You may recall my failed attempts last week at convincing my kids to see “Mr. Bean’s Holiday.” Sixteen-year-old Lex was always up for it, but his two younger siblings were adamantly opposed because, quote, “Mr. Bean is stupid.” (This led me to a theory that Mr. Bean is uncool, and my kids want to be cool, at least until they become teenagers when, evidently, it’s okay to self-identify as a nerd even when one has actually become cool.) Over the course of the week my nine-year-old daughter weakened and this morning for some reason my five-year-old son relented, and we were off to see “Mr. Bean’s Holiday.”

It was terrific fun.

Surely no one reading this needs any further discourse on Rowan Atkinson’s comedic skills. But what became evident throughout the movie was the joy in it — the simple, childlike pleasure in being foolish. One of the subplots concerns a boy of 10 or 12 whom Mr. Bean is trying to reunite with his parents in Cannes. Later, Bean and the boy wind up separated as well, and when we discover what the boy was up to sans Bean it turns out he was adopted by an Afro Cuban jazz band traveling between gigs, where the kid had the time of his life. And isn’t that really what so much of 10- or 12-year-old boyhood is about — adventure? Hijinx? I’m sure other movies, especially the American comedies, would have shown him in increasing peril; here, he’s off on a lark. Every bit of “Mr. Bean’s Holiday” was like that: silly, upbeat, and sunny. When the movie ended the audience applauded, and when we stepped out all three kids proclaimed their love for “Mr. Bean.” Outside, the world seemed brighter.

Not for most Americans, though, as The New York Times reports here. Perhaps there’s something wrong with you if like Mr. Bean or, well, goofy fun. Last week in one of my classes I shared my appreciation for Mr. Bean and one or two students snorted. “There goes your credibility,” one said. But I’m not seeking credibility from anyone else; I know what I like and I know why I like it and I’m capable of expressing it — and that makes me cool.

In the 1970’s, comics artist Neal Adams did a heroic thing: He personally committed himself to a campaign to cajole and embarrass DC Comics into doing something to help Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of “Superman.” While DC had made untold hundreds of millions of dollars with this character — in publishing, in lunch boxes and Halloween costumes and action figures, on TV and radio and seemingly everywhere else all around the globe — Siegel was eking out a living as a typist at $7,000 a year and Shuster was going blind and unable to work. While the “work for hire” agreement the two had signed in the 1940’s may have been the letter of the law, it sure didn’t feel like Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Adams’ very public campaign culminated shortly before the release of the first Christopher Reeve “Superman” movie, and thus succeeded in embarrassing DC into giving the two creators an annual “salary” of $35,000, and amount that has grown over the years and is now paid to their heirs.

Most of us probably thought that was the end of it.

But now, according to Portfolio magazine, Siegel’s widow (who was the inspiration for Lois Lane) has contracted Hollywood’s most hated lawyer to represent her in a battle to recover all rights to Superman — and evidently he’s had success with similar cases.

Here’s the story.

“Facts” are not always straightforward, as Talking Heads acknowledged in “Crosseyed and Painless”:

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don’t do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don’t stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape

Anyone who follows the news can sympathize, where most of us I’m sure would prefer “the facts” served straight, but where those of those who have been news practitioners know that inclusion of some facts and exclusion of others — whether for point of view or for story length — results in very different perspectives on the same story. (A phenomenon I blogged about here.)

If this subject interests you, you should consider joining us for a panel we’re putting together at USC entitled “Truth, Lies or Scam — Can you believe anything you read?” More information below. Hope to see you there.

Here’s a story I found delicious because the misuse of language is only slightly less entertaining than Yogi Berra. The story is headlined “Giuliani faces tough NRA crowd.”

To begin with, reading the story reveals that the “tough crowd” didn’t exactly pepper spray the candidate, or even ask difficult questions; rather, they were reduced to tepid applause and wondering if perhaps they might be able to some day bring themselves to support him even though he’s from New York and “hard” on guns. If Giuliani ever becomes president, he’d better be prepared to face far tougher crowds than this.

Here’s my favorite quote from the story:

“I think he is sincere; I just don’t know if he truly believes it down deep inside,” said Thomas Crum, a retired trucking executive from Scottsdale, Ariz. “I have a little difference with him just beginning to realize what his position really is.”

Mr. Crum, here is what “sincere” means: “free of deceit, hypocrisy, or falseness; earnest.” So if you think he is sincere, then you should know he truly believes it down deep inside. If somehow you think he is sincere but don’t know if he truly believes it, then you are having thoughts that are disconnected from knowledge — not surprising given the environment you found yourself in during Giuliani’s speech. This may be a medical condition called psychosis, one you should have checked out.

Someone else at the NRA event struggled with sincerity’s close kin, truthfulness:

Sitting next to Bell at lunch Friday, Joe Rogers was keeping a scorecard for each of the presidential candidates on the conference’s brochure. While some speakers had check marks, Giuliani was the only one with a zero next to his name. The Wilmington, N.C. salesman said even Democratic presidential candidate and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson scored better during his taped remarks.

“I don’t think there’s anything he could have said and been truthful about to win over the crowd,” Rogers said of Giuliani. “To his credit, he spoke the truth.”

From this, I take it that Mr. Rogers is saying Giuliani could have won some of the crowd over had he chosen to lie, something some of the crowd would have welcomed (although not Rogers himself); most of the crowd awards no credit for truth. Given the track record of the GOP from Reagan to present, I believe the crowd is going to be delighted with what it’s getting. And that Giuliani would be better off drinking that particular flavor of Kool-Aid now so he can get used to it for the long months to come.

Just tried again and failed to elicit any enthusiasm in my kids for seeing “Mr. Bean’s Holiday” today.

My 5-year-old remained defiant: “I’m not seeing Mr. Bean,” he said, adding this time for my clarification, “It’s stupid.” My daughter sank deeper into the couch in a pronounced cringe, a response very much like the family dog’s when I raise my voice.

Here I thought Mr. Bean was funny. Evidently he’s deeply disturbing.

While I’m on the topic of the cartoons of Ruben Bolling, which I usually enjoy, here’s one where he misses by a mile. For the Village Voice he recently did this strip, which purports to be “Toy Story 3,” but written by Cormac McCarthy. While Bolling does get McCarthy right a couple of times, as with Woody’s line “I aim to,” for the most part he’s clueless about what distinguishes McCarthy. The abundant presence of commas is an immediate tipoff. McCarthy largely ellides them. Because he doesn’t use them he must find other ways to write sentences for clarity and it is this which gives him his rhythm. (Which I’ve just attempted to emulate, with limited success.) It is the spareness of the writing, the lack of reflection in narration, the surgical skill in selecting precisely the right word, the narrative drive unblocked by commas, and the wide-open spaces he uses for setting that make McCarthy’s writing seem existentialist. It’s not directly about God. Either Bolling doesn’t know anything about McCarthy (perhaps because he hasn’t read him), or in this case he’s got poor judgment.

(If you can’t see the strip below, click here.)

Good friend and longtime finder of cool things in pop culture Rich Roesberg tells me I have to read this strip. It seems to concatenate several of my interests: comic books, literary revisionism, and that pesky God fella.

Now you can read it, too.

I don’t know what my kids have against Mr. Bean, but it’s got to stop.

Tomorrow I want to take the kids to the movies. Ordinarily we do something outside on Sundays: miniature golf, hiking, or shuttling comic books from storage locations in the garage to storage locations in my home office. But the past two days we’ve had rains of Biblical proportions, weather far too inclement for the safe transport of comic books. Hence, the movies.

On all 30 screens in Burbank, there is a grand total of one family friendly movie. Luckily for me, it’s “Mr. Bean’s Holiday.” Imagine my delight! To me, Mr. Bean is the cure for whatever ails you. Rowan Atkinson is a gifted clown who with this character has staked out his own territory somewhere between Stan Laurel, Harry Langdon, and Jacques Tati. So I showed the trailer to my two younger kids, a boy aged 5 and and a girl of 9, in an effort to whip up excitement about tomorrow morning’s excursion. Here it is:

My little boy grew belligerent and defiant, swearing that he would not be seeing Mr. Bean and I couldn’t make him. My daughter grew tearful at the prospect, then started to shake with convulsive crying. The last time I saw these same reactions from them was when I told them zombies were outside.

This reaction mystifies me. We enjoy Laurel & Hardy, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton together; are those acts more preferable because they’re in black and white (and sometimes silent)? Is Mr. Bean too threatening in some way? Or is he so utterly uncool that the kids think that by suggesting this movie I’m talking down to them?

This reminds me of my experience seeing the wonderful Jerry Lewis movie “Hardly Working” in 1981; when I told friends and co-workers how insanely funny it was, they just shook their heads and walked away. The difference here is that I hold all the keys — to the house, to the cars, to things like food and allowance. If I wanted, I could just stuff them into the car tomorrow and take them to see this movie no matter their wishes, except for two things:

1. they’d probably ruin my enjoyment of the movie; and
2. I can’t get out of my head my daughter’s final words, said in a small sad voice before I packed both her and her little brother off to bed: “Please… don’t make us see Mr. Bean….”

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Now playing: Bryan Ferry – What Goes On
via FoxyTunes

Three unrelated stories about our justice system, all of them updated today, none of them saying anything good about our system.

1. OJ Simpson, still apparently seeking the true culprit behind his wife’s murder, has made bail and is now out searching for other trouble to get into in his never-ending experiment to prove that he can, indeed, get away with anything;

2. The jury in the Phil Spector trial is deadlocked 7-5. This leads me to think that at least 5 people truly do believe either that Lana Clarkson chose that particular night and moment — in the home of a famous millionaire producer she’d just met — to kill herself, or that there is some other way Phil Spector doesn’t deserve the to be found guilty as defined;

and 3. The drycleaners who got sued for $54 million for having misplaced a pair of pants , and who incurred $100,000 in legal bills, are going out of business.

So thankfully, the system has levied a harsh punishment on one of these culprits.

This morning on the way into my office I had a flash of inspiration about what I could pick up to eat at my desk for breakfast: one of those small fruit-salad snacks at McDonald’s. Anything larger and more cholesterol-laden in the morning tends to put my energy level flat on its back, but I figured that a small container of apples, grapes, yogurt, and walnuts would do nicely, so I stopped and bought one.

Now I’m eating it. And I shouldn’t be surprised to discover that they’ve found a way to McDonaldalize what are rather normal, mundane ingredients into something that tastes saturated with chemicals.

My first indication should have been the sell-by date. It’s four days from now. I’ve cut up apples in my kitchen that don’t last four minutes before browning. My tongue tells me that these apple slices have a thin coating of lacquer that prohibits germs, rot, and enjoyment. The grapes are similarly preserved. The yogurt is clumpy as well as crunchily sugarified, and the walnuts are dosed with the preservatives “TBHQ and/or BHT” (which is suspiciously similar to Bachman Turner Overdrive, which I never want to eat). It’s amazing what can be done to fuck up fruit, walnuts, and yogurt.