From the Couch Hole: You’ve Got to Put on That Party Dress

Previously on FTCH, the Alien on Romulus is versus the Predator who is wondering where the lions are. The robot appeared at the Amityville awakening with crispy taco potato chips. This week’s Couch Hole comes to you while I’m sleeping off a nighttime investigation of Pennhurst Asylum in Pennsylvania. After such a crazy August, it’s nice to have a couple of out-of-town trips in September. This week Mary Jane’s last dance was on the causeway to a passage for trumpet. The American refugee went old school for tavern-style pizza while playing board games. Remember, FTCH is the official snack of happiness.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Causeway (2022) (Directed by Lila Neugebauer): “How you treat your friends, your family…Everybody there just to be escaped from, just to be left behind, like they let you down instead of the other way around.” – James. This is a beautiful little film. Jennifer Lawrence is a soldier returned from Afghanistan recovering from a brain injury who wants to return to service. Brian Tyree Henry lost a leg in a car accident and is trying to get his life back together as a car mechanic. Their meeting and relationship feels very natural. The dialogue and scenes are comfortable, and there’s considerable chemistry between the actors. They are both damaged people trying to find their way in a world that doesn’t make sense to them any longer. There isn’t a wider message about war or recovery or right and wrong. I like that there’s a space for these character studies in our world. Jennifer Lawrence as Lynsey is much better than Jennifer Lawrence the mega-star in bigger pictures. She plays the slow burn of character development very well.

Buy The Twilight Zone: The Complete First Season DVD

• Twilight Zone – “A Passage for Trumpet” (1960) (S.1 E.32) (CBS): “Joey Crown, who makes music, and who discovered something about life; that it can be rich and rewarding and full of beauty, just like the music he played, if a person would only pause to look and to listen.” – The Narrator. This episode is just poetry in parts. Did television even deserve shows like this 1960. The story of down-on-his-luck, alcoholic, musician, Joey Crown (Jack Klugman) who tries to commit suicide, only to wake up in a world where no one can hear him. That is until he meets “Angel” Gabriel (John Anderson) who gives him an option of how to change his life. It’s never ranked among their best, but it’s a story about how to choose happiness in your life. Joey’s sadness feels very modern, “Because I’m sad. Because I’m nothing, and because I’ll live and die in a crummy one-roomer with dirty walls and cracked pipes, and… I’ll never even have a girl. I’ll never be anybody.” This show seems to be able to plop down a winner or two for every dud. This one is a winner.

Buy Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers Greatest Hits CD

• Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” (1993) (from Greatest Hits): “One more time to kill the pain / I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again.” I know it’s got Mary Jane in the title, and it’s easy to make the marijuana connections. I just don’t get that vibe from it. I believe it’s much more of that John Cougar Mellencamp concept of leaving small-town America to be whatever you want to be. The Rick Rubin production here is top notch. The best thing in this period of time was waiting for another clever Tom Petty video. This one with Kim Basinger did not disappoint. You get the diverse influences of Dicken’s Great Expectations (1861) and Charles Bukowski’s short story “The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California.” It was good enough for MTV Best Male Music Video of 1994.

• American Refugee (2021) (Directed by Ali LeRoi): “Chickens are more dependable.” – Winter. The horror genre is ubiquitous. If there’s a channel or streaming service, there’s probably a market for a horror film. This Epix Original (do I even get Epix?) looked promising in trailers. The economy has collapsed and society is collapsing into Civil War. A Black family had recently moved into the country. They are forced to move in with a racist neighbor, Winter (Sam Trammell) and his family. They are held mostly against their will as the Ob-Gyn wife is needed for the birth of a baby. The first third of the film moves quickly, and I would have liked more explanation of what was going on. Once the film shifts to Winter’s bunker, the pacing slows down. The tension is built through music clues in the score and Winter’s unpredictable behavior. This doesn’t approach anything near Get Out (2017), but that’s not it’s downfall. It’s not playing on that same thematic level. It’s just I’m not sure what this wants to be. It’s a critique of masculinity; it starts down a road about marriage roles and it’s about how easily our societal roles can collapse. It just doesn’t follow through on any of them. I feel like too much was left on the table for this quality cast.

• Old School (2003) (Directed by Todd Phillips): “Blue, you’re my boy!” – Frank. As I get ready for Joker: Folie a Deux (2024), I am taking a look back at the interesting career of Todd Phillips. He was still a young director at this point in his career. I haven’t watched this film in a decade, and it’s more obviously an artifact of its time. This feels like a link between the older comedies of the ’90s and turning it over to a new generation of the new Millennium. That’s more obvious by the structure of the comedic actors like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, and Luke Wilson being in their thirties and forties and working with a cast of college-age actors. This isn’t as much of National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) as it’s a reflection of Anchorman (2004) and Van Wilder (2002). The older comedies are a series of comedic scenes that serve the purposes of a greater story and to provide characterization. The movement of the 2000s was to string together comedic scenes that don’t add depth to the characters or move forward the story. It’s funny in a way that I don’t know I would find it funny if I knew it was made today. The other attraction here was watching how Vince Vaughn has evolved in the last 21 years to his Bad Monkey (Apple+) character. He’s the best of the older actors here, being the only one who holds the thin story together.

Best of the Rest

• There are a relative dearth of Tom Petty covers by major artists, which makes the choice to have covers of Tom Petty songs be the signature music of Bad Monkey (Apple TV+) pretty bold. It worked out well in the third episode of the series. This haunting take makes you think more about the dangerous suicide attempt hinted at in the first verse.

• It’s a teaser, so you aren’t getting anything much to sink your teeth into. Somehow this was so far under my radar that I was taken aback when I saw it in theaters. It’s a story that is more of an hour-long television episode than a film, but I’m not crying about it just yet. The pedigree has too much potential. Directed by Osgood Perkins and produced by James Wan is a good start. I’m partial to NEON films after their run this past year or two, so let’s agree to meet at the theaters in February.

• The best thing about the return of football season is the return of football advertising dollars. The first football-specific ad I’ve seen this season is of the “underexposed” of the Kelce’s doing his BWW thing with that Buffalo that tickles me.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• On the Sunday Morning Tuneage from 3/8/2009, I was getting ready to head out to Florida with the family for a long Spring Break extended family trip that was a great time in St. Augustine. My #26 Favorite Movie of All-Time was Double Indemnity (1944). This Billy Wilder film is arguably the best film noir. It certainly could be argued to be in the right spot for a rating. Breaking Bad (AMC) was starting Season Two and stupidly, I was still four years away from watching it. Life on Mars (ABC) was officially cancelled, but they gave it enough heads up to get a proper ending to the season. The list of the week is one that probably hasn’t changed much, but it reminds me of those 2009 days with my children.
  • TOP TEN BOARD GAMES OF ALL-TIME (2009)
    • 10. Clue: One of my biggest obsessions in childhood.
    • 9. Battleship: Is this a board game? I think so, technically. The electronic version never lived up to the awesome commercials.
    • 8. Master Mind: I loved the cover. That guy looked like a Bond villain.
    • 7. Trivial Pursuit: It always seems to run out of steam, but it’s great fun in groups.
    • 6. Backgammon: No one seems to want to play anymore, but it was a big game in the ’70s.
    • 5. Boggle
    • 4. Stratego: I love the strategy of this game.
    • 3. Chess: I never put in the time it would take to get good at this game. It’s one of the few board games that I enjoy watching others play.
    • 2. Scrabble: This is a game I could play for hours and often do once I get started. It makes you feel smart and frustrated at the same time.
    • 1. Monopoly: The Classic version still can’t be beat. It’s all about the hours around the table on a rainy afternoon.
  • TOP TEN BOARD GAMES OF ALL-TIME (2024)
    • 10. Clue: There’s still a spot for this murder-mystery game on the list. It’s fun to watch children develop a strategy.
    • 9. Backgammon: The game is about 5000 years old and still finds a way to be the perfect way to chill while you play.
    • 8. Labyrinth: One of the newer games that I’ll put on this list. The best player in the family was the youngest, Caleb, who figured out a strategy very quickly. I love games that put old and young on equal footing.
    • 6. Sorry: The game play can tend to go on just past the end of my patience. The positive is that it incorporates so much math, including counting and probability, that it’s an educational game of revenge.
    • 5. Battleship: There are very subtle strategies that are developed over time. This feels like training wheels for more advanced strategy games.
    • 4. Scrabble: The brilliance of the game wasn’t just making it about creating word but about the strategy of the bonus squares are so important.
    • 3. Trivial Pursuit: Deceptively simple rules make this a game that’s quick to learn and difficult to win. There’s something cool about two teams working against each other even when they know most of the cards and it comes down to one Sports and Leisure question.
    • 2. Risk: It was a game played in every dorm room in the ’80s. I enjoy the math elements and strategy of probability.
    • 1. Chess/Checkers: I’m going to cheat and add Chess’s little brother. Checkers doesn’t have the strategy elements, but it’s a good entry-level game. Chess has so many levels to it that finding someone on your own skill level is almost a necessity. I still enjoy watching the best players show off their moves.
  • Remember, this was board games. I had to leave off card games like Uno and Exploding Kittens. I left off games that don’t have a traditional board like Connect Four or Pictionary. I think what’s really missing for children today isn’t the games themselves, but they are missing some of the most iconic ads.

1974 in Review

• September 22 – Good ol’ Charlie Brown gets a call in the middle of the night that his dog is keeping up the neighbors with his . . . typing.
• September 8 – Evel Knievel fails to jump Snake River Canyon in his steam-powered rocket. He actually cleared it before the wind caught the parachute and blew it back into the river at the bottom of the canyon.
• September 9 – Oklahoma with Coach Barry Switzer’s wishbone offense is ranked #1 despite being on probation. They are followed most of the season by Alabama, Notre Dame, and Ohio State.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“Well, I don’t know but I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwing up, tired of goin’ down
Tired of myself, tired of this town” – Tom Petty

Stay Hard

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