RIP, Lucky

We called her Lucky because of the way she came to us. One day about 13 years ago, my mom's assistant was driving someplace when the very evil person in the car in front of her flung a bag out the window. The bag moved. The assistant hit her brakes, collected the bag, and found a puppy inside. Lucky.

We debated what to do with her for a week or so, while she lived at my mom's office, but it was pretty clear Lucky was going to be my parents' dog.

She was one of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen. My friends joked that she was a tauntaun, from Empire Strikes Back. We often called her Poopie Dog, for some reason. Maybe because of the farts she'd let slip while laying next to us. But she was beautiful.

Lucky loved to chase squirrels (and a few times, when she was young and spry and really lucky, to catch and eat them), go for long run-walks, and eat human food. Roast beef drove her crazy. One Christmas dinner, while the family all had our backs turned, Lucky managed to leap up on the dining room table and suck down almost half of a big plate of prime rib, all in a matter of seconds and without making a sound. One minute there was leftover prime rib. The next there was an empty plate, and a very content and sleepy dog.

She was clever. Dad had to repeatedly re-design latches on doors in the house before he finally figured out a mechanism that Lucky couldn't open, to keep her out of the cats' litter boxes and the bedrooms. She was too smart for fetch -- it bored her quickly. Her absolute favorite game was tug-of-war, I think because she sometimes won. She and I would play tug-of-war for 10 or 15 minutes at a stretch. Sometimes she would grip the rope so tightly I could lift her off the floor by her jaws.

Though she lived with my parents in Florida, I always thought of her as my dog -- the only one I ever had. The last time I saw her was Christmas of 2009, when she was slow to get up but still game for a couple minutes of tug-of-war. Until the end, we all thought her problems were just arthritis, not a tumor.

I'm told she died peacefully in her sleep and was in no pain. We should all be so lucky.

The endorsement: "District 9"

Best sci-fi movie I've seen since ... uh, well, Wall-E. Still, this flick has everything: humor, heart, and most importantly, brutal and disgusting gore and violence. Makes Watchmen look like The Sound of Music.

The girlfriend didn't like it much.

By the way: You know who needs a cute alien boy who saves the day, Will Leitch, you heartless douchebag?

THIS GUY.

P.S. -- So it's been a while. Explanation, offered with no apology: I keep friends and aquaintances more up-to-date via Facebook these days.

The alexwayne.com review: Watchmen

Apparently, Watchmen did about $55 million in business this weekend, good enough for first place but not really spectacular or anything. This doesn't surprise me. Most of that money must have been made Friday and Saturday, because at my 5 p.m. Sunday showing, the theater was better than half empty. And at least ten seats were taken up by some teenage girls who giggled throughout the movie. I strongly suspect they had not read the graphic novel.

I have, which gives me a certain perspective on the movie. I thought it was very good, not excellent. As I suspected would happen, some of the dialogue that seemed cool in the comic book didn't translate so well to the big screen. Parts of the movie seemed a little hokey. And the soundtrack was just terrible. At times, it was as if the director had chosen songs in order to deliberately make already, uh, delicate scenes seem even more hokey. Example: An impotent character finally manages to have sex with the female lead. Musical accompaniment: Some kind of Marilyn Manson-ish remake of "Hallelujah." Seriously. Bottom-level creativity there.

Anyhow, I wonder what folks who hadn't read the comic thought about the movie. About midway through, one of the major characters disappears from Earth, reappears on Mars, and proceeds to build this giant glass clock/spaceship thing and float around for a while, pontificating on the nature of man. It was a bit disconcerting even to a fan of the comic. I suspect that stuff like that contributed to the non-spectacular gross.

There's been a lot of debate about the ending of the movie, which is completely different in practice (though not in effect) from the book. But here's the dirty little secret of Watchmen: The book's ending is kind of stupid. I didn't love the ending of the movie, either, but it does make a certain kind of sense that the book didn't. 

There was one pretty tremendous acting performance that deserves mention: Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. Far and away the best performance of the movie -- although he admittedly has the meatiest role. (Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a great job as The Comedian, too.) Nobody in film today plays a creep as well as Haley -- if you've seen Little Children, you know what I mean. He has a curious bio on IMDB -- from 1993 until 2006, he apparently did not work in film. Nobody ever said Hollywood is smart.

(Speaking of: the Oscars this year were a complete fucking farce, aside from Heath Ledger winning Best Supporting Actor. And since it's been like forever since the Academy Awards and I'm late to this conversation, I'll leave it at that.)

Anyway, I cautiously recommend Watchmen. Be aware that it's not a typical superhero movie and also that it is, like, hyper-violent. Some of the gore even took me aback, and I'm not easily taken aback. And if you haven't read and enjoyed the comic, I think there's a pretty good chance you won't like the movie.

Is that still a recommendation? Eh, go see it.

Been a while, eh?

Some things that have happened since last we spoke:

1. My alma mater won another football championship. We rule. However, I sympathize with people who say that Utah, or USC, or even Texas (a far weaker argument) ought to be recognized as the "real" national champions. Florida is merely the BCS champion. Which is still more than the Utes can say, so suck it.

2. Charlie LeDuff wrote the best piece of journalism I've read so far this year. LeDuff is an interesting story. He won a Pulitzer at the New York Times for writing this. Then he left the paper, under kind of myterious circumstances, and landed at the Detroit News. I like to think that he figured a city as awful as Detroit can't help but be full of great stories.

3. We got a new president. I was on the Mall for the inauguration (working, I'm afraid). It was crowded and very cold. And to those folks who say there shouldn't be money in this "economic stimulus" bill to fix up the National Mall, I say, have you seen the place lately? It looks like a bomb went off. Is that what you want the nation's premier national park to look like?

What an idiot.

I don't know who this Charles Blow moron is, but this is the most facile thing I've read this weekend.

Unless it results in unsafe sex (and Blow concedes from the outset that "hooking up" doesn't), who gives a shit about youth social relationships, beyond a puerile or academic interest? Of all the things I worry about today, the "demise of dating" doesn't even make the fucking list. I'm ashamed that the Times gave him space to write.

Although they did manage to get me ranting about it, so I suppose that might count as a successful op-ed...

Also: Unless they've been living in a closet the last twenty years, anyone under the age of 45 -- not 30 -- probably knows all about "hooking up." Your correspondent most certainly included.

For of such is the kingdom of heaven...

A pair of my friends attend a lovely church in Greensboro, N.C. that recently made the front page of the paper there. (My former employer.)

The church runs a program in which it fills backpacks full of food, and every Friday, hands them out to poor children in some of the schools in the city. The idea is that the kids get free food for themselves and their families, and because it's in a backpack and is discretely distributed, the kids aren't stygmatized for accepting charity.

It boggles my mind that people in this country actually still go hungry. No one in the richest country in the world should ever want for food, no more than they should want for air.  

I am not a religious man. Or even a faithful man, sadly. 

But stories like this one make me appreciate and envy those friends and loved ones of mine who are.  Most are Christians. They are not the sort of Christians who try to tell the rest of the world what to do, and who to do it with; they wouldn't be my friends if they were. They are, rather, the sort of Christians who are unswervingly kind and generous and understanding.

God bless them, if there's a God to be handing out blessings. And give some money to your local food bank this season, if you can spare it.

Our financial crisis could be way worse.

We could be seeing riots in the streets over rampant pyramid schemes gone bad. Awesome.

Remember when I said I love Somali pirates? (By the way, those badasses stole a fucking 1,080 foot Saudi Arabian supertanker the other day.) I love Columbia for similar reasons.