Bicycles and Zombies

It's pretty weird having nothing at all to do. Since I have graduated, don't have a job yet (thought I have some applications in), and have enough student loan money to left over to live on for a while, I've been living a rather surreal life of leisure for the last two weeks. It's fun, but kinda disorienting to have no responsibilities and no consequences. The past few days, I've been coming up with sort of odd things to do with my time, mostly to have something to write about on the blog.

On Saturday, I rode my bike all the way up and down the island of Manhattan, twice. On Sunday, I went to see two movies about zombies in the theater in the same day. That one managed to combine my love of zombies with my love of air conditioning in 90 degree heat.



First, the bike trek. I brought my bike with me to New York, in part because I'd only recently bought it in Easthampton and didn't feel like selling it so quickly. It's nice to have it, although my building doesn't have a bike room, so I have to lug it up and down five flights of stairs every time I want to use it, which is less than ideal. Avoiding the climb, I hadn't used it for a while, but I decided to get outside on Saturday. I noticed last fall that there was a bike trail that ran along the Hudson River, but I couldn't figure out how to get there, since it was on the other side of the highway. Eventually I asked someone, and was on my way. You can see the green line representing the path here.

My first task was to make it to the George Washington Bridge which looms in the northern part of the bike path. That proved to be trickier than I thought, involving going off the path due to construction and walking my bike through a fruit market. But after some wrong turns, I made it to the bridge and the Little Red Lighthouse underneath it. I figured I'd come all this way, I might as well go across the bridge, which took a half-hour walking detour through Washington Heights until I figured it out. The view from 212 feet up on the middle of the bridge were amazing, but when I stopped to admire it, I was freaked out by how the whole bridge shook with traffic. I got back on the bike and headed back.

I was surprsingly not tired at that point so I turned around and went back on the path headed south and found, as I suspected, that it runs all the way down to Battery Park, where the Staten Isand Ferry terminal is. So I managed to clear the entire island. It occurred to me that this would be a great way to see the city if you've never been -- in addition to the bridge, you pass the Chelsea Piers, can see the Empire State Building, World Trade Center site and the Statue of Liberty, even Frank Gehry's new building, which is just across the street from the path. All without subway tolls, traffic, or consulting a map. Turning around to head home, though, the long trip started to take its toll, but I made it just fine. And now I can say I've see the whole west side by bike.

I couldn't top that with anything athletic the next day, so I topped it with something slobby: the zombie movies 28 Weeks Later and Grindhouse (well, at least half a zombie movie on the second one). I wouldn't say that I'm a real big horror movie fan, but I love zombies. Love 'em. Probably mostly because there's usually some intelligence and satire behind them in the George Romero tradition. But also because zombies are cool for several reasons.

A) There are always a lot of them and there's no place to hide. B) The intriguing moral quandary of having to fight off the people you once loved who are now reanimated corpses hungering for your flesh. C) There are no goofy "rules" for defeating them (silver bullet, stake through the heart, sunlight, simple bacteria). You just blast away at them, but more soon come to take their place. D) As mentioned above, they form a nifty shorthand for whatever mindless group the filmmakers want to comment on.

I first went to see 28 Weeks, the sequel to 28 Days Later. I wasn't exactly looking forward to it before it came out, since it was a sequel with no one from the really creepy original movie involved, no stars, writers, directors, nothing. Just more from the cannibalistic people infected with the "rage virus" (they aren't technically zombies, but for all intents and purposes). But the decent reviews convinced me to see it, and it was pretty good. The "satire," if that's what it was, is pretty heavy-handed -- U.S. troops have to rebuild London after the apocalypse, and zombies eventually invade the fortified "green zone" etc. Nonetheless, it works, if you're into creepy scenes of deserted London and zombies gorily tearing people apart.

After the movie ended, I remembered that another recent zombie movie was still playing in New York (and probably nowhere else, after it tanked at the box office). I figured spending over five hours in horror movies was as good a way as any to pass the day, so I headed to Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's three-plus-hour gore-soaked double-feature magnum opus. It got great reviews when it came out, but no one went to see it. I didn't have time with school, otherwise I'd be first in line, but it still sold out the little art house theater that was still showing it this weekend.

The deal is that it's two movies for the price of one: Rodriguez's zombie flick "Planet Terror" and Tarantino's "slasher" flick "Death Proof." Since this is about zombies, I'll just mention that Tarantino's was totally bizarre -- a horror movie where almost nothing horrific happens. There are long, long stretches of dialogue before the few minutes of horror. I thought it was fun, but several people actually seemed offended by the lack of gore -- they stormed out during the dialogue, saying loudly "This is awful! Let's get out of here."

No one stormed out during the ultra-gruesome Planet Terror when zombie Bruce Willis's pus-filled face exploded. Seeing two zombie movies in the same day was an odd experience, particularly since the two were so similar. Both were about a "virus" rather than traditional zombies, both had major subplots about the military, and both include a scene where people realize that the best way to dispatch a whole mess of zombies at once is to use the blades of a helicopter. By the end of the day, I wondered how many heavily made-up extras I'd seen ripped apart during the course of the afternoon, but figured it was far too many to count.

I'd probably write something more clever about zombies if I weren't so tired and leaving for San Francisco in the morning. Pictures and stories from the City By the Bay next week!

Until then, I can't believe you actually read this far...

The end of movie critics

There was a time when I dreamed of being a movie critic for a living. That was at least partly my motivation for applying for the arts writing program at Columbia. I realized that it was a long shot, since there aren't that many movie critics and it's a tough gig to get, but I thought maybe I'd luck into it somehow.

But in the past few months there has been story after story about newspapers eliminating their movie and TV critics and just running the Associated Press reviews, to save money. Because any review of a movie is just as good, and who cares what local people think about movies? It's just a waste of money to pay someone to sit in the dark and spout off afterwards, all you get is a diversity of views and a variety of interesting writing about an important part of popular culture.

This is the latest one to go down. (Not that I condone this guy's catty, if cryptic, attacks on Richard Roeper and A.O. Scott in the last graf, though his final line struck fear into my heart.) In about five years, you'll be able to count all the movie critics on one hand. Apparently, I was born a few decades too late if this was what I wanted to do.

More on this topic, for the truly bored (or the truly interested in the kind of thoughts that occupy my brain. I wrote an essay for arts and culture class on this topic.)

* The War Against Movie Critics from Salon
* In Defense of Film Critics from the Christian Science Monitor
* Variety editor Peter Bart (producer of Revenge of the Nerds II) suggests critics should no longer exist, because they don't like the same movies "regular people" do, such as Norbit and Wild Hogs.
* The Chicago Sun-Times' Jim Emerson explains why that is a stupid thing to say.
* A.O. Scott of the New York Times on why he's a critic, or to answer his detractors, " just who he thinks he is."
* A contrary opinion: E! Online says that all critics are self-important blowhard who hate fun, while sensible, normal people just want to see things blow up and the good guys win every time. Sigh.

My week in enemy territory

"When I was a kid growing up in Boston, I always heard that if you wore a Red Sox hat in Yankee Stadium, you would be murdered. Later on, I moved to New York and I realized that wasn't true. You don't have to be wearing any special kind of hat to be murdered at Yankee Stadium." -- Conan O'Brien

After spending the last three nights at the Stadium proudly sporting my Sox hat and sustaining no bodily harm, I can confirm that Conan isn't exactly right. If you're a loudmouthed, drunken Sox fan who taunts the crowd of 55,000 Yanks fans and gives them the finger and other obscene gestures, however, you will at least be shouted down and cheered when you're ejected by security. Not that I was doing that, but I saw it happen more than I perhaps expected. Some Boston people are idiots, and not in the fun '04 World Series way. But if you behave yourself, you can have a lovely time even in the Evil Empire’s Death Star. Pictures are here.

Before this week, I had only been to one Sox-Yanks game in my life, and that was Game 4 of the '99 ALCS at Fenway. The Sox lost, falling behind in the series 3-1, and were eliminated the next night in New York. After a lousy phantom tag call, people threw stuff on the field for about 20 minutes, and the next day on SportsCenter, the anchors called the fans a national disgrace. At least I got to see the worst call by an umpire in history! Anyway, the only reason I got to go to that one was because my dad won tickets in a contest and thus became the top story on the local news. (This was the first time the teams had met in the playoffs, before it became a semi-regular occurrence, so it was a big deal.) I won’t embarrass him by recounting what he said on TV, but he won two tickets, and gave them to my brother and I. He didn't go to the game at all, watching it in a bar across the street from the stadium. (Thanks again, Dad!)

The point is that Sox-Yanks tickets in Boston are impossible to come by, like Fenway tickets as a whole. You're not allowed to simply buy tickets for games against New York, you have to enter your name in a lottery and if they pick you, you're allowed to open your wallet. Even for just a regular game at Fenway, you have to go on the internet the day tickets go on sale in January and spend hours on end in the "online waiting room" until they let you in to buy whatever's left. (That is how I acquired $12 nosebleed seats to a game against Detroit last August 14, and I only had to sit in front of my computer for nine hours!) Even with all the hoops you have to jump through, every game at Fenway has sold out for the last four years.

That was the mentality I had regarding baseball tickets in general until last week. I assumed that anywhere with a good team would have a similar rigmarole to go to a game, especially somewhere as passionate about sports as New York. Then I was messing around on the Yankees site the other day and thought “I’ll see if there are any tickets for when the Sox are in town in a few days, ha ha ha.” And there freakin’ were! For all three games! I was so dumbstruck, I just bought them right there, worried they were the last ones and I’d miss my chance. A few minutes later, I realized that was sorta dumb, because I’d end up going to all of the games by myself, but whatever.

After a 10-minute subway ride from my apartment on Monday, I was at Yankee Stadium. Not bad considering every game I’ve ever been to at Fenway involves two hours in a car from either Maine or Northampton, then a T ride to the stadium. I usually have to go after work because only weeknight games have tickets available, so I’d often be late. Going to Yankee Stadium was the easiest trip to a baseball game I’ve ever had, and only my fourth major league stadium (after Boston, Toronto and now-defunct Montreal).

My seats for all the games were $19, and for the first one I was right behind home plate. All right, so it was in the absolute last row of the upper deck, but it was still behind home plate. I have to say that Yankee Stadium really is nicer than Fenway -- there was actual leg room! And I could see the game without binoculars! Apparently it’s not nice enough for New York, since they’re building a new $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium across the street for some reason. One of my Yankee-fan classmates put it thusly, “We need a new stadium because we’re not making enough money.” Uh huh.

I’d always kind of figured that The Rivalry wasn’t quite as intense on the New York side, since they’ve usually won throughout history. But the level of hate for Boston appeared to be roughly equivalent in The Bronx, judging from the T-shirts on sale outside the stadium and on the fans. “New York -- 207 miles on I-95: The only sign of life in Boston.” “2090 -- Know your history.” (I’ll admit this one took me a second to figure out -- 2004+86 years until our supposed next championship.) “There was no curse, Boston just sucked for 86 years. Reverse that!” (Uh, we did thanks.) Lots of people had shirts celebrating last years “Boston Massacre” where the Yanks won 5 in a row at Fenway. Bully for them, but then they were quickly eliminated from the playoffs weeks later, so a lot of good it did them. Then there was the always classy “Bahston Sucks Cack.” (Not that there aren’t similar shirts at Fenway.)

In general, the mood in the stands was fairly cordial. I didn’t have anyone throw D batteries at my head or even comment on my hat, apart from other Sox fans. The people who seemed to get in trouble were the morons shouting at Yankees fans, even when the Sox were getting killed, like tonight. When the Sox were way behind tonight, it was a veritable circus in the upper deck, with people throwing things at Sox taunters and fans getting thrown out as early as the first inning. I prefer watching baseball to acting like a jackass, but that’s me.

On the subway home, I saw an old man get into a heated debate with a college-age girl in a Sox hat about how the Yankees were a better team because they’re fans didn’t behave like that. Right, had the game been at Fenway, there wouldn’t have been a single drunken Yankee fan causing trouble. Bastions of class and decency, Yankee fans.

This was an interesting exchange I witnessed. A group of rowdy college-girl Sox fans were chanting “Yankees Suck!” during game 2. A group of 30-ish Sex and the City-looking female Yankee fans turned and looked at them with disgust.

Yanks girls: You know you aren’t making a good impression for your team with that foul language.
Sox girls: Whatever, fuck you bitch.
Yanks girls (looking at the Sox girls’ sandals): Oh yeah? Why don’t you try getting a pedicure for once in your life. (Then they stormed out of the stadium).
Sox girls (cracking up): Did she just say ‘why don’t you get a pedicure” as a comeback?

I’ve had my fill of a handful of songs after going to three games in a row. “This is Why I’m Hot” played every time A-Rod got up to bat, and “New York, New York” played on a constant loop after every game (win or lose). They play the Darth Vader music when the Boston lineup is introduced and the heroic Star Wars music for the Yankees. This despite the face that Yankees fans wear shirts that say “Evil Empire” on them. (Embrace the Dark Side, Yankee brass.) And for some ridiculous reason, they play “Cotton Eyed Joe” in the eighth inning of every game, introduced by noted hayseed Roger Clemens. People really seem to get into that one, dancing all around the stadium, because they apparently think they’re at an early ‘90s middle school dance.

There were also actual baseball games to be played, but I presume you know the outcome if you care. While they weren’t the most exciting I’ve ever seen, they were entertaining enough. On Monday and Wednesday, the Yankees jumped out to an early lead and didn’t look back, on Tuesday the Sox did. There wasn’t a whole lot of drama in any of them, but I had a good time. And the Yankees are still 9.5 games back, so I can handle the two losses. Who knows when I’ll have the time, money and ability to go to three Sox-Yankees games in a row again?

People who complained that I don’t write enough on the blog, be careful what you wish for...

All right, everyone who's bugged me for not updating

You know who you are. It was just pretty crazy the last few weeks of school and updating the blog was at the bottom of the list. But as of Wednesday afternoon, I am a graduate of the journalism school and don't yet have a job, so I've got nothing but time. For starters, I'm passing along some photos and videos of graduation. I don't have anything particularly clever to say about them right now, but I'll write more later.

My photos are on Flickr, check them out here. I didn't take a whole lot of pictures, actually, but you get the idea. 40,000-odd people crammed into the quad. It was a scene, man.

The graduation page on the J-school site has a photo of the entire class (I'm in the back row, under the "Founded by Joseph Pulitzer 1912" sign on the wall -- get out your magnifying glass) and audio of the addresses for the two J-school commencement ceremonies. You didn't even to fly to New York, you could have just watched it online!

Ditto the entire two-hour university commencement, which is online here, not that I recommend you watch the whole thing. It's at the bottom of the page, click on "University Commencement, Event Archive (Real Player)". The J-school gets its degrees at one hour, ten minutes and about 10 seconds in: 1:10:10, just skip RealPlayer ahead to that point and hear us drown out Nick Lemann's speech with chants of "J-school! J-school! J-school!"

There was a photo of the bleachers in the New York Times on Thursday, and if you squint, you could see my face in the crowd. Alas, it was just a photo and not an article, so it's not online. But you can read the story of J-school commencement from the Columbia newspaper here.

Here are two little videos I took from the bleachers during the commencement ceremony with my little $90 digital photo camera, which explains the quality. First is the procession, for anyone who's a Pomp and Circumstance junkie.



This is the grand finale, after degrees were awarded and they blasted an appropriate song over the PA system.



The J-school ceremony was held at the same time as Columbia Class Day, so we missed the address by this year's illustrious speaker. In the past it's been Tony Kushner and John McCain, this year we got...Matthew Fox, the star of Lost. After all the whining and complaining among students about having a TV star as a commencement speaker, I think his speech was very nice -- amusingly self-deprecating but also thoughtful and heartfelt. What else would you expect from Dr. Jack Shephard? I didn't shoot this video, but it was on YouTube.



More soon. I swear.