D2

The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, Rocky III-- Sometimes sequels are just meritoriously superior to their originals. Such is the case in a film that I caught on the Encore Action Channel last week, D2: The Mighty Ducks. Embarrassing as it is, I confess that this movie was once a favorite of mine, and I might have had a crush on Gunner Stahl, the captain of the evil Iceland team. However, watching it again, I realize how cheap and sappy this picture truly is, and how much I still love it after all these years.

Therefore, I have compiled a list of grievances, high points, and other fodder for ridicule from this fictional account of a rags-to-riches pee-wee hockey team representing America in the fictional Junior Goodwill Games.

1.) Russ Tyler--this entire character is a conundrum. Played by Kenan Thompson (last year's film version of Fat Albert and an SNL castmember), Russ is a smart-mouthed homey from South-central LA. He gets the attention of the Ducks when they are training in his 'hood (highly unlikely) and he ritualistically disses them. Russ puts his money where his mouth is when he challenges the Ducks to a game of street hockey and blows them all away with his signature stroke, the "Knuckle Puck," which he always warns his opponents about by pausing for an excruciatingly long time and then exclaiming, "It's Knuckle Puck time!" The team talks Coach Bombay into dressing Russ out and miraculously he can skate on ice well enough to pull off the Knuckle Puck at a clinch time in the finals against Iceland. In that game, three of Russ's homeys are there in their street clothes to cheer him on.

2.) Jan--Jan is the cousin of Hans, the skating shop owner who is Coach Bombay's hockey mentor and pins all the newspaper clippings of the Ducks (an absurd amount of media coverage for a pee-wee hockey team) on his shop's bulletin board. In D2 Hans has died and left Jan to fill in for him as the old, Swedish hockey man who believes in the Ducks no matter what. But is another Hans really necessary? And if the original Hans couldn't make it (I'm guessing he died in real life), couldn't another actor just play Hans? Who really remembers him anyway?

3.) The Trinidad-Tobego team--D2, effortlessly ripping off the plot from Cool Runnings, writes in this unlikely ice hockey program from the Caribbean, which manages to give the Duck team a run for their money. Their colors are bright, their dreds are long, and their calypso music blairs after every goal scored. I don't think I could express anything more about this that you aren't already thinking.

So much more could be listed here about D2, but I may be the only one to care. I'll close with this totally legitimate critique I found on a D2 website.

"Rising like a phoenix from the ashes, D2 spreads its wings and soars to new heights of artistic merit. D2 is the rarest of sequels, a sequel that is truly better than the original. All of the jagged edges in the original film's plot have been streamlined, and the new ground being broken, (Self-Doubt, Conquering your fears, Sexual Identity) fit in seamlessly, giving this film a more robust feel, similar to that of Chunky Soup. Emilio Estevez (In his star-making role) plays coach Bombay with a smoldering fury that makes it very clear that he is Martin Sheen's favorite son. The rest of the cast is equally brilliant, especially the ducks themselves, whose performances are so real, you cant help believing that they are truly kids. The direction is bold yet beautiful, and instantly recalls that of the early german surrealists. The electronic score by Goblin is eerily effective in creating suspense in both the game and locker room scenes, and lets the viewer know that this isnt a game anymore, and that national pride is on the line. A masterpiece of baroque visuals and dry wit, D2 is a most worthy rental upon your next excursion to the video store. "

Feel free to offer criticism or comments about this review.

A Fairy-Tale Come True

Once upon a time, there were two little girls named Katie and Amy who went to their dad's football game. The team was losing and the cheerleaders were nowhere to be found. Nobody knew what to do. They all said, "We need cheerleaders or we'll never win this game." So, Katie and Amy went down on the sidelines to bring the crowd to their feet and they cheered the team to victory.

This corny and unimaginative (sorry Dad) fairy tale was my sister's and my favorite bedtime story when we were little, and even then I had the cynicism not to expect its coming to fruition. But I was wrong. This fairy tale came true in a really pathetic, desperate way just yesterday afternoon.

I was sitting in the hot, muggy air under a baking sun at 3:00 yesterday watching my father's football team play their so-called homecoming game. Because of hurricane Rita, the game had been postponed from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, a new precedent in South Louisiana football scheduling. This game was supposed to be the homecoming game, but because of the last-minute reschedule and the sixty-percent chance of rain (which never materialized, as there were hardly any clouds in the sky to shield us from the blistering sun), there was no homecoming fanfare, no band, and worst of all, NO CHEERLEADERS.

The stands were packed, as usual, but the crowd, docile from dehydration (and chances are post-Saturday night hangovers), looked and sounded like they were in a Chinese prison, rather than a high-school football game (which, might I add was the district opener). The game was tight, a purely defensive struggle, and the Bears (my dad's team) gave up the first touchdown with an offensive fumble. Although they completed three third down conversions, they didn't score until late in the second quarter. My point: things did not look good.

After an agonizing halftime without any entertainment and futile conversation attempts with the guy sitting next to me, my older brother's best friend (did I mention I was at the game alone?), the second half began to dismal response from the crowd. After our opponents scored another touchdown and I had recharged myself with a second bottle of water and overly salted popcorn, I was ready for some action. Everyone else, however, was not.

As the clock dwindled down to the fourth quarter, I peered vehemently over at the silent student section. Typically abuzz with cheers, taunts, and strange dance routines, the spiritless group was sitting, staring off into space as if they were tripping at JazzFest. When I could stand the sedateness no longer, I determined that the only solution would be to take matters into my own hands.

I marched across the stadium to the student section. But on my way, having lost my nerve, I decided to approach a student donning a florescent orange bow tie first to see if he wouldn’t be the ringleader to rouse the crowd. “Um, excuse me. Do you go to school here? Well, um, I know this sounds really dorky, but no one is cheering, and I just thought maybe could you and your friends start cheering or something?” He stared back at me in seeming agreement that, yes, it did seem dorky. “Uh, well, no one else is going to. Sorry.” And as he turned back around to ignore me, I realized that the burden of spirit lay totally on my shoulders.

Meanwhile, the bears were faced with fourth and five in possibly their last possession of the game. “LET’S GO CATHOLIC! (clap, clap, clap clap clap)” I shouted, certain that those around me would be inspired to join in. “LET’S GO CATHOLIC! (clap, clap, clap clap clap).” Nothing. Unless you count the stares of disgust seething from the guy who just turned me down and all the guys and girls surrounding him. I continued, undeterred, knowing that only my spirit would propel the team forward, and as a result, first and goal for the Bears! (As I write this, I am reminded of the Will Farrell classic ELF, “The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!")

Within the blink of an eye, the Bears had melted three more downs, and were now facing fourth and goal with less than three minutes to go. “GO BEARS GO! GO BEARS GO!” Like a lone reed (You’ve Got Mail), I cried out with unbridled enthusiasm (Seinfeld). TOUCHDOWN!

The once-comatose crowd was finally jolted to their feet in celebration, and I was disgusted. “Fair-weather fans!” I cried in self-righteous indignation (sadly, this is not an exaggeration). At that point, it occurred to me that although the cheerleaders weren’t dressed out, they were probably there in civilian clothes, blending in with all the other temptresses in too-short prairie skirts with oversized belts and revealing tank tops, luring the boys away from supporting their classmates on the field. I felt certain that had I been in their shoes, I still would have gone down front to lead the crowd in cheers, and then I realized that’s exactly what I had done, but I wasn’t really a cheerleader. I wasn't even in high school.

As the story goes, the Bears did pull off the victory, and, as I did as a child, I ran onto the field to give my dad a congratulatory hug. This time, however, I felt a slight twinge of personal accomplishment and satisfaction for the integral part I had played in the team’s success. And then I remembered my dad’s bedtime story and how in a sick sad way, it had just come true. I just hope his other favorite—the one about the little girl whose dad came into her room in the middle of the night and chopped her and her friend to pieces with a butcher knife—doesn’t come true too.

Since U Been Gone*

I spent a summer in Thailand with three girls who were recovering from monumental break-ups. It was incredibly isolating because I had never been in a relationship that required a break-up to signify the lack of desire to be in a dating relationship. I always just referred to that as, "talking to guys."
During this summer of heartbreak, hearing countless telling and retelling of what went wrong, how, why, and how the issues of the guy were to blame for the relationship failure (a common if not universal explanation of female rejection explored ad nauseum on Sex and the City, although not untrue in these three specific situations), I became envious of their heartache and suffering, believing whole-heartedly in the belief that that it is "better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."

And then it happened to me. Since this is my first break-up, I am realizing things about myself that I never knew before, and although I do feel right now that my life is a bottomless pit of despair and hopelessness (a slight exaggeration for effect), I have found humor in my pain and realized that I am not unlike every other woman on the planet when it comes to rejection and heartache (is there another word for this? I'm getting tired of writing it.)

Therefore, I have compiled a list of signs for any chic that she is suffering a break-up (to quote Sleepless in Seattle, "Who needed a sign?"):

1.) You find yourself watching soap operas and relating a little to closely to the plight of the lovesick characters. ie: "See, Greenlee is going through the same things as me. If Ryan could just see that her love is enough to save him, he wouldn't have faked his own death to escape his fears of intimacy."

2.) You think Avril Lavigne should be a psychology doctoral candidate for her insight into relationships, the male psyche, and how to cope during a devastating break-up.

3.) You're willing to forfeit any disdain you have for country music because of how deeply every songs seems suddenly to resonate in your very soul.

4.) You secretly (and morbidly) wish for some horrible, fatal disease so that he'll be forced to come back to you out of decency and respect. After all, you are about to die, so the relationship could resume so that you may die happily and when you do, he won't have to be with you anymore since that's what he clearly wanted in the first place. (This is also reminiscent of a soap, The Young and the Restless, when Victor remarried Nikki on her deathbed when he was engaged to someone else. Nikki, of course made a full recovery and Victor discovered that he did in fact love Nikki and they are still together. See, it works.)

I would have a fifth to round out the list, but I feel a little pathetic and sad now, and I don't think I want to write anymore. I think I'll just go eat at a restaurant by myself and work a crossword puzzle.

Put It On the Card!

As I type, the bespectacled, pubescent nerdling with apparent rosacea who is sitting next to me is wheezing uncontrollably. I turn to him, discovering that what I assumed was wheezing is actually outbursts of delight at whatever it is he is viewing. I don't want to know. I am at the library again, my HAFH (home away from home) since my laptop has been on the fritz (which has actually been over four months now...Anyone wanting to contribute to my computer's being repaired let me know). Some may see this as a drag, and by some I mean me, but really I'm certainly getting more than I asked for out of this public facility, and to all the citizens of Fayetteville, I must say, "I'm getting your money's worth."

The Blair Library (Fayetteville's new public library) is a cushy place to hang out and utilize free internet access (which makes this post possible), as well as a comfortable environment to meet friends. If you're picturing a library anything like the Baton Rouge Public Library Main Branch (and truth be told, all branches), you're imagining a musty, one-story, windowless facility erected in the 1960s when architects built such head-ache inducing buildings in order to say, "See, there's this new thing called air-conditioning, so we don't even need windows, only lots of fluorescent lights." You're imagining five computer stations that are waste-level without stools or chairs so you have to stand as long as you're on the computer, wishing you had been fortunate enough to grab one of the three computers that are accompanied by chairs but that are currently occupied by a grown woman playing an on-line video game; and Formica tables with gum stuck to the bottom and carved messages about high-schoolers having been there and having luved one another.

You're not picturing The Blair Library with its fire place and its 3 computer labs and its huge, spanning view of the Ozarks, nor its mezzanine, nor its self-checkout scanner that detects a microchip in every book. And you're certainly not picturing Arsaga's, a local coffee shop that has taken up residence in the lobby. The Blair Library may be the happiest place on earth, except for the fact that it's a public library, the problem existing in the word public.

The public library, no matter how state of the art, attracts every freak show within the city limits, myself included. Every braless, dreadlocked hippy mom who arrives every day with her family's very own canvas tote in order to lug the 37 books her five long-haired children check out; every scraggly, skinny, wrinkled homeless-looking man who smiles creepily at every young girl who sits down at the computer next to him while he peruses the internet for God knows what; every young, Middle Eastern woman with her hair and body covered, revealing only her eyes as she sits to read a magazine; every elderly man with a white beard and a hat who impatiently demands assistance from the reference desk clerk to find some old war book, the title of which has completely escaped him; every grubby elementary-age child who for some reason is not in school, but is reading in the public library instead (homeschoolers?); every Campus Crusade for Christ staff girl who can't afford to get her computer fixed, but can waste time to write about being in the library--we all gather here every day, accessing free, but limited, books, internet, and not so free coffee.

It's quite a sight. In fact, many pre-schools bring small children here on field trips. They file in, all holding hands in a straight line and being told to be very quiet by two women with their index fingers on their lips. And they stare in awe at the library (which is awe-inspiring), and at all the books, and I find myself doing the same thing--except not due to the library itself, but the self-checkout scanner that reads the micro-chip. It's really unbelievable--and leaving in amazement every time I leave with books (which is rare, but it does happen). I think to myself, "I didn't have to pay for these." That thought really hit home as I picked out a book I needed for studying purposes, only to find two other books that tickled my fancy. If I were at a store, I would prudently skim the back of each book to find out exactly what I was getting myself into. I would weigh the pros and cons, determining if they were worth my money. But at the library, I simply grab them, throwing any needless caution to the wind. If I don't have a chance to read them, I simply won't. I've lost nothing.

And that's the best thing about the library: I can afford everything in it!

Except for copies and the dream-inspiring Mocha Truffle Roll.

My Sister

My favorite thing about my sister is that other people like me because of her. She is one of those cool people who pretends to be a dork so that she is more endearing to others, especially to me. She doesn't know what a blog is. That's how cool she is. I, on the other hand, check my blog for comments at least three times a day. Katie lives in Nashville and she has a really cool son named Joseph. She and her husband John are worried that their kids are going to be too cool for them. Most parents worry about their children fitting in, but they are worried about fitting in with their children. That's how cool they are. Joseph is four months old, and he has a onesie that says "My Dad's a Rock Star." John isn't really a rock star, but he has his own recording studio. It's not like one of those in the mall that you pay twenty bucks and then get to sing a song along with a background track and then they put it on a CD for you and then you play it for your friends and ask them, "Guess who is singing on this CD?" and your friends say "I don't know, LeAnn Rimes?" and then you get to say, "No, it's me." But John's isn't like that. John's is the kind that's in his parents' basement. I've gotten to record on it and it was really cool. Katie doesn't record on it. She doesn't play any instruments or anything except for the tambourine. Miriam is one of Katie's favorite Bible characters because she played the tambourine. Katie is an artist. She paints children's names on canvases along with the meaning of the name. She painted Joseph's room and sewed his crib bumper pads and dust ruffle. Katie was the president of the Future Homemakers of America in high school. That's where she learned to sew and she's a pretty good cook, too. She likes to make these things called peanut butter treats, where she mixes granola and caro syrup and peanut butter in a pot on the stove and then puts it in clumps, but most of the time we just eat it right out of the pot because we can't wait for her to clump it.

I Can't Believe It's Over

Romeo and Juliet; Rhett and Scarlett; Meredith and Ian. Is every great couple doomed with the same fate? When I saw the most romantic proposal last February on ABC, when Ian admitted in front of millions of Americans, "Oh, baby, I'm so scared," I thought that love couldn't get any better than that. Yes, Ian and Meredith did meet on the set of The Bachelorette, but with such the success of Trista and Ryan, I had every reason to hope that Meredith had gotten it right. So imagine my disappointment when I saw the classic picture-of-the-couple-with-a-rip-down-the-middle-of-it in this week's issue of People. I could not believe it. "Our relationship began with great expectations for a happy ending. Unfortunately things didn't work out as we had hoped. What we experienced together was incredible and we are both sad to see it end," they told Extra, who told People, and People told me when I read it last night. Next they're going to tell me that Andrew and Jenn broke up too. Great. At least that explains why she's dating all those other guys on The Bachelorette. There goes my faith in the entire reality television dating system. Nothing is sacred.

The Blaine of My Existence

Well, the very creation of this blog (whatever that word means) is enough to communicate to the world that I am narcissistic. Not only do I desire to have people read the absurdities produced by my brain, but also, I assume that other people desire to read them. Turns out I was right.

The title of this blog, "The Blaine of My Existence," should probably be the first entry because I want you to, like, know me, for real, you know? Like, this is me, this is what's going on inside me, this is how I do me. Much of the title is rooted in my devotion to Waiting For Guffman, in which a fictional town in Missouri celebrates its sesquicentennial. In one scene a local Blainian explains that when you mix up the letters in Blaine, you get Nebali, the name of a planet several galaxies away which may be home to the aliens who probed citizens of the town in the fifties. (Apparently, however, others in the town believe it was Mars, not Nebali, which was home to the aliens. Such an opinion is understood in the song, "Nothing Ever Happens on Mars.") On the other hand, in the title of the play, Red, White and Blain, Blain(e) is quite obviously spelled with no "e." The fact that the "e" no "e" controversy bothers me, enough to imply that it might be the bane of my existence (although it really isn't), proves that I am an anal twit. How obnoxious! (obnoxious but true) Furthermore, the word "bane" is enough to send me reeling. What bothers me is that this word seems to appear only when followed by the phrase "of my existence." ("My," of course, can be substituted for "his," "her," "our," or any other possessive noun.) Surely this one word has more than one application in the English language. Almost all other words do. It's official. I'm a wordfreak. In fact, my boyfriend gave me the book with such a title for Christmas, Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players. I really have no obsession at all with the game of SCRABBLE. In fact, I'm awful at it. But I love words and sentences and diagramming sentences and analyzing sentences. This is my life. And this is my blog.

And this is yesterday's Daily Newsbreak from my Franklin Covey Planner, The NewYorker series:
It's the cerebral part of the game that appeals to Frank, who plans to continue work toward a medical degree in the off-season. The complexities of the 49ers' offense afford him the opportunity to match wits against an opponent rather than being a rigid pawn. "It's like a chess game," he says. "You've got to be on your toes at all times because the quarterback could change things in a millennium. I like that bit of philosophy."
--Oakland Tribune