In one corner, you've got Robert Gordon claiming that American growth is over-- the greatest technological leaps happened between 1870 and 1970 and those kinds of radical changes will never happen again-- but his premise is challenged by Kevin Kelly's book The Inevitable: Understanding The 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future . . . Kelly envisions a world where we don't own much at all and instead subscribe to services-- the Netflix, Uber model-- but we do this for for everything, and we participate in "dot-Communism" and do a tremendous amount of work for free (e.g. this blog and Wikipedia) including making and placing our own advertisements and photos on the internet for micro-payments, and we live in flowing "real time" of course, where everything happens instantaneously, and most of our jobs are replaced by robots . . . and if you don't think this is possible, check out Kelly's Seven Stages of Robot Replacement (of course my job won't be replaced by a robot-- you say to yourself-- a robot couldn't possibly do what I do . . . it could do some of the things, but not everything . . . and it might break down . . . ok, it can do the routine stuff: grade papers, ask questions, check for reading comprehension . . . but I need to train it to do new stuff and teach new lessons . . . ok, it can do my stupid boring job, but that's because teaching is inhuman and should be done by robots . . . and now my new job-- designing curriculum for robots to teach is much better than my old job and pays more . . . and I'm glad that a robot could never do what I do now . . . and so on) and Kelly readily acknowledges that what will be lost in this real-time, collaborative, cybernetic, collectivist, brand-based, robotic, completely searchable future is what scholars call "literature space," the place your brain goes when you read a book . . . according to scientists, your brain goes to a different place when it is immersed in a large linear logical piece of writing-- what is traditionally known as a book-- as opposed to what Kelly calls "screening," which is using various devices to browse the loosely connected miscellany that is the web . . . but maybe in the future there will be no reason to think that long about any one subject, and it will be considered antiquated to read in that fashion, and we'll be happy wandering from idea to idea, narrative to narrative, video to audio to text to who knows, adding a bit here, taking a bit there, like digital hunter-gatherers, wandering the binary plains.
Over a decade ago, my wife and I saw Tracy Morgan perform his very profane, very insane brand of comedy at the State Theater-- the performance was underwhelming and downright weird at times; two years later, Morgan was in a limo that was struck by a Walmart truck and Morgan nearly died (another passenger, a fellow comedian, did die) but he survived, collected 90 million in damages, and returned to stand-up with a decent and celebratory Netflix special . . . Saturday night, my wife and I went to see him in a much smaller venue-- The Stress Factory in New Brunswick and he was much more entertaining-- his joes were too raunchy to transcribe here (but he did do 15 minutes on having sexual intercourse with very old women) and the crowd was either laughing hysterically, looking at each other as if to say "can we laugh at this" or doing both things simultaneously-- anyway, the house was packed, beyond sold out-- they crammed seats in every nook and cranny-- and obvioulsy Morgan is doing this because he loves doing stand-up (or sit-down . . . as he had to take frequent breaks-- he needed help to get on stage . . . unless that was a James Brown act) because he's got enough Walmart settlement money to retire . . . I don't think I'd see him again, but I'm glad he's back on his feet, making sexist, racist, politically incorrect non-sequiturs again-- actually living the life of 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan in reality.
I've listened to several interesting podcasts lately-- and I also can't help connecting them to the non-fiction texts we read in my College Writing synthesis class . . . I suppose this is because we're constantly teaching the kids to make connections between the texts and to everything else in the world, to support some kind of argument-- eventually, you start to see connections between everything, like the conspiracy theorist with all the diagrams, pictures, symbols, pins, and strings on his study wall . . . anyway, the podcasts are good even if you haven't read this year's College Writing texts, here they are:
1) The Billionaires’ Secret Plan to Solve California’s Housing Crisis (The Daily) is a fascinating conundrum that connects to Stephen Johnson's writing about organized complexity and emergence--the question is: can a bunch of tech billionaires build a model city in California that feels like a European city? a city that feels like it emerged from a culture that values public transportation, locality, walking, biking, and mixed housing-- and does NOT value traffic and automobiles-- usually these kinds of places are built from the bottom up- they emerge from millions of tiny individual decisions of the city dwellers, over time-- and reflect the evolving core values of the city . . . but these dudes want to do it from the top down-- and they are meeting some resistance . . . an interesting investigative journalistic foray into an ongoing story;
2) Lean In (If Books Could Kill) tells the story of Sheryl Sandberg-- who was an upper-level manager at Facebook-- and wrote a book explaining how to move up in a man's world-- but her version of feminism doesn't address systemic issues, it's just very specific (and often lousy or useless) advice for upper-middle-class women trying to make it in a hyper-accelerated capitalist culture . . . and this really connects to Anand Girdharadas's description of Amy Cuddy's journey from academic to thought leader and Jia Tolentino's chapter "Always Be Optimizing," which discusses how she grapples with the unending expectations of modern feminism;
3) How Do We Survive the Media Apocalypse (Search Engine) is Ezra Klein's generally depressing take on the direction journalism, the internet, and the media are heading-- this episode gets into the costs of market-based competition, the unbundling of advertisements and your local newspaper, the benefits of inefficiency and local media monopolies and the idea that news worked much better when car ads and movie ads were paying for war reporting-- these ideas really complement Anand Giridhaardas's book "Winners Takes All" and Steven Johnson's ideas in "Emergence"-- we've collectively created a system that is incredibly and perfectly competitive-- the online world-- where Netflix competes with the best journalism and Pitchfork and Buzzfeed and YouTube videos about losing your belly fat-- and the result is that a bunch of social media companies make money; AI might cannibalize journalistic sources and therefore destroy the ecosystem that it relies on for information; ideas that are bite-sized, palatable, and digestible win out over the truth; and whatever you direct your attention to on the internet-- and in media in general-- is going to survive and what you neglect will die . . . so read some real books, magazines, and local news-- get off those social media sites, support longform investigative journalism, and recognize that the only reason that many of the fun sites that are now going extinct-- Gawker, Pitchfork, Vox, Buzzfeed-- were often supported by venture capitalists and had no real model to make money in this awful media environment . . . what is slowly emerging on the internet is exactly what we asked for and deserve, a bunch of bullshit.
It took a while-- in fact, I forgot all about it-- but then something jogged my memory (perhaps someone opened my brain with the head key and fiddled with my consciousness) and I remembered to seek out the rest of the Locke and Key comic book series and the boys and I recently read all six of them, in the nick of time, it turns out, because Netflix is about to release a Locke and Key TV series . . . the comics are compelling and wild, but I should warn you, they are also grisly, disturbing, and totally fucked up; Joe Hill-- Stephen King's son-- did the writing and Gabriel Rodriguez did the art and the combination is chilling and horrific, I hope the series captures the mood, as this is a good one.
You're about to order some Bangin' Shrimp at your local Ruby Tuesday's when the old ladies in the booth next to you rip off their wrinkled faces, revealing that aliens live among us. You tell your server you're going to need a moment, stare into their big wet reptilian eyes and-- depending on where you born and how you were raised-- select one of the following options:
Approach them with sincere and open armed curiosity.
Run! And contact all the authorities . . . the FBI, CIA, KGB, MSS, Mossad, PETA, etc.
Drop to your knees and pledge obeisance to your new overlords.
Apprehend the undocumented interlopers and relocate them to an internment camp.
Clarification: Zombies vs. Aliens
The zombie apocalypse has a universal quality to it. It doesn't matter where you were born or how you were raised. We all know how it will go down. Around the globe, little bands of survivors will wander around, scavenging food and bashing brains.
But with aliens, it's up in the air. First contact narratives reflect the collective subconscious of the culture that creates them. Alex Graham's renowned "Kindly take us to your President" New Yorker cartoon from 1953 depicts a simpler time and a more trusting America. If the aliens weren't talking to a horse, then they'd be making a reasonable request.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a moderate conservative who continued the New Deal, expanded Social Security, funded NASA, opposed McCarthyism, integrated schools, and built the Interstate Highway System. The joke wasn't on the President, it was on the aliens. They were asking a horse! That horse doesn't know President Eisenhower! Today, the caption would be very different (perhaps the horse would reply, "He's not my President" or "Sure, he loves fake news!" or something equally bi-partisan).
"Kindly take us to your President!"
I recently digested three excellent first contact stories, each from a different cultural perspective:
Representing the liberal American democratic techno-state: Hank Green's novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. Hooray for the liberal American democratic techno-state! If you're reading this blog then I'm assuming you are extremely familiar with this cultural milieu and the human rights/political stance inherent within it.
Cixin Liu's The Three-Body Problem hails from China; the story begins during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and heads into what is probably uncharted ideological, political, and philosophical ground for most Westerners.
District 9 is a 2009 South African sci-fi movie directed by Neill Blomkamp. It's streaming on Netflix right now . . . if you haven't seen it, watch it. It's awesome.
The arc of each of these three earthlings-meet-aliens narratives reveals just as much about the culture of the humans making first contact as it does about the desires of the aliens. All three present the same scenario: humans learn that they not alone in the universe, nor are they at the top of the technological totem-pole. They also learn that the aliens possess thoughts and emotions that might be slightly inscrutable to human reason. How folks handle an existential bombshell like this depends on their culture. And how authors portray how folks handle an existential bombshell like this depends on what culture the author is from. It's far more philosophical than a zombie apocalypse. The zombie apocalypse is pragmatic, which is why people love to imagine it. Food, shelter, weapons, and watching loved ones transform into slobbering ghouls. First contact is profound (at least Stanley Kubrick thought so . . . he thought it was so profound that it's almost impossible to watch 2001 in its entirety unless you're in an altered state . . . that's what you get when you make a first contact film in 1968).
What happened to the plot?
An Aside: Real Science Fiction vs. The Other Stuff
Before we dive in, I'd like to assert that District 9, The Three-Body Problem, and An Absolutely Remarkable Thing are "real" science-fiction (by my definition anyway). This is important. It means these stories go beyond the human, beyond character. This is normally a terrible idea. Characters are what makes stories great (e.g. Shakespeare and J.K. Rowling, both of whom used derivative plot elements to get the ball rolling, but excelled at creating fantastic characters). Plots are a dime a dozen. So real science-fiction is a risk because the setting has to become more than a plot device. It has to become the focus.
Certainly, sci-fi has some tried and tested working elements; it's usually speculative and contains themes of technology and alternative history, but more importantly-- the great risk of real science-fiction-- is that the setting is the main character. There might be actual characters, but you don't care about them as much as the setting. Brave New World is the perfect example. No one cares what happens to Bernard and Lenina, or even John the Savage. We're entranced by the world. There was no reason to make sequels to The Matrix. I refuse to watch them. I don't give two shits about Neo and Trinity. The real love story in that movie is between the alternate apocalyptic reality and the matrix. That dynamic is far more fascinating than the fact that Keanu Reeves is "the one." Cypher's choice is the sci-fi version of Sophie's choice. Which world does he love more? Ursula LeGuin's The Ones That Walk Away from Omelas is the extreme version of this principle, the story that tests the boundaries of convention. There is no character but the setting: Omelas.
So Star Wars does not qualify as "real" science-fiction. You could make it a Western and the themes would remain the same. Fathers and sons, good and evil, darkness and light. Horses instead of Tauntauns. Tonto instead of Chewbacca. E.T. is barely sci-fi. E.T. himself is more of a religious figure, and the story is about how individuals-- his child disciples and the others-- relate to him.
One more stick and it's perfect . . .
Close Encounters starts to grapple with how the government and the world would handle first contact, but it's more the story of the disintegration of a family because one of the members experiences an incredible event and that alienates him from his wife and family (we watched it a few weeks ago and my son Ian said he would help me if I started building a giant dirt and brick mountain in the living room, instead of splitting town with mom).
District 9, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, and The Three-Body Problem are different. You might enjoy and root for some of the people involved, but these characters all pale in comparison to the detail and attention given to the worlds in each.
Let's Relocate to District 9
Just scrawl on the dotted line.
You might argue that District 9 is character driven (at least the second half). Wikus begins as a tragically bureaucratic anti-hero out of a Kafka novel who transforms into an actual warrior-hero (and there's even a bit of intergalactic romance at the very end) but truth be told, the real stars of the film are the South African government bureaucracy, the prawn relocation camps which have gradually devolved into metaphorical apartheid slums, the forcible relocations, the alien biotech, and Multinational United (the insidious quasi-governmental weapons manufacturer/mercenary task force the government hires to move the prawns). The impact of the film comes from the world and the message it delivers: your culture will steer how you treat aliens. If you are prone to apartheid and relocation, you will use these tactics on the newcomers. And once they are ensconced in that system, it will be hard to treat them as citizens of the universe.
An Absolutely American Thing
If you live in a polarized country where half of the nation is concerned with identity politics and the other half wants to wall off and defend the country from any change in identity, then this is going to be a major influence on how immigrants from the stars are treated. Especially if this country is essentially democratic, and the citizens possess freedom of speech and unlimited internet access.
This is the world of Hank Green's new novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. He tackles first contact from an emergent bottom-up viral media stand-point. Because this process is relatively democratic and unstructured, it inevitably pits the liberals against the conservatives. People think how they want to think, and then have the the capability to express this on a grand stage. They choose sides.
April and "Carl"
At the start of the story, sixty-four hulking alien statues miraculously appear in urban areas across the globe. Late one night, April May and her art school buddy Andy stumble upon the New York statue and film an empathetic and welcoming YouTube video, in which they name the statue "Carl." The video (and the nickname) goes viral. April May becomes the self-deprecating, self-aware, and self-consciously-famous narrator of our first-contact-experience. Not only is April May special, she's extra-special. Extra-terrestrially special. She's also emerged as the most important person on earth. The alien visitors chose her and so did the internet, and then-- at least for most of the story-- she uses her special status to stay several steps ahead of the government, her fans, and a political faction called the Defenders. She is constrained by nothing. In District 9 and The Three-Body Problem, all roads lead to authority. And authority controls decisions and destiny. But not in America. We don't need no stinking badges!
Meanwhile, things get very binary between the liberals, who want band together as one human species and solve all the puzzles the alien force has presented (in a shared Dream) and the Defenders, who are xenophobic and pragmatic and defensive. It's a bit of a political caricature of America, but it works, especially since this book is probably geared for precocious YA readers. We get democracy of thought at its best and worst. Individuals making decisions that have real impact. It's such an American perspective. The enemies of global cooperation are a large amorphous binary faction and from this mentality emerges some awful individual action. Terrorism. It's a simple way to view the world. There's us and them, the liberal and the conservatives . . . and even individual conservatives might have some good ideas, but some of them get carried away and take things too far and try to take matters into their own hands. It's a tale of individual fame and knowledge, and how that can get amplified by feedback loops and viral media. This is what Green gets best . . . and so the science and technology and viral nature of ideas and fame in our world is just as strange and speculative as the world of the shared alien Dream. They are both portrayed in loving detail, and make up for the fact that April May is a mildly annoying representative of the the liberal American democratic techno-state.
I also love that April May's trusty sidekick is Robin, the personal assistant/handler assigned to her by her ruthless publicity agent, Jennifer Putnam. April May and Robin, modern superheroes endowed with the power of millions of YouTube followers and the aegis of robots from space. America: we are an absurd society, a silly superpower.
Life is More Than Humanity
In stark contrast to Hank Green's ode to the power of individuality, we have Cixin Liu's depiction of China. The novel begins during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. A physicist is being beaten to death because he inserted Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his physics curriculum. The current regime regards Einstein as an American Imperialist who helped build the atom bomb, and so not only is Einstein the person anathema, but his ideas are heretical as well. He did not fit properly into the Revolutionary Ideology, and so both the idea and the individual bearing the idea are quashed. In this society, you are defined not as an individual, but by which government (or anti-government) faction you belong to.
In this top-down system, it's not possible for an individual viewpoint to go viral. April May is not possible. In fact, it's not even possible for disembodied ideas to go viral. The top-down influence can oppress and dismantle actual ideas. We first see this with the government and the various intelligence agencies, but then we learn that the alien forces also have the power to destroy ideas and impede science. Liu sees this in Chinese history, and assumes that aliens would use the same strategy. The aliens do not choose an individual, ergo there is no April May. They examine systems. Democracy of thought does not win out in this world. Killings are utilitarian and without empathy. They are done with a cost/benefit ratio in mind, whether it's a spouse, a rival, or someone who possesses information . . . computation trumps individuality. Some factions even consider the entire human race expendable for the greater good. Ideology creates morality, and individual morality is rare.
It's difficult or impossible to operate outside this top-down sphere. The only one who has some success is the hardboiled detective Shi Qiang (who goes by the nickname Da Shi). He's earned his individuality though, by brutal and pragmatic success within the police/counter-terrorism force. He's proven himself indispensable.
Thank God for Da Shi. He's the only way into the novel for someone like me. I'm not Chinese, so understanding this totally ideological, utilitarian perspective is a stretch (although I enjoyed the historical/political parts of the book immensely . . . they are just as strange as the sci-fi portions). And, I regret to admit, that I'm not that interested in the stars. Black holes, three-body star systems, light speed . . . I should be more curious, but I'm not. I'm interested in other life forms, but the vast expanse of space leaves me cold. I'm not profound enough to contemplate it. I like when creatures move around, procreate, evolve, eat each other and have sex.
So Da Shi is a breath of fresh air. Here's some archetypal Da Shi dialogue. He's talking to nanotechnologist Wang Miao. Miao has been experiencing some hallucinatory events involving the background radiation of the universe that is making him question the fundamental laws of physics.
"You're saying the universe was . . . was winking at you?" Da Shi asked, as he slurped down strips of tripe like noodles.
"That's a very appropriate metaphor."
"Bullshit."
"Your lack of fear is based on your ignorance."
"More bullshit. Come, drink!"
Wang finished another shot. Now the world was spinning around him, and only the tripe-chomping Shi Qiang across from him remained stable. He said, "Da Shi, have you ever . . . considered certain ultimate philosophical questions? For example, where does Man come from? Where does Man go? Where does the universe come from? Where does it go? Et cetera."
"Nope."
"Never?"
"Never."
"You must see the stars. Aren't you awed and curious?"
"I never look at the sky at night."
"How is that possible? I thought you worked the night shift?"
"Buddy, when I work at night, if I look up at the sky, the suspect is going to escape . . . to be honest, even if I were to look at the stars in the sky, I wouldn't be thinking about your philosophical questions. I have too much to worry about! I gotta pay the mortgage, save for the kid's college, and handle the endless stream of cases . . . I'm a simple man without a lot of complicated twists and turns. Look down my throat and you can see out my ass . . ."
The Three-Body Problem (Cixin Liu)
I love the fact that Da Shi lives in this very hardcore-sci-fi novel. He's a reminder that when the aliens come, most of us are going to have to go on living our lives. Business as usual. So how we treat the aliens will be constrained by the limits of our culture. I can't imagine that we'll treat them any better than we treat our own citizens with opposing political views, that we'll treat them any better than those who try to immigrate to our country without permission, or that we'll treat them better the members of our society who propose controversial ideas. We'll probably treat them worse than those people . . . because, when the aliens come, most of us will root for the home team (but not everyone . . . if you read The Three-Body Problem, you'll run into the Adventists, who think the human race might be expendable).
If you don't feel like reading Cixin Liu's trilogy, you could simply wait for Amazon to make the series. Supposedly, they're thinking about plunking a billion dollars down for the rights. I hope they get it done before the aliens actually arrive.
Someone at work (who will remain nameless) said they were enjoying the Netflix show "Clickbait" and I watched an episode with my wife and we found it to be a mildly entertaining digital-kidnapping-thriller (and it stars Adrian Grenier! who I hadn't seen since Entourage) and we slowly continued to watch-- though it's often slow and repetitive-- and because I had a theory about who about the perpetrator of the crime, I avoided looking at reviews or talking about the show-- which is VERY out of character for me . . . I normally only watch things that are vetted by both my friends and smart reviewers . . . I don't want to waste my time-- but I decided to act like a normal person and just watch the show and-- SPOLIER-- the ending is absolutely dumbass, so stupid and cheap and I can't describe it without profane ad hominems for the writers that would impugn my good name-- but it seems like the original writers got swallowed up in an earthquake and they hired a bunch of drunk people who had not read or seen the earlier episodes-- and so they introduce a couple of new characters in the fading minutes of the penultimate episode-- a middle-aged childless secretary and her chubby old model-train building husband-- and THEY DID IT . . . she catfished Nick Brewer and then her husband killed him . . . and then they kidnap Nick's kid and the chubby old model-train guy might kill the child . . . holy shit, what a cheap and stupid ending . . . and if I would have just read the reviews I would have saved all this time and rage.
It took a while-- in fact, I forgot all about it-- but then something jogged my memory (perhaps someone opened my brain with the head key and fiddled with my consciousness) and I remembered to seek out the rest of the Locke and Key comic book series and the boys and I recently read all six of them, in the nick of time, it turns out, because Netflix is about to release a Locke and Key TV series . . . the comics are compelling and wild, but I should warn you, they are also grisly, disturbing, and totally fucked up; Joe Hill-- Stephen King's son-- did the writing and Gabriel Rodriguez did the art and the combination is chilling and horrific, I hope the series captures the mood, as this is a good one.
My fever is down . . . the Tamiflu seems to be working, but more importantly, I did some valuable things on my flu day:
1) watched the Netflix documentary Take Your Pills . . . makes me wonder how the hell I get so many things done without taking any pills . . .
2) finished the comic book series Saga . . . I highly recommend it: a whacked out fantastical space opera that tackles adult themes and uses utterly bizarre imagery-- BattleStar Galactica meets Star Wars with a bit of The Fifth Element thrown in for good measure;
3) watched the first few episodes of Better Call Saul . . . I didn't want to tarnish my memories of Breaking Bad with a schlocky spin-off, but Saul seems to be more along the lines of Frasier than Joanie Loves Chachi.
Adam Alter's book Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked doesn't offer up any big surprises-- it just slowly overwhelms you with the details until you have to agree-- many, many people have behavioral addictions centered around technology and digital connectedness; and the big problem is because addiction is not as character-based as you might think, and much more dependent on the environment-- and we can't escape the bottomless and ubiquitous environment of the internet-- we're going to need to be creative with solutions; while I try to put up the good fight-- I stay off social media-- aside from two blogs-- and I check my email once a day (I was astounded at how many times workers check their email on average . . . 36 times an hour?) but I've adopted some wearable tech-- a FitBit-- and this book helped me understand that one of those gadgets can lead you down some weird roads-- people get really obsessive about their step-counts and their runnign streaks-- so I'm trying to have some days, usually after tennis or running, where I try to keep my steps as LOW as possible-- really rest my feet and legs-- there's no reason to ALWAYS get 12,000 steps-- some days are for stretching or lifting or resting-- and while I'm not a gamer, I got fairly obsessed with low-stakes online poker at the start of the pandemic-- so I removed all those programs from the computer and gave that up-- it's not worth the time-- and now I'm playing a couple games of online chess each day (but only if my kids won't play) and this is a result of Netflix and "The Queen's Gambit" and I'm being very careful not to bingewatch shows-- you have to break the cycle of the cliffhanger by watching the first five minutes of the next episode and then stopping . . . and while these are first-world problems and it's the rare sort who develops a full-blown life-threatenign World of Warcraft addiction, I am hooked on the NYT Mini Crossword-- it's the crack of crosswords and there's no way I'll ever give it up . . . anyway, Alter points our that we've become far too goal oriented, there's too many ways ot keep score, and we've got to be constantly vigilant about this stuff eating up our time-- and the only way to replace one habit is to find another, when the cue happens and you usually play Candy Crush, you've got to have something else-- a ten minute yoga video or something . . . but enough of this: online chess is calling me (I'm also annoyed that my job is now on a screen, so that when I get done with my job, i have little motivation to record music or write my blog-- because it's just more screens . . . but I've set up my physical loop pedal and analog amplifier again, so that I can get back on the guitar and do some layers of sound, without getting back on a screen . . . again, first world problems but that doesn't mean you can't solve them).
Morning darkness, loads of essays, plantar fasciitis, weariness from coaching soccer, and general ennui with the constant routine were getting me down, until I remembered what Louie Zamperini had to endure . . . and how he had to endure it without Wikipedia Click-Olympics, Tetris, or Netflix . . . and now I feel better.
The last TV show I watched in real time was Seinfeld . . . I remember frenetic discussions of the previous night's episode at cafeteria duty . . . and I also remember when Catherine and I taped "The Betrayal," otherwise know as "the backwards episode" because of the reverse chronology (you could mark the passage of time by looking at Kramer's giant lollipop) but when we tried to play the episode back, we started in the middle, and got confused by the reverse chronology (and the lame nature of VHS technology) and ended up skipping around on the tape and watching the episode forwards in tiny fragments . . . but we just got cable TV this summer -- it was cheaper to get it bundled with our FIOS than to not have it at all -- and I watched the season premier of Breaking Bad on Sunday night . . . and because it's been so many years, I forgot how annoying it is to watch something in real time: you have to endure commercials and previews, you can't put on subtitles, there's no pausing so you can ask your wife pertinent questions or look up tangentially related details on the internet, and, worst of all, you have to wait until 9 PM to get started . . . I will try to make it through the final season because I love the show so much, and also so I can actually talk to people at work about the current plot twists, instead of running out of the room screaming, "DON'T SAY ANYTHING!" when anyone mentions Walter White, but after this one exception, then I am going back to my Netflix rabbit hole.
I watched Dark City on Blu-Ray the other night . . . possibly for the second time . . . it's a science-fiction film directed by Alex Proyas that is strangely similar to The Matrix (though it was released a year before in 1998) but more interesting than this comparison is the fact that I felt as if I was living parallel with the movie while watching it-- the movie begins with a naked man in a room (Rufus Sewell) with a murdered call-girl, and he has no memory of what happened to the girl or of the last three weeks of his life and he has only very dim memories of his past, and he slowly realizes-- as he makes his way through his very dark city, that aliens are manipulating not only his memories but the actual world he is living in; the movie is excellent and really looks spectacular on Blu-Ray, but I could only vaguely remember watching it in the past, and not when or where, and then Catherine came home and she couldn't remember watching it with me, and I rarely watch movies alone and it's not on my Netflix history nor have I rated it and there were only certain things that I remembered . . . like Shell Beach . . . and so I am wondering if I never really saw the movie at all, and if Kiefer Sutherland inserted it into my brain with one of his steam-punk memory injections, but now that I've got it recorded here on this blog, I'll be able to refer back to this post and foil the aliens that have been manipulating my brain (and there are the usual internet theories about how The Matrix stole from Dark City, but I find this highly unlikely, since the script for The Matrix was finished when they were shooting Dark City, and as one nut pointed out, all these ideas originated with the movie Tron . . . but at that point you might as well say that all of these type films-- ranging from The Game and The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense all the way to Bladerunner-- are an allegory for Plato's cave and forget who stole what from whom and just enjoy the special effects).
The other night we watched Vicky Christina Barcelona, which was quite good-- the studly Spanish painter teaches you how to pick up two beautiful women at one time, he's quite skillful in both art and love, but even more impressive is my artistic eye . . . we knew nothing about the movie, just took it out of the Netflix sleeve and popped it in the player, but as it started I said, "That's Woody Allen's FONT! They stole Woody Allen's FONT! " and in a moment we learned that it is actually Woody Allen film . . . so I guessed the director by the font of the credits: although my wife wasn't particularly impressed with my precognizant aesthetic sense, I'm sure there are hordes of beautiful young women who will read this and swoon.
This was supposed to be yesterday's sentence but after coaching soccer in extreme heat and humidity last night, my brain melted out of my head . . . so here it is, better late than never: my younger son Ian and I have been playing a lot of tennis lately-- all spring and summer-- and to make sure I taught him everything correctly, we watched a lot of YouTube videos on proper technique; this helped both of our games, and we've been improving in lockstep, hitting and serving better and better-- and my older son Alex comes out and plays occasionally, and he's quite good but just didn't practice enough to keep up with Ian (who was has been near obsessed with it) and both boys and their friend have been attending tennis camp this week, it's run by Ed Ransom, a trainer of some repute around here, and he took one look at Ian and moved him into the highest group and when my wife picked up the kids he asked her who Ian's private instructor was and said he was really talented and my wife told him that Ian's private instructor was his dad (Dad of the Year! this is a high point in the story . . . I was so proud that I had taught Ian to play tennis correctly) and for the next few days, Ian was the talk of the camp-- I was getting texts from other parents about how Ed had talked to them about this young phenom and it turned out to be Ian-- when I took my turn picking up the kids on Wednesday, Ed told me that Ian really had a talent and it needed to be "cultivated" and I told him we played all the time-- I was cultivating the hell out of it-- but he was also a soccer star and a pretty good basketball player and Ed frowned and said that Ian was going to have to choose and that he couldn't play everything or his talent would be "diluted" and I scoffed at this because I'm a big proponent of playing different sports in different seasons-- you make new friends, develop new skills, and don't burn out-- and so we went home and the kids rested, it was insanely hot, and then we headed to the high school gym (no A/C) for our summer basketball league, I help coach with my friend John-- a great basketball player-- and both boys play; tonight was supposed to be just seventh and eighth graders playing, but the other team had two ninth graders, so we matched them with two of ours, which made for a wide variety of body types on the court . . . Ian is heading into seventh grade and weighs 80 pounds and he stepped in front of a pass and grabbed it from a two hundred pound ninth grader-- a giant flabby kid who could play hoops but hadn't grown into his body yet-- and the kid toppled over on Ian, landing on Ian's ankle and knee and Ian's leg bent backwards and I thought something was broken (this happened to another one of our players in the winter and he was in a cast for a couple of months) and Ian was crying and clutching his leg and I had to carry him off the court to the bench and while nothing was broken, he had hyperextended his knee and couldn't walk and I had to carry him to the car after the game and now I had a stomachache and Ed Ransom's words were ringing in my ears-- this was crazy to try to play every sport . . . maybe Ian needed to focus, though he just turned twelve and hadn't hit puberty yet-- and maybe coaching soccer and basketball, and also trying to train tennis was making me crazy as well . . . but the boys finished watching Unbreakable and then went to bed and some of David Dunn must have rubbed off on Ian, because he woke up the next morning and though his knee was a little sore, he was fine, a rubber band, and he went off to tennis camp with barely a limp, which got me a little choked up, because sports stories where the scrappy little underdog prevails always do (I was crying like a baby the other day at the end of the Netflix series GLOW, if you haven't seen it, it's a wonderful show . . . empowering and athletic and funny and moving-- the total opposite of The Handmaid's Tale, which is just brutal) and I'm not sure what the future will bring, maybe some private lessons for Ian-- but he definitely wants to pursue some serious tennis instruction . . . or maybe I'll just keep watching videos and cultivate him . . . and we also have my brother as a resource-- he played tennis in college and he's still quite good . . . he hit with Ian last Sunday and he was really impressed, and though he only mentioned it once, I think he was impressed with the improvement in my game as well . . . so this is a double underdog story, because while I was a serviceable tennis player, I'm not an expert, but I think I can figure it out . . . anyway, I'm hoping to get Alex out with Ian a lot more, we've got courts right by our house and if the two of them start really playing together, they could end up like Serena and Venus, and I'm also still hoping that they can prove Ed Ransom wrong, and excel at several sports because while tennis is awesome, it's a lonely game, and doesn't compare to the fun and drama of soccer, basketball, and professional wrestling.
Sometimes I watch 30 Rock on Netflix without telling my wife, and then the next time we watch 30 Rock, I don't tell her that she's missed an episode -- so unless she's doing the same thing to me, I've seen all the episodes and she hasn't.
If you've got Netflix and you've been overly sanguine lately, and you're looking to a way to quell your cheerful alacrity, I suggest Happy Valley (irony!) if you want to be scared, anxious, and depressed for twelve episodes and Short Term 12if you want to be scared, anxious and depressed for ninety minutes . . . both are visually compelling, well-structured, and emotionally exhausting . . . and don't let them fool you, they both start with relatively humorous scenes, but it's a trap!
If you're not looking for a big commitment and you need something to stream on Netflix and you're in the mood for something kind of weird, then try Episode 7 of Black Mirror-- it's called "White Christmas" and it stars Jon Hamm; Black Mirror is a British update of The Twilight Zone . . . but the episodes center around the perils of technological innovation, and "White Christmas" is really fun and strange and features lots of surprises and a plot that circles right around to the beginning and makes perfect sense . . . if you're still in the mood for something short and self-contained and weird, watch Punch Drunk Love, it was written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Adam Sandler, and features a cameo by Philip Seymour Hoffman . . . I always had fond memories of this movie, but hadn't watched it since 2002, when it came out-- it holds up really well, and is even more bizarre than I remembered.
I was walking the dog early last Wednesday morning-- all the snow had frozen solid and in many places the sidewalks were coated with a sheet of glistening ice-- so I should have been more aware of my footing, but I was thinking about remembering to send back a Netflix disc that we had left in the blur-ray player and so I didn't notice when I got to a spot where a steep driveway intersects the sidewalk, and I stepped onto a patch of ice, and because of the slope, my left foot shot straight into the air, and it seemed as if I was going to fall backwards and slam the back of my head on the curb, but I whirled my torso around as hard as I could, and tucked, and I managed to spin my body on its horizontal axis while I was in mid-air, so instead of landing on my back, I landed on my arms, which were braced for the fall, but my lower body hadn't fully gyrated in synchronicity with my upper body-- it was slightly behind -- and so I came down on my bad hip, the hip that I injured last spring in a similarly incredible athletic move that did not happen during an athletic event . . . another incident that no one saw, but had their been a witness, would have gone down in the annals of sporting history for time immemorial.
Heraclitus warned us that "the only constant is change." For many years, the American school system eluded this inevitability, but not this year. EVERYTHING has changed. No textbooks. A new tablet device. We're wireless. And Bluetooth. We've adopted a new learning management system. Canvas instead of Google classroom. OneDrive instead of Google drive. OneNote instead of something else. And there's the looming threat that the winds of change will soon to remove our desktop computers.
Also, I still have stuff on Evernote.
Yesterday, I couldn't even figure out how to play a DVD. Every year, in Honors Philosophy, we read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" and then we watch the first thirty minutes of The Matrix. Because it's the best visual representation of Plato's allegory.
Coincidentally, both of these are blocked at our school. Even if you've purchased the movie on Amazon. So I freaked out a bit (in front of the children) and then I downloaded a bunch of weird free DVD players (and probably infected my desktop with some weird viruses . . . now whenever I use the search bar, it sends me through Yahoo! instead of Google).
Then the tech guy came and showed me that there WAS a player on my computer. The VLN player. The symbol is a traffic cone. It didn't open automatically when I put a disk in, so I didn't know it was there. And when the tech guy scrolled down through my apps and showed me the traffic cone, I wondered: why is orange traffic cone synonymous with playing a DVD? But then he started telling me about all the changes in my future-- they were taking my desktop, my DVD player, my big monitor, and my hardwired internet . . . and so I shouldn't even get used to the VLN player.
"They're not making your job any easier," he said, "and they're not making my job any easier either."
And why is the VLN Player logo a traffic cone? There's an enigmatic explanation on Wikipedia, but it adds more to the mystery than it resolves it: "The cone icon used in VLC is a reference to the traffic cones collected by École Centrale's Networking Students' Association."
If anyone can make sense of that, please leave the explanation in the comments.
Sometimes it takes an injury to remember how wonderful it is to eat salty and sugary snacks in alternation, while getting completely sucked into a TV show . . . especially when every episode is available on Netflix . . . I have watched thirteen episodes of The Killing since last Thursday, but season one doesn't wrap everything up in a neat package, so I need a new injury so that I can watch season two equally as fast.
