Life, Liberty, Etc.

...And be Sure to Thank Your Hero as You Exit.

2008-07-06T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm kind-of a movie snob.

Movie snobs come in all shapes and sizes, some refuse to admit they might enjoy any mainstream film. "Kill Bill? Yawn. Toy Story? How juvenile. Iron Man? Must be a bourgeoisie classic by now."

Do not confuse me with one of those people.

Ask someone who knows me, get me started about what I like and/or don't like about any movie I've ever seen, I will talk your head clean off at the neck.

I just watched Live Free or Die Hard, the movie which scientifically examines the all-time greatest question ever asked, its answer brutally debated in bar-fights, a question with its own fatalities. Just how much ass can one man kick?

John McClane seeks to silence all debate on the subject.

I haven't seen the other Die Hard movies, not because I think I'm too good for them or anything, simply haven't gotten around to it yet. I came into this one half an hour late, though my tardiness helped me appreciate it even more.

Art films and indie films (anything my more pretentious college classmates might call "real cinema") require set up. Come in halfway through the movie and you have no hope of understanding it. Suck it up and hope you'll see some tits or ass before the credits roll.

Action movies like this one (when they're done right) allow you to jump in at any point and immediately know good from bad. They create a simpler world, a brief respite from the shades of gray complexity of reality, one where the best, if only, solution to your conflicts with other people is to simply kill them. (What would happen to "The Office" if the characters applied the same sensibilities? Sounds like a great idea for November Sweeps!)

Ultimately, I found the evolving role of action heroes the most fascinating aspect of Live Free or Die Hard. Take this quote for example:

Fuck being a hero. You know what you get for being a hero? Nothin'. You get shot at. You get a little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can't remember your last name. Your kids don't want to talk to you. You get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me, kid, nobody wants to be that guy.
-John McClane

McClane puts his life on the line for an ungrateful society and gets nothing for it. His wife divorced him, his children shun him and he lives in massive debt. This modern day Job's stalwart faith in the society that does little to reward him strikes a chord in many of us. It hearkens back to the ideal of another time in which the good of our society lived on a higher pedestal than our inidvidual self-interest. It is a fitting end to the climax as McClane shoots a gun through himself in order to kill the antagonist, thus resolving the film in a heroic gesture of self sacrifice for a greater good.

We live our lives surrounded by real heroes in the vein of John McClane. Perhaps they cannot take out a helicopter with a ballistic police car, or hold their own against a "kung fu hooker bitch." They are our servicemen, who put life and limb on the line for a government that doesn't bother to give them body armor; who come home to protesters who call them baby killers and blame these brave individuals as if they caused a war. They are our teachers, who take low paying jobs in our public schools for the sake of kids who often don't want the gift they work hard to give. They are our policemen, whom nearly all of us refer to with derogatory names, who make it safe to walk the streets at night. The fact that these issues are reflected to any degree in mainstream cinema is noteworthy.

While it wasn't an oscar-worthy challenge of acting, it was a great story, well told by the director. But beyond the higher minded issues of the modern hero, it was fun.

Back to those classmates I knew college who felt they were smarter than the average movie-goer; they probably skipped Live Free or Die Hard. It's ironic, they embody the selfish sensibility that they are more important than society by pretending they are smarter than everyone else, and by failing to appreciate the contributions of real life heroes all around them. Perhaps enjoying mainstream films once in a while might show them that there are some popular values in our movies that might still be worth hanging on to; chiefly among them that making a movie fun and entertaining does not go hand in hand with making it stupid.

Yippi-kay-ay, Mutherfuckers!

Sometimes you gotta roll the hard six...

2008-06-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

I quit my job.

As of Monday afternoon I will not be working for someone else.

I find it strange that for many months, friends and family members made no secret of their opinions that I needed to quit, and then once I had decided to quit, suddenly everyone was alarmed at how irresponsible it was to quit without already having another job.

"What are you going to do for money?"

"You shouldn't quit until you have something else lined up."

My plan had been to concentrate on my business, eliciting more opinions:

"Self-employment doesn't usually work out."

"You should still have a day job."

All these people, my friends, my family, ostensibly those who one would trust to have their best interests in mind, suddenly seemed to have no faith in me or my abilities. Which began to sow the seeds of doubt in my own mind, and I lagged for a few months on actually quitting.

Around the same time, I began to realize that I was not ready to throw all of my eggs in the basket of the production company I own with two friends from high school. Lately my partners and I have diverging goals.

I asked myself why all these people who told me I should be doing something bigger and better, who made me believe in myself once, suddenly thought I was being naive? Why were they trying to shoot me down or telling me to stick with playing it safe?

Because they care.

For all of us, our families and friends want to see us do well, to get that better job, to move up in the world, to be rewarded. Unfortunately, reward usually requires risk. So the real paradox was that they want to see me rewarded, but without having to put myself at risk.

For so long I've played it safe, pretty much doing whatever I was asked to do for whatever people wanted to pay me. Well that's over now. Things have been so bad I've finally been forced to think about what I really want, and playing it safe is NEVER going to get me there.

One of my favorite TV characters has a saying, "Sometimes you gotta roll the hard six." He says it when they're faced with a tough decision, when they can turn and run or risk everything with the odds against them, for the chance of winning big. It's about knowing when you have to take a big chance and hope that luck and skill work together to better your chances of winning. This is that time, I can feel it as clearly as I've ever felt anything before.

To my friends and family that think I'm being foolish, I can see how it looks that way. But if you want to see me make it where I want to go, I have to give it everything I have. I don't have room for doubting myself. Maybe I'm wrong, I only hope that if I am, you will be big enough not to say "I told you so," and help me up in case I fall.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it"

2008-03-22T01:18:00.000-07:00

Brenda Ellowitz

1951-2008

Tonight I attended the memorial of a mentor of mine.

Brenda Ellowitz may have been the most brilliant person I have ever had the opportunity to meet. We shared an office for a few years when we both worked for Saddleback Valley Unified School District, and I can tell you she had a remarkably universal sense of humor. She was thirty years my senior, but we got along incredibly well. (One day I was trying to figure out the name of a song playing on KROQ. I asked our office-mate who was about the same age as me, he had no idea. "That's Puddle of Mud," Brenda shared. "The song is called "Blurry.")

Brenda was a graphic designer while I was a lowly computer tech. Armed with her pen tablet and trackball mouse, she would put together beautiful logos and page layouts very quickly. One woman who spoke tonight remembered ordering a copy of Photoshop for Brenda, remarking that when it came in, it was "like a little kid on Christmas." Others remembered that if you were taking a group photo and you were afraid you were wearing a horrible color, she would remark, "don't worry, I'll take care of it," and digitally change the color of your shirt. She could remove wrinkles, red-eye, zits, all of the things that make people nervous about having their picture taken. If you were afraid those things would dominate the picture and ruin your memories of the day, Brenda could put you at ease with a simple phrase: "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."

One day I remember looking at a group photo from an awards presentation which hung on the wall just outside of our shared office. In the group photo, I saw a gentleman I was pretty sure had not been able to make it to the ceremony.

"Hey Brenda," I said, "I thought that guy couldn't make it that day."

"He didn't," she replied.

Thus I became acquainted with her graphical magnificence.

I remember thinking, "I wish I knew how to do that."

Fortunately, another of Brenda's amazing traits was what I would consider a form of excitement at sharing the things she knew. She would light up when she could tell someone was understanding what she was teaching them. (Years later, teaching at El Toro, I would come to call this a "teachers' high") I learned tips and tricks from her, maybe hundreds of them, that I use on a daily basis. Only now that she's gone do I truly understand the profound impact she had on my skills, let alone on me as a person. I wish I could go back and thank her for these gifts.

Yesterday, I was back at the School District office taking pictures of the many Teachers of the Year. Knowing these pictures will be displayed on two 9x12 screens in front of about 500 people, they get very tense about the little things.

"Wouldn't you know it, I have a huge zit today." One complained.

"If I smile too wide I get a double chin," Another worried.

"Can you do something about the wrinkles around my eyes?" someone asked.

I looked past them toward the wall in the back of the board room and saw one of those pictures Brenda had masterfully corrected years ago.

I turned back to the fretting teachers and told them, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it."

I hope that somewhere, Brenda has that same satisfied look she used to have when she knew I had learned what she'd been trying to teach me.

Thank you, Brenda. You were a shining beacon of humanity, and the world seems a lesser place in your absence.

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants

2008-03-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

My very entelligent mother just served us nine pizzas.

Or so it used to go. This somewhat nonsensical phrase is barely a sentence, but it taught me how to remember the order of the nine planets of the Solar System and a questionable spelling of "intelligent." It's telling that the word which represents Earth in that sentence is misspelled.

Unfortunately for those of us who had to learn this phrase, there are no longer nine planets in the Solar System.

Can you believe it? We lost a planet. A whole freakin' planet! Gone!

Ok, that may have been hyperbole. We didn't lose it, we just sortof... demoted it.

Indeed, Pluto is now just a "dwarf planet." And we have two new ones, Ceres and Eris.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris.

National Geographic put on a contest for children to invent a new mnemonic device to remember it. A Montana fourth grader, Maryn Smith, won the contest with "My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants."

That's nice and cute, sure. But dammit, I used to get nine pizza's and I want them back.

In Search of Irony

2008-03-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

"Media content has gotten more graphic, more violent and more sex-based… Currently, nothing under New York State law prohibits a fourteen-year old from walking into a video store and buying… a game like ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ which rewards a player for stealing cars and beating people up. Children can even simulate having sex with a prostitute…"

-NY Governor Eliot Spitzer

Everyone is talking about Eliot Spitzer. The New York Governor had been known as a crusader, cleaning up the shady back rooms of big business. As Attorney General, he would put a man on the stand for money laundering, then question him about cheating on his wife and hiring prostitutes or using drugs. Apparently these things "establish character."

One of Spitzer's slightly less publicized crusades was against video games, particularly the "Grand Theft Auto" franchise. He championed a law that treated video games as less than other forms of expression, and in doing so trampled on the First Ammendment. Fortunately, the New York Supreme Court agreed.

The mainstream news outlets have all featured pundits remarking on the irony of the situation; that the man who viciously attacked other clients of prostitutes now finds himself the target of a similar scandal. I'd like to point out that this is not ironic. Show me the irony in a man who knowingly decried the sins of other men, sins which he himself was guilty of. Even Jesus warned men like Spitzer:

"But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

(John 8:7)

There is no irony to be found here, only hypocrisy. Judge not lest ye be judged, Governor. And you have been.

The Long Game

2008-03-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

"But such is human life. Here today and gone tomorrow. A dream--a shadow--a ripple on the water-- a thing for invisible gods to sport with for a season and then toss idly by--idly by. It is rough."

-Mark Twain

We're all going to die someday.
I'm not trying to be morbid, but it's true. I'm not referring to us as individuals either. The entirety of the human race is going to face the scythe... probably. We are all together on one planet, one well aimed asteroid (or a few thousand warheads) away from oblivion.

We are a wonder of evolution. We have harnessed our sciences, subdued nature and bent her to our will. When we split the atom, we sowed the seeds of our destruction. But when we landed on the moon, we sowed the seeds of our salvation. Unfortunately, on the fertile fields of imagination where human ideas are nourished with blood, sweat and tears, apparently there was only room for one crop.

On July 20, 1969, the world watched as for the first time, man touched the soil of another world. We were inspired at the potential that mankind might end its petty wars and embrace a greater destiny of exploration among the stars themselves.

We conveniently forget that even the noble Apollo program was an extension of the Cold War. Nevertheless, we did manage to go to the Moon. We showed the capacity to leave our fragile world behind. While until then our infant race had been crawling around our earthly playpen, the Apollo program was baby's first step... and we got to show those russkies who the cool kids were.

Then we said "screw it, this is too much work." Besides, we had better things to do, like build more of those ICBMs we used to like so much. And we were really good at that.

Thirty years after Apollo was sent to the scrap heap, President Bush put forth a new "vision" for space exploration. We would finish the International Space Station, and then we would return to the Moon and never leave her again. Then on to Mars and worlds beyond.

For thirty years, smarter men than he have said we need to focus our efforts (and money) on improving life on Earth rather than explore the cosmos. That this man, quite possibly the least intelligent president the United states has ever known, is the first to understand this necessity is the most remarkable thing about his presidency.

If we don't destroy ourselves through war, we are going to use up the Earth someday. We can conserve and recycle to delay the inevitable, but we will use it up, and sooner than we want to think. We need to stop rolling around the playpen and learn to walk around the solar system. Then we need to learn to run and reach new star systems. None of us will live to see it before we are tossed "idly by," as Twain put it.

Yet our lives are of little consequence if we do nothing to solve the fundamental problem that extends beyond all generations of mankind. The only way our species might endure the sport of "invisible gods" is to spread to the stars, where no man nor even God himself may reach us all with just one hand.

Here we go again.

2008-03-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

Meg wants to read my blog.

You see, the problem is that as soon as someone invites you to read their blog, they want to read yours. In this day and age, rife with "bloggers," "blogospheres," and "blogologists" and even two chicks on CNN who's sole job is to look like sexy co-eds while thrusting the rantings of random people from their proper place in their leaky corner of this "series of tubes"* into an international spotlight, I can see how one could easily expect that everyone is doing it. The internet gives us all the power to say anything we want, whenever we want, to as many people willing to care enough to read, or listen or even watch. It's amazing really, and how could I possibly turn that kind of power down?

I dunno, just lazy I guess.

It's not like I don't have anything to say. Ask my friends, sometimes I can't shut up.

I've even tried this blogging thing before. Like a child, it's fun and novel for a while, and everyone talks about how it's so great. But then you realize it's work. You have to feed it. It poops. One day it will call you a fascist and tell you its moving to a commune in Minnesota with a bunch of hippies. And after all that work, like a new years resolution, it dies after a month or two. It dies tragically and alone, and no one shows up for the funeral.

But Meg wants to read my blog, so here we go again.

*"Series of Tubes" compliments of Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Thank you sir, for appearing so incredibly under-informed on an issue you are heavily involved in legislating.