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Its really hard to watch a Paul Rudd movie and not think about how funny and amazing the dude is at being the screen version of himself. That is why it was no surprise that, when the credits ran, Paul Rudd had a writing credit for the film. You can tell throughout that this was all about creating a dynamic and funny character that will be the perfect comic relief (alongside the Spectacular Spiderman) for a future Avengers movie. As for the Ant Man movie itself, there were moments of greatness and moments that treaded the edges of stupid.

I would give this movie a much higher rating if they would just remove the storyline/conflict between Rudd and his ex wife’s new beau. It is a dumb plot device that seems to have little value other than giving us that redemption storyline. Sadly, that storyline is too contrived to be believable. Without spoilers I can tell you that Paul Rudd is a convicted felon and his ex’s new dude is a cop. Insert classic movie trope here indeed.

What it lacked in deep and intricate storytelling it made up for in fun characterization. The story swirls around the Scott Lang character and his fairly one dimensional cohorts. The ‘bad guys’ are thinly written and even more poorly represented on screen. In truth, it isn’t about the bad guys at all. Ant Man is about Scott Lang forming a bond with Pym and becoming the Ant Man.

Is that enough for a movie? Not really. I enjoyed what there was, however minus the beautiful scenery and fun action scenes, there isn’t much of a story there to tell.

Some Thoughts:

1. There are two after credit scenes for Ant Man. The second is especially relevant to the upcoming Civil War movie, but it seems slightly contrived. Regardless, stick around, true fans. There is enough there to get you pumped.

When I was a kid my mother’s favorite phrase was, ‘Not everything is black and white’ It never quite rang true to me. When I started learning–really learning–about science and computers it became clear that everything does pare down to a black and white argument–a zero or a one, yes or a no. What creates nuance and complexity is the way these binary choices stack upon each other to form something unique and seemingly original.

Yes or no is the simplest response to any given command line. Yes, or execute indicates a willingness to form a connection, to bind oneself to the matter in a fashion that makes exfiltration difficult. No is a denial of service, a rejection of ideology that helps maintain the status quo. Individually, A yes is a yes and a no is a no, but stacked upon each other in a chain of commands that lead to a single response.

Yes and no linked in sequence formed a maybe. A repeated sequence of  yes’s and no’s form a script and a script is echoed into behaviors and trends and stereotypes, finally entirely belief systems structured, ordered, and traced back to a zero or a one.

This is an absolutely true story.

The girl fluctuated between serious and silly, each story building upon the last, a tower of tales offering a glimpse into her true mood. There were poems and glimpses; looks behind the curtain of her psyche that moved me closer to understanding her. She said, “I don’t like writing true stories. When you write down the truth it leaves your mind. Thats why I always hold a little something back so that a piece of the story is still with me in my memories.”

I didn’t want to believe her. My feelings ran opposite of her own. I told stories to never forget. I wrote them down in the moment and sometimes after I’d had a chance to reflect, the latter creating stories more built on the fantasy of what should have happened versus the reality that did. The stories I wrote down were always based on the real. I told her that even my fiction was real in some small way. Either a relationship, or emotion, or a taste at the back of my tongue, all of it originated from a life lived.

“I couldn’t do that. If I told all my stories I’d be empty. There would be nothing left of me that wasn’t on the page.”

Nothing that belonged to only her, maybe, but wasn’t that the true point? Didn’t she want to echo the way I wanted to echo. I wanted to be heard so that my experiences could affect someone else going through the choices I went through.

“But then they are no longer your own.”

I asked her what an empty version of herself looked like and imagined bone and black space floating beneath her skin. I imagined a head that pleaded for stories, for shards of memory to orient herself in a past that led her to a present and into the future. I imagined all of these things but said, “Maybe you’re right in one sense. The memories I hold to tightest I’ve never shared on paper. Not because I was afraid to lose them, but because I had nothing to do with them in story.”

I feared she was like me; she was a writer deep down but was afraid that story was something more than she was capable of and that her experience was not the ephemeral human sort but the stuff of bad nickelodeon and made for TV lifetime dramas. I call that life fuel, and she claims that fuel burns until nothing is left but the dust of the memories that powered your words.

Tonight is the last two games of the short summer basketball season. I’ve learned that without practice or any lasting exposure to the sport, my kids rely on their own raw athleticism to get things done without actually caring too much about the game. I’ve also unfortunately learned that as a coach, I have not achieved the level of skill (communication and teaching-wise) to be highly effective at bringing a team of misfits together, a la Bad News Bears.

The 8-9 yr old team finished last night with a 3-4 record. However, two of the four losses were by a combined total of 3 pts. The other two losses were without our best player. In other words, we far exceeded my expectations for the team. The kids looked good and passed the ball well and played as a team. five of them have been together for years, so that is to be somewhat expected. What wasn’t expected was how well the new kids played together and integrated with the core five. Now these core five are all freshly turned 8 and one is still 7, meaning there is a real chance that they go back to being their usual dominant selves in the next season. I’m grateful for the losses and the learning that provides.

The 6-7 yr old losses (5-2 record with one game left) were less informative. One was purely a management issue from me. I blew it, trying to push my luck with player rotations and winding up with my best on the bench while their best went to work. The other one was a 6-8 loss that didn’t teach anyone a dang thing save for the knowledge that sometimes there is a lid screwed on the top of the basket–for both teams involved.

My 10-12 team enters its final game tonight short handed. Our largest kid is gone as well as two other starters. On the other hand some of our new players have really stepped up and we are finally coming together as a team. In three short hours they go for their first win in their final game of the year. Based on how things have been going thus far, I say we have a real chance to make it happen.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ve come to the conclusion that, at some point, I need to decide if I am okay with the way I look  or if I am going to do something about it. Non-action is indeed a form of action, but it isn’t any form that I can logically continue to take.
2. Prime day sucked. I had to sit around all night and day waiting for the good deals and when I tapered off to sleep, I missed the $75 TV. Amazon is not cool. Worst. Holiday. Ever.

An hour from now I’ll be lamenting the fact that I got paid last week. Amazon has turned July 15 into a near holiday. The earmarks of a U.S. holiday are having the day off of work and a massive sales event. Most of us are working through hump day, but Amazon’s sale is the real deal. The sale is so potent in fact that Walmart has decided to join in on the fun, offering a competing sale that includes in store pick up. I’m not quite ready to get into the whole commercialization of holidays angle in any meaningful way. Instead i’m excited about this fabrication. Prime Day is an in your face excuse to shop a la black friday, but without the clear infringement on family time.

So, in one hour I will be terribly broke as I am every holiday. I think this time I’ll go in with a game plan: I’ll aim for the cool cheap stuff I can’t get any other time and try to stick to a budget that doesn’t leave me holding a sign in 109 degree heat on the i-10. Not sure I’ll succeed…

For the first time since Deion left, I’m proud of a Dallas Cowboy. It isn’t for anything he did on the field. It is for his possible refusal to play. Dez Bryant tweeted today that he is going to sit out the season unless properly compensated with a new contract. This news was met with mixed emotions by fans. Some expect him to grin and bear it, accepting the nearly 765K he would ear each game. Now as someone who doesn’t make nearly that much, I can understand the fans who say, “take that money you greedy SOB.” They have a point, albeit a limited one. Because of the length of a players career and the extreme wear and tear on the body and spirit, a player who doesn’t go for the amount of money he is worth is doing himself a disservice and a disservice to everyone who plays and even watches the game.

Dez is worth the money. I don’t like him but I respect him and what he’s done since entering the league. He is a bonafide #1 receiver that, for the most part, cannot be defended one on one. He stretches the field and creates a matchup nightmare for most teams in the league. He ought to be getting the most he can out of a contract. Presently he is being offered a Franchise Tag, which is a one year deal that allows teams to pay out a good deal of money for the year with no promise of lasting cash in the future. There’s the rub right there: No guaranteed future money.

Ever since Jason Pierre-Paul blew apart his hand in an off-season fireworks accident, the Franchise tag has returned to the spotlight. The tag is a money saving option for teams and a really bad idea for players, who have short term careers. Any player is one injury away from done. Moreover, most players don’t play for 15 years and make the kind of money that you can retire off of, as one is supposed to do after completing an entire career in anything. What this leads to is players getting taxed massively on the one year deal and walking away not being able to support the lifestyle and security necessary for someone in the public spotlight. I’m sorry but you’re not likely to see Odell Beckham in a Brooklyn Walmart. He’d be mauled.

So, go ahead, Dez. Get that money. You earned it. Heck, you need it.

Forty years later it is still hard to say no. I think its a matter of conditioning. Not the gym conditioning or even that hard core boot camp kind of brainwashing that has you saying yes sir, no sir. This is a known but often overlooked flavor of conditioning. No matter how much I want to snap, if my mother tells me to do something it remains near impossible to deny her will.

This isn’t about being a mama’s boy or having zero backbone. No, this is the strange mystical power of the black mama. The strength is legendary, chronicled in novel and film. As she cranks her neck from side to side, each shift of flesh and vertebrae casts out waves of attitude and dominance. The set of the jaw and lips  puckered in near disgust reflect the horror that is to follow a no. Saying no isn’t just a momentary flash of pleasure and righteousness. It is an invitation to years of guilt, needling, and derision. Yes isn’t just only easier but expected.

I can’t remember one athlete story where it was about Dad. All of them–all the african american males who came from nothing talk about making it right for mom and they still follow her marching orders. That sort of power cannot be ignored.

I’m sure mothers of other races have a power. Jon Stewart speaks often about the raw sine wave guilt his mom and those of her ilk can generate. Black moms have something else; something undefinable that sets them apart and creates a lasting spell of guilt and control that can impact the world around them.

The trick for me is to figure out how to break the spell.

Adam said, “You could have just stayed.” He was sitting cross-legged in a papsasan chair that look more suited for the Goodwill than a supposedly-upscale coffee shop paying top-dollar rent on the upper east side of Manhattan.

“I didn’t even think about staying. It bothers me that you think I would have” Sara’s reply was in the form of a snort.

“Should have, I said. Meaning where do you get off thinking you’re entitled to a better life? You get what you get and make the best of that situation. It isn’t going to be perfect, it isn’t going to be special, it is going to be real and not some sort of bullshit hopeful dream of what could be.”

Sara kept her hair in braids and they rocked back and forth like a beaded curtain as she shook her head. ” I can’t settle when I know what I feel is so strong and true. Maybe if I could forget about my feelings I could go back to the way things were, but there is no Jedi mind trick to wipe out the possibility of what could be, and that alone makes me recognize what I really have in hand right now.”

“Meaning it’s crap.”

“Meaning it isn’t everything I want.”

“When does anyone get everything they want?”

The conversation had circled like this for hours with Sara coming no closer to convincing Adam that her optimism had value and Adam no closer to forcing her to accept his bird in the hand logic. Finally she stood up and said, “no matter how long we keep saying the same things to each other it isn’t going to change either of us.”

With that she walked away.

 

I’m going to rant for a second here about the decline of critical thinking. It all started with a student who asked me to share why we needed to make webpages for our online class. It was unclear what the correlation between making webpages and mythology is. I get the confusion. Some of that confusion is born out of how we classify the act of making a webpage (and what kind of people need to have that knowledge) and what we believe online learning (even learning in general) is supposed to look like.

On one level a webpage is merely another form of media. Asking you to share knowledge in the form of a webpage is no different than asking you to share knowledge in the form of an essay, save for the fact that we are used to writing essays. Sharing information about mythology through a webpage is really no different than if you do it in an essay save for the fact that the webpage allows for a greater sense of creativity and character. Consider it the ‘class presentation’ medium of the online environment.

Often students struggle with the idea of doing something that is different or doesn’t make sense in terms of what they’ve always done. My own assumptions play into this as well. I assumed that anyone taking a 200 level online class would have a fair degree of net savvy. Not true. Multiple students weren’t aware of how to make a webpage and at least one expected step by step instructions on how to do so. Here’s the thing I really hate about that: People want to compartmentalize knowledge or see learning in a vacuum. They don’t want to recognize that often you need to draw skills from other areas and learn different processes and apply them to your task.

Such is the college life.

 

The saying, ‘those who read often, write well’ is often written off as an exaggeration without any careful consideration paid to how such a thing might work. I used to think it was about imitation. If you read a lot you start to develop an understanding of the rhythms and language of successful writing. This is still true, but it isn’t the whole story.

For me, creative writing is often a reaction to something I’ve been through, drawing on the experience and also on the many many stories I have read over the years. Tonight I sat down on the living room floor only to find a bug crawling on my arm. I killed it and moments later came up with this line: Douglas didn’t want to think about the bug clinging to the hem of Sara’s skirt, but he could think of nothing else. The line draws on my experience and a handful of stories I’ve read discussing the often awkward interactions between men and women. In the proposed scenario Douglas is eventually caught staring, which leads to an awkward moment about what she thought he was doing, and finally winds back to the bug itself.

My scenario is a simple one that could have come wholly from creative interpretation of the one experience,  but I find more and more that most of the writing I do is influenced by the reading I do. Thus as I read more fiction of all quality levels, I get a stronger sense of my voice, where I fit in the spectrum, and what I like to write. Conversely, without books to fuel me, my creative tank runs dry and I struggle for even the basic blog.