Lovely day, and the last, they say. Highs in the sixties with sun on the grass. Colder tomorrow, as the season collapses. Trees shed. Lawns brown. Hostas rot. I still think it’s stupid to end the year when we do; we’ve nothing to show for it.

But a good day. Busy, if reading into a television camera can be called “busy.” It’s not, but it’s the work that goes into it, crafting every word with care. Because if I say it on TV, it’s true! Post hoc ergo teleprompter hoc. Posted to the Strib blog and the Hughniverse (my new home for the Screeds, and yes it’s a pay site, so don’t even bother clicking if you couldn’t care less what I have to say about such matters even when it’s free. Otherwise yes, go) and was in place when Natalie got off the bus. That’s the great divider of the day. Before: official duty. After: I make up my own duties.

Which means I end up playing “Wolfenstein” after dinner. Hey, I get one, maybe two games a year, and I’ve enjoyed the previous Wolfie titles. This lacks the breadth and length of the previous one, but I’m still enjoying it. You get to dispose of Nazis, always a plus, and they’re the super-evil kind intent on digging up ancient pagan Germanic artifacts for dark nefarious purposes. I do wonder if younger folk without historical backgrounds think the Nazis were in power for 35 years, because they seem to have accomplished a great deal in these games. And they had different uniforms for everyone in their paranormal division! MGM costume department wasn’t that good.

Gaming: it keeps you young! Especially if you get the power-ups that improve joint health and automatically steady your aim. I would play games 10X more than I do if I had the time, and if I didn’t feel as if I was shirking all the other things that needed doing. That tottering stack of Life magazines isn’t going to scan itself. In the 90s I played Doom until my hands were gnarled claws. Now I have to stop after 7, because otherwise the day evaporates and I’ve accomplished nothing except some saved checkpoints. I think it’s a common emotion: all that drama and noise and excitement, and in the end, nothing. People who make games for a living probably feel that way after a while.

But as I said, keeps you young – or at least in tune with a certain segment of the popular culture. I read with interest this VDH essay about dropping out on popular culture, and while I get it, I can’t do it. Entirely. Pop music: eh. Don’t care. Network TV news: please. No, Movies, I’m split – my love of old movies is matched only by my juvenile love of space operas, which I suppose means I can’t bear to live in the present, but in so many modern movies you can barely hear the bad dialogue for the sound of axes bent to the grindstone. The art and artifice of previous generations is often more rewarding, and in their own mannered fashion they say the same things about life as modern films, but in less time, with fewer pretensions. Human nature in those old movies is something the medium accepts as a given, instead of pretending it can be remade to suit the self-flattering preconceptions of an ahistorical generation. (Or three.)

I mentioned – here or on twitter, don’t recall – that I didn’t like Monsters vs. Aliens. The first reason is rather insignificant, but it bothered me just a little: I didn’t like any of the characters. Except B.O.B., who was your generic good-natured oaf. The design on the Missing Link was hideous; that grin reminded me of Tom Waits after his lips were stung by a bee. The mad-scientist bug: whatever. Ginormica: so sweet, so winsome, so . . . oddly rendered. Much of the animation was impressive, but even though the action sequence in San Francisco was well-done I’m at a curious point where spectacle just washes over me, and set-pieces like the Inevitable Climactic Battle in the spaceship make me wish it was done, already.

The larger point, somewhat related to the first: all the male characters were either idiots, fops, or thinly-shaved cliches unaware of their own ludicrousness. The macho preening Missing Link. The vain, weighless weatherman fiancee. That hideous fleshy president (horribly voiced by Colbert, nauseatingly animated) and the eye-rollingly anachronistic military man, Gen. W. R. Monger. For heaven’s sake. FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE, Warmonger. Was there anyone in there for a little boy to admire? No sir.

I remember some early criticism of “Up,” noting that there wasn’t anyone with whom little girls could identify – aside from the departed wife and animating spirit of the entire enterprise, of course. I suppose it’s a legitimate worry, in the same sense that the limited vocabulary of Eve in “Wall-E” would discourage language development skills in your women, but I can’t imagine anyone looking at “Monsters” and thinking “there’s nothing in this for boys,” because that would seem ludicrous. Hey, there’s monsters! That’s what they want.

And of course they do, but they also want lads who commit derring-do, or G.I. Joe types who are doing the right thing. Surely there’s room for that in a movie intent on telling little girl that they, too, can grow up to be 200 feet tall if they just set their minds to it, and have a meteor fall on their heads on their wedding day, thereby ruining the nuptials that would have kept them from going to Paris and living their dreams. Or following their hearts. Or following their dreams to live their hearts, or whatever banality might be dropped in the appropriate plot-slot by the committee that wrote it.

So, no. And I’m usually not on the lookout for these things, which made it stick out.

Anyway. Tonight I watched a bit of an MGM musical, realizing anew that I’m starting to like these things more than I ever thought I would. Some just seem inert and unappealing, but the more modest examples have charms, sprightly tunes, and gorgeous women with incredible legs, so perhaps I have unfairly based all my reactions to musicals on memories of stillborn 60s productions. This one was “I Love Melvin,” a confection whipped up right after the success of “Singin’ in the Rain.” Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. Now. I love “Singin’,” but I always found Donald O’Connor AND Debbie Reynolds annoying – the former for his mannered twitchiness, the latter for her generic all-American Gal routine. “Melvin” aims lower, doesn’t try to remake the genre, just put people in the seats, and as the ads no doubt said, it’s Burstin’ All Over With Fun.

It opens with a “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” sequence; Debbie Reynolds is dreaming she’s a star, which explains the overacting. This is how stars behave, dahling. The next big number, she’s a football in a stage musical, and while gender-studies professors could get tenure out of the symbolism there, it’s wildly energetic, cheerful, and Reynolds manages to be adorable, middle-class – i.e., approachable and attainable – and sexy as hell. There’s something about these movies that’s distinctively American; spirited, cheerful, optimistic, confident, grounded. That last one is something I infer, but you can feel the weight of a settled culture behind these products; they’re not gnashing and toiling and spitting with anger.

Foolish to say that was how it was, because it wasn’t. Equally foolish to say it’s better to paper over a culture’s problems with sheet music and handbills. (Although the father character in the movie reads the paper, complains that taxes and prices are rising, and he’s just a wage earner; what’s a man to do?) But part of the appeal of the movies is the sense of a shared culture – even if this film didn’t do it for you, its terms and conditions were widely understood, its vocabulary spoken by all. At least in public.

I wish I loved contemporary culture more, but it seems to be humorless about small things or imagined fantasies, and uneasy with simple truths and simple joys. If someone did come up with a movie that took an adult attitude towards simple truths and simple joys, they would feel compelled to put Ben Stiller in it so we could believe it was kinda sorta mocking it, in a genuine-but-ironic way. Then again, I like David Lynch. Don’t listen to me about anything.

Do watch Debbie.

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