Guilty Pleasure

I've always found the idea of having a guilty pleasure to be highly suspect. It strikes me as a way to keep other people from noticing your poor taste, be it in books, fashion styles, or what-have-you. Usually when somebody else points out a guilty pleasure, it is something truly awful. Then again, it wouldn't involve guilt if it was sublime, would it?

My own poor taste is clearly evident. One has to look no further than my dvd collection (which admittedly is quite small) to see an irrefutable example. I recently added to it one of the worst movies ever committed to celluloid: Black Belt Jones.

Long days back we used to rent this movie almost weekly, and I thought we had found the blue sapphire diamond of blaxploitation flicks. You could hear laughter in the house late into the night, orchestrated by corny dialogue and lo-fi karate explosions. That was years ago, and recently I got to thinking how long it had been. What would it be like to revisit BB and friends? I decided to find out, located a cheap copy on ebay and purchased it.

Sitting down to watch this gem from 1972, I found myself laughing, yes, just like old times. Yet it was laughter borne more of pain than joy: Black Belt Jones had not aged well. It may very well be the worst movie I have ever seen. It is like a home movie that should have stayed in the vault. It is bad -and I don't mean baaaadaaaassss, I mean BAD bad. Look up the word "bad" in Webster's and it cites BB.

Here's an example of the grade school dialogue. BB has been called in by his government superior -he's some kind of agent for an unnamed group that appears to part of the FBI. His superior (inevitably white) tells BB that he has to go into the ghetto and help break up a criminal scheme. BB refuses, saying, "You ought to write comedies for television."

His superior replies, "But can it be done?"

To which BB says, "Don't believe the myth that all (black people) are invisible."

When BB leaves the room, his superior starts chomping on a cigar and tells his partner, "He'll do it." Apparently BB has worked out some kind of code with his minders that the audience isn't privy to, because to me it sounded like they just spewed a bunch of gibberish. But I guess I don't know how to write good movie dialogue, do I?


BB has to help a friend called Pop save his karate school from a bad guy named "Pinky". Pop is ostensibly a teacher of kung fu, but apparently nobody told that little bit of information to the actor who portrays him, the seventies icon with the seventies icon name, Scatman Crothers. The scenes in which Scatman uses his "skills" to defeat thugs are so laughable that they go beyond the laugh horizon into a dark, lonely void of despair. Not since Margot Kidder's drug-addled turn as Lois Lane in Superman II (where she is visibly intoxicated most of the time) has a noted actor been so humiliated onscreen.

Fortunately Pop doesn't last long in the movie. Enter the daughter: Sydney.

When Sydney enters the scene, she delivers the most memorable dialogue and action in the movie. She is clearly a product of her times. The early seventies were not only the age of Gloria Steinem but Angela Davis too: feminism combined with black revolution. Sydney all but personifies the Black Panther movement, and she takes guff from no man, woman or pimp, a kind of third-rate Foxy Brown. BB quickly finds his hands full when Sydney shows up to preserve her father's school.

When BB receives a hot tip, Sydney offers to come along. BB replies by telling her, "Why don't you go do the dishes or something?" He points to the sink, where we can see a pile of dirty plates and mugs.

Sydney pulls out a revolver and shoots up the entire sink, reducing the dishes to powder. "They're done," she says.

You just don't mess with Sydney.

Later, on the beach, BB propositions her and she rejects him. "My cookie would kill you," she tells him.

There are many other citable instances of why Black Belt Jones is the worst movie ever made. Pinky's "rap" for instance, burned in my memory forever but to which I will not expose my tender readers' hearts and minds.

Men Without Hats

One of the sweetest memories from my adolescent years is dancing around the bedroom and singing in front of the mirror while playing Men Without Hats' seminal album, Rhythm of Youth. That was in the early eighties and much water has passed under the proverbial bridge since those halcyon days. Recently, though, I found the cassette buried amidst some old things and popped it in the player (yes, I still have a tape cartridge in my stereo) and found myself dancing "like an imbecile."

That lyric comes from the band's smash hit and signature song of the eighties decade, The Safety Dance. Another memorable line from the still-catchy tune gives the listener permission to "dance like you're from out of this world". Surely these are words to live by.

In my teenaged years I was a big fan of Men Without Hats. I even saw them perform live and found the experience to be very strange (and therefore, in teenage terms, "totally rad"). The lead singer and mastermind behind the band, Ivan Doroschuk, was given to talking at great length between songs and providing weird and esoteric explanations for what his lyrics "really" meant. I remember the rest of the band sort of milling around, hands laid idly on their instruments, waiting until they were needed to play again, usually after a five-to-ten minute interlude. Needless to say, it was a memorable and long night.

It's important to note that no one was wearing hats at the show, not on stage or in the audience. This is of interest beyond just the obvious homage to the band's sobriquet. Originally formed by Ivan and two of his brothers in the late seventies in the cold climes of Montreal, the band in its nascent form was known as Men WITH Hats. This was soon changed, however, since the band always threw off their hats at the end of each show. Thus Men Without Hats was born into legend.

Now, it's fine and good to have a hit pop tune instruct the listener to "act like an imbecile". Who doesn't hold that freedom as dear? I wonder, though, if Ivan didn't take this axiom to mean that he could also write lyrics like an imbecile. As evidenced in other tracks on Rhythm of Youth, there is a cause to wonder.

One of the joys of listening to pop songs -from the eighties in particular- is their regular penchant for celebrating self-evident truths. Pop songs let us in on the heretofore secret knowledge that girls just want to have fun (Cyndi Lauper) , and that one thing can lead to another (The Fixx). In keeping with the times, Men Without Hats also provide precious insight into the hidden corners of existence.

In the song Things in My Life, while thinking that he's walking in a rainy Scottish forest, Ivan sings the words, "There are things you can buy in the drugstore/There are things you can hang on your wall/There are things you can read in the paper/There are things that do nothing at all". The reek of Ultimate Truth is all over this quartet. Lending even greater weight is the song's chorus: "We can never remember the things we always forget". If this stuff was alcohol, I'd be on a bender dawn to dusk.

My love for Men Without Hats is undeterred, even so, because in hearing again the continuous keyboard chartings that provide the skeleton of every track, I am transported to the end of the rainbow, where not only is Truth plain to see, it's danceable. Safety dance, indeed.

And that is what I think Ivan and his band want to do: give the world a reason to dance. In one of two tracks exclusive to the cassette version of Rhythm of Youth ("not included on the LP"), Ivan asks the nation of China if it wants to dance. The response is a lusty wave of applause. We can safely interpret that to mean, "Yes, Ivan, we wants to dance."

In another song, Ivan sings, "I have done a good thing/You're really dancing/Everybody's happy."

Since I saw them perform only the once, I cannot say if Ivan perfected his ability get crowds dancing. I remember people were dancing at my show, but only in spurts. Maybe if he had talked less-! But that was early in their career and for a number of years after the band did go on to have a couple more hit songs. Who can forget Pop Goes The World? Therefore it is entirely possible that he finally did remember what he had always forgot.

JK Rowling Eat Your Heart Out!

Four out of five readers agree: "Auralia's Colors" by Jeff Overstreet is the best fantasy novel of 2007... and the fifth is starting to change her mind!

Auralia's Colors

This is a huge day for Jeff Overstreet. This is a postively ginormous day for him ("ginormous" is an actual word, incidentally; you can find it in Webster's). Today he has in his hands the physical fact that is his first published novel, Auralia's Colors. It arrived in boxes yesterday and Jeff had a small gathering of friends to celebrate and undoubtedly felt the warmth of congratulation. Most important, though, is what he holds in his hands, because what is now in his shall soon (September 15th!) be in many others. This is a book that will go far!

I had the unique pleasure of reading the book in manuscript form. Though I know the book has been passed through the hands of editors and back into Jeff's for revision, the impression left on me even in nascent form is sufficient to know that this is a great book. I look forward to reading it and spending more time in the beautiful and harrowing vision Jeff has created.

The Devil is a Dinosaur

Jack Kirby is widely recognised as the "King of Comics" and rightfully so. For pure imaginative power and bold design, he is unequalled, and his fingerprints can be seen on nearly every major character created by Marvel Comics in the sixties and seventies. He created the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk in 1963 (Stan Lee wrote the books and Kirby illustrated them),
characters that have become household words around the world. Looking at Kirby's long career spanning several decades, you can see the many phases that he went through as an artist. The seventies decade saw what is arguably his biggest and most creative phase, certainly his boldest. Even so, some of his creations have not aged quite as well as Mister Fantastic and the Human Torch.

In 1978 Jack Kirby introduced a slew of titles at Marvel Comics, notable among them... DEVIL DINOSAUR! At first flush a book that looks silly and seems to be the particularly harsh consequences of experimenting with horse tranquilisers, further study reveals a sublime pleasure. "In an age when GIANTS walked the world -HE was the mightiest of them all!" This tagline contains within it one the most immediate pleasures, to imagine that the age of dinosaurs was not only brutal and bloody but that it also had its own version of what amounts to a superheroic lizard. Things only get better from there.

Inside the third issue of the series, Devil Dinosaur is being scolded by his humanoid companion, the loquacious Moon Boy. "How can one find sleep when the valley resounds with fearful screams?!" Moon Boy sends Devil Dinosaur to find the source of the racket. Take a moment to think about that: Devil Dinosaur, the mightiest dinosaur of them all (and you know that is mighty indeed), takes orders from a little hairy creature called Moon Boy, when he can tear up pterodactyls like they were made of paper? Not only takes orders but lets the runt ride on his back like he was a horse? My friend, this is the stuff of legend! Let the song in our hearts be heard!

The series, woefully cancelled after only nine issues, is basically one battle after another, as Devil Dinosaur takes on progressively stronger and more fearsome monsters. In essence, he is revealed to be Godzilla's red-hided stepchild -but with the crucial distinction of having his very own Moon Boy telling him what to do.

Nevertheless, Jack Kirby shows us why he is the king, even with this title which admittedly pales by comparison with most of his other creations. Only a royally descended artist could have brought us Devil Dinosaur.

Free Hugs

You could do worse than read these

The best comics to hit the rack in recent years have their biscuits and eat them too, simultaneously sending up familiar spandex tropes while telling fine and hilarious yarns. An indirect pathos is also experienced, especially in the case of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All Star Superman. But mostly they are hilarious.

Marvel Zombies cashes in on the recent zombie frenzy and renders some of our favorite heroes into flesheating monsters. While I was initially reluctant to read this mini-series, it hooked me almost as soon as I opened the first issue. Peter Parker's lament about eating Aunt May and Mary Jane alone is worth the cover price -and the series only gets funnier from there. It appeals mainly to comic geeks who know these characters and Marvel Comics history, but I think there are probably pleasures for the uninitiated too.
Pathos rating: 9 (out of 10)
There is great satirical value to be had from characters that have been around so long and are so burdened by decades of continuity that the most interesting thing they can do now is eat each other. It's tragic because it's true and stirs tears from those of us who adored these guys when we were tots -mostly tears of laughter, though.

All Star Superman is the closest thing to mythmaking you will see in comics today. Grant Morrison and his brilliantly gifted illustrator Frank Quitely (both live in Glasgow, Scotland) have condensed everything that is grand and epic about the Superman icon. The result is an inspired amalgamation of highlights from Big Blue's long and historic career (he is the first four-color superhero after all). For anybody interested in pure powerhouse storytelling in sequential art: seek no further than this book.
Pathos rating: 3
Since this series depends so much on reconstituting what has gone before, it is not too pathetic. It is so glorious and unfettered that one can truly appreciate the lasting vitality of the Superman mythos here by seeing it remixed and remastered. One notable encounter we've never seen before is when Supes has to vie for the hand of Lois Lane after gifting her with superpowers for a day. As soon as a woman of her stature (however temporary) is available, heroes from other epochs show up to woo her away. Seeing Samson and Atlas enter into contests of strength with Superman is uniquely entertaining and very clever to boot!

Finally we come to Nextwave, the greatest comic book of all time. The prolific and witty Warren Ellis writes and Stuart Immonen renders in a panacea of illustrative styles this comic book to end all comic books. Truly, this is the apocalypse of sequential art -and I could not more wholeheartedly embrace it. This ragtag bunch of "Agents of H.A.T.E." are taken from one insane battle to another, all the while parodying and transforming the entire concept of superheroes. Nothing will ever be the same after Nextwave, and rightly so. If all comics made me laugh this hard, I would have perished before puberty.
Pathos rating: 10
Everything that is absurd in comic books is thrust rudely into the spotlight here, making it the most pathetic display of spandex and hyperbole imaginable by man and dog. What makes the motor hum in this book is also what underscores its tragedy: superheroes only really work anymore if you make fun of them. And when fun is poked with such vim and whimsy as this, it makes you almost glad that the age of capes and cowls has come to an end.

Where have all the heroes gone?

The seventies era was the beginning of the end for popular sequential art, ushering in a revitalised sense of page layout and story design that had its roots in the sixties and would see its final decline in the mid-eighties with such classics as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. Comic book illustrators and writers like Jim Starlin, Steve Englehart and Steve Gerber brought ingenuity and vitality to seventies comic books that would spark a later revolution in independent publishers and cultivate some of the finest examples of the form. Yet rather than creating a sustainable model, the work done by imaginative and greatly talented artists would give way from mythic storytelling to commercial interest and bankrupt editorial meddling.

Marvel Comics Group produced groundbreaking titles in the seventies, like Jim Starlin's Warlock featuring a man struggling to find a nonviolent path to save his soul, and Steve Gerber's Howard the Duck with its eponymous hero navigating the joys and pratfalls of modern living. Steve Englehart's run on Captain America is probably the heaviest hitting of the three, translating the Nixon years into comic book form; the "star-spangled" hero confronts dark truths about his nation's political heart and has to decide what the American Dream truly is. These pioneers laid the groundwork for later serious books created by other artists in the eighties: Baron and Rude's Nexus, for example, in which the question of justice is thoroughly explored, or Dave Sim's Cerebus, an evolving experiment of the boundaries of comic book storytelling. Then along came Frank Miller and Alan Moore.

This pair of deeply gifted artists transformed the comic book landscape in ways that have been duly noted by aficionados and scholars. Moore's Watchmen is an epitaph for superheroes, at the same time utilising literary techniques to explore human nature. Miller displays similar literary virtuosity in The Dark Knight Returns but wraps it in pulp mannerisms and vigilante justice. Taken on their own these seem natural and even necessary progressions of sequential art, developed out of the hard pioneering work of their predecessors. Yet one has only to look at where comic books have gone from there to see that the form has degenerated and now is a pale reflection of what was.

What you see in the seventies and early eighties is evolution; what follows is regression of the form and a softening of what defines it, to the extent that comic books now resemble tv shows and movies and video games. (The style of comic book storytelling is also true in the inverse, as we can see in the huge popularity of Spider Man at the box office and shows like Heroes on tv.)
What's changed? In short, comics are no longer about mythic storytelling.

The grounding Moore and Miller used for their opuses was an old innovation: give spandex wearers real hangups and conflicts. Stan Lee introduced this style in the early sixties with his coterie of illustrators at Marvel, the "House of Ideas" as was, yet never strayed from putting characters into situations way beyond the pale of human experience. Like protosuperheroes from antiquity Gilgamesh, Beowulf, Samson and Odysseus, the House of Ideas gave us Spider Man and the Fantastic Four, humans with special gifts faced with epic challenges. These challenges developed beyond simple struggles of good versus evil, setting the stage for the more significant questions of the seventies stripe of hero. Yet even as Warlock and Howard the Duck strain against boundaries that we mere mortals can relate to, still they are part of narratives culled from a dizzy, cosmic scope, a factor unique to comics and woefully absent as of late.

The kind of obstacles seen in comic books today run the gamut of dealing with pregnancy, teenagers on the run or, as in the case of Spidey, which close relation is going to be killed next. The potential for these obstacles to be part and parcel of more epic narrative is still there and intrinsic to the form, but it gives way for issue after issue of protracted discussion and emotional handwringing, highlighted by the occasional fisticuff with a villain who also happens to be burdened by mundane concerns: spandex wearers are so much like real people now that the grandeur is lost and they no longer possess the ur-capabilities of true mythical figures. The root of this development can be traced back to Miller and Moore.

I am not assigning blame to either of these men. I'm not part of the camp that takes Steven Spielberg to task for creating the first summer blockbuster (Jaws) and therefore enabled the profusion of superficial "tentpoles" that make up the bulk of Hollywood fare, and neither am I attempting to say Moore and Miller are responsible for the loss of mythmaking in comic books. What is closer to the truth is that reader expectations have changed and the dizzy pioneering of superheroes is more liable to simply give them nausea. Meanwhile the few books that do aspire to those old heights come off derivative and uninspired.

Meddling by increasingly influential stables of editors is also a big part of what has changed. Comic books now are more driven by top-down decision making, in which the home office tells creators what to do with licensed characters rather than creating an atmosphere in which bold ideas can take off and find expression. You can see a little of this in Grant Morrison's breathtaking and prolific output at DC Comics, but even then the fingerprints of editors are all over the pages stealing his thunder. Consequently the best comics to be found today are not about a staple diet of superheroes, rather you will find formal experimentation and reconstuction of old conceits leading the way. Morrison's graphic novel The Filth is a fine example of a new direction for comics, yet it is with a little sadness because a significant appeal to the book is its deconstruction of the spandex myth. Comic books, it seems, are no longer fertile ground for mythical narrative.

RollerBlog

My friend Katy has become obsessed with all things 70's and recently started a blog to honor this new phase. As I am also a fan of the "brown era", I can only heartily recommend you check it out. There's a convenient link just to the right of your screen!

Is this you? Is it me?

Now you can make your own Simpsons avatar at: simpsonsmovie.com. It's fun!

willitblend.com

Mother of All Rubber Duckies

First Life

Eve Online is "not a computer game. It is an emerging nation, and we have to address it like a nation." This comes from the chief exec of the Icelandic company, CCP. It looks like nation, too, with a population scratching 200,000. Within these diverse groupings of characters, alliances are forged, each vying for control of the game.

The "game" in this instance has digital real estate, not unlike Second Life. What separates Eve, though, is the mode in which you gain real estate. Rather than float blithely through safe zones, such as SL offers, in Eve, while it does have neutral territories, is primarily made up of 0.0 space -which means zero security or policing. Alliances control systems and battle each other to expand them.

A far cry from Pac Man, yes?

Recently CCP, owners of Eve Online, has been accused of corruption. Some alliances are convinced that CCP rigged the game to favor Band of Brothers, one of the most influential groups in the game. A rival faction, Goonswarm, has even gone so far as to say that the Band of Brothers are engaged in espionage and theft of game secrets. Because of these accusations, it turns out that a majority of players do not trust CCP to run a fair game.

In response CCP plans to hold elections this fall: nine player-overseers will act as ombudsmen for the game's subscribers.

"I envision this council being made up of nine members," says the chief exec, "selected by the players themselves, where you announce your candidacy, and if you win the election, they come here to Iceland, and they can look at every nook and cranny and get to see that we are here to run this company on a professional basis.

"They can see that we did not make this game to win it."

Generation Now Redux

You've probably already heard about this: dotcoms for the wee ones. Kids are getting into some online fun with sites like Club Penguin, where your avatar is a self-designed... you guessed it, a self-designed penguin. Who amongst us has not wondered what it would be like to be a penguin? Certainly I cannot count myself exempt from this group, and so many were the nights when I as a child lay awake on my pillow dreaming of life as a penguin, it's a wonder I slept at all. And hey, the frosting on this cake of nostalgia is that my sense of lost childhood is compounded by the fact that it is now more obvious than ever that I was born too soon.

Other sites let "small people" (as children are sometimes considered, in lieu of simply calling them "pint size consumeroids") they set it up so you can collect and dress media celebrities like they were dolls. Webkinz.com and Stardoll "your paperdoll heaven" are places where you can finally achieve your dream of creating Hillary Duff's wardrobe. Not only this, you can wrap her up in the smartest garb and take her out for a night on the town at HollywoodNightsnDelights.com.

Being a kid was never so much fun!

Remembering Tiananmen Square

This week is the eighteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, where Chinese soldiers indiscriminately slaughtered students protesting for democratic rights. Eighteen years since that horrible event. I was in college when it happened, and when news reached us here, it had a profound impact on my life. I would go so far as to say that it was the spark that set off my social consciousness. Previously, I was content doing and living by a narrow set of strictures, rules handed down by my mom and aunt, boundaries that, until that point, I had been happy to ignore or rail against. Something about Tiananmen broke open my shell and I began to take notice of a larger world beyond the borders of my ego. Eighteen years since then... I wonder how much has really changed, cynically, perhaps, but certainly with an eye that horrors like Tiananmen continue to be enacted daily, in Gaza, Darfur, Grozny, Baghdad... the list goes on. But what power there is in the image of the single student stopping with his body the advance of four tanks, cannons aimed forward and at the ready, his annihilation seemingly at hand yet doing nothing to shake him from the spot: it is as inspirational today as it was the day we first saw it.

Arrest all Smart Alecks

To follow up on yesterday's bit about cellphones being seized at New York school's, there was an incident I came across during further reading: In October of last year, a large contingent of NYPD arrived unannounced at Wadleigh High School for the Performing Arts, in Harlem, to set up a metal detector and herd students through it, ostensibly to search for weapons. One student, vp of the school government association, nervous that his cellphone would be taken away, called his mother and waited outside the school for her to arrive. When officers approached him and wondered what he was doing, the student explained that he was waiting for his mom. Their response was to call him a "smart aleck", seize his phone, handcuff him and book him into the local stationhouse, where he was detained for several hours in a jailcell.
Where's John McClane when we really need him?!?!

Electronic Contraband

That's what cellphones are called now: electronic contraband. At least according Middle School 54 on the Upper West Side of New York City. Check it out, we're accustomed to having metal detectors at schools now, sure, but probably nobody ever gave much thought that they would be used to confiscate cellphones.
Yet this is exactly what police -yes, NYPD was there in person- did at Middle School 54 this week. "People were crying," says one eighth grader.
I'm being serious.
Any child caught with a cellphone on their person after passing through the metal detector was detained and had their contraband taken away. A tearful scene, evidently.
The Education Department first banned "communication devices" in 1988. In those days such devices were beepers, the cellphone revolution still several years off. More recently, New York's mayor took action to prohibit cellphones specifically in the area's schools -forbidden items also include headphones, batteries, and can openers.
From the sounds of it, the kids were traumatised by this week's event. "I feel naked," another eighth grader reported. "I feel like I lost something very important to me."
Parents are up in arms. Oftimes, it appears, the phones are not owned by the student but by their parent. One outraged mother says that she is getting her lawyer and "filing a criminal complaint that they stole my phone."
In all, four hundred cellphones were taken, plus sixty nine ipods, two knives and one imitation gun (always a good thing to have in eighth grade). They will be returned to parents (and parents only) no earlier than next week. Which means mobs of preteens roaming the city streets without cellphones.
Could be trouble.

Zombie Halitosis

"We laugh because it's true." Whenever I hear this old saw, I want to quote Pilate and say, "What's truth?" (Preferably in a jersey accent, Marvin Dorfler-style, like, "What is this stuff, the 'truth', anyway? Somebody want to fill me in?")

That's a big question. What is truth? Is it an idea? Does it exist in some objective, transcendent form? Is it bad for your teeth? Perish forbid anyone would ever need a truth canal.

Which makes me think about zombies, this whole truth question. Bear with me a second.

George A Romero is obsessed with zombies. Look at his films. The flesheating ghoulhordes infest his stories. They are predators on the heroines and heroes, literally, when they catch them, consuming their flesh.

There's some truth to that kind of relationship. You don't exactly date someone if their whole aim is to chew off the muscle from your shoulder. You know where this kind of person is coming from; they just want to kill you and eat you. Okay.

So, why are these stories so entertaining? Isn't it interesting that the whole zombiemonster genre is so resurgent these days, that it doesn't seem like anything is entertaining anymore unless a zombie shows up?

Maybe we laugh because it's true; maybe we are entertained because there's something valid there.

Maybe, maybe not.

If there is some truth to zombies, what kind of truth is it? Does it mean that we believe zombies are trying to eat our flesh? Or, on the other hand, does it mean that we believe humanity has no real, natural predator?

Zombies are a pure, predatory mob: they exist to literally consume humanity while a living, conscious person is still running around. (Makes you wonder what they'll do when they run out of people.)

Yet we all know there's no such thing as zombies. That's the truth of the matter, the national consensus, right? (Granted, in Haiti, Africa and South America, the zuvembie is a major player in folklore.)

I wonder. If we think there is no predator out there, what kind of position does that put the human in? It does give us more time to think, and what we think about is some kind of search for truth, in some form or other, sublimated, obsessional, sociopathic, what have you, and what do we think about? How can I find better entertainment. What more do we want, when there's no hunter, no hunted, other than to be entertained?

Cosmic Halitosis

I'm a sucker for science-fiction, in all its myriad expressions, not least of all when it tackles spiritual themes: I think the genre is specially outfitted to be the ideal sounding board for spiritual inquiry. Take as exemplar Robert A Heinlein's famous Mohammed-as-Martian novel, Stranger in a Strange Land.

In this terrific story, he proposes not so much the second coming of Christ as the arrival of another in a series of holy prophets; Valentine Michael Smith, first human born on what we call the planet Mars, is the latest "Mohammedan" to visit our planet, which is to say that, like the prophet Mohammed, this is not the manifestation of the son of God, as Christ was, but rather one of the sons of God, a line of (apparently) masculine prophets with news for the world.

You should read the book. Heinlein very seriously takes on human belief in its most profound dimensions, and delivers a very sober appraisal. His satire is fiendishly subtle, as if the author wishes to provoke the less-openminded of his readers into an intellectual wrestling match, one at which they will invariably find themselves outflanked and outmanuevered. So be it, this is the privilege of the artist: he is presenting his view. Personally, I find it an important one.

Valentine Michael Smith, over the course of the novel, reaches a key understanding of our race. In doing so, he grasps a conclusion that I found to be intensely Christian. He is talking to his dearest friend and "water brother", Jubal Harshaw, about the optimism with which he embarked his project of a new church. Having believed that eventually all humans would come around to his side, Smith reaches this conclusion: "Humans aren't Martians."

He continues, "I made this mistake again and again -corrected myself... and still made it. What works for Martians does not necessarily work for humans. Oh, the conceptual logic which can be stated only in Martian does work for both races. The logic is invariant..." (here, Smith is talking about love) "but the data are different. So the results are different.

"I couldn't see why, when people were hungry, some of them didn't volunteer to be butchered so the rest could eat... on Mars this is obvious -and an honor. I couldn't understand why babies were so prized. On Mars our two little girls would be dumped outdoors, to live or die -and nine out of ten die their first season. My logic was right but I misread the data: here babies do not compete but adults do; on Mars adults never compete, they've been weeded out as babies. But one way or another, competing and weeding takes place... or a race goes downhill."

Smith reaches his key understanding of humanity: "But whether or not I was wrong in trying to take the competition out at both ends, I have lately begun to grok that the human race won't let me, no matter what."

What he "groks" -a Martian term undefinable in human terms, but roughly meaning to shed philosophical inhibition- is a rare insight, one that Heinlein achieves at the end of great striving through the mysteries of our race. Valentine Michael Smith realises that humanity doesn't want to be saved; the human race wishes to go on being human, not to live against its own instincts. What's crucial, though, is that Smith doesn't then proceed to give up all hope. No, instead he flies into the face of this brutal insight, and strives, as he feels all people should, against morbid reality.

At the end, his friend gives him good advice: "If you've got the truth, you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it. Show people."

At the end he unmistakably fulfills the prophet role, though more in the vein, I would argue, of Christ than of Mohammed -of Buddha, Blavatsky, Crowley or whomever: Smith believes, in the end, that there is a state of grace all around us that must be recognised. His fateful choice to put his life in the hands of that grace is a distinctly beautiful one, one that goes contrary to our socialised tendencies yet arrives from the core of being.

Trilogy Triumph

Face it, we live in an age of film trilogies. As sequels become more profitable, the chance of seeing tri-sectioned movie arcs increases. This summer is the true barometer, given that we have four trilogies coming to a head; starting with Spider Man, we are soon to see the third iterations of Shrek, Bourne and Pirates of the Caribbean. Audiences know and adore the characters in these films so much that they increase exponentially with each outing. So, there must be something super appealing about trilogies, right?

Kevin Smith, in his sequel to Clerks, argues that there is only one trilogy, the Star Wars trilogy; all others, we gather, can kiss his kiester. Which begs the question: what other trilogies are there? Let's see, we have Lord of the Rings, Spider Man, The Godfather, The Matrix, Shrek... any others? For argument's sake, we'll leave out Kieslowski's Three Colours, since it so far above and beyond anything else that it is de facto greatest of them all. Out of the trilogies listed, which one succeeds in being the one that stands above the rest?

I believe Sam Raimi, with his Spidey movies, has created the best.

If you're still reading, let's look at the points of variance first (to be followed by points of congruence):

Unlike Return of the Jedi, Matrix Revolutions or Godfather 3, Spider Man 3 doesn't totally suck air through the open wound of its own epic inadequacies;

Unlike Return of the King, Raimi has not betrayed his source material and bent the film into a shape that only somewhat resembles its origins.

(Since I have seen neither Shrek the Third, Bourne Ultimatum or At World's End, I cannot say how Spidey departs from these three, other than to speculate that it is probably a more mature work than Shrek, less needlessly violent than Bourne, and less bloated and exhausting than Pirates.)

As for points of congruence, we can safely say that, like Star Wars, the shining moment of the Spidey trilogy is the second film, and;

like Return of the King, Shrek, Bourne and Caribbean, character and dramatic tones are beautifully consistent, creating the sense the all three movies flow together seamlessly.

Okay, so what makes Spidey the best? I would argue that it's all in how it ends. (Beware! If you haven't seen it yet, I'm about to spoil a plot point at the end of Spider Man 3.)

First, let's look at how the other trilogies end:

In Return of the Jedi, Luke has taken up his father's mantle as a jedi. Unfortunately, as we see in the first three episodes, this victory is spoiled by the fact that Anakin doesn't turn out to have been such a great jedi after all, and the jedi order is so incompetent that maybe the universe is a better place without it: Luke's ascendance is pyrhhic at best;

In Matrix Revolutions, we learn that Neo will probably return in the future. Sadly, this goes contrary to the stated goal of the trilogy, which is to upend all our conceptions of a messiah. Whoops, turns out Neo exactly fulfills our conceptions of a messiah! Profound failure on the part of the Wachowski's;

In Return of the King, the great threat to Middle Earth turns out to be a big eye that can't stop itself from falling down! Peter Jackson renders Sauron into such a silly and anti-climactic villain, I found myself giggling when I should have been cheering. If only he had stuck with Eomer's grandslam takedown of the Witch King; now, that was climactic. Also, Tolkien explicitly painted Frodo's decision at Mount Doom as a hero's failure; Jackson manages to undermine this essential part of the story as well, turning the final moment between Frodo and Gollum into a wrestling match;

Godfather 3 fails on so many levels, I won't insult one of our finest directors by trotting out his greatest failure. Suffice to say, the third part sucks in every conceivable way.

How do Bourne, Shrek and Pirates end? We will see, and perhaps I will eat my words, but I don't think so. Because the end of Spidey gives us a totally unexpected resolution.

What stands out for me as being so great about the end of Spidey is the fact that he forgives the villain, the man, in fact, who murdered his uncle. This kind of maturity (brought by Raimi, incidentally, rather than taken from the source material) is so absent from popular entertainment, the decision to go this way is nothing short of subversive. It is also truly heroic.

Out of all the trilogies, I found Peter Parker's decision totally satisfying. It comes at such great cost, too, part of what makes it so consistent with the series. At the end of the first movie, he rejects Mary Jane because of his responsibility to the greater good; here, again, he sacrifices his own deep desire for vengeance for the sake of greater good. This decision, having been reached at the end of a long night of the soul, may ultimately undo his romance with the girl of his dreams. When they are dancing together at the end of the film, there is a sense of tragedy; we do not know if MJ can take the same step and forgive Peter for the grievous wrongs he has committed against her (culminating when he physically strikes her down out of pique). What's more, we don't know if they are really meant to be together. When MJ is coerced into breaking up with Peter, her supposedly concocted reasons are actually quite valid, and I found myself wishing that they wouldn't get back together, for the sake of their separate happiness.

Nevertheless, Peter Parker is a hero at the end, because of his sacrifice. Perhaps for no better reason than that -the outstanding uniqueness of Sam Raimi's vision- I believe Spidey's is the best trilogy.

Bring Back the Bees!

Major news: bees are vanishing, by the billions! Known as "colony collapse disorder", hordes of hymenopteroids are going out to pollinate but losing their way home, becoming disoriented by some unknown cause and dying away from the hive. If the trend continues, the impact on our food supply could be catastrophic.
Check out this report:
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/ver/225/popup/index.php?cl=2408020

Come Unity

Seeking community... I'm feeling tired: the search for a new group of Christ's followers is wearing me out! Maybe I should have stuck with the last group, the body of believers at Green Lake Presbyterian. Some good people there, some good friends. Oh, but my ex is there, too. There's that little detail. My departure from Green Lake has everything to do with her; at the same time, it has nothing to do with her. Let me explain.

First of all, I was a newcomer to GL when we started dating. By the time we broke up a year later, I had made some moves and was poised to become a member. A handful of people said they "understood" why I would stay away, given the end of the relationship. There was no question that she would continue going, since, after all, the church was headed at one time by her cousin: Green Lake is family for her. I, on the other hand, feel that I was treated like a step-child. Those who said they understood whatever my decision would be, they had gained this insight without asking me a single question. What kind of understanding was this? It seemed superficial at best, and once stated, the subject never came up again.

I've been strangely quiet on the topic. The breakup took place over a year ago, but just now do I feel as I'm coming to grips. Lacking my own understanding of what I was experiencing, how could anyone else claim it? That kind of superficial engagement I can understand from friends: it's no big fat hairy deal. But from a community of brothers and sisters? Perhaps it is too insubstantial for real accountability, and now more than ever I recognise that I'm looking for accountability in whatever body of believers I join.

Recently I've been reading Alexander Schmemann's great book about orthodoxy, For The Life of The World, and in it is a great passage about church, one that sums up my expectation for the worship experience:

The Church takes us, as it were, to that first evening on which man, called by God to life, opened his eyes and saw what God in His love was giving to him, saw all the beauty, all the glory of the temple in which he was standing, and rendered thanks to God. And in this thanksgiving he became himself.

I think the body of believers I seek are those who are seeking to become themselves, in the light of understanding what grace has done for us, how grace is the very outline of our true being. Tall order.

Everything and Nothing

"Mistakes were made," is what we're hearing from the Attorney General lately, in connection with the purge of seven officials whose loyalty to the Administration was in question; with the "Bushies" it's either purge or surge. This is not the first time mistakes were made, nor is it likely to be the last. All the more reason to consider this curious phrase. It is neither admission nor an apology. Heard in the past from Bill Clinton, Tom DeLay and Donald Rumsfeld, this nonconfession is suggestive of inefficiency and needless exposure, as if it is meant to say not so much that similar actions will not occur in the future, rather parties will try harder at not getting caught so baldly next time. A DC political guru, William Schneider, asserts that politicians have contributed a new tense to the English language. "This usage," he says, "should be referred to as the past exonerative." Recent events in Israel recall this phrase, too, if elliptically.

Israel's ambassador to Germany last week condemned statements made by Roman Catholic bishops. During a visit to the Ramallah ghetto in Palestine, these German bishops commented on the appalling state of living there; Gregor Maria Hanke and Walter Mixa said some blunt things. Bishop Hanke is quoted as saying, "We see the photos of the inhuman Warsaw ghetto, and in the evening we travel to the ghetto in Ramallah; that makes you angry." Mixa went further, describing the conditions in Ramallah as "almost racism."

I don't see an explicit connection between Warsaw and Ramallah. The former was a staging area, in essence, for people on their way to extermination, whereas the latter is a miserable place from which, to its residents, escape must seem impossible. Nevertheless, a place not being Warsaw does not exempt it from criticism. Shimon Stein sees it differently. The ambassador rebutted the bishops: "If one uses terms like Warsaw ghetto or racism in connection with Israeli or Palestinian politics, then one has forgotten everything or learned nothing."

(The ambassador, in his repudiation, fails to mention what Cardinal Joachim Meisner -another member of the visiting delegation- said in response to seeing the West Bank separation barrier, when he compared it to the Berlin Wall: "I never thought I would have to see something like this ever again in my life.")

The suggestion of taking responsibility for deplorable living conditions within your own borders is provocative, true, but perhaps the ambassador protests too much, for to forget everything and learn nothing is dangerous. If the bishops were to outright call the West Bank a clearinghouse for wholesale slaughter, similar to what the Nazis did in Poland, that would be mischaracterising the situation. Yet can Israel deny that it has built a security fence around the Occupied Territories? Such an egregious action does recall the barrier that penned Jews in Warsaw and brings about similar degradation, loss of hope and disenfranchisement of the youth -as well as spurring a violent resistance. Ambassador Stein misses the emphasis made by the bishops, which is not to say the situations are the same but that the lack of outrage, that a population should exist in such reprehense, is a produce of national neglect. They elucidate Israel's right to sovereignty and call upon it to behave better than Poland did. The bishops have done the opposite of what their critic suggests. They remember and learn: can Israel do the same?

Even were the ambassador to say something along the lines of a past exonerative statement, "Mistakes were made," as neutral as that would be, at least it would acknowledge Israels place in history.

You Too Can be an Armchair Microfinancier

This is not a phishing expedition, I promise. The problem of poverty is one that crosses all borders and nationalities, and I found a great, frugal solution for lending help. Even with a salary as small as mine, this is a site that creates the opportunity to help out with people that live in far worse conditions than I do in scenic, quiet, peaceful Seattle.

Basically you can become a microfinancier. Check out to find out what exactly that entails -but I can tell you it doesn't take much more than a little bit of money and a Paypal account.

If you have access to nytimes.com, you can also read Nicholas Kristof's editorial about Kiva in today's edition. That's how I heard about the service in the first place.

It's All in the Signs

My friend Tim sent me this cool link, at which I composed the above image: http://www.warningsigngenerator.com/

Open up!

Production sharing agreements are what the oil industry wants to see more of in the Middle East, particularly a little place called Iraq, and they are getting help from our executive branch. The Bush Administration is pushing for these agreements, aggressively pursuing laws in the new Iraqi Parliament that will open things up over there. Whereas countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran have long experience deflecting Big Oil from their reserves, the fledgling government in Baghdad is vulnerable.

Sharing agreements are about just that -sharing. They can exact long contracts up to thirty five years and allow foreign companies to enjoy direct interest in oil production. ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and BP are the world's largest and most powerful financial empires: they want something called the Iraq Hydrocarbon Law to be signed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; he and his parliament, such as it is, have proven resistant thus far, but the recurring chaos at the capital continues to wear down resistance and has proven to be a lever with which the foreign companies can exert their influence. Having the US military on their side doesn't hurt either.

The Iraq Hydrocarbon Law (have to love the euphemistic name, when they could have just called it "Gimme All Your Black Gold"), if passed, will hand over exclusive control of Iraq's oil fields directly to foreign interests. It will allow a major portion of revenues to go out of Iraq. Back in March of 2001, that so very innocent time when the worst we had to worry about was a stolen election, Vice President Cheney convened his national energy development group, the infamous Energy Task Force whose members included "Kenny Boy" Lay from Enron. At the end of their august deliberations, they gave out the recommendation that the US should support initiatives by Middle East countries "to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment." That was six years ago. Today the minutes from those meetings are still classified. What's more, the CEO of Halliburton, the company VP Cheney used to head before going to the White House, is moving operations to Iraq's neighbor, Dubai; to be closer to the action, one can only suppose.

VP Cheney just the other day said that Congress is "undermining" our troops by refusing to support the President's one hundred billion dollar "surge". What exactly are we sending 21,500 more troops to protect?

A Great Composer Honored

The greatest living composer in our time is Arvo Part. Last year he turned 70 and appears to be as vital as ever. His studies in silence and iteration have been a source of revelation to me, his choral works a joyful wellspring; a couple weeks ago I was staying with my friends the Dalrymples in Campbell, CA and they had on their shelf Part's Passion, and in listening to it I experienced such a spiritual outgrowth of feeling that I was moved to tears. Arvo Part is able to bring resonance to life that is all at once natural and electric: like voltage grounding itself through the medium of my ear, when I listen to his works I am a conduit for his tremendous creations of sound.I mention Arvo Part now because he has been awarded the $105,938 Sonning Music Prize, Denmarks' foremost music award. The prize will be given at a May 22nd concert in Copenhagen, at which Part will reveal a new work. I wish I could be there!

http://www.arvopart.info/

The Jesus Bone Box

This coming Sunday the Discovery Channel is airing a documentary about a discovery certain to set the air on fire. Archaeologists say they have found the burial ossuary for Jesus of Nazareth. They have his bones, they say. Such a find does not jive with Christian doctrine all across the spectrum, from fundamentalists to Unitarians; though divided denominationally, these arms of christianity share common cause when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus. The gospels of Christ tell us that he rose from death the third day after he was executed. If his bones have been found, the wake of such an announcement is sure to raise the ire of Christ's followers everywhere.

From Discovery Channel's website:

On March 28, 1980, a construction crew developing an apartment complex in Talpiot, Jerusalem, uncovered a tomb, which archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority excavated shortly thereafter. Archaeologist Shimon Gibson surveyed the site and drew a layout plan. Scholar L.Y. Rahmani later published "A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries" that described 10 ossuaries, or limestone bone boxes, found in the tomb.

Scholars know that from 30 B.C. to 70 A.D., many people in Jerusalem would first wrap bodies in shrouds after death. The bodies were then placed in carved rock tombs, where they decomposed for a year before the bones were placed in an ossuary.

Five of the 10 discovered boxes in the Talpiot tomb were inscribed with names believed to be associated with key figures in the New Testament: Jesus, Mary, Matthew, Joseph and Mary Magdalene. A sixth inscription, written in Aramaic, translates to "Judah Son of Jesus."

Frank Moore Cross, a professor emeritus in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, told Discovery News, "The inscriptions are from the Herodian Period (which occurred from around 1 B.C. to 1 A.D.). The use of limestone ossuaries and the varied script styles are characteristic of that time."

Intriguing, perhaps. The translation of the inscriptions has not yet been stood up for academic review, thus making its claims spurious at best, maybe even expedient -how convenient to find the bones of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and their son so soon after the raging success of Dan Brown's book, The DaVinci Code, in which the author fantasises that the Catholic church has conspired for hundreds of years to hide the fact of Jesus's matrimony and progeny. Ron Howard perpetuated this fantasy with his film, and now James Cameron is jumping aboard with his provocative documentary.

To my untrained eye (I'm one ignorant cuss, believe me), the proof that the bones truly belong to Jesus and crew seems rooted in circumstance and proximity, two factors that here I believe are collaborating to enable fuzzy logic. Again from Discovery:

In addition to the "Judah son of Jesus" inscription, which is written in Aramaic on one of the ossuaries, another limestone burial box is labeled in Aramaic with "Jesus Son of Joseph." Another bears the Hebrew inscription "Maria," a Latin version of "Miriam," or, in English, "Mary." Yet another ossuary inscription, written in Hebrew, reads "Matia," the original Hebrew word for "Matthew." Only one of the inscriptions is written in Greek. It reads, "Mariamene e Mara," which can be translated as, "Mary known as the master."

Francois Bovon, professor of the history of religion at Harvard University, told Discovery News, "Mariamene, or Mariamne, probably was the actual name given to Mary Magdalene."

Bovon explained that he and a colleague discovered a fourteenth century copy in Greek of a fourth century text that contains the most complete version of the "Acts of Philip" ever found. Although not included in the Bible, the "Acts of Philip" mentions the apostles and Mariamne, sister of the apostle Philip.

The claim by Bovon that Mariamne is the same person as Mary Magdalene flies in the face of careful process. A document written four hundred years after the life of Jesus is his sole support, and in it she is not connected to Jesus but to one of his disciples. However, the document comes from outside canon; the "Acts of Philip" is considered by scholars to be a fabrication. Some quick investigation reveals another poignant fact. The "Acts of Philip" document was discovered at a Greek monastery by none other than Francois Bovon himself!

What's more, his translation of Mariamne's name does not substantially connect her with Jesus. The woman from the "Acts of Philip" is the powerful leader of a sect of "Miriamnists", but nowhere in the text does it suggest that she is married to Jesus. Bovon takes the base assumption that Magdalene was the wife of Jesus, then builds on that to say she is the sister of Philip, and from there is able to "prove" that he has found her bones and therefore the bones of Jesus. Such whimsy as this is bound to get him into trouble somewhere along the line.

I'd imagine that when the documentary airs, the mediascape will become a conflagration of intolerable heat, as the public relations of each respective church denomination declares its own take on the discovery. These views will be splintered and combative, and will likely serve to be divisive rather than being a point of coming together in faith.

I know that sounds pessimistic. What I am pessimistic about is the public relations scandal that will arise from this. If past pokes at Christianity have given us any indication, we can expect religious leaders to once more jump up and rant and rave, in service to nothing other than the argument itself, a lot of sound and fury. To me this seems entirely beside the point. What is really at stake is not an increased share of the popular culture, though it will seem that way; the true stakes are in faith and representing true belief in a manner that does not belittle it or make faith seem like the "cool" thing to do.

By this same token, I also expect a lot of good discussion among friends and relations. There are so many folks that will be emboldened not to default to their base instincts but instead to rational discourse. There will be as much color and brilliance to these discussions, I'm sure, as anything you hear on NPR or Limbaugh.

Are you a 23rdian?

I once counted myself among the 23rdians, that group of skeptical, inquisitive, literate and credulous readers of mystic significance in the mathematical logic of the physical universe. In short, a few years ago I found the number 23 ubiquitously sequestered in the very fabric of things, stalking me, as it were, like a secret god.

I first encountered the cunning wile of 23 in Robert Anton Wilson's Discordian tract, the Illuminatus! trilogy, wherein he quoted Bishop Unger ascribing the birthday of the universe as being on October 23rd; the patent ridiculousness of the Big Bang being fixed to a Gregorian date should have shown me right away that any further pursuit of the subject would beguile at best some precious hours of thought, and at worst would chain me to a silly philosophy. Being just paranoid enough to taste a hint of sugar in the number -if the universe manifested on the 23rd, it must be of profound significance, right?- I took a candystore approach in my further inquiries and began a long period of confection obsession. Finally, a couple years later, after discovering that if you look hard enough for anything you can find it (or believe you have found it), I ate my last sugar scrap, on the very date of October 23rd, in fact.

October 23rd, 1996: picture a stunning autumn afternoon in the old town square of that jewel in the crown of Bohemia, the ancient, yellow-walled town of Prague. I stood there in the shadow of Jan Hus, a local saint and symbol of the Velvet Revolution four years earlier, in which the poet Vaclav Havel led a non-violent overthrow of communist forces. Already ensconced in a flat for ten days in the northern part of the city, I was at stare namesti (in Czech, literally, "old town") to meet a friend and continue on with her to Budapest; it was a magical time in life, perfectly mirrored in the fall splendor of fractal trees shedding their leaves and blue skies arching over castles. The date was of particular importance. By choosing the 23rd of October, I anticipated that it would have an arcane influence over the rest of my life from that day forward; I believed that every step I took from then on would be resolute, purpose-filled, artistically-pungent, etc etc, and not only would I have a better life but I would also point to the answer to all answers to thank for it: the number 23.

Youthful optimism aside, I was full of crap, as I would soon learn in the ensuing time between then and today. Not to say that I was wrong or even wrong-headed. The experience of seeking importance is a fool's errand, perhaps, and humbling at many junctures, but there is nothing inherently destructive about it. As you inch along the way further, even so, the signposts and tollbooths that were obscure, even hidden, as you encountered them, become apparent and obvious in hindsight. 23, then, looks like one of those waystations.

Why bring this up now? For one thing, it's the 23rd of February, and there is synchronicity; for another, the Hollywood version of the 23 affect (for want of a better phrase) is hitting screens today. Yes, you too can experience the vicarious thrills of fixating on a single number by watching grizzle-cheeked, hollow-eyed Jim Carrey in "The Number 23". Wow, I'm all ashiver already (though I really prefer Mr Carrey in the Eternal Sunshine). Really, how silly can Hollywood get?

Friends have asked me if I'll go see the movie, out of deference for my former sweet-toothed addiction. Invariably I answer, No. I had a slight interest when I first heard tell of it, because there was a niggling allegiance to that magical period in which 23 figured so prominently. But now, with further thought, I've concluded that it won't be worth it to go. Honestly, I'd rather go back to Prague, and if saving the cost of the ticket gets me any closer to doing that, it will be money well-pinched.

Emotional Contagion

Dropping some science on you here.

There is a class of brain cells that operate like a kind of neural WiFi. These "mirror neurons" were discovered during a scientific study of how people's brains entrain as they interact with each other. Mirror neurons track the emotional flow, movement and possible intentions of the person you are with, and they replicate these sensed states in your own brain in the same areas you perceive to be active in the other person.

This discovery goes a long way toward explaining the phenomena known as "emotional contagion", those feelings of rapport you can experience with someone else. Feeling this way depends on synchronising yourself rapidly to another person's posture, vocal pacing and movements.

In short, mirror neurons, to quote the reporter in yesterday's Science News, allow for the "interpersonal orchestration of shifts in physiology".

Pretty cool, huh?

Yogic Flying

Have you heard about this? The director David Lynch mentions it in lectures, as he crosses the nation gathering donations for Transcendental Meditation.

In TM, evidently you can be a yogic flyer. It is an advanced technique, but from the sounds of it, worthy of the effort.

Folks meditating sit lotus-style in a circle. Slowly they begin hopping in unison. They begin hopping faster. Still hopping, they begin moving so fast that in fact they begin to hover. Presently the entire circle is mid-air, like a human flying saucer.

That's yogic flying.

And people wonder where David Lynch gets his ideas from

I'll be your Captain America

I am glad I never stopped reading comics. My enthusiasm for the sequential art form has many times opened unexpected doors of perception -like the time I was reading Spider Man and I realised that maintaining a secret identity is hard work if you want to have a girlfriend too. Recently another of these doors opened.

It didn't happen while I was reading a comic precisely, rather it came as a result of thinking about the structure of a superhero team. Admittedly I devote scarce mental energies to the problem of how best to form a superhero team. Being expert at that doesn't lead to many realtime applications. But the other day I was wrestling with a question and the idea of the superhero team popped up, specifically the makeup of such a team and who would be the member of one.

I've been struggling with how to define characters in my book. As I write, I'm always looking for ways to distinguish individuals as the story progresses, to separate one from another in stark, easy to comprehend characteristics. It is hard to do! Usually, when composing dialogue, the speakers end up sounding like the flip sides of the same coin. They sound like the way we're supposed to think of the perfect married couple, where she starts the sentence and he ends it. While that ideal suits a marriage (maybe), on the page it sounds all wet.

So I started thinking about character types (an activity impossible to avoid, I think, while writing a conventional novel) and this brought me to the superhero team. In a team like this you see assembled representatives of each stereotype running around in tights. Put together a team and you're going to have a hero with brute strength, like Superman as a for instance. You also need Captain America, a soldier-type, plus about five others: a witch-type magic user, somebody with a ranged weapon, a brainiac, a buffoon and a belle of the ball. The last is like Jean Grey from the Xmen, beautiful and commanding fearsome energies, the ultimate alpha female (the witch, on the other claw, is more feline, cunning and secretive).

Cobble these types and you have yourself one mother-loving crew that leaves their bootprints on the jawbones of some serious perpetrators.

Believe it or not, coming to grips with the chemistry of a superteam has amounted to a kind of breakthrough in my writing. Since setting down these terms of definition, my dialogue has nearly begun writing itself... nearly, but not quite.

Second Wind

Children of Men is an extraordinary film. Not only does it have its cake, it gets to gobble it too. On the surface a kind of nativity fable redux, broiling just under the skin is a protest film. Fortunately it is not an opposition tract; in similar fashion as Fight Club did a few years back, this film is decidedly protesting in support of something, a rant of positivity rather than simply a rant.

The radicals this time around are the Fishes, a pro-immigrant militia. We've seen them in many movies before, most recently in the Fight Club's vacuous clatch of Space Monkeys, and in like vein they take themselves far too seriously. When, in Children of Men, the pregnant girl asks protagonist Thelonious Faron if somebody performing tai chi is "wobbly or gawky", his answer could describe the Fishes: "Earnest." In this context, earnestness is a bit narrow, a worldview that excludes beauty. The creators of the film are blessedly not so blindered. Theo himself is a former activist, but he's "more successful now." His success, however, makes him feel like shit. Not until he has entered the allegorical landscape of Bexhill Refugee Camp does Theo truly feel the old passions stirring. But i do not believe he is called to resume his activist routine; instead of feeling drawn back toward a group like the Fishes, he sees an alternative. Just how that alternative takes shape is for Theo to decide, and we see as the film progresses where that decision takes him.

The 'fugee camp is Abu Ghraib, it is Gaza Strip, Grozny, Beirut, Darfur; most keenly, it is Guantanamo Bay. The references, I presume, are intentional. The temptation is to accuse the filmmakers of vandalising the headlines. I believe something far more sinister is at work. The director and co are bringing us a work of art, in other words, a dangerous mirror in which the reflected rather than the reflection is the thing.

What kind of world is reflected in the glassy water of the story? I do not think there is a single answer. Each viewer needs to decide what they see. The possibilities offered are tremendous. I see an incarnation of grace amidst a time of terror, a manifest explosion of grace in the form of an infant that is nothing in itself, but serves as a tiny mirror of the human soul.

A rare encounter with... BEAUTY!!!

I implore one and all to see this film in the theatre while you still can. My sister Rachel and I saw it just yesterday and already I am itching to go back. This is the most profoundly moving experience I've had at the movies in a long time. It needs to be seen on the big screen, because there are so many juicy details that pack every frame. This is definitely one of those films that will be greatly diminished by waiting to see it on your home entertainment pod.
Not only is it visually satisfying, Children of Men is also a tremendous story about the world we live in. Seriously. So many movies attempt to capture reality as we know it, and fall miserably short because they are so obvious, so condescending or simply have got the picture wrong. Many movies are so particular that they do not achieve any kind of universal appeal. With this film the experience is entirely the opposite.
But, you might ask, why do I want to see a film about the world when it so much better to simply go out and experience the world for ourselves? Far be it from me to suggest that entertainment trumps direct experience. By all means, get on out there! I'd rather ride a motorcycle than watch a movie about it.
Even so, Children of Men is a work of art. There are breathtaking moments of beauty to be discovered in the film that is nothing you have seen before. This quality alone endears the film. There is so much to recommend it besides, but suffice to say, this is the film of the decade, in my book (a position it shares with Terence Malick's The New World, which came out a couple years ago and is available to be seen on dvd).

State of Grace

In the terrific documentary, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen, there is black-and-white footage from Canadian television. Mind you, this is footage from the early sixties, when Mr Cohen was known as the poet of Montreal and well before he had embarked on his career as a musician. He is being interviewed and the host asks Cohen how he starts his day. Cohen answers, "I ask myself if I am in a state of grace."

That answer made a real impression on me, not only for its simplicity but also for being so apropos to humanity.

Living each day as if it were your last on earth, this question seems like the perfect one to ask. Posing it, one is confronted with what kind of action you will choose to take. Will I go through the day as I have complete control over my situation, or will I recognise that larger forces are at work?

I recall SF author Philip K Dick's approach to getting up in the morning, one that was very different from Mr Cohen's. (Yes, shocking, I know, considering Mr Dick was a psychedelic paranoiac of the highest degree.) Mr Dick was of the opinion that the malevolent universe was out to get him and would start off his day inundated with dread and fear. This kind of experience I can more easily relate to than Cohen's.

I am more likely to bring my head up off the pillow in a cold sweat, rather than in the serene attitude the poet of Montreal suggests. This doesn't mean I don't aspire to ask his question every day, but sadly my attitude is more in line with believing that the universe is cold and deadly. This is a direct refutation of faith, and a way of caving in, as it were, to the doomsday cloud of human reality.

How can I be accountable to grace? If I believe that I am entitled to its sanction, yet take no action to recognise that every day I must ask myself if it is real, this lack of acountability is sure to have an impact. Rather than cultivating faith, instead I will continue drowning in fear.

15th Anniversary of the Thomas Parker Society