Memorial Day potpourri

Once again, Memorial Day weekend around here was much more Nova Scotia than it was Santa Barbara. The kind of day where people garden in turtlenecks. The kind of day where people say screw the burgers, honey, let’s make some split pea soup. The kind of day where people go to the damned movies.

My dilemma? I didn’t want to see The Hangover Part II. I knew that much even before I read some guy’s blog describing HO2 as “a movie that makes Big Momma’s House 2 look like The Shawshank Redemption.” Actually, I was one of the few who thought HO1 made BMH2 look like Shawshank. That’s the way it is with most comedies these days. If a flick makes you laugh two-to-three times, it’s hailed as some kind of masterwork. And I sure as hell didn’t want to go see another goddamn comic book. Fercrissakes, when are studios gonna finally get to the last Marvel/DC comic character already and be done with this extended prepubescent strain of cinematic imbecility? I mean, here comes the Green Lantern and Captain America and another X-Man thing and just wake me up when they make an effing movie about Bizarro Planet and Mr. Mxyzptlk. And yes, I spelled the name of Superman’s pint-sized nemesis correctly. Thank God the little bastard has his own Wikipedia page!

And I’ll be good and goddamned if I’m gonna give Johnny Depp and crew a nickel for their latest rip-off, which is worse than a comic book, since it’s a series based on a ride. What’s next, a flick about bumper cars? Bucket rides? Mr. Toad? (Actually, sign me up for that one!) And Johnny, you might want to stop taking lunches with ding-dongs like Tim Burton and Jerry Bruckheimer, because in your last few films, you’ve been Willy Wonka, The Mad Hatter, and Keith Richard’s Pirate Boy with shells and teeth and lucky mood rings stuck in your hair. So, uh, dude—shouldn’t you make a film as a semi-normal human being sometime in the near future? You know, just as a radical, left-field career move?

• A question for the grand poobahs of ESPN. Uh, when exactly was it that I was supposed to start giving a flaming poop about lacrosse? Just askin’.

• And Giants fans, I’ll go ahead and say it, even if most sports columnists are too blind or footballed out to do it—that season-ending hit Scott Cousins put on Buster Posey sucked. Everybody talks about what a clean play that was. Bullshit. Sure, it’s a clean play if you play baseball like a strong safety. But the truth is, and it’s right there on the replays, Buster had given up plenty of the plate for this psycho to use if he was at all familiar with an ancient skill that used to be employed by baseball players—a skill known as sliding. Cousins could have easily slid.