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Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. Its origin, according to every dictionary I've consulted, is unknown, though it seems to have sprung up in the nineteenth century West. Hence its use in Mel Brooks' seminal "Blazing Saddles," perhaps, from which I derive my pronunciation. Regardless of the spelling, the second syllable is supposed to be pronounced like "fog" or "blog." However, I prefer the "tag" or "bag" sound employed by Harvey Korman's Hedley Lamarr in the following exchange: Lamarr (to Taggert, played by Slim Pickens): "I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the West. Take this down. "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" (Cackles maniacally.) Taggert: "Could you repeat that sir?" Incidentally, mountain man Gabby Johnson uses the correct "swog" pronunciation later in the movie. |
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Thursday, January 31, 2008Jacob loves his children "Face it, Aaron. You're going to watch the two-hour premiere of 'Lost' tonight. And it's going to give you a mind-boner." After the cerebellum-pulverizing season three finale, I honestly doubted whether I'd be able to make it eight months, but "Lost" if finally back. Some good "Lost" resources here (Doc Jensen for Entertainment Weekly is by far the best writer on "Lost" for a major publication), here and here. .: posted by hornswaggler 9:02 AM| Wednesday, December 19, 2007Stupid or mendacious?It's the age-old question, here applied to Hugh Hewitt regarding his take on Time's "Person of the Year" award. We've achieved victory in Iraq, apparently. Did I miss something? Incidentally, Hewitt is the Horatio Kane of pundits due to his strange habit of repeatedly addressing his interview subjects by their first and last names. Granted, Kane uses only first names -- as in, "Looks like our killer wanted to leave us a message, Eric" -- but the principle applies. Hewitt could really hammer the analogy home if he began taking his glasses on and off before and after each question. .: posted by hornswaggler 9:50 AM| Thursday, September 06, 2007Mr. and Mrs. Hornswaggler That's my wife Kelley and I standing behind our nephew Padraig at the reception following our wedding August 18 in Laguna Beach. Here's some other images from our wedding photographer. I'll be posting a few other photos in coming days. .: posted by hornswaggler 1:43 PM| Tuesday, August 14, 2007Off the schneid "Welcome to the party, pal!" It's been 19 years since John McClane shouted that greeting to Los Angeles police Sgt. Al Powell, introducing him to the mayhem unfolding at Nakatomi Plaza, a rapidly disintegrating modern office tower. "Die Hard," which chronicled McClane's attempt, within that building, to outlast a team of trigger-happy European criminals, was one of the best and most successful action movies of the 1980s, the spawning ground of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster. It established Bruce Willis as a movie star, giving him what remains his most recognizable character in McClane, a resourceful New York City cop with a devilish wit and a high tolerance for pain. Two sequels followed. "Die Hard 2: Die Harder" (1990), set at Dulles Airport, approached the quality of the original at times. But "Die Hard with a Vengeance" (1995) was braindead, saddling Willis with a campy villain (Jeremy Irons) and an addled plot that called for McClane and a sidekick (Samuel L. Jackson) to rush around Manhattan decoding a series of riddles. By the time the credits rolled on the third installment, the franchise that had distinguished itself with its mostly sharp dialogue and limited field of play had become as lifeless and generic as its various imitators. Willis, who says he was disappointed by the first two sequels, committed to a third because he wanted to make one that stood up to the original. So then it follows that the makers of "Live Free or Die Hard" made at least a token effort to restrain themselves and tether this project to reality and the laws of physics, right? As Arnold Schwarzenegger told a villain in "Commando" before firing a slug into his forehead: "Wrong." Director Len Wiseman and screenwriter Mark Bomback start the proceedings compactly enough, with a close-quarters gun battle in a New Jersey apartment. By the end, however, Willis is doing the rhumba with an F-35 fighter, whose pilot unwisely decides to brandish the jet's vertical take-off capability. The plot? Let's just say it's ambitious: A team of computer savants strapped with automatic weapons brings the U.S. government to its knees, all in order to access a top-secret facility that stores the nation's financial data and download it onto a hard drive, one that is presumably the size of a blue whale. The terrorists are also working out a personal grudge. Thomas Gabriel, played with brio by Timothy Olyphant, was a computer expert for the FBI. But he left the agency after the Pentagon ignored his warnings that the U.S. government was vulnerable to a cyber attack. Gabriel's response to this setback is unusually harsh. Using a small team of experts and exploiting a group of unsuspecting computer hackers, he shuts down transportation systems across the Eastern seaboard, sets off terrorist alerts in the capitol and takes over the nation's airwaves. Gabriel's assassin's eliminate all the hackers except for a certain Matt Ferrall, whom McClane, now a lieutenant detective with the NYPD, is tasked with escorting to the feds in Washington D.C. They arrive in a capitol paralyzed by Gabriel's nerd patrol, whose members have disrupted the city's traffic signals to create satisfyingly crunchy T-bone collisions. McClane may have lost the fight against male pattern baldness, but he's still prepared to kick some ass when his bureaucratic superiors aren't up to the job. Since the FBI can't figure out how to track Gabriel down, McClane does it himself, hauling his clean-shaven cranium and new sidekick on a concussive tour of the mid-Atlantic region. The first stop is a remote area of West Virginia, where Gabriel's karate-choppin' girlfriend, Mia Lihn, is leading a mission to shut down all power east of the Appalachias. Lihn is played by Maggie Q ("Mission: Impossible III"), who is so good-looking that she no longer requires a last name. She does take a fairly serious beating, however, when she squares off against McClane in the bowels of a massive power station. McClane endures his standard thumping as well, absorbing the punishment stoicly and celebrating his kills with yelps and jaunty one-liners. Though McClane's bones are made of titanium, judging from the high-velocity impacts he withstands, he is still human, basically, a fact he demonstrates by limping, grunting, groaning and seeping blood from a panoply of wounds. But despite all the action, "Live Free or Die Hard" eventually starts to feel dull. Where did it go wrong? The problem isn't the acting, which, like McClane's constitution, is able to withstand all the attacks that a ludicrous plot can contrive. Justin Long, making the leap from Apple ads to Hollywood blockbuster, is effective in his hipster-slacker portrayal of Ferrall, whose technological savvy provides an obvious yet effective foil to the creaky McClane. Kevin Smith makes a pleasing cameo as a slovenly uber-hacker, playing a specific sort of part, increasingly prevalent in Hollywood, that seems like it was written for Jack Black, only he wasn't available (see pre-Oscar Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Along Came Polly"). Even Mary Elizabeth Winstead, in a hackneyed role that could have failed badly, does alright as McClane's college-age daughter, whom Gabriel drags into the action only to find out, much to his annoyance, that she has inherited her father's talent for sass talk. The writing isn't the problem either. Despite a few clunkers -- eg, McClane muttering, apropos of nothing, "Another day in paradise" -- the action-movie banter is of high quality. The real difficulty with "Live Free or Die Hard" is its complete lack of tension. The action, though cartoonish, is compelling enough, but the movie does not contain a single moment of fright or suspense. The original Die Hard thrived on its boundaries, just as the beauty of tennis derives from the limits of the court. The tight scope of action provided for the narrow escapes and neatly choreographed pursuits that are the cinematic equivalent of drop shots and sharp-angled volleys. The tone of this film, sprawling and slack, has more in common with Pierce Brosnan-era "James Bond" than, say, "The Bourne Identity" franchise, which now embodies the realistic, minimalist approach (by Hollywood's standards) that defined the first "Die Hard." So as pleasurable as it is to see McClane and his weary smirk once more, the spirit that animated the "Die Hard" franchise appears to have perished. Unless someone has a can't-miss idea for sequel number four - "Die Hardest: Not quite dead"? - it's time to let this enterprise die. [Ed: This post has been modified slightly since it was originally posted.] .: posted by hornswaggler 9:48 PM| Wednesday, February 14, 2007Celebrity lookalikesI love Stanley Kubrick. He may be my favorite film director. But, in this photo, my man looks a lot like Moqtada al-Sadr.   In Kubrick's defense, he probably hadn't showered/slept in a while when this shot was taken. And it was taken during the shoot of "The Shining," I believe, so maybe he was channeling Jack Torrance. As for as-Sadr, do you think he practices glowering in the mirror? Like Zoolander's "Blue Steel," the menacing glower is Moqtada's signature look. .: posted by hornswaggler 9:32 AM| Friday, February 02, 2007Manning fanA piece in Slate tackles the question of why people hate and root against Colts QB Peyton Manning. And there's no question that a lot of people, from Bill Simmons on down, dislike the guy. But put me down as someone who likes him both as a quarterback and person and will be rooting for him to win on Sunday. So he hasn't played all that well in the playoffs. There's plenty of players who fit that description or did fit it until they eventually won. Like John Elway, he's been labelled him a failure and a playoff-choker, but Elway put all that to rest with two Super Bowls at the end of his career. Manning has had the misfortune of running into the Belichek/Brady and buzzsaw and the fact that Patriots CB's are generally allowed to commit aggravated mayhem against opposing wide receivers, including Marvin Harrison, the Philly native who would overcome his own history of playoff futility with a big game Sunday. So Manning's a dork. I like that. I relate to that. Yes, he's in too many commercials right now. But the one for American Express, where he's encouraging the working stiffs, is pretty good, particularly the part where Manning tells the errant paper boy he's still got the best arm in the neighborhood and then ducks his head down towards his coffee mug wearing a maniacal smirk. I disagree utterly with Matt Taibbi's take on Manning, as linked to in the Slate piece, but he does nail the problem of Manning's nose when he refers to #18's "weirdly smushed centurion-noseplate face." Yes, that's it! Also, though I've lightened up on Boomer Esiason a bit recently, I agree with Taibbi when he says Esiason "surely believes Saddam had weapons of mass destruction." UPDATE: Also, Manning's made fun of for not being macho enough and being sort of a perceived outsider when it comes to the Colts locker room. Well, shit. I know I wouldn't feel comfortable in an NFL locker room, surrounded by those gargantuans (I'm going to use that as a noun.) It's like that ad campaign says, "You wouldn't make it in pro football." So I identify with that part of the Manning equation as well. .: posted by hornswaggler 1:30 PM| Big trouble for Andy Reid's kids Whoa. What looked like a kind of nothing story about the twin sons of Eagles coach Andy Reid is now more of a full-blown story: In separate traffic incidents the same day, both of them found with heroin and heroin paraphenalia; one of them brandished a handgun at another motorist, and the other hospitalized a woman in an accident while driving under the influence of heroin and was found with scales, the kind used if you not only use heroin but sell it. Andy and Tammy Reid cut short their California vacation Wednesday. The Big Avocado cannot happy right now. The Reid twins have a history of speeding violations and traffic accidents, as well. INot that's necessarily a precursor to this sort of behavior. I had a bunch of accidents when I was a teenager, but they were all of the single-vehicle variety: driving too fast and hitting a patch of black ice, plowing into a pine tree; stupidly speeding away from a harmless episode of trampoline-related trespassing, plowing into the curb at a fork in the road; driving too fast entering a highway onramp, plowing into a curb; driving off the side of a highway, going up a rocky embankment and nearly flipping over. In retrospect, I probably needed some sort of ADHD medication. But I did manage to stay away from weapons and heroin. .: posted by hornswaggler 9:36 AM| Thursday, January 11, 2007The war in Iraq is not a pair of breastsSeems like an obvious point, right? But evidently it needs to be made, since Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told senators today that the administration prefers the term "augmentation" to "escalation" as a description of the president's newly stated policy for Iraq. With all due respect to Condo -- that's right, I call her Condo Rice, not Condi -- I think escalation is precisely the term that ought to be used. Certainly it can no longer be considered a "surge," because the use of that word has been predicated on the assumption that the action would be temporary. But Bush didn't set any timetables last night, contrary to most predictions. That was the biggest thing I took away from reading a transcript of the speech. The closest he came was saying that he expected al-Maliki's government to be able to assume control for all of Iraq's security in November. Uh, yeah, right. This being said, let me admit that, despite my antipathy towards the Bush presidency, I found the plan that Bush articulated last night kind of tempting. Am I the only liberal out there who felt this way? The idea of securing all of Baghdad, including the strongholds of Moktada al-Sadr, and holding these positions, allowing for relative peace and stability to take hold in the capital, is a good idea. We've done "clear and hold" before, obviously, but we allowed ourselves to be held captive to the Maliki's dependency upon al-Sadr. Not this time, says Bush. But here are the problems with Bush's plan: It seems to be another open-ended commitment, with no timetables or real benchmarks; U.S. troops would have to secure Baghdad for years, not months, to effect lasting change, and the political environments here and in Iraq are no longer conducive to that happening -- we've spent too much money and too many lives to stake another gamble on an uncertain outcome. Here's the problem with Bush: It took a major loss at the polls to force him to think closely and carefully (as closely and carefully as he is capable) about Iraq, rather than rely on a vague but ironclad sense of purpose. He was content to keep on muddling along without making a concentrated effort to retool his strategy until he was finally forced to confront it. Who knows how the looming battle between the White House and congress will play out, and what version of Bush's proposed strategy will ultimately be adopted. But I have to confess a fondness for the White House's plan, despite the fact that neither our military nor Iraq's government appear to welcome it. It just came three years too late. [Update: Predictably, I'm having second thoughts about the above. The best way to express it would be that, out of context, I think the plan is not a bad one, but in context it's one I am not likely to support.] Incidentally, the San Francisco Chronicle had the worst headline about Bush's speech in today's paper: "Bush calls for resolve." Bush calls for resolve? Calling for resolve, and only calling resolve, has been the substance of pretty much every Iraq-related speech he's given since 2004! The whole point of this speech was to provide something more than a mere call for resolve. He was presenting a plan. So either he provided a new vision, or he failed to do so. That's the headline. To focus on "resolve" one more time means the Chroncle's headline writers were either lazy or missed the whole thrust of this news event. Also, in my last post yesterday, I noted that perhaps Bush was going to call for American forces to take the gloves off in their counterinsurgency efforts. It turns out that's not what he said, though the news that we raided the Iranian consulate certainly seems to indicate some kind of tactical disrobement. But there was one other person who drew the conclusion that Bush would call for rougher tactics for U.S. troops. Unfortunately, it's Michael Ledeen of the National Review online, a certifiable Insane Person without scruples who would like us to invade Iran and Syria. This letter Ledeen received from a reader is an apt reflection of one segment of the right-wing population: Gun freaks and military fetishists. You see a lot of them over at Michelle Malkin's blog, the types of people who know way too much about sniper protocol manuals and shrapnel dispersion patterns, but who for the most part never seem to have served in the military themselves. .: posted by hornswaggler 11:05 AM| |
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