That song was by far the best part.

Some of the men sing terribly low. The handlebar guy drops his voice so deep it feels like he’s sitting right beneath you. I bet he doesn’t even need subwoofers in his ride; when he listens to some rap music, he probably just sings the bass parts himself.

Another singer, this one with a trimmed goatee and a ponytail, is at the opposite end of the scale. His notes rarely come down beneath the stratospheric level. When someone who has been locked out of their house needs to break a window to get in, I’m sure he is the second person they call, after a hammer.

The really cool thing about Chanticleer is the versatility of their voices. The range of sounds they could produce reminded me that the human voice is really an amazing instrument. That was the other best part of the night; realizing that the beauty I’d seen on stage was created with nothing more than voice boxes like mine. It was a touching and universal message; music is in the soul of every person, and all you need to do is lift your voice.

I was pretty psyched about that. For a while. Then I tried to make that Korean ostrich shrieking sound and I got a little frustrated. Music may be the universal language or whatever but I think you need to be able to sing to speak it. Apparently I don’t sing Korean.

Plus, I think I sprained something.

Seriously, though, you can’t have a moustache like that and not have subwoofers. Or at least regular woofers.

Most everyone in the audience was pretty clearly a choir geek (and I say that in a loving, non-judgmental way). At intermission every conversation I overheard was about how “We should do Gaude virgo at the winter concert,” or “It’s amazing how full those third overtones were!”

At the end of the show when they announced that the last song would be “Keep You Hand on the Plow,” someone in the balcony actually said “Yesss!” I didn’t see who it was, so I don’t know, but I can only imagine he or she was pumping his or her fist.

Now, lest I give you the wrong idea, let me say that the song was a tremendous, soaring gospel chant and I was sorry when it ended. But if the words “Hand on the Plow” make you pump your fist, you are definitely a choral aficionado. Good for you, I say, as long as you’re aware of it.

Then again, I can see why someone would recognize the song; it’s one of those that takes over a whole room in your hippocampus and refuses to leave. I’ve been singing, humming, and thinking about it all weekend. Can’t get to heaven by drinkin’ gin, I reminded a passer-by on the walk to the coffee shop this morning. She wasn’t drinking anything, but she looked relieved anyway. It’s just nice to know.

Later at Marshalls I was in the dressing room trying on a pair of snow pants when I remembered that I needed to keep my hand on the gospel plow. Not having one around, I put my hand on my cell-phone, which, I thought, could at least be used to find a gospel plow, or call someone who could tell me about it.

Even now, as we speak, I hear the distinctive notes of that song coming from the bathroom, where my girlfriend is showering. That’s the power of gospel songs, I guess. They’re hard to stop singing. So the next time a glass of gin is placed before me, the first thing that’ll come to mind is an image of that pony-tailed man with his eyes closed and his face toward the sky, warning me, in an octave six times higher than normal, not to take it.

And you know what? I won’t. I will leave that glass were it lays. I will begin singing a mighty chorus of “Hand on the Plow,” in whatever octave I can muster. And if the mood is right, my friends at the table will start singing right along with me. Then maybe the whole bar will join in.

And a lone voice will come from the back of the room, drunk with joy and soda-water: “Yesssss!”

Now, you can debate the merits of this trend (I, for one, see it as a good thing, despite being a pain for the people who set up the theater marquees), but there’s no questioning “I Heart Huckabee’s” pivotal role in this cinematic innovation.

Unfortunately, that’s the only thing about the movie you can be sure of. The rest is a jumble, full of sound and fury, signifying, well … something. I think.

“I Heart Huckabees” has one distinguishing characteristic, aside from its unusual name. There are an inordinate number of scenes in which all the characters are yelling. Apparently, this has something to do with the meaning of life, which is nice to know, since it reminds me a lot of what our family dinners were like when I was a kid. Lots of loud talking by people who weren’t necessarily talking to each other.

As a kid this never bothered me. I just took it as a challenge. But in the film, I couldn’t help being annoyed; every fifteen minutes or so a scene would come along in which all the characters were yelling at every other character, and the purpose of the exercise was unclear.

But maybe that was the point. Huckabees is billed as an existential comedy; it deals with three or four (or five?) people trying to find meaning in meaninglessness. That may seem like a lot for a film to handle while remaining funny, but “I Heart Huckabees” manages by being really, really long. Or at least seeming it.

In fact, it lasts only an hour and a half, but like any good philosophy class, the time stretches forever. It’s not that the film, directed by David Russell (of Three Kings fame), isn’t funny. It is. And I have no complaints about the acting; Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, and especially Mark Wahlberg, put up great performances.

No. In fact, “I Heart Huckabees” is brilliant at times. I’m thinking of a scene in which Wahlberg, playing a philosophical firefighter, refuses to ride in the fire truck because he believes the use of petroleum is inhumane. So he rides his bike to the fire, weaving between cars on the clogged L.A. freeway.

Scenes like that one are funny and poignant and just kind of cool in that weirder-than-you-expected, Wes Anderson sort of way. But unlike Anderson’s Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums, this film is weighed down by its purpose.

The problem is that Russell has created a film about existentialism, rather than an existential film. Instead of showing us a plot where the existential dilemmas of life are evident, he shows us characters talking about those dilemmas. So while the theme – that existence is a balance between meaning and meaninglessness – still comes across, it feels more like a lecture than a movie.

As a lecture, it’s not bad at all. But as a film, its intellectual meanderings overwhelm rather than inform. Every philosophy discussion becomes mush after an hour. If you spend long enough talking about the meaning of life, eventually you’ll just want to stop and go for a walk or something.

But hey, if that’s all “I ♥ Huckabees” accomplishes, it’s plenty.

I’m afraid it will pickle my liver. I am afraid it will clog my intestines. I am afraid it will super-size me.

Is there a name for this?

In the feature-length documentary/practical joke “Super Size Me”, independent filmmaker Morgan Spurlock sets out to find out why Americans are so fat, and to see if he can make himself similarly fat in a short period of time. He succeeds, partly, on both counts.

For the entire month of February , 2003, Spurlock, a New York native, turned McDonald’s across the country into his personal grocery stores. If it didn’t come from a hut with a “billions served” sign, he didn’t eat it. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The experiment was inspired by a lawsuit filed in 2002 against McDonald’s on behalf of Ashley Pelman, then 14, Jazlyn Bradley, then 19, and several other teenagers. The suit alleged that “as [a] result” of eating Happy Meals, McMuffins and Big Macs over the years, the teens had “become obese [and] developed diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure” and other problems. The teen’s lawyers claimed in federal court that McDonald’s didn’t give adequate warning that its meals were unhealthy, and that the companies’ marketing techniques targeted children and pushed consumers to order ever-larger sizes.

In other words: McDonald’s made them fat. And McDonald’s gave them diabetes, and host of other health problems that are related to obesity.

The burger king’s response was that their food could not be proven as the source of the girls’ obesity (and, in fact, the case was later dismissed on exactly those grounds). Spurlock, amateur scientician that he is, took issue with that claim.

“If it’s that good for me,” he recalls thinking, “I should be able to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for thirty days straight with no side effects. I should be able to live the All American way of life of over-eating and under-exercising and be fine.”

Also he recalls thinking it would make a good movie.

And it did. “Super Size Me” succeeds in being thoroughly interesting, entertaining, and scary while walking the thin line between ridiculousness and reason. That line, and Spurlock’s unwillingness to trample it, is the reason why “Super Size Me” is not the “Bowling for Columbine” of food documentaries.

Spurlock presents the case as he sees it, which is, obviously, that fast food (and the All American Way of Life) is terrible for you. If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you fat and diabetic, as it has done for so many Americans.

This is not a novel concept. People have known, generally, that eating unhealthy food and living an unhealthy lifestyle will, in all likelihood, make you unhealthy. And unless you’re like the weirdo in “Super Size Me” who has eaten nothing but Big Macs for twenty years (with no ill-effects), it’s a matter of simple observation.

And yet, all the surgeon general’s warnings in the world will not communicate the scope of America’s obesity epidemic quite as well as seeing skinny Morgan Spurlock gain 17 pounds in 30 days on his McDiet.

From the very beginning “Super Size Me” questions the role of personal responsibility in the fatness epidemic. At the same time, it poses questions about the fast-food companies’ role (no, it’s just Ronald’s fault) that you might not ask yourself on hearing that three obese girls were suing McDonald’s for having allowed them to nearly kill themselves by overeating.

One of the more serious of those questions: is fast food addicting in the same way cigarettes are? Before you start laughing too hard, let me restate the question: is fast food addictive in the same was heroin is?

Some say yes . Some say no. Some (me) say maybe.

And another question: is marketing something as unhealthy as fast-food to children, if not morally wrong, at least socially harmful? Alcohol, with all its negative social and personal effects, isn’t marketed toward kids. And no one argues that it’s proper to do so, despite the fact that consuming alcohol is a choice people are free to make (or not make).

And obesity and related diseases cause almost three times as many deaths yearly as does alcohol and its related problems.

Here again, the beauty of “Super Size Me” is that it aims more to push fast-food companies from a market standpoint (no one will want to buy your crap) than from a moral one (it’s wrong for you to sell such crap).

Moreover, through a creative story idea, brisk, engaging editing, and an entertaining personality (Spurlock, Gut of Steel), the film manages to have a substantial effect on its audience. And in the end, “Super Size Me” is not a film made for the CEOs of McDonald’s and Burger King; it’s for those restaurants’ customers.

And if those customers can sit through this movie and go out the next day and order up a super-size Big Mac “value” meal, then the McFranchises have nothing to worry about. But I can’t see that happening.

I came out of “Super Size Me” with an irrepressible desire to NOT EAT ANYTHING. That will fade soon, I think, but it’ll be a while before I can look at a large box of fried potato sticks with the same tenderness as I used to.

Now, a large box of fried broccoli sticks? That’s another question. Mmmm…where’s my syringe?

But he is rich now, and famous, and made out with Natalie Portman, so that will give him comfort, I’m sure. If I only did unto others as I would have them do to me I’d never review anything. Or if I did, I’d say everything was great, just great. Wonderful.

Unfortunately, Garden State was not. It was a bad movie that kept stumbling into pieces of a good one. Creative visual devices, an excellent soundtrack, and occasional flashes of humor or poignancy make this a watchable movie; you’ll most likely leave the theater happy. But bad dialogue, a confused script, and spotty performances keep the film sputtering; it never really works.

Garden State follows Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff), a melancholic actor whose fortunes in L.A. have been limited to playing a mentally retarded quarterback on T.V. He awakes in a blank white room to hear of his mother’s drowning death via answering-machine message. So it’s back to the film’s namesake, New Jersey, to confront his father (they haven’t spoken in years), his friends (just as he left them in high-school), and his own crushing numbness to life.

That emotional limbo (caused in part by a lifetime prescription of lithium, courtesy of his psychiatrist father) meets its match in Sam (Natalie Portman) an epileptic firefly of a girl; she’s childish and vulnerable, a lovable liar. There’s no plot to speak of beyond that; they spend the next few days being alive, doing strange things that have no clear purpose (which isn’t the same as importance). Then the time comes to return to L.A., to that white room, and Largeman has to choose whether to stay or go.

It has drawn comparisons to Harold and Maude and The Graduate, but I think Garden State is more on par with American Beauty (in message, if not in execution). Life is life, Braff tells us. It can be nice and it cannot be. Every moment, though, is a little miracle, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can start really living. Happiness is in not having any other choice.

And he’s right. But listening to Braff and Portman spend what seems like hours figuring it out makes you wonder why they like each other so much. All they do is talk, and much of that talk comes off sounding forced and hollow. Part of that is poor writing: “Good luck exploring the infinite abyss!” Largeman yells to a newfound acquaintance whose job it is to crawl down into a never-ending canyon. “You too!” the man yells back (Largeman’s abyss being life, get it?).

But sometimes when Garden State falls flat, it’s due to the performances. Portman and Braff have some chemistry, but it’s more of a big-brother-little-sister feel, and when they do finally kiss the passion is awkward. Largeman’s friends are even less impressive; they seem like leftovers from an American Pie audition.

That said, Garden State deserves your movie-going dollars if only for Braff’s engaging direction and visual style. Until it gets bogged down with talking in the later minutes, this film is a parade of new and creative ways of looking at a scene. When Largeman goes into a CAT-scan tube to see about that depression, his naked body is covered with marker-scrawled depictions of his psyche: “Small penis” says one, with an arrow pointing in the appropriate direction.

Somehow Braff managed to top it all off with one of the best movie soundtracks I’ve heard in a long time. Coldplay, The Postal Service, The Shins, and Simon and Garfunkle are just some of the impressive names on the list of really, really good songs. Word is Braff got them all to give up their music for cheap, after they saw and loved the film. So maybe it’s just me.

In all likelihood Braff is even more critical of his own film than I am; he sees every flaw I do and then some. But those flaws he sees are flaws in his movie, and that’s quite an accomplishment for someone his age. When I hit 29 and I read a negative review of my first movie starring Natalie Portman, I’ll just laugh and think what Zach Braff is thinking now: “Kid, you don’t know the half of it.”

“The morning of September 29, 1781, dawned gray and overcast, with tendrils of damp mist swelling over the flat countryside surrounding the small Yorkshire market town of Milton Overblow.”

The first sentence of the first paragraph of the first chapter. So the book began. And so it would end. The page would never turn. The rest of “The Exiles” – that explosive first volume in the unforgettable series that continued with “The Settlers,” “The Traitors,” “The Explorers,” “The Adventurers,” “The Colonists,” and “The Gold Seekers,” – would always be unknown to Richard Price.

Pity. Eight years before, the book’s publishers, high up in their office towers at 1, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York City, had pinned high hopes on “The Exiles.” At a mere $4.95 in Canada ($3.95 USA), it was a bargain.

And their hopes were rightly pinned. By 1985, when Mr. Price’s copy was produced, old 1, Dag Hammarskjold Plaza was rolling in dough, for that was the book’s fourteenth printing in five years. William Stuart Long, World War II veteran and Australian traveler, had spent countless hours researching the book in the quiet darkness of the New York Public Library (no doubt he worked beside many other aspiring authors), and was now reaping his reward.

Richard Price, however, would not reap much from Mr. Long’s toil. He got as far as the third sentence when a woman entered the suburban Sizzler and strode right to his booth.

“Hey,” she said, before sitting down. Her sunglasses were still dripping from the rain. “What are you having?”

“Same as you,” Price replied. “Same as always. You wearin’ sunglasses?”

She shook them off in a flurry of blonde. Even in this Sizzler she was mermaid-like, always drawing him to her.

“They’re new. Ray-Ban. Well … imitation. You like ‘em?”

She was sitting now, and the waitress came. Did they want beverages? Price’s companion wanted only steak-the-house-special, which she made clear in a condescending way to the knob-kneed teenager.

Unfazed, she turned toward the kitchen, only to be recalled by a gloved snap of the woman’s hand.
“How much’s the special?”

“Six-ninety-eight.”

“OK two specials then.”

Alone again. Price set the book beside the silverware. His shoes were wet, and he squished them against back of the booth. She thought he looked tired; his comb-over only partly combed over, his shirt dark and wrinkled.

She, on the other hand, looked like she’d just woken from a long nap. Her skin was bright and taut; ripe. Her blue suit-skirt, pleated and knee-length, was resplendent. Such shoulders, he thought. Even without the pads she had such shoulders.

“Listen, Ricky,” she started, leaning in. He leaned in too. “I don’t think-”

But then the salads came. They separated, saying nothing as the waitress distributed greens from an oversized wooden bowl.

“Fresh ground-pepper?”

No response. So she left. They huddled in again, as if discussing a trick play.

“Ricky I don’t think this is gonna work anymore.”

“What?” He asked, now leaning almost all the way across the table. He really hadn’t heard her.

“This,” she said. “Any of it. It isn’t working. I’m not happy, you’re not happy. Every week this place. And then what? Y’know? Then what? You gonna’ live this way another ten years? It’s a new decade, Ricky, everything’s different now…”

She trailed off, staring into the distance. Outside the storm was worse.

“I’m happy,” he said, looking down. “I never said I wasn’t happy.”

“Oh Ricky, come on. You haven’t been happy in three years. You don’t smile anymore … we don’t … do nothin’ no more.”

“That’s not true. That’s not true. We tried, last year we tried but then your mom got sick and–“

“Ricky don’t blame it on her. We coulda’ still done it. I was over there three nights a week, Ricky. That’s four nights with you. Every week. Don’t blame it on her.”

He said nothing, opting instead to pick at his salad. The food came, floating and bobbing on a huge round tray with skinny legs.

“Fresh ground-pepper?”

Nothing. She left, un-offended. Five dollars and fifteen cents an hour and she wasn’t going to get offended by anything. Pepper, no pepper. Fine.

“Do you love me, Ricky,” she said, drooping those beautiful shoulders. “I mean, are we still in love?”

“Of course,” he said, chewing. Little bits came out along graceless trajectories. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t think I love you anymore. I’m sorry, but I don’t. I swear I tried and it’s not another guy, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t supposed to be together.”

He stopped. Stopped chewing, stopped breathing, stopped blinking. This was it, he realized. She wanted a divorce. She wasn’t just talking, she was serious. And he didn’t want a divorce. He didn’t want a divorce.

“Baby. I can’t live without you,” he said. It was true, but in words and out loud it sounded rote and perfunctory.

“I know, honey, I can’t live without you either. But I got to.”

She flagged the waitress. Her plate was nearly empty. How had she eaten so much?

“Can we have the check, please?”

“Sure. Here you go.”

“Hold on, I’ll give you my card.” She dug through her purse. Things fell on the ground which she did not pick up, then or later. She found the credit card and held it up, like she was bidding for something expensive.

Meanwhile Richard was statuesque; frozen in body and mind. He knew there were things he could be saying but he didn’t know what they were. His insides were crumbling.

“We don’t take American Express,” said the freckly teen. She was sixteen, probably, Richard thought. More or less.

“Oh shit. Jesus … Richard can you cover this one? I’m out of cash. I’ve gotta go, baby, I’m sorry, I love you…OK? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

And she did. But not the next day. And seldom after that. And he was stuck there at the Sizzler in San Bernadino, a vast all-you-can eat buffet behind him, with a bill for $14.80.

He took out his wallet, produced his Visa card (which, along with MasterCard, the restaurant would not refuse), and finished his steak.

Two dinners, 84 cents in tax. No tip.

David Sedaris compares his sister’s feet to animal hooves. He portrays his brother as a slovenly brute. He gives the impression that his father is a chronic failure. And that’s just in his latest book, “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.”

God knows what he makes his poor relatives out to be in his earlier bestsellers (I haven’t read them). But from this last one I can glean at least one thing: it’s not bad to be in a David Sedaris book, as long as you’re not in it for very long. If I ever meet the man I’ll have to remember to act boring, and give a false name.

Criticisms? Nah. He hasn’t written about me yet, and while I’m sure his cloven sister doesn’t send him Christmas cards thanking him for the mention, it’s not my business if he wants to describe his family in petting-zoo terms. Once you get over the fact that he isn’t only going to say nice things about the people closest to him, Sedaris’s book is like reading a bag of potato chips: each chapter leaves you feeling good and wanting more, until you reach the end, and you’re left with an empty bag and greasy fingers.

Normally, to compare a book to junk food is disparaging, but I say it with respect and admiration. If only I could write a few dozen little potato chips and throw them in a bag with a publisher’s logo on it, I’d be set. Sedaris did, and he’s rich and gives college lectures and lives in an apartment in Paris with his collection of spiders.

Unfortunately, I’m not gay. I can’t refer to places from my youth as where I used to do “mushrooms, cocaine, acid, peyote.” And, while my family is perhaps strange enough to mention here and there, I don’t think I’ll ever reach the point where I don’t mind exposing their deepest flaws.

So what am I to write about? Why would anyone want to read about the dead bunnies I find in my yard when they could learn all about this bitter, sarcastic man and his sister who eats turkey out of the garbage?

And even if I did have something terribly interesting to write about, don’t you sort of get the feeling that it’d be better to just send my notes to David Sedaris and let him put it together? Dear Mr. Sedaris, here is a humorous event that occurred to me, would you mind creating a brief and hilarious story out of it? Feel free to embellish with drugs and curse-words as needed.

Oh but then it wouldn’t have that innocent note that permeates my writing. And isn’t that, after all, why my readers keep coming back here? My touching naïveté, my ingenuous take on the everyday challenges of life? Like that time I had to shovel poop out of my basement when the drain line backed up; wasn’t that cute?

Reading the stories of people like David Sedaris always makes me wonder if maybe I’m not going about my life the wrong way. Sedaris, from what I can tell, was basically flunking life during most of his twenties. He cleaned homes for a while, vacuuming for rich people and the occasional weirdo who thought he was from an erotic cleaning service. He also seems to have spent a lot of time at the International House of Pancakes, where his obsessive-compulsive disorder drove him to sit in the same booth every time.

That’s a whole lot different from me. I’m going straight from college to a job (at least for now) where I sit in a cubicle all day working on a computer. Don’t get me wrong; I really like my job, but so far it hasn’t turned up much good material for a book. At least, nothing that compares to being mistaken for an erotic maid.

Sometimes I worry that when the time comes to move to Paris and live in a spider-filled apartment while writing my book, I won’t have anything to write about. And isn’t that the problem with reading other people’s books? It just reminds you of all the things you haven’t done.

When it comes to “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” that’s the allure too. There are some lives that are best lived vicariously. David Sedaris’ is one of them.

But they were courageous. They fought and won, and then went selflessly to do the hard work of building a country.

And so, this Fourth of July weekend, we honored the work of our forefathers and mothers by taking a few days off. To relax. To grill the meat of dead animals and watch the red glare of pretend rockets.

And, of course, to watch movies. I hope you all did your patriotic duty and took part in the great American holiday tradition of going to the cinema.

If you did something traitorous like volunteering or educating yourself for the upcoming election and you didn\’t get out in the trenches, don\’t worry. I was there, and I\’ve got you covered. Here, in a triathlon of film criticism, are reviews of the three movies I saw this weekend. That way you\’ll have something to talk about around the water cooler, and your co-workers won\’t think you\’re a commie.

#1 – The Verdict (starring Paul Newman)

OK, to start with, I\’m sure you\’re thinking \”Hmm, \’The Verdict\’ came out in 1982, the year Bruno was born, so he cannot possibly have gone to the cinema to watch it.\” Fine, you\’re right, I watched it on DVD, in my living room, with my law-school-bound roommate Dan sitting beside me. And I didn\’t go see fireworks this weekend, either. Jeez, what is this now, McCarthy n\’ Me*?

Anyway, in \”The Verdict\” Paul Newman plays a has-been alcoholic lawyer who takes on a medical malpractice case that can\’t be won. When the hospital (via its team of smarmy lawyers) offers to settle with the family of the now-comatose patient, Newman turns them down (the woman\’s brother-in-law nearly kills him for throwing away what looks like their best chance at $200,000).

But, of course, Paul Newman wouldn\’t have taken the role if the case really couldn\’t be won, so he does the only reasonable thing, which is to win it. Unfortunately, it isn\’t much of a surprise. As with many courtroom movies, you know the good guys are going to win the minute it starts looking like they won\’t. The fun, as Dan put it in his hoity-toity pre-law-speak, is in \”how they do it.\”

\”The Verdict\” does OK until the third quarter, with Newman cruising along in steely-blue-eyes mode, but it poops out (HA! Print that, McCarthy!) in the last minutes. Newman\’s surprise witness seems to pound the last nail in the doctors\’ coffins, but through some technical trickery, her testimony is stricken. That would seem to end it – old Paul will have to go back to ambulance chasing and beer-runs (maybe simultaneously) – but then the jury returns a guilty verdict, and the good guys win again.

Wow. What a surprise. I can\’t believe it.

Worth seeing, especially if, like Dan, you too dream of one day becoming a drunk, failed, stunningly good-looking attorney. For those with humbler goals, I recommend you skip the law stuff, and go right to the beer chasing and ambulance-runs.

*A sitcom I have dreamt about in which I play a businessman, a la Ricki Ricardo, and Joseph McCarthy is my stay-at-home roommate, always getting me into trouble.

The Verdict: 32 of 50 stars, no stripes.

#2 – The Terminal (Starring Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta-I-have-too-many-last-names, and Stanley \”Sushi\” Tucci. Directed by Steven Spielberg)

Man, whoever said Russian people sound like they have pudding in their mouths was so right. \”Terminal\” (not to be confused with \”Germinal\”) brings us Tom Hanks as the pudding-mouthed Victor, a Krakozhian (fake country) tourist who gets stranded in an airport when his country collapses into civil war. The king of the airport (What? I can\’t remember his title), played by Tucci, says he can\’t leave the airport and he can\’t go home until his countrymen stop killing each other.

So he\’s stuck. Stranded. Permanently delayed. A tough situation, to say the least, but Hanks quickly puts his Castaway skills to use, killing and eating stray tourists, uh, I mean, building a bed out of waiting-area benches. As time goes by, Victor learns the rules of the airport ecosystem (see, what you always suspected was right, you could live in this place) and even starts to make friends (I\’m looking at you, Zeta-Jones).

Hanks knows how to get laughs, and the fake Russian accent only makes that easier. His character is ably played and well-written, and you can\’t but cheer for a guy who eats ketchup-and-mustard on cracker sandwiches. Tucci plays the villain with a likable touch of incompetence, adding complexity to the part. Spielberg is on home turf here, and he avoids, for the most part, an overdose of sappiness.

There\’s a message in there, somewhere (something about finding home and keeping promises), but it\’s not that important. The pudding ratio is right, Russian people who can\’t speak English are funny, and that old Indian guy from Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums keeps getting more and more time onscreen.

The Terminal: 37 of 50 stars, 7 stripes.

#3 – Spiderman 2 (Starring Toby Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Alfred Molina. Directed by Sam Raimi).

Wow, you\’re still here. I wasn\’t even sure I\’d make it this far. Well, you\’re in for a treat; the best film of the bunch gets the shortest review.

Spiderman 2 was the best super-hero action movie I\’ve ever seen. For once the action served to support the story, not the other way around. Sam Raimi takes us where few movies of this genre have dared to go; into three dimensions.

Have you ever wondered, \”Doesn\’t Spiderman get tired?\” or \”Doesn\’t Doctor Octopus feel guilty about being such a villain?\” Spiderman 2 takes on the difficult task of humanizing characters who are defined by their inhuman abilities. If it sounds a little like Tim Burton\’s original Batman, it is, except Toby Maguire is lot more likeable as Peter Parker than Michael Keaton was as Bruce Wayne. Both he and Alfred Molina (playing Doc Oc) add real human emotion to their roles; an understanding that after the fighting is over, the superheroes and super-villains have to go home and eat a frozen TV dinner just like anybody else.

Kirsten Dunst is a beautiful and terrible actress, both in great quantities. This is a bad thing. Also, the movie starts talking too much at the end. That, and an uncomfortably forced set-up for the next sequel make the last twenty minutes yawn-and-stretch time, but by then you\’ve probably zoned out, thinking \”Where does Spiderman do his spandex laundry, anyway?\”

The answer? Well, you\’ll have to watch to find out, I\’m not going to go spoiling the ending.

And speaking of laundry, I have some spandex I need to attend to down in the basement.

A superhero\’s job is never done, y\’know.

Spiderman 2: 42 stars, 9 stripes.

Here I am beginning to flounder. Please forgive.

Have you listened to Cake?

Oh. Maybe that\’s the problem. See, you are missing out on the best band to come out of the years 1990-2000. Think about all the great musical moments you have missed.

For example: Today I was driving home from the gas station (a bargain at $1.85/gallon) when the song \”Rock and Roll Lifestyle\” by Cake wandered into my radio.

All my inner frustration at the aimless political and social contrarianism I see around me was immediately expressed in the sung/spoken lyrics. \”Excess ain\’t rebellion/You\’re drinking what they\’re selling.\”

It\’s good because it\’s true, it\’s catchy, and it rhymes. Like a clever pun. These are the moments you\’re missing. You could be driving in your car right now, or yesterday, if that works better, listening to \”Prolonging the Magic\’s\” \”Where would I be?\”, a doleful waltz riddled with religious symbolism.

And then you could think to yourself, \”Do I like this because of the subtly implanted religious references, or because of the way the banjo and the bass pluck together?\”

Maybe you could listen to the track seven on the same album and wonder what the line \”And the gravedigger puts on the forceps\” means. You could wait and wait for an answer but it would not come.

That is, it wouldn’t\’ come until the chorus, when John McCrea sings \”Sheep go to heaven/goats go to hell.\” How\’s that for an answer! Huh!?

Best band of the 90s.

Ok, I\’ll give you a hint.

My familiarity with \”Pirates of Penzance\” had, until Friday, extended only to Barney\’s rendition, while doing backflips, of the show\’s hit song (Deep Space Homer -1f13).

In truth, that would have been enough. As with many classic works of art, a brief pop culture reference – on the Simpsons or, in earlier years, Duck Tales – has been enough. Like my eleven-year-old brother said when he saw the bust of Cleopatra in the British National Museum, \”Oh, I know her, she was on an episode of Loony Toons.\”

The Pirates of Penzance, let\’s not kid ourselves, is never going to be in the British Museum. Nonetheless, the play has been become enough a part of pop culture that, even without having seen it, I knew a little about it.

I knew, for example, that nearly every male character in the play has the apparent sexual orientation of Nathan Lane in \”The Bird Cage\”. That doesn\’t bother me; a) I find it quite progressive for a piece that premiered in 1880 and b) it was fitting since the next day the 32nd annual Twin Cities Pride Festival was being held in Loring Park, just a block away.

I also knew, however, that Pirates of Penzance is a musical – a narrative form that has always infuriated me with its random singing and dancing. Why are these people singing to each other, I always wonder. What is the purpose of all this synchronized dancing?

But while I generally hate musicals, I liked Pirates of Penzance. The story, and I ask old G & S to forgive me when I say this, is terrible (here\’s a summary). Something about Pirates wanting to marry the daughters of a major general (yes, the very model of a). But, as I said, it\’s hard to understand why they want to, since they don\’t seem to, um, swashbuckle that way.

I can\’t comment on the lyrics, since I understood about ten percent of them. They sounded very clever, in the same way that a chalkboard filled with math equations looks very clever. But, not knowing what any of it means, it\’s hard to tell just how clever it really is. What if the only real English words they were using were the rhyming ones at the end of the phrases, and the rest were gibberish? I had no way of telling, but that\’s probably a defect on my part.

The singing was kind of a cross between opera and tongue twisters, which is actually more impressive than it sounds. The standouts were the Baldwin sisters, Christina and Jennifer, whom I loved even more as the leads in \”Carmen\” at the Theatre de la Jeune Lune. The rest of the cast was also good, if slightly less pretty, and everyone was just brimming with enthusiasm (a remarkable feat on the last weekend of a long run).

But the staging was what made this musical a winner, and you knew it in the first five minutes of the show. That\’s when, during a sleepy, hilarious opening ballad by a Sullivan look-alike, the famous pirates make their entrance. They come flying out of the rafters, over the balconies, swinging from the ceiling and crawling through the aisles. Those first five minutes seem more like a circus than a musical, which makes the fact that they\’re singing (although who knows about what) that much more impressive.

The whole production is staged with this kind of high-flying enthusiasm. It\’s almost as if the director and choreographer knew the inane plot of this late 19th century vaudeville wouldn\’t sustain us modern, high-society types, so they packed it full of fun stuff, like back-flips (more than I ever thought I\’d see at the Guthrie).

And guess what? It works. By the time Queen Victoria drops from the sky in a hot-air-balloon, the audience is pretty much in hysterics, whether or not they\’ve understood more than five minutes of the singing. And when, during the curtain call, the Sergeant of the Police comes out break-dancing, the audience\’s applause is so compulsively rhythmic that you might think you were at the Fitzgerald Theater watching the end of \”A Prairie Home Companion.\”

Except it\’s different, because the All-Star Shoe Band has been replaced by a dozen agile, shirtless men and Garrison Keilor suddenly looks very good in a busty Victorian gown. And there\’s two of him.

So really, not that different at all.

Related:
Oh, there\’s so much related stuff out there, I don\’t know where to start. Briefly:

• The whole musical in MIDI
• The Pioneer Press\’ review
• The Guthrie study guide
• And best of all, a list of parodies of the \”Major General\” song, with my favorite, by Yacko, Wacko, and Dot, of the Animaniacs (see, all you ever needed to know about the classics, on afternoon cartoons).