We both knew there was no way I'd let work get in the way of me posting random thoughts on TOP GUN. Come on, you know me better than that.
1. Can Cougar just basically quit the Navy like that? Isn't there some sort of years-of-service requirement or, more importantly, a contractual obligation? What did they do, stick him down in the mess or something? "Hey Cougar, man, tough going. Sorry." "Thanks, Mav." "Yeah, so can I get the salisbury steak?"
2. James Tolkan is Michael J. Fox's height. Which is to say he's shorter than Tom Cruise. Which is to say he's about 5'5". That's mind blowing if you think about it.
3. The hard deck for the first hop was 10,000 feet. While Mav knew it and broke it, the entire dogfight was under 10,000 feet, right? Racing just over the mountaintops, etc.
4. I still have no idea what time of day the opening scene takes place. Looks like it starts at early morning, but then when they take off it's bright, then the dogfight is in daylight but they keep cutting back to the carrier which is in the dark, and when they land it's in complete dark. But the fight is only a couple hundred miles away.
5. It really is pretty fucking gay.
6. Top Gun is my go-to movie for explaining to people who Adrian Pasdar is after I tell them Natalie Maines is married to Adrian Pasdar, and even then it doesn't always work. "He's sitting next to the black guy from Walker Texas Ranger during the commencement speech." "There's a black guy in Top Gun?" "Yeah, well, he's sitting next to him."
7. You know how the Hackman/Hershey relationship in HOOSIERS was maybe the most demagnitized screen romance possible? Now I don't know. This one comes close.
8. People seem to forget that Tim Robbins was in this. Tim Robbins probably forgets it.
9. I love that the battle scene bookends are set in the Indian Ocean, the Pete Best of the oceanic realm.
10. Anthony Edwards was awesome as Goose. Seriously. Just throwing that out there.
11. There's no way Cruise would've been able to spike a volleyball over a regulation net.
1) Nowhere in "Top Gun Anthem" is an actual piano played. Keyboard, yes, but not a grand piano. Although it's worth it just to see the surprisingly ginger Harold Faltermeyer cram himself into a white Crockett suit.
2) This video makes the movie, already an icon of latent homosexuality, five, ten percent gayer. Easily.
I may come back with more random thoughts on TOP GUN as time and energy allow.
This post is inspired by and dedicated to my sister Mollie. When we were kids and our folks had gone to bed and our older sisters were nowhere to be found, we'd often congregate down in the family room, the one with the bigger television and our grandmother's rocking chair, and stay up late watching talk shows and stand-up comedy. One of our favorites, which seemed to run nearly every night, was Gallagher. You know, the watermelon-smashing guy. I spent an hour of otherwise billable time trying to track down web video of smashing, but the best I could find was this classic bit with the giant couch. Somehow extraordinarily dated and timeless at the same time. Grown men on trampolines will do that. Love ya Molls.
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As a special bonus, I was also able to track down Bill Cosby's classic dentist bit, which comes from our family's holy grail of stand-up, "Bill Cosby: Himself."
Closet Skeleton 1: The Hijacking of the Spaceship: DELTA
My skeletons are buried in a box in the depths of my basement closet. From time to time, usually when I'm cleaning or moving, or both, I unearth them. I dig out the plastic bin where they're kept, remove the stacks of heavy yearbooks that weigh them down, and unfold the flaps of the Trapper folder which holds their secrets. The one marked "Story Collections" with my name at the bottom, both of them written in the hand of a little boy who was fascinated by haunted houses, submarines, and UFOs.
That I've held on to them all these years is not so much an indicator of their quality (believe me, it's not), or even sentimental value; instead, they serve as a reminder of the unabashed joy there is to be had in the simple act of storytelling. When I was a kid it rarely took me more than a few days to finish a story, sometimes only a few hours. A story idea was like Christmas Eve to me; I'd become obsessed with finishing it, thinking about the surprises of writing like so many Christmas presents under the tree. It sounds so precious, I know, but writing was perhaps the purest experience of my childhood. Not the blips of the Nintendo. Not the junk food. Not the late night movies. Not the Entertech pistols or the Reebok pumps or the Pogo balls. Just me and my imagination.
As an exercise in humility, I thought it might be fun to share some of these old stories, at least those short enough to retype (many are self-indulgent pontifications on the nature of life, and catching spies). I considered adding jokes and commentary, but in the end I think the stories are funny enough by themselves in their seriousness. Plus, The Wonder Years already did it. Maybe in the future I'll add a running commentary. I should point out first that the ONLY changes I made to this first entry were paragraph breaks. I recopied it as is, in all its glory.
So, without further adieu, I give you:
The Hijacking of the Spaceship: DELTA
setting: Earth, and the Moon Date: September 15, 2120
"T-minus and counting. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, BLASTOFF!" The spaceship blasted off, heading for the moon. The Delta was the first passenger ship to the moon. It was like a flying cruise ship. But instead, it was a spaceship. "Cabin 51, sir." said the desk clerk. "Thank you" I said. "Cabin 52, sir." "Okay, come on guys." "Right boss." When my family and I got to our room, I opened the door. The cabin was very nice. The kids all ran in and started jumping on the beds. As any normal father would, I yelled at them, and told them to stop. And as any mother would, she defended the children. "Oh, they're just trying to have fun." "Alright kids, go get your bathing suits on, and we're going down to the swimming pool, and then we're going to go to dinner, so bring your nice clothes, so you can change in the bathroom." "Okay dad. We're ready." "Wow! People are right, kids are getting much, much, much faster these days." "Give us a break dad, this is the 21st century, in the next room there's a cool clothes dresser." "I must be getting old. Let's go." We went down to the pool. An hour after that, we went to a restaurant." "Okay, tonight we hijack the ship." said the hijackers. "I'll have shrimp cocktail." I said. The hijackers started walking down the hall to the restaurant carrying M-16s + grenades, + RPGs. When they got there they yelled "Alright! Everybody down!" They all fired into the air and put holes in the ceiling. The men started to talk to each other in Libyan. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but I knew they were planning something devious. When they were through talking, the leader started to walk forward and talk to us. "Okay, all we want, is the gold that is hidden somewhere in this ship. On your way back to your cabin, leave all your valuables with him." The man asked the purser where the cockpit was. He went to the cockpit. When he got there, he opened the door he told the pilot to land immediately. The pilot refused. "If you don't land now we'll kill one of the hostages." "You're bluffing." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!" One of the men came over and hit me on the back of the head. "All right! All right! I'll do what you say, but please don't hurt one of them." "I won't if you land." "Oh all right, I'll land." "Shuttle, please identify yourself." "Shuttle Delta, passenger shuttle." "You have permission to land on runway 3." "Turning off afterburners. This is your captain speaking, please buckle your seatbelts, we are now landing." The shuttle landed and all the women and children got out, but the men stayed in. The hijackers made us look for the gold. While I was in my cabin looking for gold, I took the clothes dresser apart and made a gun out of it. I burst out the door and shot the hijackers. They were badly injured. We returned to Earth and I got the Merit Award for Bravery. The gold was found and taken to Fort Knox.
I hope you got everything you want and nothing you need.
I left a piece of cake for you in the fridge. I know you don't want it now but I know you'll be back to eat it later.
I'll leave a candle burning on the cake, and not the trick kind. Those are for amateurs.
Michigan won and Notre Dame lost.
Dinner's up to you tonight. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go.
I wanted to buy a card but I didn't know where I should send it, so instead I quietly told a joke to myself about dads and duct tape. After that I did an impression of you looking at me (also played by me) incredulously, wondering why you always get cards like that.
I tried to sing "Happy Birthday" but couldn't get through it, so the thought will have to count.
I have more thoughts but can't get through them either, so these will have to count for now.
My Dad lost his brave fight with lung cancer on July 6. He was 68. Too young for anyone to go, let alone someone with such vivacity. He'd never been in the hospital before. He'd never had any serious illness I can recall. But in the last couple of years he had a cough. Turned out to be a sign of things to come.
My Mom cared and tended to him every day for the past five months. Such a strong unit. I'm grieving for a father, but she's grieving for a life partner. In the end it's the most helpless feeling imaginable. You can't do anything for those who suffer and you can't do anything for those who grieve. You can only do for yourself, and even that's overwhelming.
The funeral was last Thursday in Rhode Island, where we had our best times as a family. It was lovely and moving and excruciating and sobering and life-affirming. I got to see him one last time at the viewing and he didn't look sick anymore, and that's the best I can say. You're not sick anymore, Dad.
Now I'm left with so many happy memories and the frustration that while I always knew him as a father, I was just starting to get to know him as a man. As both, he was and always will be my hero.
You might call me a bathroom connoisseur. (You might call me a lot of things, natch, but regrettably, possessor of a nose for bathrooms is among them.) Since there's no possible way for that to come out right, let me explain.
My first job was as a bagging clerk at a grocery store, at one of the last stores it seems that gave a shit about its customers. It was an independent local Michigan chain, and so there was a faster throughline between the stores and the owner's credo: The customer always comes first. Not after your break. Not after that phone call from your friend who needs to know who's picking up whom before the big party (which is to say, four guys sitting on a couch watching Chris Farley movies). Not after you're done helping two other people figure out how much a can of corn is. Not after "I'm really tired." Never. You tended to the customer on the customer's terms, and you always abided by the Eight Tile Rule: If you came within eight floor tiles of a customer, you asked how they were doing, if they were finding everything all right, if they needed anything, if they wanted me jerk you off...(sorry, just had a "big party" flashback).
It sounds worse than it was. It sounds like bag clerks were the indentured servants of the food distribution industry. For some, the kids filled with self-hatred (teenagers? nah...), it was. It was a shit job for no money. But for a majority of us, it sincerely was an avenue to help people. We all became friends, kids with common interests and common sensibilities. We were sort of like the band kids.
And we were clerks in the truest sense. Not only did we bag (and there was a cashier and a bagger for each live register), but we carried the groceries out to each customer's car. We loaded them up and we weren't allowed to accept tips (most of us didn't). I even remember driving an elderly woman home after she'd taken a cab to the store and stranded herself there with a cart full of groceries she couldn't get home. Those motorized carts just don't have proper torque. It turned out - and I swear I'm not making this up - she was the most overtly racist person I've ever met in my life. I was stuck in my own car, sitting in her driveway, listening to her spew the most hateful, vitriolic ignorance I'd ever heard. Before I got her out of the car she tried to rope me into a job mowing her lawn and taking care of her house. Ever the slick huckster, I managed to make it out of there without committing myself to either. I wonder if she got someone to cover the skid marks my tires left in her driveway.
When I got back to the store it was time to take care of any one of a number of maintenance chores the clerks were responsible for. We cleaned the floor of the store. We did stocking. We did un-stocking (you ever wonder how those eggs get back into the dairy case when you decide you don't want them at the last minute? Okay, maybe you don't). We did cart runs out in the parking lot, which led to machismo-fueled strings of dozens of carts. We dinged a few cars but we got the job done.
We also, gulp, cleaned the bathrooms. Top to bottom, spic and span. Until they gleamed. Bathrooms are an essential-yet-overlooked piece of the customer experience. Customers should feel comfortable using the bathrooms provided by the businesses they patronize. Not to wax poetic about it, but a store's public restroom is really a microcosm of its commitment to service. It's like a secret, anonymous blog the store is writing about how it really feels about its customers, but it's written in giant letters on posterboard for all to see, and it's signed by everyone who works there
This is the long way of saying that Borders apparently doesn't give a shit about its customers.
There are several Borders stores in the DC area. I imagine they appeal to the hipsters this town is infected with. (Look! Chuck Palahniuk!) I go there often because, despite my judgments about its demographics, they usually have a great selection of soundtracks and off-the-beaten-path DVDs. Normally, a person would avoid using the Borders' bathrooms so often that he would be able to compare and contrast the hygiene and presentation of said bathrooms, but two facts should be noted: 1) A certain mentor of mine taught me to never pass by a water fountain or a bathroom; and 2) You only need to enter a Borders bathroom once to see what kind of contempt they have for their customers.
It's a shithole.
No, seriously, puns aside, it's a shithole.
Wet, nasty floors. Toilets and urinals that haven't seen the working end of a scrub brush since Nathan Good left Death Cab. Malfunctioning paper dispensers, many of which have been pried open and left that way. Graffiti on the walls and stall doors (one gentleman was kind enough to leave the forwarding number of an attractive young woman willing to escort a lonely soul about town; I assume "rimjob" has something to do with a romantic walk along the mouth of the Tidal Basin).
There's just nothing clean about it. There's nothing comfortable about it. And it's like this in every bathroom in every Borders store I go into. I should make myself a little badge and issue the store a citizens health code violation. It's not as though I expect leather couches and free acupuncture in every public restroom, but what Borders is doing amounts to a giant "Fuck you" to its customers.
Why is this? How does an otherwise upscale, reputable, falling-over-itself-for-educated-suburbanites store chain like Borders force each customer to climb through Dante's Inferno to take a whizz?
Believe it or not, I have a theory. Perhaps it's not as sturdy as my theory that ROAD HOUSE is the greatest Western ever made (see here), but it's a theory nonetheless. I think Borders employees feel that they are above cleaning bathrooms, so much so that for the most part nobody does it. Can you imagine the typical Borders employee, fawning over Gabriel Garcia Marquez while wearing that ridiculous headset, getting himself a sponge and wiping down the sink? You think he even knows where the mop is? I just don't see it. That said, and given the fact that most Borders stores are in malls or shopping plazas, I'm betting they employ a service that does it. And we all know what kind of job those services do.
I wish I could quit you, Borders, but as much as I try to run, your selection and your industry-leading rewards program keep me coming back.
I just have to remember that sometimes it's okay to pass by the bathroom.
