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“Don’t be wrong. I’m not suggesting we wear those weird chastity rings you know American kids have — you know, ‘We’re not shagging ’cause we’re mentals.’” -Being Human

Every once in a while, I like to have a sandwich of chunky peanut butter and thin-sliced smoked turkey on whole wheat bread. It’s not what you’d call regal, but it’s salty with an interesting mix of textures. Imagine if a national chain of restaurants not only offered that dish but sold it as a sweet dessert, and you might have an idea why Adventureland grossed just over $16 million at the box office.

Advertised as a film “from the [noun] of Superbad, Adventureland very quickly reveals that its attempts at raucous comedy have been segregated to the margins. The few people who saw it in theaters received many fewer dick and fart jokes per dollar than they’d been led to expect.

Of course, lacking lewd humor doesn’t necessarily relegate a movie to mediocrity. The Shawshank Redemption did all right without any hyperbolic elucidations on penis size. No one’s going to accuse Adventureland of aspiring to Shawshank, but it does succeed within its genre.

“Just what genre is that?” you ask? Think intentionally muddled comedic romance in which a rather directionless recent college graduate returns to his childhood home and attaches to a previously unknown woman who is both petit and possessing of artfully-shaped zygomatic bones. If some part of that sentence couldn’t also describe Garden State, then that’s an oversight on my part. They’re not the same movie; Adventureland involves both more ethical quandary and less silent velcro than does Garden State. They do, however, share a very concise narrative space.

One area in which Adventureland shines is its casting. Like a championship team comprised solely of role players, the picture places character actors in their proper places. Much as he did in Rodger Dodger, The Squid and the Whale, and the unfortunately short-lived Get Real, Jesse Eisenberg plays a conspicuously academic and neurotic naif. Drawing on her experiences from In the Land of Women and the dreadful Twilight series, Kristen Stewart continues to professionally portray the distressed damsels of cliche fame, in all of her impotent, brooding humorlessness. Ryan Reynolds is an unapologetic tool with texture; don’t pretend to be surprised. Of course, if you haven’t seen Party Down, then the amusement lent by Martin Starr might convince you to do so. Saturday Night Live cast members continue to confuse awkwardness with humor, but in this case, the jokes hit more often than not.

In fact, considering its meandering script and efficient use of cost-effective talent, one wonders why Adventureland was made as a feature film rather than a marginal series along the lines of Freaks and Geeks. As it stands, the picture is an adequate, nostalgic coming-of-age story with a disturbingly contrived conclusion. Formulation as a series would’ve allowed for further development of both plot lines and characters that suffered peripheral neglect in the cut to 107 minutes. It also would’ve allowed for a more acceptable ending. I seek denouement as much as the next guy, but it’s got to rise to meet the first two acts.

“Glenn Beck is supposedly part of [air quotes] ‘the media.’ I never invited him to the club — whatever club meeting I was in.” — Chuck Todd, NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent

[Note: The typing of this post began yesterday. Since you're on the internet, I'll assume you've already learned of Ted Kennedy's passing last night; such news is rightfully ubiquitous. This off-topic post is intended as no disrespect to Senator Kennedy or his career in the Senate, which extended beyond one-fifth of that body's existence. There are plenty of places you can read, watch, or listen to content on those topics. Here, we try to lend a little levity and analysis to the lives that persist.]

If the Miss Universe competition was like the U.S. Senate, then one might suggest that Tom Delay’s stint on Dancing with the Stars will be analogous to Tara Conner hosting The Girls of Hedsor Hall. The part of Heidi Montag/Pratt might be played by Michelle Bachmann. Perhaps this topic requires some explanation.

On Sunday night, NBC broadcast the Miss Universe pageant live from the Bahamas. In search of an angle beyond “That’s a hell of a spectacle,” I began to consider the pageant’s competitive aspect. Theoretically, it would make sense for the most successful candidates to represent the most populace countries. If one assumes the drawing pools to be more or less random, this logic supposes, then it would follow that the largest pools would be likely to produce the most exceptional contestants. Of course, there are other matters to consider, such as the fact that a plurality of judges are American and the reasonable supposition that the Miss Universe organization would benefit most from an outcome that pleases the maximum number of viewers.

Returning to the question of the contestants and their alleged homelands, however, one begins to see a parallel with the U.S. Senate. Much like the U.N., the Miss Universe organization conforms to the notion national self-determination. That is to say that, with a few exceptions, the Wilsonian nation-state is its basic unit of measurement. Hence, no qualitative distinction is made between Miss USA and Miss Kosovo, Miss China and Miss Mauritius, or Miss France and Miss Iceland. Had such a study any pretense of representing the world’s population as a whole, then this methodology would unlikely receive IRB approval.

Nonetheless, a predictive model based on either population or commerce would have proven an utter failure. No Southeast Asian makes the Top 15 cut, and the Final 5 represent Australia, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and, yes, Kosovo. (Given that Kosovo declared independence a mere 18 months ago, one assumes that previous Kosovars would have represented either Serbia as a matter of geography or Albania as a matter of ethnicity. What, you don’t keep up with post-Tito developments in the Balkans?) For those of you keeping score at home, it’s Hugo Chavez 1, Blonde Imperialists 0.

Forgiving Hugo Chavez references, the failure of population or commerce to predict a region’s influence is also true in the U.S. Senate, where, similarly, agents represent parochial regions designated to reflect continuities of local culture — or some such nonsense. That’s how Max Baucus becomes more critical to negotiating health insurance reform than, say, Barbara Boxer or Dianne Feinstein, even though his Montanans would make up less than 3% of California’s population. I took U.S. History; I know why the bicameral legislature representing population in one house and land in the other was necessary. All I’m saying is that the current implementation doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Meanwhile, Miss Kosovo finished as Second Runner-Up. One can only hope that Orrin Hatch and John McCain do so poorly.

In case the absence of a new post hasn’t made this fact abundantly clear, I’m taking the week to address some other business. In the interim, you might kill time reading the archives of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja — if you’re into that kind of thing.

On the other hand, if you somehow feel that this space must be occupied, you can contact me about guest posting opportunities at blog [at] levikafka [dot] com.