Star Wars Meets Exodus in VeggieTales' Frog Wars

It’s a beautiful thing when two of my favorite fictional worlds collide. This happens quite a bit with VeggieTales, a Christian video series that has expanded to include books, CDs and toys. In print or on screen, the creative minds behind the Veggies (and fruits) often transport the colorful cast to familiar literary locales. Some of my favorite outings have spoofed Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Wizard of Oz.

While the most complete Veggie experience comes through the videos, there are some very cute books out there incorporating the Veggie gang. One series of picture books uses popular movies to impart important lessons. So far there are eight, including spoofs on West Side Story, Field of Dreams, Lost in Space, The Sword in the Stone, Ben Hur, Cool Hand Luke, The Blues Brothers and Star Wars.

It’s the Star Wars one that I have; I was feeling in need of an extra shot of perseverance, and this uber-geek couldn’t resist the cover. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I’d received this very book as a free gift back when I was involved in the VeggieMoms home party program, but I don’t mind; the books are inexpensive, and I’m sure I can find somebody who would appreciate the story as much as I do.

Entitled Frog Wars, this book by Cindy Kenney and Doug Peterson is one of two Veggie adaptations of the Biblical account of Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The other is the video Moe and the Big Exit, which sets the story in the American West, giving it the feel of an old John Wayne movie. It’s quite lush and elaborate-looking, while the illustration style in Frog Wars is flatter and more stylized.

Junior Asparagus is the main character, and he is simply himself, a rambunctious boy who wants to play a musical instrument but quickly grows discouraged because he isn’t progressing quickly enough. The main story is framed by his struggles to play the tuba and to determine whether he should stick with it or try yet another new instrument. His mother, advising him to get a more basic instruction book, sends him off to the Treasure Trove bookstore, where, in a scene reminiscent of The Never-Ending Story, he falls into the tome kindly Mr. O’Malley selects for him, and that’s where he spends most of the book.

Kenney and Peterson clearly had a lot of fun matching up Veggie characters to those in the Star Wars universe. Affable Larry the Cucumber becomes Cuke Sandwalker, who quickly welcomes Junior and apprises him of the situation. Cuke is a slave, as is Madame Blueberry’s Princess Hair-Spraya and their adorable Pea buddies, Achoo Bless-U and Sweet-Pea-3-Oh. Ultimately, they are mostly there for decoration, and for the sake of a couple of groan-worthy puns that infiltrate the story. The major player here is Mo.

Mo is Bob the Tomato, and he’s meant to resemble both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Moses. He has a brown hooded robe and a bushy white beard and a light saber / walking stick. He’s the one who must confront Mr. Nezzer’s Dark Visor, the nefarious zucchini who is counting on the frog god Ribbit to help him continue to oppress the many citizens under his rule. As Mo faces Dark Visor again and again, Junior begins to understand what his mother meant when she told him about perseverance.

The contours of the plot are very basic, and generally they have more in common with the book of Exodus than with George Lucas’s epic. None of the other characters are alluded to, except that the elderly Mr. O’Malley serves as a wise advisor and, at the end of the book, winkingly delivers a Yoda-ish line. Those who are already familiar with Star Wars will probably smile, while those who aren’t will probably wonder why the previously perfectly articulate potato is suddenly spouting such garbled syntax. But that’s always the danger of inside jokes like that.

Frog Wars is written with the 4- to 8-year-old set in mind. While the story is more fun for those will understand why all of these characters are wearing such funny costumes and will cotton on to the wordplay involving some of the trilogy’s catchphrases, it’s presented in a manner that is entertaining for those who, like Junior, find this landscape entirely foreign. So step into a galaxy far, far away as the Veggies demonstrate the importance of perseverance.

Lose Yourself in Harmonic Richness With Straight No Chaser's With a Twist

In December of 2008, I was at work, with the radio tuned into the station playing all Christmas music, all the time. A version of The 12 Days of Christmas came on, and at first I didn’t pay much attention, as it’s one of those songs that tends to annoy me more often than not. But then I realized that there was something significantly different about this rendition - that its purpose was, in fact, to skewer the song as thoroughly as possible while joyously tearing through the Christmas carol catalog, taking as many merry melodies down with it as possible. I love Christmas music; if it were considered a genre in and of itself, it would be my favorite genre. But this song celebrated and mocked simultaneously, and by the time Toto’s Africa showed up in the last verse of the song like a bolt out of the blue, I just about collapsed laughing, grateful that I had no customers in the store at that moment to observe my descent into lunacy.

The name of the group was Straight No Chaser, and I was hardly the only person to latch onto their extraordinary performance of that song. It became a YouTube sensation, then hit the radio waves, leading this one-time college a cappella group to cut a full Christmas album, and then another, and, most recently, a third album for any ol’ time of year. I’ve listened to the Christmas albums with relish but have yet to add them to my collection, so With a Twist became my first Straight No Chaser purchase. I suspect it will soon be followed by concert tickets, as they’re coming to Erie in November and something tells me that I won’t want to miss that. But for now, I’m content to listen to the brilliant harmonies of this fantastic choral group - Ryan Ahlwardt, Walter Chase, Jerome Collins, Seggie Isho, Michael Luginbill, Charlie Mechling, Dan Ponce, David Roberts, Randy Stine and Tyler Trepp - who breathe new life into classic songs with their inspired, instrument-free arrangements.

I’m Yours / Over the Rainbow - These two songs go together so well that it seems like they were always written to be a medley. The Wizard of Oz anthem has experienced a resurgence in popularity lately thanks to the wonderfully mellow Hawaiian-styled version by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, which he matches up with Wonderful World. I’ve always felt I’m Yours had a very Hawaiian sound to it, and it complements Over the Rainbow as perfectly as Wonderful World. Instead of a medley celebrating the joy of life in general, we get an ode to the beauty of romantic love, and every time I listen to their carefully articulated rendition, I am impressed again at the intricacy of Jason Mraz’s rhyme pattern. A wonderful group effort and one of my favorite tracks on the album.

Tainted Love - A fun, slightly dangerous-sounding track. I’ve never been a huge fan of the song, and it’s one of the tracks I’ll sometimes skip, but they still do a great job with it, with Luginbill standing out as the soloist as he does in the first track.

Don’t Dream It’s Over - Ahlwardt takes the lead in this inspirational song that is one of many on the album that seem to have a lot of resonance with LOST, though it may just be that I can’t help seeing everything through that lens nowadays. Smooth and encouraging, it acknowledges the inevitability of difficult times but offers assurance that the good will prevail.

Fix You - Luginbill and Collins share soloist duties on this Coldplay anthem, another inspirational song that has even deeper LOST resonances. For me, it sounds like a song from Christian Shephard to his son Jack. Both are “fixers,” which is both a good and noble thing and a liability. But this is about a renewed, repentant Christian trying to reach out to his broken son: “But if you never try, you’ll never know / just what you’re worth. / Lights will guide you home...” In any event, it’s a lovely song, and of all the individual voices in the group, Collins’ smooth, soulful tone is the one I find the most soothing.

You’re My Best Friend - A very peppy, upbeat number that gives each of the guys a chance to shine individually. Just a summery, feel-good song. I haven’t latched onto this one quite as much as some of the others, but it’s a great song, and Queen’s rich harmonic sound is wonderfully suited to their style.

The Living Years - Probably my favorite track on the album. I always really liked this wistful song that, like Cat’s in the Cradle, reads like a cautionary tale against fractured father-son relationships. This one somehow feels more hopeful, and almost has a gospel flavor to it. While Harry Chapin’s classic focuses purely on the failure of one broken relationship, the speaker in this one spends the whole song reflecting and actively encouraging the listeners to learn from his mistakes. Again, there’s a whole lotta LOST here, and it’s easy to imagine Jack being the speaker, regretting his lost opportunities to communicate clearly with his father. “I wasn’t there that morning when my father passed away. / I didn’t get to tell him all the things I had to say...” Ahlwardt does an absolutely beautiful job with the lead vocals, and I love both the staccato percussion, which sounds like the persistent patter of raindrops, and the tight harmonies on the chorus driving home the message.

You & Me & the Bottle Makes Three / Single Ladies - Guess we needed a bit of a break after the solemnity of the last track. This one is a jazzy ode to drinking mashed up with Beyonce’s maddeningly catchy ditty that just won’t go away. Ponce and Collins are the lead vocalists on this one. It’s fun but frivolous and another one that I sometimes skip, though I love some of the deep-voiced interjections during the first portion of the song, as they remind me of Rockapella, the first group to make me fall in love with this style of music.

Wonderwall - This Oasis song was popular when I was in high school, but it wasn’t until the third season of LOST, when it became Charlie’s personal anthem, that I really came to love it. Now I can’t listen to it without being reminded of the intense relationship between this washed-up rock star and the frazzled Scottish sailor who believes it’s his duty to save him from an unfair fate. “Maybe you’re gonna be the one that saves me...” The soulful qualities in Collins’ voice are especially evident in this song, which is about as close as any track comes to being a pure solo effort, though of course as always his vocals are enhanced by the harmonic backing of the rest.

Joy to the World - Ahlwardt, Trepp and Chase share soloist duties on this unusual take on the Three Dog Night hit. Straight No Chaser‘s version is even more repetitive than the original, and it has an interesting minor tone to it, along with some strange rhythmic choices. It almost doesn’t sound recognizable, but it’s fun to hear such a familiar song performed in such a new way.

Under the Bridge - This song, oddly enough, was one that was introduced to me by Weird Al Yankovic. Despondent but ultimately hopeful, it’s another one that benefits from Collins’ stirring vocals, and another one that reminds me of LOST’s Jack, this time recalling his darkest moments when he was contemplating suicide in Los Angeles. “I don't ever wanna feel like I did that day. / Take me to the place I love, take me all the way.”

Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You - Like Joy to the World, an enthusiastic new take on an oldies staple. Collins again takes the lead here, but this is a very harmonically dense track, so it’s more of a group effort than many of his solo turns. Another very feel-good kind of song that gets more complex as it goes along.

One Voice - This makes a neat capper to the album because Barry Manilow joins the guys, taking the lead vocals himself, later to be joined by Collins and Luginbill. It’s an extremely fitting way to end this album, as it’s all about voices joining together. The lyrics are a wonderful tribute to what makes Straight No Chaser so impressive, while also encouraging listeners to add their own voice to the chorus, whether literally or metaphorically. Some of the most intricate harmonies on the album are appropriately found here. “All it takes is one voice / Singing so they hear what's on your mind / And when you look around you'll find / There's more than one voice / Singing in the darkness...”

If you dig a cappella music, you’re sure to find Straight No Chaser a delightful addition to your list of favorite artists. And if you’ve never listened to much music in this style, give them a shot; you might just fall in love with them as so many folks did when that little video of their decade-old Christmas performance made its way onto YouTube.

Shrek Forever After Brings the Happily Ever After

Back in 2007, May brought with it a trio of third installments at the cineplex. I was determined to see them all, and I did, but the third time isn’t always the charm. It certainly wasn’t in the case of Shrek. So I worried that the fourth, and allegedly final, volume in the twisted but tended saga of the grumpy green ogre with a heart of gold would fizzle. And yet as the previews sneaked their way into nearly every commercial break as I watched the LOST finale, I realized that this was perhaps my most anticipated movie of the summer. And I began to think that number four might just make up for the disappointment of number three.

Shrek Forever After is not a wholly original story, but then the Shrek franchise has always been about taking familiar stories and putting new twists on them. In addition to the multitude of traditional fairy tale characters, including sinister newbie Rumpelstiltskin, you’ll find similarities to It’s a Wonderful Life, The Princess Bride and Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast. Which, of course, is a traditional fairy tale in and of itself, but the echoes of the specific Disney version are particularly strong, just as they were in the first movie.

In many ways, it’s a return to the beginning, with the main difference being that Shrek knows where he has been, and he is aware that he’s more than just a surly ogre. I’ve noticed that many stories being written lately have employed a reboot device of some kind; I guess it’s a creative way of treading old territory in new ways. In this case, we see that Shrek (Mike Myers) has grown rather weary of his domestic bliss. He loves his wife and children, but the monotony is getting him down, as is the sense that his domestication has somehow emasculated him. And when enough little irritations pile up, it turns the docile family man into a raging beast who is so desperate for a change that he’s willing to enter into a bargain with the seedy Rumpel (Walt Dohm) in hopes of letting off a little steam.

It’s at this point that the movie begins to bear a great resemblance to the last season of LOST, as it’s once again the lovelorn Scotsman who is aware of two separate realities and who must try to get his old friends to remember each other, and him. In this case, the problem is that Rumpel tricked Shrek into negating his own birth. Unless he can convince Fiona (Cameron Diaz), in this reality a fierce warrior princess, to kiss him - and to truly mean it - before the end of the day, he will cease to exist, and Far Far Away will forever be ruled by a diminutive tyrant with a wide array of wigs to suit each of his moods.

Rumpel is the most significant new character in the film, and he really is creepy. I find him quite a convincing villain, and more threatening than any of the others the franchise has offered up, in part because he is so adept at figuring out what people want and tempting them with it in such a way that it seems they can’t lose. At the same time, however, as soon as Shrek gets his initial burst of old-timey rampaging out of his system and returns to his senses, Rumpel loses a lot of his power. It seems like an affirmation that evil may loom large, but ultimately it can’t come close to equaling the power of good. As Shrek gains strength with each new ally he makes and each friend he recovers, Rumpel grows more and more desolate as even his sycophants begin to drop off, either defecting or fighting among themselves.

Also new to this tale is a whole colony of ogres ruled by a ferocious Fiona who, never having been rescued from the tower, had to fight her way out and has since become a master military schemer. Among these ogres, Shrek is rather puny-looking, and it’s funny to see him in contrast to those who have embraced their slimier natures. Yet the ogres still come across as noble because they are fighting a corrupt government, and I definitely got a whiff or two of Braveheart as they plotted to bring down the oppressive rule keeping them underground. My favorite of the new ogres is Cookie (Craig Robinson), a jumbo fellow with the build and disposition of Hagrid, but considerably better culinary skills. While his comrades talk weapons and maneuvers, his chief concern is feeding the troops.

I find Shrek at his most lovable yet throughout the course of this movie as he valiantly strives to undo the mess he has made, but the one character in this series who has always had pride of place in my heart is hyper, sweet-as-candy Donkey (Eddie Murphy), and that remains the case. As expected, his awakening comes first, since he is such a pure, open-hearted character, though there’s still a process to it, and I found myself very touched by the way his initial violent resistance to Shrek’s overtures of friendship gives way to trust, to the point when Shrek begins to tell him the most fantastical of tales about his alternate life and Donkey responds not with skepticism but with exuberant acceptance. Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) follows a similar path, but unlike Donkey, he is physically much different in this reality, having spent his life pampered and pudgy, so while he is a valuable ally, he’s not quite the stalwart swordsman we’re used to seeing.

I saw the movie in 3-D, and I was rather surprised at how organic the whole thing felt. I expected that they might use the technology to give us a lot of sight gags, like pies being thrown at the audience and that sort of thing. In reality, I can’t remember a single moment like that. So by one token, one might argue that the 3-D is unnecessary, and certainly not worth the extra couple of bucks. But for me, I felt that all the surroundings felt just a bit richer and deeper than they did before. I was able to be drawn more fully into the experience, and I don’t regret springing for 3-D.

Supposedly this is the end of the Shrek tales, and I rather hope it is because it would be nice to see a series that got off to such a promising start go out on such a high note. As much as I enjoyed the first movie, there were a few things about it that left a bad taste in my mouth. Same goes for the second, and the third just dropped the ball. But for me, Shrek Forever After represented all that is best about the series and brought Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, Puss in Boots and all those other characters we love to a true happily ever after.

Take a Trip to Italy With the Veggies in Pistachio

When my brother Nathan was little, he went through a phase during which the only movie he wanted to watch was Pinocchio. He’d be content to watch it three times a day. I don’t know how many dozens of times he saw the movie before he moved on to a different obsession, but the story of the little wooden boy with an ever-expanding nose has always been one of his favorites. So I thought of him as I watched Pistachio, the latest DVD from VeggieTales, the line of computer-animated videos that uses a wacky array of anthropomorphic veggies to impart Biblical lessons.

Right now, Nathan is in Italy, and last I heard he was enjoying a gelato festival. Pistachio takes place in Italy, and Gelato is the name given to the character who corresponds to Geppetto in the original tale. In this version, Geppetto is a kindly old man who lost three of his brothers at sea and who delights in carving wooden toys, including a duck so realistic that it attracts a trio of real ducklings, who become his family. One day, he receives a very special piece of wood and carves it into a boy, who then springs to life, and Veggie fans will recognize the youngster as an incarnation of the adorable, albeit mildly irritating, Junior Asparagus.

In terms of starring Veggies, Pistachio sticks mostly to the side characters and even introduces a few newbies. Among the more familiar faces as Madame Blueberry as the Blue Fairy role and Khalil the caterpillar as Pistachio’s conscience, or more to the point the one who is there to remind the lad of his father’s teachings. Scooter the carrot makes a brief cameo as an art museum employee, and the shifty leeks who are so good at causing trouble turn up as the fox and cat determined to lead Pistachio astray. And though Gelato’s face is obscured by a large white mustache, puffy white hair and tiny spectacles, his voice is clearly that of Larry the Cucumber, while Bob the Tomato serves as the unseen narrator. Meanwhile, his brothers are new characters who are modeled after three iconic Italian-American actors, most prominently Robert DeNiro.

The Italian references fly fast and furious, from the names of every character to the landscapes, and it’s great fun to point out all of the allusions. It’s also interesting to compare this story to various versions of Pinocchio, particularly Disney’s, since that has become the most iconic. In this version, Pistachio is not so much tempted by the allure of fame as by a desire for money. Hence, he never really falls into puppet master Mr. Nezzer’s snare, but he is all too easily drawn into the dangerous quagmire of games of chance; the more he spends, the more desperate he becomes to recover what he lost and thus regain his father’s approval. I found this an interesting side lesson on the danger of being too preoccupied with acquiring money, with the lesson being that it’s more important to make wise spending decisions than to try to accumulate great wealth.

The songs are enjoyable as always, though I found the Silly Song, Where Have All the Staplers Gone?, more depressing than amusing. I have a hunch that it’s one of those songs that children will find silly, while many adults will have a hard time getting a laugh out of it. And I found the vampire stapler at the end of the segment just plain creepy. But I like Gelato’s peppy instructional song to his ducklings. Mr. Nezzer’s tune is appropriately ominous, and the brothers’ lament sounds like something out of the iconic spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp.

Along with the main story, which is both creative and beautifully animated, there is the typical counter-top framing device, only this time, things look a little different. That’s because VeggieTales, like so many movies and television shows of late ranging from Star Trek and LOST to Shrek Forever After, has latched onto the reboot as a compelling storytelling device. So it is that between the last video and the current one, Extreme Re-Do: Crying Edition, a nod at feel-good home repair show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, has come in to recreate these familiar surroundings. Larry’s in on it, while Bob is confused and unsettled. Everything from the theme song to Qwerty the computer has gotten a face lift, and it will be interesting to see how these differences carry over into future installments.

Pistachio is a charming tale that encourages obedience to one’s parents and thriftiness in one’s financial decisions. For those who identify more with Gelato than Pistachio, it’s a reminder of the importance of not giving up on one’s children although they have gone astray. It also urges young and old alike to accept change and to look for the good in a new situation even if it is thrust upon one quite suddenly. And it’s also just plain fun, with pop culture references from Pinocchio and Lady and the Tramp to The Godfather and Midnight Cowboy. VeggieTales seems to be at its best when it spoofs great literature but infuses it with Biblical meaning, and Pistachio definitely falls into that category.

Art Garfunkel and Alan Dale Enhance Flight of the Conchords' Final Season

Back in 2007, my brother introduced me to Flight of the Conchords, an HBO comedy about a pair of awkward New Zealanders who come to New York City in hopes of making it big as a folk duo. Jemaine Clement, a big lug with a deep voice and thick glasses who starred in a string of memorable Outback Steakhouse commercials, and Bret McKenzie, whose delicate features and soft voice landed him a role as an Elf in Lord of the Rings, play fictionalized versions of themselves in this hilarious, albeit sadly short-lived, show.

This January, I bought the second and final season of Flight of the Conchords, which, at ten episodes, is even shorter than the first. I’d previously seen one of the episodes online, but since we don’t get HBO, I counted on catching the rest on DVD. It was a worthwhile investment.

The beginning of the second season finds Jemaine and Bret attempting to manage themselves after their hapless manager, Murray Hewitt (Rhys Darby), diverts most of his attention to his new act, the Crazy Dogs. They soon discover just how much they don’t know about the music business, and the episode ends with the three gaining a renewed appreciation for each other. Darby remains impeccable as the hopelessly naive and ineffectual Murray, who in many ways can be considered a third member of the group.

Season one is stuffed with goofy, catchy tunes, rendering season two a bit sparse by comparison. While Bret and Jemaine, already a band before the show began, had plenty of material to draw from initially, they had used most of it by the end of the first season, forcing them to produce a lot of new material, most of which doesn’t make quite as much of an impression as the earlier songs.

Probably my favorite ditty of the season is Friends, from Murray Takes It to the Next Level, in which Murray decides it’s time to hang out with the guys as a buddy. This mellow, nearly a cappella ode to friendship is upbeat and harmonious, in the style of a barbershop quartet. Along with a great sound, it includes several clever descriptions of what constitutes a friend, and I like it enough to forgive the one crude line.

Unfortunately, low-brow humor isn’t that hard to find in season two. In season one, they mostly keep things fairly innocent, or at least take things no further than awkward innuendo. But in season two, it’s harder to forget this aired on cable rather than on one of the big networks.

On the other hand, Bret and Jemaine remain riotously inept, so their attempts to be seductive generally fail spectacularly, particularly in A New Cup. While this is probably the most risque episode of the season, it’s also one of the best, thanks to an absurd premise that confirms just how unsuccessful these two really are, a zany side story about Murray’s decision to invest the band’s meager funds with a Nigerian businessman who contacted him over e-mail and a tragi-comic conclusion that serves as a metaphor for their lives.

The one episode that I saw ahead of time was The Prime Minister, which I’d highly anticipated because I knew it featured Art Garfunkel. While his actual appearance is very brief, it’s quite amusing, especially considering the events leading up to it - events that involve Bret and Jemaine getting a gig as a Simon and Garfunkel tribute band and Jemaine hooking up with a girl who insists that he continue to dress as Art Garfunkel whenever she is in his company. It includes perhaps my favorite line of the season, to Murray: “So we look like some Simon and Garfunkel look-alikes who don’t look like Simon and Garfunkel?”

Additionally, it introduces the magnificent character of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Brian (Brian Sergent), who is even dopier than Murray and makes one start to wonder whether all Kiwis are a bit daft. While I was disappointed that there were no Simon and Garfunkel-style songs here (just very brief manglings of Scarborough Fair and Bright Eyes), Bret’s random karaoke performance of a Korean love song has some of the funniest (subtitled) lyrics of the season.

Each episode has something to recommend it, whether it’s an appearance by LOST and Ugly Betty’s Alan Dale, adding to his haughty boss repertoire as the Australian consulate leader who bullies Murray, or a disastrous attempt by Jemaine to help Bret prove himself chivalrous to a love interest. Kristen Schaal continues to be uncomfortably overzealous as Mel, the duo’s lone fan, as evidenced in the episode in which she presents the guys with disturbing portraits of themselves. The season - and series - ends in a way that feels very fitting for this saga of these chumps who will never let life get them down, despite a steady stream of failures.

While I’m sad to see the show go, I’m happy to know that Flight of the Conchords lives on, and I hope to catch them on tour one of these days. Until then, I’ll be content to giggle my way through the 22 episodes of their wonderfully quirky comedy.

Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne Edify Each Other in Adam

Recently, my friend told me that I should go see Adam, the 2009 movie written and directed by Max Mayer that details the relationship between Beth, an aspiring children’s book author, and Adam, an electrical engineer with Asperger’s Syndrome. When I mentioned the movie to my mom, she said that she’d been wanting to see it too, so it quickly made its way to the top of my Netflix queue.

Adam is portrayed by Hugh Dancy, a Brit who previously charmed me in Ella Enchanted and The Jane Austen Book Club, and I found him just as adorable here as a quirky American with a sweet temperament, an expansive interest in astronomy and a deep discomfort with social interaction. Rose Byrne is equally endearing as Beth, who moves into his apartment building and quickly develops a friendship with him, even as she notes the awkwardness of their conversations and wonders if she is the cause.

Twenty minutes or so into the film is when the term “Asperger’s Syndrome” first comes up, at which point the movie briefly takes an overly didactic turn, making it feel more like an after-school special than a feature for theaters. But aside from a few minutes of rather heavy-handed explanations of how those with Asperger’s differ from “neuro-typicals,” I felt that Adam’s traits were integrated pretty naturally into the movie.

While both leads are very sympathetic, Adam’s bluntness and difficulty in connecting with emotions and social cues sometimes frustrate Beth and cause her to react sharply. Meanwhile, when he is confronted with an upsetting situation, Adam has a tendency to throw tantrums that are destructive and, Beth fears, potentially violent. All told, I think the two aren’t so different as Mayer would have us think; both are quiet, polite outsiders with an occasional angry streak.

We see a variety of different people react to Adam, whether it’s his boss, who tries to be kind but is ultimately more concerned about this young man’s impact on his company’s bottom line, or a police officer who sees him lurking near the playground of the school where Beth teaches and takes rather brutal action. Adam’s closest friend is his dad’s old buddy Harlan, played with an appealing mix of crustiness and warmth by Frankie Faison. He’s known Adam his whole life, so he is better equipped to understand where he’s coming from than most. There’s a lot of respect there from both ends, and I found their relationship one of the most enjoyable aspects of the movie.

Beth, too, is an only child, but while Adam is an orphan, both of her parents are very much alive. Peter Gallagher comes across as affectionate and uppity as her father, a businessman whose indictment causes Beth a great deal of anguish. He’s likable at times, but he also comes across as controlling and sleazy. Amy Irving is more like her daughter and more helpful in navigating the ups and downs of the romance that develops between Beth and Adam.

I enjoyed the look of this movie, which accentuates natural beauty even in the midst of bustling New York. A night-time stroll in the park proves especially lovely, and Adam’s living-room planetarium is an impressive sight. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, which feels mellow and folkie-ish, with one song reminding me very much of the sound of Simon and Garfunkel. Additionally, the opening voice-over from Beth comparing Adam to the Little Prince (and herself to the pilot) is effective in setting the tone of the movie and hinting at the direction in which it might go.

This is a quiet little movie about two people getting to know one another and growing because of that experience. It’s neither dry and clinical nor especially sappy; as Adam says in response to Beth’s inquiry about what living with Asperger’s feels like, “It just is.” Straightforward, with turns that are sweet, funny and sad, Adam was worth the recommendation, which I will gladly pass along.

Celebrate National Poetry Month With Billy Collins

This past Tuesday, Billy Collins gave a reading at a local university. When I read that he would be coming, I knew that I wanted to attend. My first official introduction to Collins came back in 2002 when, after hearing his name tossed about in the English department of my college, I caught his guest appearance on A Prairie Home Companion. He was still Poet Laureate of the United States at the time, a distinction that was an integral part of his role in that night’s Guy Noir sketch, which still holds the distinction of my favorite of all the adventures featuring that gritty gumshoe.

How I chortled as he, Garrison Keillor and others delivered one dubious imitation after another of William Carlos Williams’ This Is Just to Say and Collins ardently discussed his recent revelation that novelists lead much more exciting lives than poets! At another point during the night came a more serious moment as he read The Lanyard, a self-deprecating tribute to his mother that I liked so much I read it myself at a college poetry night the following week. Billy Collins had won me over.

At the reading, Collins read The Lanyard again, and the many members of a large audience applauded loudly. It’s a poem in which a very simple image conveys a universal message about the inability of children raised in loving homes to repay their parents for a happy, healthy childhood.

“She gave me life and milk from her breasts, / and I gave her a lanyard. / She nursed me in many a sickroom, / lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips, / set cold face-cloths on my forehead, / and then led me out into the airy light / and taught me to walk and swim, / and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard. / Here are thousands of meals, she said, / and here is clothing and a good education. / And here is your lanyard, I replied, / which I made with a little help from a counselor.”

Both wistful and humorous, it remains my favorite of his poems, and when I approached the table to select a volume of poems to take away from the evening, I was grateful that one of the men on the selling end pointed out, even before I could ask, which book contained that particular poem.

That’s how I came to buy a copy of The Trouble With Poetry and Other Poems, which Collins signed for me on page 45, the first page of section three, which is where The Lanyard is printed. The book contains four sections, along with one poem that serves as an introduction to the reader, spread across about 80 pages. I’m still mulling over the significance of the bear gazing placidly at the reader from the cover; haven’t quite worked that out yet. But perhaps one of these nights I will find myself awake at three o‘clock in the morning, struck with the sudden conviction that I know exactly why he put that bear there.

If bears don’t jump out at me from within the pages of the book, other creatures do. In the Evening succinctly discusses the winding down of a day, with a line each devoted to a bee, a cat and a horse. Flock is a rather twisted meditation on the 23rd Psalm inspired by the fact that each copy of the Gutenberg Bible required the skins of 300 sheep. A cat inspires a reflection on mortality in The Order of the Day, and in the darkly amusing The Revenant, the speaker is a deceased dog addressing the master who had him put to sleep.

Indeed, the subject of death comes up a number of times, sneaking its way into a majority of the poems in some form or another. It is blatant in The Peasants’ Revolt, which is at its most despairing when it speaks of “just a hole inside a larger hole / and the starless maw of space”, and Theme, in which, at one point, the speaker yearns to “echo the longing for immortality / despite the roaring juggernaut of time”.

Meanwhile, Bereft is essentially a litany of things that the dead no longer experience, culminating in this image: “More like an empty zone that souls traverse, / a vaporous place / at the end of a dark tunnel, / a region of silence except for // the occasional beating of wings - / and, I wanted to add / as the sun dazzled your lifted wineglass, / the sound of newcomers weeping.” And in Reaper, the sight of a man “carrying an enormous scythe on his shoulder” brings the speaker, who is driving down the road, a “jolt of fear // whose voltage ran from my ankles / to my scalp”. Pretty bleak stuff.

Yet just as prevalent throughout the book is humor, often just lines away from emptiness and sorrow. At other times, the entire poem is simply laugh-aloud funny. Collins read several extremely brief poems of this variety on Tuesday, but the ones in this collection are a little more complicated - or perhaps convoluted is the correct word. For instance, in The Introduction, we are told, “I don’t think this next poem / needs any introduction - / it’s best to let the work speak for itself.” What follow are references to and vague definitions of a dozen different items mentioned in the poem, none of which have any apparent connection to the title, which is finally revealed in the last line. Similarly, Freud describes a bizarre dream incorporating many disparate elements, including “a little shop called House of a Thousand Noses”. And The Lodger makes brilliant use of the phrase about beating swords into ploughshares, using it as a starting point for a series of practical transformations.

There’s something in this collection for everyone - even, I was pleased to discover, the avid LOST fan. Those who don’t share my level of obsession with this ABC show hurtling toward its long-awaited conclusion will hopefully forgive the digression, which I can’t bring myself to resist. Consider Building With Its Face Blown Off, whose title feels right at home with all the explosions that have rocked the show, and which includes “a leader on a horse,” “clouds that look like smoke” and “a man pouring wine into two glasses,” all images with deep LOST resonance. And given the centrality of mirrors in this sixth season, and their connection to a sense of self-awareness, I had to smile at this, from In the Moment: “I stared into a small oval mirror near the sink / to see if that crazy glass / had anything special to tell me today.”

And then there were the two poems in which the connections were so clear that, were it not for the publication date, I would have almost sworn that Collins was a LOST fan. In Traveling Alone, we meet a traveler who reminds me very much of Jack Shephard. He takes note of “the tiny bottles of vodka” on the airplane, as well as those whose acquaintance he makes ever so briefly at various stages of his journey. “I began to sense that all of them / were ready to open up, / to get to know me better, perhaps begin a friendship.” This makes me think of all the times in which characters have crossed paths back in the “real world,” little knowing that they would become intimately acquainted in the future, and in Sideways World, suspecting a connection but not understanding it. And then there’s this delicious little nugget: “And was I so wrong in seeing in Ben’s eyes / a glimmer of interest in my theories / and habits - my view of the Enlightenment, // my love of cards, the hours I tended to keep?”

Finally, Statues in the Park, taken as a whole, reads like a love letter to redshirts. While walking through a park filled with memorials to fallen soldiers from the Civil War, the speaker thinks about all of those whose deaths have gone largely unnoticed by society at large. Those whose names were not carved into an impressive-looking bit of stone, rather like those actors whose names have never been listed in the opening credits of LOST, whose characters have never been mentioned by any of the most prominent castaways. But what really got my attention was the line “In the shadow of the statue”. It stopped me dead in my tracks, and I simply stared for a moment, so that when I went on to the next line, I burst out laughing. I now had, “In the shadow of the statue, / I wondered about the others”. Now there is a statement that has LOST written all over it. What it looks like to me are the first two lines of a poem in which Sun recalls her experience in the season five finale, surrounded by people she doesn’t know, all of whom she previously considered enemies. Am I inspired? Perhaps...

If you lean toward the poetic, there’s a good chance you’ll find inspiration here too, especially as so many poems deal with the act of writing poetry. You, Reader gives us this wonderful insight into the communal nature of the writing process: “I was only thinking / about the shakers of salt and pepper / that were standing side by side on a place mat. / I wondered if they had become friends / after all these years / or if they were still strangers to one another // like you and I / who manage to be known and unknown / to each other at the same time - // me at this table with a bowl of pears, / you leaning in a doorway somewhere / near some blue hydrangeas, reading this.” So does Eastern Standard Time, which begins “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, / but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”.

Monday is built around the idea that “the poets are at their windows,” which is their proper place in the world. “Just think - ” he posits, “before the invention of the window, / the poets would have had to put on a jacket / and a winter hat to go outside / or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.” Evidently he also finds the bathtub an ideal spot for musing, as we read in The Long Day that “I closed my eyes and thought / about the alphabet, / the letters filing out of the halls of kindergarten // to become literature. / If the British call z zed, / I wondered, why not call b bed and d dead? // And why does z, which looks like / the fastest letter, come at the very end?”

Finally, there is the title poem, again a reflection on poetry as an interactive experience between writer and reader. With a chagrined comic touch, Collins speaks of the way in which poets draw inspiration from each other. “But mostly poetry fills me / with the urge to write poetry, / to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame / to appear at the tip of my pencil. // And along with that, the longing to steal, / to break into the poems of others / with a flashlight and a ski mask. // And what an unmerry band of thieves we are, / cut-purses, common shoplifters...” What thieves indeed - though I contend that perhaps the poets rob from the rich to give to the poor, and that the victims may find themselves enriched in the process.

I’m an old-fashioned gal who tends to veer toward poetry of the rhymed variety. Billy Collins doesn’t rhyme, at least not often, but he has, to quote again from The Lanyard, “two clear eyes to read the world,” and what he sees is both extraordinary and marvelously commonplace. Collins writes with a wit and accessibility that might just encourage the fervent verse loather to give poetry another chance. This Poetry Month, pick up a collection of poems by Billy Collins. Then pick up a pen.

Walking Thunder Is a Family-Friendly Frontier Film

A little while back, I rented the movie Higher Ground, a made-for-TV film from the 1980s starring John Denver and featuring two of his songs. When I saw that Netflix also had Walking Thunder, another John Denver movie, I was eager to give that a shot too.

Written and directed by Craig Clyde, Walking Thunder is a movie of comparable tone and quality. It’s a family-friendly film involving father-son conflict, explorations of the wilderness and interactions with indigenous people. Unlike Higher Ground, this movie is mostly set in the 1800s, though it is framed in the present as a boy reads the journal of one of his ancestors.

The movie has a bit of a Little House on the Prairie feel to it, except that the children in the McKay family are boys rather than girls. Patriarch John (Denver) is restless and rugged, not content to remain with a steady job when it means he has to be employed by someone else. His wife Emma (Irene Miracle) tries to be patient, but her frustration with his choices becomes apparent after an accident leaves them stranded in the mountains for the winter. To make matters worse, she is expecting their third child in just a couple of months.

To Jacob (David Tom) and his younger brother, this is all a grand adventure, especially once they cross paths with mountain man Abner Murdoch (James Read) and his elderly companion, the mystical Dark Wind (Ted Thin Elk). These are the two most engaging characters in the movie. Abner is an exotic outsider who instantly has the adulation of Jacob, though he tries to discourage it. Meanwhile, though Dark Wind doesn’t speak English, he becomes an invaluable asset to the rest of the family when Jacob joins Abner on a trip to the trading post.

This is a wholesome, family-friendly movie, and it features some spectacular landscapes, not to mention a number of scenes involving Walking Thunder (Bart the Bear), an enormous bear with a strange connection to the land where the McKays have decided to settle for the winter. The pace is a bit plodding; it’s an hour and a half long but feels considerably longer.

There’s something a little wooden about most of the acting and dialogue, and Denver is no exception to that, though John does share some nice moments of vulnerability with Jacob. He has a very serious air about him throughout the movie, rarely smiling and looking especially solemn with his jumbo-sized mustache. And, most unfortunately, he doesn’t do any singing at all. The setting seems very fitting for him, though.

I’m not sure how well this movie would hold the attention of most children. Jacob is reasonably engaging, and there are some bad guys who blunder in partway through to provide a mix of menace and comic relief. On the whole, though, the comedy quotient is pretty low, and the story tends toward the excessively didactic at times. For kids interested in frontier times, this would probably be a good choice, however. A kind of throwback to some of the old live action Wonderful World of Disney movies, Walking Thunder is also John Denver’s last movie, having been completed the year he died. While it’s not the most thrilling frontier saga I’ve ever seen, I think he would be proud of the results.

Number 2700: The Story Behind the Song Is Chicken Soup for the Music Lover's Soul

Three years ago, my friend Libbie and I went to see Music and Lyrics, a romantic comedy that also has a lot to do with the songwriting process. I found it both entertaining and inspiring, as it helped motivate me to do some more lyric-writing. This past Christmas, Libbie gave me Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story Behind the Song. I was anxious to read it, and I also hoped that it would provide a similar boost. Given my love of music as both a fan and an aspiring lyricist, I thought this would be a fitting review with which to mark my 2700th post on Epinions.

Chicken Soup for the Soul is a series of books, each featuring 101 contributions pertaining to a particular theme. Usually, a majority of the authors in any given book are ordinary people who happen to have a great story to tell. Libbie and I both have read several of these feel-good collections, and I even had a poem included in 2008’s Chicken Soup for the Soul: Love Stories. This volume is a little different in that every contributor is a songwriter, or at least is intimately acquainted with one. It’s a bit on the long side as each entry includes the lyrics to the song in question after the reflection on what brought that song about. Some of these entries are quite detailed; most are between one and two pages.

Another difference between this book and most others in the series is the fact that there are no sub-sections. Typically, a book will be divided into several smaller categories, ranging from the silly to the tragic. In this volume, the arrangement is alphabetical by the last name of the song’s composer. In most cases, this is also the person who wrote the essay. One exception to this is Ingrid Croce, who writes about the people and circumstances inspiring Operator and Bad, Bad Leroy Brown, two hits by her late husband Jim Croce. I’ve always been a big fan of his, so I was especially interested in those stories, and I had to chuckle over the fact that as many as 40 guys have approached Ingrid over the years to identify themselves as “the real Leroy Brown”.

As I perused this book, I was surprised at how many of the songs I didn’t recognize. Only about a quarter of the songs were ones I knew. No doubt everyone who picks up this book will gravitate toward different songs and songwriters. My interests tend toward classic and folk-rock. While most of my favorite songwriters - Paul Simon, Gordon Lightfoot, Billy Joel, Elton John and Paul McCartney, to name a few - did not chime in, I enjoyed reading about several songs from artists I’m not quite as familiar with, and the book introduced me to plenty of songs that were new to me.

Among the entries that interested me most were the reflections on Bohemian Rhapsody (Roy Thomas Baker), That’s What Friends Are For (Carole Bayer Sager), Right Here Waiting (Richard Marx), The Rose (Amanda McBroom) and Eye of the Tiger (Jim Peterik). One of the most detailed entries is Tony Asher’s recollection of writing Wouldn’t It Be Nice with Brian Wilson after a chance meeting brought them together in the mid-sixties. Asher talks about the back-and-forth nature of their collaborative process and the way they pushed the envelope with this song, which now seems so innocent.

Chicken Soup for the Soul books are always designed so that you can skip around as much as you like, reading an essay here and an essay there and not worrying about the order in which the stories are presented. I’ve certainly read The Story Behind the Song in this way, often opening it up at random and seeing what song I end up with. The first entry that I read was Tom Higgenson’s description of how he came to write Hey There, Delilah as a tribute to a girl he liked but didn’t know very well. There was a very appealing sweetness and scrappiness to the story, as he hadn’t really hit the big time yet when he wrote the song in fulfillment to a promise that he had made to this young woman. I must have had his reflections rolling around in my head for the next month or so because my streak of new LOST filksongs began in February with a parody of Hey There, Delilah.

If you’re interested in songwriting or the music business in general, The Story Behind the Song is a fun and fascinating collection that celebrates songs spanning half a century. My only complaint is that it makes me curious about what a lot of other songwriters would have to say about their own work. I’m hoping that they will consider a follow-up volume and that even more musicians will participate. Until then, this volume has plenty to keep me reading.

Sheldon Cooper Is a Spock-Magnitude Masterpiece in The Big Bang Theory

I am not an especially scientific person, but I’ve always had an odd attraction to fictional uber-geeks. Spock, the original Blue Ranger and LOST's Daniel Faraday are just a few of the eggheads who have won my affections. It was Spock who helped me discover another to add to this list.

It was the fall of 2008, and seemingly every time I flipped the channel to CBS, I saw a promo for The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon, the brightest, most socially awkward of the main quartet of young scientists on the show, explains the rules to “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock,” a more complex version of the traditional game. That’s supposed to make it more interesting, but naturally, once Spock is in the mix, everybody chooses the Vulcan, turning it into one big stalemate. I’d seen ads for the show before, but this was the one that hooked me, the one that convinced me to check it out during its second season. I’ve been a fan ever since. My brother Nathan bought the first season on DVD, and over spring break he brought it home, so I was able to catch up on everything I missed, so now I can consider my fandom complete.

Season one consists of seventeen episodes, each with a title that sounds like an oddball experiment or theory. For instance, The Luminous Fish Effect, The Middle Earth Paradigm and The Nerdvana Annihilation. Right off the bat, we are in introduced to the comedy’s five key players. Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki) are roommates. Both are physicists, and both have a tendency to amuse themselves with things like Klingon Boggle, Halo tournaments and arguments over arcane bits of Marvel trivia.

But Sheldon resides in the upper stratosphere of nerdiness, so wrapped up in his own brilliance that he is both unwilling and unable to grasp even the most basic of social niceties. Leonard is a bit more down-to-earth, and when Penny (Kaley Cuoco), a beautiful, sweet-natured waitress moves in next door, he immediately develops a raging crush on her. Soon thereafter, we meet girl-crazy Jewish aerospace engineer Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) and painfully shy Indian astrophysicist Raj Koothrappali (Kunal Nayyar). All four scientists work at Caltech.

Virtually all of the show’s humor derives from the interaction among these five characters. It’s fun when the guys get together and revel in their own nerdiness. For instance, in one episode, they are invited to Penny’s Halloween party, and each of them decides to go as The Flash. After they agree to wear different costumes, their choices range from Leonard as Frodo Baggins to Sheldon as The Doppler Effect. In another episode, Leonard buys the time machine from the movie of the same title, and the other three eagerly chip in for some time with the impressive prop.

I love it when the show focuses on the guys’ appreciation for science fiction and fantasy. I’m not so crazy about it when it the concentration is on their hormones. Sheldon remains utterly detached from the entire notion of romance, despite the fact that in one episode he unintentionally woos a date away from Raj. But the other guys are always bringing it up. Howard is the worst, always ready with a sleazy one-liner and obsessed with hooking up with pretty much any girl who will have him. While Penny generally enjoys the company of the other three, she shows consistent disdain for Howard. Raj, meanwhile, is quiet and sensitive, and throughout much of this first season he is physically incapable of speaking to a woman unless he is intoxicated. He’s much more likable than his best friend, but the two are rarely out of each other’s company, so if Raj is around, you have to put up with Howard, easily my least favorite of the quintet.

Leonard’s intense attraction to Penny is reminiscent of Niles’ obsession with Daphne in Frasier. There’s a similar dynamic between the two of them, with Penny the kind, salt-of-the-earth, attractive woman and Leonard the infatuated intellectual. The two quickly form a bond of friendship, and Penny’s genuine good will is what makes it so easy to root for the relationship. She has a habit of getting together with real dirt bags, and despite the major differences in their characters, you want to see her with a nice guy for a change, and for his devotion to her to be rewarded.

But it’s Sheldon who makes the show so riveting for me. A fascinating character brilliantly portrayed by Parsons, he is one guy who would have no trouble making sense of LOST’s time travel season. The gears in his head are always turning, allowing him to turn the most ordinary of objects into the inspiration for a head-spinning diatribe. Sheldon is hyper-intelligent, as well as just plain hyper. He has dozens of little ideosyncrasies, from the fact that he always has to sit in the same chair to his insistence on preceding each attempt to enter a room with a forceful series of three knocks and shouting the name of whoever he expects to be inside, and repeating the process until someone opens the door. On the one hand, intellectually speaking, he’s far ahead of even Leonard, Raj and Howard, but this is balanced out by his utter confusion with ordinary social conventions. It takes him most of the first season to begin to understand sarcasm, and empathy tends to elude him too, though in his own strange way, he proves to be a pretty devoted friend, especially, oddly enough, to Penny, who can never seem to decide whether she finds him infuriating or endearing.

All of the guys have issues with their mothers. We don’t meet Leonard’s in the first season, but she is a psychologist with a forceful personality whose methods have clearly scarred him a bit. Raj’s mother is occasionally seen via internet videoconferencing, along with his father, and they both try to control his life from afar, particularly in the romance department. Howard lives with his mother, and we’ve heard her voice in several episodes but never seen her. Their interactions consist of her bellowing at him from across the house.

Sheldon’s mother has made only two appearances on the show, one of them in the first season, but we also occasionally hear his side of a phone call with her, and he often mentions his upbringing in a conservative Christian home. While he and his mother have radically different worldviews, he does have a great deal of respect for her, and she is about the only person who can truly keep him in line. He also recalls her fondly in moments of distress. In one episode, he falls sick, and he yearns to replicate the conditions of his childhood, even asking Penny to sing the song his mother sang to him on such occasions. Sheldon becomes even more childlike when mentioning his beloved grandmother, whom he calls Mee-maw.

In general, I enjoy Sheldon’s background, but I’m very annoyed by the canned laughter that follows any statement his mother makes relating to her faith. None of the main characters is overtly religious, and logic-driven Sheldon clearly has no time for it, but I see no need for the outright contempt the show seems to display for Christianity whenever his mom is involved. Howard’s cracks about his own cultural heritage sometimes rankle too, but then so does almost everything he says.

So yeah, sometimes the treatment of religion on the show bugs me, and I would prefer a little less smut and a little less Howard in general. But as long as Sheldon is the show’s centerpiece, which he certainly is in the first season, I intend to keep tuning in.