jimmy

Finished. JimmyBramlett.com. Thanks for the 12 years.

I hate Christmas. I hate the holidays. I hate families. So of course this makes me go back to the wonderful John Waters movie Cecil B. DeMented. “Family is just a dirty word for censorship!”

In the spirit of the holidays, I wrote my tribute to them in my Lakers story on Friday. It was sparked by one too many stupid pictures on Facebook. So the first four paragraphs of the story I wrote:

The holidays are such a miserable time. There’s a myth that people enjoy being reunited with the family. Perhaps that is a good myth to be comforted by. The television commercials make it seem wonderful. The only problem is that it’s a bloody lie.

Reality hits. You realize how much you hate your family. Drunk Uncle Jeff who has one too many egg nogs and pisses his pants. Aunt Bessie who is probably the most selfish person you’ve ever known. Cousin Jeff who likes burning things. Mom complains you never call. Dad tells everyone to pull his finger. Older sister slept with all of your childhood friends, and your younger brother is esconsed away in his third stint in rehab. And lord knows how many packages of tube socks and droopy drawers you’ll receive.

And all of your friends on Facebook who post messages and pictures of hope and joy are just fucking liars who have no soul and probably are closeted serial killers.

It’s a nightmare, and unfortunately the Lakers will not give you a couple of hours of solace.

I was worried heading into the theater without Dramamine. I am prone to motion sickness, and it tends to come out when I’m in a movie theater especially when there’s a lot of handheld cam shots. I had problems with Blair Witch Project, avoided problems with Cloverfield thanks to Dramamine and was feeling a bit queasy at 12 Years a Slave.

This was also my second 3D experience in a theater. I went to to a live 3D broadcast of the 2009 BCS Championship Game that saw the Florida Gators beat the Oklahoma Sooners 24-14. It was less 3D and more let’s-put-on-strange-glasses-and-cross-our-eyes-and-maybe-we’ll-see-a-chance-of-the-desired-effect kind of event.

But I went to see Gravity, sat in the back of the theater and put on the glasses. Instantly I knew it was not going to be the same experience as the football game. It worked.

Gravity is a horror story not like Alien or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s more like The Shining. The monster is outer space. It’s not tangible, doesn’t have a voice and doesn’t move. Outer space became the Overlook Hotel unleashing horror upon horror to the two floating astronauts.

Despite sounding so open, outer space is claustrophobic in this movie. And like the Overlook Hotel, it implodes onto itself gradually as the movie goes on. With everything that Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) has to deal with in her fight for survival, suddenly its her psyche she has to deal with.

The technical marvel in pulling off this film was enough to overcome the thin plot. It’s simple: try and make it back to earth safely. There was some backstory filler of Dr. Stone that was very eyerolling.

It sounds like director Alfonso Cuarón and his team got most of the experience of being in space correct. A couple of things were fudged for the sake of the story, but these oversights weren’t so obvious to the point of distraction.

In all it’s a breathtaking suspenseful movie that will keep you entertained for 91 minutes. I really don’t know how this will translate on the home television, but it was amazing watching it in 3D. And, to boot, I had no issues with motion sickness.

This isn’t the best movie I’ve seen this year, but it is definitely one of the most entertaining ones.

While many places in the United States have high-speed car chases, nowhere else in the world airs it with as much flair and panache as we do it here in Los Angeles.

They usually follow the same basic script: a live local newscast will break in with footage of the chase, someone on Twitter will announce it, people start watching and tweeting about it, the car tries to escape from the cops with the velocity and quality of the driving a variable from chase to chase, the car chase stops, the suspect surrenders.

Just like that our hour-long escape comes to a neat end. Every now and again an innocent victim will get entangled in one of these messes. Ever rarer is when the suspect meets a violent end at the hands of the police. But usually once the end happens everything is wrapped up.

Except last night.

A silver Corvette was being chased around South Gate and Highland Park. The LA County Sheriffs pulled out of the chase saying it was too dangerous for the public opting to only follow it from a chopper. CHP opted not to chase for the same reasons. But once the driver got into LAPD jurisdiction, they were more than happy to oblige.

So the chase heads its way into Downtown LA. To this point the driver hasn’t been more reckless than what I would normally expect from a Corvette driver. Except the driver gets the intersection of Olympic Blvd. and Los Angeles St. and hits a car crossing the intersection at full speed. They t-bone, the “innocent” car spins out and shears off a fire hydrant. The driver keeps trying to flee, gets out of the car once he realizes the car is kaput, gets shot by the LAPD on live television and dies.

Go to the 48-second mark in the video above. Note that the Corvette being chased has the green light heading into the intersection. So the so-called innocent victim ran a red light at full speed.

Question 1: Will the driver of the “innocent car” get a ticket for running a red light? I’ve been pulled over in Downtown LA for a brake light being out. No warning was issued. A full on ticket. Fucking quotas.

So this driver that caused an accident must at the very least get a ticket, right? I get that the driver of the Corvette needed to be stopped, but this “innocent” driver needs to be punished for breaking the law, right?

Question 2: Why was the driver of the Corvette shot? The guy wanted to flee. From the live shot when this happened (which you won’t see on the archived videos on the news site rightfully), he didn’t appear to make any threatening moves to the police.

But let’s assume he made a threatening gesture to the police. Rubber bullets couldn’t bring him down?

This goes back to the Christopher Dorner manhunt and my problems with the police. They tend to want to shoot first then ask questions later.

So why was this driver shot? Had he made threats to the police during the chase? Was he armed? Did the police know he was armed?

I forget how lovely movie matinees are. They’re cheaper, and you get to pretend you own the entire theater.

It had been a while since I have stepped foot in a movie theater, and I forget how annoying the adjacent screen’s sound bleeding into the theater was. I also forget how annoying other people are.

I watched 12 Years a Slave and sat with my jaw on the floor even as the credits ended and the house lights came back on. It did a great job in unflinchingly show the dehumanization of slavery, and the ending was particularly jarring.

Early this morning it received seven Golden Globe nominations which it richly deserves.

But here’s a question. Brad Pitt is only in the movie for about 10 minutes or so. How did he get a personal makeup artist?

I really fucking hated Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. It was an unwieldy self-conscious mess of a film that was so pretentious even I couldn’t make excuses for it. And trust me, I love a bit of pretense in my art.

I didn’t think I would like Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color based on so many people using Malick as a starting point of comparison. But it was more related to another auteur that critics used in their analysis of this film: David Lynch.

The story is a simple love story between two who unknowingly meet after they had been abducted, used to house parasites in order to grow blue-colored orchids, have all of the money and assets stolen and have their lives completely turned upside-down. They meet on the train, get married, realize they shared traumatic experiences and liberate a pen of pigs.

Sure it makes no sense when told in that matter, but the way actor, director, producer, composer, writer and cinematographer Shane Carruth presented the movie it makes perfect sense. I fell into the movie wrapped up in trying to figure out which reality I was in, what the fuck was going on. When the credits rolled at the end of the film, it all made sense. But most importantly, it made sense in a way that felt fulfilling.

This is a pretentious movie but not so much so where it’s just a director masturbating on film for two or three hours. This is David Lynch-lite, just obtuse enough to hook you in but not so baffling to leave you confused for years.

Another college football regular season has come to an end, and what else can be said? I guess we found out how shitty the Big Ten was seeing how Ohio State lost to Michigan State. We saw the Big 12 cannibalize itself as Oklahoma ripped the Fiesta Bowl away from Oklahoma State allowing Texas and Baylor to fight for the scraps. On Friday we saw Bowling Green cost their conference around $8 million when they beat Northern Illinois.

Florida State predictably beat Duke, but I still don’t know if quarterback Jameis Winston understands the concept of “consent”. But he wasn’t charged so it’s okay for the misogynists to victimize the victim, right?

And Auburn took care of business against Missouri, but the more I watched the game the more I was convinced the Pac-12 was the best conference in the nation. And speaking of the Pac-12, how about some schadenfreude for Arizona State’s head coach Todd Graham? Hahahahahahahahahahahah!

In lieu of rankings, here’s how I think the BCS bowl games are going to be doled out:

BCS Championship Game: Florida State vs. Auburn
Rose Bowl: Stanford vs. Michigan State
Orange Bowl: Ohio State vs. Oklahoma
Sugar Bowl: Clemson vs. UCF
Fiesta Bowl: Baylor vs. Alabama

If I had my druthers, I would have Stanford playing Florida State in the championship game. Of course that is a mere fantasy.

Sometimes a gay sportswriter needs to remind himself that he’s gay. So last night I took a page out of the “Gilmore Girls” and watched all three “A Star Is Born”s.

Here’s the Reader’s Digest version of the story. Big male alcoholic star plucks tiny lady from obscurity and gives her a chance. She succeeds, they fall in love and marry. Her career eclipses his. He loses his job. He gets in trouble. She decides to give up her career to make sure he’s safe. He kills himself. She goes on.

This film was made three times. The 1937 version starred Janet Gaynor and was produced by David O. Selznick. The 1954 version was a musical produced and starring Judy Garland as a comeback vehicle. And Barbra Streisand starred and produced the 1976 version.

What stunned me was not only how each movie was progressively longer than its predecessor. But I was shocked how timeless the original 1937 version was.

Of the three, the original was the one that stuck closest to the story. Both Judy and Babs’ versions loses themselves in their musical numbers, although I have to admit that I did a gay gasp when Judy first came on screen for her first number. Of course, of all of the musical numbers in that version that first one was probably the most germane to the story line.

As Judy’s version kept going, it becomes more and more clear that this was clearly a vehicle for Judy and her comeback. She was already a veritable mess on movie sets and with her love life. MGM had cancelled her contract years beforehand, and she partner with Jack Warner at Warner Brothers to release this movie.

It became funnier as you see James Mason’s character spiral down towards alcoholism while Judy was the stable one.

The most dated version was the Babs version. Instead of the movies, it’s set in the world of stadium rock of the 70s. Kris Kristofferson is the lead singer and guitarist for this Bachman Turner Overdrive type of stadium schlock rock band, and Babs sings what she sings. Basically it was everything that was bad about the 70s set to celluloid.

The most ridiculous scene came as Kris gives Babs her first big break. At a gig Kris becomes disinterested in his music. The crowd is on the verge of a riot. He tells Babs to come onstage and do her thing. She does reluctantly. She sings one of the prototypical power-Babs ballad, and the crowd loves her. Yeah, this stoned and drunk crowd expecting bad 70s rock loves the torch singer.

Then there is this:

It’s remarkable that in most cases the original is always the best. Here is its availability:

It’s also amazing that I actually did this.

Hours after the fury died down, there is still the question over where to rank that play in the annals of sports history.

Here is the play as narrated by Auburn play-by-play radio announcer Rod Bramblett (no relation):

What do you say to that?

I tend to be cautious when it comes to superlatives. I’ll elect to wait a while and let history dictate where this play ranks.

But speaking of rankings, here are the AP Rankings.

I’m thankful for ___. Just insert something you feel I should be thankful for, then we’ll just go about our businesses.

Now that’s out of the way, I’ll move on.

Last night FYF Fest asked a simple question on Tumblr and Instagram: What was your favorite album when you were 15?

Of course, I had to count on my fingers to figure out what grade I was in. Ten minutes later and a prolonged period of squinting towards the sky in contemplation, I finally figured out it was my freshman/sophomore year in high school. Well, to be fully accurate, in the LAUSD at the time high school was grades 10-12. So really it was my final year of junior high school and first year of high school.

Being a March baby, my 15th year encompassed most of 1994. Kurt Cobain shot himself effectively killing grunge. The Juice went loose. Tanya Harding became the most infamous figure skater in history.

There were two albums that I played over and over again.

Tori Amos – Under the Pink

Hearing “God” on KROQ was a bit of a revelation especially for a boy who played the piano and had just become an atheist a couple of years prior. It was refreshing to hear a piano in rock, and it was even more refreshing to hear a woman be so defiant. What can I say? I was a huge “Roseanne” fan and a huge grunge fan, so at heart I was a feminist.

I bought the album on tape because I carried around my Walkman with me everywhere. It was a nice Sony one that could switch sides without having to eject the cassette. I completely forget where I got the $80 to buy it, but it got me through high school.

Of course it is during this time in a kid’s life that identity and hormones just become a hurricane in one’s psyche, and by this point I was pretty sure I was gay. Of course I couldn’t tell anyone because it’s high school. Duh.

A song like “Icicle” showed me that sexuality was nothing to be ashamed about. Unfortunately I’m a slow learner, so it wasn’t until second semester of my junior year that I started to come out.

“Yes, Anastasia” was the epic ode to the Romanovs. “Cornflake Girl” was a dancey number. “Pretty Good Year” has the burst of anger. “The Waitress” is just complete id.

I haven’t listened to this album in a while, but for that year I damn near wore the cassette out.

Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral

This album served two purposes. Of course there was the sexuality angle.

Everyone talks about the “I want to fuck you like an animal” lyric of “Closer”. But in all of the funk of the song, there was this bit that I at 15 thought was the sexiest part of the song:

Through the forest, above the trees
Within my stomach, I scrape off my knees
I drink the honey from inside your hive
You are the reason I stay alive

At a time when a bumpy bus ride gave me a hardon, you can imagine what a whispering Trent Reznor could do to me.

I’ll admit it. This album got me into industrial music. From here I checked out Ministry. Then KMFDM. Then My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. With grunge essentially over with Kurt Cobain dead, it really was time for something new.

I still like listening to this album. When I quit smoking a couple of years ago and my hormones reverted me back to my 15-year old angst-ridden self, it was a bit of catharsis.