Know Thy Internal Barometer

Mine is right about here.

The one universal observation I have made in my life about people as they get older is that they tend to care more and more about the weather.  When The Weather Channel first appeared on cable, it was a joke to hack comics..  “Hey, what’s the other term for The Weather Channel?  Your window.”  I guess that daily weather is only of import if there is something severe headed your way and you have to travel.  Okay. What I am actually referring to is climate.  The weather where you live.  I think it is overlooked in our lives or treated as a trivial detail when someone moves to a new location.  Job prospects, schools, crime, and housing process all matter, but so does the weather. The weather just matters. 

            Many of us, if not all of us, have an internal barometer.  We cannot change it.  It is like our eye color or bone structure.  It is unique to us; it may not be the same as your immediate family.  It is the temperature range, the altitude, the humidity and the intangible feel of a place that feels comfortable to you. The feeling when you see news footage of the first fall colors in Vermont, or the soft sandy beaches of the Gulf of Mexico; you linger a little too long. It is not just a kneejerk reaction to that day’s weather. It is the feeling of home.  Lots of people choose to live outside of this climate, even if they know what climate they belong.  For marriage or job, they have chosen a place that is just not quite right for them.  I will concede that this can be done successfully, but what I will not concede is that there always is a lingering sensation when seasons change or when temperatures hit their extremes.  You just don’t feel right, somehow.

            We need to appreciate these emotions.  If we ignore these types of emotional realities in our lives, we will pay for them later in life.  If it is too snowy and cold, you have choices.  If it is too hot, head north.  If you have a partner who thinks otherwise, you have to make a compromise.  There has to be somewhere suitable for the two of you.  Some of us feel a tugging inside us that pulls us somewhere else.  It is not a move for money or living situation.  There is a need to belong where you live.  At least, get as close as possible.  If you do not have this then consider yourself lucky.

            It has nothing to do with where you were born.  I’m guessing it has a bit to do with your genealogical background, but I’m not smart enough to roll through that. I’m just pointing out that a lot of Scandinavian immigrants live in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  Even among those frosty people, there are some who long for New Mexico and 330 days of sunshine a year. Americans get to make the choice.  Part of what makes our country kind of cool is that we have a representation of every major world climate.  We are our own EPCOT.  Hot desert, freezing tundra, sandy beaches, farmland, swamps, deciduous forests, pine forests, lake fronts, ocean fronts, high mountains, low hills, flat lands, urban, remote, green, brown, and those black beaches in Hawaii.   We are free to live anywhere we can or want.  Not a lot of countries on Earth can boast this.  They don’t have the same options in Morocco or Scotland.  This is a first-world problem.  It is also one we can appreciate and fix if we need.

            I need seasons.  I need them.  Twenty-five years in Florida taught me I need to break up my year into four sections, each with a personality and their own unique tasks for dealing with them.  However, I don’t need the colors of the seasons as much.  Florida is very green.  Oregon is very green.  Different trees, same color.  I need low relative humidity and only ten or so days of the year that reach 90 degrees. I don’t want to break out in a sweat from my front door to my mailbox.  Also, I’m not much for sub-zero temperatures. I do not own a snow shovel.  No problem in Oregon.  It’s moderate, mild and rainy in the first four months or so of the year.  Some people hate rain and need sun as much as possible.  These lizards could live in Idaho or Arizona, depending on the temps they prefer. 

            My mood has improved exponentially since leaving Florida.  I miss all the people in my world down there; but it was not them I left.  It was the intense heat and humidity.  My wife and I had to try somewhere else.  When you are miserable all the time and the only person to blame is Mother Nature, you may have an alternative. Get the fuck out.

            We ignore these intense pangs from our internal barometers every day.  We exchange the focus on them for thoughts of money and success and tradition and fear.  This is one of those things that in your bones.  You feel it or you do not.  It is integral to a happy life, or it is not.  These are the parts of life that really matter to us. Try not to turn your back on them. 

I Love Time Travel - Part 10 - Looper

Not the spitting image of David Addison

Looper started off so very good. A gritty crime drama that morphs into a couple of love stories. The cool action, detailed backdrops and a fun sci-fi script work quite well, but the holes in our observance of time travel were a little too much for me to accept.

Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) lives in 2044.  Sometime in the 2070’s time travel is invented and immediately outlawed.  A crime syndicate has the technology, and uses it to dispose of people by sending them back to 2044 to be executed.  The hitmen from the past are loopers and they are paid well for their services.  Eventually their individual ‘loops’ are closed by the future syndicate sending back the aging loopers themselves to be executed by the 2044 version.  The young versions are retired with a stack of money and have 30 years to live out their lives until they are sent back.

I love the concept.  It is always compelling when the protagonist is a mere witness to time travel instead of actually travelling himself.  In this case, Joe is very aware of the technology, and has to deal with the ramifications of not closing his loop. His future self, (Bruce Willis), escapes his execution. I can end the recap here; it’s as much as the trailer would reveal.

A few extraneous observations.  First, there was no need to make up Gordon-Levitt’s face to look like a young Bruce Willis.  It was a nice try, but not convincing enough to merit the entire movie with a star we know with a weirdly reconstructed mug.  Leaving it alone would have been just fine.  Two, there is a sub-story in Looper about people with telekinesis. I’m am wholly on board with all of that too, although wedged into a movie already set in the future featuring time travel may have been too much for one movie.

That aside.

Looper is not loop time travel.  It may want to be, but it is not.  It is also not single-string time travel.  Like The Terminator, it is a mish-mash of both experiences.  This should not sound like one of those zombie experts out there who criticize how fictional creatures behave.  Time travel is fictitious, just like the zombie outbreak.  But in the stories, rules are set.  However you want the time travel to work, we follow the story accordingly.  If it is a loop, then all events are preordained and fate is the hand that pushes the action forward.  If it is single-string, events can be changed by altering the past.  It is impossible to know if any of this is how nature would react; we can only control the stories.

Joe’s looper friend Seth lets his future self escape early in the movie.  Seth knows that the 2044 arm of the future crime syndicate will now kill him and his future self.  Seth is caught, and Future Seth is still on the loose.  To stop him, the syndicate begins to mutilate Seth, cutting off fingers, his nose, his legs; all in an attempt to debilitate Future Seth.  Gruesome and original, but in the logic of time travel, it does not jibe.  If the future version was truly handicapped by what the criminals did to his past version, he would have had no legs, fingers, and nose for the entire thirty years.  Joe scars himself later in a similar attempt to draw out his future self, and the scarring appears to Bruce Willis as brand new information.  If you are affecting a body from the past, than that means that not only is the future path affected, but it had been affected from the moment you made the change.  Follow? 

If the change can affect you, then it always has affected you.  If it can’t affect you, then…it can’t.  Movies circumvent this a little by showing changes slowly happening (Marty McFly’s photo of his family). But as we grasp these high concept movies, we have to know the rules.  Looper’s rules are just off.  I think they wanted it both ways, because the end is scene of sacrifice which works dramatically but fails the logic test again.  The question isn’t in the physics of traveling to the past and meeting yourself, it is what relationship of causality you have with one another.  If you are the traveler, do you remember this meeting when you were a young person?  If you don’t, than it is a single string occurrence.  The two truly have no connection; they are different realities of the same event, or person.  If you do remember meeting yourself from the future, you are connected and all of your actions are preordained.  The older version of you already knows how the meeting goes.

This glitch occurs in Back to the Future, too.  Remember that Marty returned to 1985 a few minutes early to save Doc from being killed by the Libyans.  He witnesses the events from earlier in the movie…escaping in the DeLorean, Doc’s murder…and then he goes down to the changed Lone Pine Mall find out Doc wore a bulletproof vest.  The Marty that Marty watched disappear in the DeLorean was not him.  It was the New Marty, the one with cool parents and a Toyota.  The teenager who we see at the end of the movie is the Original Marty, our hero, who has now assumed the life of New Marty. Fine, but where the hell is New Marty?

Both Young and Old Joe are trying to change their paths.  Young Joe needs to kill his future self to stay alive, and Old Joe needs to change the past to preserve the life of his lost love. The question that is raised is if changes in the past can be made, when exactly do the changes take place? Looper puts forth a new spin, albeit a confusing one. As a story, it works fine.  When you add in the trickier elements and consequences of time travel, things get very murky.  

My Name Is Jim. I Have Mental Illness.

Just look at that nutjob.

Did we just pass another Mental Illness Week?  It seems like we go through four or five of those a year. It went without much fanfare, which is not surprising.  Mental illness is still something that is kept behind closed doors.  It is something that elicits shame to those who have it or confusion and dismissal to those who do not understand it.  It is a little like being gay.  We all know that every gay person has this moment in their lives where they have to “come out” to the world around them.  It is a challenging and special day to anyone who has to go through it.  Being a straight male white guy, I don’t have a corresponding experience.  But I should.  Although it is merely on my little blog that almost no one reads, it still can count. I want to come out as person with mental illness.  My name is Jim.  I have mental illness.

I have known there was something amiss with my brain since I was a teenager.  I was way too anxious to engage in life, and so many things that made other people happy made me sad.  I never thought I was crazy, whatever that is.  I knew I was broken. I never got any help.  I never really asked for help.  When I mentioned it to family and friends, the answer was always “You don’t need therapy.” As I got older and the weight of adult and parental responsibilities weighed me down, the anxiety was right there all along.  Depression kept me from growing as a person and feeling the joy of accomplishment or confidence, and by the time I hit 38 or so, I could not feel joy at all.

            Was the world around me making me this way?  No.  My money and job situation sucked, but I was happily married, my kids were healthy and surviving adolescence and I still had some close friendships.  But, you see, my brain was broken.  My ability to understand things like “Everything is okay” and “There are people in the Sudan who have it much worse than you” did not work correctly.  Every problem was a disaster.  Every problem had to be worried about.  I could not enjoy the weekend because I hated my job.  I hated my job because I couldn’t afford to do things on the weekend. I could not relax.  Everyone was just being nice, they didn’t value my company or companionship.  I was a failure.  There was no capacity to let things go, or acknowledge that sometimes I was just having a bad day.

            I went to the doctor in 2010.  Regular doctor.  Guess what?  High blood pressure.  High cholesterol. You must understand, anxiety can give you those things.  Those things do not necessarily give you anxiety.

 I immediately dropped caffeine.  Caffeine to a person with anxiety is like giving a Zippo to a pyromaniac.  I stepped up my walking; my one true exercise.  It was not enough.  I went to therapy.  And you know what?  I didn’t need much.  My entire life and I needed a dozen sessions or so.  Just a tune up, because I spent so much time thinking about my problems.  Oh, yeah, when you are thinking about your problems all the time, you aren’t living.  You are stewing.

            I am mentally ill.  I have a little depression, and acute anxiety with the added bonus of panic attacks.  My panic attacks are like heart attacks.  Tightening of the chest.  Numb left arm.  The cherry on top is the actual act of the panic attack gives you a more intense panic attack.  It feeds itself.  That is not the proper function of the human brain.  Panic is in there to keep us away from attacking wolves and guys with sharp sticks coming after our shit.  Not because a cop pulled you over for a speeding ticket or a late power bill.

            Now I take Zoloft and I am better.  I have no shame.  I thought about it for three years before I jumped in.  It literally saved my life.  I did not want to exist if I couldn’t feel joy.  Now, everything is better.  I’m still broke, we have our problems around here,  but I am okay with it.  Medication doesn’t make you loopy.  It allows you to feel the way you want without the dark clouds rolling in.  I still feel crappy sometimes.  But when I’m in a good mood, I’m in a good mood.  That is not too much to ask.

            Now I see it in my kids.  They have their own struggles and one of them needs some medication.  I have made it as easy as I can around him to accept that this is a problem that has to be dealt with.  It could be just a temporary scrape, or a permanent scar.  We don’t know yet. But, it has to be addressed.  I am so proud that he wants to take care of himself and not run from the problem.  It won’t rule over him like my anxiety ruled over me.

For the love of all you consider holy, do not think you are crazy because you are struggling.  You may not need medication like me.  You might need a professional to talk to for a while.  Maybe longer, who knows?  You might need more exercise or a change in diet.  I don’t know, I have a degree in history.  But mental illness has to be next on the table of things we need to be vocal about.  There is no shame in cancer; there should be no shame in mental illness.  I would not feel shame if I broke my arm and it needed a cast.  Why should anyone feel embarrassed about talking through your issues with a professional? We all get colds, we all get bumps and bruises.  Some of us deal with more complicated problems.  It is okay. 

I assume the struggle with gay life in society will reach a milestone is when it is no longer a big deal. (Hey, Bob’s gay.  Yeah, who cares?) That has to be the same for mental illness.  Announcing you need help for your brain should be about the same as saying you need to see the doctor for a checkup and to see about that mole on your butt.  It is just one of those things that your fellow man has to deal with.  Arguments against psychiatry and drug over-prescription are for cable news.  If you have a problem, this is your life.  If you have someone close to you that you think needs help, I think it is okay to bring it up, but remember they have to want to go.  If you have addiction, well, most people around you are waiting for you to get help, anyway.  Be a hero for taking care of yourself.

Maybe that is the point of coming out as a Mentally Ill Person.  There is nothing wrong with taking care of yourself.  Don’t let opinions and traditions and all that intangible crap get in the way of you enjoying life.  Just come out with the rest of us. Step up and get the help you need.

Trailers, Trailercide, and Cynicism

You just never know...

I am a sucker for trailers. Like this one. A million or so have passed in front of my eyes and I still get excited by what the movie (or TV show) has in store.  With age, the knowledge that most films never live up to the hype and that people who make the trailer are not the same set of people who make the movie, has instilled a dose of healthy cynicism.  But I still get chills.  I love a great story.  I don’t care.  If it has the chance at being good at all, the little kid in me who could not sleep on Christmas Eve is hooked.

The trailer for The Phantom Menace was just awesome.  Lightsabers, aliens, lasers, spaceships; it was unbelievably cool, and my kids were the perfect age for all of that in 1999.  It was the first video I ever downloaded; and because I still had a dial-up connection it took 14 months or so.  The longtime Star Wars fans were all eventually disappointed by the movie in one way or another when it came out, and rightfully so. But my kids were into it; and when I look on the bright side of things, my kids and I had a good time being excited about the movie for the months leading up to the release.  I did not feel slighted, because the trailer did not lie to me.  It showed a lot of visual awesomeness that the movie delivered on.  It was all that plot and acting and dialogue that got in the way.  The experience was not ruined by trailercide.

Trailercide occurs when the trailer flat-out misrepresents the movie you are about to see in the hopes of selling tickets to a normally unwilling audience. Your experience has been killed in some way. A love story marketed as an adventure film.  A drama cut together to look like a comedy.  An action movie with only two scenes or so of anything you could consider action.  A movie star is featured in the cut of the trailer but his actual screen time equates to a cameo.  We all know it.  It’s the marketing department lying to screw people out of their money.  There are also instances of trailercide that occur when marketing does not even understand what type of movie they are trying to promote.

A quality film is usually more than one thing.  It is dramatic, with scenes of lightheartedness, and maybe a dash of adventure. A trailer cannot be accurately edited without some understanding of what the film portrays. The creators of the film have one vision, which they had in mind when the project began and that included its marketability.  Then the trailer is created by a different group of people that have no emotional stakes with the movie itself.   However, trailercide is weeded out quicker these days. When the internet and movie sites have a feeling they are about to be duped, they are on that shit.  I’m glad they’re on the case, but I’d like to focus on what makes me get excited about trailers in general, and why I prefer to be a sucker.

Some people believe nothing of what they hear or see.  They are skeptical about everything and they believe those who are not deserve to get burned.  I take a different approach. Cynicism is so easy.  I have never subscribed to the idea that cynicism goes hand in hand with adulthood.  It is a tool in the toolbox of dealing with life in America. And it is an important one.  But cynicism in the face of art or effort or fun is just a life-killer and something I try to avoid.  I love a good movie or TV show. That’s part of my input of life. I wish I was a person who could just be satisfied by the birds in the trees and waves crashing on the beach.  I’m greedy; it’s not enough.  I love ideas and stories and characters and science fiction and heroes and escapes and love stories and all of that stuff.  All of that stuff is promoted through trailers and I’m finding myself even more addicted to them as I get older.  Sometimes, I am as gullible as a four-year-old.

On my old podcast, I remember talking about an incident with my dad about 20 years ago.  We were watching TV and we saw the first teaser trailer for the movie Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone.  My dad is into that stuff.  The trailer was this and only this:  Stallone, running toward the camera, on a cliff, then diving into the abyss.  That is it.  Fifteen seconds.  My dad says “That looks great!”  What looks great?  Stallone running and jumping? That’s not a movie… Fast forward about twenty years to me in front of my TV.  A promo for the upcoming series Justified comes on.  It was about the same length; an unknown man is slowly entering a house from the front porch, and Timothy Olyphant in a Stetson cocks his pistol behind a nearby corner.  Done.  Within two seconds I think:  “Oh I have to watch this!”  (Although, I think my instincts were a little better than my father’s).

I’d rather get screwed over a few times and still get excited by things than think everything is disappointing at first blush.  Trailers make a promise of a little fun and excitement and that is all I want.  Sometimes they are worth all the fuss.

I Love Time Travel – Part 9 – Doctor Who

This is how Vincent Van Gogh summons the Doctor.

I only joined the Doctor Who crowd in 2010, during a Netflix binge on the 2005 series and beyond.  Three Doctors and eight or so seasons later I am now a fan of the most unusual show on television.  I phrase it in that fashion because it is British, tightly scripted and not for doorknobs.  You have to keep up.  If you can negotiate the accents, and the quantum physics, the English humor shouldn’t be a problem.

What makes this show different in the realm of time travel fiction is that the rules are as fluid as the concept of time travel.  One the most famous quotes by the Tenth Doctor: “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.”

The TARDIS (that blue Police Box dealy) is not just a time machine a spaceship as well.  The Doctor is from a race of Time Lords (the show was conceived in 1963, cut them some slack.) and the show are his adventures bouncing throughout the universe; exploring, interacting, blowing it up and sewing it back together.  The box, not unlike Bill and Ted’s phone booth, travels to predetermined destinations but because of superior alien technology, also has a mind of her own.

(It has been established that the TARDIS has a female personality who loves the Doctor dearly.   I’ll move on.)

The unique wrinkle that the show brings is the idea of fixed points of time.  It is a way to anchor the stories and logic and maintain the story arcs from season to season.  There are points in time that cannot be changed without dire consequences; moments in the universe that have to come to pass or the fabric of existence would collapse on itself.  The Doctor usually obeys this rule and because of sharp writing, finds a way around the rule to accomplish his goal.   He is more of a tour guide to the universe, finding interesting people to meet and wrongs to right.   

There is an omnipotence, God-like quality to the Doctor.  Because he is the last of his kind, and the only being in the universe with his abilities, all of his actions affect universal timelines.  He also answers distress calls in any space/time, to those who know him or believe in his legend.  He can be in the exact place, at the exact time, all the time; and return his companion after months of adventures to the exact moment they left Earth.

Doctor Who is about fun.  It is more of a detective show than a time travel show.  There is the wonder of traveling to different time periods, but more problem-solving, too.  The protagonists make decisions (delightfully British, and frequently liberal) that affect societies as well as just screw around in the Victorian age. Most episodes are about the sense of adventure in life.  The science fiction is merely a backdrop or a means to an end.  The scripts are about meeting new people and learning.  The morality plays between cultures (a la Star Trek) are unavoidable, but the Doctor’s sense of fairness, justice and nonviolence keeps the whole world moving.

So many time travel stories are locked into transformation of historical events or righting wrongs in one’s personal journey.  Doctor Who’s TARDIS is more of a vacation tour and a theme park ride.  Maybe the Brits keep their imaginations in check and remember that this is all just fiction and sometimes fiction can be adventurous and entertaining.  

Drop What You’re Doing and Invent Teleportation

Hmmm...you say it only transports matter...

There is no more beneficial technological breakthrough than teleportation.  Alright, curing cancer.  There is no more beneficial scientific breakthrough, outside of curing cancer, than teleportation.  I pondered this one day in college when I was in a particularly dull short story workshop class; the writer reading her pages aloud lulled me to sleep.   (Sorry, but vampires are a snooze-fest.)

I made some notes about how the modern world would be changed with the advent of teleportation.  After a few minutes, my mind exploded.  The changes would be unbelievable.  So much so, the historical record would divide human existence into to eras; pre- and post-teleportation.  To clarify: the ability to almost instantly send a person or object anywhere, and safely return them is what I consider teleportation.  I am not even lose to a science- minded person.  I am a history major with work in creative writing (remember, short story class?) And I know next to nothing about the physics behind teleportation.  It involves throwing matter from one dealy to another dealy.  I’ve also heard the big ethical question.  If you dissolve someone into another form of matter or light beams or whatever in the attempt to transmit that energy to another place, are you not killing that person and reviving them on the other end?  Can you circumvent this by trying to have one object simultaneously occupy two spaces at once?  I don’t know, I studied Woodrow Wilson.

What I can tell you is the impact it would have on everything.  First, if teleportation was safe and mostly affordable, there would be little need for cars.  Erase emissions.  No cars, buses, diesel trucks, trains, semi’s, or the need for all-weather tires. You could walk into your home teleporter and zip right to work one minute before clocking in. Or would you even have to be there?  Would you need a workplace? Could you not just have a meeting room that served as a place where the employees strategize their week, and then go the hell home.  No traffic.  No snow days. (Sorry kids.)

Go to any restaurant.  Get fresh groceries anywhere.  Drunk?  Don’t need a ride home anymore.

 Is it vacation time?  Where do you want to go?  Paris for lunch and then the Bahamas for an overnight?  Did you plan a visit to Aspen but the snowfall sucks?  Pop over to Switzerland.  If you get sick on bad curried goat, come home and sleep in your own bed.  Along with that, if there is an emergency of any kind in any time of your life, you can not only instantly get to the hospital, but if necessary the medics can also get to you in seconds.  No emergency rooms.  Wait it out in your living room and they’ll call when they’re ready. 

No world hunger.  People can stay in their ancestral home and still be able to live and feed their families.  Think of the effect on casualties from natural disasters. 

Think this is a job-killer?  It will reshape the economy, not destroy it. Someone needs to maintain these things.  Why have Amazon.com when you can zip to any store in the world?  If you still want things delivered; overnight would seem slow in comparison.  Shipping without boats.  Vacations industry without planes, airports and bullshit.  Transportation would fall under the weight of teleportation. It would give way to a more personal marketplace.   Cars and bikes and planes would be for fun only. Feel like driving your car in Europe?  Find a public teleporter with a wide opening.  A simple fee and you can hit 200 mph on the autobahn.

(I wonder if it would be okay to throw our trash into the sun.  It could handle it right?  Set up a portal on Mercury or something and launch tons of Styrofoam and rubber tires directly at the sun.  I’m just spitballing here.)

We have suffered culturally in America because careers and opportunities have separated us from our families.  Not after teleporters.  I have family in upstate New York I’d like to see when the snow thaws.  Blam, I’m there.  Want to live where you want but still hang out with your best friends 1000 miles away?  Have a weekly poker night in the time zone of your choice.  Any wedding, funeral or party you don’t feel like avoiding you can attend.  (We will all have to update our excuses for ditching, but we can adapt.)

There would be security concerns, but if the government persists on monitoring phone calls, I think they would be all over a doorway that leads from Afghanistan to Tallahassee.  Let me entertain my fantasy.

Automobiles created the suburbs. They exist because people needed to be near a city but still have a home with land and not live on top of each other. There would be no reason to live somewhere or to not live somewhere.  We could ease city congestion while still increasing tourism.  The world would shrink.  In a generation, think of the amount of cultural knowledge and understanding that would be possible.  Our detachment from each other via internet and phone could dissipate with actual human contact. Live in New York, work in Texas, hang out with your friends in San Francisco on the weekend.  Be at the hospital when your sister has her baby in London and be back home for chili. Take the kids to Disney World on Saturday after you get home from work in Chicago. Scratch seeing the world off your bucket list.   If only.

Damn, maybe we could get one of these suckers on the moon.   

I Love Time Travel - Part 8 - Bill, Ted, and Hot Tubs

Excellent, dude!

Dude,what the hell?

Yes, a few spoilers.  Calm down.

I saw Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure twice in one day when it was originally in theaters in 1989.  It had time travel, hilarious quotable one-liners and my hero, George Carlin. The movie made some money, had a sequel and a cartoon show.  There is also talk of a third movie coming around, which I am too pessimistic to think will be any good. You know I’ll see it anyway. 

Bill and Ted are two morons who travel through time collecting historical figures for a very important history class presentation.  (I’m not sure what high school social studies class covers both Socrates and Billy the Kid, but I’ll shut up now.) They are offered the use of the time machine through Rufus (Carlin), a visitor from the future who says that all of human history depends on the two staying together and forming a band that will eventually bring about world peace.  So, it’s a comedy.

The time travel is a little wonky.  The device is used for comedic purposes and it works very well. The time travelers are idiots who barely understand what they are doing and each historical figure is kidnapped and seemingly okay with wormholes and sharing a phone booth with Genghis Khan. The phone booth is a rip-off of Doctor Who’s TARDIS, but only in size and shape. Creators of the film abandoned the original idea of a van because it would seem like a rip-off of Marty McFly’s DeLorean.  The device is secondary to the comedy which is driven by Bill and Ted and the rest of the world’s seeming indifference to the fact that they have retrieved the actual Beethoven to play live at a high school auditorium. 

It is loop time travel; at least it feels like a loop.  Ted speaks to himself from earlier in the evening, and the two make plans as the adventure continues to return through time and aid themselves.  Also, no consideration is given to the gaggle of historical figures and what would happen when they were returned. Lincoln has now met Socrates.  You would think that would have some affect. But who cares?  Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.  This is a classic eighties-era comedy and an original twist on the genre.

Hot Tub Time Machine premiered not long after the enormous success of The Hangover, and it is just as funny, if not funnier.  All the elements were there.  A rated-R comedy, a bunch of guys drinking and having ridiculous adventures. But HTTM had the element of pathos and childhood regret among the nudity and f-words that created a more rounded experience.

Three sad guys and the nephew of the lead travel back in time. How? They spilled a Russian sports drink on the controls of a shitty hot tub they once used as young men in their early 20’s.  The whirlpool brings them back to the day of their favorite big weekend, and they have assumed the bodies of their younger selves in the 1980’s. Chevy Chase tells them they have until sunrise to return to the 21^st century or they will be stuck in the 80’s. No rhyme or reason.  No electronic doo-dads. Just Chevy Chase as a fairy godmother.

 This is a blend of consciousness and single string time travel. The guys go out to try to alter their future lives.  The nephew tries to wrangle these idiots and explain they are making serious changes to their own timelines, including possibly undoing his own existence. But the guys are drunk and partying and kinda sad. One meets another girl, one faces a bully, one follows a dream of being a musician. All of the jokes are solid and there is a nice chunk of satirizing the genre, including stealing the ideas for inventing things that will eventually make billions.

The humor works well, but the time travel drove me insane.  I don’t care about a magic pool of time travel water.  The Chevy Chase character is fine with me; he puts a time limit on the whole affair.  Great.  But the ending is very unsatisfying in the traditional fictional construct of a time travel movie.  Like Marty McFly, three of the four guys return to their lives and they have changed for the better.  In Marty’s case, life is essentially the same.  There are nicer furnishings in the house, happier family, but the same girlfriend played by the actress that will be replaced by Elizabeth Shue.  But in HTTM their lives are incredibly improved; one with a happy, successful marriage and the other with a dream career.  John Cusack’s character sees photos on the wall of all the great times he and his dream girl had in the last 25 years, and Craig Robinson’s character stands in his recording studio in the business he built. 

But they didn’t get the 25 years! The prize is the life they made, and they actually missed all of it!  Not to mention there are 25 years of experiences and memories they have no knowledge of whatsoever. The guys are strangers in their own lives. The trips, the friends, the crises...all of life’s moments are completely unknown to them.  They crossed the finish line but the price may have been too high.  In fact, they should have stayed behind with Rob Corddry’s character.  Suicidal at the beginning of the film, he relives his life more confident, happier and rich.  Maybe they can address these issues in the sequel.

It may be incredibly difficult to screw up a time travel comedy.  There is so much grist for the mill of character development, satire, and overreaction.  Both of these films succeeded and remain very watchable and fun.

Anthropomorphism and You: You’re Probably Not a Nutjob Because You Talk to Your Car

Don't be such an asshole!

There is a degree of schizophrenia in which a person has conversations with inanimate objects.  If you or a loved one has deep philosophical discussions with your toaster, than by all means stop reading this stupid thing and call a professional.  But there is also an innocent side to this strange phenomenon that is still quite revealing.

I have talked to my car.  “Come on, get me through this and I’ll give you the best oil change of your life.  My treat.”  This is quite common, especially those of us that either have little technical know-how or have crappy cars.  We need somewhere to vent our anxiety, and we are trying to befriend our car in the hopes that he will return the favor and not leave us stranded on the highway.  I’ve done the same with my computer, printers, heater…even once with my roof.  That one scared me. For some reason it seemed crazier to talk to something without any moving parts: “Jesus, don’t leak tonight, okay?”

Two days ago, I wrote in my journal file on my computer.  I have been writing a lot of this essay stuff for the past few weeks, and when I opened my personal journal, I felt a sense of apology hit me.  Just for a moment, I felt bad that I hadn't opened it up in the last three weeks.  I felt bad for the journal.  The 1’s and 0’s on my computer arranged in alphanumeric shapes set against a white page on my screen. For half a second, I felt bad for a computer program.  That’s a little weird.  But, if this is the thing you do to get by, it should not feel any stranger than telling your dog your plans for the day or bitching out your old rake because it’s a piece of shit.

The truth is, those of us who anthropomorphize tend to be more sensitive and a little more detached from the rest of life.  We are lonelier; in that we feel lonely more often than a person that does not do this.   It is a little sad, but I like to think of it as that we have a lot of friendship to extend to the rest of the world, and why just stop at human beings?  There are pets and machines and homes that have personalities we have assigned; why not include them in your life.  I think as long as you don’t hear the toaster talking back, you are okay.  Plus, we just don’t have enough places to give thanks.  If you are religious, you can thank God over and over, as you probably do.  Some of us like to spread the love, and thank the cable for not going out, and the lightning for not hitting the tree outside your bedroom window, and the tree for not falling on you.  Its quick, it’s innocent.  It’s kinda healthy-ish?

The inverse is interesting as well.   The lonely or detached tend to talk to their stuff, while the extremely secure do something very different.  Those who don’t question their place in society often look at people as objects.  Their detachment is quite different and from a different end of the spectrum of removal from society.  It seems there is one more divide between the sensitive and the secure, the thoughtful and the callus, the self-aware and those who just aren’t.  (I apologize; I cannot relocate the research article that details this study. I didn’t just make this crap up. Dumb brain.)

I understand why these things bring us comfort.  They are in no way any different to me than talking to your maker or your mother who passed away twenty years ago.  It is a search for attachment.  Now that I now it is mostly common and relatively indicative of a sane but sensitive person, I won’t feel the shame or embarrassment of feeling twinges of pity when I throw old clothes away, or lock my lawnmower in the shed. 

Ooh, I bet its cold in there for him right now.

I Love Time Travel - Part 7 - 11/22/63

You will learn more than you wanted to know about Oswald.

A few spoilers within.  Suck it up.

Stephen King released 11/22/63 in 2011 and I was immediately intrigued.  I had not read a King novel in years, and now he threw a time travelling behemoth of a book at me.  I had to check it out.

In the world of time travel, I’m betting Stephen King played around with a lot of time travel devices to get this story off the ground.  There have been so many time machines used in the past; cars, booths, portals, black holes, just waking up in another body…  It must have been an interesting writing session where he came up with using a walk-in freezer at a burger restaurant as a doorway to September 9, 1958.  Here we have the use of fantastical time travel.  I love to see this.  Sometimes the story has nothing to do with experiments or missions, but just one normal guy’s experiences.  This is a very close approximation of what it would really be like to live life, not just a few days, but years in another time.

Jake Epping is a teacher in Maine.  (Yes, Maine.)  He has a favorite local restaurant that serves the best burgers around.  Through his friendship with the owner, he discovers this doorway to the Eisenhower era, and that the chef has been using it to buy cheap burger meat.  That’s right, at the beginning of the story it is a Frozen Beef Portal to the Past.

 The doorway operates like this: Every time you walk through it you are in the same spot in Maine on September 9, 1958 at 11:58 in the morning.  You can return through the portal back to 2011, but only two minutes of your own time has passed.  The catch is, any changes in the world you have made during a visit, including killing anyone, robbing a liquor store, or buying ground chuck at less than 70 cents a pound are reset the next time you go through the portal.  Jake learns that the chef has not only been buying cheap meat; he’s been buying the same meat over and over again to serve to 2011 customers.  The chef is dying, he has to close the restaurant and he lets Jake take a crack at the doorway. 

King’s vivid descriptions of the world of the late 1950’s pull you into Jake’s journey.  Obviously taken from his youth; the taste of food, slang, mannerisms, clothes, the racism, the music are all center stage. Jake has a few personal missions to accomplish, but remember, he has to decide to never return to 1958 again if he wants the changes to stick.  The title suggests correctly that he decides to hang out in this time period for five years to try and stop the Kennedy assassination.  This trope is as trodden as there is in the genre, but King makes it more of a commitment to the protagonist.  Are you willing to invest five years of your life to save Kennedy?  How would you live and work and take care of yourself?  Do you avoid people or not?  Would you want to stay and never come back at all?

There was talk of turning this into a movie soon, but that has changed to a possible JJ Abrams series project on TV.  A two-hour movie would lose the book’s central conceit.  Time travel and life in another time, day after day, can wear on you.  You can completely reinvent yourself as a mysterious stranger anywhere you want, but you will be lying daily to everyone you know.  To speak honestly about a magical meat locker from 53 years in the future would probably raise a few eyebrows.

Without revealing too much, the consequences for Jake are disastrous.  (It’s a Stephen King book, remember?) There is also a new wrinkle.  Time travelling is unnatural. It takes a toll on the natural world and the events with which Jake is interfering.  It’s not just Jake playing a hand at affecting the course of history, but the travelling itself causes disasters outside of Jake’s control. Reality itself does not like the interference of time travel.  It is rejected like white blood cells attack a virus.  This is not explained clearly, in that, why would there be a doorway to this time at all if it would only create a catastrophe for space/time/Earth?  But the questions remain in Jake’s hands.  What do you do and what would you sacrifice for the changes you’ve made?

Although this is one of King’s longest books, and there is a bit of sag in the middle, it is one of his more unique and satisfying efforts.  It is worth a read for the window into the 50’s and 60’s alone.  11/22/63 is a meticulously detailed Twilight Zone episode, complete with a love story, historical footnotes, and time-travelly goodness.      

There Is No Excuse For Not Making The Thing

Just a nice picture of the Pacific coast.

There is a very tough lesson the most of us have to learn.  I am speaking to the creative types out there, the ones who can’t help fiddling with that dusty guitar over and over and those who add a few words to a story they started years ago.  We aren’t without any talent at all; we just don’t have “it”.  The acting version gets the smaller roles; the athletic version rarely gets to take the field.  We try and try to be in the game, but our DNA has only given us so much.  We lack the height or the voice or the look or the angle or the necessary understanding to be truly great. 

So many hours of my life have been soaked up by questioning all the passion I have to be creative. It is actual labor and it is natural and American to see what it has reaped.  It has never taken me anywhere, and only I can notice the incremental improvements I’ve made.  I have no dream of commercial success or serious readership, and any performances will most likely be done for free.  For so long I wondered why not quit it altogether.  I am also a fan of these things, too.  Why not just appreciate the art?  So many people just shout into the abyss, (or the modern term: ‘the internet’…) for someone to acknowledge and validate what has been crafted.  Is art in a vacuum still art?  Well, yes it is. 

The lesson we all have to learn is: Tough shit.

Those two words apply to every other adult pursuit in life.  You didn’t get the job.  You didn’t get accepted to medical school.  Your business is in trouble because of the economy. 

Tough shit.

All of those people are faced with crap every day and they have to figure out a way to move on.  Try another job, try another school, try another business approach.  Why should a creative person think they are outside of this aspect of humanity?  If you are in it for fame and glory and money then I’m not sure if you are creative type. But if you are in it because you just cannot escape the urge to say something to the world through canvas, song, or the written word; tough shit if no one’s paying attention.  Tough shit if you are broke.  Tough shit if your friends don’t get what you are doing.  Art isn’t a guarantee of anything.

Van Gogh wasn’t truly appreciated during his life.  Van Gogh!  Jimi Hendrix couldn’t get anything going in the US; it was London that made him famous.  We know these are geniuses and their work is unparalleled, but their challenges are very human.  The point is, even the truly gifted aren’t guaranteed anything.  Tough shit for them, too.

There is another sobering realization. Ask yourself the question I ask myself all the time (with a twinge of shame.)  How supportive am I being to my fellow creative types?  Am I out there reading blogs and seeing shows or buying local music?  Could I be a little more involved in the community?  An adjustment of the prism with which you view your own successes is nice, but taking action is always more satisfying. I could always read more or take in more to involve myself in the world of creativity. We all want to be heard.  We can start by hearing each other a little more. 

To those who are shaky at the starting line:  you have nothing to lose.  ‘Tough shit” is harsh but liberating.  It does not have to make sense.  You don’t have to justify the book you are writing or your gardening blog. I think it’s time we remember that we don’t all need audiences; at least not for everything we make in our lives. Get back in the garage, pick up your woodworking tools and get covered in sawdust. Go take the photos or try to paint.  Just pick up the guitar again and challenge yourself to learn a few more chords.  You are not going to the Grammys and you are not making a platinum album. But you are making something.