Local Trivia: Vermont edition

While in VT with P.C. and his (and my) friends on the 4th of July weekend, I went on something the kids these days call an "alpine slide." Here's a video I found on youtube of the exact slide I went on -- well, not precisely exact, as I was on the "beginner's" slide, and the video is of the "advanced." They're identical, except on the beginner's slide you might get stuck behind a mom with a two year old...or me.

I had never heard of alpine sliding before this. It's like the summer's answer to sledding and the ski resort's answer to roller coasters -- but without the tedious hill-climbing or the upside-down loops. The scariest part was, as always, riding up in the ski lift and having to jump off and run to the side when we arrived at the top. The most annoying part was getting a bum sled my first time down that almost wouldn't continue through a flat area. The fun part was, as one would expect, sliding through the trees and down the mountain to the end.

Overall, in other words, it was pretty fun, and punctuated by seeing a friend on the "advanced" track fall off his slide, just a bit, and then by a mini-golf game in which I cared very little and subsequently achieved a hole in one. (Go apathy.)

In Defense of Poppery: Inception

Inceptinated!

This defense of poppery won't include a score or a reasoning for my opinion on the recent "summer blockbuster" Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, a bunch of other guys who did a really decent job, and Joseph Gordin-Leavitt, who finally seemed to come into his own as the possible-next-Heath-Ledger I've always felt he could be. (Go find a DVD of Manic, people, and tell me how it ends; my Chinese copy never included the last chapter. That movie also includes the awesome Don Cheadle. It's as far from Third Rock from the Sun as that third rock is...uh...from the sun.)

Instead, I will use this first defense in a long while to knock down a straw man: the idea that movies (or stories of any kind) should have morals to them, and as a bonus, the idea that they could possibly be "without morals."

I'm responding, in short, to this comment posted at the NYTimes review of Inception:

"What exactly is the moral of this overly-complicated tale? The essential question of the ethics and morality of invading and manipulating the dreams of others is simply ignored, and we are left with the moral relativism of pure empty spectacle.
— TM, New York, NY"

That first question I think is a well-stated version of what I sometimes wonder about life itself. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as aptly applied to the question of what the "moral" is in movies.

When people refer to "the moral of the story," they usually mean they want to be told outright what the writers/actors/directors believe about a certain topic (Revolutionary Road's abortion, The Beach's drug lording, Inception's dream-stealing), so that we can agree with them and love the movie or disagree with them and hate it.

Any film critic will tell you this adherence to a didactic morality that determines likes and dislikes will only impede the "true" experience of the movie/story. I'm not going to go that far, since I suppose people who limit their likes and dislikes in reference to a moral compass have every right to do so -- like people who read books to see how many times the word "the" is used -- but I will say that they're doing something different than people who watch for other purposes, aesthetic, emotional, or intellectual.

To be fair, TM isn't necessarily eschewing an aesthetic reading of the movie in deference to a moral one. But TM does use the buzzwords "moral relativism" in a way that enforces the idea that TM expects the movie to offer a "moral."

(It's particularly odd to me that this is TM's criticism, as Inception seems to go out of its way to establish that meddling with other people's minds is very dangerous, criminal, and ultimately self-defeating...but then, this isn't actually a review of Inception, but a review of expectations and viewing habits.)

What TM wants, somehow, is an Aesopian statement at the end of the film, insisting that "it's not good to meddle with other people's minds." Which TM already knows, and which is otherwise peppered throughout the film in more subtle ways. So what TM is asking for, what TM needs to feel safe experiencing this "empty spectacle," is reassurance that Christopher Nolan (who directed Memento, you'll recall) believes the same thing TM believes.

Movies, like the Bible, are not designed for reassurance of preconceived notions. They're challenging, like all the stories we tell -- even the ones with interpretive "moral" statements at the end. Only "Christian fiction" "art" or similarly didactic genres fall into the trap of trapping the subjects absolutely, so that the good always ultimately win and the bad are appropriately punished.

Those genres are about a specific fantasy, and I would like to use this opportunity to suggest that no matter what the subject matter ("romantic," "tragic," or otherwise -- Christian fiction rarely delves into comedy, which usually works by irreverently upsetting the status quo), they should be grouped together under one generic umbrella. Some attempt at this has been made by designations of "family films," though this is not satisfactory to everyone.

Creating this genre would mean the end of statements like "where's the moral of this story?" It's not that the movie is "bad"; it's that you went to the wrong kind of film. I don't expect my romantic comedies to all have shoot-em-up scenes in them; it's inappropriate to the genre. So let morality mongers stick to their own genre, too, and stop complaining when they don't get what they're looking for from other films.

From now on, those who look for other things should be free to reply "you should have gone to the "moral films" section and rented something from there."

PSA: Sense and Sensibility also morphs into battle royale.

Here's a brilliant web video pointed out by friend Carl.

Watch it with the understanding that yes, linking to stuff on my blog instead of writing incisive (or any) commentary on it IS a cop-out -- and I know that -- but honestly, I think this one speaks for itself.

And in semi-Victorian English no less.

PSA: SYD morphs into Battle Royale

For the third week in a row, a dancer has been injured on So You Think You Can Dance, seriously enough that he can't perform.

On the one hand, it's kind of weird that so many people are getting hurt on SYD this season. On the other hand, if guys would keep getting kicked off for hurting tendons and knees, maybe the only girl left will make it to the end.

Still, I agree with the complaint that the show will quickly become meaningless, vote-wise, if people keep getting kicked off by their own injuries...meaningless, that is, unless you enjoy a battle royale.

PSA: Congress should extend unemployment benefits.

Not extending the relatively small, but hugely impactful (if that were a word) fee associated with extending unemployment benefits would be like paying very, very expensive dental insurance (the stimulus and bail-outs) and then balking at the co-pay when you had a real emergency ("$40?!? No THANK you!").

This is a stupid debate. If we wanted to be annoyed at paying way too much money for stuff that might not work, we should have done it earlier (and most of us did) like reasonable people. THIS money is actually directly accomplishing something, and it's WAY LESS than what we went into debt for two years ago.

This kind of thing is what taxes are for. Nobody who is not an anarchist or hardcore libertarian should be complaining.

Anarchists and libertarians, carry on. Everyone else shut up.

PSA: When I was looking up why Sharona left Monk...

I found this in the advertisements.

Just in case you wanted to become a monk instead of watching one.

PSA: Five years too late, I get pissed off about Monk.

I own the first three seasons of Monk, which it turns out, serendipitously, are the only ones I care to own. Midway through season three, as everyone but me must have known five years ago, Sharona (played by Bitty Schram) leaves the show suddenly and unexpectedly, with the sort of precipitous, badly thought-out narrative excuses that stink of contract disputes (sudden remarriage, moved back to NJ, etc). Sure, it's funny when it happens to Tasha Yar, but this departure ended up being, itself, a "skin of evil." San Francisco was better off with a little of Sharona's East Coast inflection, even if it was New Jersey, and anyone who calls her replacement Natalie "milquetoast" will receive a hearty "hear, hear!" from me.

I guess there was a contract dispute, and Sharona reappeared in one episode in the final, eighth season.

But I'm glad I don't own any of the later seasons.

Local Trivia, NYC: Little dudes atop buildings

When P.C. and I went to visit friend Carl in the N.Y.C., I began noticing little dudes on top of buildings.

In fact, it was around one park in particular -- Madison Square Park -- and the dudes weren't real people, they were metal statues. Art, in other words.

It was cool seeing the guys standing up there, though, and it made me look at the tops of buildings from then on in the most stressless trip to NYC I've been on. I have a tendency to look at the tops of buildings, anyway, and it was nice to have a reason to do it.

Here are some pictures -- see if you can see the dudes standing on the tops.

Quantifiable Living: Country song - patheticness

Social state of being: Patheticness, or the amount of pathos associated with a person involved in a social situation including or requiring a lost pet (i.e. dog), lost romantic partner (i.e. wife), lost or "beat up" pick-up truck, or any other item deemed "pathetic" by dominant culture.

Unit of measure: Country songs (Cs)

How it works: A long established link between country-western music and pathetic social situations -- one which long predates the unusually embarassing practice of collective country line dancing -- makes this scale almost intuitive, and easy to manage and use. Both the amount of social embarassment experienced by someone involved in the patheticness-incurring situation and the amount of perceived embarassment perceived as accruing to that or those individual(s) by those outside the situation may be measured by this scale.

Examples: Your credit card gets declines while you're attempting to buy feminine products: .3 Cs (for women); .6 Cs (for men)

The person who agreed to go on a date with you called out sick, but is seen later that night at the local Shake Shack with someone more attractive than you: 1 Cs

Your dog runs away with your romantic partner in your trusty beat-up pick-up truck: 5 Cs

Limits: This scale only measures the amount of patheticness involved in a social situation, not personal embarassment experienced in a non-social situation (i.e., when alone) nor any other emotion associated with the same situation. For truly accurate measures of emotionally complex scenarios, several scales must be used.

The scale also only refers to country-western songs that themselves describe pathetic situations, homogenized into the unit Cs. Garth Brooks is, in general, not involved in this scale; nor are any current or prior American Idol contestants, though the scale may itself be used in describing their rise to fame.

Confessions XLV

I instantly start resenting tour guides whose voices I deem "plastic."

I get sick of listening to the male client I work with talk about how often he goes to the gym and volunteer to tell me how much he weighs, enough that I often ignore him pointedly when he continues to do so.

I hate the overemphatic, crying-so-hard-I'm-choking-on-my-rage screaming that very young kids do...so much so that I think it may be dangerous for me to be the primary caregiver for any kids I might have in the future -- and I'm not planning on having any.