Koko's top ten of 2008: part 2 (5-7)

5. Generation Kill: According to the visionary critic who created this device, "We have a little dilemma for The Carusometer here. Generation Kill, the Iraq war mini-series from the creators of The Wire, started well, scoring probably a 1 or a 2 on the Caruso scale. Since then, each episode has been better." Thus making episode three, "Screwby," an Anti-Caruso.

Occasionally the dialogue is a bit too cooked to be believable, even if spoken by reconnaissance marines and not run-of-the-mill, manufactured-in-a-boot marines. But that doesn't really matter, not when Frank Sobotka's braindead son Ziggy appears to be driving a USMC Humvee and wearing cocaine bought Bogota issue sunglasses circa 1983:

And did he just wax philosophical: "As the great warrior-poet Ice Cube once said, if the day does not require an AK, it is good." Which is precisely the reason our warrior-poet Ziggies have been ghostwritten by The Wire. Not since an eighteenth century lord lay bleeding in a wheat field, uttering his last words for posterity, "I die, sir," has combat been so mock-literary or so happily bourgeois. How better to travesty an invasion than by reinventing it as literature? Wonderfully staged, directed, and acted, and hysterically, baffoonishly written, like a latter day Don Quixote full of caffeine gorging pseudo-insomniac knight errants poised to do battle with goats and garbage bags (see episode five, "A Burning Dog"), this too abbreviated miniseries fuses the ridiculous with the more ridiculous, the ecstatic with the inevitable, all too regretful embarrassment of remaining in one's body while experiencing rapture. Sad mortals, behold the Platonic paradox! Man can be no more divine than when he understands that he is finite. Or, in the words of Lt. Fick, "never pet a burning dog."

I can think of no better satire, no more appropriate or effective dissent than to take this war, this tired little banality, and pump it so full of chain-of-command slapstick that it turns into Tom Jones or some other specimen of weirdo picaresque realism. And that makes Ziggy Dr. Square, doesn't it? It does, and you're welcome.

6. 2008 Davis Cup semifinal tie: Spain vs. USA decisive rubber (6-4 6-0 6-4)

Although his masterful dismantling of Federer in the French Open final may have been Nadal's finest hour (literally, about an hour) this year, his win over Andy Roddick this fall in front of thirty thousand Spanish madmen at the Plaza de Toros Las Ventas in Madrid, in a mother-of-God bullring,

proved to the world how triumphant a man can be, how Herculean his feat, when he believes that the beauty and elegance of his performance come from his having abandoned them to the fortune of other men. When his instincts influence the success or failure of those who remain outside the game and who are therefore subject to its irrational throes without appeal to their own powers, Nadal competes with his conscience as well as with his heart or his lungs; he moves with moral purpose, as though play were providence and competition were a sacrament through which to make manifest the mysteries of his creator. Against Roddick, at home, fired up like a fire catching fire, Nadal miracled himself out of existence, playing so perfectly and so lucidly that he disappeared for the next three months--he just blinked out. In a few weeks we will see whether he rematerializes for the Australian Open; if he doesn't, I propose we canonize him as a saint. And for those skeptics and apostates among us who doubt the importance of the Davis Cup, remember the words of John McEnroe, former Davis Cup captain and winner of the 1979, 1981, 1982, and 1992 Davis Cup finals: "Do you have any problems, other than that you're unemployed, a moron, and a dork?”

7. Breach

Technically, this came out in 2007, but I did see it only last month, and besides, it belongs on every list for 2008, including the list of most popular baby names: Breach Obama Myklebust. (In truth, if we ever have a son, Seorin and I plan to name him Bear von Kim, although Breach is a convenient second-stringer.) Understated movies are rare enough, but understated movies about the biggest security upset in American history vex the same probability laws that Guildenstern contemplates in the opening scene of Tom Stoppard's play as he flips his coin to heads ninety-two times in a row, or the odds against getting demolished by a giant space rock in 2026 (1:45000), roughly the same odds as picking the correct value of a combined furniture set and minivacation on The Price is Right, hosted by Drew Carey. (This latter example did beat the odds recently, so sleep well knowing that an asteroid hitting the planet is as likely as a hillbilly winning a new dining room set, which he did.)

I can't admire this movie enough. But strangely, I also can't think of anything special to say about it, except that it's refreshingly grown-up and that Chris Cooper is fast becoming my favorite actor, and not just because he's named Cooper.