddies up the bark. You’re never burdened by having to wear pants even in formal places like squirrel church.

For a squirrel to be suicidal just seems plain nuts.

Maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe they are what they eat.

Related . . .

Ringling poop shoveler steals the show

A beef about cow flatulence

Shocking news: Snake handler dies from snake bite!

July 4 re-run: America, land of the blue, white & red

I wrote this in Oct. 2011 and thought it'd be a good one to re-run for anyone sniffing around the blog today. Enjoy your Fourth and God Bless America -- 237 years old and still a really great idea!

The Red, White & Blue. Just mention of the colors kind of puts a patriotic lump in the old throat.

The colors are synonymous with mom, apple pie, Detroit car commercials and the almighty NFL.

Pop flag wavers Lynyrd Skynyrd and Toby Keith have songs with the sequential colors in the title, and they’re the colors political stars of all stripes will wrap themselves in as they seek to convince voters they are the patriots deserving of election.

So just who are they striving to represent? The Netherlands? Luxembourg?

Because flags representing those countries are true red, white and blue.

America most certainly is not.

We’re maybe blue, white and red or the alphabetically proper blue, red & white. If spacial considerations were given we’d likely be the white, red & blue, those being the dominating percentages of the flag colors in descending order.

But if we Americans continue to call ourselves “The Red, White & Blue,” we’re letting the world know we’re a nation of ocular idiots.

Just picture the American flag and let your eye react to it the way it naturally does to words on a page. The eye is conditioned to start at the upper left and move rightward across the top.

With the American flag, the eye sees blue, then white, then red.

I called Vince Vaise, park ranger and chief of interpretation at Fort McHenry, where the American flag inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner,” incidentally a much more accurate and zesty description of the American flag.

He said he knew of no history of how the colors came to be sequenced the way they did.

“Whenever anyone uses bunting, the order is blue, white and red,” he says. “So it goes against that custom. It sounds better, I guess.”

True, but that may only be out of habit. Since children we’ve been indoctrinated to say it in specific sequence -- red, white and blue.

But how did that get started?

I’m going to investigate. I’m going to try and put together a story idea that will inspire some history magazine to assign me to find out the truth.

But more than that, I think it simply needs to be done and, by God, I’ll not rest until I do it.

I’ll do it for mom, country and the good ol’ red, white and blue.

That’s right.

I’m doing it for the Dutch.

"Civil Wargasm" for Gettysburg re-enactors

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The Pond is closed this week and everyone knows what that means: it’s the week I park out front in the handicapped spot just to sow confusion and mess with the minds of people who think maybe Dave’s let me in to drink free and wonder if he’ll do the same for them.

He won’t, so don’t even bother knocking.

But it’s also the week that the staff we depend upon to feed and inebriate us leaves us to fend for ourselves. It’s terribly upsetting, but we somehow manage.

I asked Keith, the bartender, if he has any vacation plans.

He does not.

“I have a suggestion,” I said. “Why don’t you go out and spend $700 or so dollars on an authentic wool uniform and gear and go marching up and down the sweltering pastures of central Pennsylvania.”

“Well, for one, I’m not insane.”

That’s true.

But neither are the armies of Civil War re-enactors who at this very minute are camped around Gettysburg to commemorate the 150th anniversary of one of history’s most pivotal battles.

Or are they?

Like many history buffs, I have Gettysburg fever. My daughter and I were there in November for three days (links below) and left with many great memories.

But my interest goes deeper than that. It’s because like so many others I’ve read “Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War,” the terrific 1998 Tony Horwitz book about hardcore Civil War re-enactors.

How hardcore? They soak their uniform buttons in their own urine so the acids will bestow them with the proper hue. The pain, deprivation and hardship they self-inflict is welcomed as just another step on the path to authenticity.

Horwitz says they call it a "Civil Wargasm."

The part of me that reveres history admires what they do, while the part of me that clings to common sense agrees with Keith. As pastimes go, Civil War re-enactment registers neck-in-neck on the insanity scale with the Trekkie nuts.

Sure, the Trekkies reside in the make-believe realm, but they’re cerebral enough to pursue their silly whimsies in air-conditioned convention halls with catered buffets and indoor plumbing that assure any urine that splashes on their outfits is purely by accident.

It’s entirely possible that by this time tomorrow some of these less fit re-enactors may actually expire in the heat -- and will their deaths be added to official battlefield casualty rolls?

What’s interesting to me is that the Civil War is the last conflict in human history that will attract people who enjoy romanticizing the worst behavior humanity has to offer.

The horrific carnage of World Wars I and II were too sprawling to lend themselves to orchestrated re-creation. 

Our more current wars have been mostly urban and lack definition and grandeur. And, heck, there’s probably already video games that let 10-year-olds simulate Pakistani drone strikes almost as genuine as the guys in the Tampa bases who do it for real.

But I have an idea that will allow history buffs to re-create a dandy war without the sweat and pain being experienced by the Gettysburg button pissers.

That would be the Vietnam War.

Not the one fought in the Southeast Asian nation.

I’m talking about the one fought on the college campuses right here in the U.S.A.

This would be a fun and historically relevant period to recreate, especially if you chose to be on the side of the hardcore hippies.

Remember, it was an era of free love and ample drug use. I’m familiar with a lot of people who strive to recreate that lifestyle, but do so without the benefit of historical purpose.

Getting high and getting laid would seem more noble if you could claim that you were doing it under the guise of an re-enactor movement.

Conservative types who thought the war was a really swell idea could get crew cuts and simulate whacking flower children on the heads with their very own “Give Peace A Chance!” protest signs. 

The re-enactments could conclude with both sides marching off to celebrate their business degrees by all together doing “The Hustle” down at the campus disco.

As war re-enactments go, this would be much more civil.

Related . . .

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! A Gettysburg success

Tweets of the (last) month: 2,000 & counting

It’s taken me three years to hit the 2,000 tweet mark at 8days2Amish, which I did last week.  I’ve probably done about 2,200, but I’ve always ruthlessly gone back and weeded out ones that I deemed inferior. Lately, I just don’t tweet them. I think that shows with this batch. Many worthy ones here, I believe. I invite you to judge for yourself.

• Anytime I think I'm a bad father I remind myself my 12 year old can name all five Traveling Wilburys and I'm again at peace.

• I remain amazed "beer" and "mirror," words with just one letter in common, are a near-perfect rhyme. Beer, is there nothing you can't do?

• Saw a friend I hadn't seen in 30 years. He said I looked great. Even the paunch? Yes. He said it gave me gravitas. More like gravy-tas.

• Why are there locks on the lobster tank where I shop? If I'm a shoplifter, a live lobster is the last thing I'm stuffing down my pants.

• It is a confounding paradox for those challenged with marketing the machines, but the best vacuum cleaners really do suck.

• Teaching is like preparing Thanksgiving feast w/ 40 in-laws crowding the kitchen, each one offering advice on how to prepare perfect bird.

• It's been a long, long time and I still can't believe it's not butter.

• News reports say Mandela in "serious" condition. Has anyone suggested treating him with laughing gas?

• People love waffles, yet get impatient with wafflers. Something's gotta give.

• In the future, suspicious parents will be able to purchase smart pants for kids that will ignite when the pants detect the youths are lying.

• I believe in the next six months, the combined age of the Rolling Stones (247 years) will finally exceed their combined weight.

• Even if it were true, I’d never dream of telling the world Mama’s got a squeeze box she wears on her chest and when Daddy comes home he never gets no rest.

• Unlike Takei, my tweets are 100 percent authentic. And that which doesn't kill me can only make me stronger!

• Let's clear this up: A tornado warning is dangerous weather. A tornado watch is an inefficient timepiece whose hands spin really fast.

• You think you can tell time. Foolish mortals. Time tells you!

• “Godspell” is a popular theatrical production. “Spell God” is a statement that will get public school teachers into trouble with the ACLU.

• Trivia question for today: How much does it cost to use a pay phone? Trivia question for 2015? What's a pay phone?

• I know it’s dishonest, but I find it irresistible to run into crowded rooms to yell, “Dick Cheney’s gonna be on ‘Dancing With The Stars!’”

• Am I a bad father for leaving sweet notes to each of my daughters that say, "You'll always be my favorite . . . Don't tell your sister!"

• The tasty snack would still taste and look the same, but they would take on a whole new connotation if they were spelled "FreeToes."

• Told the 6-yr-old I'd give her $1 if she could get her ears to produce sound. Finally gave her a buck when I feared her head would explode.

• Dining oddity: It's perfectly okay to cook on a spit, but never okay to spit on a cook.

• If Lassie smoked medical marijuana, supported gay marriage and hung out with surfer dudes he’d live in Colliefornia.

• I'm hoping Bill Belichick is an eventual character witness for Aaron Hernandez & breaks down on the stand after telling a story about a boy and his puppy.

My book featured in USAToday.com

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The first e-mail arrived about four minutes after USA Today.com posted the article, and here’s the link to the latter.

“Great story!” read the comment from a Jasper, Alabama, man. “Can I have a free book?”

Certainly.

Within the next three hours, I’d get another 33 e-mails with some variation of that request.

The national publicity bonanza that I’m hoping will boost “Use All The Crayons!” has already cost me $189.20 in postage and free books.

Any more of this kind of “success” and I’ll need to risk stiffing Comcast for another month.

Of course, it is all my fault. It was my bright idea to include on the very first page of the book, “This Book is Free,” followed by the note explaining I’ll be happy to send for free a book to anyone who is struggling and can’t afford one (U.S. servicemen and women are entitled to freebies, too). I’ve since broadened the criteria to anyone who asks nicely.

I do this for two reasons: One, I believe it would be wrong, immoral almost, to withhold something that might help make someone happy -- and my book is making everyone who reads it happier -- over a few measly dollars. It costs me $5.75 in postage and publishing costs to send a book first class to those who request one.

I spend about that much on free drinks anytime cheerful strangers sit down next to me downstairs at the bar and the exchange invariably leads to a new friend.

The second reason has to do with pure karma. I believe if I help people people will want to help me. Those that can’t afford to buy will buzz up the book; those who can will buy the book.

That’s the part that drives Gladys Edmunds bonkers. She’s the one who wrote the USA Today article about me 13 years and four months after I’d written one about her.

She’s one of the most successful and inspirational entrepreneurs in America. As a 16-year-old single mother, this African-American kid from Pittsburgh knew she had her work cut out for her.

I remember she started off making good money selling Bibles, a venture she stopped after reasoning a book that concluded with eternal life was a dead end job.

What would she do after everyone in the world had one of her Bibles?

So this teen mom started organizing bus trips to the malls, the race tracks and places like The Poconos. She eventually began running the travel needs for top city corporations and The University of Pittsburgh. She became a millionaire and chummy with Oprah.

I wrote about her in the Feb. 27, 2000, editions of National Enquirer. She says it was the best story anyone’s ever written about her, praise that says more about the euphoric way National Enquirer presents a great story like hers than it does about about any skills of mine.

I sent her a book last summer because I’ve always admired her and because it gave me the opportunity to imagine her fainting dead away that anyone would give anything of value away for free.

“What kind of business plan is that?” she fumed. “You need to tear that page right out of every book! Why would anyone buy a book when you’d give them one for free?”

She decided to feature me in the story after seeing a table with about a dozen of my books at the Monroeville Barnes & Noble as a great gift for grads. I went by later that week and they’d sold out, each for the retail price of $15.95.

See, what I’m offering isn’t a diet pill or a cure for baldness. Sure, the book is full of giggles, but at its heart it is something pure and the last year has shown that’s really resonating with people.

And I continue to believe that will be enough to eventually make the book subtitled “The Colorful Guide to Simple Human Happiness” a real success.

Judging just by the more than two dozens notes I received this week, in many ways it already is.

So I’ll continue to give them away for free to anyone who asks nicely because, in spite of the cost to me I believe it’ll ensure good things will continue to happen to me.

It’s just my way of taking care of business.

Related . . .

Giving away my book a blue chip idea

My business plan: keep feeding the unicorn