Some Folks, You Just Can’t Reach.

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After a bit of a vacation – my wife insists on calling it “time in lock-up” – I’ve been vexed about what to use as a subject. More political scandals have popped than potential fathers for Anna Nicole’s baby. In the ADHD world of American politics, the Senate and House have passed differing resolutions to ramp down the war in Iraq; apparently because they never traded business card last January and all the while, the Department of Justice is trying to get past its case of recto-cranial insertion. China continues to ban the crap out of me, firing me down a hole of teh internets obscurity…buried alive…buried alive…

KHAAAAAN!!

Instead, because it’s really starting to annoy me, I want to take a bite out of the meat-and-cheese-heads at danielcraigisnotbond.com.

That’s right Jim, that’s my beef. Only here will you find hard-hitting commentary on a story that ran its course about a year ago – oh yeah baby, I’m the rusty spot on the cutting edge.

For those Luddites among you who do not know this saga, the Daniel Craig is Not Bond people are a group of chronic soreheads who became shrill like frightened schoolgirls when Sony and Eon fired Pierce Brosnan for Daniel Craig. They claimed that he could not play the part because he is blond, too short and (my personal favorite) he looks like a boxer. Oh yeah, he’s really blond.

Daniel Craig, they whine, is not sufficiently suave and will kill the legendary secret agent. He is, they bleat, going to destroy the legacy of Ian Fleming and the 007-film franchise because he is not sufficiently in line with the casting of Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.

If I boil this down to its barest parts, this sounds a lot like my 3 year-old when she wants the pink toothpaste but is forced to use the blue toothpaste.

I’m sure that its been pointed out to these gas bags that in Ian Fleming’s mind, Sean Connery was also entirely inappropriate for the role. Connery was too big, Fleming noted and he also took exception with Connery for being overly muscular (he looked like a body-builder, after all) and , like Craig, not sufficiently suave. Further, as a keen observer of the human condition, Fleming also noted that Connery was a native of Scotland and upon further investigation, this was not the same place as England at all.

Fleming’s first choice was apparently David Niven. Niven was a fine actor as well as a decorated veteran of the Second World War and by all accounts a delightful man. But as Bond, I think that Niven’s casting would have required that the main villain of Doctor No be changed from a psycho with metal hands to a corrupt but insecure Soho banker.

In the climax of the film, Bond would wither Loans Assessor No into mush as he repeatedly says witty things in between martinis in a flurry of pulse pounding after-dinner chat. His ego shredded by the merciless onslaught of British sarcasm and received pronunciation, Loan Assessor No turns himself in to the authorities while Bond remains comfortably seated in order to aid digestion.

When the film was released, Fleming was so impressed with the lump of Scottish muscle that he retconned Bond’s history to include Highland Scots in the family tree.

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig as James Bond, was among the best-reviewed Bond films of all time and it was also either first or second best in the history of the franchise at the box office. Sadly, it did lack the campy aspects of previous films;

1. Super-sexualized leading ladies: I can’t imagine how we outgrew lines like; “Good evening Mister Bond, my name Professor Velvet Manlicker”. The low in this was casting Denise Richards as a hot pants-wearing nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones who spawned one of the worst lines in the history of all possible universes when it was noted that Bond thought that “Christmas only comes once a year…”

Yes, let’s do our best to preserve that caliber of film-making.

2. High-tech gadgets; Casino Royale was bereft of wristwatches that folded out to reveal an Aegis-class destroyer. The most advanced piece of technology in the film was whatever they used to keep Caterina Murino from flopping out of her bikini while riding a horse.

3. Black hair.

Personally, I was pleased that they took the material a little more seriously for a change and hired a guy who looked like he could actually throw a punch.

When Michael Keaton was cast as Batman with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, purists shriveled. Ditto for when Star Trek was rebooted with a bald Englishman or when that other guy took over for Jesus after the crucifixion.

They were wrong too – welcome to the club.

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I’ll Promise You the Moon

Now that I’ve got a modest body of work on this blog, I have been horrified to discover that I seem to have standards. As such, I feel the need to put some genuine effort into my columns.

While I may be perfectly justified in writing, “When the President talks, it’s like a dog pooping…” this would not meet the requirements that I self apply as a pundit. Most importantly, it’s much too short – only nine words when I usually aim for about eight hundred. I can only bulk that up so much by adding that the dog is a malamute, or perhaps a hilarious dachshund-St Bernard mix. Even if I added two additional modes of bodily egress and three more species of pet, that still tops out at about a buck and a quarter at best.

Not that I’m aiming to replace the New York Times, although they also appear to share length as the only criterion for publication. An obvious distinction between the Times and me is that in addition to being even more convinced that I am the center of the universe, you know ahead of time that I’m making all of my columns up as I go. You won’t need to investigate me, Jim; I rang that bell when I breezed in through the swinging doors.

The most important standard I have is regularity; my last attempts at blogging failed because I never made time for it. Like an idiot I was concentrating on things like my family or my career when I could have been cluttering up teh internets with columns about the fleshy, bloviating pod-person who so ably represents the Catholics of the United States.

On the other hand, I come up with plenty of ideas that can never be sufficiently fluffed to make it to the aluminum-standard of eight hundred words. Combining these truths I have decided to take these lemons (rather than whine and bleat) and make lemonade in tiny, tiny cups.

So, it’s with no pleasure at all that I present to you the first installment of “Bits of Stuff I Thought I Might Write About Eventually”;

Volume One. (pronounced; [boh-zee-tim-way], tell your friends).

I. As a sure sign of the ongoing mental decline that starts after every Super Bowl and speeds me drooling and smearing my food on the walls into the pre-season, I watched the live coverage of the NFL Scouting Combine.

For those of you who have never seen this, it’s three-hundred pro football prospects who work out, run fast and jump for an unidentified gang of older men. If this were college-aged women cavorting about, this stuff would be rolling behind the opening credits of a porn movie.

While I won’t make a lot of suggestions to the Combine, I will propose that all prospects for the position of middle linebacker emulate the great Lawrence Taylor and break Joe Theisman’s leg. This would also provide the ancillary benefit of keeping Joe the hell off of ESPN.

II. As a sure sign of my more general, ongoing mental decline I watched snippets of the hearing to determine who gets to bury the remains of Anna Nicole Smith. The first thing I hope is that someone takes all of the money and sends the baby girl to the distant suburbs of Neptune so that she can grow up halfway normal.

I was never a fan of the fried chicken waitress from Mexia, Texas but barring a Viking funeral pyre held next Dick Clark’s Rocking New Year’s Eve, I can’t imagine anything more exploitative than this. Maybe next time they’ll get a real judge and not some guy who thinks he’s Alan Arkin.

Finally I think the participants of any legal proceeding should aim for much higher and principled ground. I’d suggest that jurists emulate the brilliant and incomparable Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall, and break Joe Theisman’s leg.

III. I watched the Oscars last night (thank you for asking, but I’ll be fine) and it occurs to me that I’d much rather attend the Scientific and Technical awards where they have a very pretty actress (2006; Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2005;  Rachel McAdams, 2004;  Scarlett Johansson) host a dinner and ceremony for a group of geeks so alarming that they will no longer even show clips for the Sci-Tech awards on broadcast television.

Initially I assumed that Maggie, Rachel and Scarlett must have drawn the short straw for each of their respective years. I know now that this is the one room in the universe where they can be absolutely positive that no one will hit on them. At best, these guys would be rendered insensible by such beauty and mumble something about “…Skittles for pretty girl…” and then return to the lab in order to assist Professor Nerdlinger in completing the Interplexing Formal-Wear Removatron.

IV. When the President talks, it’s like a dog pooping.

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