writer, speaker, content creator

Author Archive

Things I Have Been Asked By Portland Tourists

In Uncategorized on November 13, 2012 at 8:28 am

As a Portland tour guide, I am often asked questions about my city. Here are some of them.

“Why do so many people in Portland have backpacks?”

“Why do people in Portland dress like that?”

“What are Portland’s major religions?”

“Is it true that people have chickens in their yard?”

“Where’s the Apple store?”

“Is being a tour guide your main job?” [I do not like this question]

“Have you seen Portlandia?”

“What’s the deal with Voodoo Doughnut?”

“How come there are so many homeless people?”

“Why is Portland called ‘Stumptown?'”

“Is Portland safe?”

“What’s the difference between the streetcar and light rail?”

“Where’s the Pearl District?”

“What’s that building right there?”

“Where are you from?” [When I say “Portland” people often act surprised.]

“Is it true that there’s a place where they put bacon on donuts?”

“Where’s the bad part of town?”

“Do people here like Obama?”

“The sea gulls here seem fatter than the sea gulls on the east coast. Why is that?”  [I later found out that the east and west coasts do, in fact, have different varieties of seagulls.]

“What do people here think of Portlandia?”

“What’s quinoa?”

“What time are the food carts open?”

“Why are there so many strip clubs?”

“What’s up with Voodoo Doughnut?”

“Do people really ride their bikes naked?”

[Said while looking east across the Willamette from Waterfront Park.] “Is that area across the river still part of Portland?”

“I heard that some people in Portland have goats. Is that true?”

“Do you guys really not have a sales tax?”

“What do you guys think of Seattle?”

“Why don’t people here pump their own gas?”

“What, exactly, is a ‘hipster?'”

“Where’s Voodoo Doughnut?”

And,

“What’s with all the white people?”

Respect the Sandwich!

In Food on September 26, 2012 at 2:55 pm

The cartoony side-scroller video game Castle Crashers has, obviously, several upgrades. Magic, weapons, mounts, familiars- all the kinds of things that you’d expect to find in a fantasy video game. However, the most powerful item in the game has nothing to do with magic, maces, or fantasy creatures. The item in Castle Crashers that transforms your 2D knights into hulked-out monstrosities is none other than a humble sandwich. After partaking of meat, cheese, veggies and bread the tiny characters transform into massive machines of badass destruction, able to slam through enemies and obstacles with quickness and ease.

This is entirely appropriate, as sandwiches are magical. They are amazing, fantastic, wonderful creations, and they don’t get the respect they deserve. A good sandwich is every bit the amazing food-based experience as anything else that is given the term “fine dining.”

Sandwiches, to put it simply, are not simple, though we think of them as such. They are, in fact, a collection of several variables, all of which could go very wrong or very right. They are bread, meat, vegetables, cheese, condiments, and sundry other edibles. They are made of not one, not two, and oftentimes not just three items. And a sandwich must get all of those things right if it wishes to succeed.

For example, I got a bratwurst from a food cart that shall go unnamed. The meat itself was excellent. Very excellent, actually. The toppings were all very good- an amalgamation of onions, garlic, and mustard. The tart and carmelized toppings mingled pleasingly with the meat. The bun, though? The bun was awful. It was the kind of sad, bland bun that one would find wrapped in clear plastic at Safeway. It was stunning in its unremarkableness, and utterly spoiled the experience. The meat and veggies and mustard were all good, but that single stumble sank the whole enterprise.

By contrast, I recently had a banh mi at Double Dragon that expertly jumped through each and every hoop. The meat was cooked just right, and the shredded vegetables and hot sauce cooperated excellently with the pork belly. The bread had a certain crunch to it that was toasty without being too crumbly, and the whole thing was moist but not to the point of sloppiness. On every metric, the sandwich succeeded, and finished it with a feeling of satisfaction and admiration.

Sandwiches are not to be dismissed. They are not to be scoffed at or derided as mere bar or deli fare. Sandwiches can instantly satisfy one’s craving for carbohydrates, protein, fiber, and sundry flavor notes.  Respect the sandwich. Admire the sandwich. Love the sandwich. Within it lies skill and beauty, a layered concoction greater than the sum of its parts, each one an edible example of e pluribus unum.

I Guess I Won’t Watch the Olympics, Then

In Rants, Television on July 29, 2012 at 7:41 pm

I fenced in college. I enjoyed it a great deal, and still like to think that I would know my way around a foil if one were placed into my hand. When I got home from work this evening, I wanted to watch some Olympic fencing, and revel in the amazing, stabby athleticism of people who are probably embarrassingly superior to me. I went to the NBC website, thinking that that would be my go-to place for Olympic videos. I found a little tab that said “Select Sport” went to “Fencing” and then this abomination popped up:

NBC, I’m trying to watch this on my computer. You know about computers, right? The dominant information-sharing machine of our time? Those? I want to use mine to consume your product. Not a TV. I don’t have a cable provider. I have an ISP. Asking someone to say who their TV provider is before watching something on the Internet is kind of like requiring someone to show proof of horse and buggy ownership before getting into a car. It is utter idiocy. I’d be fine watching ads with my fencing. I would even pay five or ten bucks so I could watch Olympic videos from the NBC site. However, this? This is backward luddite nonsense.

Not that this is a new thing, mind you. I guess I won’t be watching any magnificent dancy/stabby people after all.

Gotham City, DPRK: The Big, Thumpy Politics of The Dark Knight Rises

In Comic Books, Movies, Politics on July 22, 2012 at 3:58 pm

Here, everyone. Have another post about Batman!

Major spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, go away, see it, and then  feel free to shove this post into your eyeballs.

This isn’t a review. I greatly enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises, though thought it had some pacing problems. Despite being almost three hours long, it felt a little rushed in some places, and there were a few plot holes that just had to be waved away by saying “because Batman.” It wasn’t as good as either The Dark Knight or Batman Begins, but still excellent. If nothing else, I loved how amazingly gigantic Nolan made the final chapter of the trilogy.

The Dark Knight Rises is a hugely ambitious movie that definitely wants to be about something. The film acknowledges the existence of poverty again and again with scenes of an orphanage and Selina Kyle’s impoverished friend. We’re also reminded of the decadent corruption of the corporate class when we see Bane initially working with Gotham’s business elite. The Dent Act, the thing that put thousands of criminals behind bars, is based on false pretenses. At the outset of the film, the social order is not ideal. It is ripe for upending. However, the shape that that revolution or reform takes is of vital importance. Bane, storming into Gotham, offers a new way. Over the course of of the movie, the various characters cavort and bellow in front of the camera, and I couldn’t help but think of which real-life political figures the characters were most like. For instance:

Bane is Kim Jong Il

Bane is a tyrant with a horde of dedicated followers who clearly adhere to a kind of cult of personality. He values martial strength as a virtue in and of itself, and the society that he leads, occupied Gotham, is bereft of any kind of infrastructure, culture, or way of being not directly related to its own militant self-perpetuation. Like almost all totalitarian regimes, Bane takes power in the name of “the people,” exploits popular discontent with the existing system, and gives his militaristic rule only the barest patina of rule of law (One of my favorite parts of the film was the Scarecrow playing the part of Robspierre).

The fear of nuclear annihilation is the trump card that keeps the rest of the world from streaming into Bane Jong-Il’s impoverished hermit kingdom. The bridges of Gotham echo the perpetual standoff of the Korean DMZ, and past an arbitrary line known as a “border” Bane can preside over decay as he pleases, parading his dystopia in the face of the world.

Catwoman is George Orwell (kinda)

I will admit this is something of a stretch, but bear with me for a moment. Orwell was a socialist who hated communism. He longed for change, equity, and greater fairness in the political and economic systems of his time, but when he saw Communism distort the ideals of him and his fellow leftists, he denounced it as tyranny. Selina Kyle is not happy with the inequality or unfairness of Gotham, and says as much to Bruce Wayne. (By the way, I absolutely loved Anne Hathaway as Kyle- she nailed it. That being said, I did think her “storm is coming” speech was a tad too heavy-handed.) However, she rejects the false populism of Bane, knowing that even though an unfair social order has been upended, it did not happen in the right way. Catwoman blowing away Bane with the guns on the Bat Pod was as potent a denunciation as Orwell gave to Stalinism in 1984.

Batman is George Washington and/or Nelson Mandela

Nolan ends the series with Bruce Wayne faking his own death, hanging up the cape and cowl, and disappearing. He willingly gives up power, prestige, and position that others would clamber and fight over, and bequeaths the identity Batman to another at the end of the film. Both George Washington and Mandela did a great service to their respective countries by willingly giving up power. Both of them could have held on to the title “president” for the rest of their days, but neither of them had an interest in their person being synonymous with the ideals of their country. Batman also does not want his legacy to be entangled in the person of Bruce Wayne- he wants it to be universal. This puts him far away from the Kim Jong Ils, Fidel Castros, Moammar Qaddafis and Mao Zedongs of the world. He’s more in keeping with Washington or Mandela who declined to make a position explicitly personal, and therefore potentially more tyrannical.

All that being said, I don’t think that The Dark Knight Rises had a singular political thrust to it. It wasn’t Animal Farm. Instead, it used various political fears and attitudes as backdrop and coloration for the story it wanted to tell. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Nolan’s trilogy very much is of its time, and very freely uses characters and people as broad representations for things that he knows are sources of anxiety for the audience.

(Case in point- the Gotham City PD. If the Nolan movies were actually “realistic,” as people seem to be fond of calling them, several of the cops would have probably joined Bane’s thugs. When freed, they probably wouldn’t have strode bravely into battle- instead, they probably would have wandered about filthy, broken and malnourished. However, I didn’t see them as representing literal cops. The big, final street battle was all about the rule of law finally confronting tyranny. Nolan’s movies are as sleek, stylized and unrealistic as anything from comics- that style is simply better at passing itself off as realism.)

I wonder how much of Nolan’s trilogy will look dated in ten or twenty years. Or, I wonder how much of it will be seen as a kind of time capsule for our era. Either way, the trilogy is mainly about the politics, crime, fears, terrors, and social welfare of a place called Gotham City. It does not necessarily work as a human drama or as a series wherein superheroes are put into a “realistic” environment. What makes it work, though, is that it makes visible very real, often unformed fears of terrorism and tyranny. The trilogy gives its hugeness the room it deserves, allowing its characters to be broad avatars who parade loudly before us as inspiring or terrifying symbols, the most prominent of all being Batman himself.

My Completely Unsolicited Ideas About The Next Inevitable Batman Movie

In Comic Books, Movies on July 20, 2012 at 11:33 am

Via: http://davedrawscomics.blogspot.com/2008/08/batman-robin-and-nightwing.html

Like most of America, I’m going to see The Dark Knight Rises this evening and am quite excited about that prospect. Given that Batman is an intellectual property that basically prints money, it’s inevitable that Warner Brothers is going to reboot the series in a few years in some way, shape, or form. Retreading the Nolan movies would be a mistake- if they try to out-Nolan Nolan, it’s just going to be embarrassing for everyone involved. If they try to go all Adam West on us, fans will rebel. If they rehash Batman’s origins, that will just be boring.

What to do?

My wholly and completely unsolicited idea: Make it all about the Batman/Robin dynamic.

We’ve already seen Batman become Batman, fight dudes, brood, all that other Bat-stuff. One thing we haven’t seen him do yet is be the Bat-dad of the Bat Family. Seeing an actually good movie where Batman has to deal with having a partner, working with people, etc., would be a something new. Here’s the pitch-

Act I:

Dick Grayson grows out of his role as Robin, and takes up the Mantle of Nightwing. Grayson goes out on his own, punches some dudes, and has a great time being a vigilante without any help from Dad/Batman. Meanwhile, Bats is still in Gotham, feeling kind of like an empty nester and, despite his insistence otherwise, isn’t dealing with the loneliness well. Meanwhile, a young photojournalist/hacker/Robin wannabe named Tim Drake is spying on Bats.

Act II:

A villain (someone uncomplicated- let’s say Killer Croc) messes up some stuff in Gotham. Bats gets clobbered, but is saved at the last minute by Tim Drake. Who insists that he’s the new Robin. Batman grumbles and makes lots of cantankerous old man sounds, but eventually gives in accepts the new kid. He’s also secretly relieved, because he knows that he actually needs a partner in crime(fighting).

Meanwhile, Nightwing uncovers an Evil Plan and realizes that he alone can’t stop it. He contacts Bats, and they make a plan to stop whatever evil MacGuffin is about to happen.

Act III:

Batman, Robin, and Nightwing get together and punch evil.

I’d love to see a movie like this. It would be necessarily different in tone from the Nolan movies (sort of a necessity when you have Robin), wouldn’t be about Batman’s origins or lonely struggle against evil-ness, and the plot wouldn’t be villain-driven. Like The Avengers, the central conflict would be about the heroes negotiating their relationships, overcoming their own conflicts, and then coming together. It would be fresh, new, and would potentially make up for that other horrible Batman and Robin movie. It could be great. (And yes, I know it doesn’t have Jason Todd. Let’s just stick to the actually good Robins.)

So there’s my idea. If anyone at Warner Brother is reading this, you now owe me five million dollars. You’re welcome.

Why Avatar: The Last Airbender is One of the Greatest TV Shows Ever Made

In Fantasy, Television on June 22, 2012 at 3:32 pm

Some time ago, I made a go of watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. I was in Japan at the time, and watching more anime than was probably good for me. The only Avatar episodes I could find, though, were in English. I was displeased- I didn’t want a dubbed version of Avatar. I wanted it in the original Japanese, so I could maybe actually learn something from it. I looked and looked and couldn’t find any non-dubbed versions of Avatar. It was all in English. I watched Full Metal Alchemist instead.

Later on, much to my chagrin and humiliation, I found out that was because Avatar is, in fact, an American cartoon and was recorded in English.

Earlier this month I finally watched the last episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I loved it. I know that the show has been off the air since 2008 and I’m very late to the party about this, but whatever. I feel the need to enthusiastically yell at the Internet about why I enjoyed it so much. If I had to only briefly summarize why I enjoyed it so much, I’d say that Avatar does not traffic in cliches, and is utterly original. In more detail, though:

Avatar nicely demonstrates that “fantasy” truly is limitless.

There is a depressing sameness to fantasy novels/movies/shows/games/etc. If you go to bookstore a peruse the sci-fi/fantasy aisle, you’ll most of the fantastical novels are all about medieval psuedo-Europe. Oftentimes, there are magical swords, wizards, and elves or dwarves or whatever. You know. Tolkien stuff. That stuff is fine, but it’s been played out. The very word “fantasy” implies that a book or show could be about any given thing. It could be about talking ducks or sentient rocks. It could be about a very excitable trees or pan-dimensional toasters. Anything. It’s a fantasy. The writers could go anywhere. Instead, the genre just comes back to the same magic sword stuff, and tosses some elves in there. As much as I enjoyed, for example Dragon Age, I was highly disappointed that it just recycled fantasy conventions. It was great- but it all felt a little stale. Fantasy, lots of creators seem to think, means emulating Tolkien.

Avatar gleefully says “fuck that.” It is a fantasy show, yes, but it’s a fantasy show that’s not about elf-y/dwarf-y stuff. Instead, it’s about Kung Fu. Except the Kung Fu is on fire and there are also people who can make tidal waves by using Tai Chi. One of the principal characters is a six-legged flying bison, because, well, why the hell not? Of course bison can fly. This is a fantasy world and bison can just do that. There are giant lion turtles the size of islands, multi-winged penguins, and immense badger moles who can teach you how to punch mountains. Avatar is a fantasy in that you get the impression that the creators actually, you know fantasized. It is like you are seeing someone’s immensely creative daydream on screen, rather than any kind of adherence to conventions.

What’s more, the show dispenses with both the middle ages and with pseudo-Europe. The technology level of the show seems to be around the late mid 1800s- an industrial revolution has certainly started, but it’s not so widespread that the world is completely mechanized. There are things like trains, ironclad ships, zepplins, and tanks, though they exist alongside with less developed setting elements as well.

The setting evokes Asia more than anything else, though two of the principal characters come from a culture that strongly resembles that of Native Americans. Avatar does for Asian and Native American society what fantasy has done for Europe over and over again- it stylizes it and showcases it as something adventurous and inspiring. What’s more, the Asiatic elements are not just window dressing or some kind of exotic other intruding upon a European setting- instead, the Asian and Native American elements are the setting.

(By the way- I think it’s immensely fantastic that the Avatar showcases nonwhite characters. I don’t ever want to see the live action adaptation of the show, but after watching it I can definitely understand the disappointment of fans who saw characters they loved get whitewashed. The fantasy genre has done a lot to make pseudo-Europe seem kind of badass. And, that’s fine. That’s good. Avatar, though, gave the same kind of wide-eyed fantastical treatment to other cultures, and the world’s a richer place for it. Speaking of which…)

Kung Fu!

Lots of movies and TV shows have terrible fights scenes. I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with martial arts. I took fencing and Aikido in college, and learned how to handle a bokken (i.e., a wooden katana) passably well. I spent about a year, once, getting the crap beaten out of me via Pikiti-Tirisia Kali, a Filipino martial art. While I’m by no means a skilled fighter-guy, I know enough to be sort of snobbish about movie fights, and to know how actual humans would actually move if they had swords and stuff.

Anyhow, most fighting scenes in movies and TV are bollocks. Either because the parties concerned don’t know what they’re doing, or because the choreographers just want to make it look cool. I love The Princess Bride as much as any nostalgia-addled nerd, but nothing in that movie resembles actual fencing. Sure, it’s fun, it’s great, it’s a classic but… wow. You don’t actually use a rapier like that. Anyway…

Avatar‘s fighting scenes are not crap. In fact, they’re really, really good. The characters move in very natural ways, and even though the fights often involve boulders and fireballs, all of the action seems like it’s the result of actual humans moving around. It’s free of unrealistic action that pervades other media, and it certainly doesn’t have anything like this. My (limited) experience with martial arts made me enjoy the show’s fight scenes more, not less, and that’s a very, very rare thing in a TV show.

It’s funny

Weirdly, genre entertainments and comedy don’t really go together well. There are very few science fiction comedies (the Back to the Future series is the only one that springs to mind) and most fantasy epics such as The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones stick to the serious side of things. Avatar, however, actually allows for pratfalls, puns, jokes, etc. And not only that, but it’s pretty good at all of those things. The show is really, really good at comedy, and that only adds to its charms rather than diminishing the epic-ness of the proceedings. The recent season of Game of Thrones actually had a few laughs, but for the most part genre fiction (perhaps because it’s historically been starved of respect) tends to take itself pretty seriously. Avatar, however, proves that you can have a huge, sprawling (and yes, “epic” as well) fantasy and still have jokes. Humor does not detract from the emotional depth of a given piece of fiction. It enhances it. On a related note…

It very skillfully plays with genre

Lots of shows have one-off genre episodes- think Buffy‘s musical episode. Avatar is no exception. One episode of Avatar (“Zuko Alone”) is essentially a spaghetti western. There’s another that’s very similar to an 80s teen comedy. In yet another, the main characters encounter a bunch of Ken Kesey-esque hippies, and at one point there’s a haiku rap battle. The sampling of genre elements, though, does not compromise the integrity of the show. There’s not any blatant fourth wall breaking or cutesy winking at the camera. Instead, Avatar does episodes wherein it tackles given genres on it’s own terms. The aforementioned spaghetti western episode isn’t done as a joke or a parody. Instead, it’s a really, really good half hour about one of the characters feeling lost, alone, and uncertain of his place in the world. Doing up his experience as a drifting, Eastwood-esque vagabond doesn’t cheapen his character development. Instead, the show’s creators use the spaghetti western genre because it works for what the character is going through. The show samples different kinds of genres, and it often does so in a very funny way, but it does not do that to parody those genres. Instead, Avatar knows that those genres have something to offer the characters and the story, and the conventions of those modes of storytelling are appropriate for the moment.

Lastly-

Korra is how you do a sequel.

Yeah, I’ve started watching Korra. It’s fantastic, and I’m very, very pleased that it’s highly different from its predecessor. Avatar looked like it happened in the 1850s or 60s. Korra, seventy years later, really does look like it happens in the 1920s or 30s. Time has passed, the world is different, and the conflicts in Korra are different from those in Avatar. I kind of want a Fire Ferrets jersey.

I hope the team who does these shows keeps with it. I hope they make a sequel to Korra set in the equivalent to the modern day, and a sequel to that set in a cyberpunk-ish future. I hope Nickelodeon gives them gigantic piles of money with which to make television, and that they stay consistently brilliant. I feel really silly, now, about waiting so long to watch this thing. I have been utterly, totally, and completely won over. And I’m not kidding about that Fire Ferrets jersey. Someone please make that happen.

Types of Tour People, Ranked From Best to Worst

In History, Jobs on May 11, 2012 at 9:52 am

Being a tour guide is sometimes fantastic, and sometimes miserable. Whether it’s transcendentally awesome or utterly terrible depends on the kind of group you get. Below are people I encounter regularly, ranked from best to worst.

People who are totally into it and are geeking out as much as you

I like history and architecture and urban planning and anecdotes and all of that kind of thing. When my enthusiasm is shared by others, it’s spectacular. I’m into it, they’re into it, and it makes me feel like some kind of grandly talented imparter of truth, like I’m Carl Sagan or something. It’s a great feeling, and usually results in lots of tips.

Drunk people who are totally into it and are geeking out as much as you

Same as above, but more distractable.

College students

College students are actually pretty easy to talk to, because lots of them want to be adults. They want to seem smart and interested in things, so they act smart and interested in things.

High schoolers

Same as above, for the most part.

People who know more about history than me

I’ve had a few actual, real historians on my tours. They terrify me. I worry that I’ll get something horribly wrong. But, they usually like to chat afterward, and then I steal material from the knowledge they impart.

Bored people who are only there because their spouse or friend or someone else dragged them along

These people are fine. They usually stare into the middle distance, thinking thoughts of things. They bother me not, but add nothing to the experience.

People who want to tell the entire group this one story about this one time when they were growing up in Portland and, wow, that had nothing to do with the matter at hand.

I like it when people have interesting things to say or add. I don’t really like it when someone starts talking about how back when they grew up, things sure were different. Yep. Totally not the same as today.

Small children

Small children are easily impressed by things such as magnets. Also, they are very short so addressing large groups of them is easy. One is gigantic by comparison, so they can all see and hear you easily. They do, however, have the tendency to tire easily. Sometimes they spontaneously cry, and must be whisked away by a parent.

Disinterested guys in NASCAR hats and sunglasses who always seem to be thinking “What the hell is this shit?”

I imagine these guys as being the kind of dudes who actually get excited when the History Channel does yet another thing about WWII, and gritting their teeth whenever I extol the virtues of public transportation.

People who come up with weird rationalizations for Japanese internment

Portland used to have a big Japanese neighborhood. We don’t anymore. It got enthusiastically erased. Now, the only thing we have is a memorial by the waterfront where a big immigrant district used to be. Most people find this terrifying and horrible and sad. Once, though, a rather terrible woman tried to tell everyone why it was a great idea. It only happened once, but still.

Drunk people who are not at all into it

These people are asked to leave. They ususally stumble into a bar or something. An drunk old lady who had too much makeup grabbed my ass once. That was weird.

Middle schoolers

I kind of think that between the ages of eleven and fifteen children should be hooked up to some kind of energy-gathering cybernetic thing that would allow us to use the collective hyperactivity of the nation’s middle schoolers as a source of clean, renewable power. Middle schoolers do not stop. They do not tire. They do not focus. They are made of superballs and pop rocks. They are energy incarnate. Nothing can hold their attention. Nothing. Talking to them is like screaming at a jet engine. After the heat death of the universe, they will still be yelling at something.

On Running

In Athletics, Self Improvement on April 24, 2012 at 1:46 pm

At the behest of my father, I ran cross country in high school. He demanded that I do some kind of sport, and I chose distance running mainly (I think) because it meant that I didn’t have to really cooperate with a team or do anything complicated. I didn’t have to learn to hit or kick or pass or anything subtle. I just had to learn to run. I thought it would be simple. I was right. Running is very simple. That does not mean that it is easy.

Since high school, I have only rarely jogged. When I lived in Narita I regularly biked through the rice fields and bamboo groves near my apartment, but seldom jogged. Last year, I went to a gym on a regular basis (before said gym went under) and worked on a number of exercises and weights a few times a week. I did not run, though. Bicycling, jumping jacks, push-ups, weights- these were all well and good. Anything but running. Running was the only exercise that I actively did not want to do.

I’ve started running again. I hate it. It feels great.

Jogging is at once an act of punishing self-abnegation, and also a source of great satisfaction. It does hurt. When I run, I huff, puff, and feel various parts of my body buzz and twist in pain. Or, if not pain, then some other feeling that is certainly not pleasure. I’m steady, but I do not go particularly fast. Every moment is a moment in which I have to tell myself “I have the capacity to withstand an additional moment of pain.” Every pace invites the next, and every unit of distance screams “we will withstand more.” Running is an act of passing through pain in order to get to other, additional pain, and more pain after that. Lots of life is like that. Running makes it explicit.

It is satisfying, though. I’ve only started running again recently, but at the end of a jog (or during it) I pause and realize that I do not need to be passive. Also, I realize that even though I create difficulty for myself (such as jogging arbitrary distances) I can also overcome such difficulties. Running is a visceral reminder that a human can take action and self-create both challenges and solutions. We can act. We do not wait to act or simply get acted upon, we do not just observe or stew or bide time. Running (such a simple activity) is a reminder that we can dramatically do. Also, it’s good for you, so that’s a nice bonus.

I would not say I like like running. I do however, enjoy it. I would not describe myself as a masochist, but knowing that one can both create (and subsequently crush) a given challenge using only the power of one’s legs makes for a worthy satisfaction, and a good pain.

Why I Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved Cabin in the Woods

In Uncategorized on April 17, 2012 at 11:12 am

If you haven’t seen Cabin in the Woods yet, go see it. Don’t read this blog post. Don’t read anything else about it. Don’t watch the trailer. Shun all articles, comments, advertisements, and even headlines that mention it. Just go get it all up in your sense organs and take it in. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time, and you (yes, YOU) need to watch it.

If you haven’t, go away. Now.

There are spoilers ahead.

Click away if you haven’t seen it. This is the Internet. I’m sure you can find something else to read.

Alright, is it just us? Have we all here seen the movie? Cool. Guys, I loved this film. Loved, loved, loved it. Here’s why:

I will now imagine every conventional horror movie being expertly manipulated by Josh from The West Wing.

Cabin in the Woods isn’t a spoof or a parody like the Scream movies. It doesn’t ask the audience to laugh at other horror movies, or love them less. It’s not biting the hand that feeds it. Instead, Cabin provides a backstory for just about every other horror movie ever made. It takes tired genre tropes and turns them into something we can actually appreciate by turning them into plot points. Instead of skewering cliches, it provides a reason for them. Why are horror movies the way they are? Because the Ancient Gods say so, that’s why. Why do people make stupid decisions? Because of pheromone gas. Why do the characters fall into such neat archetypes? Because of poison hair dye and spiked weed.

The next time I see horror characters who are badly drawn, who make stupid decisions, or who generally fall into easy stereotypes, I’m just going to assume it’s because Josh from The West Wing and his coterie of murderous poindexters are pulling all the strings, substituting common sense and depth of personality with the ritualistic motions of the horror genre.

It fire’s Checkhov’s gun gleefully into the air, again and again and again.

As soon as I saw the Hellraiser-esque ball puzzle in the basement scene, I couldn’t help grinning. I knew exactly what would happen if someone solved the puzzle, and (by implication) what all the other things in the basement did. My suspicions were confirmed moments later with the shot of the whiteboard that listed a plethora of horror monsters and baddies. I had to admit, I was a little tiny bit disappointed when the baddies turned out to be “just” some shambling corpses, and understood Bradley Whitford’s disappointment when he said that he wanted to see a merman.

The ending, though, completely reversed my earlier disappointment. If anything, it was only because of my disappointment earlier at not seeing a giant snake or werewolf that made me so ebullient when they appeared later. Cabin in the Woods is one of those few movies that satisfied all of my expectations and didn’t leave me exhausted. It knew when to overload the audience with horrors, and also when to stop, creating, and then masterfully satisfying, audience desire.

It’s a movie that gives us a good damn look at all of the awesome carnage.

I don’t hate shakycams or fast edits if they’re used well (I don’t hate anything if it’s used well, actually) but unstill cameras and rapid chopping have become all too common in movies. I loved the camerawork in Cabin. The frame actually stayed put from time to time, and instead of giving us brief and frenetic looks at the action or various monsters, director Drew Goddard let us have a good, long look at everything that was happening. When the menagerie of horrors sprung from the elevators toward the end, I was immensely happy that we got to actually see them. Goddard didn’t just give us a brief flash of monstrous action- he lingered on the beasts and the gore lovingly, serving up a beautiful, bloody feast for the audience.

Speaking of the audience…

The Ancient Gods are us.

At least, that’s what I think. The white-shirted manipulators ominously say “we’re not the only ones watching.” No, not at all. The Ancient Gods are. They demand a certain amount of satisfaction, titillation, conflict, gore, sacrifice, messiness, and all in a prescribed formula. They are us. They are the producers who want movies packaged in a particular way, and the audience who wants certain expectations met. If the manipulators (i.e., the film makers) fail, their world falls apart. Box office receipts plummet, audiences walk away unsatisfied, and a giant fist rises from the ground, rage-quitting the world in anger. The Ancient Gods for whom film makers create elaborate, cruel, blood-soaked illusions are those of us sitting in the theater seats who demand new sacrifices year after year. Those sacrifices must follow a certain pattern, they must be of a certain type, they must follow rules. Otherwise, the Ancient Gods, the audience, will not be assuaged.

I, though, walked away from Cabin in the Woods immensely pleased. Mr. Goddard, Mr. Whedon- your sacrifice is acceptable.

In Praise of Makoto

In Video Games on April 3, 2012 at 2:12 pm

I love fighting games. I love Soul Calibur, Super Smash Brothers, Mortal Kombat, and Guilty Gear. I even kind of tolerate Tekken, if there’s nothing else available.

For and away the best by far, though, are the Capcom fighting games. Capcom has been making pretty much the same game again and again since Street Fighter II over two decades ago, but it’s a successful format which has successfully consumed a good portion of my fan energy, despite (or maybe because of) its sameness/consistency.

I will admit to being a fairly boring Street Fighter player, in that I usually choose Ryu or Ken, easy-to-use characters who spew fireballs. However, due to zoning out after work and playing way too much Street Fighter III at Ground Kontrol, I think I have a new favorite Street Fighter character: Makoto. We need more Makotos in video games. Badly.

We need more female characters in games.

This is kind of a “duh” point, but it’s important. We actually need more female characters in all media. A frightening amount of movies and TV continue to fail the Bechdel test, prove the Smurfette principle, and otherwise fail at portraying half the species in any meaningful way. So, there’s that. But…

We need more female characters whose gender is not the defining characteristic of their being.

I love Chun-Li as much as any fighting game nerd- she’s fast, she’s dodgy, and if you know how to play her she can be really, really cheap. However, Chun-Li is very much Street Fighter‘s Smurfette- the defining bit of her character (at least initially) was that she was the one lady amid a series of dudes. Her little bit of victory banter wasn’t anything about her fighting style or any kind of trash talk. She said to her vanquished opponents “I am the strongest woman in the world.” It was all about her XX chromosomes. Later additions like Cammy and Sakura hit the same note- their gender was pushed front-and-center, and their identities as martial artists were secondary.

Makoto’s different. She’s a fighter first. Wearing a gi, she’s doesn’t have any kind of costume that shows off her tits or ass, and there’s no obnoxious schoolgirl posturing or spurned-lover weirdness like there is with Sakura and Cammy, respectively. Makoto looks and acts like a martial artist, and in Street Fighter III it’s her martial arts skills and her fighting style that define her, rather than a costume that barely covers her butt. She is a martial artist who is female, rather than a female martial artist. We need more of that. Which brings me to my last point…

We need more female characters whose play style transcends their gender.

Let’s go back to Chun-Li again (and I want to emphasize that I like Chun-Li, I’m not trying to rail against her or anything- I just want a broader pallete here). Chun-Li is lighter, faster, and dance-ier than the other Street Fighter characters. Her play style, broadly speaking, is strongly influenced by the fact that she’s female. This is true in lots of games. The female characters are the quick, light ones speedy-dodgy ones.

Makoto, on the other hand, hits hard. Makoto is all about hard punches and high, close-range damage. She is not a character who flits about elegantly or whose movement or play style is at all feminized. One of her moves is a choke, and one of her super techniques involves her turning red, hulking out, and turning into a relentless damage juggernaut. The Street Fighter character whom she resembles more than anything else is Zangief, the immense Russian bear wrestler.

When Capcom designed Makoto they did something right. They’ve put out a lot of nonsense like Crimson Viper, but with Makoto they got something right. I’ll take Makoto over the Laura Crofts or Bayonettas of the world any day- more than anything else she’s a punching, choking, utterly punishing martial-arts damage machine. She just happens to be a woman. We need more ladies like her.