Brad's Week in Dork! (6/23/13-6/29/13)

Skipped a Week in Dork for a Family Getaway to the OBX (only read a chunk of the Lone Wolf & Cub manga, and binged some Law & Order SVU when The Wife was sick for a day), but dove right back into the thick of it with some serious Movie House consumption.  I went back for seconds on both This is The End & Man of Steel, and although I won't give you double reviews here I can say that I enjoyed Superman much more the second time around; once I got past a lot of my comic book baggage I was able to enjoy the computer punching.  This Is The End, however, is still my film of the Summer.

I can hardly believe it, but I only read one single issue comic this week - Age of Ultron #10.  I've been up & down on this Marvel Event, and I'm sad to report that the final prognosis is negative.  Not the worst crossover Marvel's attempted (ugh, Fear Itself), but the time travel hijinks were obvious and ultimately boring.  As with all things Marvel, the story is all about what's coming next, and not the story you have in front of you.  As fascinating as all the Neil Gaiman/Todd McFarlane Angela mumbo jumbo is, I really do not care about this character's introduction into the Marvel Universe.  Who knows, maybe Bendis & Gaiman can do something great with her in Guardians of the Galaxy, but she's certainly not the O...M...G...moment you want to climax Age of Ultron.

Also this week, Alamo Drafthouse hosted their Silence of the Lambs Feast, which paired the classic chiller with actual Fava Beans & Chianti.  An expensive treat gifted to me by my lovely bride of four years.  Sadly, her job got in the way, and she could not attend the anniversary dinner.  So my co-dork Matt scored the date night, and we had an absolute blast chugging down glass of wine after glass of wine.  Not to mention that the Buffalo Bill Skinless Chicken Wings were amazing!  Only in America folks, "U-S-A!  U-S-A!  U-S-A!"

The other treats this week came from Scorsese & Spielberg.  Rewatched Jaws in celebration of its 36th birthday, and finally witnessed his first film Duel as a remembrance of Richard Matheson.  I entered a new stage in Scorsese's career with The Color Of Money, a film rightfully neglected in his cannon, but also one containing some of his finest sweeping camera moves.  And finally, this Summer's big screen entries (World War Z & White House Down) were just a couple of turds.  No shock there.  Anyway, on to the reviews....

Jaws:  I watch this one at least once a year.  Still ranks as my fifth favorite film of all time.  No question.  I tend to direct most of my love towards Robert Shaw's Quint, and his epic USS Indianapolis storytelling, but Roy Scheider is the one who really makes this movie work....as well as Spielberg's confidence to let the screenplay breathe before plunging him into the oceanic serial killer finale.  Scheider just embodies good guy morality.  He perfectly sells his fear of the water.  We're given an hour of beach cringing, ferry boat anxiety, and autopsy horror before the Chief chokes down his fear and gets on the boat.  The guy does right in the face of community conspiracy as well as the cavernous maw of the beast.  He is everything I would want to be in the situation.  Hero Dad.  The craft and thrills are amazing, but they're only successful due to the heart placed in the characters by Benchley, Gottlieb, Spielberg, and the actors.  Can you imagine a tentpole movie these days spending so much time to establish love between characters?  It's rare now to get anything but bullet point emotions in Blockbusters, and Jaws is one reason film fanatics look back so fondly at the cinema of the 1970s, and rejoice in bashing bloated non-entities like Michael Bay's Transformers...despite the knowledge that Bruce the Shark birthed these B-Movie at A-Budget monstrosities.

The Color of Money:  This is a painfully mediocre movie.  I can't say I was bored during any particular part, but I was certainly left uninspired as the credits rolled.  What's evident is that Scorsese is perfecting his camera theatrics, and that Paul Newman commands the screen whenever he's projected upon it.  Young Tom Cruise though?  His pool hall wiz kid routine grates the nerves like nails on a chalkboard, which is an essential aspect to this teacher/student story, but the film fails to reach beyond genre cliches.  I've never seen The Hustler, so I could be missing essential aspects to this sequel, but at this point in my Scorsese-A-Thon I'd rank The Color of Money at the very bottom of his filmography.  It seems like a financial stepping stone to his long-desired The Last Temptation of Christ.  Whatever you gotta do, I guess.

World War Z:  Everything Jaws does right, World War Z does wrong.  The Hero Dad here is Brad Pitt, a supposed everyman who gave up the high stakes stress as a UN Investigator to play Mr. Mom.  When the world goes to the walkers, the remaining bits of the US Government swoop to his rescue, choppering his family to a floating fortress in the Atlantic Ocean.  Why does the US of A need Pitt?  Cuz only he could babysit a think tank geek across the globe, and discover the zombie plague's point of origin.  Really?  Ok, whatever.  It doesn't matter anyway since the brainiac lasts three seconds on screen, and the rest of the film chases Pitt across the world as he hits one dead end after the other.  I suppose the emotion of this film is meant to be found in the cellular conversations with Pitt's weepy wife, but the screenplay only gives them seconds to be teary before the next CGI swamp blobs the frame.  Much has been made of the troubled production, the chop-shopped screenplay, and the last minute reshoots.  Maybe if Pitt's team had more confidence in Max Brook's source material then we could have been blessed with a scary Ken Burns styled mockumentary instead of this PG-13 limp noodle.

Wrong:  "I looooooove pets."  Quentin Dupieux's Rubber followup is another art house student film done right.  With the help of William Fichtner's mysterious Master Chang, unemployed sadsack Jack Plotnick attempts to relocate his dog.  Did he simply run away, or was he dognapped?  There's some other kooky business involving Eric Judor's gardner & Alexis Dziena's pizza slut, but the main focus of the film is solving the riddle of the pooch.  Well, talking about focus when discussing a Quentin Dupieux film is problematic if not downright pointless.  A bunch of weird shit happens.  You're either into it or you're not.  I enjoyed Rubber more as it was easier to define as a deconstruction of the horror genre.  Wrong is just...weird.  I'm either not smart enough or stoned enough to discover its essence.  I love Fichtner & Plotnick.  I could watch these two bumble through an Oscar Meyer commercial.  And I'll certainly be there for Dupieux's next film.

Age of Ultron #10:  The first five Bryan Hitch issues of this comic were a beautifully broad look at the Marvel Universe laid to waist.  Then you get Wolverine's time travel band-aid.  Ultron leaves the story, and a new batch of whacky chaos occurs.  Issue 10 finally brings us back to Ultron and it's the mini-battle we saw during Free Comic Book Day a couple years back.  And then we get a bunch of blather about the space time continuum.  Just groan.  This series certainly had its moments (again, those first five issues), and I'm gonna give it another go in a singular sitdown reading, but I am left yet again with a tepid Marvel Event.

Duel:  A solid little flick that certainly shows the makings of a master filmmaker.  Steven Spielberg's Duel is a simplistically torturous thriller.  Dennis Weaver's salesman zigged when he should have zagged, and in one throwaway instant brings upon the ultimate epic of road rage.  Spielberg succeeds in holding our attention, no mean feet considering the film never leaves one stretch of highway.  Weaver is a disgusting mess of twitches and screeches, and half the time I wasn't sure if I wanted him to knock the beast off the cliff or get squished into road pizza.  I can't rank Duel as one of my favorite Spielberg courses, but it's certainly indicative of the primal power the maestro contained in the 70s & early 80s.

The Silence of the Lambs:  "He's some kinda vampire?"  Before Anthony Hopkins Freddy Kurgered the Hannibal Lector character into absurdity, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs terrified audiences with its masterful true crime fetishizing.  This grisly procedural might have been spun from the real life horrors of Ted Bundy & Jeffery Dahmer, but by embracing the theatricality of Spaghetti Western closeups and scenery chewing performances, Demme's film never feels exploitative.  In fact, Hopkins' Lecter feels more at home with Dracula & The Wolf Man than his real life counterparts.  Jodi Foster excels as well as the southern sleuth battling daddy issues while navigating the grotesque.  She's prim, proper, troubled, and badass.  Her conversations with The Cannibal are as suspenseful as any of the bloodshed, and her climactic duel with Buffalo Bill is the cherry on top of this hideous feast.

White House Down:  Why do I keep showing up to Roland Emmerich movies?  Independence Day, Godzilla, The Patriot, The Day After Tomorrow, 10,000 BC, 2012.  The man makes one dreadful film after another.  I've never been a fan, but I keep showing up.  Is it time to cry NO MORE?  I think so....but then I'll see the trailer for ID4Ever; Channing Tatum will be punching a grizzly bear through the cockpit of a spaceship, and I'll get all excited for craptacular filmmaking and toss my cash in Emmerich's lap.  There's one of me born every minute.  White House Down attempts to recall your nostalgia for Die Hardy action films of yesterday, draping Tatum in a McClane wifebeater and buddying him up with President Air Jordans.  Unfortunately, the DC disaster show is a crappy collection of blurry CG, the dialog an abomination of wisecracks, and the homeland threat an embarrassing peek into James Woods' mortgage planning.  Max Renn's gotta eat!  I like silly.  I like dumb.  But ultimately White House Down is just a bore.  I don't like that.

--Brad

Good Bye, Richard Matheson...

Like a lot of genre fanboys my age, I first encountered the work of Richard Matheson through the citations of Stephen King.  And once you read I Am Legend it's impossible to digest books like 'Salem's Lot without recognizing the foundation laid by the true master of suburban terror.  However, Richard Matheson is not some dusty "Father of Modern Horror" best left acknowledged rather than consumed.  Last night, after getting word via Twitter that he had passed at the age of 87, I immediately went to the local bookshop to snatch a copy of his short fiction.  As I munched over a fast food dinner I read the terse tension of "Duel."  It's a terrific bit of boogyman writing - a simple act from a careless mind leads to a torturous assault on the everyman.  Matheson took us out of the far off, exotic hoodoo and brought the beasts to our doorstep - Stephen King ran with it, but even he couldn't muster the power and fear of the all-time-great apocalypse novel.  The Stand struggles to match the weight and intensity of what Matheson did in just 160 pages.

Published in 1954, I Am Legend is the story of The Last Man on Earth, Robert Neville.  Each day he raids the shops & homes of Los Angeles researching what caused the end of man, and possibly what could save it.  At night he retreats to his fortified bunker as the rest of humanity has been transformed into vampiric scavengers.  These are not the vein sadsack Draculas of Bram Stoker or Anne Rice.  These are beasts.  Monsters.  Real horrors that taunt him from the streets, aching to snap their fangs into his neck and complete the consumption of the earth.  I Am Legend is a dystopian downer with bursts of terrorizing siege action, and it climaxes with a fantastic Twilight Zoney philosophical twist that's all in the title.  It's astonishing how effective it is with its scares, and walloping with its heartbreak - all under 200 pages, something doorstop bestsellers often fail to grasp.  And, yeah,  I Am Legend is the perfect book for the big screen...

The book has been adapted three times already, but they keep screwing it up!!!!  God Damn Hollywood, how can you possibly be this inept when the source material is so simplistically brilliant?!?!  In 1964, Vincent Price certainly grasped the doom & gloom of being The Last Man on Earth, but his Dr. Morgan stumbles around a shanty set, beating upon faceless vampires without ever scratching the mythic dread of the conclusion.  1971's The Omega Man barely resembles the source material, but Charlton Heston's turtle neck sex machine is sooo dang charming even when he's swimming the deep end of crazy town.  The Omega Man is a rather striking bit of disco cheese that elevates itself into earnest exploitation through performance and audacity.  And easily my favorite of the three adaptations.  Will Smith's 2007 extravaganza gets the title right, but squanders it all in the last act.  For most of the film I was flabbergasted by its faithfulness to the novel, and Smith's relationship with the dog is one of the sweetest & saddest representations of man's best friend I've encountered in cinema.  The fact that they ignore the genius of the novel's climax shows that the producers either didn't have the balls to follow through or were utterly dense to its impact.  We finally get to hear "I Am Legend" uttered on the big screen and it's laughable.  Do I dare ask for a fourth adaptation?  Give it ten years.  I sometimes have fantasies of a low budget (what's that $50,000,000 these days) version directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt.  Can't you just see a fifty year old Pitt laying the undead to waste?!?!  Forget Word War Z sir, this is where you should be exploring the human condition through the filter of genre.

Of course, the general consensus is that if you're looking for the great I Am Legend cinematic experience than you look towards George Romero's Night of the Living Dead.  For a low budget filmmaker with just enough jingle jangle in his pocket, it's easy to see the appeal of I Am Legend as the base for a screenplay.  He had access to a house and a group of wannabe actors.  A shelter from an outside force.  A siege film.  Plague.  Damn scary.  The modern zombie certainly owes more to Matheson's vampires than the haitian undead seen on screen before 1968.  We currently live in a walking dead world where every third horror film seems to involve a brain eater, and it's impossible to imagine the current state of the genre (for better or worse) without Romero's zombies, and in turn without Richard Matheson.

As you're growing up geek, even if you skip past Stephen King, George Romero, & I Am Legend, you're eventually going to stumble upon Rod Serling's Twilight Zone.  Richard Matheson wrote 16 episodes of the anthology series, most of which spawned from his own short stories.  His most famous episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is a staple in this household, and we watch it every year around Shat Attack.  William Shatner's recovering madman boards a plane and comes face-to-face with a furry gremlin.  It's dated, goofy, melodramatic, and George Miller's big screen version is certainly more successful.  But Shatner sells the hell outta his psychosis and it's rather painful to witness the rejection from his spouse - an element missing from Lithgow's nightmare.  Other Matheson highlights from the series are Lee Marvin's "Steel" (also the basis for Hugh Jackman's Real Steel), Agnes Moorehead's teeny tiny "Invaders," the time traveling "Last Flight," and that other Shatner tale "Nick of Time."

Matheson wrote one Star Trek episode, "The Enemy Within."  I don't see it get a lot love these days on the internet (where all geek matters are settled, right?), but as a Shatner obsessive it is essential viewing.  A transporter accident splits Captain James T Kirk into two personalities.  One good, honorable, and a little meek.  The other one bad, alcoholic, rapey, and filled with screams.  The good Captain Kirk tries to coax the bad Captain Kirk back into the transporter room, but in the end it comes down to some nasty Kirk on Kirk violence.  It might not be a significant moment in genre television - it's certainly no Twilight Zone - but I couldn't write this post without giving it a little love.

A couple of years ago, I read a great interview with Richard Matheson in the pages of Fangoria.  In it he bemoaned the various adaptations of his work (the I Am Legends, Richard Kelly's underrated The Box, A Stir of Echoes), but when the interviewer reminded Matheson of his own liberal adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe for Roger Corman, the novelist did some serious backpedaling.  I was a little bummed.  Not just because Matheson seemed to have disdain for what others had done to his work (I suppose that's only natural), but mostly he seemed to have little enthusiasm for those colorful Vincent Price adventures.  Sure, they're working on the flimsiest of skeletons, but The House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, & The Raven are whole heaps of fun and some of the most joyful work to come from Vincent Price.  Well...in Usher, Price is at his most dour, but The Raven is an absolute lark with its Boris Karloff wizard battle and animal transformation hijinks.  They might not have been Matheson's proudest moments or the most influential, but they certainly helped Roger Corman take claim of his B Movie Empire.  It's possible that if The House of Usher had bombed then Corman would have faded into obscurity and the cinematic landscape would be a far blander arena.  No Matheson = No Corman = No Scorsese, Coppola, Demme, Dante, etc.  Ok, that's extreme and unreasonable...maybe...

Finally, I can't talk about Richard Matheson without mentioning the loony monstrosity of Jaws 3D.  It has to be one of the clumsiest and lamest sequels ever crafted, and at least some of it came for the pen of Matheson (at least two other writers worked on the script).  I've enjoyed the film since I was a wee lad; possibly only a 4 year old could find the merits of this dreck, and I'm sure most of my youthful glee came from the Sea World setting.  Having recently partaken in a Fish & Chips Alamo Drafthouse screening, I am still a firm believer in its horridness but I can't shake the giddiness of long ago.  And I can't help but take sick glee from the fact that Matheson contributed to the bastardization of Steven Spielberg's first blockbuster after having jumpstarted Spielberg's career with the television movie Duel.  It's a small world, and Hollywood is even smaller and delightfully incestuous.

This has all just been a long winded way of thanking Richard Matheson.  His work has been with me for nearly 20 years, and I will continue to revisit his worlds for the rest of my life.  And I look forward to experiencing the future stories of those standing on his shoulders.  The next Kings, Romeros, Spielbergs. 

--Brad

Brad's Week In Dork! (10/30-11/5)

A fairly crazy Week In Dork.  Managed to get Halloween off work and cranked out a fairly epic run of horror movie watching which climaxed at the AFI Silver theater with a trilogy of Vincent Price flicks (The Raven, The Tingler, & The Masque of the Red Death).  The AFI pulled out all the stops for The Tingler with a brilliant acid trip light show, a skeleton screaming across the audience, and The Tingler actually attacking one trained professional.  Next to seeing Batman Begins on IMAX with a surprised Philadelphia Comic Con crowd two weeks before the theatrical release, this was the absolute highlight in my theater going experience.

And then the week concluded with my co-dork's 12th Annual Hest Fest, a celebration of all things Charlton Heston.  My first Hest Fest was nearly five years ago and it inspired my own Shat Attack parties.  Last year I only managed to attend half of Hest Fest and I was not going to let that happen this year.  Especially when it was being held at my place and would contain both Ben Hur and The Ten Commandments back to back--it took me 32 years to build the stamina to withstand those monstrous runtimes.

MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

Shocker:  A craptacular cheesefest, Shocker wanted soooooo bad to be the start of a new franchise but Mitch Pileggi's limping electric serial killer never had a chance. As the film stretches to its climax with dreamscaper Peter Berg battling the villain through tv newscasts and Leave It To Beaver reruns this audience member is left scratching his head...who thought this was cool? There's an MTV wannabe vibe punctuated with strategically purchased Alice Cooper & Megadeth jams giving the proceedings an ultra un-hip nature. Goofy, is the word...but you gotta heart Pileggi.

The Black Sleep:  The Black Sleep crams in Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Bela Lugosi, and Tor Johnson but this is really just a Herbert Rudley's picture. Wrongfully accused of murder, Rudley survives execution thanks to mad doctor Rathbone's Black Sleep formula. Recruited into body snatching and barbaric surgery, Rudley must choose between evil science and Patricia Blake's raven locks. Solid 50s horror with some killer climactic makeup effects, and it's definitely a treat to see all those icons on one screen, but the viewer is obviously left craving more.

Fantastic Mr. Fox:  In a lot of ways, all of Wes Anderson's previous films have been building to The Fantastic Mr. Fox. It's a rollicking family adventure told through beautiful stop-motion animation that perfectly captures Anderson's deliciously artificial style. And Gosh! It's hard to pick a favorite character. George Clooney's super cool, arrogant Mr. Fox? Eric Anderson's karate natural nephew Kristofferson? Michael Gambon's psychotic, camper trashing Bean? Willem Dafoe's West Side Story switchblading Rat? There are so many fantastic characters, it's really hard to choose, but I'm gonna go with Jason Schwartzman's frustrated and desperate son Ash. He's a brat and a bit of a jerk (just like Dad), but you root for him. He's the cuss at the end you're crossing your fingers for, hoping he can prove himself and get that bandit hat. Makes me feel warm all over.

Too Fat For 40:  Over the course of several nights I nodded off to bed watching this on Netflix Instant.  When I was young, I adored Kevin Smith.  I still enjoy Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, and even Clerks II.  But I'm starting to get bored with Mr. Smith.  And his latest Q&A tour movie just plods about with the pot and poop humor.  I got a chuckle or two but that's about it.

The Raven:  An extremely enjoyable, fantasy horror comedy that really has nothing whatsoever to do with Edgar Allan Poe's classic poem.  Vincent Price plays a widowed sorcerer forced to team up with transformed Raven Peter Lorre and wet-behind-the-ears Jack Nicholson against evil wizard Boris Karloff.  Half the joy comes from seeing these genre powerhouses do battle against each other, but The Raven is also loaded with plenty of low budget Roger Corman charm.  Fun!

The Tingler:  "Suicide? You mean murder." Every time you experience absolute terror a slug like insect called The Tingler manifests around your spine, and unless you scream your lungs blue you will die of fright. This silly, gimmicky fright flick is one of Vincent Price's best. He has always been a master of concocting sympathy while doing the most dastardly of deeds and his demented pathologist might be the jewel in his lecherous crown. Just a great creeper feature.

The Masque of the Red Death:  Vincent Price is pure evil as the Satanist prince who lords over a dying town plagued by The Red Death only to hold orgies of gluttony and greed. No sympathy for Price here, just mustache twirling villainy! Hazel Court and Patrick Magee do their best to match Price's wretched worship, and Jane Asher swoons properly as the damsel in distress but we're all here for the big bad. And Roger Corman & Nicolas Roeg's trippy sets/lighting.

Ben Hur:  At 222 minutes, Ben Hur is one long damn movie. And yeah, I could have easily cut out the last 30-40 minutes, basically everything after the epic chariot race that properly climaxes the film. Charlton Heston desplays the apporpriate gravitas for the role of the Jew prince betrayed to a life of slavery by his Roman childhood friend. Favorite parts of the film involve Jack Hawkins' fantastic supporting turn as the fatherly fair Roman warrior of the sea that returns Ben Hur to the favor of the people.

Dark City:  "Everybody Gets Mad Sometimes." A great cast a jerkwads (Charlton Heston, Jack Webb, Henry Morgan, and Ed Begley Sr fix a poker game to rob welp Arthur Winant of all his dough. As with most cinematic poker scams, things do not go according to plan and a whole lotta death follows. Unfortunately, despite the great cast and the set-up, Dark City is exceptionally average... oxymoron? No, it's amazing at how dull this film truly is! I wanted to love it so badly, but it's soooooooooo meh.

The Ten Commandments:  Okay, so maybe its a sign of my cinematic stamina but I could not handle the nearly four hour run time of this epically beautiful and infamous Cecil B Demille production. I really enjoyed everything pre-burning bush, but once Heston grew his God beard and led the Exodus...I kinda checked out mentally. Moses is a badass and he really knew how to handle his turn-on-a-dime Marvel crowds, but this movie is just too darn long.

The Crucifer of Blood:  Horrible Shrew: "What Should I Do Now?" Heston Holmes: "Think and Die." Charlton Heston is a strange, oddball choice to play Sherlock Holmes but there is a solid made-for-cable mystery movie here involving a cursed group of military officers, a jumpy pygmy, and at least one horrible shrew. The Crucifer of Blood is definitely not going down as one of the great films of the great detective but it's an amusing two hours.

The Omega Man:  A horrible adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel (I Am Legend), but still an extremely entertaining post-apocalyptic film in which Charlton Heston must machine gun his way through hooded, plague carriers in a desolate Los Angeles. He takes comfort in booze, talking to himself, an endless loop of the theatrical Woodstock, and fellow survivor's Rosalind Cash's pleasant, if fleeting PG nudity. The Omega Man is a hoot, and an essential entry in Heston Cinema.

Touch of Evil:  "I'm not a cop anymore! I'm a husband!" After an explosive opening, Mexican police officer Charlton Heston (just get over the face paint, okay) attempts to contain his dignity as he battles the brutally, disgusting American copper Orson Welles. Welles' direction is as stunning as his vile portrayal of the corrupt monster--King Kong ain't got nothing on him. And Janet Leigh is tough as nails when she's not being pumped full of marijuana and sexually assulted. Great, classic cinema.

Treasure Island:  This TNT pairing of Charlton Heston and his director son Fraser C Heston weilds an incredibly entertaining adaptation of the classic Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Christian Bale as the young Jim Hawkens thrust into the world of mutiny and pirates in a disastrous quest for buried booty. Fun small roles from Oliver Reed, Christopher Lee, Pete Postlethwaite, and Julian Glover guarantee a good night in at the movies.

Major Dundee:  Union Prison warden Amos Dundee (the badass in a neckerchief Charlton Heston), collects his best troops as well as his best Southern Trash Confederate Prisoners (led by scene stealer Richard Harris) to go across the Mexican border to hunt down a bunch of bloody Apache savages. Along the way he rescues a village, cheats on a smoking hot German lady (seriously, Senta Berger), and pisses off the entire French army. The extended cut of Major Dundee is a fine film that shows the promise that director Sam Peckinpah delivers on in uber classics The Wild Bunch and Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. And it's a man's movie. Heston, Harris, James Coburn, LQ Jones, Ben Johnson, RG Armstrong, and Warren Oates.

And there you have it.  A lot of movies.  But not a whole lot much else.

--Brad