Movies December 2009

Gilmore Girls, season 7, disc 1
We had heard that this final season of GG takes a quality nosedive due to a lack of Palladinos. This wasn't bad, but it was missing something that I haven't homed in on.

I Am Legend
I had read the meh reviews, but I like sci-fi apocalypse, and Will Smith can be entertaining, and what the hell. On viewing, both M and I agree, its deeply stupid parts mar the whole. Not terrible, but not an experience for willful repetition.

Gilmore Girls, season 7, disc 2
This is where the show gets the worst of all fates... mediocre. Not bad, just miserably average.

Samurai Champloo, disc 4
Good, but Mugen's background story was confusing.

G.I. Joe Resolute
I watched this about three times, studying it. It was built for the Web, in segments, meaning that in addition to telling one large coherent story, it had to tell 7 or 8 coherent miniature stories within that had their own matryoshka doll structure and cliffhangers. The initial setup is so fast and choppy you really don't know what's happening the first time you watch it, but the rest of it flows well enough. It makes perfect sense that they got a comic book writer to do this (Warren Ellis). He's already wired to do this.

The anime stylings were gorgeous, and from the extras I learned a new term for this kind of IP: "military fantasy." Well done, lads!

Sherlock Holmes
Much better than I thought it would be! It was more of a reverse caper movie than a mystery, but man, mysteries are dang hard to do well in film. This was just fine. I like a kinetic self-absorbed genius Sherlock Holmes. And I like most things Guy Richie does. So not only did I not mind the liberties taken, I enjoyed them.

Avatar
Here's my tip from my Lucasfilm days: When advanced press spends a lot of time talking about the technical wizardry behind a movie, it's probably because that's the movie's strong suit. M hated this movie so hard, but I thought it was ok, except that every single thing that happened was as predictable as gravity. There were some fun comparison to Aliens--particularly matching Carter Burke up with Parker Selfridge.

Eh? Separated at birth? Eh? Eh?

John Mackey on corporations as do-gooders

Part 54 zillion in a series of musings about capitaltruism, an excerpt from a New Yorker article about John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods:

[Mackey] "...This is a paradigm that has polarized our country and led to bad thinking. It’s holding the nation’s progress back. It’s as if there were a wall. And on one side of the wall is this belief that not-for-profits and government exist for public service, and that they’re fundamentally altruistic, that they have a deeper purpose, and they’re doing good in the world, and they have pure motives. On the other side of the wall are corporations. And they’re just selfish and greedy. They have no purpose other than to make money. They’re a bunch of psychopaths. And I’d like to tear that wall down. Human beings are obviously self-interested. We do look after ourselves, but we’re capable of love, empathy, and compassion, and I don’t see that business is any different.”

He went on, “We’re trying to do good. And we’re trying to make money. The more money we make, the more good we can do.” By this, he had in mind not the traditional philanthropic argument that more money earned equals more to give away but, rather, that a good company—that is, his company—which sells good things and treats its employees, shareholders, customers, and suppliers well, can spread goodness simply by thriving.

This was a variation on what he calls “conscious capitalism,” which some people, smelling an oxymoron, or worse, snicker at. His idea is that business should have a higher purpose—that, just as doctors heal and teachers educate, businesspeople should be after something besides money. It may be an easier argument for a grocer to make; he feeds people, and if he feeds them properly he heals and educates them, too. But it borders on humbug when you apply it to, say, Wall Street. Consciousness, as it relates to capitalism, is in the eyes not so much of the beholder as of the capitalist.

via Kottke.
Read the whole article at your leisure.

Yuletide Existentialism

I've just finished the checklist, and now I'm certain that we have every physical object we need in this household. Everything necessary for a full and healthy life is contained in this building. We also have many of the things we want and enjoy on top of that.

Now what?

If I can't answer that question, what was I collecting shit for in the first place? Why have a thing if you have no purpose for the thing?

Why does everyone else roll their eyes when I start talking like this? Am I missing something obvious? I'm willing to be the dumbass if someone will just explain it to me slowly.

I don't want to go all Charlie Brown Christmas Special here, but if it's about Jesus, then where the fuck is Jesus? I didn't see a lot of him on December 25. I saw a bunch of people open boxes of crap they didn't need or even want all that badly and act delighted about it. And I participated. And I felt dirty about it.

I'm a pretty miserable Jesus follower. But it's funny that I seldom feel like a miserable Jesus follower when I really am being miserable at it.

I'm done with this mealy-mouthed Christmas shit. I always feel a little sick and disconnected going into Christmas, and I'm not doing that any more. I'm not going to play along next year. I don't know what I'm going to do, and I hope I don't alienate my wife in the process, but I don't have the stomach for make-nice any more.

Trust in the Lord

I am told that God loves us, and rescues us from our sins and enemies.

But God also leaves us to suffer the consequences of our insistent foolishness, and to suffer other people's foolish consequences as well.

This is one reason why I don't trust God. Even when I ask him to save me, he might not. How can I trust that?

Consignment

Every once in a while, someone sees something you got and wants to talk to you about combining your thing with their thing. Maybe they want to hire you, or perform with you. In college, the student ministries director thought I'd be perfect to preach in Guam for a summer.

These propositions are a little magical. They mean someone looked at you and saw merit and wanted to risk a little something on you.*

Historically, I stumble all over these offers. I get self-conscious and either back away thinking I can't live up to it (cf. Guam) or freeze up when called to produce (cf. lots of other things).

But this year, I told myself the next time one of these offers came I would grab it with both hands.

At Art Shop this year, a consignment shop owner, Square Peg Artery near Rittenhouse Square, was cruising the aisles looking for talent. We talked, we traded business cards, and she followed up.

It's not a big opportunity, but it's big enough to start with. I'm learning marketing with my bare hands, and this is another round of class. Get the product out there. Make money if you can, lose it if you must, but get eyeballs on your goods.

I'll try real hard not to fumble this one. And if I do, I damn well mean to learn something from it.

The picture, by the way, is of a monster available at the Artery. Swing by their store at 108 S. 20th St and take a look around while you're out xmas shopping.


*Precluding scammers and the deluded. Those types are usually easy to spot if you're doing due diligence. I'm talking about the genuine article here.

Your New Flying Car

This is not your new flying car, the post title is totally misleading, I don't know who wrote that.

But it strikes me as an eminently more doable flying car than the plane-like things people try to pass off as flying cars. Anything that requires you to think about a mile ahead will not become mass market. The ramifications of momentary inattention are too dire.

But something sort of helicoptery, I could see that for taxis and getting around Rio de Janeiro and such.

Art Shop 2009 Post-Mortem

Art Shop is over, and I did pretty well! I'm about to go into a long review, mainly for my own benefit, so feel free to drop out any time this gets boring.

I have only two data points: last year and this year. So I'm not sure how meaningful my conclusions are. But I'm trying to draw some anyway.

The overarching lesson this year is from my neighbor Liz, who was selling smart-looking hand-knitted sweaters. The lesson: "Business is fickle." You do your homework, and you hedge your bets, and then you show up and hope. You don't know when it's going to go well or go badly. You go anyway.

More specific observations:

• This year's commercial breakthrough was diversification. I had a few normal monsters (fewer than last year), a bunch of pattern monsters, some tetris magnet sets, and random stuff I glued googly eyes onto. This provided a nice price spread from $40 down to $1 for the Things With Eyes. (I also sold coasters for my sister-in-law, Alison).

• The ratio of "Cool!" to "Sold!" is about 10:1.

• I didn't bring some things I wanted to. I wanted to make hats, but I never did the R&D to be able to churn out a bunch, and I didn't want to show up with only one or two. I also had meant to make pillows out of t-shirts, but the dog ate my homework there (literally), and I was already staying up late finishing monsters and freelance as it was. So I let it go. It's probably just as well -- the table was full enough. But I coulda sold the headlice out of hats, I think.

• Got lots of compliments, and someone said to me, "Everyone is talking about your stuff!" Meredith pointed out that it must feel good to hear people say nice things about my work. And it should. I've tried to figure out why it doesn't.
  
  My guess is that I have a subcutaneous cynicism that distrusts inert talk. Telling me you like my work is swell, but like it with your wallet, and I'm more inclined to believe you.
  
  I mean, regardless of origin or intent, a compliment is a compliment, and kindness is not so abundant that I'm willing to wave it away. But there's still a stark line in my heart between "talk" and "walk."
  
  Cynicism is low on my list of favorite character traits. But it's often coupled with a constructive shrewdness. I haven't discerned how to gerrymander my feelings to properly segregate "good judgment" and "bad faith." But at least I'm happy I've discovered it's important to do that.

• Everybody DOES love monsters, but everybody also loves utility. Based on some half-verbalized semi-criticisms, I got the impression that many people think stuffed monsters are only for children. Items that look fun and cool are ok for children, but not adults. Had I ingrained some sort of usefulness into the product (here's where a hat would have come in handy) I would have had more admirers and customers.

• I can't tell whether low-pressure sales is better for business in dollar terms, but I can tell I feel icky about applying pressure. I only want to sell to people who already want to buy. I get no joy from persuasion.
  

• Some of last years' monsters didn't sell, and I brought them home thinking that they must have been defective in some way. They were unbeloved, and therefore I had failed. I took them back this year anyway, to fill out the ranks. To my surprise, they sold, to people who seemed happy to have them.
  
  So the new conclusion is that some products hit certain people a certain way, and you don't know who or when. There might be some genuine stinkers in the bunch, and you hope to weed those out as soon as possible. But sometimes a creation's buyer just hasn't come along yet.

• Last year I sold a bunch of stuff on Friday, and Saturday was dead. Low point: Some woman spent most of an hour letting her daughter amuse herself at my booth while she talked, and then bought nada. However, my goal had been to make enough to cover my new sewing machine, and I did that, so mission accomplished.
  
  This year, I did only so-so on Friday, and going into Saturday I did a lot of hand-wringing about how bad I feared business would be, especially after a quiet first hour. I heard people say "Friday is more social; Saturday is the day more people buy." But that hadn't been my experience.
  
  Turns out, people were right. Saturday mysteriously picked up around 1:00, and I did decently thereafter. When I tallied up sales, I made a significantly larger amount of money this year compared to last year.

• I dropped my prices a little on magnets and big monsters on Saturday after disappointing Friday night sales. Both sold better on Saturday. I don't know whether it was because of the price drop or the motivated Saturday shoppers. For monsters anyway, my hunch is $40 is a breaking point for a lot of people. They'll bite at $35, but $40 is too much.

• When I say I did "decently", we're still not talking a lot of money. I probably did a little better than break even on the hobby this year. Which is cool with me. I'm interested to turn this into more of an income stream, but a self-funding hobby is sufficient gratification.

• An artsy consignment shop downtown wants to sell my monsters. Sweet! I'll probably have more to say about that in a couple weeks.
  

• I've set a goal to attend at least one more art/craft show in 2010 as a vendor. I need more data points.

If you came out to Art Shop this year, whether or not you bought a monster, then my sincere thanks. If you DID buy something, then I hope it brings you joy and amusement. See all y'all next year.