Babel On

Gerry's Corner: Well, as everyone knows, it's awards season in Hollywood, and with the Oscars coming up, I've realized once again that I hate the movie industry and everything for which it stands. (Maybe that's over-dramatizing a bit, but come on - I'm allowed a little literary showmanship! It's my blog, after all.) When the nominees were announced, I found that I'd inadvertently already seen two of the films up for Best Picture: Little Miss Sunshine - you can read what I thought of that here and The Queen. Now, I had liked The Queen, but that was mostly because I never thought it would get a Best Picture nod. I mean, to me, getting nominated in that category is a bit like getting kissed by death. If the Hollywood elite love something, it usually means I won't. The Queen seemed like a safe bet - gossipy, dowdy, and British, but no Dame Judi Dench in sight. It looked a bit like a made-for-BBC movie. I thought for sure I could enjoy it. Well, there goes that theory. Now, I'll have to dislike it out of hand.

Dukakis, still sore from the fact that I'd beaten him our most recent grappling match, accused me of being racist.



"You heard me, Gerry. Just because something gets nominated for Best Picture doesn't mean it'll be trash. Look at Moonstruck, starring my cousin, Olympia Dukakis. You're trying to judge a book by its cover."



"Am not, Dukakis. I'm merely judging a movie by the award for which it's been nominated."



"You're missing the point, Gerry. Do you think, when I personally let Willie Horton out on a weekend furlough specifically to rape and rob a woman, that I thought it was a bad idea? Of course I did. But I didn't want to be accused of being racist, so I let him go have his fun."



"I see where that got you."



"I'm good at standing on principle and beating around the bush."



"If only you'd been better at beating Bush."



"That's a cheap shot. Here, Gerry, I'll offer you this challenge. I'll choose two Best Picture nominees and one non-Best Picture nominee. We'll watch them together—"



"Will you make me popcorn?"



"What? Sure, popcorn, the whole nine yards. And if you think—"



"It's actually ten yards, Mike."



"It's just an expression, Gerry."



"Well, it's an inaccurate expression, Mike. If I'd known it was still going to get all popular like this, I would have signed a law banning it during my presidency."



"Focus, Gerry! All right, so I won't tell you which movie is which, and if you honestly think that the non-Best Picture nominee is better than either of the Best Picture nominees, then I'll shave my eyebrows off."



"Ha, ha! Funny-looking Dukakis."



"That's right, funny-looking Dukakis. And if you pick one of the two Best Picture-nominated films as your favorite of the three, you have to tell everyone that I am superior at grappling."



"But - oh, come on, Mikey."



"It's a fair bet, man. You come on."

So we went to see Babel. I could guess right away that it had been nominated for Best Picture, because it was terrible. Just - words can't describe, and I'm no librarian, so I probably wouldn't be able to figure out what words to use to describe it anyway. Here, I'll try and summarize the plot for you: Cate Blanchett, playing a frosty wife to a bearded Brad Pitt, gets shot by a Moroccan kid who's supposed to be herding goats and shooting at jackals, except that he mistakes a tour bus for a jackal. The gun was indirectly from a Japanese safari hunter guy, whose daughter is an oversexed deaf-mute (but the gun connects them!). Meanwhile, Brad & Cate's children's nanny takes them south of the border, to Mexico, for her son's wedding, except that her nephew freaks out at customs on the way back and tosses them out in the middle of the desert, which leads to the nanny getting deported. What would have been great is if those kids had turned out to be the ones that shot Brad & Cate - their own parents! What symmetry! Alas, it was the Moroccan kid who had all the fun. The message was supposed to be that not all Arab-looking folks are terrorists, but I saw the message as this: they can't help killing people with their guns!

Anyway, I hated hated hated that movie. Dukakis is one step closer to shaving his eyebrows. I told him he should shave one since I was already winning. He told me to go to hell. I told him that hanging out with him made me feel like I was already there. Then, he gave me a noogie. After that, we debated how to spell 'noogie.' (Dukakis insisted it was n-o-u-g-i-e. He may be booksmart, but I bet he got a lot of noogies in his school days.) Then, we grappled to a tie.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry