During the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year at college I worked at Watertown, USA. Late on Saturday nights as the park was approaching closing time, someone would volunteer to drive to the nearest liquor store and grab a box full of bottles. We would bury them in the ice machines, slip the occasional sip, and by the time we closed the gates and drove away, we were all three sheets to the wind1. I worked the “canteen”, earning my tan from a massive burger machine with flames shooting out the ceiling during the lunch and dinner rushes, and I had a crush on the hottest little lifeguard with big brown eyes and the kind of mechanically straight hair you could only find in the 80’s. One night, high on Boone’s Farm, I told her I loved her and she gave me the “your sweet, but creepy” look. When she ran away at the end of the summer2 with a wanna-be biker, I was ready to move on.
The Wackness may be set in 1994, but it touched a place in my head that reminded me of that summer, and several other times in my life where I was in love with a girl who would just give me the time of day, but nothing more. (It, also, reminded me of a year or so of my life ¡ when I was invincible ¡, smoking inappropriate things at inappropriate times without a care in the world.) Josh Peck (formerly of Nickelodeon’s “Drake and Josh”) makes a clear break from his family-themed roots, playing new high school graduate pot dealer, Luke Shapiro, in NYC who trades some of his stash for counseling sessions with Ben Kingsley’s psychiatrist character, Dr Squires…who is, also, the father — step father — of Olivia Thirlby’s Stephanie, the girl that Shapiro is in love with. Everyone is performing at Oscar levels here, including all-too-brief cameos from the lovely Jane Adams, and excepting an all-too-annoying cameo from Mary-Kate Olsen. It is especially nice to see Thirlby step out of Ellen Page’s (va)ginormous shadow, achingly portraying the enigma that is blossoming young women. The story is beautifully, slowly paced (as any story should be when they smoke as much as Shapiro and Squires do) with several brief moments of hilarity (see previous parenthetical statement). I am betting that Sony Pictures holds onto this Sundance-buffed gem until closer to Oscar Season in hopes of snagging the annual Little Miss Sunshine media frenzy. Try not to forget about it, because it is worth seeing.
Oh!, and the soundtrack is a great mix-tape of 1994 rap cornerstones from the Shapiro character with classic rock from the Squires character. Oh, baby !you!….you got what I nee-eed…
1 Keep in mind: this was the late ’80s. 18 year olds could buy alcohol in Louisiana, and it was ¡ ok to drive drunk ¡ .
2 That girl — how sad is it I don’t remember her name — had an older brother who really was a biker, and he called and threatened me because he found my number pitifully written down on a scrap of paper but never called. There was something twisted going on that Dr. Phil and Jerry Springer would’ve made money from, but when I left for college I decided to let that story go.
3 There is no footnote 3, btw. I’m just learning how to use them…inappropriately…so I thought I’d add another one.
Yeah, I’m one of those Austinites who came here ¡ all the way back in 1992 ¡ and I was sick of “SouthBy” before it even started last week. You wouldn’t believe how many skinny boys in pencil jeans with 80’s hairdos were wandering around downtown yesterday evening looking so much cooler than me. Still, if you are doing that kind of thing this weekend I am obliged to recommend some shows that friends are involved in that are noteworthy.
The kid who taught me how to beat1 Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out is all grown up and playing “four-string guitar” for Chris Denny who is in the Billboard showcase tonight. Denny is, also, on the new cover of Billboard magazine which some might say is a pretty big deal. If you go to the showcase, throw your panties or boxers at this guy on the right.
Wednesday night I attended a screening hosted by Chicken Ranch Records — run by my college radio buddy, Mike Dickinson — of J.D. Wilkes’s premiere film Seven Signs. It’s a top notch indie doc that is a perfect parallel to the eclectic kind of neo-anything-revival bands that Mike likes to sign. His regular showcases have already happened, but you can still catch his day party at Bull McCabes tomorrow from 1-5pm.
1 This lesson on the original 8-bit NES set the stage for learning patterns in a way that I previously had never seen/grasped in video games. If not for the young Chris Atwood, I would never have completed future Zelda, Mario and other games…much to my wife’s chagrin.