'Trainwreck': What Raillery

Popcorn Column by Michael S. Goldberger

Universal Pictures  Greg, Rachel and Earl face life and death in this Sundance-winning slice of modern teen angst.

Point of disclosure No. 593: My favorite film genre is the screwball comedy ... movies like Preston Sturges's "Sullivan's Travels" (1941), "The Great McGinty" (1940), "The Lady Eve" (1941), and George Cukor's "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), to name an iconic few.

While director Judd Apatow's very funny "Trainwreck," about a wayward career lass's search for love and truth, can't hold a candle to those romantic comedy classics, it's at least in the same movie house, just a different row. Evincing similar DNA, you can make the case that it's the contemporary heir.

Of course, exercising a much more liberal interpretation of the First Amendment than its forebears, as well as unabashedly mirroring the current mores of the society from whence it springs, this isn't your grandmother's frivolous farce. That is, unless she was Mae West. Even this enlightened critic, while witnessing protagonist Amy's reckless gallivant through the courting process, was surprised to see what is now considered acceptable in modern film. Only it really isn't. The so-called profanities and divulgences are actually meant to get a rise out of us.

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Amy Schumer's Amy would doubtless be put in stocks back in Colonial times and, unless hailing from wealthy genes in any succeeding time period, would be scorned as a you-know-what. However, to paraphrase a mantra that used Women's Lib to sell us cigarettes and illness, we've come a long way, baby, exemplified by Amy's, er, progressive attitude. However, as outlandish as her Devil-may-care social life may strike us, intellectually it begs consideration of the expression, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," only in reverse order.

Thus, while tittering, chuckling and OMG'ing at Amy's risky, if no longer bad, behavior, we can't help but also contemplate the changing social landscape. It goes back and forth you know, our moral code and vanity, reacting to pressures both obvious and unseen, adjusting to what we perceive is necessary to our well-being. And Amy, a very intelligent young lady, albeit currently a top scribe for a men's magazine catering to its readers' gossipier instincts, is fully aware of the dynamic in which she swirls. Problem is, she's not too happy about it, not really.

But she is hip, resolute and the staunch, living embodiment of her adopted anti-romanticism. Though she keeps a perfunctory boyfriend (John Cena) in tow, a hulking Neanderthal specifically chosen for his implausibility in any truly serious future plans, she is otherwise a prolific free agent. In short, unless circumstances deter, neither she nor her conquests spend the entire night.

All of this is humorously foretold in the prologue when, at about the age of 10, Amy's Lothario dad, nuttily played by Colin Quinn, explains to her and her sister why he is divorcing their mom. Meaning to emblazon a lesson in their psyches, he asks that they repeat aloud, "Monogamy isn't realistic." It's comforting to know that popular psychology still plays a part in speciously exampling cause and effect in movie plots. Not to nitpick, but only to play Devil's advocate, there's an inherent contradiction here, an ambiguity, if not out and out hypocrisy.

Amphibious Toads Procreate in Perplexing Amplexus

By Tor HanseniBerkshires columnist
08:09PM / Sunday, May 05, 2024

 

Toads lay their eggs in the spring along the edges of waterways. Photos by Tor Hansen.

My first impressions of toads came about when my father Len Hansen rented a seaside house high on a sand dune in North Truro, Cape Cod back in 1954. 

 

With Cape Cod Bay stretching out to the west, and Twinefield so abundant in wildflowers to the east, North Truro became a naturalist's dream, where I could search for sea shells at the seashore, or chase beetles and butterflies with my trusty green butterfly net. 

 

Twinefield was a treasure trove for wildlife — a vast glacial rolling sandplain shaped by successive glaciers, its sandy soil rich in silicon, thus able to stimulate growth for a diverse biota. A place where in successive years I would expand my insect collection to fill cigar boxes with every order of insects abounding in beach plum, ox-eye daisy and milkweed. During our brief summer vacation there, we boys would exclaim in our excitement, "Oh here is another hoppy toad," one of many Fowler's toads (Bufo woodhousei fowleri ) that inhabited the moist surroundings, at home in the Ammophyla beach grass, thickets of beach plum, bayberry, and black cherry bushes. 

 

They sparkled in rich colors of green amber on beige and reddish tinted warts. Most anurans have those glistening eyes, gold on black irises so beguiling around the dark pupils. Today I reflect on a favorite analogy, the riveting eye suggests a solar eclipse in pictorial aura.

 

In the distinct toad majority in the Outer Cape, Fowler's toads turned up in the most unusual of places. When we Hansens first moved in to rent Riding Lights, we would wash the sand and salt from our feet in the outdoor shower where toads would be drinking and basking in the moisture near my feet. As dusk fades into darkness, the happy surprise would gather under the night lights where moths were fluttering about the front door and the toads would snatch bugs with outstretched tongue.

 

In later years, mother Eleanor added much needed color and variety to Grace's original garden. Our smallest and perhaps most acrobatic butterflies are the skippers, flitting and somersaulting to alight and drink heartily the nectar abounding at yellow sickle-leaved coreopsis and succulent pink live forever sedums of autumn. These hearty late bloomers signaled oases for many fall migrants including painted ladies, red admirals and of course monarchs on there odyssey to over-winter in Mexico. 

 

Our newly found next-door neighbors, the Bergmarks, added a lot to share our zeal for this undiscovered country, and while still in our teens, Billy Atwood, who today is a nuclear physicist in California, suggested we should include the Baltimore checkerspot in our survey, as he too had a keen interest in insects. Still unfamiliar to me then, in later years I would come across a thriving colony in Twinefield, that yielded a rare phenotype checkerspot (Euphydryas phaeton p. superba) that I wrote about featured in The Cape Naturalist ( Museum of Natural History, Brewster Cape Cod 1991).