Into The Great Wide Open Part Two: A Mudslide, A Funny Farm and a Shiny House On A Hill

Back for more? Check out part one of this stupid one-man odyssey right here! On to part two, where I check off a couple dumb items from the bucket list, attempt to re-create an underrated bad movie scene, have a romantic dinner by myself surrounded by people in love, and see what really unnecessary opulence looks like! Anyway, here we go!

The Best Road in North America

It was just past one o'clock when I passed the Seventeen-Mile-Drive turn-off just adjacent to Pebble Beach where the road forks and the entrance to the Pacific Coast Highway began. Sweet jeezus, I've only ever seen it on television and in the movies, but I've always imagined this stretch of road as the greatest stretch of highway in the United States. I flashed back to memories of riding with my uncles from Anchorage to Homer, Alaska on the Seward Highway years ago and thinking that was some pretty impressive beauty, as well as multiple trips through Big Sky country in Montana in my playing and coaching days at Westminster, but this was something different. This was me and my car making this drive for the drive's sake. Not with any end goal in mind, but just to see an epic stretch of America and to lose myself in the sheer beauty of it all. Sure, the 101 was a lot quicker way to get to my next overnight stop in San Luis Obispo/Atascadero, but it lacks a certain...majesty.

I think this means something

Once you pop out of Carmel Highlands heading south, it's like the entire world opens up to you. I had mountains to my left, high cliffs and thousands of miles of ocean out to my right. It was like I could see to the end of the earth. Being that there were no real time constraints, the drive was slow and steady as I'd pull over every couple miles just to admire the view. I'd snap a picture here and there, but mostly just stared out and down into the sapphire coves below. Occasionally the road would cross a bridge, such as the Big Creek bridge that I've pictured here, but they do a nice job of blending that into the scenery until you look back on it. I wondered if there was a metaphor there. I'm sure there was but I hadn't figured it out yet.

Bide your time and all becomes clear.
Also, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!

Eventually I made my way into the place I've been obsessed with for years, Big Sur. As I've mentioned before, Big Sur was the location of the final scenes of one of my favorite films of the the late-90's called The Limey. Starring Terrence Stamp as Wilson, a recently released long-term inmate in an English prison, This underrated Stephen Soderbergh classic features the man once known as General Zod making his way to California to seek revenge after the suspicious death of his daughter at the hands of Hollywood producer and part-time drug lord Terry Valentine, played by Peter Fonda. The cliffs and the coves below were an awesome spectacle to see. I also appreciated that there was virtually zero cell-phone coverage anywhere in the area. This would be an awesome place to disappear to. And if I was a Hollywood mogul and part-time drug lord, this would be an awe inspiring place to retire and eventually meet my terrifyingly violent demise in.

Why would anyone want to
be anywhere else?

I pressed on heading further and further south until I realized, "I think I might be the only car on the road." Followed quickly with, "Oh shit, I forgot about the landslide." A couple years previous there were some pretty massive wildfires in the Big Sur area, followed soon with a massive landslide that wiped out several miles of the Pacific Coast Highway and actually reshaped a good chunk of the California coast. I was the only car on the road because I was getting near the end of the line. I looked for signs of detours south but there were none. Eventually I hit the big orange barrier in the "town" of Gorda By The Sea. I walked into a little gas station there where the first words out of the fella behind the counter were, "you're lost aren't you?"

In more ways than one. "Kinda. I'm on a road-trip, but I forgot about the slide," I sheepishly replied.

Later, I raced the Drift King
down this bastard to win his girlfriend's
freedom, or some shit.

"You're not the first, and you're not gonna be the last. But at least you look good," he said weirdly. "Double back seven miles until you come to the Nacimiento Road and it'll take you over the mountains to the 101." I told him thanks, paid to re-fill my water jug and turned back north. Ten minutes later I hit the turnoff and for the next ten minutes, I was almost driving vertically upwards. WE'RE GOIN' BALLISTIC MAV! That strange dude wasn't shitting me when he said it took you over the mountains, I figured the climb would be a little more gradual. Like many things in life, I was wrong, but eventually it kind of evened out although the climb was still there. And it was easily the most winding 1 1/2 lane road I've ever been on. Reminded me of something out of the European mountains on Top Gear or the climax of The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift!. I'm sure that if I knew that I was the only car on that road, it would've been an absolute blast hooning around those crazy turns, but every couple of minutes a car would pass going the other direction or around a blind turn so it was WHITE KNUCKLE TIME. It took about an hour and a half at 15-25 miles per hour to drop down on the other side and eventually make it to the 101. I often get sick riding in a car, but never driving a car, but this road left me a little queasy. Pretty awesome drive though. The dropoffs were terrifying, but the views were incredible. It was starting to get dusky and I was still an hour or so away from my hotel, but I eventually found it in the little town of Atascadero.

I trust these dude's opinions on fine-dining and haberdashery.

Just a quick aside here. One of my favorite weekly podcasts is The After Disaster. It had its beginnings as sort of a Loveline after-show starring the sound engineer, the phone screener and a buddy of theirs that helps run the Improv comedy club chain. It's kind of like the Seinfeld of podcasts, with no real topic from week to week and is pretty much just three guys shooting the shit. Sounds kind of lousy, especially with my describing it, but it is wildly entertaining and I can't recommend it enough. Anyway, the show originates out of Southern California, and I kinda wanted to see some of the stuff that they describe on the show while I was out here. One of the guys favorite hangouts is a world famous hotel in nearby San Luis Obispo called The Madonna Inn. The place is famous for their themed rooms, outdoor recreation, winery, killer restaurant and bakery. I would've loved to stay a night at this place, but at $300 a night and this late in the year, I was trying to get through this trip fairly lean. So I was stuck with exploiting my kid sister's Marriott friends and family discount. But I had to see the place for myself, so after getting checked in and getting cleaned up, I drove the thirty miles down the road to have some dinner.

Classic California kitsch

I pulled up and this place looked like something out of an old Rat Pack movie. Just a technicolor wash of lights and colors against the stark, inky blackness of the night sky. I found their steakhouse and this place was a sight to behold. Pink and gold everywhere with the centerpiece being a gigantic golden tree with cherubs hanging over it. It looked like that scene at that honeymoon hotel in Superman II. The restaurant was adjacent to a large dance-floor where a ten-piece band was setting up at the far end. I thought they only had the live stuff on the weekends, then I realized it was almost Halloween when a couple college-age gals dressed like Wayne and Garth walked by. I asked the barkeep what was going on, and he explained that once a week the dance classes at Cal-State SLO hold a theme dance out there. So there would be some entertainment later.

That's true love right there.

I sat at a small table underneath the big tree and had one of the better ribeyes I've had the pleasure of hammering down. They grill over red oak wood here and you can taste it. Looking around, I was the only one there that was on my own. It was late, so the restaurant side of things was winding down for the day, but there were three couples dining on adjacent tables. I found it kind of serendipitous. One looked like they were in their mid-twenties, smiling constantly at each other, two giant pieces of pink cake and champagne in front of them. The next couple were in their mid-40''s. Faces long and mostly silent, two large glasses of wine filling almost as quickly as they were emptying. The third were quite elderly, looking like they'd just gotten out of that bed in the middle of Charlie Bucket's house. The old man's quivering hand holding his wife's throughout their entire meal while never taking his eyes off her, grinning from ear to ear. I thought to myself, "this is like seeing the three stages of a lifelong relationship here." Love can do no wrong early on, but eventually life wears on you and you get tired of each other's shit but over a long time you realize that what you have can't be replaced and love seems new again. That ship has probably sailed in my case, I'm almost 40, but that doesn't mean that I can't recognize it when I see it and appreciate it for what it is. It's like Deadpool said, "Love is a beautiful thing. When you find it, the whole world tastes like Daffodil Daydream! So you gotta hold onto love...tight! And never let go! Or else the whole world tastes like Mama June after hot yoga." Wise words from the "Merc With A Mouth." So I sent a text message to the mysterious gal back home letting her know I was thinking about her and hoped she was doing good.

Top O' The World!

College kids in elaborate costume started pouring in, and the standards from the big band started to swell. I took that as my cue to call it a day. I got a piece of that pink champagne cake to go (I really shouldn't be eating this stuff but I was on vacation! It was good, but I was miserable later), paid my bill, wandered the grounds a little bit and moseyed back up the highway to my hotel in Atascadero to retire for the night. I can't remember another day in my recent past where I did so much from sunup to my head hitting the pillow.

Nurse Ratched was actually
pretty nice!

It's kinda nice having the freedom to not have to set an alarm, but the golf business is too entrenched into my DNA, so 7:00 AM hit and I was wide awake and hammering down some hotel room coffee with my protein shake as creamer and my Greek yogurt. Other than a few nice meals, I'd kinda managed to stick to my daily diet and routine on this trip. Today I was going to finish the trip down the PCH to Los Angeles. But I had a couple stops to make on the way. Sounds dumb as hell, but I had to stop by the Atascadero State Hospital, where the Terminator and John Connor busted out Sarah in Terminator 2: Judgement Day. They wouldn't let me in. Also, it's a dude's-only hospital, so that movie was factually incorrect. Still, it was a trip just seeing the big sign up front.

This place probably cost a couple
hundred bucks.

After a fuel stop I backtracked over to Highway 46 which took me back out to the coast where I turned north towards a beautiful little seaside town called San Simeon. I had to see one of California's great treasures, The Hearst Castle. As a long-time movie lover and occupier of various Film History classes in high school and college, the 1941 film, Citizen Kane, has been required viewing in pretty much half of them. The real-life version of Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst was a pretty awful dude, that did some pretty awful shit, but goddamn did he have him a pretty swell vacation home, now a California State Park and museum. As I pulled up to the visitor center at the bottom of the mountain, the marine-layer parted and the house appeared on top of the peak. Impressive to say the least. I paid twenty five bucks and was the last one on the bus for their first "Grand Tour" of the day.

The California climate is
perfect for preserving 3000
year old statues. No wonder
Bob Hope loved it here.

The drive up the hill was awesome with the house appearing and disappearing from view with the voice of Alex Trebek giving little trivia tidbits as we drove past various landmarks on the windy road. We pulled up to this huge staircase where Sean, our tour guide, met us and immediately launched into a few stories about Hearst's father George as he led us up the stairs to the main courtyard. Unfortunately, the legendary Neptune Pool was entering yet another renovation to fix some leaks that have existed since its original construction, but the Roman temple facade was impressive to say the least, as was the incredibly colorful flowers that adorned virtually everything on the outside of the house. The upkeep on this place must be insane. I've barely been able to keep my rose garden alive during this summer! We passed an actual Egyptian statue of Sekhmet, the Warrior Goddess of Healing and entered the building through a tiny side door. I liked that there was actually a screen door on that entrance.

It's not even heated! What
a cheapskate!

Only a couple rules were given to us by the tour guides, keep up and DON'T FUCKING TOUCH ANYTHING! Literally everything in this house is hundreds of years old, imported from Europe and the Middle East and carefully reconstructed. Every piece of artwork in the place, authentic. In addition to pushing us to war with Spain, opposing Roosevelt's New Deal and giving an open editorial platform to nazis in the US, Hearst had a real appreciation for finery, and thankfully he was able to preserve these priceless works of art for future generations to see. Maybe the one good thing he did was to not just leave all of this to his asshole kids. He loved California so much that he left it all to the state when he died to preserve as a museum. I appreciated Sean's passion for the place, and the artwork and attention to detail was incredible, but as the tour moved through the main rooms of the house and the flat-out insane indoor pool, I found myself growing more and more resentful and pissed off. Sometimes, I think this country never learns. Hearst had the resources and probably could've kept half this country afloat during the Great Depression, but instead he just built a big house on a hill. Typical.

What the hell?

The Dulcet tones of Trebek greeted us as we got back on the bus and we cruised back down that winding hill back to the visitor center. I picked up a couple tchockes from the gift shop. Giselle fired back up on cue and I was back on my way south, having re-joined the Pacific Coast Highway south of the slide. The next phase of the trip was about to begin where the golden mountains and rugged central coast were about to give way to the world's ultimate concrete jungle. As I brought the car back up to speed, I nearly drove it off the side of the road at the sight of a couple strange looking horses in a pasture. WAITAMINUTE, IS THAT A FUCKING ZEBRA? It was.

See you next week for part 3: The Saint of Los Angeles.

Into The Great Wide Open Part One: From Salt Lick to Domestic Bliss

"So, are you headed out to the course today?" queried the bright-eyed gal at the drive-up coffee shack, seeming just a little too cheerful for 6:00 AM just after she'd taken my usual order.

"You know, for the first time in five years or so, I'm on vacation." 

"Awww, that's awesome! What are you going to do?"

"Hitting the road for a couple weeks. Heading west until I can't go any further, then south." I replied.

"Right on! When are you leaving?"

"Right now." I said as I paid her for the drinks, crammed a couple singles in her tip-jar and punched the gas pedal on Giselle. 

It had been four years since VodkaRob from back in the Dorm Days and his lovely bride had gotten married on the beach at the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, and it had been that long since I'd left Utah. Outside of a Mesquite, Wendover, or Evanston quick hitter to place some shitty bets on football games or pick up a Powerball ticket for my old man anyway. California and the ocean are almost always calling my name. With everything I've put myself through in the last year and a half, between the surgery and the accident, I've realized that you never know when your ticket is gonna get punched. The life we have is precious, and after the responsibilities you have towards others, you owe it to yourself to experience all it has to offer. So it was time to go and see some people and some places, and hopefully figure out a few things about myself and where my life is headed in the process. Was I able to succeed in any of those endeavors? Well, hopefully while I'm reflecting on the last couple weeks, it'll become a little more clear. In the interest of not shoving a novel's worth of content into one entry, I'll split this one up into three four parts. And away we go!

There was relatively little traffic heading west on I-80. Of course why would there be? It was 6:30 in the goddamn morning. But it made for a pretty pleasant jaunt towards Wendover and the Great Basin. it almost felt like I was racing the sun. Of course, the sun always wins. Passing Wendover, I noticed just off the highway, maybe the biggest liquor store I've ever seen with a "Grand Opening" banner hanging off it. Between that and a proposed cannabis dispensary going out there, it seems like it's going to bring the death knell to the "quickie gambling trip" where you could make the drive back to Salt Lick in a little over an hour. 75% of the highway patrol in the state is gonna be on that stretch of I-80!

Miles and miles of not much!

The rest of the drive across Northern Nevada was fairly uneventful. Other than I realized that the Lovelock Penitentiary was just a little too close to Salt Lake for my liking. What if OJ had busted out and tried to play golf at Rose Park while trying to find "the real killers"?! Also, taking a look around and overhearing a few conversations when I stopped for gas, I really kind of appreciated how uncomplicated life seemed out here in the middle of nowhere. One of my best ever golf recruits came from this area. Anyhow, I eventually arrived at my first long break in the drive, Reno Nevada, right on the border. Home of the greatest fake cop reality show of all time and the primary location of the first family vacation I could ever remember taking when I was four-years-old. Really Mom and Dad?! What in the hell is there for a four-year-old and a two-year-old to do in goddamn Reno? I'm sure they had fun. And somewhere back home I've got a photo of me at age four at the Ponderosa Ranch in some giant cowboy boots. God help my electoral chances if that ever gets out.

Sometimes nature can do better than any painting

After picking up some "party supplies," the story of which I'd really love to tell here, but alas, I work for the government so it probably wouldn't be a good idea, I had lunch at the hotel we stayed all those years ago. The road once again beckoned, so I gassed up Giselle and continued west. The barren plains of the Great Basin soon gave way to easily the most scenic stretch of this drive, up over Donner Pass. In what would be a trend on this trip, I kept having to pull over just to admire the beauty. Pretty incredible country near Truckee. It's no wonder another one of my old golf recruits still calls this place home. If I lived here, I don't think I'd ever leave. I really gained way too much entertainment looking at the telemetry stats on my car. I don't think that beautiful beast is ever going to average 70 miles to the gallon again on any stretch of road. Probably could've pushed it to 80 if I hadn't kept pulling over just to look at pretty things.

Only darker and weirder.

Unfortunately, from pretty much Sacramento to my first destination the famed California traffic took over, and with no real planned route and almost a complete reliance on Celeste, the voice in my GPS and the Waze app, I had no clue where I was going and no idea how to get around it. I kinda miss the old Rand McNally days. I'm sure it's a really lovely drive coming into the Monterey Peninsula, but I wouldn't know because soon it was dark as hell and the fog had rolled in. It looked like something out of a David Lynch movie. I eventually found my old college roommate, Big Nick's neighborhood in East Garrison, near the old Fort Ord. Unfortunately, his neighborhood is still pretty new, so his street didn't appear on any of my GPS devices. So I got as close as I could, driving through some random construction sites and gave him a call.

He still has the same haircut, I unfortunately, do not.

I wasn't too far off, and I was soon parked in front of his gorgeous looking home. I was unloading the trunk, when suddenly I heard a yell and a five-year-old had latched onto my leg. "Hi Uncle Mike!" Big Nick's little girl was about four-months-old the last time I'd seen her. Melts the old heart. With Giselle unloaded and gifts delivered (A first set of actual golf clubs for the girl, his first Metallica t-shirt for the little boy and a bottle of Highland Park for Mom and Dad), Big Nick and I hammered down a couple beers and commenced to catching up. It'd been about five years since I'd seen him and the missus, and a whole lot had changed.

They'd bounced all over the world in support of his military career, eventually temporarily settling in Monterey so he could attend a Naval engineering school. He was the only remaining Army guy left in the program left with a bunch of Navy dudes and Astronauts-in-training. A pretty awesome source of pride. He was always a great student. That might've been while we meshed so well in college. He was awesome in the classroom as a pre-med and super athletic. As is well known, I was a shitty student and schlubby looking. We were kind of a real-life Mutt and Jeff. But boy howdy, were we good at the college experience. That being said, it wasn't as shocking as I thought it''d be seeing him as a pretty domesticated family man. Granted, this is just my own uninformed observation, but seeing some of the awful shit he's seen with his job, I'm willing to bet the relative calm of a normal home life, as chaotic as it could be, has probably brought him the balance we all crave in life. Plus, he's got a great partner in this, his wife, Annie, might be one of the sweetest people I've met.

I can't believe they let a brute like
me just walk around out here.

So sweet, that the next day, even though Big Nick hadn't had any time off in god knows how long, she was totally cool with him driving my ass around to check out the touristy shit a golf pro visiting that area needed to see. Yup, Seventeen-Mile Drive and Pebble Beach were on the agenda! Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to play there in a million years, but they were cool with us just walking around there. Looked a lot different than it does on TV. This is the course that some of the greatest US Opens ever have been played. Watson chipping in on 17, Woods and his blitz of the field in 2000, and of all things, Tom Kite's holeout on #7 in 1992 during that magic summer where the seeds were planted for a twelve-year-old Nickas to start taking the game seriously. Just walking around that place was magical, at least until I saw some of the shots that the people that could actually afford to play there were hitting, then I just got pissed off. I talked to the cart-shuttle driver next to the 18th green for  awhile and asked him how many good shots he sees on an average day. "Not many," he said with a grin.

Still have no clue how that
tree grows out of that rock.

The rest of Seventeen-Mile drive was just magical. The majesty of the famed Lone Cypress, the bits of Spyglass Hill and Cypress Point that you could see from the road, a whole lot of houses that had names, it was all pretty cool! Mother nature may have carved this place, but old money fleshed it out. For big Nick, having lived here for a year, seeing this stuff was kinda old-hat, but he was a good sport pretty much every time I wanted to get out of the car. As spectacular as these sights were, my favorite part of the drive was just a plain-old section of beach. The swells were huge and I was mesmerized by how high those waves were. Looked just like the end of Point Break to me. The power of "the world's largest water hazard" is tough to deny. Just watching the waves roll in, whitecaps crashing and then get sucked back out for the next one held my rapt attention for at least ten minutes until I realized Nick was still in his car, probably bored out of his mind. Lunch in Carmel was pretty good and Nick got me to actually open up a little bit about the mysterious gal back home that I'd been hanging out with for the last few months. "Dude, I've never seen you like this," he said. "You're totally over the moon about this chick!"

"Well, I don't know about that man, but I do like her very much and have for a very long time. But I don't know what I'm doing."

"Nobody does! Things tend to just happen."

"Yeah, but they've never just happened to me. I've always been pretty terrible about opening up to anyone I've ever really had any real affection for. I always clam up, at least without the help of booze and that has never gone well. That being said, I don't drink a ton anymore so maybe things'll be different this time. Hey! Here comes the food!" I said, already getting uncomfortable. I'd have plenty of time on the road solo coming up to ruminate about that particular situation.

Sad to say, one of my lame side-quests never came to fruition as I never did find the mysterious "awesome bathroom," that our old roommate Jose's wife told me to look for. The only one I did find, looked just like the ones up at the old University Golf Course that I'd occasionally find homeless dudes crashing in when I'd open the shop and somebody forgot to lock the door.

My love life in a nutshell.
Swing and a miss!

We returned to their house to a nice surprise. Big Nick's mom, recently relocated to the area had come over to visit the grand-kids. Loved this lady back in the Dorm Days! She worked for the local health department and I knew she had an awesome sense of humor when I returned to the dorm one night after class and Nick said, "my mom said she was worried about you, so she left you a gift." I walked into my room to find a gigantic manila envelope crammed full of prophylactics. The funny thing being that I struck-out more than Aaron Judge when it came to women all through college. That being said, I listened to Loveline pretty much every night, so I fully believed in supporting safe sex. So I became the Res Hall Three condom hookup. It was great to see her again and she even volunteered to take care of the kids so Big Nick, Annie and I could go to dinner. But first, we took his daughter to her favorite spot, the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium to watch her run around like a little maniac and look at some awesome sea creatures. As she ran by, whooping it up to the kids area for the fifth time, Nick shot me a look like, "do you really want to deal with this all the time? STAY SINGLE!" "Dude, kids are kids, and there'll be a time where you look at this stuff fondly." I told him. I've got no idea if that's true or not, but it was still fun to see some unbridled joy on her face, right up until they kicked us out because they were closing.

We had a lovely dinner in Pacific Grove, and the next day was a hell of a good time as well. Big Nick and I played golf at a course called Monterey Pines on the Navy Base which is adjacent to the area where they held the legendary Monterey Pop Festival back in 1967. You could almost still hear the echoes of a 1967 Fender Stratocaster, with original pickups, and maple neck, strung upside down for a left-handed motherfucking genius ringing through the trees. My putting was still hot garbage, but a 75 on a track I'd never seen, down at sea level where the ball doesn't fly very far felt respectable. Annie cooked us a great dinner and while Nick had to retire to his office (where I'd taken temporary residence on his awesome couch) to do the homework I'd caused him to neglect for the entire weekend (some things never change!), I got the chance to play with the kids. I got to help the little girl craft a Lego masterpiece, and played a mighty game of peek-a-boo with his two year old. Those kids are already smart as hell. And were loving their first ever visit from "Bad Influence Uncle!" Loved the opportunity to hang out with them. The boy cracked me up, they had to give him a dummy TV remote because he's already figured out how to use the real thing. But he got control of the real one and I'm pretty sure he set the TiVo to record Houston Astros games for the next decade. I switched the remotes when he wasn't looking, but the little dude knew something was amiss and kept trying to trade me the dummy for the real thing. Given enough time, he'd have probably outsmarted me for it, but it was bedtime for everybody. And this awesome visit with my old brother and his family had finally come to an end.

Never piss off anything with
a ten-foot wingspan!

Life goes on, and for a busy military family, Monday puts a sobering end to the weekend's shenanigans. The next day I woke up early enough to see Big Nick off to school. This had been the longest we'd hung out together since we were in college. Couldn't have had a better visit. I don't think I could ever thank them enough for their wonderful hospitality. And seriously, in all honesty, I'm kinda jealous about the life those two had put together. I'm kind of a cynical old shit, and I really admired just how happy their family was. They do it the right way. I packed up my bags, loaded up Giselle, gave the Annie and the kids a big hug and took off. I had one more stop before the journey continued. On the recommendation of my friends Mark and his fiance' Steph, I had to play the "Poor Man's Pebble Beach" (I fit the description!), the Pacific Grove Golf Links.

Just unreal.

Walking on was pretty easy and I got paired with some nice local folks. I don't think I can say enough good things about that course. It is a tale of two nines, with the front-nine hilly and winding through the neighborhood. A small herd of deer followed us around for a couple holes. You had to be a real shotmaker here, and be able to shape your shots well and I was really feeling it, working the ball both directions better than I have pretty much all season. But the best part of that track, and the section that earned that course its reputation was its stellar back nine.

Somehow I overcame all the
distraction to pipe this drive!

The back-nine was more of a traditional links-style layout right on the sea! We're talking huge dunes, crazy wind, a pretty bitchin' lighthouse, crashing waves, all that jazz! Truly golf the way it was meant to be played. I saved my best golf of the trip on that stretch. Only finding serious trouble once and making a great save out of an iceplant on one of the dunes. The dudes I played with were very helpful in letting me know where I could miss, as well as indulging in my dipshit tourist act and clicking off a few pictures for me. I played the closing nine at 1-under to card a 72 and put a close to the Monterey portion of the trip. I probably should've finished the season with that round. I don't think it could've gone better. I thanked the kind folks in the shop for allowing me to walk on easily and talked business for a little while. I could've hung out at that place for hours. But the call of the road was too much to overcome. I had another dumbass bucket list item to check off: Cannonball Running down the Pacific Coast Highway. I stowed my gear, filled my water jug, gave Giselle a loving pat on the dashboard and hit the ignition. The real work of this trip was about to begin. The solo section where I had nothing but my own issues in my head to confront and there might not be a better place to do that than the most awe-inspiring stretch of road in North America.

Holy shit kids! Part one was WAY longer than I thought  it'd be! Thanks for suffering through it this far! Things get a little more introspective in the next segment, I promise.

Stay tuned for part two later this week:  A Mudslide, A Funny Farm and a Shiny House On A Hill

Emotional Wreckage and Actual Wreckage: A Corner Turned...

Like just about anyone that grew up in the 80's, John Hughes "Rite-du-passage" films had a tendency to jam its way onto HBO and the various Ted Turner Networks on an almost endless loop. And if you were watching TV back then, you probably saw what many consider his magnum-opus, Ferris Beuller's Day Off. The title character, played by the immortal Matthew Broderick, had one of the best closing lines of a film ever, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." That never quite resonated with me as it has with many others, I prefer another line from that movie in the deepness and meaning of life areas, but I'll work that in a little later. 

I probably needed to find better role models in those days.
Still, the world is a shittier place without him in it.

Anyway, Ferris' quote is still pretty pertinent especially in regards to the last year and a half or so of my life. Life moves pretty fast, other things move pretty fast too, and if you don't look for it, it'll definitely hit you and hit you hard. I don't think it's any secret that for the better part of the last twenty years, I've kinda dealt with some depression issues. It didn't really manifest itself in anything too typical, like that refusal to get out of bed type of stuff people typically experience. For me it had a little more to do with just plain not caring enough about myself to not engage in pretty self-destructive behavior. During the Dorm Days, it meant I would hammer ALL THE BOOZE, eat ALL THE FOOD, excel at all the things college had to offer that weren't really all that important to actual academic pursuits. Let's just say my studies suffered a bit. Post college, the booze and food were still there, but now I had to keep a roof over my head as well, so I threw myself into work. I did it all to such a degree that well, I didn't leave a ton of time to myself. I had a fun job that I wasn't having any fun doing, my personal relationships kinda suffered. I was miserable. Then I turned 37. 

37?!

I discovered that 37 is a magical age. Kids, when you turn 37, every single, solitary bad decision you've ever made arrives on your doorstep to collect its bill. I was always a big guy, but I put on a ton of weight, really fast. I started to forget stuff, probably because of all the brain cells I annihilated back in college. I stopped going to concerts, or even going out at all. Christ, usually the only reason I'd leave my house was to go to work so I would have a house to come home to. I couldn't even sleep longer than an hour at a time, and I'd wake up in places other than where I'd fall asleep. SCARY SHIT! What was I doing? Who knows? I felt like shit all the time and looked even worse. Something had to change. 

It's hard to put a finger on a catalyst. I think the root was when I reconnected with an old friend on that Instagram app. Our lives had gone on vastly divergent paths and something about her creativity and zeal for life hit a button in my brain and got me thinking about the old, better days. That's the type of person I wanted to be again. Right around then, after a particularly shitty night of drinking alone and feeling sorry for myself, I looked in the mirror and didn't recognize the disgusting thing staring back at me. It was time. I decided that I wanted to live instead of die. 

Also a bad idea to get me wet or feed my ass after midnight.

I made a few changes. I got some help. Started getting some counseling to work through the garbage in my head, and the big one, I bit the bullet and got my guts rearranged. SIPS Duodenal Switch it's called. It wasn't cheap, but as the surgeon told me, "No natural method is going to help you and you are going to die. This is the only way to take it off and keep it off." Basically, they cut about 80% of my stomach out, and re-arranged my intestines so I hardly absorb any fat. This is what they call a two-pronged approach to losing weight. You can't eat very much, and what you do eat barely gets absorbed. It works as long as you follow the rules. Cut as many carbs as possible, focus on protein and smearing butter on virtually everything because you need to eat a ton of fat in order to make the giant handfuls of specialty vitamins I have to take every day for the rest of my life to work. Exercise like a fiend and get a gallon of blood drained out for nutrient level testing every six months are just a couple others. Also, stay sober for a year and change or your liver will shut down. 

Not exactly the picture of health. But I'm much better now.

Kind of a pain in the ass, but I've followed the rules so far and seen the results. 250 lbs down and I'm getting pretty close to just getting the rest cut off me. I look like a fucking war-crime naked, but my clothes fit a lot better, hell, I recently raided my closet down home and am fitting back into my old high-school gear! CORDUROY AND SWEATER VESTS FOR MILES! I can run for ten minutes without stopping where I couldn't run ten seconds before. I still can't hit the ball out of my own shadow, but I can play 36 holes without wanting to die for the first time since college. Oh yeah, golf is fun again, work is fun again, life in general is fun again. Actually, I can't really say "again," because I don't think it ever really was for me. 

So I almost died, managed to bounce back, and then last April, I almost died again! This time, instead of slowly murdering myself over a twenty year span, I almost took the easy way out. BIG OL' CAR CRASH! Driving out to the mighty Rose Park for a little round of golf one morning, I approached an intersection right by my house. I was hanging a left as the light turned yellow. It's a fairly high speed street, but I thought the truck that was approaching was slowing down for the red. I was wrong. Dude gunned it instead and two vehicles can't occupy the same space at once. They estimated he was going sixty but I don't remember much of the actual impact. Just the spin as my Dodge Charger pirouetted a couple times around in the intersection and I got punched by every single airbag in the car. 

All that's left.

I sat there for a moment. The radio was still playing "Problems" by the Sex Pistols. I looked down and wiggled my toes. My fingers were still there too. I tried to shift the car into park, but the knob wouldn't budge. "Shit" I thought, "the transmission is fucked." I was probably a little concussed. There probably wasn't a transmission left. The door was popped open so I unbuckled the belt and swung my legs out. Traffic was piling up and I was so supercharged with adrenaline, I felt like I could've dragged the car off the road myself at least until I saw the front-end or rather the lack of one. Surprised at how uninjured I was (maybe I'm bulletproof), I jogged over to the other guy to make sure he was all right. He was all right, the only damage his truck incurred was a missing bumper. As I went back to my car to start emptying it out and get my paperwork for the cops I realized that I most definitely wasn't bulletproof. My ribs were jacked up and I was in shock. The tow-truck dragged the husk of my beloved Charger off the road, I collected my citation from the police for failure-to-yield and went home. 

My mother came over to take me to the doctor, and as I painfully sat in my easy chair, something weird happened, I just started laughing. My mom and sister looked at me horrified. Maybe I am a little nuts, because that was really the only reaction that felt right at the moment. Despite all my best efforts, both self-inflicted and accidental, I was still here. For reasons I can't even perceive I was still here even though I shouldn't be. For some reason, I found that hilarious. At least until all that laughing tightened up my ribs and tears started pouring out. GODDAMN THAT HURT.

So I'm still alive, and from now on, I take absolutely NOTHING for granted anymore because nobody knows exactly when their ticket is gonna get punched. And I'm bound and determined to live my best life from now on. Whatever that is. I'm going to do it. The problem is, I don't have any idea what that means. For the first time in my life that I can recall, I like myself. I've got confidence that I've never really had. My job is satisfying. I've got great pals and my relationships with my family are as good as ever. As that other main character (and who some have theorized is the actual main character) in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Cameron Frye said, "I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it." 

"And the times have changed my friend
I'll be here to the bitter end
With a guitar in my hand, I stand a little taller
And I've been to hell and back
I ain't falling off this track
From the back to the front page
From the gutter to the stage"

But something is still missing. And I need to figure out what that is.

So, I'm gonna hit the road for awhile. Just me, and my thoughts. Sure, I'm going to be seeing some old friends, revisiting the past and figuring out how I got to this point, along the way. But I have a feeling the next couple weeks and this trip I'm taking might bring a little clarity to my head. I'm going to try to mix in a few dispatches from the road for you folks, and even if I don't find what I'm looking for, at least I'll have some good memories and a few awesome sights to share. Anyway, thanks for indulging my ass on this story. I promise to go back to telling dumbass college stories, inane commentaries and reviews of shitty movies again soon. 

Tales From The UGC Part 1: The Commute

I might be possibly indirectly
 responsible for THIS GUY

Good god! Seems like it's been a hundred years since I've put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard so to speak in service of entertaining you, my dear readers, who if my usage stats are to be believed are mostly from behind the former Iron Curtain. Hello Russia! Anyway, Winter is setting in, which means I might have a little time on my hands, so like I've said at least ten times in the past, I'm planning on getting a little more frequent with my posts, because I feel like I've got a few things to say. Now, before I get started, I just want to say, I appreciate you guys' support over the years. I recently undertook a major lifestyle change. No, not that kind of lifestyle change (not that there's anything wrong with that) but I can promise you, this blog won't turn into one of those "My Journey" type of deals. Yeah, I might dedicate one post to that when I'm done, but that's it. I'd much rather just spin some hopefully entertaining tales from this crazy life I've led.

The Mighty UGC! No longer exists!

That leads us to today's story. It's kind of a quick one. I worked for seven and a half years at the University of Utah on what used to be a little nine-hole executive-style golf course, right in the middle of campus. I started out as a guest instructor for some junior camps in 2003, and by the time the powers that be decided to drop a building on top of us and shut us down in 2009, I'd worked my way into being the last ever Head Professional of the UGC and pretty much the last man standing. They were some of the best times in my life with friends I still have today and the stories I have are innumerable, so much like my "Dorm Days" series. today will be the first post in an occasional series I'd like to call, "Tales From The UGC."

"The Commute"

A fine place for vagrants to read newspapers on
a rattan cane and masturbate to Internet porn!

Not long after I was hired at the UGC, my beloved giant 1982 Chevy Blazer, affectionately known to my high school buddies as "Sweet Ride" partially exploded on me during a trip to my hometown to see my buddy Rat for a haircut. That truck was legendary, especially during the "Dorm Days" as the most reliable way for my roommates and I in room 302 to get around, safely and in style. There was no mistaking who was pulling up when it's diesel-ly growl approached. But she'd finally given up the ghost and since I had about $500 to my name at any one time (THE LIFE OF A GOLF PRO, SO GLAMOROUS!) my options for getting to and from work (and really anywhere else) were limited to public transportation. Thankfully, I lived in a not-so-horrible condo about a block and a half from the Salt Lake City Library and the light rail station adjacent to it. Riding the TRAX train every day to work was amazingly convenient (No gas! A drop off right next to our 5th hole! A semi-convenient schedule!) and provided me with endless people watching opportunities.

One early Fall day I boarded a train for my normal afternoon shift. There were about seven stops between the library and my drop-off point on our 5th Fairway. The car was about half full as I thankfully rarely had to commute during the busy parts of the day. I popped in the ear buds, cranked up a little "Heartbreak Boulevard" by Shotgun Messiah and settled in for the fifteen minute ride. 

Two stops in a guy boards the train and sits in the seat across the aisle from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell he bore striking similarity in appearance to a certain long-time Carbon High School football coach, who in turn was the spitting image of long-time WWF wrassler, former Governor of Minnesota and current underground bunker-resident Jesse "The Body" Ventura. As a matter of fact, I thought it actually WAS Coach, so rather than just staring out the window, like I usually did, I actually popped the ear buds out when he motioned towards me that he wanted to say something.

"Hey man, lot of pretty girls on this train."

"Well yeah, it's kind of the main artery up to the University," I said, a little apprehensively. 

"Yeah, the State is making me take a bunch of classes up there, so I can get out of the halfway house. You grow up around here, man?" He asked.

"Naw man, a few hours south of here. A little town on the high desert called Price. How about you?"

You can trust me to get you
 the good shit, Gorilla!

"Kansas City, had to split town though. A few hombres were bringing the heat down on me," his eyes starting to dart back and forth, "I've been to Price. Got busted down there, a couple years ago."

Here we go, a good story, maybe! "What did they nail you on?"

"Dealing Crank. The market down there is goddamn great these days!"

"Yeah, that's what I hear." The economy was tanking in the early 2000's, and my hometown's drug issues were getting pretty gnarly. But his comment was making me wonder if there was a magazine like Investor's Business Daily for the drug trade. 

"We were making money hand-over-fist! Then one day, a new guy started hanging around. Goddamn narcs. Next thing you know, I'm in County getting hosed down and they were breaking out the rubber gloves." He said grinning, way too matter of factly for my comfort level.

"Well, at least it seems like you're getting your shit together man. They eventually let you out." This dude might be Heisenberg.

Had to jump a fence, to get to work,
 but damn it was convenient!

"Yeah man. These classes have been great for getting some new connections! You guys are sitting on a gold mine up here."

I just kind of gave it a snicker. Time to pull the plug on this conversation. "Good luck to ya, pal."

He nodded and grinned, "Lot of pretty girls on this train."

I punched the button and jumped off the train a couple stops early. Hiking clear across campus to the clubhouse. It was already a weird day.

The Golf Monster Sundance Preview/Review 2013 Edition!

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival just blew through the area, and left just before a massive snowstorm that's threatening to make life for all of us here in the city very uncomfortable for a few days. For a film lover like yours truly, it's a great opportunity to see some awesome films months and months before anyone else gets to. It's also a great chance to see some really shitty films months before Rotten Tomatoes gets to pile dirt on them. I tend to find, it's usually one or the other. There's rarely a film that plays at this festival where I come out thinking, "meh, it's all right, I guess." And that risk folks makes the $15.00 tickets worth it. You're really on the edge of your seat. I also tend to limit myself to screenings only within walking distance from my condo as parking's a mess this time of year, but as luck would have it, all the Salt Lake City venues fit the bill. I also tend to gravitate towards the films that don't get a ton of mainstream play, so it's pretty rare to have the random celebrity sighting, but once in awhile I get lucky. Here's what I saw this year!

WE ARE WHAT WE ARE

Man Chili makes for a pasty complexion.

Official Sundance Synopsis:  A seemingly wholesome and benevolent family, the Parkers have always kept to themselves, and for good reason. Behind closed doors, patriarch Frank rules the roost with a rigorous fervor, determined to keep his ancestral customs intact at any cost. As a torrential rainstorm moves into the area, tragedy strikes and his daughters Iris and Rose are forced to assume responsibilities that extend beyond those of a typical family. The most important task the girls face is putting meat on the table— but not the kind that can be found at the local supermarket. As the unrelenting downpour continues to flood their small town, local authorities begin to uncover clues that bring them closer to the secret that the Parkers have held closely for so many years.

My Quick Review:  Pretty solid way to kick off the festival this year! This film started off with a vaguely familiar looking lady, Mrs. Parker, puking up a ton of bile and drowning in a large puddle. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that was actually one of the two only really recognizable "stars" in the cast, Kelly McGillis! It was then that I realized that Top Gun came out 27 goddamn years ago and I started to cry. GETTING OLD SUCKS! Anyway, this one had a creepy as hell atmosphere and was also graced by a solid performance from Tarantino film mainstay Michael Parks.  I was also impressed by the performances from the two female leads, Ambyr Childers and Julia Garner. They were incredibly composed given the cannibalistic subject matter, and played the part of scared children of a religious nut well. This one had a great, WHAT IN THE BLUE HELL DID I JUST SEE ending to it. It has been picked up and I'm sure it'll play at a horror festival or two.  It'll probably see an autumn release at some point. Just in time for Halloween.  RATING: 7 Shovels to the back of the skull out of 10  

THE SUMMIT

LOOK AT THAT GODDAMN THING! YOU GOTTA BE NUTS!

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Although K2 is only the second-highest peak in the world, it is renowned as the most dangerous and revered by mountaineers as their ultimate challenge. In August 2008, 18 of 24 climbers reached the summit of K2. Forty-eight hours later, 11 people were dead. What happened on that fateful day has never been resolved.

Utilizing found footage, interviews with survivors, and seamlessly realistic reenactments, The Summit zigzags back and forth in time, interweaving multiple narrative threads and piecing together events, hoping to solve the mystery of what actually happened on that day—the deadliest in mountain-climbing history. At the heart of the mystery is the story of Ger McDonnell, one extraordinary man who chose to risk his own life to save others. With the help of breathtaking cinematography by Robbie Ryan and Stephen O’Reilly, director Nick Ryan creates a tension-filled, experiential film that will have viewers on the edge of their seats. The Summit pits Man against Mother Nature in her most majestic and terrifying extreme.

Had to sit way too close for this one

My Quick Review:  There's a thing with seeing documentaries in these days of the internet. You can do a ton of research of the subject matter and get one part of the story. But it takes true talent to take what is the given story that everyone seems to agree upon of a subject and flip it on its head. Nick Ryan's The Summit did that very well. I remember the stories of the disastrous 2008 K2 expedition. But had no idea the depth of the heroism involved in that tragic Summer. I still have no idea whatsoever why anyone would want to try to do something like climb a 28,000 foot high deathtrap. But I do have a little greater understanding of the rush that these adrenaline junkies are constantly chasing. One thing I do have is great appreciation of true heroism, and the guys that kept going up into the "Death Zone" to try to rescue people have that in spades. I had the opportunity to meet one of these guys, Pemba Gyalje Sherpa after the screening. He's easily the biggest badass I've ever met in person. If you want to see what true heroism is, check this documentary out. 

As an added feature, I got to the line-up for the screening a little bit late which meant I had to sit in the second row, almost looking straight up at the screen. Usually that sucks, but for a movie like this one where the people onscreen are literally looking out over the edge of the world, that sense of vertigo made if feel a little more real.  RATING:  9 Top of the Worlds out of 10   

HELL BABY

Only still I could find!

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Expectant couple Jack and Vanessa move into the most haunted fixer-upper in New Orleans—a house with a deadly demonic curse. When things soon spiral out of control, it’ll take the help of Vanessa’s Wiccan sister, a nosey “neighbor” who lives in their crawl space, two local detectives, and a pair of elite Vatican exorcists to save them—or is it already too late?

Revered as two of the minds behind the hilarious sketch television shows Reno 911!, The State, and Viva Variety and the screenwriters of big-budget comedies like the Night at the Museum films, comedians Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant finally unleash their codirectorial debut. Featuring a seasoned comedic ensemble, including scene stealers Leslie Bibb and Keegan Michael Key, this raucous horror spoof sics the devilish humor of its creators on the most sacred of genre conventions: the haunted house, an exorcism, and one pissy demon child. 

My Quick Review:  I'm an unapologetic Rob Corddry nutswinger. I think that dude's comic timing is great and he has great range playing everything from the everyman, to the asshole, to the schlub. After Steve Carrell, he's probably my favorite Daily Show correspondent ever. But he rarely gets any feature work in films. He's usually a side character at best. So it was great to see the guy come to the forefront here in this ridiculous sendup of every 70's horror trope known to man. Lennon and Garant manage to get everything right that the vastly inferior Scary Movie series gets wrong. Add in hilarious cameos from just about every current recognizable improv comic on the scene as well as some gratuitous nudity courtesy of folk comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates' Riki Lindhome and we have a winner.  RATING: 10 Domilise's Po-Boy's out of 10.

ASS BACKWARDS

Glad to see John Cryer get some poster time

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Kate and Chloe have been best friends since childhood, when they both tied for dead last in their hometown beauty pageant. Now they are all grown up and living in New York City, where Chloe works as a “girl in a box” at a nightclub and Kate is a CEO…of her own one-woman egg-donor “corporation.” Their past humiliation remains long forgotten until they receive an invitation to the pageant’s milestone anniversary celebration. The unpleasant memories come flooding back, but Kate and Chloe decide to redeem themselves by winning the elusive crown.

Director Chris Nelson takes us on a raucous and wacky road trip that includes a rescued wild rabbit, a feminist wilderness commune, and amateur night at a strip club. Lead actresses June Diane Raphael and Casey Wilson have great laugh-out-loud chemistry, and their brand of stiletto-clad physical comedy brings an amusing and unique charm to the female version of the buddy movie.

My Quick Review:  This one is mostly for the ladies out there, as it flips the formula for a typical road trip flick. But it's got plenty of laughs for the fellas as well. This one features two gals that are best friends through thick and thin, but have never quite gotten over their childhood defeat as wannabe pageant queens. And by "haven't gotten over it" I mean to say, are in complete denial about it. But that's not going to stop their good-natured romp back to their hometown. There's plenty of bawdy laughs to be had here. And their Q&A after the screening was goddamn hilarious. RATING:  6 Rehab Stints out of 10.

S-VHS
Official Sundance Synopsis:  Inside a darkened house looms a column of TVs littered with VHS tapes, a pagan shrine to forgotten analog gods. The screens crackle and pop endlessly with monochrome vistas of static—white noise permeating the brain and fogging concentration. But you must fight the urge to relax: this is no mere movie night. Those obsolete spools contain more than just magnetic tape. They are imprinted with the very soul of evil.

From the demented minds that brought you last year’s V/H/S comes S-VHS, an all-new anthology of dread, madness, and gore. This follow-up ventures even further down the demented path blazed by its predecessor, discovering new and terrifying territory in the genre. This is modern horror at its most inventive, shrewdly subverting our expectations about viral videos in ways that are just as satisfying as they are sadistic. The result is the rarest of all tapes—a second generation with no loss of quality.

My Quick Review:  This was my most anticipated film of the festival. Horror anthology V/H/S broke some serious ground when it comes to providing big scares and gore on a budget. So the sequel had a lot to live up to. The premise, a couple private investigators bust into a decrepit house looking for a missing college student. He's nowhere to be found, but there are hundreds of VHS tapes strewn all over the apartment. They start popping tapes into an old-school top-loading VCR and are treated to the horror contained on each. Each tape was its own little horror short.  Here's a quick rundown of the four:
Tape #1:  Directed by Adam Wingard and Simon Barret -  A wealthy man, has his right eye replaced after an accident with a robotic one. The catch being that the robotic eye is recording everything he sees. Oh and it gives him the ability to see the myriad of ghosts that inhabit his rather large Hollywood Hills home. This one had some good jump scares, but not a ton of gore.
Tape #2:  Directed by The Blair Witch Project's Eduardo Sanchez and Gregg Hale - A guy spends an afternoon riding a mountain bike through the woods with one of those GoPro cameras strapped to his helmet. He happens upon a screaming lady covered in blood that's running from something. As he tries to assist her, she turns zombie on him and tears a nice chunk out of his neck, leaving him for dead. But he's not dead, he's pretty undead and we get an incredibly gory, slightly comical first hand look at a zombie apocalypse from the other side. Good laughs here.  I rather enjoyed this one.
Tape #3:  Directed by The Raid: Redemption's Gareth Evans and Timo Tjahjanto - A group of TV journalists travel to Indonesia to investigate a Jim Jones-esque cult leader at their compound. While very accommodating at first, the cult soon starts to peel the layers back to reveal a more sinister side. And mayhem ensues. This was my favorite short of the film and it easily could have been its own feature. As an aside, the walls of the cult compound were decorated by hundreds of those creepy-assed Blair Witch dolls. So it was surprising to me that those dudes ended up doing a different short in this film.
Tape #4: Directed by Hobo With A Shotgun's Jason Eisener - This one featured a group of little asshole kids having a slumber party at their lakehouse when their parents were away. They strapped a GoPro (who really should be sponsoring the movie at this point) to a little Shorkie dog. So the entire movie was fromt he POV of the dog.The kids pull pranks on their older siblings and each other until something otherworldly comes out of the lake. Like a more terrifying ET. This segment got most of the critics talking, but I found it inferior to #2 and #3.
Conclusion:  I enjoyed it well enough, but overall it was a bit of a letdown compared to the nice surprise that V/H/S was last year. Although, any flick where the gore onscreen caused a solid fifteen people to just up and leave in the middle of it has to be doing something right.  RATING:  7 Goat Babies out of 10

SWEETWATER
Official Sundance Synopsis:  Against the backdrop of the American Old West, newlyweds Miguel and Sarah struggle to make a living cultivating their small patch of land. Soon a much bigger struggle arises as powerful landowner and community preacher Prophet Josiah makes a play for their property. As he launches his diabolical plot to take their land, an eccentric big-city sheriff comes to town. Things soon go from bad to worse, culminating in a jaw-dropping, hell-hath-no-fury showdown.

Sweetwater boldly establishes its own identity while remaining true to the tenets of the western genre. Wonderfully cinematic, this expressive tale is superbly directed by the Miller brothers, who extract strong performances from the ensemble cast. Ed Harris is especially striking in a bravura role as the sheriff. With the magnificent New Mexico countryside as their canvas, the Miller brothers imaginatively stroke their cinematic brush across an intense but humorous film.

My Quick Review: When done well, I loves me a good Western flick. And this one certainly didn't disappoint. The landscapes were beautifully filmed, with the New Mexico countryside just popping off the screen. Ed Harris was solid as the eccentric Sheriff, trying to get to the bottom of a murder mystery.  Hell, the director even got a competent performance out of January Jones, and she normally can't act her way out of a paper bag! I was hooked by one scene in particular where Harris' Sheriff character explains to the increasingly sinister Prophet Josiah, exactly why geography brought him to this small town. Folks, it was Tarantino-esque.  This one should do pretty well if it gets a decent release.  RATING: 8 Wooden Crosses out of 10   

 
FRUITVALE
Official Sundance Synopsis:  Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who loved his friends, was generous to strangers, and had a hard time telling the truth to the mother of his beautiful daughter. He was scared and courageous and charming and raw, and as human as the community he was part of. That community paid attention to him, shouted on his behalf, and filmed him with their cell phones when BART officers, who were strong, intimidated, and acting in the way they thought they were supposed to behave around people like Oscar, shot him in cold blood at the Fruitvale subway stop on New Year’s Day in 2009.

Director Ryan Coogler makes an extraordinary directorial debut with this soulful account of the real-life event that horrified the nation. Featuring radiant performances by Melonie Diaz and Michael B. Jordan as Grant, a young man whose eyes were an open window into his soul, Fruitvale offers a barometer reading on the state of humanity in American society today.

My Quick Review:  I saw this one at a special "locals only" screening. This film won the festival's U.S. Grand Jury Prize. This was a pretty moving film, and you get the sense that this dude was on the cusp of changing his life around when he was struck down at that subway stop. That's not to say that the guy didn't have flaws, I mean, you can't spend the first three years of your daughter's life without some major flaws. But you just get that feeling that with another break or two, he was going to elevate things. Or at least become a productive member of society again. Michael B. Jordan had a moving run as the deeply conflicted Oscar Grant that may put him in line for an award or two in the future. This is probably going to be one of those "important" films that generate major buzz. Sometimes those types of movies (Amour for example) seem self-involved or only for the hoi palloi, but this one was just, plain good. RATING 9 Riots out of 10. 

AFTERNOON DELIGHT

Official Sundance Synopsis:  Rachel is a quick-witted and lovable, yet tightly coiled, thirtysomething steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’s bohemian, affluent Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right—chic modernist home, successful husband, adorable child, and a hipster wardrobe. So why is she going out of her gourd with ennui? Plagued by purposelessness, Rachel visits a strip club to spice up her marriage and ends up meeting McKenna, a stripper whom she becomes obsessed with saving. She decides to adopt McKenna as her live-in nanny, and this bold move unleashes unimagined and colorful waves of change into her life and community. It becomes clear that Rachel is feverishly, desperately trying to save her own sense of who she is.

In a perfect storm of hilarious writing, performance, and direction, first-timer Jill Soloway pinpoints the ambivalence of privileged, educated women seduced by an idealized vision of marriage and motherhood, yet deadened by the stultifying realities of preschool auctions, lackluster sex lives, and careers that have gone kaput. Afternoon Delight compassionately revels in the existential trials of a Peter Pan generation battling too many choices, resisting adulthood, and distractedly tapping their iPhones instead of tuning in to what matters.  

My Quick Review:  Endend up seeing a lot of movies geared toward the ladies this year and this one was no different. Although much like Ass Backwards there were plenty of laughs and entertainment to be had for the fellas as well.  But don't get me wrong, while this was a laugh a minute kind of flick, it wasn't really a comedy.  It was actually a pretty dark film about a family and a mother that are crumbling before our very eyes. Kathryn Hahn was excellent as the wisecracking Rachel, but portrayed the more serious content with aplomb. The film took a daring approach to answering the old question, "How do you save someone that doesn't necessarily want or need saving?" It was an enjoyable end to the festival.  RATING 9 Yentas out of 10.

CONCLUSION:  Once again, the Sundance Film Festival provided a week and a half of ground-breaking, imaginative filmmaking. I feel luckier than hell to have this going on every year, right in my backyard!  Next year, we'll be making the trek up into the mountains to Park City to try and mingle with the upper crust. But for a film junkie, none of that shit really matters. Everybody should take advantage of the wonderful opportunity to support independent film making and the people that make it happen!

The Golf Monster's 2013 Film Rankings!
8. We Are What We Are
7. Fruitvale
6. Ass Backwards
5. S-VHS
4. Afternoon Delight
3. Sweetwater
2. The Summit
1. Hell Baby