Wichita: The Next Hollywood?

Every now and again my hometown of Wichita, Kansas is featured in a movie. Perhaps with my upcoming high school reunion I was feeling a sense of nostalgia. So I rented a recent Wichita movie-- The Ice Harvest. Before I delve into a review, I'd like to note there are many conceptions (pre and mis) about Wichita. To clear some of these up: is Wichita a cow town? No. I suppose it used to be, but now it is a metropolis of half a million. There is industry and commerce. There are neighborhood swimming pools. There is a Starbucks. And yes, there are farms, but they are outside the city proper. Next...Is Wichita a red state? Yes! Conservative Christians run rampant. But there are at least some liberals...although many of us have moved out. Does Kansas have tornados? Yes...but houses with girls named Dorothy rarely land on witches.
The Wizard of Oz fixed Kansas (if not Wichita) in the minds of cineophiles decades ago, but alas, the current crop of movie offerings are nearly forgettable. Ten years ago Tim Burton directed Mars Attacks! It was filmed in Wichita and featured a big cast of A list actors including Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Danny DeVito...I remember the call for extras and the excitement of the filming. In the end, the movie, clearly about martians, caused Wichitans to further defend themselves. It was a strange flop, now remembered only by cult fanatics.
Several years later, The Big Kahuna featuring Kevin Spacey and (again!) Danny DeVito was released. Although it got fair reviews, in the end was a character study of several salesmen and took place entirely in a hotel suite. I wasn't impressed.
Two duds, but the passing of the years must have made me forget that, so The Ice Harvest was sent to me by Netflix. A film noir starring John Cusick and Billy Bob Thornton, The Ice Harvest promised a dark comedy reminiscent of Bad Santa. It did take place at Christmas, and it was dark...but there were few funny moments. The premise: two guys embezzle 2 million from a local gangster. They need to get out of town alive with the money. It's a basic story line, but I never really understood the motivation, or why the two guys went in on it together. There is a twist at the end, and I did keep watching, but there was little to indicate this movie needed to take place in Wichita, save for a running riddle, "As Wichita Falls, so does Wichita Fall." In the extras commentary, the filmmakers joke, "who knows what Wichita looks like? No one. So we shot in suburban Chicago." They argued that for this movie, the set need be only any suburban landscape from which the leads needed to flee...still, if they had consulted anyone from Wichita, they would have been informed that no one goes to Citgo as a convenience store. You'd go to Quicktrip.
I guess Wichita doesn't lend itself to glamour the way L.A., New York, London or Paris do. Perhaps that's why the house in the Wizard of Oz was trying to get away.

World Cup

I guess you don't really know someone until you've been with them four years, or at whichever point in the four year cycle the World Cup hits. For myself and G, it's been nearly two and a half years and until a week ago I had no idea the lengths he'd go to watch these soccer matches. I think Americans equate soccer to the activity their kids play after school and on weekends (think Soccer Mom) and at some point the kids outgrow soccer, so that we can all be free to obsess about the Red Sox, er, I mean baseball, in general.

Boston is a cosmopolitan city, so even those of us who barely know the difference between a soccer ball and a whiffle ball are forced to notice the proliferation of World Cup media as of late. A few years back I lived in a building with a large Brazilian ex-pat population...I first understood the true fanaticism of the games when Brazil finally won-- at 3 am.

At any rate, G showed his European background by making plans with his Irish friend to meet at the bar on Saturday morning at 9 am. He tried to get me to go, but I'd already determined I wasn't getting out of bed for anything short of a national emergency on Saturday morning. And in fact, when 8:45 did roll around (after a night of dinner out, followed by drinks for Evil Twin #1's pre-departure to Japan), and it was rainy, I was surprised at G's determination to make it to the bar.
So what did I do, as a good American, while G was off drinking Guiness and eating blood sausage? What any good American would do. I ate apple pie in bed.

Summer of...

Even though I've been out of school for years, Memorial Day weekend still means the start of summer and all that entails-- sleeping in, a morning class of something, watching soap operas, heading to the neighborhood pool for a long afternoon, followed by dinner and iced tea out on the porch and running around outside until the late sunset. Unfortunately this is a memory and does not reflect a working professional's summer (fortunately my memory falls just short of remembering the grueling task of mowing the lawn in 100+ degree weather and other "God, Mom, please, no!" tasks presented daily in the chore notebook). A summer in Boston usually means staring out my work window, into the sunshine, waiting for the weekend when all manner of New England activities can be enjoyed (the beach! a clambake!)...and then sighing with frustration when the weekend yields two days and two nights straight of rain and only 55 degree weather.
Because summer is now only what we make of it, it helps to set specific goals. Last summer was the Summer of Evil Twin #1 and I hosted a series of teen movies (which I probably looked forward to more than I should admit). My sister has deemed this summer to be the Summer of Svelte. I'm awaiting my official package, but I believe it involves excercise competitions with one other person (perhaps someone you live with). At the end of each two weeks, whoever has best accomplished his/her goals takes the other person out for drinks. Unlike some people (you know who you are), I am not goal oriented, so really the motivation's (beer, really?!) got to be good. It's no use reflecting on the past, when ballet camp every morning and swimming every afternoon kept me in shape.
With less than 12 weeks left of "summer", it's time to start svelting...and drinking.