Month: July 2016

I went to the Bourne movie and it made me think a lot about the nature of sequels. As a writer I feel like a story can encompass more than one book. Some tales work in that fashion for movies as well. Lately I’ve been bantering with my co-teacher about how Alien and Aliens work as a feature together so long as you start the film in the right spot. Other movies are less like that. Bourne is less like that. In truth the nature of the film dictates one film. The remaining stories are circular and add nothing new to the story other than tidbits of information that inform his forgotten past without affecting who the character is at present. In that manner Bourne and the Taken movies are identical. Start with a tried and true formula, add a dose of new tech and roll with it. Perhaps these films are attempting to serve as mirrors for where we are in society and how we react to the same things differently based on where we are as individuals.

I could be giving the film way too much credit.

Was it fun? Yeah. The car chases and fight scenes were tied together with the twine of a plot still old and frayed from overuse. Yet it held and entertained and made all kinds of money. That, after all, is the goal.

I was watching a cerveza modelo commercial and was really impressed to see how quickly and cleanly they drew up a specific idea of masculinity and tied it to their product. The commercial, ‘Work for it’ (seen here) reminds men what you need to do in order to subscribe to what it means to be a hard working American Male. Now these are things that align with classic masculine perceptions: blue collar men than break their backs for a job, speak with manners, and always ask the dad before they ask the gal to marry them. Nowadays men are rarely drawn in these 50’s inks. I liked it. I don’t subscribe at all, but I liked it. The alignment to these values is so obvious and blatant that it, for me, far surpasses the low key nonsense you get from the average Ice Age driven product ad.

These two things may seem disparate but in fact they are both trying to create a sense of unity/belonging among a specific population in a way that reflects their product as a symbolic piece or even signifier of that population. Just food for thought.

Some Thoughts:

1. Chelsea Clinton, despite (rare) appearances still has a lot of political juice.
2. Obama may no longer be able to be our president, but he is still the People’s Champ.

I first discovered Justin Lin back in 2002 when he released (and wrote) Better Luck Tomorrow. I liked what he had to say. It reminded me a lot of the wannabe asian gangsters who I hung around ten years prior. Kinda made me homesick. It also helped me realize how authentic and limited the dude is. Justin Lin is a director capable of saying a great many things according to the strength of script he is presented with, but Lin is only ever telling one slickly published story. It’s Better Luck Tomorrow wherever he goes. This time he went into space. He might’ve left Vin Diesel and the keys to american muscle behind, but he sure as hell brought at least one motorcycle and the same openly stereotypical friendships that made him a millionaire.

In case there is some confusion as to my position here, Star Trek Beyond is terrible. It is the kind of movie that makes you feel like it could be really good and then really falls on its face over and over again–largely in the last 30 minutes. When dealing with space drama the idea of plausibility is always a bit tenuous, but in Lin-land nothing about the antagonists seem remotely plausible or sensible. This includes their motivations which seem to align more closely with the villain from Spectre than any truly relevant angle. There’s even that moment where the bad guy wants to turn good and you’re like, ‘Oh gawd please don’t. Just kill Kirk and be done with this’. He doesn’t, of course. They never do. Instead some deeply rooted friendship nonsense transpires and Kirk is again saved.

Look, maybe I just don’t get these so-called millennials. Maybe I’m fine with that, because an 85% fan rating on Rotten Tomatoes is supposed to have meaning. Hell, even the critics wound up at 83%. I’m sticking to my splat. Star Trek Beyond is a terrible movie and gives me a great swell of concern as the series (and Star Wars as well) moves forward.

 

Today I showed my class Einstein’s God Model. An hour into the film I still haven’t seen a black person. There are Asians and Hispanics but no black people anywhere. I might add that this film is shot in Chicago. I might also add that the protagonist is a doctor who runs in academic circles. All of this adds up to a worldview that has become all too common–a world built of civility and science that is utterly without black people. The media representations of blacks has improved significantly over the course of my existence but the core philosophy of black as lesser or criminal remains. Black people are only treated as token representatives of any stable society of civilized–even advanced–people. The one exception to this is the portrayal of fictional African royalty–namely the fictional nations portrayed in Coming to America and the Wakandans of Marvel lore. The rest of us are barely graduated above animals, and in a dystopic or post apocalyptic future we hardly exist. Consider the basis of shows like the Walking Dead, The Road, etc. Think about the Hunger Games and its ilk. Even Harry Potter treated blacks as marginal/background characters–though JK Rowling made it clear that Hermione is quite likely black yet did not bat an eye at her white portrayal.

I don’t know what all of this means for the continued perception of blacks, but I worry that it means we will always be viewed and treated as something less than we are and whenever we excel it wont be met with a sense of expected success but instead surprise and a collective holding of one’s breath until we eventually go back to our anamalistic ways.

Building off of what I’ve been thinking about this week, I think I am at that point where something has to give. I cannot stay in this state forever. At the start of life you’re given a certain level of opportunity. Most of us work our tales off to get to a better spot. Then most of us stop. I stopped. I stayed in that place treading water and eventually wore myself down and started to sink. I’m older and wiser and better at a lot of things in my life and I just need to get focused and determined in a way that has not been realistic in decades.

Sounds easy enough, right?

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Big shout out to my friend and co-writer Robyn for her Scribe Award nomination. She’s gone far past the level I’m at and I couldn’t be more proud–and maybe a bit jealous too. I want to be up there very soon with my own novel.
2. Was in the tunnel the other day for the Rattlers game and I was instantly reminded of how small the team is–not in stature but in number. This is a tiny roster of dudes who have fought their way to greatness again and again. There are lessons to be learned there.

I learned something tonight. I spent the tail in of my practice following a former NFL coach around the field as he demonstrated drills and techniques I’ve never seen before. He was helping out my first born’s team–coaching them up as much as he can while he still can. The man is about to undergo surgery and treatment for cancer and here he is spending Monday night giving back to the community in the way he knows how. I’m not only impressed but I’m humbled by the service. The dude is good and knows his stuff cold. That team is going to be a stronger unit based on what they learn out there on the field every night from him as long as he has the strength to teach. So, that is what this is really about then–teaching.

I suppose I’ve been really circumspect about my teaching career as of late. The culture of the office shifted and started to resemble a high school girls bathroom. I don’t like it one bit, but watching coach out on the field was a much needed reminder that it isn’t about that. It is about the impression you leave on the students and being about the job and the life and affecting lives in any small positive way that you can. It is a noble and important profession that is often seen as anything but that. I teach in the classroom and on the field. I’ve never quite been able to jibe that with my writing, treating the entire situation more like a job I do in order to have the money to write. That isn’t the appropriate mindset to have about the situation at all.

Perhaps that is why I’ve struggled with the writing and with striking balance between the words and the classroom and the coaching. It has to be more than laziness tethering me to this spot in my multiple careers and passion projects. It has to be more than having too much on my plate and too many different directions. I know folks who do ten times more than I do and do it better, so maybe the problem is within how I approach things and, more importantly, why.

Some Thoughts:

1. Caught the tail end of Bernie’s speech on the way home. The DNC platform is serious this year and bound to piss off Wall Street big time.
2. Football. I love that stuff.
3. Got to watch all three of my franchise boys practice on their respective tackle teams. Big moment.

As I move towards summer’s end I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I believe I grew closer to my boys and loved ones this summer and made the most of the extreme heat by finding new ways to connect through board games and conversation, giving us more as a basis of a relationship than video games and TV shows. I’m proud of my boys as well for challenging themselves academically over the summer and taking chances to learn new things. I’m a proud papa and proud to be a papa.

Best of all is the fact that I’ve gained an understanding of the need to balance such things. I won’t go so far as to say I’ve learned how to balance anything in my life effectively, but I learned enough to take the next step forward. Perhaps I am finally recognizing the journey as an ends unto itself.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I’m amped up for 3650–10 year anniversary!
2. Thinking about applying for grants for my football team. A squad with great equipment is a squad that promotes smarter football on and off the field.

The two key (skills?) a writer must have is organization and dedication. I have to say dedication is a skill as much as it is a way of life, and alongside organization it is one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer. Dedication means taking things off your plate in order to make the time for writing. It means sacrificing some of the other stuff in your life in order to get that page written. It also means sticking to the (oft maniacal) schedule that you create for yourself.

I usually do my weekly planning on a Sunday, but I found a moments peace tonight to put a few notes in the calendar. Even here in the summer I am a busy dude between wrangling three boys, coaching, teaching, and writing. Still I have more time than I otherwise do, which I discovered isn’t a good thing, because I spend a lot of that time wasting a lot of that time. The key is to lock down the daily calendar and factor in time to stare at a wall every now and again.

I’m serious. That step is important. It is impossible to go full speed all of the time without burning out, and there are posts in this blog that attest to what happens when you finally do burn out. Spark Notes version: It is not good.

When I was a kid I ended up having to leave home for a little while. I spent that time with a family who came to be like family to me. The father was a cop working narcotics. He and I got along well. Gruff as he was, he felt it was important that I understood his worldview and why he looked at reality the way he did. I won’t say he hated black people. He honestly didn’t hate any race. Instead he had an open concern about the violence of minority communities–blacks in particular. This was back in 89, when the racial tension in America was building towards the 92 riots. The belief that blacks are somehow more violent has not subsided, as evidenced by this video in which a woman who’d been arrested for a traffic violation speaks with an officer (unrelated to the arrest itself) transporting her to jail.

I’m kind of burying the lead here. She was roughed up considerably by the cop. She tried his patience early on in the exchange and he decided to stop being patient. It didn’t end well for anyone, but there is evidence on that tape that this was an expectation by police–that when they see a black person they are more prepared for a violent encounter than otherwise. I write this to amend that statement. I believe officers are more amped when responding to blacks–especially now. I believe this has gotten much worse in the shadow of three recent fatal attacks on cops (we cannot allow ourselves to forget about this 2014 attack).

I’m not about to overlook the Dylan Noble shooting. This white teen was shot under similar fear-based conditions to the majority of black shootings. The video shows that the officers involved had their guns out in the car and pointed at Noble’s truck before they pulled the kid over and even after they ran the plates and found no priors. The difference here is that the kid was clearly looking for suicide by cop. Still, the fear and force and anger that created the situation resonates with me.

More on this later as time has expired.

I cannot stop talking about this guy. His way too long and mean speech cut into my valuable battlebots time. I don’t know as of this writing if battlebots will even air and it didn’t air last week. Yeah, its petty, but given the ridiculous nature of the election cycle its no more petty or stupid than anything else we’ve seen–including the sorta redemptive but ultimately petty speech of Ted Cruz who totally tried to get back at Trump and wound up looking like the bad guy to a bunch of very confused and angry American people.

Look, the Republican party cannot be defined as a single organism. Under that heading there are living and breathing humans who feel like group A more aligns to their values and beliefs than group B. Unfortunately that group is often willing to walk in lock step with the party despite straight up moronic and dangerous decision making from the presumptive leader of the free world.

Yeah, I called him that. No, it isn’t going to happen. I’m not going to buy the media narrative any longer. I’m not going to buy the voice of the few Trump followers who, like the mere 5 million people who actually belong to the NRA are being allowed to control the conversation on guns in America.

This shite needs to stop and I believe that we as a nation will not allow ourselves to be Trumped by a man who basically amounts to a strong arm dictator with bad skin and hair. He is not the one and enough of us know that and will act against that. We will not be another Brexit. We will not be another Rome.