Spike Got Most of it Right

The Plotniks gave up on HBO after their free year. They rarely could find anything to watch on it, and got really tired of three different channels of Entourage, or Cat House in Spanish or boxing from Ceasar's Palace.

So, they canceled and in the process received at least seven channels of Encore, IFC and Sundance, where the movies are 'way better than HBO, and they're all free. They got these by downgrading! Hu-ha!

So Wednesday Night the Plotniks watched some cool doc about New York and world traffic patterns on the Sundance Channel, and last night on Encore they saw 'Mo Better Blues' which really is a great movie, except for the "unrealistic" Denzel Washington portrayal.

(Plot puts quotes around "unrealistic" because Ducknik finds Denzel to be not only very realistic, but fantabulous in everything he does. It probably has less to do with the roles he plays than with him, duh.)

Wesley Snipes was great. Denzel was too, in that classic scene when his character Bleek has to face both his girl friends at once, seeing as they both showed up at the club on the same night in the same red dress Bleek bought for both of them. There are always lots of great moments in Spike Lee movies.

He got one thing right for sure: every musician has had to face the problem at least once when he's been forced to choose between friendship and upgrading his art. You always start out playing with your friends, but sooner or later someone in the band outgrows the others. If it's you, you have to make tough choices.

It's not easy to fire people, either, unless you don't know them. In Plot's first band in New York, he had a brilliant bassist, whose name should have been Cranky. Cranky and Plot were friends, but less than they might have been because Cranky's principal job was being an alcoholic. He also played fretless electric bass, which is a very difficult instrument to play when sober, but basically impossible when wasted. String instruments all sound horrid when they are not played in tune, trust Plottie on this one.

So what did Plotnik do? He lent Cranky his car. Jesus. Both the Vega and Cranky came back in on piece, but barely. Cranky said the car bottomed out at 110 on the Garden State Parkway, before he came to the place where he should have slowed down.

A few weeks later, Plot fired Cranky because he got mad at a customer in the first row who was heckling him. The band was playing quietly in a club, and had to keep it quiet because it was early in the evening and patrons were eating dinner. But Cranky decided he had to show the heckler who was boss, so he actually MOVED his amp so it was directly in front of the heckler's table, turned it up to MAX and then blasted away as loudly as he could.

He was out of tune, of course, since he was smashed, but the heckler probably didn't notice that. The manager did, though, and the band got fired, and Cranky came next. He didn't think he'd done anything all that wrong and was furious at Plottie for firing him.

(To tell the truth, Plot didn't blame him either, in fact he liked Cranky a lot. He was a very good writer and a good musician, but he was a drunk playing a fretless instrument. The drunker he got, the more out of tune he played. Plot knew he had to let him go, and this was as good a reason as any.)

Next day, Cranky had a change of heart and checked into Bellvue Hospital, which is the last place Plottie ever saw him.

Plot's new bass player was Jonny, who stayed his companion and collaborator for many years after, and whose picture is still on Plottie's wall.

Plot doesn't know what ever happened to Cranky, but he understood when Bleek had to fire Giant in the movie. It had to happen. Spike got that right.