Iconned myself again

I made another trip to the dollar store (have I mentioned I do this for fre--oh, yeah, I did, several times. Forget I wrote anything about it) and, impulsive dreamer I am, I gambled another buck on another pack of Panini Americana Heroes & Icons cards. If you need a refresher, click HERE for what I found in the first pack several weeks ago.

After opening another quintet of these cards, I hereby suggest another moniker for this series: Panini Presidents, Swimmers, and Astronauts. There just ain't a lot of variety in this assortment of "heroes and icons," and I suggest the good folks at Panini expand their definition of those terms next time out. I would love to see a fireman, Matter-Eater Lad, even a hero sandwich--anything except another Olympic swimmer (though my Summer Sanders exception still applies).

Now, I can't complain about the best card I got this time: Abraham Lincoln. You could argue a George Washington card would too it, but that would be like arguing about a Reggie Jackson or a Shooty Babitt. I mean, they're both awesome, right? And this Abe card is pretty cool, though the text on the back doesn't even give George Washington a place at the table:

To the overwhelming majority of historians there is no debating that Lincoln was our greatest president."

Whoa! That's pretty definitive, Panini. I hope you'd keep a more open mind when choosing between Reggie and Shooty.

After ol' Honest Abe, anything might seem a letdown. President William McKinley suffers a little bit from being in the same pack with one of the all-time greats. Hey, I just noticed two assassinated chief execs in one group of cards--that's a little odd.

Next up, it's swimmer time, and today's athlete is Rowdy Gaines. He seems a decent enough guy, and I always have love for those '84 Olympians in particular, but...eh, yeah.

Then we get to the requisite astronaut portion of our pack, and this time out it's Charles Duke and Dick Gordon. Again, much respect to our moonwalkers, but two of them? I would rather have had a little more variety WITHIN the pack, let alone among the two I've bought.

So I think I'm done with the Heroes & Icons cards. I'm only gonna be disappointed by the presidents, swimmers, and astronauts from here on out. At 20 cents a card, these are kind of cool, but I still think my money would be better spent looking for 1982 Shooty Babbits.

Brooks on Books: The Great American Cereal Book by Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis

When my sister gave me this for Christmas, she almost apologized. She knew I was getting a lot of Kindle books, and I think maybe she feared I had moved on from regular, old books. But that is not the case, not at all, especially when those regular, old books are as well designed and just...cool-looking as "The Great American Cereal Book."

It's a hefty and sturdy but easily browsed hardcover volume that is designed to look like a smaller version of a cereal box. The spine even has a white "Nutrition Facts" box listing serving size, ingredients, and percentage of daily value (like Sugar: 100%). We are informed that it "MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS." This is a nice touch that shows the care put into the book.

Once you open the book, you get something that's laid out much like an encyclopedia. The story of cereal begins with a brief origin, and then it's arranged by different eras (the last one is 1981-2010), with each chronological chapter beginning with a brief text history of that time period. Then there is an alphabetical listing of individual cereals from that era, with each concise entry detailing the manufacturer, the dates it started and ended (if it did), the ingredients, and fun facts like different variations that appeared and celebrities and fictional characters used to promote it. Occasional sidebars like "The Cap'n Crunch Story" take several pages to examine a given topic or a specific cereal in depth. Throughout the book, the text is crisp, and the overall layout makes a smooth, pleasurable reading experience.

But, hey, did I mention the illustrations?

Oh, are there illustrations in "The Great American Cereal Book." Not every entry has an accompanying picture, but there are tons of great shots of cereal boxes, many of them taking up a full page, all in glorious color. There are also examples of magazine and comic ads as well as promotional items and giveaways. The authors subtitled this "How Breakfast Got Its Crunch," and you do get a good overview of the history of this food item, but the main appeal here, and the reason why I didn't want a Kindle version of this, is all the fantastic pictures.

I don't know if the selection of cereals is comprehensive, but there sure are a lot of obscure ones included alongside the famous supermarket staples. As a test, I looked for one particular not so fondly remembered effort from back in the day. As soon as I held the book in my hands and saw how it was set up, I went to the back and leafed through its pages hoping to find this test item. Not only is it included, but it has a full-page illustration of a sample box, a typically bombastic example of how offensive this item and its source material was. I am talking about that short-lived phenomenon known as...

Urkel-O's:

As soon as I saw that, I figured the book was all right with me. Reading the whole thing did not disappoint. "The Great American Cereal Book" is a "regular, old book" from Abrams that looks gorgeous and is full of interesting information. It earns a strong recommendation for anyone with any interest in this kind of thing.

This Week in DVD and Instant Watching

Cloud Atlas: This is the most significant new movie on DVD this week, and it's also probably the most confusing. Not that I saw it. Or did I? Maybe this is the kind of ambiguity the movie gives you. Or maybe it isn't. Whatever this film is, it seems like the fact that Tom Hanks agreed to do it is yet another reason why he is the coolest Hollywood type around. And I think anything the Wachowski siblings (I finally remembered not to say brothers) is worth seeing. Unless it's "Speed Racer."

Liz and Dick: It's a sad week when this is arguably the SECOND most significant new movie on DVD. This the train wreck of a TV movie starring that train wreck of an actr--uh, movie sta--uh, celb--uh, that train wreck Lindsay Lohan. This video should come pre-packaged with an assortment of miniature vodka bottles.

Frankie Go Boom: I highlight this just because it stars Chris O'Dowd, and it gives me a reason to mention that his Britcom "The IT Crowd"  is coming back for a wrap-up special.

Back to 1942: An oddity here: A Chinese movie starring Adrian Brody and Tim Robbins. If this is who they're luring over there to headline their films, well, suddenly I'm not so worried about Chinese domination anymore.

3:10 to Yuma (Criterion): A few years ago, I saw the James Mangold remake, simply titled "Yuma," BEFORE I saw this Glenn Ford-starring original, and you know what? I actually preferred the remake. It was tough enough to say that in public, but now that Criterion has designated the original as worthy of its Collection...well, I feel like just about the most ignorant cuss out there. I was clearly wrong.

Jubal (Criterion): Well, I can--nay, I must--also now acknowledge that "Jubal" is an undisputed classic, as it, too, joins the Criterion Collection. I can only thank the heavens that a sharp remake of it didn't come out in the last decade and force me to look like a complete ass by praising it.

Wrestlemania XXIX: WWE's annual extravaganza was filled with public relations, music, public service announcements, tributes to corporate partnerships, and, oh, yeah, some wrestling. You'll get the wrestling on this DVD.

And in streaming...

I give Hulu credit for being much more reliable lately. Maybe I should curse it, actually, because its consistent performance allowed me to watch, against my better judgment, several episodes of the One Life to Live revamp. I've never been a soap guy--I prefer body wash--but I think these iconic programs, and relaly this genre, deserves a place somewhere. So I support the efforts of OLTL and All My Children, and I hope this experiment goes well.

Having said that, I have hundreds of titles in my Netflix queue, many of them entire TV series. I have a Hulu queue that is overstuffed, though to a lesser extent.  Do I really need another option? No. No, I do not.

On the Road: PNC Park (Part 3)

Still MORE stuff I learned while watching some baseball with my father in the 'Burgh...

*"Turn It On Again" by Genesis is a pretty cool song in the right circumstance: PNC Park played this Wednesday night to get the fans excited...then abandoned it. Hey, it's a pretty good "get pumped" song. I am all in favor of more Philbert Collins at the ballpark. I would support a campaign to make him Official MLB Ambassador of Getting Pumped.

*The National Anthem is also pretty stirring, even in a 'Burgh accent: Before Wednesday's game, the Steel City Enrico Caruso several rows behind us sang along to the "Star Spangled Banner" in full Pittsburgh voice. In fact, I was surprised the guy didn't sing, "O, say, can yinz see?"

After his spirited, entertaining, but not disrespectful rendition, the guy told his companions he was "fired up." Was it the game? Was it the song? Was it Phil Collins? I suspect it was the beer, as I heard him mention he had been drinking earlier. (Un)fortunately, he was pretty quiet once the game started.

*Pittsburghers, like fans everywhere, can have the dumbest arguments: And of course the level of discourse in the stands is inversely proportionate to the amount of beer flowing. The second night we were at the yard, Dad and I overheard some of the most inane chatter imaginable. A fan of that night's visitor, the Atlanta Braves, was in a heated running debate with some tanked hometown faithful about 10 rows down.

I can only hint at the conversation because we unfortunately forgot to send a self-addressed stamped envelope and request a transcript before we left town. Basically the talk degenerated quickly into hockey boasting, with the Bucco booster asking, "Does your town have an NHL team?" He said it more like a statement than a question, as if it alone was the definitive end to the baseball argument they were having. This led, of course, to an attempt to compare Stanley Cups won and Super Bowl rings.

The oddest thing about this chat session, and the thing that made it one of the most absurd I've ever heard in my life, was the fact that the Atlanta representative was wearing a Pirates hat. This stimulated a natural question, namely, "Why are you wearing a Pirates hat?" The unhelpful but amusing (to us) reply? "I NEVER liked them!"

This whole scenario was a solid argument in favor of cutting off beer sales at a certain point in the game, but I will say that at no point did it become too obnoxious. It mostly ran throughout the evening as occasionally jarring but mostly entertaining background chatter. Dodger fans get to take a radio and listen to Vin Scully as they sit and enjoy a game; Pirate fans get to sit back, stretch out, and take in the sounds of intelligent conversation such as that.

Stuff I Scrambled to See on Netflix Before It Expired Theater (Part 1)

The May 1 Massacre which decimated my queue ultimately had much less impact than I feared; within days most of my missing titles returned. But, oh, what fun I had in April scrambling to see a lot of the more interesting and/or rare movies while I still could (so I thought). Here then are capsule reviews of some of the stuff I saw:

High School Hellcats (1958): This teen exploitation flick isn't as lurid as it sounds (and might I say, "Damn!"), but it is an entertaining saga of a sweet girl who falls in with the bad crowd at her new school. Actually, though her parents seem like complete tools, it's hard to fathom why she would hang with the Hellcats gang at all. They don't have much going for them other than sass and matching jackets, and she herself doesn't need any social assistance. She finds a nice older soda jerk who clearly has no qualms about dating high school chicks and starts a relationship with him even while experiencing some misadventures. It all culminates in a tragedy and then a scene that's shot like a horror movie. It's worth watching for genre fans--teen exploitation, that is, not necessarily horror, unless you find bobby soxers as fearsome as mummies.

GORP (1980): Oh, this is a horrible film. It's poorly written, directed, acted, and it's cheap, derivative, and tasteless. Yet it's absolutely worth seeing. I believe this is a "so bad it's good" kind of movie, but I warn you that you might well disagree.

It's a raunchy teen comedy about hijinks among the staff at a summer camp. Only problem is it's not very funny. Oh, it strains for wackiness, but though it uses just about every teen sex comedy trope you can think of (I think all it's missing is the scene in which the guys drill a hole in the wall to watch the girls shower), none of it works.

It is worth watching in a weird way, though, to see how flat it is and also catch a glimpse of the stars of tomorrow (well, now they're the stars of yesterday) like Fran Drescher and Rosanna Arquette. Michael Lembeck has the "honor" of headlining this fiasco, but the one who steals the show (and you can tell they really intended him to be the breakout Bluto Blutarsky of this thing) is Dennis Quaid, who makes a complete ass of himself as Mad Bob Grossman. He snarls, he cackles, and he moons, and he's totally over the top all the way.

Canon City (1948): Somehow this prison breakout movie never connected with me the way I hoped, but I'm not gonna say I'm not recommending it. I strongly suspect the John Alton cinematography would have been more impressive had Netflix offered a better copy of the film; after all, John Alton cinematography rules the world. There are some tense moments, and the movie picks up once the convicts hit the road, but it just never hit that next level for me. Maybe I'll give it another shot the next time it's set to expire in two weeks.

On the Road: PNC Park (Part 2)

More things I learned while at PNC Park watching the Buccos with my dad a few weeks ago:

1) Baseball is not exactly huge in the 'Burgh right now: At least it wasn't in the middle of the week in April when the Penguins are still playing. I didn't expect sellouts for Wednesday and Thursday night games when school was still in, but I expected a bit more than we saw for the Cardinals and Braves. Oh, well. I was pleased to see that among those who WERE there, many of them were young--not just small children dragged by their folks, but teenagers and people in their 20s. Who says baseball is just an old person's sport?

Seriously, who? I wanted to quote them here, but I couldn't find them.

2) If you want wings, show up early: One night, we decided, hey, we had a seat in the front row with a rail ahead of us, nobody was sitting in our row, we could stretch out and relax--why not share a bucket of wings? Oh, yeah! The wings were tasty and provided some of the best overall value in the entire place, but our options were limited because the concession stand had run out of 2 of the 4 sauces.

Who the hell operates a wing stand that runs out of wing sauce before game time in the middle of a homestand, with a weekend series coming up, no less? Apparently, the Best Ballpark in America!

I repeat, the wings were great, but still, that was odd. And speaking of bizarre...

3) The Pirates have some weird-ass scoreboard videos: The team rotates through a series of pre-produced videos showing each player and runs them on the big board as they come to the plate. The oddest assortment is comprised of the player doing a serious pose, then turning to the camera as we FREEZE FRAME.

That would be innocuous enough if not for the fact that the shot lingers on the giant scoreboard while the at-bat occurs, creating an awkward situation for everyone: The players because they are trying to hit 95-mile-an-hour fastballs while gargantuan mug shot of themselves loom high over the outfield, the fans because the effect is reminiscent of "Police Squad."

Remember how at the end of every episode, everyone, or almost everyone, would remain motionless as if they were in a cheesy freeze frame but they were really just staying still while the cameras rolled? Yeah, these scoreboard videos are kind of like that.