Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Tuesday, August 31, 2010 Road Trip Day 9: E-Town Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Cameron Crowe's male protagonists can't handle failure. Like, at all. Lloyd Dobler gets dumped by his girlfriend and turns into a creepy, if admittedly iconic, stalker. Campbell Scott in Singles gets his pet project (which was dumb to begin with) shot down and he not only walks off the job, he literally demolishes his cubicle on the way, then morphs into a housebound waste of carbon. That nerdy kid in Almost Famous lets a setback in his journalistic career -- when he's a teenager, mind you, and has plenty of time to recover -- override all the cool, unique experiences he had along the way, to the point where he barricades himself in his bedroom. And of course, most recently, there's Orlando Bloom in Elizabethtown, who's so crushed by one professional faceplant that he attempts suicide. What is it about all these guys that one kick in the chops sends them into a near-hopeless spiral of despair so deep that the only thing that can rescue them is the even greater need of someone else? This of course raises the question of what Cameron Crowe's been up to ever since the aforementioned Elizabethtown, a widely panned flop. Well, if he's anything like the characters he's created, it's not so much a question as a certainty -- he's moping around inconsolably, making everyone miserable. There hasn't been a new Heart album in years because Nancy Wilson has been too busy holding her husband's hair while he throws up and thinking, Dammit, I should have seen this coming. I haven't seen Elizabethtown, but as of our road trip this summer, I have seen Elizabethtown, or "E-Town" as the locals call it. From what I'm to understand, the movie version of the town is a magical place, full of quirky characters. I don't see how any of its real-life residents could be that quirky, given that it's practically impossible to find a damn cup of coffee there. We spend most of the next two days at the home of our host, which is set on a hillside in exactly how you imagine rural Kentucky -- long, horizontal-plank fences bisecting rolling green hills. M. Edium alternates between swimming in the pool and going on hunts to pick up clover for Houdini the rabbit. It's the third of July, so in the evening, we light off the Super Finger-Fragging Fun-Pak collection of Target fireworks we've been toting all over the country in the back yard, in a spot set aside for that purpose. You can tell because it looks like a very small rocket landed there once. We'll have to leave before dark, so it's not as spectacular as we might have hoped, but some sights don't require a lot of sparks to generate entertainment.  Update: Thanks to Alex for pointing out that there's a new Heart album out. I knew I should have posted this entry earlier. posted by M. Giant 2:46 PM 3 comments 3 Comments:Heart just released a new album this week!
By To be fair to the character in Almost Famous he was a teenager, when everything does seem a lot more black and white, and one failure can doom you forever (see also: SAT score).
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Wait -- Heart's still around?
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