Tra La La (aka golf movie)

Back home in the Redneck Rivera for some rest and relaxation and more importantly some home made Indian food. You are probably asking yourself what do Native Americans eat, well it is not those kind of Indians. There are Indians in the panhandle? Well I guess, though I do not know any. Indian food is what white kids make when they try and relive the experiences they have in foreign places. But I digress. During my trip I got to return to scene of the crime and by crime I refer to inspiration for the worst seven minutes of video ever created, golf movie. The Fort Walton Beach municipal golf course, containing two 18 hole courses. This weekends outing was mostly uneventful expect for being paired up with some guy who talked and talked about how much he played only to be followed by why he was not playing good. I think his name was Ed and can visit him at his place of employment the Black Angus restaurant. As exciting as it may seem to hang with Ed, he pales in comparison to the last time we played this Oaks course. So there we are driving up to our balls on the 10th hole of the Oaks course when all of a sudden golf balls are being hit into us. We look back to see some old guy waiving a driver at us. Unsure what we had done we decided it would be best to just let them play through. We tee off on the 11th hole and wait for them to pass us. A few minutes pass and then we hear a caravan of golf carts flying down the cart path towards us, with the old man leading the way. When he gets to 11th tee he does not stop he just keeps coming up to us. Finally he slows down next us and just looks at us and says “You guys are messing up the tra la la!” and speeds off followed by his cohorts. I sure hope I am surely as that guy when I am 70.

CSI: Maimi

CSI: Miami, The most popular show in world and as a friend of mine likes to say the best comedy on TV and the worst drama ever. How is it that a show this terrible could be so great?

CSI: Miami is show about how we dream things to be it can take the most complicated, convoluted situations and make them simple. It appears to generate its plots based on the random combination of possible subplots. To make sure that you do not get lost, it leaves you signs to make sure that everyone can understand what is going on, both literally and fugitively. If there was drinking game of based on the number times that they show a sign telling their location, you would be drunk before the Who “say we won’t get fooled again”. For me this is where the show usually starts to go down as the first five minutes of the show are some are the best you are going to see the whole week. Each episode starts very formulaic. They start off with somebody either getting murdered or the finding of dead body in the most unexpected of locations. This is then followed up by the best looking CSI crew in the history of crime fighting who are on vacation from their full time jobs as models. Finally when the crime seems clueless or too bizarre Horatio Caine (played by the Leprechaun, looking David Caruso) shows up to see the key clue or makes connection that no one else can make about the crime by simply removing his sun glasses and a witty phrase. In one of my favorite scenes a man appears to have been murdered by an ice sculpture and the coroner asks Horatio "what kind of cold person could have done this", to which he responds “someone who is as cold as ice," he then places his sunglasses back on. And with that another crime is going to be solved with help of the magic sunglasses. Knightrider had Kit; the A-team had BA's van, MacGyver had his Swiss army knife, Magnum PI had his Tiger’s hat, and now a new generation has a great TV prop: Horatio Caine's sunglasses. These are more than ordinary sunglasses, not only do they help solve crimes; they help protect the pale skinned David Caruso from the intense south Florida sun. You would have thought that his prop of choice would have been hat like Magnum PI. Experience shows that glass do little to protect you from the harmful rays of the sun. I was just out fishing a week ago wearing a long sleeve shirt and a hat despite the fact that it was suppose to be sunny and 95. All the tourist going out on the charter boats were looking at us kind of funny as they left the harbor wearing only shorts and sun glasses. If only they realized that they would be the funny looking ones as the easily spotted that evening with their faces looking redder than Caruso’s hair, but at least they had white circles around there eyes.

But the sun and water is why people tune in to watch CSI: Miami. The show uses the Baywatch mantra: if you give them beautiful places and beautiful people, people will watch. Not only are they the best looking CSI crew in the world there victims and suspects are too. Where else on TV can you see a common street criminal come in for a police interview in designer clothes. It is escapism at its best, Hollywood is known for creating places that do not really exist, or do they. There are places like this in the world and one can be found in the beaches of south Walton. This is where the rich spend their beach vacations and mega rich keep their 200 ft yachts. When you enter the gated part of the resort you are met by girls riding bikes in bikinis and old men driving H2 golf carts like they are late to a crime scene. Normally you have to take shuttle through the gated part to get to “village” area, but a friend does some work for a night club owner so we got drive there. As much as the drive was something out of a movie the night club was something else. Just the other day my friend let someone in the back door in exchange for dinner at Ruth’s Chris. Then you get to go upstairs were they have a table full of money counters and you half expect to see someone doing lines of coke in the corner. Just when I had thought I had seen it all, I ran into an old family friend who was telling the story of her husband, a luxury yatch captain, who had just been attached off the coast of Nicaragua by pirates. Because they had just come from Havana were weapons are not allowed, they had to make like MacGyver and improvise molotov cocktails and flare guns. This was enough to scare them off long enough to make a run for it and to call the US state department, who said that they had watched the whole event and that the pirates would not be bothering them anymore. I am sure with Horatio’s glasses you could see that far too.

We all love a good mystery; we also love things to be wrapped up quickly. Who wants to wait for lab results? Just solve the crime in day. If you watch enough CSI: Miami episodes you begin to realize that it is never night in less that is when the murder happened. The reason that it is never night is because they always solve the crime in one day. So if you see the sun going down you know the crime is about to be solved. It is too bad that the real world does not work this way. I was asked to go by the local book store to help them find out if they had been robbed, i.e. help them use their video surveillance equipment. The bookstore reminds of me of something out of the Death on Demand series of novels with about five old ladies huddled around, drinking coffee, trying to piece together the crime. Based on their summary of what had happened I was able to use the video surveillance and found that they were robbed and that they had criminal on tape stealing books and purses and then sneaking out. The only problem was that you cannot enhance the video like they do on the CSI, so the best I could for them was produce a grainy picture of the suspect and a DVD of the crime. It was probably still good enough; though I am sure they will never see the lady again.

So night began to fall As I left town the mist of the post afternoon summer shower began lifting off the bayou and settling into the trees and I began to realize just how beautiful this place was. The haze lasted longer that normal it seemed to hang on to the tree branches and the kudzu, trying to not leave. I thought I was ready to leave but the further I drove the less I wanted to leave and I began to think about something I a comment that a friend once made that you probably do not meat as interesting people in engineering as you do in liberal arts. I agreed with then and still do, but truth is everyone has a story, an angle; it is just a matter of doing a little investigating. A sign appeared out of the fog it pointed right for Tallahassee, I knew where I had to go…Cue the air boat…arhhhhhhhhhhhh…..

Bottle Rocket

Bottle Rocket, Wes Andersons directorial debut, and let me just say I hate this movie. I am not sure what is worse Owen Wilson’s writing or his acting, with that said you can begin to see Wes Andersons story telling and directorial style begin to develop here. The idea of the juxtaposition of roles, where children act as adults and adults act as children, begins in Bottle Rocket and comes to fruition in his next two movies Rushmore and The Royal Tenebaums, is quite brilliant. The only thing that I ask is how you can waste the greatest names ever, Bottle Rocket, on such a terrible movie. Bottle Rockets are one the greatest joys. They take two ideas that have intrigued man kind since the begging of time, fire and flight into one single entity. Today is the Fourth of July, which means that it is national fireworks day and my favorite holiday. I am not sure what the best part of the Fourth is it the food, being around the water, or the Fireworks, I do not think that it really matters. What is important is that you act like you are eight years old, eat too many hot dogs and too much cake, and enjoy the fireworks show. If you should happen to be lucky enough to be a kid it is your day to be an adult and play with fire and light off a few bottle rockets. And, for those of us who do not like birthdays or celebrate them, today is the day that we and everyone else can. Happy 4^th of July.

Vacation

Vacation, National Lampoon’s, is a1983 Comedy starring Chevy Chase. It is one of few comedies that I thoroughly enjoy. Written by John Hughes, now famous for such terrible movies as Beethoven and its 4 sequels and drill bit Taylor, was once known as great creative mind in the 80’s. It can be argued that two of his latter movies were better The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in my mind they can not surpass the simple joy that is Vacation. Simple is the key word here while most comedies are held down because of their plots, Vacation excels because of its plot. It has none. It follows the journeys of the Griswald family as they take a car trip across America to the fictional amusement park wally world (a clear Disneyland rip-off with an owner that looks like Walt Disney) along the we get to see some of the lively miss adventures. The constant in the movie that I always found most enjoyable was that it seemed real. Each new disaster that be felled them seemes plausible, if not common. You could see how your own family could end up in this predicament, except for possibly the death of aunt scene. As for me I am currently on vacation or at least that is what others are calling it. While most people go on vacations to exotic places like Europe or Canada, I go on vacations to the mundane world of the Florida panhandle also know as the Redneck Rivera. I came to realize this past week that being in Gainesville has left me aloof much like Obama when he talked about people clinging to guns and religion, we really forget about how the other half lives. While on trip to Wally World (Wal-Mart) with a friend we ran into a friend of his, an acquaintance that I knew a little. His girlfriend, wife, I am not really sure was with him. I noticed, though it was quite obvious, she had no left eye. She might have had a left eye, it could have been sucked down into her face, either way I know that that she use to have any eye because I had scene her before. As we stood there talking I started wondering if she notices that we know. I then think about how I would never see this in Gainesville, for that matter I would never have even consider the possibility that someone would be content walking around missing an eye. The whole experience left me with the impression that our view of the world is very limited. I think that this is what they call Framing. I guess sometimes you do not need to go to Europe to see the exotic it is there all the time right next to you.