I'm In Love With My Car, and Other Stories

You want to hear something funny? So, I was going through the list of all the books I read this past decade, January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2009. The mission was to make a big definitive list of the Top 50 Books of the Decade, which as you might have gleaned didn’t happen. Yet.

Of course, there’s been an obvious trend in my reading. I read a lot of Stephen King this past decade. Okay, yeah, you knew that, but what I thought was kind of interesting is how often I read King during this decade. It certainly wasn’t as much as in decades past, but it was a pretty sizable delving. Aside from the young adult novel Singularity, King’s books are the only ones that have benefited from re-reads, and as I went throughout my lists, I thought it would be fun to figure out which ones I re-read the most. I was a little taken aback at my findings. A brief chart!

King Books I Read Only Once: Dreamcatcher, Desperation, Needful Things, Everything’s Eventual, Firestarter, Cycle of the Werewolf, The Gunslinger, Wolves of the Calla, From a Buick 8, The Shining, Song of Susannah, Silver Bullet, Black House, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Stand, Cell, The Dark Half, Bag of Bones, Rage, Faithful, Insomnia, The Long Walk, The Running Man, Thinner, The Regulators, Blaze, The Mist, Dolores Claiborne, Different Seasons, Under the Dome, The Dark Tower

King Books I Read Twice: Lisey’s Story, Duma Key, Misery, Hearts In Atlantis, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard and Glass, Roadwork, It, The Colorado Kid (back to back!), Pet Sematary

King Books I Didn’t Read At All This Past Decade: Carrie, Night Shift, The Dead Zone, Danse Macabre, The Talisman, The Eyes of the Dragon, Skeleton Crew, The Tommyknockers, Four Past Midnight, Gerald’s Game, Nightmares & Dreamscapes, Rose Madder, The Green Mile, Storm of the Century, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

And the Only Book I Read Three Times This Past Decade: Christine.

Seriously? I read Christine more than any other book in the decade? What the French toast!?

* * *

And for those of you who don’t care about Stephen King, here’s some stuff about the books I read last year!

It’s hard to pinpoint my favorite book I read last year. I read eclectically. Buzzing through Ruth Reichl’s entire oeuvre in under three weeks was kind of a huge rush. Tender At the Bone, Comfort Me With Apples, Garlic & Sapphires, and Not Becoming My Mother were all pretty kick-ass, even though Mother was a tad bit pricey for what amounted to a gift book. While Julie & Julia the year before introduced me to food writing, Ruth kind of stabilized my love for the genre. Of her books on food, I liked Comfort Me With Apples the most, because I’d gotten used to her voice by then and I felt cozy with it, even when she was being selfish and strange.

Speaking of food writing, I totally incongruously dug Born Round, by Frank Bruni. A lot of the book details his struggles with weight, and ends up on the decision that thinner is better – at least for him. Which should offend me to my core, except that Bruni’s journey is a personal one, and he doesn’t make any huge pronouncements about fat automatically equaling bad. It’s just his thing. Plus, he’s a terrific writer and a gay dude, and despite his crazy-femme author photo, I really related to him.

Trends I was not in favor of? Follow-up books which totally failed to live up to their predecessors. I was coerced into reading Tom Standage’s A History of the World In Six Glasses and couldn’t put it down. Then he puts out An Edible History of Humanity and it was dull as shit. Ironically, not even the section on the spice trade was spicy. Same happened with Audrey Niffenegger. I literally read The Time-Traveler’s Wife largely in one sitting. I kept thinking I should put it down, go walk, get exercise, perhaps go to the bathroom. No. It was compulsive. Then she releases Her Fearful Symmetry, which has a kick-ass title and nothing else going for it. One of the plot twists is so contrived and out of character that I had trouble even finishing it. It’s maybe not a bad book – there are character pieces I loved, and the structure was fun – but it fell way, way short.

I kind of fear that I’m taking authors I love for granted, so I want to highlight four that deserve special recognition. While I liked and respected Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates, I found it hard to love; I far preferred Take the Cannoli, which I read for the first time this year. If it’s maybe not as good as Assassination Vacation, it’s absolutely better than Radio On and on par with The Partly-Cloudy Patriot. Chuck Klosterman’s Eating the Dinosaur might be his best collection of essays, despite a chapter on football (though, helpfully, he says we can skip). Nick Hornby’s last collection of book essays, Shakespeare Wrote For Money, is maybe not his very best one – that distinction probably goes to Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt – but it was delightful to be back in his voice and tone again, and I got some good recommendations, which is kind of the point. And A.J. Jacobs, who has yet to disappoint me, released The Guinea Pig Diaries. If The Year of Living Biblically felt a little heavy after The Know-It-All, this is a return to light reporting about his weird, experimental life. Light, but not fluffy. You get a little substance with your dessert here, and now I want a new book.

Some big surprises this year? Shawn brought home I Hate New Music: A Classic Rock Manifesto, by Dave Thompson, which I scoffed at because I thought it was going to be a lot like John Seller’s atrocious Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life. I snatched it out of Shawn’s hand to read the introduction and didn’t put it down until the next day, finished. It’s cranky but readable and understandable. I don’t agree with all his points, but I don’t think you have to agree with an author to like him. Same with Tattoo Machine, by Jeff Johnson, a short but comprehensive story about the recent history of tattooing from someone who was there. There’s a lot of really cool stuff about tattoo trends, stories of crazy people, drunk people, bad tattooists, good tattooists, portrait ink, all that. It’s amazing.

I was also gratified by Charles Ardai’s crime book Fifty-To-One, which is the fiftieth book published by the Hard Case Crime imprint. The goal of the publisher is to put back in print classic crime novels from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and also release new novels by current authors writing in that style. Fifty-To-One manages to title each chapter after each of the preceding books, and was a terrific crime caper in itself. The Abstinence Teacher was a very good follow-up to Tom Perrotta’s Little Children – more readable suburban ennui, dealt with deftly and accessibly. It’s depressing, but not so much that you don’t want to keep reading. Bev Vincent’s The Illustrated Stephen King Companion was a first-of-its kind for King fanatics, featuring removable documents that reprinted unpublished King stories and early drafts from his novels. At once, it became one of the best books on King ever published.

Finally, Stephen King himself put out a new book this year, Under the Dome, which I liked a lot but had some problems with. Almost everything in the book – from the weirdly balanced characters (bad people doing heroic things, heroes fucking up big time) to the interesting movie-camera point of view (used more sparingly here than in Black House) to the ending that skirts a big battle in a really interesting way – works. What doesn’t work is the same thing that didn’t work in Cujo and almost didn’t work in The Stand: big plot turns relying on coincidence. There’s this file folder that, if found, would probably have changed everything in the book, but it keeps getting lost and almost found and it’s frustrating as hell. Despite this, though, the book has a lot to say about Big Issues without ever making them feel like Big Issues, and the characters are very real. (I actually wrote a huge full-length review!)

Huh. I did it. Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? For further elucidation: Everything I Read In 2009.

Now, onto reading in 2010!

Bitches On the Radio

I was at Spike’s yesterday and for the first time, I heard Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance” on the radio. I paused by the door, wanting to see if they’d cut down the bridge like they did on the karaoke version, when I heard something startling: they’d bleeped out the word “bitch.” As in, “walk, walk, fashion baby / work it, move, that *** cuh-razy.”

Dumfounded, I wracked my brain, trying to recall whether bitch was among the naughty no-no words on the radio nowadays. I know God is, except in pious cases (despite the hard work of The Beach Boys, whose “God Only Knows” was banned from some radio stations for not using “God” in a religious fashion), and especially when used as part of the word goddamn, even though silencing it generally plays hell with meter. Ditto fuck and shit, and of course cunt, which actually may have finally trumped fuck as the Worst Swear Ever. But bitch?

I know I have heard Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” on classic rock radio. Same goes for the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch.” Heck, in 1997, thirteen years ago, we were treated to Meredith Brooks’s “Bitch,” which was heard as a sort of feminist paean to mood swings. Maybe there’s a loophole if the song has “bitch” in the title?

Or maybe there aren’t rules about this. When Christina Aguliera’s terrific big-band homage, “Candyman,” came out a few years ago, my friend John wrote about the odd disparity of bleeping out the term “makes my cherry pop” but keeping in “makes my panties drop” – in essence, condemning the sexual innuendo part but being totally okay with the actual sexual part.

It seems arbitrary, that’s all. Lady GaGa can’t declare herself a bitch on the radio, Jay-Z can’t mention references to drugs – even when condemning them! – in “Empire State of Mind,” and Panic! At the Disco can’t say “closing the goddamn door,” but everyone’s cool with Britney Spears spelling out “F-U-C-K me” with wordplay so transparent it might as well be onionskin paper soaked in canola oil.

Look, bitch isn’t even on George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” (although, weirdly, “piss” is, even though they used to say “pissed off” on Friends all the time). Remember that billboard advertising Melrose Place featuring nothing but Heather Locklear and the word BITCH in capital letters? That was a decade ago. Come on, radio. We’ve grown up. Shouldn’t you?

Out Where the Dreams All Hide: A Review of The Killers' Day & Age

Have you heard the new Killers album, Day and Age? Because, seriously, stop reading now and go out and buy it and then listen to it all the way through, and then listen to it again because it’s AWESOME. Seriously, AWESOME, with a capital A (or, in the case of a blog post where the HTML has gotten slack enough for me to hold down the shift key instead of italicizing, AWESOME is in ALL CAPS). Really, go buy it and upload it to iTunes and go to the gym with it or listen to it in bed as you’re drifting to sleep or brushing your teeth or something. I’ll wait.

Still waiting.

Okay, by now I assume you’ve listened to it nine or ten times like I have since getting it for Christmas. (Here I am also assuming that you are hyped up on Red Bulls and Bawls and eggnog chai from Starbucks, because this is how everyone wakes up, right? Right?)

Let’s start with the first single, “Human,” which I purchased from iTunes after I saw The Killers on Saturday Night Live a few months back and which I have since done a near-pitch-perfect version of at karaoke. (Seriously, I know when I’ve fucked up at the karaoke. Note: Alanis’s “Thank U” is not my song.) The song’s chorus has stirred some controversy – not from religious groups or from concerned parents, as most rock and roll does, but from staunch grammarians. The verbal disagreement in the line, “Are we human / or are we dancer?” has caused what can only be deemed a hilarious uproar. According to singer Brandon Flowers, the line is a paraphrase from Hunter S. Thompson … which makes the whole thing a little bit more understandable.

Regardless of all that, the song is full-textured KICK, with a side of RAWK and BITCHIN. Does it make any real sense? Of course it doesn’t. It’s The Killers, the band who made famous the line, “I’ve got soul / but I’m not a soldier.” But there’s an earnestness to Flowers’ singing, especially when he asks, “Will your system be all right / when you dream of home tonight?” As on the genius album Sam’s Town, The Killers make mythic the themes of home and youth and lost love. Nostalgia isn’t passive; it’s vibrant and sometimes violent.

That’s not to say the album is dire. After their glam-pop debut of Hot Fuss and their bid for epic Americana on Sam’s Town, they have figured out how to merge the two sounds on “Day and Age.” (This reminds me of how U2 found a way to merge the electronica of Pop and Zooropa with the soaring, ambitious rock and roll of their early albums on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind.” Except Day and Age is just a little bit better than that.) Their obsession with Bruce Springsteen – an obsession I fully endorse – is on full display here (especially on the absolutely perfect “A Dustland Fairytale,” which seems like a New Wave take on something from the Boss’s “The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle,” and “Losing Touch,” which could have been on Springsteen’s newest effort, “Magic.”) But there’s also some Elton John and David Bowie on “Spaceman,” early Blondie on “This is Your Life,” and “Joy Ride” is the most Duran Duran the Killers can possibly be without becoming a straight-up cover band. It’s eclectic all the way through, in ways that neither Hot Fuss nor Sam’s Town were, and that’s this album’s greatest strength.

The album isn’t without flaws. It’s a little unfortunate that the album’s final two songs – “The World We Live In” and “Goodnight, Travel Well,” are its weakest. It’s not for lack of trying, though: the former has a full string section and its lyrics strive for depth, and the latter is a brooding, spooky closer that weirdly recalls Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” By the end, when the drums and synths kick in big time and try to bring the song (and album) to a rousing close, they fall just a little short. Flowers tries to sound mournful but often comes across a little bored. It’s a terrific title, though.

But focusing on the shortfalls is a disservice to Day and Age, which is a really fantastic record. I honestly can’t get over how amazing “A Dustland Fairytale” is – especially some of Flowers’ more interesting vocal inflections, which manage to break out of his “bombast AND NOW MORE BOMBAST!” mode more than ever. And I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t mention the fantastic “Neon Tiger,” which seems to be told from the point of view of a, um, neon tiger, looking out over the Killers’ beloved/hated Las Vegas. Lyrics you don’t expect keep popping up, keeping us all on our toes. It’s exciting and fun, which are words that can be used to describe most of Day and Age. This is the perfect third album for The Killers, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

The "Bad Romance" Exegesis

Lady GaGa's "Bad Romance" starts off wordlessly, and the opening “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” soars, seemingly hopeful. But at once, words contradict the good feeling being generated: “caught in a bad romance” brings in stark reality, even as the music thumps electronically to life behind it. We’re less than fifteen seconds into the song, and the boomeranging isn’t done yet. Suddenly, Lady GaGa launches into a recitation of sounds that almost make sense – rah-rah, Roma, GaGa, oo-la-la – which seem at first to exist solely for purposes of rhyming, but on closer examination seem almost willfully self-aggrandizing. She’s cheering herself on, rah-rah, oo-la-la: look at me, I’m Lady GaGa. She’s apparently also in Rome, but that might be beside the point. This rhythmic quartet opens the song proper, repeated twice, and crops up throughout as a way of dividing “Bad Romance” into distinct chapters, and introducing each.

At first glance, the verses themselves seem like standard pop-dance fare, repeating “I want your love (love, love, love, I want your love)”. But the real story is darker, as she insists what she wants is mostly negative: ugly, disease, drama, horror. There’s a flirtation with S&M as she admits she craves “your leather-studded kiss in the sand,” conflating the positive aspects of kink-play with the larger “bad romance.” The bridge – in tone, music, and lyrics reminiscent of the Divynals’ “I Touch Myself,” perhaps ironically featuring a far more positive look at self-love – uses the words “want” and “need” in regards to romance, reinforcing the negative connotations of the verses.

The chorus, then, is a bit of a surprise; for the first time, we sense perhaps a different meaning in the phrase “bad romance.” Even as she sings the line, “I want your love and I want your revenge,” she follows it up by suggesting, “you and me could write a bad romance.” Here, the listener gets the sense that she means something along the lines of a trashy romance novel, one with a lot of softcore erotica and a happy ending. Her inflections support this thought, but that word “revenge” keeps appearing, contradicting the more positive readings. Illuminating the chorus is a revival of the first verse in the song: “caught in a bad romance.” The use of the past tense – in a song otherwise in the present-tense – is interesting, indicating that the things she craved were the wrong things, and now she’s stuck in something she only thought she wanted. It’s a bizarre reality check, even as that “oh-oh-oh-oh-OH” continues to paint verbal hopefulness in the background.

The second verse recalls a qualification of the first: earlier, she’d stated that she “want(s) your everything as long as it’s free”; now she warns that “you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine.” It’s as if she’s giving outs to her object of desire, subtly indicating that she’s willing to throw herself into a fantasy as long as it remains a fantasy. Dark desires have a way of turning into dark realities. To underscore this, GaGa name-checks three Alfred Hitchcock films – Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo (applying the appellation –stick to this latter title, recalling the disco-stick of her earlier hit “Love Games”; it’s still nonsensical, but at least its conjunction with Vertigo makes a bit more sense. In addition, the line “while you’re in my rear window, baby it’s sick” begs for a more lurid reading than mere allusion; the longer the song continues, the more pornographic and naked her desires become, even as she tries to repudiate them.)

Following another doubling of the “rah-rah” bridge, we enter into a bizarre subplot, which seems to feature GaGa onstage at a fashion show (could this be what she meant by “Roma”?) The vocal grows a bit more diffuse, standing in for a crowd watching her strut. Amid the standard “walk, walk fashion baby,” we get “work it, move, that bitch crazy.” The shift to second person (with GaGa looking in at herself) is fascinating, as if she knows that other people know something about her that she doesn’t; perhaps she is afraid of her “sick” intentions being brought to light, even as she wants them to. A defensive, “I’m a freak bitch, baby!” tries to sound like she’s owning it, but fails to convince. This dichotomy continues to define the song.

Something revealing happens by the next chorus: after the repetition that she wants both love and revenge, she states, “I don’t want to be friends.” It’s the first time in the song she nakedly states something she doesn’t want. It’s a brief moment of naked honesty, and GaGa immediately fears it. At once, she dives into French, as if backing off from this statement, baffling the listener away from truth.

Soon enough, though, she comes back to it, seeming to need to get it out. She repeats the line three times, and on the third repetition, she finally evinces emotion. Most of the song has been sung in an almost-monotone (with the exception of the chorus, whose vocal ranges from come-on to slight desperation). On the final, “I don’t want to be friends,” she actually shouts, underlining her entire intention of the song. She wants destructive love, but she doesn’t want to actually like this person. The whole song has led up to this moment, finally revealing GaGa’s true colors – she wants a theory of love tainted with versions of hate and pain. Real love, which requires you to be friends with the person you are in love with, is messier than her initial concepts of what makes romance “bad.” Immediately following this revelation, she falls back to her default position: “I want your bad romance.”

“Bad Romance” is a complicated, complex song, bursting with pop concepts that could have been the basis for four or five lesser songs. More, it’s deeper than it pretends to be; even flourishes like the way she slurs the word “hand” and the grunting sigh in the middle of the second verse are more interesting than they have any right to be. After the mediocre “Just Dance,” the trying-too-hard “Poker Face,” and the absolutely horrible “Love Games,” “Paparazzi” was a breath of fresh air. “Bad Romance” happily continues this trend. It’s not only Lady GaGa’s best single so far, it is also one of the best songs of the year.

Whatchamacallit!

In 1978, the Hershey’s company released the Whatchamacallit candy bar to the masses. The Whatchamacallit bar was made of peanut butter flavored “crispies” and featured a coating of rich milk chocolate. Eager to play on its silly, memorable name, Hershey’s produced this early commercial, a Little League take on the classic Abbot & Costello bit, “Who’s On First.”





In 1987, nine years after its inception, Hershey’s made the controversial decision to add a layer of caramel to the candy bar. Debates still rage to this day whether the decision was a good one. In an effort to take on problems that are truly important, several online petitions have sprung up to get Hershey’s to remove the caramel layer. None of these efforts have been successful.

While the Whatchamacallit bar never had an amazing movie tie-in opportunity like Reese’s Pieces did with E.T. – or, to a lesser extent, Baby Ruth in The Goonies or Zagnut in Beetlejuice – Whatchamacallit did have an amazing mind-bender of a commercial in 1989. Again, though it’s not as revered as, say, that one for the Tootsie Pop (probably the best candy commercial of all time), it’s weird and merges retro and future-retro styles to create something truly memorable.






Whatchamacallit’s brand graphics changed in 2002, with more dynamic package imagery (the name of the bar jumps out against a chocolate “splash” field). In 2006, the Whatchamacallit – along with several other candy bars, including the inconceivably popular Take 5 – underwent a far more radical change than the addition of caramel. Due to the rising cost of cocoa, Hershey’s began replacing the cocoa butter coating with a new coating consisting mainly of vegetable oils. While it still contains some chocolate, Hershey’s is no longer allowed to legally state that the Whatchamacallit contains milk chocolate. As a result, the packaging of the Whatchamacallit changed once again, and advertising that it is “Made with chocolate, peanut flavored crisps, and caramel.”

In 2009, following the trend of candy bars receiving spinoff treatment, the Whatchamacallit introduced a limited edition candy bar called the Thingamajig. The Thingamajig is slightly smaller than the Whatchamacallit, featuring cocoa crisps with a layer of peanut butter substituted for caramel. Like the Whatchamacallit, it is enrobed in a coating of Hershey’s imitation milk chocolate, but because the whole bar is suffused with chocolate essence, one can detect the lack of cocoa butter less.

The Whatchamacallit has never gotten the recognition or praise it deserves (which makes the existence of the Thingamajig it a little puzzling … if delicious), but even with the caramel layer and the change to mocklate, I think the Whatchamacallit is one of the best candy bars out there. Crisp, wide, and a surprising chocolate/peanut butter combination flavor that is at once unusual and inviting, the Whatchamacallit deserves its due.

Foot Loose and Fancy-Free: Quentin Tarantino's Curious Fondness

On the set of her eponymous show, Tyra Banks abruptly leans back, throws her legs in the air, and promptly drops her feet in Quentin Tarantino’s lap. She explains that when she’d heard the director was going to be on her show, she had a pedicure done at once. “I was actually going to say,” Tarantino laughs, “is this on my account?” But when she tells him that she’s going to utilize his foot obsession to help her judge a model contest, Tarantino defends himself: “You don’t have to say obsession … I have a fondness.”

But what a fondness! Infamous screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus felt it interesting enough to mention in his memoir, Hollywood Animal. A recent New York article, commenting on a photo shoot in which Tarantino is photographed fondling Diane Kruger’s feet, shouted, “Okay, Okay, Quentin Tarantino Has a Foot Fetish, We Get it!” But is that all it is? A prurient preoccupation with feet, a kink Tarantino is helpless to throw onscreen in a combination of titillation, explanation, and popularization? Perhaps not. The Village Voice, eschewing the shock and exasperation that generally comes bundled with a discussion of Tarantino’s quirk, explored it a little more deeply: “It's not just that he's a foot fetishist, but that he takes what he cares about—personal, quirky stuff—and transforms it into art.”

Directors are famous for their motifs, and Tarantino is no exception. His fascinations – genre films, off-kilter sequencing, and 70s culture among them – define and occasionally pigeonhole him. Just as each of these directorial choices come to shape the movies he makes, so too does his fondness for feet. No mere fetish writ large, Tarantino’s examination of the toes and soles of his actresses is far more interesting.

Pulp Fiction launches right into things, as gangsters Vincent and Jules famously discuss whether giving a man’s wife a foot rub is cause for defenestration. The message is clear right off: whether throwing Tony Rocky Horror out of a window for touching Marcellus Wallace’s wife Mia’s feet was justified is not really the issue; the issue is whether touching a woman’s feet equals sex. Later, the film does its best to convince us that it is: when Mia Wallace first appears, we see her dancing barefoot to Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man”. The finale of this sequence lingers on a close-up of Mia’s toes sunk seductively into a deep-pile carpet. Mia is beautiful and her dance is seductive, but it is this image that underlines the scene – the job of the audience is to understand that the soles of her feet are meant to be as erotic as seeing her naked.



Later, in what is arguably Pulp Fiction’s most famous sequence, Mia bullies Vincent into entering (and winning) the Jack Rabbit Slim’s twist contest. It’s no mistake that while Vincent remains in socks, Mia – now aggressive – dances barefoot once again. It is here that we first get a glimpse of feet symbolizing something more than sex for Tarantino. Mia stripping her shoes off is an act of power here – seductive, yes, but in the service of winning her the trophy she wants. During the twist contest, we are allowed only one close-up of her gyrating feet. Any more, Tarantino seems to say, would be to rob the sequence of its power, degenerating it to something like pornography.



Of course, pornography is very much on the roster in From Dusk Till Dawn. Though not directed by Tarantino, it was written by him and stars him, and offers and intriguing evolutionary step in this aspect of Tarantino’s development. In one scene, Salma Hayek, as erotic dancer Satanico Pandemonium, moves seductively across a table toward Tarantino’s Richie Gecko. Bikini-clad and wearing a writhing snake around her shoulders, Pandemonium lifts her foot to Gecko’s face, pouring alcohol down her thigh and inviting Gecko to lap it off her toes. That Pandemonium is revealed to be a vampire recontextualizes this scene, echoing Jonathan Harker’s seduction by Dracula’s concubines. The theme of consumption mixed with sexuality is key in vampire stories, and it is no mistake that later, Pandemonium drinks more literally from Richie Gecko, transforming him into a vampire. This classic horror movie trope of sex (in this case, toe-sucking instead of intercourse) leading to death will be explored in far more detail in Tarantino’s later Death Proof.



The image of alcohol and feet re-emerges in Jackie Brown, a movie concerned above all things with age. When Bridget Fonda’s Melanie first appears, several shots focus on the soles of her bare feet, prettied up with toe rings; as it is later suggested that she is “past her prime,” the toe rings – along with her skimpy outfits and garish fake tan – serve to accentuate her desire to cling to her youth. The first close-ups of her feet frame them next to a glass of alcohol sipped intermittently by Robert DeNiro’s Louis Gara – seen here grizzled and old. The proximity of girlish feet next to this man’s alcohol underlines their drab Lolita relationship, and serves as foreshadowing to its violent conclusion. Whereas Salma Hayek’s bare foot – dripping with alcohol – symbolized her power over Tarantino’s character, here the power dynamic is reversed. Following a brief and blunt sex scene (recalling – and perhaps exploiting – DeNiro’s boudoir scene with Jodie Foster’s child prostitute in Taxi Driver) DeNiro’s character shoots Fonda in broad daylight.



In these early Tarantino films, his focus on feet is almost purely sexual, though suggesting themes of more symbolic importance. Sex is either presaged or entirely subverted by the fetishization of feet. However, by the time of Kill Bill, the focus shifts. Early on, Uma Thurman’s Bride character awakens from a coma partially paralyzed. Before she can embark on her “roaring rampage of revenge,” she first has to get her feet moving. A close-up of Thurman’s bare feet fill the screen as she commands herself to “wiggle her big toe.” Epic importance is attached to this moment; this is the Bride’s first major act of independence since being shot in the head by Bill years prior. In this context, a woman’s feet are as much symbolic of her power and strength as her swordplay; it is important that Lucy Liu’s character removes her shoes before her climactic battle with the Bride.

In Kill Bill, Volume 2, we again see The Bride’s feet in flashback, before her later violent retribution. During her talk with David Carradine’s Bill – before his attempt on her life – we see her in sandals, the tops and sides of her feet exposed. Bill appears in loafers, and there are several shots of both pairs of feet approaching one another. The dynamic here is clear: Bill has caught The Bride unaware, putting him in control … though his control is not total. Though he shoots her, she lives; it may not be that much of a stretch to suggest that her covered soles are a symbol of things even Bill is not allowed to see.



Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the Grindhouse experiment, pushes all of the director’s interests to the extreme. Here, his love of dialogue that has no bearing on the plot or story of the film at times detracts from the momentum, and his interest in subplots as epic as his plots can be trying. His interest in feet, too, is explored to unprecedented degrees. Tarantino has described Death Proof as a slasher film, and in slasher films, the killer tends to target teenagers who have dared to have premarital sex. Death Proof follows that logic with a Tarantino twist: instead of sex, we are privy to long, sensual shots of young women’s feet.



The film opens with a bright shot of feet crossed at the ankle resting on a dashboard; this is meant to be as sexual (and iconic) an image as a scantily-clad woman writhing on the hood of a car. Our first glimpse of one of the film’s sexy leads, Sydney Poitier, is of her walking barefoot through her apartment, with many shots tracking her at foot level. Later, she appears with her feet dangling off a porch during a rainstorm, the water sluicing sensually between her toes, bringing to mind similar scenes of skinny-dipping in earlier slasher movies. Immediately before she is murdered, we see Poitier’s foot dangling out of the window of a car: bare feet equal sex, and sex equals death.



In the second segment of Death Proof, a sleeping Rosario Dawson is spotted by the slasher-killer Stuntman Mike; her feet, too, are dangling out a car’s window. While she dozes, Stuntman Mike runs a finger over the heels of her feet. This act is the height of repugnance, meant to imply attempted rape. Stuntman Mike’s twisted mentality sees this accidental sensuality as reason to murder. It is no accident that, later, Dawson and her friends take their revenge on Stuntman Mike by stomping him to death. The shoe, truly, is on the other foot.



Inglourious Basterds is a tricky, intricately plotted foreign film hiding inside a brash Tarantino genre-bender. Over the course of the film, we learn that Diane Kruger’s actress Bridget von Hammersmark is working as a double agent for the Americans within the Nazi ranks. During a climactic scene, she is nearly killed and just manages to escape with her life. Christopher Waltz’s Hans Landa, a brutal Nazi officer who has uncovered her high-heel shoe amidst the wreckage she escaped, tracks her down, and in an unbearably tense perversion of the Cinderella story, matches the shoe to her foot. One foot is already broken, symbolic of her sudden diminished usefulness; her other, exposed by Landa, literally and figuratively explicates where her loyalties lie. Far from being a sexual symbol – though there is an element to dark sexuality in this scene, as there was in the similar scene in Death Proof – here, Diane Kruger’s bare foot reveals her secrets and makes her vulnerable. Her feet broken and exposed, von Hammersmark is powerless.



However Tarantino’s “quirky, personal stuff” first emerged onscreen, it is obvious that his passion for feet has become far more interesting than kink or fetish. As symbols of sexuality, of power, of vulnerability, his actresses’ feet are as versatile as any other signature at Tarantino’s disposal. One can’t but be intrigued as to what his next step will be.

Be a Pepper!

Of course we all know that Dr Pepper is delicious, but did you know that it is the oldest major manufacturer of soft drink concentrates and syrups in the United States? That’s right! It beats Coca-Cola by a year and Pepsi-Cola, which came about in 1898, is like Dr Pepper’s upstart little brother. I thought it would be fun to take a little look at not only how “the most misunderstood soft drink” came about, but also how it’s remained so popular all these years.

Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas in 1885, liked the way the drug store smelled – an intoxicating aroma of fruit syrups wafting through the air, mixing and merging together. In his spare time, he set about experimenting with capturing that wonderful aroma in a taste, and serving it in a beverage.

After a successful taste-test by his boss, Alderton began serving the beverage in the store, and soon patrons began demanding a “Waco.” Unfortunately, how the moniker “Dr. Pepper” came about is lost to the sands of time, although it is generally agreed that Morrison – Alderton’s boss – came up with the name.



In 1904, at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition – more commonly known as the St. Louis World’s Fair – Dr. Pepper was unleashed on the world (with some heavy consumption competition; at the same World’s Fair, hot dogs and hamburgers were served on buns for the first time, and ice cream cones were popularized! Talk about a junk food explosion!) Over twenty million people sampled the beverage, and Dr. Pepper was officially a hit!


Old Doc!

The popular slogan, “King of Beverages” is thought to have originated in a newspaper advertisement as early as 1906. A mascot, a country doctor with a top hat and a monocle named Old Doc, emerged in advertising in the 1920s and 1930s, and became Dr. Pepper’s trademark. During that era, research determined that the average person experiences fatigue at 10:30, 2:30, and 4:30. Capitalizing on this, the Dr Pepper company promoted an ad contest that would incorporate this new information into their marketing. The winning slogan was “Drink a bite to eat at 10, 2, and 4!”


Drink a bite to eat!

During World War II, a radio program titled The 10-2-4 Ranch (and later 10-2-4 Time for broader appeal) aired, with Dr. Pepper advertising spots. Over five hundred episodes were produced! Two other variety programs – The Dr. Pepper Parade and Dr. Pepper’s Treasure – were also sponsored by the company.

Changes were afoot in the 1950s. A new slogan, “The Friendly Pepper-Upper,” began appearing in advertisements, and the familiar logo was redesigned. This new logo was slanted, and due to legibility and stylistic reasons, the period at the end of “Dr.” was dropped, making the brand name officially Dr Pepper.


OMG RUN!!!

In the 1960s, it became a major sponsor of the television show American Bandstand, linking the beverage intrinsically with rock and roll music. A new version of the drink, “Dietetic Dr Pepper” was released, although sales were sluggish due to people thinking it was for diabetics. In 1966, the product name was changed to “Diet Dr Pepper.”


Why? Because it's awesome.

Around this time, the slogans, “The most misunderstood soft drink” and “so misunderstood” also appealed to the teen market, as did the early 70s slogan, “the most original soft drink ever.” However, no one could have guessed how popular the Dr Pepper marketing campaign of 1977 would be. With a catchy jingle and commercials featuring David Naughton and campy choreography, Dr Pepper was arguably more popular than it had ever been:





I drink Dr. Pepper and I'm proud / I used to feel alone in a crowd / Now if you look around these days / There seems to be a Dr. Pepper craze!

Oh I'm a pepper / He's a pepper/ She's a pepper / We're a pepper / Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too!

Sort of a change from the theme of individuality just a few years before!

In the 1980s, Coca-Cola tried unsuccessfully to purchase Dr Pepper, but the Federal Trade Commission blocked them at every turn, due to concerns about Coke creating a monopoly on “Pepper”-flavored beverages. However, for a time, Coke and Pepsi distributed Dr Pepper, until it merged with Snapple. Currently, Dr Pepper Snapple bottles and distributes most of its own product.

In 1991, aspartame was introduced to Diet Dr Pepper, along with the successful marketing campaign that it “Tastes more like Regular Dr Pepper.” An upswing in sales ensued. In 2002, for the first time in 122 years, Dr Pepper began experimenting with flavor extensions. First came Dr Pepper Red Fusion, which tasted nothing at all like regular Dr Pepper. Its production ceased within a year.



Other flavors followed: Dr Pepper Berries & Crème, Cherry Chocolate Dr Pepper, and Dr Pepper Cherry, but the most popular was Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, which remained on the market from 2004 until 2009. In 2009, a new advertising campaign featuring famous pop-culture “doctors,” like Kelsey Grammar of Frasier and Dr. Dre, began appearing in commercials with the tagline, “Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

A Dr Pepper Museum located in Waco, Texas bottled Dr Pepper from 1906 until the 1960s, and was opened to the public in 1991. It features three floors of exhibits, an old-fashioned soda fountain, and a terrific store of Dr Pepper memorablilia.

For nearly 125 years, Dr Pepper has been making people smile. It’s a beverage with real appeal, a fascinating history, and twenty-three delicious flavors. Wouldn’t you like to be a pepper, too?