Nine thoughts on 9. Sort of.

Over a month ago I stumbled across a trailer for an animated movie which would come out in September.  It caught my attention up-front with its original premise, but REALLY sucked me in when “Welcome Home” by Coheed & Cambria started playing.  Check this out:

So now I’ve seen it.  And since I have seen it, I want to discuss it.  Also, I like lists in blogs.  The name of this movie is a number, so that works out perfectly, wouldn’t you say?  So here we are — Nine thoughts that I have relating to or inspired by the movie 9.

1. I think Elijah Wood is awesome.  Seriously.  I think it’d be cool if he and I bumped into each other one day in some yet-unknown circumstance that would require us to get to know each other.  Then we’d be buds and he’d meet all my friends and we’d just hang out and do cool things like I would with any other friends, except this friend is Elijah Wood; but I don’t let that influence me because, you know, he’s just a friend, and I’m cool like that.  I’d get a call someday, “Hey, man, it’s Elijah.  What you up to tonight?”  But that would be awkward because then what if I wanted to have a Lord of the Rings marathon?  I would invite him, no question, but would he come?  And if he did, would he tell us all kinds of cool things about filming the movie, or would it just feel really weird with Frodo sitting there saying nothing at all?  I may never know.
2. I commented that this movie has an impressive cast at one point.  Soon after I realized that by “impressive cast,” I meant that I recognized most of the names.
3. The concept of this movie deserves something WAY bigger than an 80 minute film.  Here is an entire world that was destroyed by technology that is now only inhabited by nine little dolls and a robot.  There is so much room for stuff there!  I get not pursuing a franchise with it (and appreciate that), but a two-film or three-film story arc could have really worked here.  Or, at the very least, a two to a two-and-a-half hour movie.
4. I really hate the way movies sometimes rush through exposition.  For anyone with a brain, the exposition is where the movie really lies!  This is my main beef with Michael Bay movies – somewhere (waaaaaaay down there), there is a story, but he refuses to tell it.  9 did this to a degree (though nowhere near Bay’s offenses).  As I sat in that crappy theater, I was completely sucked in by this neat concept of a story, but it seemed to jump from one big, defining event to the next very quickly.  That bugs me.  That’s how cartoons in the 80’s told stories in 25 minute episodes.  Slow down, please! Anyone who would sit and complain that the movie is taking too long doesn’t deserve to be there!
5. It did have quick-fixes to very big problems. (Spoiler alert).  I can appreciate the ways in which the assassin robots are taken out, but they’re all taken out in sequence like mini-bosses in a video game.  The threats don’t last long enough for us to care about them.  (I’m going to start calling such a story move “a Darth Maul”.)  Also, getting back and forth between the factory and the church started taking about 5 minutes, when the first journey was clearly (at least) a couple hours.  Lastly, the distruction of the factory was too easy.  It worked the way they planned it the first time — granted, the big robot survived, but the point remains that, while the tension was present, it did not hang on nearly long enough.
6. I noticed the song “Welcome Home,” nor any other Coheed & Cambria tune (the whole soundtrack was Danny Elfman), was not in the movie.  One of my friends expressed mild frustration over this fact (quote: “All my problems with that movie would have been forgiven if it had a Coheed & Cambria song in it.”)  But I thought putting that song in the trailer, despite it not ending up in the film, was a very clever marketing move.  Maybe this aspect of it wasn’t on purpose (like maybe they just liked the song), but I like to think it was:  what kind of demographic is going to see a movie set in a post-apocalyptic world following the exploits of hand-sized, sentient burlap dolls, facing an evil machine?  Maybe the same people that listen to a progressive rock band whose albums tell a very complex and original sci-fi story?  Yeah, maybe.
7. I’m glad to see Crispin Glover doing stuff these days (since I’m such a big fan of Back to the Future), but that man seriously creeps me out.  It’s like he takes the stereotype of “weird theater major” to a whole new level.
8. Someone, somewhere, is going to describe this movie as “Toy Story meets The Matrix.”  I think that would (or will) cheapen the creativity here, so I will not be happy when I see that.
9. My final word on this movie is that it was wasted.  All of the potential is there, but it was trimmed too much and finished in a hurry.

 

Let’s put this to rest once and for all.

I was going to write up a whole blog on how I have said time and time again that a “sugar high” or a “sugar rush” is not at all true – meaning that you, nor anyone else, anywhere, ever, have gotten a surge of energy from eating an excess of sugar.  No, not even kids.  (This does not account for caffiene). I was going to search and search and search and provide references out the proverbial butt to support my case so that all you nay-sayers can see what I have on MY side so you know what  you need in order to prove YOUR side, and thus effectively knowing that what I know is RIGHT.  I was going to do that, but the first place I looked turned out to be all I needed.  It’s The Straight Dope article from February 15, 2008, where this reality was first introduced to me.  In it, Cecil Adams (self-dubbed as “The world’s smartest human”) cites many studies that have been done over the last 30-40 years which have all effectively failed to prove that sugar has any effect on people even closely resembling what is commonly believed.  In fact, what HAS been observed is that parents’ behavior around children, when the children have been given sugar and the parents know it, is what changes.  If you still refuse to believe me after reading this article, then there’s no hope for you.

So in your FACES! I love you all.

 

(Why) I listen to bands that don’t even exist yet . . .

This is a topic very dear to me.  Those who know me will certainly be able to attest to this.  I must choose my words very carefully, and be sure to support my grievances with plenty of examples, as people on the other side of this eternal debate seem to be filled with TNT as I spew my fire at them at close range.

The mainstream ruins good music. I hesitate to use such a tired term, but I will stand by my decision to do so.  By “mainstream” I mean not only commercial radio stations, Mtv etc., trend stores like Hot Topic, and end-caps in the Wal-Mart CD section, but also popular culture’s common knowledge (which is usually incorrect in its assumptions) and, overall, things teenagers these days think they understand, and by extension what adults think they therefore understand by watching today’s teenagers.

It is because this “mainstream” ruins good music that I find myself getting upset when (to name just a few examples),

1. My favorite bands sign to major labels or go on tour with crap groups like Blink 182 or Nickelback,
2. A song on one of those bands’ new albums (which I would have had for 3 months or more at that point) becomes some cell phone company’s new jingle for their commercials,
3. New bands spring up that only imitate that what has already been done and get more attention for it,
4. I see a store in a mall selling ready-made fashions that, years prior, I watched creative people design for themselves via thrift shops so as not to support stores in malls,
5. The songs and albums that defined the genre in question are belittled by those who think they understand music better because that OLD stuff was never on the radio, but the NEW stuff is.

There is a general understanding held by many people that good bands get famous, okay bands are one-hit or one-album wonders, and crappy bands are just generic little garage bands you never hear of and that’s okay because they’re no good anyway.  Furthermore, this general understanding also says that people who get mad when their music gets famous are just selfish and guided by some irrational, anti-establishment ideology and only listen to the music to perpetuate their image of independence from mass culture in the first place.  That understanding is disgustingly wrong.

I’ve had this blog on my mind for quite some time, and since starting to write it two days ago I’ve gone “J.R.R. Tolkien” on it about four times (kudos to those of you who get that analogy).  What I have concluded is the best way to state my case is to tell my music story, and then conclude with some insightful thoughts for all of you to take home.  It is my goal that those of you who may, to whatever degree, agree with that “general understanding” I mentioned, go away with a broader perspective on the world of music, and the eternal struggle of artistry and sound vs. image and money therein.

I got into punk rock starting in 1995 and developed an affinity for the more pop-punk sound (featuring vocal harmonies and simple chord progressions) by bands such as NOFX and Bad Religion. It wasn’t long after that when I started getting into ska by way of bands like The Toasters, Mustard Plug, and Slapstick, to name a few.  I dissected every album I had, learned all about the genres’ histories, and read other bands’ names in the special thanks sections and hunted down their works as well.

1997 was one cool year.

I was sure I was on the cutting edge of the new wave of popular music because mere months after friends introduced me to these two genres, they became more and more popular.  However, I quickly learned a distaste for this as some of my classmates, who were Rage and Bush fans the week before, were writing “New Found Glory” and “Mighty Mighty Bosstones” in white-out on their backpacks, Mtv (as it existed in that day and age) was having a hay-day with “Sell-Out,” and other people were asking questions like, “What’s this new form of music called ’ska?’” and when I’d inform them that ska is actually older than reggae, I was ridiculed for being so ill-informed.

Crappier

Crappy

There were guys that I knew as Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam junkies who actually convinced me that The Urge were a good band so I regrettably bought their second album.  There were popular kids in the cafeteria singing the new ska-punk hit, “Walking on the Sun.”  My gut twisted as I even saw a few of my favorite bands, such as Buck-O-Nine (see albums Barfly and Twenty-Eight Teeth) change their style in hopes of landing an Mtv hit (see album Libido).  My heart broke as the popular kids that owned Turn Off the Radio and Dude Ranch, as I did, would roll their eyes at albums such as Life on a Plate and Lookit! (which, in my opinion then and now, are WAY better).  I wanted it to stop.  I wanted them to say away because, for some reason, I knew that since they weren’t genuine, the consequences could not be good.

Then ska disappeared like any other flavor of the week.  From around 2000 or 2001 forward, there have only been a small handful of such bands, playing shows and releasing albums for those who were really ska fans all along.  If you don’t believe me, check out groups like Mu330, Voodoo Glow Skulls, and Streetlight Manifesto.  I think the Toasters might still be together, too, but I could be wrong.

Next came emo.  Emo was harder to define than punk or ska.  The bands were all so different, though they still carried a certain, common je ne sais quoi between them.  There were straight-forward rock bands like Braid, Alkaline Trio, or Moneen.  There were synth-rock bands such as Sig Transit Gloria, The Anniversary, or latter-day Get Up Kids.  There was the hard-edged dissonance of At The Drive-In, the melodic screaming of Thursday, while also the artistic concept albums from Appleseed Cast.  

 Early on the label of “emo” was already viewed as negative by some because some pure-blood punk rockers saw emo as the next stage of evolution from pop-punk (and they were probably right), and those guys hated pop-punk.  Also, many of the groups were interested in just being bands, rather than a kind of band, so they did all they could to distance themselves from the label.  Usually they failed, and I’ve tried to maintain a much more loose and positive assigning of the word to acknowledge that to some degree. However, I always feel it necessary to remind everyone that what you may THINK or have BEEN TOLD is emo (Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Good Charlotte) is NOT what emo is.  Or was.  However you want to put that.

Honestly, would 20-somethings in 1997 have bought into this?

When I started listening to emo, I was a late-comer, as many emo bands of the time were gone or entering their last days by 1999.  These groups were Tuesday, Braid, Jawbreaker, among others.  Other bands coming onto or who would be on the scene for a while longer were The Get Up Kids, Hey Mercedes, Appleseed Cast, Alkaline Trio, etc.  I had known of emo for several years at that point, and had hated it and avoided it like the plague.  I began liking it when I realized 1) I was maturing with my musical tastes and needed new things, and 2) hating an entire genre as I saw it based on a tape an old friend had made me three years prior was just silly.

Emo, to me, circa 2000

The downfall of what was emo came with Dashboard Confessional[1].  Others may say otherwise, but trust me on this one; it was Dashboard.  And Jimmy Eat World. I’ll get to that. . . . The lustful eye of the mainstream was noticing the commotion in the “underground” scene and was taking an interest already, so when Chris Carraba burst onto the scene with his second album, The Places We Have Come to Fear the Most, with his rugged-but-pretty-boy looks, soothing voice, and ringing, slide-tuned acoustic guitar, the teenie girls went nuts.  Almost overnight, what was emo before (maturing punk-rockers with more complex song structure and at least an attempt at insightful lyrics) was re-defined as crying 14-year-old girls, singing along as Dashboard waxed sappy over lost loves.

Not much longer after that, Mesa, Arizona band Jimmy Eat World released the follow-up to their sophomore masterpiece, Clarity, and called it Bleed American (in case you didn’t know, it was re-titled Jimmy Eat World after 9/11, which was around a month later, and making it Jimmy Eat World’s third self-titled release).  The title track was a good hard-rock anthem about who-knows-what, but there were a few songs on there that reeked of radio-pop-hits. I remember the first time I heard “The Middle.”  I don’t think I made it through the whole song.  Where Clarity screamed at me with the beauty of life through sound, and elevated the standards I held for what a good album should be, this song “The Middle” made me think of puppies and pastels and matching white suits and musical guest appearances on Regis and Kathy Lee. “Well Jimmy Eat World just isn’t emo, anymore,” I thought.  But pretty soon, the song hit the airwaves and everyone was talking about this new kind of music, “Emo!”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” us emo fans shouted.

A tug-of-war ensued between those of us who didn’t want a repeat of what happened to ska and those who suddenly thought they knew how to define one of the most eclectic genres in rock music.  But we were destined to lose.  So sad.  Those on my side either abandoned the whole “emo” thing altogether (remember that many didn’t like the label to begin with) or just hung out on the side-lines and threw punches when someone got near (like I did).  Emo, as I knew it, flailed about like a fish on concrete over the next year or two in its attempts to somehow not end up in its inevitable fate of being a lame excuse for gutless teens to hide in corners and be laughed at by everyone.  I was embarrassed when someone asked me what kind of band The Get-Up Kids were and I would respond, “emo.”  I tried to defend myself, explaining that what they had been told was wrong, but no one cared.

Take some goth, add some pink, you get emo. . . . I guess.

And what followed was pretty weird.  The scene’s look mutated.  It mutated into some gross emo-goth conglom.  I honestly don’t know how the goth look even came into the picture in this story, but it did.  Maybe it’s because both were associated with Hot Topic, but I don’t really know.  I’m still perplexed to this day.  “Emo-Kids” before 2002 or 2003 looked like your normal college rockers, but since then they look like Apoptygma Berzerk rejects like that douche to the left.  Keep in mind, I knew self-defined goth rockers at the time.  I’ve gone to industrial rock shows.  I know what “goth” fans look like, and it’s being called “emo” by the mainstream to this day.

Well, it’s been several years now, and rising in popularity (and in the mainstream’s peripheral), we have what is called “indie music.”  Where emo was a difficult-to-define genre of rock, indie music (that’s “indie” for “independent”) isn’t really a genre at all, and certainly isn’t always rock; it’s more of a broad category (kind of how “metal” isn’t just one type of sound anymore, except broader).  These days we have bizarre, hard-to-classify groups like Polyphonic Spree, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Broken Social Scene.  There are also catchy soft-rock bands like Stars and Fleet Foxes; artsy, folksy singers like Sufjan Stevens; quirky line-ups like Mates of State; and even groups with heavy other-genre influence but providing new twists in the sound, like Black Kids, Miracle Fortress, or Vampire Weekend. The list would be infinite with this kind of music because no one (finally) is asking “does this band fit the genre?”  There is no genre.  It’s called indie because it is truly independent.  They make their own genres, either for themselves alone, or one for each album or song.  Bands make the music they want to make without pandering to a scene, and the scene that is there wants to see what they come up with.  I’ve loved going to the few shows I have lately with absolutely no pre-conceived notions as to what the bands will sound like.  The more originality, the better.  The more clear influences and classic nods, the better.  The more anything, the better.

Bands have more than one person, idiots.

But it’s happening again.  It’s becoming fodder for comedians.  The mainstream is catching on and putting these bands on talk shows and Caribbean cruise and cell phone commercials. I’ve already heard reports of radio stations spinning the new hit single from the band Feist!

I’d like to just shrug this one off, since the very nature of indie music is to let it be what it is – but I’ve seen it too much.  I’m serious.  I’m tired of my favorite bands becoming trends and then becoming teen-movie fodder for money, and my subsequent furry causing me to be lumped into a category of people whom everyone assumes just doesn’t like to share and only cares about image.

It’s not about sharing!  It also certainly isn’t about image!  I’m almost 30 and work in an office!  I have no image these days, and I’m not trying for one.

I have stood by helplessly three times as the music I enjoy is destroyed. This “mainstream” gobbled up ska and pop-punk and emo like a Maury Povich fat kid on a pre-rehab ice cream kick.  But he’s not eating Haagen-Dazs. He’s eating out of the plastic tub you find on the floor of your grocer’s freezer. As he’s shoveling it into his face-hole, he does not know how to, nor does he think to, enjoy the treat for the delightful confection it’s intended to be.  Instead he acts purely on instinct and finishes two gallons before sane people could finish a half-pint.  Then he throws up and is so disgusted by the memory of the gluttony that led to the cold-and-warm mass on the floor that he never eats ice cream again – nor does anyone else in the room. But he is not cured – no, his lusts are not quenched or swayed.  He will find a new snack to devour with the fervor of a starved and rabid wolf.

Certainly, I am not so naïve to think that such a blog as this will forever change someone who defines the success of a musical artist by whether they perform at the Grammys or not; but please understand — I want success for my favorite bands.  I want to be able to share the music I find and am introduced to by other friends with even more people.  What I do not want is some guy at the head of a major corporation, whose main goal is to make money, to package and sell and overexpose the masses, and not only ruin perfectly good bands, but attract more to the arena that WANT to be used and overexposed, because as far as they know that is what music is supposed to be about. They come along and play the game by the numbers, crap out some quick hits that hit our ears like cotton candy to the mouth, until we all stop and wonder what was so appealing about any of this in the first place.

I want to conclude on a positive note by stating that regardless of what happens from here forward, understand that true music fans will always be one step ahead.  Ska, punk, and emo are not the only genres to be devoured by the mainstream, and they will not be the last.  But those of us who like good music and appreciate the artists that make it will always be doing something new and something different, and it is the mainstream that must catch up and exploit in order to survive.

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[1] I want to point out that there’s nothing inherently wrong with Dashboard Confessional.  I like Dashboard.  I’m listening to him as I write this, because brining him up earlier made me realize it’s been a while since I listened to Places (though my iTunes has already moved on to the incredible So Impossible EP).  Had the whole mainstream thing never happened, he would have been one branch on what was a beautiful tree of a variety of sounds.

 

Do yourself a favor and stay out of the housing industry.

I just read some of my old blogs. They were clever and well-thought out, and I was writing them while at work, in a panic while hoping to not get caught by my manager. Perhaps I’m praising myself too much, but I can state with complete confidence that had I not written the bumper sticker rant, I would have marked it as a favorite.

Working for a mortgage company for the last three years has done a number on my brain. There’s a million jokes that can be made about this, but really I’m wanting to mention only briefly how the sad state of language comprehension is most apparent in the emails of those in the mortgage business.

People who use smileys as punctuation

People who, think that a comma, is to emphasize the pauses in their brain.

People who not can’t structure for syntax.

Should I also mention people who don’t seem to forget question marks, but rather don’t appear to know they exist.

I could go on. The end point is that this is all seeping in to how I write. I’ve began getting lax. I’ve noticed myself not caring about correcting capitalization errors. I’ve stopped fixing “adn.” I’ve began letting myself leave prepositions at the ends of sentences again.

Today, I was trying to annoy a co-worker by typing the lyrics of the Alkaline Trio song to her in IM (a song which she had no doubt never heard). The actually lyric is “and all though it’s all my fault, blaming myself had to come to an end.” But that’s not what I typed. And I didn’t notice it until I read it back to myself. I wrote “and all though only it’s my not all fault, blaming . . .”

Lord, I implore you. Rescue me.

 

A clean rant

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that Axe Body Spray and Body Wash commercials annoy the crap out of me. Is this product of such low quality that they have to try to convince guys that women will not be able to resist carnal assault at the very wiff of Shock, Kilo, or Snake-Peel? What’s worse is that they’re coming out with scents for chocolate and leather and who-knows-what-else-is-on-its-way. I mean, what woman can control herself at the scent of a man who smells like a stale Hershey’s bar or the shoe department in Wal-Mart?

Honestly, though, I’d be afraid of a woman that actually found that attractive. My mind produces an image of a way-too-small tube top and an aluminum bottle of Bud Light sitting behind a trailer on an otherwise-vacant 16-acre lot. Perhaps I’m being mean, but regardless I’ve found yet another reason that I’m glad I’m married to who I’m married to.

I’d still be bar-and-wash-cloth if I didn’t determine years ago that such a method was the reason I itched constantly. However, since I did, I’ve switched to the body wash method. It’s often quite a challenge to find neutral-colored washy thingies, but I get by. I’ve bought Axe before, though it was years ago, when the stuff was new, the ads weren’t as prevelant, and it was really cheap. I think it’s still pretty cheap, but in addition to a personal boycott on the stuff, I’d be a little embarassed to buy it. “Hi, I’m buying this because it’s soap, not because I expect women to make out with my drain after I take a shower. No, seriously.”

Currently I’m using that Nivea for Men stuff. Why? Well, Dove was too expensive, nothing else was on sale, and I was getting tired of Old Spice. But besides those reasons, they had a very effective ad run for a while. It had all these annoying teenagers going on about how important their body wash was for attracting women, etc. etc., and this Nivea stuff doesn’t fit the bill. Then they cut to Mr. Biz-Caz, wearing his suit with no tie and the top button unbuttoned, murse over his shoulder, getting into a cab in the big city. He looks the bottle over, smells it, says, “doesn’t reek, won’t dry my skin . . . works for me.” That’s right, my fellow corporate slave, it does work. So does the ad. Kudos to the advertising department that came up with that one. It’s not so much that I’ve been convinced that “this is the body wash for those of us who are smarter than those who buy and perhaps buy into Axe,” but more the fact that I can clearly see that someone else out there sees an Axe commercial and feels a small part of them die inside.

Well, my bottle of Nivea is running low, my unnamed brethren. Keep it up and I might get another.

 

There’s a reason it matters.

One way to get someone mad at you really quick is to point out their flaws. However, many people’s responses wouldn’t be to the tune of, “why do you have to focus on my imperfections? We all have them,” but instead a justification of themselves (citing extenuating circumstances) and/or belittling you for noticing. It is my belief that such a response is a sign of both narcissism and lack of education.

Recently, the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out. I paid $6.75 at a theater in illustrious Carbondale, Ill. to watch this piece of trash. Thank goodness I saved my additional $3 that I would have spent in Washington; Michael Bay will never get that.

Now, you can go anywhere on the internet to find blogs and reviews of why this movie was so bad, with its poorly edited exposition, gaping plot holes, crude humor, plastic characters, and overall minimization of the title characters. And anywhere you go you will also find a mass of people attacking the reviewer for taking things too seriously, or forgetting that it’s just a movie, and reminding said reviewer that it’s just meant for entertainment “and it did just that.”

What is happening here? It is my opinion that, more and more, people in America today are allowing themselves to become uneducated and are losing their ability to recognize quality in forms of art, or lack thereof. We are allowing ourselves to be stimulated by only our most basic and primal of instincts, and not just leaving our brains at the door but never taking them with us anywhere; so we end up with Michael Bay movies, useless reality television, and music that consists of nothing but the most basic of chord structures, over and over, and poorly written lyrics. And what’s worse is that when someone points this out, we attack them like rabbid dogs. But we’re not really upset at them for not liking that movie, or that show, or that musical artist. We’re upset at them because they’re saying that it was unintelligent, and we are subconsciously denying that we have bought in to such a ploy, and we can never be convinced otherwise because our pride won’t let us.

And on the flip-side, when something requires a little more thinking, or some time and focus to appreciate fully, it is diminished by the masses. This is, at the end of it all, what makes this so concerning. It’s not that we just allow ourselves to be filled with sugar-for-the-brain, but that we also despise that which is truly visionary and creative.

I have no redeeming comments; I’m very saddened by this and hope that when I become a father that  can instill in my children an ability to appreciate that which is good and wholesome.

 

I’m going to talk about Terminator for a while. Part two.

There are two kinds of stories.

Okay, there are more than two, but go with me on this.

There are two kinds of stories. There are simple stories, and there are complex stories.

A simple story, as in my meaning here, could be like many one-shot movies that have been made for decades. I just watched Pixar’s Up last night with my wife. It was an extremely charming movie, endlessly entertaining, and very simple. The basic ideas and themes were conveyed quickly, and it didn’t take much to determine where a character was coming from or what the motivation was at any given moment. It worked.

In a complex story, such easy viewing isn’t possible. The motivations are hidden. The events aren’t linear. There are twists around every corner. To tell this kind of story, you have to be very careful. You need to have your facts straight, have events mapped out, and have names memorized. To do so is extremely important because when everything is said and done, it all has to make sense to be worth the time of those watching, reading, or listening to it. I’m a huge fan of the Lost television series because it does exactly that – drops little pieces here and there while you think the story’s headed in one direction, but when it all takes a major left turn out of nowhere, you can go back and see it was coming all along.

The failure to do this can and will result in what I call “The Refrigerator Box Syndrome.” Let me quickly define what this means. When a family buys a brand new refrigerator, often they will give the cardboard box in which it came to the children. Such a box is a blank canvas of imagination and adventure, where anything can happen. The children get in and envision journeys of peril and heroics. At one point, one of the children suggests adding a back door. All the children agree and they do so, and it makes the box that much more exciting. Then someone wants to paint or draw a logo on the side, so they do and now it looks better than ever. Then someone wants to add a hatch on top. Then someone else wants to add their own details to the mural. Then someone thinks the back door would be best if it was just an opening and not a door at all. By the end, the magical world that the children had was destroyed by too many ideas and not enough cohesion, direction, and common purpose.

Many stories have suffered from this, and the result is usually abandonment by its fans until a reboot occurs and promises to keep things together. The biggest example of this of which I am aware, which many people may not get, is the X-Men comic book series. I haven’t read comic books in over 15 years, but I remember in my middle school days that the X-Men story line was being pulled left and right by countless, arrogant writers who want to drop their own stupid ideas into the mix regardless of established canon. And at the time, in my eyes, it ruined the story.

The Terminator story is, in many respects, standing on the edge of a cliff above this abyss of worthlessness and butt-of-bad-jokery.

The first reason for this, and the most prominent in my mind, is the TIME LINE.

My goodness, people, is it that hard to stop and do some simple MATH?! Let’s put some pieces together as they are presented to us, shall we?

As mentioned before, Kyle Reese and the first Terminator were sent back in time from the year 2029 to the day of May 12, 1984. How do we know the date? Well for one, nearly the very beginning of The Terminator gives us the setting: Los Angeles 1984, 1:52 a.m. Shortly after this, Kyle attacks a cop and demands he tell him the date. The cop tells him it is May 12, to which Kyle replies, “No, THE YEAR!” This was  confirmed again in T2, in the scene which two police officers are questioning Sarah Connor, locked in a maximum security mental care facility, and show her surveylance pictures of the first Terminator from the shoot-out at the police station in the first movie. The say that they were taken “at the WesttownPolice Station, 1984.”

Big deal, right? Well the problems begin to mount when you remember that Terminator 2 came out in 1991. However, we can’t just assume it’s 1991 in the film. Why? Because John Connor would only be SIX! He was conceived in May of 1984, meaning that if Sarah carried him for the full nine months, he would have been born sometime in February 1985 (see? I know I can do math!). But John Connor cannot be six in this movie! Edward Furlong, the young actor playing John, was 13 when they were doing principle photography in 1990! Sure, older kids play younger kids all the time (e.g. Daniel Radcliffe, Michael J. Fox, the entire cast of 90210), but a 13-year-old passing as a 6-year-old? Not gonna happen.

But hold on – this is still fixable, right? We can just say it takes place in the near future! Why should they have to wait until the year in which the fictional character John Connor would be in his middle school years just to do the story? Sure, that works. Of course you run in to the problem that you’ve got middle-schoolers in the mid-to-late 1990’s listening to Guns ‘n Roses, wearing mullets, and playing After Burner at the arcade, but we can get past that.

Yet there’s another obstacle in the way. The writers set the date for Judgment Day to be August 29, 1997. In 1991, the year 1997 may have seemed like an eternity away, but now you have issue because that means John Connor is TWELVE YEARS OLD WHEN THE WORLD ENDS! How old did we say Edward Furlong was during shooting? And this WAS done to an extent because the T-800 tells young John that he will send him back “35 years from now.” That means it would be, at the earliest, 1994. That makes John Connor nine. The writers have managed to chop of their own arms to make a believable story because there’s no WAY that kid is anything less than TWELVE! His voice is changing, for goodness sake!

You can brand me a nerd for noticing these things, but actually having things line up in your story shows that you care about what you’re saying. To completely ignore it and let things fall where they may is lazy and it shows you put as much effort into it as a D-grade 9th grader does in a 10-page research paper. If you write movies, then that’s your JOB. If I did my job to an equivalent of that I’d be fired in a week.

Well what has been done in retrospect is to say that Terminator 2 takes place in 1995, when John is 10.  Sigh. Whatever. Let’s move on.

Now we get to the crown jewel of the series (*cough* sarcasm), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Right from the get-go you can tell the producers and writers of this film really didn’t give two hoots about what they were doing – they just saw dollar signs due to their super-model villian and Arnold’s mug on posters. Most people understand that the third movie was horrible, namely because of bad acting and over-the-top and way-too-long action scenes, but allow me to explain the other reasons it was bad.

The opening narration given by John Connor states that he was THIRTEEN when the 2nd Terminator came. We’ve already established that’s impossible within the timeframes given within the first two movies, so there’s no need to embelish on how wrong that is. What this means is the writers either didn’t care or didn’t check when they established this. My money is on both.

This error is embelished all the more when John later explains that his mom was diagnosed with leukemia and was given 6 weeks to live, but “fought on” for three years to make sure Judgment Day didn’t happen. That means she was diagnosed in 1994, three years prior to Judgment Day. I’m sure you’re doing the math by now to realized that John would have had to have been nine in the second movie (at the oldest), not thirteen, for those time frames to work. Though I am willing to bet that the writers assumed the first movie took place in 1991. I just got that vibe.

Now that I’ve pretty much exhausted the Time Line problems, let’s move on to a few more.

1) What the heck is the name of Arnold’s character? – In Terminator and T2, Arnold was called a “Cyberdyne Systems, Model 101.” The extended scenes in T2 refer to him as a T-800, and he is also called T-800 in the latest Terminator Salvation. Terminator 3 calls him both “T-850″ and “T-101.” Can we all just have a meeting and come to an agreement? At least pop a cassette into the VCR to see what the movie said. Does it take that much time?

2) We can all debate about how time travel can work, but it doesn’t work that way – This is essentially one of the major plot flaws of the third film. Putting aside the fact that Skynet wasn’t supposed to be around in 2032 (which I’ll get to in a moment), the T-800 (or 850, whatever) explains that John could not be located so the T-X was sent after his generals and future wife. Well that’s all fine and dandy since John told us in his opening narration that he’d been living off the grid for several years, but why didn’t Skynet send the T-X to a time when John could be located? I do believe that we’re talking about time travel. Does anyone else remember the climactic scene in Back to the Future when Marty remembers that he is in a TIME MACHINE and he can give himself all the time he needs to save Doc’s life? (Of course he comically gave himself only 15 minutes, but never mind that).

2) The T-1000 was supposed to be advanced as it got – This might seem a bit picky, but it ties directly into my main point, which I’ll conclude with. When Kyle is being interrogated by police in 1984, he states that his forces in the future had smashed the defense grid of Skynet, effectively winning. They found the “time machine” and that the Terminator had already been sent through. Kyle believed that after he went in after it, the time machine was destroyed. However the second movie reveals that there were actually two Terminators sent, and that the second one, the T-1000, was an advanced prototype, meaning those things weren’t in mass production yet and it was likely the only one. Then, remember, the human resistance wins the war. As Kyle said, they’d destroyed the defense grid. If that’s the case, how does the T-X come around three years later? And why all the sudden does Skynet know about John’s T-800?

Sure, you can say that Skynet knew all along. You can say that Kyle didn’t know that the war would rage on for 3 more years, just as he didn’t know a second Terminator went through. But by that point you’re not creating a good story, you’re mopping up bad writing.

My main point is that in these kinds of stories, one should not rewrite what is already written. You can write around what’s already written, and (even better) you can write into what is already written, but you shouldn’t change it. It negates everything already established and makes it less interesting because the multiple parts cannot be enjoyed as a whole.

Now that I’ve beaten up relentlessly on those movies, it’s time for me to bury the hatchet and admit how blown away I am by the over-arching story’s complexities and its subtleties . . .

 

Election Day

I hate election day. I begin to enjoy life again slowly as each day passes beyond it. I’ve already gotten into three arguments over things that neither I nor any of the three other people really understood. I told one of them that Obama came from obscurity, and she said that Palin was more obscure, and I said she wasn’t, and then she somehow got me to defend the notion of Palin as President some day, when all along I don’t really think she’s that capable. How did she get me to that place? I’m awful at real-time arguments.

I usually try to keep myself out of the American political arena, instead standing on the outside where I can clearly see how everyone inside all act exactly the same way or, at the very least, have the same, messed-up hearts despite the fact that their issues are opposite.

So many people think that the future of the world hangs in the balance with this election, but that’s just not true. It’s the same as all the other elections previous. The left says that if the right stays in power, the world will be thrown into the dark ages. The right says if the left gets in power, they’ll take over everything we own. Obama is a Chicago politician (a city known for corruption) who has rose from obscurity over the last 4 years (he was first elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, served 8 years, and then has been a US senator for 4), and he’s gotten us chanting things like, “Yes We Can!” and “It’s Time for Change!” without any of us really knowing what he means. Sure, we know what WE mean, and that’s what those who wrote those slogans were counting on: that we’d all fill in our own blanks. McCain is a Republican who has stood in the Moderate range at best for years now, and now that he’s the GOP’s candidate, he’s suddenly as right-wing as they come. Do we really think that Obama will make all the difference with the issues we’ve made him represent in our own minds? Do we really think that McCain really means it when he tells us he’s against abortion, let alone anything else he’s said? If you answer “yes” to any of those, I’m afraid you’re naive. The crossroads where we stand right now WILL NOT be the defining moment in our nation’s history that either brought about our demise or our success. It can be a step in either direction, but nothing that’s not reversible within 4-8 years. When Clinton took office, the right shouted “he’s undoing everything done in the last 12 years!” and then when Bush took over, the left shouted “he’s undoing everything done in the last 8 years!”

In the end, when you vote today, you’re just defending a point of view or your own comfort. Those on the left can go on about how horrible the Bush Administration has been, but the fact is there are those who think he’s done an excellent job – it all depends on the criteria you put forth. Those on the right can scream about universal health care and assisted suicide and increased governmental controls, but the fact is there are those who want those very things and will be happy if they are put into place. As much as anyone on either side wants to think, their opponents will not someday think, in mass, “Oh, gosh, guess I was wrong about this one” under any circumstances. Americans are stubborn like that.

I think we need to take a long, hard look at how important we make this stuff. Yes, it’s important and valuable in this nation to be sure to vote, but the fact is that people see various issues differently and you might lose. We have turned the act of NOT voting into an immoral action, and not because of fear of an unelected person taking over or people of which we don’t approve making decisions for us, but to keep the other guys from getting their way.

Go ahead, get mad, tell me I’m not seeing the importance of this election. Tell me that I don’t really understand what’s at stake. I’ve already heard it. Let me tell you that all of this will eventually pass, be it 4 years, 8 years, or maybe 16 to 20, and we’ll all have some other list of issues that we’re debating and thinking that the world will end if things don’t happen the way we think they should.

 

Let me offer some help.

Okay, pay attention, take notes if necessary:

Yeah – an alternative, more casual version of “yes.” An affirmative. “Yeah, I remembered the soda.”

Yea – an Old English word, pronounced “yay.” “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Rape and Despair . . . “

Yay – an expression of excitement. “Yay! You remembered the soda!”

Ya – an informal version of “you.” “Top of the mornin’ to ya.”

—

Then – used to illustrate sequence. “I bought the soda and then I went to the party.”

Than – used to illustrate difference. “The soda cost more than the chips.”

—

There – used to illustrate location. “Put the soda over there.”

Their – used to illustrate possession. “The party will be at their house.”

They’re – a contraction of “they are.” “I’m bringing the soda, they’re bringing the awesome.”

—

A – indefinite article used before words that begin with a consonant sound. “Hand me a soda.”

An – indefinite article used before words that begin with a vowel sound. “It would be an honor to hand you a soda.”

—

Its – possessive of “it.” Note that there is NO apostrophe. “Here is the car’s engine, and over there is its hood.”

It’s – contraction of “it is.” “It’s awesome that you brought soda.”

—

There’s lots more, so I’ll do sequels. Stay tuned.

I’m sure I’ll mention “Who” and “Whom,” but I’m still working on figuring that one out.

 

The Care Bears Movie II Analogy

I have a lot of analogies for things. It’s really how I think, and then later express my thoughts. This one I’m going to write about is by far my favorite one for two reasons: 1) because it’s such a weird place to draw an analogy from, and 2) because it’s a really darn good analogy.

One of my buttons is the “Christian” war on magic, the occult, and “satanism.” I think it’s really, really misguided. I have so many friends that were not allowed to watch The Smurfs or Scooby-doo when they were kids because those shows had magic or witches in them. I’ve heard people talk about and people write about the “evils” of the Harry Potter series and how it’s teaching children witchcraft. My dad hated my love for the fantasy genre in my teen years because of its associations with and influences from Dungeons & Dragons, which EVERYBODY KNOWS is a game satanists play. I even have some back-woods-minded extended family that have somehow become convinced that to have a goatee is evil because “Satan has one” (that’s really the tip of the iceberg with those guys). And all of this is in addition to people freaking out over rock ‘n roll and the now-dated-but-still-acknowledged fears that subliminal messages are hidden in secular music to turn young teenagers in to orgy-attending Satan worshipers.

A lot of this runs hand-in-hand with the idea that as a Christian, one is not supposed to fight for a niche in culture, but rather represent Christ in the world. When you get that, and I mean really get it, you begin to see how all those people are loved by Jesus and need to be shown that, and the whole “them vs. us” thing becomes irrelevant. Through understanding that, too, it becomes clear how Satan really is trying to lead us astray and corrupt us. It’s in the form of day-to-day temptations, trying to muddle what we hear from God, and trying to subtly set us on the wrong paths. He does this by getting us to make compromises, or to get us focused on the wrong things. He does not do this by entering our minds from the page of a Harry Potter book.

I want to add in a little factoid for everyone: The overly-conservative-Christian belief that the Harry Potter books teach and influence our children to practice witchcraft was born out of an article from The Onion parody newspaper, which means the whole story was made up. The article was actually cited as fact in some Christian journals on the subject, because those authors did not understand that The Onion is one huge joke.

Of course I don’t want to imply that I think that anything that can genuinely be categorized as “dark arts” is harmless, but it’s primary harm is to those who practice them and it’s not horribly contagious. If your daughter starts hanging out with a Wiccan boy and brings home some of his reading materials, then I think you have cause for concern and should step in. But I do not think that if your kid finds that the Dragonlance book series is entertaining, that he or she will begin to hear demonic voices and be led like a zombie to a dark basement apartment where there is an in-process black mass, and then strip naked and join the orgy.

Okay. On to the analogy. You’ve waited so patiently.

The Care Bears Movie II was more of a reboot rather than a sequel to the first film. Of course I didn’t understand this at age 6 and 7. For a brief synopsis of the plot of the movie so you understand the analogy better: a summer camp in a northwestern state is taken over by the evil Dark Heart, who has disguised himself as a kid, and he has made all the kids at the camp stop caring. Stop caring about what you ask? Everything! They knock over trash cans and gave developed dark circles under their eyes. Gasp! Two children have escaped this, who conveniently felt rejected and unloved at the beginning of the story but found friends in the Care Bears.

So, it’s clear that Dark Heart needs to be stopped. True Heart Bear (the yellow one in the picture above on the left) and Noble Heart Horse (the purple one . . . yes, apparently it’s a horse) (for the record, I had to look up their names on IMDB) set out to take Dark Heart down. They travel through caves and oceans, staying hot on what they think is his tail – but this is where the surprise comes in: they’re actually chasing his shadow. By the time they catch up and figure out they’ve not actually been chasing the real Dark Heart, their home (Care-a-Lot) is destroyed and Dark Heart has taken all the other Care Bears prisoner. (Don’t worry, the good guys win, but that’s not part of the analogy).

The final point is that people that get up in arms over magic in cartoons and Harry Potter books and kids wearing black nail polish, but they’re being fooled by the evil one to think that all of those things are what they need to point their shields at, while the real enemy wrecks their homes and their lives, and by the time they figure it out it’s too late.

I don’t have any big conclusion. That’s pretty much it.