the ticket collector

The Truth about Orkans

2012-03-08T19:08:00.001-08:00

I got a little chuckle out of the fact that Slacker 2011 was showing in the auditorium of Muenzinger Hall, the psychology building on the CU campus.

Let me explain: last summer when I was living on the Hill I sometimes cut across campus on the way home from work and noticed that the Psych building was right next to the CU football stadium, Folsom Field.

It made me remember, in a humorous way, the old ABC television show Mork and Mindy (link), which is the only network sitcom ever to be set in Boulder, and which debuted right at the time that my family moved to Colorado in the late 1970s.

The premise of the show, as you may recall, is that an extraterrestrial alien being Mork (Robin Williams) travels from the planet Ork to Earth to study the habits of Earth people. Mindy (Pam Dawber) is a young woman in Boulder who finds him and takes him in. They live together in her apartment (I always remember the Jackson Browne album on the wall of Mindy's apartment in the show---that was the epitome of Bohemian living to me back then).

There's a scene I remembered in the opening credits of the show, in which Robin Williams is standing on the goal posts of Folsom Field. Pam Dawber is standing on the field in the end zone trying to coax him down. Here it is (I love Mork sitting in his rainbow down vest next to Boulder Falls in this clip!):

Last summer when I noticed Muenzinger Hall next to the football stadium, it suddenly hit me: Oh, Mork really wasn't an alien being at all. He was a crazy homeless person from Boulder who was in some observational experiment at Muenzinger Hall in the CU Psych Department. One day he escaped, went off his meds, and Mindy found him on the football field and took him home. Now it all makes sense! OK, I realize that probably doesn't fit with the plot of the show, or that particular episode, but I'm going to keep it as my pet theory.

In any case, just to continue my review of Slacker 2011 briefly, I certainly got a kick out of the fact that 9/11 "conspiracy theories" were mentioned quite copiously in the movie. This was appropriate in many ways, since discussion of the Kennedy assassination was part of the original Slacker in 1990.

The discussion about 9/11 was a bit satiricial in the context of the movie, but I didn't mind at all, or take it personally.

But just for balance, and in tribute to the psychologists of Boulder, I'm including the Youtube video at the top of this post, which I also greatly enjoyed, and which made me feel like I'm in good company with the other "crazies" walking the streets of this town.

Slacker 2011

2012-03-08T16:12:00.001-08:00

Has it been thirteen years? I guess it has.

Looking for my next-thing-to-do in Boulder after last week's climate science lecture, I read a notice in the printed version of the Onion, of all things, for a showing the following Wednesday on the CU campus for Slacker 2011, which I immediately discerned must be an updated version of the famous film Slacker by Austin film producer Rick Linklater. Given that I had just been reminiscing about Austin, this seemed like the obvious next step.

Slacker (link) came out in the summer of 1990, at the end of my first year in graduate school in Austin. I remember the guerilla marketing for it all around West Campus and the Drag that spring. It soon became a local cult classic. One of the most notable actors in it was later in a film shot in my own house on Duval Street in the spring of 1992, produced by my roommate James Froeschle as part of his master's thesis at UT (imdb entry).

In the original Slacker, the rambling stream-of-consciousness style that dragged the viewer haphazardly from one conversation to another, following various people who crossed the screen, seemed to be the perfect style for Austin. Say what you want about it, somehow it captured the goofy spontaneity of Austin and its weird inhabitants right on the cusp of the 1990s. I was looking forward to seeing the "update," although I knew there would be a bit of poignancy in that it would remind me that I had not been back to Austin since the spring of 1999, and in most ways, it was no longer my place to call my own, or my home at all anymore.

I noticed the showing would be at the Meuzinger Auditorium on CU. That was just a little bit further up the hill from the Institute for Behavioral Sciences. Could there be anything more perfect for my next step?

I drove to Boulder a bit early and stopped for dinner at a Tibetan take-out place at the corner of Folsom and Arapahoe. What could be more Boulder than a Tibetan take-out place? It was the first time I'd been there. I'd driven by it repeatedly and thought of going. It seemed like the time to start new things. I asked the Tibetan-looking guy at the counter for a recommendation for Tibetan food, and he suggested a spicy beef dish. As I ate it, sitting at the window counter with my back turned, a young couple that had just moved to Boulder from Detroit chatted with the owner about Tibet and Tibetan food. The owner went into a history of Tibetan independence and non-independence. He said Tibetan food was a cross between Indian food and Chinese food, as one might expect. He discussed how he had come to America from India, where Tibetan exiles live these days. He talked about times long past in Boulder---the old days and how they differed from today. It took me a while to realize that he was talking about 1992.

I parked down by the high school and walked up the hill to campus on 17th Street. It's the nicest way to approach campus. Some of the buildings remind me so much of UT at times. I got to the auditorium a few minutes early and killed time staring up at the CU physics building across the street, a mini-high rise that also recalls the physics building in Austin.

The film was being shown as part of CU's international film series (link). The auditorium is in the psychology building, and was a nice place to see a movie for seven bucks. The girl at the table gave me a torn paper ticket from a roll. The auditorium was almost entirely empty. Only about a dozen people were in attendance. All were men in their forties and fifties. With exception of one pair, they all had come alone.

It took me until the end of the movie to realize that Slacker 2011 was not in fact made by Linklater himself. He had gone on to much bigger fame, of course. Rather this sequel is the collaborative product of the Austin Film Society, with different film makers contributing various scenes to the stream-of-consciousness tapestry. The style is true to the original---we follow a character for one scene, and then follow another character randomly into a completely different scene. There were a few distinct homage scenes, including a reprise of the most famous scene from the original where the late John Henry Faulk, an Austin legend, narrates his experiences on the day of the Whitman tower shooting in August 1966. In the updated version, the dialogue is exactly the same, but the roles are played in a humorous inversion by new actors that gives it a surreal flavor.

But most of the material was fresh in content. Right in the first scene, I was pleased to recognize streets I had once walked on years ago. In those same scenes I noticed how cell phones, which did not exist in 1990 in their current from, now played in important part in so many of the mini plots.

It was fun to reminisce and to see places of business that I recognized---old signs---and "have it all come back to me." But there were plenty of new things too, places I didn't recognize at all, but which I knew must have become new well-known hangouts. A new Les Amis!? I was prepared for this kind of zeitgeist shock. Like I said, I knew Austin wouldn't feel like home to me anymore. If I wanted it to be home, I'd have to go back and reclaim it all anew.

But there was more dislocation in my reaction than this personal element. In many of the scenes, I noticed that a strong current of something akin to nihilism, something which was not in the original at all. It made me realize why I don't actually want to live in Austin anymore. It was as if, on the one hand, nothing had really changed there, only that the dysfunctions of the trends of 1990 had been blown up and amplified over the years to the point where the character sketches were no longer whimsical and fun but downright sad.

The characters were mostly young people in their twenties---barely just babies when the original came out. I felt sorry for them. It was as if they were wandering around in anger and confusion looking for the Austin that existed long ago, the Austin they had heard so much about back in Brooklyn, etc., but which had been overrun and tapped out long ago, and now consists of a stream of new arrivals and refugees trying to find "Austin verification" from each other. Many of them expressed the dead-end nature of their lives, a frustration at the apparent meaningless of their existence. There was an undercurrent in many of the stories of a desire to escape their lives. Only a few characters seemed to have the goofy life force of the ones of 1990.

The interactions between the young men and the young women were highly indicative of this ennui among the youth. Repeatedly we saw aimless, weak young men attempting to curry favor with (and hit on) angry, recalcitrant, disdainful young women, who by and large scorned them and rebuffed them with jaundiced eye and flippant phrases. There were only a few strong male characters who seemed to be on anything that could be called a "path" in life (one character ironically expressed a desire to go to Detroit and start anew by urban homesteading amidst the ruins there). Such is the post-millennial generational update of what it means to be a "slacker." And I thought my generation had it bad trying to emulate the hippies of the 1960s!

A few of the characters expressed downright dark apocalyptic visions of life and America, including one by a flamboyant gay man riding a bicycle, who seemed to yearn and look forward to the destruction of our entire culture and way of life. Despite his prophecy, his clarity in expressing this made him one of the most dynamic characters in the movie, and seemed to prove the cultural maxim we have arrived at, that (straight) men, devoid of purpose in their lives, are reduced to sexual beasts enslaved by their craving need for women (who flee from them naturally), and the only path to freedom for a man is to be a homosexual.

In a way this gay character seemed to speak for all the other characters, as if giving voice to the unspoken things in their souls. I felt like I was watching an End Times parade of the damned, a cataloging of a soul-deprived way of life that is no longer sustainable, not because of our material consumptions, but rather because of our inability to connect with each other, and to find meaning in our lives.

It was quite an X-ray. It left me somewhat depressed, despite the humorous and worthy update of the "throwing the camera off Mt. Bonnell" scene that closes the original. Yet artistically it was certainly a success, and thus gave me hope underneath it all. Hope comes from recognition of issues, and there was certainly recognition in this movie, even though the only solution seemed to be darkly apocalyptic.

After the movie, I came back out in to the cold of the CU campus. There was a brilliant full moon in a clear sky above the physics building. As I walked back down towards 17th Street, I passed a parking lot where a young woman was talking on a cell phone. The first words I heard her say, loud and clear, were: "Staten Island...he's a big guy..."

Nederland

2012-03-05T16:04:00.002-08:00

It was such a fun time going to the lecture at CU that after dinner, I didn't feel like going home quite yet. When I got back to my car I wasn't quite sure where I might go, but after starting it up, I remembered that Nederland, a small town up the canyon of Boulder Creek, was having a festival that weekend, starting on Friday afternoon, and that it might be fun to check it out.

Normally I'm a sucker for smalltown festivals. Driving across the country, I love stumbling upon them by serendipity. If a parade is involved, then it gets an extra bonus.

In this case, however, I had mixed feelings. The name of Nederland's spring festival is "Frozen Dead Guy Days," so called in honor of a specific frozen dead guy (here's the background if you want to know). The logo shows a skeleton wearing a ski cap and holding a popsicle with a frozen corpse inside it.

It's not that I have anything particular against festivals of the dead, especially when they occur around Halloween time, but lately I've come to believe the skull image is way, way overused lately in our culture. A couple years ago, you couldn't go into the mall and buy anything from the casual men's clothing stores that didn't have a skull image on it. Nevertheless, I thought it might be worthwhile checking it out, if nothing else just to wonder around among the musical venues and, of course, see the parade on Saturday, which would no doubt feature lots of death/skull/corpse costumes. I wasn't sure if I wanted to see the "coffin races" that were soon to follow. It seemed like bad luck, all in all.

Since it was still Friday afternoon, I thought I might just skip ahead, and instead of going to the corpse parade, I go up to Nederland on the first night of the festival to see what was happening. All this went through my mind as I came up to the first stoplight on Arapahoe, and in a spontaneous decision, I put on my blinker, headed down to Canyon, then took a left heading up the creek into the canyon itself.

Right as I turned the corner, I saw a young man standing at a bus stop, no doubt waiting for the bus to Nederland. He was wearing a winter coat and a stocking cap, the kind that everyone wears for skiing and hiking, and which the skeleton is wearing in the Frozen Dead Guys Days logo. He was holding out his thumb, begging for a ride.

Without even thinking much, I decided to pull over and offer him a ride. He hopped into my passenger seat and introduced himself as Nick. He looked to be college age.

"Wow, what they said is true about Boulder," he said. "Hitchhiking is easy." Turns out he had just put out his thumb about thirty seconds earlier.

"Where you from?" I asked him.

"New Jersey," he said.

"Ah, the Great Megalopolis of the East," I replied.

He asked me why I was going up to Nederland. "Purely on a whim," I said.

He told me what he knew about Nederland. "They say that if you take Boulder, it's even more Boulder than Boulder is."

"I've heard that too," I said.

As we drove up Boulder Canyon in the last strains of daylight, he told me how much he loved my car.

"We used to have a BMW almost exactly like this when I was a kid," he told me. "Everything looks almost exactly the same."

I told him that it was a solid car, and even though I'd had to put a bunch of money into it last year to get it even in this good of a shape, I was hooked on BMWs and didn't ever want to own anything else, if I could help it.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," he said. "We used to call our car 'Captain Kirk' when I was a kid."

Somehow that made me feel better.

About halfway up the canyon, Nick let it spill that he was the grower and seller of a specific kind of herbal medicine product that is only partially legal in Colorado. He offered me some of his product as compensation for the ride, and being in a whimsical mood, I said yes.

"I've got to pull over though, for safety's sake," I told him. So I parked at a pull-out along the road beside an informative sign about a forest fire in the canyon many years ago. We shared some of his product, something I hadn't done in a while. As usual, whenever I'm in that state, I started running my mouth off about the history and geography of the area. He didn't seem to mind as I paced around. He said he enjoyed looking at my car, because it brought back so many memories.

After a couple minutes we got back in the car and started up the canyon. As I do when I'm in that state, I was super paranoid about driving and could hardly talk because my eyes were riveted on the road. Since I'd nearly lost my life the week before in the Poudre Canyon, all I could think about was how I didn't want to die now.

I told him that I had mixed feelings about going to the festival. "I'm not so into death imagery, I told him. I usually try to avoid anything with skulls." I told him what I knew about the background of the festival, and the real "frozen dead guy" that the festival was named after.

By the time we got to Nederland, the sun had gone down. I had driven the last half of the drive with a horrible cotton mouth, so much that I could barely talk at times. Also I was running low on gas---the reserve light had come on halfway up the canyon. So I pulled over at the gas station as soon as I got into town.

Nick hopped out and thanked me. We shook hands and he walked off to find his destination. I told him I'd remember his face and look for him around Boulder and Fort Collins, where he said he spends lots of time.

After filling up on gas and buying a bottle of Perrier water in the convenience store, I parked in the RTD parking lot and walked around town for a brief time in the dark.

It was thirteen degrees, according to the bank clock by the creek. I didn't want to drive back down the canyon yet, in the state I was in. But I didn't feel like going inside anywhere for very long either.

It turns out there was nothing go on, festival wise. The most interaction I had was buying some hot tea at a diner. With my mind finally calmed down, I thought I was in a state enough to drive again, so I headed back down the canyon. A half hour later I was back in Boulder where I had begun.

So even though I didn't really do anything, I guess I technically had a good time at Frozen Dead Guy Days by the fact that I avoided becoming one.

The Science and the Politics of Disasters and Climate Change@CU

2012-03-04T21:55:00.003-08:00

Attended: Mar. 2, 3:30 pm at the Institute for Behavioral Sciences, Boulder.

After my visit to the Boulder International Film Festival to see The Big Fix two weeks ago, I wondered what cosmic directions I would receive for my next steps in Boulder. It didn't take long to get my directions, because a couple days later I noticed a web posting for a lecture to be given on the CU campus by Roger Pielke, Jr. on the subject of climate change. It was a perfect transition. Having graduated from Boulder High, so to speak, I could right up to the hill, and continue in the theme of environmentalism as well.

Pielke is rather a famous name in the "climate debate," mostly because of Roger Pielke, Sr., a longtime professor of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State who is now at the CIRES climatology institute in Boulder, as is his son, Roger. Jr. The senior Pielke is one of the most famous "skeptics" of "global warming," and his credentials and career alone should be enough to put to shame anyone who derides as "deniers of science" those of us who refuse to swallow the ideologically-driven "consensus" that ones hear about so often in what passes for news.

The younger Pielke is known more as a "lukewarmer," that is, someone who accepts that man-made carbon emissions are driving climate change, but who is not fully on board with all of the conclusions about what actually will happen.

So I wasn't quite sure how much I'd enjoy the talk, but I thought it would be good to expose myself to the debate. I want to be open to all sides and gather as much information as possible.

The lecture was entitled "The Science and the Politics of Disasters and Climate Change," as was presented as part of the colloquia series of the Geography Department at CU (link). I looked up the location on the map. It turned out to be in the Institute for Behavioral Sciences, on Grandview Avenue, on the lower part of the hill of campus, just a on the other side of the Boulder High School athletic fields. How could it be a more perfect transition from my last Boulder outing?

I hadn't been in that part of campus in a long time, but found the building on Grandview quite easily. The room was quite full by the time I arrived, with over a hundred people in attendance. By the time of the start of the lecture, every seat was taken, and people were lining up alongside the walls.

When Dr. Pielke was introduced, I realized that in fact he is not in atmospheric sciences, but rather received his doctoral in political science, and studies the politics of science as his field of research. Nevertheless he seemed top notch in his work. I could tell by the way he spoke. I thought he was younger than me, until he talked about doing post-doc work at CSU in the early 1990s.

The talk was impeccable and persuasive. Dr. Pielke presented an extremely compelling case for his conclusion, namely the following: the apparent extreme weather events one hears about---be they tornadoes, hurricanes, floods---cannot be ascribed to climate change but rather to societal changes and development of cities.

I was delighted at how sound and persuasive he was. I'm sure it was not a conclusion that many in the audience wanted to hear. It basically put to the sword any attempt to use the recent spate of "bad weather" as proving anything about climate change.

He was especially hard on the IPCC, the United Nations organization that has been spewing the reports about manmade carbon causing the end the world, and driving the politics of climate change. He basically said that they have been lying outright and misrepresenting the science of disasters. He didn't say why they did this. But his detective work was amazing. I was in awe.

Towards the end of the lecture I began to understand his entire approach. Indeed, his is "lukewarmer" and "accepts climate change." As a non-climatologist, he can stand outside the debate. But by taking the stance he does, he can then be free to take the stance he does about the politics of the climate debate without being accused of "denying the science." Like I said, I was in awe.

Overall, it was a splendid way to spend a Friday afternoon. During the talk, it occurred to me that the last time I'd been at a colloquium of any kind was probably 1997 in Austin. It felt like coming back to life, with all kinds of dormant parts of my brain suddenly springing back into action.

There was a nice reception with wine and hors d'ouevres afterwards. I grabbed a salami slice with bread, and thought of sticking around to talk to the lecturer, but decided I could drop by and see him later in his office if I were inspired to do so. Instead I slipped out of the IBS building and walked down the path by the BHS athletic fields, where the girls soccer team was practicing in cold weather gear. I ate an early dinner at Mustard's Last Stand---a double hamburger with a black cherry natural soda, and perused the Colorado Daily for my possible next assignment. Boulder just keeps getting better and better.

Ultralighter than me

2012-03-02T11:01:00.002-08:00

I just saw this segment that was broadcast recently on Oregon Public Broadcasting about an ultralight backpacker and his gear. The hiker himself had actually linked to the article off /r/Ultralight, which is how I found it. He claims to be an "8-pounder," which is about half my base gear weight. But then I "pack more fears" than he does. After I watched it I left him a message saying how happy I was to see the Golite Chrome Dome trekking umbrella in his pack. I'd bought one a couple weeks ago and then wondered if it was kosher-ultralight to carry one, even though I'd heard great endorsements about it. But if an 8-pounder is carrying one, well them, it has to be OK, doesn't it?

Montgomery Pass

2012-02-26T12:22:00.002-08:00

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. ---Psalm 121

Satuday, February 25, 2012---that will be a day I will remember for a long time to come, to be sure.

It began like an ordinary Saturday. I had chosen not to go on the /r/coloradohikers group meetup this week. The organizer had scheduled a second trip up Bear Mountain outside Boulder---by popular demand he said---and although the "bear" theme was of course tempting to follow, I didn't feel like climbing that particular mountain again this week. For one thing, it's quite a steep and long ascent. Although I don't mind strenuous efforts, I was clearly the drag on the group last time and didn't feel like being in that spot again this week.

So I wound up dawdling away the early morning and didn't get out into the sunshine until after ten. All I had was a general inclination that I wanted to go snowshoeing, and my further inclination was to go up the Poudre Canyon to the summit at Cameron Pass. It would be a long drive, probably almost two hours, but driving up the Poudre is almost always a serene and beautiful experience, so I didn't mind how long it would take. Also there would surely be enough snow up there for a good snowshoeing trip.

The destination I had in mind was the Michigan Ditch trail at the very summit of the path. It is nearly flat and goes in for several miles. It would be a nice easy trip in and out, without too much exertion. But the scenery would be beautiful.

The roads in the canyon were almost completely clear, with ice in only a few places. I reached the summit of the pass around noon, parking in the parking lot at the trailhead at the summit. There were only three other cars there. It was indeed beautiful and sunny, but the wind was blowing ferociously in gusts, sending snow in great waves like mini blizzards. I sat there for several minutes contemplating my choices.

While I was there, I had the inevitable flashback that I was always have, when I parked at the summit of Cameron Pass, back to January 1987, when I was driving back to college in Oregon in my red Volkswagen Rabbit, the first car I ever owned. I parked at the summit of the pass on that trip, almost in the same spot, before going westward. It was one of those incredible road trips of my youth, during which so much happened in such a short time, and helped define my college experience. Among the things that happened was that later that day, on that same highway much further west, I spun out in my car for the only time in my life. The car landed in the ditch in the middle of nowhere. I was rescued in only a matter of minutes by pure chance by a passing truck, which pulled me out of the ditch without a scratch on me or the car.

After reminiscing like that for while, I finally decided that the wind was blowing too hard for a decent trip on the Michigan Ditch trail. So I headed back down the pass in the direction I had come, about a half mile, to another trailhead, which was sheltered from the wind. The parking lot was packed with cars.

I took out my Trails Illustrated Map of Cameron Pass and looked at my options. I could take the relatively flat trail on the south side of the road---that's what most people were probably skiing on that day, or I could take a trail across the road that went up a very steep incline a few miles to the summit of Montgomery Pass at the south end of the Medicine Bow Mountains.

My inclination was to take the high road. It would be strenuous, but I could go at my own pace, and it would surely be an awesome view once I got to the top.

So I took my snowshoes across the highway to the trailhead and put them on at the edge of the snow. Then I began marching into the trees and up the hill. It was indeed a beautiful trail, with the sun trickingly through the trees. On the way up, I passed several cross-country skiiers on the way down. One of them, an older gentleman, spontaneously warned me: "It's pretty windy up at the top."

I set a nice slow pace and after about two hours I could tell I was reaching the top. The snow grew very deep and in a few places I began to wonder if my snowshoes would provide enough flotation, but I never sank more than about eight inches downward, even in the powderiest section.

Just when I was wondering if I would ever reach the summit, I saw the tricking edge of the trees and a large snowfield ahead, with a peak behind it. This was surely the summit.

When I came to the edge of the trees, all of a sudden I could understand the warning I'd been given about the wind. It was blowing hard and steadily, with gusts that felt like a gale force coming right down off the top of the pass along the snowfield.

As I rounded the trees and came out onto the snowfield, I thought I was going to be knocked down in my snowshoes. At that point, to reach the top of the pass, I had to walk on the crunchy snowfield upward on the incline, straight into the wind. It was impossible even to keep my face upward. I had to look down at my feet and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, occasionally stealing glances upward to see how far I had to go.

Finally I reached the summit, where a small wooden sign indicating the top of the pass rocked back in forth in the constant wind. To the west, over the top of the pass, was a view over North Park toward the Rawah Range in the distance. It was incredible, but I could not look at it for more than a few seconds at a time because of the wind. I knew I had to get at least one good shot with my camera. My fingers nearly froze in place when I took my gloves off and held my smartphone up into the wind just long enough to attempt to get a shot. I couldn't even tell if I had gotten anything on the display.

At that moment, while putting my gloves back on, I looked around and saw beside me the towering summits of the mountains flanking the saddle of the pass. They were rocky and barren, covered with snow. As the wind blew around me, I had a sudden enormous feeling of the presence of the Creator, and understanding (yet again) of how one can experience the Creator this way so directly in the most barren of places, as Abraham surely did, so long ago. I felt humbled and the same time so lifted up by the presence of God. It made the trek to the top of the pass so completely worth while. Overcome by the emotion of it all, I struggled and knelt in the snow in prayer and thanked God for letting me experience this.

I wanted to linger, and looked for a place to hide from the wind, but the snowdrifts were sculptured so perfectly to provide no wind break. So having received the filling of the Spirit, I headed back down the snow field, now with the wind at my back. I noticed that my snowshoe tracks were almost completely invisible already from the blown snow that had covered them over, like sand at the beach.

In about five minutes I was back into the trees. At that point, my fingers began to warm up almost immediately and I was comfortable and relaxed all the way back down the trail at the road. I noticed when I got to the parking lot that the wind there had picked up quite a bit, and the snow was blowing there with the same force as it had been at the parking lot at the top of Cameron Pass several hours earlier.

I figured it had been a very good trek for the day and looked forward to a good meal. I knew there was a little hamlet called Gould on the other side of Cameron Pass where there was a restaurant, so I drove back up to the summit on the road and down the other side, at one time having to navigate a snow slide that had blocked half of the road.

When I got to Gould, I saw that the restaurant was closed for the winter with snowdrifts in front of it. So I turned around and went back up over Cameron Pass yet again and head down the road back towards home and civilization, thinking I would stop and get a bit to eat at one of the restaurants along the canyon highway.

As I drove down from the pass, I noticed that the wind had picked up even more. It began to feel like driving in a blizzard. Then all at once the wind would cease and it would be a sunny day again.

I was thinking about the day and how nice it had been, when I began to approach the trailhead where I had parked to reach Montgomery Pass. When it was still visible just head, all at once I felt my car begin to slide on the road on a patch of ice. At the same moment that my car began to slide out of control, the wind threw an incredible blast of snow over the road and within a half second, my car was completely shrouded with a whirlwind of blown snow. I could see only a few feet out of the car in front of me. It was as if I were inside a snowglobe.

In the midst of this blindness, I could feel the car sliding to the left, and I knew I was now in the wrong lane, helplessly moving forward down the hill at a fast clip, directly into blind snow without any sense of what might be ahead of me. I knew in an instant that if any car were in the oncoming lane, then I would see it only in a flash of an instant before we hit head on.

I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew that my life could end in an instant, and yet I felt completely at peace about that. Instead all I could think about was how I might be about to ruin someone else's day/month/year/life by my own stupidity, and how ashamed I would be about that.

Then after a few seconds of hurtling in the blindness of the oncoming lane, I felt my car begin to rotate, and to slide further to left. Now I knew that I was spinning off the road. In some ways, it was a relief, because I knew that at least I would be moving out of the way of any oncoming traffic.

Of course the idea of sliding off the road was not much appealing at all, especially since I couldn't see at all where I was going. Yet again I felt no panic---just resignation and a sense of "well, I guess we're going see where this goes."

The car spun completely around, so I could tell I was now facing uphill and moving sideways off the road. Just when I thought I was going to go off the edge of some embankment and was already calculating in my head about having to get my car out of the snow, my vehicle came to a gentle halt, as softly as a lamb lying down, halted by the snow at the edge of the road.

Finally it was over. After another second, the wind suddenly ceased and the snow around me dropped down and everything was clear. I was essentially parked along the road, facing uphill. It was as if I had simply pulled over beside the road, ironically only a few dozen feet from where I had put on my snowshoes a couple hours earlier.

I turned the key and the car started right up. With a glance along the clear road, I pulled out and turned around, to head downward away from the top of the pass.

You would think I would have felt all shaken about it, but I didn't feel anything of the sort, only great peace, and thankfulness above all that I hadn't ruined anyone else's day.

Of course I drove extra slowly as I descended down towards to the Poudre. It took about another minute until a car passed me in the opposite direction---a large pickup truck. I laughed when I saw the license plate---the unmistakable initials of a friend of mine with whom I had been recently corresponding by email.

I drove onwards about a half hour before I reached the first open restaurant, at the Glen Haven resort. After I pulled over into the muddy parking lot beside the highway and walked up to the door I was welcomed by a standing bear carving. Inside there were little bears on every day holding the salt and pepper shakers. I used a bear-shaped honey container to sugar up the hot tea I ordered.

While I waited for my burger and fries to arrive, I took out my smartphone and opened my Bible application. Since there was no connection in the canyon, I knew I wouldn't be able to access the particular translation I had been reading, since I hadn't downloaded it to the phone. I figured the application would simply open to a blank menu of the Bible, but instead, when the screen came up, I found myself looking at a passage that had loaded from the King James version that I downloaded and which was on the card in my phone.

The passage that came up was one I had not read in weeks. It was as if a passage had been selected for me at random. It was Psalm 121, which begins...

This week's bear

2012-02-20T13:06:00.000-08:00

I knew I'd found the right classroom in Boulder High School for the after-movie discussion on Saturday evening when I saw what was on the door. I especially liked the New York City theme mixed in, as well as Bob Dylan (whom I've actually met and dined with, in 1993).

The Big Fix (2012)

2012-02-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

Seen: last night at Boulder High School, as part of Boulder International Film Festival.

“The primary function of a theater is not to please itself, or even to please its audience. It is to serve talent.” Robert Brustein.

This week I had planned on going on the Saturday outing of my hiking group as usual, but I woke up at 4 a.m. and realized I might be on the verge of a scratchy throat. A little voice inside my head told me to forgo this week, and so I rose early and sent a message to the group organizer that I would see them next week probably.

Instead I decided to rest from the stress of the week, which had been more than usual. Still I needed something to get out of the house for, and perusing Facebook I noticed a status update from Occupy Boulder suggesting that people see the movie The Big Fix, which was showing this weekend as part of the Boulder International Film Festival.

The post had a link to the Youtube trailer for the movie (link) (which is not to be confused with the 1978 Richard Dreyfuss detective movie).When I clicked on the Youtube link, I was a little suspicious, because it was from a "green" organization and mentioned the threat of "climate change," which made my eyes roll. I'm still very much a supporter of legitimate environmental causes, but from my perspective the theory of man-made climate change is way, way overblown to the point of being, well, bunk. Most of the people I know working in anything related to "climate science" actually share this belief to some degree. Something really rotten is going on, if you ask me.

Fortunately it turned out the movie was not a documentary about climate change, but rather about the fiasco of the BP Deepwater Horizon well disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, and the injustice of it, and how big money has corrupted politics. Now that's a subject I can sink my teeth into, especially in regard to BP (formerly British Petroleum), which has close connections to a subject I've been researching for several years.

I had never heard of the Boulder International Film Festival, so naturally I was intrigued and went to their website (link), where I could buy tickets to the movie. Looking at the listings, I wished I had known about the festival sooner, but I thought it was good enough to catch a least one movie. Although I could have seen a different movie than The Big Fix, I thought it was appropriate to follow through on the initial random suggestion. Besides, how often do I get a chance to see a bona fide hippie-style environmental documentary in Boulder?

Much of the BIFF was taking place at the Boulder Theater, a nice venue to see movies downtown (and with a great neon sign), but The Big Fix was showing in the auditorium of Boulder High School. Since I'd recently been back to my own high school for productions (both the building I went to, as well as the new and inferior structure), I thought this would a nice continuation and contrast.

The high school was swarming with people with festival badges when I got there in the late afternoon. I went into the lobby and picked up my ticket at Will Call. One of the fun things about film festivals is that they are sort of a halfway phenomenon between live theater and movies.

Before the screening, I killed a few moments wandering down the hallway perusing the glass cases full of trophies from decades ago. It was nearly a carbon copy of a trophy case from my own high school just forty miles away, in a rather pleasingly fun way. Even the school colors are the same, but with the letter "B" instead of "C." It felt almost like being in a parallel universe (except our mascot was waaaayyyyy cooler, for the record).

The auditorium was about the same size as the one in my own high school as well. The ellipsoid lights hanging from the side brought a smile to my face.
Before the screening a guy from the festival came out and introduced it, and let the director (I think) speak for a few minutes. The guy from the festival said the movie was painful for him to watch, because he had been part of the Obama White House during the whole crisis, and could vouch for the truthfulness of some of the criticisms in the movie. Fortunately he made only passing mention of "climate change" and the need for "carbon solutions," which have nothing to do with the subject of real pollution and environmental degradation caused by high-level corruption.

The movie began with a short history of British Petroleum, which basically is synonymous with the history of 20th Century Iran. I was extremely pleased at the short history of the Iranian coup of 1953 and the involvement of western intelligence services. Like I said, it's a subject that I have been researching very heavily for a number of years now in connection to a particular historical individual.

The movie itself was well-produced and professional. It was presented from a highly personal viewpoint, since the film maker was from Louisiana. The suffering of the residents was portrayed very poignantly, as was the malfeasance and indifference of the corporations and the government. I was fun sitting there watching a movie criticizing a Democrat president surrounded by a bunch of people who no doubt voted for him with great enthusiasm in 2008.

Still I thought the film felt short. It didn't really tell me much I didn't already know. For all its power, the paradigm of the movie was still wallowed in the old-school "oil companies are evil" thing. Why can't the government do something? In many ways, things are far worse, and far more corrupt, than were portrayed in the movie.

What was shown was only the tip of the iceberg, or the top of the oil slick, one might say. The message could have gone a lot further, but it was probably at exactly the right temperature for the aging hippie crowd of BIFF, which sees the world in a certain way where "oil companies" are the enemy. They openly booed at the mention of the infamous Koch Brothers, who have become a convenient stalking horse for the liberals. If only we get out these bad apple rich guys...

The movie indeed hinted at the wider level of corruption, but really didn't explore it much. In the end, I thought the first few minutes of the history of Iran at the beginning were the most powerful. I wished the whole movie had been about that.

After the film, there was the normal question-and-answer session with the director. People from the audience came up to the microphone in front of the stage one after another. The level of the questions was about what I expected from a Boulder audience, and included things like: "how about the green organizations get together and endorse candidates in the upcoming election?" and "why can't the Pentagon get its gasoline from some other oil company than BP?" and "how can I boycott gas stations that use BP gasoline?"

From my seat in the auditorium, I wanted to go up to the microphone and say: "It's all way too late for any other these things. We are way past the point of no-return. We are just about to have a huge disastrous war with Iran, which no one here is mentioning, and all we can really do is spread the message of what is happening so that we can pick up the pieces after the disaster that is about to befall the entire nation."

But of course I didn't say any of those things. I didn't want to be a Cassandra. Maybe I should have said it, but I didn't.

At the end of the question-and-answer, the guy from the festival said that since this was a "Call to Action" movie, there would be a continuation of the discussion in one of the classrooms down the hallway.

I thought it would be fun to go, so on the way out of the auditorium, after depositing my ballot (I gave the movie 5 out of 5---why not?), I followed the signs down the hallway, and into a small classroom that appeared to be part of the English department of Boulder High School, or more specifically, the drama program, since the ceiling was covered with quotes about theater, including the one I cited at the top of this write-up.

I took a seat by a large poster of William Shakespeare from the 1993 Colorado Shakespeare Festival. A discussion was led by a local woman who elicited possible political actions from the people in the room, all of which seemed as quaint and old fashioned as the ones that people had brought up in the auditorium.

Everyone there seemed very concerned about defeating the pipeline that was to bring oil form the Canadian tar sands. It was the most important thing to them, it seemed. I wanted to ask why, because I don't really understand this issue. Aren't they going to drill up that oil anyway? Doesn't this just mean we'll get more of our oil from overseas, shipped by water, instead of over land?

But I kept my mouth shut of course, and my mind started to drift, like a bad high school student. After a while I noticed that on the wall in back of me, beside the Shakespeare poster, were, much to my surprise, small drawings of Ancient Greek triremes, as well as one of the Trojan Horse. On the shelf next to me was a thick text book labeled "Mythology." As the people in the room debated about a letter-writing campaign to stop the pipeline they hated, I flipped open the book and read a few paragraphs about the aftermath of the Trojan War.

End note: looking up that quote from the ceiling, I found this other one from Robert Brustein: “Theatergoing is a communal act, movie going a solitary one.”

Weighing in

2012-02-16T18:32:00.001-08:00

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Today my Ultralight gear obsession took a new step with the purchase of a cheap kitchen scale at Wal-Mart. I've had a fish scale for a month, but it is useless for less than a pound. Now I can weigh my lighter items of gear. In case you're wondering the weight of a Trails Illustrated Map of Indian Peaks/Gold Hill, the answer is three ounces.

The bear who came to tea

2012-02-13T23:07:00.001-08:00

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No shortage of bears on last weekend's hike up to the top of Lookout Mountain. The gift shop was full of black bears in various poses on the shelves around us as we ate. My favorite one was this one in the photo, however, guarding the cream next to the hot water dispenser. In the background one can almost make out the counter where one can purchase the aforementioned peanut butter cups. I can assure you the bear was quite friendly and generously allowed me to fill up my cup for my Earl Grey.

Chimney Gulch

2012-02-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

Here we are, on our way up, with Golden in the background. My GoLite down jacket (size: XL, color: Chili Pepper) performed like a trooper keeping me warm in the 10 degree weather (rest assured I was wearing a hat/balaclava most of the time, but took them off for this photo.)

And here we are on the way back down, near the same spot, having paid our respects to Buffalo Bill (I insisted on toasting Mr. Cody with our beers afterward).

Lookout Mountain

2012-02-11T21:33:00.001-08:00

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Woke up before dawn this morning and saw it was ten degrees outside, and a fresh coating of powder out the window. Wasn't exactly enthused to be going out hiking, but got going on schedule and drove two hours down to Golden, where I was the first one at the trailhead.

There were four of us today---Jonathan, the organizer, as well as Andrew, an ex-New Yorker I met on the first hike, and Zanen (?), a Texan whom I hadn't met before.

We started off on the snowy trail up Chimney Gulch. Surprisingly they wanted me to take the lead and set the pace. It seems they were quite happy to have me do it, and were somewhat glad the hyperkinetic pace-setters from previous trips weren't there.

As it happens, I had done this hike before. Well part of it, at least. Last summer when I was living in Boulder, I went off an spontaneous drive one weekend and wound up in Golden, where I drove up Mount Zion and parked at the Windy Saddle, halfway up, then walked up the trail to the Buffalo Bill grave and museum at the top of Lookout Mountain.

This time we were starting down in Golden itself, not halfway up, yet it still strange to be hiking the same route as last summer. A redo, in a way.

The hike up was beautiful. The newfallen powder looked like sugar coating on the trees, and in the sunlight, the blowing flakes made multiple colors, like some kind of LSD trip.

We made good time and found ourselves at the top around noon. By then the sun had come out fully. It was all of thirteen degrees, but I didn't feel it, because of all the exertion.

Even the though the rest of the group didn't care, I insisted we go inside the gift shop and the little restaurant at the top. I love that kind of cheesy tourist stuff. I makes me feel like it's 1972 and I'm traveling with my grandparents again. I even bought one of those smashed souvenir pennies there. I have a little collection of them that I began when I left New York seven years ago. It's not an obsession, just something I do whenever I remember to do it.

My favorite part of the day was when we were on our way up and stopped at on overlook looking down at the valley of Clear Creek, right as it comes out of the mountains towards Golden. I took the opportunity to give the group an impromptu five minute presentation on the history of the Colorado Gold Rush, one of my favorite historical topics.

I took a Toblerone along this week, but I didn't even finish it. Turns out they have awesome peanut butter cups in the gift shop up there, as I had remembered from last summer. One of the great things about hiking is you don't have to worry about eating too much sugar. It's all guilt free.

Afterwards, at Andrew's invitation, we went down to the Old Chicago in Lakewood, where I had two pints of beer and loosened up enough to engage a lengthy fun-spirited debate with Andrew about religion and spirituality.

Ten degrees? Bah!

Thank You, Edward B.

2012-02-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

A note found blowing in the wind, reprinted here:

If there is one thing about you that I have cherished above all else, it is your innocence. It is innocence that I felt in you, when I was in your presence. It was innocence that I felt in myself too, when I met you, that had seemed lost, but was refound whenever I was near you, and made me ashamed that I had ever lost it. It is your innocence that I miss most of all, for it replenishes me, even now, and makes me feel the world is new with each breath.

I know why things must the way they are. There is no mystery about that to me. Yet that does so little to lessen the sorrow I feel. Yet sorrow, like joy, is one of the two wings of human experience, as Rumi points out. How can we fly without them. Embrace your hurt to make it the greatest joy. You above anyone else have taught me this.

Thank you---for everything, for so long. You more than anyone else in my life have taught me what it feels like to feel myself connected to another person's life, and through that one connection---you---I have felt myself connected to the rest of humanity. How could I ask for anything more beautiful than that?

Innocence, yes, I know it is still in you, below everything else that may have clouded it over. It is still as strong as ever, still as pure as ever. To know that it still springs so pure is to feel a warm wind in my life every single day.

Thank you, yes. Thank you. Maybe I'll never get to tell you that in person, so I will throw it into the wind, like petals of a flower, and hope that the beauty of it finds it way to you somehow, in some roundabout way, in some beautiful sunny day, when the wind caresses your face, and the sunlight beams in your eyes once again.

I will be your friend forever.

Lady Moon

2012-02-04T17:42:00.001-08:00

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This week the Denver area got hit by a huge snowstorm, prompting the cancelation of this weeks reddit group hike, which was to be down in Golden.

But up in Larimer County the storm was much less severe, hardly more than the dumping we got in late October. By Saturday the roads were completely clear.

With no group hike, I thought I might just relax on Saturday. But by noon, I was more than a litte stir crazy. I got in my car and thought I'd go from a drive, like I used to back in high school. I wound up going up to Red Feather Lakes, into the Roosevelt National Forest area.

My snowshoes and gaiters were still in the trunk from last week, and when I passed the Lady Moon trailhead, I decided it was time to get a little exercise.

It was a perfect sunny afternoon. There was about a foot of snow on the ground, and there was already a nice little trench from previous snowshoers and cross country skiers. I didn't even have to use my poles.

The trench went about a mile along the trail before looping around. I didn't feel like blazing any new tracks in the powder, so I turned around and called it a day. I took this picture with smartphone on the way back, passing through a meadow. You can almost make out a woman crosscountry skier in the middle of the meadow.

The trail was very flat. Up near Red Feather, the terrain is a plateau, more or less, with small mountains poking up. It was the perfect amount of exercise before the sun went behind a cloud and the temperature started to drop.

A very nice afternoon. As I drove back through town, it occurred to me that the only thing missing this week was the ongoing "bear" theme. Just as I was thinking about this, and stopped at a stoplight, a van pulled up to my left. When I looked through the passenger window, I just burst out laughing. I couldn't beliee what I saw. Right through my passenger window was an enormous looming emblem of a standing ursine creature staring back at me with the words: Bear Archery.

"Perfect," I muttered.

Lunch@Penelope's

2012-01-31T13:38:00.001-08:00

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Downtown Estes Park---a complete dive, to be sure, with mediocre service and not-cheap food, but it is the only place I know in the world with photographs of both Isabella Bird and Marilyn Monroe on the wall.

I was just about to head out of town when I realized how hungry I was after showshoeing, and I just had to visit my favorite hamburger joint. The place was crowded for lunch. I ordered an elk burger and fries and took one of the only tables left, all by my lonesome, while I waited for my order. Fortunately it was the one right below Isabella, where I always prefer to sit.

I was feeling a bit guilty about hogging up so much space, but then after about five minutes who should appear but my new friend Jonathan, who had come there independently.

While we waited for our food, I pointed at some of the old photographs on the wall. Jonathan is from Wisconsin and just moved out here last year. He asked me if I knew much about Colorado history. "Probably more than most people here," I said.

It was an unexpected pleasure, sharing lunch on a sunny winter day after so much exercise. I might have even said that it was the whole point of it all.

Bear-Dream-Emerald

2012-01-30T19:35:00.000-08:00

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So I guess I'm smack in the middle of one of my outdoorsing phases.

This past week the organizer of /r/coloradohikers on Reddit (link) proposed two meetups, one on Saturday and Sunday. The Saturday meetup was another hike outside Boulder, to the top of the mountain that is above the Flatirons. The Sunday one was to be a snowshoeing adventure in Rocky Mountain National Park.

I briefly considered committing to both of them, but decided it was folly. I decided to go with the snowsheoing expedition on Sunday, for various reasons. One is that the snowshoes that my sister bought me for my birthday have been languishing unused and even unwrapped in the trunk of my car since October, and I dearly wanted to use them at least once this winter.

It also seemed quite appropriate to go on the showshoing expedition, because we were to meet up in RMNP at Bear Lake, which would continue the "bear" theme of my life lately.

So I skipped the Saturday meetup. That evening I heard from the group organizer. Evidently it was to be just him and me for the showshoeing trip. That made it much harder to back out, which was a good thing.

So early Sunday morning before dawn I drove to Estes Park, earlier enough to grab a donut at the Donut Haus just outside of town, where I like to visit, but which is usually jam packed in the summer. I also discovered the fun fact that if you get to the park early enough, you can enter without paying the usual twenty dollars. Already the day was off to a good start.

I found the Bear Lake trailhead without problem. There was hardly any snow in the park at lower elevation, but there was plenty at higher elevation.

About half a dozen cars were already parked there---I felt like a true early bird. I fumbled using the scissors on my keychain to cut the plastic straps on my snowshoes. I felt like a real amateur. The truth is that this was the first time in my life I had ever been snowshoeing. When I was younger, it always seemed like something quaint and weird, like something the Hardy Boys would be doing.

The group organizer, Jonathan, found me in the parking lot and waited for me to get ready, in my obsessive compulsive way. We carried our snowshoes up to the benches at the trailhead and I found myself hoping that I knew what the hell I was doing, while pulling the bindings onto my feet.

But it wasn't too hard to figure it out, and in a few minutes we were off. He obviously knew I had been the slowpoke on our trip up Bear Mountain, so he didn't mind when I apologized in advance that I might be slowing him down.

We decided to make a hike up the trail from Bear Lake to Bierstadt Lake. I very much liked the idea, since that exact trail was the very first Colorado hike I ever made, with my family, in the summer of 1978, when we first moved out here. I hadn't been back to this trail since then.

We started up Bierstadt Moraine, but about halfway up, we ran into a woman in microspikes coming down who ironically asked me, "Have you been on this trail before?"

"Not this time of year," I replied, not mentioning that it had been over three decades.

She said that she hiked this trail a lot, and had been up to Bierstadt Lake two weeks ago, but today she had been unable to even find the trail, because of the snow that had blown over it. She cautioned us to be careful and not get lost, if we proceeded.

"Where are you from?" she asked us. "Fort Collins," I said. "Boulder," said Jonathan.

She seemed quaintly relieved at that, as if she could trust us not to kill ourselves on the trail. Turns out she was from Loveland.

So we climbed up to the top of the moraine. It wasn't too hard. I was barely winded and doing very well in the snowshoes. But the woman turned out to be right. The trail was completely unidentifiable, so we decided to turn around, but not before discovering a complete igloo that someone had constructed. I decided not to climb inside.

So we descended the Moraine back to Bear Lake, where we decided to take an alternative route, up from Bear lake towards Dream Lake, and then Emerald Lake, which was about two miles in, and right at the foot of the mountains on the Continental Divide.

It was a steep trail, and I did very well. Getting winded or fatigued wasn't my main problem this time. Rather it was the strain of the muscles right at the top of my thighs, at my hips, where the tendons were sore by the time I got to Emerald Lake.

I only embarrassed myself once, when I foolishly walked too close to a sunken tree and discovered the nightmare of being caught in the loose snow there (people actually die from being "drowned" in snow pits). It took a great amount of my remaining energy to get myself back on my feet. But I believe people should be forgiven when they fall down while snowshoeing (or cross-country skiing).

It was a great warm day, overall. We put in about 2000 feet of elevation gain, topping out around 10,500 feet. But I barely felt it. I must be getting back in shape.

By time we got back to Bear Lake, the parking lot was crammed full of people just starting out for the day.

There was something so oddly satisfying about the whole experience, beyond the physical exertion. I can't quite explain. Maybe there is part of me still trying to be a real Coloradoan after all these years, and somehow I fulfilled part of that.

One of the best fun moments of the day was when a woman on the trail who had been following us told me, when she caught up to me, that because of the tan color of my gaiters, she thought I was hiking in bare legs. "Hard core!" she said. It was almost as if she granted me the benefit of that, even after she found out it wasn't true. It made a better story, I suppose.

Only one minor screw-up: I forgot the Toblerone bar!

Here are some pictures that Jonathan posted of our trip. That's me in the red down jacket standing in front of the Igloo on Bierstadt Moraine, and on the frozen surface of Emerald Lake.

Rest stop on Lumpy Ridge

2012-01-23T17:03:00.001-08:00

Gear shown: trusty Nalgene bottle (one of the first pieces of gear I bought two years ago at REI), Natl. Geographic trail map for Rocky Mountain National Park, Toblerone (of course---for the bear theme, see this), REI Flash containing trail food, emergency stuff, etc., Black Diamond Trekking Poles (also an early purchase from two years ago). Fixed to outside of pack are heavy mittens (unused) and small packing cube containing my microspikes.

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The Pleasure of Swiss Chocolate at High Altitude

2012-01-23T16:41:00.000-08:00

The fun I had hiking with the reddit group that went up Bear Mountain had me eagerly volunteering to go on the second scheduled hike, which was to be down near Colorado Springs (because of weather, supposedly). It was to be a long hike up Mount Rosa, which supposedly was the peak the Zebulon Pike actually climbed instead of the one named after him.

The trek would be even more daunting than the week before, at higher altitude, and with a greater vertical rise, but a little voice kept telling me to follow through and commit to going ,which I did. I've learned to follow that little voice as much as possible.

For the half the week, I wasn't sure I could make it physically, however, because it took that long for my thigh muscles to recover from the flexing they took the week before. But by Friday I was all psyched to go. I went out to REI and bought a bunch of trail goodies, and went to the Mountain Shop in downtown Fort Collins and got the National Georgraphic Trails Illustrated map for the Colo. Springs area. I was even so motivated as to go to Office Depot and make color copies of both sides of the map, to splice them together to get an impromptu map of the entire trail.

I spent Friday afternoon getting my little REI flash pack prepared, using my new twist ties to fasten my microspikes and trekking poles to back. I looked like a real alpinist.

Then on Friday evening I got a message via reddit from the group organizer saying that almost everyone had canceled except for two people, so he was calling the trip off for this week. Part of me was disappointed, of course, but in reality I was quite relieved. I knew the physical challenge might be beyond me right now, until I get in better shape. Yet I felt I'd earned "cred" among the group for having stuck my guns until it was canceled.

But I couldn't just stay at home on Saturday. I was all geared up, literally, and needed something to do. So I kept my alarm on, and in the morning I left around sunrise and drove by myself up to Estes Park, one of my favorite places.

I drove up to the Lumpy Ridge trailhead just north of town. From there you can walk right into Rocky Mountain National Park (for free!). It's a popular place to access the park, as one can imagine, but on this morning, there were only two other cars in the large parking lot.

I spent the next six hours hiking up the canyon along the ridge into the park, passing the curious towering rock formations that are popular with rock climbers in the summer, including the famous "Twin Owls" that are visible from Estes Park proper. There are some amazing views of Long's Peak and Mount Meeker along the way (like this one).

The vertical rise over four miles was less than two thousand feet, yet I was quite winded along the way (partly because it is at a higher altitude than I'm used to lately). I was glad that the other hike was canceled. I probably would have embarrassed myself, or wound up torturing myself to death. A light easy week was in order.

I turned around and headed back just in time to get chased by a snowstorm coming down off the continental divide.

It was a great solo day. Just a little over nine miles total. I had to (or should I say, got to) use my microspikes for the top part of the trail as I got to the crest of the ridge.

I even saved most of my trail goodies for the next week. The only thing I wound up eating was my Toblerone bar, a staple of mine on the trail since I bought a huge one in Switzerland in 1985 with virtually the last money I had while heading home. Good memories always make a good hike too.

And my thighs feel great. All ready for the next one.

Spotaneous Puppet Show@Chez Westminster

2012-01-18T15:23:00.000-08:00

It had been weeks since I'd been to a legitimate show of any kind. Thus it was very nice to be treated to a spontaneous puppet show after school staged by my three nieces this afternoon, using the family room sofa as a stage. The first show was a three-act drama involving homemade paper bag puppets (show here with cousin Becca looking on). The revolved around a girl looking for her lost dog and cat.

The second show was used conventional puppets, involving a princess and a unicorn. Wasn't quite sure about the plot of this one, but it was marvelous nevertheless. Much applause was given.

What I missed out on in Amarillo

2012-01-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

So I didn't go to Occupy Congress in Washington, D.C. this week, as I planned.

I originally planned to join the folks from Occupy San Diego on their cross-country Greyhound bus ride. I was going to take the bus down to New Mexico, or to Amarillo, Texas, and join their convoy. I had even contacted the organizer in San Diego about joining them, and donated money so that others could buy bus tickets.

But I got signals in my guy saying not to go to D.C. right now, for various reasons, among them being my discovery that the Occupy Congress thing was going to be just a one-day event. I thought they were going to try to set up an Occupy encampment on the National Mall.
I thought that would be the end of it.

As it happens the big story of the entire Occupy Congress event has not been what happened in D.C. on Tuesday (the day of protest), but what happened to the Occupy San Diego people on the way there. The entire group was kicked off the bus in Amarillo by the Greyhound driver, who stated that he disagreed with their politics and did not want them on board.

The entire S.D. contingent spent the night stranded in the Amarillo bus station, until they got an apology from Greyhound and were given an express bus all the way to D.C.

It was a huge thing in the social media, and made the national news in multiple outlets. Keith Olbermann called the driver, Donald Ainsworth, his "worst person in the world" for that day (not that I'm a big Keith Olbermann man). The "Amarillo 13," and the stranded occupiers came to be called during the event, were greeted with a hero's welcome when they got to D.C.

Here's one article on what happened.

So that's what I missed out on. That photo in the article of the Occupiers in the bus station was probably taken about the same time as the one at the top of Bear Mountain that I posted. I traded one experience for another, I suppose. Quite an adventure they had in Amarillo---yet one I felt like I wasn't mean to participate in. How weird.

3000 feet above Boulder

2012-01-17T11:15:00.000-08:00

I didn't mean to do it---to take my first ever real video using my cellphone. But that's exactly what happened, when I standing on the very top of Bear Mountain on Saturday with the /r/coloradohikers group from reddit. I was actually trying to take a picture, but somehow, with the clumsiness of my thick gloves, I wound up hitting the video button instead.

Actually I took above three short videos. I was not aware of it until I was looking at the photos last night with my nieces.

Today I decided to take the plunge and join the modern video era---I decided to upload my first video to Youtube. It was suprisingly easy. It was so easy that I'm ashamed I was intimidated about it.

So here's the first one, a mere eight seconds of footage from the top of Bear Mountain, looking down on the city of Boulder. Keep in mind that I didn't think I was taking a video at the time. Also that's me huffing and puffing after four hours of hiking to the top.

Here's a second one, a bit shorter but with a few of fellow hikers in the shot. As you can tell, I'm got a long ways to go to be a decent videographer.

Atop Bear Peak

2012-01-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

Last year my life seemed to have a curious recurring theme about bears. This was especially true when I was living in Boulder, and no incident was more indicative of this than when I actually walk right past a bear right in town in June.

I spent a lot of time hiking while I was there, but one of my regrets was that I didn't climb Bear Mountain, which is essentially the highest point on Boulder Mountain, the mountain that flanks the south side of the city. It seemed like an obvious thing to do, yet I was still somewhat intimidated by the steepness. Right at the end of the summer, one of my co-workers---a cheerful Swede named Lars---invited me along on a hike to that spot, but I didn't quite have the gumption to do it. Also I worried I might slow him down, given that he used to be a ski instructor in Aspen.

It's this latter thing---fear of being the slow person in a group---that has kept me from going on a group hikes in the past. It's not only that I feel out of shape compared to others, but also simply that I like to take my time, to preserve my energies over the long haul, and also, most especially, I like to just daydream and stare off into space. I don't like the idea of racing through things, as many like to do.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided to go along on a group hike this weekend. I found it through the website reddit, which I've used as my primary news source for the last five-plus years. Recently someone started a coloradohikers subreddit there with the idea of soliciting group hikes. Since I've been planning to do more hiking this year, it intrigued me. When I saw that the first hike was to be to none other than the top of Bear Mountain, I knew this was absolutely something I had to do.

To make it easier on myself---meaning, harder to back out---I replied to a message on the message from someone needing a ride from Fort Collins. Thus I committed myself early, and arranged by text message to pick the person up near campus at a quarter to seven on Saturday morning. Thus there was no backing out when I woke up yesterday morning.

My companion for the ride down was named Franklin. He was a student at CSU studying pre-vet-med, and wanted to go vet school after graduation. I told him about my job at CSU many years ago, where I had milk and slaughter goats. Franklin turned to be from New York---from out on Long Island.

We got to the South Mesa trailhead right at 8 in the morning. There were about ten people there. I had to scramble to pay for parking so I could leave with the group.

The first couple miles were gentle. It was sunny and warm. I was wearing my new Golite down jacket over my new Kulh wool fleece, as well as a hat and balaclava. About a mile in, I was sweltering. Some of the others were almost stripping down to their t-shirts and shorts by this time, but when we got up into Shadow Canyon, it got cooler quickly and I was glad I had worn all my layers.

It was about then that we started hitting snow and ice on the trail, and all of us who brought them got our microspikes. This had in fact been my purchase the day before, upon recommendation of the hike organizer. I had used my entire REI dividend for a new set of Kahtoola Microspikes. I had debated whether to buy a pair, but on the trail, it became obvious that I wouldn't have been able to make the hike without them.

The hike was brutally steep in the snow, nevertheless, especially the last few miles up to the top. My arms grew very weary pulling my trekking poles out of the snow.

I was by far the slowpoke. The group had to stop and wait for me to catch up as the last one. But I didn't feel so bad. It was obvious that I was probably at least twice as old as every other person in the group. Slow and steady wins the race. I know how fast I can go, and I wasn't go to go any faster.

Sheer willpower kept me going the last few miles. Each step seemed like the last one I could take. I would look up to the summit and think: no way can I make it, but also "I'm not going to stop, no many how long it takes me to get there."

Finally, at a little past noon, we got the very windy summit. Those without layers were surely suffering then, but I felt toast warm, except for my toes that were freezing in my non-waterproof boots. I scrambled to the top of the rocks and touched the USGS marker at the summit. I'd made it to the top of Bear Mountain at last.

On the way down I lagged behind the group again, not because of exhaustion, but because I didn't want to twist my ankle. In this case, a few others lagged behind with me, including Ben, who was from New York City and had grown up in White Plains. We talked about the military history and the Revolutionary War as we walked together.

That was one of the quirks of the whole trip----the first four people I introduced myself to were ex-New Yorkers, and everyone else was from somewhere else. As far as I could tell, I was the only person there who had grown up in Colorado.

By the time we got to the trialhead, I was walking in spirit with the group, not lagging behind, and with a smile on face. I'd preserved my energies just the right amount. By this time everyone was talking outloud about all the food they were going to eat.

As we stood at the trailhead in the parking lot, everyone said how much fun they had had, and they we should do this on a regular basis. Already there are plans for another hike next week.

On the way back to the Fort, Franklin and I stopped at my suggestion at the A&W in Berthoud where we wolfed down burgers, fries, and root beer. That A&W is my favorite place to stop between Boulder and Fort Collins. Berthoud is a nice little town. Franklin said he had never been in an A&W before. It was the perfect end to the day.

I've included the photo that another hiker took of us, at the top of Bear Mountain. I'm the guy in the back, in the red down vest, happy just to have made it to the stop. My friend Franklin is down in front with the yellow hat.

Here's the map of Bear Mountain.

My favorite thing in the world

2012-01-12T21:27:00.000-08:00

This is what my bed looked like this morning in Westminster shortly after I got up--full of stuffed animals. They weren't there in the guest room the night before when I went to sleep. Instead they were piled on me as I slept (or rather as I pretended to still be asleep) around six thirty in the morning.

My nieces love to do this to me---pile their "aminals" on me while I'm in bed. They started it when I was staying with them back in Massachusetts in 2008-2009.

On the first night of my visit this time, they told me to make sure to stay in bed so they could do this. But I got out of bed anyway, thinking they had forgot. But they hadn't forgotten. Instead when they saw me, they made me get back in bed and pretend to be asleep with my eyes closed. I can hear them sneaking up to my bed with the animals. Maura giggles while Sarah whispers directions to her: "put those ones over there by his head."

This morning I made sure to stay in bed until they were finished. Then I pretended to awake with a giant roar, flinging all the animals off the bed and sending my nieces running out of the room in delight.

Did I mention this is my favorite thing in the world?

Android Baby

2012-01-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

One of the surprises of this past Christmas was my father's gift to me of a new Android smartphone. I had thought about taking the plunge and finally getting some kind of device like that, but hadn't settled on it (I'm always way behind any electronic trends). I was really excited when I opened it.

It took me a week to finally set up the account and get in working. The first use I got out of it was to use the clock to count down the new year with the homeless people at Occupy Boulder.

For a couple days after that, I was sure it was all a horrible mistake. It seemed like it was "too much connectivity" and had the possibility of driving me insane (literally). Fortunately I think I'm learning to mitigate the downsides and have learned some fun upsides of having this kind of device.

I really like being able to call up Youtube videos and watch them, or listen to the music on them. I've been using the Youtube app to explore a New Year's resolution to finally educate myself about classical music, starting with Mozart. I spent a couple days listening/watching various versions of Exsultate, Jubilate, which Wikipedia tells me is Mozart's earliest works that is still performed in concert on a regular basis. I watched at least ten different versions by ten different sopranos.

This was particularly fun when I was down in Westminster visiting my nieces. I showed them some of the videos and they watched various versions with me, huddling right next to me as we watched on the tiny little screen. It's the kind of the memory that I hope they keep in their minds in the years ahead, partly because it is so "of the times" of the year 2012. Someday they talk about doing such things, and it will seem wonderfully quaint.

Later on that evening, Sarah came into the guest room and decided she wanted to play a version of "house" with me. She had brought her baby doll into the room in her toy stroller. She left the baby with me and told me to change its diaper if it needed that.

"Just throw the diaper away into the trash, and then pick it up and use the same one," she told me. Then she took the stroller and left the room to go off to "King Soopers" to go grocery shopping.

When she was out of the room, I dutifully changed the diaper just as she instructed, throwing it away and then picking it up out of the trash again to use the same one---just so I could tell her truthfully that I had done it.

Then I decided to have a little fun of my own. I used my Android phone to search Youtube for a "baby crying." I found a video and confirmed it was what I wanted. Just before she came back into the room, I pressed "play" on the video on the phone and then slipped it into the crib behind the doll's head.

My little stunt was a big hit. Children always appreciate it when you make a sincere effort to participate in their games, but this was extra special. It made me feel like I wasn't so behind the times after all. Old dogs can learn new tricks.

Ultralight Rainbows

2012-01-11T14:51:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a beautiful day down in Westminster. It was sixty degrees when I arrived in the mid afternoon. I walked around for a hour before heading over to the school, where I ambushed the girls on their way out the door. They didn't expect to see me there. Maura rode home with her mom, but Sarah insisted on walking home with her uncle, holding his hand most of the way. We raced the last couple hundred yards through the park in order to beat my sister's minivan to the front door.

When I got back to my sister's house, the new tent I had ordered had arrived. My current tent is way to heavy---not something one can carry in a pack. As part of my Ultralight '12 initiative, I had agonized over which shelter to buy, and after much deliberations on weight and utility, I had settled on a Tarptent, because I liked the concep. I specifically chose the Double Rainbow, which comes it at a mere 41 ounces for the full set up.

Fortunately it was a great day to set up a tent. I wasn't even planning to set it up, but the girls were very eager to help me try it out. So with them "helping" (mostly by swinging on the swingset while I fumbled with the directions), I got the tent set up just as the sun was setting. The first order of business was to pack the three of us inside and engage in a game of coloring with markers of many colors of course. It is surely an auspicious start for the Double Rainbow.

Helium

2012-01-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

Another trend for the new year---ultralight. Two years ago I went on a weird binge of deciding I needed to get real outdoor gear. I had been motivated by my trip to France the year before that, when I realized how poor my gear was, and how it limited my movements and options. Then when I got back to Colorado in spring 2010, I got obsessed with visiting REI everyday and figuring out what I wanted to buy. I went through a phase of buying out lots of gear with the idea of being able to take off on the spur of the moment and hike up into the mountains, if need be.

This phase culminated in the trip I took this past summer/fall to the west coast. I camped using much of my gear, although some of it turned out to be a bust, and hardly useful at all. I guess that's a common experience. Nevertheless it did allow me a great spontaneity of travel---being able to camp anywhere I wanted, and to take off into the mountains in my car on whim, as I did when I left Fresno and headed up into the Sierras. I felt very mobile.

But now I feel like I've entered a new phase again. For one thing, I've decided that I'm going to take to the road again, but I am going to ditch my car. I'm either going to sell it or store long-term, I haven't decided which. I'm going to go back to being on foot, and carrying everything on my back. Where I'll go...well I haven't decided that, but I know this is the right thing.

As part of this, I've decided to embrace the concept of "ultralight," which is a trend in backpacking that, as it sounds, indicates that one tries to travel as light as possible. Every ounce counts.

I've learned that many of my gear choices from 2010 were poor choices on this score. They were okay for car camping, but were not ok when one tries to minimize the weight one carries on one's back. So it means buying a bunch of new gear. I've been making out a list of what I need, and using the site geargrams.com, which lets one keep a gear library/list organized by weight and category.

My first major purchase was a new backpack. This stung somewhat, since I'd recently bought a 350 dollar Gregory Baltoro internal frame that is awesome, but is over seven pounds in weight. I never have really used it, except to keep it in the trunk of my car. But it's too heavy.

I wound up purchasing a new Golite Odyssey on sale for a mere ninety bucks at the local Golite outlet in downtown Fort Collins. It's about three and half pounds. I could have gone even lighter, but I wanted to keep some excess capacity in the bag, because I figured I may need it for the various kinds of travel I might do.

It was fun to buy it. I thought about it for a couple weeks and finally dove in while the clearance sale was going on. It was especially fun to buy it here in my hometown. It reminded me of buying my old blue Camp Trail Explorer pack way back in the spring of 1985, at a little now-defunct store on South College, earned with money I made delivering singing balloon-a-grams. Lots of helium involved. I took that to Europe that summer, and trekked through the Eastern Bloc, Turkey, and all the way to the ruins of Troy. It was "the trip that changed my life" right before I went off to Oregon as a transfer student.

I need that kind of energy of transformation again, and I felt a little of that old magic buying the Golite backpack. I was all of twenty years old back in the summer of 1985, and the world felt so different. Times have changed. It's freaking awkward trying to feel that way again. It's more than a little bit painful to feel how the world has changed, and trying to feel that optimism about life again. It seems so easy when you are young, to think you can summon newness into your life no matter what age you are. When are approaching fifty, it is a different story. You have to find a way to give yourself permission to be new, and that is not so easy to do sometimes. Or least it doesn't feel that way. I have to fight the voice that says "who the hell do you think you are, getting another chance to be new?"

Or as Satan himself once told me, in play:

Can't be born twice over, Can't be!

I thought it was good luck that while I was trying the pack on, I remarked to the attendant that I felt lighter with it, than without it, as if it were filled with helium. He replied that they had actually joked about helium-filled packs.

Then I walked down College with my back and stopped at a food cart vendor (something that didn't exist here in 1985). It was directly across the street from the offices of the long-defunct Balloon Family, my place of work. The building was bought out a decade ago by a locally famous billionaire businesswoman and turned into the headquarters of her charitable foundation.

I looked at the chalk board of food items and realized they were all Greek items, exactly the same kind that one buys in Greece---spinach pies, cheese pies, baklava. I could tell at once that the proprietor was Greek, so I used some Greek phrases interacting with him while I ordered. I showed him my new Golite Odyssey backpack.

"Maybe I'll use it in Greece," I told him, before biting into my spinach pie.

Nutritional Upgrades

2012-01-04T13:29:00.000-08:00

My new regimen:

1. Beyond Tangy Tangerine, 2 scoops daily. The directions suggested four scoops daily for my body weight, but I decided to halfsy on that for now, because this stuff costs fifty bucks a jar, and I wanted the first jar to last a whole month, rather than fifteen days before reordering. I'm very pleased with the results. Among other things, it's like coffee for me---I never forget to take it. My body seems to like it a lot. I'm getting down to the end of the first jar now and need to reorder, which I'm going to do without delay. I'm also getting a jar for my dad, after telling him about it.

2. Powdered Whey, two scoops daily with milk as chocolate-flavored shakes. I bought some off the shelf from Whole Foods for about fifteen bucks for a large jar. I have one shake for breakfast, another for lunch. It has pretty much replaced all the sugary crap I used to eat, including Starbucks Frappucinos, which I don't miss at all. Very pleased so far.

3. Omega-3,-6,-9 gel tablets. I take three of these a day, one with each meal, for "essential fatty acids."

4. Magnesium chelate tablets, three per day. I bought these for my tendonitis. They seem to have really helped. It really makes me think that the off-the-shelf fruits and vegetables we are eating are truly stripped of basic nutrients.

To say that I feel like a new man, and that I feel in the best shape of my life, why only exercising mildly, is just for starters. Among other things, my mood has great improved, even in the midst of things that would otherwise cause me grief and sorry (including the state of the country and the world).

I don't weigh myself, but from my beltline it's obvious that I've already lost a few pounds (all the while gorging on chocolate over Christmas). It has definitely cut down on my sweettooth cravings in a huge way, and I no longer seem to be prone to overeating (both lifelong problems for me). The key point is that this has taken zero willpower on my part. I has just "happened" somewhat like magic.

One final bonus I noticed today while looking in the mirror is that the chronic rosacea on my nose seems actually be subsiding. My ex-wife was concerned about this years ago---my nose was always beat red and broken out in small lesions. I had given up that anything would ever change it, but today, in my mirror, my nose actually seemed more brown than red for the first time in living memory.

Of course I know that none of this is scientific at all, but I'm not out to prove anything, just to feel better---and that seems to be happening.

Finally, the New Year

2012-01-02T18:54:00.000-08:00

The last few years, I watched less and less network television to the point where I don't have any regular comedy or drama shows that I watch anymore. Nearly all the television I enjoy watching anymore is Turner Classic Movies (which I don't have access to right now). But I decided after the end of Lost on ABC that I was done with the regular networks forever.

One of the last events on network television that I make a point of watching is the Tournament of Roses parade. I love waking up on New Year's Day and flipping on the television just in time to see the floats coming down Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena.

This year New Year's fell on a Sunday, so it was all delayed a day. The parade wasn't until today---the second of January, so yesterday didn't even really feel like New Year's Day, but like an extra day in between New Year's Eve and the real New Year's Day (today). I took the opportunity simply to rest and meditate.

Today finally felt like New Year's. I even watched the Rose Bowl game as well, and was pleased that Oregon won, since my visit to Eugene this past year was a definite highlight of 2011. I stayed there on a game weekend, and my motel was right near the stadium. I woke up there on a Saturday morning to find legions of fans streaming past my window.

But now it's time to face 2012 for real. Yes, I realize it's just a turn of the calendar, but New Year's Day is actually my favorite holiday of the year. I love the chance to start new things, and to leave old things behind. I love making resolutions. I love giving myself permission to overhaul my entire life if I want, and to reorient my thoughts and goals all at once. One can do that at any time of course, but it is never so easy for me to day as it is during the first week of January.

This past year was a tough year personally, as it was for many people out there, but I actually accomplished a lot, and ended the year in a much, much better position in many ways than last year. Financially, I not only was able to get off my back and out of distress, but am in the most solid position I've been in for many years.

Physically, I'm in very good shape too. I spent the last couple months of the year in sharp pain from tendonitis, but the good part was that I discovered the magic of magnesium supplements and was able to cure myself of it. That encouraged me to go further and I've developed my own regime of vitamin supplements, protein whey shakes, and fatty acid tablets.

Never have I felt so good in my life. After years of thinking that my body was in inevitable decline, I've felt like I've been granted a new lease on life. A couple days ago, I went for a walk and wound up going all the way to downtown (five miles). I was going to take the bus back, but decided to walk part of the way back and catch the bus on the way. I wound up walking all the way back as well---ten miles just spontaneously on foot, and at the end I felt no fatigue or foot pain at all. I could have kept walking easily. I haven't been able to do that in many years.

Feeling financially stable and physically fit is a great way to start the New Year. It means I can concentrate on other resolutions for 2012, a year that everyone seems to be dreading. But not me.

Who knows? Maybe next year I'll go to the Rose Parade in person.

Resolutions

2012-01-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

As if fulfilling the appearance of Jupiter, the new year began with a rather auspicious start. On the way home from Boulder, on a dark highway south of Loveland, I was pulled over by the flashing lights of a police cruiser from a deputy of the Larimer County sheriff's office. Knowing that cops were everywhere, I had been making sure to drive very carefully.

It turns out I had a headlight out. The deputy could tell I hadn't been drinking so everything was chill (I was glad I turned down the beer in the tent at Occupy Boulder) After scrambling to find my registration, everything turned out OK. He didn't even write me a citation. Instead he just chatted with me, rather sympathetically. I told him I'd been to see a movie, and he asked which one. I told him that I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him it wasn't as good as the first one. So that was my first movie review of the year.

It was actually quite a nice feeling, when I drove off without any damage at all. If only all of life's stresses could be melted away like that.

As I drove on into the dark, my mind focused on something that had been going through my head. I thought of how in the past year, I have felt the sharply mounting distress across the country, and have tried to warn and share this insight with as many people as possible. Partly this has been through Facebook, where I have "come out the closet" after a couple years of being laid back, and have been posting many links that have actually caused several people to defriend me. I knew that would be the price. It was part of my plan all along, I think. If they defriend me, then I know at least they read and absorbed what I said.

Facebook, I've said, has felt like a ministry. Although I've found it to be like a quagmire of nothingness at times, I've felt like I had to participate in it, because this is where our culture is right now. I wanted to understand that, and know why things are they way they are, and to "take the pulse" of that part of the world.

But now I feel as if I've reached a limit of my ability to do that. I think I've said what I needed to say. I can't go on with that form of "ministry." It's time to let it go.

While driving, I meditated about how I need to shift into a new mode. While the world is cracking up---and it surely is---it no longer serves the world for me to convey the kind of distress I've been relaying. I'm not doing myself or anyone any good by doing that.

I need to shift into a mode of trying to show people that there is a way forward out of this. I need to start conveying the confidence that I feel inside, that through all of this, there is a miracle that is available to us---a way forward. I need to embody that in my words and actions. I need to inspire that feeling in others by how I act, and what I say. It is time to start focusing on that.

How I'm supposed to do that, I'm not sure. One of the huge themes I am facing in so many things right now is that I don't have any idea of the master plan. That has freaked me out, because I tend to want to know the longterm route of things. But I have to trust that there is a step-by-step way forward for me at every turn. I truly have to take it day by day. Or as a friend of mine said, step, breathe, step.

In the spirit of that, I knew what the first step I had to take. I have to get off Facebook. I was thinking of simply deactivating my account, but I realized that this might erase all of my posts on other people's pages, and leave no way for people to contact me, if they wished. So I decided the best thing to do would be log out, and simply resolve to not log back in. I'll have to tell my sisters that they will have to relay any important family news to me by other means.

So when I finally got home, one of the first things I did before going to bed was to fulfill my first resolution. My ministry is over. It's time to start actually meeting people in person. And also it has given me new impulse to write this blog as much as possible, perhaps every day, after letting it lapse. Of course now I write about much more than movies, as I once did, because I don't go to very many movies any more, and I need to say things beyond the vehicle that once provided. The same with theater performances. But I still want to go to as many as possible. That won't change.

So what's out there for me? Where I am supposed to go in the new year? Who I am supposed to meet? What am I supposed to say? Like so many others right now, I am completely at a loss to furnish answers to those questions. But I know that this the way it is meant to be. I'm not supposed to know the answers to those questions right now. I'm supposed to voyage out and learn what the answers are. So here I go.

Stargazing@Occupy Boulder

2012-01-01T10:46:00.000-08:00

For New Year's Eve, I decided to end the year 2011 where it began---in Boulder. I drove down in the early evening and treated myself to a movie, seeing Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows at the Regal Century, the multiplex that is part of the outdoor lifestyle center on the site of the old Crossroads Mall.

It had been a couple years since I'd been at that theater. The last time I was there was to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus in early 2010. I noticed that the tickets now cost ten dollars and fifty cents. Wow.

I really enjoyed the first Sherlock Holmes movie two years ago, but this new one was a real eye-opening. It simply confirmed how quickly Hollywood, and America as a whole, is disintegrating. The story seemed chaotic and meaningless, lacking all the cleverness and wittiness of the original. Gone was the intricate mystery-solving of the conspiracy in the first one, replaced with the blunt tropes of the War on Terror, projected back in time to 1891. This is what happens when we live in tissues of compounded lies, I thought. I takes it toll on art.

The movie got out just after ten p.m. I decided to drive up to the illuminated star on Flagstaff Mountain, where I spent midnight last year. It was much warmer evening this year---last year it was one of the subzero end-of-the-world cold type of nights. There was also much less snow.

I didn't stay and climb up to the middle of the star, as I did last year. I just stood outside in the mild air by the road and meditated on the incredible year that had just passed, and all the ways I felt so different than one calendar year before. A young couple was playing and sliding up in the lights on the mountain side. I could hear their laughter and voices. It was very pleasant.

But the best part was that above the star, hovering above the dark shape of the mountain was the bright light of the planet Jupiter, almost like a heavenly mirror of the star on the mountain side. It felt like a good omen for the year ahead.

With about an hour left before midnight, I decided to fulfill my resolution to spend midnight down at the Occupy Boulder encampment at Sister Cities Park. On the way up to Flagstaff Mountain, I had driven by it and seen the tents beside the creek on Broadway, just south of downtown.

On the way back down there, I stopped at a convenience store and bought several large cups of hot chocolate. I drove back down the hill on Broadway and parked on Arapahoe across the street from the library. I filled my backpack with several boxes of Clif Bars that I had been toting around as provisions for several months on my travels, and took them and the hot chocolate over to the encampment in front of City Hall on Broadway. It was ironically right across the creek from a hot dog stand that I had remembered visiting on my first trip to Boulder in 1978, when we moved to Colorado.

When I had driven by earlier, I had seen several people standing out by the tents, but now I saw no one around. It seemed like the camp was deserted. But I heard some guitar music from inside one of them. I called out "Free Hot Chocolate!" I guy in his twenties with dark hair came out. He said he didn't want any hot chocolate, but he invited me into the tent, so I went inside. There were two other people there, a guy with a beard and a young woman wearing a stocking hat. I took a seat in one of the shares. The young woman took eagerly took one of
cups of chocolate and started sipping on it. I poured myself some from the other cup, using a red squishy cup that was part of my camping gear.

A couple other people came into the tent after a few minutes until we were all crowded inside. Beer and other things were passed around. It occurred to me rather quickly that none of the people there cared anything about the political ramifications of the Occupy "movement." This was simply a homeless camp. Everyone there was simply trying to survive. It seemed a world away from the community meeting at the Nomad Theatre. None of those lawyers was done here tonight.

Everything seemed broken. It was hard to carry on any time of conversation with anyone, except the guy with the bear, whose name with Sean, and who said he had been homeless for three years. I tried introducing myself and shaking hands with the people who came in the tent, but the idea of greeting each other that way seemed to be a foreign concept. I felt like I was I was smack in the middle of the American Crack-up.

"Do you think we had actually make one complete brain here, with the people here?" Sean asked me.

"I don't know," I told him. "Maybe eighty percent of one."

I felt awkward being there---as if I were an interloper in some degree, but mostly because I realized how tense I was, and how the vibes of my tension were apparent when I was trying to hang out with these people. I could feel so strongly how have been under so much self-imposed stress lately. I felt like I was too high strung to be sitting there. I felt embarrassed and unworthy, as if I needed to peel off layers of ego. I had to struggle to overcome that. It made me wish I could relax more, and be a better listener.

I wound up emptying my backup of all the Clif Bars I had, and leaving them there, also with the camp glow stick in rainbow colors.

"Do you carry around a whole supply of Clif Bars?" one of them asked me, incredulous.

"You're not going to believe this," I said, "but I actually lugged these boxes of Clif Bars all the way out to West Coast and back."

That just blew their minds. "I took them to ocean and back," I said.

"Were they blessed by the Pacific Ocean?" Sean asked me.

"I guess they were," I said.

For a few moments things took a spiritual tune. Sean even did a rendition of Kum-Ba-Ya, which the young woman (whose name was Alex), hadn't ever heard before. Then we all agreed for God "to bless America and everyone else."

After midnight I went outside and showed Sean the planet Jupiter, which was still above City Hall. I listened to his theories on the "Collapse" that it is progress. He asked me: "are you one of those religious people?"

"Absolutely," I told him.

"What are you? Christian? Catholic?"

I thought about it a second. "Yeah, I guess so," I told him. "I try to be a bit of everything."

Then I said good-bye to him, giving him my pair of gloves, which he was grateful to receive. Then I went back to my car, walking back across the creek and past the old hot dog stand.

In a couple days from now the City Manager has resolved to clear out the camp from in front of City Hall. I could understand why it is probably going to happen, despite the efforts of the well-meaning progressive lawyers. But at the same time I was thankful that the tents were there that night, so that Sean and his friends could be inside a tent that night, and not out in the cold.

Now what about those layers of ego that I am carrying? What am I going to do about those?

Some Private Thoughts

2011-12-30T14:22:00.000-08:00

How I miss you so much already. I have so much sorrow for having lost you as a friend. It's true---I let things get out of hand in my mind, as I am prone to. In some ways, I knew exactly that it would cause you to say what you did. It was almost as if I were trying to make you say that, on some level, just to get a reaction out of you.

You say: I was a good friend. I don't think so. A good friend would have found a way to stay friends. I spent so much emotional effort this year, trying to make contact with you again, trying to restore our friendship.

As I mentioned before, I had a lot of old feelings to burn off. A lot of it was guilt over my actions from years before, that I was the cause of your pain. I wanted to tell you that. I wanted to tell you how sorry I was, for the pain I helped cause you. I wanted to tell you that I would do it all differently, if I could. I was trapped by that, for all these years. For some reason, it was important for me to tell you that I would do the things now I should have done, those years ago. But I know that is not what is meant to be. Yet somehow it was important for me to convey it. Forgive my wretched clumsiness, I beg you.

If I had a wish, it would be for you to give me yet one more chance, to be friends. I know you need one. I need one too. We can be friends to each other, I truly believe, and leave the old things behind. I'm ready to do that. I think it took your last message to really wake me up, and let me move beyond the old.

I'm ready to help you, if you want. You know that I know things about you that you have told to no one else. I am not scared of the dark things in you, that scare you to talk about. Maybe I am the only person in the world for which that it true. But it is true.

When you are ready, come back to me. I will never give up hope of hearing from you---ever. You are too close my own soul. And yes, I love you, as Jonathan loved David, "like his own soul." (1 Samuel 18:1-4).

@The Nomad, Boulder

2011-12-29T10:13:00.000-08:00

So it begins...
Last night I found myself down in Boulder for the first time in many weeks. I had wondered how I would feel being back there, thinking it might fill me with a heavy heart, but instead all I felt was great release and joy. Perhaps it was the warm wind coming down off the mountains before sunset.

I was there to attend an event at the Nomad Theatre, a peformance space on Quince Street in North Boulder. But I was not there to see a dramatic performance, but rather to go to a town hall meeting of Occupy Boulder.

I'd read about on Facebook and had decided to go, as the first step in what seems to be my new direction in life, which is to attend and observe as many events as possible of what appears to be this chaotic proto-revolution and revolt that is in progress, and which I believe will grow only stronger and bigger in 2012.

The meeting started around five o'clock. The purpose was to discuss strategy to combat an impeding rule from the Boulder City Manager that would basically outlaw the current occupy encampment at Sister City Park.

The building is an old quonset hut---a very quaint space. There were already cookies laid out on the table at the entrance, and a row of clipboards with email signups and petitions.

About a hundred people showed up. Ironically it felt much like a theater performance. They even were handing out folded paper programs with a "cast list"---an lawyer for the homeless, an ACLU representative with an Arabic name, and a grey-haired local activist woman. As I watched them speak on stage, and discuss the proposed ordinance, I couldn't help but be struck by the complete blending of dramatic performance and politics, all rolled into one.

I loved watching it, partly because it all felt so haphazard. What the hell is this all about? Nobody really knows. It just feels like democracy, as if we are rediscovering something long lost in this country.

I enjoyed it all, until the fourth speaker, who was a Denver lawyer who spoke about filing injunctions. He went off on a tangent decrying the "Tea Party" (which got some applause from the audience) and speaking about how this whole thing was not an issue of individual rights but "collective rights." That made me cringe. Then he spoke about how this issue wasn't about the Constitution, but could actually be fodder for the Organization of American States human rights council, which he said was the human rights organization "for this part of the world." The old liberals in the audience let out sighs of happiness at the bashing of the Constitution and the mention of unelected world government, whereas I felt disgusted. It reminded me of how much I differ with many of those in this "Occupy Movement."

But that's OK. I can deal with that. For now I'm just going to keep going to these "performances."

Solstice Decision

2011-12-22T13:02:00.000-08:00

On Dec 20, 2011, at 5:55 PM, Matthew Trump wrote:
Uncle ChainSaw,

> Have decided to start traveling the country after Jan. 1 visiting as many Occupy sites as possible and handing out free food and the Word. Am spending NYE at Occupy Boulder.
>
> After thinking I would not go, am starting to strongly consider going to the Million Tent Occupy in DC on Jan. 17.
>
> See you there?
>
> -m

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:55 PM, XXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:

Puzzle tzar,

Welcome back to Jazz and Justice.

I have a few old tents I could take for a, hopefully crowded, walk mid January.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Matthew Trump wrote:
Awesome. See you there. I'll be the one in the camouflage hunting cap.

To Aurora

2011-12-19T08:32:00.000-08:00

Forgive me.
I don't need the things you said
that I need from you,
that you can't give me
I know they are not in your power to give
I know where your struggle must be
I felt the deep despair in you
and rejoiced at being needed as a friend
at being greeted with such relief
as a balm to your anguish
even as I suffered with you
I felt your pain and reached out
And spoke in the only language I knew to you
The clumsy metaphors of our old ways of being
To at least show that you are loved
Thinking I might provoke your tears
To help speed your healing
Instead I drove you away
And earned only sorrow
for both of us
I hope someday the songbirds sing again
That I hear your voice in gladness and friendship
In some epoch when the stars have come back out
Forgive me.

You Gotta Believe

2011-12-18T22:28:00.000-08:00

Sunday evening's fun activities with my nieces culminated in a game of "drawing," with Sarah pretending to be a teacher leading Maura and I in making a drawing. It starts with "Put your name on the top of the page...and the date..." And then we have imitate everything she puts on the page, using the same color markers from the plastic tub. She handed them to me as she finished, so I could copy what she just did.

At one point she used a brown marker to color in an entire section she had already drawn. She made it dark and thick on the page. When it was my turn, I asked, "Is it ok if I do it lightly?" I asked. "I don't want to dry out the Magic Marker."

"It's not MAGIC, Uncle Matt!," said Maura, completely amused at my comment.

Generation gap, I guess.

Beautiful Day

2011-12-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

It was over sixty degrees today here in Colorado. I was lucky to get to spend the day down in Westminster with my sister's family, and in particular with my nieces. We watched part of the Broncos game (my sister has a case of Tebowmania). During halftime my nieces and I went out into the park across the street to play soccer. The "soccer" was really just them kicking their balls around while I tried to intercept them. But after about five minutes it gave way to a sunnyday snowball fight. A perfect last Sunday of Advent, all in all.

Fresno Loves Me Redux

2011-12-12T19:14:00.000-08:00

This afternoon I got a call from my friend Nick Z. who lives in Portland. I knew him back in college and he has gone on to be a successful playwright, among other things.

He wasn't calling about anything theater related, but rather because I had seen his post on Facebook requesting people to purchase raffle tickets for his son's private school fundraiser. I was happy to jump in with the chance to help a friend. Besides the first place is a trip to Hawaii, one of the few states of the Union I haven't visited yet. I had a chance to go there many years ago in college, and foolishly didn't go. I told Nick that I intend to get to Hawaii in 2012, and it would awesome it were free.

He asked when I was coming back to Portland and I told him I intend to be there sometime in Spring, but I'm not sure when. I told him that I was planning to be there after heading down to Fresno again, as I wanted to see a friend of mine there in a new show.

Since Nick is a theater professional, I entertained him to no small measure by my stories of being entangled with the amateur theater community of Fresno, and how I had become an acting coach helping Rick to perfect his Gary Cooper imitation, something I blogged about a couple months back.

"The director of the show even started asking me for advice," I told him. This part I didn't blog about. It's a fun story.

The show that my friend Rick had an interesting history. It turns out that the original director of the show was a local Fresno guy who had gone to New York and made it big directing Broadway musical shows. His specialty was choreography. The locals had brought him back in order to direct a show in his hometown, but for some bizarre reason, they made him direct Stalag 17, which a serious drama about American prisoners in a German prison camp in World War II.

Moreover, the returned local guy directed the show only through rehearsals and up to opening night. After that, he promptly returned to New York and left the show in the hands of a local woman with the strict stipulation that nothing about the show be changed. He enforced this stipulation by review of nightly video feed of the show to New York.

The whole weird situation left no small amount of grumbling among the cast. By far the strangest part was the curtain call at the end of the show. Instead of a straight conventional bow, the cast came out onto the stage area of the black box and then, spread out among the cots and tables of what was supposedly spartan prisoner barracks, launched into a chorus-line type dance routine, with both the SS Nazis and the American prisoners pretending to march happily together and doing several awkward leg kicks. Tick warned me about it in advance, yet nothing could prepare me for how absurd it looked when I saw the first time.

I should mention that every night I went to the show, I sat in back near one of the stage entrances, all by myself, mostly because I'm claustrophic and like to spread out. I noticed during the second night that the replacement director sat only a few feet away from me and one row down. I could tell it was her because of red hair, and the fact that she was taking notes during the show.

After the Friday night show, I told Rick that the dance-number curtain call was the stupidest thing I had even seen. He told me that the grumbling was getting worse and worse each night among the cast at having to do it. "You gotta get them to change it," I told him. "It's the worst thing about the show."

On Saturday night, the last night I went to the show, I noticed the director sitting near me again. At the end of the show, I was prepared to see the same absurd Nazi-American dance number, but instead the cast came out and performed a simple conventional bow to the audience. Something had changed.

As the applause died down and the actors left the stage, I waited for everyone to leave, as I usually do. The director stood up in her house and walked past me. As she did, she asked me directly, "So did you like the curtain call tonight?"

You could have knocked me over with a feather. What the hell? Why was she asking me that? "Oh yes, much better," I said.

Outside in the alley I asked Rick what had happened. He said that before the show that night, the cast had risen up and finally demanded that to the replacement director change the curtain call, and she had agreed, notwithstanding orders from New York.

So it didn't have anything to do with me at all. Just a coincidence that the director had asked me that. She had obviously seen me sitting there on previous nights.

Just a coincidence...

Meanwhile Rick has started rehearsals for Crimes of the Heart. It opens a couple days before New Year's Eve. I'm looking forward to seeing him on stage, and to being back in Fresno, where Rick said that the folks in the company still ask about me, and where somehow I have become a theater guru.

Fictons, Foreshadows, Flasbacks: Senior Dance Showcase @ University Dance Theatre, Colorado State University

2011-12-10T21:04:00.001-08:00

Seen: this evening

So here I am, back where it all began.

Last week after I went to Fiddler on the Roof at the new building of my old high school, I realized it was probably time at last to go see some kind of show at the old building, the one I and my friends knew as Fort Collins High School, and which is now the University Center for the Arts for Colorado State.

The renovations were done over the last decade---the entire building was gutted and remodled. I'd been inside since then, but only in passing. I hadn't poked around much, or gone to any kind of performance.

After looking over the schedule at the CSU website, I decided the senior dance recital was my best bet. It was to be held in the University Dance Theatre inside the building. I was curious to see where that was, in relation to old school plan.

I got to the box office about an hour beforehand, which left me time to walk around the building, which was open, as an campus building was, during finals. I walked along the first floor and up the main staircase where we used to sing the Alma Mater on the landing every Friday at noon.

What I was most curious to see is what had become of the old auditorium where I had performed on stage. The sign above the entrance indicated it was now the Organ Recital Hall. I tried the door: it was open. I walked inside and saw the old space I knew, now dominated by a giant pipe organ on the old stage.

The lights were on, but the auditorium was empty. Delighted at the chance to be there, I walked up towards the stage. I could see that besides all new seats, the stage itself had been extended about fifteen feet and was occupied by a grand piano. I could see where the old stage still was. It seemed some of the same wooden planks were there, by their wear compared to the newer part.

I walked up onto the old part and crept out towards center stage in front of the pipe organ. The first thing I remembered was the very first time I came out on stage, as Mr. Webb in Our Town, thirty-one years ago, introduced by the Stage Manager, my friend Ken, who passed away a few months ago while I traveling on the West Coast.

I paced around a few minutes and remembered other lines from the other dramas I had been in.

My skin...it's...healed...

As I stood leaning against the wall soaking in a few moments of remembering, the door opened on stage and a young Asian man poked his head in. He saw me and said, "the concert is over now." Evidently there had been a vocal recital there earlier in the evening.

I explained to him my story in brief, and that was just there to reminisce. I told about parts of the auditorium that had changed. He seemed to know more than he should have.

"The tower...," he said, pointed upwards. "It's blocked off now."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "I climbed it once. There used to be all sorts of secret passages backstage. I guess those are gone," I said, looking at the massive pipe organ.

Having gotten my fill, and having exhausted my memory of my lines from various roles, I left and went back down the hall towards the dance theatre, which turned out to be inside the space once occupied by what we called "The Small Gym" of the high school. My main memory of that place was the ritual of card pulling at the beginning of each semester to select classes.

Before the performance I sat in the nice chairs in the remodeled hallway and kibbutzed on the conversations of the dance students and their parents and boyfriends.

The recital was well attended and entertaining. I'm not much to judge either the choreography or the performances, so I can't say much.

There were four solos, and two ensemble performances, the largest of which had about twenty dancers on stage. Of course over eighty percent were young women---beautiful and graceful. The content seemed so innocent when the world is so uninnocent. There were no political statements or anything of that type in the content or choreograph. I couldn't help thing how little has really changed from the days when co-eds were required to take "eurythmy" as part of their undergraduate coursework.

May it always be so innocent, I thought to myself.

All About Eve (1950)

2011-12-07T19:42:00.001-08:00

Seen on TCM, last month.

It seemed appropriate to begin my discussion of Monroe by this, her first real speaking role. I've seen it a couple times now, and also fairly recently, so it is fresh in my mind.

Bob Osbourne, the host of TCM, loves this movie, as I've come to infer over time. It took me a while to understand why classic movie buffs like him love it so much.

Simply put, one can argue that this movie, released as it was at the midpoint of the Twentieth Century, is in fact the quintessential motion picture, and the movie that defines the transition to Postmodernity itself. Certainly it would be on the short list of any movies that one could nominate as such.

I realize that this is a strong endorsement, but it is a very powerful movie. Among other things, it is perhaps the defining role for arguably the greatest single actress of the 20th Century---Bette Davis. And of course it is the movie that introduced Monroe to the world.

But what really makes this movie so singularly great, in the way I've described? Specifically why is the movie that defines the transition to Postmodernity?

It has a lot to do with the fact that it is a movie about the theater, that is, the legitimate theater, as it was once called. Most of the characters are Broadway actors, and the movie is about the world of stage actors.

One can see the essence of the importance of this in the famous "party scene", the one which Davis utters arguably the most notable line of her screen career: "Fasten your seatbelts..."

Watching this scene the last time I saw the movie, I could not help be struck by the lines uttered by the "actors" to each other. The lines dripped of insinuation, irony, and sarcasm. There was a tension of subversion and misdirection in almost every line.

To today's audiences, irony delivered in this way is quite normal. To say we're used to it is an understatement. In fact, it is the norm today. Yet sixty-one years ago, it was not the norm. It was, in fact, shocking for most audiences to see people behaving this way to each other.

It hit me: we're all supposed to be actors now. It brings to mind something I read, about how until recent times in history, actors (that is, stage actors) were held in fear and contempt by ordinary society because of their seeming "magic" ability to change personality. Actors could not be trusted to be "real" according to normal definitions of character. They were fluid.

This kind of transformation is the essence of drama. The surface is not the real. There is a deeper level. The purpose of drama is to reveal it.

The core idea of Postmodernity is a takeover of society by the dramaturgical. Everyone now knows that personality is fluid. Irony is king. We must all "act" this way and must all be aware of this in each other. The real is fleeting and an illusion.

In other words, we are all supposed to be at that party scene from All About Eve now, all the time. And like the characters at the banquet that frames the story, we are all supposed to be privately miserable while clapping our hands with a smile on our face.

The movie has even deeper levels. One of the richest aspects of it is the focus on the transition of the feminine character in Postmodernity (hence the title), anticipating the emergence of the ubiquitous "princess" of contemporary society. The vanity of women, once considered a vice, is now promoted shamelessly as a great virtue. The goal of love has been replaced by the desire for universal attention through fame. Nowhere is this more eloquent than in the very last shot of the movie, when Eve, supposedly the young ingenue, is usurped by her even younger version, who seems shockingly contemporary in her ego-driven nature. One could almost argue that it hinges on horror at that moment (especially coming on the heels of the scene in which George Saunders delivers his "I own you" speech in the New Haven hotel room).

Horror, yes---another one of the cornerstones of Postmodernity.

So what about Monroe? Her performance is limited to one scene---the aforementioned party scene. She is introduced as the bubbly "new find" of Saunders' character, and treated by him with contempt. She's a throwaway to him.

But the great meta-message of the movie if you will is how much Monroe utterly dominates the scene during her brief time on it. It is impossible not to look at her.

Even though it is supposed to Anne Baxter (Eve) who is the young starlet, Monroe is utterly in a class by herself among the other actresses there. It is as if she is a new type of woman, emerging out of the already nascent world of Postmodernity destined to become its archetype and queen. She has synthesized all the elements of the entire previous generation of Hollywood actresses and is the living personification of the next phase of American culture.

It would be easy to say that next to her, Davis looks old fashioned. But the genius of the movie is that Davis is supposed to be old fashioned. But so is Baxter.

Here she is...there has never been anyone like her on screen. Just watch her eyes as she is listening. There is genius in them. It is unmistakable.

Operation Monroe

2011-12-05T14:18:00.001-08:00

These last few weeks I've been laid up with a shoulder and neck injury---tendonitis, as it turns out. My mobility limited, I've taken refuge in my old habit of watching old movies. Since I don't have TCM where I am staying, I decided to rejoin Netflix and catch up on some classic films I've been wanting to see. Usually this would be too daunting of a task---too much choice, but I decided to make it easier on myself by assigning myself a theme. Last month on TCM was "Blonde Bombshell Month," and since I didn't get to see most of those movies, I decided I would go with that as a basis, but would go to even one more level---a Marilyn Monroe film festival.

Rather shamefully, Monroe is a big blank spot in my appreciation of classic films. As I've mentioned before, I think I saved watching many of her films until I'd absorbed the generation of actresses before her---Stanwyck, Rogers, Davis, Crawford, Garson, Dunne, Hepburn, Garland, Young, and their contemporaries. They got their start in the 1930s and would have been the actresses that Monroe watched while she was a girl.

Now I feel like I'm ready for a fuller appreciation of Monroe. My first three disks from Netflix are sitting on my DVD and ready to be loaded. It's going to be a fun couple weeks.

Fiddler on the Roof @ McNeil Peforming Arts Center at Fort Collins High School

2011-12-04T08:21:00.001-08:00

Seen: last night (December 3)

So there I was, back at my old school, the place where I first set foot on stage as an actor, and where I did nearly all of my theater work.

Except it wasn't really. The old building, the one I went to, was closed in the 1990s and is now part of the CSU campus. The new one was built on the edge of town to replace it. Back in the day, we used to pride ourselves on our cool building---towers and pillars and all that. We thought it made us better than the other schools with their inferior postwar boxlike buildings.

I got tipped off to the production by a friend on Facebook and decided to go. It was my first time in the new building. I drove through the cold and ice and navigated the maze of the parking lot to get to the entrance.

I can't say that I was impressed by the building itself. It was completely the kind of cheap blah structure one might have feared they would build. I felt no connection to it all. The only jolt of feeling like I was in anything like my old school was seeing a girl in a purple and gold letter jacket in the lobby. That took me back.

But the auditorium is nice and expansive. It's named after the beloved orchestra director back from my day.

Driving there, I couldn't help but muse at the irony of the production I was about to see. During my three years at FCHS, I had three large dramatic roles, one per year, and was also the stage manager of the fall musical comedy during my senior year. One of the dramas was about the life of a small New England town at the turn of the century. One was about a soldier going off to die in Vietnam. In both of those. The third was one based on the Old Testament and was about the trials of believing and trusting in divine Providence. The musical comedy that I stage managed was about the excitement of the outside world coming to a small Midwestern town.

It occurred to me that if you rolled all of those productions up together into one, you would probably come up with, well, Fiddler on the Roof.

In fact, in my last role, I played a Jewish father of a large family. But in that case, my children didn't have as nice a fate as Tevye's daughters. Not at all.

What can I say about the production? It was a high school musical. It made me wish I could see our production from the fall of 1982, to compare it. The auditorium was beautiful. We would have given our eye teeth to have that kind of facility. Or maybe not. There was something charming and rustic about having to make due in the old auditorium. There were so many weird secret nooks and crannies. It felt like a real "theater" somehow. So I didn't envy the kids in the new building at all.

Among the changes in the new facility is that the seats have numbers and the tickets actually were reserved. Our seats didn't have numbers at all. But we did have a balcony. I asked for a seat in the very back. During the intermission, I stood against the railing by the light booth and looked out over the parents and students and everyone else in the audience, standing and moving in the aisles.

At that moment I had a flashback to how I used to feel way back when, about my place in the world, about the town I lived in, and about the world as a whole. I was so idealistic back then, and I knew it. I wanted to be connected to everyone, and feel and experience love in a universal way with humanity. I knew it was a grandiose notion, but somehow I had the notion that I should capitalize on my youthful idealism to soak in as much of that as possible.

That kind of attitude made me feel so alive. Back then I wanted to talk to as many people as possible, and experience as much of life as possible in the outside world, like an ambassador of hope and love. It's an attitude that carried me forth all around the globe and late me make friends everywhere I went. All of that kind of feeling of connection kept getting reflected back to me.

As I looked down the rows at the people in the auditorium, it occurred to me that I have not felt that way in a long time. Instead I have been going through the world with such isolation. I have not wanted to connect to people. I have not trusted that. I have been able to see only the blindness and desolation of the people in my town, and in the world. I have felt on a solitary mission.

I miss feeling that connection. Perhaps it is the way the world has been spinning so rapidly lately, but for a moment, I had a glimmer of a window back to my old self, that one who wanted to connect and project love, and experience it back from others.

After the production I walked back out through the lobby and saw the same girl with the purple and gold letter jacket. I thought of a girl I knew from long ago, my date for the junior prom. She hated this place and the people here. She left behind Fort Collins right after high school and never looked back. She went off and married a naval officer, and had a couple kids. The world have to end for her to show up on Facebook. Maybe she had it right after all.

I am so sick and tired of this war. When do we get America back?

Now, Voyager (1942)

2011-11-10T21:23:00.001-08:00

THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find

---Whitman

Seen tonight on TCM. One of those mega-classics that had escaped me up until now. A very good movie to watch for those who've spent time in the LB.

"Are you the same woman who just a few months ago had not a single interest in the world?" (I want to learn to talk like Claude Rains---"like honey poured on gravel," as Richard Chamberlain once said.)

The Matrix (1999)

2011-10-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

My creative writing teacher in college said the best advice he ever got about writing was from a well-known published author who told him, "follow the rabbits that cross your path."

But those rabbits can be scary at times. Reminds me of the signature scene from one of the most significant movies of recent vintage, one worth revisting. Pills can be overrated in reality, of course, but the metaphor is interesting.

Also I think I like the Portuguese subtitles in that clip.

Como un zunido na sua cabeça...

Shall We Dance? (1937)

2011-09-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

And speaking of Fred Astaire...

Well, actually I could entitle this post On Ginger, because I intend to use it to talk about Ginger Rogers, who is probably my all-time favorite movie actress.

When I start to write about Rogers, one of the first things that pops into my head is that an old feminist quip from the 1960s/1970s that went, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels."

What a crock! There are so many things wrong with this statement on so many levels, it makes me angry to think about it.

First off, as a statement of fact, it is flat-out false. Rogers did not do everything Astaire did. That would be nearly impossible. Among the reasons is the difference between the male and female bodies and how they move while dancing. Even my super-feminist ex-wife, who introduced me to dancing lessons twenty years ago, would have admitted that in a second. Moreover, Astaire is not just any male dancer but arguably the most uniquely talented of all time. His signature moves, of swinging his legs pendulum-like while the rest of body undergoes seemingly independent motion, is something that Gene Kelly wouldn't even be able to pull off with the same grace. And Kelly was really, really good, of course.

The quip actually refers to the fact that in traditional ballroom dance, the man is the lead. The lead (the man) steps forward with his left foot on the first beat, while the woman steps back on her right foot. It's just convention. Anyone can dance anyway they want to, and either partner can lead if they want, but well, somehow people often like it the traditional way, no matter how much others may not like it.

But Astaire and Rogers rarely danced like that. Most of their dancing screen time together is spent dancing side-by-side, facing camera. Also Rogers wore heels on screen only when the plot called for her character to be wearing heels. She often wears flats in many of the complicated numbers (and roller skates).

Rogers never tried to do most of the things Astaire did on screen. She did her own thing. Yeah, her own thing, with moves that Astaire never could have pulled off. How terribly patriarchal and retrograde!

And what was her thing? If Astaire's signature was his pendulum legs, then Rogers true genius was in her twirl. Better than any other dancer in the history of Hollywood, Rogers was the master of circular motion, the adaptation of the pirouette into fluid motion on a sound state, often moving back and forth to Astaire like a yo-yo, but of her own free will, not his. The twirl is not something that a male dancer could pull off in the same way. Kelly could do it with power, but it is Rogers to capture something that seems to be lost on current audiences: feminine grace. I love how she seems to know exactly where her dress is, and how to make it slow at the end of the swirl and reverse direction right in time with the music.

One of the reasons that Shall We Dance? is probably my favorite pairing of the two great dancers is that specifically because it calls attention to Rogers' twirl. Actually in the movie, Astaire calls it her "tweeeeest" (as in twist). He character at that point is pretending to be a Russian dancer, but of course Rogers has already learned that he is faking the accent. When I saw that scene I smiled, because I'd already developed my theory of Rogers' twirl, and I knew immediately that this was something recognized by people at the time, although it seems lost to today's audiences.

Rogers' ability to somewhat cynically dismiss Astaire's corny humor, all the while falling for him, is what makes a lot of their movies have spark and life. Shall We Dance? is almost a primer in in the ins-and-outs of misunderstandings that crop up in a love affair, and the necessity for the man to be persistent and patient in pursuing his True Love. These are lessons of classical romance that were once the common wisdom of our society but which were rarely told to my generation.

Rogers always gets me when he starts to sing to. By no means could she match, say, Garland, in terms of vocal solo performance, but like in her dancing, Rogers' great skill was in how she used her voice and her body in character. She has an unmatched ability in my book to seamlessly go from talking/walking to singing/dancing as if there were no line between them. If (post)modern audiences lack a full appreciation for Rogers, I think it because they don't like her characters, who are very traditional in how they interact with men on screen.

I love the scene with her walking the dog, and the little story that is told in complete silence, moving the story along without a word of dialogue. My favorite musical number in this movie is when Rogers launches into her nasal drone, "The odds were a hundred to one against me..."

Bonus video: Rogers at age 92, doing the salsa.

High Society (1956)

2011-09-26T13:15:00.000-07:00

And speaking of Cole Porter songs...

While waiting to see my next live theatre performance, I've decided to write about a few classic movies I've seen lately and which I really enjoyed.

I got re-see part of High Society a few months back on TCM. It's one of those movies that if it comes on, I'm going to wind up watching part of it, guaranteed. It's among my all-time secret favorite movies. I say "secret" because one is not really supposed to like this movie all that much.

Yes, I know it's a remake of The Philadelphia Story (1940), and although I like that earlier film, it's actually not anywhere near the top of my list as far as comedies from that era. I think Grant and Hepburn did better work together, and Jimmy Stewart is underused, all in all. But I know my opinion is in the minority here.

As for the 1956 movie. C'mon, it stars Grace Kelly. You really need more to appreciate it? But I shouldn't talk: I was late in really becoming a huge fan of hers---I had learn to appreciate the early generation of actresses first (somewhat like how I purposely waited to appreciate the genius and significance of Monroe).

But mostly my appreciation stems from that fact that I just love the musical numbers in the remake, written by Cole Porter specifically for the film. I think that was a stroke of genius. They turned me into a Bing Crosby fan.

Yes, this movie would near the top of my list if anyone asked me for a movie sure to make them smile.

But to be sure, in case you haven't seen it yet, and in case the opinion of others counts to you about the movies you watch, then best to watch and appreciate this one by yourself the first time through.

Me the Acting Coach

2011-09-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

My experience hanging out at Second Space in Fresno was fun for so many reasons. As I mentioned, I felt like I was almost part of the company there after going to three shows on successive nights.

I sat in exactly the same seat, off the corner by one of the exit doors, away from the rest of the crowd (I'm claustrophobic that way).

Among the ways I got involved was an acting coach for my friend Rick. It's not that I know much about stage acting, but for his particular role, I turned out to be a really good source of knowledge. His character, Sgt. Reed, is supposed to have been an actor back in New York, before he got shot down and interred in the German prison camp. His fellow prisoners are always having him do impressions of famous actors from that era, something that Rick can actually do well. His Bogart was spot on, and his Jimmy Stewart was uncanny. But I told him his Gary Cooper sort of sucked.

He said he wasn't surprised, as he hadn't really seen any Gary Cooper movies. As I happen to a huge Gary Cooper fan, I spent some time with him after every performance, giving him pointers on what to do.

He's supposed to do a Cooper as a cowboy in a gunfight. I told him to stand with stiff wooden legs, and to rock gently back and forth somewhat awkwardly. I taught him how to talk like Cooper, low and out of the corners of his mouth, and to fix his eyes open and wide like Cooper does. I told him that when he draws and shoots, he should immediately transition from stiff and wooden to a quick crouch with deadly aim.

Rick is a great study and super smart. He picked all this up quite easily. I was amazed at how well he improved over the course of three nights. By the time that matinee arrived, he had it down almost completely.

But something was still bothering me about it. While I was driving back up to Oregon, it hit me. At one point, before he draws his imaginary gun, he is supposed to turn and pretend to spit. I realized that he was turning his head way to wildly to the side.

From Eugene, I wrote him an email. "Cooper would NEVER do that," I wrote him. "Turning your head way to the side to spit like that would get a person killed in a gunfight. Cooper would never take his eyes off the guy in front of him."

I told him to just jerk his head quickly to the side, and to pretend to spit out of the corner of his mouth, but while keeping his eyes fixed on the same point ahead of him.

He said he'd take my advice. He's really eager to improve as an actor. I figured it would work especially well for the Sunday matinee crowds, which skew towards the oldest demographic---people who probably saw plenty of Gary Cooper movies back in the day.

I know he'll do fantastic, or as the old song goes, super duper!

A Calm Day of Driving and Reflection

2011-09-14T14:46:00.000-07:00

The landscape of Eastern Washington looks amazing open after having on the West Coast for a couple weeks. A good day to reflect and think as the highway rolls by. Seven years ago today I left New York City as a resident for the last time. Can't help but wonder what the next seven years will bring.

Must be Robin Goodfellow

2011-09-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

Today I ventured into downtown Portland for business, which turned out to be a highly successful trip. Afterward, I was in such a good mood I wandered around the city a little and decided to drop by to see an old friend who works at Powell's Books as a cashier. His name is Nick Z.

His primary vocation is a playwright, as it happens. Four yeas ago, the last time I was in Oregon before this recent trip, I went down to Salem to see a production of one of his shows at our mutual alma mater, where he was an artist in residence.

At Powell's, I saw him at the checkout counter and snuck up beside him, hanging on the stair rail a few feet away. Finally he saw me, grinning like Puck. That got a big smile and laugh out of him.

He couldn't take a break from his work right then, so our conversation lasted only a few minutes. I told him I was only in town for the day, before heading back to Colorado for now. But I promised I'd be back soon and have drinks with him and his lovely wife.

In our abbreviated conversation he told me something funny that resonated with my new direction in life.

He said that he had been working on a new play over the last week, and that one of the characters was named Matthew. He said that whenever he typed that name into Microsoft Word, the program tried to automatically convert the name into my email address.

I don't know how I could possibly be in a better mood than I am right now, but that really put the cherry on top of it all.

See you soon, Nick! First round is on me.

Cowgirl Heaven @ the Wildish Theater

2011-09-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

seen in: Springfield, Oregon, two nights ago.

So yes, I'm really in Oregon (again, for the second time on this trip). I spent the last three nights in a motel in Eugene across from campus. I had come back up to Oregon for the second time on this trip after getting a call from a guy in Portland who works for an educational publishing company, about possibly doing some contract work for them. It's exactly the kind of thing I was looking to do. I took three days to drive up from Fresno, and camped in view of Mt. Shasta on the way. It was a much better trip than the one through Nevada a couple weeks before.

It was weird being back in Oregon again, of course, but the difference this time compared to just last month felt like heaven compared to hell. Like night and day.

Eugene surprised me. Frankly I'd come to think that I wasn't capable of living in Oregon, that there was no place that appealed to me. Whenever I told people I was going there, and might relocate there, they would say, "Oh, Portland is nice, I hear." I would tell them that I don't like Portland much. It makes me feel lonely and isolated. I prefer smaller towns and cities, but none in the Portland area made me feel comfortable at all. I drove through a couple of them, but I am giving a wide berth to one of them for now, out of respect for a good friend.

But Eugene, well, that's a place I decided I could actually live. When I was here a couple weeks ago, I had stopped in Eugene and found myself checking my email at a Starbucks at the corner of Broadway and Pearl. How ironic, I thought. Where have I heard of that intersection before?

I'd only spent one night in Eugene, in 1993 during a road trip. It didn't much appeal to me then. But things change. I felt almost instantly at home there, even if it is still for now second best in my heart to another college town I won't mention. I loved walking around the city and the campus, even though at times I felt the sympathetic pain of a good friend's bad memory from that place. I tried to think of happier things, like playing go. After a day it worked, and I was even able to finish the first chapter of my manuscript in my motel room. This morning I didn't want to leave and drive north on I-5. But work calls---gotta make a living.

Of course one of the first things I did was put into motion my plan to start attending community theater again. I picked up a copy of the weekly newspaper and scouted for some possibilities. Fortunately I hit the jackpot. On Saturday night there was a one-time encore performance of Cowgirl Heaven, a little musical I'd never heard of. It was playing across the river in Springfield. It's about five women who work the rodeo circuit in the 1920's, a time when it was almost unheard of for women to perform stunt work. It had about ten interesting musical numbers, following their lives and careers, starting in Pendleton and going all around the country, even to New York.

The Wildish Theater is very nice, with plenty of comfortable seats. As I like to, I sat by myself in one of the upper rows, higher even that the crew running the lights along the side.

As I was watching the performance, I couldn't help think of how, on Saturday night, if I were out seeing a movie by myself, I would leave the theater after the credits had rolled (as I ALWAYS do---it's part of the movie, after all) but would feel tremendously lonely going back to my room.

But in the Wildish, I felt connected to everyone in audience. It was a truly shared experience with everyone there, and everyone on stage. I can't believe it took me this long to rediscover this. The best fifteen bucks I ever spent.

Rick kept insisting in Fresno that I find an audition for a show and try out. I told him that for now I just wanted to be an audience member and a blogger about theater, but after a couple days, I relented and told him I'd give it a go, if and when an opportunity came up.

Crest Theatre, Fresno

2011-09-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

Traveling the country I've seen so many old movie houses in old downtowns that just fill my heart with joy to see them. It has occurred to me that perhaps the main reason I went to see so many movies for so long is simply because I liked going into theaters.

One thing that amazes me is how resilient old movie houses are. They may change form, and serve completely different purposes, but as architecture, they are amazingly stable. I've seen re-incarnated in almost every form, but with the marquee and the exterior barely altered. There is just something so compelling about them. I've learned that unless the movie theater is completely demolished, it is possible to renovate into anything. I'm aware of a few old theaters that have indeed been torn down and it is always sad to me. In particular case, the theater site has simply become a parking lot.

The Crest Theater here in Fresno has undergone a fairly common renovation as a live music venue. That's my friend Rick walking in front. We were walking around downtown Fresno when I saw the Crest and said "I have to take a picture of that!" Since he's now an actor, I figured he wouldn't mind being caught in this candid shot I took from across the street. My camera card is filled with photographs of old theaters like this, often taken while I'm sitting at a stoplight at a small town, desperately trying to get the shot before the light changed. Maybe I'll dig some more out like this.

Goodbye to a Decade of Pain

2011-09-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

In Fresno, I was able to spend a lot of time catching up with my old friend and hearing the story of how he came to wind up on stage. It wasn't his first choice. He had tried to break into movies, like many foIk, and had found it impossible."Real actors don't need cameras pointed at them," I told him. I told him that I admired his determination, but there is no way in the world I would ever want to try to break into the film industry. It just doesn't appeal to me at all.Of course this is quite ironic, given how much I wrote about movies over the last couple years (over 200,000 words, the last time I estimated). But to me it was never about trying to become part of the movie industry. It was something far deeper and more important in my life. If I could summarize, I would say this: in 2004 I left New York City and separated from my wife. For the next two years, I was pretty much depressed and broken, for reasons that I could not even understand at the time, but which have become clear to me in great detail. I wound up living much of that time in a friend's basement apartment, but also being completely cut off from her. It was very strange.During that time I grew to become extremely angry at the world, for my situation, and for what I saw as the absurdity that the entire world had become. In June 2006, I became so disgusted at the television, and all the things people were saying on the news channels, that I thought I couldn't watch tv or read the news anymore. At that moment, for some reason, I flipped the channel over to Turner Classic Movies and pretty much left it on there for the next two years straight without changing channels. My job let me work at home and I would leave the television on, playing a whole day of old movies one after another.In college I had taken a film class, during my last semester at Willamette, but I hadn't really taken it seriously as a study of contemporary art. Watching TCM not only gave me the film education i never had, but it also taught me what I saw as the real history of the 20th Century. It was like being immersed in a time machine. After a while I began to feel as if I were living in 1948. I began to understand how much America had changed, especially the rules about how men and women interact. It was a tremendous change in me, to see contemporary culture in that light. I could see how much destruction had been wrought by these changes.Before I started my viewing, I could hardly watch any old black and white movie from the 1930s. After two years I could easily watch three 1930s movies in a row. I learned about actors, actresses, directors, producers ,etc., I never knew about it. I came to see the library of classic Hollywood movies as an enormous treasure bequeathed to us. I even fell in love with Ginger Rogers (I blew a kiss to a picture of her in a storefront last night on my way to see a community theater production). It was great fortification. It changed me. It gave me a sense of honor I never had, and what it means to be a man. I realized how I had been so wrong in so many things in my life. It made me feel sorry for our culture today, and all the destroyed lives and discarded wisdom.It was nearly impossible for me to see new movies in theaters during that time. "It's like surfacing in a water and taking a giant gulp of sewage on the surface," I once said. Yet even then I knew that there was a reason why the Classical world was destroyed. "The Classical world had enormous structure," I said. "But it was also a prison." That's why there are so many movies where people wind up having to go to jail at the end, because the Classical rules dictated such.On the other hand, Postmodernity (contemporary movie) supposedly had no rules but it was a sewer. Just when I thought my life would go on forever like that, in June 2008, a whole raft of things about my life suddenly changed. First off, the company I was working for went bust, so I lost my job. Also my friend from whom I was renting the apartment moved out of the upstairs, and I had no desire to stay there any longer. Also a close friend, with whom I had been trying to write a screenplay and had been working with nearly every day for two years, was suddenly diagnosed with leukemia. Also my ex-wife, with whom I had been friends since our divorce, suddenly cut off all contact with me (I learned last week from Rick that she got remarried not long after that. I'm happy for her and am at peace with all that. I was happy to leave our marriage).In any case, I was suddenly in a new place in life. I decided that I would travel for a while. Without TCM, there were no more classic movies. Instead I decided to start to go see movies in theaters again. Like all things I do, it became an obsession, one that carried me over the next two years as I travelled around the country in my car, and over to Europe. It was tremendous fun while I was doing it, even as it was very lonely. I went to nearly every movie all by myself. Writing about them here on my blog helped me sustain myself, and feel as if I were connecting to other people while doing it.But it couldn't last. It took it's toll on me, to be exposed to so much of the culture of Postmodernity so deeply. It was like drinking poison and trying to synthesize it in my body. After a while, it caught up to me.All the time I was travelling I was also battling tremendous demons. I was chasing ghosts of monsters all over the country and the world. Many of the places I went to were because I was trying to track down the remnants of certain historical individuals, most of them long dead, whom I had come to see as the architects of the disaster that had overtaken our country and the world. At one point my quest saw me in a quiet graveyard in suburban Connecticut, throwing a symbolic folding shovel down on the grave of someone who died in 1972 and screaming at the air. I was battling huge monsters---world-size ones. Only my leukemia-stricken friend knew the whole story of what I was doing. I felt all alone, as if it were up to me to save the world, and restore something that had been lost. I thought that there was no one else in the world who could help me, because I alone knew the identities of the monsters. It was me against the world.Finally in 2010 I couldn't take it anymore and various reasons suffered an emotional collapse and withdraw. I couldn't go on battling these monsters by myself. I couldn't see movies anymore. Last fall I made one last stab at compiling the notes of the things I had learned, so I could the story of what I had learned to others. I was fairly successful at this. Then in November my grandfather passed away. Somehow it released a whole flood of emotions that had been pent up. The last ten months have been among the most emotionally chaotic in my life, trying to synthesize all the emotions I have experiences over the last few years, and trying to get past the struggle with the monsters I mentioned. But the good part is that now, ten years after the giant tragedy that changed all our lives, I have come to feel free of so much of the monsters that are still imprisoning the rest of the country. I see the tributes and memorials on Facebook and on television and I know how trapped so many people are. I had to go on and try to slay the largest dragons that mankind that ever produced, but somehow i feel free.But it can't stop here. As my Thor, my leukemia-stricken friend who has now fully recovered, told me. "You HAVE to write this up. You HAVE to find a way to express this through art. You have a duty..." He wasn't saying anything I didn't already know. He was just repeating my words and thoughts back to me.For much of this year, I have been struggling with how to find a way forward. I was at a loss. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. But somehow over the last two weeks, I have felt the dawning of a new day, a new way forward. This is what I'll be writing about here I guess.Two nights ago in my motel room I finished the first chapter of a manuscript I've known I had to write for a long time. Artistic expression is the only way forward for me. It's the only thing that keeps the pain at bay. It's the only thing that feels like healing.So here I go.

Stalag 17 @ Second Space aka My Great Revelation about My Life and the Direction for Me

2011-09-09T16:18:00.001-07:00

Seen in Fresno, on Sept. 1,2,3

If there was one thing about Fresno that really changed my life, it was the discovery, or rather rediscovery of something that has been missing from life, which is live theater.

One of the reasons I went there was to see my friend make his stage debut in a local theater production there of Stalag 17, the play that the movie was based on. He had never been on stage before in life. The production had debuted in mid August. I was only planning to see the Thursday show but I wound up going on Friday and Saturday night as well.

Rick played Sgt. Reed, the big-mouthed American prisoner whose indiscretion winds up causing all sorts of problems and driving the plot. I told Rick that it was quite ironic, given certain things in my life recently. It's funny how theater works that way, and directly connect with you.

After three nights I was practically an understudy. Everyone in the cast knew me. The cast even liked hanging out on the hood of my classic BMW behind the theater (everybody loves my car).

Frankly it's the reason I'm blogging again. Years ago I was in theater, and when I was there, I found it to be my family, the refuge for me against the crushing isolation and loneliness of the rest of the world. All through high school I was in productions, but for some reason, in college, I thought I was supposed to do other things, so I was only in one production in college and have never been on stage since then.

Rick was adamant that I give it a try again, and I promised him that I would, not because I have some great yen for people to clap for me, but for many other reasons, the primary one being that I know this is where I am supposed to find my family again, in whatever form. Somehow I've known this, but have resisted it. But now I know I am ready for it again. Heck, maybe I'll do it in Fresno.

I am planning to write a lot about this, right here on my blog. If you followed me in the past and read any of my posts, know that all of a sudden I have a lot to say about a lot of things, and want to share them. Also, I realize that some people have commented on my posts but I did not do a very good job of replying. I wasn't in a position emotionally to respond I think, for various reasons, while I was working through certain emotions. But now I feel free again and for starters I've gone back and made few replies to comments people have made. If you have made any, you might double check if you are in the mood to do so.

Fresno loves me!

2011-09-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

I never expected to feel so welcome and alive in this place, but after a week's stay here, I feel like a new man. Most of it due to my hosts, Carolyn W. and my good friend Rick, whom I hadn't seen in years. It was an awesome reunion, so much so that I even feel like blogging again, even though I haven't seen any movies lately. I think I want to blog about other things now, and I'm starting off by saying how much I love Fresno back.

Mars Needs Moms

2011-04-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

seen at: Cinema Saver 6, this evening.

It had been at least a months since I was at the Cinema Saver, but I recognized Danae, the young woman with glasses who worked the ticket concession, and who chatted with me after I saw

Megamind

a couple months ago. We both liked that movie, and I had enjoyed discussing it with her.

This I reminded her of that when I saw her, and then confessed that today I was going in a different direction, towards the movie that was supposedly the latest "worst movie ever." Or at least I'd heard that it got bad reviews. Danae, however, said she hadn't seen it yet, but it was getting good reactions from the audiences coming out of it.

What an interesting film this was! I found myself towards the end drifting into thoughts regarding the various definitions of feminism. When a movie inspires such philosophic discussions, it can't be all bad.

Danae was gone from the lobby by the time I came out, but the next time I see her, I'll say that Mars Needs Moms was an extremely lucid commentary on the contemporary American family paradigm, perhaps uncomfortably so.

Why is it so lucid? Because it very boldy portrays the shadow scenario that we all know to which we are moving: the world post-men. It is a Martian place in which all the men are enfeebled. All the males in this movie are highly debilitated in some way. Among the humans, one is boy child searching for his lost mother, another is a grown man stuck in permanent adolescent at a computer screen, and the third and last is an absent dad (appearing only briefly in two scenes) making a lame-sounding stereotypical excuse for missing a flight. The Martian men are confined below the surface as a miseducated primitive beast-type, "as dumb as rocks," in the words of one of the human men.

All necessary functions of this world are taken over by the women, since women along possess the raw intelligence to run things. Men simply aren't capable of such worldly competence anymore, except for their sole remaining skill of playing video games and/or hacking computer networks.

Yet the movie is kind to the weaker sex (us males) in suggesting that we are capable of more, if only given the chance. It also suggests that women have been enslaved. This last part is the one that probably really pissed off the wrong people. The head villainness looks a bit like a shriveled Hillary Clinton in certain angles.

And we can't have that, can we? NO STRONG AND POWERFUL WOMAN MUST NEVER BE MOCKED LIKE THAT---EVER!!!!!!

If the central struggle of this story had been anything else than "boy-man quest to save his mother" (soooooooo boooring....) I would have liked it better.

United Artists Twin Peaks Mall

2011-01-11T11:07:00.001-08:00

What I saw here: Where the Wild Things Are, October 2009.

As of today I'm shifting the focus of my blog from being primarily film-centric to being both film- and theater-centric, with an emphasis on the latter. In some ways, I've felt that seeing all these movies was simply an excuse to go into as many different movie theaters as possible.

In that spirit, I'm kicking off the new year with a post about what I think is the oldest existing movie theater along the Front Range north of Denver. The theater itself a multiplex of the Regal chain, and is inside the ancient but still operating Twin Peaks Mall in Longmont.

I was there over a year ago after returning to Colorado from being away for year. It was one of the first places I visited as part of an ongoing project of visiting all the movie theaters in this area. Until last year, I'd never been inside, even though I'd driven by it countless times on the route between Fort Collins and Boulder. It was always a pleasant sight to see back in the old days, because it meant you were almost at the turnoff onto the highway.

At the time the theater lobby and the coridors down to the auditoriums were festooned with all the promos for the upcoming Alice in Wonderland movie. It was almost like going into a cave, passing under the hanging banners. It was quite a tickling experience.

Yesterday I stopped to take this photograph while I was at a coffee shop on the other side of the street. I wasn't quite in the mood for a movie, but I crossed the street and the parking lot, and entered by the south end of the mall.

The place is nearly deserted, but I've come to learn to love such types of aging shopping centers as I've traveled around the country in recent years. The fact that the cinema is still operating inside is a good sign for the future.

Still there was a poignancy about seeing such a structure nearly vacant. I walked over the ancient tiles in the floor of the mall, in patterns of green, blue, and gold, and wondered about the decades of folk who had walked on it. Now most of the stores inside are empty. Yet there is life. People hang out there, even in a nearly empty food court, as if it's a town square. I chatted with the young woman at the ear piercing pagoda. She told me that the holidays had been fairly good.

There's a small cluster of still-operating mall-type businesses on the south end, including a few chain clothing stores. There's even a stage theater company there (link)---quite a surprise.

Happy 2011!

2011-01-01T01:21:00.000-08:00

Flagstaff Mountain, Boulder. 11:52 p.m. New Year's Eve.

The forecast was for five below. I came wrapped in my subzero gear and used my trekking poles to reach the star. It was a vigorous climb. I took this photo next to a tree, then walked out to enjoy the view. I couldn't believe that no one else was there.

Only a few minutes before midnight a group of jolly college kids piled out of a car on the road below. I could hear their voices and they stumbled up the mountain in the snow, their feet slipping. I knew they'd never get where I was, without poles. They stopped at the lowest metal pole of the star, and huddled around it drinking champagne. Most of them didn't see me standing on the slope above them.

A few minutes after midnight, I started to descend. I slipped in my boots and slid about fifty feet in perfect powder down to a tree (the where I took this picture) which gently stopped me, just on the level where the kids were huddled.

They were blown away by the spectacle of me gliding right into their midst. They dubbed me an "extreme skier" and invited me to share their champagne. I made a traverse to them and drank right out of the bottle with them, toasting the new year with them.

Tangled

2010-12-30T14:46:00.000-08:00

Seen at: AMC Promenade in Westminster, Sunday evening.

I was delighted to accept my sister's invitation to see this with her daughters while I was staying down in Westminster at their house over Christmas.

Neither of us was looking forward to it that much as a movie. The trailer had looked atrocious. But thankfully, like so many trailers, it misrepresented the nature of the story.

Alice---of course I thought of you, not just because of the particular angular letter in the name of the main character, or because it's about a young woman held prisoner for eighteen years (seriously, really?), or because of her huge emerald eyes that remind me of a pair of contacts you once owned. It was all of those things, and more. Perhaps I just see you everywhere lately.

The story is more of a family reunion (girl reunited with parents) than a love story, and thus it was a bit deficiency. The romantic hero didn't really win her at the end. He wasn't put through enough trials. For example, there is no scene in the movie in which the hero thinks he has lost her entirely. It is in that black moment that we learn that he will do anything to get her back. That is how true love is tested.

In any case, it worked on enough levels to not be offensive. On the way home in the van, with the girls zonked out in their car seats, I told my sister about the movie. We both liked it better than we thought. We both agreed that the horse stole the show (second movie in a row for me). The idea that hero and horse are at odds with each other through much of this story says a lot about our culture. Horses are physical manifestations of human virtues. In this case the horse embodies the dogged unswerving tenacity that the hero lacks. For the hero to be a true hero, one who wins the heroine fully as his true love, the hero and horse have to be united. He must be as tenacious as the horse was, in this movie.

I also told my sister that I loved the idea that a man's hand can be healed by touching the hair of his true love. That's very romantic. But her true healing power doesn't come from her hair. That's not enough to bring him back to life. Instead it's her tears of mercy that do it, even if her hair has turned brown---or any other color for that matter.

Secretariat

2010-12-24T09:24:00.000-08:00

Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, last night.

Alice---thought of you while seeing this movie, for obvious reasons, if you ever see it.

The movie unfortunately is rather dreadful---an amateur screenplay and textbook clumsy direction. You can really see the cast straining at the lines they are having to say. It's rather reactionary and cloying in the not-good sort of way, while simultaneously endorsing the worst of postmodernism.

The most interesting scenes were the close-ups of the horses themselves. They should have done more of that, I think---made the whole movie from the horse's point of view.

Nevertheless, I rooted for this movie. I remember the headline from the Triple Crown horse race that summer in banner type on the front page of the Des Moines Register. And that photo of that one horse, all alone, gallopping across the finish line to victory. Thirty one lengths---The number always stuck in my mind.

That's the way I thought of the world back then, that I was living in a perfect time, when the greatest of everything was happening, and that the wildest kinds of magic were possible, and that there was no reason I couldn't be a part of it too.

And the epilogue---that was freaking hilarious---snow angel hilarious.

Despicable Me

2010-12-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

seen at: Cinema Saver 6, about seven weeks ago, I think...

Smitty---has it really been less than two months since we saw this together? Then you went and did what?

So glad you had a great visit out to Coop and Betty's. Too bad about the cell phone. But you saw what mine looked like. I took your cosmic hint and got a new one too.

We both liked Despicable Me, as I remember. Wasn't that a good movie? Suprisingly so. I thought the trailers were dreadful, but it turned out they highlighted the worst part of the movie. The rest was almost charming.

Definite surprise of the year for me.

So glad you're back in town. What do you want to see next?

Metropolis (restored version)

2010-12-18T08:14:00.001-08:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, last month.

When I mentioned that this was coming to the Lyric, my dad said he really wanted to go. So for the second time in a year, I found myself going to a movie with him. I even got to introduce him to Ben, who was working the counter that night.

On the way there, my dad mentioned that the restored version was considered to have a very strong Nazi message. I had seen the old American recut version on TCM a few years back and thought it was a masterpiece. I wondered just how a re-editing could make it a Nazi movie.

After the movie was over, on the way home, we both agreed that there was no question what made this a Nazi movie.

The key to understanding it is to realize that we have essentially been fed a load of malarkey about what Nazism was about. We've been conned into thinking it was all about anti-Semitism, which in fact was a side issue in the main philosophy of the Third Reich.

Metropolis had to be lost and destroyed in its original version, I think, because it shows what the real philosophy of Nazism was about, especially in regard to the bloodline-based hierarchical and authoritative organization of society. It is the part of Nazism that survived the war intact, and was proffered to us as the New International Order after World War II. In order words, this movie shows how even though Germany lost the war, the Nazis triumphed.

But other than that, it's a brilliant movie. One of the greatest masterpieces of all time. It was a pleasure to watch every scene. My father thought it was "overly theatrical" like an old movie. I had to tell him that was part of German Expressionism at the time---the exaggerated sets and gestures, as well as the lingering camera shots.

I'd see it again and again, even if I get cold chills seeing the older Federson and his henchmen, who provided the textbook lesson in how to act like a Nazi for many members in the audience. The reason this is not an American movie is simple---the bad guys suffer no downfall. There's no revolution at the end. It turns out they were the good guys after all. They just needed to realize that it takes an upper-class scion of a powerful family to save us all. Gee, where have I heard that before?

Angelina Jolie as the New Role Model

2010-12-18T08:13:00.001-08:00

Sure got a big kick out of this TED talk, as one might imagine. Towards the end, it degenerates into a celebration of almost everything about postmodern pop culture that I have come to find as disgusting as drinking sewer water.

AJ as the new James Bond, indeed---a soulless psychopathic agent of the global elite, remorsely killing to keep the powerful in their powerful places. My ideal woman---NOT!

Well, to be fair, I should have thought of that before I spent 200,000 years oppressing and enslaving the women of the world!

Salt

2010-11-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, about three weeks ago.

Any of my Facebook friends will already know what I thought of this one. I usually don't mention movies there (for one thing, I haven't seen that many of them lately), but I made an exception in this particular case.

Indeed, I surprised myself. Over the last two years there were so many times I just wanted to walk out of a movie, but until now I always restrained myself, telling myself that if I started to do that, I might walk out of half of the ones I was going to.

But everyone has his/her limits, and Salt pushed me over the line finally.

So sad---I was looking forward to it for months, and waited until it got to the two-dollar theater. Over the summer, it was one of two Hollywood releases (the other being Inception) that I thought might have a chance. I was even willing to give Angelina Jolie another chance.

Inception crashed and burned for me during Act Three. It could have been a good story, but it collapsed utterly at the end (Ben agreed with me that it failed to advance the "false reality" genre even an inch).

Salt, on the other hand, had me churning in my seat from the opening scene---featuring AJ gettting waterboarded in a North Korean prison. What the hell is this, South Park in 2005? Even the promise of a generous role for Liev Schreiber couldn't kindle my interest.

I could have weathered that opening piece of merde, but it just got worse very quickly. The minute I realized that Jolie and Schreiber were CIA agents, and this was going to be another movie where "romantic, heroic CIA agents save the world" as I said in my FB post, it was all I could do not to throw something at the screen. Good thing I didn't have a tomato with me. Pardon my French, but I just don't have time to watch this kind of bullshit anymore.

It doesn't matter to me what the story is---probably something about a "rogue, bad" agent that has to be put down. It's too late for that---way too late. Anything short of a full indictment for that nest of wretched America-killers just doesn't cut it for me now.

Jolie just struck out in my book for the last time. She's on my banned-forever list of movie actors. Go find something else to do, Ms. Jolie, preferably not helping a bunch of rich assholes depopulate Africa so they can turn it into their private game park, like they want to. You suck, Angelina.

Still at this point, I remained in my seat. What finally had me fleeing to exit was a story premise at about minute twenty. Lee Harvey Oswald was a Soviet agent all along, you see...

We don't have time anymore for diversionary revisionary fantasies about what happened in Dallas in 1963. Nothing short of full sunlight matters now. There is too much at stake. Given the recent important disclosures about the JFK case, and what they actually mean, this was beyond insulting. It borders on treason.

I sprung from my seat and uncontrollably yelled "bullshit!" at the screen and stormed up the aisle. For the six or seven other patrons in the auditorium, I suspect I gave them more entertainment than they got from the rest of the movie.

It was the first movie I'd walked out of since my ex-wife and I abandoned The English Patient in Austin in the mid 1990s. I'd rather sit through that twice over before seeing ten more minutes of Jolie's ghastly, snarky smirk in Salt.

But what door have I opened now? Can I possibly force myself to sit through these turkeys anymore. Well, it is Thanksgiving season, at least. And the restored Metropolis is at the Lyric...

By the way, I was quite surprised at the response to my status update on FB. I went away from the screen for a hour and came back to find four "likes" to my post, all from female friends. Seems I'm not the only one who feels this way about these kinds of movies.

Verdict: I'd say burn all the prints, but probably good to keep this one around as reference for just how bad Hollywood got, before it all imploded.

Twilight Saga: Eclipse

2010-10-30T11:55:00.000-07:00

Seen at Cinema Saver 6, about six weeks ago (on its last possible showing before it left town).

Pretty much had to see this installment, because I'd seen the first two as part of my "see everything" project.

I was not offended by the first two movies. They were empty of any real substance, but the first one took advantage of the spookiness of the Pacific Northwest in a unique way (at least, since First Blood (1981)). The second one had a similar romantic sheen because of the scenes set in Tuscany.

This one made me understand just how awful the books of this series must be. I could barely stomach listening to much of the early dialogue, and had to curl up and not look at the screen at times, it was so wretchedly juvenile. It was on par with the corniest short melodramas that came out Edison's studio a hundred years ago. Has Hollywood really lost that much of its storytelling ability?

The direction and editing is as clumsy as the worst of recent Hollywood films, quite surprisingly so, given the marquee status of the franchise. Yet the cinematography ironically is superior to the first two films, and we get some gorgeous shots of Kristin Stewart trying out her hand at advanced eye-acting in close ups.

The last half hour of the film perked up my interest a tad. It was a novel-enough take on a battle royale between super vampires and a team of other such vampires aided by werewolves. You've got my attention, at least, and I was far more entertained than I was in the dreadful collapse at the end of Inception. It almost made sitting through the dialog of the first ninety minutes worth it.

Winter's Bone

2010-09-15T11:39:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, Thurs. Sept. 8 at 6:00 pm

People were talking this movie a lot, and the concept---neorealistic suspense in the Ozarks made with local actors---was intriguing, but still I waited until the last showing at the Lryic before it left. Too bad. It would have been good to have been able to recommend it before it left.

As I went into this movie, I was musing on a theory of movie narrative I've been toying with. It goes like this:

Every movie has a climax. At the moment of the climax, the main character or characters typically are forced to make a decision regarding an action. If we only saw that moment of the movie, that particular decision by that character might seem bizarre or incomprehensible. The purpose of the movie narrative is to bring us from complete ignorance about the character to a sympathetic understanding of the motivations of that character at the climax. It does this by taking the viewer through a series of emotional states that accompany revelations about the character(s).

Superior movies tend to be the ones that provide solid and satisfying emotional insight into climax-decisions that would be otherwise completely outside our understanding, were it not for insight engendered by the emotional journey of the narrative.

I tested my theory in Winter's Bone. I wondered what the "climax decision" of the main character would be. In this case the protagonist is a seventeen year-old girl taking care of her siblings in their house in the hills of southwestern Missouri and immediately facing the threat of losing her house and land, unless she can locate her absent father and convince him to show up to a court date.

What is the decision she is forced to make at the climax? Well that would be a spoiler, and there's no good in spoiling this movie. But let's just say it was an auspicious start for my new theory.

Winter's Bone advances horror, suspense, and mystery in tangible ways. It is somewhat in the subject-matter genre of the The Blair Witch Project (1999), but without the POV style, and with a much more sophisticated story. We've come a long way since then.

The story is fresh and unpredictable. There's even a cool dream sequence (cf. Inception), used in exactly the way you would want a dream sequence used. The heroine is awesome in her heroism. She embodies the real struggle of Americans right now in a way that Hollywood is flat out ignoring.

I'll throw my wager in with those saying this is going to win Best Picture next March. Given the last two winners, it's hard to see Hollywood not recognizing when it has been bested.

Inception

2010-09-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, Ft. Collins, at 4:25 p.m. on Sept 10

This was a fun movie-going experience, because I saw it with my dad on his 70th birthday. I bought the tickets, he bought the popcorn. Off the top of my head, the last time I remember seeing a movie with my dad was 1972--and that was with the whole family.

My dad is a hard-core science fiction fan from the early post-World War II days. He has an incredible depth of knowledge about science fiction paperbacks by the great classical writers, and all the pulp of varying quality that came along with it over the years. While I was growing up, those kinds of paperbacks and copies of little Analog magazine filled our house.

After the end of Inception, I was eager to hear what he thought about it. Most of our movie discussions are me just talking about things I've seen by myself.

I offered my cautious entree to get things going, saying that I was "not sure" about it. He concurred. I could see it was a genuine opinion, and he wasn't just following mine.

Over the next couple of hours, it turned into a rout. Then, and over the following afternoon at the celebration my sister held at her house in the north Denver suburbs, we piled thought about thought about why Inception was so bad, and was one of the most disappointing movies I have seen in a long time.

It's so disappointinga movie, and so deceptive about its premises, that I hesitate to open up the catalog of my thoughts again, lest I feel compelled to write a long treatise on it.

Certainly it is solidly in the genre of Hollywood film that emerged in the 1990s centered on the premise that some or all of the primary characters introduced in Act One are either in some sort of alternate reality state and are either unaware of it, or are dead (in which case the characters in flashback are doomed but are not aware of it).

That being said, Inception utterly fails to advance the genre by even an inch. It's a cop-out, a retreat. The twist of the entire movie turns out to be (spoiler........) that there is no twist and the story is completely linear within a world in which lucid shared dreaming exists. The only plot conflict is about a man getting over his deceased wife---nothing else. That I didn't care at all about the characters, who were like video game characters, can be used to support the idea that the entire framing story is thus also a dream state. Ah, that's it. This movie is about the psychological effect of people living their lives by the quest narratives of video games, and missing out on the real world and family. OK, I get it.

Inception reminded me a lot of Shutter Island so much that they seem as variations on the same movie. With Scorcese, I pretty much know that I'm going to hate anything new he puts out, and now I can add Christopher Nolan to the list. I should have known. Inception is also the same movie as The Dark Knight, in that they are both incoherent on a basic level of narrative logic, but in different ways.

The Dark Knight's incoherence is on the level of morality and motivation: it uses the mask of classicism, for example the the prisoner's dilemma that the Joker sets up on the ferry boat, to fool the audience into thinking that the story says something meaningful about Batman's choice at the end of the movie. Inception has a much deeper level of narrative disconnect, almost like the molecular bonds of character structure are being dissolved.

The people who liked this movie--well, I suspect a lot of it is because of the special effects. The last half hour ofInception is amazing long and boring for minutes on end. The too-forced parallel narrative structure of the dream levels each coming to their respective climax had me rolling my eyes. But the anti-gravity scenes in the elevator and hallway were unique and interesting such that they are deserving of an Oscar nomination, and perhaps even a win depending on the eventual competition. But not the score. Please not the score.

My greatest anger against it comes from the movie's utter failure to use it's science fiction premise (lucid, shared dreaming) to say anything meaningful about the reality in which we live right now via our shared culture and media. There isn't the slightest hint of this in the movie, really. It's as if one took The Matrix and drained it of all its connotation. You've got some innovative arm flailings enhanced by CGI to be sure, and pretty much nothing else. Is the metaphorical premise of Inception really that "you can't put an idea in someone's head, it has to come from them." That's the only interesting question about psychological that the movie even attempts to raise. To be sure, this was debated in the context of lucid dreamnaut experiences, but the problem is: this kind of dreaming experience doesn't exist in reality. The only meaningful debate is about what this means in our "real" reality.

So is the movie saying that you can't put ideas into people's heads? Is this really a deep philosophical question or is this just the Postmodern shell of the appearance and trappings of rational inquiry? I think it is the latter.

As far as lucid dreamnaut movies go, put Dreamscape (1984) in your Netflix queue instead. I haven't seen it since it was in the theaters back then, back when I'd walk over from our house on Purdue Road to see flicks at the now-long-gone University Triplex. But I thought it was fun when I saw it, and certain images and scenes have stuck in my head from it since then.

The Expendables

2010-09-10T21:27:00.000-07:00

Seen August 29, afternoon at the Fox 5 in downtown Sterling, Colorado.

A strange way to break a month's fast. A spontaneous three-day road trip last month took me out onto the Eastern Plains---one of my favorite places to drive for hours on end without seeing anyone.

After two days of that, little Sterling seems like an oasis of civilization, a space colony in the midst of a void---cleans motels, a lovely museum well kept up, about the Rural Electrification Project.

The downtown multiplex is a coverted single screen establishment off the main boulevard. I arrived just in time to catch this movie, which I call the It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of 2010.

Stanley Kramer's 1963 madcap epic was the end of a era, a last hoorah for an entire generation of the cast in many ways. The world was about to change in big ways.

Now, among other things, the action star as we know it is fading into history. There is a sadness among the old men in this movie that there is not a next generation. Cinema has moved on.

But it's much more than that. The mercenaries in the movie somehow know something went really, really wrong with America, and they identify it as stemming from the Serbian War. Very intriguing idea.

It's camp and pretensious on every level, and the action scenes rather bored me at times, but I still liked it for the reasons I've just described.

The finest scene in the film is a short performance by Mickey Roarke, as a hip Austin motorcycle tatoo artist and retried mercenary. He delivers a soliloquy in a close-up while bent into purple light as he concentrates on one of his designs. "We used to stand for something," he says.

I think of his character here as essentially the ghost of his character from The Wrestler, speaking form beyond the grave, mourning the death of the America we all knew and loved, and for which Stallone thought he was fighting, in his own Postmodern way.

I hear ya, brother. I hear ya.

Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop

2010-08-05T10:13:00.001-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, three weeks ago.

I saw this on the first Friday afternoon showing when it came to Lyric last month. I had just happened to be in the neighborhood, but this meant that I got to screen it with Ben, the Lyric owner, and a few other people.

For most of the time during the movie, I thought it was an interesting documentary on the street art movement, which is NOT graffiti (think posters more than paint) and which is much fascinating that I had thought. There is plenty of valuable archival footage of the creation of various projects by famous street artists.

Toward the end, the story seemed to lag a little, but that was okay. In the lobby, I swapped opinions with Ben, who had almost the same reaction I did.

I went on my way, on my downtown errands, then remembered I had left my reading glasses, so I came back to get them at the theater. Ben was holding them when I walked in. As he handed them to me, we chatted about the movie again, and he asked a simple question regarding a rumor he had heard in connection with the movie, specifically one concerning Banksy's relationship to the artist who is the subject of the movie.

An hour later, we were still sorting it all out, and along the way we both agreed that Exit Through the Gift Shop was an utter masterpiece. We were laughing not only at the movie, but at our own stupid initial reactions to it.

Thank god I forgot my reading glasses that day.

At the Starbucks laptop table today

2010-07-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

"Can the Undead be Role Models?" asks the USA Today on the top of the front page. The Postmodern summer rolls on.

City Island

2010-06-23T19:10:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, 3:30 pm today

After the houselights came up, I was the last one in the number two auditorium at the Lyric. Ben came in to walk through to the projection room. As the last credits rolled, he asked me, "So how was it?"

"My kind of movie," I said. "It's a New York neighborhood-family movie, which I like a lot."

I added that Andy Garcia's performance was superb. "You know how every year the Academy nominates an Indie performance for the acting Oscar. Last year it was Richard Wright."

He knew what I meant. "Well, Garcia could be it for this year."

Then I added that the movie got a little goofy at the end, and got fairly Postmodern when Garcia's character actually goes from being a prison guard to an actor, and Martin Scorcese is explicitly invoked.

The story here has a Postmodern dysfunctional family that is healed by bold Classical honesty and courage. It occurred to me that in Scorcese's earlier films, and also in Saturday Night Fever, the New York Catholic Family that Screams (NYCFTS) was not so much Scorcese showing us a New York phenomenon (witness his own personal upbringing), but rather the Postmodern one, albeit in New York garb and patois. In City Island, it's come full circle---the New York screaming family now looks normal American, because we've all become that, somewhere along the way.

But like I said, some good performances by a great cast, and I learned a few things about the place where I dined on lobster on my 35th Birthday, having visited all five boroughs in one day of fun. The film did not let down any of my memories.

Letters to Juliet

2010-06-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, two weeks ago

It's almost cruel---over the past three months we have gotten three incredible performances by Amanda Seyfried, my favorite 20-something actress. What a year so far for her.

The cruel part? I felt it strongly while watching Letters from Juliet, a lighthearted and fairly straightforward romantic comedy set in Tuscany, in which Seyfried stars (and holds her own against Vanessa Redgrave). The story is fun and predictable, but earnest and quite watchable within its genre. And yes, Taylor Swift makes an appearance in the soundtrack in Act Three.

Watching Seyfried cross the screen in the echoing streets of Verona and Sienna, or sitting on a Tuscan hillside in the sun, or under a starry sky, was for me, in that moment, to feel the majesty of film to capture the beauty of creation on screen, and to ache in my soul to know that such beauty exists. It is not a longing for possession of the actress herself, or even desire for her, but something more transcendental that springs from the power of art itself. It is cruel in how fleeting it is. It is the tragedy and triumph of cinema, as it reflects life, when something is so beautiful that it hurts in your soul, pleasantly so.

One of my favorites of the year so far. If Amanda didn't appear in anything else for 2010, she'd already be on the shortlist of my Actress of the Year.

The great cinematic experiment ends---but goes on

2010-06-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's late June already, and I've been busy not seeing lots of movies. In fact, I've been really enjoying not seeing movies lately, after the expiration of the two-year project to see "as many movies as possible that are released in theaters in the U.S."

That last statement in quotes is what this thing evolved into. The two-year timeline is what it became when, as it approached this spring, I could started to get increasingly unenthusiastic about cinema-going, even to movies I wanted to see.

Since mid-May, when I decided I'd had enough and could call it quits (because I'd seen nearly every movie released since mid-May 2008), I suddenly felt as if I had lots more free time and energy. I was no longer a slave to the movie listings.

But we like our chains, don't we? So immediately I began to miss the weekly regimen of cinema strategizing that became combined with trips to the Denver suburbs to catch movies that had left Fort Collins already.

Since then I've seen about a movie a week, on average. All of a sudden, I like going to movies again. I can pick and choose. It is delightful.

Ironically I could pick up again with the "see-everything" plan and hardly have missed a beat, since most of the movies released since mid-May are still in theaters. But I've already decided to pass, for now, on many of them. Just as I left several 2008 and 2009 missed movies unseen, so too will these become future DVD watchings, perhaps, years down the road, when I want to see this time in cinema history with fresh eyes, to verify if my judgments back then (that is, now) were (are) on the mark.

What will I leave unseen for now? I think the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street, released in early May, is where I decided to call a halt to this. Technically I could have invoked my "didn't see the others in series" rule, on which I have passed on the Saw sequels recently. But really it was because every time I thought about wasting an afternoon in the Carmike seeing it, I suddenly could think of better uses for the five dollar bill in my wallet.

I've also decided to pass for now on Shrek 4, Robin Hood (probably), Killers, Toy Story 3, among others.

My regrets are that I didn't act quickly enough to see Magruber, which came and went out of all theaters in Colorado/Wyoming within about three weeks. When a movie bombs that bad, something is compelling about seeing it, especially since it spent a week in the two dollar cinema. What a shame. It's not even playing anymore at the Elvis Arvada.

This still leaves me with a raft of movies I've never written up. I think I'll have to shotgun them with one-paragraph reviews if I can.

The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)

2010-05-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, a couple months back

This was an Oscar nominee that was playing at the Lyric during Oscar week. I didn't wind up seeing up before the Awards, but saw it a few days later. It didn't win in Best Foreign Language Film.

Interesting characters and setting in early 1910s Austria that really do recall life in a rural European village, including quietness of no television, etc., and the shift in social relations that entails. Emphasis on class distinctions that have analogues in American towns of late 19th Century. The power of the story is in the ending, which is unexpected but speaks to the difference between narrative and real history.

"That's pretty typical Michael Haneke," said Ben, in the lobby of the Lyric after the show. "His movies all have that kind of twist somehow."

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

2010-05-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, last night

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo out of Sweden was one of those movies people have been talking about all spring. I'd put off seeing it during its lengthy run at the Lyric because it was two hours and thirty minutes long: anything over 2:05 begins to seem like a long movie to me. Ben, the Lyric owner, had seen it and proclaimed that it was a half hour too long. After the movie I agreed with him.

It was an interesting mystery story for much of the movie--a Swedish newspaper reporter is asked to solve a decades-old mystery of a missing young movie---pure Raymond Chandler type stuff.

There is a horrible sexual assault scene---one that the made the teenage girl in front of me cover her eyes. Then there follows, fifteen minutes later, a second much more brutal sexual assault scene with the same characters. Really? I needed to see two in a rows?

The solution to the mystery devolves into a rather trite "racist misogynist madman" theme. I couldn't help thinking that it was really (again) the same movie as Antichrist, but without the ironic twists and artistic sensibilities that make us question our assumptions. No room for that here. The heroine is stone-faced, because she has to be. The patriarchy made her so.

It's all very, very serious. By the end of the film, I figured the entire screenplay could have been written by a Women's Studies Symposium at a northeastern liberal arts college circa 1993, with Scandanavian self-righteousness thrown in for good measure.

It all would have made better sense if I'd only known the Swedish title in advance: it translates to "Men Who Hate Women."

Iron Man 2

2010-05-23T10:53:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, last week, matinee

Iron Man 2 was among the better movies to come out this spring. The first installment two years ago was one of the more interesting movies of 2008, storywise and productionwise, and the second movie builds on successes of the first.

In the first installment, the hero finds power. He uses the power, and is threatened by someone jealous of it, whom the hero defeats.

The second movie is about how the hero discovers that power has a consequence, in that for power, he sacrifices love. The hero has to reconcile his power to his heart. Because this is a superhero movie, the symbolism is all literal. But that's ok.

The problem of the movie is discovering a narrative path towards endorsing the idea that Tony Stark must be CEO of his enterprise, and not Pepper Potts. The story does this in a fresh and interesting way for 2010.

There's interesting political commentary. (Spoiler) Stark resists the demand of Congress to hand over his suit, on the grounds that it is his private property. He somehow manages to hand it over to the government---in the form of benevolent Don Cheedle playing a USAF colonel. But the way Stark lets it play out, this appropriation appears to have it have been against Stark's will. We're supposed to think that this is a good thing, when Cheedle flies away in a copy of the suit. Or are we?

Ghost Writer

2010-05-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, about five weeks ago.

This film---the latest from Roman Polansky---is certainly the best film I've seen over the last few months. Without giving any endorsement to any of Polansky's actions outside of being a movie director, let me just state that this a superb thriller, and a near perfect suspense story about high level corruption, at least until the last half of the third act, where the resolution of the story is not quite what I'd hoped for.

Nevertheless it scores very high on my Condor Index---a 1-10 rating system I invented for movies that expose high-level corruption and real conspiracies among the elite, with Three Days of the Condor (1975) being at the top of the scale as the best one could legitimately expect from Hollywood. Of course, 1975 was the year of the Church Committee hearings on the domestic intelligence operations. We've never matched that level of public awareness since, and started backsliding immediately afterwards (when you-know-you was appointed head of the CIA).

Ghost Writer, despite its less than impressive conclusion, still scores, oh, about a 9 on my Condor Index, the highest such ranking I've given over the last couple years of moviegoing. It legitimately raises the issue of whether or not certain foreign leaders are actually in the pay of the CIA, all the while mostly avoiding the X Files-type Hollywood trap of predictive programming, i.e., falsely "exposing" a legitimate issue in order to debunk it to the public: "oh, silly, you saw that in a movie."

I cannot speak of the truth of the rumor that this movie so angered Polansky's powerful globalist friends that they almost allowed Switzerland to deport him back to the U.S. recently, just to put the fear of "God" (i.e. the Bilderbergers) back into him. In any case, score one for him, and for us.

And yes, there's Pierce Brosnan again, the man who can do everything, back in his natural element as a British leader, instead of attempting a Brooklyn accent.

How to Train Your Dragon

2010-05-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, about six weeks ago.

This is a movie I did see in 3-d, because it was meant to be in 3-d, and everyone was talking about how good the 3-d was, by the time I saw it. I guess so. But honestly, when I started this review, I thought: "now did I see this 3-d or not...let me scour my memory."

This turned out to be the sleeper hit of the Spring. This is not surprising to me, since it is a kid's movie, which always have good legs if they are not heinous or stupid, which this movie is not. But it didn't blow me away either.

I was bored much of the time because it has what is now the standard Hollywood love story:

1. Nerdy boy-man is stuck in adolescent state.
2. Boy meets girl-warrior, who kicks his ass with her prowess in fighting. He falls in love with her.
3. Boy overcomes his nerdiness and becomes a kick-ass warrior too, and earns respect/love of the girl who originally kicked his ass.

Notice the use of the phrase "kick-ass" in there. It's not an accident.

Hollywood sees contemporary men as so enfeebled that they must be shamed by women into any mature solidity of character. Women, immune from the types of egotism that keep men in childlike states, must hold together society and civilization, not only through traditional female roles (which are devalued---only lesser women confine themselves to such activities) but also the traditionally male ones, in particular war and combat. Women are better men than men.

OK, now I'm straying from the movie of Dragon a bit. It's not a bad movie at all, but on some level I could never take this movie seriously because of its embrace of the standard love story above. I'm so tired of it. It's no longer fresh. But we've backed ourselves into a corner culturally. If women stop being the sword-wielding warriors in movies, does that mean it's back to domestic enslavement and traditional roles? Hollywood has no answer for that yet, so in the meantime we all get to go around chopping off heads of flying reptiles. It's the sexy thing to do.

Clash of the Titans

2010-05-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, six weeks ago.

This was probably the second most notable movie of the recent stretch. I'm a big fan of the original (1981) and was afraid it would be spoiled, in particular by having Andromeda become a "girl with the sword."

They didn't do that, to their credit, and it made the movie interesting to me. The problem is solved by introducing a new character, Io, who is unfortunately supernatural, but that's ok in this genre. She's an active, yet feminine. The way she handles a whip in the scene with the Scorpions is downright sexy. In the credits, I looked for the actor's name: Gemma Arterton. "I've looked for her name before," I thought. But where? Turns out she was the Bond girl in Quantum of Solace. She's in Prince of Persia---the female lead---coming up in a couple weeks. Mark her name.

Back to Clash of the Titans---unfortunately the story with the Gods sucked, and didn't even make sense. Zeus is bad, then good. I later read that the director had actually created a much more intricate story, where Zeus is indeed the bad guy of the movie, and the humans do indeed revolt. It was supposed to be really epic, but the studio got final cut and rearranged the entire movie, and largely ruined it. Like I said, I was just happy that it didn't suck in the way I thought it was going to.

I did not see it in 3-d, because it was not shot in 3-d. I'm not going to pay extra for that.

I still prefer the old version by far---claymation Medusa rules!

Alice in Wonderland

2010-05-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Metrolux Loveland, about two months ago

This is the movie that kept me from writing my blog for a while. After I saw it, on a whim after driving through the backroads of Weld County one sunny afternoon, my thoughts got all jammed up. There was too much to say about this movie. I had to let my thoughts simmer down, so I could be succint.

This movie will not be particularly enjoyable by most people who see it. Certainly it gave me a queasy feeling at times. But it is probably the most significant Hollywood movie to come out in the Spring of 2010.

Why? Because it encapsulates so much of what Hollywood is trying to say lately. It is the apotheosis of the "girl with the sword" motif that Hollywood is shoving down our throats lately. Moreover the girl with the sword is sweet Alice, a Victorian young woman.

It has the Postmodern fascination with prophecy. Instead of Lewis Carrol's (classical) mathematical puzzles, we get a magical scroll that shows the future, one in which Alice is destined to pick up a sword and slay the Jabberwock. But the poem says "he" instead of "she." Very gendy-bendy.

There were a few moments that were really hard to take. When Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum seize Alice by the arms and drag her away, I felt my Victorian sensibilities being violated to an extreme degree.

But this is not about the Victorian era. It's a fucked up mirror to our own fucked up times, even more fuckeditty-upped than Shutter Island. It's a must see, if you want to understand what 2010 is about.

Wonderland is really Underland---the Underworld, that is, Sheol, the pit, or Hell. Alice has gone to Hell.

The three-D sucks. It wasn't shot in 3D. It certainly washes out the color (they should have done the Wizard of Oz thing, made it 3-D only after Alice goes to Wonderland/Underland.

The chess pieces no longer move in their prescribed moves. They just charge ahead and attack each other chaotically. It's a civil war of the female: bad mother versus good mother. Do you want to know why the Mad Hatter is mad? It's because of the War. The War drove him mad.

See what I mean? What an awesome movie, in a certain way. The ending was to die for: Alice goes off and founds the opium trade. I kid you not.

War. Opium. Insanity. Johnny Depp breakdancing. This could be the movie of the year.

Goodbye Boondock Sandler

2010-05-10T20:12:00.000-07:00

Has it been three weeks since I wrote anything? It's hard to believe it.

A bout of late season flu laid me up for more than a week in late April. After I recovered I went on an incredible run of theater-going. Now I have fallen way behind on this blog. Actually this lag in my write-ups has been good thing, because it allows me to boil down what I was going to say, into just a few statements.

Among other things, I've made a decision: at the end of May, it will have been two years exactly since I set off on the quest to see all the movies released in theaters in the U.S., or as many as possible. I've done pretty well, by my reckoning, but all good things must end.

Frankly I'm tired out. I was going to suspend this at the first of the year, but Extraordinary Measures gave me a late rally to finish it out until now.

This doesn't mean I'm going to stop seeing movies---in theaters or otherwise---anytime soon. It just means I'm not geoing to be obsessive about seeing everything in the theaters. I'll probably still see almost everything at the Lyric (although Ben tells me that he'll look out for any Boondock Saints II that I could skip), and I'm still going to see plenty of first run movies, the ones that people talk about. I'm still going to write about it all here in this blog.

But last week while watching a trailer for the new Adam Sandler movie, the one where he pees in the swimming pool, and after seeing that it wasn't coming out until June, I felt a great sense of relief in saying to myself I'm not going to see that movie.

Nordwand (North Face)

2010-04-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, Thursday afternoon

This German production is one of the most brutal and intense outdoor movies I've ever seen. I saw just after coming down from a hike up to Arthur's Rock, where, if you read my FB posts, I got "swooped" by a turkey vulture. I was proud of myself after that hike, but after seeing this movie I realized that I'm the most amateur of amateurs, and always will be.

(Spoiler)

When I walked into the theater, I was under the impression this was a period piece, set in the 1930s, about the first successful attempt to climb the north face of the Eiger, "the last unsolved problem in the alps." Thus the ending ot the story caught me off guard. Like I said, very brutal.

Creation

2010-04-18T13:03:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, about a month ago.

I knew little about this movie---a biopic on Charles Darwin during his writing of Origin of Species---until I walked in to see. When I noticed it was one of the BBC Films production financed by the UK National Lottery, I knew what kind of movie to expect, namely a fairly well-made, tight script that plays to the middle of the culture road, thoroughly exploring a certain range of sentiment without going too far in one direction.

That's pretty much what I got here. As I told Ben, the Lyric owner, as I left the theater, it was about "the trials of historical figure to complete or continue their work while facing a personal problem that threatens to derail his/her entire legacy." In a way, it's very Classical, albeit safe in tone, as all Classical movies are lately.

The story strove to give a balance between science and religion, and succeeded fairly well I thought. Jennifer Connelly gets to play her usual role as the wife-who-doesn't-really-go-along-with-her-husbands-plans, and she spends most of the movie with her skeptical pose. By the end of the movie she actually has some interesting scenes where she gets to emote, and show any sort of vulnerability.

Worth seeing for everyone, for historical reasons above all else, but also a well-told story.

Edge of Darkness

2010-04-18T13:00:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark 16, Ft. Collins, at 12:40 pm at Feb. 28

This Mel Gibson was suprisingly among the best of the spy-oriented thrillers I've seen recently, which surprised me. For once I wasn't disgusted by a movie that appears to implicate high-level governmnt officials in malfeasance, and then brushes it off by the simple interpretation of being due to a few "bad apples." I enjoyed the CGI effects to create a secret defense installation on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts. All in all much better and more enjoyable than the trailer indicated.

Kick-Ass

2010-04-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark 16 in Ft. Collins, at 11:45 am today

Good god. What a horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible movie.

Eight hours after seeing it I can't even muster the sputtering disgust at this diarrhea-on-film that I was just forced to sit through. Of all the movies where I've had to restrain myself from walking out lately, this took the most effort to stay in my seat. I got half way up, almost started moving toward the exit, but curiosity to see how far it could go kept me there.

I didn't have any clue it was going to be so bad. Last year, after Watchmen, I wondered where the superhero genre could possibly go, since Watchmen had seemed to put the capstone on it. When the trialers for Kick-Ass started showing up a couple months ago, I thought I had my answer: Kick-Ass appeared to be the logical extension from Watchmen. In a sense, it does that, but really it takes everything that is problematic with, say, The Dark Knight, and magnifies it by an order of magnitude.

But that hardly begins to describe it. Kick-Ass is nothing else than the sick, twisted elaboration of the girl-assassin-with-the-sword fascination that literally has Hollywood masturbating (see first scene of Kick-Ass, complete with a waste basket full of spermy kleenex).

Let me put it bluntly: anyone who thought making a movie about an eleven-year-old girl who turns into a remorseless psychopathic killer who gleefully jams a samurai blade into defenseless people fleeing and begging for their lives, and which endorses these actions as fun, wholesome and righteous, is, in my book fucking insane on a level that makes all other Postmodern dysfunctions seem like quaint melodrama.

To everyone who made this movie: go fuck yourself. Fuck you for getting me to sit through this.

This is what Hollywood at nadir looks like. Can it get any lower?

Here's Ebert's Twitter on this movie.

update: I'm with Roger.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

2010-04-12T20:27:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, 4::05 pm today

Where did this movie come from? It just showed up a few weeks ago at the Carmike. I thought it was one of those obscure Christian movies, perhaps, but it actually beat out Jennifer Aniston's new movie the weekend it released.

It's a somewhat cute story of a scrawny preteen boy, following him from the first day of middle school until the end of the first year. His quest is to be popular, and everything that he does makes him more miserable, and more of an outcast.

He's selfish---but that's ok because he's a child. Yet we can still judge his actions when he screws over his friends and acquaintences, thinking that they are less valuable than he is. His best friend, originally an outcast with him, winds up becoming popular in the way he wishes for.

The setting is fairly Postmodern---we accept without reservation that a typical American public middle school is an utter cesspool hell of torment. The mission of the boy's older brother is simply to make the protagonist's life as miserable as possible. Moreover the adults, including the boy's parents, are clueless to help him navigate the shoals of this transition to his teenage years.

The story mixes both live action and animation---in the form of moving stick-figure drawings supposedly drawn by the protagonist himself. I found myself wishing for more of this animation, and less of the live action.

But I was rooting for boy, enough to make it enjoyable to sit this through without wandering around the auditorium in boredom too much (I was the only person for the matinee). The sceenplay earned my respect early on, in a scene at the kitchen table during breakfast before school. The boy is forced to sit next to his much younger brother, who is astride a child's potty while eating at the table. It was a disgusting image, the kind of visual cue that sums up how I feel about much of contemporary culture and cinema at times. The boy objects to the presence of the toilet at the table. Amen, little brother!

Date Night

2010-04-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, 4:55 p.m. yesterday

Yesterday afternoon I showed up at the Carmike on a whim, coming home from a long walk, and hit the showtime for this on the button. As I mentioned before, it's nice to see a movie on the opening weekend so that one is not deluged by headlines of reviews on the web. Date Night was the only wide release film to come out on Friday, so I had no excuse not to tackle this one right off the bat.

Going into it, I knew it was only ninety minutes long. Watching TCM a couple years ago, I used to love the "eight reelers"---the old classics at 85 minutes or so. I give a lot more leeway to films that come under the hour-and-half mark.

This one worked well enough, and at times I found myself comparing to it romantic escapade comedies of recent eras. A film that can do this while offering fresh contemporary tweaks and twists is also one to which I can give much leeway.

The freshest (or perhaps most Classically retrograde) aspect of Date Night was Tina Fey's performance. Although I could imagine an actor other than Steve Carell as the male lead (perhaps not as good, but I could at least imagine it), I simply could not see anyone else besides Fey pulling off the character of Claire.

Fey's secret is that she completely thwarted what we have come to expect of the Postmodern marriage: adult wife, baby husband, where the story is driven around the failings and immature frailties of the male character. Fey's ability to self-deprecate, and still remain powerful female, puts her in a league by herself right how, and points the way to the Post-Post-Postmodern with a big blinking neon sign message.

Thus we have a story about a non-dysfunctional marriage that still has "problems" that need to be solved, ones that don't simply fall back on the formula of "husband needs to grow up, and wife needs to realize that husband will never really grow up all the way she wants him to."

All this was enough to keep me entertained through most of the film. The film seemed well written in the first act. I was impressed by small screenplay touches in the opening minutes, comparing the two principals at their jobs. He's a NJ tax accountant. His wild young clients reject his advice as being too staid and conservative. She's a NJ real estate agent. Her older mature clients reject her advice as being too rash, given market conditions. They both wind up in the same place, by parallel routes.

The story somewhat comes unglued in the last fifteen minutes, as so many of them do. I actually got bored in the scene in the strip club at the climax, where Fey and Carell are forced to perform ludicrous unsexy sex dances for the bad guy. I could barely look at the screen, as it kept going on and on way too long (although at least it speaks to the central issue of the sexlessness of their marriage, and what that means for them as a couple). Not a fatal flaw, just a little bit of discord.

On the other hand, we have one too many scenes involving Mark Wahlberg opening the door of his apartment without a shirt. Twice was OK, but on the third time, my mental "script error" starting flashing bright red. Oh, and the fun, friendly Mossad spy references were enough to make me gag a little (Die, Ziva, die!)

Yet there were plenty of fun things in this movie to forgive the errors. Were I putting together a New Jersey film festival of recent releases, this would certainly belong in it.

As for Fey, in a different era, she would be a blockbuster movie comedienne, and perhaps she will be, but what makes her a genius also have a somewhat of limiting quality to her story range. That's to our loss.

update: forgot to mention that this movie is full of fun supporting performances. I especially liked see Taraji P. Henson again. Hadn't seen her since her outstanding performance in Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys.

:Classical derangment

2010-04-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight I was listening to KRFC-FM on the radio. Thor has a regular show, and I've expanded from listening to him and his collaborator into listening during the whole week. Togight Lyle Allen does the regular show in the hours before midnight. He has a quirky style. He likes it when his fans call up and chat with him. He told everyone to go to his Facebook page to see his dog, so I did.

After Allen's show, the KRFC overnight mix comes on---a randow shuffling from pre-made CDs of heterogeneous genre that the station airs in the overnight hours when they have no regular show. The mixes can get old, if you hear the same one over and over, as I did a couple years back. But tonight's mix was new to me.

As the shuffled songs played on the radio, I busied myself with pre-bedtime chores, filling up my Nalgene and arranging things in my room for a hike I'm planning tomorrow. As I was laying things out, and cleaning up, I noticde that the radio is playing "Tangled Up in Blue"---not the Dylan original but a contemporary slackerish bluegrass cover version.

Mayble it was because I hadn't hear the song in any form in a while, but the freshness of the cover compelled me to listen a bit, and to anticipate certain of my favorite lines.

The singer was about to get up the line "She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me, written by an Italian poet from the Thirteenth Century." I've always liked that particular line.

But that's not what the singer sang. Instead he sang, "...written by an Italian poet from the Fifteenth Century."

My thoughts came to a screeching halt. You could have knocked me over. I'm thinking: Fifteenth Century? Are you kidding me? That's two hundred years off! You just changed the whole meaning of the song!

Later through Internet research I determined he might have meant Ludovico Ariosto, although his most famous work did not appear until 1516. It must be a bluegrass thing.

The Spy Next Door

2010-04-08T21:31:00.000-07:00

Seen at: AMC Promenade in Westminster, Feb. 4 at 2:10 pm

A couple weeks ago I was having dinner with Agnes and Thor. I mentioned having seen this movie a month or so back. We all agreed that not only was Jackie Chan underrated, but that he is perhaps the best living cinematic dancer in the Classical masculine tradition of Gene Kelly.

One can see this latter aspect in several scenes in this movie, in particular during a chase-fight duet sequence with the Russian bad guy (played with hilarious tongue and cheek by Icelander Magnus Scheving (imDb). From this scene alone, one can see that Scheving was cast because of his ability to follow Chan in disguising Classical studio-era Hollywood dance as Postmodern martial arts combat.

That's the secret to understand Chan's real talent. One minute he's fluidly doing Kelly's unmistakable scissor leg swing over a metal staircase to chase the villain. A few minutes later, he's sliding down a drain pipe of a suburban home like Buster Keaton.

Here Chan plays about as goofy as role in as goofy a story as Kelly did in The Pirate (1948). The portrayal of the CIA is about as absurd as it gets. But who cares? It's too much fun.

Actually the story is deliciously Classical inside a Postmodern shell. Chan is paired with a pretty thirtysomething widow (Amber Valetta) with preteen children. Chan and the widow are boyfriend-girlfriend at the beginning. His girlfriend's children hate him because he is a typical Postmodern milquetoast man, a doormat for the assertive mother. Even the use of the term "boyfriend" in the movie seems to demote Chan's character to being like an extra child in the family, rather than the prospective man of the house.

But all this is just an act! In reality, in his job, Chan's character is a cool, confident superspy with amazing ninja talents who fights supervillains to save the world from destruction. Yet he cannot reveal this to his girlfriend or her children because to do so would compromise not only his own job secrecy, but would put them in physical danger. He resists all temptation to reveal who he is, even though it would put an end to the ego bruising that he takes. That, folks, is pretty much the very paradigm of honor for Classical heroes.

The story of course will force his hand. It must, for the secrecy he is required to enforce is at odds with the Classical (and Postmodern) principle that there can be no such secrets inside conjugal relations. Before he can become the step father, he must come clean to his wife, and through the extension principle of remarriages, to the children as well.

The bad guys in the story thus function as the plot device to force him to reveal his real self to his new family.

Can you see how subtly brilliant this movie is? It didn't get much hoopla at the time, and I suspected that in part it was because the idea of the "perfect stepdad" is just too bizarre for many people to swallow these days, especially disgruntled divorced women who bring their children to places like the Westminster Promenade for matinees. Yet any kid oriented movie will live a thousand lives on Redbox and Netflix, so the producers will recoup their money many times over. No tears must be shed for this.

And why should they? This is Classical comedy!

After talking about Chan, I posed a follow-up question to Agnes and Thor, to get their opinions. Consider this: everyone knows that Astaire and Kelly, in no particular order of 1 and 2, are the two greatest male dancers Hollywood has given us over the last century of movie making. My question: among men, who is third?

Agnes suggested Russ Tamblyn, who is certainly on my short list. I stated that I lean towards Groucho Marx.

click here for bonus clip to this post

Chloe

2010-04-08T10:37:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Lyric Cinema Cafe, last Tuesday afternoon

Let me wax a bit about Amanda Seyfried, who has recently become one of my favorite young actresses, and who plays the title character in this movie, the lastest issue from Atom Egoyan, about a Toronto prostitute who wreaks havoc in the life of an older married coupled (played by Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson).

I mentioned Kristin Bell in my last post---Seyfried was in a supporting role in Veronica Mars, but lately she has zoomed past Bell to emerge in a varieity of interesting roles that give evidence that she is probably the superior actress, all in all. Not that Bell is bad, but Seyfried, so far at least, has proven that she can more than cope with a challenging roles like this one, and hold her own against heavyweights like Moore (ostensibly the lead here) and Neeson.

To be sure, there were a few brief moments in monologues where the idea of Seyfried as a hooker strained credibility, but here I mostly passed them off as a relic of the fantasy nature of this story, and the way Egoyan deals with this type of subject in his screenplays and his direction.

This story is not meant to be a "realistic" one but one that swims in the lotus-scented waters fantasy. I noticed that given several framing shots of Moore's character looking out a glass window of her office, one could interpret the entire story (on one level) as being the fantasy product of the imagination of Moore's character as she watches a beautiful young woman (Seyfried) leave a luxury apartment building, creating an entire story around her that reflects her own fears about her husband, her marriage, and her lost youth.

Seyfried certainly has a preternaturally beautiful face, at least when shot from full forward. Her round full lips almost look like a sex doll when made up the right way. One of the interesting parts about Chloe is that Egoyan also gives us plenty of unflattering shots of Seyfried here as well, particularly in scenes in which Seyfried appears in profile (much less flattering to her) with stringy hair and looking less than glamorous.

The opening scene---pure Egoyan---has Seyfried in a voice-over monologue as we see her in her undergarments, dressing after visiting one of her clients. Who would not want to see Seyfried half-naked? Yet even here the interplay between the elastic of her undergarments with the shadows of the room seem to highlight bits of cellulite on her that a cleaner and less self-conscious attempt at eroticism would have avoided showing. Right the first we see the flaws in Chloe's pefection. Seyfried sails through it all like a seasoned pro.

This seemed a far more mature statement that Egoyan's Exotica (1994). Here he revisits the same realm of sexuality and voyeurism but in a way that feels updated for the 2010s, in particular in the switch to female voyeurism. Moreover one should not be surprised to encounter the use of audio narration, one character to another, as a way of driving the story (as in, say, Ararat (2002)).

It's far from a perfect movie. The twist was fairly easy to see coming (not a bad thing in this case). The ending was a bit of a letdown, not because it was wrong, but it was the simplest way of bringing the story to resolution, and letting us emerge from the envelopment of the fantasy. I wouldn't have minded the film being fifteen minutes longer, to ease the narrative abruptness.

But really who's complaining? Certainly one does not need to salivate over Seyfried's naked body to appreciate her, but if she does the rest of her career covered from head to toe, at least there is this movie to draw in, if you want to see her undressed.

It was a courageous role for her, and one in which she succeeded. Letters from Juliet, a sappy-looking romantic comedy set in Tuscany is next up for her. I'd go see even if I weren't seeing every movie.

Now if only Seyfried could star in a movie with Pierce Brosnan. That would awsome! Oh wait, it already happened. And she sings!

When in Rome

2010-04-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark Greeley Mall, March 10 at 2:30 pm

As I've mentioned before, in the Postmodern Hollywood paradigm, traditional Christian religion, along with a belief in God, has been largely exiled to fringe movies like the one in my last post. But that doesn't mean Postmodernity is atheist. Instead, we get a smorgasbord of spiritual beliefs in curses, legends, and disconnected spiritual forces that affect our lives.

When in Rome is a good example of this, in the context of a romantic comedy. Kristin Bell, a decent actress of her generation who seems to be gravitating towards harsher bitchy role as she matures, is a romantically down-on-her-luck heroin who blatantly invokes such spiritual forces as a revenge against the Goddess of Love.

She does this by picking up coins out of "the fountain of love" in Rome, thinking it will save the poor lovelorn saps who have thrown in the coins. Later she finds out that according to her Italian brother-in-law, this act by her invokes magical forces that will cause the coin-throwers to fall in love with her. If you've seen the trailer, you will have gotten this premise of the story.

Of course this being a romantic comedy, we know that somehow she will wind up with her soul mate.

How is this Postmodern? So far, it is not explictly so. This could be the set-up to a Classical comedy. The difference is that in this case, the magical forces of the fountain turn out to be absolutely real, instead of simply a legend, as they would be in a Classical story.

Another way of saying this is that there is no naturalistic cover in this story. The actions of the male coin throwers can be explained only by believing that the curse/legend of the fountain is real. As I'm watching this I'm thinking, "wait till this gets out on the Internet about this fountain of love!"

By contrast, a Classical version of the story would have somehow explained the coin-throwers' encounters with Bell's character in a way that did not explicitly endorse the reality of the magic fountain. This kind of thing was taboo in Classical cinema to a large extent, because it violated the Christian paradigm of free will.

So instead of the universality of God, in Postmodernity we have a world in which every petty old wives tale turns out to be mystically true. I've seen it over and over again in Postmodern cinema, to the point where I'm beginning to think of it as the "Postmodern Religion."

Forutnately there is a little more to the movie that this premise. The real love story of the movie turns out to independent of curse/magic of the fountain. This is the twist at the end of the story, one that very easy to see.

We may be in Postmodernity and wallow in our belief in animistic magical forces around us, but Postmodern women still want and need to believe that men fall in love with them not out of compulsion from magic, but from free will.

To Save a Life

2010-04-05T21:32:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark 16 in Ft. Collins, late January

This one---a Christian movie that came through town early in the year---has been sitting in my pile of ticket stubs for a while, waiting to be written up. Since this was Easter, I figured it was time.

The story is about a teenage boy who struggles with his conscience when a former childhood friend, whom he blew off when they both entered high school, commits suicide. He eventually finds guidance through Christian faith.

What made the movie interesting was that the writer acknowledged that Christianity is not really very cool to a lot of young people, and moreover than many Christians, including pastors and their families, are blatant hypocrites about their values and faith. This self-consciousness of the narrative made it interesting to follow.

Of course this had the feeling of an after-school special at times, but I've come to appreciate that these movies have a place in the ecology of American cinema. To judge by the few I've seen, Christian movies are usually not about social issues in a judgmental way, but more about family and social bonds. There's very little preaching and dogma to be found. In a way, they are old Classical themes and stories recycled with a dash of Jesus.

I saw it on a school day, however. There were moms with kids in the audience. Were they ditching? Tsk, tsk. Silly me, these were homeschoolers of course.

Youth in Revolt

2010-04-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

Seen at: AMC Promendade in Westminster, late January

I had to chase this movie down in Westminster, after I let in leave Fort Collins early in the year. I saw it on a trip to my visit my sister's family.

This was not the movie I expected it to be, but this is an earlier effort by Michael Cera, that is just now getting released after his success, so I don't bedrudge him this role.

I thought it was going to go like this: sweet young Postmodern adolescent boy discovers that sweetness only makes life very frustrating for him, when it comes to women. Somehow he gets in touch with his "bad boy" side, creating an alternate persona with a French accent and a mustache who is the manifestation of this side of himself, and shows him how to "have success" with women. At first it seems to work, and he has "success." He meets a girl who could be his true love (could be, because they are teenagers) and wins her love (through innocence amidst his new persona). But eventually he takes the "bad boy" thing too far. It causes him heartbreak and the (temporary) loss of the affection of his could-be-true-love (the heroine). Somehow he is able to tame the "bad boy" (on his own terms) by a fusion of the spirit of it, back into his "sweet" self (his true character). The mustached persona fades away into oblivion, but not really, because it was the hero all along. By his renewed humbled innocence, and no longer the pushover Postmodern boy, he wins back the heroine. All's well that end's well--for a teenage comedy.

The movie didn't go like that at all. It started off like that, but then it crossed the point of no return by having the hero go "full bad boy." He commits manifest crimes of property, threatening the lives of others. He disgraces and dishonors himself and his family in public. That is, he goes off the Postmodern cliff.

By any classical standards, the story has boxed the hero into a corner. He must go to prison at the end. There is no way around it. But because this is Postmodernity, he also wins the girl too.

One person who really liked this movie is my friend Ben, the owner of the Lyric. I told him how I had to go down to Westminster to see this, because it left the local multiplex after two weeks. That set in a motion a chain of events that has led to Ben declaring "war" on Cinemark.

I swear I didn't want it to come to this!

Remember Me

2010-03-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark 16 in Ft. Collins, last Sunday afternoon

This year I took the occassion of the first day of Spring to do some hiking up in the Big Thompson Canyon, in Roosevelt National Forest. I'd rented a pair of Black Diamond trekker poles from REI, and I wanted to try them out in the recent snowfall, to see if I wanted to purchase a pair. After a jaunt up to the overlook on the Round Mountain trail, I decided that only an idiot would ever go hiking without them.

In the afternoon, after a wonderful outing, I rolled up to the Cinemark to see a show. I love seeing movies this way---just arriving and seeing whatever is showing next. Actually I cheated a little because I knew that Remember Me was showing there, and that since it wasn't showing at the Carmike, it meant that I better make it priority before it leaves town.

This ending to this movie was spoiled for me on the Internet before I even knew anything about it. Given the subject matter, I was glad it was spoiled, because it gave me a chance to look at the film while knowing in advance the fate of the protagonist (Robert Pattinson, from the Twilight movies), and the final twist.

(start spoilers here)

This is 9/11 movie, to be sure, but what's good about it is that it doesn't try to say everything about 9/11. Instead it looks at the life of one person who winds up being killed in the attacks.

The story kept me going without flagging. I was surprised to enjoy Pattinson in this role. His "listless young man" character (who of course works at the Strand Bookstore in the Village!) has more than a dash of Holden Caulfield in his character, especially when he is interacting with his younger sister (who is about ten years old, an age that many young women in the audience of this movie would have been at the time of 9/11). In a way, it is the younger sister through whom the sentimental "memory story" of the memory is cast.

I also noticed in this movie that both characters of the love story are supposed to be Irish-American (see the map of Ireland next to Chris Cooper in one scene). This lends a patina of Celtic mourning to the story, in an oblique way.

The casting was well done. It's always pleasing to see Pierce Brosnan as well, the second time this month. Here he is Pattinson's father, a powerful businessman who does not think much of what his son is doing. Brosnan is my favorite "actor's actor" who will apparently attempt any role (including being a centaur in the recent Percy Jackson release). Here he does a New York accent that doesn't really work, but that's about the only overt negative I can say about this movie.

Chris Cooper, another of my favorite supporting actors, was exactly in his element here, and reminded me of his role in American Beauty (1999), a movie that I have long thought of us as "America on the eve of 9/11."

Can't forget a surprise supporting appearance by Lena Olin. Always nice to see her on screen.

Yes, it has a downer ending, but in narrative terms it completely works (by a a first-time screenwriter, apparently). Moreover the film really impressed by what it didn't do. Leading up to the climax I began to worry that the movie was going to attempt to re-create the strike on the tower by digitally showing us a 767 flying into WTC 1.

The last thing we need is Hollywood to contribute to our collective false memories about what happened that day. Instead the film completely eschewed any special effects that would add to our collectively video vocabulary of that morning. When I realized this, I heaved a big sigh of relief in my seat. This gave me permission to like the movie, which I did.

On the other hand, there was ample implied horror, in that Pattinson's character is seen mounting to the very upper floors of WTC 1 right before the attack. Those people in the top ten floors were the ones who were doomed right from the very first moment, if they weren't killed outright.

(end spoilers here)

Don't expect much more than a young adult drama if you see it. The main narrative is driven primarily by father-son conflict, a theme that arguably is one of the strengths of Postmodern film.

Curiously it's also another entry in the recent string of Brooklyn films (three in one month), in that it is framed by a backstory involving an incident in Brooklyn that happens to the heroine in her childhood. In a way it thus contributes to the subgenre of films that speak to the Brooklyn-Manhattan divide, although in a way that seems far away from the viewpoint of Saturday Night Fever (1978).

This will probably remain a guilty pleasure for 2010. On the other hand, I feel no guilt about my new Black Diamond trekker poles, ones that purchased on the spot after returning my rentals. Some things are mandatory.

Valentine's Day

2010-03-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, about 3 weeks ago

Last month my sister emailed me about this movie. She'd gone to see it with some friends on a girl's night out. They liked it; she hated it, and couldn't understand why anyone would like it. What did I think of it?

I wasn't particularly offended by this movie. It was pretty much exactly what I expected, with a few twists. The movies I truly dislike, especially among Postmodern romantic comedies, are the ones that take me to a new level of disgust, which this one thankfully didn't.

The story is based on a gag premise: imagine contemporary Los Angeles, and its dating workplace scenes and married couples with issues, etc., but set in an alternative universe.

The alternative universe is one in which Postmodern Weak Men (PWM) still exist (because who could conceive of it being otherwise, right?) but in which attractive single women actually crave the saccharine displays of "i wuv you" affection with which PWM attempt to find mates.

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh on the male characters in this movie, but maybe you get my point. This movie uses Valentine's Day as the pretense for juggling the emotional rules of the courtship game to actual give guys a fighting chance to impress women.

If you can stomach seeing a half dozen mini stories like this for two hours, then you can make it through this movie. I think the only reason it held my attention was because it didn't try to inflate any one of these mini stories into a full-fledged plot.

The funniest twist of the movie for me was the unexpected reinforcement of the new Hollywood rules for categorizing Postmodern men into three basic types: (1) charming but weak and clueless; (2) strong vibrant complete assholes; and (3) gay.

Actually there is a fourth type, played here by George Lopez, namely the long-suffering family man who has achieved a zen-like detachment from it all, who no longer expects intimacy with his wife or any concessions to his manhood, but knows his place in the universe. He's the PWM who has achieved enlightened wisdom. Thus Lopez's character is essentially the axle around which the rest of the movie revolves.

As far as category 3, this is somethings I've noticed strongly over the last few years. According to Hollywood, the most emotionally mature and balanced men are not interested in women at all. On the surface that statement is extremely classical. But in the classical era, it meant that the hero was not really interested in any woman who did not deeply strike him as exceptional, and who was not really his true love.

In the Postmodern era, it means something different obviously. Nowadays we simply do not understand how men could be this way, that a man could turn down sex when offered to him by a woman (something every classical hero was expected to do). According to current reasoning, He must be gay.

Thus the two real male "catches" of this movie both turn out to be gay, and moreover in love with each other. We don't realize this until the end of the movie, when their two respective miniplots merge with a homosexual kiss when they finally meet. It was the iconic moment of the movie to me.

So what's not to like here, sis? It's a nice little Whitman's Sampler box of everything that Hollywood wants us to know about relationships right now. Since we live in such a vibrant, emotionally healthy society, this is only a good thing, right?

Well actually I feel a bit nauseated afterwards. Probably took too many chocolates from that Sampler box.

She's Out of My League

2010-03-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, at 4:25 this afternoon

On the surface, She's Out of My League purports to follow the logical progression of the Weak Postmodern Man to its ultimate conclusion. The hero is an undereducated and underemployed young man, slender of frame and with a personality that is less than assertive. He is every "omega male" out there in America in 2010.

We meet him at the most awkward moment of his life so far, as he pathetically attempts to win back the love of an ex-girlfriend (whom we can tell is beneath him in character).

By fate he is going to run into a "solid 10" in the form of Molly, an event planner with sparkling blue eyes and blonde hair. Hence the title.

A review that I read on the web told me what to expect of this movie, namely that there is no realistic way that such a woman would fall for such man. The movie actually asserts this "He's a 5, She's a 10," and that's too big a leap to make.

Thus we have the rarified view of the Hollywood view of modern romance: all men are beneath all women. The strong men are assholes. The non-assholes are weak. All women realize this. Only the Goddess of Love herself keeps things going, by leading the heroine to somehow overlook the faults of the hero.

The movie lived up to my expectations on one level, but during the first scene in which the two principals meet, I could tell that the web review I'd read simply didn't understand the movie.

In the language of classical cinema, the movie was telling me that the premise of the story (that the hero is a typical omega male) was a ruse. In fact the hero had quite a few strong classical characteristics that made him exactly the kind of man that the "solid 10" heroine would be interested in getting to know.

Specifically, it is apparent that Molly knows very well that men slobber all over her when they meet her. They are distracted by her. They put her on a pedestal.

The hero is somewhat immune to her, refreshingly, precisely because he is so beaten down. At the magical moment when their eyes meet (across a crowded airport screening area), he allows himself only the most temporary flash of true love. Then he returns to his placid acceptance of the reality of the situation--temporarily drained of self esteem, yet firm in his actions as an airport employee (because a man does his job).

He is at the low point in his life, and he barely keeps his eyes open. He isn't even interested in looking at her.

That's a necessary but not sufficient condition for the hero to pique the interest of the heroine.

What wins her over, in the first scene, is that he becomes her champion. When his fellow TSA employees are hassling her at the airport screening line, he naturally and without pretense takes the position of honor. He stands behind her, literally, and speaks up for her when she cannot (because then she'd be a bitch).

Moreover, we understand that his desire for her is not simply because she is a hot babe. In reality, they are alike, because he, as an intelligent young man, has to suffer a constant stream of indignities from his friends, co-workers and families. She reflects his own spiritual state, and that is why there legitimately is magic when their eyes first meet.

At this point, I knew the love story would work for me. It kept getting better after that.

For example, eventually if the hero is really win her completely, he must provide an overt demonstration of his desire, specially by a physical action which he initiates. The way the story handles this, subtly over several scenes until it reaches, uh, a climax (wink wink), made for a hefty portion of the charm of this movie.

The story here was quite clever on many levels. There is a fun play on the literal meaning title by the use of hockey, played in both a professional arena and in a family basement.

The story amazingly never took the painfully obvious route I thought it would. It put the characters in fresh scenarios of tension, instead of the same old Postmodern chestnuts. At every point it kept inventing a new way to have the principals move the story forward, and to create sharp but pleasing waves of tension when their love ambitions are temporarily thwarted (as it must).

This could almost be a Gary Cooper-Barbara Stanwyck movie, catapulted into the language of the early 21st century. Some loving and enjoyable second unit cinematography of Pittsburgh, including the Warhol Museum reception hall, made for a visually engaging film experience.

It had just the right dash of contemporary crudeness to speak in the vernacular of today's audience. What more could one ask for in this type of movie?

Moreover, in the climax it connects in a seamless way to the present-day cultural notion that asks women to become the active heroine, i.e. "the princess must save the (weak) prince, so that he is no longer weak." One saw the extreme version of this is the teeth-baring courtship rituals of Avatar. IN this movie, we understand the necessity of this active quality of the heroine as championess, because of the "perfection" (by cultural surface standards) of character Molly.

Thus in the climax of the story, it is she, not he, who must actually travel the furthest physical distance to where they can embrace (in the airport of course). In terms of courtship dynamics, it is he, not she, who must break away from his family to stand by her side (she is already her own woman).

Yet this apparent inversion (or warping perhaps) of the classical courtship paradigm leads back to a place that seems familiar in a classical sense. Namely, we arrive at the notion that seduction is the woman's game, not the man's, and that any intelligent woman knows instinctively that when she meets a good man, she must go out of her way to grab his attention. Like I said, this could almost be Cooper and Stanwyck, in a Postmodern Mobius Strip sort of way.

Extraordinary Measures

2010-03-21T22:54:00.001-07:00

Seen at: Reel Mountain Theater, Estes Park, Colorado, about six weeks ago

There are two movies theaters up in Estes Park, but only one (the Reel Mountain) that is open all year round. I'd been meaning to get up there for some time, but mustering up the gumption to drive all the way up the Big Thompson Canyon just for a movie had been elusive.

To be honest, I wasn't even planning on seeing Extraordinary Measures. That's right---I was going to skip it. In January I decided I was tired from seeing movies constantly in the way I've doing for a year and a half. I privately decided to take a break. My plan at the time was to let some of the minor winter/spring Hollywood releases leave the theaters, then to catch them later on DVD by the end of the calendar year.

Like I said, that was my plan. Along those lines, I noticed that Extraordinary Measures (a movie that was not high on my to-see list) was leaving all the theaters in northern Colorado, even the ones in Denver. "It's time," I decided. The next Friday came around and Extraordinary Measures was officially gone. I'd crossed the Rubicon of my movie project.

But it was not to be. My plan was thwarted when the very next day, on a whim, I looked up the Estes Park listings on. I saw that Extraordinary Measures was now showing up the canyon!! It seemed like fate: at last I had a definite reason to go up there.

It turned out to be a nice result. In the morning, I used the opportunity to do some winter hiking on the trails on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. That afternoon, I drove into town to the theater, which I found to be a charming and quaint independent showplace on the edge of town---very well run and tidy. Five buck matinees and cheap popcorn too.

The movie itself more than surpassed my expectations, which were very low, actually. First off, I had developed an aversion to Brendan Fraser. He's really not a bad actor. He just seems to choose really awful screen projects. But in my contrarian way, at the start of the film, I decided, "Heck, I'm going to try to like Brendan in this one." I guess it worked because I became entranced by the fleshy protuberances of his one-of-kind profile as he was leaning into confort his sick child.

Yes, the sick kid thing, with the corresponding race against time to find the cure. That's certainly a barrier to my embracing a movie---one knows that the story's going to pull heartstrings, so one almost must take a defensive stand against the onslaught of emotion, to force the movie to be genuine. But the simple straightforward story in this case won me over, just as I was won over last summer (in a big way) by My Sister's Keeper. I came out of the theater a tad less cynical than when I walked in. Most people I know would not like this movie, but for the kind of movie that this is, it works.

Harrison Ford was certainly a surprise here. In Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, he looked like a tired old man doing a geriatric Saturday Night Live parody of his Indiana Jones character. Here he plays a (very) cantankerous University of Nebraska professor, and he seems to relish every minute of it, hopping and bouncing around the screen as if he were twenty years younger than in Skull (coincidentally Estes Park has multiple businesses that sell only University of Nebraska paraphernalia to the tourists---I guess I really did come to the right place to see this one).

This day-trip adventure to the mountains was so successful that I reconsidered my entire decision to take a break, and have forged onward (for now) without missing a beat. Soon after I discovered that forgoing the trailers really helped me with emotional stamina as well, so I got a second wind with movies in general.

Green Zone

2010-03-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, this afternoon

Holy mackerel! This is the way to make a movie about the Iraq War.

Greg Kinnear is awesome in a supporting role as the villain. The "conspiracy" revealed in the story is that the Bush Administration actually knew in advance that there were no WMD in Iraq, but pushed the invasion anyway.

It took seven years, but Hollywood is finally opening its eyes just a crack. Director Greenglass shows the way. It makes me want to man up and finally watch his United 93 (2006).

Repo Men

2010-03-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Carmike 10, at 1:35 pm today.

This week had been like a taste of early summer. Last night the temperature dropped and the snow rolled in. Smitty called in the late morning. He was having a snow day. I hadn't seen him since we saw Sherlock, so it seemed like a fun idea.

Repo Men just opened today, so in case you haven't seen the trailer, it is set in the near dystopian future, and stars Jude Law who is a repossession agent for a giant biomedical firm that sells artificial organs. When payment falls too far beyond, Law's character (or one of his comrades) is sent to collect the "artiforg." In certain case this results in instant death (for example, with heart repossession).

At one point in this movie, I thus realize that it is about psychopathic serial killers, in the guise of normality. It reminded me of Daybreakers a little, but much more sophisticated, using pure naturalism instead of supernatural.

Some impressive sci-fi in this movie. Original concept right that sheds light on the horror of contemporary society. I was hooked. For example, I was curious to know what it was, about this future society, that would cause so many people to need so many artifical organs? The movie gave a partial explanation, but left open to wandering about more of the back story about this horrible future.

That kind of open-ended wondering is a good thing for a sci-fi movie, in my opinion. It forces you to fill in the details on your own.

Another great thing about this movie was Liev Schreiber, one of the better supporting actors in Hollywood lately. He gets to play the heavy, as the head of the evil corporation, and he does it well.

Unfortunately there is a horrible plot twist in the last part of this movie, one that I saw coming a mile away. It completely changes the theme of the story at the climax, taking it from being a corporate dystopia movie to being a psycho-nihilistic thriller in a way similar to Shutter Island. Yes, it becomes one of those kind of movies, that want you to go back and re-evaluate earlier scenes, like a parlor game.

What an awful disgrace, that the movie had to be marred in this way. There was no reason to do this. The story worked beautifully up to that point.

It was a narrative train wreck at the end, to be sure, but not as bad as the plot malfunction at the end of Daybreakers, which was a more lower-level violation.

Along those lines, in Act Three of Repo Men (spoiler in this paragraph) there is an interesting bit of classical stitching that ties together the two pscyho-realties. In the "fake" reality inside the mind of Law's character, Schreiber gets tasered by Law a second time. Schreiber says sarcastically, as he slumps unconscious, "this again?"

At that instant, I immediately thought of the "variational rule" of movie plots: never twice should we see the same action with the same result (or almost never). That the story violates this rule is actually a signal that the climax of the movie is not "real," but a virtual one inside a character's dreaming mind. This kind of thing really impresses me, when I notice it.

But like I said, this whole twist was a pointless distraction, and even a dismantling of the up-to-then successful biomedical corporate dystopia story. Why wasn't it enough, to tell the dystopian story without the psycho-nihilistic plot twist at the end?

I think the answer to that question is a key to understanding Hollywood and America right now.

Leap Year

2010-03-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, Feb. 16 at 3:15pm

Here is a plot that is right out of the 1930s. A little-too-stuck-on-herself modern American young woman washes ashore (literally) in Ireland, where she meets the love of her life in the form of a rough-hewn but kind and honorable towering Irish leading man. He tames her, and she helps elevate him out of the prison of his own past. They start a new life together, and live happily ever after.

In this sense, Leap Year is another movie that simply treads water, at least in the narrative sense. Yet it was one of my favorite movies I've seen recently. Why?

First of, it executed this 1930s plot flawlessly, exactly the way you should do it, while following the old narrative rules, while mixing contemporary culture and attitudes about men and women, and a strong subplot that was very Postmodern (as a mans of comparison to the main plot, which was very classical). This made for a light, fun, and enjoyable little romantic comedy.

What made it special, then? Certainly it was some plain old directorial artistry, and awesome camera work from the DP (including some impressive second unit work of the cliffs of Moher). But really the reason it was so enjoyable was because all this camerawork was focused on a particular person---the Promised One, who has arrived.

As I'm watching her on screen in this movie, at one point I'm thinking, this could be Ginger Rogers, the way she tilts her face and the way her hair lights up on camera with a way that warms her eyes.

But it's not Ginger Rogers. It's the actress of today, who has arrived in full to save Hollywood movies, at this critical moment in history when all seems lost, by being able to embody at once in turn all the great leading actresses of the 1930s and 1940s.

It's as if everything that seemed dead is still alive, in her---or at least a big chunk of it. How did Amy Adams pull this off? Who knows? It is absolute genius at work.

We saw her dance just a little in Enchanted. How about a biopic of Ginger one day? Can she sing?

Cop Out

2010-03-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark, Ft. Collins, March 1 at 1:20 pm

I saw this early in the afternoon, on a day on which I would see three different screenings. As the first course of three, tt was light and fun, especially for a police drama. It was a good way to kick off a day of moviegoing.

The plot is completely out of the 1980s buddy cop movies. Kevin Smith basically made a homage movie to the genre, one in which Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan do their respective schticks, which they do to perfection, as Brooklyn cops (two movies in one month with that theme).

There is a enough fresh post-millennial material in it to make the story worth following. As such it did not advance the art of moviemaking forward much, but, well, so what. Sometimes movies that tread water artistically are the most fun to watch.

The thing I took most from the film is how much the portrayal of Brooklyn has changed over the last four decades in movies, with a huge run lately---The Wackness, Notorious, Two Lovers, Precious, and Brooklyn's Finest among them. Throw in Tyson as documentary as well.

Brooklyn's Finest

2010-03-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

Seen at: Cinemark, Ft. Collins, today at 3:30 pm

This was a spontaneous visit to the Cinemark that resulted in an on-the-spot purchase of a ticket for this movie. It was on my list for this week anyway, since it is leaving Fort Collins after Thursday, according to Google movies.

I made a note at the end that it was directed by Antoine Fuqua. I was impressed in many ways with this movie and wanted to know who was behind the making of it. It was mostly well written too.

I had seen a single trailer to this, and knew little about it. It turns out to be a drama about three Brooklyn cops (played by Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, and Don Cheadle). It follows their stories over a week, which coincides with the last week of service for Gere's character, before his retirement.

Yes, it's a cliche. For the first twenty minutes of this movie I was worried it would be just one cliche after another. But it mostly moved beyond cliche, although the director liked using the obvious pop song during several scenes (like using "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane in a scene where Gere's character is snorting coke in a whorehouse).

Yes, Gere in a whorehouse. His sex scene somewhat rivals the recent raunchy one by Nic Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

The three substories were entertaining and full of narrative momentum. At one point it occurred to me that this was covering much of the same ground as The Departed, but was a much better film in many ways, albeit a less ambitious one.

The movie let me down in the climax, where the three substories come together. Fuqua falls apart. He goes "full Scorcese." The movie degenerates into a triple version of Taxi Driver. Each of the three stories ended on a somewhat overwhelming note, and the resolution of the Cheadle story was simply wrong, and should have been rewritten.

It was certainly a pleasure to see one of my favorite contemporary actors, Wesley Snipes, out of the federal pen and back on the screen where he belongs. Fittingly, he's a ex-con, just back from Clinton in Upstate New York. His supporting role was fairly easy for him, but provided much of the life of the movie in Act Two.

Also a strong performance by Ellen Barkin as a ball-busting bitch fed. Someone along the line had a sense of humor, having Gere sing "Sea of Love" not to Barkin's character, but to a prostitute. Wink. Wink.