Image and Word

Turning 30 is a very reflective time. And, being myself, I used the opportunity to reflect on my own petty quirks and preferences. I am sure I missed plenty of things I love in this compilation, so consider what is assembled here to be a pretty good estimation of the best 30 cultural and media items to cross my path lo these 30 years.

30. Danger Mouse: This droll British cartoon about a secret agent mouse and his cowardly hamster sidekick was the television equivalent of training wheels, preparing young funnybones for future enjoyment of Monty Python.

29. Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me: I have no argument for the impact or profundity of this weekly radio quiz show, but it is like audio-comfort food, and you just can’t argue with macaroni and cheese.

28. The first sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

27. Screenwriter’s Blues, Soul Coughing: This song is aesthectically pleasing, in other words, “fly.”

26. Bird Books, in general: Ever since I was very young I could easily spend a good hour or so paging through these field guides, mentally catalouging the birds I have encountered, admiring the drawings and photographs, attempting my own sketches. Why? No idea. But I just bought a new bird book yesterday so clearly my obsession lives.

25. Heroes: It has only been one season, but even if it goes wildly downhill come the fall, Heroes will have been the brilliant meteor shower that you got up at 3 a.m. to go watch with your Dad when you were eight and remember forever as the one of the most amazing and entrancing things you’ve ever seen.

24. From Here to Eternity: This movie is more than the classic embrace-in-the-crashing-surf scene. Try not to tear up when Pvt. Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) plays a bugle salute to the fallen Maggio (Frank Sinatra) or not to hold your breath through the tempestuous first meeting between Karen Holmes (Deborah Kerr) and Sgt. Warden (Burt Lancaster, embodying the term ‘barrel-chested’).

23. The State: Among many other reasons, for bringing us monkey research. No wait. “Research is such a restrictive term. I feel I’ve opened up a whole new arena of experimentation which I call ‘Monkey Torture.’”

22. No matter how many times I see it, I will flip to the channel showing A Few Good Men, just to hear this: “Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives…You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall.”

21. Network, specifically the dialogue: The script of this movie is clearly the work of someone who simply loves the sound, the meaning, the rhythm and cadence or words.

20. Crazy, as sung by either Patsy Cline or Willie Nelson: Plaintive heartbreak at its most elegant. This song is spare, simple, and nearly perfect.

19. It Happened One Night: Once upon a time in Hollywood the double entendre was a finely-honed craft. Here, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert elevate it to a sly and sexy art.

18. Spongmonkeys: They have a pepper bar.

17. Cracker: If the crime-drama gods told me that, for the rest of my life, I could have one episode of Cracker, or the entire catalogue of all three Law and Order franchises the choice would be clear. The subtlety and the complex characters (and the British accents?) make even a little bit of Cracker infinitely more filling than an entire season of any American production in the genre.

16. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: I am still looking for the magic closet that will turn me into a mythical queen. In the meantime I will have to settle for regular re-readings of this first and best of the Narnia books.

15. Leaves of Grass: Just because.

14. Northern Exposure: If Northern Exposure were a new show today, would I like it or would I find it too full of self-conscious quirk? No matter, the talking trees, errant satellites, and especially the bohemian local DJ/armchair philosopher were irresistible to me in high school. And with that unique variety of nostalgia that high school obsessions can induce, I love it to this day.

13. This line of the American President: “My name is Andrew Shepherd and I AM the president.” Hey, I dig righteous indignation, especially as written by Aaron Sorkin (see also #22).

12. Ten: The 80s are in right now; grunge must be making a comeback soon. I am dusting off my flannels and army boots at this very moment.

11. The Green Sky Trilogy: In later years, I have come to find the books’ veiled politics a bit wearisome, yet the exquisitely sketched alternate world where the denizens glide from tree branch to tree branch on silken wings has never failed to captivate me.

10. Automatic for the People: It’s 1995. I’m feeling angsty. Lying on my bed in the dark, listening to Michael Stipe croon, “I will try not to breathe, this decision is mine…”

9. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock- “Let us go then, you and I…”

8. 10 Things I Hate About You: Unlike many other teen movies in which an outsider protagonist finds love and suddenly starts acting and dressing like his or her more mainstream classmates, in this high school-based adaptation of the Taming of the Shrew the character of Kat (Julia Stiles) gets her man, but never loses her fierce sense of non-conformity. Score one for the outcasts.

7. New Partner, by Palace Music: Just ask my college roomates if I ever get sick of this song.

6. Clue: The movie that taught us that the chief duty of butlers is to butle, and that “Monkeys’ brains, though popular in Cantonese cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington D.C.”

5. Colin Firth’s performances in Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Love Actually, Girl With a Pearl Earring, and What a Girl Wants: No other actor in movies today is undone by love quite so well as Colin Firth. He plays it steely and distant and yet always clearly telegraphs the affection (whether paternal or romantic) that simmers beneath his icy surfaces. And when, in most of these films, he finally submits to his passion it is with a headlong rush that is all the more satisfying because of his previous sternness.

4. The Princess Bride: Yes, Fred Savage, the story on which this movie is base is indeed a kissing book. An awesome, awesome kissing book.

3. Sonnet #18: I probably shouldn’t even try to bother elaborating on why this most famous of Shakepeare sonnets is, you know, good.

2. Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson: I am indeed a transparent eyeball.

1. Pride and Prejudice: The mini-series, the movie, and, above all, the book. “You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on the subject forever.” Sigh.

Matt Damon is nice and all. Julia Stiles is pleasant in her way and Joan Allen exudes an interesting sort of steely toughness. But in the Bourne Ultimatum, these three are but planets orbiting the radiant magnificence of David Strathairn.

Strathairn is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Edward R. Murrow in George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck, but he has been poking around in character roles and indy films for years. In the Bourne Ultimatum, he plays Noah Vosen, a high-level CIA operative who knows were the bodies are buried or, at least, where they were taken down by ruthless trained assassins. He is cold and hard, and Strathairn makes clear that, underneath this reserve, he enjoys his power just a little too much. As he explains the dark significance of the black ops Blackbriar program to fellow agent Pamela Landy (Allen), the faintest whisper of a near-smile plays across his lips. Strathairn captures perfectly the arc from smug triumph to defeated resignation when Vosen realizes that Landy has discovered and revealed his secrets. He elevates the part of the soulless bureaucrat, shading Vosen with tints of malice, desperation, panic, and even fear.

The subtlety that Strathairn brings to Vosen also characterizes the whole movie. With a restraint essentially unheard of in action films, director Paul Greengrass dares to hint at emotional undercurrents and then leave these suggestions hanging in the air. He allows, for example, a cryptic but suggestive exchange between logistics agent Nicky Parsons (Stiles) and the titular amnesiac killer (Damon) to go unexplained.

At the risk of over-interpreting (though something about the film does seem to invite associative thinking), it is this unconventional approach to the genre that makes the Bourne trilogy so compelling. Bourne is insecure, searching for himself. He is, in hyperbolic form, every one of us who has wondered if we are just a cog in some larger machine or feared that we are not our own self-made creations but instead the sum of others’ expectations for us. And in the Bourne movies, as in our own lives, questions sometimes go unanswered, connections flicker across our consciousnesses and then evaporate.

Bourne is us and we are Bourne. Just with a little less kicking ass.

Tonight, a first. Guest essayist Neil Freese lives the life of the rich and famous. Sort of.

­When someone mentions off-hand that you resemble a celebrity or other public figure, more often than not they intend for this to come across as a compliment. Of this I am certain.

For instance, last week when I told I one of my co-workers that he looked like Tom Hanks, it was supposed to be a good thing. I meant the youthful, spry Tom Hanks from Big and Splash, not the wet-rat-on-the-banks-of-the-Seine Hanks who hobbled through The DaVinci Code. Obviously.

I remember quite clearly the cool fall afternoon in 1995 when someone, probably a classmate, possibly my mom, told me that I looked just like Hugh Grant. In theory there was nothing terribly wrong with this statement, considering that Grant is wonderfully accented (like all Brits, of course) and occasionally dashing. However, he famously enjoyed his prostitutes and would later star in Notting Hill.

At the time I couldn’t have known about Notting Hill, which wasn’t released until 1998, but it was enough knowing that Grant had recently been arrested in his car in West Hollywood getting oral pleasure from a lady of the night, cheating on then-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley. I also knew that he often wore pleated khaki pants and hideously oversize sweaters. In addition, this new association with old Hugh made me wonder if my extensive orthodontic work had been all for naught.

No matter how sexy and popular the celebrity, the moment we are compared to him or her we immediately single out their flaws. Maybe I’m speaking for myself here, but I doubt it.

We figure that we share these flaws, and that must be what reminds people of said celebrity. Thus, I knew it wasn’t my blue eyes which made people think of Hugh Grant, but rather my as-yet-undiscovered love of hookers.

I cured my resemblance to Grant right after high school, when I cut off my foppish blond hair. But since 1995, I’ve grown to look like all sorts of other well-known folks.

Example: A few years back my aunt Shellie told me I looked like Dirk Nowitzki, the cyborgian German power forward of the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise. Shellie probably thought this meant: You are tall, studly and a dangerous perimeter shooter. What it actually meant was this: You have sunken eyes and a large nose and an Aryan way about you.

Then, two years ago, it was stylish among my circle of friends to discuss how closely I resembled Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who at the time was portraying all sorts of psychotic douche bags in big-budget films. I assumed that people thought I was crazy, too, and that I had freakishly large cheekbones. Turns out it was probably my track jacket which made me look like Murphy.

Lately, I seem to remind people of perpetually under-the-radar character actor James Marsden, and I’m rather okay with that. Except that Marsden has big teeth, which means that I also have big teeth. Or, maybe what it really means is that I can shoot lasers from my eyes just like Marsden did in both X-Men and X-2 .

I just don’t know how to activate the lasers yet.