“The site is supposed to be located on an ancient Indian Burial Ground…”

 Is The Shining a scary film? I don’t know. It certainly sticks with you and comes back to you, not always at the best of times. I think it’s because Stanley Kubrick has seared a few incredibly disturbing images onto our collective consciousness – an accomplishment that stands up just as well as if he had made a great film. Or maybe that’s the same thing.

The movie was not well received in 1980. But it would have taken a visionary critic to have foreseen the lasting impact of this film, and there is a lot to criticize even if someone had been such a visionary. Roger Ebert gave it a “Thumbs Down” initially, and then in 2006, he reconsidered and included it in his reviews of Great Movies.

To get the plot out of the way, because that is the least important thing about The Shining, Jack Torrance (a revved up Jack Nicholson) agrees to become caretaker of a haunted hotel and almost instantly loses his marbles and tries to kill his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son (Danny Lloyd). Though he is pretty much off-the-deep-end after the first snowstorm, his madness is fairly directionless until a couple of experienced ghosts counsel him on the finer points of axe-wielding and wife-hacking. The breakneck speed of Jack’s descent and the ultimately useless side story of the telepathic son and chef (Scatman Crothers) are poorly draped around some of the spookiest and most indelible images from the entirety of horror-film history:

The winding mountain road.

Danny’s ever present Big Wheelish Trike.

The blood in the elevator.

The twins.

Jack’s demonic facial contortions.

(more…)

Leeches; Orcs; Johan Santana’s recent talks with the Mets’ PR department; Abe Vigoda’s armpit; C.H.U.D.s; this guy; Newark; the 2010 Orioles; Don Mossi.

What do those things have in common? They’re all prettier than tonight’s steaming pile of an excuse for a ballgame. And yet, in the end… I wasn’t totally sorry I watched. That’s thanks to the go-ahead Curtis Granderson homer in the 10th inning, and Marian River’s ultra-dramatic white-knuckle save to preserve the Yanks’ 6-5 win. But, lord, you did not want to watch them making that sausage.

I began the evening feeling sorry for Dontrelle Willis – a fun, charismatic player who I loved watching in his prime, which feels like it was a long, long time ago now (…but then, the third inning feels like it was a long, long time ago now). An hour or two later I mostly felt bad for myself and anybody else still watching the slow-motion tragicomedy of errors well after 1 AM on the east coast. The fact that the Yankees eventually came back from their self-dug grave and pulled a win out of their caps made it more bearable, of course, but still, all traces of this game should probably be scrubbed from the archives immediately to protect the public.

You will, I hope, forgive me for not giving you a complete blow-by-blow of this game, but it’s late, I’m tired, I had to delete most of the writeup I had ready in the ninth, and this is a family website. Willis went just 2.1 innings, gave up two hits, and walked seven. It was excruciating to watch, and he left, head hanging, after walking Alex Rodriguez to force in a run. The fact that the Diamondbacks got out of that inning with the score tied at 2 is a testament to how sloppy the Yankees were playing all night – numerous outs made on the bases, often dumb ones; swinging at all kinds of things they shouldn’t be swinging at. By the end of the game the Bombers had amassed 10 hits and 13 walks (!) with six runs to show for it; early in the game that ratio looked even worse. Damaso Marte added some nice flourishes in the sixth inning with a balk and a wild pitch. Going into the ninth, the Yankees were down 5-4 and I was not exactly brimming with confidence, despite the reassuring presence of old friend Aaron Heilman on the mound.

“They play 162, and they can’t all be Rembrandts,” someone wrote to me on Twitter while I was bemoaning this festering eyesore. Which is true. But surely there’s plenty of middle ground between a Rembrandt and this, which is really more of a monkey-painting-the-cage-wall-with-its-own-feces sort of a game.

Or at least that’s what I was thinking before the ninth and tenth innings. It wasn’t a Rembrandt but maybe it was, I dunno, a lesser Basquiat or something. In the end, I was glad I’d stayed up for it – it certainly wasn’t dull. That said, as I wrote last night: just because you made it home okay, doesn’t mean it was all right to drive drunk and high on meth, you know?

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Runner-up titles for this post:

This Game’s so ugly, it couldn’t get laid in a prison with a handful of pardons.

This Game’s so ugly, I took it to a haunted house and it came out with a job application.

This Game’s so ugly, even the tide won’t take it out.

It’s Dontrelle Willis v. Jav Vazquez tonight in Arizona as the Yanks look to leave the desert with a series win.

The Score Truck made a late-inning pit-stop last night; here’s hoping it arrives early tonight.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

[Picture by Bags]

Walt Simonson

Just a tremendous match–the longest of all-time–going down at Wimbledon. It was called yesterday because of darkness tied at two. Today, they played the fifth set, and it was called again, 59-59 in the tie-breaker. Hol-ee Cow.

A Giant American vs a French Elf.

From Smitten Kitchen…

I don’t feel tardy…

If it pleases you, discuss the World Cup matches here. And keep us blisslessly ignorant desk jockeys informed of what’s going on. It will be a wild morning with probabilties of advancement swinging drastically with each goal scored in either game.

The Desert Foxes of Algeria still have a slim hope to advance. The, whatever the US is called, have a somewhat better chance, but nothing is for certain.

Scenarios for Group C are as follows:

USA Advances With: 1) A win. 2) A draw and an England loss. 3) A draw and an English draw while maintaining a total goals advatage over England. (currently US is up 3 goals to 1)

ALGERIA Advances With: 1) A win and an England tie. 2) A win and an England win and Algeria makes up goal deficit to Slovenia.

England Advances With: 1) A win. 2) A draw and a US loss. 3) A draw and a US draw,but England ends up with more total goals than the US.

Slovenia Advances With: 1) A win. 2) A draw. 3) A loss and a US draw.

Solely  in terms of US advancement, we are rooting for low scoring draw (0-0 or 1-1)  between England and Slovenia. Under that scenario, the US wins the group with a victory over Algeria and advances in second position with any kind of draw. If England wins their match, America has to win to get in.

Back in 2001, I wondered whether or not Andy Pettitte lost Jesus somewhere between New York and Arizona. He lost his ability to execute pitches–in fact, he was tipping pitches, which led to a Game 6 beat-down by the D-Backs. Painful memory.

None of those old Diamonbacks are around anymore, at least not in Arizona, but the current version showed last night that they too can crush the ball. Time for a vintage performance from Pettitte.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

[Picture by Bags]

Detail of a New York City Splat Shot by Bags

Howard Chaykin

It’s been almost nine years since he blew Game 7 of the Whirled Serious out in Arizona…It’s astonishing to consider how great Rivera has been since that loss.

He’s 40 now, and yeah, Mariano’s still pretty damn good.

Why not?

From Orangette…

Here’s a childhood favorite…

My brother loved this one…

Another week of comic book dudes…first up, George Perez.

I’ll take one to go.

From the wonderful food blog, Food52.

Welcome to Stanley Kubrick Week on Million Dollar Movie.

Claire Quilty: I get the impression that you want to leave but you don’t like to because you think I think it looks suspicious, me being a policeman and all. You don’t have to think that because I haven’t got a suspicious mind at all. A lot of people think I’m suspicious, especially when I stand on street corners. One of our boys picked me up once. He thought that I was a little too suspicious standing on the street corner. Tell me, I couldn’t help noticing when you checked in tonight–It’s part of my job, I notice human individuals–and I noticed your face. I said to myself when I saw you, there’s a guy with the most normal-looking face I ever saw in my life. It’s great to see a normal face, ’cause I’m a normal guy. Be great for two normal guys to get together and talk about world events, in a normal way.

Peter Sellers is best remembered as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies, but his artistic masterpiece is generally considered to be Dr. Strangelove. Sellers plays three characters in Stanley Kubrick’s dark, political satire. His performance is all that and them some and deserves all the praise it gets, but I believe Sellers’ accomplishment in Kubrick’s previous film, the 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s notorious book, Lolita, is just as fine—a comic actor at the height of his powers.

Sellers plays Claire Quilty, a pompous hipster playwright, the alter ego and nemesis to James Mason’s lustful professor, Humbert Humbert. “Are you with someone,” Humbert asks Quilty at one point. “I’m not with someone,” Quilty replies, “I’m with you.”

(more…)

Pass me my oxygen mask, would you dear?

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

It’s June, so we can stop worrying about CC Sabathia.  The Yankees were 2-4 when he took the mound in May, but they’ve won all four of his June starts as CC has posted a fairly imposing line: 29 IP, 21 H, 8 R, 7 BB, 22 K, 2.48 ERA, 0.97 WHIP.  A week after beating Roy Halladay (who pitches as if having returned to Krypton when he faces the American League), Sabathia faced and defeated another ace, the Mets’ Johan Santana.  During his eight scoreless innings, Sabathia allowed six base runners, only four of whom made it to second base.  It might not make sense to say that he wasn’t dominant, but he was pretty close.

The Yankee offense was able to do just enough against Santana to secure Sabathia’s eighth win.  Scanning the box score, you might notice a third-inning explosion, but here’s what really happened.  Brett Gardner led off by slicing a single to left (and really, it’s only a matter of time before Michael Kay begins describing hits like this as “Gardnerian”), and Jeter followed with a dribbler to the left side that David Wright was unable to handle cleanly.  Nick Swisher then dropped a beautiful push bunt towards second and was able to reach safely, loading the bases for Mark Teixeira.

Normally, this is a great situation.  Bases loaded, nobody out, the three and four hitters due up.  The problem, though, is that right now I have absolutely no confidence in either Teixeira or Alex Rodríguez, and I braced myself for the worst.  Watching live as Teixeira took a ball and then a strike, I figured he would probably just strike out.  My next thought, though, was this: “He’s probably gonna hit a grand slam just to piss me off.”  And then he deposited the next pitch into the left field stands.  I can’t explain why it pissed me off, it just did.

But that was all the Yanks needed, as the 4-0 lead held up. First place feels good.

Hey, y’all. Sorry for the delay in posting yesterday’s recap. It’ll be up jiffy. Then, we’re back to our regular schedule. Hold tight…

[Picture by Bags]