Worst Sleep of My Life

We were camping, chatting around the campfire at night. I was telling one of my fabulously entertaining stories, laughing at my own jokes, really getting into it. Suddenly, a rock the size of a double hamburger (ad size not actual size) rolled toward me. In mid-sentence I picked it up, carefully placing it back in the ring around the fire to do it's job, containing the flames.

The others seemed shocked. That's when I realized that I must be a very good storyteller because I could elicit a variety of emotional responses from surprise to my hand is burning my hand is burning. I plunged my hand into a bucket of ice water. Afterward there was some degree of argument over if this was the proper treatment for the degree of burn.

Now that pointer, middle and thumb had immense, throbbing blisters it was time for sleep. I took action to avoid being awoken by the constant pain, dipping into the cooler and filling a bag with ice. As I nodded off to sleep I would let go of the ice and wake up in agony. My right hand still felt on fire.

Being a genius, I decided to tie the bag to my hand. Imagine my surprise when I awoke, about ninety minutes later, discovering my bag of ice had been replaced with cold water. It is true that if you put someone's hand in liquid when they're sleeping they will feel an urgent need to urinate. I woke up with my bladder screaming. Never watch a desperate man trying to open a tent without his glasses, in the dark, unable to use his burning right hand. I can only imagine what a sad, frustrating spectacle I was. Unfortunately, I was unable to directly experience the ordeal. In order to cope with my twinging bladder my personality split, creating an alternate universe in which I was a master thief breaking out of prison. I vaguely remember getting free, stumbling to my equally difficult first heist, barely able to liberate the jewels before the alarms went off.

I had made it to 1am.

What is a story?

I think a lot about storytelling because I perform improv and I like to write stories. I've memorized Vonnegut's advice about writing "make your characters want something" which is such bullsh*t because his characters are shoddy puppets tossed about to express his ideas. So here is my own bullsh*t wisdom from what I see in good stories and try to emulate in my own work. It's shameful but I feel compelled to watch the ending of bad movies if they simply employ these two storytelling tricks.

1. Have a clear ending point.
Heist movies, mysteries, and sports films (I'm sure there are more genres) all have the advantage of a clear finale. The inevitable last job/game/confrontation. This promise to the audience is made early and gives us a sense that we're going somewhere. I just watched Where the Wild Things Are. While I love Spike Jonze and the visual style of this film it was sorely lacking in this area. I found myself quite bored watching the film which was simply a montage of interesting monsters standing around, bitching about their lives. You might say the structure was: boy goes to island, has adventure, boy leaves island. But I really felt he left the island because he checked his watch and the movie was about over. They weren't moving toward any final action and it bored me.

2. Give me a chance to guess.
Reward attentive viewers. We should be able to foresee how the main character will solve their problems by what we have learned about their character and environment. This is such a key skill in improv that I realized with the help of Keith Johnstone's work.

I land my spaceship on the moon. I drive my moon rover around. Then I'm attacked by an alien. If I shoot it with a gun, it's bad storytelling. Where the f*ck did I get a gun? Bad storytellers solve problems by pulling things out of their asses. Good storytelling goes back to what we already know. I could hit the alien with the moon rover or, better yet, I could drive back to the ship, letting it chase me, only to fry it with my spaceship's engine. That incorporates the things that the audience knew. I love this feature of storytelling. It's a very artistic dance that storytellers do. If you call something back in a way that's too obvious or too obscure then you lose them. It's a careful, interesting balance. When it's done right everyone has a sense of how the movie will end, leaves saying "I saw that coming", but wasn't sure enough to speak up.

Was Avatar racist?

 WARNING  I spoil Avatar in this post. 


I watched Avatar in a surprisingly filled IMAX theater on a Monday afternoon over a month after it opened. I didn't find it very memorable but I did like the villain and the final fight. There's been a lot of talk about the offensive storyline in Avatar and I wanted to attack and defend it.

TAKING SHOT AT AVATAR:

Typical Whitey Saves the Day
Undeniably, the story contains a heavy dose of colonial mentality. Basically: the savages need a white male savior. The message here is that foreigners are waiting for a Westerner to save them. This mentality is also very prevalent in our various "save Africa" charity campaigns. From (Red)'s "spend money until we save Africans from AIDS" to the classic "only your money can buy African children food, water, and to learn to read the Bible". In the film the natives are pretty cool but absolutely useless when it comes to fighting the humans. The protagonist saves the day by throwing grenades in the attacking aircraft engines. All of his training to become a native warrior did fuck all. Good thing he was also a trained soldier.

The Alien Natives
The way the aliens all sit cross-legged and chant to their tree-god made me uncomfortable. Hollywood storytellers always portray natives with the same connection to nature. They are "purer", living with a spiritual (and in Avatar literal) bond with plants and animals. Savages love nature and civilized people hate it. Savages live in balance and civilized people live in greed. This is the classic dichotomy. For once I'd like to see a tribe that hates nature as much as everyone else and focuses on the constant struggle to tame it with technology. Although I was excited to see that the forest creatures came to the aid of the natives -that choice also made me uncomfortable. So did the film's use of the words 'shaman' and 'race'.

I also felt like I could overhear meetings that included comments like "make sure the warpaint looks tribal and cool" and "the aliens should have dreadlocks and if anyone asks tell them that they're organic internet cables" and "I told you not too African but this other one isn't African enough."

IN DEFENSE OF AVATAR:

Cheering when White People Die
We're meant to enjoy the death of regular white soldiers who are killed in the line of duty. This is an unusual choice for mainstream action. During the climactic air battle sequence the tough alien warrior jumps on the ship and begins tossing humans to their doom. It's clear that we're meant to be on his side emotionally and feel sadness only after he is shot and falls to his own slow motion doom. Usually, when white people die in cinema, especially at the hands of natives, it's important to show them doing something cruel beforehand.

Woman Saves Day
Why aren't more people pointing this out? I was most impressed by the choice to have the female hero save the protagonist's life twice at the end of the movie. This is a big deal. Action movies do not end this way. In Avatar it seemed very natural. First, she has to kill the villain because he can't. Then she has to save his ass again because he fails to put on an oxygen mask. Also, she's not overtly sexualized in the film. I know all of the Aliens have intergalactic runway model body types but I'm talking about bending over, taking her top off, or coming out of the waterfall shower. I feel that they consciously avoided the sex object route. Also, she's a ten foot tall blue-animal-woman. I would argue that Avatar is a good feminist film because it expands our expectations of women in cinema. She trains the protagonist, she saves his life three times in the film, and she isn't overtly sexualized.


If Frantz Fanon wrote Avatar:
One of the interesting aspects of Avatar is language (it's a constant struggle in sci-fi movies to explain why everyone can understand each other). The aliens speak english because a school had been set up but later kicked out. The film stays pretty superficial on this topic. The teacher of the school learned to speak the alien's language. And we're meant to like her because she shows respect for foreign culture and she like children. Even our hero trains for three months and speak their language as often as a mainstream audience can stomach subtitles. For the sake of Fanon, I was really hoping they were going to show more of a disillusioned generation that had been trained to speak English and then discovered that humans didn't give a shit about their opinions. Then they would have been outcasts from both sides. Shunned by the aliens for acting "too-human" and never taken seriously by those who taught them.

The epiphany
The aliens don't need us. They have a thriving, independent culture with a long history. This is an interesting linchpin of the plot. Our protagonist reveals that there is nothing humans can offer the aliens. At which point the corporation decides to kill them. Interesting note, the military villain mentions he had done three tours of duty in Nigeria which I feel is an intentional reference to Shell Oil's dirty business.

IN CONCLUSION:
Avatar is a film that reinforces the idea that white people are here to save the world while working very hard to show a respect for other cultures. Obviously these contradict and, in the end, white people rule!

The Furthest Fall 3 - King Tutankhamen

How's this for cruel:

King "Tut" died and was buried in the Valley of the Kings over 3000 years ago. He was buried in a very expensive and particular way. He was mummified so that he could make a successful transition into the afterlife. His vital organs were placed in canopic jars. His body was wrapped with a few scarabs to ensure everything would work when he woke up. His ba was raring to go. And everything was hidden so that it would not be disturbed.

He was a relatively unimportant Pharaoh -except for one thing. We found his tomb intact. Other tombs had been completely robbed but his was full of ornate, crafted, golden goods.

Now, his body is sitting in a glass case inside his tomb and visited daily by hundreds of tourists. He is covered by a blanket that does not cover his toes so that everyone can comment on how disgusting they look. THERE IS A SECURITY CAMERA PERPETUALLY POINTED AT HIS BODY while his sacred artifacts tour the world for more people to see.

For all of the careful preparations to keep his body safe and hidden he may be one of the most looked at corpses in the history of the world.

Sci Fi Summaries. Best Gifts.

For a long time the best gift I ever gave was an obscure book about draining Kirkland Lake for mining that my dad vaguely remembered. Thanks to the internet for finding that one. I had never got my mom a 'next level' gift until, one Christmas, I realized that she was an insomniac who read Grisham all night. Well now, thanks to me, she's also read everything James Patterson wrote.

I can understand how gifts in a relationship can become very symbolic. Will early handmade presents give way to hastily bought chocolates? Liz and I have set our bar frighteningly high. We make shirts for each other with obscure stencils of Nagi Noda or Song Kang-ho. Now, since I spend my days writing, she created this blog, of sci fi novel summaries, to inspire me. Check it out: 365daysofscifi.tumblr.com

Shifting Identities

I've noticed that when a mix of people are brought together (particularly in a high school class) there are generally the same amount of leaders, troublemakers, keeners and quitters -which make me wonder what personalities have shifted.

Leaders will emerge in a room full of shy people and troublemakers will emerge in a room of squares.

That our lives are not our own but a matter of the room we are in.

It's fascinating and frustrating to realize that our lives are conforming to broad statistical predictions.

And now I'm going to see if this sketch involving a bear attacking the pope is still funny or if we were in a mood.

I miss SPAM?

Gmail is excellent at filtering spam. I've started to miss the amazing community of assholes known as Spammers. They still bombard me with their demands to click on their links. I have 804 right now, these are the gems from the first two pages. Charm someone tonight by reading these in your best poet's voice. They're short and to the point -except the one with Russian literature.

1.
Get pretty strong bone-on!
Make her feel your wang

2.
Make it intense
Genital growth secrets

3.
Women prefer steel in your pants than gold on your hands.

One more question, count, he said, which beg you to answer in all sincerity not as a future mason but as an honest man.
He went in a traveling coach with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides de camp, and an escort, along the road to posen, thorn, danzig, and konigsberg.
There is everything, everything in her, continued this man.
Anatole kept on refilling pierres glass while explaining that dolokhov was betting with stevens, an english naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

By the way, a quick google search reveals this talk of Anatole is an excerpt from Tolstoy's War and Peace. Nice try Spammer but your copy lit and paste failed to fool the filter.

4.
Be a love rhino
Bring hot-rod to life