This letter appeared in The Oregonian on April 3, in response to coverage of the Bruce Springsteen concert in Portland several days earlier:

Bruce Springsteen’s band member tells us that it is a rush to him to “turn your guitar amp up to 11 and scream and shout and be presenting amazing music.” Amazing to me that anyone older than a demented 6-year-old can call that racket “music.”

True, my standards are high, as they are generated by the Metropolitan Opera. But the reaction to the Springsteen noise proves the truth of the old adage that “some people grow up, others just grow old.”

Robert E. Vanderzanden
Woodburn, Ore.

Assuming this letter is legit and not meant as a joke, I have to conclude that Robert E. Vanderzanden is the following things:

1. Very, very old. Anyone who was younger than about 20 in the mid ’50s, when rock ‘n’ roll came around, would almost certainly have succumbed to at least SOME of its charms. To have such disdain for the entire art form — and Springsteen isn’t even “niche”; his stuff is pretty much basic, pure rock ‘n’ roll — you’d have to have been already set in your musical tastes in 1955. At least generally speaking.

2. A pompous crotchbag.

For the record, being a fan of the Metropolitan Opera does not automatically make you a pretentious, insufferable jerk. But citing it as a credential does.

This week’s “Snide Remarks” is the latest installment of a regular feature, “Ask Eric Stuff 28.” The SnideCast® technology at the top of the column will allow you to listen to it if you don’t like reading; the podcast does exactly the same thing except on your iPod. Or you can use your eyes to scan the words visually, the way the good Lord intended.

Also, there’s been an update on the situation discussed in last week’s column, about the boys who might do 10 years in jail for smackin’ some girls’ booties. On Friday, the district attorney dropped the sexual abuse charges against the boys, which means the possibility of being registered sex offenders for the rest of their lives is gone. They still face the misdemeanor harassment charges, but at least some progress has been made.

And finally, if you were wondering how bad “Skinwalkers” is, you can read my review of it here. I gather no one was interested in seeing it anyway, though, since it made only [Edit: Final figures are in and are slightly higher than estimated; here are the correct numbers] $753,520 over the weekend. Its per-screen average was $1,011. Figuring each theater showed it five times a day, or 15 times over the weekend, that’s $67.40 per showing. The average ticket price in America is $6.55, so that means an average of 10 people attended each screening. Not very encouraging for the folks behind “Skinwalkers.”

I’ve been enjoying the “Firefly” screenings at Portland’s Mission Theater these last few Tuesdays. It turns out I’d only seen five episodes of the series, so most of it is brand-new to me.

I’m not generally a sci-fi sort of person, and I admit some of the people at these screenings are far geekier than I tend to associate with. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) But it’s been interesting to discover that “Firefly,” while surrounded by sci-fi trappings (outer space, the future, etc.), is not always strictly a “sci-fi” show. Many of the stories could just as easily be used in a straightforward action series like “The A-Team” or “MacGyver” or whatever.

For that matter, the show is set on the frontiers of space 500 years hence, and a lot of the frontier resembles the American Old West. Because of that, a lot of what goes on could happen in a Western series, too. Replace “going to visit this planet” with “going to visit this town,” and everything else is the same.

The point is, if you’re generally averse to science-fiction, you might like “Firefly” anyway. Did I mention it’s also very, very funny, often exciting, and full of lively, interesting characters? Well it is!

The free screenings at the Mission have been very well attended, so much so that people are lining up outside an hour early in order to get a seat. And some people have gone even further:

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Portland is a great town for geeks. Several comic book writers, artists, and publishers make their homes here. You can’t swing a light saber in this town without hitting some skinny hipster with black nerdy-cool glasses and a vintage T-shirt, ready to talk about why the second half of season 13 of “The Simpsons” was better than the first half of season 9. And Portlanders love the work of Joss Whedon: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Firefly,” and the film “Serenity.”

My first up-front exposure to this devotion was Tuesday night, when I joined some friends at the McMenamins Mission Theater to watch the two-hour pilot episode of “Firefly.” Sponsored by KUFO and McMenamins, they’ll be screening two episodes every Tuesday night at the Mission until they’ve finished the series … which won’t take long, since it only lasted 15 episodes, counting the two-hour pilot as two.

I had seen the first six episodes that Fox aired back in 2002, but that did not include the pilot. Fox didn’t like the pilot, so they aired another episode as the premiere and didn’t show the actual pilot until the very end, when they had given up on the series and were just burning off episodes. And by then I wasn’t watching anymore.

Shame on me, because I’ll be doggoned if the pilot isn’t a fine piece of entertainment.

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July 24, 2006, “I Was a Junket Whore”: Fifteen minutes of Internet fame — oh, and it cost me a job, too.

This one earned me 15 minutes of Internet fame, but it had far more lasting repercussions than that: If it weren’t for this column, there is a very good chance that right now I would be the full-time film critic at a major weekly newspaper. Yep, this column cost me a job.

I had been freelancing movie reviews for Portland’s Willamette Week for several months when the paper’s full-time film critic, D., called to see if I wanted to go on this junket. It seemed like it would be fun to do once, just so I could say I did it, and I made the arrangements with Paramount Pictures.

My understanding was that I was going as a freelance writer, not as an official Willamette Week representative, and that WW would buy my story when I got back. The story would be your basic interview feature, incorporating the conversations I’d had with Oliver Stone and his actors.

Meanwhile, D. had announced that he was leaving WW, and the paper was seeking his replacement. The other writer who had been freelancing for them wasn’t applying for the job, which meant I was the only applicant who already had a foot in the door. D. indicated that if it were up to him, I’d be his replacement. He put me in touch with K., the features editor, and I went in for a job interview. It went well, K. liked me, I liked her, she was less interested in my past (I’d been fired from a newspaper a few years earlier) than in my ideas for the future, and things looked good.

Later that same day, July 19, I flew to Seattle for the junket.

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The Oregonian ran a great story on Sunday about a local woman who was sued, harassed, and stalked by the RIAA for allegedly illegally downloading music — and now she’s suing them back for the two years of harassment they caused her.

Tanya Andersen is her name, and when the Recording Industry Association of America accused her in 2005 of having downloaded thousands of songs, she responded, quite truthfully, that she hadn’t downloaded any songs. She didn’t even know how. She still belonged to a CD mail-order club, for crying out loud.

She offered to let the RIAA inspect her computer, which would have settled the matter then and there. The RIAA refused, telling her the only way to end the case was to pay them thousands of dollars.

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The Oregonian published a letter to the editor on Monday that I want to address. First, though, a warning: This letter contains references to towns such as “Happy Valley” and “Boring.” Those are the real names of these places, not sarcastic nicknames.

And now, the letter:

Every time I sit in traffic on Interstate 205 through Clackamas into Portland, my blood begins to boil. You see, construction work has begun to bring light rail to Clackamas Town Center. Precious land is being wasted on something that will never reduce congestion on I-205 (just look at the Interstate 84 corridor through Portland).

The urban growth boundary expansion into Happy Valley, Damascus and Boring will add a significant amount of growth to an area that is primarily serviced by I-205. All of these cars will end up on I-205, creating another traffic nightmare like we see on Interstate 5 every day.

Light rail will cost hundred of millions of dollars for approximately seven miles of track. With that kind of money, I-205 could easily be expanded to four lanes in each direction. This would be smarter growth and money well spent.

People will never give up the comfort and freedom of their cars in favor of public transportation, especially in a climate where it rains seven months a year.

ALAN GROSSO
Happy Valley

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Whichever one of you jokers ordered a Monday, here it is. The rest of us were enjoying Sunday just fine, thank you.

The new “Snide Remarks” is posted here. It will not be brief, and you will not enjoy it. The podcast version is forthcoming; I’m hoping the scratchy throat I have will clear up.

Meanwhile, as promised, I have reviews of the five movies that opened Friday that I didn’t already have reviews of. They are:

“The Last Mimzy” (YAY!)

“The Hills Have Eyes II” (BOO!)

“TMNT” (MEH!)

Pride” (DOUBLE MEH!)

“Shooter” (YAY, SORT OF!)

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It’s a lukewarm week for movies. Of the wide releases, we have two C+’s and a B-. At Rotten Tomatoes, B- is the cutoff for a “Fresh” rating, so I adopted that as my unofficial standard some years ago. But it’s tricky. A B- movie is “recommended,” but just barely, while a C+ is NOT recommended, but also just barely. Either way, B- or C+, we’re dealing with movies that are sort of OK but not particularly noteworthy. And you have plenty of those to choose from this weekend!

I saw “The Guardian” more than three weeks ago. Why they screened it so early, and subsequently had about six more screenings, I don’t know. Well, I do know. They were trying to build positive word-of-mouth. But why they thought this particular film was so worthy of it, THAT part I don’t know.

“School for Scoundrels,” meanwhile, is a Dimension product, which means I am not invited to screenings, as Paramount harassed Dimension into joining them in their boycott of me a couple months ago. However! The film screened in “sneak previews” last Saturday in about 1,500 theaters nationwide. Sneak previews are not promo screenings; they’re regular pay-for-a-ticket showings that are open to anyone. So I went to one of those and there WASN’T A DAMN THING PARAMOUNT COULD DO TO STOP ME. I’m hardcore like that. (And yes, of course I paid for a different movie and sneaked into “School for Scoundrels” so that Dimension wouldn’t get my money. I’m hardcore like that, too. The list of ways in which I am hardcore is lengthy.)

It had been a while since I’d been to one of these week-early “sneak preview” screenings. I recall going to a few back in Utah, either because I wanted to get the film out of the way without waiting for the press screening the following Monday or Tuesday, or because there wasn’t a press screening. The thing I remember about them, though, is that they were always packed. This one, for “School for Scoundrels,” had maybe 25 people in it. Was it because they put it on so many screens in so many cities, thus dispersing the audience? Did they not publicize the sneak previews well enough? Or were the ones in Utah always packed only because there was nothing else to do in Utah on a Saturday night?

The third major release this weekend is “Open Season,” an animated tale of whimsy featuring the voices of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher. I knew I didn’t like Martin Lawrence when I could see him; turns out I don’t care for him when it’s just his voice, either.

In limited release is a documentary called “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” (no review yet, sorry), detailing the Nixon administration’s paranoia with regard to the ex-Beatle and his activist/bad-influence wife Yoko Ono, what with their anti-war protesting and love-ins and so forth. Lots and lots of footage from the early 1970s is included, along with new interviews of some of the participants.

The film was screened Wednesday night at Portland’s Fox Tower (an excellent arthouse multiplex), and sitting in the very front row was a man who was VERY passionate about the film’s subject matter. To wit: Every time a John Lennon song played, the man would raise his arms above his head and sway them back and forth. When Lennon would say something especially profound, the man would make his fingers into peace signs. When Richard Nixon or G. Gordon Liddy or some such person would appear, the man would flip them off. Over time, his reactions to the film became vocal, too, with shouts of “RIGHT ON!” or “[EXPLETIVE] YOU!”

Now, once was funny. The audience chuckled at his exuberance. All the subsequent outbursts, however, were annoying. Near the end of the film, with Lennon’s immigration status in question and Nixon winning re-election, it was finally too much for the insane man. He stood up with a roar and stomped toward the exit, apparently unable to take any more. But he calmed down and returned to his seat, swearing at the person near him who had said, “Go ahead and use that exit.”

You may know that these advance screenings always have a representative on hand to make sure things go smoothly. Most of these reps are impressively efficient and resourceful and are a joy to have nearby when there’s a problem. The rep on duty this time, however, is not particularly fond of confrontations, and thus spent the entire film pretending not to notice that there was a lunatic shouting things. FINALLY, with five minutes to go, he went and tried to escort the man out of the theater. They got as far as the aisle, and then the man said, “No, I’ll see the end!” and went and sat on the floor in front of the theater’s second section. The rep made no effort to prevent this, and the man stayed.

Afterward, as I left the theater and walked down the street, I spied the lunatic just ahead of me. He was ranting a bit, to no one in particular. He looked to be in his mid-50s, scrawny and stringy-haired. As I drew closer, I realized he wasn’t crazy, necessarily: He was stoned. Stoned out of his mind. (My first guess, actually, would have been drunk, but he didn’t smell like alcohol at all.) He said, “Did you see the movie?” Seeing this as my opportunity to have one of the post-movie confrontations that I always fantasize about but rarely engage in, I said, “Yes. Why were you yelling the whole time?”

“Was I yelling the whole time?”

“Yes! You kept shouting stuff at the screen!”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you doing that? What makes you think that’s OK? It wasn’t a concert, or a rally. It was a movie theater. You’re supposed to be quiet in movie theaters.”

He stonedly explained how he was very interested in the subject. I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t get stoned before you go to the movies.” He replied, “But I ALWAYS get stoned before I go to the movies!”

Now the whole thing was just funny, not annoying, because he was SOOOOO high. It was hilarious. He asked if he could talk to me while we waited for the light rail, and I said no because I had to go across the street to use the ATM (which was true). As I walked away, he shouted, “FINE, THEN!!”

Don’t do drugs, kids. And especially don’t do drugs and then go to the movies.

One of the cool things about Portland (well, about any big city, really, but I’ll claim it for Portland) is that during any given week, there are usually several older films playing somewhere in town alongside the current blockbusters.

I see 10 such films playing this week in P-town, from “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” at Portland State University’s campus theater (free admission for students!) to “All the President’s Men” at the Laurelhurst (my personal favorite among Portland’s non-chain theaters) to the silent Buster Keaton classic “The General” at the historic Hollywood.

This is great for people like me, who have seen everything in current release but still like to go to the movies sometimes. Home video makes all of these movies available whenever we want them, of course, but the big screen and the big sound system make it a whole different experience.

So I was delighted to see that “Scarface,” Brian De Palma’s infamously excessive tale of a Miami drug lord from 1983, was playing at the Clinton Street Theater this week. I had actually never seen this film, though I am familiar with its most famous line (”Say hello to my leetle friend!”). Yes, it’s on DVD. But a real theater will have a real sound system and a big screen, plus an audience of movie fans. This will be a great experience!

Now, I felt some compunction about going, knowing that the owner is a lunatic who once assaulted a fellow movie critic with a pie after getting some negative press from her. Some of us had vowed not to patronize the theater again. Since I’d never been there at all, though, I figured I could make an exception just this once.

Alas, it was a dreadful experience. The theater itself is fine — old and charming and all that — and the screen is big enough. But the sound system is atrocious, or at least it was Saturday night. I had to strain just to make out the dialogue because the sound was muddled and bass-y. It seemed to be turned down too low, but when audience members complained and management said they’d see what they could do, it got no better. I had to assume that was just how the sound system is there.

After an hour of barely enjoying the film because I couldn’t hear it very well, I left. I figured I could rent the DVD and see the rest of it, but the Hollywood Video near my house didn’t have it in stock. (Well, their computer said they did. But it wasn’t on the shelf.) So I can now say I’ve seen one-third of “Scarface,” and that I’ve been to the Clinton Street Theater enough to know it’s not worth going again. Unless someone can demonstrate that Saturday night was a fluke — maybe it was a fault in the film print itself, not the system — I see no reason to go back.