7 Things I Lost Escaping My Uncertain Fate (of '07 or '08)*

Editor's Note: I've never wanted this blog to be a LiveJournal, and this post comes dangerously close to reading like a diary entry. Forgive me. I'm thinking about publishing another e-book, something like "Eleven Sevens," that's a collection of unrelated essays structured as lists of seven. It's the hot way that all the kids write like now, and what I did with my Christmas List in July. Consider this a more formal screen test.

Settling into a new place requires some dredging up of the past: whether it's relating your medical or academic history to some doctor, binging on TV shows from the Dubya administration, or relating to new friends by sharing your story. I have a palsied grasp of my personal history, but my hand has been forced to close in on it. So, as a great professor and horrid administrator from Pepperdine once said of technology, "New and exciting things are redefining the way we live every day, but in going forward we rarely consider what we've lost."

I'm told I've grown and matured since junior year of high school, and I have. I know some of those ways, so please don't feel you should respond to this piece by building me back up or anything like that. Seriously, don't. I'm merely considering what I've lost.

1. Prioritized public speaking and presentation
I haven't had to seriously wear a suit in about five years. Yeah, weddings and funerals. I wore out a cheap tux singing with the Glen Ellyn-Wheaton Chorale. But I haven't had to coordinate my suit and tie, belt and shoes, or folio and biro for any of that. Was it California? Getting on a writing/academic track? I'm not sure, but solo performance-oriented situations have dropped off, and so have my performance skills.

2. Putzing around with Photoshop n' piracy
I was really into computers. Not so much programming or hardware—though I knew enough to get by—but manipulating photos, music and videos into any format for presentation or recreation. I didn't clock Gladwell's 10,000 hours, but I was in the thousands. "If you don't believe me, just ask my satisfied customers!" Teachers I'd never had and tenuous acquaintances would ask for my help with their presentations. In the Excel spreadsheet I made to compare prospective colleges, Graphic Design was one of the dozen "Major" columns.

3. Respect for achievement
I was still more skeptical than cynical, so my first reaction to someone's laurels was not eye-rolling and immediate explanation of their actual mediocrity. I actually admired certain "successful" people in many fields. A variety of figures from Conan O'Brien and Michael Crichton to Alan Greenspan all deserved to be where they were and had earned their social influence. They were models of who I could be one day. In fact, I was ambitious to this end, I would be like them one day.

4. A fortified social circle
I was in a... VERY tight-knit speech-choir-theater clique. We Heren Zeventien ran together and were together ALL the time. From that hub I was connected to other social nodes, some of which have survived far better than le troupeau. I have a few closer friends now, even some of the former pack, but I haven't had a Gang since high school. And I do still miss it.

5. Unshadowed jest
Within the Gang's fast-paced language of in-jokes, bewildering and barring to outsiders, or even the later Racist Basement, my sense of humor was never eggshell white. My "jokes" were sprinkled with dark irony, but they were not marinated in it. My humor then and now is the difference between sugar on a grapefruit and overripe Christmas fruitcake. Today even I struggle to know when I'm being serious. Whether that's good or bad, and it's probably bad, it's nonetheless bewildering and barring to outsiders. Except now I'm the only one in on it.

6. Habitual self-discipline
This is akin to One and Three. Homework assigned first period? That's completed in the back of the room during second period. AP English essay deadline approaching? Outlined that nonsense during rehearsal for "It's A Wonderful Life." The theater and speech season are over? Great, I can go back to work at Cedarstone. Doing the song PowerPoints and sermon podcasts for church? There's my Key Club volunteer hours checked off. Even on a basic level, I was up, showered, and dressed every day no later than 8:30 am during the school year. In summer I'd sometimes go 40 hours before sleeping. I'm well aware all this was not the healthiest lifestyle, that I was sometimes flagellate and eventually exhausted. But I was terribly productive in all senses of those words.

7. Trust in the love of others
This last one isn't a Mitch Albom thang. Promise. It's abstract, but I list it because it was already slipping away while all this other stuff was peaking. If you're performance-oriented and prone to over commit yourself, you've got some self-image issues. I was already having a hard time believing that the people around me actually cared about me apart from everything I was doing, and doing so well. My teachers didn't speak highly of me just because I got A's. My friends didn't hang out with me because I made lasting contributions to the group patois. As a matter of fact, my family and church had been cheering for me since before I could speak. I still struggle to accept that I'm loved by so many, all around me, without having earned it. And I'll accept all these other losses just to work on accepting that.

*This is a riff on the title of a book Stewart Lee wrote. If you haven't gleaned that he's my favorite stand-up comic from previous posts or my Facebook and Twitter activity, I've now told you directly. I'm seeing him live on 11 November. YouTube him already.

Three-ish Flags Over Texas

Like many things Texan the phrase “Six Flags Over Texas” is a bit larger than life and kinda overstated. Yes, throughout history six different flags have flown over different parts of what is now the loud-n-proud U.S. state of Texas; Spain, France, Mexico, Texas itself, The Confederate States, and the United States have all been there and done that. But if we’re talking in broader terms, I count three real claimants: Spain/Mexico, Texas, and the United States. Not to sound cliche or perpetuate a stereotype--both French words--but France doesn’t really matter here except as an intermittent nuisance.
Essentially, the history of Texas has been a relay race run by the aforesaid powers-- a tamale, T-bone steak, and cheeseburger bumbling from third to home at the bottom of the sixth. They’re not completely unique or drastically different foods. The steak will forever feign disgust of the others’ cheese, but they’ve all got the same meat. I’ll nevertheless treat them as such so y’all can read a better-structured narrative.

All the photos with flags have three too many for some reason.

1. El trabajo de los Tamales

We all know nothing in America existed before white people got there, so we only have to go back 500 years to tell Texas’s beginnings. Early European settlement of the general area was a li’l back-and-forth between Spain and France. Given that today about 30 percent of the state speaks Spanish, you can guess who Juan that battle. Spaniards mixed and mingled with the millions of brown people they conquered. (Apparently, there were already people there!) This mass coalescence effectively begat two classes: an elite group of White Haves, and the vast majority of not-as-white Have Nots.
All involved were Spanish-speaking Roman Catholics. The global Spanish Empire, the first one on which “the sun never set,” was great at making that happen; and it was even better at sending unholy amounts of gold and silver home to Spain. It did these things to the envy of the rest of Europe from 1492 clear into the 1800s, inspiring all the European empires that followed. But did it manage stable and responsible governments, whether at home or in the colonies? Yeah... sure, in the same way that Jeffrey Skilling was a stable and responsible manager of Enron.
So when Napoleon Bonaparte became President and CEO of France, New Spain was not long for this world. First he let America make the bargain-basement Louisiana Purchase, kinda sorta throwing in some Spanish land. (Yes, Thomas Jefferson. 1803. AP US History.) But his ten-year strategy for growth and a greater market share entailed a corporate takeover of Europe, in which Spain became a big sticking point. Though España had rotated in and out of Chapter 11, it still had shiny metallic assets Napoleon kinda really needed. The icing on the cake for him was a chance to oust the Bourbon royalty, a family he had been happy to see recently expunged from France.
Why does this matter to Texas? Well, as France was busy spreading La Révolution and sending Spain’s stock into the gutter, Mexico thought it wise to split. They stated as much on 16 September 1810, and Mexico now celebrates this as its Independence Day-- not Cinco de Mayo, though that date will come up later. So just as the U.S. celebrates 1776 but wasn’t free till 1783, Mexico’s spin-off deal took till 1821 to close. Mexico, which then encompassed Texas and the other Southwestern United States, was not alone in splitting from Spain. Almost all of Spanish-speaking Central and South America broke free at this time. It was no longer part of New Spain, but Mexico was still poorly structured and managed. And unlike the rest of née New Spain, Mexico faced the unenviable challenge of bordering the eagerly expanding United States. Nonetheless needing money, the new country swiftly invited any and all empresarios, literally ‘entrepreneurs’, to set up shop in its northeast regional market, aka Coahuila y Tejas. The very first of these enterprising immigrants was a Virginian who brought 300 other American families with him. His name was “Stone Cold” Stephen F. Austin.

2. “How do I want my steak? Bleeding.”

Despite everyone talking about learning from history there are very few hard-and-fast rules to learn, but this is certainly one: Never invite foreigners into your country to just help out for a bit. They will become a problem. The severity of that problem will vary, but if your guests are stronger, richer or more numerous than you, you’ll soon be theirs: c.f. Anglo-Saxon England, Qing Dynasty China, and the diplomatically-worded origin story of Russia where the Slavs “invited” the Rus Vikings to come rule them. Incidentally, one of the only other hard-and-fast rules of history emerged after this: Never invade Russia, especially not in winter.
Thus, Mexico’s invitation to their fiesta soon became a desastre. Before the 1821 empresarial invitation, only 3,500 people lived in Tejas. On the eve of Texan Independence in 1836, the population was 30,000 Anglos with 5,000 slaves stacked against about 8,000 Mexicans. These English-speaking Protestants would be damned before, if?, they spoke Spanish and followed the Pope. These immigrants didn’t speak the language, weren’t even trying to assimilate, and were taking all the jobs and land. So during this fifteen-year flood, Mexico tried to slow, restrict, and then abolish Anglo settlement as well as slavery. Legally and illegally, Anglos rich and poor kept settling in this part of Mexico. The rich slaveholders technically obeyed abolition by making their slaves sign contracts as “indentured servants for life,” laden with unpayable and heritable debt. To their credit, in strictly the financial sense, cotton was king and cattle was maybe like an earl.
Remember that the foundation of Mexican government was colonial Spanish government, which government Napoleon had rocked into regional juntas ten years ago by... rocking Spain into regional juntas. The success of the American Revolution and Constitution 30ish years prior was inspiring several failed imitators. One of which was the First French Republic that Napoleon militarized and made an empire. Another was the United Mexican States (1824-1835) that General Santa Anna militarized and made an empire.
But contrary to his present infamy, Santa Anna was not always the enemy. Both Steve Austin and Santa Anna had drummed up troops to repel a Spanish attempt at reconquest. Only Santa Anna’s actually fought, and his victory made him a hero in Mexico. Following this, Austin supported him as a check to redress grievances with the mismanaged federal government re: Anglos’ rights to immigrate, bring and hold their slaves, and pay little to no taxes or tariffs on their cotton and cattle. This really didn’t work out for three reasons.
First, the government posted a Mexican military official to enforce these unpopular measures at Anahuac near the major port of Galveston. Oddly that Mexican military official, John “Juan” Davis Bradburn, was an American. Not just any American, but a white Virginia-born Southerner and former slave trader. Perhaps he and the colonists being of a similarly fiery breed hastened the escalation of matters through the telltale steps to outright revolt: dubious written threats or staged protests, violent retaliation by the nervous government, mounting and mutual bloodshed.
Second, Austin was away in Mexico City while all this was happening trying to moderate the colonists’ demands of the current government, and he was actually having some success. But this meant he was neither in Galveston to smooth things over between the colonists and Bradburn, nor did anyone know he was already smoothing things over with Bradburn’s bosses.
Third, proud Mexican General Santa Anna took great offence at what was happening to a fellow officer of the Mexican Army in Galveston. Finding Bradburn’s bosses too weak to respond, he did so himself-- and, at the point, why not militarize Mexico into an empire?
So, war were declared in Tejas. Clearly Santa Anna was no good, so Remember the Alamo on March 6th. But just imagine for a second that lots of angry Mexican immigrants attacked Fort Bliss and then retreated to a fortified Baptist church. I’m pretty sure the U.S. Army garrison wouldn’t let them just chill there till things cooled down. Anyway, Jim Bowie, William B. Travis, Davy Crockett, Sam Houston’s brothers and every other Texian, except twenty-some women and children, died at the Alamo. Three times as many Mexicans died too, but whatever cause they’re the bad guys now. Sam Houston avenged his brothers’ deaths. He defeated Mexican forces and captured Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on 21 April 1836.
Steve Austin died of illness in December, so Sam Houston now took the Republic-of-Texas bull by the horns. In its nine-year life, Texans spent lots of their time fighting off Comanche Indians from the northwest and still some Mexican forces from the south. But they mostly fought diplomatic battles for international recognition of both their sovereignty and ambitious border claims, claims which stretched west through New Mexico and north to Wyoming. Texan forces never controlled or settled this land, but that didn’t stop their dreams of one day extending to the Pacific. Its most contentious claim was that the Rio Grande was its southern border, whereas Mexico understand it to be the Nueces River 150 miles to the north.
That particular border dispute became an American concern when Texas acceded to statehood in 1845, precipitating the Mexican-American War wherein the United States finally realized its own dream of extending to the Pacific. (APUSH Bonus Fact: All the manifesting of destiny beyond the Louisiana Purchase north to Seattle and south to San Diego was accomplished by the little-remembered, quietly ruthless, and 11th president, Mr. James K. Polk. He did all this in one term.) The Compromise of 1850 confirmed Texas as a slave state and confined it to its current borders, south to the Rio Grande but nowhere near as far north and west. Texans agreed to ‘surrender’ future New Mexico, Wyoming et. al. primarily so that the U.S. would assume its $10 million debt. The Compromise of 1850 also postponed the Civil War for ten more years.

★

Yeah, that’s the Lone Star. 

This should be the start of a cheeseburger-named section about Texas as American, but it’s not. Sticking to the three foods/three flags thing, Texas was far more Texan than American through the Civil War. And let me point out that by not putting Confederate Texas in the U.S. section I’m implicitly respecting the legitimacy of secession, so try calling me a damn yankee now.

Yes, Texans did secede to join the Confederacy and shared much in common with their confederates. A severe orneriness about their personal and state’s rights, surely exacerbated by lack of central air conditioning, commonality in chief. It was during the Civil War that Cinco de Mayo broke out south of the (Rio Grande) border. Remember Napoleon and the French? While, this time his nephew, Napoleon III, tried to conquer Mexico as a check to the growing power of the United States. The French won the war and installed a French puppet state in Mexico, albeit short-lived. But Mexican forces won the battle against the French on 5 May 1862. This raised Mexican spirits for a little while, but it also barred the French from sweeping back into Texas, at which point they would have joined the Confederate fight against the Union. In light of this, I’m pretty sure “The South will rise again!” doesn’t jive with getting plastered on Cinco de Mayo, but far be it from me to quell either sentiment or activity.

By 1863, after two years where Texas saw very little battle on its own soil, the Union won control of the Mississippi River and effectively cut it off from the rest of the South for the rest of the war. Nevertheless, 90,000 Texans fought in gray over yonder. After the war, and unlike Amy Winehouse, Texas had to go to rehab with its confederates under the program of Reconstruction. No historian will argue that Reconstruction was successful, but it did have three outcomes all across the South: Blacks were free but not equal; Whites voted staunchly Democrat and kept Blacks from voting Lincoln Republican; both Blacks and Whites stayed poor and bitter whether at each other, the North, or both. Texas celebrates Juneteenth as the day the slaves were freed, but a lot of that freedom took another century to kick in.

3. That Cheeseburger section I promised. It’s probably a Big Mac.

All right, realtalk. Domestic growth between the Civil War and World War II doesn’t really interest me. It’s not that I find the times boring. I swoon when I study the foreign policy and financial powers of exactly this era. I’ll tell you what, Ante-global-bellum Imperialism is actually my speciality. Nevertheless, I’m bound by state law to explain what happened in Texas up till now, just as I must remain 500 feet away from Mark Cuban at all times. So here goes.

Cotton and cattle were still key to the Texas economy. The North’s successful blockade during the war was now lifted, and railroads soon knit the whole country together. A hurricane destroyed Galveston in 1900, so Houston popped up as a safer inland alternative that could still get things to port. It became a railroad hub. Another new railroad hub was the previously nondescript town of Dallas, a city you may have heard of. Businessmen, not Democrats entrenched in the postwar political machine, ran the city. So it soon became a center of finance and services and even erected the state’s first skyscraper. From Dallas, cows could take trains straight out of the state instead of shipping out from Houston/Galveston, though presumably not of their own accord. The farms those cows left behind were embroiled in land disputes. Both the new paths of the railways and the new use of barbed wire fences sliced up formerly free-flowing fields. Both railroads and barbed wire, while making cattle production a cash cow, ultimately signaled the death of the nation’s frontier open ranges.

The most powerful source of growth, however, was this new thing called oil. Spectacular gushers which shot oil straight into the sky attracted young men with commensurate energy. Texas eventually out-produced both California and Oklahoma. It may sound very odd today, but Democrat control of the state meant antagonism to big oil companies. Attorney General, then Governor Jim Hogg prosecuted John D. Rockefeller for Standard Oil’s many monopolistic practices-- e.g. controlling the railroads. These were Northern Republican business interests meddling in Texas, clearly unwelcome. But whether Standard or not, oil made Texas rich right along with aforementioned cotton, cattle and finance. More accurately, these made certain Texans rich. Both the Dust Bowl and Great Depression hit most Texans hard. A whole lot of field workers went west, and a whole lot of federal New Deal programs aimed to defibrillate the state. Luckily, once again, war were declared.

World War II was an economic godsend for the U.S. generally, Texas particularly, and Houston especially. Military bases, all varieties of technologically-advanced manufacturing, and aviation came to the state. With so many men away fighting Hitler or Hirohito, and so much new work in the cities, women, blacks and Mexicans got the jobs. With no one left to till the fields, FDR negotiated the Bracero Program with Mexico to import massive numbers of Mexicans for manual labor all over the Southwest. This program was renewed repeatedly until 1964. If you recall the first rule of history I mentioned, this massive influx of foreigners “to just help out for a bit”--like with the empresarios in Coahuila y Tejas--caused big trouble. When the white men returned from war and couldn’t find jobs, widespread discrimination against todos los braceros ensued. Cesar Chavez was essentially the Hispanic Martin Luther King in all this. He helped win workers’ and immigration rights across the Southwest. His birthday, March 31st, is a state holiday in Texas.

Since the 1960s, air conditioning has blown all sorts of people into the Sunbelt, of which Texas is the buckle. The Lone Star State may also be the buckle of the Bible Belt and has now voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980. I guess since everything is bigger in Texas, it has to wear two belts. And although Dallas witnessed the loss of one president in 1963, Texas has produced three presidents since then--LBJ, H.W. Bush, W. Bush--which is more than any other state in the last fifty years. Many new installations have joined all those military and aviation bases built during WWII, including one in Houston belonging to NASA.

Today, Texas is #1 for millions, but it’s second in three big categories. It’s second in area to Alaska by a lot: Alaska is 240 percent bigger. I’d write that one off because, come on, nobody cares about Alaska. But more significantly, although its 26 million people annually produce $1.4 trillion, Texas is second in both population and economic output to California, which was also a republic before it was a state. But that’s a story for another day.

Surprise! It’s not a relay race.

Maybe it never was, but the tamale, T-bone, and cheeseburger are all running around Texas today. San Antonio is almost all tamale. Lying south of the Nueces, it might as well still be Mexico. Houston is much more like a corporate McTropolis, though parts are straight out of Cops. Dallas-Fort Worth, however, exudes an Antebellum sensibility thoroughly wedded to Suburbia. Whereas Dallas campaigns to keep ‘normal,’ Austin proudly keeps weird. It’s the state capital and literal standard-bearer of Texas, but it shows up an island of blue each election year. This blue is the liberal and elite, and orange, University of Texas. Indeed, Austin’s hipsters and head shops could be straight out of Williamsburg-- the one in Brooklyn, not the colonial one near Busch Gardens. In fact, loads of people from Williamsburg flock annually to the ever-expanding Austin City Limits Music Festival. But don’t think for a second Austin isn’t proud to be Texan. The dome of the Texas State Capitol was not accidentally built taller than that other one in D.C.

But it is in rural Texas, east and west and everywhere else, you’ll find the strongest Texas pride trickling down into staunch ‘Murcan patriotism, a T-bone cheeseburger. Church-going Republicans share a religious dedication to the local high school and appropriate college football team. This is a phenomenon typical to a lot of the South. In Texas, though, it is rooted in a pride of place once coequal with any country in the world. You can see a recipe for tastes unamenable to figurative tamales. Austin, that hippy Babylon, doesn’t even vote as blue as the border districts south of the Nueces. People there don’t speak English, and they like some other sport they mistakenly call football. Where are their documents?

A bit harsh there, but this is not an indictment of Texas, the South, or even the United States. Any loyalty or group pride that makes someone “hate people they’ve never met and take credit for things they had no part in” is dangerous. Tamales, T-bones, and cheeseburgers can each be as repulsive as any other food. It’s an incredible accomplishment that all three dish around Texas today. There are very few hard-and-fast rules to learn from history, but endless truisms underpin the practice of medicine. Any registered dietician will tell you: People on strict diets react violently to new foods.

Christmas List in July

This is the last day I can post this, because apparently "Christmas in August" isn't a thing. This is my wish list of gifts you can't buy in a store or even with Amazon Prime, but I don't think MasterCard would call them "priceless" either.

1. I wish Chris Christie would gain weight, grow a beard, and start wearing hats. His views on the issues? Meh. No one who shares my views on the issues would ever run, the issue of choosing to serve in political office being chief among them. So to me, politics, especially presidential, are sheer pageantry. Eisenhower was the last POTUS to wear a hat, only outdoors of course, and Taft was both our last bearded and corpulent Commander-in-Chief. I've always had my finger on the pulse of the times, and I don't know any American who wouldn't vote for a guy who looked like this:

And imagine if he were wearing a hat!

2. I wish Rick Rubin would start a clothing line. Russell Simmons (right) did it, and as the other founder of Def Jam records, Rick Rubin (left) can expect similar success. This is a corollary to the Chris Christie/Brian Blessed Principle. Who wouldn't want to look like this?

3. I wish Bryan Cranston and Michael C. Hall would star in The Odd Couple. I don't care if it's stage or screen. Both their shows are ending this year, and Walter White and Dexter would make a perfect couple. Imagine how great it would be to see Walt's meth lab spill into Dexter's pristine living room. Dexter would get all mad: "I'm a very neat monster!" Walt would remind him that he always politely knocks on Dexter's door. They'd fight over where to park the Pontiac Aztec and Ford Explorer. And at the end of the day, they're united by a mutual interest in not getting caught for their misdeeds— and tons of sexual homicidal tension! 

4. I wish Edward Snowden would focus on remaking The Terminal. He's been stuck in Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport for a month now because he can't go back to the United States. Tom Hanks's character was stuck in New York's JFK airport because he couldn't return to his fictional Soviet bloc country. It's just a simple Russian Reversal! I think even hard-nosed government agents would be totally won over by Snowden's heart-warming, culturally illiterate antics. Maybe he'll even fall in love with Catherine Zeta-Jones and build her a fountain. For that, though, Putin would probably lock him up for vandalism.

5. I wish Scott Aukerman would change his name to Scott Spivakerman, to fuse the worlds of farcical talk shows and postcolonial studies. I think people would find concepts like subalternity, the double bind, and supplementing Marxism as a means of realigning pedagogy towards the aesthetic more understandable if they were presented in the format of Comedy Bang Bang!. Critical interviews with Thomas Friedman or Fareed Zakaria, and typical puffed-shirt celebrities, would really be enhanced with the musical oddities of sidekick Reggie Watts.

6. I wish Before & Afters would be respected for their inherent cultural value and rewarded financially. These aren't just wordplays for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! This is serious business, just like crimping. B&A strings merit serious scholarly study, literary canonization, and concurrent renumeration at least as much as Lucky's rambling monologue in Waiting for Godot.

"Kermit the Frog in my throat" is a good start, but what about "French Vanilla Ice Pac 12 Angry Men in Black Album"? Or even "The King of Queens of the Stone Age of Consent to Kill Bill, Volume One is the Loneliest Number Theory of Relativity Media res ipsa loquitor"!

7. Amazon, Netflix, YouTube, Goodreads or OKCupid should improve their recommendations. Then you would have been spared from all of this. 

13 PG-13 Movie Review Haiku

Here are 13 haiku reviews of PG-13 movies I saw when I was 13. I am releasing them on 13 March 2013 for the belated birthday of my buddy, Brian Bohr. I won’t use hashtags on these haiku. This is not Twitter.

1. The Italian Job
Charlize looks so hot!
rest brought to you by Mini
F. Gary Gray’s best

2. Paycheck
Affleck, Uma— wow
Dexter plays small role as Fed
he won Best Actor

3. SWAT
Sam Jackson leads team
Dr Pepper! rich dumb crook
women can be cops?

4. Hulk
Science, science, sci—
army? green man always wins
Ang Lee, not angry

5. The Day After Tomorrow
Warming means ice age
“my dad, climatologist”
no Minaj mammoth

6. Matchstick Men
Nick Cage plays himself
Los Angeles... Miami?
surprisingly good

7. Starsky and Hutch
This taught me something
vintage jokes, gimmicks, car chase
Dad loved this movie

8. Hellboy
Movie, stop: you’re drunk
Lovecraft, cartoon, love story
Rasputin makes sense

9. Flight of the Phoenix
Plane crash, no matter
“water, food, let’s build new plane”
why is this movie

10. The Core
Earth’s core stops spinning
dig deep, nuke it (perfect tropes)
Two-Face is hero

11. X2
Slash, boom, EXPENSIVE
mutants can do anything
mutant kids useless

12. LXG
Queen: “Crack team, stop war.”
ruin ALL the good fiction!
Sean Connery wins

13. Daredevil
I saved best for last
blind hero, all others dumb
illuminate all

Yes, I did watch all these movies. Yes, near the end I was usually alone. Yes, I often had to pay to rent them on Amazon. Yes, I expect to be reimbursed. Buy my book. Or, watch a one-minute video on why you should buy my book, and then buy my book.

Vile-haters will be persecuted

I watched Gangster Squad and Lars and the Real Girl in under 48 hours, so what? Ryan Gosling is a great actor... and I really like this meme. More relevant to this post, however, is his character in Lars and the Real Girl.

Lars was a loner and didn't know how to handle his emotions, so he directed all his affections toward a sex doll he named Bianca. While he may have intended to simply take refuge in this delusion, the whole town played along with it and cared for Bianca as if she were really his girlfriend. I won't ruin the ending for you, but the Tin Man gets his heart.

In other words, Switzerland, I love you, but your neutrality is a myth. Perpetual dispassion can resemble a wu wei demeanor but, at least personally, is probably more of a Wall. To be abidingly mild-mannered is not necessarily the same as to be apathetic. As with Jiro, simple daily and careful commitments (read: loving) can sum to excellence. 

But what exactly is the relationship between apathy, hate and love? Fear not, I have a diagram! Granted, it’s a graphic I grabbed from Google and edited in MSPAINT, but I think it works.

The central vortex is literally neutral territory, and thricely powerful centrifugal force makes it impossible to stay there.

So let's go clockwise as Klaus intended. Hate is blinding darkness (1 Peter, 1/2 Corinthians— somewhere in there) and cares so contrarily that it cannot know or refuses to see truth. I know from experience that hate can be a fun place to visit — Self: "Belle wouldn't like the Beast if he didn't transform into a handsome prince!" (Fun, if painful.) Sensible young lady: "Actually, she was hesitant to embrace him after his transformation." (So, I'm now so bitter I'm lying to support my hate.) — but it’s literally Hell to live in. Satan's curse is that he's trapped in hate, not apathy.

The end of apathy, however, is annihilation, which at least to Milton's demons in Paradise Lost is worse than Hell. It's difficult to imagine nothingness — Buddhists try their whole lives to — but I can't think of thoughtlessness slash apathy without recalling that scene from The Fountainhead. Doggedly critical journalist Ellsworth Toohey hounds Howard Roarke, the subject of his especial venom, "What do you think of me, Howard? What? Tell me!" Howard: "I don't."

Pretty certain that is crueler than hate. Howard doesn't even care or think about Ellsworth enough to hate him. And If I'm honest I see this in myself. (I try to hate it so that I might expel it from myself.) I don't often keep other people in mind and have hurt many by simply not thinking of them.

A certain incident with my roommate Paul comes to mind. I was writing and kept adding five more minutes until we would walk down to dinner together. His patience spent and his stomach screaming for even a Hot Pocket, he left without me. I, finally finished writing and finally feeling hungry, drove down past him to eat by myself then drove back up past him when I was done. That's cruelty by way of apathy. At that moment I literally had no thought or care for Paul re: his hunger. I assure you, this is something I rectified as the semester progressed.

Ambivalence and ignorance are both totally legitimate, but maintaining neutrality usually floats you out into the twelve o'clock of the circle of apathy. Admitting ignorance or apathy about a person or situation, however, is a fine start. In fact, it just might produce some feelings. Not necessarily loving feelings, but at least something to work with.

Bottom line: Caring is Quality. If you think you're largely apathetic, you're probably not letting yourself be drawn into one of the other two circles. And let's face it. It's risky to care.

Three Rs: Robotic Robots Review

The only music review I have ever written was for Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, an album whose first four tracks I then looped for the next four months. This music review is for a very different album, one crafted by the enigmatic Ethan the Robot! during his 2008 summer in Heidelberg. But while it is nearly five years old it is, in many ways, still sealed in plastic. (Plus, I only got it in like September, so it's new to me.) If you want to listen to this album, you can download it off Dropbox here. What follows is my track-by-track analysis capped off with a summary, one I imagine quoted on the album's packaging.

1. My Electro Intro

The album starts with familiar enough Garage Band sound, but soon escalates into a full-fledged diddy— a microwave warm welcome to the album. It would be easy to write this track off as little more than an intro, but by its end it sounds more more like an Introitus to a Requiem than what it claims to be.

2. Mr. Cricket and the Wildflower

This song wins for best title and best story. Clearly a quirky, single man in his early forties has found himself in the first level of Sonic the Hedgehog and, rather than racing through the technicolor landscape, has decided to take a pleasant stroll to enjoy the scenery, even the wildflowers.

3. Blood Red Summer

The title invokes the blood red sun of the Japanese flag, but its sound is more of a lazy summer day on rural Honshu as in scenes of Ponyo rather than the seizure-inducing speed of Tokyo life. Picnicking atop a green suburban hill with a view of the Sea of Japan, the listener can almost taste the Sapporo shandy.

4. A Song I Made

An opaque title for a piece with a wide berth. Background chatter complements the plodding beat nicely as co-workers unwinding at the happy hour of a piano bar. This song is not boring, but is definitely ambient. The evening after a long summer day is preparation for a dark night ahead.

5. I Saw One Bird Eating Another Dead Bird

The cannibalism in this piece is largely psychological and ex post facto. You'll find no flesh rending in the bass clef piano licks, but guilt steadily growing louder. A sapphire light shines through in the end by way of treble piano play.

6. Underwater Radar Gun

While other pieces also spin-off Final Fantasy and Zelda soundtracks, this piece in particular feels like the inside of the Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time. But the Water Temple is also inside the tree, and all the overhead lighting has been updated with clean, white LED bulbs.

7. Morning Rainbow I: The Life of a Baby Dinosaur

You can hear the small triceratops trotting gleefully through the same landscape Mr. Cricket explored in track two. But to this little dino, the land is not to be admired for its detail but rather romped through as an open playground and breathed in rigorously, euphorically.

8. Morning Rainbow II: Rhythm and Instinct

This is mostly a straightforward rock song, even complete with guitar and drum solos. It gets back into the flow of the album near the end, squawking and beating home its electronic point.

9. Morning Rainbow III: The Attack of 2212

I don't know what the world will be like two hundred years from now, nor who would be attacking whom then. But this song foretells swift cavalry, in all their nobility and savagery, descending upon an isolated town. I'm unsure of the exact nature of the force — podracers on laser horses? — but the townsfolk are in deep doo-doo, especially because they can't decide whether to tarry to collect their valuables or to flee immediately. Either way, I don't think it ends well for them.

10. Morning Rainbow IV: Colored Rain

This title truly speaks for itself, and the song unfolds as a fine dessert to what has been a meal of fruit cocktails, raisins and marshmallow fluff.

This album is not only perfect to take a drug-induced mid-morning nap to, but is also a great soundtrack for several hours of data entry. It’s what they played when spring rolled round in irradiated Nagasaki, and it will one day blare proudly from the loudspeakers of Disneyland Mars.