Month: May 2015

Ramping up for my summer Lit and Film class I’ve been doing a case study of the adaptation of Wayward Pines from the novel to the small screen. Wayward Pines is an important novel in the way that Hugh Howey’s Dust is important. It is written by an independent author and published without the help of the big book companies. The book’s author, Blake Crouch, is presently #6 on Amazon’s top 100 where he remains one of the handful in the top 20 not writing about billionaire bad boys, vampires, or some combination of the two. Crouch approached the book with a vision and sold that vision to Fox. What did they do with it? Well, lets find out.

Authenticity is an important aspect of that translation (adaptation) from book to film. I am the type of person who believes the film ought to be authentic to the text. I define authenticity as carrying forward the literary position (deeper point) of the text and remaining loyal to the general plot. For example, if Game of Thrones the TV show decided that they were going to eliminate whole characters from the chorus–perhaps narrowing the Stark siblings to only two for the purpose of telling a narrative they have the time to tell or the most important (as they see it) aspects of the narrative.

Wayward Pines is literature in the sense of a piece of work tackling larger ideas through a character-driven narrative. My fear of the adaptation is that the sense of the larger ideas is lost in the visual pursuit of suspense-building and misdirection. On the one hand the larger meaning of the town of Wayward Pines is made obvious through quick visuals that give away far more than the novel does at that point in the story. In other words, the book deals with some real issues and the show trades in that conversation for suspense and moments of heightened drama.

The story isn’t over. I’ll continue following along and wondering if the effort is worth the time…

Some Thoughts:

1. Whats crazy is that I thought today was friday and thought I’d somehow missed a night of posting… Not going into the office everyday makes me lose touch with reality quite fast.
2. In 1841 the slaves who freed the Amistad were themselves freed, despite calls for their extradition to spanish authorities. It is an important step towards civil rights, especially considering that the slaves were defended by none other than John Quincy Adams.

With a week off and a mind that is nearly tired of playing WWE 2k15 and other games, I find myself falling into legitimate thinking patterns destined to lead to something productive and worthwhile. This is probably not that post. I recently tore myself away from the console to read an article about ‘winning’ your first week at work. As is my normal thought pattern, I filtered what they had to say through my latest ‘new job’ experience that took place a few years ago. I don’t think I made a wonderful impression. In fact, I think the impression I made then is probably worse than the one I made this year when life punched me in the mouth and followed up with a few kicks to the nethers and said, ‘You want some? Come get some!’

I could’ve used the article then. For all intents and purposes I will use the article now going into the fall semester. I’ll take a few things it says to heart, such as not trying to impress, engaging with the right people, and asking the necessary questions beforehand. More importantly I am going to have this conversation with students about how to ‘do’ their first week of school and critically consider the role early impressions make in the way a person is perceived and ‘handled’ over time.

I don’t believe there is a great amount of meta-thought that happens around the idea of how to be a student by students during the first week. There is just too much going on. They are entering a new world with new responsibilities and likely doing a great deal of partying and worrying and buying of a whole bunch of stuff to be ready, but what does it really means to ‘be ready’ and to make a ‘good impression’ and set yourself up as the student you expect to be from day one. I don’t have a clear answer, but I feel the conversation is one worth having with the students.

Some Thoughts:

1. Back in 1840 William Henry Harrison was named president of these United States. Who? Exactly… It is strange how some presidents slip into obscurity while others–either through things they did, things done to them, or the circumstances of the time end up living in our hearts and on our money forever.
2. Houston proved once again that they don’t belong in the conference finals. Now what is Cleveland going to prove as short handed as they are? Only that LeBron James is kind of an epic basketballer.

I am starting to think that fan fiction is moving the literary world in ways it never has before. Fans always want what they want, but nowadays fans aren’t waiting. They are creating. This video is a prime example of what I mean. As a writer I can login to Amazon and produce and sell fan fiction and even have it marketed as derivative of the original text. At times authors will publicly support these efforts. The author of the Wayward Pines series mentions fan fiction on his website and even directs readers to buy some of the stuff his brother wrote and that another major author, Brett Battles, wrote in the Wayward Pines universe.

It is not so easy to create but it is getting easier to have your creation recognized. 50 shades of Grey, a book that started as Twilight fanfic, sold over 90 million copies worldwide. Whose fanfic is going to be the next big thing?

Some Thoughts:

1. I had to make the hard decision to pass on coaching tackle football this fall. I feel like I made the right decision for my boys, because it gives it leaves them in more capable hands. It also has the added bonus of giving me time to work with other teams as an assistant and to have even more time and mental energy to pursue writing.
2. The Clippers fell apart. I don’t even know what happened to cause such a shocking collapse. It isn’t like the Rockets picked up their game or even figured out something about the Clip we didn’t know. The Clippers just fell flat.
3. I’m pulling the trigger on the bags. I’m not sure I have full support, but this is something the kids will enjoy and will remember. That’s enough for me to do it. Maricopa Knicks 2015!
4. Today marks the first day in some time there isn’t any soccer for my boys. Coincidentally 1839 is the year the Cambridge Rules were born, which later became the basis of what we now call soccer.

When I was a little kid I started using a Commodore 64 and programming in Basic. Back then a lot of what I did revolved around simplistic if-then statements and prompt-response algorithms. I had this thought even then that computers could do more and that there were some wicked programmers out there set to push computers to the brink of what they could do. I wasn’t alone in that thinking. Terminator came along in 84 (even then the irony of that movie that year wasn’t lost on me) and tried to signal the rise of the machines. Hal had come before that, but I didn’t get to see it until after Terminator. The combination of those visions were soon joined by Cameron’s Bishop (I saw the original later). All of this promised a future where computer intelligence could and would exceed human intelligence relatively quickly. All of this pointed to a future where we would gladly cause computers to be able to complete what were initially conceived as human-only intellectual tasks. Terminator and its ilk still felt fictional. They didn’t scare me. The stuff we are doing now is far more terrifying.

Some scientists believe that 90% of the news could be written by computers by 2030. On the surface it sounds ludicrous until you factor in the reality that a portion of the news we read right now is already written by computer algorithms. This is if-then to the nth degree. It gets darker. There are programs presently writing novels and poetry. Some of it is indistinguishable from human writing. So what does it all mean? As the singularity approaches and we gain a deeper understanding of what that means it is going to be harder and harder to define what it actually means to be human or even alive. Ex Machina spends a great deal of time having this discussion through action and dialogue.

All of this leads to one conclusion: We could be headed towards a reality where the media–the books and poems that shape our reality–will be created by something utterly unreal.

Some Thoughts:

1. Another late night just getting in touch with the media world. It is a wonder I sleep at all…
2. In a time when kids are facetiming and snapchatting and whatever comes next after snapchat, It is interesting to note that this instant distant transmission kind of started back in 1838 with the first test of the telegraph system.

I think there ought to be more screaming rooms. Japan has created a cottage industry of crying rooms, but I haven’t heard terribly much about a place to go and just scream your head off until you feel at ease. I used to rock a lot of heavy metal for exactly that purpose. I don’t believe I’m alone in this belief in screaming either. There are people, situations, and world drama that makes you wanna holler. Here’s a world one: I listened to Mitch McConnell blame the Iraq war on Obama with a straight face. People cheered. I wanted to scream. I watch racism unfold and people turn a blind eye. I want to scream. I watch really bad TV and I want to scream.

Don’t even get me started on raising boys.

The thing is, its socially unacceptable to scream in public. If you do it in front of your kids then you’re supposedly harming them as well. So where do I go to scream? My car mostly. I have a long drive and loud music. Its working for me. Besides, I’m far too old for the mosh pits.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1837 marked the beginning of the American boom-bust cycle with the first major bust and resulting economic depression. It makes me think that there is a timer on such things. The wave of financial gain crests and then breaks. We just survived a break, which means things ought to be good for a little while.

Over the years I’ve gained an increasing awareness of the spectrum between supportive and controlling relationships. I have, for example, stopped referring to it as a dichotomy. No relationship is completely controlling or supportive nor do the two necessarily even represent two ends of a long spectrum of relationship flavors. They are more accurately aspects of relationships that define and color the perceptions of the people in the relationships and how those people come to relate with the outside world.

Not surprisingly, I think about these things the most when my mother is in town. I’ve tried to apply all sorts of thinking to understanding how that woman works–none of which have been entirely successful. Yet the more time I spend with her the more I see aspects of her played out in my own familial relationships, and that scares the crap out of me.

My mother is a control freak. She is a person who needs to be right all of the time, because she predicates her existence on her own personal importance and control of the situation. This is especially relevant in terms of her grandkids, who apparently I have no idea how to raise. Because she is controlling, anyone else in a position of power relative to her own needs to be undermined. As such, she seeks to undermine me and cut me down at every possible opportunity. This is what I call the controlling relationship. So, as my kids are roaming around the house in tears from being berated or repeating her undermining comments I find myself absolutely ready to snap.

Still, she’s mom so I don’t snap and I try very desperately to give her the respect of the position even if no respect is tossed back my way.

I know my control/leadership style is purposely divergent from hers. Every time I see a glimmer of her ‘way’ in myself I beat it out of me. This isn’t necessarily a great idea, but it feels like the psychological backlash of that parental relationship. At least the response is better than what I did as a kid. I was angry and dealt with her nonsense by being violent and harboring terribly dark thoughts. I’m over that. I am, as the say, “A grown ass man.”

Sooner or later my boys will be grown ass men, and I hope that in the intervening years I can talk to them about relationships and help them learn with me how to strike an effective balance that allows them to be good people to their lovers, kids, friends, and coworkers, without having to control those people in order to feel necessary and good about themselves.

 

Two days before the release of Mad Max: Fury Road Rotten Tomatoes had it with a five star rating and NPR was toting it as a film worth seeing almost solely based on the work and character of Charlize Theron. I was sold. I adore Theron and, especially after Monster, would watch her eat a turkey sandwich in a dark alley just to see her on screen. So, I watched.

And waited to be impressed.

Then I started laughing, often uncontrollably. Mad Max #1 and the new addition seem to both reflect the core idea of the director. George Miller’s vision and cinematographic thrust are in full view, especially in scenes featuring the herky-jerky speed-up phenomenon often associated with Evil Dead movies and not seen since the first Mad Max.

Mad Max’s world seems carved out of Viking mythology with a dusting of the truly weird stuff they used to make the 2nd and 3rd Pitch Black films. This is largely hinted at throughout earlier films but here it is hooked on steroids and slammed in your face three dimensionally where possible. Cars are the religion here. When the ‘kamikaze’ fighters prepare to die they spray paint their teeth with silver to resemble the chromed out grills of prized automobiles from the dead world. However, the film isn’t about that. It is about redemption. On a more metaphorical note (and obvious one at that) it is about the relationship between what we prize, what we weaponize, and what we want to have sex with. In other words, it is a blatant reflection of the objectification of women (and other prized possessions) and the resulting perceptions of power that come from that.

This is not put forward in the subtle way we see in Ex Machina. In fact, in one scene there is a beautiful concubine wearing a white dress with her legs spread apart to create almost a basket effect. She’s counting bullets and dropping them one by one into her crotch-basket. The camera lingers there for some time. Later, an older de-sexified woman opens her purse and in it are all the seeds of creation. Literally. She talks about it.

I’m not sure I want to talk about it anymore. I’ll say this: The film is often jaw-droppingly beautiful. I said wow and that’s beautiful multiple times and if the set designer doesn’t walk away with an award then people need to be hit. Hard.

See the movie for the beauty, for the action, but not for the story. If you don’t take it terribly seriously you;ll have a good time and you’ll laugh.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There are a series of books and book come TV shows that swirl around the idea of global extinction and cryogenic freezing. These stories tie into the idea of a controlled release of humanity back into a world that was originally destroyed by said humanity. I wonder if this is a niche market or becoming a growing trend in the speculative genre.
2. All apologies for not posting yesterday’s blog until this morning. I’d been away from the ‘net for a while–which is something I think we all ought to do from time to time–and blogged offline. Posted it before I started righting this one.
3. 1835 marked the beginning of the end of bloodletting as a thing. This happened 17 years after a group of authors supposedly held a contest to see who could right the best horror story. The authors included Lord Byron (who was in part responsible for Babbage’s Analytical Engine…), Mary and Percy Shelley, and Joh Polidori. That contest resulted in Frankenstein and the earliest vampire tales. It is strange to me how everything is even tangentially connected.

Ten minutes from now I’ll say, “and that’s all there is to say on the matter.” The matter in question is my understanding of intelligence and a revision, I think, of a longstanding belief that everyone is secretly smart.

You’re probably already saying, ‘no, dude, everyone is decidedly not secretly smart’. I used to disagree with good reason. We quantify and qualify genius through outdated testing and criteria. Genius doesn’t necessarily refer to one’s IQ. I feel like genius is a more situational terminology. For example, no one would ever accuse Iceberg Slim of being an MIT Scholar. He was, on the other hand, an extraordinary pimp much in the way that Mike Tyson was an exemplary boxer and boxing logician. While known for raw power, Tyson understood the nuance of intimidation, ring positioning, punch strategy, and so on. I am talking about scions of specific professions, but my belief was more basic than that. I felt like each of us had some area of expertise in our lives in which we were quite intelligent.

 

Now I feel like some people are straight dumb.

 

I’m not trying to be mean-spirited or condescending (though I’ve been recently reminded of my oft occasion to do the latter), I’m just at the point where I recognize the role that effort plays in intelligence. In other words, I realize the people and situational intelligence I credit has far more to do with effort and innovation than it does with actual intelligence. These people merely were not lazy. They decided that they cared so completely about one thing or another that it superseded their natural desire to lay sideways on the couch drooling to the staccato of the Itchy and Scratchy Show. I have recently discovered that this level of drive/effort is in of itself a rare thing, which gave me a new perspective on intelligence. Smart is something nearly anyone can achieve with a baseline intellect and a heck of a lot of hard work. Lazy smart requires a level of intellect that far exceeds average.

 

Lazy smart means that your raw intellect makes you capable of being very good at a very large number of things with little effort. This is particularly noticeable when seen in contrast with those who don’t have that raw intellect and put in the same amount of work as lazy smart people but with far worse results. Once I watched a student turn in a final paper she’d written in front of me only hours before it was due. I had the fortune of watching her friend do the same thing in the same room for the same teacher. One student walked out with a great paper and one was, well, crap. At first I dismissed this as one student having a better grasp of the basics of language and perhaps more extensive training prior to contact with me. Both of these things may still be true but what I read in those two papers can no longer be dismissed. One student exhibited a considerable depth of critical thinking and the other had all the depth of a rock skipping across water.

 

In the end it comes down to the ability to think critically. The depth of that capacity seems proportional to the depth of one’s intellect. If you can think enough to consider the important questions and think on the ramifications thereof, you have smarts (street or otherwise). If you can’t think of any questions, you’re just dumb. This semester I encountered some powerful thinkers and some people who were not so powerful. When asked, students tell me that they can’t be bothered with thinking critically about stuff they don’t care about or see the benefit of. I say to them: If you cannot reach the conclusion that coming up with important questions and finding the motivation to succeed in something where the immediate benefits cannot be seen, then I cannot ever call you smart.

And that’s all there is to say on the matter.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Caribe Devine is a local newscaster who, by name, could easily be mistaken for a stripper.
2. On a completely unrelated but far more meaningful note, Charles Babbage began work on his analytical engine back in 1834.

I am considering how to make the summer basketball experience super spectacular for all parties involved. I want to take a page from my son’s football coach who was adamant about the team having custom duffel bags for each player. I want to go there but with drawstring backpacks and possibly water bottles. This is all swag, of course, but it is my experience that the swag and the look is often a part of the experience. Kids like looking and feeling cool, and while the sport itself and winning games is super fun and super important, imagine earning something they can tote around for a few years with the memory of that incredible summer season and all the fun and relationships they formed.

Short post… I’m not great these days.

Some Thoughts:

1. Back in 1833 A train derailed in Highstown, NJ killing two. This is the earliest recorded train derailment causing death. I bring it up because yesterday almost 51 miles away from the site of that crash an Amtrak train went off the rails going twice the posted speed limit killing 7 people.
2. Speaking of speed limits, I was pulled over by a cop who said he clocked me speeding… this is after he chased me down from my town over 5 miles and locked on my car vs. all the others that were driving past me and ticketed me for “waste of a finite resource” really?

Students are constantly asking me, “why don’t you just teach us how to write?” My response is canned at this point. Writing is a form of communication with a nuance and set of rules, but writing is really just communication and in order to do that you need to have something worth saying. It is for that reason that I teach my classes through any number of critical thinking lenses. Lately I’ve been my own guinea pig, testing classroom concepts on myself. The one that I find to be extremely important is where I sit down at the end of the day and assess everything I’ve done that day. I write it down in a list and work to make sense out of it.

What are my habits, who do I talk to, where is the best work taking place, where does the time go? As a result I find my productivity has risen, because I cannot justify to myself an entire day of sitting around and watching Gilmore Girls. Today, for example, I finished off my son’s present (a homemade loot crate) just in time for it to be given to him. I got a quote for some backyard work–two, actually. I cleaned up my dog a bit. I cleaned up the garage a very little bit. I made dinner. I put away most of my laundry…

Things get pretty sketchy after that.

The point is that writing down the things I do have helped me to identify the things I don’t do and compare that to the reality I am trying to create for myself. I find the exercise to be very useful, especially to cluttered people like myself who is prone to slipping into dangerous fits of wasting time…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Did you know that Greece became independent in 1832. Now they’re defaulting on debts. That was fast…