{"id":1962,"date":"2014-01-14T07:10:04","date_gmt":"2014-01-14T01:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=1962"},"modified":"2014-01-14T07:10:04","modified_gmt":"2014-01-14T01:10:04","slug":"on-alexander-paynes-nebraska-a-christmas-without-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/01\/14\/on-alexander-paynes-nebraska-a-christmas-without-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"On Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" & a Christmas Without the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I happened to see the awesome\/sad\/hilarious film Nebraska<\/em>, another classic by Alexander Payne, at a swanky art house theater (the Plaza Frontenac) in St. Louis before Christmas, but was unable to post anything about it, as I left the city the next day to travel to my mountain hideout in Colorado, only to discover that my ISP was malfunctioning, and basically all the holidays I had no internet. Yeah, sure, I could go to an “internet cafe” like every other terrorist in the world, but this is a tiny town in the Rocky Mountains, and twice when I did try to visit the local hippie coffee shop that has Wifi, it was closed. Ah well. So I lived without being online. Was my life made richer? Did the air smell better? The elk snort louder? The Great Horned Owls hoot more hauntingly? Did I enjoy the mountains any more than usual? (Usual being a state where I do have internet access up there, anywhere in the house, and even the yard.) Not really. I grouse about the internet but I think part of that grousing wears off in that I try not to let it take over my free time. But when I want it\u2014mainly for business\/communicating (as opposed to, say, online poker, which I eschew<\/em>)\u2014I want it, and it was irritating and annoying not to have it, rather than making me feel relieved to have all that extra free time. I set up a toy train set, like all good fathers have done since Jimmy Stewart played George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em>. I read the novellas of Jim Harrison in Brown Dog<\/em>, and Chang-Rae Lee’s new novel On Such a Full Sea<\/em>. And I played the old-timey board game Life<\/em>, which has an astounding obsession with money, something I didn’t remember from my foggy childhood reveries.
\nBut back to Nebraska<\/em>. It’s ultimately sad and heart-breaking, as Bruce Dern plays a good man gone wrong and gone to seed & drink, but along the way of telling that story, Payne gives us his bawdy, awful wife\/mother (to Will Forte, who does a good job as the caring son), and a couple of cousins who remind me of some ex-stepbrothers I had. Half the movie we were laughing hard, and the other half squirming in that Death of a Salesman<\/em> kind of way, when you realize you are<\/em> Willie Loman. See this movie. I liked Payne’s last film, The Descendants<\/em>, but this was twice as good, more like the flip side of About Schmidt<\/em>. Schmidt told the story of a moneyed man in his final years, while in Nebraska<\/em> its about an ex-auto mechanic, husband of a beauty parlor operator.
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So I happened to see the awesome\/sad\/hilarious film Nebraska, another classic by Alexander Payne, at a swanky art house theater (the Plaza Frontenac) in St. Louis before Christmas, but was unable to post anything about it, as I left the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,16,29],"tags":[43,61,86,95,178],"class_list":["post-1962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding","category-booksfilm","category-film","category-the-west","tag-alexander-paynes-nebraska","tag-christmas","tag-film","tag-good-fiction","tag-the-west"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t