From the Couch Hole: You Realize You Just Can’t Have It All

Previously on FTCH, Medusa was in Cold Harbor with Aguirre. The four Musketeers discovered that love hurts but late-night jalapeno poppers are good. This week was a bit of summer, and a little spring with a trip to see the Dallas Mavericks. This week we go to Tom Lake with a beautiful loser. The death of a unicorn is caused by the righteous Gemstones who were looking for pi. Remember, FTCH, FTCH, get your adverbs here.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Ann Patchett – Tom Lake (2023) (Published by Harper): “The rage dissipates along with the love, and all we’re left with is a story.” There’s a fine line where a quiet, thoughtful story threatens to become a boring, slog. I’m glad to say that, mostly due to Patchett’s writing style, this book teeters on the edge but never becomes unreadable. The book starts during the Pandemic when Lara’s three daughters are back at home. The majority of the story takes place in the past as Lara tells the story of her relationship with a famous actor. It’s almost necessary to be familiar with Wilder’s Our Town to enjoy the book. Lara meets Peter Duke while portraying Emily in the play. The story of the novel is a mirror reflection of the play. Setting a story mainly in the past as a tale told by a mother to her daughters takes away much of the drama that could have been present. There’s something very Pandemic about the slow pace and focus on family that feels nostalgic just five years hence. An easy read, but I fear I will forget it all in a month or two.

Buy Tom Lake: A Novel paperback

• The Righteous Gemstones – “For I Know the Plans I Have for You” (2023) (S.3 E.1) (MAX): “Through God’s teachings, we could be a monster truck” – Young Jesse. This is the point that people warned me that I should have watched Succession (MAX) to understand some of the humor in Season Three. I get that both shows are about siblings that spend more time feuding for their father’s approval than they do actually being part of the family. I’ll watch that show eventually, but I don’t feel like I’m missing anything here. The season starts with a flashback (as have the other two seasons), and the season-long formula appears to be in place. This season will be a battle against the alt-Gemstone’s, the Simkins family (led by my favorite, Stephen Dorff). The formula established, this episode seemed to pack in a few episodes of development, including the May-May as Jason Voorhees subplot. Each episode gives me more laughs per minute than any current show, so I’m sticking with what others have told me is the weakest of the seasons.

Buy Bob Seger – Beautiful Loser CD

• Bob Seger – “Beautiful Loser” (1975) (from Beautiful Loser): “If you need him, he’ll be there again / He’s always willing to be second best.” The first song on the first side of Bob Seger’s eighth album is the moment that I feel like Bob Seger became a sound as much as an artist. Six years of touring through Michigan without a significant breakthrough had him looking at his life. That’s when the magic comes. The best Bob Seger songs, including “Fire Lake,” “Against The Wind,” and “Night Moves,” are all about that perspective of looking back with a combination of love, pain, and missing the feeling of those younger days. He secured my fandom with this album. It still sounds rich 50 years later.

• Pi (1998) (Directed by Darren Aronofsky): “I’m trying to understand our world. I don’t deal with petty materialists like you.” Maximillian Cohen. I trace the modern independent movie scene to Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino in 1993/1994. The next push was the movement in 1998 that connected independent films with art films. Aronofsky wrote and directed this film with obvious influences from David Lynch. He moved it beyond that era with a story that connected the digital world with religion, the past, and the future. The decent into madness by Maximilian is also symbolized by the transition from science to the fringe worlds like Numerology. The attempts to turn the last act into a thriller are the only drawbacks to the film. I appreciate Aronofsky’s story more now that I’m familiar with his career after this film. It’s odd, not easy to decipher, but it’s hard to take your eyes off the screen.

• Death of a Unicorn (2025) (Directed by Alex Scharfman): “And here’s hoping we kill Bigfoot on the way back.” – Shepard. It’s refreshing to see that a horror/dark comedy film can make the big screen. All you have to do to appreciate the odds is to see all of the sequels, franchises, and derivative film trailers in front of the film. The premise is simple (as befits some of the best horror films) enough. Paul Rudd and his daughter, Jenna Ortega, are driving to a remote weekend in Northern Canada when they hit a unicorn. From that point on, it becomes Jurassic Park meets an ’80s slasher film. The film could have veered off course very early but each character is cast perfectly. The film doesn’t pursue some of the more insightful symbols available thanks to the unicorns, but it’s a fun trip that doesn’t simply copy current trends. The genre thrives in corners like this.

Best of the Rest

• My Scooby-Doo franchise is landing at Netflix. But this time it’s a live-action series! Produced by Berlanti Productions, who brought us some of my favorite DC properties at the CW for years, not to mention Riverdale and Nancy Drew. It looks to be an eight-episode, live-action origin story written by folks who worked on Cowboy Bebop. I’m honestly pretty excited for this venture.

• Entertainment Weekly (3/28/97): “Best Commercials of All-Time” #26: Dept. of Transportation “Crashing Glasses” (1983): “Drinking and driving can kill a friendship.” I wouldn’t have picked a PSA from the Ad Council as a Best Commercial of All-Time. This ad won a Clio, and it ran for years through the ’80s. Maybe glasses breaking in slow motion doesn’t move the needle in 2025.

• “The Californians meet the VW ID Buzz” might be the best post-Super Bowl ad out there. I didn’t see much coming out of March Madness that impressed. This SNL50 ad also played during The Emmys, so there’s a chance it will just be saved for event television. I’m only vaguely aware of the Bill Hader, Fred Armisen, and Kristen Wiig characters, but this makes me want to do a deep dive on YouTube. I wonder if the highway humor resonates for anyone who hasn’t lived in California.

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 (#41-100)
  • 3 – Directed by Terry Gilliam
  • 3 – Directed by Quentin Tarantino
  • 3 – Directed by David Yates
  • 2 – Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
  • 2 – Directed by John Hughes
  • 2 – Directed by Terry Jones
  • 2 – Directed by Sergio Leone
  • 2 – Directed by Rob Reiner
  • 2 – Directed by Steven Spielberg
  • 2 – 1920’s
  • 2 – 1940’s
  • 1 – 1950’s
  • 6 – 1960’s
  • 14 – 1970’s
  • 11 – 1980’s
  • 15 – 1990’s
  • 5 – 2000’s
  • 3 – 2010’s
  • 1 – 2020’s
    
• FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL-TIME (2009)
  • 45. Dazed & Confused (1993)
  • 44. Aliens (1986)
  • 43. King Kong (1933)
  • 42. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
  • 41. American Graffiti (1973)
    
• FAVORITE MOVIES OF ALL-TIME (2025)
  • 45. Being John Malkovich (1999) (Directed by Spike Jonze): I like this film better today than I did in 1999. It’s an odd little film. John Cusack is perfectly cast and then days after watching, it you will find yourself smacked by some of the small moments of the film.
  • 44. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part Two (2011) (Directed by David Yates): If any film illustrates “you can’t go home again,” it’s this one. The emotional climax of the story was at the end of the previous film. That’s not to say there aren’t emotions here, but this is about circling the story, for better or for worse.
  • 43. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (Directed by James Cameron): This is a top-ten film if we are talking about the experience of seeing it in the theater at the Big Newport in California. As we approach our own Skynet becoming self-aware, this film becomes more and more of a warning.
  • 42. Misery (1990) (Directed by Rob Reiner): There are a number of Stephen King adaptations that make my Favorites list. This is a good example of when it works, it works. Reiner drops a few details that would have made Kathy Bates even more detestable, but the spirit of the work is captured perfectly.
  • 41. The Great Dictator (1940) (Directed by Charlie Chaplin): “You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men!” The final four minutes is one of the most powerful in cinema when taking into context the time that it was made. Chaplin should have been sliding into a deserved retirement by 1940, but here he was making the most serious man on the planet into a buffoon.

Buy The Great Dictator (Criterion Collection) Blu-ray

1975 in Review

• April – The Witching Hour #53 (DC Comics): Cover art by Nestor Redondo. Written by George Kashdan. Art by Ernesto Patricio. Three horror stories in what used to be a very common thing on the newsstand – the anthology comic. The main story “Jeanette by Candlefright” has a very clever Twilight Zone-worthy twist.
• April 8 – Frank Robinson became the first African-American to manage a Major League Baseball team. His Cleveland Indians beat the New York Yankees, 5-3, including a home run by Robinson who batted as a designated hitter in the game.
• April – Rick Barry is coming off a 64-point performance against Portland on March 26th. He will average 30.6 points per game during the season, in addition to 2.9 steals, 6.2 assists and shooting .902 from the free throw line. We’ll revisit Barry’s season next month as they go on to win the Pacific Division and make a deep run into the playoffs.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man
He wants his home and security
He wants to live like a sailor at sea” – Bob Seger