An Agreeable Companion Or Slouching Towards The Future

So Scott and I went to see A Prairie Home Companion today, and while it wasn’t exactly a summer blockbuster it was, like the long-running radio variety show on which it’s based, it was very entertaining.
If you don’t know anything about Prairie, it’s a show broadcast on Saturday nights from Minneapolis, hosted by master storyteller Garrison Keillor (who wrote the screenplay for the movie and appeared in it, with some biographical tweaking, it would seem, as himself), and it features music, skits, stories, and, well, a variety of entertainment.
The central plot point of the movie – which was largely incidental, as this movie was about the characters and the actors portraying them – was that a new corporation had purchased the radio station that broadcasts the show and had decided to pull the plug on it. The story took place on the night that was to be the show’s last broadcast.
Add in a mysterious Angel of Death, played by Virginia Madsen, wandering around throughout the theater from which the show was broadcast, musical performances featuring the real and fictional cast of the show, Keillor’s fictional “hard boiled” detective character Guy Noir (played to clueless perfection by Kevin Kline) who served as the narrator, and an exploration of the backstage goings-on, stir, and just as easily as whipping up some Powdermilk Biscuits (one of the show’s fictional sponsors) you have yourself a movie version of A Prairie Home Companion.
If I had one complaint about the movie it was that it didn’t feature a “News from Lake Woebegone” segment, which was always, for me, as I’m not exactly a fan of the style of music featured on the show, the primary reason to listen to the show, as the stories about his fictitious hometown showcased Keillor’s humor and his talent for spinning a yarn.
I’m not a big devotee of Robert Altman and his work, but the pacing of the story and the narrative style, which consisted mostly of intertwining and interconnected vignettes, seemed representative to me (based on what I’ve seen of his work) of his directorial style, which worked very well here, especially given that the movie, as most Altman movies do, had a strong ensemble cast.
Lindsey Lohan was fairly entertaining as a suicide-obsessed angst-filled teen, though I think that the evidence of the age of the writer and director was showing in how, physically, she was portrayed, which is to say not nearly goth or emo enough. She just seemed very much like the vision of a “rebellious teen” that men of Keillor and Altman’s ages would have. She just sort of seemed like an out of touch, “what’s with these kids today with their dungarees and the MTV” kind of presentation of a modern teen. There was a disconnect between the way she looked and the kind of internal life she was leading, and it just stood out for me. I doubt that Keillor or Altman would have any idea of what you were talking about if you said “goth” or “emo” to them, and that was made very clear by the sort of “not quite a good girl by older standards, but not quite a bad girl by contemporary standards” look she sported.
Still, it’s an extremely minor and nitpicky complaint, as it was a good role, particularly in terms of how others reacted to her dark sensibilities. It could have been a conscious decision, I suppose, to make her outwardly appear less angst-filled and depressed than she actually was inwardly. So maybe my complaint is without merit. Oh well.
Anyway, overall it was a good way to spend a little over an hour and a half (which is less time than the actual radio show takes up)
Hell, I could even stand Meryl Streep in this – she and Lily Tomlin played off each other very well – and I can’t ever stand Meryl Streep.
So that’s saying something.
Of course, the trip to the theater wasn’t nearly as entertaining as the movie.
On my way to 28 from 7, I became convinced that there was no possible way that the method in which other drivers were messing with me could be anything other than deliberate.
Whether they were in touch with each other via radio, God was personally directing them, or they were in telepathic communication, it had to have been done on purpose.
I can’t even begin to list the million little ways in which they screwed me over, all of the complex driving maneuvers they executed that ultimately left me stuck behind the four dump trucks that I had done everything in my (extremely limited) power to get around, the intricate series of braking and accelerating that led me to drive along screaming FUUUUCCCCKKKKK!!!!! at the top of my lungs for miles and miles.
The state of mind that this experience put me in probably goes a long way towards explaining how it is that I drove along 28, once I finally got to it and managed to get around the dump trucks, and totally missed the exit to 50 that I wanted to take.
I had gone pretty far past it before the thought occurred to me that I should have hit the exit to 50 by now. Once I got past the exit for 66, I became certain that I’d missed it.
Honestly, though, I still don’t see how. I mean, nowhere along the line did I notice the multiple signs informing me that I was coming up on 50. I’m beginning to suspect that they were taken down, because I should have seen one of them.
Still, I got to the theater well in advance of the movie, which was actually my plan, as I’d intended to have lunch at the Potbelly’s near the theater before meeting up with Scott.
That plan went out the window once I stepped inside, though, as the line for ordering was the longest line I’ve seen since I stood in line to get my books signed by Neil Gaiman.
I’m talking 4th of July in DC line for the porta-pottty long.
So, since there was no line at Ben & Jerry’s, I decided that an ice cream cone would make a suitable lunch.
After the movie Scott met up with Stacy and the girls, who had hung around while we were at the movie, so that they could all go to see Cars.
Stacy invited me to join them, but I didn’t feel up to sitting through two movies in a row.
My drive home was considerably less irritating than the drive there, though given that I took the Greenway home and paid $3.20 to do so it pretty much had to be.

Great Moments In Television Department:
On last night’s Colbert Report, Stephen interviewed U.S. Representative Lynn S. Westmoreland of Georgia’s 8th District for the show’s “Better Know A District” segment.
Stephen pointed out that Westmoreland has never introduced a bill to the House, but that he co-sponsored one requiring that The Ten Commandments be displayed in the House and the Senate.
Stephen, in character, agreed that this was a good idea, saying that he couldn’t think of a better place to display them than a public building, and asked, “Can you? Can you think of a better place to display them?”
Westmoreland said that he could not think of a more appropriate building in which to display The Ten Commandments.
However, while that was entertaining and incisively satirical, that was not the best part.
The best part was when Stephen asked the Congressman, who had just finished talking about how everyone should be mindful of the Ten Commandments at all times, to list them.
All ten of them.
The look of sheer panic on the Congressman’s face at that moment is one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen on television.
(He couldn’t list them. He said, “Don’t murder. Don’t lie. Don’t steal. Umm…I can’t name them all.”)
That this followed on the heels of a Daily Show that featured footage of President Bush making fun of a reporter for wearing sunglasses on a sunless day, when said reporter suffers from a degenerative eye condition that makes him extremely sensitive to light, helped to push this moment over the top.
Admittedly the President had no way of knowing this, and he has since called the reporter to apologize to him personally, but even so, it serves as a faux pas funnier even than Scott telling a guy to get his autistic son to shut the hell up (I can't link directly to his MySpace Blog, so go to his page and check the blog out) on his flight home last week.

The area around the theater that I went to today is this sort of gentrified “plaza” with all kinds of little shops and restaurants, a water fountain, and some upscale residences.
Because school is out, the place was lousy with teenagers.
While I’m certain that I’ve never heard more gratuitous use of the word “like” in my life, it wasn’t their grammar, but rather their posture that seemed most salient.
As I watched them slouching and leaning, I couldn’t help but think that given that the only thing teenagers are good for is standing around doing nothing, it seems like they should be better at it.
I mean, when all you do is stand around, the least you could do is stand up straight.
Just a thought.
In fairness to teenagers everywhere, I’m sure they’ll all grow up to be useful, contributing members of society someday, but for the next few months I’d mostly like them to contribute by staying the hell out of my way…
Oh, and for those of you wondering how/why I ever listened to A Prairie Home Companion, the reason is that my dad listened to it. I never actively sought it out, but I never minded on those occasions (in the car, or at home, as I usually was, on a Saturday night, etc.) on which I was exposed to it. My dad still listens to the show, which makes it sort of surprising that he as no interest in seeing the movie, though he pretty much just doesn’t like going to the movies, period. It’s irrelevant anyway, as it’s not showing at any theaters back home.
I also had a teacher, in my formative years, who was a big fan of the show, and so his endorsement of it (I looked up to him a great deal) made me that much more inclined to give it a chance.
In any case, that will do it for this entry. I hope you all have exciting and interesting weekends while I’m sitting at work struggling to stay awake.