By Dan Mackie
For the Valley News
We have recently seen a couple of movies made for grown-ups. It was nice to watch films that weren’t directed at frat boys, slackers, rowdies, girl gangs, etc.
Not that I didn’t enjoy the misspent hours of my youth, but they are so far behind me that I’ve been co-opted by the Old Fart Film Society. I’m no prude. I just think that movies with adult material should have adult things to say. Drinking and Vomiting are Fun! That doesn’t qualify.
With the harrumphing out of the way, let’s go to the movies. Up in the Air with George Clooney and Vera Farmiga (Confession: I had to look her name up), was so good that I left the theater dazed. Was it 1975 again? Had I entered a time warp and major directors other than Steven Spielberg were allowed to make serious movies?
I know that my wife Dede liked it. At one moment I looked over and saw her beaming at the Mt. Rushmore handsomeness of Clooney. Graying and classy, he’s made for black and white ads shot in Paris for expensive magazines that people look at, but don’t read.
My wife looked transfixed. It made me think of Jennifer Jones, who died last year and whom readers of a certain age will recall in The Song of Bernadette, a movie about being swept away by visions larger than George Clooney. I told Dede that I’d caught her, and immediately began razzing her. “Don’t write this in your column,’’ she said.
What is outstanding about Up in the Air isn’t the mug of Clooney, who on screen is so confident and relaxed that he seems to have been sent from the otherworld with a message from Cary Grant. (If my wife’s reaction is any indication, after Clooney filled the screen the Nugget should have passed out dark chocolate to all the lady patrons.) No, the movie is about serious stuff. Clooney plays a hired gun who fires people for a living. He flies from place to place, north, south, east, west, making almost no human connections. He organizes his life for peak efficiency, and discards sobbing and desperate workers with slick dispatch. He is the corporation’s smiling smarmy face.
Vera Farmiga, of whom I could only say, umm, she looks slightly familiar, manages to match him in a mano-a-mano (she acts pretty mano) suave smack-down. They speak and duel with wit! WIT! The word used to refer to humor that reflected intelligence, and not just stains or body parts, or both.
For a short stretch the movie veers toward a Julia Roberts fantasy of reconnecting with home, finding out what really matters, and marrying a rich guy even though you’re a hooker (oops, wrong movie), but reality rattles like a dropped box of Malted Milk Whoppers. Clooney is showing signs of nascent humanity by the end, but corporations still chew people up and spit them out, and he helps wipe away the crumbs.
It was four thumbs up from the Mackies, but something about Clooney’s looks and my wife’s reaction made me uneasy. It’s been a long time since she’s gazed at me like that, unless we were so far apart that she was having trouble focusing.
It’s Complicated assuaged my angst. It stars Meryl Streep, who has become so utterly good at acting that we should just name her queen and be done with it. She is Meryl, and we are commoners, and that’s that. Last year she portrayed Julia Child, which I thought impossible without parody, but she infused the character with warmth, blood and spirit.
It’s Complicated looked like it might be total chick flick, but it has been my policy to take my significant chick to one or two of them a year as a gift, or penance, depending on the season.
Meryl was Meryl-ous, but Alec Baldwin carried the day for me. Baldwin once aspired to leading man status, but he has let himself get out of shape and is known for the eccentric TV executive he plays on 30 Rock, a critically acclaimed television comedy (how often can you type that?)
In Complicated, Baldwin is a certified hoot. He plays Streep’s ex-husband, who has married a younger woman and suddenly finds himself attracted to Streep and their shared history. Can he go home again?
This has the makings of a woman’s revenge movie (the young wife with perfect abs is not portrayed kindly), but Baldwin will not be utterly humiliated. He is a Little Rascal grown older. He’s in on the joke that has become his life. As for physical humor, he puts his dignity — and his gut and backside — on the line.
One of the things they got right is Baldwin’s rapture at walking into a house and finding a spread of delicious leftovers. This is a small detail, but it rings true. At some point in middle age many men lose their zest for the hunt, but leftovers are glorious reminders of another day.
Baldwin’s young wife would deny him sugar and fat to keep his arteries clean, but what he really wants is comfort food and lassitude, a pint of laughter, and someone to sip it with. He’s a guy. It’s simple as that.
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.

By Dan Mackie
For the Valley News
This year I considered altering my end-of-the-year routine. Of late I’ve written “year in advance’’ columns, but they have been so eerily accurate that people complained that removing the element of surprise takes much of the spice out of life.
Astute readers of last year’s column can confirm that taking the third letter from the second word of every other sentence gave the following result: “Balloon boy hoax will captivate America.’’ Similarly coded messages included “Economy in coma; Octomom gets own show’’ and “Congress lays egg, calls it reform.”
I considered taking a look back at 2009 instead, but I realized I could only serve a thin soup. My middle-aged brain is challenged to recall the cavalcade of facts. Even sadder, there’s no room in my noggin for new pop culture references. After the Budweiser frogs (circa 1995) and Who Let the Dogs Out? (2000), everything is a complete blank. Rihanna, Kanye, Shania — I don’t know who’s famous and who’s in rehab.
It actually is humbling to try to review a year’s events without notes or prompts. So much big news quickly fades like morning fog. Admit it, you remember that Michael Jackson died in 2009, and that President Obama was sworn in. Everything else is kind of fuzzy. Did someone from The Wizard of Oz pass away? The last Lollipop Kid? The final Flying Monkey? Didn’t some governor go missing because he was in love with a woman from Argentina? No, that sounds made up. Was that Dick Cheney on Dancing with the Stars? Did he hurt someone? Or did he shoot Newt Gingrich? If not, why not?
There were a whole bunch of scandals, culminating in the Disgrace of Tiger Woods, which was reported in a manner that suggests it will go down in history like the explosion of the Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898. (See, I remember the Maine, but not much else.)
The year 2009 featured war, pestilence (reality TV shows) and the hangover from the banking crisis/bailout. Near the end: a sad Saab story. Good-bye to a car model that made the trip to the Hanover Co-op more bearable for generations of Upper Valley drivers.
This was a year to be thankful you live in the Upper Valley, a small pond that’s calmer than national and international waters. Sure, Dartmouth’s own reality show, “Dancing with the Endowment,’’ has been curtailed, and it can’t find a way to balance the budget by laying off ever more janitors. But mostly, our local economy never boomed as much as others, so we’ve had a kinder, gentler bust.
Without further ado, here are some stories you will read in 2010. Some might be ignored by the “mainstream media,’’ but you can be sure they will come true. When necessary, so-called proof will be posted on the Internet, where proofs of all kind can be found.
 Made famous by regular coverage from Valley News writers, the Norwich town email service becomes a huge money-maker when “The Best of the Norwich Listserve’’ is published in book form. “People got tired of vampires and wizards,’’ explains a noted New York book critic. “But I don’t get it.”
 The Extreme Makeover Home Edition show spins off a new series, Extreme Surprise Makeover. The premise: the crew makes over the homes of unsuspecting people who are away on vacation. In an Upper Valley episode, they demolish a four-year old Etna McMansion and replace it with a modest bungalow. The astonished homeowners threaten to sue, but are mollified when they meet celebrity carpenters George Clooney, Alex Rodriguez, Paris Hilton, swim champ Michael Phelps and “that guy from the original show who always looks like he’s been up all night.’’
 The New Hampshire Department of Transportation announces it will open its Museum of Traffic Gridlock on Route 12A in West Lebanon. “It will be a drive-through, of course,’’ says outreach director Walter Stucken. “We’re very proud of the low-power radio broadcast system that will reach out to drivers on the roadway. Easy-listening music, subliminal messages to calm down … all that kind of stuff.”
 A difficult Town Meeting season concludes. In the annual Battle of the Clichéd Phrases, “We Have Champagne Tastes, and a Beer Budget’’ narrowly defeats “The Children Are Our Future.” Taxpayers spend countless hours making changes in the tiny areas that aren’t controlled by federal and state regulations, or contractual obligations. In six Upper Valley towns, they lay off the school janitor. In another five, they cut the janitor’s hours by one-third. Two towns vote to reduce cleaning supplies; another postpones replacement of the mop for another year. Lebanon forms a Janitorial Study Committee, and will put the issue to voters in 2011.

 Fairpoint, the troubled telephone service provider, gets $1 billion in federal stimulus money for infrastructure improvements. “We can’t promise high-speed Internet for everyone,’’ says spokesman Walter Hankup, “but these new crank phones from Bulgaria are really nifty.”

 A movement to have Ice Fishing added as a demonstration sport to the Winter Olympics is derailed by controversy over the use of PEB, performance enhancing beer.

 A Vermont TV weather person breaks down on the air when she’s jokingly blamed for a spell of rainy, dreary weather in the spring. “I’m not responsible,’’ wails weekend replacement Wendy Spritely. “I just read the National Weather Forecast. I DON’T MAKE IT HAPPEN!’’ Spritely’s career has been notable for the fact that she is often mistaken for a high school intern.

 Conservative Republicans finally unveil their alternative to healthcare reform. “It’s based on the school accident and life insurance that most American children were offered half a century ago,’’ says a congressional staffer who asked that his name not be used because “I have health insurance and you don’t, and insurance envy isn’t good for any of us.’’ America Rightward Insurance would bring back the body part lottery that amused many a schoolchild. Remember when one hand and one foot could net $5,000? Or an eye and an ear were good for $10,000? “People should earn their benefits,’’ says the unnamed congressional staffer, “and not just look for government handouts.’’

 After a low-key campaign, one of West Lebanon’s premier local newspaper columnists succeeds in having a structure named for him: The Dan Mackie Temporary Bridge. “We’ve never named a temporary bridge before,’’ said Armand “Ard” Patch, district supervisor for the New Hampshire Division of Tolls and Bridges, “but when we received his written request on a postcard, we said, what the heck. It’s only temporary.”

 The Valley News reports a troubling trend among technologically addicted couples who text each other even when both are at home. “It just seems a bother, to, you know, switch over to talking when I have my iPhone right at my finger tips,’’ says Wendy Zune of Enfield. “Isn’t that right, honey?” Y-e-s, d-e-a-r, types her young husband, Steve, on his dark blue Blackberry.

The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.