Summer Rental: 3 Reasons to Love the Summer

This weekend marked the official beginning of Summer. When I was school aged, Summer was a total goof of fun. Warm weather, relaxation, movies, baseball and ice cream--those were the calling cards of the season. Now? Summer is just a more humid and annoying version of Spring. But hey, that's what happens when you become an "adult," right? Summer loses its meaning when you still have to get up to go to work everyday.

The fact is though, it is still Summer and that should mean something. Granted, thanks to global warming, the warm weather lasts well into what we used to consider Fall, but we should still acknowledge the start of the season. And instead of throwing a virtual bar-be-que here in cyberspace, I'm going to mark the occasion the only way I now how: with an overly wordy post about how you should spend your time this Summer. With that in mind, here is the 42 Inch Television "Summer Viewing List."

No. 1: Watch Mad Men!

I had planned on re-pimping Mad Men (which returns to the airwaves for it's second season on July 27th) before I read the excellent New York Times Magazine cover story on the show. Now, it just looks like I'm piggybacking them.

But who cares. Mad Men is that good.

Clearly I'm prone to hyperbole, but believe me when I say that Mad Men is easily one of the best shows on television. There are times when I think back to the first season and decide that, outside of LOST, it truly was the best show on television in 2007. And then there are times when I think I'm over-rating it, blinded by the onslaught of critical acclaim and awards.

The fact is, Mad Men easily ranks as one of the five best shows on television. If you are one of the people who missed Mad Men during its initial run last Summer, I implore you to catch it on DVD (which will be released on July 1st.)

It is certainly the most The Sopranos-like show currently on television, but for those of you who weren't the biggest Sopranos cheerleaders, it really does have the chance to be even better. The writing of both shows--the pacing, tempo and ease at which the characters speak their well honed dialogue--is similar, but Mad Men does something The Sopranos sometimes failed to do: make its characters really human. When you get right down to it, Mad Men is much more relatable and true-to-life then The Sopranos could ever be.

The people walking through the hallways of Sterling-Cooper (Mad Men's fictitious advertising agency) are living and breathing reality. There are no clownish caricatures like Paulie Walnuts and Silvio Dante were at times. There are no cold-blooded murderers, like Tony; Mad Men's characters are real people with real problems. You might not agree with what Don Draper does (Jon Hamm, expertly combining Gary Cooper, Fred MacMurray and George Clooney into one fascinating package), but you can at least see where he's coming from.

In the Times Magazine article, show creator Matthew Weiner is quoted as saying, "I don't believe in bad guys ... everybody has a reason for what they're doing." That attitude is what separates Mad Men from every other show on television. By not taking the easy way out, it cuts deeper and harsher than anything I've seen on television in some time.

No.2: Don't see Iron Man! Watch Transformers instead!

Stop, I already know what you're saying. "How can a guy who just lauded the intelligence and brilliance of Mad Men be telling me to watch a really crappy Summer movie based on a toy, instead of a rollicking superhero movie like Iron Man. He's lost his mind."

Hear me out.

The other night, I was flipping around and happened to catch Independence Day on one of the Starz! channels I have. At the same time, on another Starz! channel (how many of these channels are there?), The Rock was on. While those two films might not be the best examples of film ever created, they do share one inarguable fact in common. They are real Summer movies. And even more surprisingly, they were both released in 1996.

1996.

That was 12 years ago. I was seventeen, and it seemed at least once a week, I could go the movies to see something fun. And it got me thinking: remember when Summer used to be the time to see ridiculous action movies, fun diversions where s*&t blew up and blew up real good? Yeah, it was pre-9/11, when blowing up New York was all the rage (see: Independence Day, Armageddon, Deep Impact), but have times changed so much that the viewing public doesn't appreciate big, dumb Summer fun?

In recent years, Summer hasn't been a time of fun at the multiplex. We're so starved for a "fun time at the movies," we've actually talked ourselves into thinking Iron Man is that "good time."

Seriously? Iron Man? A movie which was so excessively mediocre that looking back on it now, I can barely remember anything that happened? Come on, we can do better than that!

The problem with Iron Man is that it's a one man show. Robert Downey, Jr., he's great, at once funny, charming, edgy and invested. But it's a problem when he has more chemistry with his talking house than with any other character on screen. Him and Gwyenth were a total snooze. Terrence Howard is an out-right disaster in that movie, channeling Cuba Gooding post-Maguire and channeling him badly. And Jeff Bridges, yeah, he's great, but why was he even there? That could have been anyone. He pretty much strolled through Iron Man like he was in the park on a Sunday afternoon, aimlessly wandering from scene to scene, stopping every once in a while to smack his lips.

And that brings me to Transformers. When it was released last Summer, amid a torrent of bad reviews calling for Michael Bay's first born child as punishment, I wrote it off as pure trite garbage. But then I watched it on DVD. And watched it again. And again. And again. I've probably seen Transformers, in full, five times since it was released on DVD. And I've probably seen parts of it another ten times.

I know it's not a good movie. It's actually pretty average. If you're going to compare it to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly or There Will Be Blood, it's going to look like the worst film ever created. But why would you compare a movie about toys to a movie about locked-in syndrome? To me it makes more sense to compare Transformers to its other Summer brethren. And when you do that, Transformers looks like Citizen Kane.

For all its admitted flaws--you can't even follow the action at times because it's such a mess--Transformers manages to succeed in the first rule of making a Summer movie: it's just plain fun. That's what the latest batch of summer movies sorely lack. Even the great movies, like Batman Begins, are just not fun, bogged down with all their dark and foreboding nonsense. Granted, Iron Man wasn't dark and foreboding, but I think for what it was, and for who the lead is, it should have been a much better time at the movies.

Transformers though, is a movie that is much better than it has any right to be. It's a movie that The Rock and Independence Day would have been proud to call a peer. Maybe it's because I *loved* the toys as a kid. Maybe it's because the cast is completely game and fun and they realize that they're in a movie where giant robots talk. Maybe it's because, of that cast, the star of the show is Shia LaBeouf, who is actually so charming, funny and easy to root for that he lifts the movie to another level. (It will be impossible for him to not become a Poor Man's-Late 80s/Early 90s Tom Cruise, if he wants to.) Maybe it's because, say what you will about Michael Bay, that motherf$%ker knows how to direct the hell out of things blowing up. Or maybe it's because of all the Summer movies to be released in the last decade, Transformers is the only one that seventeen-year-old Chris would have loved. Whatever the reason though, Transformers works and works like gangbusters. And looking at the upcoming slate of movies, I doubt any of them will be as much pure Summer fun as Transformers was.

In short, it's awesome and a must watch. Forget Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk and Hancock. Watch this instead.

No. 3: Watch a Los Angeles Dodgers game with Vin Scully broadcasting it!

Vin Scully is old. He's going to be 81 in November, so the time when Scully no longer broadcasts baseball is right around the corner, doing push-up's. That's why I am imploring you to do what you can to see at least one Dodgers home game this Summer.

Since I'm a complete maniac, I buy the MLB Extra Innings package that Time Warner provides its customers. No, not because I root for an out of town team like the Red Sox or Indians, but because I need to see my fantasy team crash and burn with my own two eyes, rather than read about it on the internet. And during the Summer, I pretty much spend every weekday night idly flipping between games.

But watching Scully broadcast a Dodgers game transcends even my fantasy team. In a world where louder is better, where baseball broadcasts are a mess of sound effects, graphics and at least three voices talking to you in the course of an inning, Scully is truly the "Last of the Mohican's." He does the broadcasts alone. There is no color guy with Scully. He's 80-years-old and completely alone in the booth! Think about that for a second. It is really unheard of. And while his voice sounds a little older than it might have sounded when the impossible happened and Kirk Gibson homered in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, his mind is as sharp as ever.

Scully accentuates the action with silence rather than blathering on about nonsense. Sure, he mispronounces names and doesn't know the stats as well as I do, but it doesn't matter. Hell, even when he makes a mistake he almost always corrects himself, with a self-deprecating wink. I watch a lot of baseball broadcasts, and Scully is the only announcer who actually talks to the viewer. He's conversing with us, even if he can't hear us talking back to him.

I imagine heaven as a place where all baseball games are broadcasted by Vin Scully. He's that good. And he's a limited resource. Age is a perilous thing. Who knows how much longer we'll have to hear him. Sure I want you to watch Mad Men and I think you'll have a great time with Transformers, but really, if you only listen to one thing I wrote here, it should be this. Vin Scully is an American treasure. Watch him while you can.