Carded

We sit in the back of Sneaky Dees on Bathurst.  I am after some beer and I look at a chalkboard on the wall nearby that lists the draught selection and prices.  It is cheap - that's good.  The selection isn't stellar, but, given it is a rare circumstance in this day and age that you can drink two pints for under ten dollars - as will indeed be the case tonight here at Sneaky Dees on Bathurst - you don't nitpick. You just put-down-the-money-shut-up-and-drink-it.  It's pretty straightforward.  So, we wait for the server to come along and take our order and that is as complex as seems things will need be.

So the server comes along.

-Hi how you doing.
-Good how are you.
-What can I get you to drink.

It is Buzz Ale I want.  Supposedly Buzz is made from hemp, which makes it really hipster and edgy and badass.  And cheap.  The cheapest, actually.

-Yeah alright I'll be right back.

She goes.

-So anyway

She's back.  No beer though.

-You guys have your IDs please.

I'm 32.  Fine - so I just turned 32.  The point is, technically I have been of legal drinking age in this province for thirteen years.  Thirteen.  A decent chunk of time.  And here I am being carded by a girl who's herself only probably barely legal.  It's awkward, but I do want that Buzz beer.  Luckily I actually thought to bring my driver's license along tonight.  You would think that after turning, I don't know, let's say 30 you would finally be allowed the dignity of drinking freely without suspicion of whatever it is they suspect potential minors at bars and pubs to be trying to get away with.  You would think.  But here we are - 32.  Apparently the greying hair and crows feet make my years difficult to ascertain.  Are kids getting uglier these days?

Whatever, so, I give her the driver's license.  I guess I must roll my eyes or sigh or something.  I suppose it's something about handing over my particulars when I'm not answering to official authority.  She goes away again.  Comes back in a minute with the Buzz hemp beer.  There is this weird vibe now - she's got some kind of attitude, didn't appreciate my fully justifiable and dutifully subdued put-outance.  She sets the beer down.

-Yeah you know so the thing is you have to have ID in here after 9pm, that's just the rule they have.  ID after 9.

She leaves.  Benefit of the doubt: this server girl is harrassed by a superior to be really strict about people having ID.  I get it.  It's lame, but I get it.

So we're drinking Buzz beer in the back of Sneaky Dees on Bathurst and it's a good thing I have my ID card because the rule is you have to have it after 9.

It's 7:15pm.

The Adam Sandler Mystique

Roger Ebert a few hours ago tweeted a link to an article in the LA Times that states that this weekend, Adam Sandler's newest movie Just Go With It reached $100 million at the box office, his twelfth film to do so--further cementing Sandler's status, in Ebert's words, as Hollywood's most "dependably bankable star." By comparison, some of Sandler's contemporaries such as Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn, and Eddie Murphy have to date each featured in movies numbering only in the single digits that have reached the $100M milestone. According to the Times, Sandler is lapping some of these guys--Ferrell, for example, who you may recall having seen in what seemed like quite a number of ubiquitous comic blockbusters over the past decade, has in fact just five $100M+ movies to Sandler's twelve.  Twelve. The race isn't even close. Ferrell seems to be fading away; most would probably agree that Murphy, Shrek cheques aside, has been done for quite some time; Stiller looked tired and spent in the abominable Meet The Fockers; ditto Wilson in the unfortunate Hall Pass; and Vaughn has been lying low--front row tickets at Chicago Blackhawks playoff games notwithstanding (or The Dilemma, which I had thought was upcoming but just found out actually opened back in January--touche). I remember being in my early teens going to see Billy Madison at the movie theatre; nearly twenty years have now passed and Adam Sandler is still cranking them out and raking it in with the same shtick he has used since I was young.

Financial implications aside, there is clearly something about Adam Sandler that makes him such a perennial draw. But who can explain the Sandler phenomenon? It seems popular to divide his work into two categories: one comprising his sillier, more mainstream fare (Madison, Grown-Ups, Mr. Deeds, etc) and the other his more 'artsy' features (Punch Drunk Love, Reign Over Me, Spanglish, etc). His 'artsy' films are generally not as lucrative, but as in the case of Punch Drunk Love or the more recent Funny People nevertheless proof that Sandler a) in fact has a decent dramatic sensibility and b) is endeavouring produce a counterbalance to the cash-grabbing fluff he fires off. Funny People in particular did a great job of giving Sandler a more introspective role as well as acknowledging, reflexively, the kind of shallow tripe he generally resorts to--via several self-parodying spoofs of said shallow tripe. But don't get me wrong: I often have a soft spot for the shallow tripe. And consistently, too--I've variously enjoyed Sandler's goof-off pictures, from Happy Gilmore to The Waterboy to Big Daddy to You Don't Mess With The Zohan. Fairly enough, sometimes I find his silly movies so grating I want to do harm to myself or others--Grown Ups comes to mind--though I have disliked some of his more 'respectable' films with equal vehemency, such as the dreadful Reign Over Me. And this is all just in my own opinion--Reign Over Me was a flop in its own right, but Grown Ups did quite well (it's one of the twelve) and as such I am certain there are people who swear by it.  I haven't seen Just Go With It but if and when I do my approval or lack thereof will be superfluous. The point is that, yes, these movies make lots of money, but the reason for that is that people want to go see them, and regardless of how empirically awful the movies are, for the grosses to climb as high as they do people must be enjoying them. Including me.

Given the latest news I'd like to take this opportunity to restate an ongoing prediction of mine: that years from now--if it isn't already--academia will be made of the strange power and mystique of Adam Sandler. I am as of yet uncertain what the angle(s) could be. Accounting varying opinions of movies that traverse a decidedly bipolar spectrum, the true effect and meaning of his work are difficult to qualify. The only definite is that a lot of them are really really popular. I recall reading somewhere about Humphrey Bogart that when he was actively making films people weren't really very high on him--today Bogart's now-iconic name (and visage) has been immortalized and is fondly acknowledged across what became a sprawling body of work. If I may be so bold (or foolish) as to compare, perhaps the future will be similar for Sandler's movies, if only in terms of appreciating the cultural impact. How much longer he can hold out at his current clip is anyone's guess, but as of the present time it is clear he's still got whatever it is that is apparently such a sure thing. Perhaps the dust will have to settle post-mortem--as it so often does--before anyone can set to making sense of it. Click: Adam Sandler farting in David Hasselhoff's face = $135 million box office. Who knew? Adam Sandler likes to act stupid, but I think maybe he did.

PS -- New banner image design is courtesy of Crossley81.

Still Got That Sheen

Over time—probably not much time, mind you, the way things are going—I imagine every single semi-interested individual and their pop culture-savvy dog will have had a chance to weigh in on the topic of the personal comings and goings of one Charles Sheen, AKA Carlos Irwin Estevez—brother to Emilio, son to Martin, star of exactly two Hot Shots! films as well as that number plus a half in sitcom men on TV, self-proclaimed 'winner,' and owner and/or operator of someone or something having to do with tiger's blood. I likely didn't need to list all of that and you were already well fucking aware of whom I was speaking. And you may have already had your say about Mr. Sheen, as I expect everyone will by the end. In observing that eventuality, I write this now to fulfill my obligations thereof.

It's like he knew all along - Charlie Sheen as a coked-out
bad boy in 1986's Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Here's the thing: I don't understand what the big deal is. I really don't. Maybe I haven't really been paying close enough attention. I don't watch Two and a Half Men—for that matter, I haven't really watched anything with Charlie Sheen (not even interviews concerning his involvement in the 9/11 Truth Movement, which should have been an amusing diversion) since I saw Hot Shots! Part Deux in the early 90s. Before Charles recently did whatever it is he did that has everyone transfixed I was most definitely not what you would call an invested party in the life and times of the artist formerly known as Carlos Irwin. And I'm still not. I still don't care.

I knew he was married once, or maybe twice, to Denise Richards—herself but a minor blip on the radar, even for those who saw Wild Things 13 years ago. I knew he'd been and out of rehab a few times. So what? Are there any celebrities who haven't been in and out of rehab a few times? Show me one—that's a fucking story.

And therein lies the source of my confusion. At the end of the day, Charlie Sheen is just another famous face who fucked up. The way his name and the one or two-word particulars of his transgressions are punchlined about, the number of tweets devoted to him, the volume of mentions he gets in late night monologues, the ink spent printing stories about him in entertainment publications, his complete dominance of the internet—you'd think Charles was the first star to ever drop his pants when he shouldn't have. Not quite.The Charlie Sheen saga is in reality just one 'story' in a closed system of ongoing bloopers and fuck-ups. Focus too much on him and you'll miss out on the rest of the world of celebrity circus idiocy that inexorably continues to turn. Just last week, for example: aspiring trainwreck Christina Aguilera and her doofus boyfriend spent the night in the drunk tank after being pulled over for driving under the influence; also drunk—again—was Jessica Simpson, who looks so bad it's almost scary. But Simpson and Aguilera are only doing their part to fulfill the Blonde Female Celebrity Fuck-Up/Train Wreck quota; there are certainly others from this past week, some of which luckily (or maybe not so luckily) didn't make it to press. Through the years the famous have demonstrated their incredible talent at, if nothing else, achieving stupidity of monumental proportions, and so many of them do it you could make a career of trying to document their so-called mistakes (an entire industry do, in fact). Charlie Sheen is just one man at one point in time in a ever-expanding jungle of shitshow.

He's not even very innovative, if you ask me. To my knowledge, he is stumbling his way along a path previously forged, and forged well. Trashed hotel? Johnny Depp says hello. Mountains of drugs? Robert Downey Jr. knows more about that than any celebrity ever has or will. (Depp knows a little about it too.) Raunchy trysts with white trash girls? Mel Gibson berates and beats the shit out of his. And as for publicly-televised delusions, well, in my books Tom Cruise's batshit crazy antics courtesy of airtime with Oprah Winfrey and Matt Lauer are pretty tough to top.

Charlie Sheen is certainly loving this whole farce. How could he not? He's getting so much exposure and publicity it won't matter if the golden goose Two and a Half Men goes under for good. Two to three million an episode—who needs it? Sheen is right about one thing: he's in the driver's seat. Everyone patting themselves on the back for their clever digs and clever 'winning' references should take pause and consider that perhaps the person who's really laughing is the supposed butt of the joke himself. It's not like we're all sitting in a room together making fun of the guy behind his back. Sheengate has become too much and too public a phenomenon. Charlie Sheen knows full well what's up, and he's joining the fun, if he didn't organize the party to begin with. Kind of difficult to take pride in mocking someone who's benefitting from the mockery. You have to think every one of Charlie Sheen's 2 million-plus Twitter followers has some financial equivalent.

So, yeah, I don't know the whole Charlie Sheen story. But if that means the joke isn't on me, I'm fine with that. Especially until we know who it's really supposed to be on. Maybe it's everyone. I guess I'll get in line.