Great Urinals of the Pacific Northwest

Highway 6 gas station

NBA Forecast 2015-16: Eastern Conference

Baltimore Bullets: It’s a guard's league with guard's rules. Min. Projection: ECF.

Lebron James Low APR Mortgage Co.: If Cleveland got to the Finals with Lebron running 95% of possessions, can they really do that much better with him in the pilot seat less? Min. Projection: East semis and Della seriously injures someone.

A Taqueria in Chicago: My favorite thing about Chicago is you can go to a taqueria and ask for grilled onions to be added to anything. Min projection: lettuce everywhere, 5th seed.

Miami: Wade's healthy again so he can have one last go at running into people head first to draw fouls and increase win total by +10 games to make the playoffs. Min projection: 4th seed.

Atlanta Hawks: Big year for Teague. See Washington projection.

Philly: Keep trying to catch lightning in a bottle! No projection.

Boston: Keep trying to catch lightning in a bottle! No projection.

James Dolan's Cablevision Money: Maybe it'll work out? What I see is a lot of plug-n-play guys on the roster all cabled to the Carmelo-cube. Projection: long form apologia for JAX.




Fortune cookie: The west tomorrow.

U-Turn Audio makes a terrible product and has terrible customer service

Last year around this time, I started to feel a major bite: I no longer had a working turntable, and that's not how I like to spin roll. I looked around a little bit, asked some friends, and decided to try the U-Turn Orbit. Big mistake.

The first day I had it, I sent the following email to my pals:

I took a flyer on a hipster turntable and there's some shit they did that makes it kinda frustrating:

• no autoreturn, meaning I can't pass out to a record
• switch between 33 & 45 by means of touching the belt, meaning a nacho enthusiast like me will inevitably fuck up the belt and platter with filth
  [Ed. Note: I didn't tell these guys that I am also really really ineptly frustratingly bad at changing between 33 & 45 and that when I try it, the belt invariably falls off a couple times before I can get everything lined up correctly]
• needs a preamp (because I have a second-rate amp), and the one they sell can't be turned on and off, meaning an incredibly bright blue LED burning at my eyeballs, and meaning...uh, shit, I guess I got to unplug it when I go to bed??
• dust cover isn't counterbalanced, so it is either down or up at a 90-degree

Keep an eye on that preamp. It figures in the next email I had to send about this turntable—this email, I sent to the manufacturer.

Hi --

I am extremely frustrated with your product. I bought it, used it maybe twice, and then put it on the shelf for a while, unplugging the preamp, because it has no power switch and I

1. didn't see why it should be sucking electricity all the time
2. didn't want to see the god damned LED all the time
3. thought it might overheat/burn out if I left it plugged in

I tried to use the turntable tonight, and the preamp is apparently dead. I tried plugging the AC adaptor into multiple different outlets to zero effect. The turntable itself appears to work as well as it ever did -- no auto-return, and the belt falls off all the god damned time, but the platter spins. Again: I am extremely frustrated. And disappointed. And angry.

What do you recommend I do? Will you make this right and at the very least replace the preamp for free? Please let me know.

yours, a person who really wanted to listen to some records tonight, and can't,

And here is the response I got.

Sorry to hear you are experiencing some difficulties. Please note that we are not the manufacturers of the ART brand DJ preamp. I also agree that the LED is irritating, although it is worth mentioning that it does consume very little power, so I wouldn't worry about (1) or (3) - most preamps are designed to be left on. If you ship us back the preamp we can take a look at it and will send you a replacement (pre-owned) if necessary. This is a courtesy, as we are not the manufacturers of this item. [Ed. Note: you sold me the item, dude.]

Alternatively, I imagine that this might be a power adapter issue. Can you try quickly using the Orbit's adapter to connect the preamp and see if that gives it power? If it's just the adapter we can send a new one.

The Orbit is a fully manual turntable so there is no auto-return. [Ed. Note: yes, this is what I'm complaining about.]

There is an auto-lift device called the Q UP that you can purchase and install if you would like similar functionality: http://www.amazon.com/Q-UP-QUP-Up-Tonearm/dp/B008OAMD26. [Ed. Note: sweet upsell. Exactly what a disappointed, frustrated customer is most interested in.]

Can you please describe the belt falling off - when exactly does it fall off (during play or installation)? This should not be happening and if you provide more information we would be happy to look into this for you.

I didn't get back to him, because I know when I've been blown off. U-Turn Audio never followed up, presumably because they know when they're not going to be able to upsell their way out of their "stupid, pretentious instance[s] of 'design' as a noun overwhelming the verb-process of designing something". They wanted to have something "minimal", so they sell a turntable that doesn't have autoreturn, or a dust cover that's functional, a turntable that makes you handle the stretchable, finger-oil sensitive drive belt every time you want to change the speed. And they back it up with the commitment to customer service that says "Hey, man, sure, the thing we sold you broke after a week of minimal use, but we didn't make it, so if you want it to be replaced...we'll send you a used one and act like we're doing you a favor while we do it." So fuck them; fuck U-Turn Audio. If you see a product by U-Turn Audio, do yourself a favor: do a U-Turn. Walk away and find something you will enjoy using, made by people who do not loathe you.

ANNOUNCING: I Don't Even Own a Television, a podcast

Further to our notes of the other week, it is incumbent upon us to note that our Reviewieran ways continue to spill out into the world, beyond the high walls of our beloved home and land. Yes, I continue to pound the Reviewiera drum, hollering away that SOME STUFF IS BETTER THAN SOME OTHER STUFF—this time, via a podcast, over at the I Don't Even Own a Television podcast.

Every two weeks, the ridiculously talented J. W. Friedman and I get together and riff on one or another really really crummy book. J. founded the podcast in early 2014, and it was on my radar from the first episode, a book from a romance-novel publishing house's action imprint, Harlequin Intrigue (!), an erotic (?) thriller (?) called Pregnesia (!). Episodes that stood out to me from that time:

• Pregnesia, with special guest Jeb "Mobute" Lund
• A Princess of Mars, with special guest Centa Schumacher!
• Ready Player One with special guest Mike Sacco!
• Those Who Trespass, with special guest Jeb "Mobute" Lund
• A Spell for Chameleon with special guest Jesse Dangerously
• The Actuator with special guest Alexander Hinman
• Treacherous Love with special guest Mara Wilson!

Somewhere in the run of excellent episodes with excellent guests, I managed to con J. into letting me guest on an episode. (I think I told him something like "I'm local, I always prefer to yes-and somebody when they make a joke, and I'll show up with beer".) It went well—I sure had a good time—and BOY did we read a lousy book, Brian Lumley's Necroscope. A few episodes later, it seemed to make sense to J. to offer me a gig as co-host, which I accepted the hell right out of, and since then, we've been reading every garbage book we can get our minds around. It's been a lot of fun, and it's a terrifically good fit with everything we've always tried to do here, so if you like hour-long sojourns in the land of abysmal writing, please give I Don't Even Own a Television a shot!

ALSO IT IS EXCITING AND IMPORTANT THAT WE ARE TAKING OUR SHOW ON THE ROAD! We will be guesting on fellow podcast champions The F Plus' live show ONE NIGHT ONLY, October 4, 2015, at Grumpy's in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota! It's gonna rule.

Great Urinals of the Pacific Northwest

Electric Castle's Wunderland. SE Belmont .

ANNOUNCING: Like a Shit Sandwich

One of the stories of Reviewiera is the story of Fat & Tinzeroes, collaborating. "Some stuff," we argue, "is better than some other stuff," and we commit to the promulgation of that claim in all available fora. We began with our legendary, not at all fictional, scam to get our college to pay for us to eat hamburger sandwiches with french fried potatoes garnish while watching movies like Black Dog and Knightriders review collective B3—Bad Food, Bad Movies, Bad People, demonstrating that bad movies are pretty much the best stuff we can think of. Following that, Giant Turtle Patrol kept our nights full and our skies free of monstrous incursion; Super! Hero! Shared! Housing! made sure that the people who are bad at being people were kept safely in giant houses together, far the hell away from the rest of us... And so on.

But! We forgot to mention here, in our homeland of Reviewiera, that we are RIGHT NOW THIS VERY MINUTE still, again working hard to ring out the message: "some stuff, damn it, really is better than some other stuff". In the new project, we devote ourselves to that stuff that is worse than 'most all other; that stuff is: work. Yes, Tinzeroes and I are, essentially, reviewing work, those activities we (all) do to facilitate living our real lives.

SPOILER: the reviews are coming in and they are NOT particularly favorable.

The project is called Like a Shit Sandwich, based on the classic dad-level aphorism:

Life is like a shit sandwich—the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.

It's an email newsletter, comes out three times a month, with words mostly by me and art all by Tinzeroes, a chosen-just-for-you HEAVY TUNE in each issue, along with an interesting quote about work, found by me. It's a lot of fun, it goes straight to your inbox, so you can read it at work without anybody being the wiser, and we'll never do a thing in the world with your email address, okay?

You can get a taste of the project here, and you can sign up to receive every issue here. Please enjoy!

Fibber

Fun game: every time someone writes/says "Lamarcus Aldridge", think "Shareef Abdur-Rahim."

ESPN's Marc Stein Is a Fucking Idiot

I have a question for Larry Bird that I really hope he'll field someday.

A question that can be asked a variety of ways.

What kind of coach do you want?

Who out there is a coach you'd actually like to play for?

Who could the Boston Celtics hire that you'd give some meaningful backing?

I don't have the answers to any of those queries. Celts assistant coach Chris Ford is my best guess.

I know this much, though: Larry Bird is too brilliant as a basketball player, too truly great, to behave the way he did toward K.C. Jones during the NBA Finals.

We literally saw Peak Larry and the corresponding Larry nadir over those six gripping games with Houston. He had staffers from the surging Rockets almost quaking at night in fear of the havoc he was wreaking, such was his genius in controlling tempo and carrying a skeleton of a roster to a 2-1 lead that actually made you think the Celts could win it all against even Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.

And we likewise saw Larry emasculate K.C. Jones in ways that are simply unbecoming of a player of Bird's legendary stature.

I saw it from close range in my role as sideline reporter through the Finals for ESPN Radio. Larry essentially calling timeouts and making substitutions. Larry openly barking at Jones after decisions he didn't like. Larry huddling frequently with Ford and so often looking at anyone other than Jones.

There was Larry, in one instance I witnessed from right behind the bench, shaking his head vociferously in protest after one play Jones drew up in the third quarter of Game 5, amounting to the loudest nonverbal scolding you could imagine.

Which forced Jones, in front of his whole team, to wipe the board clean and draw up something else.

I understand he had no input into Jones’s hiring and had to roll with him in less-than-ideal circumstances. But it struck me as a rather unflattering look for an all-time great.

No matter how inept he might think the coach is.

How is any fellow Celtic to treat Jones with something resembling reverence when Larry treats him like a bench ornament in plain view?

How can Larry publicly laud his own leadership, as he so often does, when setting that sort of tone?

My ESPN.com colleague Brian Windhorst, who ranks as the most credentialed Larry-ologist there is after shadowing Bird since his teens, went on "SVP & Rusillo" on Wednesday and posited that No. 33 actually wouldn't mind if the Euroleague import keeps coaching the Celts because he "likes having Jones to kick around."

I wouldn’t expect to hear anyone in Boston dispute it, either.

Because they can't.

Jones, for the record, is by no means faultless here. It's up to the coach, in the Big Boy NBA, to earn buy-in from the players.

It was on Jones, furthermore, to make better use of Kevin McHale -- offensively and defensively -- after his bust-outs in Games 2 and 4. It was likewise on Jones to find better schemes to disrupt Hakeem Olajuwon in the series of his life as opposed to leaving him open game after game and asking McHale to chase after him. You also expected him to coax more out of Robert Parish after Jones proved more than once while coaching abroad that he had a knack for reaching enigmatic players.

The disconnect with Larry is no alibi for any of that.

But I repeat:

Larry's otherworldly performance in this series, on top of everything he's done for Massachusetts just by returning to the area and revitalizing it beyond words, doesn't make any of this stuff palatable.

The charade can't continue. This isn’t about whether Jones deserves to be brought back for a second season, but he obviously does after going so far in the playoffs -- and with Boston improving its defense so drastically along the way in the postseason -- in spite of all the injuries.

This is purely and simply about Larry, if he can't bring himself to back Jones with more gusto going forward, going right to Gilbert and telling him to hire Jeff Van Gundy, Tom Thibodeau or the most likely suspect: Lue.

Someone he's prepared to support.

Support like Magic Johnson was providing Pat Riles long before he was "Riles"!

Or the kind of support that Olajuwon, your newly minted Finals MVP, reluctantly but ultimately submitted to a bad coach named Bill Fitch, with far less of a coaching resume than Jones.

The otherworldly way Larry played in these Finals, shouldering a bigger load than any superstar we've seen on the championship stage and slowing the mighty Rockets like no one else could with his brain as much as his brawn, left little doubt that he's one of the three-to-five greatest individual forces this game has ever witnessed.

Yet when folks question why I would dare suggest that Magic deserves consideration in the same conversation, here's my answer: Earvin ticks every single box when it comes to serving as the ultimate tentpole upon which to hoist a franchise.

Eight years removed from the Finals where Magic's Lakers swept aside young Bird and a different set of overmatched Celts -- eight years after Magic told the then 22-year-old Bird that he would soon own this league -- I found myself coming back to the same thought.

He's too damn good to behave this way.

burnin' for blue: Blue Öyster Cult, 22may2015, Slim's

For Noodles, who came in saying "I only know 'Don't Fear the Reaper'" and came out, I think, at least a Buck Dharma fan, if not a full-fledged Blue Öyster Cult fanatic.

Slim's is probably our least-favorite frequently visited venue in SF—its bizarro layout makes crowded shows really difficult to see/enjoy, and it's not all that convenient to anything in the city, so good luck getting dinner on the way, if you worked that day. The sound is usually okay, though, and it's just about the right size for the bigger bands I like, the ones who are squarely in the middle. Over the years, we've seen a post-hill Built to Spill there, as well as Big Business, Hot Snakes, Pissed Jeans, Red Sparowes...and other white men with guitars and a long history of making records.

Which leads us to BŐC.

I'd never seen them! They were one of my first favorite bands, having inherited my uncle's copy of their 1981 new wave classic (second-to) last-gasp effort Fire of Unknown Origin in around 1987 when he moved out at night after a falling out with my mother. (Having interviewed a couple rock stars about Blue Öyster Cult, I can confirm that essentially everybody's first experience with the band was mediated by an uncle.) In 1988, I bought Secret Treaties, which scared me a little—the vocals and themes of "Dominance and Submission" were a little much for me at 13!—and my first two copies of the record seemed to bring bummers, or, as I thought of them then, evils, into my life. The first tape was in my first Walkman the first time I took it to school and left it in a locker during basketball practice: it got stolen. The second time I took the record to school, I got suspended for not having reported seeing Aaron Krantz stealing money from a teacher's desk. This was a part of my middle school's innovative "Start Snitchin'" initiative.

(My defense—that I couldn't report him because I hadn't seen him do it and didn't know about or benefit from his thievery—didn't get me all that far. Recent events had included me getting busted for shoplifting a couple times, so the taint was upon me like the mark of doom upon Elric... My career of evil. I've told all these stories before, I know.)

But by the time I heard them on Rockline in 1988, promoting Imaginos, I awas already moving to a newly Ramones-centric musical aesthetic, and while I never stopped listening to BŐC, nor talking about them, they were for me more or less sonic comfort food, something I'd go back to, again and again, but something that seemed somehow of the past, not something I'd go see in the present. This idiot stance even had me skipping it when my friends' band played a show at Blue Öyster Cult's afterparty, somewhere in like 2003. Dumb, me.

Anyway, I saw that they were playing, I bought tickets without thinking about it, and I was glad to do so, because we live finite lives and it's never clear to me how many more chances I'll have to do the things I want to do. That was in 2014; I didn't get to use the tickets because the set happened while we were still on a plane back from Hawai'i. Worse things have happened. This time, when I saw the show pop up, I felt pretty about jumping on it: how many more chances will we really have, anyway?

The crowd was...not young. Nor was the venue particularly packed—which is a good thing, at Slim's. We got there just in time to see the opening band finish up, and were treated to quite a lot of Godzilla being projected on a screen that lowered in front of the stage while the roadies did their thing(s). I clocked the merch table and resolved to buy what I knew was going to be a thick, ill-fitting Haynes Beefy-T, because, damnit, why do I even have a job if I'm not going to buy shirts at shows? We posted up just left of center, behind just one thin layer of humanity, basically right in front of Eric.

Maybe because of Slim's sometimes-dodgy sound, maybe because we were too close for the P.A., maybe because of more depressing reasons, we couldn't really hear Eric very well all night, especially early. This was a colossal bummer for me, because, as I explained to Noodles about two-thirds of the way through the set, "I've always been an Eric man." She is solidly in the Buck Dharma camp, perhaps unsurprisingly, describing him at least once that night and later as "a very charming tiny man". The other three guys in the band were less notable, though the bass player Kasim Sulton was extremely charming and the drummer had heavy, heavy, fast hands and bore the distinction of being the only guy on stage not wearing actively embarrassing footwear. (This is sorta a hobby of mine, checking out what bands wear onstage footwise. This night included Chuck Taylors on the dummer, Toms (!) on the bass player, all-black New Balance cross-trainers on Eric, what I think were ankle boots on Buck and I can't even remember what the second guitarist had on...) But at this point, BŐC is completely a-charismatic on stage: while they go through their moves and routines, and while they're genuinely, fully committed to putting on a good show and entertaining the people in the audience, it's a bemused, professional, slightly impersonal commitment.

It's sounding like I didn't have a great time at the show. It was a solid B, especially given my history with the band, including decades of listening to them, two failed book pitches about them for 33 1/3, more than a dozen of their albums* in my crates and on my hard drives, and my general expectation that a live show be, like a Neurosis show, a legitimately transcendent event. I came in trying, and largely failing, to temper my expectations is what I'm saying, and the show I saw was solid. As the band has always known, execution counts for a lot in the genre, and they executed well all night long.

(My collection isn't quite as bodacious as my dude @eyenoise's, but it's pretty pretty close.)

Afterwards, Noodles mentioned "I thought they'd be more...rockin'. Not that it was a problem..." and that got at something pretty significant: what the crowd was there for was a whole lot of Buck Dharma, and, "Godzilla" aside, what Buck's great at is in general not a lot of rocking qua rocking. (The crowd popped surprisingly well for end-stage semi-hit "Dancin' in the Ruins", even, which blew my mind.) But Buck was great that night, with a lot of super-melodic, quick-fingered, extremely Buck-Dharma-esque solos, and a couple charming stage moves (including a weird I-don't-know-what hand gesture to the crowd at the end, which I would swear meant "yeah yeah shut up already" and an exaggerated slow-motion wide-legged stomp to indicate timing during a few songs). It was remarkable how little energy he seemed to be expending to be playing so well! I've never seen anything like that, I don't think. He seemed in good voice, what we could hear of it anyway, as opposed—maybe—to Eric, who for whatever reasons (PA? just doesn't have it anymore?) never pulled out the strident clarion that was always my favorite thing about his songs. Though I will admit that "Black Blade" sounded pretty great. (Upon reflection, I'm not convinced he sang any songs completely solo: everything seemed like either a Buck song or something he and Buck and often the rest of the guys were harmonizing on...)

The harmonies were good, the band was tight, probably tighter than the original five ever were, and the set list was mostly satisfying. There was a legit drum solo, which was okay, though a somewhat dated gesture, and while Bloom never deployed any of his old-style jive-talking patter, he did take the time to introduce "Black Blade" with a potted history of Michael Moorcock's fantasy anti-hero Elric (which Noodles found hilarious and impossible to take at all seriously), and he had a pretty good riff on the Rangers/Lightning series, punctuated with a muttered "I'm sure you all give a shit." that absolutely killed at least me, and probably pleased nobody else in attendance.

A craftsmanlike night, then. Five people demonstrating their skills in ways they had good reasons to believe the audience would enjoy. And they did it on their terms: as Eric pointed out, they do a different set every night; while they are absolutely going to play the "three hits", they're also going to play reasonably deep cuts, a nice antidote to turning into a nostalgia act. (It took me, embarrassingly, quite a while to figure out what the hell "The Vigil" was—I like that song fine, but for some reason, it just never stuck with me, and it was buried on the likeable but impossible-to-give-a-shit-about Mirrors. Anyway, enough excuses: clearly, I gotta listen to more BŐC.) This night, the band was light on the heavy/sinister, focused on the pop-songs-with-interesting-structures-and-a-lot-of-soloing, and amiably, thoroughly determined to give the crowd what they came to hear: only a churl could complain about this show.

And the shirt I bought? A lightweight, thin-weave shirt, more American Apparel than Haynes, and much higher-quality than I'd expected. A nice bonus. I've barely taken it off, since.

Track List

1. The Red & the Black
2. Burnin' for You
3. Career of Evil
4. Dancin' in the Ruins
5. ME 262
6. Buck's Boogie
7. Black Blade
8. The Vigil
9. Then Came the Last Days in May
10. Godzilla
11. (Don't Fear) The Reaper
12. Cities on Flame with Rock & Roll

An Hour Ago Rudy Linnekar Had This Town In His Pocket Now You Can Strain Him Through a Sieve

The ninth film I was able to see in the Orson Welles series was projected in 35mm and it made a big difference.

So, I've seen Touch of Evil (1958, Welles) a few times on dvd before. And lately I've been realizing more and more the benefits of seeing something on a big screen in a theater over my tv at home; and, film over digital. But seeing Touch of Evil in a theater was like discovering it for the first time--this might also have to do with that I'm older, and maybe also because I've seen ten other Orson Welles movies in a theater in the last month.

First of what's most important in Touch of Evil is the setting: Mexico. Specifically the US-Mexico border. Welles had already photographed parts of the films The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Confidential Report (1955) in Mexico. Welles is also one of few filmmakers who has chosen not to employ subtitles when characters speak in a foreign language. And Touch of Evil features a lot of Spanish.

Secondly the Noir aspect. Let's presume I can use darkness synonymously with evil, alright? And noir also translates as black. So, the darkness in Touch of Evil can be read in many ways other than Hank Quinlan's (Welles) corruption. The Mexican setting delves into the dark criminal underworld of murder, blackmail, reefers, mainlining, brothels, stripclubs, leather jackets, hot rodding JDs, molotov cocktails, and peeping through windows. And this is the last Film Noir ever made. No I don't have evidence to support my claim, but I'm convinced. Trust me on this one.

Dark lurid trash was the producer of this film, Albert Zugsmith's specialty. Zugsmith also produced Douglas Sirk's trashy melodrama masterpiece Written on the Wind (1956, Douglas Sirk) and Tarnished Angels (1958, Sirk). Compare Written on the Wind and Tarnished Angels to any of Sirk's other films and you will definitely see Zugsmith's influence--they're way trashy darker than anything else Sirk ever did. Leather Daddy Butch Mercedes McCambridge's cameo as the Mexican villain who says "You know what a Maryjane is? You know what a mainliner is?" and "Let me stay. I wanna watch," is probably the most bizarrely vulgar one of Welles's films has ever gotten. She's awesome.

Tertiary is the Shakespearean tragedy of the whole affair. Quinlan refuses, like Macbeth, to sleep. This gives the film a unique dramatic unity and urgency--it will be resolved before he falls asleep, we know it. Quinlan is dying. Holy crap, the scene where Quinlan frames Vargas' wife for Uncle Joe Grandi's murder is shot with these slowly paced out strobes from somewhere outside through the small apartment room where the final struggle between Quinlan and Grandi takes place--the light bursts are evocative of Quinlan's life slowly dying out of him: the beat of a heart visualized; the light that's left of him diminishing into darkness; the poetry of that scene is very important.

Once Quinlan falls off the wagon and starts drinking bourbon--my own worst poison, but also the most seductive--he starts talking about his dead ex-wife. And the sheer madness and dementia that appears in the insomniac, old, tired, obese, man makes us think for a second: wait a minute did he kill her, his own wife? But it's only a glimpse. Even more intriguing. Later Menzies (the Master Swallow to Quinlan's Falstaff) defends Quinlan saying that he only thinks about his ex wife while he's drunk until even later Quinlan:

I'm always thinking of her. Drunk or sober.

What else is there to think about, except my job?

My dirty job.

Okay this is like as darkly romantic as it gets. This is poetry. That this suffering man has one friend and somehow has still hung onto his career makes the setup for the great tragedy of him unnecessarily framing Linnekar's Mexican son-in-law that results in him destroying what's left of his job, securing his own ignominy, and murdering Menzies, his only friend, the only one who loved him, powerfully Shakespearean. But, like the stuffed spiked black bull's head that the desperate Quinlan rests under in the brothel, he is a magnificent beast that holds our attention in the ring because some part of us is fascinated by seeing him slowly, methodically killed by a hero. But we are here for the bull, not the bullfighter. Yet the bull has to die. That is tragedy.

We also get all of the best the B genre has to offer. Dennis Weaver as the motel clerk who postures as erratically as an ostrich on angel dust, being the only human the sexy pointy cone brassiered Janet Leigh is stuck with in this motel two years before she'd meet Anthony Perkins at the Bates creates a whole different brand of suspense. Weaver really makes Perkins look like a ladies man compared to his awkwardness. 

Oh and Welles is on point with his mise en scène, but not just the famous opening. This was the first time I noticed how long the take was when Quinlan interrogates Sanchez at his apartment. That's an impressive sequence. But the opening still takes the cake. Man, you really realize how close that bomb is to going off right next to Heston and Janet Leigh's characters. And the litter polluting the river where Quinlan goes to die is gorgeous. The Joseph Cotten cameo is also a treat for Welles aficionados.

Yet one thing I can't quite get over is that Quinlan has Menizies take Vargas' wife to a motel he knows Grandi owns. Do you realize how early in the film this happens? That truly is evil of Quinlan is he had the foresight for this that soon after meeting Vargas. How can he despise him so? Is is because he's Mexican? Because he's younger? Better at his job? Smarter? Has that smoking hot Janet Leigh wife? Or is it because he knows Vargas is onto him? Quinlan is a fat, ugly, evil, monster villain. But again, damn if I don't still love him. Welles knows his magic.

--Dregs