November 2005
Movies I Don't Get: Manhattan
OK, I tried to get Manhattan. Sure, it's Woody Allen's understated, unabashedly romanticized follow-up to Annie Hall, whose self-awareness manages to skewer effete, erudite intellectualism while foreshadowing Allen's reversal of social mores through the prism of his relationship with a teenager played by Mariel Hemingway.
But there's one thing I absolutely don't get: the mistreatment of Mark Linn-Baker.
You all know Mark Linn-Baker. He played Larry Appleton on Perfect Strangers. As such, I considered him a role model, if not a hero, for most of the 80s. And as it turns out, his big break came on Manhattan, filling the role of "Shakespearean Actor", appearing opposite of none other than Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy!
Needless to say, I watched Manhattan quite closely, trying to figure out where they were. Didn't see them. So I watched again. And it turns out that about two and a half minutes into the movie, they appear in the middle of a montage for exactly two seconds - sans speaking parts - looking like specks on the movie screen:
That's it? No droll monologues whilst engaging in an urban leisure sport such as racquetball or target shooting? Not even a single utterance of "Forsooth?" And as if that were not enough, they misspelled his name in the credits, giving him a different gender in the process!
(Yeah, I know you all don't care. You're probably more excited that the Inconceivable!!! dude from The Princess Bride happened to be in this film as well.)
Luckily, things are looking up for Mr. Linn-Baker. After a ten-year hiatus, he's returned to network television, starring against Melanie Griffith on a show on the WB. Contrast this to Balki, who spends his time alternating between looking like an ass on The Surreal Life and chilling with Tom Bergeron on The Hollywood Squares. It's like one of those rare episodes of Perfect Strangers where Larry was right for once in the end.
Pumpkin Update
An actual follow-up to a previous post! Jim (from the Mail team) took photos of the original pumpkin carving event (below left), and June took some more dramatic photos of the Dunning O'Lantern (below center)*.
However, I made the unfortunate decision to leave the pumpkin in the office over the weekend. Presumably, the huge, nascent growths of mold eventually caused the jack o'lantern to topple onto the floor, where it quickly decomposed into a revolting puddle of brakish, "fermented pumpkin juice", outside the aforementioned interaction designer's cubicle (see above right). It's probably a metaphor for something, but too many early morning infomercials and repeats of MSNBC's Hardball have stunted my brain.
* If you backtrack in June's Flickr photostream, you might see bits and pieces of a rather surreal somersault contest from a previous UED offsite. Indeed, it's a strange group.