Dear Mr. Olyphant...

Dream On Cowboy - Flesh For Lulu (mp3)
Bad Boyfriend - Garbage (mp3)

For the fourth time over Spring Break, I found myself drifting back into the land of the vulgar and wild west known as DEADWOOD. Or, what I’ve called The Greatest Show Ever On Television.

The only current television show I’m watching with loyalty is JUSTIFIED, currently in its second season on F/X network.

These two shows have many things in common, but one stares at you with piercing eyes so potent you actually worry your corneas might bleed if you stare back too long. The owner of those eyes is Seth Bullock a.k.a. Raylan Givens a.k.a. Timothy Olyphant.

I’ve never been shy about my man crushes because they’re not particularly sexual in nature. It’s possible for a man -- on an admittedly rare occasion, I grant you -- to actually find himself drawn powerfully to another person without it having the slightest thing to do with his pecker. I get the impression women are generally more comfortable with this feeling, some strange mixture of admiration and attraction. Men don’t seem willing to cop to it as easily.

When I first witnessed the storm that is Timothy Olyphant in the prurient yet highly enjoyable teen flick “The Girl Next Door,” I certainly hoped I was making acquaintance with a man I’d meet again. He managed to make the bad guy both frightening and charismatic. He was both bully and enemy to fratboys and preppie snots the world over. He was the kind of character who, in an S.E. Hinton novel, would have had a compelling back story and been the protagonist for whom we cheered.

“The Girl Next Door” wasn’t his debut. He cut his teeth slowly up the ladder, including a related if slightly more sadistic and evil version in GO. But TGND was the film that launched him into the next level.

Since my obsession with DEADWOOD began, I’ve managed to watch almost everything Olyphant has been in. It’s weird how that works. And it’s not just this one guy.

I chase around Ian McShane a.k.a. Al Swearengen, too. Hell, I watched every minute of that show KINGS. I think I was the only human on the planet who did, and I still argue that if McShane's character was just one time allowed to say "c**ksucker," ratings would've shot through the f**kin' roof. And if Nathan Fillion sneezes on camera, I’m likely to be sure I see it at least once. I don’t even think CASTLE is that good a show, but I watch because I loves me some Nathan, and his cop pal ain’t so bad herself, neither.

But Olyphant’s collection is especially impressive for being both understated yet strong.

Stop-Loss. A Perfect Getaway. The Crazies (as zombie horror films go, this one’s very good and unusually accessible for the non-zombie types out there). A turn in the second season of Damages. And then his portrayal of a Kentucky lawman come home to roost in JUSTIFIED.

F/X just announced that they have renewed ol’ Raylan Givens for a third season. Ratings for season two are up. Even though I don’t think this season is one hair’s breadth better than the first, I don’t mind if some folks are late to a great party so long as the party keeps going.

Dude, you can even make a friggin' STAR WARS reference and still bleed coolness!



Don’t worry, Timothy. I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want to be some repressed Felix Unger in your midst. But even if you’re only half as damn cool and charismatic as the characters you play, feel free to upload some of that into the cloud and share it with all us nerdy scrawny awkward types. We sure would be mighty obliged.

He's No Hack

Cure for Sale - Loomis + the Lust (mp3)
Written All Over - The Jayways (mp3)

Ever seen Hoosiers? God I love that movie. For a stretch of about 10 years, I would watch that movie the week before the NCAA basketball tournament began, back during the time when I was under the illusion that cheering for UNC was anything at all like rooting for the little engine that could.

Anyway, there was always one scene in Hoosiers that left me feeling really icky. Cold shivers up my spine. Hair on the back of my neck raised. A pinch of nausea.

Barbara Hershey’s character finds Gene Hackman’s coach walking out in a field. (There’s a lot of those in Indiana.) They talk. He tries to explain his sketchy past. She, 18 years younger, caves in to his sad song, and they kiss.

You remember back when Al Gore kissed Tipper at the DNC, and the entire viewing universe offered up a collective groan of uncomfortable disgust? Well, Al stole that move from Gene Hackman from Hoosiers. It was disgusting enough the first time around. Al Gore’s version was like the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho.

That scene is, to the best of my knowledge, the only time I can ever recall watching Gene Hackman and thinking, “That’s Gene Hackman, and that’s just wrong.”

The rest of Hoosiers, and the rest of his career, Gene Hackman never really did anything to make me think much about him. And I mean that to be just about the best compliment I can offer an actor.

A recent issue of Newsweek offers a brief but great send-up of this man’s career, a career that is apparently over.

Did you know Hackman hasn’t been in a movie since 2004?! Neither did I. Combine his remarkable acting with his unremarkable looks and his uninteresting personal life, and you have someone who, when their name isn’t on the marquis, can be out of mind when out of sight.

But when he’s in sight? When he’s on that screen? Hackman is like BASF. He doesn’t make the movie you watch; he makes the movie you watch better.

I just looked through his list of 70+ movies, and I can’t see a single one where any actor could have taken his role and made the movie better. Did some of his films suck? Sure. Was he the sole reason Unforgiven was amazing? Of course not. But even Michael Jordan didn’t win every year. He was on some shitty Bulls teams. And the Wizards. And the Barons, fer Chrissakes. It’s not like he won a World Championship every year. And Jordan won titles thanks to some pretty vital supporting actors.

Hackman's critically-acclaimed work – The French Connection, The Conversation, Mississippi Burning – certainly deserves respect, but it’s the collection of films down the rung that endear me to him and his talents. In almost all of the Hackman films I love, he manages to create characters both despicable and deeply sympathetic, people designed to be the villain yet frustrating us with their moments of endearing humanity, as if those moments were an unavoidable weakness.

Crimson Tide, The Firm, The Quick and the Dead, No Way Out. Even stuff as unimpressive as Extreme Measures and Absolute Power. His CV is filled with roles of unlikeable, cranky men. But damn he’s good at it. And not many people are so good at it that they can keep tweaking it and riding it into one film after another without most people getting sick of it.

I can’t think a single actor who has been in so many films that I happily and greedily digest over and over. Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman might come close. Tom Cruise has more than I’d like to admit. Jack Nicholson almost competes, but he’s soooo busy being soooo Jack Nicholsony in his movies that it’s hard to say he’s fighting fair.

And Hackman gets but a fraction of their glory. ‘Cuz he’s fugly.

But if you had to limit yourself to a single actor’s or actress’ works, to never again watch a movie that didn’t include that person, you’d be hard pressed to find a better collection and a wider array of genres and vibes than Hackman’s. Sorry Meryl, but there just ain't enough testosterone in your collection.

I hope to never be limited in such a way, but if I had to, Gene ol' buddy, you'd be my man.

"Cure for Sale" is off their EP Nagasha. "Written All Over" is from The Jayway's EP Light. Both are up and coming bands. Give 'em a whirl and see what you think!

Why I'm Not An Action Hero

Frank Black--"Headache (live)" (mp3)
Frank Black--"Calistan (live)" (mp3)

Okay, so I will grant Jack Bauer the freedom not to have to eat, go to the bathroom, or sleep during a 24-hour period, but what about a good, old-fashioned headache?

Today was one of those experiences where I get about as close as I'm going to get to being an action hero. My daughter calls and says that a neighbor has called and warned her that there has been a car parked in front of our house for over half an hour.

We've had a number of break-ins in the neighborhood recently, including one yesterday morning where they kicked in the back door and took the tv and a bunch of other stuff.

So, when my daughter calls, I'm headed out of my office as fast as I can, running up the stairs to my car, huffing and puffing as I drive down the hill off campus, and then I start to think. Who is in front of my house and why?

I know I'm going to have to confront him when I get there, and I start to think about what to say. Everything from "Sir, can I help you?" to "Yo, motherfucker!"

And as I race home, the adrenalin begins to rush through me, my heart beating quickly, the superhuman, Reader's Digest strength coursing through me in case I have to rip the door off of a burning car or anything.

Like Jack Bauer, I am going to rescue my daughter.

When I get near the front of my house, I see the guy, see his car, a non-descript blue Buick or something. His window is down. He's sitting there with his eyes closed.

"Sir, can I help you?" I ask. He does not respond.

"Sir?"

He looks at me. "Oh," he says, as it's now clear he's been looking down at his cell phone, not sleeping, "I'm an insurance agent. I'm just making some calls."

"Well," I say, "You've been here for over half an hour. You're scaring my daughter." I motion towards my house.

"Oh, sorry," he says. "I'll move along." And though I pull into the driveway, he continues to sit there and finish up a call. When I get out of the car, he pulls aways slowly.

And that's it. The big showdown. I go into the house and talk to my daughter, explain to her who he was, and tell her I have to go back to work. She nods and continues with her homework.

But on the way back, all of the unused adrenalin hanging around, my head starts to pound from stress, anticipation, and relief. And soon I've got one hell of a headache.

So what must it be like for a guy like Jack Bauer, who is tortured, wounded, comes back from death, decides to let people he knows die, stops nuclear terrorists, overcomes heroin addiction and more, all in a days's work? I think he must get crazy headaches. I think that he must have a pounding in his brain almost all of the time. Maybe that's why he talks in a husky whisper, why he has that look on his face, why he seems so unhappy, like the whole world is against and doesn't appreciate what he's done for it.

Oh, right, I forgot. The whole world does seem to be unappreciative and against him. No wonder he has a headache. No wonder I'm not an action hero.

Frank Black, aka Black Francis of the Pixies, has had a stellar solo career. These songs come from his cd, The Black Sessions--Live in Paris.