Movies June 2009

Legend of the Drunken Master
Early Jackie Chan. He hasn't hit his stride yet here, but he's still fun to watch.

Avatar: The Last Airbender, season 3
While working on the A:tLA card game a few years ago for Upper Deck, I watched all of season 1 and part of season 2 to get up to speed on the show. I liked it for the rich setting, well-written characters, comedy, and unexpected twists. So I jumped at finishing the series on Netflix, finishing season 2 and watching all of season 3.

I love this show more than ever now. It transcended children's entertainment, and the love its creators invested in it shows. Plus, the M. Night Shymalan version comes out next month, and it's nice to be reacquainted with the characters before that hits.

Master of the Flying Guillotine
More kung fu classic cinema.

Mystery Team
This movie about boy detectives who solve a real adult crime was pretty fun. I watched it because I'm becoming a fan of Donald Glover, who wrote for 30 Rock, stars in Community, and is part of the Derrick Comedy group. Maybe not a great movie, but a fun movie.

Death Note
The Japanese movie base on the manga about a guy who finds a notebook with the power to kill whoever's name is written in it. And the cat and mouse to find him once the police figure out it's weird murder. I've never read the manga, but the movie was good diversion. Above average. Kept me interested.

Death Note: Last Name
The second part? I guess? See above.

Connected
A short film about people after some apocalypse. Tense and well done. You can watch it now.

JCVD
Jean-Claude Van Damme is the Rodney Dangerfield of the action movie star set. Some pathos. Some comedy. Pretty fun.

Steel Magnolias
Nice dialogue.

The Karate Kid (2010)
And we close with modern Jackie Chan. You know, this was fine. The best part was Jackie Chan beating the mean kids up. The rest was nice enough.

Movies May 2009

The Office, season 4

The Office, season 5

Once Upon a Time in the West
A great western. I just watched it and I already think I probably need to see it again.

The Empire Strikes Back

The Twilight Samurai
5 Stars. Not a martial arts movie in a Bruce Lee sense. Very little swordplay. But moving and sweet.

The Return of the Jedi

The new free lunch

Yesterday at my favorite burrito chain, Qdoba, I was musing to M about whether a completely ad-run restaurant could work. I'm paying $6 for a burrito. I don't know much about restaurant margins... they're thin I hear... but how expensive is it to make that burrito? Ingredients, hired help, rent, blah blah... what are we talking, an amortized three bucks each? Let's say $3.

This particular Qdoba is located near a bunch of expensive universities. Haverford and St. Joe's kids are in there all the time; Penn isn't too far away as the crow flies. That is juicy marketing target -- young AND moneyed.

If you could guarantee delivery of rich college eyeballs, how much would a well-targeted advertiser pay? Would they pay $3 per impression? Would five advertisers pay $.60 each?

What if you made your customer fill out a survey for their free food too? Wouldn't some marketing firm love to have that steady stream of data? They'll pay more than $3 a pop to get these peoples' opinions in other venues, right?

Then sell space on some tasteful wall posters, sell the tray liner space... as long as you don't get greedy and sell every ceiling tile, you could make this work.

The food would have to be good. You couldn't ever let food quality drop. But otherwise, this seems like it would make at least as much profit as a regular burrito joint. There must be some reason why this hasn't been tried yet, right?

Then, that very same day, I see this: Panera: Pay What You Can Afford.

“Take what you need, leave your fair share,” says a sign at the entrance of the Saint Louis Bread Company Cares Café. Patrons who can’t pay are asked to volunteer their time.

The café, which reopened Sunday as a nonprofit, has cashiers who provide receipts with suggested prices and direct customers to the store’s five donation boxes. The menu is the same, except for the day-old baked goods brought in from sister stores in the area.

“I’m trying to find out what human nature is all about,” Ron Shaich, who stepped down as Panera’s CEO last week but remains as chairman, told USA Today. “My hope is that we can eventually do this in every community where there’s a Panera.”

Not quite the same thing, but maybe one better.

The continued work of awakening

I dreamed last night that I heard Steve Taylor died, so I Googled him to find out if it was true, and to my horror -- surprise twist! -- there was no mention of Roland Steven Taylor on the Internet at all.

Now that I'm up, I don't know why that was horrific, but in dreamworld, this was like taking the final exam for the class you forgot you signed up for. OMG serious.

On awaking, I immediately went downstairs and let the dog out and checked my email. Sometime later in the morning, I checked on Steve. Nobody panic.

If you knew me well in college, you knew I was pretty into Steve Taylor. He was funny, clever, pro-Jesus, and he could do it all in song. My personal ambition sleepwalked through college... I couldn't say I wanted to do what he did. But Steve Taylor was a noise the direction of wakefulness.

Around the time I graduated, he released his best album, Squint, and then traded performing for producing. It was the mid-90s, we were all becoming different people at that point. I started working on Dungeons & Dragons for a living then. We've all been there.

In the mid-aughts I checked in on Steve again, and found he'd gone to movie making. He made a flick starring Michael W. Smith of all people, called The Second Chance. It's a buddy movie about a white suburban pastor and a black inner-city pastor. It's in my Netflix queue now, I'll let you know what I think at the end of the month after I watch it.

And today? Now? He's in Portland working on a Blue Like Jazz movie.

BLJ's author, Donald Miller, is someone else I would have wanted to emulate if his books had been around in college. I'm sort of glad they weren't. They could have misled a sleepwalker.

These days, I get a prickly feeling on my neck when I consider trying to create some piece of art for an explicitly Christian audience. It seems as though it would be easy for me. And financially rewarding. I could do funny, touching memoir for the saved set. I could do a passable Don Miller.

But as I start down that road, I think of Jesus talking:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

A whole chunk of text there, Matthew 5:43-48, has kept me up nights. That bite's got a lot of hard-to-swallow. Jesus tells you to be "perfect" in there. He tells you the rough truth that God makes the rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. And to me, he says that writing books for my brothers and sisters is not particularly what I'm called to do.

Look, God has a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people to be doing. I still love Steve Taylor's music and wit, and Don Miller is a decent writer. Don't hear me saying that what they've chosen to do is wrong or subpar or Not In God's Will.

But as my personal ambition rubs away eye boogers and stares into the bathroom mirror wondering when it shaved last, those noises... they're not for me to follow. I don't want to greet my brothers for a living. There's too many other people out there who need introductions.

I am glad Steve is alive, though. Check out his movie blog.

I am two metaphors for the economy

I am the canary in the coal mine of American jobs. As a serial freelancer and contract worker, I am the first one down when unemployment gas leaks out.

Happily, lately, I've been finding jobs again. If you're not clear how the economy's doing, ask me if I've got a job. It's a telling pixel of what's on the bigger screen.

Movies April 2010

The Men Who Stare at Goats
This movie could have been funny, but somehow... maybe in the editing? The jokes just fell flat. It was like comedy archaeology: You could see the bones of jokes. The set up, the punchline, the reaction, they were all there, but the meat was gone. Not funny. I don't understand what went wrong. All those great actors were doing decent work. But then the movie fell flat. Weird.

Whip It
If I were a girl, I guess I'd feel lightly empowered or something after this.

Fringe, season 1, disc 1

This is ok, I guess. The X-Files-y sci-fi of it is pretty cool, but the characters don't do much for me.

The Office, season 2

Netflix on Xbox lets us stream whole seasons of this show. So during protracted illness and unemployment, we watched a hella lot of Office. It's pretty good, although I am thankful that the show becomes less excruciating as it goes on. I had anxiety dreams starring Michael Scott halfway through the season I'm not eager to reproduce.

The Office, season 3
More of this.

Zombieland
This was fun. Pretty fun.

Transformers Animated
The animation here was weird, like, either the Koreans went off-model with impunity, or somebody was trying something "new" that didn't work when it comes to character elasticity. Especially the little girl, who seemed to change shape and proportions at random.

The story was ok though, especially for a G1 man such as myself.

Movies March 2010

30 Rock, season 3, disc 2
"Did Cranston give you my messages?"

Super Size Me

The third in the trifecta of fast food horror documentaries.

Transformers
Didn't care for this movie much, but we all knew that would happen, so let's move on to the interesting part: The way I watched it. Normally, I like to remove all distraction, sit down, and watch a movie in one sitting. I didn't do that here, and I blame 30 Rock. Watching 22-minute TV episodes is delightful. Watch one, you're done, a nice bedtime story or a responsible half-hour filler. Watch two, it's an hour with an intermission. I've gotten used to it. I like it.

So I watched this movie that way too, without pressure. When I wanted to stop, I got up and did something else. I expect most films to have an emotional arc best experienced in one sitting, but I didn't feel robbed, because it was just a lousy Michael Bay Transformers movie. Go team Jeff!

The Invention of Lying
I love alternate reality, and I love high concept. Even if it turned out to be antithetical to some of my own beliefs, I was ready to be amused and challenged on a long plane flight to Rome by The Invention of Lying. However, this movie had a big, stupid flaw, namely, an inherent unreality that drives a truck over suspension of disbelief. Killed this movie dead for me.

Here's the thing: religion is a part of human existence. Let's start secular and empirical: Religion has shaped culture, history, art, government, and language in every part of the world for every human, everywhere. This is not wispy poetry-and-flowers talk, this is way shit is. Even if you think religion is bogus, it has MADE you in ways you can't control.

So it will be understandably difficult to envision a world without it. You have to rethink everything, including, literally, how you think. What is justice? What is evil? Why wear clothes?

I don't expect Ricky Gervais to have a philosophically defensible rubric here, but some sense that he'd spent some time on the implications would help me like the movie. Genetic advancement? That's your highest imperative? How does anything get done then? Why isn't everyone living in huts? (Because a whole lot of architecture got done because of religion. Architects and engineers are not, historically, renowned for genetic excellence.)

That's the big one. That's the problem I can't get past, intellectually. But then there's another horrible flaw this movie purports: that honesty is cruel. That kindness is only "invented" when someone has the genius idea to lie.

The only reason honesty is ever harsh is because people cherish lies. If you did not, for instance, silently and invisibly nurture the lie that you are OK with losing your hair, then no one could hurt you by calling you "baldy." And in a world where no one lies, there would be no reason to try hurting you. Your deficiencies are fact, not barb. The cruelty that Gervais's character, Mark, endures at his work is dishonest.

Yes, it was played for larfs, but the emotional premise of the movie, one of the reasons we're supposed to empathize with Mark, is that in this world of no lies, people are hurtful to each other with honesty. That kind of internal illogic punches you in the face over and over.

Furthermore, this movie does truthfulness a disservice by suggesting that lies make the world a kinder, richer place. The colors, the lighting, the set design, all suggest a bland, homogeneous, simplistic place. But if you think about the consequences of the absence of deception for even a few minutes, when everything and everyone can only be itself and nothing else -- that would have to be the most varied, colorful, wiggy world you can imagine. Telling lies forces us into being boring, safe, and predictable, not the other way around.

Then of course, there is the poetry-and-flowers kind of stuff that you can't reason around. Love. Art. Feelings. Those things are real and powerful, and impervious to justification. A society that could not lie would understand this implicitly. I suspect a concept as dodgy as "genetic imperative" would be inconsequential as well.

And so, see, I'm putting more thought into this than Gervais seems to have, and the thought I put into it tells me that the movie itself is fundamentally a lie. The setting and premise are so divorced from reality, so bedrock fictional, that it doesn't possess the capacity to enlighten us about the reality we do live in.

I know it's a silly, cheap movie. But I want more. In fiction, we tell wonderful lies to get at wonderful truths. The Invention of Lying doesn't have the capacity to do or be either one.

The Michael Bay of the Gospels

We've been reading the Gospel of Mark in cell meeting lately. Mark is like the Michael Bay* of the Gospel writers, all action, quick cuts, and immediacy.

Verse 13 through 20 are where Jesus explains his parable of the sower:

¹³Then Jesus said to them, "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? ¹⁴The farmer sows the word. ¹⁵Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. ¹⁶Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. ¹⁸Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²⁰Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown."

Lots of my brothers and sisters in Christ like to blame Satan for the things that go wrong in he world. I prefer to avoid such talk. I'm not too "modern" to buy into the idea that evil spirits exist and want to fuck me up. But I don't like giving credit to the Devil for two reasons:

1. God is infinitely more powerful than any evil spirit. So while spirits may have some power over my life, they are ultimately non-issues. I prefer to treat them that way.
2. I don't have a reliable way to differentiate among acts of the Adversary, self-inflicted problems, and unaccountable crap in life. So I don't try.

Tonight I found some Biblical reinforcement for reason #2.

Sometimes Satan eats the word. Sometimes things outside your control do you in. Sometimes you're weak and shallow and you kill yourself. And sometimes your soil is ready to take the seed in.




*Also like a Michael Bay joint, sometimes it's a little disjointed.

Trust your intuition: Bogus advice

That's not quite right; I think trusting your intuition is a great idea, after say, age 35 or so.

More and more as I live it, I like the idea of "logging the miles." We used to be able to use the word "experience" and that would be meaningful enough, but when the word gets applied to theme park rides and expensive dinners, we've lost some of the punch. Logging the miles is accruing enough time in the pilot chair to get a feel for how things go. You don't have to be flying loop-de-loops. You just have to show up and log the miles.

Back to my original point: Intuition is a subtle collection of observations. You don't have to be old or experienced to be intuitive, but you do have to be observant in inobvious ways. The way a person talks and twitches, what doesn't get said as much as what does get said. It's not conscious, but neither is it magic.

Regardless of your naturally-gleaned subtle observation skills, the one thing that ups your intuitive ability for sure is more opportunities to make those subtle observations and have them confirmed or denied, i.e., learning.

When old people offer advice to young people and tell them to "listen to your heart" or "trust your intuition" that is dangerous advice. It's decent advice for those who've been listening to their hearts for 40 years. But someone who's only had a heart for 20 years barely knows what that sounds like.

Don't trust your intuition if you're young. Test your intuition. It's a great tool, but you don't have a magical voice inside of you that knows truth when you don't. An untrained intuition is as helpful as a coin flip. You have to break it in with a few upsets and victories, and learn what to listen for. Then it starts clicking for you.

Open-heart surgery

Discovering how abnormal you are is both a relief and and a frustration. For years, I assumed I was normal enough, and by some definitions I guess I was and am. I seem to be able to put on clothes and walk around and groom myself and participate in meaningful conversations with other humans. I had quirks, but everyone has quirks.

Eventually, and this is a realization I'm not done having, I realized that I'm actually pretty messed up, it's just that I'm an operative messed up. Like a secret alcoholic, I suspect everyone around me knew something was off. But I was good enough at concealment, and the off-ness was subtle enough, and people were polite enough to avoid embarrassing me. So it didn't come up much.

A signal that I'm messed up is the still-dawning realization that I don't like my family. My family is the same operative crazy that I am. I resisted this notion at first, assuming that I was the problem, or that other people were the problem. 

Then I dedicated myself to changing relationships by visiting my family more, trying to communicate, trying to become an active problem-solver. In the last couple of years, I've given up. Because no one else seemed to want to work on the problem, and this is not the sort of thing you can fix solo.

My basic assumption, which I think is solid, is that fundamentally well people like being around their families... or at least have no problem with it. Your relationships don't need to be perfect, but you want to basically like your family. Family behavior sets your assumptions for life, and these relationships are templates for all your other relationships. If you don't have ok family, you start life in a deep hole. While people around you are ascending heights, you 're clawing your way to sea level.

My templates oscillated awfully between needy and aloof. Angry and disinterested. They were not aware of this, but those are primary readings on the dashboard of my childhood. That is a horrible, toxic way to teach new humans what is important and how to behave. The fact that my brother and I are operative nonetheless is a testament to civilizing principles and divine grace.

I haven't spoken to my parents in over two years, and I think I'm supposed to feel bad about that, but mostly I feel relieved. A week ago my mother broke radio silence to tell me she's going to have open-heart surgery soon, and I didn't know what to do about that. I hear that she's pulled through ok, but mainly I'd rather not have to deal with it.

I think that might make me monstrous. But if I can find some peace and rest, I'll need to ask if monstrosity is an acceptable price.