Soldiering On

I have been away recently, adoring masses.


But now I return, and there just so happens to be triumphant sunlight shining around me as I ride down an impossibly steep slope on my conveniently white horse at the head of a whole eored of warriors.


(Lord of the Rings reference? Anyone? Bueller? Guess I have to spell this one out with a picture.)

I'm somewhere in the middle. On a conveniently white horse.

I have written the first draft of the next Great American Novel, so that's where my ostensibly boundless but actually all-too-humanly bounded creative energy has been directed. If you made it through that last sentence with your patience intact, go ahead and get yourself a congratulatory enchilada from the enchilada dispenser. I'll wait here.


I participated in NaNoWriMo this year. For you unwashed who are not privy to the secrets (and by "secrets" I mean "things which actually aren't secret at all"), NaNoWriMo is the cool people's in-slang for National Novel Writing Month. I could explain all about it, but linking to the description is much easier.


Ignore the part where it keeps harping on how terrible the finished product is. Mine isn't terrible. It has actually been called "the next Great American Novel" (DeJong, 2 Paragraphs Ago). Critics would be calling it "mindblowing" and "splendid" and "rad" and "bully" and "tearjerking" and "the potato pancake to my lobster souffle" except I haven't let them read it yet. I have to tone down the awesomeness before I let anyone read it. Also, there might be a character whose name changes a couple of times.


Anyway, that's where I've been. In all seriously, it was a great experience. My finished product is actually nowhere near "finished", but I've already started looking at it again. I have a list of immediate fixes that I need to effect, and then I'm putting it away for a month. Not going to talk about it, not going to think about it, not going to work on it. I'm going to pretend as if it never happened.


Oh, and grad school apps are in. Here's hoping someone makes a mistake and accepts me this year.


Long live the Triumphant Slope!

Home Is Where My Clothes Are

My apartment has been, is now, and most likely will be for the rest of its brief life, a crash pad.


(If my landlord reads this: I am not planning to arsonize my apartment. Or blow it up, or destroy it in any way. Remember that part where I said "for the rest of its brief life"? That was neither a threat, a promise, nor a warning. It was just my way of saying "I won't be living here for the rest of my life. I probably won't be living here a year from now, actually."


This addendum is now 4x as long as the body of this post, and we are desperately off-topic. In sum, landlord, we cool.)


My apartment is a crash pad. I don't live here, really. I don't make memories here. I don't even make food here usually. Not what most people mean when they talk about food.


I stop in occasionally, is kind of what I'm trying to say.


(Oh, and I get millions of pageviews every hour. So stop laughing at the possibility that my landlord might read this post. In terms of Adoring Fans, I am the king.)


So tonight I came back home--


There. I did it.


Before tonight, I never once thought of my apartment as "home". Not like I was uncomfortable here. Not like I had some other place that was "home". I never referred to this place as "home" in my mind, is all.


Until tonight. 


It was unique. I haven't really felt "at home" somewhere since the summer of 2009.


I like that feeling.


Too bad the lease is up in about six months.


Long live the Stream.

There's No Accounting For Taste

I...guess I have some explaining to do.


I recently picked up Louis Leterrier's remake of the 1981 Harryhausen creature-feature Clash Of The Titans. The remake intrigued me when it came out; I didn't see it in theatres, though I wish now that I had. I actually blogged about it, it interested me so much.


So I got the movie for a song, and I watched it. And I enjoyed it.


And then I made the mistake of telling some people that I liked it.


Yeah, "oops" is right.


I can't say why I liked it. Some movies I enjoy more than others. I watched The Informant! the other day. Critics liked it, I didn't. It was supposed to be a comedy (I knew that because the music was upbeat and spunky) but I only laughed a few times. It was a sobering movie, in my opinion. Critical success, undoubtedly well-made, but I just didn't enjoy it.


Clash of the Titans doesn't have a great story. It has some pretty good actors in it, actors I always love seeing, like Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes. I thought the visuals were pretty cool, too. But honestly? I don't really know why I enjoyed it. I did, though, and I'll probably watch it again sometime.


I guess it just comes down to something I'm always preaching: individuality of mind. I encourage people to make their own decisions, not to be shackled to the drifting raft of public opinion. "Make your own mind up!" I rail. "Don't let everyone else make it up for you!"


Sometimes I doubt my own ability to adhere to this credo. But then stuff like this happens, and my faith is restored.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that owning your own mind is wise. Because then you can do "stupid" stuff like enjoying Clash of the Titans.


Long live cop-outs!

+35 Tome of Corruption

...and with that appropriately nerdy (and mostly unrelated to my topic) title, we have nowhere to go but up, quality-wise.


I recently finished A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. It has 21 chapters. Apparently the 21st chapter wasn't really ever published in America, because the American publisher didn't like the last chapter. Then the movie came out, and it omitted the positive ending as well. So for, like, forty years, The American Consumer labored under the illusion that A Clockwork Orange has 20 chapters.


Big whoop, right? Actually, yes. Because if the book ends with Chapter 20, it's a pretty depressing statement on human depravity. SPOILER (highlight): Chapter 20 ends with the "reformed" criminal returning to his crime-filled ways.


If it ends with Chapter 21, it becomes a hopeful "boys-will-be-boys" sermon about the fundamental good in humankind. SPOILER (highlight): Chapter 21 ends with the criminal, now a few years older, realizing that crime is boring and he'd rather have a son.


We all know that ART! is dark and dreary and anti-everything. So when a writer in the sixties produces a book about how horrible people really are, it's ART!


But if that writer had produced a book about how people are really good, and you just have to give them time to sort out their psychological disorder, would it have been viewed as ART!?


Perhaps not.


A Clockwork Orange is considered a dystopian classic. Would it have gained the following it now enjoys were the final chapter more accessible?


Or, to put my question in more empirical terms, is ART! arbitrarily constructed to feed the rebellious tendency in the human heart?


Long live cliffhangers...!

Shadows of Friends Past

Tonight I stop in the auditorium to watch part of a dance rehearsal for a musical. On-stage, friends and strangers gyrate inconsistently. Director and assistant director gaze up at the controlled chaos, their faces non-judgmental, all-seeing masks. Accompanist, patient but ready to spring in at a moment's notice with the required chord, watches steadily, her gaze never leaving the spring-loaded body of the choreographer.


And what a marionette he is! He is machine-making-art, powered by inexhaustible funds of creativity and joy and passion. He creates story with body and character with movement. To young actors, he is accessible. To experienced actors, he throws down a gauntlet: Can You Do This?


In counterpoint to his irrepressible energy looms the silent stateliness of the performance space. How many stories these walls tell me: of high drama performed and petty drama exacerbated--of unintentional comedy that sparkles and shimmers and tickles, and of unfunny jokes forced down the unwilling throats of the audience. Here is a student performance of Romeo and Juliet; here is Cinderella come to life as student proposes to student, mid-rehearsal. Here is anger and faked catastrophe, and real catastrophe barely-averted. Vases and ropin' fools and little women and tax-evading grandfathers...these curtains tell all.


To me. They tell these stories to me, because I am gone. I am no longer a part. I am an outsider, looking in, and my memories merge with the memories of these walls, and I am mysteriously a part of history.


Long live flights of fancy!

Odds and Ends

Has anyone seen the trailer for David Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"? If you haven't, here it is.

Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy is quite the success story. Documented elsewhere, so I won't go into it here, but pretty amazing when you think about it. They were adapted for film in Sweden, and then, because there was more money to be made, American movies were planned.

So that trailer up there is for the American version. Just to be clear.

I intended this post to be about how some trailers are pretty cool by themselves, but then their music just exponentially increases their level of win. Then I discovered that MTV.com did this article already. So go ahead and just read that. I was going to mention Watchmen and 9, but they also pick up on Pineapple Express, for which I never really saw a trailer. Hurray for MTV.com.

Went to see Contagion on Friday. I guess it's supposed to be an Oscar contender. Maybe it'll challenge for Best Director, and I suppose it could be one of the "five to ten" to get enough number one votes to put it into Best Picture. It's an awards-hungry film. You can just tell.

I didn't hate it. It all just seemed so retreaded to me. Maybe I've been spoiled by fantasy-epidemics like that in 28 Days Later. Maybe I have low, consumerist tastes. But I felt like there were too many threads in the movie--too many elements trying to teach us too many lessons--too many characters trying to elicit too many emotions--too many plot elements jostling for first place, with the effect that the plot just didn't seemed to matter.

And that last was one of the most surprising to me. In a film about a worldwide epidemic, plotting seems simple. But the characterization was so lacking that when a major character succumbed to the virus, I felt no deep pang of sorrow. I felt nothing more than a whiff of passing regret. "Well that's too bad."

So the characters didn't make me care about the plot. But by itself the narrative was insignificant. I didn't want the epidemic to ravage the country, to the extent that the film became a prequel to Zombieland. But I wasn't quite prepared for how everything and everyone seemed back to normal. The events of the film didn't seem to change anything. The characters were superficially affected (dead, bereaved, or that dread cliche Drawn Closer To Loved Ones), but not actually affected. So I was left asking, "Why should I care?"

Sure, technology conquers. Sure, humanity adapts to survive. Sure, there will always be profiteers piggybacking on disaster (whether they be renegade bloggers or pharmaceutical companies). Does catastrophe change us?

Or is history truly cyclical? Are humans innately unable to learn from their mistakes, doomed to repeat them for eternity? According to Contagion, the answer is yes.

This, then, is Contagion's chilling message. Not "Wash your hands or you might start an epidemic" or "Love the people you have before you lose them". No, Contagion shows us people who are fundamentally unaffected by catastrophe.

I don't want to be one of those.

Long live accidents.

Chronic Optimism

There are few things I have experienced in my 21 years on this terrestrial ball as optimistic as the beginning of a new year of undergraduate study.


As I watch school start for my friends and acquaintances--as I watch from the outside--I'm impressed with the unbridled positive spirit which lives and breathes on campus. Impressed, and a little amused.


Lest the following post sound like sour grapes from a recent post-grad, let me remind my constant readers that I experienced the illogicality of Fall Optimism, and I drank it to its dregs. More than most, perhaps.


First, there's the issue of Coping With The Loss Of Summer: inevitably, the complaint is that summer was too short. But since Wisconsin draws out its summers into mid-September (often later), the weather will not have changed yet. In fact, many moving-in students probably wish for a cooler wind to whisk through the futon- and TV-clogged hallways. And the first week, we reassure ourselves, the first week of classes is always easy.


Which brings us to the second hurdle to be overcome by Fall Optimism: the discipline of school after a summer of...something else. Some were able to relax and take their ease; for them the hurdle is higher. Those who worked hard all summer to make spending money for the fall? Well, they're already in a disciplined mindset--but even so, academic discipline is different from working-world discipline.


So how is this hurdle overcome? By forgetfulness. We don't remember just how draining a 15-page paper on the minor differences between John Locke's and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's vision of mankind can be. We forget the sick feeling that comes with looking at the syllabus and realizing that no, that test isn't next week, it's tomorrow, and did I study for it? Is the Pope Presbyterian?


Instead of those things, we remember the day that our one prof jumped up and down when he was talking about Portia in The Merchant of Venice, or we remember how the other prof is a department head so he cancels class fairly often, or we remember the time we listened to Bob Dylan songs the whole class period.


We remember the positive.


The same goes for on-campus activities that we participate in. We don't remember the blinding, sickening drag of getting up coffeeless on a Saturday morning to help with set build for the fall musical. We don't remember the frantic scheduling, the wheeling and dealing necessary to make sure that neither one of our on-campus jobs needs us for Tuesday night, because that's when the writing workshop is--oh wait, I was supposed to take my buddy shopping. Gotta text him quick...


Instead, we remember the glow of satisfaction as we take our bows at curtain call.


And we forget the intricate webs of relationship that we entangle ourselves in while we're at school. In our delight to see everyone once again, we forget that one's emotional instability, this one's immaturity, that one's inability to take a hint and LEAVE, for Pete's sake, because SOME OF US have to be up at 8am tomorrow for a meeting. We don't see the potential for new pains, new struggles, and new sorrows. We look at our friends, associates, acquaintances, with rose-colored glasses.


This post seems to be shaping into a condemnation of the idiots returning to school, how they can't live in the real world, how they must practice self-deception to survive the harsh realities of college. But fear not, gentle reader: for now comes the Shyamalanian twist.


I applaud the Fall Optimism of whose waters so many returning (and new) students drink deeply. And I applaud the students who are mature enough to drink of those waters.


When confronted with something massive and fanged, one may run and hide, or despair, or gird one's loins up with confidence and self-respect. Those who run forsake the potential glory of defeating the monster. Those who despair are often consumed by the monster. But those who stand tall in their own two shoes, screw their courage to the sticking-point, and face the monster head-on have the greatest chance of victory.


I have seen people leave school because those papers or those tests or those presentations were too much. I have seen people become cynical, hate-filled shells of themselves, all their energy wasted on hating their alma mater. And I have seen people emerge triumphant, because they could cope. They drank from the well of Fall Optimism; they found a way to cope with the depressing aspects of college; and then they raised their shields and dashed headlong into the maw of Semester I.


Hail, students. We who know your toil salute you.


Long live hope.