“I just spent three weeks in the hospital,” a middle-age man explains. “I been tellin’ my sister to nail that trick stair down for months. Wouldn’t you know I’d be the one to throw my back out on it?”

The man is speaking to an elderly woman behind the counter at a Motel 6 in Eloy, Arizona. The man’s mother has just had her leg amputated, he explains. He is on his way to Mexico to visit his teenage daughter who has just given birth.

The man stands 6’2, salt-and-pepper crew cut overshadowed by a massive web tattoo spiraling outward from his elbow. He excuses himself to check the license number on his car.

“Poor guy,” the attendant addresses me. “Says he just got out of the hospital.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard that,” I reply. I am standing by a display case along the north side of the wall. “Say, I called down here a few minutes ago. I was looking for a wifi password? Room 216?”

“Just give me a minute,” the attendant responds.

The attendant’s name tag reads “NORMA”. Norma’s hair is dyed orange with matching eyebrows penciled in. Norma’s collar is permanently stained and there are individual grains of make-up caught between the thick folds of her skin. Norma smiles. I smile back. It is understood no further business will be conducted until the tattooed man returns.

A cow bell clangs above the door signaling the tattooed man’s return. He slaps a credit card on the counter, mentions something about having an artificial hip. Norma hands the man a room key which he thanks her for profusely. He hobbles through the doorway, disappears around the bend.

I cannot say for sure whether it’s the 10-minute wait or the $3.29 password, perhaps the dried-up drops of urine on Room 216’s toilet or the live cricket in its bed, maybe it’s the absence of humility or the fact tomorrow will be Sunday, and – as such – there’d really be no point in me driving over to the offices of Arizona’s InBusiness Magazine (That magazine’s publisher, a man named Rick McCartney, has been refusing to pay me $1950 worth of freelance fees for years), maybe it’s all this ugly immigration business or the fact I’m deep inside a state that prides itself on Sheriff Joe, maybe it’s the dry heat or the ill-conceived construction, maybe it’s the notion I’ve traveled all this way to visit an old west mining town where the locals have been reenacting the same bloodthirsty gun battle for 130 years. Maybe it’s all of these things. Maybe it’s none of them. Regardless, I cannot seem to shake my overwhelming lack of empathy. Fuck this place, this backward pit called Arizona. I look forward to crossing the border into New Mexico tomorrow.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

Jesse Eisenberg is just one of those guys … one of those guys whose prose pops up in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s despite the fact it really has no right to be there (See also: Michael Cera). He’s one of those guys who fancies himself an uncompromising intellectual despite appearing in bullshit fare like Now You See Me. Jesse Eisenberg is one of those guys the general public loves in certain roles (i.e., Adventureland, The Social Network) despite ignoring the overwhelming majority of his films.

Jesse Eisenberg is just one of those guys, alright … one of those guys who, when asked what originally attracted him to a movie like The Double, might simply stare ahead and say, “It’s Dostoyevsky.”

That’s who Jesse Eisenberg is.

Unfortunately, Dostoevsky does not translate well amidst the dark and tangled mess that is Richard Ayoade’s The Double. Ayoade’s movie is bland and unrewarding, the cinematic equivalent of being locked inside a vacancy. Certain critics will employ the term “dystopian” when attempting to describe Ayoade’s film. What these critics are actually trying to say is that The Double is irretrievably dire and grim. That being the case, one’s best bet might be to stay at home and enjoy an encore screening of Adventureland. It features Jesse Eisenberg in a relatable coming-of-age tale, and – as the title might suggest – it also represents the polar opposite of dystopia.

Your best bet: Revisit 2002’s Roger Dodger, a largely overlooked motion picture which features Eisenberg in his most endearing role. It’s currently streaming via Netflix.

(The Double opens in limited release this Friday.)

Boarders, breakers, bikers, ballers, brawlers, bleachers, beachers and stoics, their eyes fall soft and easy from the sunlight and the glare. There are ex-cons, short cons, gamers, marks and framers, an entire promenade divided equally between predator and prey. There are the drug-fueled dregs of Dogtown, Z-Town relics bronzed with muscle despite a pale lack of ambition. There are guitars and sitars, a lyric poem, a bonfire song. There is the S.M.P. and  the P.O.P, the Ginger Court and Muscle Beach. There are Schwarzenegger and Morrison, airbrushed pictures of their heroes on the wall. There is chess and there are checkers, falling dominoes and rank patchouli. There are steel doors slamming harshly where only vampires dare to roam. They’re out here sleeping neath the cosmos, all but begging me to come along.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

The temperature reaches 95 by midday and I stop off to change my blue jeans into shorts. The fan is playing catch-up and there are dead flies on my grill. The windshield is dirty, the interior is scolding and the air outside smells charred like burning. It is the advent of brush fire season throughout the San Bernardino Valley, and I am reminded of how brilliantly Joan Didion wrote about this region nearly half a century ago. I am stuck in traffic on the 405 now, one final push before I spill out onto Lincoln Boulevard. No more roadway, no more desert. Nothing left but sea and sand.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

Weaving, winding, carving deep through snow-capped mountains, Utah summits grasping weakly to what still remains of winter. The Douglas firs fall down in breakneck order, the empty streets feel like the backdrop from some movie. I stop for gas outside Park City and the attendant can’t believe that I’m an “actual New Yorker.” I think better of explaining I identify much more with Philadelphia and continue driving south along the interstate. It is twilight when I break the plane of northwest Arizona. Looking off toward my left I am reminded of the final stanza from Bob Dylan’s “Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie”:

You can either go to the church of your choice,
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital.
You’ll find God in the church of your choice,
You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital.

And though it’s only my opinion,
I may be right or wrong,
You’ll find them both,
In the Grand Canyon
At sundown.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

The problem with The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – in a word – is Stan Lee. That’s two words, I know. But they both refer to one concept, that being the idea that blatant, shameless self-reference is the bane of any worthwhile superhero franchise. This is not to say there’s no place for humor or lightheartedness in the Marvel/DC Universe because, quite frankly, humor is what allows both comic books and their celluloid counterparts to maintain a sense of buoyancy. But this odd, ongoing tradition of having Stan Lee – a giant in the industry – pop up throughout the majority of Marvel movies is embarrassing, if not entirely off-putting. These cameos, particularly the more recent ones, take one out of the suspended reality most superhero movies have come to rely on. And for what? To have a 91-year old man with unsavory acting chops deliver some throw-away one-liner? No, sir. There really is no place for it. Least of all in a franchise the likes of Spider-Man, a franchise that’s still battling to overcome the specter of its predecessor (Sam Raimi – for anyone who happens to be keeping score – is now up 2-0 in terms of critical superiority).

The Stan Lee issue speaks to something much larger, of course – the use of in-jokes and subtle winks to compensate for – or distract from – a general lack of substantive writing. Consider, by way of example, that during the opening action sequence of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 there is not only an unnecessary cameo by Lee, but two separate references to the original Spider-Man theme. The first features the theme serving as Peter Parker’s ringtone, the second Parker whistling the tune while in costume (less than one minute later). Cute, right? Wrong. Both references serve no other purpose save for distracting from the matter at hand, forcing viewers to temporarily consider how it might be possible for a 47-year old song to exist in a world where Spider-Man only recently came into being. One might argue this is a minor issue … and one might be correct. But when the joke’s repeated and then stomped on before being topped off by some one-liner from Stan Lee, the cumulative effect becomes stultifying, bordering upon inane.

What’s the point, beyond seeming coy? Die-hard comic fans are going to see each of these movies regardless of whether Lee appears in them or not. The remainder of the box office public doesn’t care. Meanwhile, as a writer/director, you wind up forcing a square peg into a round hole and for what? I mean, can you imagine Christian Bale running by Michael Keaton amidst the dark-end streets of Gotham only to have Keaton turn to the camera and say, “Hey, where’d he get that costume?” What if every Marvel comic book was required to include a cameo by Stan Lee? Poppycock, I say. Nothing more than cornball nonsense … and that, for any of you who might be wondering, is precisely what The Amazing Spider-Man 2 feels like. Dane DeHaan is fantastic and Andrew Garfield is OK, but it’s not enough to save a movie that’s lacking any soul, any deep-down sense of what people actually relate to in terms of style, motivation, layered conflicts and betrayal. The movie’s fun and the special effects are dazzling, but there’s very little left to latch on to once the CGI has run its course. I’d suggest that maybe what it needs is a little bit more, but the reality is The Amazing Spider-Man 2 would have benefited a great deal from trying to cram in just a little bit less.

(The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in theaters nationwide today.)

The air falls fresh and thinner at this altitude, the gusts like offshore gales. The roads come filled with tumbleweed, the dirt lays soft like sand. The grass grows sharp and arid, the freight trains last forever. My room in Green River costs $37 without tax. There’s no number on the door and the knob jams before opening, but the space itself proves welcoming – two-cup coffee maker, full-service cable, a corner table, reliable wifi, a brand-new bathroom, a queen-size bed … double the amenities of several four-star hotels.

The night wind slips down low across the prairies, rattling hard against the window as I lie awake in bed. I am watching a cable access show about the suicide rate throughout this region. Wyoming, as it turns out, is part of a cluster of mid-western states, all of which perennially compete for the top five suicide rates in the country.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

Nebraska is the most beautifully barren stretch of land I’ve ever known. Gold and desolate, wind-swept prairies, low-hanging clouds that bunch and tear like cotton, stiff-whistling winds that bob and weave through rusted wire, empty lanes where old jalopies cruise at 95 for hours. The distant farms appear so grand it makes one question states like Pennsylvania and Ohio, states where rotting barns and livestock brush right up against the road.

Bruce Springsteen, Alexander Payne, Adam Duritz of the Counting Crows … Nebraska is a place where “Rain on The Scarecrow” still makes a perfect world of sense, where the homeless nearly outweigh the young executives, where the mid-day sky beams bright and tranquil, despite dark storm clouds on the rise.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

Home of the World’s Largest Golf Tee, Home of The World’s Largest Windchime, Home of the Annual Popcorn Festival … everything along this stretch declares itself to be the bullshit home of something. The selling points are meager, designed to draw fast-passing motorists beyond the off-ramp into doldrums, beyond the cheap motels and gas pumps into whatever circus tent or freak show the chamber of commerce can procure.

While driving through St. Louis I stop off to visit the World Chess Hall of Fame, where I find myself consumed with the phrase “Pax Americana.” Thirty minutes later I am weaving west along I-70, the DJ sending “Highway to Hell” out to “The hottest girl in Wartville.” From there it’s north-northwest along I-29, where the rural routes bear names like H-I-J and K. I check into a Super 8 beyond Topeka, its office doors within a stone’s throw of the highway. One quick left and then a right, and I’m off and running once again the following morning.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index

I meet Keith outside a rest stop in Indiana. Keith is a truck driver, slumped over and shapeless, wearing XXL sweat pants that clash beneath his paisley. Keith moved down this way “a while ago,” satisfying a mandatory prerequisite for his job. These days, Keith splits his time between the big rig and his God. He sneaks in references to the messiah at every turn, whether discussing the 90-year history of Route 66 or the robust arts community that exists outside of Omaha. We shake hands upon departing, and I offer Keith best wishes. “I leave it all up to the man in charge,” Keith assures me. He is pointing off toward an empty sky, a soiled Band-Aid dangling listless from his arm.

The story of the Flatlands is a story bathed in Christianity – a long-lost tug of war between an America that never was and the capitalist regime it’s since become. Here in the Flatlands there are feuding steeples all but dwarfed by giant crosses, Christian universities located on opposite ends of the same block. There are billboards draped in crimson, plagued with slogans about God and love and Christ and death; bankrupt houses sinking low into the ground. There are burned-out train cars, rusting silos, stripped-down plants that haven’t seen good work in years.

“I come here every evening,” an elderly woman informs me. We are standing in an open field along the northern edge of Cloverdale. “I search the brambles for my Jackie.” Jackie is a house cat. Jackie flew the coop after his lifemate disappeared. It’s been several weeks now since poor Jackie hit the bricks. And yet his owner still comes out here right at sundown, unwilling – or perhaps even unable – to acknowledge the bustling traffic less than 40 yards away.

Bob Hill’s America: General Index