CALL ME SNAKE

I read a story the other day about a man named Winter who is trying to drink a cup of coffee (caffeinated only) at every Starbucks in the world. Of all the nutty things...

So far he has visited nearly 5,000 stores owned by Starbucks out of a total of 6,055 such establishments, not counting licensed franchises in airports, grocery stores, and the like. The hard part is keeping pace: Starbucks plans to add 1,000 new stores in 2006, which means Winter may be on a treadmill for the rest of his life, never quite achieving his goal.

Well if it's any comfort to him, Winter doesn't have to worry about any competition from me. I have not had a single cup of coffee in my life, nor am I any fan of Starbucks. The most interesting thing about this whole quest, if you ask me, is that Winter doesn't even like Starbucks. So why does he do it? You might say "because it's there," but unlike climbing Mt. Everest, he says, this is something no one else has done. Or tried. Or thought of doing, for that matter. Until an ambitious software developer from Houston came along with a singular dream...

Where do you turn for news? NPR? The New York Times? The Annals of Improbable Research? I personally rely heavily on the "Intelligence Report" in Parade Magazine and wish it came out seven days a week rather than just on Sundays, in which case I'd be seven times more intelligent. But, alas, it only comes out once a week, so I'll have to settle for using just 14.3 percent of my ultimate brainpower potential.

Last Sunday, I saw an interesting item about Iraq. I can't remember the details, because we're pretty avid recyclers in my household, but here's the gist of it: People like Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the war, and former CIA director George Tenet, who provided some of the "intelligence" (not to be confused with the intelligence provided in the aforementioned "Intelligence Report") that backed the Bush administration's hellbent desire for war, are raking it in with high-paying jobs and/or lucrative lecture circuit fees. Paul Bremer, who helped convert Iraq into a safe, thriving democracy now has a cushy book deal, on top of the honoraria, etc.

Meanwhile, the enlisted men stuck fighting this ill-advised war are getting next to nothing, with corporals and privates earning just $3,000 or so a month. And U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq aren't collecting even that meager sum. Now you can see why the good citizens of Iraq are so eager to have a democracy like ours.

Today Call Me Snake At the Movies will review two new movies in a shortened, special holiday edition. Well, actually, neither of these movies are "new," though they are both fairly new to DVD. The first movie is "Heights," a Merchant Ivory production starring Glen Close as "the grand dame du theatre" and a cast of other lesser knowns. After watching this movie, which is by no means terrible, I thought: Robert Altman, what have you wrought? In Nashville, which came out 30 years ago, Altman introduced the format that has since taken over cinema--that of multiple characters and story lines that intersect in unforeseen ways. He perfected the technique in Short Cuts (1993). Since then, and especially in recent years, there have been countless movies of that style and they all blend together. It's hard to remember any of their names although last year's "Crash" is a recent example, not to be confused with the execrable 1996 "Crash" starring James Spader and Holly Hunter (what’s a nice girl like her doing in a revolting picture like that?) Heights follows the formula of a group of people with seemingly disparate lives that are linked by a neverending chain of coincidences. My thumbs remain firmly in my pockets for this one.

The second movie, Bad Timing, is a 1980 film by Nicholas Roeg, who made the beguiling "Don't Look Now" (1973) and the intriguing "Performance" (1970, though I'd have to see how well it holds up today). Bad Timing is supposedly a tale of "sensual obsession," but it’s actually the story (to the extent there is a story) of a sordid little affair that (big surprise!) comes to a bad end. Art Garfunkel (who sings better than he acts) and Theresa Russell (who acts better than she sings and used to specialize in playing dissolute tarts) star in this picture, along with a youthful Harvey Keitel as the cop. In case you’re curious about the title, it has to do with whether Garfunkel gave a truthful rendering of the timing of events that occur near the movie’s end, chronologically speaking (though the narrative unfolds almost entirely through flashbacks). But for me, personally, “Bad Timing” means having had the bad fortune of looking at the screen during the two hours and two minutes this DVD was playing.

Halfway between here (my civilized city) and BF, New Hampshire (the exact location is immaterial, apart from the fact that it is a quintessential representative of smalltown New England), there is an outpost--an oasis in fact--called Mr. Mike's where one can "gas up" (to use the local vernacular), buy a soda or snacks, and catch up on the local gossip. (Yesterday, for example, I asked the cheerful cashier about the fire in Troy we'd seen. We couldn't have missed it, as traffic was backed up for miles. "Oh really," she said. "I hadn't heard." Exchanges like that keep the customers coming back, day in, day out.)

Mr. Mike's is open every day of the year--even on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's (as I know all too well)--and it's a good stretching out point or "gassing up point" or basic junk food stop, seeing as it's halfway, as I mentioned already.

My mother-in-law, who's made the BF drive even more often than I have, uses Mr. Mike's to keep track of distance: 40-some miles on Route 2, 10 miles on 140, and five miles on 12 bring you to Mr. Mike's on the outbound leg. Another 20-some miles bring you to the metropolis of Keene and 20 or so more to BF.

Years ago, while driving home from Thanksgiving alone and somewhat fatigued (perhaps a result of an accidental tryptophan overdose), I saw Mr. Mike's and was relieved, though surprised that I'd already hit the halfway mark. But things seemed off--the road kept going, well beyond five miles, with no sign of Route 140 or the McDonald's that preceded it. How very odd. By and by, I passed Mr. Mike's a second time--this time where it was supposed to be--just before the Golden Arches. The rest of the drive proceeded uneventfully, save for the moment I fell asleep at the wheel and caught myself as I drifted out of the lane.

For years, I've been puzzled by the strange case of the two Mike's, though I forgot about it until yesterday when I drove back from BF with my mother-in-law, who began to recite the number of miles to Keene and then to Mr. Mike's and then to our subsequent waystations: Route 140, Route 2, and a place the Car Talk brothers call the "fair city of Cambridge." I confessed, somewhat tentatively, lest I be committed to the nearest institution, that I'd once seen two Mr. Mike's during this drive, not just the one we normally stopped at. She said, to my relief, that there had been two but that the second one was shut down long ago.

And I think I know why. Having two Mr. Mike's on that stretch of Route 12 was just too darn confusing. Can you imagine all the drug dealers setting up "buys" at Mr. Mike's on Route 12 or the people on blind dates who arrange to meet there, let alone innocent drivers like me trying to figure out how close they are to BF, New Hampshire or, conversely, how far they are from BF?

No, I think they made the right move by turning that Mr. Mike's into a regular old filling station. In my book, two Mr. Mike's on the road to BF is one Mr. Mike's too many.

My wife grew up in a city near Boston. The kids from her neighborhood were rather provincial, referring to outlying towns--that are sometimes called "the sticks"--by the disparaging term, "BF." (I won't say what BF stands for, but I will say the first part of the compound word is "bum." The second part of that compound word is a four-letter-word that was not printable in the New Yorker until recently.) Well, I just got back from New Hampshire, where I celebrated Thanksgiving with my wife's family in a "BF" kind of place--that is, if I were inclined to use such a term. My brother-in-law often points out homes for sale in his small village--one right across the street from their house, in fact--in an attempt to persuade us to move out there.

I think about it sometimes, wondering if could give up urban living and move to a more countrified setting--the kind of place (like the bar in Cheers) where everyone knows your name. I run into people I know from my neighborhood all the time, but they're always busy and the conversations tend to last about 30 seconds or less. In their smalltown, I fear those same conversations could go on endlessly. Which gives me pause and makes me think I'm not ready for such a radical change in lifestyle and habitat. But one day, who knows, maybe I'll be out there living with the rest of them folks in BF, wondering why it took me so long.

It's true I have, upon occasion, used this space to vent. To rant. And to gripe. Call me a nitpicker but I don't like torture. Nor do I like waging wars for no good reasons and for a lot of bad reasons. But today I'm not going to complain. Despite the state of our country and the state of the world, I do have plenty to be thankful for--a healthy family, both in my immediate family and throughout most of my extended family too. Plus I have a roof over my head, at least for now, and plenty to eat. So on this day, for once, I'm going to put all the carping aside and focus, instead, on all the good things in life--like "beating the rain," watching flying squirrels, and playing volleyball. Who knows? Maybe it will become a habit.

We haven't heard much about the "axis of evil" lately--a term Bush used to employ often--perhaps because of the sense among many people that the "axis" runs right through the offices of the President and Vice President, among other despots in the world. Bush, to me, represents the "banality of evil"(though I've never read the classic work by Hannah Arendt), showing how a regular, good-old-boy former drinking buddy can consistently drag our country down to some of the lowest, most degrading, depths it's ever seen, while simultaneously waging war on multiple fronts: on the environment, on the economy, on the poor, on Iraq, and on common sense, to mention a few.

Cheney, on the other hand, represents (for want of a better term) the "audacity of evil." Our Vice President has become a mad dog, of late--unchained, foaming at the mouth, and running wild. He calls the country's recent experiments in torture a necessary walk on the "dark side." He calls people who claim the Administration distorted "intelligence" about the threat posed by Iraq "reprehensible," even though any semi-conscious observer knows that his remarks merely continue those transparent distortions. If the architects of the Iraq War were wrong on one count--the weapons, for example--perhaps we could give them the benefit of the doubt. But when they've resorted to one lie after the next to justify this disastrous war, their arrogance and deceit become glaringly obvious.

A few years ago, Bush pledged that the forces of good would prevail over the axis of evil. If only he could make good on that promise. But that, of course, is too much to ask for.

Doctors are taught to "do no harm." It's part of their basic training and part of their code. Why can't we demand the same from our politicians?

The optimism of a three-year-old must be tempered against the harsh realities of meteorological fact. Despite the hope expressed yesterday, most exuberantly, by my daughter of "beating the rain," it came down hard today and we were unable to "beat it" on the way to school this morning, nor on the way back. I had been riding high yesterday, swept away by the power of her fantasy. But after a getting soaked in several downpours today, I was forced to admit that nature has its own ways that are not subject to the wills of humans-even when those wills belong to an especially willful child.

Today got off to a shaky start but tomorrow is already looking better. I was supposed to bike with my three-year-old to her preschool, but she threw a fit and insisted on "mommie" taking her. I told her that she hurt my feelings. "That's OK, dad," she said. "We can bike there tomorrow." When I told her it was supposed to pour tomorrow, she said: "That's OK. We can beat the rain, right dad? We can beat the rain."

You gotta love that spirit--and maybe, just maybe, the kid is onto something. Maybe we can all "beat the rain." Wouldn't that be a wonderful world?

Today, Call Me Snake is doing the thing we do best, introducing a new feature called "Call Me Snake At the Movies." In this segment, we'll review five movies, maybe more, depending on how tired I get.

The first movie we're reviewing is called "Bright Leaves," a documentary made by former Cambridge resident Ross McElwee. (I don't know him personally but have seen him around town; he's still in the area.) "Bright Leaves," like all of McElwee's efforts, is an extremely personal film--the kind of self-reflective work that shows what a blog can strive for but probably never achieve. Calling it a movie about the tobacco industry, and the smoking habit, is like saying Moby Dick is a book about fishing. Three thumbs up for me.

Our second movie is "Dodge City" (1939), starring Erroll Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The bad guy, played by Bruce Cabot, looks like a younger George W. Bush. And like Bush, Cabot has others (like Cheney and Rove?) to take care of the dirty work for him. This one gets a mixed review from me--one thumb up and one down. I like the way Flynn got his point across while speaking extremely softly. The bad guy stuff seems derivative, especially compared to the real thing we witness every day.

Our third movie is "The Rainmaker" starring Burt Lancaster and Katherine Hepburn--the original based on the N. Richard Nash play, not the remake based on a John Grisham novel. This is a truly great play that has everything--a great romance and a searing look at the American Dream. The movie is perfectly cast: Lancaster overacts as usual, which is perfect for the role of Starbuck. And Hepburn is both moving and convincing as the "old maid." Three thumbs up for me. I'd give it four thumbs up if I had another.

Our fourth movie is "Batman Begins." This one, we were promised, was supposed to be different from the usual comic book superhero saga. It was supposed to be deeper, more psychological. The main problem with "Batman Begins" is the begining--a Kung Fu, ninja training tutorial that comes off as ludricous. The movie also suffered from a mediocre middle and a none-too-satisfying ending. All I can say is that I know Spiderman. He's a good friend of mine. And Batman, you're no Spiderman. Two thumbs down for me.

That's our show for tonight. Did I say we'd review five or maybe six movies? Sorry, we'll have to get around to those next time we meet "At the Movies." Until then, the balcony is closed. So all you folks sleeping back there, or doing other things I'd rather not mention, will have to take your business outside.