Fear Of The Blank Page

Another goodbye

2010-01-14T14:45:00.005-05:00

I have tried my hand at blogging on and off for four years. Whether it was the original Blog of Plenty, the second Blog of Plenty, or Fear of the Blank Page, I always wanted to find a unique voice that would bring some readers. While I don't think myself as particularly vain, blogging is an inherently self-satisfying exercise and for those four years, I have been pretty much satisfying only myself.

Yes, I am officially closing Fear of the Blank Page.

I realize this is sudden and that I should have closed out on something better than the latest Sherlock Holmes movie, but I can realize that I don't have the blogging power. While the record may stand against it, I am not the person that likes to quit, but I can realize that my talents may not rest in snarky blogging. That includes both the craft and the patience to blog continuously. If you have a blog you follow routinely, then make sure to thank the blogger because it is tough to come up with thrice a week posts. Much less daily.

There are plenty of other places online where you can read funny movie reviews. Dave Campbell may be gone, but you can still find lots of great comics blogs, which also feature witty movie, book, and TV commentaries. If you want a good story, then check out your local library.

For anyone that read any of the blogs and their posts, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and interest. I hope that maybe one of these blogs struck you in the same way as the websites that convinced me to put thought to HTML. Actually, that may be too much to ask, but I do hope you had some fun. I certainly did, but now is the time to put it to rest.

Peace!

Seeing More

2010-01-11T09:42:00.003-05:00

Amanda and I saw Sherlock Holmes over the weekend and I must admit to liking it and not understanding the overall lukewarm reaction to it. Of course, if you have followed this blog over the past few weeks, then you must have noticed that I have lukewarm reactions to movies people absolutely love.

Maybe people expected too much from this movie and the crowd pleasing Robert Downey, Jr. Iron Man and Tropic Thunder were awesome and gained both commercial and critical praise. Of course he would do it with this one as well! It could also be that the film ends with pretty much a huge "To Be Continued." They don't put those cringe inducing words on screen, but the entire vehicle was just a setup for more movies. Look, I know Hollywood will turn everything into a trilogy. Want to start taking bets on what the third Alvin and The Chipmunks movie will be called? The Tweelogy? But, be a bit coy about it with fleeting celebrity interviews and a leaked early script draft leaked online.

I appreciated the movie's buddy cop theme and there was a nice chemistry between Downey's Sherlock and Jude Law's Watson. Sherlock had a tough time elucidating his apprehensions of Watson marrying and leaving the sleuthing business. For such a rational man capable of cracking cases by just reading the initial police report, this was a nice touch of humanity. I also appreciated that we got that fragility without some heavy handed pathos building scene where we flash back to Sherlock's parents being killed by a mugger outside the opera or dying in a climbing accident.

Don't know if this is very true to the actual relationship in the books. The older interpretations do make it seem like Watson is Sherlock's go-fer. I remember reading some of the Sherlock Holmes books when I was younger, but that is about it. I am not sure what purists feel about the movie, but, if it is like any other movie based on a cherished serial story, then I am going to say they are mad. The movie is very physical, with slow mo fight scenes that made one Internet commentator say it is Fight Club meets Victorian England. I don't mind a bit of action thrown in to spice up the gumshoeing, but they do sometimes feel inserted for the hell of it. Best example is an early battle where Watson and Holmes dispatch a band of brigands tasked with burning the evidence. You can almost hear the characters resist saying "Oh, here we go again" when the guys show up. The fight then continues for a few minutes, extending into a scene defined by the almost there feel of a Family Guy gag.

Speaking of inserting elements for the hell of it...why was Rachel McAdams in the movie? Not necessarily her (Got nothing against her), but her character seemed pointless. Not to give away any story elements, but her quasi romantic foil is meant to keep Holmes, whether via sincerity or deception, on the case. This would make sense in any other movie that wasn't about Sherlock Holmes.

The world's greatest detective needs someone to motivate him to stay on the case? The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, maybe? This also feels hollow because an early conversation reveals how Holmes is frustrated that there are no more intriguing cases.

All of this relegates McAdams to a very pretty face and an American connection to an otherwise very European story. Remember the Tom Sawyer character from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

I liked the explanation at the end where Holmes elucidates on how the villain was able to do all his nefarious deeds. It's neat, albeit a bit muddled by the fact that no one could figure it out because all the clues are haphazardly placed. One scene fleetingly shows Holmes licking a rock, which features prominently in the villain's escape. Good luck trying to figure out what are clues and what are the quirky characteristic Downey puts into the Holmes persona. I thought he just licked rocks cause that was weird and we wanted weird.

Peace!

Save Coco!

2010-01-08T15:24:00.005-05:00

While it is not unusual for the blog to talk about TV, it is unusual for the blog to discuss celebrity gossip. Not to sound too tweedy, but I do sometimes agree that debates on whether or not you are on "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob" can take away from the national discourse. Our local Fox affiliate kept referring to the Tiger Woods scandal as "the gift that keeps on giving," often leading with it at the five o'clock hour. It should have been labeled "Son of a bitch, here we go again," because it became ad nauseam especially when scant information was stretched into entire remote segments.

Roaming Reporter (RR): "Well Bill, We just saw someone with long, blond hair leave Tiger's house."

Studio: "Ah, so we can assume it was a woman."

RR: "Yes, that would be safe to say."

Studio: "And that means this person would have two X chromosomes."

RR: "Yes, correct. Because they may be a woman."

Studio: "A woman just left Tiger's house."

RR: "We can confirm that a possible woman with blond hair left the house."

It also helps that I don't care very much. I like lots of people on TV and in movies, but, unless Joel McHale actually came to my house and slept with my wife, then I care very little who he sleeps with. I hope he sticks with his wife, but if he meets some other women then too bad, but I hope the keep making The Soup.

Even with all this said, I must admit that I am pretty upset about the recent developments in late night network television.

It appears that Conan got the ultimate shaft and that Leno will return to the 11:30 pm timeslot currently held by The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. We may still see Conan on NBC, but he will be pushed back to midnight. I have no idea what will happen to Jimmy Fallon or Carson Daly. I think the TV stops working at a certain part of the early AM.

I really hope Conan leaves NBC and take it to them on another network. He uprooted his whole life to move to L.A. and host the Tonight Show, something promised to him several years earlier, when we all thought Leno would bow out gracefully to go fiddle around with his cars. He is paying for the NBC's executives mistakes and Leno's stubbornness to leave the limelight. No one expected The Jay Leno Show to work, except for the folks at NBC who hailed it as an upcoming revolution in television. It is refreshing for them to be so upfront with their mistake, but Conan appears to be heading for a up close meeting with the underside of a bus.

I can't believe I just typed this, but, TMZ reports that Conan is "pissed." I tend to trust TMZ as much as a certain little boy that cried wolf, but they do their job well, and that job is to dig up dirt. I hope Conan is pissed and that the NBC execs now fear seeing a blazing red pompadour coming at them from across the hedges. La Bamba could play a trombone solo to prelude to the attack, much like the strings in Jaws.

Remember that Conan was already hamstrung by the fact that Leno would still lead into him. While Conan took over the mantle of The Tonight Show, Leno was never off the air, making the whole switch over seem fake. Except for Conan, who had to move cross country and face off against another veteran TV host, David Letterman. Everything was very real for him and now he is paying for the reality that....

1) Viewers do actually enjoy some drama at 10pm. I agree that there is enough CSI clones out there to solve the Zodiac killings, but their popularity says something. People watch them

And,

2) Jay Leno is not funny. I still believe he is a nice guy, even though his boorish behavior before and after the switchover stands testament against this, but not funny.

I know he has his fans and that he reels in the older Johnny Carson viewers still wondering who the hell this red haired guy is, but Leno has not made me laugh since I was 13. Supporters often point out how hilarious the Jaywalking and Headlines segments are. Indeed, they are funny, but Leno doesn't produce a single one of them. We laugh because he is telling us this is chuckle worthy, but he has no hand in making he funny. Just showing it. You don't give the MC the Lifetime Achievement award or the guy who throws out the first pitch a World Series ring. Hell, people send in the Headlines bits to him!

The original jokes are telegraphed from three junctions away with punchlines out of those "101 Knock Knock Joke" type books you see in the children's section of the library. His humor always felt very safe with a focus on reaffirming punchlines and images we expect.

If the joke mentions an intern, then Leno is going to wrap up with a Lewinsky reference. Yes, still. If the joke mentions a husband and wife then the man will be a dude's dude and the wife a hen pecking shrew. It it like the Far Side comic, where every image was a repeating trope, except Larson used it to create a world one panel at a time. Leno phones it in every night. Finally, the joke never seems to be on him. Maybe it says something about the comedies I watched growing up, but I want my comedian to be a bit self deprecating. Conan was my man when it came to this, especially since he recently referred to his abs as "The half empty laundry bag."

Conan's humor feels much more brainy and involved. His skits often created their own logic that they must adhere to. Of course, Conan had to retire the Masturbating Bear when he left for L.A. It made sense in New York at 12:30AM, but The Tonight Show was for all America and the Bear's reason for being was that he was an obtuse and hilarious nonsequitor. The running Triumph bits and the photo slide montages, my favorite from the Late Night era, where they all ended up dead, required an investment.

You watch Conan. You see Leno.

In the ensuing fallout of the shuffle, I have read Internet comments against Conan and in support of Jay. It must be a generational thing, because I have never meet anyone that dislikes Conan, but I can understand the critiques that he can ham it up in front of the camera and often switch into asides and inside jokes. When I like a show then I try to do everything I can to love it and shows with inside jokes and a running streak of healthy self deprecation are key. This is why I loved Arrested Development and it got shafted by Fox. And when is the third season of Flight of the Conchords coming? I notice a pattern...

Good luck, Conan! Please leave NBC. Now that Southland has gone to TNT then I only watch it for the Thursday night comedies, which the execs might replace with even more Leno. He is cheap to produce and it seems like most of American likes him. Just like high fructose corn syrup.

Peace!

Ouch

2010-01-07T14:20:00.010-05:00

I sustained my third sports injury ever earlier this week. Much as this may surprise you, loyal blog readers, I did not strain my thigh making the last second three-pointer at the all city street ball championships. * And don't worry gym fans, every piece of equipment at the local Y is still in fine order. I think.

No, I hurt my inner thigh on the Wii Fit. The Lunge Strength Training routine to be specific. You can see a sample of that routine on the video below. Just fast forward to about the four minute mark.

I knew this would happen as soon as I got the Wii Fit and, to be honest, it is much better than punching through a window after overcompensating in Rhythm Kung Fu. Or doing something horrible to an ankle (shatter, twist, roll...you name it!) during the Step game. Or just plain dying during the Super Hula Hoop. I'm like Zoolander...an ambiturner that can't turn left.

Thankfully, I did not hear anything pop or crack, but sure as hell felt it for the rest of the week. Most steps felt like your little brother trying to punch you out. Sure, it doesn't hurt very much, but you don't want to take hundred punches in a row.

It feels much better now, not that I can attest that to any specific mending routine. Plenty of ibuprofen and "No, I'm fines."

My Wii injury ranks right up with my two previous sports injuries, one of which did not even involve sports.

That one?

Well, I pulled a neck muscle while working as a janitor during one summer in college. You try unscrewing three dozen light bulb covers, wiping all the dead gnats out of them, and then screwing them back into place...

Yeah...I know you could do it, but, c'mon, it was me. I had inproper light bulb screwing posture. There is a joke in there somewhere.

The other? That did involve an sport, even though some may debate it as an activity.

It happened during the 9th grade in a gym class kick ball game. If the Wii thinks I am fat now, then it would have blown up if it meet 14 year old Garik. I usually played in the outfield because that was the nice place for fat kids that did not run very well. When we played soccer, I was usually a defensemen and in volleyball folks prayed that the ball did not lob itself in our direction.

One kid smacked the rubber ball straight into the air and it arched in a nice rainbow floater path towards me in center field. I reached out my arms, but did not tense my forearm muscles enough because the ball slapped past my hand, rolling my fingers against the back of my palms.
My right middle finger took the brunt of the drop and I never really bothered to take proper care of it. I took a friend to the school cafeteria and asked for some ice. We got a Zip Lock bag and wrapped the ice filled bag around my finger. There you go!

Of course, the ice did not last past third period and the finger healed on its own by permanently arching the first finger joint up, forcing my finger tip to always slight dip down. Here is a picture, albeit a slightly blurry one...
My finger looks like a dromedary camel. I remember asking my pediatrician back then if this was bad and he said no, but that it did mean the wound had healed incorrectly.

War wounds. The ladies love them.

PEACE!

*Mind you it is January. The All City, Slip and Slush Stretball Championship. Brought to you by Morton's Rock Salt. Don't get too much of it on the ball.

Boo!

2010-01-04T08:24:00.004-05:00

Boy, am I happy that I did not believe the hype and waited to see Paranormal Activity on DVD.

I remember the lesson of The Blair Witch Project well and refused to be reeled in by a clever advertising campaign and plenty of word of mouth. Tween-age Garik was very excited to watch that film and could not wait to see what many described as an true story filled with terror. A friend claimed that he had already seen the movie on a bootleg copy. Since this was 1999, it meant that the guy had to have a 64KB modem (LUCKY!) or associate with some shady characters. In any case, he was bad ass and told me the movie "just killed you with suspense."

Of course, Blair Witch was horrible and I was surprised to meet people in college legitimately scared by it. It is now close to eleven years past the movie, but it is the rare movie that is both lame and a pain to watch. Nothing happens and we have to see these doldrums through the same lens as the security camera at the first National Bank of San Andreas Fault.

***SPOILERS ABOUND BEYOND HERE****

I still give Blair Witch a well deserved nod for its slick advertising campaign, which spun the myth that this was all true via Time magazine cover stories, Sci-Fi network prime time specials, and false listings on IMDB, which reported all three actors were deceased. It wasn't the first to do so,* but it did it the best and the people who came up with it do deserve every bit of credit. You can draw a direct line from Blair Witch to Paranormal Activity, which Amanda and I rented on DVD this past weekend...

If you were one of the three people that did not hear about Paranormal Activity (PA) then...what was your secret? Did you have a very big rock? Or on an island? Our local ABC affiliate actually sent a reporter to watch it and later report on how scary it was. Indeed, News Net 5 is on our side. The hype was phenomenal and increased by the fact that PA got a limited release and fans had to demand that big movie chains carry it. In Cleveland, it was only available in one theater out in the eastern suburbs until about mid October. I was working at a Halloween store at the time (Yes, I am that cool) and this seemed to act as a crucible for the hype...

"These headless lawn stakes are nice. But you know what was scary. Paranormal Activity!"

One co-worker swore that it was a true story and was undaunted by the fact that it wasn't and all the actors were very much alive.

The plot? A young couple, Katie and Micah, are living together in a home that is haunted by something. Micah buys a state of the art camera to document whatever is happening and explain to the jittery Katie that everything is in her head. Or it is the damn neighbor kids. As the film continues we learn that it is not the neighbor kids and Katie herself if pursued by an evil force dedicated to its malevolent mission. Hilarity does not ensues, unless your sense of humor is kind of demonic. If so, then the movie is hilarious.

The movie is wonderfully made especially if the claims that it was made for just $10,000 in a frenzied seven day shoot are indeed true. Even if these were fudged for dramatic effect, you can tell that this did not have any major studio or a Michael Bay sized budget. It isn't because of poor quality, but because of honesty and clever effects. It says a lot when movie goes are terrified and moved by this sleeper film and universally pan digitally enhanced gore fests. If you hate that there will by 50 Saw films then you can take comfort that people can still be scared and impressed by movies like PA.

I appreciate the movie making, but the actual movie felt a bit boring with well executed but very much telegraphed scares. The movie keeps up the tension, but never acts on this except in the scenes it tells you are going to be scary. Remember the scene in Signs where you first see the alien? Well. here it is below...

That was an excellent scary scene that would have been put to good use in P.A. Instead of hearing the demon come running up the stairs and then be hit by the scare, imagine seeing a shadow loom over Katie and Micah as they fret over the lack of sleep in the kitchen.

The demon effects are done with a subtle, yet effective attention to detail that keeps us scared without every really showing the monster. The whole concept of having something invade you while you are in bed is what got to most people and I did appreciate the scene where it gets it bed with them and you can see the outline against the sheets? Imagine a scene where we just see a part of the mattress dip down as if someone is sitting on it. And that just plays out all night. No footsteps. It just shows up. And then it strokes Katie's hair for a creepy, perverted moment. They could do that, but first the demon is going to turn on the hall light (Really? Satan is afraid of the dark) so we know it is coming.

The movie is a victim of its own hype and further crippled by the fact that the trailer shows you the big scare. Very little actually happens in the freak out department and most of that comes at the very end. The end scenes provide the most trailer material which speaks to the fact that, indeed, not much happens. A movie that gives you a nice five second warning before each scare and already showed you the money has a hard time keeping you scared. Especially after all the hype. I imagine that if you saw this back in 2007 on the independent film circuit then the scares would have been heightened. Some European reviewers online have commented how their barrier from some of the hype helped intensify the scares. So, I guess the hype won even though I opened by saying I dodged it.

I did like the relationship between Katie and Micah. It felt honest and sincere, especially in the happy moments at the start and the terror at the end. I felt more pangs as they argued about what to do and in the moments where each was terrified for the other. Micah gives it his all as plays literal tug of war with the monster with Katie as the rope. There is also a scene where Katie has clutched a cross so tightly that it cuts into her hand and Micah has to left the near catatonic Katie to help. She also struggles to keep it all together as she can't explain why this being is attached to her and why it feels so threatened by Micah.

There are several scenes where they cry about having little sleep and how this is starting to effect their lives beyond the home. In the end, we learn that the monster has full control of Katie and uses her body to betray Micah and the relationship. These moments are also moving as Katie alternates between the brink of madness and eerie smiles.

There are several endings to PA and the relationship angle plays better into the alternate one offered in the U.S. DVD release. As a relationship movie, PA defies the hype by offering us a glimpse of what we many do if faced with such a situation. As a horror movie, it seems to stumble by letting you know when it is coming and relying on horror movie tropes we have already seen, albeit not as nicely executed.

Peace!

*No, that honor belongs to a truly awful movie called Cannibal Holocaust. Awful in the fact that is as close to a snuff film as you can get with actual animal slayings that include a turtle quartering and pig shooting. I have seen bits and pieces of online and savvy searchers could find the whole film. Its checkered production and distribution history also includes charges of brutality to the actual human actors and disproved claims of onscreen murder. Some critics have hailed it as revolutionary and brainy, but passing actual killings as entertainment cannot merit a defense even on this blog.

Medieval Acela

2010-01-02T08:15:00.000-05:00

It wasn't all Wii games for us. Amanda was nice enough to get me The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS. My DS appreciated playing something else besides Pokemon and removing the Pearl cartridge must have felt like having that surgery on a benign tumor.

If you have never heard of the DS, then it is Nintendo's current handheld system and descendant of the original GameBoy. Aside from buttons, you have to use the bottom screen as a touch responsive component. So you can scratch off lotto tickets in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars or choose menu options in the Pokemon games. You can draw images in other games and physically move the characters on the screen by dragging it across the touch pad. And as the name implies, it has two screen stacked on top of each other, which allows for two separate interfaces or a unified view of the larger action.

In this game, you use the touch screen to move our hero Link around. You can also give yourself a heart attack by playing the game's Spirt Flute, which requires you to actually blow into the DS's microphone opening. Having not played a Zelda game since Majora's Mask on the N64, I was not used to anything but a control stick. Spirit Tracks also takes a note from the previous sequels Wind Waker and Phat om Hourglass which all featured an overwold map dominated by water. You had to navigate this by ship, using your items and songs to control the wind. I never played those games, but from looking at images and videos it seemed bery similar to the other overworld maps where you got around by foot or horse.

Spirit Tracks does the same thing, but it has a train. Choo choo! The train has been a major sticking point with Zelda fanboys, which are just one level below Final Fantasy maniacs in fanatical devotion to their quasi-medieval worlds. The main concern is that the train is stupid because Zelda is supposed to be medieval and trains are a 19th century mainstay. If this were the Legend of Zelda: Steam Wars, then that would make sense, but these guys want realism. Realism in a game that features, amongst many other things...

Androgynous, hairless mountain men that eat bombs for sustenance...
Anthropomorphized acorns that defend themselves by spitting acorns...
Barnyard chickens that can unleash the wrath of God...
Enough enchanted instruments to fill two Vatican secret store rooms...
Oh, and bombs. Makes as much "real" sense as a train, but we let that one go, right?

I am no Zelda maniac, but I do know that the games are filled with items and influences free of the medieval England feel they try to emulate. It has a boomerang, which would make perfect sense in The Legend of Zelda: Outback Odyssey. In that version you need to play the Heaven's Didgeridoo instead of this game's Spirit Flute. It has a spring loaded spiked hook that you can use to climb up surfaces. And some games have Bombchus, wind up bombs that can crawl up walls and look like Speedy Gonzalez after pounding a few Stackers. Where was that in Robin Hood?

When people get mad about story items in games, then I think they are primarily devoted to the idea and not the actual game play. It's like having a room devoted to Jesus, but never going to church because they installed a new PA system. Speaking of which...

With that said...I do not like the train. D'oh!

It is not a story thing, but a game play thing. You need to run all over the world looking for secrets and having to follow the set track makes the whole thing a real grind. You need to catch all the snow rabbits by the snow temple, but then you must return them to the Rabbit rescue in the Forest temple. You spend large portions of the game just chugging along. The few enemies on the tracks are easily dispatched, but can get annoying as usually your eyes roll back into your head from the boredom of passing another pixelated treeline. Except for the Demon Trains, which cannot be killed and only avoided. Imagine playing Pac Man except that PacMan can only move in a straight line, there are no power pellets, and the ghosts blow you up!

Once you get to each station, the game is fun. You do almost everything on the touch pad including swinging your sword and using items. This can get a bit frantic, but adds a nice level of difficulty. In the N64 games, once you learned to Z-target and lock onto enemies, you were pretty much invincible with an eagle eye accuracy. You also get to control Zelda, which is a first! She can sometimes take command of certain enemies and this fires up a neat tag team mode where you have to draw paths for her with the touch screen and team up to corner enemies. So the swordplay is nice, but man do you need to work to get there. I thought that was supposed to be the challenge?

Chooo! Chooo!

Peace!

Holiday Returns

2010-01-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year 2010!

Sorry for being AWOL for that odd time between X-mas and New Year's Day. That whole week always seems very surreal, as if the whole world were still working on bought time. Many people are still on vacation and the kids are not in school. Consumers shuffle around returns and pick up accessories for the gifts they did keep. Everything seems to be happening while we are waiting for the snooze button to go off at midnight New Year's Eve.

Aside from all that holiday ennui, I have also been busy with all our Christmas gifts! WOO HOO!

And after many years of watching video game play uploads on You Tube, I can now say that we have WAY TO MANY VIDEO GAMES in the house.

Amanda's parents got us a Wii and Wii Sports! And a Wii Fit! Then we bought Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Brother Brawl!

I would say that my thumbs hurt, but because it is a Wii, that means my whole damn body hurts. I know that leaning forward on the Wiimote does not give you a speed boost in Mario Kart, but hell if I won't try when I have everyone behind gunning for me with every kind of shell. Wii Sports reminds me I never learned how to follow through on my baseball swing, but I am happy that I do not let go of the remote, which always happened to me with the real bat. High school gym class was a lot of fun...

Nothing like having a video game machine prove to you how out of shape you are. After the first day on the Wii Fit, I was so sore that I thought I had just fought Ivan Drago. I am getting better and already cut my Wii Fit age from 41 (Oy vey!) to 21 (Hello ladies! Look how good I am at Rhythm Boxing!). My weight keeps zigzagging up and down the graph, which I attest more to variables like body hair and recent bowel movements. Hell yeah, I'm getting skinny. Well, maybe...

It told me I was fat...

More stories on our video game adventures later in the week.

Peace!

The Best!

2009-12-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

2009 is winding down and I always think it is helpful to reflect on the year and its various highs and lows.

On a personal level, it was a mostly great year that saw Amanda and I get married and spend our first year in Cleveland.

However, if I must find something that truly was the best thing ever about 2009 then it would have to be the following...

And the Christian tradition begot Lent. And Lent begot the Fish o Filet sandwich. And the Fish O Fillet sandwich begot.....

THE BEST THING EVER!

Happy New Year 2010!

CGI Overload?

2009-12-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

Speaking of Avatar and the clash between amazing visuals and lame storytelling, you should check out this interview between James Cameron and Peter Jackson that was reproduced on Slate. I found one bit from Jackson to be very salient. It summarizes my feelings about Avatar in a succinct format that does not mention Dune, Final Fantasy, or Transformers. I have quoted it below...

"Jackson: There are all great tools that people haven't quite gotten their heads around yet. But one of the things that has happened [is that] people focus on technology. Probably the film industry has been guilty; there's more attention spent on the technical aspects than the story. That's led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. People regard CGI as a gimmick, they almost blame CGI for a bad story or a bad script. They talk about CGI as if it's responsible for a drop in standards. We've gotten to a point now where there isn't nothing else we haven't seen. We've seen dinosaurs, we've seen aliens; with Avatar we've seen realistic creatures. I think we're going to enter a phase where there's less interest in the CGI and there's a demand for story again. I think we've dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we've played with."

Peace!

Blue Movies

2009-12-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

This may come as a shock to you loyal readers, but, I did not really dig James Cameron's new movie Avatar. This does not mean that I hated it. It left me feeling pretty "meh," which is how most big, loud summer blockbusters leave me feeling. And this wasn't supposed to be a big, loud summer blockbuster.

If you haven't heard of Avatar then you must be either 1) A member of the Taliban or B) Living in Ithaca, NY. It is Cameron's first return to film making in over a decade and has been much ballyhooed as the next step in movies. Like George Lucas, Cameron claims to have been sitting on this for years and waiting for special effects technology to catch up to his original vision. The thing cost $237 million dollars to make and has already netted $232 million in worldwide sales in just one weekend. If it hadn't been for all the snow on the East Coast this past weekend, then it could have made A LOT more money, but it will soon recoup that.

Avatar follows Jake Sully, a wheelchair bound U.S. Marine vet that must replace his twin brother on a scientific mission to the new world of Pandora. Pandora holds a rare mineral that an evil corporation wants because it sells for "$20 million a kilo." Going to need a really big Invisible Hand to move that stuff. The planet is also home to an indigenous race of 10 foot tall, blue, quasi-cat aliens called the Na'vi. Human researchers have been able to create biological robots of the Na'vi that humans can pilot with their brains. The science team on Na'vi, lead by the always wonderful to see Sigourney Weaver, uses these creations, called avatars, to communicated with the natives and better learn their culture. The evil corporation, which has an army of mercenaries I dub "Space Black Water," wants to use the avatars to infiltrate the Na'vi, learn their weaknesses and get more of that rock. Sully mans one of these avatars, falls in love with the alien babe and epic battles, training montages, and PG-13 alien sex continue.

A ton of effort went into Avatar. Cameron and his team even created a full, working Na'vi language that you can learn right after you memorize Klingon. To this end, the film is a huge success with visuals that are hyper realistic and engaging. We have scenes that are filled with all non-humans and these feel as solid as any scene with flesh and blood actors. There are moments where the CGI melds into actual stage props. The lush backgrounds of the Pandoran rain forest feel thick and real with the encompassing bird calls and jungle tweets needed to add more gravitas. If you are the kind of person that reads movie reviews before checking them out then, yes, Avatar is a visual wonder with a world that adheres to its own internal and highly detailed logic. Even if that logic is not in and of itself logical.

My problem was that I am getting more and more tired of liking movies because they look cool. I like a damn gun fight, but I really want that to have some substance. And if substance is too much, then I prefer it to be campy and self-aware or fun. When it comes to the actual story, Avatar falls right on its blue face and picks itself up with cliched archetypes. It's Dances With Wolves, The Last Samurai, or Lawrence of Arabia, whichever one you want really, set in space. The final battle reminded me just how dumb indeed it was for the Ewoks to defeat an entire legion of Imperial troops at the end of Return of the Jedi. It made me think of Fern Gully and I don't even remember the plot of that movie except that the rain forest was good and bulldozers were bad.

One reason I did not dig Avatar as much as possible is because I am a nerd. The story reminded me a lot of Dune, which is one of my favorite sci-fi stories of all time. If you haven't read Dune, then please do before you see Avatar because the last thing I want is for people to think Dune is like Avatar! Both stories are a tale about a young man who must go to a hostile, but beautiful, planet that is the only known source of a valuable commodity. The commodity is currently mined by an evil group that must share some of that space with new comers hoping to learn more about the environment they must steward. The boy meets a researcher who has made inroads with the natives who are both stewards of the environment and fierce warriors. After a great betrayal, the boy flees to the wilderness, falls in love with a native woman, learns the native ways and becomes their greatest hero.

There are characters in Avatar that are near clones of people in Dune. Jake Sully is Paul Atreides. The benevolent Navi researcher Grace Augustine is Liet Kynes. Evil general Colonel Miles Quaritch is the Harkonnes except with out the child molestation, which may be a good thing. Neytiri, Jake's Navi love, is Chani and her arranged marriage Tsutey is Stilgar even though Stilgar and Chani don't hook up in the book. All those crazy Pandoran creatures are just trying to be as cool as Shai Hulud, the mighty Sandworm.

Speaking of nerdiness, many of the visuals, particularly the glowing forest reminded me of scenes from the Final Fantasy games and that gets me thinking of bad Final Fantasy fan fiction. And video game cosplayers. And then I imagine someone else thought that and sneered, 'Hey that looks like the forest of the Fayth that Yuna and Tidus have sex in in FFX!" I am bit embarrassed to admit that I thought this as the last thing I want to do is apply plots from video games into my life. Reminds me of the time I tried writing an English paper in the 11th grade based on the flavor text of Magic cards. I was that cool.

Aside from these comparisons, the movie is a pretty standard anti-industrial warning that says it is not nice to mess with Mother Nature. I'm an environmentalist, so I appreciate the idea, but this is also the same idea as Frogs. The end battle is wonderfully rendered digitally, but feels hackneyed and drawn from a hundred much weaker action movies.

Considering all the hype for Avatar, I expected something greater with those great visuals but something to support them with. Lavishing praise on a movie because it looks really great is useful, but makes me feel like we are just watching a video game demo.

Peace!

***Author's note***
I did not see Avatar in 3D, which is akin to watching the Wizard of Oz on a black and white TV. Maybe the 3D does it for most folks.

And yes...I realize that the guy that just wrote this really loved Transformers back in 2007. And Star Wars. One of those was dumb and the other borrowed a lot from classic archetypes of the kinght errant. Both were visually stunning and I will argue both were fun, which I Avatar was not.

Think of the Trees!

2009-12-22T08:10:00.004-05:00

I enjoy houseplants. I use that verb, "enjoy," because I appreciate the interactions they offer. These are often something that the individual must actively seek out. They are plants, after all. But these moments, like watching our philodendron furl open a new and glossy leaf, can be very rewarding. I even enjoy my aquarium plants and how the Amazonian Sword has burst from the gravel so that its emerald leaves mimic the arch of an oil strike.

I have blogged about house plants before, so I feel this holiday PSA is both very helpful and pertinent.

Please, if you are tempted to buy a Norfolk Island Pine this Christmas, then do some research. Walgreen's sells six inch saplings by the checkout counter and they are decked out for Christmas with foiled line plastic pots and a half dozen tiny ornaments. And all for $6.99! Home Depot has two foot tall trees spray painted with glitter (Just like Britney Spears!) for just $9.99!

Yes, it is Christmas time. Yes, it has pine its name. But the thing hates the cold. I found that out the hard way after I killed my first Norfolk Island Pine after hauling it across the IC campus in the late December chill. And at night. I thought it could handle the cold for just those few minutes because it was a "pine." Why should it have a harder time than a Douglas Fir? Well...it did and the person who babysat it for me over winter break reported those early signs of atrophy and eventual death.

I really want to have a big Norfolk Island Pine like the ones you see in a waiting room. As a tropical plant, it has been exported around the world as an ornamental. I am still unsure about their ecological impact on a non-native ecosystem, but on a personal level they left vivid images of watching our neighbor's sixty foot pine tower over their cement bungalow. The prickly leaves of the younger trees tighten up as they get older and each long leaf becomes a braided green strand with the luster of snake skin.

Unfortunately, I have had horrible luck with my various Norfolks. We have had so many plants that we have brought back from the edge. We saved a coffee tree that someone left over night during the first Cleveland frost! But, I, and only I, often kill Norfolks in a few years. The leaves begin to calcify at the stem and convert from a bright green to a mineral green the color of chalkboards. This hardening spreads up the leaf, leaving the tips still glossy as the disease spreads up the leaf. Too much light? Too little? Too much water? Too little? I do not know as I have tried everything and combed the Internet. Maybe one day I will succeed, but I am taking it easy for now.

The Norfolks you see marketed along with the rest of the holiday merchandise are long lived trees that represent decades of nursery growth. You see that dirt they come in? That means they are supposed to live for a while and not end up on the curb on January 2nd. Indeed, you can use them as an alternative Christmas tree, but remember that you are going to keep it.

Peace!

Movies I Should Have Already Seen, Vol 3, #8

2009-12-17T12:42:00.012-05:00

Now that the blog is back, we should also bring back one of the longest running bits.

Movies I Should Have Already Seen, Volume 3, Issue 8

This is the first MISHAS installment of the Hulu era. Or, at least the era in which I watch Hulu. That means that for you readers that want to play along, you can swing over to Hulu and watch the movie right now.

Watching movies on Hulu can prove engaging because of the comments people can post on each movie or show page. Because Hulu enforces an actual name policy, the posts tend to be a bit more put together than the average YouTube comment. Older movies and shows tend to attract many comments by what I assume are younger viewers often hammering the video. These are people that are also engaging in MISHAS and they mostly hate it. I read one comment asking for the movie to be remade with today's faster pace. That would be a mess with ten minutes of setup and another hour-and-a-half of gun fights. Every individual piece of every individual gun would be separately mic'ed to intensify bullet time effects. The famous mirror scenes would be cut short to fit in another gun fight. But, we would make sure to try and get a PG-13 rating to boost profits. Robert DeNiro would be replaced by a cut-up Gerard Butler and Miley Cyrus would be Iris.

I really liked Taxi Driver and part of me would have wanted to see it during its initial 1976 run. I think that it is a wonderful character piece that stands in stark contrast to the usual plot driven popcorn thrillers. I read some criticisms that nothing much happens in Taxi Driver until the very last minutes. Agreed that it does not clip along, but it is a lingering and long descent into madness. A weaker movie or a current remake of the film would try to highlight Travis's madness with dream sequences, quick jump cuts, or green screened hallucinations. The original film does that with a loopy soundtrack that exchanged between jazz horns and a screeching bass line. The noise really gets under your skin and makes it feel like the city itself is assaulting you. Some of the scenes seemed superfluous, such as the match strike conversation in the campaign headquarters. But this also helps add to the mental anguish, as if every inane conversation is pointless and hollow. The modern equivalent would probably be blog posts. That no one reads...

Speaking of the city, NYC comes off as gritty and dirty and needing that hard rain Travis so wishes for. This is partially a sign of the times as most urban centers in the 1970s were tough places to be, but everything gets to you. Like the Nostromo in Alien, everything seems old and broken making us wonder what life is there to live. The cinematography often reuses that same shot over and over again, particularly in the driving scenes where we pass the same traffic light or movie theater crowd several times. This helps highlight Travis's fragile mindset.

I read some comments that the movie has not aged well and should be appreciated as more of a period piece that was great at the time and for the better pictures it has influenced. I can understand this mindset and often used it for previous MISHAS pieces. I found Taxi Driver to be eerily prescient. Travis was anguished because of his experiences in Vietnam and coming back to a country that he did not recognize. This drove him to violence. How is this any different than the ennui and rage that motivated school shooters at Columbine or Virginia Tech. We all seem to be angry at each other and social commentators speak of an increasingly polarized culture. Travis felt isolated and misunderstood and are those feelings that existed purely in the post Vietnam 1970s.

I also think it is a bit short sighted to dismiss older movies by what they influenced. Does that mean The Godfather is a piece of crap because it inspired Goodfellas or The Sopranos? Every gritty, or attempt at a gritty, movie now disproves Taxi Driver's worth? Fight Club was great, but I didn't know it was proof of the law of diminishing returns.

It was also nice to see a young Harvey Keitel as the muscled up pimp, "Sport." He looks like a damn tank! Cybil Sheppard was pretty foxy as Betsy, the campaign worker and infatuation for Travis. 13-year-old Jodie Foster did well with the 12-year-old prostitute role even though she comes in the final act. The movie had balls to refer to a 13-year-old that could "make your cock so hard it pops off." Good luck saying that today even in our more "realistic" world.

Peace!

Into the Future

2009-12-16T10:33:00.004-05:00

I almost forgot to keep blogging this week. Oh, it's not because of the busy holidays or anything like that.

Amanda and I got ourselves cable as an early Christmas gift to ourselves and I forgot how nice it is to have more than 13 TV channels. We got the next step up from the super duper basic plan we used to have so we have the most channels available before needing to get a digital box. Maybe we will move to that some day and DVR things, but, for now, we are happy with having taken a step into the late 1980s.

In just a few days of TV watching I must ask...What is up with all the ghosts shows? This isn't necessarily a bad thing. I used to be really into the paranormal, even starting an afterschool club about it. Yeah, I'm was that cool. I have grown more skeptical in my older age, but still find the whole genre fabulously entertaining.

Discovery Channel has A Haunting and Ghost Lab. It's sister network, Travel Channel, has Most Haunted and Ghost Adventures. A&E just launched the season premiere of our favorite, Paranormal State, but also has Psychic Kids. SyFy (When the hell did they change their name?) has Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters Academy. And Histor Channel remains the UFO channel, which beats being the WWII channel, but, not by much.

Ghost stories have never really been out of style. Hamlet has a ghost story within it not to mention the hundreds of indigenous and religious narratives on spirits. But, they must have traded in all their back stock of Ecto Cooler to become cable reality TV darlings. When I was a kind, we had to make do with the ominous interlude and a trench coated Robert Stack on Unsolved Mysteries. And that ran on Lifetime right after SuperMarket Sweep! That about juxtaposition. They should have aired SuperMarket Sweep afterwards so you could calm yourself down. Or we had to hunt down what channel Sightings aired on to hear the former local WKYC-Channel 3 TV achorman Tim White speak in his dramatic telenovela style.

Apparently....They're here and all over the basic cable line up. Peace.

The Gift From Hell

2009-12-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

If you have followed my various blogs and their evolution then I have two things to say to you. First is thanks and the second is...I'm sorry.

In earlier blogs posts, I tended to rant and violate a cardinal rule of "Never say anything you would not say to that person's face." I quickly wised up and moved to my current style of random posts.

However, I must rant today. In preparation for the holidays I will blog about the number one gift from hell...

LONG SLEEVED POLO SHIRTS!

AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!

Long sleeved polos are beyond dumb. I am far from a fashionista, but I do know that polo shirts are also known as "golf shirts." Upon doing some more research, I also learned that they are sometimes called "tennis shirts" and were initially designed by Rene Lacoste, a famous French tennis pro who was also pretty keen on alligators.

Golf and tennis are outdoor sports that are usually played in the warm weather. Hence, the short sleeves. The whole concept of a polo shirt was designed as a nice, sport, semi-casual shirt for the warm weather! Why put sleeves on it? Should you be wearing a polo shirt in the winter? Are you playing tennis in the blizzard. The golf course in Trumansburg, NY had a winter golfing session. As a joke! If you want a collared shirt with long sleeves then get a button up shirt. Who cares if the collar is popped if you have to layer up over it?

Putting sleeves on a long sleeved polo is akin to inveting winter sandals or the Alaskan hula skirt. Makes no sense. I would argue that it isn't even witty or postmodern because they look just plain dumb.

My disdain for the shirts is compounded by the fact that my family always gets me one for Christmas. And in hideous colors like Whitehead Beige or Pothole Charcoal. God bless my sainted mother. She thinks that anywhere place in the United States, besides Florida, is locked in a perpetual deep freeze and that we have no stores in which to buy clothes. She always asks me if we have Marshalls, Macy's or JC Penny up here. Yes, mom. Where do you think those stores came from? Certainly not San Juan.

My grandmother, rest her soul, thought that it was so cold and backwards up here in the mainland that we had no running water and had to resort to rubbing wet, hot rocks over ourselves to bathe during the endless winter. Mind you that she lived in Mayaguez, PR, which, don't worry, you should have never heard of.

I really hope that you don't get a long sleeved polo for the holidays.

Peace!

Life Lessons from Jason DeRulo

2009-12-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

One of the latest, hit songs not only guides young men out of infidelity, but also on how to get out of any sticky situation! Just remember that...

"Cause when the roof caved in and the truth came out I just didn't know what to do But when I become a star we'll be living so large I'll do anything for you..."

Check it out in several sample situations..

Situation 1

An example in the workplace...Beluga Heights!
Boss: "Johnson! Why wasn't the toner in the copier refilled? I just ran out in the middle of copying a 100 page file."

Our subject: "Cause when the roof caved in and the truth came out I just didn't know what to do But when I become a star we'll be living so large I'll do anything for you..."

What our subject really means: "Sorry boss. I was wrapped up in some paperwork and forgot. But when I get that promotion, I will get someone to be on 24/7 toner patrol. Or order Xerox to make a toner less copier."

Boss: "Oh, OK."

Situation 2

An example at home...Take it away Jason!

Wife: "Damnit! Why didn't you take out the garbage? The dog got into it and spread it all over the kitchen floor."

Subject: "Cause when the roof caved in and the truth came out I just didn't know what to do But when I become a star we'll be living so large I'll do anything for you..."

What our subject really means: "Sorry baby. The game was on and we were still ten minutes until halftime. However, once I get my government check I'll make sure to get us a maid. And I'll get rid of the dog."

Wife: "Oh, OK. I love you."

Take a note from the hit show Glee and sing everything.

Also, our researchers have found that Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" is helpful in getting out of awkward holiday moments like you re gifted someone's gift back to themselves or you make a face when getting another long sleeved polo from your family. Just tell them...

"I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me
Papa, paparazzi
Baby, there's no other superstar, you know that I'll be
Papa, paparazzi

A Tree

2009-12-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

Amanda and I put up our Christmas tree earlier this week. I will not post any images because it is still a bit bare. We have never put up a Christmas tree before and considering that, our ornament supply was limited to just five. And two of them were a pair of those styrofoam balls covered in gold cloth. The fabric had started to fray on one of them and, in usual fashion, I had found them in the garbage.

We also got a rosemary Christmas tree from Amanda's parents. Ours looks a lot like the one below:Pretty cool! I hope we can keep it throughout the winter. If so, then I am going to be putting enough rosemary on enough food to make Macaroni Grill jealous. Most of the food will be microwaved veggie burgers and toast, but it will be served Italian style. Mange! Mange!

During the blog's hiatus, I managed to write an article about sustainable Christmas trees for Lucy magazine. Lucy was an online, alternative woman's magazine that acted as a sort of counter-Cosmo with articles on health, life, politics, and art. It unfortunately folded soon after I joined, but the staff and articles were very diverse and engaged. The archives are still up for you reading pleasure. Check out my tree article!

Peace!

Working Online

2009-12-09T12:59:00.002-05:00

How does one get a job putting up fake job listings on Craigslist? Cause I want that job!

I swear that pretty much every posting on admin/office jobs is a fake. Receptionists jobs that pay $25 an hour with no experience necessary! Sweet! With all the receptionists and secretaries needed and working, who is actually calling into these offices?

And each ad saying that some club owners wants dancers and girls for his club is an attempt to get girls to undress. Does Cleveland really have that many strip joints? I don't even think Las Vegas or Atlantic City has this much demand for dancers and "photographic models" It seems that every day some rookie club owner is looking for the right girl to call Destiny and light up his mirrored cat walks. C;mon guys! Why work so hard to look at some girls when YOU'RE ON THE INTERNET!

Is this just hundreds of enterprising scammers? Or is there a con man guild?

Peace!

Finish Line

2009-12-07T08:48:00.002-05:00

Speaking of television of necessity, we have become big fans of The Amazing Race.

Actually, I am bit sorry I did not start watching this show earlier considering it has been on since 2001 and it has nice geography theme to it. It is also originated in the U.S., which is very unusual for any popular reality show, hell, any show, here in the U.S. I also appreciate that contestants have a bigger motivation to win and not spin their fifteen minutes of fame into a larger faux celebrity status. Contestants are often antagonized by their very partner, which doesn't seem catty, but realistic when you make a pair of newlyweds race around the world. Amanda and I agreed that we would KILL each other if we were on the race.

The show aired its 15th season finale yesterday and lovebirds Meghan and Cheyne won. Congrats! The good news is that you won. The bad news is that now you really need to get married. No more of this will they, won't they dating. There is $1 million dollars to consider, you know.

Meghan and Cheyne were not my favorites. I was rooting for the Harlem Globetrotters, Flight Time and Big Easy. Alas, they did not make it to the final after getting tied up in an obstacle that made them sort out the word Franz from a word jumble. One of the few times the Globetrotters lose and it had to be on Amazing Race! It didn't help that they were betrayed by one of the Amazing Douche Bag Brothers. I guess some viewers appreciated the brothers constant bickering, but it did not help that each arguments was a nasal whine. You could hear those nostrils take a nice breath before someone uttered, "I'm tryyyyyinnnng, Dan!" or "Shut upppppp, Sam!"

While I like the show, I must admit to several face palm moments that made me clutch the couch cushions. As a geography nerd, it is painful to hear Cheyne ask a cab driver, "What country is Monaco in?" or "We need to go to the country of Prague!" Or hearing one of the Amazing Douche Bag Brothers pronounce Monaco as Moe-na-coe. Yeesh. Almost as horrible as the time the local CBS affilitate, WOIO, spelled Czech Republic as Check Republic and told us that the Soviets had invaded South Ossetia in 2008.

Peace!

Fantasy Dancing, The Gentlemen

2009-12-02T10:23:00.006-05:00

On the second day of our Fantasy Dancing With the Stars line up, we will focus on the men.

We will begin with the contestant's name then follow with their claim to fame and end with a brief explanation and sample of what outlandish judge Bruno Tonioli would say.

Gentlemen

Contestant #1
Name: Michael Keaton
Claim to Fame: Fading big star. He was Batman. Was almost Dr. Jack on Lost.
Why?: Wouldn't America love to learn what Keaton has been up to all these years? And love to learn it with a spicy salsa? He could deliver some icy glances, reiterate that, yes, he's Batman, and hope for a Multipilcity affect that gives he six more legs.
Bruno: "Say it Michael....I'm DANCING!"

Contestant #2
Name: Michael Phelps
Claim to Fame: Olympic superstar athlete. Won 16 Olympic medals, second highest in history. And he is still swimming.
Why?: Every season needs an Olympian and one season got Shawn Johnson, so we can handle the high priority guys.
Bruno: "Watch out because Michael P is going to make you all wet!"

Contestant #3
Name: Andy Rooney
Claim to Fame: Cranky guy on 60 Minutes. We should really spend all sixty of them with him. Sorry, Leslie Stahl
Why?: The guy could write a diatribe against breadsticks. Can't wait for him to cut a rug.
Bruno: "Spend a few minutes on the dance floor, Andy!"

Contestant #4
Name: Shaquille O'Neal
Claim to Fame: 15 time NBA All Star and 4 time NBA Champ. HUGE!
Why?: The latest Cleveland Cavalier will become the Big Dance once he hits the floor. Every season needs a major league athlete and I am tired of football players.
Bruno: "So BIG!"

Contestant #5
Name: Levi Johnston
Claim to Fame: Got Sarah Palin's daughter pregnant.
Why?: What a better way to celebrate reality television than having someone who is famous for knowing someone that knows a famous person. God Bless America!
Bruno: "We didn't see any of this in Playgirl!"

Contestant #6
Name: Rod Blagojevich
Claim to Fame: Former Illinois governor. Ousted in controversy surrounding then Senator Obama's empty Senate seat. Still trying to beat the false rap.
Why?: We wouldn't need to ask him. He would show up outside of the studio on the first day of call backs. The U.S Marshalls may have something to say against this though.
Bruno: "Sell every seat in the house with that waltz, Rod!"

Contestant #7
Name: Darius Rucker
Claim to Fame: Former front man of Hootie and the Blowfish. Solo star that now wins Country Music Awards.
Why?: To be honest, I did not know he was still around. Turned himself into a burgeoning solo star. Now he will become a dancing star!
Bruno: "With that samba, Darius, you do not need the blowfish."

Contestant #8
Name: Pauly Shore
Claim to Fame: Fading funny man that gave us such classics as Encino Man and Bio Dome.
Why?: He would do something wacky like try to dance with a live kitchen. People would tun in just to see him get voted off.
Bruno: "Pauly, Pauly, Pauly....um....that's it!"

There you go. Now...DANCE!

Fantasy Dancing, The Ladies

2009-12-01T10:07:00.005-05:00

For how much I talk about TV, you may assume that I have a 50 inch plasma screen with the super duper cable that brings 700 channels. A cable package with both the East and West coast feeds!

Well, we just updated to a 24 inch screen four months ago after deciding that the 13 inch TV I had in college wasn't doing it anymore. And we have exactly 13 channels because we have very, very basic cable. We essentially just get the broadcast networks with some Univision, TCT, and two PBS stations.

Because of this, Amanda and I are pretty much limited to what network prime time has to offer. We have become big Dancing With The Stars fans because of this. And the latest season just ended with a win for Donny Osmond. Congrats Donny and take it Marie!

Our new fandom made me think of a dream dancing line up for future seasons. And, of course, I would blog about it! Today and tomorrow you will see my fantasy lineup. Lets start with the ladies!

Format & Rules

We will begin with the contestant's name then follow with their claim to fame and end with a brief explanation and sample of what outlandish judge Bruno Tonioli would say.

Ladies

Contestant #1
Name: Serena Williams
Claim to Fame: Tennis great. Won 35 titles. Made over $28 million in prize money over her career.
Why?: Every season needs some star athletes and why not pick the currently ranked # 1 female tennis player? Besides, America would love to give her a chance to explain her outburst to that line judge with a nice paso doble.
Bruno: "Serena...I hope the only thing you threaten to stuff down my throat is some dance ATTACK!"

Contestant #2
Name: Lauren Graham
Claim to Fame: She was Lorelai on Gilmore Girls. Also in Evan Almighty and Bad Santa
Why?: She is America's favorite fast talking, power eating, quirky single mom. She can drop a Flashdance reference while recreating every scene from it. Hopefully, she will move so fast that they will need one those "Gilmorism" guides from the DVDs to keep up.
Bruno: "Sexy sexy sexy Lauren. Let me tell you that Bad Santa was very helpful.

Contestant #3
Name: Barbara Walters
Claim to Fame: Famed TV interviewer. Former host of 20/20 and current host of The View.
Why?: Because she is Barbara Walters. That's why. Beside she is an easy get since ABC owns the rights to her other show.
Bruno: "I knew you would make me cry, but who knew it would be for the beauty of the dancing!"

Contestant #4
Name: Rachel Ray
Claim to Fame: Breakout Food Network star.
Why?: People either love her or love to hate her. Perfect for a reality show!
Bruno: "Rachel, you add O to end of everything. EVOO! Yum-O! Well, here comes my judge O face! OH!"

Contestant #5
Name: Stephanie Courtney
Claim to Fame: Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials
Why?: She gave those cavemen and the gecko a run for their money. People have proposed to her. She does have a nice job selling insurance.
Bruno: "You can check me out anytime, Stephanie. This is wonderful insurance for the finals!"

Contestant #6
Name: Jamie Lynn Spears
Claim to Fame: Britney Spears' sister. Actress on All That and Zoey 101. Famous for getting pregnant
Why?: Because we couldn't get Britney Spears. So we went for the lighter shade of crazy.
Bruno: "Forget your sister! Oops, you did it again with a 10!"

Contestant #7
Name: Rosie O'Donnell
Claim to Fame: Stand up comedienne. Actress and TV host.
Why?: She'll draw the cynics jokes and then sneak in through the second or third elimination. Every season needs someone whose very name is a punch line. Of course, Donny Osmond won this year.
Bruno: "This dancing is in a League of Its Own, Rosie!"

Contestant #8
Name: Jenny McCarthy
Claim to Fame: Former Playboy centerfold and Single Out co-host. Used to pay the bills with far jokes and now pays them by saying juice cures autism. The American Dream manifested in a person. Her appearance would also strike a victory for media fairness by giving scientifically unsound theories equal exposures as, you know, facts.
Bruno: "Chelate these 10s out of me, Jenny! More juice! More ATTACK!"

There you go, folks.

Tomorrow we will present the gentlemen.

More Returns

2009-11-30T12:20:00.004-05:00

I had a gift certificate to our local comic shop that was burning a hole in my pocket so I decided to cash it in.

It has been a long time since I bought a comic. Even before the blog went into its latest hiatus (December 2008), I had already stopped buying monthly issues. Buying little booklets of glossy paper isn't too smart, you know? But, I had the gift certificate and I missed the head kicking.

The good

Daredevil made it to 500 issues! I got a back copy along with the latest issue 501. But, Matt Murdock know leads The Hand? That is kind of a neat twist, but didn't he already sell his soul when he was the brutal "new" Kingpin of NYC? We do have umpteen stories of him snapping and girlfriends dying, so it can't hurt to recycle this. Right? His new DD inspired Hand ninjas look awesome with little devil horns and long pony tails designed to mimic devil tails.

I may need to set aside the three bucks a month to keep reading DD. It is nice to come back to such big reveals and plenty of ninjas.

The Bad

When the hell did Immortal Iron Fist get canceled!? It was because I stopped buying issues, right Marvel? Well, times are tough and some of us didn't get a nice injection of Disney money earlier this year.

I picked up four issues of the Iron Fist tie-in series, The Immortal Weapons. It chronicles each of the champions from the other heavenly cities that Danny Rand, a.k.a Iron Fist, met during his adventures in the series. They are nice, but I really wanted to see Danny Rand punch some people out.

I have also read rumors that this is just a stand in while Marvel decides what to do with the main series. So, maybe it will come back. I hope. If not, then I will be down to just one comic a month since few other weekly series attract me. I just need to keep dueling with the other guy that keeps putting trade paper backs of Y: The Last Man on hold at the library.

Peace!

Organize

2009-11-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Astute readers may notice that the newer posts feature tags. The older posts will soon all have tags and by the time you read this, most should be annotated.

We may have few patrons, but we are organized. Just like the corner hardware store.

Peace!

Celebrate Thanksgiving...In Space!

2009-11-26T10:00:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving. Amanda and I will be out of town and maybe you will be as well. Isn't the Internet great though? You can read this from anywhere even as you remember there is a reason you only see these people three times a year.

Thanksgiving used to mean lots of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) and I remember both Comedy Central and the Sci Fi Channel (Now known as SyFy) running all day marathons of episodes on Thanksgiving day and Black Friday. I am not the only person to remember. Bully, a fabulous comics blogger, remembers.

These marathons were very helpful particularly in an era where I had limited access to the Internet. Our meager dial up connection was always at the mercy of my mother's friends calling to chat. MST3K is an immediately likable show, but it has a very high learning curve. We have all seen a bad movie and maybe even been forced to endure it. Everyone riffs on a bad movie, even if its just an eye roll while you walk back to the car from the theater. MST3K turns this into an art. There are eight seasons packed with a dozen or so two hour episodes into each one. There is no plot, so you don't need to scramble through back seasons to understand why Mike's dad owns a mail order burlap store in Minong, Wisconin. But you always want more and Sci Fi didn't have the rights to anything earlier than the seventh season!

This has to be my favorite show of all time. I waver on "My Favorite" quite often. Anyone who has kept up with the blog must have noticed that one day I was talking about comics and then I started pretending to know a lot about politics. There were links to sports sites, comics sites, and news sites. When I listen to my MP3 player I mash the skip button until it gets to Black Eyed Peas, then Silver Sun Pickups, 311, and Jimmy Eat World. Please don't ask me what my favorite kind of music is.

But, MST3K will remain my favorite TV show for life. The show is over twenty years old and Old Man Garik will still guard his DVD player and boxed sets fifty years from now. 'It's funny, dammit! The best," I will say much like our parents scream at us when we ask them why the bought a DVD season of the Dean Martin variety show out of those inserts you get in the paper.

Nearly every episodes of MST3K is up on YouTube. The folks at Best Brains have always appreciated how bootlegging helped spread the word about the show during the early 90s. I shudder to think what would have happened if Viacom had owned MST3K and YouTube was forced to scour its servers of all riffing and references to "Watch out for snakes!"

I don't recall what was the first MST3K episode I ever saw. It was late and I laughed at the silhouettes emanating from the TV. And, as per usual, I am hesitant to name a favorite, even though Space Mutiny comes pretty close. The many names of David Ryder really did it for me, even though they do run it into the ground. Hard.

Enjoy!

Here

Michael Bay is laughing at me

2009-11-24T14:31:00.004-05:00

Speaking of movies...

I realize this is about five months too late, but the sequel to Transformers, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, was God awful. I went to a midnight showing of the thing and left three hours later quite disappointed. And a bit heartbroken as well. I realize how melodramatic that sounds. It is a movie about giant robots that beat the hell out of each other. How much could one really expect? But, returning readers will remember how excited Amanda and I were about the first one.

I can't say much that already has been said about the movie. 19% on Rotten Tomatoes is a serious F. The first one got a 56%, which is a low D. That gets you through to the next school year!

I think that part two was a victim of the first movie's attempts to be taken seriously. They spent a good part of the first hour trying to legitimize giant robots that turn into cars. The focus was always on the fight, but folks gave it a pass for trying. The robots were still here to kick ass, but at least we got a try at why they were here to kick ass. It made the first movie a lot of fun. Stupid fun, but not just plain stupid like the second once. Watching the second one, it seemed like Michael "360 shot" Bay was a bit subdued in the first installment and that the second one was his true canvas on which to demolish freely.

Peace!

Take Me Away

2009-11-23T11:28:00.006-05:00

Over this past weekend, Amanda and I took in two movies. We go to movies quite often, but two times in just over 24 hours was unusual since the first experience usually gobbles up 30 plus dollars.

We saw the new Sandra Bullock picture, The Blind Side, which was nice and inspirational even though it laid it on thick and made it seem like all of life's problems could be solved with money and sass. Lots of sass. It also didn't help that I know next to nothing about football particularly the fervent loyalty of fans in the Southern SEC. Living in Cleveland, my football knowledge is limited to "$@!# Browns!" You should check it out. A great story heightened by its true basis. And Kathy Bates is in it.

We also checked out the following film...

Starring Milla "Lilu Dalla Multipass" Jovovich, The Fourth Kind is a supernartual thriller based on supposed true events in the town of Nome, Alaska. Folks in our 49th state are having trouble sleeping and it has something to do with an owl. Or a murderer? Or ancient Sumerians? Or aliens?

This movie is a hot damn mess. I try to steer clear of technical criticism since I would not know a filter from a gaffer, but the whole setup was distracting. Much like The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity, Fourth Kind includes so called actual footage into the movie. This time we are told that the recordings are from actual sessions with Milla's character, psychologist Abigail Tyler, and show her patients' violent reactions to remembering being taken. The movie decided to juxtapose these images with shot for shot reenactments with Milla and the crew. So we are seeing two movies at once. Except it is the same thing! Maybe another angle would have helped, but its like watching your home movies made with a much bigger budget. The film even divides the scenes into a quad screen with moving borders that increase and decrease the size of each panel as the scene progresses.

I have no idea why the film makers tried this. Why show us the same thing two, three, even, four times? Maybe it was to give the supposed real photo some extra authenticity. The time we would really like the reenactments are those scare moments when the aliens show up and the cameras goes all wonky. Between distorted snow we often see some creepy images of victims floating in the air and distorted into grotesque poses. This are few and far between and presented in the same shaky-cam style that made The Blair Witch Project a chore. The dual view took me times out of the experience and had me and some of the fellow movie goers laughing at were supposed to be harrowing scenes.

The film plays fast and loose with its plot. I could appreciate the scatter shot approach if this was indeed based on true stories, but it is not. Universal Studios actually lost a lawsuit brought forward by the Alaska Press Club because of the deceptive promotion. A viral marketing campaign peppered sites with fake news stories associate to actual Alaskan media. The artifice of the story requires good story telling, not ham handed efforts to make all of this seem real.

I wanted to like this movie and I wanted to lose sleep over it. As a young boy and teenager, I was obsessed with the paranormal and especially aliens. I have since become much more skeptical, but the fear of those almond eye emaciated visitors still creeps me out. Indeed, there is something alien and soul less about that imagery. However, Fourth Kind never even shows the monsters or hints at their faces. The big reveal is a bunch of black shadows coming for Abigail. You don't need to give us the full monster Monty, but a peek or peer would have been nice.

Many critics have also pointed out that the whole owl omen is hokey. A.O. Scott of The New York times said that owls are not scary. I must agree that the owl omen is never used to full effect, but feel it could have been done right. This image from the trailer hints at a possible transformation of earthly being to alien visitor.

The trailer I saw focused a lot on the owl and I thought we were going to get a sci-fi "The Raven" type scenario where the beings stalk victims with an earthly creature they find appealing.

I hope you don't waste your money on this especially because you can get a better experience watching sixteen year old episodes of The X-Files. Of course, I am in the camp that watching X-Files beats out a lot of things.

Peace!

Relive Blogging...for the fifth time

2009-11-20T14:57:00.003-05:00

I am way too good to go one whole year without an update.

I am going to give the whole blogging thing another try. Still not sure on the topic or theme. No more comics references. I still love Chris Sims and Dave Campbell, but there was not point in trying to recreate their voices. Maybe some more fiction. Stay tuned.

Peace!

Earth Rise Anniversary

2008-12-24T12:36:00.009-05:00

Forty years ago on this Christmas Eve, there was another celestial entity orbiting the Earth at thousand miles a minute. The Apollo 8 astronauts were in the best position to view Santa Claus, but they were also in the best place to capture this image:

Even more incredible than the image itself is that it all happened by accident and that the astronauts did no expect to see such an event. I could only compare it to watching an eclipse in ancient times, maybe over a Mayan temple, and wondering what the gods were up to. We were so bound and defined by our terrestrial origins that we could not imagine our own planet rising. Imagine the earth rise from a planet like Mars. A tiny blue sphere arises over the red horizon and it is full of life! Earth with a singular and stunning abundance of life engages in the same cosmic dance the entire Milky Way.

Happy Earth Rise 40th Anniversary! Oh, and Merry Christmas, too.

Peace!

Chia Christmas Countdown Day 14 (I think)

2008-12-22T18:25:00.005-05:00

I should give up on trying to keep track on these days. However, the Chia tree has yet to give up.

The mature seedlings have sprouted out and become leggy tendrils. Just like any other plant, they follow the sun and curve as necessary. Other seeds are still just sprouting and try to establish themselves amongst their taller brethren. I rotate the tree every other day to help it give an even look, but that might be a futile exercise. Who knew Chias were so much upkeep. Deceptive commercials make it seem like a permanent mantle piece that keeps level and even all the time.

If you can't believe classic commercials then who can you trust. Do you need to take your pet rock to the vet? I already know how hard it is to coerce your slinky down a flight of stairs. Maybe because mine were never carpeted like on the ads.

Peace!

PR Watch...¡Si!

2008-12-19T12:27:00.030-05:00

Let's talk jungle cats.

Introducing a new function here on the FOTBP called PR Watch...¡Si!

Readers of the older and now defunct Blog of Plenty might remember my occasional observations on the wackiness back home in Puerto Rico. Actually, wackiness is a poor word choice since my blogs posts focused on things like the island going broke (hence, creating a sales tax for the first time) or one of the umpteen school strikes at the U of PR where some students actually held self-taught classes in the street while other students (in charge of the strike) tried to stop the DIY classes. Learning bad! Screaming good!

Those are serious subjects that scholars both external and internal have spent much time analyzing. What the hell is the FOTBP going to do add to those discussions?

My new feature is in the same light, but some real wackiness. On an island where you can ask for French fries with your Chinese food (Oh, hell yes, you better add them to my order) there has to be something wacky. On an island where there is a brand of doughnuts you can only buy from street vendors at red lights, there has to be something crazy. On an island where you could have your car washed by a guy with a little hot dog cart full of water and soap at the mall parking lot while you shopped, there must be something for the blog. There are jungle cats! HOOOOO!

Quick history lesson. There are no big cats native to Puerto Rico just as there are no native mammals. This is pretty common for small islands that were geographically isolated from larger mainlands. As serendipitous it was for a lizard or bird to awash on the island's shores, it would be even rarer for a panther to show up rafting in on some driftwood from Florida.

But a panther indeed now stalks the island. Or at least, authorities believe it is a panther. Did I mention it will help a lot if you read/speak Spanish? If not, you are going to have to trust me, but, go ahead, read those stories up on the blog. You think I could make this stuff up?

This story broke in mid November, but people in and around the western edge of San Juan have begun to report seeing a "black panther." A lady reported a dead sheep on the day after Thanksgiving to the PR version of the Interior Department, the Department Of Natural Resources and the Environment or DRNA by its Spanish acronym. The attacks were happening around a neighborhood called Caimito, which is heavily wooded and hilly. Caimito then abuts into a posh gated community called Montehiedra that then neighbors a small mall by the same name. In fact, my childhood home was in the neighborhood right next to all of this albeit cut off by a four lane highway. The whole area is iconic of the concrete mushrooming that represents over development, sprawl, and fragmented ecosystems in Puerto Rico. So there could be a panther around my old house. Or not.

No one seems to be able to find the big cat. Just like the Chupacabra, the Panther of Caimito leaves behind a trail of dead animals and flustered citizens. This report from one of the main TV stations in PR says that the thing ate a horse. A horse! But then a later report in the main PR daily paper says that no one has confirmed a dead horse. People have reported losing chickens, cats, and dogs, but the only confirmed victim has been that Thanksgiving sheep. Apparently its name was "Fugaz" Fugaz? I have no idea what that means. "Fuga" means a get away or escape. Escaperz, maybe?

Maybe it is a panther? Or a jaguar? A puma? Or nothing. One man in the Montehidera neighborhood reported that the saw the thing by his pool and that is was about the size of a German Shepherd and dark colored. One lady in this article says how she sleeps with the window open so she can keep an eye out for the cat. Great plan lady.

The DRNA dispatched teams to hunt the animal down and even the director took the hillsides with a machete. I wonder if he wore a pith helmet as well? Someone said they saw a tree with claw marks etched into the base of the trunk. HOLY SHIT! DRNA agents said they heard weird noises while searching, something that residents in the area have also reported. DAMN! With no leads and just one dead animal, the panther trail grows colder by the day and the DRNA has scaled back the search teams to a skeleton crew. If the thing does exist, then the authorities do have a lead and are ready to seek a warrant to search the reputed owner's house. But it still might not exist. How can you have a Plan B without a Plan A? There might be a guy out there with a missing big cat, but THE big cat does not exist. Shouldn't we be terrified of that other big cat?!

I also love how the article mentions a Panther Party tonight organized through Facebook. Reminds me of the Chupacabra hunting parties the mayor of Canovanas, the municipality plagued by the bloodsucking bastard, organized in the mid 90s. Except with beer.

If it is wacky and from PR, you will find it here. Peace!

Chia Christmas Countdown Day 10

2008-12-18T09:01:00.002-05:00

What am I supposed to do now that it sprouted? I'll let you know when something crazy happens, like it evolves! Or when it looks like the Chia on the side of the box.

Peace

Chia Christmas Countdown Day 9 (I Think)

2008-12-17T08:09:00.008-05:00

SUCCESS! Take a look.

Amanda and I returned from our weekend trip and the tree had survived the weekend and sprouted.

The picture shows a patchy tree and I am still waiting to vindicate those commercials that feature Chia growth more akin to Astroturf. The very top lip and bottom edges are the worse, but we do have some sprouts coming from the very bottom of the tree. Below the bottom of the lower branches (i.e. layer of terracotta), where I imagine they slid down from the upper grooves. Really bare spots are still patches of goo and particularly bushy spots are the products of multiple seeds piled on top of each other.

But we have have some growing from the inside out! They sprout up from the very top lip and out the opening where the star goes. We reuse the water that transpires into the drip tray and there must have been some loose seeds in the mix.

All this Chia maintenance makes me think of anatomical analogies. Chia pets are ripe for TWSS gags. I wonder why they haven't been incorporated into an episode of The Office yet. Million dollar idea!?

Peace!

In lieu of Chia

2008-12-13T10:00:00.002-05:00

While I am out of town and away from the Chia this weekend, please enjoy one of my favorite new blogs.

The Million Dollar Arm

Here is the back story, which I first discovered in this wonderful Slate piece. A U.S. sports agent decided to create a reality TV show in India where contestants had to throw three consecutive 85 mph fastballs and these two guys, Dinesh Patel and Rinku Singh, were the winners. Well, Singh was the winner and Patel the runner up, but they came closest with some consistent 87 mph throws. They got $100,000 and the opportunity to come to the U.S. and throw in front of some more MLB scouts. Now the Pittsburgh Pirates have signed the guys on for next season. There are no guarantees they will actually throw in a major league game, however, but the possibility makes me giddy. And the Pittsburgh Pirates are one of the lowliest teams in the MLB, so don't expect Rinku on the mound of World Series, but the sheer surrealism and wonder makes it all worth it.

We have now entered a stage where reality shows are producing actual positions with actual effects. Sure, Donald Trump hired apprentices and the kids from Real World Seattle tried to run a radio show, but here are some reality stars that will be there on Sportscenter and the sports page for all to see. Last time I heard of Richard Hatch, he was running away from the IRS. They will even get their own baseball cards. That seals you into Americana! I do hope this becomes the standard in sports. I keep expecting to read the paper and see the Browns are having open tryouts. People could show up at Public Square downtown and bring a pair of cleats and some comfortable work out clothes. They get three trys to make a touchdown pass. The highest rankings gets to start next Sunday. Why not put it on TV?

Even better than their story is their blog. The Slate piece does a great job at covering the beautiful madness that are their posts, but I will mention my favorite. In this tough economic time, you still have to marvel at the sincere and wondrous views of America from two 19-year old guys from rural India.

Here is post from a month ago, "We went with JB sir to breakfast at a great American breakfast eatery called Dennys. Rinku ordered a breakfast aclled the Lumberjack. We now know that a Lumberjack is a person who works as a tree cutter in the forrest so they must eat a lot of food. this breakfast was quite huge. It had eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, potatos, breads, and pancakes. I had French Toast and both meals were very fulfilling."

I LOVE IT! The broken English and the sheer sincerity of it. No one in America talks so honestly. Welcome, boys! Denny's, a great American eatery? Well, I guess it is when you think about and imagine the first time you decided to get that Grand Slam. Or when your friends split three orders of Mozzarella sticks after a concert. Don't think about the last time you went there and left the place with indigestion. There are some neat memories at the Dennys and these kids love it. I also dig the lumberjack explanation. The guys' impressions of the U.S. fill me with some pride and some laughs. It really is dumb that we trademark a plate of food as "The Lumberjack," but if anyone was going to do it, it was going to be America. Fuck yeah!

Good luck to Rinku and and Dinesh! You know I will try to get to the game when the Pirates come into town and hopefully see one of you pitch.

Peace!

Chai Christmas Countdown Day 4

2008-12-11T12:14:00.006-05:00

Success! We have sprouts! Take a look.

Well, the picture is not the best quality, but all those little white dots are sprouts. I feel like a I am back in third grade and the kidney bean I planted in a plastic cup has split open. Life!

Little cotyledons are coming up from the grooves. I hope for some actual green before Amanda and I leave town for the weekend. Don't worry. I will have updates as soon as I return and will put up some non Chia related posts via Blogger's time release feature.

Peace!

Chia Christmas Countdown Day 3

2008-12-11T00:13:00.003-05:00

All quiet on the Chia front.

I removed the star from the top because I had no reason to light up the tree. Once we get some sprouts, I will turn it on and ring in the season Chia style.

Peace

Chia Christmas Countdown Day 2

2008-12-10T00:19:00.005-05:00

It is the second day for our little Chia tree and it still looks like a science experiment. Of course, I did not expect any growth by the second day (The box predicts 3 to 5 days), but something besides a mess would have been nice.

No need for pictures because of the lack of change. I did mist it a few times yesterday* and spraying your terracotta doodad with a spray of water makes you feel like a real winner. I imagine this is what mushroom farming feels like except without the eventual dinner. Not that I have put eating Chia sprouts beyond me. I will do it for the Christmas countdown.

I already did so for the leftover seed gel. The package is not kidding around when it says you will not need all of the seeds. We, indeed, used as directed and still ended up with a good three teaspoons of the gel. What else to Chia besides the lining of me esophagus? Nothing horrible or great tasting right there, however. They slid down all slimy like and I was once again reminded of eating a passion fruit. I suggest you try one if eating Chia gel is not up your alley. I would describe the sampling as eating watery Jell-O with kiwi seeds dislodged from the embedded fruit

More updates to come. Peace!

*There is a one day delay on these pieces since I usually write them late at night. Hence, Day 2 was actually Tuesday, December 9, 2008.

Chia Christmas Countdown Day 1

2008-12-09T10:00:00.001-05:00

First comes the setup.

I defaulted back into the same mentality I used while building Legos as a kid. My father had this obsessive compulsive habit of arranging all the pieces by shape, size, and color before building. It made them easier to find, but it took longer for that damn rocket ship to come together. I usually turned to the box and worried over the neat accessories like the helmets and little walkie talkies. When I did build, I would dig for the pieces in the box and whittle down the pile into a completed Lego.

The same happened with the Chia. The box said soak overnight. What!? It is my personal theory that nothing originally marketed on TV should have the word "overnight" in its instructions. That baby better work as soon as it gets home, because I waited 6 to 8 weeks of shipping. But then the instructions said soak for an hour. Whew! That is what I get for trusting the box. Legally binding arrangements are never printed on cardboard. That should have been my first clue.

Meanwhile, Amanda soaked the seeds. The Chia seeds (Salvia hispanica) look like tiny river stones and vary in how they switch from blue to white and then to granite. When wet, they release a gel like substance that binds them together. I originally thought this was a chemical additive, but it appears to be a natural property.

The wet seeds reminded me of passion fruit seeds which also come packed in an equally tenuous jelly cluster. We slather on gobs of the Chia gel onto the sculpture. That thing is no Thomas English Muffin and we had to guide the seeds into the grooves with out fingers. You had to get a rhythm down and stick to it. I had luck rotating the sculpture's base around my finger and letting the rotation spread everything around. Once completed, we ended up with a...slime tree.

Gravity started taking it to the thicker sections and the gel began to drip over the bottom edge. However, in a few minutes everything stabilized and we had our little alien hive. The thing looks like a pair of frogs humped on it, but I remain faithful that it will soon sprout.

The star is off in that picture, but it is pretty nifty. The color changing happens progressively and isn't manic like some sets of Christmas lights.

The drip tray takes a bit away from the wonder, but it is necessary. I will try removing it once the sprouts are fully grown. Either I would have beat the system or I will need a new TV. Either way, you win.

Day 1 complete. Peace!

Chia Christmas Countdown

2008-12-08T23:29:00.004-05:00

The back is coming back to life and what better way to celebrate than with a Chia?

Yes, that Chia. The one available at Walgreens, Rite-Aid, CVS, and other fine retailers nationwide.

Amanda and I noticed this particular piece of Americana on TV the other night, and, damn does advertising work, because we immediately snatched one up at the local drugstore.

We got the Chia tree. It is basically a terracotta pine with grooves cut into the boughs. It includes a small opening at the top where you can slide a color changing LED star. We intend to use it as our Christmas tree and put teeny tiny presents underneath it. That saves us a ton of money. New buttons and safety pins all around!

The commercials (Ch-ch-ch-chia!) are forever etched into my brain. Chia Pets are made by the same guys that sell the Clapper, so they come with an advertising pedigree. If things keep going the way they are right now, you might not see an American car in a few generations. But there will always be Chias to pick up at the gas station or end of the supermarket aisle.

I did some research into them for this post and they are not just the product of an advertising wiz. They originate from a Mexican handicraft tradition where chia plant seeds are spread over clay figures. The grass that grows on the sculpture imitates fur and adds a bit of whimsy. Not too different from our setup, except for the marketing which produced a rare Mr. T Chia back in the A-Team hey days! Check it out here. You can watch his mohawk grow, but good luck trying to get him on an airplane.

What makes Chias so popular? Maybe it is the growth. Gardening is a popular hobby and even those without a green thumb might dabble with a houseplant or two. It is a knick knack, but the hint of life gives it some more authenticity. Here is something that should be cared for and not just left to collect dust. And there is the nostalgia factor as well. I was truly excited to setup my first Chia, feeling as if I were about to partake in an enduring tradition. This wasn't just a novelty item. It was part of the lexicon. I only needed my Pet Rock, Clapper, and Thigh Master to feel complete.

On to the experience. I will track the progress of our Chia tree on the blog throughout the holidays and see how this works out. Is it as easy as the commercials make it seem? Or is it a houseplant lite?

Peace.

Fever Dreams

2008-12-06T23:30:00.003-05:00

Last week, I had a horrible cold that make my asthma flare up and bronchioles go all aflutter.

I treated it with a mixture of everything we had in the medicine cabinet. However, those were mostly second string treatments. The only rescue inhaler I had was the OTC Primatene Mist stuff. Any asthmatic unfamiliar this relic is lucky. The active ingredient is adrenaline, one of the earliest and first improved upon asthma treatments. It jumps starts your lungs by inducing a smaller version of the "fight or flight" response in your brain. To the uninitiated, imagine trying to cure your cold with an IV of Red Bull and you could get the picture. After repeated uses, the stuff stops to work, but I actually kept taking it for a slight tiny jonesing for the Styrofoam taste of it. Also, it comes in a bulbous container colored the same buff yellow of a whitehead pimple. Seems like an odd design for something that is pure adrenaline. They need to make this bad boy sexy and fierce looking. Maybe a lightning bolt or a racing stripe! It will kick that crap out of your asthma...for 10 minutes! And then it will move on to your throat!

Also, my Vicks Vapor Rub had expired. I had no idea that stuff could expire and that little date etched into the side was not fibbing. The stuff didn't work! I lather my chest and throat in the slime and felt no soothing vapors. I was just slimy. I might as well have tried to slip into a wet suit or slide down an air duct for all the grease that was on me.

The first night of the cold, I slept in intermittent periods of 15 minutes. As the night progressed at the same pace of a hockey game, I had a continuing dream where I was in prison. Not a regular prison, but a single dark room. The plaster on the walls was colored yellow, but that color had to come through black and brown smears. There was a chair. It was spindly, with metal legs and a puffy vinyl cushion with the seams coming apart. The only light came from a small barred window high up off the floor where the wall and ceiling met.

In the dream, I had the feeling I had done something horrible. I never figured out why I was trapped, but it was a heinous crime for sure. The only hint was a nagging feeling that many people had died, but it had all been an accident. An accident I caused.

I spent the night coming in and out of the dream. The room in the dream reciprocated well with our own sparse bedroom. A few times, I awoke and thought that I was still trapped. Except this time it was in China and the nagging guilt only felt stronger because everything in this room (i.e. the bedroom) was palpable and tangible.

After that evening, I spent the day feeling a bit better, but by the evening I had relapsed. We ended up going to the urgent care and getting an asthma treatment and some prescriptions. I also learned that I had the early stages of an upper respiratory infection and ended up on antibiotics. All better now, however. And you got a blog post out of it!

Peace!

Stumble in

2008-11-24T00:53:00.003-05:00

Hey! If you came across the blog from the Lucy magazine site, then thanks for coming here! And thanks for reading Lucy, which was so kind in letting me write something for them.

As for this blog, I am always thinking about posting something new, but then...

Peace!

Eiger Dreams

2008-10-20T11:33:00.009-04:00

I apologize for being gone for so long. Everything is in flux right now, but for the better. Whether it be a better job or some more writing gigs, it looks like good news for Garik. There might be some more writing coming along and while it does not pay, it feels great to be actually read. Might bring some more people to the blog as well.

One wonderful recent read isJon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams. It is a compilation of his late 80s and early 90s articles for magazines like Outside and National Geographic. It also features an early version of "The Devil's Thumb" essay from Into the Wild, where Krakauer compares his own youthful exuberance with Christopher McCandless ill-fated adventure.

Krakauer could write a book about dryer lint and I would read it. Actually, I implore Mr. Krakauer to write another book. About anything! Canned mushrooms packed in brine. The history of folding chairs. Electrician's tape. Anything! Krakauer is the literary version of Chuck Norris.

Behind Krakauer's beard is nothing, but another turn of phrase!
Krakauer does not write books. He renders them from the granite under his boots.
No one edits Krakauer's books. He presents them carved in the stones of Everest.

Seriously boss

Krakauer possesses a lovely verbiage. "Sheldon's career coincided with the mushrooming popularity of mountaineering on McKinley," reads one sentence from "The Flyboys of Talkeetna." His choice of words does not originate from the obscure end of the thesaurus, but the forgotten verbs swept away by "to be" variations. I read Krakauer to challenge my own writing skills. Reading him, you can appreciates his knack for journalism and in conversation and research. A real common piece of writing advice is Mountaineering lends an entire list of dynamic and interesting words. I try to insert the word bivouac into everyday conversations, but find I have little opportunity to reference a temporary encampment. Caribiner, crampons, ice axes, glacial airstrip and then there are the locations names like Denali, Chamoix, or K2.

Krakauer does not answer why people climb mountains. But in The Devil's Thumb he mentions how mountain scapes have an almost pornographic feel. In staring at a picture of the eponymous mountain in Alaska, Krakauer says, "How would it feel, I wondered over and over, to be on that thumb nail-thin summit ridge, worrying over the storm clouds building on the horizon, hunched against the wind and dunning cold, contemplating the horrible drop on either side?"

I get the same feeling when looking at pictures of tiny islands. Veteran readers might remember my obsession with these bits of obscure geography. Krakauer's bit on mountaineering verbalizes the sames feelings I have on these spits of land. How would anyone survive if stuck there? How would you deal with the isolation? Would you pace the island from end to end, dominating your city block sized empire?

My favorite piece in the book is "On Being Tentbound," an essay where Krakauer narrates how to live in a phone booth sized fabric envelope for days. Or even weeks. The sense of isolation speaks well to the aforementioned dangerous wonder. Mountain climbers have attempted to recreate Monopoly sets from memory and studied the back of food packages. Since he wrote this in the late 80s, Krakauer just touches on the nascent handheld video games and Walkmans of the time. I would bring my PSP up Everest so I could play GTA: Liberty City Stories in the storm! Woo! Books are important, but you can only bring so many. I would bring all four of Krakauer's as they always offer something new.

Peace

Books I Should Have Already Read, Vol. 5

2008-09-12T09:02:00.022-04:00

Punching in for another installment of the series....

Books I Should Have Already Read, Volume 5

Nickle and Dimed

By Barbara Ehrenreich

This is one of those "Ithaca" books that felt like everyone back there had read and discussed. Other examples of such books included Fast Food Nation; Eat, Pray, and Love; State of Denial; A People's History of the United States, and anything by Michael Pollan. What I am trying to say is that I heard a lot about this book and already understood the basic gist of it.

And the subject is one hell of a pitch. Barbara Ehrenreich decided (at the suggestion of her editor) to try and make it as a member of the working poor. She would leave her persona and profession behind to find housing and sustenance on $7 to $8 dollars an hour. She worked as a waitress in Key West, FL; a home cleaner in Maine; and a Wal-Mart store associate in Minneapolis, MN. There are other odd jobs in between (hotel maid, food service worker, etc.) and failed attempts for some others.

Ehrenreich's writing is strong and the narrative is compelling. She distills the ins and outs of job applications to their mind boggling details. As someone who has taken a slew of those Unicru Assessment Tests, (I can tell you that I "Strongly agree" that "It is infuriating when the court lets guilty criminals go free" and "Most people can be trusted.") it was wonderful to read how those tests are just filler. Instead of assessing your personality, the tests are meant to squeeze out your loyalty. And you are not even working for them yet! Would you get any job at all if you put anything but a big fat zero in the "How many dollars of company materials have you stolen in the past year?"

The book's central challenge isn't to any one employer, but the idea of the American Dream. The idea that if you work very hard you can have a piece of the pie and rise up from the bottom rung. This idea is core to our Master Narrative and Ehrenreich's questioning of it makes for a prickly book. Understandably, the book sends the Right into a fit. Ehrenreich does herself no favors when she plays right into the "liberal academic snob" that pundits love to hate. She is able to deduce that a household with books by John Grisham and Rush Limbaugh (Literature she describes as on the "low-end" of the literary spectrum) isn't filled with the brightest bulbs. She attends a church revival in Maine, in hopes of finding some entertainment in a small town, and finds it all quite silly. On the revival, "But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpses; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christinaity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth."

Yeeesh. Did I just stumble into Christopher Hitchen's God is Not Great? Cause that is one is still on my "to be read" pile. I am no fan of Limbaugh and an atheist, but did she really need to say those things? I understand that in a book about the poor, it might be wise to mention Jesus since he was all about helping the poor. He was poor himself. But, this is the only mention of him in the whole book! I would have prefered something like, "Hey, it would be great if Rick Warren and Pat Roberston really stumped for the poor and calm down a bit about this whole gay marriage bit."

People were having fun at that revival. It would not be my kind of fun, but they can go nuts. I find writing for free on a blog nobody reads plenty of fun! I am sure those folks would not. Did she met the people in that house and actually have a conversation with them? When I used to live in Ithaca, fellow progressive/left-leaning/hippie/whatever folks, would often judge me by the media I view. "My God, Garik! You watch prime time television!?"

"Hell, yeah! The Office is on and then we can watch Lost!"

Such arguments do the movement no favor. I have ranted about this before, so feel free to browse the archives. Please, browse the archives! PLEASE!!!

Ehrenreich makes some sharper observations when she turns the lens to the working poor's situation. If we expect the "lower class" to cook our fast food meals and stock our Big Box shelves then they need to drive out to the suburbs. Or they find housing in the suburbs. And once the wealthier class gets nervous about having those folks in their neighborhoods, they move further out and continue the cycle. I am new to my little Cleveland inner-ring suburb (Lakewood*), but I often hear how Section 8 housing has ruined it. Lakewood is a nice place to live if you end up cleaning houses in Bay Village or selling Halloween costumes in Rocky River. It is close enough to the outer suburbs and relatively cheap enough to live in.

She challenges assumptions that her jobs were "dumb" jobs filled by "dumb" people. She frames this in light of her academic experience and PhD. It was still hard to learn how to master the backpack vacuum cleaner and register! I understand her viewpoint, but nothing except experience on the actual machine itself will prepare you to handle it. I think what Ehrenreich was trying to do was portray herself as someone considered "smart" by society in "dumb" jobs. An honest analogy, but an awkward presentation that can come off as snobby.

Regardless, these are not dumb jobs. Every job and workplace has policies, politics, and a culture that you need to adjust to. When I am faced with a new register at a new job, I don't think back to my degree. I do that for my writing gigs. In this gig, I am begging the senior staff to walk me through the process.

She budgets down her earnings to demonstrate how difficult it is to get by on $7 an hour.This provides the greatest challenge to the American Dream of working hard and getting that house in the suburbs However, the book is filled with people that bust their ass everyday doing the repetitive work and still can not rise up. If something was supposed to happen, if something was supposed to "trickle-down," then why hasn't it yet?

All these discussions reveal a inherent conundrum in the book. Most of the debates around poverty, welfare, and the working poor are based on anecdotal evidence. Ehrenreich's book is a great read, but it only represent relatively isolated cases. Her writing is great and you feel for these people,but for every (insert name) she met, someone probably has the opposite example. My parents grew up damn poor and worked hard so that they could prepare me for all this blogging. Oh, and life too. Thanks to the efficiency of Puerto Rican social services, my grandmother (who was in her late sixties when she recently passed) collected WIC and the PR equivalent of food vouchers. I remember her once telling me to run down to the store and use the EBT card to buy groceries. In a moment that would make Ronald Regan** proud, I refused to use the card and instead paid for the groceries (I think it was some rice and Vienna sausages) with a twenty dollars I have saved up from my lunch money. It felt wrong to use that money when I knew we were not lacking. Of course, I also deduced that the cashier would wonder why a fifteen year old was whipping out a welfare EBT card. I got this one, granny. No jail time for me***.

So there are people that abuse the system. Go on the Cleveland.com message board to find supposed proof of these moochers. The rants you read up there are part of that anecdotal evidence. Personal responsibility is a big part of the equation. If you cannot afford something then it is simple economics that you should not buy or have it. Then again, such statements ignore the realities faced by some of the working poor. Hell, I am working poor. Not to dive too much into a sob story, but I have and still do work in similar jobs and situations. It would be great if I owned a car since I have actually been rejected from jobs for not having one. A car would open up a whole other side of town for me. Financing one would be risky, so I am left to sorting out jobs based on their criteria and proximity to a bus line. Ultimately, I am responsible for this, but it speaks well to Ehrenreichs comments on how it can be hard, almost impossible, to break out of poverty. Worse of are those workers that want to climb up and go to school, but have no time. A single working mother might dream of bettering herself, but cannot consider taking a break between her current job and her children.

She challenges the idea that poverty stems from joblessness. All her co-workers are (duh!) employed, but they often work two to three jobs, still struggling to make ends meet. She does not dwell much into her co-workers personal lives (Another quip I had with the book is that it presented everyone but Enhereich as utterly defeated. It seemed no one had hobbies except being a loser and dreaming about going to Dairy Queen), but it seems that most of their money gets spent on necessities. Again, their is plenty of anecdotal evidence that people can waste away their paychecks of vices and unnecessary luxury items. Then there is the argument of what are necessities. Is a car a necessity? Well, no, I guess, but don't we live in a car culture? Is Internet a necessity in today's world? My job searches would be render impotent if I stuck to newspaper classifieds. When does a specific food item become a luxury?

She does mention how all her co-workers either share an apartment house with roommates, friends, or families. Enhereich approaches every situation alone and that takes a bit of the bite out of her argument. Few people end up with absolutely no support groups like a friend to borrow some money from or family member's couch to crash on for a night. I read some critiques online that said this dismissed her entire thesis. I understand that it is rare to find people in such situations as Enhenreich, but this was an experiment and that was a variable she choose to control. Being as she mentions how all her co-workers double up on housing and job (One in Key West actually lives in a van down by the river!), I don't consider this a glaring flaw. She probably chose this condition, including an aversion to social help, particulalry religious charities, to concentrate the impact of her experience. Albeit, these are not conditions you should impose if you find yourself in a similar bind.

The book deserves to be widely read. I mean, it has already, but if there was a book I would have everyone read then it would be this one. It instantly creates discussion and debate because everyone makes (or tries to) make ends meet. The constant back and forth about the "working poor" even with anecdotal evidence demonstrates how it hits across all social spheres. A well off person might not necessarily care about the poor's condition, but they would have something to say about it. Nickle and Dimed obviously wants the reader to agree with Ehrenreich's conclusion that the working poor are screwed by the "owner class." At the very end she even mentions a sort of workers revolution where the poor will realize they are getting the Reganomics shuffle. I don't know if that will ever happen, but Ehrenreich chronicled and wrote about these experiences during the tail of end of the 90s and into the early part of this current decade. It is sobering to read this book in light of the recent mortgage crisis and sour economy. During her Key West sojourn, Ehrenreich mentions how the $5 a day for gas are really eating into her budget. Could it have been conceivable that we would hit a day when people making the same wages as Ehrenreich struggled with $4-a-gallon gas? What about everyone affected by the mortgage crisis? Getting back into the murky waters of anecdotal evidence, what do we say to families that tried to finance a house and had the rug pulled out from under them?

Regardless, the book offers an engaging read about an often forgotten sector of the economy. You can read it and be angry and the companies or the workers, but it will get your mind thinking and ideas churning. And if our economy moves towards a post-industrial one, dominated by innovation and service/hospitality, then you will see even more and more of these jobs in the headlines. There are some other issues with her analysis. She could have always returned to her regular life, if things got dicey. It would be an experimental failure, but security. Few people have such safety valves. But, the heart of the book remains solid. There are many obstacles to "making" it in America and the American Dream from the Master Narrative does not factor any of those. Some of these obstacles are personal and require that an individual prioritize what is important to them. Some of these are economic, racial, social, and gender based. Some can be cured with a quick "Suck it up an deal with it!" Others might need a "Hey, do you need some help?" Nickle and Dimed tells us that this is all very complex and that it deserves our attention.

Peace!

*In all actuality, I love living in Lakewood and do not see much to these arguments. Again, anecdotal evidence. Maybe I live in the "good" part of town. I find the mix of people and classes engaging when compared to the angry hippie echo chamber of Ithaca.
**Not that I was trying to impress him or anything. Ronald Regan gives me the willies!
***My grandma could fill up an entire series of blog posts. About a year before she passed, she got worried that the PR government, in a stunning act of doing something, would bust her for these welfare shenanigans. To make herself appear needy, she proposed sending my sister and I each a sum of some $10,000 to hide. You know, while things settled down and the tax man left. Yes, my grandmother wanted to turn me into an offshore tax shelter. And don't blame this on old age. She was nuttier than pistachio ice cream, but always lucid. The transaction never happened. This was great considering how I would need my own real tax shelter to explain that to the IRS.

Why No Post?

2008-09-11T10:33:00.003-04:00

In the words of blogger extraordinaire, Dave Campbell, why no post Garik?

Well, I have been busy of late, which is always the excuse, but this time I am busy doing something dear to this blog.

I have been writing. A lot. Nothing really huge. Some news briefs three times a week and some articles for small Cleveland area publications, but people actually read those pieces. And, I do all of this for free! So it is exactly like blogging!

I will have another installation of "Books I Should Have Already Read" up soon. So look forward to that. All two of you, that is.

Peace!

Wild Accusations

2008-09-02T09:16:00.005-04:00

This past weekend, I got into a discussion about board games with some folks from Ithaca. The conversation turned to the Parker Brother's game Clue and I proclaimed, "Oh man. I used to love Clue. I would play the hell out of it, begging my parents and anyone interested in playing a round."

Whenever you walk by board games in the store, you will often see a small label on the box saying "Plan a Family Game Night!" This is definitely a neat idea and wholesome campaign, but Clue should not be one of those games. Who would believe that it was a board game (not those dreaded video games) that would ruin our children?

And this is not because clue is about a murder. Not at all. That aspect of the game "keeps its real!" If I was in a mansion with a bunch of other well to dos, I would not be moved to playing Dick Tracy because someone lost their antique silver jewelery box. Sucks to be you I guess. Now where are those apple puffs? But a murder?! Holy crap! The killer could still be here! And I can't leave the house because I already paid the baby sitter for a full evening's worth of care. Let's do it!

Here is where Clue fails because it teaches children to run around making false accusations. Why doesn't anyone ask, "Hey, shouldn't we leave the homicide investigations to the professionals? Like the police?"
Apparently not. Didn't you just hear that I paid the sitter for a full evening? She is never going to give me my money back. I am going to find that bastards because it sure beats sitting around and those apple puffs just ran out.

Play too much Clue and you become a teetotaler. But an amateur one. Instead of seeing the deed, you run around spouting off more theories than Mulder and Scully until one sticks. The playground beatings will be swift!

Peace!

Books I Should Have Already Read, Vol 4

2008-08-21T09:00:00.001-04:00

Just in time for the movie...

Books I Should Have Already Read, Volume 4

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Well, first off, I will defend considering graphic novels on equal footing as any "proper" novel. Reading six issues of your favorite monthly comic book wrapped into a trade paperback format is not reading a novel, but graphic novels are one shots designed with characterization, depth, and length in mind. Graphic novels have won Pulitzer Prizes and Time Magazine considers Watchmen one of the 100 Best of the English language. So, if my lowly opinion isn't enough (It isn't!?) then trust these respected institutions.

Considering that I discovered my inner comic book geek a scant two years ago it makes some sense that I missed Watchmen. However, the work is seminal and won a Hugo award, so it is not like I had failed to hear about it before I stepped into Comics for Collectors one June day.

I had read some of Moore's work before and appreciated the sense of detail and expansiveness to his graphic novels. I enjoyed the hell of out of Top 10 and it's police drama meets comic book world. It had so many injokes and references to other comic books that it really was a delight to read. In a world where everyone has super powers and/or is a super heroes it makes perfect sense for things to play out in comic book logic. So having the exterminator reset the timeline for your mouse infestation makes perfect sense even though you do not remember asking him to do so.

V for Vendetta was a great book even though it took me a few reads to wrap my head around it. I have yet to read From Hell and some of his single issue work, but there is still plenty of time.

But, how did I miss Watchmen for this long? Isn't it the best graphic novel of all time? Many believe so.

As I have mentioned before in these posts, it is difficult to write anything new about these works. I started reading comics in a post Watchmen world and the book's influence is apparent. I imagine reading Watchmen when it first came out and rereading the hell out of it because it just felt so real. Wouldn't it make sense that the government would try to crack down on masked vigilantes. If cities can now legislate what kind of oil a restaurant can use then why would they stand by and let some armor clad weirdo jump over roof tops? And Watchmen dares to answer all those "what if" questions like "What is Batman has to pee while chasing the mugger" or "What happens when Daredevil sleeps those two hours every night?" Well, people get hurt and crime keeps going on. Superheroes (Or "Masked Adventurers" as per the book's terminology) inspire fear in criminals, but they might also inspire fear in those they protect. Aren't these people human? Maybe they might mistake me for the perp and crack my back in half by accident? Regular cops did have some code to bind them.

Of course, there are numerous examples of this kind of realism or psychological depth in current comics. I read one analysis of Watchmen that said Moore had released a sort of four-ink genie that now equated gratuitous violence with real and real with good. Hey, Rorschach shoved someone into a refrigerator, so why shouldn't we do the same thing to Kyle Rayner's girlfriend? I think you can trace the umpteen times that Daredevil has been pushed way too far and has had to go way too violent to Watchmen. And where did all this raping in Identity Crisis come from? Well, not Watchmen per se, but I can see the point. Watchmen was wonderful because it broke from comics as a kitschy escape art for kids. Of course, some of those old stories were just lots of fun! Can't we have fun comics and "real" comics. I appreciate some nice realism, but sometimes I want to see a guy drop a battleship on the other guy.

However, this was not the effect Moore and Gibbons had in mind. The reason comics get any respect (albeit still minimum) is from seminal works like Watchmen. And, guess what, the book was both fun and real at the same time! Not for faint at heart, but it had some jokes, some punches, and some thinking to it. What is the real point of a superhero if all they do is fight the sickness of crime? If someone robs a store because they can't make the rent then should the hero try to smash the CEOs that terminated the robber's previous job? Or should the hero punish them both? One for robbing a man of his life and the other for robbing the 7-11 of one-hundred dollars. Why are these masked people better than me? Because they spent more time in the gym than I? Well I had to work! And, I look funny on the elliptical machine.

If you have not heard, there is a Watchmen movie coming out and upon first seeing the trailer I was thourughly confused. After reading the book, there is a spine tingling excitement in seeing the scenes play out now that I understand what is happening. I think they are definetly going for the fanboy approach here. It might be hard on those that are unfamiliar with the book. Spiderman and Batman have a ton of backstory, but in the end they are guys that punch the hell out of the others. The Watchmen do the same thing, but have all those neuroses that make you and me a delight to others.

I did not enjoy the story in 300, but appreciated the director's loyalty to the original comic's panels. If he does the same thing with Watchmen then it will be a movie to enjoy several times*. Just like the book.

Peace!

*Unfortunately Alan Moore has ben quite vocal in his disapproval of the film and his name is never to be seen on any of the credits. I only hope that the movie does well and introduces more people to comics and his work. Even if they came via the film.

Kitty Cat Rising

2008-08-20T15:20:00.003-04:00

Below you will find the reason why I have not blogged in about two weeks...

The newest addition to our menagerie of animals: Lila M. Kitty!

We got her as a stray at the beginning of August and have spent the past weeks cat proofing the house and introducing her to the animals. She seems terrified of Carson Rabbit, but his routine of sleeping and eating has not been very fazed by her presence. And I think Dante Pig believes cats are just an urban legend. The little guy does not get out very much. Oh, but she is so cute and has extra digits on her front paws! She can hitch hike to places with those thumbs.

Of course, this now means I have another animal to PhotoShop with funny hats.

Posts will continue to be erratic, but I have a "Book I Should Have Already Read" for you by tomorrow!

Peace!

A Deer

2008-08-07T09:00:00.001-04:00

At the end of this week, it will be four months since we moved to Lakewood from Ithaca. We have everything unpacked, but only a few days ago did I find a final spot for this one throw rug we dragged around the living room. This also means that the summer is ending. Where the hell did that go?

I am a nester. An emotional nester as opposed to a physical one. I used to sleep on a tapestry that I substituted for bed sheets proper and made maximum use of a dutch oven pot as bowl and deep frying pan. By nester, I mean that I tend to settle into a situation quickly. In all of my jobs I imagine the rest of my life as if it were my last job. What can I do with a career as a janitor? After twenty years of making copies as a law office assistant. I would hope for a raise or promotion, but I tried to make my peace as early as possible. This helps when dealing with horrible jobs and it does not stifle any desire for upward mobility. That is the whole reason why we moved.

I got used to the move quickly. Ithaca and New York state were the only places I ever lived in after my move from Puerto Rico. So, I accept that everyone says "pop" here even though you will never catch me saying that. Did we go through a time warp here and start saying pop, shopping at Woolworth's, and getting our food from car hops? I have already spoken about the cadence of the Cleveland, OH metro area and how it is refreshing after the Ithaca scene.

However, there is one aspect of Cleveland living that I have yet to acclimatize myself to.

People tend to freak out here when they see a deer. We were driving though the Metroparks (A lovely set of urban parks in Cuyahoga County) and suddenly hit a four car long crawl. People take the Metroparks' roads for both the scenery and lack of traffic lights. Why were people going so slow?

There was a deer. A pretty ho-hum doe. However, there was also a fawn and this must have flipped people's lids. It was a late summer fawn and the speckled white pattern faded underneath he adolescent chestnut coat. Cute, but considering that our old house in Ithaca had three to four fawns living on the lawn we reacted with "Get the hell going!" as opposed to "Oh, honey go get your camera!"

Anyone living on Ithaca's hills shares an intimate relationship with deer. Deer are so common place that they end up becoming defacto neighbors with their own patterns and preferences. I used to whiz surplus apples into the hedges and one resident put our entire heads of Romaine lettuce for the deer. This might seem excessive, but these are sacrificial gestures designed to protect mums and lily bulbs. We just had too many apples and I swear those deer knew me as the "Crazy Apple Guy." When you stare at their black mirror eyes you begin to imagine and legitimize anything in that void. All the deer need to do is ask to borrow a cup of sugar and they can become full fledged neighborhood citizens!* If deer were ever to evolve into a new species, it would happen in Ithaca.

Everything is relative. While people here might scream out, "Holy shit! Look at that deer!" an average Ithaca resident visiting the Cleveland area might remark, "Damn! Synchronized stop lights!"

Peace!

They do exist!

*If there isn't already someone advocating for deer rights in Ithaca then they are to come. Whatever happened to the dog park people? TCDEER, much?

Firemen Ring Out The Night

2008-08-06T09:26:00.006-04:00

Here is that fiction piece I mentioned last week. It takes a letter to the editor format, which is figurative crutch since it helps me frame the action. I strain to use the word fiction since this could really be just a little slice of life piece. Vonnegut and Saunders have used this format in their short story compilations and in the hands of such talent, you get some poignant pieces. Saunders has this one piece ("99390" from In Persuasion Nation) which is nothing but the type out of a lab report (Made up, of course). It narrates the clinical results of brutal animal experiments and the repetition hammers away at your heart strings. This is just cranky. The title is supposed to remind you of the headlines you see above letters to the editor in the paper. There must be a subtle art to that titling. You could save time by just saying 'This guy is pissed!"

Enjoy!

___________________________________________________

Firemen Ring Out The Night
By Garik Charneco

Dear Editor O' Lalan:

Well, I have done it! I decided to "Not take it anymore!" I decided to remain patient no longer.

Oh, I had said these statements before. I will not lie. I often said them to the TV screen or the headlines of your very paper, but, I have now actually done it. I felt empowered after doing it. After taking this stand. Imagine voting, but with your lungs and not with a piece of paper.

I live on Dakota Avenue, right across from the Ward 3 fire station. I closed on this house forty years ago with my wife. We raised a single daughter here and now she lives in Milwaukee working at an art museum. I buried my wife from here three years ago. Well, not literally with something like an extra long steam shovel! And the school district and four different baby sitters had something to do with raising our daughter.

I am used to the noise of the fire station. My family made peace with its blaring cadence at the earliest moment. Every time before the firemen head out, a woman's voice blares from the PA. Her voice comes across muffled and nondescript like the voices of adults on the Peanuts cartoons my daughter used to watch. Her warnings bounce off the cement walls of the garage bay and come in through the living room windows.

"WUUUUUPPPP.....West Neeeintth.....akkkkkkk......truooookkkkk......kiiiiii.....WHAAAPP!"

After that comes the familiar truck and fanfare. When my daughter was younger, I secretly wished for a son that might better appreciate the trucks and tools. The whimsy waned on her as soon as she turned eight.

I did not hope to criticize firefighters. As I prepared this letter, I realized how unwise that proved today. But, I had to do something and I did it!

Neighbors will know what is next to the Ward 3 fire station. Bowden's Bar and Fan Tavern are next to the station and diagonally from my home. Why these bars have not merged into one watering hole escapes me, but I never adjusted to their cadence. It is too sporadic, fueled by different mixers and metabolisms. I have written about them before and even spoke to Mr. Bowden briefly, but I later heard he moved and left the business to his son. Screams, hollers, and the crackling of broken glass often rise up each Friday night. My wife and I made use of ear plugs and my daughter seemed to not be bothered. We made sure to keep her room as far back from Dakota Avenue so that her window overlooks our yard.

Recently, the fire station's and bar's soundtracks mixed. The firemen often spend summer nights on the driveway of their station in lounge chairs. They do not do much except sit. One sometimes reads a newspaper or paperback novel. One night they brought up a ping-pong table and exchanged volleys waiting for the alarm. This does not bother me as they would probably be doing the same thins indoor during the winter months.

But the bar patrons often approach the firemen. Particularly young ladies that like to scream out phrases like "Hooray for firemen!" or "You guys are so much cooler that those cops." Many stumbling patrons like to task the firemen to take their pictures. The men twist their hands into symbols and jut out their arms. The women strike a pose and hold their arms out the side or rest their heads on the firemen's shoulders. A bachelorette party once waltzed by the station and they made the firemen hold an inflated rubber penis while they did cartwheels on the station's lawn. The firemen clicked away with borrowed cameras and the one with the inflatable penis playful walloped his coworkers.

I do not think this would happen indoors. And why are the firemen encouraging such debauchery instead of turning the revelers away? Isn't this the kind of behavior that leaves a hot plate on the kitchen counter or knocks over an idle candle?

As I have mentioned already, I took a stance. On the night of the bachelorette party incident I sat on my porch. Through the cartwheels and screams I ducked down by the veranda and screamed out, "Hey! Are my taxes paying for this!?"

I did not notice any reaction, because I immediately scrambled back into the house. My knees still ache and I have yet to repair the door where the palm of my hand pulled the screen from the aluminum frame. Maybe this letter will bring something of it. A comment from a supervisor or remark from the fire fighter's union. I doubt the revelers will remark since they probably do not live in the city.

I suggest that all residents should try it out! The brick apartments across from city hall could become a new loud speaker for citizen's action. The bicycle shop could rent out a front window and a bullhorn allowing people to scream out "What will you do about county assessments!" or "Please lower the sales tax! The civic center is complete!"

It feels wonderful!

Sincerely,

Edward Meadows
214 Dakota Avenue

_______________________________________________

Peace!

Ball Dropped

2008-08-01T08:53:00.003-04:00

Chuck Palahniuk released a new book* back on May 20th and I missed it!?!?!?!?! Where the hell was I? Oh yes, sitting here trying to unpack and sending off resumes at the same time. It must be mine and I put a hold on the library's copy faster than Sgt. Slaughter administers the Cobra Clutch.

While I dropped the ball on that and on posts this week, I will have something for you later. I am working on another piece of fiction. Excited? Well, probably not, but isn't that the reason I started this blog? And the reason why you tuned in?

Expect that sometime next week. I write all these fiction pieces on paper before putting them up on the blog. It helps center me and my writing (The posts would be worse if I did not use this paper filter), but it takes time.

Maybe some other pieces between now and then as well.

Peace!

*I have not read any reviews, but I get the sense that they are primarily negative. Is it another X-Files: I Want to Believe? Bah!

Santos Cielos!

2008-07-28T23:46:00.003-04:00

After a full week of posts I come to you with some cosmic justice. I was getting into a blogging groove and then my computer crashed. I just woke up the next day and my desktop was making all kinds of horrible noises and failing to start up.

Thankfully, in a serendipitous turn of events, Amanda just got a new laptop and that is where I am currently blogging from.

Not really an excuse, per se, but this will seriously hurt my "Great Works Defiled" tradition of putting funny hats on the varmints. I had several pictures of the animals on the desktop and last thing I want to do is clutter up the laptop with such silliness.

I still have the blog, thankfully. Unless Google's computers crash, but, if that were to happen, I think people would want their G-Mail back up before FOTBP. When I could no longer access my files this morning, I realized that almost all my short stories are up on the blog. And all of my work for Tompkins Weekly remains on their website. I take a lot of pride in these little posts. Sure, they are riddled with typos I made in haste and lame jokes. But if trying to get someone to read any of this is my dream (My person, if you allow me to be so bold) then it is comforting to know that it will remain up and active. My work remains as "cloud computing," even though I really want those varmint pictures.

Peace!

X-Files: I Want To Believe-FOTBP Review

2008-07-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

It is done. With the X-Files: I Want to Believe firmly in my cortex, I only need to wait for Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen to come out next June and my movie going days are set.*

I purposely stayed away from IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and even the local movie critic before watching the film. I tend to whore out the movie info sites before watching anything. I never look for spoilers, but any information is welcome.

Speaking of which...The Truth is Still out there and SPOILERS ARE IN HERE!

If you want to be surprised, then stop reading at the posters and look for the Apollo 11 logo at the bottom. Anything in between those two images comes with SPOILERS. I am sorry for the SPOILERS, but I cannot give my full opinion of the film without telling you about some concrete images.

Well, I liked it, but I am a die hard fan. If a movie based on a TV show were ever to alienate or disappoint its fanatics then something horrible must have happened. Something along the lines of the devil making the movie himself. The X-Files: I Want to Believe (IWTB) does no such thing. The exact opposite happens and everything seems to happen to bring Mulder and Scully to the focus.

What did the rest of America think about it?

EEEEPPP! A 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes! Not good at all! That is only six points higher then Step Up 2: The Streets and five points below 2 Fast 2 Furious! What was that about the devil again?

It is not fair to compare those movies to IWTB. Both of those movies were horrible from the first teaser trailer. If IWTB is supposed to be as big a flop as that rating indicates then we were disappointed once the film ended? What happened?

Duchovny and Anderson bring back their patented energy and chemistry for the movie. Their own little drama makes up for the weak points in the plot. Anderson looks particularly fabulous as Scully. Time has been kind to her and she has not lost any of the dominance she had over the role. I think Duchovny looks great too and for an actor that has tried to move beyond the Mulder role, he falls right back into the quips, rants, and asides. Watching them on screen feels like slipping on a pair of old jeans. The people have still got it.

I got several of my movie wishes granted. No Krycek and CSM. Skinner shows up, but he comes so late in the movie that he is as ethereal as many of the ghosts the agents hunted during the series. I do not know what Mitch Pileggi has been up to since the series ended, but he to comes right back into the Skinner role. He just has the screen presence and intense look (Here in dubbed, "The Pileggi") that makes it feel like he is recognizing ten different things in the room he can use to kill you. You don't fuck with "The Pileggi" look.

Skinner's cameo was great, but it came out of nowhere. He just happens to pop out of black SUV after Scully says she need to speak to someone else at the FBI. What is he? The FBI's special teams? These quick intros and exits exemplify what I think to be the biggest weakness in the film. Like the season 7 episode, this movie is in a "Rush," and it shows. In an opening scene we are lead to believe that Scully and Mulder had some sort of a falling out and hardly speak to one another. This makes sense in light of Mulder's fugitive status at the end of the series and the existence of the neo-conspiracy. Scully has a bit of a tighter alibi and spared of Mulder's pariah status, she becomes a full-fledged doctor at a Catholic hospital. However, right after the scene where Scully explains the relationship, she drives up to an isolated farm house that she and Mulder share. I thought it was his little hideout, but that is there house. I ran with my mistaken belief through the first crime scenes. Mulder and Scully are definitely getting back into their groove while the question the supposedly psychic Father Joe (Well acted by Billy Connolly, but with little character development), but Scully fears that Mulder will be swept back into "the darkness." She would also then be swept into the mix, forcing her to abandon her work and terminally ill pediatric patient. Hence, they are former partners and lovers, divided by their desire for stability and safety versus "the truth."

Of course, the very next scene is a classic Scully in bed moment where she reflects on the case under the covers. We then see Mulder pull up from behind her and start to spoon with her! We do not get to see the deed, but it is directly implied that they made love just a few moments ago and you were probably out getting popcorn you sucker movie goers.

Don't get me wrong! Seeing Mulder and Scully spooning in bed like a pair of old lover set my fanboy heart a flutter. And not in some kinky way, but in a Fuck Yeah! sort of way. All wonderful stuff, but didn't we just spend thirty minutes realizing that they are trying to keep a low profile? I guess not.

The plot is a bit loopy. This creates both pros and cons. I will not get into any huge spoilers, but there a few notable scenes that just seem there to pad for time, most notably an exchange between one of the villains and a lawyer. Consequently, all the characters in that scene are played by no-names with no connection to the franchise canon. Considering that what brought Mulder and Scully back together was a missing FBI agent, we spend no time learning exactly why this agent is impossible enough to ask for Fox Mulder's help. Amanda Peet does as much as she can with her brief character and their are inklings that she is supposed to have some sort of professional crush on Mulder. Thankfully, these ham handed bits do not lead to a Scully/Dakota Whitney catfight and Peet's character is quickly killed off. This also felt rushed, as if the creators wanted to up the villains "evil" ranking. Are we supposed to feel bad for her? No one on the case seems to. Xzibit acts what is essentially an X-Files mold role of "super skeptical cop." He does it well with a deep voice that comes off as both authoritative and defiant. Like Sam Jackson Lite. Very lite, actually.

The nice bit of the loopy plot is that we get treated to several possible explanations for the crimes. Could it really be a psychic connection? Or is it something more mundane like plain old fashioned kidnapping? The twists are OK and keep the plot fresh, albeit un-shocking. The end proves anticlimatic. The agents get their man, but considering that the criminals one henchman is "Guy With An Ax," it makes you miss the days when the agents had to battle Alien Bounty Hunters and the entire Peacock family to solve the case. It was nice to see a true mad scientist as the villian and you cannot deny the sheer fun of an actual mutant two-headed guard dog! But, again, he only has one.

It is a beautiful looking movie with many gorgeous snows capes. None of the images are especially haunting or arresting, but the slow pacing of a line of FBI men with scouting poles contrasts nicely with the exploding summer blockbusters. There is one lovely scene where we view Father Joe face on as he walks toward us (i.e., a frozen lake). In the background is a snowy cabin and the spruce trees behind it are throwing off a faint miasma of snow that creates an icy rainbow. If the X-Files series had been shot as a cheap set sitcom/drama then these scenes would be mind blowing and innovative. However, IWTB is a victim of its parent's own success and just meets the bar of lovely X-Files backdrops.

Mark Snow is back at the sound board and you couldn't ask for anyone else but this series veteran to provide a soundtrack. There are some humorous touches. I think some people might find an early scene where Scully and Mulder are waiting in an FBI hallway and the cameras pans to a portrait picture of George W. Bush. The X-Files theme music then chimes in and both agents looked puzzled. This is both a jab at an unpopular president (And he looks particularly goofy in the picture in case you want to thrown in "Leftist Hollywood" conspiracy observations) and a reference to the show's history. Pictures of public officials are not uncommon in federal facilities and you could always see the floating head of Bill Clinton or Janet Reno in Skinner's office. In the later seasons this was changed to Bush to reflect his swindl...err...I mean election in 2000. In an ultimate "Pileggi" moment I could Skinner beating CSM to death with a framed picture of Janet Reno!

I find it interesting how many online discussions mentions how a successful (or unsuccessful) movie performance could determine the future of the series. I must have missed something because I consider this a nice epilogue. Like Sex and The City: The Movie, IWTB exists because it would be great to see our favorite characters again. The film is unkind to newcomers. If you never watched an episode of The X-Files then this would be a truly horrible movie. It might do well if you have a casual attraction to the show or remember older family and friends watching it in the 1990's. It can make you want to explore all the back story that the movie plays fast and loose with. All the nostalgic touches (William, the fish tank, the sunflower seeds, the pencils, Samantha, Scully's faith, etc.) whip up fanatics, but can either confuse or annoy first comers. Sadly, IWTB has no scares or chills. If this was supposed to be an important chronicle in X-Files history then where is the scary zing?! The writer play around with the very idea of the X-Files. When Scully fears that Mulder will get sucked back into "the darkness" and lose his mind he retorts by saying this is what he does. Interesting to consider the X-Files defined not so much by finding the elusive truth, but instead defined by the search for it. Getting there is half the fun in The X-Files and it lends the show an air of agelessness.

If you could not guess from the X-Files Week coverage, I was excited for this movie and the lack of hype actually made me even more anxious. I never expected it to become a smash, but still expected something higher then 31%. Designed to signal the end of the summer 2009 movie season, IWTB premiered only a week after The Dark Knight. Since our theater still had three screens showing that Batman bad boy it is safe to say that IWTB had quite the expectations to meet. We got a big long episode, which is usually the flaw in TV to film adaptations, but considering the movie was just supposed to have some fun in the X-Files universe, that formula feels necessary. It still accounts for many of the film's weaknesses, but bringing the conspiracy back to full life and ending on some cliffhanger would have muddied the X-Files experience.

I would have paid $9.50 to see Mulder and Scully share a cup of coffee and slice of pie at the local diner. I would have still wanted to see Skinner pull off his "Pileggi," but X-Files can take me anywhere. If IWTB makes even just one new viewer want to give the TV series a try then it was all worth it.

Peace and Don't Give Up!

*Well...they might make a Green Lantern movie. Someday. Or another movie based on a Palahniuk book or CivilWar Land in Bad Decline film. I pray for a Daredevil remake. Every God damn day.

Your homework is due

2008-07-26T10:00:00.001-04:00

It is July 26, 2008 If you haven't seen the X-Files: I Want to Believe already, then drop everything you are doing and go see it! Yes, stop reading this blog and go! I shudder to think of all those new readers I must be losing, but you have to see the movie.

I already did. What did I think of it? Well, you will have to wait until Sunday for that. Use the time to go the see the movie! Peace!

The Day is Here!

2008-07-25T10:00:00.002-04:00

It is July 25th! Back in the PR, it is Constitution Day and, depending on your political preferences, you are either celebrating or protesting. Everyone gets a day off and at every event there will be lots and lots of Coors Light. Seriously, Coors Light is to Puerto Ricans like Spam is to Hawaiians. Remember that truck from Smokey and the Bandit filled with Coors Light? It went right past the South and floated all the way to San Juan.

It is also the day the Andrea Doria sunk and the day the Cerro Maravilla killings took place and atomic test took place on Bikini Atoll and the Air France Concorde crash.

Christ on a Bike! What a day to launch what has to be the greatest thing to come out of 2008! The movie will make up for all those things*

What movie, you say?

DID YOU JUST STUMBLE UPON THIS BLOG!?!?!?

If so, thanks for reading and go to your local movie theatre because X-Files: I Want to Believe is premeiring today nationwide!!!!!!!

Just like the first X-Files movie, the creators have kept quiet about the film and I have stayed away from teaser/discussion sites. I will be thorughly unprepared for the film and isn't that the way we should watch our based on a TV show movies? Here comes a big episode and I refuse to press the "Info" button on the remote.

Of course, there are a few things I would like to see and not see. Let us start with the good...

I would like to see or hear a reference to Doggett and Reyes. What ever happened to them after they break Mulder out of jail and escape the Black Helicopters? I realize that they are not in movie, but give us something Mr. Carter!
I want Walter Skinner! Mitch Pileggi dominated that role and I even think he did his best when he narrated Fox's Magic's Biggest Secrets Revealed specials!
Another Mulder and Scully kiss! EEEEE!
The expected twist ending. All the "monster of the week" episodes ended with a twist that showed us the beasts were still out there. With the movie being a monster episode, I would appreciate a nice focus shot on a thicket of trees and then see some eyes staring back at us. With out such a touch, it really isn't X-Files.

What I would not like to see...

Alex Krycek. HE IS DEAD! I remember the episode (Season 8's "Existence") where Skinner shot him ice cold killa style with a 9mm bullet to the head. I lept off the bed and shouted in murderous joy! Never have I despised such a TV villain until Lost's Others. It was fun to watch them blown to bits in the Season 3 finale.
The Cigarette Smoking Man. He is also dead. He single handily changed history several times and is the Joker to Mulder and Scully's Batman**, but all men pay for their sins.
Crap. Oh man, I really hope the movie doesn't suck.

Aside from those specifics, I just want to have fun! Here is a link to Fandango for those of you that have not already found your X-Files crucibl...errr....I mean local movie theather.

Peace and happy movie viewing!

*No, it will not. But it is still X-Files!
** An overreaching analogy, but, like Batman's Joker, Cigarette Smoking Man was originally created a a filler character. They then both grew to prominent evil doing.

Over A Shark Or Two

2008-07-24T10:00:00.001-04:00

I do not think The X-Files ever "jumped the shark." Of course, I am quite the fan, so you would expect me to remain loyal even after the movie, Duchovny's exit, and the riddles wrapped in enigma conspiracy arcs. My definition for "jumping the shark" centers around an actually crazy or wacky stunt/plot point that makes me want to stop watching the show. As a fan, I appreciate the effort that creators and actors put into each little 44 minute drama and I do not immediately crucify them for a weak episode or two.

Jumping the shark needs to be something truly insane and out of character. Since the X-Files features many shades of mutant and monster, it's jump the shark would need to be big. Really big.

I remember when Amanda and I started dating and she introduced me to Gilmore Girls. A solid show that features a quintessential of "jumping the shark." We never got to see the final season on TV, because we did not have cable that year and Ithaca is infamous for it's lack of over the air broadcasts. I once got a Christian gospel channel and the FOX affiliate out of Syracuse with a massive English Lop style bunny ear antennae.
When we received the final season of DVD, we eagerly awaited for a resolution. Then there was that episode where a pickle train derails outside of Stars Hollow and makes the whole town stink of dill!

Oy! My sides! The hilarity just writes itself with that concept. Stop it Palladinos! You're killing me!

I mean, Stars Hollow, CT could not really exist to begin with, but do trains full of pickles criss cross our nation? Do they say "Pickles" on the side of the box cars? Are the box cars shaped like pickles, like in the Richard Scary books! Wouldn't the state or NTSB be involved in the gerkin disposal. Not the usual army of volunteers from Stars Hollow. The town could raise an army to rival Hannibal's elephants. And the quips they would deliver! OY!

That was crazy and we both just watched the rest to see what happened. Oh, and when did Rory become a stary-eyed hopeless romantic. Wasn't she going to change the world? Thankfully, Lorelai totally ends up with Luke, which is how it should be! WOOOOO!

OK, let's get back to X-Files. That is why I gave you that little picture of John Dogget and Monica Reyes. It is X-Files week. A Gilmore Girls week would probably result in me getting my ass kicked.

Duchovny's departure was a loss. Initially, I was left reeling. Where would X-Files go without Mulder? Isn't he the entire reason that unit got off the ground, albeit still in the basement offices of the FBI. I pretty much freaked out!

I now realize that losing Mulder did some good for the series. In a show where the agents are shot at, attacked by monsters, and killer viruses, it would make sense that a main character either dies or decides to retire. Mulder does neither, but within the show's organic potential, his exit is understandable. It would have been weirder if one of the characters from Friends got their head decapitated by driving a convertible under a truck trailer. The kids from Central Perk do not routinely engage in death defying so such a trick would be a true jump the shark.

In the wake of Duchovny's departure and Anderson's mostly behind the scene roles in the final seasons, we got new X-Files agents. I think that time has justified Agent John Doggett and Agent Monica Reyes. When they first appeared, there was this universal feeling of betrayal that the writers incorporated into the show. Upon first meeting Doggett, Scully is distrustful of the man supposedly sent to find Mulder and throws water in his face. I am not a mean ahead of my time, but I always liked Doggett and Reyes.

First off, Robert Patrick is a woefully undervalued actor. His role as the T-1000 brought him to national attention, but it limits the roles he is assigned. I would not cast Patrick to play the dad on 7th Heaven, but he excels in the Doggett role. He is just a good cop put into an insane unit. And with a mind better suited at finding murderers and kidnappers, he is supposed to track down batmen and guys made out of metal. He showed a sense of wonder when first encountering paranormal phenomenon (Even though he kept it inside) and stood in stark contract to Mulder. I love Mulder, but he always seemed to know what was the monster or anomaly. His sense of amazement came from "I told you so and here is proof." Doggett's comes from "HOLY SHIT. That guy's arm just melted off his body!" We got to spend a few seasons with Doggett and he has a nice enough repertoire to get a handle on his character.

Annabeth Gish, who plays Monica Reyes, had even less time to develop her character. You could feel that in her episodes where she sometimes came off a New Age Flower Girl with a gun and other times felt like something akin to Law and Order: SVU's Detective Olivia Benson. Oh, and she was half-Mexican too. With another season or two the writers could have could have sharpened her character into the "Mulder-lite" she was supposed to represent. She brought this wonderful sincerity and energy to the duo. If Mulder was smug, Scully was stubborn, and Dogget gruff, then Reyes was just wonder. She was everyone's inner fan, that little voice that kept saying, "Isn't this stuff cool!?" One-time X-Files Agent Leyla Harrison is supposed to be our onscreen X-Files fanatic (And she does this wonderfully), but Reyes represents that curiosity the convinced so many people back in 1993 to stay in on a Friday night.

Doggett and Reyes could have carried the show beyond the ninth season. If the FBI really did have a X-Files unit then you would most likely see something like Doggett and Reyes. Again, I want Mulder and Scully to come to my wedding, but the team up is a bit implausible. Scully is the young and bright doctor that gave up medicine to become a talented FBI agent. Oh, and she is hot! Mulder is another young agent who could have caught the Green River Killer if allowed, but gave up that gift to become an encyclopedia of paranormal knowledge. Oh, and he is hot too!

Doggett and Reyes were also supposed to share a muted romance. I admit it would be a bit lazy to have these two agents fall in love as well (Is there something about those basement offices that make people fall in love? The gypsum board? The decaying celluloid of Mulder's dirty movies?), but it would have been nice to see. They could have approached it from a different angle then the Scully and Mulder romance. If Doggett and Reyes knew that their relationship would get them in the same situation as Mulder and Scully, then they could have taken it slow and nuanced.

It has been about six years since The X-Files left the air. This is all water under the bridge, but in light of the movie coming out tomorrow, you cannot help to ask...What if we were still tuning in?

Peace!

Turn of Phrase

2008-07-23T10:00:00.001-04:00

Donnie Darko told us there is no word more beautiful in the English language than "cellar door." Apparently, this is attributed to Edgar Allan Poe. Or Mark Twain. Or it was made up by Frank the Rabbit.

While that might be the word, X-Files gives us the loveliest phrase in the English language. Maybe in all of oral communication!

"Fight The Future"

That is the tagline for the first X-Files movie. It represents the agents' efforts to stop the conspiracy and the 2012 invasion of Earth. Since the conspiracy has been working towards the invasion since 1947, stopping it is a race against the clock. Save the present by fighting our predestined future.

The phrase helps me play some fabolous mental gymnastics. It is a loaded phrase filled with potential, even though it it telling us to stop something. We are supposed to look forward to the future and, sometimes, even fear it. And we can change it or make it brighter, but only the X-Files tells us to fight it. I consider fight the future to be a stronger and thriving version of something like "Take Charge of Your Future" or "The Future is in our Hands." When my nieces and nephews graduate from high school, I am going to hand them a blank card that says "Fight the Future" in it. They will think I am weird, but, unlike Mulder's uncle who used to do magic, I am the strange uncle that gives you cryptic messages alongside gift cards.

You can fight the future everyday! Whenever you do something for your or society's future benefits then you are fighting the future! ALRIGHT!

Remember to go to school and get your degrees so you can fight the future!
Remember to go and vote on November 2nd so you can fight the future!
Eat those five servings of frutis and vegetables a day so you can fight the future!
Exercise tirty minutes a day so you can fight the future!
Tell your mom you love her so you can fight the future!
Take the bus to work today you can fight the future!

Try it! It is really fun and it makes you feel great and dynamic. Fighting the future is my therapy and I like to thing everything I do has a butterfly effect that ripples along my lifetime.

Oh, and remember...go see X-Files: I Want to Believe on July 25, 2008 so you can Fight the Future!

Fighting the Futre since 1993

Today?

2008-07-22T10:00:00.001-04:00

Whenever I watch episodes of The X-Files I tend to muse about the show's age and impact. According to the typewriter reminder text during their first adventure, Mulder and Scully first busted aliens in 1992! The premiere episode aired in 1993 and we are getting a second movie almost 15 years later!

Some of those earlier episodes have a dated quality to them. Season 1's "Ghost in the Machine," which concerns a killer artificial intelligence, does not seem to cut it when the computer uses a DOS interface! And the Samantha abduction scene, where we see her floating mid air in a spread eagle position, falls apart during that hard full frontal shot. I think I can see the gurney she is strapped to!

Then there are those moments that the writers could not have controlled or imagined. I just saw Season 2's "Little Green Men" where Mulder tells Skinner that the FBI had no right to wiretap his phone without a warrant. I laughed during the quip only to realize it is kind of sad I cannot imagine a time before the Patriot Act and FISA.

The X-Files always was and remained an intelligent show. Current debates about the limits of genetic research and loss of nature have some thematic episodes in the X-Files. You also have lovely What If episodes that just fuel those late evening discussions over beer. "Hey, what if I could turn invisible or fly! Like have superpowers! I would totally not stop crime. Forget that!" And there are emotional pieces about what it means to be human in the face of deformities or emotional limits. Like with Mystery Science Theater 3000, that intelligence gives it a timeless quality even when the effects start losing their luster and we forgive the set designer for plastering an angst ridden kid's room with Busta Rhymes posters. Of course, X-Files was a fun show with a good scare potential. The weekly adventures were not academic treatises, but by working with eternal concepts (Even if you do not believe in ghosts or werewolves, they will still populate the imagination long after we are all gone) the show retains this dynamic quality. You can rewatch episodes of the show and take new meanings from everything. When I was a younger fan, I dug the monsters and fangs, but as an older fan, I enjoy a good bit of dialogue or inside joke.

I also wonder if the X-Files could premiere today. What would happen? This is a tough thought experiment because many contemporary shows owe something to the X-Files. The show was originally shot as it were a movie and this help up the integrity and appeal to 1993 audiences. I think that if the X-Files were to premiere today, it would not last as long as it did. It would premiere with some jaw dropping Hollywood opener (Pushing Daisies, much), but then have to cut corners to save money. And while the original X-Files slowly tapped into the then nascent Internet chatroom/fandom support, the new show would be a victim of its own success. It takes time to create a brand phenomenon. There was a certain mystique to X-Files fandom when you talked about it to your friends and co-workers. "Who the hell are these Mulder and Scully people, Garik in legal keeps talking about? I better check them out someday." The weekly broadcasts hooked people and demanded their continued attention if they wanted more.

Look, I LOVE Wikipedia and YouTube and IMDB and all the Internet spolier/discussion sites. I want my shows to give me something beyond the 60 minutes on the TV screen. However, the early X-Files required the sort of discipline that all these things make moot. You can get entire season summaries on Wikipedia. Whatever happened to cruising the reruns on FX for that one season 6 episode you had yet to see? The way we watch television is changing and in a modern day premiere The X-Files would be akin to Lost. Phenomenally good, but already stunted from the start.

We can also speak out about the themes of the show. Would a show about questioning the government be accepted in today's world? What would Jack Bauer have to say about Mulder and Scully? Conversely, considering all the foibles of our government and how we are just getting a handle on Iraq (Shock and awe, much?) would all these decade long conspiracies hold water? As Scully said to Mulder, "They couldn't hide Iran-Contra and they can hide aliens?"

Peace!

Monster

2008-07-21T10:00:00.001-04:00

X-Files: I Want To Believe explores the second type of X-Files episodes. To the unknowing, if an episode did not involved the agents trying to unravel The Conspiracy (and subsequent Neo Conspiracy), it usually had them waving flashlights at all kids of freaks.

These are the bread and butter of the X-Files. Even to die hard fans like me, the Conspiracy episodes are convoluted and stretched out over several seasons. This often requires a quick refresher in previous seasons and episodes before approaching new episodes. They were also hard for new viewers. If every episode was a conspiracy episode then the X-Files would have never become the phenomenon it is. It would have been more like Twin Peaks. Miss an episode because your kid is sick or the power goes out and you are boned. X-Files came about in the pre-Hulu and You Tube days so you hoped that someone had recorded it on VHS.

The monster episodes were great filler. The word filler might describe their purpose, but it does no justice to the adventures. These were the episodes that hooked your girlfriend or cousin that thought sci-fi was just plain weird or the show too scary. X-Files had so many episodes with so many plot points that you could find an episode to fit any interest. Is your friend William Gibson fan? Well, introduce him to X-Files with the solid Season 7 "First Person Shooter" which was co-written by the science fiction legend. Does he like Lucy Liu? Well show him the famous actress in pre anything days in Season 3's "Hell Money," which also featured Law & Order: SVU's B.D. Wong. If you had even the passing interest in voodoo, robots, environmentalism, time travel, artificial intelligence, cults, and even zoo keeping then there was an episode of the X-Files to meet.

My first ever X-Files episode was the strange Monster/Conspiracy hybrid Red Museum from Season 2. Those are quite rare, but the combination of vegatarian religious fanatics, alien DNA experiments and kidnappings convinced me this was a fun show with potential. It was meant to be!

In celebration of whatever beastie will come out of the sequel, here are my five favorite X-Files Monster of the Week Monsters!

5) The Lizard Man/Herman Stites

From Season's 8 "Alone" is the slithering lizard man. This episode is notable for a bunch of reasons. It is David Duchovny's last Monster episode after leaving the series. He returns at the end, but those are mythology episodes. It has pesky agent Leyla Harrison in it. She represents the fans and bugs the newyl assigned Doggett with fan girls observations. We also get teased with the possibility of finding out how Scully and Mulder escape from Antarctica in the first X-Files movie, but then the credits role.

Stites, a reptile specialist separated from academic (Hey, an actual mad scientists!) can become a lizard creature able to spit venom that blinds people and turns them into husks of easy to digest bodily fluids! He traps victims in an abandoned wine cellar below his mansion and stalks them through the maze. Imagine Alien 3 and you can get a sense of the action. He can do this at will and there is a nice shot of reptile Stites scampering across the lawn and up the ivy of his house into an open window. As he climbs the wall, his body transforms back into a pasty naked man.

4) The Devil Doll

Mulder and Scully decide to take a weekend break from the X-Files. Mulder stays in DC and Scully heads off the Maine where she rents a convertible and wears a white t-shirt with the word "Maine" on the chest. However, just like that episode of Scooby Doo wear they head to Puerto Rico, trouble follows Scully and soon she finds a town where people are clawing their eyes out and cutting themselves with broken vinyl records.

Co-written by Stephen King, Season 5's "Chinga/Bunghoney*" concerns a possessed doll that latches onto an autistic girl.

Dolls, especially porcelain dolls, t-e-r-r-i-f-y me. I still cannot watch any of those cursed "Child's Play" movies and my sister's room at our old house was filled with them. My mom would ask me to go and fetch the blow dryer from in there and I would let the dog scout out the scene first.

The dolls speaks by opening its eyes and screaming out in a voice you usually only find on three pack a day smokers. "Lets have fun!," says the thing before someone gets their head pulled into an ice cream machine! "Let's play with the hammer!," she orders at the climax where she hopes to kill the girl's mother.

The episode has a nice duality with the agents separated and Mulder feeding Scully information from his apartment. His life is kind of sad without monsters to chase and it strengthens their bond. Particularly awesome is how Scully kills the demon doll...SHE FRIES IT IN THE MICROWAVE! SWEET!

3) Virgil Incanto

Fat-sucking vampire. Imagine the symbolism in all that. Vampires are usually portrayed as suave Euro trash that feed off the beautiful. Stoker's Dracula played off Victorian fears of sexuality and passion. However, here we have a vampire that feeds off the fragile emotions of America's overweight. I used to be really fat and it is heart breaking to know that society considers anyone overweight as stupid, lazy or lacking in any control. We call all laugh at the occasional fat joke, but being fat is anathema in many circles.

Virgil Incanto needs to feed because he body cannot make or store fatty acids. His victims feed off of him because they are so used to rejection. Cruising the online dating sites, he tells his women what they want to hear and they give him what they want.

Season 3's "2Shy" gets my pick because his premise is that unique brand of X-Files high concept. Fat sucking vampire! GO! And it is seat in our new home of Cleveland,OH. This is achieved by a lot of waterfront shots representative of Lake Erie and some people wearing Indians shirts. Vancouver is a dynamic place!

2) The Tulpa

From Season 6's "Arcadia" this has to be a great monster from my favorite episode of the show. Mulder and Scully pose as a happily married couple to investigate disappearances in an exclusive San Diego suburb. A mix of Stepford and Amityville, The Falls at Arcadia is just too perfect. The draconian zoning rules would be even funnier if actual cities did not have such regulations. Everything needs to be in by 6pm. You cannot have more than 13 pounds of pet! You can't have a pool in your front yard, but you can have a reflecting pond!
The Tulpa keeps everything in check. It is the neighborhood busybody and Incredible Hulk in one convenient form. And it is made of the garbage from the landfill underneath the development. If you put up a pink Flamingo in the rose bushes (Which Mulder does because he is pimp) then it will come to kill you for your tackiness. Whatever happened to old fashioned ostracizing and denial of coveted cobbler recipes?
1) Flukeman

From Season 2's "The Host" comes Flukeman. Half man. Half fluke worm. Born out of the slime of the Chernobyl meltdown he is an homage to those old 50's B-movie monsters and an X-Files villain we actually get to interact with. Mulder (with some help from the Newark, New Jersey Department of Sanitation) actually catches the damn thing! Scully sees it in plain daylight and we get some real results from the X-Files. He is one of those rare monsters that became seminal to the series and it is too bad he does not get an encore like Victor Tooms or Pusher.

Considering Flukeman swims up through the sewer pipes, he strikes in a room where we are at our most vulnerable and retreats to the sewers and porta-potties that are too gross to explore! he is like the Jaws of brown water. And he is still out there!
There are many other great Monsters. The Peacock family from the notorious Season 4 "Home" are another quintessential X-Files villain. I also like Leonard from Season 2's "Humbug" in all his killer puppet ways.

X-Files sure had a lot of monsters, but I was always disappointed we never got a true Chupacabra episode. 'El Mundo Gira" demonstrated how the show could stretch its creative wings and work with a Spanish soap opera style, but those were not even close to the "real" Chupacabra that orginated PR before stomping off to Mexico and all of Latin America

Peace!

*Speaking of Mexico, if you speak Spanish, particularly Mexican Spanish, you might know that "chinga" is pretty much "fuck." As in, "Chinga tu mama!" Apparently, Stephen King thought it up as a nonsense word and only later learned of its content. The international verions of the episode are titled the truly silly "Bunghoney"

It's X-Files Week!

2008-07-20T10:00:00.001-04:00

In the spirit of no-longer comic book (However, still wonderful) blogger Dave Campbell, here comes an official theme week on the blog!

Amanda and I saw The Dark Knight this weekend and it certainly deserves all the accolades and excitement. But, I am over the top excited for X-Files: I Want To Believe coming out on July 25th!

In celebration of this splendid end to the 2008 summer movie season, I will post all week about the X-Files. Yes, a post every day! Just like a real blog with real readers! After I have seen the movie, I will conclude this week with my own thoughts about the film.

So expect my favorite monsters, why I actually liked the last few seasons of X-Files, musings on specific episodes and "what if thought" experiments on the show if it were to premiere today.

Here is the legendary theme music to set you up for the week. Peace!

Eats

2008-07-15T08:42:00.006-04:00

No, I am not dead. Still waiting and still anxious, but I have been reading* and if you are interested...

Give Pete Singer and Jim Mason's The Ethics of What We Eat a try.

I have blogged about Singer in an earlier post. He spoke at IC and he even signed my copy of the book after the event. Which also means I have put off reading this until now.

The book is a nice overview of food production as viewed through three American families. There is a "traditional" American diet family who buy all their groceries at Wal-Mart, a sort of Hippie Yuppie couple that frequent Trader Joes and farmer's markets, and a devout vegan couple. If you want a bit more muck racking and shocking imagery then you might want to read some of Singer's older stuff or something like Fast Food Nation or the last chapter in The Botany of Desire.

When I first read that setup, I was a bit nervous. I do not like WalMart as much as the next person (Or maybe not since they are America's largest private employer), but I am tired of the bashing of people that shop there. After reading "What's The Matter With Kansas," I am always leery of when socially progressive people tend to belittle the people they are trying to help. Oh sure, there are Bubbas and Yokels. And WalMart is your place for cheap plastic crap, but it feels like we lose the message.

Singer and Mason allow people to make their own food choices. If there is a theme to the book it is that food and eating have deep impacts on society and the environment. Eating is an ethical decision made by all of us (Hopefully!) several times a day.

Of course, the WalMart couple has the biggest impact since most of their food comes from traditional agribusiness. The vegan couple has the smallest impact. Singer and Mason heap plenty of praise on their diet, but, unlike the preachy veganism of say a small city in Central New York, their conclusions are backed by observation. The chapters are very readable, almost conversational, and you can hear Singer and Mason saying, "Look, pal. If you were to remove all the meat and dairy in your diet, you would lower your impact, just because! Even an organic farmer with 500 head of super happy cows has to find a place for all the manure and keep clearing fields for grazing." Of course, this all sounds better in the book. There was one bit about the vegan family that irked me and that was when the authors mentioned how the couples kids had never broken a bone, taken antibiotics, or developed any allergies. The 43 year old mothr is able to jog three miles without missing a beat! Much can be said about the health benefits of a well thought out vegan diet, but those last observations seem a bit strained. I have never broken a bone and my favorite summertime meal as a child was three hotdogs with plenty of mustard! You can live well on a diet that includes animal products and while the authors probably inserted that for color, it threw up some red flags not used since the move to Lakewood.

The very last bits of the books actually have a header that reads "You don't have to be fanatical about food choices. " Eating is often a communal activity, regardless of the diet and source of the food. The one big thing that vegan couple misses is going out to eat or to a dinner party without the need for elaborate pre-work. The world might be a better place if we all went back to the land and lived like Edward Abbey in some trailer in the Utah desert. It would be a lot less fun and, yes, we can have both! It will take education and work. While the book does not wax about the interconnections and webs of of our food system, it is complex and frustrating. Organic milk can still come from intensive feed lots where cows are stacked on top of each other. It only certifies that the food is free of synthetics, not that the food is treated nicely. Fair trade certification is not a certification of taste or quality, but of production values. A small family farm might give you hamburgers for a steal just to move some of their products. But you just need to be a savvy shopper and it starts to make sense.

Peace!

Hot, Hot Heat

2008-07-08T07:36:00.007-04:00

It is not as hot as when I blogged about the heat, but, the humidity!

TOO MUGGY TO COHERENTLY* BLOG!

Even Dante G. Pig thinks it is too hot and spends his time lounging by our above ground pool. OK, well by the rabbit's water dish. In my head this scene looks much nicer and you can get this Riviera look in between the fan, cans of soup, and flakes of bedding.

The apartment doesn't always look this horrible. I just read a short story by T.C. Boyle (Who I very much enjoy) in The New Yorker about a man with 1300 hundred rats. Two varmints is enough for us!

I also just finished reading a scholarly text on PR called Puerto Rico in the American Century. It stared at me from the "New Arrivals" section of the library and I thought it would be nice to reacquaint myself with the homeland. The last, and only time, I ever took PR history was in senior year of high school and our book was published in 1983! This was 2002, mind you. Those nine missing years became a sort of living history which we discussed through photocopies.

Very nice book, albeit for the academic crowd interested in PR history. It introduced me to a new word that describe that awkward feeling that makes me feel like a crappy Puerto Rican. It is "neonationalism." If you want to sound like you know what you are talking about, just put the prefix "neo" or "post" in front of anything.

Anyway, it is the idea that you strongly identify with the culture (nationalizing the culture) while also taking less of an interest in the actual apparatus of the state (denationalizing the state). While traditional nationalism could be used to strengthen the power of the state (Rally around the flag), neonationalism creates a strong brand image and does not guarantee anything beyond that. Hence, Puerto Ricaness** is defined by going to the beach every weekend, listening to regeaton, partying at San Sebastian, calling all breakfast cereals "Con Flakes," talking really loud, dancing to salsa music, driving really bad, and having Frech fries with your Chinese food. The phenomenon also ties directly into advertisements, with foreign companies sometimes interlacing PR identity with their good/service. When I lived in PR, McDonald's served this breakfast sandwich called "McCriollo." Criollo (a Spanish word akin to Creole) is used in PR to evoke the traditional and old, often exemplified by rural farm workers. The McCriollo was just a Egg McMuffin on bakery rolls, but since the bread had the hard crust atypical of PR bakeries, eating this sandwich was affirming your identity as Puerto Rican.

There is nothing wrong with being proud of your culture and heritage. While the neonationalist asides in the book gave me some touchstones, I am not one of those post modernists that believe in erasing borders and racial/ethnic identities. These are sources of pride and are healthy. But when you sensationalize a culture at the expense of the people who live it, then isn't that a raw deal. Considering PR has field day mentality to its gooferme...err...I mean, government, the un-watching public concerns me.

This talk also ties into the PR identity of all of us that live off the island. Should we extend this PR image to the mainland? Should we incorporate into existing communities? If Puerto Ricaness requires you to wear it on your sleeve and say it loud and proud, what do we become when we do not do so? We were already technically Americans, so where is the category? All minority communities struggle with these questions, but if you are interested in PR, then you might want to give the book a try.

Peace!

*This also accounts for yesterday's piece.
**While what I wrote is silly and fun, exactly what and who Puerto Ricans are has been the defining question of Puerto Rican history. To have found the answer to this 500 year old question in a cooler of Medalla Light beers on the beach in Luquillo feels a bit too convenient.

Detroit Avenue

2008-07-07T14:19:00.003-04:00

Hey, it is a post!

_______________________

Untitled Aside

My new apartment overlooks Detroit Avenue, a main drag that runs from Cleveland and into the Western suburbs. I do not see much of the traffic that goes along the road, but instead hear it from the living room recliner. I can not stick my head out the window because the edges are caked with the soot from the tractor trailers forced off the highway, making deliveries to the United Dairy Farmers convenience store and Pet Supplies Plus. The wood frames are bent, maybe from the rumble of the traffic or the lack of building maintenance. Still, I can hear everything and when I must look, I press myself to the dusty screens and leave my imprint on the wire checkerboard.

RTA buses have this low rumble combined with the pop and his of hydraulics. You can hear them from a block away and the noise signals me to pull the bus fare out of my pockets. If the buses have their air conditioners fired up, then I am transported to a small airport, waiting to jump on my puddle jumper across the plains. When I anthropomorphize them, the buses whine out "I'm coming, I'm coming!" as they pull up to the bakery downstairs from the apartment.

Cars all sound the same to my untrained ears. I need a gear head listener, with an ear most often featured on an avid birder. Sometimes the radios share their music and each day will have a surprise soundtrack. In my previous homes, such shared blaring would produce reggeaton or country music. respectively. Here the street is a mix CD. A pavement tuner set to the maximum value and permanently on scan.

"Two minutes to midnight...."

"Sexual eruption..."

"After two days in the desert sun..."

"Reeboks with the straps, with the straps..."

To snap out my noisy reveries, I rely on the slam of the loading dock doors of the pizzeria across the street.

_______________________________________

I tried some onomatopoeia.

Peace!

With Children?!

2008-07-01T09:32:00.005-04:00

Here is that story (Or, better out, creative endeavor) I mentioned at the end of last week.

___________________________________________

Untitled

By Garik Charneco

Anne had just learned the best way to settle down baby Estelle. She squawked out "wada-wada-wada," while playing a quick game of peek-a-boo.
"It look like she is your kid," I told her while I cleared space in the broom closet for the diapers we bought. I snuck into the wholesale club with my brother-in-law's card and all the new items overwhelmed our loft.
'Oh, shut the hell up," she responded with a half-smile. She carried the baby off towards the crib in our bedroom. That, also, barely fit. We had to remove the oak headers and caravan it down the steps of my sister's house and up the fire escape to our apartment.
"Did you put Mickey, to bed, already?" Her voice carried from the bedroom. Baby Estelle cooed.

I was still trying with my nephew. "I wanted honesty as a kid. No more bullshit from my parents. Just wanted to be treated like an adult," I told Anne when we drove over to pick the kids up the night after the accident. A neighbor had come in the house and laid them up in their little robes and bulging overnight bags. Mickey ran from the hallway and wrapped him self around my knees. His forehead bumped against my belt buckle, but he made no sign of pain.
"Are mami and papi, OK?" I strapped him into the back of our car and pulled the straps extra tight. The neighbor had brought out a booster seat from my sister's Town and Country mini van, but I stuffed it in the back. Mickey seemed to appreciate this.
"Are they, OK?"
"We will go see you dad tomorrow in the hospital. Your mom...," I struggled for a lie. Almost like a reflex, I wanted to say she is with Grandpa Hector in the sky or in everything so that she would always watch him. "she is gone, Mickey, but she loved you very much and you and Estelle will be OK with me an Aunt Anne."
Mickey stared at the back of my seat. "Will I see hear at a funeral?"
I imagined what funeral he might remember. Maybe it was someone on Mike's, my brother-in-law, side of the family. Or he learned it on TV or in a book.
"Yes," even though we had barely thought of that.

On another separate ride, returning from the hospital, Anne told Mickey that his dad was still asleep, but that the doctors thought he would wake soon. Mickey looked out on the lights of Detroit Avenue and while staring at the low glow of a Convenient Market sign asked, "Why did mami die?"
Baby Estelle began to cry and Anne swung around in her seat to tend to her. I thought about entropy and randomness. "It just happens, Mickey. You can't do anything about it except make sure that you work hard and have fun each and ever day."
He then began to cry. It was the first time we had seen him cry since the accident. I focused on the driving. All four traffic lights in front of me turned green and I shifted into auto pilot. Anne then tended to Mickey.
At home, she ripped into me.
"Who the fuck says that existential junk to a six-year old?!"
"What else do you want me to say? You can expert on children, now!?"
"And then that little "seize the day" stuff at the end. Jesus, you trying to run his life like a finishing school, Antonio?"
"Just trying honesty." I could not imagine myself saying anything about God, angels, or bad men with a straight face.
Baby Estelle began to cry. Anne ran to the bedroom. "These are your niece and nephew, Antonio!" Then the door closed. Not with a slam, but gently, as to not bother the baby any longer.

We had converted the only spare room into a bed room. We had pulled out the particle board desk and shuffled the computer to the living room. Any books on the shelves were covered by Mickey's own books and toys. We had slid our pet rabbit's cage out of the room, even thought Mickey wanted to keep him there. "Can I share him with you as my pet, too," he asked that first morning after everything. We had no idea where he went to school and decided to just keep him at home. "Sure," Anne said, even though the rabbit, Marzipan, struggled with even the thought of children. I barely see her anymore, but am reminded of her presence by the soft thumping noise coming from behind the couch sometimes.

In the room, Mickey lay on the air mattress staring at an infomercial on the 13-inch TV we brought from our bedroom. The living room TV was no bigger, but he adjusted well to that. "Time for bed, Mickey."
He nodded, but kept the TV on.
Not spotting a remote, I clicked it off before I kneeled next to the air mattress. I felt the rubber and it bounced back against my palms. "Are you ready for school tomorrow?" It had been two weeks, but the school contacted us through the hospital.
"I guess so," he said. "Do you think the other kids will make fun of me."
'Because of your parents?" I wondered if children were really that cruel. Whatever happened to the sheer sanctity of bringing your mother into this? "No, of course not. Not unless you go to school with some really sick classmates!"
"Terry Jameson once killed a cat!" Mickey's eyes went wide and he shook away the bits of hair in front of his forehead. "He threw rocks at it down by the creek behind the school and told everyone the next day."
I tucked the comforter under the mattress. I went deep because sheets slid off the mattress and Mickey would wake up with nothing on him but his pajamas.
A lie came out of me. "Hey, all those mean kids. One day they will work for you." The lie felt necessary. Mickey returned it with a smile. "Mami, used to say that."

If enough adults say a lie is true, it seems to stick with kids. The Easter Bunny. Tooth Fairy. The Three Kings. "Did she?"

Mickey nodded.

"Well, it is true. I learned it from your grandmother and look at me!" I turned around the room and showed him everything that two combined department assistants (Me, legal, and Anne, collegiate admissions) could afford. I stomped around and held a plastic sword tucked behind a cedar chest as a scepter. He laughed, loving the lie.

_____________________________________________

So what did you think? It hops around and I decided not to go with my usual "* * *" breaks. Maybe the readers could keep track of it. If you cannot, then it is my shortcoming and we can go to second draft!

Peace!

A Post Coming

2008-06-27T09:22:00.004-04:00

Hey, I have a short story for you! I wrote up a draft in my journal and will soon put it to blog. I would do it right now, but I am bit nervous today. Just job stuff. I am waiting to hear back from a few interviews and applications. Pretty nerve racking stuff considering that Amanda and her family have been completely supportive and my sainted mother has been...well...my mother.

But, I try to avoid from a rants, even though I do not always keep that promise. An old boss in college used to describe his life as "Still swimming upstream." I think we can all relate to that.

So the story will come up, but until then...enjoy this picture of Carson eating pizza!

I know he isn't wearing a funny hat, but, look at that! Both out animals love junk food, which means they hang around us way too much.

I think I hear Animal Control coming.

Peace!

One Year To Go!

2008-06-26T09:08:00.007-04:00

What an exciting time late June 2009 will be! By this point in 2009, Amanda and I will be married and, on this very date (June 26, 2009*) the sequel to the Transformers live action movie will premiere!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Previous posts should tell you how much Amanda and I adored Transformers! We saw the movie four times in the theater and once at Cornell Cinema. Funny that the one and only time I ever went to Cornell Cinema was to see a huge Hollywood blockbuster (as opposed to an art house film), but how can you deny another opportunity to watch this movie! Forget about the intelligentsia and pray, please pray, that the sequel will meet expectations.

Of course, the Internet teems with rumors. I tend to steer clear of these and I seriously do not want any spoilers...except for what robots we can expect to see!

So it looks like much of the original cast will return and that Rainn Wilson of The Office will also star in a minor role! I can't wait for the reciprocality between the film and the The Office series. I can imagine Dwight touching on the film...

"I love Japan, but I would never visit. They have several armored transforming robots and girls in mini skirts protecting their islands. Yeah, islands. It is made up of several. Blew your mind, uh? Just like Japan."

I do hope that the robot Jazz returns. Even though it is a movie about giant robots and has a girl dodging debris in pumps and a belly shirt, I can appreciate that the writers killed off a (somewhat) likeable character. But I want him back! He is so slick and did you see his car!? I want that super modified Pontiac Solstice. It would be like driving the Millenium Falcon!

Michael Bay is back creating his unique brand of "bay-hem**" and that is great! I can't believe I just said that, but you have to stick true to the original. If I read a book written by a trained chimp and really enjoyed it, then I would only want the trained chimp to write the second novel. Of course, Michael Bay is not a chimp and he made the incredibly exciting first Transformers film, so he gets some serious credit on this blog. I am a fanboy, but not a mean fanboy. I don't care if Bay and the writers color Starscream entirely cool grey or Arcee (a new Autobot that also doubles as a token female character) something not pink.

"But Statrscream was red, blue, yellow, and grey in the G1 cartoon! And Arcee was pink! " say the fanboys. "You will pay Bay!"

Yes, and a tri-colored jet fighter painted by what seems to be Mrs. Luofer's pre-school art class seems realistic. And a female character colored entirely in hot pink? What a great message to young girls. You can be anything you want to be ladies, but only wear these colors.
While fanboys dominate the Internet buzz and will debate the movies endlessly, I think we geeks sometimes forget that these movies make there money because the non-geeky watch them as well. The writers already need to get around the fact that giant, sentient, robotic organisms, from space, somehow come to Earth and decide to change into cars. And planes. And stereos. Oh, and we also want to writers to color them hot pink.

Sure, you need to stick to the originals, but I would not mind if that chimp write his second novel on a computer instead of a typewriter.

Oh, I can't wait! PEACE!

*This could change, which means I would have to keep living for even longer. So far, so good!
**Seriously, this is what Bay's crew call his distinct style of movie making.

¡Ay Perdon!

2008-06-24T15:01:00.003-04:00

Hey, a little slice of piece for you. In memory of George Carlin and in the spirit of many stand up comedians that can laugh at themselves, here is an awkward anecdote that happened to me yesterday...

How I do love Mexican food! Well, Tex-Mex food since I have never had the luxury of eating in Southern California, Texas, or Mexico proper. One day I will, but, again, how I do love Mexican food.

But we are in Ohio*, whose main culinary export seems to be chili. Chili from Cincinnati, which is pretty much Kentucky. But chili originates in the Southwest, so there is hope for jammin' Mexican food in Ohio.

I usually make an ass out of myself at Mexican restaurants. Not in the "We are taking Grandma Esther to have her first ever taco!" awkward or "This isn't as good as Taco Bell" horrible, mind you. My horror comes from something that you would imagine actually makes the process smoother.

I am a native Spanish speaker. Puerto Rican Spanish, of course, but Spanish nonetheless. I can say jalapeño with the necessary nasal uptick of the ñ character. I don't pronounce it to rhyme with "we know" or "hero." And I can salsa with the emphasis on the first syllable, almost coming out to sound like salt and not like some big Italian guy.

I don't look like I speak Spanish. I look like I am actually from Ohio. Somewhere in the middle of the state like Wooster, OH. Sometimes I notice that the waiters are caught off guard by this. My sister, who name drops her Puerto Ricaness like a job reference. will then bust into full Spanish. This somehow makes the entire experience more authentic.

I never bust into Spanish. There is no guarantee that that waiter or waitress speaks Spanish. They could be the Mexican-American equivalent of me!

"Well, I was raised in Mexico City**, but I do sound like am from Minong, Wisconsion, don't I!? Now, do you want those margaritas on the rocks?"

Or we could begin to switch a round of "que?" since the server would speak Mexican Spanish and I have my own Spanish. I say habichuelas, he says frijoles, and everyone else says beans.

The Spanish does break out and here is where I look stupid. Like the rolling "r's" you practice in Spanish clash, the languages sometimes rolls off my tongue and into pretentious prick land.

So when Amanda and I ordered some desert and I said, Can I have some sopapillas, por favor," my immediate reaction was to crawl under the brightly colored table in the shape of a sun.

The waiter must have thought I was saying that to be smart. How many times must the servers of Mexican resturants have an "hola," or "si," or "por favor," thrown at them by people whose limits of Spanish end at those words? I was just trying to say sopapillas right, becuase, you know, that is how it is actually said! I wasn't trying to be cute or coy.

When we got out deserts, the waiter handed me the fried dough drenched in honey and chocolate with a quick "Here is your desert, señor."

Ack! A señor!? Did he play along to placate me? Like I somehow did well in my Intro to Spanish class and required gratification. Plunge a knife into my heart because I hate looking stupid in front of my favorite ethnic food.

I need to up the Wooster, OH act.

Peace!

*Of course, I am new to the state. Maybe lovely readers will educate me with famous Ohio eats.

A Message from the National Apple Council...

2008-06-23T08:10:00.004-04:00

Kind of creepy to know that one way to get me blogging is to have somebody die. I should work on that...

Unfortunately, George Carlin passed away last night in a Santa Monica, CA hospital of heart failure. A testament to his work ethic and comedic spirit, he had performed as recently as last weekend.

Of course, I am a fan. Even though I am too young to have ever seen the impact of his early days and the famous "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," he was legend and marked an important moment in my personal development.

In high school, my school participated in a public speaking tournament knows as forensics. Not CSI stuff, but competitive public speaking. The word "forensics" comes from the Latin root of "forum." It still confuses people to this day; they believe I spent high school chopping up bodies.

My school was never big into sports. No high school in PR is and my few bits of culture shock when coming to college included seeing local high school sport coverage in The Ithaca Journal.
But, the forensics team, that was another story. People were exited for this, especially because the team usually spent two days in the late spring semester running around the middle/high school and practicing their speeches in front of class rooms. Hey, we miss class, you miss class. Hooray!

I signed up late for forensics in the 10th grade. For a very shy and very fat Garik, public speaking proved a complete 180. My first speech was an oratory speech that won some prize in a 1957 Mississippi State Fair or something. Oratory was the driest category, akin to competitive final trial arguments. But you learned in that category and moved up to the comedy and drama speeches each class wanted you to give. In the 11th grade, the new forensics coach let me try my hand at comedy and assigned me a Carlin speech. I had never heard of the guy, but even without the swears (The competitions were judged mostly by nuns. I don't think you could have even gotten away with a "gosh darn!"), "Airport Security" proved a wonderful bit.

Of course, these were not my words, but when you take genius Carlin, even a 16 year-old's performance will knock them out. Well, not quite. I was an alternate that year. Kind of like special teams! Or a bench warmer. My first try at anything competitive and I got the most fitting position. Cosmic justice.

These speeches could change your identity for those five to seven minutes. One girl on our team had this drama piece about a mother watching her children starve. There was one line where she could not produce milk for her newborn because she was also hungry. Dark stuff and powerful delivery. I couldn't masturbate to that girl for weeks, always imagining her suffer over her fake children. And the other team mate with a Carlin piece? Well he just ramped up the energy and delivery. He ran for about every student council position (and still does today) and the exposure and practice of forensics made him all the better. And me? Well I never talked in high school and there I was saying how, "No, I did not pack my bags. Last night Carrot Top, Martha Stewart, and Florence Henderson made me a lovely Lobster Newburg and then packed my bags. They then each performed a deep tissue body massage on my back." In the actual bit, the threesome has a four way around the world fuck fest, but, remember those nuns.

That was the importance of Carlin to me. Imagine having an actual soundtrack to an important moment in you life like landing a dream job or winning the all state basketball tournament? All these moments for me had the Carlin soundtrack and I sought out his albums and books.

His acerbic pieces on the stupidity of humanity and organize religion will prove infinite because we will always look to those leaders and see there foibles, whether innocent or malicious. George Carlin angered many a square, prude, and busy-body. Of course, I don't agree with everything he sees ("I don't vote on election day. Never. I stay at home and jerk off because when I am done masturbating, I at least have something to show for it!") but comedians are comedians, not philosophers. While their bits can be scintillating and thought-provoking, they are still just jokes, and only being able to laugh at others always ruins a comedian's routine.

I had the pleasure of seeing Carlin live in Ithaca. In fact, Carlin always provided a respite to the near infinite stream of zydeco, blue grass, and drum bands that cycled through Ithaca. I learned about his gig when a discarded newspaper flew across the sidewalk and wrapped itself around my leg. I was standing in a bus shelter, trying to avoid the January cold and here was manna from heaven. Carlin!? Ithaca!? TOGETHER!? The routine consisted of older stuff, but my future roommate and I laughed it up, enjoying the fact that we related to what he was saying along with all the older fans. His final piece was a practice run for a bit for his (then) upcoming HBO special. I have to admit I did not like it. It concerned the end of the world and had Carlin focusing on a great universal whirlpool just swallowing up everything. At one point, he mentioned how he enjoyed watching large groups of people die and, while not true, it took me out of the moment.

Don't get me wrong, I like cranky Carlin. ("Lead, follow, or get out of the way! What is this Marine Corps bullshit? You know what I do? I obstruct!"), but goofy Carlin is the best. Sometimes I dream of being a comedian and I would be in the vein of Carlin-esque observation (with touches of MST3k, of course).

"How can you be, 'more than happy?' To me this sounds like a dangerous medical condition."

"What exactly is a deadly weapon? I mean, you could kill a man with the Sunday New York Times!"

"You ever notice how other people's stuff is shit and you shit is stuff? 'Hey! Get this shit out of the way so I can put down my stuff!'"

The goofier stuff is older Carlin. One particular favorite of mine is "The Interview with Jesus," where Carlin, playing Jesus, admits that not all the miracles were miracles.

"Some where optical illusions, tricks of light, and sleight of hand."

And what about Lazarus?

"Well I never said he was dead. I get misquoted alot on that one. I said, 'Man, he looks dead!' You see we had gone to a wedding feast the night before and Lazarus had too much to drink."

And Jesus' advice to humanity?

"Don't give your money to the church."

And my favorite Carlin joke of all time? Well, it is the title to this post.

"The following is a message from the National Apple Council...FUCK PEARS!"

Goodbye, Mr. Carlin. Thank you for giving us the 23 comedy albums, the four Grammys, three books, 14 HBO specials, and glee-inducing cameos (Dogma, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Price of Tides, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Cars, etc.). Holy shit, will you be missed!

Peace!

Talking About the Heat, Part 2

2008-06-19T08:56:00.003-04:00

Here is the second half on heat. This half focuses on air conditioning, fans, and what we do to try and beat the heat.

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On Air Conditioning

I can hear the echoes in my own words. I realize that saying something along the lines of , "I will never have or want any children," sounds a bit hollow in your early 20's. Who knows what might happen? But, right now, I don't want kids and that is a good thing since mine would probably tie me up on hot July and take advantage of my indisposition by buying an air conditioning. I would hope they would buy a wall unit somewhere locally, but the kids, angry at having their fish tank boil over, would probably buy it at a Wal-Mart, just to piss me off.

However hollow whatever edicts about children I say about children sound, I am solid about one thing.

No air conditioners!

This is not as crazy as it sounds. I do not take a hammer to central cooling units. Neither am I the Wicked Witch of Chill, melting whenever we get below 68 degrees. I just have an uneasiness to air conditioning. Whenever I sit in air conditioning (That I can control, mind you. I don't tell the bus driver to turn down the ac or scream at the movie theater manager), I feel as if I am getting away with something. An oscillating fan only takes the air around you and fires it onto your skin. While it is icky to think about it, fans help you sweat faster, making your natural evaporative cooling feel all that more satisfying. Air conditioners, on the other hand, have this Faustian ring to them. You don't need to sweat with ac as it brings the cool to you.

Hey, I like my body and marvel at its ability for homeostasis. When I cool off, I like to know that I aided natural processes like evaporative cooling and simple hydration. Air conditioning makes me feel lazy. And when you(like myself) spend summer already sitting around reading and re-playing every Grand Theft Auto game, you do not need to feel any lazier. If a fan is a nice walk down to the corner store, then air conditioning is hopping in your car to go down the driveway for the mail.

Please don't take this as some sort of insult to anyone that does use air conditioning. Hell, it is nice! And I realize that heat stroke is deadly serious. If you have a/c, then go nuts!* But, leave me to my little overheated zen.

Growing up in PR, everyone had a/c window units. If your house was newer or recently remodeled then you had central a/c or at least those slim Japaneses units that clung to the high walls like huge flies. Our house only had window a/c's and one for every room. The spaces in the walls featured black metal shelters for the outside half of the a/c. They were made of black bars and the air conditioner looked like it was in jail. I used to pretend these were escape pods, to be used if an hurricane with wind speeds greater than 145 mph** ever hit us!

And my mother let me turn on the air conditioner whenever I wanted! Woo hoo! I had a friend in school whose parents only let him turn on the air conditioner after 10:30 pm. Poor sucker, I thought. My mom was nice!

This was before I ever saw an electric meter or an electric bill. Our actual meter was outside the house, on a retaining wall against what used to be an alley. A schefflera*** tree blocked the meter, meaning you had to push the two story plant aside to read the meter. I once took a look at it when all the window a/c's hummed away and the disc looked ready for orbit. It was a "Holy Crap" moment, only intensified by the fact that it never got that hot where we lived. My first ever 100 degree weather was in Ithaca, NY! I spent my final two years in PR, sleeping only under the wobble of my ceiling fan.

When my father battled cancer, we ran the air conditioning in that room non-stop. There was a year where that a/c never turned off. Instead of getting such breaks, it would seem to let out a deep sigh, lag for a minute, and then hum back to life. I used to turn it off during those rare occasions he left the room, most often to enjoy some sun on the terrace. To little environmentalist Garik, the ancient a/c must have been spewing out CFC's! My parents lied to me in that way that only parents do. The kind of lies that take advantage of their parental status and make you believe that they can actually speak to a little bird of Santa Claus. They said there were no CFC's in the a/c, but I never believed them.

"You are killing the ozone layer, dad," I said to him!

He never replied, except with the lie, and it must have taken much will power to not respond, "And I am dying of cancer, kid!"

A/C units, particularly wall units, remind me off him. Of him with cancer. The room where he died always felt sickly with the huge sliding door glass windows perpetually boarded up. We put them up one summer for hurricane season and my mother, without the help of my father and with her back problems, never bothered to take them down. Because of this, the room felt cavernous. They had no house plants in the room (Not that any could of survived) and since the wall were a dulled peach color, nothing seemed lively. My father spent hours in a reclining chair by the corner and my mother would sit at the opposite end, at the foot of the bed, watching TV. And it was always cold.

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This version had a bit more stream of consciousness to it. I hope that everyone also realizes that there is no snobby hippie to my anti air conditioning diatribe. I have ranted about mean hippies before and the idea to where environmental actions on ones sleeve. I just can't bring myself to fire up the a/c, unless something else (like a guest sweating to death) makes me realize that no one else has this idiosyncrasy. Peace!

*Well, within reason. They are energy hogs and screw with your car's gas mileage!
**Another parental lie, except this one came from my mom's most serious boyfriend. He said no house in PR could resist such winds. And while these kinds of winds could only be described as "the hand of god," there are no such things as specific building strengths.
*** Yes, that schefflera that you often see in mall planters. Originally from Australia, it grows to the size of a house in tropical climates!

Talking About the Heat, Part 1

2008-06-18T09:19:00.004-04:00

This little piece came to me a week ago when Cleveland baked through a four day long, early June heat wave. Outside, now, the clouds block the sun's rays and everything feels cooler. Like many of these asides, this will be stream of consciousness style.
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Heat Rises

All my apartments come in this ebb and flow of temperature. In college, I lived for two years in a brick apartment cut into the side of a low hill. They were officially known by the Soviet-esque name, Garden 29, but we all called them "The Bunkers." That certainly warmed them up! They proved cool enough that walking into them (or down into them) felt like walking into air conditioning. Sixty years ago, someone must have strolled down the stairs to their basement apartment and felt the gradual layered cooling of the air. "Hey," thought this individual, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow bottle this!?" The Bunkers were pleasant, reaffirming that if cliff structures worked for the Anasazi then they would certainly work for the class of 2006 coeds.

When already graduated and gone, I took an apartment on the main street of a village in Central New York. The apartment had the perk of being right next to the office where I worked. A three minute commute! And it came with the miscellaneous bric-a-brac that can only come from a previous tenant that did not care and a landlord that cared even less. Silverware, an electric blenders, carpet samples, and a plastic ship model that hung flush to the wall. I named it the USS Ezekiel Benjamin. The entire apartment felt ship-like, but this would have never made it out of the shipyard. The cherry wood floorboards sagged in the middle of the living room floor and lifted up all four corners. My apartment had a topography! The fall of the first step through the front door and the depression in the middle room before the kitchen linoleum plateau. The heating unit was an electric range sized brown gas boiler that dominated an entire corner of the living room. The front had a little grill in front of it where you could watch the flames. The edges of the heater were swooped in that future-retro way where the Jetsons watch the news on a triangle shaped TV. It added to the ship analogy as I imagined myself shoveling coal into it to meet the captain's order for "Full Speed Ahead!"

My landlord turned off the heater's pilot light during the summer. But the heat still rose to the top of this split A-frame house. Heat came to the apartment like an universal black body. It had an inherent mugginess independent of the dew index outside. A friend once described such heat, the heat unique to old houses in the Northeast, houses built before we had the luxury to worry about summer more than winter, as "Satan's Asshole Hot." The thermometer on my fish tank shot up to the maximum range, but when I first noticed my Mollys and Platys swimming in circle's belly-up, I realized it was hotter than the 86 on the thermometer. I have never noticed an aquarium thermometer that goes beyond 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The entire industry could have not imagined an actual situation where a tank would boil to a point beyond that. "Inconceivable!" they must have said. "No, Apartment 5," I would retort! I dropped in a bag of peas to cool the water, but the Great Boil only broke when October first chilled the air.

I then moved into a true basement apartment, where the footfalls of the upstairs tenant reminded us that this was an apartment building. But, it looked like a real house, in the city limits and with a backyard where we set up a pen for our pet rabbits and guinea pig. Pity the poor animals in the heat. IF anything could actually melt than it would be the rabbit. Unable to sweat and with a toothy slit of mouth, their heat regulation looks almost reptilian. Of course, imagine anything horrible and it has to have been done to some bunny at some point. But, the heat looks and feels particularly horrible.

But that was all in the old apartment. This basement apartment physically reminded us of why creatures took the ground. The houseplants were not happy, routinely turning angry yellows and dropping leaves in a false internal Autumn.

In my current apartment, we live on the third floor of a brick-shit building. The ground floor is dominated by two bakeries and the smells of sourdough and crisp pie crust little make up for the heat. Oh, the plants are happy, for the sun pours in through the windows, but the animals have taken to spaces behind the bathtub and the aquarium thermometer creeps up to the far limits.

Maybe one day we will have a house with enough rooms to seek solace from the climate and to make all the living things; furry, fishy, leafy, and human, pleasant.
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So, why Part 1? Well there will be a Part 2, of course. I am not getting all post-modern on you readers! I decided to cut back on the stream of consciousness and focus this entry on the apartments. Tomorrow (Yes, tomorrow) I will have a little aside about air-conditioning and cooling.

Peace!

Books I Should Have Alread Read, #3

2008-06-12T08:00:00.004-04:00

The return! Of posts and and a previous column!

Books I Should Have Already Read #3

A Walk in the Woods
By Bill Bryson

Well, it is not a classic, but Bryson is a popular author with books about subjects ranging from hiking, popular science, etymology, and the UK. He is an honorary Officer of the British Empire and an university chancellor. Also, Robert Redford already secured the rights for the book and will make it into a movie sometime soon. Some serious credentials.

This book escaped me all throughout college where many fellow environmental studies students praised its narrative of the Appalachian Trail. I have discovered that those that love hiking only like one thing second to that and that is reading about it. OK, well, they are individuals so one hiker might really like pistachio flavored ice cream as his second choice and another always gives Maine Coon cats her second place medal. I have never really sensed a real desire to talk about hikes from the hikers. While you are on a trail, the fact that the only controlled variables in the whole hike are that strip of earth and whatever you have strapped to your back make for some serious, "Well, you just had to be there" moments. Except for really wacky moments like losing your pants while trying to ford a creek or being chased by bees in the shape of a fist! Or, just regular bees. Equally terrifying. They always want to take you there, however. Then you won't need to listen or read! Hikers are a friendly lot and, in my experience, always want to bring more appreciation to their trails.

And by hikers, I mean hikers. The kind of people that have actually taken their Nalgene bottles outside of the office. Or, a person who doesn't even own a Nalgene since the clunky plastic seems to pedestrian. Maybe that bright purple bottle will attract a bear, rookie! You ever thought of that!? These folks sleep in their sleeping bags for fun, laying them over an old comforter situated on the porch. Their boots are lost to the reverse gravity of their feet pounding the earth and not eaten away by the whorls of winter salt.These folks have wardrobes full of natural hues. Hunter greens, tans, granite, sage, and mahogany brown. But these colors, on these folks, are not drab. The energy of their stride and the adventure make everything come alive until you realize why should you hike in anything else. Certainly not something purple, because it might attract bears! And not in blue jeans, at least according to Bryson's research.

A UK resident in my previous book club tried to get us to read Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island once and I wonder if A Walk in the Woods would have shown up here any earlier if we had chosen his suggestion. Better late then never because I appreciate Bryson's honest voice and snarky wit. I have no idea if any of the cartoony events he mentions actually happened in the exact circumstances in the book, but I came to trust Bryson in the early chapters. He does an immense amount of research on the (roughly 2,100) mile long trail, but never feels overbearing or depressingly authoritative. If you read these posts and realize that my voice switches from observation to exposition (see above) then you probably realize that I am a big fan of "wonder." Bryson never loses that wonder, framing the trail and the journey, in the path's scale. Until I read the book, I never understood exactly what the trail was. I had ex-girlfriends, classmates, co-workers, and colleagues tell me about the desire to walk it from Maine to Georgia (or vice versa), but what the hell was it. I was always trying to impress these people (or at least get along with them) so I never really asked. But, Bryson, paints a trail that is meticulously maintained and well traveled, albeit rarely completed. When your local municipality has a 500 foot road with potholes able to disable a tank (I am looking at you Ithaca!), an unbroken trail of 2,100 miles maintained by an alliance of the unlikely (volunteers, state officials, entrepreneurs, federal officials, etc.) can restore your faith in humanity. Bryson and all his fellow trail writer/advocates portray a national treasure, the kind of narrative that has saved the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil development. I will probably never hike the trail, but I ma glad to know that it is there and that others can enjoy it.

The book features a particularly fresh point of view. Bryson likes to hike, but he also loves cheeseburgers and can't help but feel laughed at while purchasing his supplies at the outdoor store. His hiking partner (Stephen Katz) wheezes and whines throughout the climb and tosses supplies because they were too heavy on his back. While trail veterans might roll their eyes at such unfit people hiking the trail, Bryson and Katz democratize the trail for all of us whose hardest hike ever was the steepest incline possible on the gym's elliptical machines. Before reading the book, I knew it was humorous, but I still expected a serious anti-establishment tone to it. Something along the lines Edward Abbey or Bill McKibben, where hikers can find themselves in wilderness and lose all the absurdities of "modern living." Such works spoke to the people I mentioned before and I imagined Bryson doing the same, except with some MST3k wit and not Abbey's crabbiness.

Instead, Bryson makes the trail a physical and metaphorical through line for the eastern seaboard. The segment in Northern Georgia brings up the necessary Deliverance reference and how such stereotypes have harmed the region's image. A side trip through Pennsylvania mentions Centralia, PA; an abandoned town siting on top of a continuous old mine fire.

Of course, it is odd to find a hotel on top of Mount Washington and that you can drive your car all the way up one of the highest peaks in the continental US. My limited experience with hiking is in the El Yunque rain forest back home where you can walk up to the highest (publicly accessible) point on a 3,526 feet tall. It is an easy hike, with the only hazards being the poorly marked signs dating back from the 70's and slightly washed out ridges near the top forcing you to hop the length of a little bit less than a yardstick. But even here there are roads, where, if you made it pass the rangers, drive up to a concrete shack built for some communication towers. It feels phony there and more so on the Appalachian Trail. There is a sobering statistic where Brysion says, "Ever twnty minutes on the Appalachian Trail. Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week." Maybe that has changed since the book came out in 1998 ( most of the trip happened in 1996), but it reamins powerful. There are asides on the death of the small trails towns to multinational chains and the commercialization of the trail. All these asides come across as mournful and not vindictive, something I have seen in such hiking literature. Shouldn't we be blowing up the bridges, Mr. Bryson?

Bryson portrays fellow travelers in cartoony tones. Selfish day hikers that actually dress like they are out for a safari and an irritating latch-on that had the annoying tendency to pinch her nose and blow, in an effort to clear her head. Apparently she honked all the way along the trail and when the guys ditched her, later feeling bad, are able to identify her by asking fellow passerbys if they had heard the honking girl. And they meet those people that your parents warned you about when telling you never to accept rides from strangers along with enough local color to make ten PBS specials!

Bryson appreciates the trail and venerates it, but never takes it beyond what it actually is. The trail is nature, not magical, and packs dangers for those ill prepared. He reflects on the fears created by the nine murders in the trails and how these are isolated cases, ill compared to the potential for twisting your ankle or dying of hypothermia. Bryson and Katz only walk abot 870 miles of the trail by the time they quit. The took a cab along part of the Virginia section, following a road that runs parallel to the trail. In Pennsylvania, Bryson goes it alone and has to rely on his chair, hiking to the next checkpoint and then hiking back to previous one where his car was parked. He then drives up to the new start, doubling back on himself in a snail's paced hike through the Keystone State.

When Bryson and Katz quit, I found their epilogues wholesome. While a "crunchy" hiker might sneer at their lack of devotion (Katz is excited to watch X-Files that first night after calling it quits. My hero!), Bryson mentions how 870 miles is still a whole hell of a lot. From New York to Chicago he says and that few people ever complete a true, non-stop, one season hike. He ends with more respect for the trail and the "cubic" woods that surround it. More respects for the comforts he has at home and the love of his family. "Yes and no," is how the boys described their feelings at the end and if that means finding the middle ground, then more people should read this book.

Peace!

Vision Complete

2008-06-06T17:57:00.005-04:00

As a quick follow-up to the post of "Like an Open Book," I realize that the two other complete stories for that book proposal were already up on the blog! Here are the direct links to "Smells Like Almonds" and "Cuernos".

The cafe where Emily from "Like and Open Book" is the same one where the protagonist of "Smells Like Almonds" speaks to the ghost. Nothing in "Cuernos" relates to the others, but I had this idea where a customer buying some magical tea (For lack of a better phrase) overhears the conversation about the unicorn horn.

See!? It all makes sense! Well, sort of. Makes sense in the way Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace makes sense. I mean, I am telling you they are interconnected!

Peace!

Ball Game

2008-06-05T08:30:00.003-04:00

This post has been a few weeks coming, but, you know, I suck.

Over the Memorial Day weekend (Yeesh! It is already June!), Amanda and I partook in an American summer tradition by going to a Cleveland Indians baseball game at Jaco...err....I mean Progressive Field!

It was fun! My first ever major league sporting event and the Indians broke a seven game losing streak! Of course, then they slipped into another losing streak, but they won yesterday! Against the same team they beat at this very first of my major league ballgames*.

We had horrible seats. Section 514, Row K, Seat 18. After the gates opened, we fumbled around the ground floor trying to find the section. All the other people (i.e. real fans) knew where they were going and my hope was to find some other poor saps stuck at the roof of the world. We did reach the stairs to our section and after about three flights I noticed another sign for Section 514 and I said to Amanda, "Keep going up."

Hey, but that is part of the fun! We paid 16 dollars combined for those seats! And, let me tell you, we certainly knew that the white ants were our guys and the blue ants, the other team.

Oh, the sights and sounds! The children's choir signing the National Anthem and the heckling! The announced listed off the Indians starting roster and finished by saying "And they are managed by Eric Wedge." Then someone behind me (Yes there were people even higher than us. It is all relative) screams out, "No! They are mismanaged by Eric Wedge!"

Genius! I don't even know why they hate this Eric Wedge guy, but that is right up there with the heckle I heard at a minor league hockey game in Syracuse, NY.

"Get off your knees, ref! You are blowing the game!"

Amazing!

I hope to go to some more games this summer and into the future. I might not like sports very much, but I sure do like the home team. I still use this tired gag whenever conversation lulls, which is something along the lines of, "Well, how about that local sports team?" My college roommate and I had this mini vaudeville bit around the line:

"Hey, how about that local sports team?"

"Oh, they need to fire the manager."

"And build a new stadium."

"Hi-yo!"

OK, well, by vaudeville, I mean nerdy, and by bit, I mean the reason we had no friends!

But now the bit has it's own new cadence, because there is a real local sports team!

So, more games for sure. If we can afford them. I remember reading about how expensive it is to go to a ball game, but it is different actually feeling it in the flesh and pocket book. At 6.25 a beer, I expected to watch a couple of movie previews on the world's largest baseball scoreboard or hear that my connecting flight to Atlanta was canceled.

The prices put a whole new spin on "Take Me Out To The Ball Game!"

Take me out to the ball game!
Take me out to the crowd!
Pawn off your class ring and golden latch
Don't you worry if you get your investment back!
Because it is...
Root, root, foot for the pawn shops!
If they close down it's a shame
Because it is...
ONE!
TWO!
Three mortgages on your house
To go to the old ball game!

But, again, it was fun. There was an energy to the event. The game was sold out and knowing that about 39,999 other people share a common interest with you always takes the sting out of any bullshit life deals you. So, while we still have to deal with George W. Bush, we beat the team he used to (partially) own! WOO HOO! Makes up for the erosion of civil liberties, delay of global warming response, and water boarding with the crack of Ben Francisco's bat and the leather plunk of Grady Sizemore's glove!

Peace!

*I must have gone to umpteen baseball games in Puerto Rico watching the teams of the Professional Baseball League of Puerto Rico. These had their own fun, but were far beyond major league, even though you could see some stars play there during the off season.

Deeper Archives

2008-06-02T23:22:00.003-04:00

One lovely thing about finding a new blog is reading through that blogger's archives. The act helps you familiarize yourself with the blogger and see how he or she got his or her voice. It is akin to tapping into a hot, still aired show into it's third season. You get all the back episodes on DVD box sets or watch them online to understand why everyone is so stoked for a fourth season.
Maybe, someone out there, will stumble upon this blog and say, "I need to read more of Garik! There is still an hour left until quitting time!"

Well, if you like books and the kind of jokes you read in the "Movies I Should Have Already Seen" bits, then you can peruse my Bookcrossing shelf and see the reviews for all those books I contributed to the wonderful experiment of BXing. Like the blog, the earlier posts feature a wide variety of typos and hasty text. The newer ones are sharper and my most recent one was the longest review in my BXing career. So many Bookcrossing reviews are short and lacking. "Hey, I liked it," is not going to get me on a cross-town bus so I can search underneath every desk at a local park for any book.

Enjoy, and another post coming up soon!

Peace!

It's ON!

2008-05-28T12:54:00.004-04:00

You are luck to be alive blog readers because this movie is coming to theaters July 25, 2008.

OH FUCK YES! It is the X-Files: I Want to Believe trailer! The long awaited X-Files sequel's trailer not shot on a cell phone camera!

Wow, am I excited. I just need to live until Transformers 2 comes out in 2009 and then I can die a happy man. Unless they get the ball rolling on a Green Lantern movie sometime in the next twenty years. I need to keep drinking my green tea and jogging if I am going to make it to that one!

I can wax on and on about X-Files. It is the only show where I ever wanted to lash out against so-called "n00bs," and some of those You Tube comments just drove me bat-shit up the wall frustrated. You kids should really watch the whole series until posting up crazy assumptions that will spread on the Internet.

Krycek is dead, folks! At least we should hope so because he is evil incarnate. Didn't you watch the scene where Skinner shoots him through head? It was a religious experience, purgative and exhilarating! We already know the "Truth," just watch the final episode. It tells you everything and, plus, has Adam Baldwin in it, the hero of Canton! It is sad that the Lone Gunmen will not be in it (We are to believe since they died in the regular season), but they died American patriots. You want them to still be plugging away at their basement in northern Virginia and selling all their spy gear to save the struggling paper!?!?!

We already knew that the sequel would be a "Monster of the Week" episode since last year. This is a wonderful thing because Monster of the Week episodes are often overlooked by the neophytes. Your never got your significant other to watch X-Files until you showed them the Flukeman episode from Season 2. Or creeped them out with the Peacocks in Season 4. Leonard the murderous conjoined twin and Big Blue in Georgia! Oh, poor Scully's dog, Queequeg. The first movie attracted non-viewers and fan boys alike with an accessible and engaging script. This is an even wider door open and while the "n00bs" might bug me now, they all become fans and we sure need more of those!

Please mark your calendars for July 25, 2008. Call in sick, leave the dog some extra food in his dish, and try to pass the movie off as an educational home-schooled field trip to your kid's principal! HOORAY FOR X-FILES!!!!

Peace!

Lazy, Hazy Days of Blogging Summer

2008-05-27T09:48:00.006-04:00

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend and that you are ready for summer! It really is the best season.

In homage of my blog post title, here is a little something from the archives. OK, so I am lazy and did not have any err... jokes for you today. Once again, I am conflicted about what to blog about and how to stay consistent with whatever I choose. There are many wonderful blogs and sites out there already that offer sharp observational humor. I feel much more comfortable with pieces about the mad subtleties of Arthur, but probably because I read blogs with similar posts. Whatever did happen to book devouring Garik? I have only read 10 books this year. JESUS! In my defense, I now have subscriptions to The New Yorker, Harpers, and our local paper. I try to read these first because those New Yorkers come to the mail box as fast as they can print them. The New Yorker people must have material queued up for decades. Has John Updike ever taken a break? Chill out, Mr. Updike! The magazine has enough people screaming to have them take a glance at their short story or cartoon without your fine craftsmanship always eating up those pages!

So, I am still reading, but not just too many books.

Great writer are also great readers. I should get back to some serious reading.

Until something really fresh comes along, please enjoy this piece from back in my college days. In my science fiction/fantasy course, our end of the semester project was to put together a book proposal. We had each written several short stories and the hope was to unify them under one banner.

I entitled my proposal, "Town on the Event Horizon," and said that all my stories would take place in one town where strange things happened. And each of the stories would refer to one another. The protagonist from this one story has a coffee at at the cafe where most of the action of this other story takes place. It is Winesburg, Ohio meets Erie, Indiana!

I only had three full pieces written, along with some ideas and sketches for future ones. In my proposal, I had everything connected, but it is a cinch to write proposals. And fun to draw lines between the stories! It is like the play place mats at Denny's!

One of the stories had to be novella length. Unless we had a whole novella ready to go, we could submit a first chapter. Well, here it is. The main character can read peoples minds, but she cannot seem to control the ability. Imagine a radio that is always on and you can get a grasp on the phenomenon. Come to think of it, I use that analogy in the story!

_________________________________________________

Like an Open Book (excerpt)

By Garik Charneco

Last night, around 1:45am, right after I finished American Psycho and wondered exactly why Patrick Bateman did it, I read these three drunken students on the street. They came down the street and stopped to fumble for some smokes right in front of my place. In the lazy half-sleep of just going to bed, my mind sensed fresh thoughts and pounced. I can’t turn off my ability so I spent thirty minutes reading their minds while they sat on the stoop of my apartment complex—smoking.

Maia told herself that this would be her last cigarette tonight and that tomorrow she’d quit. She would do it for Nana. This Maia girl was the nicest of the group—the least drunk and quiet. She took drag after drag, reassuring herself. I hate when people repeat themselves.

Nikki tried counting how many drinks she had that night. There was the three they had back in Rishel, just as pre-game. Then the two tequila shots at the house party and one swig of whiskey from Jared’s hip flask. She struggled with the directions to the after party, wondering whether it was 249 Stark Road or 111 Oris Place. She was always mixing them up. Must be a freshmen, those streets are next to each other.

Jared nursed his hip flask, taking long, hot draughts of whiskey. His thoughts came in hard and rough. A burst of poetry from his seminar here and an image of Maia in her underwear there. He was the easiest to hold onto and almost entertaining, a mental collage of colors, words, and skin.

They finished their cigarettes and Nikki thought about whom to call for a ride. Maia flicked her cigarette into the gutter, stamped it out and focused through her beer buzz for Nana. That always bites back when people try to think clearly and free their minds. It is the psychic equivalent of staring at the sun. Jared screwed the top back onto his hip flask, debating whether to masturbate to Nikki or Maia at the end of the night.

The three of them walked down the street, striking up a conversation. Then it became the standard fare. Action and reaction. The period of “what should I say?” and “uh huh.” I followed them far, something I hadn’t done since high school, sensing the satisfaction of not having to walk to the party and the uncomfortable camaraderie of six people in a four person car. I followed their minds till they were just wisps in my head, squeaky voices and weak thoughts. I should have read a book or something instead, tried to lose them against a backdrop of words, but I went with them and now I feel tired. I went to bed at 2:30 am.

* * *

The clock at the Broken Quill reads 8:57 am. Three minutes later the owner, Mr. Savona, unlocks the front door. I am sitting at the front register, uncurling orange and white rolls of quarters into the tray. Mr. Savona turns and looks at me, giving me a succinct smile even though he wonders whether he’ll catch me reading the books. Mr. Savona lets all his employees read when at the desk but I tend to ignore customers, burying myself in books with characters whose minds are silent. There is this new collection of poetry by this guy out of the city named Calixto that we aren’t even allowed to display yet. The shipment got in yesterday, when I was punching out, but I sensed Mr. Savona hope dreadlock girl did not get to them. I’ll hide it inside a magazine and read it in the morning lull. Mr. Savona walks past the register and thinks that the novelty gifts—The Make Your Own Bonsai Kits and Home Made Voodoo Dolls—are unorganized. There is one pocket dictionary where the magnetic poetry stands, but nothing heavy. I tell Mr. Savona that I will clean up the desk and when he asks how I knew I say, “Initiative, I guess.”

* * *

This child-choked mother stands at the register, a stack of pop up books in front of her. I ring up the books; one on dinosaurs, another on Australian animals and the last on backyard birds, while her two kids claw at her legs. The mother, Debbie, worries whether the kids will actually read these books. She wonders whether they should just be playing outside or maybe in one of those after school clinics like Joanna’s (her sister’s) kids. I pull out a bag, slide the books in, and say, “It is great that they are starting to read so early.” She is mollified for a second and smiles, content that someone else agrees with her and that her sister isn’t always the best. Debbie says, “Oh, you’re so right. Can never start too early. Do you have any suggestions?”

From the tone of her voice, the soft fake edge and hint of nasal intonation I can tell she isn’t interested. This is idle chit-chat; the kind of stuff that everyone tries to make with the cashier while waiting for their change. I look at her kid, the boy, and catch his name: Alex. Then I read a little deeper into Alex’s head and pick up laser firing robots, juices boxes, and big trees to climb. His entire mind feels fast and saccharine, the kind of thing that if cast on a screen gives people epilepsy. His mind is superficial but not shallow enough that I can pick it apart. I only read what is on the surface, what he thinks about at the moment. I hand Debbie the bag. “No not really. Just whatever they like. As long as they read.”

She snatches the bag, slides her handle through the loop and carries the weight on her wrist. She says thanks, but thinks, Some help. Stupid kidt.

I watch her wrangle the two kids together; Alex, who debates whether King Kong could beat The Incredible Hulk, and the other kid, the girl, who is too young to even know her own name. No wonder I read only two heads. Debbie opens the door and the rusted brass bell above the clatters, announcing their departure.

The sound of the bell still rings in my head and it feels kind of good. For a brief few seconds I don’t pick up anything. During that time, I’m an unplugged radio—all potential, but no product. Then the bell stops and my mind lingers, ready to pick up the next customer or passerby the just happens to think too hard. Debbie is still on my mind and I can read her as she fumbles for the keys to her car. I’m not some stupid student. I tried the whole college thing for a while, but it got hideously boring. I knew what all the teachers wanted to hear. Even an open-ended question like “What did you think the author is trying to do in this piece?” was pointless. I dropped out and started working full time at the Broken Quill afterwards. When an old teacher comes into the store and sees that I dropped out they are honestly sad and think What a loss of potential.

I honestly don’t mind the bookstore. I get to read for free and I can’t mind read a character in a book. If Don Quixote trots into the store right now I couldn’t tell why he tilts at windmills, but this kid over by the poetry section I am all over.

He has a big tuft of curly brown hair that comes over his eyes. He is emaciated and looks like an urban refugee, dressed in all black, gray, shoeless moon boots and three chains running from his wait into his back pocket. I squint, focus on his thoughts, and pick up his name. So, Eric what are you thinking about?

Eric curls around a column and balances a thick anthology of 19^th century Romantic poetry in one hand and a crumpled pocket notebook in another. Eric nests the notebook inside the book and whips out a pen. He scribbles away, taking glances at me with every line. He tries to be furtive about all this, taking breaks to scan the room pretending that he is just looking around when he debates a metaphor. This what he writes…

Broken Quill

DNA double helix hair

Shimmer starburst beads

Play in twisted follicles

How did you get that piercing?

On your nose

Didn’t your mother disapprove?

Of that iridescence across your face

Speckled green eyes like

Margarita jelly beans

Razor sharp features

No need for curves

Book store muse

What do you want to read?

I try hard not to laugh. I got some interest in the book from him, but it is camouflage more than anything. I have never been anyone’s muse and I throw Eric a tiny smile, flashing those “razor-sharp” features he likes. He sees me and tries to hide his surprise. He reminds himself to act cool as he slides, out of order, the book back onto the shelf. I single out one of my dreads—one with an orange and cream colored swirl bead—and twirl it in between my thumb and index finger. I chew at one the end of it, while I arch my back against the chair. He forgets about the metaphors and fails to keep cool. He shoves the notebook back into his pocket and walks to the door. He hangs around in front of the register, pretending to read the cover of the magazines Mr. Savona keeps next to the register. He wonders about my name and I lean forward, putting my hands under my chin and letting my hair drape over my eyes. I smile at him again even though all he can think about right now is looking down my shirt. Eric’s eyes dart from the magazines to me and to the door. I pull up and flip through the Calixto poems. Eric thinks Fuck it. Then the hackneyed, Nobody likes me. He looks away from the magazines and shuffled to the front door, defeated and loathing. I sense his final thought coming—smashing through sad little neurons and breaking the surface of his active memory. I want to kill myself.

I laugh because I know he isn’t. He finds suicide appealing but he thinks about it with apprehension and dramatic flare. He looks back at me, his mind snapped to attention and running through a list of possibilities. She has such a sweet laugh. Oh God, what is your name? Was that for me?

Eric opens his eyes and he tries to cut into me, see my soul as he puts it. He stands there at the door under the purple dream catcher Mr. Savona hung up, thinking that he can somehow turn me with just his pale paper bag brown eyes. I blow at the hair in front of my face, so one my tiny dreads swings back up and then I smile, not at him but at the book. He finally gets the message and decides to leave. He thinks I am a bitch that played with his heart. He starts to think about this biting sonnet he is going to write when he gets back to his dorm. Something really harsh in Italian, no Spencerian format that will show them. He thinks about me reading it and then crying at the heartless bitch I was. He imagines me hitting the floor, sobbing, and begging for him to take me back. I say some sappy lines. Stuff like, “I never understood you, baby!” and “Your poetry is too hard for me to understand, but I still love you!” and “I want your cock!”

Still chuckling, I watch Eric leave the store from the reflection on the lacquered counter and with my own minds. I keep reading the book of Calixto poems, happy to experience some real poetry and wonder exactly who the speaker is in this one he entitled “Bruised Apple.” The apple itself or the kid refusing to eat it? I start to lose Eric. He thinks about crossing the street, then about food, how much money he has and then me. But I am reading and his thoughts get fuzzy. He gets farther down the street and I get farther into the poem. I forget how tired I feel and clear my mind till I achieve psychic white noise.

* * *

The rest of the day is uneventful. No more Eric’s thinking about how they want me to suffer in un-publishable poems. Marissa from the rear register decides to cover my post for a bit while I get us coffee. The coffee maker broke. No one wants to admit who did it, but I read Xander at the last store meeting and sensed his guilt over hitting the thing too hard when the water wouldn’t come out of the reservoir. Mr. Savona says he is going to get a new one, but he really thinks we don’t deserve it. Let them bring their own coffee. They won’t waste time at the maker anymore, he though at the meeting as he pretended to write down suggestions for the new maker in a paper pad.

At the coffee shop, I try hard to block out everyone’s thoughts, but the shop is busy. The speakers in the ceiling play a moaning choral music that doesn’t make for a good focus. Surrounded by people I pick up bits and pieces. Someone worries about a deadline over by the napkins. Over by the message board another individual puzzles over what exactly zydeco jam music is? I focus on the lady behind the counter, a big Hispanic woman with greasy curly hair and overalls stained with coffee grounds. She feels angry and thinks about some guy named Roger and how he ruined her business. Her thoughts come in a mix of English and Spanish. Maybe an old boyfriend, I guess, not wanting to pick too deep. I just want the coffee and I put in the order for two tall lattes. I hand her our mugs and she reminds herself to punch in the discount. She goes on to make the coffee and I enjoy the sweet hiss of the coffee machine as it warms milk and water.

No one is behind me, so while she makes the coffee I turn and lean against the register. My mind, stuck on ‘scan’ right now, takes in the entire scene and I hear a few more thoughts. Upstairs there is a paper that needs to be finished. By the bathroom door this one guy thinks, Way too much coffee! There are some sad thoughts—stuff like Should I tell her about that girl last night? and This coffee is going to be my only food today. I swear. Sometimes I get something that feels honestly interesting—when someone wonders about a character’s motivation in a book they are reading or when they gaze at a pamphlet on permaculture farming, wondering how they can help. Then there is the inane—thoughts wasted by over use, thoughts like: Gee, wonder what I want?, Where did I put that extra penny?, That girl looks hot, That guy looks cute, Where did I put my wallet, Weather sure is nice, What a great day, What a crappy day.

I wish the lady gets the coffee made, so I can leave. The coffee shop starts to hurt my head—all the quick thoughts machine-gunning into my head. The whole experience feels like when someone sits on a remote control and the channels on the TV just blur past. Except with me; its ideas, rants, worries, and opinions, and no one gets up to stop it. I sense the Hispanic lady think all done and I turn around to grab the coffee, but I see the reflection in the tip jar. Right under the hand drawn purple and green note that says “Karma Collector” I see him. I didn’t sense this guy. I didn’t feel anything coming from his direction and he is only ten feet away, cradling a steaming cup of oil-slick brown coffee. The Hispanic lady tells me that my coffee is up and I hear her, but I keep my eyes on the man. I fumble for the mugs on the counter and tip some hot latte foam onto my fingers. Wincing, I pull the cups away and hold them against my stomach. I let my tank top soak up the coffee dripping on my hand while I keep looking at this guy. Where did he come from and why don’t I pick up anything from him? What is he doing in the Blue Iris coffee shop just standing in the corner next to a stack of soda can flats? Right now, my mind is entirely blank, just like when I get really into a book or a song. I blink and sway my head around, trying to get something on this guy, but there is nothing. I must still be tired. Some caffeine will do me good and sort this guy out. I lift my cup to my lip and feel a pact of moisture against my stomach. I look down at see a brown splotch at the bottom of my tank—my white tank top, so it looks like some old wound opened up under the cotton. I mutter under my breath and the lady behind the counter thinks Pendeja gringa, whatever that means. My watch says 1:30, so I am late. I hunch over and shuffle out of the Blue Iris trying to ignore the lady behind the counter but she rings inside my head thinking out curses in Spanish.

Back at the Broken Quill, I arrive late, having taken all the quiet alleys and side streets. Marissa’s eyes widen when I walk through the door and I hear her think, Finally! What took you so long? She perks her shoulders and slides the copy of Utne reader off the counter and into the cubbyhole under the register. “Long line or something?” She puts an elbow on the counter and flicks her wrist, so her fingertips reach for me. I hand her the mug and half-smile, feeling actually awkward, as I pry into her head. She is wondering whether there really was a long line and where I got that ugly brown stain on my tank from. She takes a sip from the coffee and is surprised to feel heat still in it. Must be the weather that kept it hot. The radio did say 84 degrees today.

I must look stupid standing at the head of the store with a brown splotch on my stomach and staring at Marissa, who idly sips coffee while playing with the register’s change tray. Marissa’s thoughts bore me. Nothing special, but I still got it. I can still hear her thoughts and comb her short term memory for mental tidbits. That guy in Blue Iris must have been a fluke. I was tired from last night and caffeine deprived from Mr. Savona’s policy. It was loud in the coffee shop, both physically and mentally, so he just slipped past me. It happens and part of my head tells me I should be happy because his presence gave me nothing.

Marissa thinks, Woah. What is that? I circle around the counter and climb up onto the little island in the middle of the bookstore. She forms the question in her head, but I answer before her lips even move.

“I bumped into someone as I left Blue Iris. Spilt a good part of my coffee on myself.” Marissa goes blank, thinking Woah and Umm. I grab the coat I wore over here this morning off the back of the chair and throw it over myself. “It is nothing severe.”

“Oh ok, I’m sorry, but how did you know I was going to ask that before I did?” Starting to feel anxious, she awaits my answer.

“I saw it in your eyes. Just the way you glanced at me when I walked through the door. Besides, it is a pretty huge stain.” I zip up my coat up to the top of my stomach. “Nothing really discrete about it.”

I guess, she thinks feeling satisfied. “Were did you learn that whole face reading thing anyway?”

Motioning around us I tell her, “Read it in a book.” It’s an old joke but she feigns laughter.

“Ok, well do you want me to stay here while you go back home and change or something. You’re here for like another 4 hours, right?”

Marissa is sincere when she says that, but I can also sense how worried she is about Mr. Savona coming back and finding only one register open and two employees. I doubt he will come back. I heard him think It is too nice to stay in here all day and Better go work on the boat while the weather is nice before lunch. I could go back home, but I can only read minds, not the future. I tell Marissa, “I think I’ll live.” She gets out of the chair and feels relieved that I didn’t take her up on the offer. I can’t get another demerit or talking to. She can deal with it. You got to stop being so nice.

I watch her walk away from the desk and take the bend at the travel section. I hope she doesn’t stop being too nice; she’s an easy read.

* * *

At 5:45pm, I am alone in the store. Marissa left at 3:30 and Mr. Savona never returned. I start to close the store; flipping off light switches and re-shelving loose books people leave in the wrong sections. Poetry with poetry, history with history, and humor with humor. I only do the really noticeable ones; like having Crime and Punishment sandwiched in between Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul and Yes, You Can! I take a copy of Invisible Monsters someone left next to Greatest Military Blunders and head towards fiction. I take the bend at travel and I hit a wall of flesh. I drop the book and the tip of the spine hits my big toe; it’s a hardcover and I’m wearing sandals. Curling my toes into rubber sole and biting my lip, I look at whoever I hit and it is him. The same guy from the Blue Iris.

He has a lot on him, but he carries the fat well like if his eyes were meant to sink into two pudgy sinkholes. From the crinkles under his eyes I can tell he is old but he still sports a tuft of gray and black hair under a cap. His skin looks permanently tanned a deep toasty brow, a color I have only seen on pictures of people from islands in the South Pacific. He has no coffee but instead carries a plastic bag from the supermarket, filled with odd polygonal black shapes. Our crash didn’t seem to faze him and he chuckles while I wince. The laughter sounds neutral and hearty, but I don’t know where it’s coming from.

I pick Invisible Monsters off the floor. “Sorry. Um, we are closing in like ten minutes. Is there something I can help you with?” It is the first time I ever ask the question without knowing the answer. Without knowing what section to point to or if we have the book in stock. I only have my thoughts and I wonder how Marissa or the other employees handle customers. The questions are pilling up in my head and I have no way to answer them, except by waiting. He laughs again and I think if people always take this long to answer questions. Is he being rude or should I just give him another second?

He points at me with his bag. “I’m sorry if I surprised you. I just came in here to get a little break from the heat and must have lost track of the time. Afraid I don’t read very much.” All his words come out very slow and long like he is spelling everything out nice and clear. I stare at him, wondering what Marissa, Xander, or Mr. Savoan would do. I remember all the store meetings where Mr. Savona would talk about customer relations and wish I paid attention. He takes the initiative and speaks again. “But since I have troubled you and your store I will buy something.” He looks at the shelves, tilts back a burgundy cap that reads “Xavier Brick Works”, and scratches his head. “You know what I have always liked?”

Normally, I would know but this guy isn’t some fluke; he is a freak. I’m left to guess and I have never guessed with people. I shrug my shoulders and let my hair fall forward so he can’t see how red my face is. “I don’t know. That is up to you.” It is a lame answer and anyone else would have thought up something better, something clever.

“Well that is true.” I shuffled over to the side and points at the science fiction section. “I always loved those space stories. And the really campy ones, I mean. The ones with blue aliens, laser axes, and planets that eat spaceships. You have any of those?”

“Sure.” I motion to a bottom shelf and point out some trade paperbacks in bright neons, smooth pastels, and stylized covers. The art on the covers is better than the books, but it seems to fit the bill. He looks over the books—stuff with titles like Starburst Surprise, Bounty Hunters of Terra Nova, and At the End of the Eclipse. His bag is on the floor and I try to look into it. I make out some sharp lines, angles, and a lot of black. I need an excuse to peer in there. Drop the book again? Trip over him again?

He chooses a book, the bounty hunters one, and grabs the plastic bag. “I think this one will do.” He turns on his feet and walks right by me. I stand next to the shelves and see him take the bend to the front register. “You coming?” I hear the plastic bag crinkle with each of his steps.

I pull at my hair and tuck it behind my shoulders. Following him, I rub my eyes, trying to coerce some read from this guy. At the register I don’t focus on the beep of the keys or ring of change. I keep staring at this guy focusing my eyes on his pudgy ham of a face. The book is $10.15 with tax and I wish he pulls a credit card out of a pocket or that bag—something with a name on it, so I know who he is. But he pays in cash and with exact change.

“I don’t need a bag,” he lifts up his arm and shows me the crinkly plastic hanging from his wrist. “I got my own.”

I tuck the receipt into the book and tell him, “Thanks. Have a good night.”

Bag man says the same, but with a tip of the Xavier Brothers cap. I have never heard of any place like that in town, but I spend the rest of the night pouring over the phonebook. I try Xavier Brothers, then bricks, then masonry, then masons, but nothing. He doesn’t seem from out of town, but the hat must and I close the phone book. I tuck it under the counter and look at my watch—6:35pm. After closing the door and spending 35 minutes of unpaid overtime, I gaze around the street looking for him. There is a pair of parked cars and a jogger that thinks I feel so alive! Bag man isn’t around. I don’t hear the crunch of his plastic bag and I give up on sensing him.

* * *

Next day, I wake up having dreamt of Bag Man. In the dream, he came into the store and left his bag on the counter. I looked into it and saw a burst of light come from the crinkles and folds in the plastic. Then I woke up, a full hour before my alarm. I dress for work slowly, always thinking of Bag Man and still trying to remain collected, like if he were there, staring at me, looking for some sort of reaction to his unreadable state of mind. Outside the leaves on trees hang limp and the most common thought I pick up while walking to work is So hot! At the Broken Quill, Mr. Savona blasts the air conditioning and we have a dozen people loitering in the cool halls, escaping from the heat like Bag Man last night. Xander, the coffee maker breaker, stands at the register and rings up a beaded bookmark this lady is buying because she feels bad that she came in here just to dodge the heat. But it is so hot out there! This will make due.

__________________________________________

Any people from Ithaca might note the similarities to local stores or situations. Or maybe not. All my stories have a decent touch of self-awareness in them, particularly this one. Everything happens too neatly and too well explained. How you exactly "show" and "not tell" is still beyond my grasp.

I had several ideas of where to go with the Bag Man. One would be that he is somewhat mentally disabled. Autism was one specific idea. That would be hard to pull off without cowtowing to disability stereotypes. Another is that he suffered a head injury at the brick works. But that sounds too much like a Daffy Duck routine. I had a change set up for the main character, which is critical to fiction. The narrator, previously annoyed with her power (Who is not named in this excerpt, but in my proposal was called Emily), now needs to find out why the do not work on this man. Her whole life is suddenly thrown off kilter. The idea with Emily was that she had this power since birth. Imagine losing an entire sense or nervous reflex. How it would excactly end is always my big question.

Peace!

More Cartoons

2008-05-21T17:12:00.010-04:00

If you did not get it from the previous post, I still watch cartoons. In secret and alone, you see. Well, until I tell everyone about it on the blog, but I am relying on the time and media cushion divide in these posts.

Unfortunately, our current TV line up does not feature as many awesome cartoons as I was used to. "

Hey, it is 5 in the afternoon! Where is Toonami? Saturday nights!? No fair! I actually do stuff on Saturday nights now! I have a fiancee! And a local sports team to root for!"

With much less awesome things to watch, I am forced to learn how to read all over again with the line-up on PBS. Previous to recent weeks, my only exposure to PBS was Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? Unlike the commercial network affiliates, Puerto Rico did have both national PBS stations and homegrown ones as well. The national ones were weird with English language broadcasts of Nova and the kids show, but then Spanish language local shows. I guess there is some wacky whimsy in all of that. You capture Carmen San Diego in the North America map and then learn how to make tostones! Still, my exposure to PBS was limited.

Actually, that is one of the minor culture shocks I ever experienced in moving to the U.S. mainland. PBS and all other public broadcasting play a huge role in American culture. Even immersed in commercial broadcasts, we recognized public touchstones. Embarrassingly enough, the first time I ever heard of Frontline was during the classic David Chappelle "Black White Supremacist" sketch from his TV show. Hey, I was raised by cable TV. It is a true status symbol in PR and I used to dread going to my grandmother's house because she only had local TV! The Simpsons and Fresh Prince of Bel Air dubbed into Spanish! And the kind of Spanish they speak in Spain! Castillian*! What the hell does vosotros mean!? Hee hee, bicho means penis Homer, not insect.

I am watching PBS from now on and one kids show is particularly wacky and wonderful to blog away...

Go ahead, judge me!

I first discovered Arthur in an episode where he decides to watch the popular kiddie show Love Ducks over the Batman-inspired Dark Bunny show. Art really does imitate life! Or at least my fall asleep on the couch at 1:30 PM and make yourself a sandwich just in time for kids show kind of life. I did tell you it was OK to judge me, right? I take that back.

Today's was particularly mind-bending. Remember that this is a fictional city full of anthropomorphized animals. Keep that in mind when everyone seems just a bit too excited that the second (Better watch out KFC. Two of 'em!) location of the Lickin' Chickin' fast food joint coming to town. Do aardvarks, monkeys, rabbits, and moose eat chicken? The kids need PBS to help them learn to read, but the food chain and basic biology, well we better hope the kids find a dead millipede on the playground asphalt and that those ants come a coming. Or that there moms tell them where Happy Meals really come from!

Of course, Elmwood City can't have its improved sales tax parcel and keep the kids happy. The new location will be right over the beloved Sugar Bowl restaurant where all the kids gather for ice cream and sodas. Do third graders really spend that much time hanging out at local establishments. When I was in the third grade, I didn't have enough money fill a jar of instant coffee much less buy those monster sundaes.

Bu the kids are wish to them chicken folks. They know that corporate chains often promised increased tax revenues, more jobs, and better markets, but then move out to the other friggin municipality once your assessments go up or the school district needs to be bailed out! Or that there strict zero tolerance policies on minor crimes like loitering or petty theft burden the already over-worked police force! Oh, and that the kids will really miss their ice cream.

Anyway, one of the kids learn from her diplomat parents (So I am guessing Elmwood City is close to the Arthur equivalent of NYC, DC, or LA, right?) that she should try something like a letter writing campaign or a protest.

So, Sue Ellen, who I guess is some sort of 2-D Muppet enlists the help of the local kids to make a difference. "5-6-7-8, keep your chicken off our plates!," goes the second half of their chant. The kids do pretty well getting ready. The last time I went to a protest, we had a hard time getting 19-year old college kids to get up for a 7am bus to DC. Buster Bunny does mess up a sign when he writes "Safe the Sugar Bowl," which Sue Ellen quickly corrects in Arthur-world Sharpie (A Pointy?). Isn't this show about reading? Way to go Buster!

The Anarchist Cookbook! With illustrations by Richard Scarry!

I am no Arthur-pro, but I have to admire its sense of self-awareness and tongue-in-cheek attitude. They have a Sopranos knockoff called the Altos and Arthur gets to run the "bleep" machine! If there is anything else you could want from a kid's show then it must not be legal.

With that said, the protest does not go too well. The rich girl, Muffy, tries to sway Sue Ellen to not protesting and letting her father set-up a rival taco franchise in the space. Muffy even tries to bribe her! "Oh, look what someone left behind [on the floor of her limo]! A Brand New Polly Princess Pocket watch!" Or, "Want to go around the block in my limo. It is so comfy and toasty here with some hot chocolate!"

Pretty sneaky, Muffy. But Sue Ellen doesn't bite because she realizes that she should wait for the hard cas...err...I mean she is the heroine and teaching the kids a lesson. No candy bars and plastic trinkets can stop her!

And there are only about five kids at the protest. Every animal in Elmwood City seems set on feasting on the fried flesh of fellow animals. It reminds of that Pizza Hut commercial where Ms. Piggy eats a sausage pizza. Hey, kids! Ever hear of the ouroboros! Wait, don't run! There is more Arthur to talk about! Maybe a bit too much Arthur. Hmm, I would go cry in my car if I had a car. And I just sold my bicycle on Craigslist! WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

By the end of the episode it looks like the Sugar Bowl will close. However, it is saved when GASP, the local citizenry begins to support it again! The same phenomenon happened in Ithaca with a great local bookstore. People racked up purchases on Amazon and the Barnes and Nobles on Route 13 and did not frequent the local place. When it announced a going out of business sales everyone and everything from dark energy to Dick Cheney was blamed. The store drummed up some sales and continues today and, hopefully, into the future.

I will keep this all in mind when donating to the local PBS station.

Peace!

*Hey, Spain. Hey ,Spain! Spanish and Castillian ARE THE SAME THING!!!!!

Mobius Strip

2008-05-20T11:07:00.003-04:00

Have you been enjoying the frequent blog posts? Well, great! You can thank all the time I have had on my hands as of late*. And what better way then blogging away and digging through the archives of YouTube.

Of lately, I have lost myself in a time warp back to the mid 1990's. Those YouTube lawyers might have scoured the airwaves for anything Viacom, but the wealth of entire TV episodes speaks to the power of nostalgia and sheer ingenuity.

Entire episodes of Swat KATS, Batman Beyond, VR Troopers, Gundam Wing, Samurai Pizza Cats, Wing Commander Academy, and Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills!

There is something odd and infinite about watching these shows again as an adult. So many hours spent watching them at home and, now, entire afternoons lost to the digital video channels. Of course, I should probably go play outside because, back then, it would do a boy well and, now, it would lessen my fat ass. There is also a bit of justice, scales falling from my eyes and what not.

Some of these shows were absolutely crazy. Pizza Cats was particularly insane, the kind of stuff they probably play at Guatanamo Bay to break enemy combatants. Did you see that intro? There are anime purists out there that think that is tame. They wear their armor all the time, get shot out of a revolver cannon on top of a pagoda pizza place, and one fights with an umbrella. The main villain has a banana for a nose!
It was aired on WPIX, which is now a CW affiliate in New York City. Being Puerto Rico, we had not network affiliates so your cable provider would choose whatever it wanted. We mostly had NYC stations, but by the time I hit puberty, our ABC affiliate came out of Nashville. It did not matter much to me then since we still had all those cartoons.

Sticking with the cat team, I was pleased to see how well Swat KATS held up. That was my 60's Batman. They had a missile for everything and the fighter jet spat out more cat themed things than Noah's Ark. Octopus missiles! Mole Missiles! Drill Bits Missiles! Shark Repellent Missi...err...well we never saw that one, but I am sure that Razor and T-Bone had it. When I turn on the TV today, Saturday morning seems dominated by horrible anime imports. Back when I was a kid, the anime dubs seemed counterbalanced by a fine crop of American animation like SWAT Kats or Tiny Toons. Now it feels like it is the mold and kids are shocked to see something that has normal sized-eyes and none of those weird sweat drop effects. I mean, we had three Sonic the Hedgehog cartoons and the only spikey hair was on the damn hedgehog! Like with the new Transformers cartoon, I realize that styles change and animators want to go in a new direction, but why should kids only know one cartoon style? We are sending the message that if something is anime and/or from Japan, then it must be good. That is ridiculous. We know that not all movies are great just because we saw Citizen Kane. All those great works of literature cannot defend Wild Animus. And Princess Mononoke cannot defend Hentai, Tentacle Rape, or One Piece!

Wow, I watch a lot of cartoons. STILL! No wonder I can't write a decent short story. My mind is set for...HORRIBLE FAN FICTION! Stop laughing at me! Just like when I was a kid! CURSE YOU CARTOON COSMIC ELEGANCE!

If you are of my same persuasion and want some serious "Oh, Hell Yeah" moments...check these out.

Peace!

*Ok, so I am in between jobs. But, you like the blog posts, eh?

Run Time

2008-05-19T11:01:00.004-04:00

I took a jog the other day. The first one in my entire life. I always feel like watching me "work out" has to be hilarious. Recently, I had the chance to play with a puppy that had yet to grow into its legs. She was a Bernese Mountain Dog, a huge breed with bear like paws. She ran in a broken half-step best described as a stumble-gallop. At certain points she did not move her joints, but instead quickly thrashed across the carpet, swaying her hips and moving her static legs. That should give you an idea of me running.

Of course, I did not run the entire two miles. I jogged for a three minutes and then looked around to see if there was no one around me. When all clear I would simply walk. Sometimes I tried to be clever about it. Pretending my cell phone was ringing or the MP3 player was acting up. "Stupid machine! Now my heart rate will go down. Oh, better ease into the next sprint."

I just realized that I don't necessarily have the discipline to write a full blown short story. Oh, I can write up some asides and vignettes, but it is damn hard to create characters. Good characters. If anyone here has noticed a push towards more non-fiction and notes of journalism, then they are all on purpose. I mention this little confession because I also lack the discipline to jog. Exercising au natural requires the need to keep a constant beat. I shouldn't need a particular good riff during a song to keep me going. There are only so many times one man can hear "Highway To The Danger Zone."

I can only blame myself, but my jog proved much "higher impact" than anything I had done in a gym. The following day my entire body felt like hell. After my initial jog, I also tried my hand at small engine repair and lifted up a hundred pound outboard motor for a two-hour tinkering session. That is a whole other post, but, seriously, I was beat. Sore muscles are the worse feeling. That feeling of "Hey, I just worked out! Hooray for my heart!" feeling last until you take a shower, which hopefully is really soon after you are done running. But sore muscles last for about three days. Legs seem to buckle under you and thighs become coiled ropes, taut and stressed like dock ropes pulled too far. My ropey arms should not have these many aches and my chest seems to pull up and into itself. As a struggling writer, I realize that cliches like "hurt in places that you did not even know existed" are weak. There seems to be cosmic justice when you realize there is not better way to describe what you are feeling.

I think I will stick to the indoor gym. Of course, at this point I am not in the situation to pay for a gym membership, even at the local YMCA. That damn song mislead me. I'll try something here in the apartment. I wonder how thick the downstairs ceiling are and whether the neighbors own a gun...

Peace!

Bird of Prey

2008-05-15T00:07:00.006-04:00

I always hesitate to put up some simple picture and quickly comment on it. Sure, I have done it before, but I liked that as much as I liked not posting.

However, I am not made of stone and this is fucking awesome...

That is Swiss pilot Yves Rossy flying a JET POWERED, BACK PACKED, SET OF WINGS over the Swiss Alps. Many, many, many decades since The Day The Earth Stood Still, since we boldly went where no man went before, and since we walked without rhythm it is about time we got a working jet pack! Now we just need those hyperdrives and wrist rockets.

While it has always been humanity's dream to fly, I can't help but see how life catches up to art. Or pop-art depending on how you consider those old comics where a disgruntled inventor turns that suit of armor he was developing for peace (Seriously? Were those spinning saw blades supposed to scythe stalks of rice?) into a killing machine. The Marvel universe is full of such maniacs. Except, Yves will certainly use his machine for good. Like flying over the English Channel or, ultimately, through the Grand Canyon*.

Imagine flying through the red rock formations of the Grand Canyon. The green-blue waters of the Colorado River dampen your flight suit as you start at Le Poudre Pass Lake and then you start to scare canoers all through eastern Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. You get close to the Gulf of California, but by then the whole river has gone dry and the only sign of its water is the vineyard leaves stuck to your nylon wings. It would be flying up and over aviation and ecological history, plus an unforgettable slice of Americana. I give it fifteen years until flying the Grand Canyon on a JET POWERED, BACK PACKED, SET OF WINGS becomes the new pinnacle of daredevilry, usurping riding a barrel over Niagara Falls or burying oneself alive.

Check out more pictures and news of Yves Rossy on his website. It never loaded for me, but probably only because the sheer weight of all those girls underpants must mess with the servers. Or you can You Tube the hell out of him.

Peace!

All photos credit of the Associated Press. Please don't sue! I think your style rocks!

*Oh, and the sheer amount of potential Star Wars references dizzies me! Beggar's Canyon, Womp Rats, the Death Star Run! Thank you, Yves Rossy!