Monthly Archives: May 2019

Polly Wants a Crackhead

Image result for brazilian parrot crack police

Somewhere in my mother’s Charleston, S.C., home, there sits a box of about five dozen 8 mm films. On them, my sister and I are captured in all our dorky glory: at birthday parties; walking half-asleep down stairs on Christmas morning; running like cocaine-crazed toddlers through the yard.

One in particular is my favorite. It’s a family movie of us at Sea World in Florida (before Sea World became known as a gulag for marine life). I must have been four or so, my sister about one. I am standing at the ledge of the dolphin pool, railed off about 10 feet above the surface of the water. Back then, you could toss a rubber ring to the dolphins, which dutifully tossed it back.

In the clip, a dolphin is tossing me this rubber ring. As dad would later recall, “That dolphin could throw as accurately as Johnny Unitas,” the Hall of Fame quarterback with the Baltimore Colts. One toss was so direct it would have been impossible for me not to catch it. So I did, clumsily trapping it in my outstretched arms.

You would have thought I had just won the Superbowl catching a last-second hail Mary. I leaped up and down, holding the toy the way Gollum would hold the gold ring of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. I’m surprised I didn’t spike the toy and do a touchdown dance. It is the only footage of physical grace in my existence.

I’ve been thinking about that movie, and the interaction between man and animal, a lot lately. The first time came courtesy of a Beluga whale that slipped off the shores of St. Petersburg Russia and into the waters of a tiny hamlet in nearby Copenhagen, Denmark. There, fishermen found the whale with a camera harness clamped tight around its head that read “Equipment St. Petersburg,” prompting speculation the animal escaped a nearby military base after attempting to train it for covert photography. A fisherman jumped into the icy water to release the clamp, freeing it. Image result for norway beluga whale

Instead, the whale, which I’ve nicknamed the Dude (after all, he is a white Russian) has become a Copenhagen celebrity. He plays so closely to the dock that visitors pet it. When you call it, it comes to you. Resident Linn Saether said when she throws out a plastic ring, the Beluga whale brings it back to her as she sits on the dock. “It is a fantastic experience, but we also see it as a tragedy. We can see that it has been trained to bring back stuff that is thrown at sea,” Saether said.

See Donnie? It’s possible for a blubbery whale to escape Putin’s clutches, even when he feigns friendliness. Image result for putin controls trump

Next came a story about the Ry-Con Service Dogs, a North Carolina facility that claimed to be licensed in training therapy dogs for people with autism and physical disabilities. Problem is, North Carolina doesn’t issue therapy dog training licenses. Neither does any other state. Instead, the hucksters at Ry-Con simply boarded the animals, then sold them to patients for as much as $14,500. Sobie Cummings

Animals there, too, outsmarted their human captor by doing what they naturally do: pee where they want, shit where they want, nip hands that get too boisterous. Their behavior quickly lead to fraud arrests of the Ry-Conners and underscored the need for proper therapy training and licensing nationwide.

But my favorite pet-outwits-owner story came from Brazil, where a parrot was taken into custody after nearly spoiling a raid while playing lookout for two crack-dealing suspects by repeatedly yelling, “Mamãe, polícia!” according to Brazilian police in the state of Piauí. The phrase means, “Mama, police!”

The unnamed parrot was found in a small brick one-story house raided by cops. As police searched for the suspects, it seemed the lime-green bird knew exactly what to do. “He must have been trained for this,” one officer told Brazilian media. “As soon as the police got close he started shouting.”

An officer then carried the papagaio do tráfico — or “trafficking parrot,” as news outlets referred to the bird — out of the house on his fingertip, before placing him in a cage and taking him into the Teresina Police Department. The parrot did not say a word, remaining in total silence even as law enforcement sought to loosen it up. Image result for brazilian parrot crack police

While the humans flipped and ratted on each other, the pet’s stubborn silence continued even in jail, a veterinarian said. “Lots of police officers have come by,” veterinarian Alexandre Clark said, “and he’s said nothing.”

He may be a parrot, but homie’s no stool pigeon.

John Wick’s Excellent Adventure

Image result for john wick 3

Here’s looking at you, Wick. Part grisly Casablanca, part bloody Blade Runner and part macabre Matrix, the elements combine to make John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum an epic of choreographed mayhem and the best action film of the year. Endgame schmendgame.

Directed by Keanu Reeves’ Matrix stunt double-turned-action auteur Chad Stahelski, Parabellum mixes terrific CGI with even more impressive stunt work to become that rarity in an the action genre: a live-action cartoon that doesn’t look cartoonish. Yes, the violence is over-the-top and Parabellum is by far the most brutal film of the sleeper franchise. But as body counts go, this is bloodshed as high art.

The opening of Parabellum picks up just minutes after the end of its 2017 predecessor, with Keanu Reeves’ wronged, out-of-retirement super-assassin on the run through nighttime Manhattan. Wick, as you may recall from part 2, committed the cardinal sin of killing a made member of the shadowy assassins’ guild known as The High Table. Now, he’s been declared “excommunicado”, which in layman terms means that it’s open season on Wick, who has a $14 million bounty on his head.

Out of loyalty, colleague Ian McShane’s gave Wick a one-hour head start to get out of Dodge before word attracts the enumerable professional hit men (and women) who come after him for the reward. As played by Reeves (who, at 54, can still remarkably dish out and take a nasty beating), Wick is the ultimate tragic loner – haunted and hunted. The role fits the soulfully unknowable star like the custom, slim black suit he wears on the job.

The first brawl in John Wick 3 sets an ultraviolent tone that never relents as Wick does with a library book what he famously did with a pencil in the first film, and it just gets nastier from there. What makes that brawl — and the dozens subsequently – so effective isn’t just the lightning-quick fighting or the cameo appearances of Asian cinema martial-arts heavies that are easter eggs for the action savants; it’s the way the audience feels each blow in the fights. As in The Raid films, the punches are insanely inventive, but they also hurt. And they also sound especially crunchy. Whoever was John Wick 3’s Foley Artist deserves a raise.

It also doesn’t hurt that cinematographer Dan Laustsen creates a world that would make Ridley Scott envious. From the sands of Casablanca to the rain-slicked streets of Manhattan, the worlds of Wick never lack for flair or twists. There’s a horse raise in Wick 3 — on city streets instead of Moroccan sand — and it looks somehow natural in the Wickian universe. Image result for john wick 3 horse

One of the new characters introduced in John Wick 3 is Asia Kate Dillon’s “Adjudicator,” who spells out the fine print rules of the High Table. It’s a nice countermeasure to the chaotic violence that immerses us for nearly 2 1/2 hours.

As a man without a country in John Wick 3, Reeves’ bruised and battered hero is forced to call in the only two favors he has left to his credit. The first is with an underworld Russian mother figure who’s played by Anjelica Huston and who helps him flee to Casablanca. The second is with an equally badass assassin played by Halle Berry (whose pair of attack dogs steal the middle-third of the movie). Neither one steal Wick’s thunder, but they do add some emotional weight to the film.

If Wick 3 has any weaknesses, it’s that the fights can feel a little long and so quickly edited you can miss the nifty, fatal moves. And while Parebellum clearly sees itself as a franchise film, it sets up another sequel a little too blatantly.

Still, with his dog and muscle car already avenged in the first two movies, John Wick 3 really leaves viewers with one question, one never answered in the movie: Who or what is a ‘Parabellum?’ For the non-scholars of dead languages, an internet search reveals that it comes from the Latin phrase: Si vis pacem, para bellum. Which translates as, “If you want peace, prepare for war.” And no one prepares for war like John Wick does.

One Move, and Fido Gets It

A few years ago, the HB ran a story headlined “Why Kittens Suck.” I was reminded of this while flipping through some old articles, and decided the headline, while in jest, was too harsh. Kittens do not suck; in truth, my house would be full of ’em if I weren’t such a dog nut.

But while flipping through the posts, I saw an ad for Avengers: Endgame. The scene featured The Hulk, the unfortunate doctor belted by gamma rays who was turned into a huge human with tiny patience. And I began to think: What would happen if our domesticated pets were doused with radioactive hocus pocus?

And here’s the bottom line: Humans would be dead. We’d drown beneath loving dog slobber and bleed to death as cats batted us about like yarn mice. Ok, maybe that’s still too harsh, but consider how entitled our feline friends are when they’re small: