From the Couch Hole: Have You Seen the Weather

Previously on FTCH, last week the Monkey Wrench Gang took on the emotional baggage of Y2K with some queer s’mores. The endless summer showed how sweet it is with strawberry and watermelon. This week brought some big changes to work situations in the house, more to come. This week there was time enough for love during warfare. When love breaks down, you gotta have fun even as the night moves with double fudge. Remember, when FTCH talks, people listen.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Robert Heinlein – Time Enough for Love (1973) (Published by Ace Paperbacks): “Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.” I was intrigued by the cover but daunted by the 600 pages. His shorter novels are dense enough for me that I was worried about getting bogged down in a Frank Herbert-sized novel. The book is mostly a series of novellas told by Lazarus Long (born Woodrow Wilson Smith), the world’s oldest man at about 2,000 years old. The Arabian Night setup allows Heinlein to look back and tell stories set in different eras. The first few stories, especially “The Tale of the Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail” have a distinct Mark Twain voice to them. So do the breaks in between stories where Heinlein riffs some one-liners about society. The novel is capped off with “Da Capo,” which is a fascinating time-travel story where Lazarus falls in love with his own mother. It’s a culmination of multiple looks at polyamory and incest that run through most of the stories. This story has had influences upon modern writers. I could even see the line through to Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (2011). The incest angle is probably the biggest turn-off for most readers. I understood that the need to mate with other “long lifers” caused this reliance upon reproducing with relatives. It makes sense from a practical point of view. Those complaints aside, I find that Heinlein’s thought-provoking explorations to be much more accessible than other writers in the genre that I’ve read recently.

Buy Time Enough For Love paperback

• The Rehearsal – “Gotta Have Fun” (2025) (S.2 E.1) (MAX): “Maybe a clown can change the world after all.” – Nathan. I wasn’t sure how you would go about following up the initial 2022 season of The Rehearsal. Nathan Fielder is miles ahead of anyone else in the field of uncomfortable comedy. On The Curse (Showtime), Nathan had to reel in his creativity. This season purports to solve the serious problem of cockpit communication that has caused real plane crashes. The episode title comes from the actual dialog in the cockpit of a Canadian plane accident. As Nathan says early on, he’s “both the best and the worst person to solve this.” The season would seem to be about the even larger issue of communication, speaking up in a work situation and the loneliness of modern society. Nathan gets away with more than any other comedian in his line of work. I laughed and cringed and loved every minute of the first episode. We have five more weeks to see if a comedy show can save lives. Or as he says in one of the more bizarre moments in the initial episode, “Maybe a clown can change the world after all.”

Buy Prefab Sprout: Steve McQueen CD

• Prefab Sprout – “When Love Breaks Down” (1984) (from Steve McQueen): “The things you do / To stop the truth from hurting you.” I am struck by the first line “My love and I work well together” because the rest of the song seems to be about the loss of a relationship. The album, when issued in the United States in 1985 was called Two Wheels Good, since “Steve McQueen” is a little more expensive to release as a brand. Those first few notes still give me the goosebumps of memory. The mid-’80s had some beautiful love songs (including the falling in and falling out of kinds). This captures a feeling of an era that might only makes sense if you lived through it. I am sad that this group didn’t break bigger.
  
  Bonus beats. Mark Rae’s “Paddy’s Break Down” is a remix, reimaging that does what the best Old School remixes did, it breaks the song down in a way that gives you a new perspective on the music.

• Night Moves (2013) (Directed by Kelly Reichardt): “People are gonna start thinking. They have to.” – Josh. There are some coincidences that seem like fate. I had just watched Night Moves (1975) and finished reading The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) in the same week recently when this film came across my feeds. The description reads like an updated version of The Monkey Wrench Gang. Instead of a foursome, there are three eco-terrorists. Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, and Peter Sarsgaard spend the first half of the film setting it up as a type of caper, setting up and attempting to blow up a dam in Oregon. The book would turn into a chase film after this event, but this film becomes more of a psychological portrait of how they handle the guilt of their terrorism. Visually, this is a beautiful film. The camera always seems to frame the characters in a way that we can see their faces working through their emotions. The ambiguous ending, or maybe even the last 20 minutes of the film are probably why this film doesn’t get more love. The story isn’t about the result as much as about the journey of the characters. That goes against the credo of the eco-terrorist where the end result is more important than the means. I just can’t give it a full-throated recommendation.

• Warfare (2025) (Directed by Ray Mendoza; Alex Garland): “Peeking with serious intent to probe.” These brief thoughts might frustrate my average reader. I could argue either side of the argument for or against this film. Instead, I fall a little bit in each camp. November 11, 2006, Ramadi. After an introduction to the setting and scenario that last about 15 minutes, the rest of the film takes place in mostly “real time.” The film begins with a statement that it is from “memory.” That allows for any artistic flourishes, and it adds a level of doubt to the veracity of the story. It’s hyper-realistic, which for an anti-war film creates an effective level of intensity in the action, but it ends up serving as a glorification of the war. I know the directors didn’t mean that as part of their message, but told from the memory of the American soldiers, it is devoid of any political message or perspective (until the very last shot) of the enemy combatants. The best anti-war films include a political point of view greater than the single battle. These stories of the Iraqi War are important, and I feel like this is a great film experience without being an important one.

Best of the Rest

• I might not let on much in public, but I’m a fan of Snow Patrol. This 2013 cover of the Prefab Sprout feels like a good match. In the hands of this group, it’s naturally more of a tragic song. The instrumentation captures what I think more of a 2008 sound, but the song still sounds fresh. The noise borders on burying the vocals at points, but there’s lot to hold onto here.

• Entertainment Weekly (3/28/97): “Best Commercials of All-Time” #25: McDonald’s “Clean” (1974): “You deserve a break today.” It’s interesting that this particular McDonald’s ad made the Top 25. There could be a Top 25 of only McDonald’s ads because they were so influential over three decades. This ad debuted the “You deserve a break today” that I still associate with the company as if it was in their current ads. Notable for the appearance of future television stars, John Amos and a young Anson Williams. The last note is that showing the cleaning of a fast-food restaurant might seem odd, but at the time, the reputation of many fast-food joints was of a dirty interior.

• The International Oreo world is much more exploratory than our United States releases. The limited edition release of Cherry Blossom Matcha Oreo Thins coming to America from Japan is something to be applauded. They will only be available through an online lottery. I’m unlikely to ever taste them. I appreciate the first steps towards getting more matcha flavors here that are so prevalent in the Asian releases. I’m still waiting for Vanilla Raspberry Oreos to make it here from the United Kingdom.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• On the Sunday Morning Tuneage from 6/4/2007 to 7/12/2009, I ranked my 100 Favorite Films of All-Time. I did one per week with the arbitrary rule that they had to air on television that upcoming week. It ended up being a pretty representative list in retrospect. A few were ranked out of order, but I stick with that list for that point in my life. The 2009 stats check out.
  
  6 – Alfred Hitchcock films.
  5 – Steven Spielberg films.
  4 – Stanley Kubrick films.
  4 – Billy Wilder films.
  
  I’m going to attempt the impossible over the next 20 weeks. I’m going to use that old list as a template and rank five films a week, without planning it all out ahead of time. Remember, these are “favorite” and not necessarily “best” movies. Enjoy critiquing me along the way.
  
  2025 Running Stats (#31-100)
  • 3 – Directed by Terry Gilliam
  • 3 – Directed by Rob Reiner
  • 3 – Directed by Steven Spielberg
  • 3 – Directed by Quentin Tarantino
  • 3 – Directed by David Yates
  • 2 – Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
  • 2 – Directed by Brian De Palma
  • 2 – Directed by John Hughes
  • 2 – Directed by Terry Jones
  • 2 – Directed by Sergio Leone
  • 2 – 1920’s
  • 3 – 1940’s
  • 2 – 1950’s
  • 6 – 1960’s
  • 16 – 1970’s
  • 15 – 1980’s
  • 15 – 1990’s
  • 7 – 2000’s
  • 3 – 2010’s
  • 1 – 2020’s
    
• FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL-TIME (2009)
  • 35. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
  • 34. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
  • 33. The Wild Bunch (1969)
  • 32. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
  • 31. The Searchers (1956)
    
• FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL-TIME (2025)
  • 35. Stand by Me (1986) (Directed by Rob Reiner): “You guys want to go see a dead body?” That’s the question that puts into motion one of the best adaptations of a Stephen King novella. It’s a coming-of-age story that addresses themes that he plays with in all of his books about young men, but it especially feels like a dry run for the young boys in IT.
  • 34. North BBy Northwest (1959) (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock): I don’t think that Eva Marie Saint gets enough credit among the Hitch women. While most of his action films earlier would circle back to where they started, this film is a straight arrow. It is possibly the most accessible film for the uninitiated. I still enjoy it on an almost yearly basis.
  • 33. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) (Directed by Robert Zemeckis): I know that we didn’t give this film enough credit when it first came out. The cameos were a distraction to a really fun, crime-noir story that has plenty of adult-themed nods. I watched it again a couple of years ago and smiled every second.
  • 32. Deliverance (1972) (Directed by John Boorman): Famous for a single scene has not done this film any favors. There are so many rich themes about survival, classism, and life choices that this is almost more philosophy than thriller. It’s one of the more thoughtful films of the early ’70s.
  • 31. The Omen (1976) (Directed by Richard Donner): I’m not going to claim this is a work of Art. It was and is really fun to watch. Gregory Peck plays his role like no one told him he was in a horror film. As an eight-year-old, this film was famous in the schoolyard before any of us ever saw it. I was probably closer to twelve when I finally caught it, and in a rare example, it lived up to expectations.

Buy North by Northwest Blu-ray

1975 in Review

• April – Mad #174 (April 1975): Cover by Norman Mingo who typically paints in the Norman Rockwell style. Interior stories by the usual gang of idiots including the cover parody, “Death Wishers” by Mort Drucker.
• April 30 – The Fall of Saigon. The surrender happens mid-morning, and the Viet Cong flag would be raised by just after Noon. The last helicopter evacuated ambassadors from the roof of the U.S. Consulate just hours before the fall.
• April 21- People Weekly (April 21): The interview with Paul & Linda McCartney are making the magazine rounds as they are mixing Venus & Mars before the May release. The album would continue their success from Band on the Run and launch a year-long concert tour.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“My love and I, we work well together
But often we’re apart
Absence makes the heart lose weight, yeah” – Prefab Sprout