More Than Human

There is a difference between mellowing out and losing your edge. Most people mellow out as they get older. That’s natural. Sidley Lumet made a string of good-to-great movies from the late 50s into the mid-70s, from 12 Angry Men to Dog Day Afternoon. His pace slowed after that, but he never lost it completely. His final film was Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, an unflinchingly cynical piece of work that would be impossible to sit through if it weren’t so gripping. A lot of artists have a 10-15 year period relatively early in their careers during which they crank out one classic after the next. Springsteen was like that. So was Akira Kurosawa. John Carpenter, too, although he was a little hit-and-miss even when he was in his prime. Alfred Hitchcock is an outlier. He made two of his best-regarded films, Psycho and Vertigo, when he was pushing 60. I haven’t seen any of his films from the 70s, but I’ve heard some very positive things about Frenzy. If I mellow out, that’s fine. If I lose my edge, kill me. I’m not kidding.

I’ve cried at only a couple of movies in my lifetime. Ikiru is one. If you’ve seen that one, you probably know which scene I’m talking about. Even if you haven’t, the DVD cover gives it away. Dear Zachary is another. It’s one of the most wrenching films ever made, made even more so by the fact that it’s a documentary. The last half hour of that movie will rip your heart out. The most recent one was Mary and Max, a claymation film from Australia. It’s on Netflix, so if you haven’t seen it, hie thee hence over there and watch it immediately. It’s about a New Yorker with Asperger’s who becomes pen pals with a little girl in Australia. As a warning, let me say that though the film is animated, it is not kid-friendly, and it gets dark pretty late into its running time. But it’s worth it. I respond to dark comedies better than most other genres, perhaps because my life is one. That film is hopeful, just unconventionally so. Don’t feel sorry for Max.

There’s a general rule that I’ve observed when it comes to couples. People who are in healthy, fulfilling relationships rarely feel the need to talk about it. You can spend a significant amount of time getting to know them before they say the words, “My girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/partner/whatever….” People who are insecure about their relationship and want to hide behind it as a means of deflecting criticism are the ones who always gush about their partners and how perfect they are. It’s more willful self-delusion than anything else. They want to believe that because of this relationship, they are a totally different person than they were before. This requires that their partner sit still and be objectified to be complicit in maintaining the illusion. It’s a form of co-dependency, an immaturity that tries to pass itself off as maturity. There’s nothing wrong with a little PDA here and there, but if you make YouTube videos consisting entirely of you and your boyfriend kissing and canoodling, I feel justified in saying that your relationship is not long for this world. That is all.

I’ve said before that I never want to work a 9-to-5 job. I’m actually starting to like the feeling of being free when everyone else is at work, even if the flipside is that I often have work when everyone else is out partying. Maybe that’s because I’m a weirdo, or maybe it’s because I like to remind myself that I’m a weirdo. I wonder if other people find me intimidating. Do they hang back from talking to me because I scare them off? As I write this, I’m still doing a slow burn over the events in Ferguson, Missouri. I don’t have the time or the energy to talk about that at length now. But I will reiterate what I have said before: If you are one of those people who insist that this isn’t about race, you’re part of the problem. I hear people tell me that if I were nicer, people would be more willing to listen to me. No, I think the only way I ever get someone to listen to me is by telling them exactly what I think of them. It’s not “I speak my mind, and if you can’t handle it, fuck you” so much as it’s “I speak my mind, and if you can’t handle it, okay then”.

You can’t really get anywhere if you can’t have a discussion. And a lot of discussion gets shortchanged because the instant I say something negative about, say, a movie, somebody says, “It’s just a movie. If you don’t like it, you can watch something else.” That’s…not a response to my criticism, however. Sometimes, I watch/read/listen to stuff that I don’t exactly like. Sometimes I say so just to see what people say back. If all people have to say is, “Why can’t you just let Person X do their own thing and not be so judgmental”, I sorta shrug and roll my eyes at the same time, then walk away. When you put yourself out there in a public forum, you are opening yourself up to criticism. That doesn’t mean you have to like it. It doesn’t even mean you have to listen to it. It just means that you should acknowledge it. Because you can’t make the stuff you don’t like just disappear. And the reason other people exist is not to tell you how wonderful you are.

I’ve been getting more into classic comic strips lately. Does anyone remember Pogo? I had never read it, but then I found out that my main man Bill Watterson is a fan. So I guess I have some reading to do.

Serendipity

Everybody else is talking about Robin Williams’ death, and for good reason. The man was a cultural icon, a capital-G genius with a gift for improvisation and an energy that has rarely been matched in comedy or drama. This is not a typical eulogy. It’s not a eulogy at all, really. Because everyone is trying to find meaning in a beloved funnyman and entertainer’s offing himself at an age at which most of us are starting to wind down, and I have a few thoughts. For one thing, depression can strike at any age. When we picture people who are too sad and dejected to go on, we usually think of teenagers who haven’t yet realized how good life can get or middle-aged guys who have just gotten laid off and whose wives have just left them and taken the kids. Or something. I haven’t checked the stats, but I’ll wager that suicide is less common among men who have passed middle age. Because I’m a cynic, I won’t try to find closure in this mess; I’ll just offer what I know: there is no such thing as a wasted life.

I hear people my age say (or people older than me tell people my age) that they have their whole lives ahead of them. This is not technically true, obviously—the instant you are born, you have at least a little of your life behind you, but I appreciate the sentiment. I still haven’t done most of the things I intend to do: see the world, rule the world, marry Jon Hamm…if you’re a regular reader, you’ve heard all this before. My accomplishments so far include getting a killer education, having a decent enough run as an actor, and getting started as a writer. But that, as far as I’m concerned, is still just the tip of the iceberg. Joan Rivers was in her 70s when she said that she felt her best years were still ahead of her. It’s an admirable philosophy: keep on living, until you die. But it still doesn’t mean the same thing coming from a septuagenarian as a twentysomething.

Okay, so now we have the news that Williams was in the early stages of Parkinson’s. Maybe that had something to do with it. But this post isn’t really about him, anyway. I know one or two people who have offed themselves. One was a guy I went to school with who I hadn’t seen in years, another was a lady who I’d been in a play with who seemed perfectly fine and happy when I knew her. But people are complicated, and can you ever really know anyone? I think you can. My Japanese Lit professor in college had absurdly complicated rules to prevent cheating. I found all of it a little much, but he did say once that he’d been burned before, and you really just can’t tell the difference between an honest person and a good liar. I had my tips stolen at work a few weeks ago. I can think of one likely suspect, but I’m not saying who it is, because what the fuck do I know?

I’m not sure what I want to do with the rest of the millennium that I plan on spending on Earth. I keep thinking I should look into inventing, because it would combine my more creative side with the side that likes science and machinery. A lot of people peak somewhere around middle age. In Blood Meridian, the Judge talks about how man is exhausted when he hits his climax, because it means that he has nowhere to go from there except down. Except the Judge is a vicious, murdering psychopath, so take what he says with a grain of salt. I’m kinda just rambling here anyway.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my (relatively short) time on Earth so far, it’s that you actually can have what you’re looking for; it just takes longer than you’re probably expecting. It can range from a job that you had your heart set on to a school you really wanted to get into to even just a cool dude who you worked with for a little while but wish you’d gotten to know better. People who live with integrity can achieve at least some of what they set out to do, and who are we to tell them when they’re finished? It’s not really my place to speculate on what is going on inside the heads of the depressed, but I don’t think for one second that most suicidal people are unaware that there are folks who will miss them. Read Cloud Atlas (or see the movie) if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Don’t ever let go before you’re ready.

It’s rare that I find myself telling other people that they are being too cynical, but the negative comments on this video had me thinking just that. What happened was that a couple of German students decided to surprise a homeless guy by sitting down next to him and singing a song for passersby. Then they gave him whatever the people dropped in the hat and walked away. (Since they didn’t want to film a homeless person without his permission, they did it once for real, then reenacted it with a paid actor and filmed that.) I don’t have a problem with that. The point is to draw attention to the plight of the homeless, isn’t it? Some commenters have pointed out that the most the dude could have made from that was, like, ten Euros, but that’s ten Euros he didn’t have five minutes ago, right? Who cares if they were doing it just to feel good about themselves? The homeless guy gets enough for a bite to eat, they get to make a viral video. Everybody wins.

Novgorod

It’s been years since I was a diehard gamer, and I’m finally starting to dip my toe into those waters again. When I was a preteen, they were basically all I thought about. I passed the summer by playing games all morning (after lunch, I would at least try to find something to do) and when I hung out with friends, it was mainly just to play computer games. I never owned a console, but that was just because my parents had some weird prejudice against them even though they were totally okay with computer games. I’m giving Skyrim a try, because I liked Morrowind a lot and thought Oblivion was okay, so this seems like a good place to (re)start. I also downloaded Braid because Steam was offering it for only $2 at one point. I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I guess I just wanted to say that even though I had what, to a child, might have seemed like all you could ask for, I definitely wasn’t all that happy. And it wasn’t my love life, because at the time, I was too young to have sex. No. Something else was going on.

I haven’t yet figured out where the balance between creative and non-creative, geeky and non-geeky pursuits is. There is a part of me that still sees Faulkner as somehow “higher” than Tolkien, and that’s bullshit. But I do find Tolkien more fun to read, so maybe the problem is that I have some internalized prejudice against having fun. I’ve always had this problem of being afraid that if I don’t keep going out of my way to see my friends, they’ll just disappear. Thing is, that’s actually happened once or twice. I have not seen or spoken to one of my best friends from college in over two and a half years, and it’s not because I haven’t reached out to him. I just hung back a little, waiting for him to reach out and ask me how I was doing. And he never did. From what I can gather on Facebook, he is living in Seattle and still hasn’t accepted my friend request. I could delete it, but I choose not to. Because frankly, I think he deserves to be reminded of what he decided to pass up.

It’s funny. I’ve had friends who’ve drifted away, but more often than not, they slam the door in my face (metaphorically). I know that very few people are with you all your life, and even then, I think I could be doing a hell of a lot better than I am right now. I’m digressing a little, but I have to say that while I normally agree with John Green, I think he really misses the mark in this video. He basically says that his success is undeserved and that the reason his bestselling novel has been made into a surefire hit movie is because he’s lucky. I haven’t read The Fault in Our Stars and I probably won’t see the movie, but I think that’s bullshit. The reason that John Green is where he is is because he wrote a book, people liked it, and it all just kinda snowballed from there. Whether or not it’s any good is besides the point (I know some people who liked it, although it doesn’t sound like my thing); what matters is that while “deserve” is certainly a loaded word (and I agree with him that rich people need to stop acting as if they’re where they are because they’re just better than the rest of us), the fact remains that you have to fight for good things if you want them to happen to you. Nobody “just” gets lucky.

It is now time to talk about vengeance. The internet exploded after the latest episode of Game of Thrones, because it contained what is arguably the series’s most gruesome and nihilistic moment yet. I’m getting into spoiler territory, naturally, so navigate away if you haven’t seen it yet.

Essentially, my problem with Prince Oberyn’s death is that it doesn’t make sense. Some have argued that he grew cocky and obsessed with avenging his sister, which caused him to let his guard down and allow the Mountain to strike a fatal blow. I don’t buy that. People let their guard down all the time. Why is it that the only people who are ever punished for doing so in George R.R. Martin’s world are the good guys? Why not include a scene in which the Mountain does something stupid and careless and gets punished for it? People will argue that the cynicism and grimness of the story makes it that much deeper, but this isn’t cynicism so much as nihilism. And it’s obvious that the deck is stacked in the bad guys’s favor. Oberyn didn’t just slash at the Mountain’s heels, he put a fucking spear through the guy’s chest. There is not a single human being anywhere in the world who could survive that, let alone still have the strength to smash their opponent’s skull with their bare hands. Why are there no “good guys” on the show with that kind of strength?

The closest thing to a takeaway that I can find in that scene is that even though Oberyn died, he did get the Mountain to confess his crimes before doing so. That might go a little ways towards shifting people’s opinions against the Lannisters. After seeing what scumbags they are and what scumbags they employ, perhaps other powerful people will be less inclined to ally with them. But philosophically speaking, this series and I have just parted ways. I am not an optimistic person. I do not believe that everything will work out for the best. Sometimes, the bad guys get away with it and life just sucks. And still, I think that the trial by combat scene was so ridiculous as to border on surrealism. Seriously, the Mountain took a fucking spear through the chest. That should have been enough to end him. Yet I will continue to watch and read this series.

People have been comparing Oberyn to Inigo Montoya. Mandy Patinkin once said that vengeance is pointless, and he’s right, but the funny thing about Montoya is that for a guy who has spent the last twenty years of his life obsessed with vengeance, he seems to have turned out alright. At the end of the movie, he has made some good friends, become a master swordsman, rid the world of a truly detestable human being, and might have a bright future in piracy ahead of him. So keep that in mind. Because I liked Oberyn. And it’s not the Mountain who killed him in the sickest and most sadistic manner imaginable, it’s George R.R. Martin.

Here’s something inspiring.

Let the Right One In

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles on the internet lately about what it’s like to be a twentysomething. The good ones tend to strike a balance between tough love and pep talk. I’m all for both of those things, but I don’t think any of the articles I’ve seen quite hit the nail on the head. That, of course, is because none of them were written by me. It’s time that we amended that.

High schoolers tend to be full of angst. Twentysomethings, in my experience, tend to be riddled with anxiety. There’s a difference. Most of us go through that Holden Caulfield stage when we’re fifteen or sixteen where we’re convinced that everyone is a phony and that nothing is “real”. There’s nothing wrong with that. The world is full of phonies, and it’s perfectly natural to look around at this fucked up world we live in and get bitter and cynical. I am bitter and cynical. I was bitter and cynical when I was in high school, and now that I am older, I’m still bitter and cynical. All that’s changed is that I have a bit more perspective. Sometimes, it’s actually a bit scary. It used to be that every time something bad happened, I panicked. Now, I tend to think, “What the hell, I can handle this.” Perversely, something seems wrong with that. I can’t handle everything. I am unbelievably amazing, but the world is vicious and cruel. I know that because I just finished season three of Game of Thrones and if you don’t know what happens at the Red Wedding, I’m curious as to how you’re reading this blog since you apparently live in a place without the internet.

Anyway, I’m getting really tired of people talking about young people like we’re all a bunch of entitled brats. I’m also tired of people talking to me like I just need to learn to love myself and I’ll get everything I want. This is the part where people start to settle into a groove–or at least, they try to. People I went to high school with are getting married to other people I went to high school with. I have officially reached the age at which I hang out with married people and their married spouses. Everyone is getting married on Game of Thrones. Oh yeah, and there were those SCOTUS rulings about marriage equality. No, I’m not fixated on this. Why do you ask?

The tricky part about progress is that the closer you get to your destination, the scarier the ascent becomes. You look back at all of the shit the world has thrown at you and wonder if the worst is still to come. (Hint: it is.) And that’s frightening. I’ve met a lot of shitty people in my lifetime. They all think I don’t get it, that I just don’t understand how the world works, but I know better. When I was a kid, a lot of adults told me that life had a way of sanding the edges off of your dreams, of making you realize that you should stop trying to change the world and just try to live in it. I think that’s bullshit. My ambitions are so lofty that they border on megalomania, and you might think that having to move back in with one’s father for the third time and get a job at a coffee shop to pay off $400,000,000,000 in student loans might crush one’s spirit, but make no mistake, I still intend to conquer the world someday. Maybe I’ll just have to serve really good coffee. All I know is that you will kneel before me I can do better than this.

I don’t know why I thought of this guy. Moving on…

I don’t really have the time or the energy to feel sorry for anything I’ve done. That’s why I’m wary of all of these “20 Things I Wish I’d Known in My 20s” articles or whatever they’re called. They’re all written by people in their 30s and 40s who think they remember what it was like, but are really just using hindsight to gloss over the parts that made that period interesting. Are we really that different from the Baby Boomers or the Generation Xers? I keep hearing about how young people think they’re going to live forever, but I spend most of my time trying to forget that I’ll never be this young again so that I can fucking enjoy myself. I have a vague idea of what I want. It gets clearer every day. And I will get it or die trying.

I think what it really boils down to is Facebook. Social media has instilled in us that desire to put on a front, to use every drama into an excuse to make passive-aggressive swipes and fish for compliments and use every triumph as an excuse to glamorize our own life more than it probably deserves. Hey, I’m not saying you shouldn’t go on there. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t treat people on social media any differently than you do anywhere else. I hate it when I call somebody out on an offensive or racist comment they made and they respond by saying that I shouldn’t get into arguments with people on the internet. Fuck you. I’ll get into arguments with anyone anywhere and anytime I like. I’m not trying to change your opinion; I’m just trying to understand why you feel the need to drag gun control into a discussion about gay rights.

One more thing before I go: I keep hearing a lot of talk about how “friendzone” is a sexist term, as it implies that a man (it’s always a man who gets friendzoned) is entitled to sex from a female friend just because he doesn’t slap her around or anything. That’s how the term is often used, but not, I think, how it was intended. I’ve known nice guys who have gotten into friendships with self-destructive women, then had their feelings hurt when she rebuffs them for being “too nice”. To their credit, they took no for an answer and, realizing that the woman in question didn’t have the self-respect necessary to recognize a genuinely decent guy when she saw one, sought out love elsewhere. There are some women who are just manipulative shrews who want someone wrapped around their finger so they can run to them when their bad boy boyfriend does something bad, and there are misogynistic douchebags who think not being a serial rapist is the same as being a good person. It cuts both ways, people, is what I’m trying to say.

That’s all for now. This video sums it up, really.

This Must Be the Place

I hate anything that confirms my cynicism. That’s why I am always wary of anyone whose outlook is even bleaker than mine. One of my favorite filmmakers is Darren Aronofsky, a man who, as of this writing, has yet to make a single film that is not incredibly depressing. After seeing The Wrestler with a couple friends, one of them asked me if we could see something more upbeat next time. Truth be told, I barely even noticed what a downer it was. To me, it was just a beautifully-made movie about a man whose sad life only gets sadder and sadder. How it did not win a boxful of Oscars, I will never understand.

The most difficult part about downtime is figuring out what to do next. I had a very busy week, and now that my weekend has just begun (I have no classes or work on Friday), I have no idea what to do with myself. It’s like you climb up a hill and start down the other side, eventually moving so fast that you have no idea how you’ll stop. There is just so much stuff that I need/want to do, and there is no way that I will get around to all of it soon. I’m kind of tired of people telling me that my problems are all first world problems. I got very angry a few days ago when I found that at least a dozen audiobooks I wanted to listen to were available for download from the New York Public Library, but only in a format that is incompatible with my mp3 player. I’m just trying to find a way to stimulate my mind while I’m making copies and shelving books at my job. Is that really something that poor people don’t have to worry about? I suspect quite a few factory employees during the Industrial Revolution would have loved to have some music to listen to. I’m just trying to make use of what I’ve got. No matter who or where you are, it is always difficult to feel as if you are not operating at your peak of potential.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about Doctor Who. I’m still not sure why sci-fi/fantasy automatically feels like comfort food to me. Sometimes, I like to read stories set in the real world that feature non-magical, non-futuristic beings just dealing with their problems and being people. But somehow, that always feels like more work. I guess genre fiction has an inherently escapist appeal that the “literary” stuff lacks. When I was studying English as an undergrad, I realized not too long after declaring my major that I hadn’t even attempted to read a great many established literary classics. So I made a list that I have long since abandoned, the first two items on which were Lolita and 1984. I read them that summer and liked them both a lot, although I’m not really sure if 1984 would stand up to multiple readings. It seems like the sort of thing the meaning of which is plain right from the get-go. So I try not to divide everything up into high-minded art and nerdy pulp. The divide between the two gets more permeable with each passing year.

A few months ago, I talked about my policy on gift-giving, which is that if I buy something for someone (which happens occasionally), I buy them something I think they would like that I don’t think they have. In this respect, I take after my mother, I suppose. When I told my parents that they could get me whatever they wanted for my birthday, but that there were three items that I had my eye on, my father ordered those three items from Amazon and had them shipped to me. I knew he was going to do that. I told them they could get me whatever they wanted, even if it was just a card, but parents are parents. My mother calls me once a week to check up. My father hasn’t called in a while. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. I still don’t think he’s gotten it into his head that, as my father, he needs to be more, well, supportive. When I wished him a happy birthday, I told him that I hoped he felt wiser, not just older. He replied that he felt older, and spent most of his time worrying about my siblings and me. That really isn’t something I need to hear. Then again, maybe I was asking for it.

I need a vacation. Of course, spring break is coming up, but even then, that is likely to be a working vacation. I have a job that I would like to work in some extra hours at, and I need to stop asking around about what full-time jobs I might be cut out for post-graduation and start actually applying for them. And my wardrobe collapsed about a month ago and I ordered another one, but still haven’t found the time to construct it. It’s way up on my list of priorities, but still not quite at the top. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time dicking around on the internet over this past day or so, so maybe I’m making up for my lack of time off by fucking around in moderation. I don’t have much else to say for now, except that Game of Thrones is a really addictive series, and at this rate, I will not be able to maintain my policy of reading each book before seeing the corresponding season of TV. It’s a shame, as that made me feel so literate. I’ve started reading classic mysteries lately, and my take on Agatha Christie is that you might be able to guess the killer in her stories if you look for the most dramatically appropriate character rather than trying to put the clues together. Whodunits are crazy that way.