Todd Levin

My DVR is officially clear of programs to record, until 30 Rock starts up again. I have to say, the finale of The Wire was bittersweet. It had everything: drama! action! gunshots! a new baby??!!?? a great answer to that big will-they-or-won’t-they question! a city in peril! huggings! a cryptic and much talked-about blackout. and of course, the return of Mr. Big!

It’s strange, though. As much as I cared for the veteran characters who were there from the first episode all the way until the last chopper flew out of Korea, it was the kids from seasons four and five who made the greatest impression. Michael, Dukie, Bug, Juju, Bing-Bong, Cryin’ Shame, Partyhat, Ring ‘n’ Run, and Pizza Pie. There’s something about the fate of a child that gets under my skin and lives there, like a heroin needle I was too high to remove. Just a floppin’ in the breeze on angel wings.

Like, remember the time that one kid sold all that candy? Or the time Ratfink and Cobra Commander tried to sneak a tape recorder into the Doobie Brothers concert, but got caught when the tape recorder fell out Ratfink’s pants during his signature dance, “The Corduroy Jump?” Or the time they made their own home movie about the first Thanksgiving? Or when Dukie shot all those drugs into his arms and lived in a garbage can?

I will miss The Wire like I’d miss an old friend I had killed because I was suspicious of his loyalty. And since the show was always very quotable–each episode began with a simple title card featuring a line of dialogue from that chapter, just like how Stephen King books will begin his novels with profound quotes, like this one from the Ramones: “Gabba Gabba Hey”–I think I’ll end this eulogy, fittingly, with one of my favorite lines from The Wire’s short, yet epic run:

“Ooo-whee, do it one more time for me!” –Mayor Clarence F. Royce

Are you like me, in that you practically lose your mind counting the interminable days between the release of Kevin Smith films? If so, you probably know Silent Bob (a.k.a. Kevin Smith) will be releasing his eighth film later this year. It’s called Zack and Miri Make a Porno and it sounds positively Smith-riffic. Check out the plot synopsis from IMDB:

Lifelong platonic friends Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks) look to solve their respective cashflow problems by making an adult film together. As the cameras roll, however, the duo begin to sense that they may have more feelings for each other than they previously thought.

I can totally see that happening between lifelong platonic friends!!

Anyway, the movie’s release date is still a while off (Hollywood is such a cocksmoker!)
but that hasn’t stopped me from keeping up with the production details at The View Askewniverse, listening to Smith’s weekly SMODCAST (it’s a podcast but funnier!), and reading “My Boring Ass Life”—K-Rock’s online diary. (It is not a blog!) Still, I’ve got such a Smith Itch and it seemed like nothing could scratch it until today, when Lunchbox totally outdid himself.

He posted a video featuring the whole cast of Z&M singing a very NSFW song called “I’m F*CKING SETH ROGEN.” It’s off the hook! I won’t give the whole thing away but let me just say this—Elizabeth Banks has quite a mouth on her! Not only did the lyrics have me LMNO (Laughing My Nugs Off), it’s actually a really good song, too. It scans well! All I’m sayign is, if Zack and Miri is even 1/10th as dirty or original as this outrageous comedy song, it is going to go down in the Kevin Smith Hall of Smame. Snoogie Boogies! (P.S. congrats to QuickStop Entertainment on grabbing that exclusive. I hadn’t heard of this web content site but I am guessing they are psyched that they’ve found their “The Landlord.”)

UPDATE: A few people have emailed me to tell me there are a few other videos floating around the Internet, made by Jimmy Kimball and his lifelong platonic friend, Sarah Silverman (yeah, right!) — one is called “I’m F*cking Matt Damon” and the other is called “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck.” (I won’t even bother linking them here because I’m sure they’ll get pulled down with Kevin finds out about them.) Just to show I’m not a hater I checked out those videos and, no lie, they’re pretty funny. But I gotta say it’s a little lame that Jimmy Kimball had to rip off Kevin Smith just to grab some publicity. Whatever. I think most people will see it and agree that, like most things, the original version is the best. (The exception to that rule being Clerks II, of course.) Hey Kimball—maybe you should leave comedy to the professionals. Just saying.

In Argentina for 10 days. Good to know they’re getting the best America has to offer.

Don’t forget today is also Pom Tuesday:

This is a Missy Elliott Exclusive. In 3-D. I’m so glad she’s back, and that someone’s finally taking shit seriously.

Several friends recommended 3:10 to Yuma and I kept meaning to see it, but wasn’t completely convinced until I read this pullquote from a review of the film in InStyle Magazine.

“Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in leather chaps and six-shooters? Um, hellooooo! Give me one ticket for the 3:10 to Yummy!”

And no, I will never, ever stop doing that.

Some of you may remember–or may even remember playing–my wildly successful Angels in America drinking game. Well, with Sylvester Stallone mounting his latest 80s icon resurrection, RAMBO, this weekend, it seems like it’s time to start drinking again. Sure, there probably isn’t enough alcohol to make you dumb enough to see RAMBO, but now you have an excuse to try.

In instant-message collaboration with my friend, Justin “The Bug” Farren, I present The Rambo Drinking Game. Print out these rules and bring them, along with a case of beer and 2-3 bottles of tequila, to your local cineplex and demand “one for Rambo”:

RAMBO ’08 DRINKING GAME:

Every time…

• A beating heart is held in Rambo’s hand: Drink
• Someone looks down and sees an arrow in their chest, about to explode: Drink
• A throat is cut while the enemy is preoccupied with reloading and looking around in a panicky fashion: Drink twice
• Someone silently prowls through the jungle, searching for Rambo when, suddenly, a twig snaps ominously beneath his feet and, a split second later, some sharpened logs fly out of nowhere and kill him dead: Person with most full cup drinks
• Rambo remembers when America used to be OK, and then feels sad: Pour your drink into the person’s glass sitting to the right of you and make him/her drink
• People (possibly playing cards or Mahjongg) look down to see a grenade roll into their hut/room/building/fan boat, and proceed to dive out the nearest window: Finish Drinks
• Someone has a live grenade stuffed into his mouth or uniform: Put an ice cube down your shirt, and drink
• Rambo holds a dying person in his arm, and gets that revengey look in his eyes: Face salute and drink
• Someone is looking for Rambo in the jungle when, behind him, a pair of Rambo eyes magically appear from the mud/leaves: Pour your drink into the garbage
• Someone is killed by serrated knife: Drink, chase with a shot
• Someone is killed by crossbow: Do a shot
• Someone is killed by a crossbow, and pinned to a tree/wall: Do a shot, refill it, do another
• We see a pair of empty boots still smoking as evidence of death by explosion: Fill your shoe with beer, drink
• The screen fills with a slow, lingering shot of burned or torn American flag: Do a Body Shot off the person to your left
• Someone mentions John Rambo’s green beret background: Nod serenly and knowingly drink and say, to no one in particular, “They brought this on themselves. They created John Rambo.”
• Rambo catches a knife and throws it back at the thrower: Throw your drink at your neighbor and yell, “That was for our lost innocence!!”
• Someone stands over a female captive, and unbuckles his belt: Take back the night, and drink
• Rambo murders someone who has just unbuckled his pants and is seconds away from raping a female captive: Read aloud from The Feminine Mystique, and do a shot
• Rambo uses an enemy as a human shield: Pour everyone’s drink into the least-full glass and make that person drink a “suicide”
• Rambo or anyone uses the phrase “first blood” in a sentence: Cheer wildly, draw your own blood with a pen-knife, squeeze it into a shot glass, and drink
• Rambo punches or kills a wild animal: Murmur into your glass, “This time you’ve gone too far, John Rambo,” and drink

“[Mitt] Romney, the Republican candidate from Massachusetts by way of Michigan and Utah who enjoys a milkshake at the end of a long day, stopped by a staging area for a Martin Luther King Birthday parade here. In his dress shirt and tie, and with his unwavering smile, he walked over and posed for photographs with a group of black youngsters. Putting his arm around a teenage girl, he waved to the cameras and offered, “Who let the dogs out?” He added a tepid ‘woof woof.'”

In related “white people talking like black people” news, I’ve been floored by how well David Simon and his team of middle aged mostly-whiteboy writers repeatedly nail the nuances of conversation on The Wire, from corner kids and dock workers to political campaign strategists. Over and over again, I get sucked in by the way certain characters speak, particularly because this is a show where the best characters are the ones whose ability to speak well keeps all the other characters working for them. My favorites have been Lester Freamon, Prop Joe, Stringer Bell, Senator Clay Davis, Homocide Sargeant Jay Landsman, and Marlo Stanfield. The scenes between Marlo and Proposition Joe have become some of my favorite from the show’s run, mostly because their styles are so completely oppositional. Joe is a talker––slow and methodical, but still a great talker––while Marlo manages to communicate a tremendous amount of power, contempt, and swagger with three or four words punctuated by a drooping of eyelids or a tuck of his chin. His character is the poster child of Season Five’s “More With Less” mantra.

But sometimes the lesser characters–the ones digging in the dirt–get the best lines. My favorite line of dialogue from this season came out of the mouth of one of Michael’s corner boys, when Michael showed up late after going AWOL at Six Flags with his little brother and Dookie. While one of the young’ns dresses down Michael for abandoning his post, another chooses his words more carefully, for greater devastation. He just looks at Dookie, purses his lips, and says, “Nice dolphin, nigga.” Cut to: Dookie, face flushed with shame, standing on the corner with a stuffed dolphin–a prize he won at Six Flags–tucked in the crook of his arm. Outstanding.

I guess There Will Be Blood left me thinking about a lot of things. Among them:

• “Were Paul and Eli truly separate characters, or two sides of a single metaphor about the American Character?”
• “What was the symbolic significance of the goat milk Plainview constantly fed to his surrogate child?”
• “Was that opening scene with Plainview toiling in a well meant to be a birth metaphor?”
• “Is Baltimore ready for a white mayor like Tommy Carcetti?” (I can’t stop thinking about The Wire)

But mostly I kept thinking about what great material Daniel Plainview’s dialogue will provide to disgruntled high school students in search of the perfect senior quote for their high school yearbook:

1. Who am legend?
2. In the script, next to the part where Robert Nevil mentions his favorite album is Bob Marley’s Legend, did the Akiva Goldsmith (more like “Shitsmith”!) include a parenthetical note that said “(get it? LEGEND. Because he am legend???!!!??)” And then, later, did Akiva stick around the set to make sure that bit of character information was retained, and lock himself in his 5-star hotel suite for several hours when there was some concern about getting the licensing rights to all those Bob Marley songs we used to listen to in the common area of our dorm? And does Akiva Goldsmith still ask people if they caught that connection, between the album title and film title, after they’ve seen the film?
3. Before you added all those vampires with cancer, was I AM LEGEND an unofficial sequel to Mannequin? There was a lot of mannequin screen time in the film, and a lot of good human-mannequin repartée, is all I’m saying. I couldn’t help thinking about how much fun it would have been to watch Robert Nevil go on a blind date with that mannequin he had his eye on, and try to feed her soup. Or slow dance, or maybe take a carriage ride around Central Park. Just saying. Follow-up question: Was the role of Robert Nevil originally written for Meshach Taylor? Did any of the crew slip up and call Will Smith’s character “Montrose?”
4. How many push-ups can Will Smith do without taking a break? Will that be in the DVD extras? Did Will Smith fight to include that full set of behind-the-neck hanging pull-ups?
5. Dash Mihok played one of the Geico Cavemen in the original ABC pilot. In I AM LEGEND, he plays a fully CGI vampire with cancer. (or is it cancer patient with vampirism?) I guess my question is, during the filming of I AM LEGEND was Dash Mihok on suicide watch?
6. Why didn’t any of the trailers and commercials for I AM LEGEND include scenes from Shrek, particularly since I AM LEGEND itself contained (from my estimation) almost 45 minutes of footage from Shrek?
7. Is it OK to bring my kids to I AM LEGEND, just for the extended Shrek footage?
8. In addition to Robert Nevil and Cancer Vampire Leader action figures, are there any plans to include sell I AM LEGEND special edition Shrek figurines?
9. Since Will Smith is a Scientologist, were all the cancer-pires “clear”? Was his character entitled to a daily, free stress test?
10. If Manhattan was quarantined, and all road access between the island and everywhere else was eliminated, then how did that lady–oh, forget it.