In a state-sanctioned procedure that some say belies our claims to be a moral, civilized nation, a prison inmate was put to death early this morning.

by Dan Kois

After we watched Toy Story 3, my wife and I ate dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Why did we do this? Well, Wisconsin Avenue, near Mazza Gallerie in Chevy Chase, has some pretty slim pickings, restaurant-wise. Also, we did it because the Cheesecake Factory is fucking delicious. I got some kind of fried-chicken pasta in cream sauce, no lie. Just for the hell of it they laid two wide slices of prosciutto atop the whole shebang. None of it was exactly right; the pasta was a little mushy, the chicken was a little greasy, the prosciutto was sub-Boar’s Head quality. But all together, drenched in butter and cheese, it was so good.

Anyway, it got me thinking about the movie we’d just seen, and about why things become popular with Americans. About how some things that are popular are frauds. Like the Cheesecake Factory: Its fancy lighting, zingy decor, and decadent over-large dinners are like someone’s idea of a nice restaurant. But some things, like Pixar movies, are miracles: They are popular because they are actually so fucking good that they couldn’t be unpopular. Toy Story 3 is going to make a gazillion dollars, and it deserves every penny. It is amazing.

Certainly you know, from the trailer and from general cultural osmosis and from that horribly depressing Times piece about how kids who were five when the first Toy Story came out ARE NOW TWENTY, that in Toy Story 3, little kid Andy is now college boy Andy and all his favorite toys face obsolescence.

But what you don’t know yet is that Toy Story 3 is totally bonkers. It has a mushroom cloud made of a trillion plastic monkeys, and it has a scene in which Buzz Lightyear is tortured under a bare light bulb. It has a terrifying horror-movie flashback. It has the best escape sequence since The Great Escape (or maybe Chicken Run). One of its heroes is a creepy walking, talking tortilla. It features an agonizing scene in which our favorite toys, facing a roaring inferno, close their eyes, hold hands and make peace with death. It makes an adorable teddy bear the terrifying villain and a baby doll his henchman. It toys with the old gag about the sexual identity of the Ken doll, deftly sidestepping offense and instead presenting the most surprising portrayal of gender fluidity in a 3-D family movie since Johnny Depp played the Mad Hatter as Madonna.

Which is all to say that the first eighty minutes of Toy Story 3 make up as funny, rousing, surprising, and exciting an adventure as you’re likely to see all year. And it’s also to say that nothing in those first eighty minutes prepared me for the final fifteen minutes, which I spent bawling, as did every moviegoer around me. The tears streamed down my face as they had not since… well, since I saw Up. And then before that, the only time I cried at a movie was during… well, it was during Monsters, Inc. And so I wasn’t precisely surprised to have my waterworks turned on by a bunch of fucking toys, but still.

It’s not exactly hard to fool Americans into thinking they’re watching a funny movie. Just kick someone in the nuts.

It’s a piece of cake to fool Americans into thinking they’re watching an exciting movie. Just cut every action sequence so fast that no one can see what’s going on.

It’s pretty easy to fool Americans into thinking they’re watching a really sad movie. Just kill off someone’s dad.

But those movies are frauds. Sometimes they fool Americans, and sometimes, glory be, they don’t.

You know what’s hard? To actually make a funny movie, and a sad movie, and an exciting movie, and a thoughtful movie, and an artful movie, and a challenging movie, and a sophisticated movie, and a surprising movie, all at once. To make it with integrity and wit, to never insult your audience — whether that audience is five or 35 or 65 — and to do it again and again and again, eleven times and counting. That’s a miracle.

That’s why the people of Pixar are currently America’s most important filmmakers. And that’s why Toy Story 3 is the best movie of the year.

Dan Kois writes about movies and plays and comic books, too.

…at least, they will be when we throw them at you! So, for those who are interested and in New York City, there will be the First Annual Awl Commenters’ Bawl tonight. Info follows, if you know where to look.

Wonderful fake trend alert: Ethnic Frensing: the removal of all people of a certain group from your Facebook, etc.

Sebastian Horsely-the Times once described him as “a Withnail with more money, one of Malcolm Bradbury’s artistic youngsters with a spike full of heroin, a nephew of Quentin Crisp”-has died in a manner far more expected than one might have hoped for him. Still, let’s raise a glass to him, for at least he always told appalling stories with no happy endings!

“In 2000, Holy Land introduced hummus flecked with jalapeño. More recently, the company, which makes about 100,000 plastic tubs of hummus each month for the Midwest market, rolled out guacamole-flavored hummus. By August, its blend of hummus and peanut butter will hit the shelves. ‘That one is for my daughter, Noor,’ Mr. Wadi said. ‘She didn’t think she liked hummus. Then we stirred in peanut butter.’ Other companies are also taking liberties with hummus. In Somersworth, N.H., the Crazy Camel company makes six varieties of dessert hummus, including a blend of chickpeas and cocoa it calls chocolate mousse hummus. In North Carolina, Good Health Natural Foods of Greensboro makes Humbles baked hummus chips in four flavors, including one with feta.”
–In case you missed it yesterday… (I didn’t see it til last night), the story in the Times’ Dining Section about Majdi Wadi’s Holy Land hummus company changing the traditional Middle-Eastern staple into “an American product,” is worth reading. Besides the entertaining disgustingness above, it offers a good look at the workings of an industry that has expanded 65-fold in the last fifteen years, and also, a refreshingly apolitical depiction of Arab-American family life. And if you’d like to watch the video cited at the end of the story, “Hummus: The Rap,” by Youtube user GoRemy, here it is!

This exists: “Cageflix is the internet’s leading Nicolas-Cage-centric, batch queue management tool for Netflix. It adds all availalable DVDs of Nicolas Cage movies to your Netflix queue. It adds as many Nicolas Cage DVDs as it can (or you specify) to the end of your Netflix DVD queue. Once you close your browser, Cageflix forgets you ever existed. If you feel paranoid, you can remove Cageflix’s privleges from your account settings in Netflix. Cageflix only works with available DVDs. In order to not spew Nicolas Cage titles in your Instant, DVD, and Saved queues, Cageflix omits unavailable DVDs and titles only available instantly. Sorry, Vampire’s Kiss fans.”

Yeah, no, I bet whatever album you’re trying to tell me about is great. It’s not even out yet? Ooh, a leak! So you’ve got, what, a 160 kbps transcode ripped from NPR’s live stream or something? Then we’re definitely not listening to that. Also, my iPod speakers stopped working.

Nah. Doesn’t bother me. Honestly? Best thing that could’ve happened. See, I’ve still got my old stereo, and I’ve been hoarding all the CDs I bought or burned between the ages of 13 and 24. Sure, they take up a lot of space. Was a pain to move them out of the old apartment, too, but it’s worth it. This stuff is gold. No more blasting the hot new downloads. From now on, I’m all vintage.

Wait, don’t go! I’ve got some good stuff here. Look, I’ve got Version 2.0 by Garbage. Bought that before I realized they were a straight ripoff of Curve. Heh. Butch Vig, you shameless bastard. This is what I’m talking about, though-the physical disc? It takes you back. Transports you to that moment. No, sorry, I don’t have any Curve on CD.

I’ve got that shoegaze, though, for real. Stack of My Bloody Valentine EPs, my fifth copy of Loveless, hell yeah. Hm? Not that scratched. Most of the songs don’t skip. But dude! The skips are part of it. You’re supposed to hear skips, those tiny hiccups. It’s like… my brain fills in the missing pieces. Human memory’s amazing, am I right? Besides, the skips happened because I played the album too much, so that’s just extra cred for me. Any jackass can get into iTunes and mess around with the play count; this is legit wear-and-tear.

I would totally throw on some Spiritualized, some Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, but the case is empty and I don’t know where the thing itself is.

How about something from-ah, no, these are mixes of stuff I played over the radio in college. Need to throw those out. And that’s, eh, I know, of the whole Jesus & Mary Chain discography I have no idea why The Sound Of Speed is the thing I own. Don’t even bother trying to decipher that cover, it’s just Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Ah, funny story about The Bends. I bought it after liking OK Computer and listened to it on my Discman on a car trip and was confused about the direction Radiohead was taking. Shut up. Sam Goody’s didn’t say which one came first, you know.

80s? I’ve got 80s. Echo & The Bunnymen? Cocteau Twins? Pixies? Whatever, Surfer Rosa was like ’88. All stone masterpieces, all in their original shiny jewel cases. Except this one still has some sticker residue on it. Don’t you miss those stickers you had to strip off to open a CD for the first time, furious with stymied anticipation? If you weren’t careful sometimes you’d break the case! Point is: we put effort into our fanhood back then. It wasn’t all mouse-clicks. Except when you had to go on Napster to pirate a Jerky Boys sketch.

Check it: The String Quartet Tribute To New Order & Joy Division.

Okay, just say it. The Flaming Lips. Yes, they really have that many albums. I went through what we call a phase. You ever had a phase? Don’t I remember your mom confiscating Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness from you back in the day because you were getting all mopey? I don’t care, early Flaming Lips are pure acid rock heaven, even if I don’t listen to them anymore. I’m glad I preserved that era of my life where I was blithely ordering bands’ entire back catalogs on amazon.com. That felt real.

That? Kiss Me Deadly, Misty Medley. No one’s heard of it. Just something I used to cry to while I was in London. Ditto Paik’s The Orson Fader. Ditto several other things. Actually most of these are good for a crying jag. Especially this used copy of Codeine’s Frigid Stars LP I picked up at Other Music down on 4th Street. Odds are pretty good that whoever owned it killed himself and bequeathed it to a friend who sold it off. History!

There’s something bewitching and lovely about hearing the old CD changer struggle and whir inside the stereo. Usually I don’t even bother seeing what’s in a given slot, because it takes too long for the slot to open. You just press play and listen to what gets spit out, is what I do. That’s the problem with music libraries on computers, too much control, too much choice. One time this stereo was completely stuck and I had to listen to Bowery Electric’s Beat like twenty times in a row. It was even more hypnotic that way.

Anyway, it’s stuck right now, so I guess we’re listening to … The Knife. Hope you like gothic Swedish electronica.

Yeah, a few of these are only a couple years old. The National, Boxer. Black Moth Super Rainbow, Dandelion Gum. Electrelane, No Shouts, No Calls. Burial, Untrue. Stars of the Lid, Stars of the Lid and Their Refinement of the Decline. Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree. I don’t know what I was thinking when I scooped these up. Doesn’t make sense hearing them through the laser precision of a compact disc. Feels anachronistic and weird. It was too late for them, I suppose. The dream is over. It was our golden age. We remember Tower Records, man. We were there.

You leaving already?

Miles Klee really wants you to come over and listen to the authentic fidelity of his CDs you guys!

CD iPhone base by Geeky Gadgets.

“Action-artist Alexei Plutser-Sarno posted photos on his website of the most recent art-action by his group Voyna (“War”)-the spray-painting of a giant cock on the Liteyny Bridge in St. Petersburg, next to the [Federal Security Service] building there. At night the bridges of St. Petersburg are raised, and so on the night of the action a giant cock was raised next to the FSB building. As Plutser documents on his site, young people and couples began to arrive at the bridge to have their photos taken next to the cock.”

by Dan Shanoff

When the ball skirted past England goalkeeper Robert Green for the game-tying goal against the United States on Saturday, I leaped from my chair, whooping. A few seconds later, I was stunned by a sensation I hadn’t felt in nearly 30 years.

From 1981–1983, I was the single-worst goalie in the age group of my youth soccer league. I have no game logs to back this up. But I was the keeper on the least successful team in the league, four seasons running. Circumstantially, I have a strong case.

Playing youth league soccer was pretty much a requirement in the DC suburb of Montgomery County, where I grew up. Even the league name felt professionalized: “Montgomery Soccer Incorporated”-known to all simply as “MSI.”

But at the time, MSI was the farthest thing from the crass competitiveness that overran youth soccer in the 1990s and the past decade: the early-age sport-specialization, the expensive and pressure-packed “travel” teams, the emphasis on winning and individual success.

Back then, it was just a bunch of 2nd-graders from my elementary school who wanted to try soccer, like every other kid in the area. This was no hand-picked team of all-stars, just kids in my class who wanted to give it a shot. And my team was a motley bunch:

• Our best player was a girl who, a few years later, would save me from Bar Mitzvah humiliation by being the only girl invitee to dance with me-in fact, she asked me to dance. I will maintain a crush on her for life.

• One kid was what in the early-80s was known as “hyper.” In reality, he probably had a debilitating case of ADHD. Same diff. That few parents would allow him over to play at their homes was probably cruel, but entirely necessary.

• One kid, a close friend of mine, maintains a place of honor in my family history as the boy who got the “spoiler” from me in kindergarten about the provenance of his Christmas gifts.

• One girl, known as “The Snail,” turned out to be one of those kids who writes so brilliantly as an elementary school student that every year when I see the NYPL “Young Lions” list or the New Yorker “Under 40” list, I expect her to be on it.

• One kid had the unfortunate combination of severe behavioral problems, substantial family wealth and an overbearing mom. (Surprise: He went to Landon. He lived a few doors down from our public elementary school, which got him on the team.)

* * *

Our coach was an energetic woman, a former soccer player with a husky voice who wanted nothing more than to have us enjoy our first experience with the game. To this day, she remains the only person who could pull off calling me “Danny.” A few years later, she invited the entire team to her wedding.

When Coach “Keeni” picked up our jerseys that first season, either she got to the league office late or she didn’t care or she intentionally wanted to make a point about players transcending their uniforms: Our team T-shirts were brown. Turd brown.

We needed a name and came up with one as a team. We called ourselves the “Brown Bombers,” which sounds now like something you would look up in Urban Dictionary and gasp at.

I am not sure why I wanted to be the goalie. With nearly 30 years to more fully understand the core neuroses from my childhood, I suspect I enjoyed the exceptionalism of the position. You are alone, the last line of defense. You even wear your own distinct jersey.

Here was the problem: I was terrible at being a goalie. I was not particularly athletic. I did not kick the ball particularly hard. I experienced a constant dread that the ball would hit me in the face. If I could describe my style in the box, it would be “Flinchy.”

* * *

From the start, Coach Keeni wanted us to have fun. Winning was simply not important. Consequently, we got drilled.

Game after game we would lose by astonishing margins. Despite truly earnest efforts, I allowed so many goals that it was clear that one of the significant contributing factors to our team sucking was me, specifically.

And yet on Saturdays at whatever local field we were scheduled to play at (requisite orange slices and water bottles brought by that week’s designated parent), I would look at Coach Keeni’s yellow legal pad with the lineups sketched on them, and see “Danny” listed in goal.

Despite being Montgomery County’s worst 8-year-old (then 9-year-old, then 10-year-old) goalie, I never thought about not pulling on my special mesh penny jersey, not trotting out to the goalie box and not taking my place as the team’s “stopper.”

My intentions were sincere. I wanted to be in there. I wanted to play. I enjoyed my position and I enjoyed the game. In retrospect, it seems entirely sensible that the same coach who wanted her players to do nothing more than love the game would refuse to bench the worst goalie in the league.

I cannot speak for England coach Fabio Capello, nor is it appropriate to judge Robert Green’s fitness for remaining as England’s goalkeeper just because he might really really really want to keep the job. Intentions are wonderful to nurture in an MSI league for 8-year-olds, less so at the World Cup.

But in that one instant watching what was happening on the field in South Africa, I was transported back to 1981. And I understood Green’s anguish, at least as far as an 8-year-old goalie could. Giving up goals is, by job description, the worst offense. But you get back up and try to stop the next one.

* * *

After two years and four remarkably unsuccessful seasons, Coach Keeni left the team. This coincided with our entry into the fourth grade. It also brought the unexpected transfer to our school of a new kid, who just so happened to be one of the best schoolboy goalies in the county, if not the state. That I would be displaced from my favorite position was a given; I don’t even think the new coach considered it for a moment.

Our team, almost entirely the same from previous seasons (except for the netminder), promptly won our division. Given where we had started a few years earlier-the Brown Bombers, crapping all over the field-it was a turnaround that I still feel ranks up there with the greatest in the history of sport.

From that success, a neighboring “select” team poached half our team’s players. Kids who had played with classmates all through elementary school were split up, and there were plenty of bad feelings. I was the last player siphoned onto the “good” team, where I got cool pro-style jerseys (home AND away) with my name on the back. Winning mattered, a lot. I was the worst player on the team, barely played (certainly not in goal) and was miserable.

Soccer was ruined for me. I lasted another season or two, then quit the sport entirely, just as we got to the age when the vortex of competitive sports merges with puberty and turns a bunch of potentially good kids into future bros.

* * *

I am freaked out that this tectonic shift that happened for me right around age 11 and 12 now happens to kids at age 7 or 8-and, increasingly, much younger. Looking back, that first year I played organized soccer, being the worst 8-year-old goalie in the world, might just turn out to be the most cherished sports memory of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for any level of greater success as a soccer player as I got older.

My older son has just turned 4. We had him in a kiddie soccer class last year that he really enjoyed-the emphasis was simply (and appropriately) on developing a love for the sport, for playing with other kids, for listening to coaches. Last weekend, I made sure to show him the missed save by Robert Green, promising myself that, for fun, the two of us would recreate it with me in the park: him playing Clint Dempsey, me playing Robert Green. I think I can pull it off pretty convincingly.

Dan Shanoff is a Brooklyn-based writer and parent-that really narrows it down-and, for lack of a better phrase, “media industry consultant.” He previously wrote here about going on a third date with his future wife… in Italy.