Most Underrated State: Kansas
When you mention Kansas to most people, only two things come to mind: flatness and Dorothy. Well, many people come from Kansas -- Detroit Lions running back Barry Sanders, Alf Landon, the poet William Stafford, Martina McBride, Vivian Vance, the Clutter family, not to mention thousands of people nobody ever heard of -- and Dorothy isn't even a real person. As for flatness, I've driven across the state many times as a former resident of Wichita, and Kansas is not flat. It's a landscape of gorgeous rolling hills that enable a person to see grain silos from miles away. If it were flat, I never could have stayed awake during all those excursions. You want to talk about flat? South Florida is flat. Just think -- if the Everglades were comprised of rolling hills, alligators would be turning up in canals and people's backyards all over the surrounding municipalities. (Oh, wait -- they already do.)
Most Underrated Sport: Curling
What would the Winter Olympics be without curling? Curling is like shuffleboard on ice, only the disc is replaced by a round polished granite stone, and what I find to be an endless source of fascination is watching the two players ahead of the stone sweeping frantically with brooms. I have a broom at home, and if I could sweep that fast, my housecleaning would be over in seconds.
Most Underrated Performance By A Movie Actress in a Leading Role:
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miami Blues
Generally speaking, crime dramas aren't usually noticed during awards season, and, as a result, actors and actresses in those movies get overlooked as well. But in Miami Blues, Leigh gives a positively Streepesque performance that I can't even try to be funny about. She plays a hooker/college student who gets involved with a deadly ex-con played by Alec Baldwin, who also has never been better. Leigh doesn't merely embody this role; she lives it. Her inflections, her quirky body language, her manifestations of doubt and grief, are all totally unlike anything she has played before or since, and they're true to her character. Just watch her in the supermarket scene where Fred Ward, also outstanding as a cop (this movie is filled with terrific performances), is informing her that her boyfriend is a murderer. She had promised Ward, who previously shared a dinner with her and Baldwin at her apartment, a homemade recipe, and as she tells it to him, her delivery is a perfectly modulated blend of ordinary chit chat and slowly mounting heartbreak. The movie is based on a novel by crime writer Charles Willeford, whom I mention because he, too is underrated.
Most Underrated TV Show: Then Came Bronson
This series ran from 1969 to 1970, which gives you some idea of how underrated it was. Michael Parks played Jim Bronson, a newspaperman who takes to the open road on a 1969 Harley Davidson Sportster after a friend's suicide and his overall disgust with "working for the Man." Each episode opened with Bronson pulling up to a stoplight beside an average-looking guy in an average-looking car. The dialogue is a perfect mix of Shakespeare and European existentialism:
What did I tell you? I couldn't get enough of it back then -- that is, when I could hear it. You see, Parks was one of a new breed of Method actors who tried to sound and act like their ultimate rebel hero, Marlon Brando. In Parks' case, this meant lots of mumbling. I would watch it with my parents, and my father was forever going, "What the hell did he just say?" He didn't understand what being cool was all about. Then a few years ago, I came across a copy of one of the episodes, and after a few minutes, I found myself going, "What the hell did he just say?" I no longer understood was being cool was all about. I had joined the Establishment.
Bronson spoke to the free spirit I wanted to be at 16. I wanted to own my own Harley and travel the country and meet people at pivotal points in their lives and make everything OK before riding away again until the next episode. By the 2000's, though, I'd had enough of traveling, I thought motorcycles were rolling death traps, and people at pivotal points in their lives would have to solve their own problems; I had my own. Ah, youth.
Most Underrated Athlete: Floyd Patterson
Talk about boxing today and it's Ali this, Ali that. If not, it's Tyson this, Tyson that. You don't hear much about Floyd Patterson (1935-2006) anymore, and that's a shame. He's the only fighter I'd like to have met and shared a meal with. I won't bore you with the stats, except this: He fought and lost to Ali twice, the first time in 1965. (The second time was in 1972, when the fight was called after six rounds due to a cut and swelling that Ali gave him.) Ali had called Patterson an Uncle Tom because Patterson wouldn't call him Muhammad Ali after he dropped the name Cassius Clay. Ali considered this an offense to Islam. Patterson wasn't all that interested in Islam to begin with; he was a staunch civil rights activist, and this ran counter to Islam's beliefs (or something like that; I'm not sure exactly what the conflict was). Legend has it that because of this, Ali toyed with and tormented Patterson throughout the fight just to prolong the humiliation. But Patterson was suffering from a slipped disk he'd gotten during training, and it became evident pretty quickly that he was in considerable pain. Ali saw this and pulled back, thinking the ref would stop the fight. But the ref didn't stop it. Patterson said later that Ali's punches grew softer as the minutes went by, and he wondered if indeed Ali was mocking him. Ali ultimately won the fight with a TKO. Hmm . . . I thought I knew where I was going with this. It doesn't speak as much to Patterson's character as it does to Ali's, does it? Ignore this paragraph.
Point is, though, that Patterson was an activist who fought for desegregation, and, nearly as important to me, he was by all accounts a perfect gentleman to everyone he met throughout his life. Hence, our meal together.
Most Underrated Plant: Dandelion
Dandelions just want to be our friends. They look so cute with their little white afros, and they give us hours of pleasure when we blow on them. If you can't blow on them because you're weak from hunger, they're also edible. That's how much they love us.
Most Underrated Rumor: Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
It's long been an accepted fact that President Millard Fillmore installed the White House's first bathtub in 1850. He didn't. This was a hoax perpetrated by journalist H.L. Mencken in 1917 in one of his columns. He later admitted it was a prank and that he had only tried to boost morale during WWI. I'm sure our troops and their loved ones here at home rested easy knowing that Millard Fillmore went to bed clean every night. So I call this rumor underrated because I can't think of many others that have been so fully integrated into the national consciousness. Heck, I believed it my whole life until ten minutes ago. (Love you, Wikipedia!)
Most Underrated Band: Doug and the Slugs
Doug and the Slugs was a Canadian pop band that formed in 1977 and lasted until 1992. They had trouble getting gigs in the early days because of their name (can't imagine why), but they went on to become a very popular band in Canada and achieved a modest success here. Their (few) hits included "Making It Work" and "Too Bad" ("Too Bad" became the theme song for a sitcom called The Norm Show. If you remember it, then voila, you've heard of them.) I like them because they were quirky and self-deprecating, because their lead singer, Doug Bennett, wrote good lyrics, and because they had a smooth sound that I found infectious. Theirs were some of MTV's earliest music videos, and hey, I just happen to have one of them right here. The song is "Real Enough," a song I still can't get enough of. Just listen to this harmony. These cats swing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoRgcUJ66SY
You're right, everybody was great in Miami Blues. I'd really like to see that again.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad someone besides me saw it. I never get tired of watching it. Remember Alec Baldwin helping her with her haiku, making one up as he ransacked her neighbor's apartment? Such originality in that script.
DeleteNever saw Miami Blues. Maybe I should rent it.
ReplyDeleteIt comes with a proviso, though -- sex, nudity, language, violence, the whole shebang. I don't know what your tolerance level for that stuff is. I didn't mind it because the script and the acting were so good.
DeleteMy mom used to say that the dandelion ought to be the National Flower.
ReplyDeleteRoger
Yay, Mom!
Delete