134. Nobody ever wins a fight?

May 14th, 2019

Here are Stella and Carrie Ann, the waitstaff at the Double Deuce, watching Dalton, Jack, Hank, and Younger, the bouncers at the Double Deuce, whip the shit out of Ketchum and his pals, would-be assassins at the Double Deuce. They leer and cheer from the sidelines like extras shown in slo-mo during a Rocky movie when someone’s getting absolutely beaten senseless, only they’re not in slo-mo, they’re in glorious real time. Representative dialogue: “GO ON GO KICK HIS AAASSSSSS!” When the dust settles and the last man goes down you can hear Carrie Ann’s distinctive white-soul rasp: “ALLLRIGHT! YEAH!” She sounds as satisfied as Matthew McConaughey lighting a spliff after having sex for two hours.

And why shouldn’t she? Carrie Ann, we’ve seen, was the victim of sexual harassment we can safely assume was constant until Dalton showed up and announced “It’s going to change.” Stella was almost certainly in the same boat. For untold years, these two women had to take drink orders from men who would convert those drinks into that many more ass-pinches and face-punches. We’ve watched both women resort to using beer bottles as weapons to try and stem the tide of violence in their own favor.

The Double Deuce was an absolute hellhole, a Missouri Mos Eisley Cantina, the Inn at the Crossroads during Lannister rule, Rick’s if Bogey was playing his character from In a Lonely Place and Peter Lorre was the child killer from M and Claude Rains was the Invisible Man. It was a hideous, soul-destroying place to work. It’s a miracle these women made it out emotionally intact.

But it ain’t like that anymore, and I can’t imagine Carrie Ann and Stella are nuts about anyone who’d like to restore that particular status quo ante. They recognize Ketchum and his church potluck pals for what they are. You see in their faces and hear in their voices the hunger of people who are finally getting to see their oppressors get theirs. I’d like to see these faces and hear these voices much, much more often.

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113. Pants

May 13th, 2019

Brad Wesley’s pants are a mess. Look at those wrinkled-ass trousers. Like an elephant’s trunk, twice, in khaki. This is his apotheosis right here, his truest moment of pure power, the point at which instead of blowing up buildings in the middle of the night with no one looking he feels able to order his man to run over a Ford dealership in a monster truck in broad daylight with a crowd of like two hundred witnesses watching. Dalton’s there, the owner of the Ford dealership is there, Wade Garrett is there, his own ex-wife Elizabeth is there, and guess what, the man don’t give a fuck, this is his town, don’t you forget it, but apparently the dry cleaners is not included. Those pants are the visual equivalent of him crowing about having the raw kingmaking power to open a JC Penney. What the hell was Ben Gazzara doing to wrinkle his pants up like that? Did no one from wardrobe intervene? Did they think it made for a nice feet-of-clay visual shorthand and just let it slide? Jimmy, couldn’t Jimmy have said something? Ketchum, a man who looks like he was born starched, what about him? Will no one tell Brad Wesley his pants are embarrassingly wrinkled? Is this what it feels like to be truly alone, even with the world at your feet? Standing in front of your great triumph over your enemies and looking like a goddamned fool and you have no friends to say so? What? Is up? With the pants?

The Stand is Stephen King’s best book, I decided about three decades into my career of reading and re-reading Stephen King books. One of the many reasons I think this involves a fellow name of Starkey. Starkey’s a military guy, brass, way up on the totem pole but it’s a totem pole they keep hidden in the dark at all times. He was in charge of the bioweapons project that had a little hiccup and started to destroy the human race, and so he’s in charge trying to halt that destruction. He’s also in charge of trying to cover it up, first under the pretext that it will buy them a few extra days to find a vaccine or a cure before panic sets in, and then mostly out of sheer force of American military habit.

The thing about Starkey is that as time goes by and it becomes increasingly clear he won’t be earning any medals for this one, to say the least, he grows fixated on the security monitors that show him the inside of the facility where Captain Trips emerged and started drowning everyone in their own snot while their brains boiled. At first this happened much faster than it does later, for reasons that I don’t think the book ever quite makes clear, and even if it did the idea of a flu virus that kills in under a minute the same way a regular flu virus would kill over the course of several days is science-fictional even for The Stand.

Be that as it may. The important thing for Starkey, less important than other things really but increasingly important to him as the bodies pile up outside that’s for sure, is that one of the people in that facility died in the cafeteria, just dropped dead at his seat, and when he did his face fell right into his bowl of soup. The soup starts congealing and getting really disgusting, which is the case with everything else that used to be warm and made of organic material down there, but the soup and the face in the soup are what start to bother Starkey, and bother him bad.

It’s the indignity of it, you see. This fellow in the lab, for all anyone knows his face will remain in that bowl of awful soup for…well, for as long as it takes for the site to be deemed sterile enough to enter at first, and then, when it becomes clear no one will be left alive to enter it, for all eternity. Starkey just stares and stares at this guy with his face in the soup. Did I mention Starkey also gave the order to have secret agents in Russia and China open vials of the flu without ever telling them what they were doing, just to make sure that when America dies she takes the rest of the world with her? Yeah, but anyway the soup. It’s just not right, a man dying like that, like a slob, like a joke. Something must be done.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about Brad Wesley’s pants. They’re wrinkled, is the problem. See? See? See?

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“Game of Thrones” thoughts, Season Eight, Episode Five: “The Bells”

May 13th, 2019

So ends the most daring episode of Game of Thrones ever. It’s the Red Wedding writ large, a masterpiece that murders all hope of neat closure, and reduces any lingering belief in the redemptive power of violence to ashes in our mouths.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, the series’ best, for Rolling Stone.

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The 12 Best Game of Thrones Battles, Ranked

May 13th, 2019

1. The Fall of King’s Landing, “The Bells” (Season 8, Episode 5)

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” A sick humorist like Ramsay Bolton would probably appreciate the poetry of losing his place atop the list of Game of Thrones’ best battles to a conflagration that adhered to one of his own maxims. When the battle of “The Bells” begins, it first appears to be an absolute onslaught of wish-fulfillment fantasy violence. First, Daenerys and her last dragon effortlessly torch a fleet, an army, the walls of King’s Landing, and every last dragon-killing scorpion on land and sea. (Unlike the Night King and Euron Greyjoy’s sneak attacks, Dany and Drogon were coming prepared this time.) Then Jon Snow and Grey Worm lead thousands of screaming Northmen, Dothraki, and Unsullied into the city, making good on promises Khal Drogo and King Robb made way back in season one.

Then it all goes to shit. Snapping under a lifetime of paranoia, pressure, and rage, Daenerys burns the city to the ground. The soldiers run amok. The Hound and Jaime Lannister earn nothing but pyrrhic “victories” over the Mountain and Euron. Arya, who saved all of humanity a couple weeks ago, can’t even save one mother and her child. Cersei Lannister dies in the arms of her brother beneath the Red Keep, literally buried by the trappings of power.

Eight seasons of build-up result in a horrorshow that, in terms of both amassing bodies and punching the audience in the face, makes the Red Wedding look like flag football. Director Miguel Saphochnik (yes, him again) shoots it all in broad daylight, a gobsmackingly bold act of filmmaking that forces you to bear witness to every awful detail of the carnage. If you thought this had a happy ending, if you thought mass violence could be harnessed and tamed and aimed only at those who deserve it—well, you’re paying attention now, aren’t you?

I ranked all the major battles in Game of Thrones for Vulture.

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132. Jack reacts

May 12th, 2019

Jack is Dalton’s most promising student, his protégé, the Dalton to his own Wade Garrett. He’s the quickest both physically and mentally, he sees things others do not, he is seldom far from Dalton’s side (except when duty-bound to be elsewhere of course), he shares his observations of the world and receives Dalton’s in turn. Throughout, whether with the genuine happiness of “I didn’t know she could sing!” or the shocked disbelief of “Jesus Christ!” or the exasperated incredulity of “This is a Sears credit card,” he is never less than a hundred percent open to the world and honest in his reactions to it. He moves through life the way one should, even before the Dalton Path lies before him.

But now that it does, even his wordless responses evince that same willingness to take life as it comes. Witness how he handles Dalton’s extremely utilitarian advice following the throwdown with Ketchum and the Men Who Iron Their Jeans Gang. “Give me the biggest guy in the world: You smash his knee, he’ll drop like a stone,” Dalton says, and QED. Jack, however, does not react the way one might to fighting tips, but the way one might to good old-fashioned common sense one has never had the common sense to figure out for oneself until a wiser soul relays it. His eyes widen, his head tilts, his eyebrows go up, he nods slightly, and his smile says “Huh, I’d never really thought about it that way before, but you’re right!” It’s as if Dalton just said “Don’t worry, you won’t have trouble making it to the Fotomat before closing—school’s out, so traffic’s gonna be lighter this afternoon,” or “If you tell the kid no, he’s just gonna sneak in, so at least buying him the ticket to the R-rated movie yourself keeps the lines of communication open.” “Oh yeah,” says Jack’s face, “good point!” Which it is, I suppose, if faced with a big guy and a knee. But Jack teaches us here as much as Dalton does.

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131. Pain hurts

May 11th, 2019

“It is realistic, and we’ve been striving very hard to make it realistic. Fights aren’t pretty. You know, when somebody gets hit, it hurts, and it’s ugly, and we’ve tried to capture that.” —Rowdy Herrington

—

“I grew up in Texas—not that this is exclusive to Texas. But what is it about men having to go out to bars at night and beat somebody’s face in, or get their face beat in, and get drunk, and you know, they don’t care which it is? There’s some kind of anger or aggression in all of us that we have to find a way to vent or it’ll kill us. And that’s what intrigued me about this, because this script looked like everything I grew up with—every level of mentality that I’ve known since I was born.” —Patrick Swayze

—

“Do you ever win a fight?”

“Nobody ever wins a fight.”

—Dr. Elizabeth Clay and Dalton, Road House

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130. The Third Rule, Verse 5

May 10th, 2019

“This is the new Double Deuce,” says Frank Tilghman. We are at the start of an all-hands staff meeting, and Tilghman is pointing to the concept art for the bar’s redesign. But standing nearby is his latest hire, Dalton. It is through Dalton, with Dalton, in Dalton that the new Double Deuce will be achieved. Dalton embodies the new Double Deuce. He is its future.

When Dalton takes over as cooler he becomes more than just the chief bouncer. His role is not to handle a series of discrete incidents, but to institute sweeping reforms that will eliminate such incidents forever. “It’s going to change,” he states—not a threat, not a promise, a fact. His bouncers, too, must change for this to take place. As below, so above.

Bouncing on the Dalton Path is a matter of following “three simple rules.”

This, for the sixth time, is the third.

3. Be nice (continued)

Previously:

  1. The Great Commandment
  2. The Parable of Someone Getting in Your Face and Calling You a Cocksucker
  3. Walking the Dalton Path Together
  4. It’s a Job / It’s Nothing Personal

Whenever two or more nouns are gathered to call a name, there is hate.This is the difficulty—well, one of the difficulties, in addition to being barred from coming within 200 yards of Jasper High—facing Steve the Horny Bouncer. He has heard Dalton’s commandment. He has heard the parable of someone getting in your face and calling you a cocksucker. He’s heard about the power of community, the innate dignity of the laborer, and the fact that it, whatever it is, is nothing personal. He simply isn’t buying it.

“Uh-huh,” he says, the sarcasm dripping from his lips in sufficient quantity to stain his shirt, were he wearing one. “Being called a cocksucker isn’t personal?” Gyp Rosetti, you have a friend in Steve.

“No,” says Dalton coolly and confidently. (Considering the degree to which men routinely sexualize their antagonism toward him, I’d say this is a man who’s been called a cocksucker many, many times.) “It’s two nouns combined to elicit a prescribed response.”

Well goddamn, looks like he was a linguistics minor in NYU! Thanks there, Chomsky!

Of course, he’s right. One need look no further than the fact that this is my 130th essay about a movie called Road House in 130 days to see that combining two nouns in the right way can elicit one hell of a prescribed response. I have chosen to give myself over to that response, but that’s just it: I made a choice. Dalton is attempting to convince the skeptical Steve that he has a choice too, and he can choose to let that shit slide.

Steve, you will not be surprised to learn, is not buying it. However, while dumb, he is no dummy. He senses he will not be able to best Dalton in the squared circle of neurolinguistic programming. Better for him to take a new and even more direct approach:

“What if somebody calls my mama a whore?”

Actor Gary Hudson’s delivery of the word “whore” is remarkable, a cousin in its way to Joe Pantoliano as Ralph Cifaretto, exasperatedly insisting “She was a hooah.” He takes the word and purses his lips and shoots it out the side of his mouth, like he’s trying to send it scurrying out of the servant’s entrance before the Duchess arrives. Nervous laughter erupts. All that his smug look of triumph afterwards lacks is the voice of Ra’s al Ghul from Batman: The Animated Series saying “Checkmate, Detective” or some shit.

Which leaves him wide open for Dalton’s riposte:

“Is she?”

Nervous laughter bubbles up again, at Steve’s expense this time. His smile sours. He takes the napkin or whatever he’s been tearing up OCD-style and tosses the latest shred to the ground in a rage. Anything he says would imply acceptance of Dalton’s framework, that rather than being some outlandish insult, the notion that Steve’s mother is a sex worker is a matter of some debate. Not since Dalton told Morgan “opinions vary” has he so thoroughly shut someone down.

Note that Dalton himself is agnostic on the issue. I’m not claiming any kind of “sex work is work” points for Dalton; this was an era in which even an NYU philosophy major may not have encountered this kind of thinking, and moreover his attitude toward Denise after her topless dance smacks of SWERFiness. And yet one is reminded, is not one, of Matthew 26:63-64: “And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said.” Tou-fuckin-ché, Caiaphas.

And so it us unto you, Horny Steve. You have just given Dalton the rope to hang you with, rhetorically. When you diss Dalton, you diss yourself, and in so doing you yourself have set up the perfect demonstration of the wisdom of “Be nice.” Did Dalton say anything insulting? You’ll notice he did not! He left it to his foe to be his own undoing. Petard, here be thy hoist.

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129. The Third Rule, Verse 4 Revisited

May 9th, 2019

“This is the new Double Deuce,” says Frank Tilghman. We are at the start of an all-hands staff meeting, and Tilghman is pointing to the concept art for the bar’s redesign. But standing nearby is his latest hire, Dalton. It is through Dalton, with Dalton, in Dalton that the new Double Deuce will be achieved. Dalton embodies the new Double Deuce. He is its future.

When Dalton takes over as cooler he becomes more than just the chief bouncer. His role is not to handle a series of discrete incidents, but to institute sweeping reforms that will eliminate such incidents forever. “It’s going to change,” he states—not a threat, not a promise, a fact. His bouncers, too, must change for this to take place. As below, so above.

Bouncing on the Dalton Path is a matter of following “three simple rules.”

This, for the fifth time, is the third.

3. Be nice (continued)

Previously:

  1. The Great Commandment
  2. The Parable of Someone Getting in Your Face and Calling You a Cocksucker
  3. Walking the Dalton Path Together
  4. It’s Nothing Personal

But there’s more to Verse 4, isn’t there? Dalton doesn’t merely tell his acolytes that bouncing is nothing personal. He chooses to emphasize that bouncing is a job. Bouncing is work. Bouncing is labor. Through this lens, perhaps, we can arrive at the cod Marxism for which Road House has been crying out for years.

We’ve discussed one interpretation of the latter portion of this verse already—the need to maintain a level head, a distanced perspective, the ability to distinguish between professional challenges to be surmounted and personalized challenges to be destroyed.

At this point Dalton could, and indeed at a subsequent point he will, emphasize the “sticks and stones may break my bones” element. He could, and will, insist that though they will be dealing with physically and verbally aggressive patrons, those patrons have no insight into the men bouncing them and thus their words and deeds carry no true weight. That’s one interpretation of “it’s nothing personal,” and it’s valid.

But what does Dalton mean by counterposing “it’s nothing personal” with “it’s a job”? By situating bouncing within the context of labor and setting this up in opposition to the personal, he is underlining—and not for the first time—the communal nature of the task. The bourgeois conception of personhood, atomic individualism, false individual consciousness, Thatcher proclaiming “there is no such thing as society”: These have no place Dalton’s philosophy. When you do a job you do so in concert with your fellow workers, and, ideally, for the benefit of workers as a class.

You are no Morgan, searching for opportunities in which to vent your rage and exercise power at the expensive of the collective.

You are no Pat, enriching yourself at your fellows’ expense.

You are no Steve, fucking young women of uncertain age in the breakroom, or Judy, selling cocaine in the bathroom, indulging in hedonistic pursuits while others shoulder your burden.

“You are the bouncers,” Dalton says at the end of the Giving of the Rules. You are the proletariat. Through your labor the value of the Double Deuce is derived, a fact which is made plainer and plainer as the film goes on.

“I am the cooler.” Dalton is the vanguard. He seizes power with the intent of awakening the wider class of bouncers to their revolutionary potential and diffusing that power among them, and unlike other vanguardist movements he does so.

“Watch my back and each other’s.” Solidarity forever.

“Take out the trash.” Up against the wall, motherfuckers.

 

 

 

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128. “You’re too stupid to have a good time!”

May 8th, 2019

When Ketchum and the boys from the Tuesday night Good Book, Good Burgers combination Bible study & barbecue men’s meeting show up to kick-stab Dalton in the skull for the crime of firing Brad Wesley’s nephew and then beating him and his buddies up after they attempt to stab Dalton in the face and torso over it, Dalton is ready. Arrayed Avengers-style, he and the other bouncers tell the new visitors that the Double Deuce is closed. You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Ketchum, however, who notes that the bar is full of people and demands to know what they’re doing. Dalton merely points out the obvious, which is that they’re “drinking and having a good time.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” says Ketchum, grinning, before whipping his leg straight up in the air to enziguri Dalton…with extreme prejudice. 

Alas for the goon! Dalton is quicker of reflex than his assailant, which he demonstrates by catching Ketchum’s leg in midair. But he is also quicker of wit, which he demonstrates with a first-ballot Hall of Fame Road House one-liner: “You’re too stupid to have a good time!”

Dalton proceeds to QED Ketchum’s ass by dragging him into the parking lot and whipping him and his buddies but good. All is well, one would think.

But one would be wrong. Just over two weeks into this project we discussed The Shirtless Man. Much like the Green Man, the woodwose, or Dionysian mystery cults, this figure of fertility and abandon is, along with his demonic/cthonic opposite number Morgan, our introduction to the world of the Double Deuce. I won’t insult your intelligence by belaboring a point you can grasp with your own two eyes immediately: The Shirtless Man is extremely stupid, and he’s having the time of his life. Indeed much of the clientele of the bar when Dalton arrives to work there—the very same people Dalton is intent upon clearing out—are both as dumb as pillowcase full of doorknobs and as happy as pigs in shit. There’s no other way to put it: Dalton is wrong.

But in this rare instance, Dalton’s maxim reflects the world not as it is, but as he is determined to make it be. His task here is not to fix something broken according to the ways of the Dalton Path, but to break something intact so that the Dalton Path may proceed. He is changing the pig himself this time, creating the conditions under which “You’re too stupid to have a good time” is true. The Three Simple Rules, “Pain don’t hurt,” and the like are matters of observation; “You’re too stupid to have a good time” is a matter of application.

In short, we have reached the start of the Dalton Path’s rockiest stretch, and we will see Dalton pushed to the breaking point as a result before he emerges stronger on the other side. We are privy to a great becoming.

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127. Earth-Denise

May 7th, 2019

I think it’s only natural to look at this image of Dalton and Denise, Denise sidling up to Dalton to cheerfully and in fact thoughtfully proposition him for sex and Dalton preparing to rebuff her pretty much no matter what she says, and focus on the hair. Those two glorious manes, brown and blonde, male and female, yin and yang, equal and opposite, an Aqua Net Argonath. Do they not suit each other, complement each other, mirror each other? By the end of this film you’ve seen both of these people mostly naked and once you cross that threshold—well, brother, we’re all adults here, and given what’s gone on in the back room of the Double Deuce already I don’t see the percentage in beating around the bush—you want to see these two people fuck. I sure do!

But I want more.

Oh, things work out fine in the Dalton/Doc timeline, for sure. Not for Denise, who gets beaten by Brad Wesley and then does an aggressive striptease on his behalf and then gets ridiculed by Dalton and dragged away and never seen again. And of course not for Brad Wesley and his men, who all get murdered, so hey, maybe things work out fine for Denise after all. But for Dalton and Elizabeth, you know, they find true love, Dalton turns a personal corner and quits cutting and running and gets over his guilt and trauma from the last time he murdered a guy, they have a bunch of no-nonsense sex in there somewhere, the Double Deuce and Jasper are freed from the tyranny of Brad Wesley, and regardless of where you come down on Frank Tilghman the movie implies this is a good thing so let’s go with that.

But sometimes I imagine another world. In this world Dalton does go back to Denise’s place and fucks, it doesn’t kill him, he does even like it. First of all kudos to Denise for maintaining her own apartment or whatever, maybe she and the girls are roommates, it’s a fun situation like Sarah Connor and whatsername at the beginning of The Terminator, just independent women of the ’80s living their dreams, there’s a lot of snickering and giggling when Dalton and Denise offer perfunctory greetings to them while they watch The Golden Girls and then fall into her room together. Second maybe it accelerates the timeline vis a vis Jimmy, Wesley’s top goon and illegitimate son (source for this claim?), who tells Dalton to say Goodnight, Denise. Maybe Dalton actually does say “Goodnight, Denise” in response and it really humiliates and angers Jimmy the way Dalton’s mildest comebacks seem to snap the likes of Morgan and Steve like dry twigs, and so Jimmy participates in the fight that follows with Ketchum and the anonymous goons who look like they’re dressed for Sunday services at a midwestern evangelical church. Maybe this fight is a real backbreaker for Dalton and Jack and Hank and Younger now because it’s five on four and at least two of the participants are pretty dece at fighting or would be if Dalton hadn’t yanked one’s boot off and twisted his ankle and hauled him into the parking lot like a sack of potatoes, but regardless we later see Jimmy beat Jack and Hank and Younger and damn near Wade and Dalton too before Wesley calls it off, so it could get rough. And let’s say Denise finds that boot with the knife in it that Dalton threw, technically we never see where it lands, and she sneaks up behind Jimmy as he’s about to deliver the coup de grace on Dalton and just fucking brains him with it, you see the lights go out right in front of you, it’s kind of horrifying but this abusive psychopath had it coming. And the rest of the goons fuck right off and yes I’m sure Wesley would go absolutely ape shit considering his bastard (?) just got done by his girlfriend, but guess what Brad? She’s not your girlfriend anymore, nope, she’s busy having Dr. Elizabeth Clay who showed up just in time to watch Dalton fall into the arms of another woman treat his wounds. And it’s a touchy thing for a while, what with the police in Wesley’s pocket and now there’s kind of a love triangle developing, and Brad’s acting rashly now, he’s not timing the explosives right for Emmett and Red because it’s like Tinker or O’Connor placing them rather than Jimmy and for all I know maybe Strodenmire gets run over along with his car dealership this time because Ketchum can’t sleep because all he can see is Jimmy’s vacant eyes with his boot embedded in his brain and he’s doesn’t give a fuck who gets hurt anymore because it’s hard to feel anything. But who should ride into town to help Dalton put down this pack of mad dogs but Wade Garrett, just like he always has, and even if Red and Emmett and Pete are all dead this time around there’s still Wade to pull the trigger and save his mijo from becoming what he’s always dreaded, he’ll be his sin-eater and that’s fine, and the Double Deuce will be fine, and Jasper will be fine, and yes Wade comes on to Denise pretty heavy but wouldn’t you know it, this time around Dr. Elizabeth Clay is not spoken for, and the red fucking hot sexual chemistry between the two of them combusts and they’re fucking before you know it, everyone’s fucking up against walls, left and right, like rabbits, because death’s thick in the air, it’s in their brains like a disease, and this is how you treat it, this is palliative care because you need love to feel alive, don’t you, you need to have love and make love to show death it hasn’t fucking gotten you yet, and Dalton and Denise who escaped her abusers and Wade and Elizabeth who escaped that abuser before are still alive and they say as they fuck and love each other goddammit we still have time on this earth and we’re going to live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live.

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126. Thug casual

May 6th, 2019

Look at this sorry state of affairs. Look at what the goon industry in Jasper has become. This fearsome foursome have stepped right out of a Promise Keepers meeting and into the parking lot of the Double Deuce in an attempt to assassinate Dalton by kicking him in the head with a knife. The denim bandit taking point is Ketchum, obviously, as you’ll recall from previous posts about Road House‘s most anonymous and yet also for some reason ultimately most prominent goon. The other three guys…well, they’re stuntmen, that’s the easiest way to put it, stuntmen who have no lines and appear in no other scenes and are only there to have a dust-up with Dalton and his bouncers that will leave their acid-washed asses in the dirt.

Tinker and O’Connor have better luck than these clowns do in taking Dalton on, as a matter of fact. Yes, in the previous fight Pat McGurn gets his nose broke and his ass kicked through a plate-glass window before he so much as lands a blow, though for attempting to carve Dalton like a Christmas ham with a knife the size of his forearm he should at least get an E for Effort. But Tinker comes close to killing Dalton, and he and O’Connor work both Dalton and Tilghman over pretty good before Dalton regains the upper hand against the Bleeder and the other bouncers team up on the big man.

Ketchum and company? Dalton and Jack spot them coming from a mile away. They post up with Hank and Younger just inside the vestibule and block these dopes from getting in. Dalton catches Ketchum’s would-be deathblow, violently twists the guy’s ankle, then literally drags his ass out into the parking lot. There’s some back and forth out there I suppose but there’s no reversal to speak of, where the bad guys are winning but then Dalton stages a comeback. Nope, they just go at it until the bouncers defeat the goons one by one. Ketchum is reduced to shouting “You son of a bitch!” as he’s dragged away with just one boot on, since Dalton lobbed the other one up on the bar’s roof, like Walter White with the pizza that one time. Just a disgraceful performance from top to bottom.

Ketchum, as we’ll see, returns with a vengeance, but these other guys are never seen again. After their work tonight, it’s entirely possible Brad Wesley beat them all to death in his driveway while smiling wryly as his other minions looked on and chuckled. Or perhaps after that they drifted East to perform other tasks in Wesley’s service but were never heard from again by the main characters, kind of like the Blue Wizards from Tolkien before Christopher revealed he’d revised their origin and made them part of anti-Sauron activity in the Second Age instead of the Third. (Seriously, apparently Professor T wound up deciding they came over from Valinor with Glorfindel now rather than Saruman, Gandalf, and Radagast. Blew my mind too.) My best guess, though, is that they simply went back to their day jobs at the Bass Pro Shop in the new mall. Take another look at those faces and tell me you wouldn’t be able to get a hell of a fly-fishing lure recommendation out of every man jack of them. They couldn’t possibly fuck it up worse than they fucked up being goons, I can tell you that much.

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“Game of Thrones” thoughts, Season Eight, Episode Four: “The Last of the Starks”

May 6th, 2019

“We may have defeated them, but we still have us to contend with.”

So says Tyrion Lannister regarding the plight that faces the people of Westeros — and the show that chronicles them. Yes, the dead are no more. But will the living choose to exist together as one? Or will they return to killing each other as they always have?

These questions haunt this week’s episode, titled “The Last of the Starks.” Written by co-creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss and directed by series mainstay David Nutter, it starts of in a celebratory mood, as the survivors of the Battle of Winterfell bid farewell to their fallen comrades and then drink and screw themselves into a stupor. But it ends with the gloomy, gut-wrenching prospect of even worse horrors to come — because this time, the killers will be humans.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone.

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“Billions” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Eight: “Fight Night”

May 5th, 2019

This week, “Billions” staged a charity boxing match between its fake-tough traders. I’m surprised that it took this long for the show to get in the ring.

The mano a mano match between Dollar Bill and Mafee on behalf of their overlords, Bobby Axelrod and Taylor Mason, provides the show with a perfect symbol. On the surface the fight is an act of philanthropy, a way to turn competition between rival firms into something productive. And surface is all it is.

The perfunctory noblesse oblige of the match’s charitable component disguises the venal truth. Two rich men who can barely muster the strength to swing at each other enact an absurd grudge match while their colleagues gamble obscene amounts of money. The winning bet, it turns out, is on both competitors losing. On “Billions,” there’s always a way to make money off someone else’s misfortune.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

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125. “I didn’t know she could sing!”

May 5th, 2019

If this configuration of Dalton and his padawan-learner Jack looks familiar, it’s because we’ve been here before. The exchange and fight scene that are about to occur are perhaps the purest distillation of the Dalton Path in the entire film, following the Three Simple Rules and their various chapters and verses to the letter. As a bonus they show the primacy and utility of Jack among the Double Deuce’s other bouncers. It is Jack, after all, to whom Dalton relays the Riddle of the Right Boot, counting on the younger man to solve it. When they move on the intruders who’ve come to the bar to murder a man by kicking him in the head with a boot-mounted knife on account of the fact that he fired a rich guy’s nephew, they move as one.

But how did they arrive at this point? By what strange magic were Dalton and Jack united at this moment? The magic…of rock.

Specifically Carrie Ann’s variant thereof. The big-grinned barmaid with the bangs has traditionally occupied a privileged position in Dalton’s orbit. It is she to whom he first entrusts the secret of his name. It is she who preaches his name to the other barfolk. It is she who is granted a glimpse of the ass.

Now that the Double Deuce has been cleaned up, it is she who takes the stage to demonstrate this fact to the viewer. Would any woman have been caught dead on the stage of the old Double Deuce, where the only thing separating you from the ravening hordes, whose attention is drawn to and focused on that stage in a way no other staffer or patron can claim, was a thin chickenwire line? To be honest, dead might be the only way a woman would get caught on that thing. Putting a blind guy up there strikes me as some kind of ADA violation as it is.

But now things are different. How different? Different enough that a server is up there singing her gorgeous, joyful heart out. (Kathleen Wilhoite is truly one of this movie’s MVPs; I have no doubt from the way she shakes and grooves and grins and at one point even puts her hand to her face like “holy shit I can’t believe this!” is a sign of completely sincere pleasure on the part of the actor herself.) A few weeks earlier she had to save all her vocal power for yelling “BASTARD!” at people she’d just brained with a beer bottle in a barfight. Now she’s singing Eddie Floyd with the Jeff Healey Band.

That’s why Jack drifts over to Dalton that night: Just to smile with delight and say “I didn’t know she could sing!” He’s so happy in that moment, so happy to see someone he thought he knew reveal a new and exciting side of herself, so happy to know that as a bouncer on the Dalton Path he helped make that happen. It’s his desire to share that happiness that puts him by Dalton’s side when Ketchum strides in, anonymous minions by his side, to try to kickstab Dalton in the skull. The right place at the right time, that time being “time to not be nice.”

Call it a coincidence if you want, or even synchronicity. I call it the ne plus ultra illustration of the Third Rule, and of how the obervance of that rule yields dividends none could predict. Be Nice, commands Dalton. So mote it be.

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124. Say Goodnight Denise

May 4th, 2019

We’re near the midpoint of the movie now and things have turned around for the Double Deuce. The thugs, thieves, dope dealers, and dudes who fuck high-schoolers have been purged—and that’s just from the staff. The bad element in the crowd has had its proverbial face smashed through the metaphorical table. The first attempt by the Brad Wesley organization to re-exert control by forcing the rehiring of sister-son Pat McGurn ended in a defeat so humiliating that Wesley beat up one of the already beaten men himself upon hearing about it. Carrie Ann has gone from getting groped and forced into fistfights to getting on stage and banging out blue-eyed soul versions of “Knock on Wood” with the Jeff Healey Band. There’s a neon sign now. The floor and walls are clean of dirt and graffiti. The dance floor is jumping. The damned chickenwire is down. It’s a new day.

Denise must agree. Not that we know her name is Denise at this point. She’s just the vivacious blonde with a sense of style who rebuffed a dude who asked her to get “nipple to nipple” a while back, and who looks at Dalton like J. Wellington Wimpy looks at hamburgers. Today is the day she makes her move.

No bizarre “nipple to nipple” euphemisms that are actually filthier than the real thing for Denise, oh no. Gliding over to Dalton’s usual post-up spot near the bar, she gets, well, nipple to nipple with him, rubs his shoulder, asks him why he avoids eye contact with her (“I’m shy”), and says “Would you be shocked if I said ‘Let’s go to my place and fuck’? Ain’t gonna kill you. You know, you might even like it.” Show me the lie, you know?

Dalton, who has an inscrutable but distinct sense of decorum that I’m still puzzling out 124 days into writing about him, seems unimpressed (or blind) and unlikely to accept the offer. But the matter is taken out of his hands. Appearing from out of nowhere, Brad Wesley’s chief goon Jimmy violently grabs Denise by the arm. Whipping her behind him and thrusting himself into Dalton’s face, he growls “Say goodnight, Denise,” and they leave.

But he doesn’t say “Say goodnight, Denise” while looking at Denise. He says “Say goodnight, Denise” while looking at Dalton, and I mean looking at him, staring right into his eyes like he’s trying to psychically bore two holes through his skull. He says “Say goodnight, Denise” as if he’s telling Dalton “Say ‘Goodnight, Denise.'”

Given Dalton’s penchant for cheap sarcasm when the opportunity presents itself, and given Road House‘s penchant for dumb jokes whether the opportunity presents itself or not, it’s hard to believe, but no, Dalton does not stare right back into Jimmy’s face and say “Goodnight, Denise.” But their loss is your gain. You can be Dalton’s voice in this moment. You can say “Goodnight, Denise.” Your quick wit will delight all who have the pleasure of your company. Goodnight, Denise.

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123. Chicken wireless

May 3rd, 2019

Dalton purged the staff of the Double Deuce of its criminal element.

Dalton purged the crowd of the Double Deuce of its criminal element.

Dalton defeated the minions of Wesley in open combat.

Dalton liberated the small businessmen of Jasper, Missouri from the Jasper Improvement Society.

Dalton saved the life of yeoman rancher Emmett.

Dalton put the minions of Brad Wesley down like dogs, one by one.

Dalton lulled Brad Wesley into a false sense of victory that enabled the small businessmen of Jasper, Missouri to gun him down.

Dalton taught the bouncers of the Double Deuce to walk the Dalton Path.

Dalton taught Dr. Elizabeth Clay how to love again.

Dalton freed Jasper, Missouri from tyranny.

For these deeds we honor him.

For these deeds we celebrate him.

But through his efforts, Dalton also freed the Jeff Healey Band from the loose-hanging confines of their chicken-wire prison.

And it is for this deed that we dedicate our lives to his service.

So was it nice. So is it nice. So ever will be it nice.

In the name of the Dalton, the Jack, and the Holy Wade.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

—from the Most Meet and Worthy Charter of the Holy Jasper Empire, Forty-Fifth Post-Tilghman Schismatic Revision; So Decreed by the Ass-Mother of the Sisters of Carrie Ann and the Eternal High Priestess of the Elizabethan Order; So Ratified by the Intranuclear Auto Sales Consortium, the Swords of Tinker, the Swords of Denise, the Cody Navigators, and the Guild of the Valet Visible; Sworn by the Blood of the Bleeder, Jasper IX, AD 7201 

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When Game of Thrones Plays Sad Piano Music, It’s Time to Freak Out

May 3rd, 2019

For the final stretch of the episode, the ambient sound is muted and a piano melody kicks in. It immediately felt like a callback to “Light of the Seven,” one of your best-known pieces—so, you know, I got worried.

That was 100 percent intentional. When I talked to Miguel [Sapochnik], the director, and when David and Dan came to my studio and we started working on this episode, we all agreed that it had to be a piano piece again, just like “Light of the Seven.”

That was the first time we’d used piano in the show; it really meant something different. You realize Cersei’s up to something and it all blows up. By using it again, we wanted to have the reverse effect. The piano comes in and people go, “Uh-oh, here comes the piano again. Something’s unraveling!” There was little hope throughout the episode. They’ve fought and fought, but the Night King is just unstoppable. Then he comes walking in, and the piano itself represents, like, “This is really it! It’s over!” Then there’s that big twist in the end. It definitely misled the audience because of what they knew from “Light of the Seven,” back in season six. We always treated the music as another character in the show.

I interviewed Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi about his work on “The Long Night” and elsewhere for Vulture.

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122. A look of concern

May 2nd, 2019

This is Emmett. Emmett has just made two discoveries that, from the looks of it, have shaken him to his core. That Brad Wesley plans to send men to the Double Deuce to physically intimidate his tenant Dalton and his friend (?) Frank Tilghman? No. That Brad Wesley plans to send men to his own cabin to plant explosives that will blow it up while he’s asleep one night? No. That sales at the new JC Penney (Opening Fall 1989!) will require a loyalty oath to Brad Wesley for eligibility? No. He has discovered that Dalton drives a Mercedes-Benz, and that Dalton is doing tai chi with his shirt off.

I’ve thought a lot about this look of utter, almost abject confusion and dismay since I first saw the movie, during which screening a friend MST3K’d the bit where Emmett lifts up a tarp in the barn and discovers Dalton’s Benz by hollering in Emmett’s hee-haw voice “THIS BOY’S FROM THE FUTURE!” Time travel is indeed one of the few exigencies I’d deem capable of occasioning that kind of blind pigfuck panic in a man of Emmett’s age, experience, and Show Me State sangfroid. (Seriously, when Dalton asks him if he’s okay after rescuing him from his recently detonated, still burning shack, Emmett replies “I’d be fine if you get off of me.” Always with the wisecracks, this one!)

Is he upset because Dalton is rich? Like, are we to believe that his whole schtick about only charging a hundred bucks a month in rent isn’t because he doesn’t care about money, but that this was just his polite way of letting a man he didn’t think could afford anything more off the hook? Does he feel bamboozled because Dalton drove up looking for a place to rent in the beater he bought at Big “T”‘ Auto Sales instead of this luxury piece of German engineering? (Does Emmett know Big “T,” while we’re on the subject? Is Big “T” part of the Jasper Improvement Society? Is Big “T” related to Pete Strodenmire, his fellow walrus-faced car salesman? Down this road lies madness, so we head back.)

Is he upset because he believes Dalton may practice “alternative lifestyles”? He’s city folk, that much Emmett could tell from the car’s New York plates. He’s pretty, and he’s got that hair. He’s writing around with no shirt, unless you count a fine sheen of oil and sweat as a shirt, which in the case of Dalton perhaps you should. His pants are mighty snug. And he’s performing some kind of Eastern dance ritual. Is the idea that Emmett’s iconoclasm regarding the local Presbyterians is a front and he actually is more on board with down-home American values than he lets on? Or is he a New Atheist?

The simplest answer, I think, is the question we’ve been asking on and off for three months now. What kind of man works as a bouncer and lives in a barn but also drives a Mercedes and practices martial-arts meditation? Shirtless, at that?

The other answer I’ve come up with is that he’s mistaken tai chi for karate and, between that and the Benz, believes Dalton to be an agent of the Axis. I mean, you’d look worried too.

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121. Life’s Been Good

May 1st, 2019

I have a mansion I visit sometimes
Brad Wesley lives there, he makes me do crimes
I live in Jasper, near the new mall
We made some old guys pay for it all

They say I’m crazy but I have a nice smile
They put most of my part in the cylindrical file
Life’s been good to me so far

Brad Wesley’s Mustang does one-eighty-five
I’ll stare at Dalton, Jimmy can drive
My necktie’s loose so I never choke
I dress like Albert Hammond the Stroke
I crashed Red Webster’s and trashed the whole place
I watched O’Connor get punched in the face
Though I’m listed as Karpis in credits as they crawl
I’m barely in this movie at all

Lucky I’m sane when my three scenes are through
(In the background at Brad’s pool)
(Brad’s pool)
Don’t say my name, but for Tinker they do
Life’s been good to me so far

I’m just a soldier in Brad Wesley’s war
After this scene you won’t see me no more
Red Webster cleans up my mess with a mop
In A Nightmare on Elm Street, I play a cop

I am in Road House but for not that much time
(Everybody say Karpis)
(Karpis)
Vanish completely after 0:45
Life’s been good to me so far

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“The Act” thoughts, Season One, Episode Eight: “Free”

May 1st, 2019

The final episode of The Act is titled “Free,” and the irony is hard to miss. This is, after all, the episode where Gypsy and Nick are imprisoned for the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard — Gypsy for ten years and Nick for life. But despite the foregone-conclusion resolution of this true-crime drama, there are two scenes of actual freedom here, by my count, and each serves to drive that terrible irony deeper into your brain.

The first is the flashback to 1997 that opens the episode. This is the night when the Blanchards’ bedtime routine begins: Dee Dee comforting Gypsy, who’s spooked by the Spanish moss swaying from the branches above them as they lie in the grass, telling her that the stars are angels who will protect them, just as they will protect each other. They’re sleeping under the open sky, in the great outdoors, yet Dee Dee is forging a crucial link in the chains that will stay wrapped around her daughter until the night she herself is killed.

The second takes place on that fateful night, which we see in flashback near the end of the episode. After the murder, as Nick and Gypsy prepare for their farcical flight to freedom in Wisconsin, Gypsy grabs her two pet guinea pigs and sets them free on the lawn outside the pink Blanchard house. These two small domesticated rodents stand about as much chance of surviving out there on their own as the other two life forms who emerge from that house on that night. By freeing them, Gypsy has unwittingly sentenced them to death.

A literal sentencing awaits, but that’s not even the half of it. Gypsy’s imprisonment, her ongoing sense of being trapped no matter what she does and no matter where she is, is the guiding principle of the episode.

I reviewed the season finale of The Act for Vulture. What a show.

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