A movie called Brothers

How did it get on my Netflix queue, I dont remember, but it is a movie you need to see. Somebody must have mentioned it, and I never heard of it again. Nobody talks about it. Nobody raves as if it were a 'must see.' But a more human movie you will not find in the last 24 months, perhaps longer.

A soldier goes off to war in Afghanistan while his new-released loner convict brother remains behind and slowly regains acceptance with the family stateside. While dad experiences unimaginable things as a soldier, life goes on back home. Tobey Maguire's portrayal of the returned war hero is magnificent. You'll remember him in this movie and replace the Spiderman association. Natalie Portman has finally become a woman and has a role in which to be one, though I have to say she is not a great actor, and though given a chance to be one here merely comes off as an eye-candy placeholder. Jake Gyllenhaal (sp?) is a flawless no-count brother and is a candidate for some movie hall of fame (I saw him in Brokeback Mountain recently, and though I found the gay cowboy stuff unbelievable the acting was great).

I can't say more without giving away the plot, but you will find not so much cliches in this movie, but familiar themes in all their human garb. A good story with painful scenes. No, not a landmark, but important. Not Academy material, but compelling (...er, whatever that means). And you are left to think seriously as the credits role about matters of real, here-and-now import: war, family, fidelity, children, trust, healing, brotherhood.

On editing your own work

This was too good to keep to myself. From an editorial by Benjamin Percy in Poets & Writers.

"So much of revision, I've discovered, is about coming to terms with that word: gone. Letting things go. When revising, the beginning writer spends hours consulting the thesaurus, replacing a period with a semicolon, cutting adjectives, adding a few descriptive sentences - whereas the professional writer mercilessly lops off limbs, rips out innards like party streamers, drains away gallons of blood, and then calls down th lightning to bring the body back to life."

He and others quote Faulkner's heartless writing axiom: Kill your darlings.

Definition of 'bathos'

In this newsworthy video by CNN, a small group of girls is doing something simultaneously potentially admirable and utterly banal. Flyers are printed, buttons sported, refrigerator magnets distributed, contracts drawn up, signatures solicited. What is their cause? Is it stay sexually pure till marriage? Avoid drugs? Discourage drunk drivers?

No.

These girls are saying "no" to tanning before the prom. "No!" they are saying, "NO! You will not take my soul! NO!" to tanning, to the pressure, to the fashion impulse of being sun-browned, the stigma of being too pale...oh wait, hold on.  yeah, they're still getting darkened, just with spray-on tans. I said. Spray. On. Tans. It's the skin cancer from exposure to UV rays they are worried about.

So, congratulations Macedonia, OH, and thank you CNN.  Some brave high school senior girls are standing up to create awareness. Not, apparently, to reject social pressure regarding appearance, vanity, artificiality, absurdity. Not to address an issue that has disturbed all teenage girls for a long time (not the 1 in 50 who get skin cancer). Not to celebrate humanity, beauty and sanity. But awareness of the increased risk of melanoma to tanning salon patrons. In advance of prom. Way to change the world.

Not that I wish to hail and defend the tanning salon industry. This is a case of dueling absurdities. It's like watching two seagulls fight over an Alka-Seltzer. Aren't I in favor of guarding against skin cancer? Sure. But focusing on tanning salons narrows their voice, (what about the sun?) and making it a Prom-centered campaign could have really brought redemption to a largely crass, high-pressure, frought-with-"At Risk"-behaviors event if not for the substitution of a kooky trend. Get your hair done. Accent your features with a little make-up. Wear perfume. But hosing yourself down to look the color of Gran Marnier is not subtle.

Steve Job is a witch

Here's one of my favorite skits:

Why do people think X when they used to think Y?

Elvis Presley...

In his time, Elvis's dancing was thought by most people to be lascivious. I was reminded of this when Fess Parker died (Daniel Boone actor). Parker said the Daniel Boone show was more popular than Elvis for most people because it was clean. We no longer think of Elvis with shock, but a sort of quaint 50's nostalgia.

Michael Jackson? When he became popular, I was in junior high school. The way he thrusted made even me uncomfortable. But today he is the King of Pop and a legend, a marvelous original dancer, almost heroic, and definitely beloved.

Marriage is less and less popular, but used to be an almost universal goal of people. Witness from song lyrics: 

Beach Boys Wouldn't It Be Nice

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older

Then we wouldn't have to wait so long

...we could be married

then we'd be happy

The Hollies Bus Stop:

Some day my name and hers are going to be the same

...Nice to think that that umbrella Led me to a vow

Manfred Mann Do Wah Diddy.

She looked good (looked good), Looked fine (looked fine)

Looked good looked fine, Wedding bells are gonna chime

Then:  dressing up to fly on a plane. My first flight in 1977 was like dressing for church.  Now:  no dress code. Vacationers wear bikini's on a plane

Would the advertising slogan "An Army of One" been successful for military recruitment slogan in 1950?

"Making love" used to mean hugging, kissing and or sweet talking. (eg, in "Its a Wonderful Life", Mary shouts up to her mother upstairs about George Bailey: "he's making violent love to me, mother!" She meant wild kissing, nothing else.)

School class photos before 1980: Then: colors, prints, stripes, checks. Clothes were just clothes. And equal ratio of skirts and slacks, no logos. Now: hard to find a shirt without a logo or slogan on it.

Star Wars was mind-blowing in 1977. Now it takes Avatar to wow us.

Underwear: I grew up wearing monochrome briefs.
Why do boxers now come in patterns and colors? Implication: they are meant for viewing.

What is going on when some girl's shorts have letters right across the butt, such as "CHEER". I saw one today that said "bebe".

Christians believed in hell.

You interacted with an gas station attendant when buying gas.

Parents felt safe letting their children walk to school or ride a bike without a helmet.

Smoking used to be acceptable and drinking was frowned on. More or less reversed today.

Children's movies and cartoons never mentioned farting, vomiting, belching or underwear.

Homosexuality was listed with the AMA as a mental illness.

'Hate' used to be a word that was too strong for everyday use.

Boys aspired to military service and joined the Boy Scouts when they were too young to join the army.

Keys used to be left in cars, houses left unlocked.

Drawing, music, and needlecraft were normal activities for girls.

Poetry had rhyme and meter.

Books were made of paper.

ipad makes me squirm

I'm sick of latest-and-greatest products being presented like the arrival of the messiah to starry-eyed consumers. Some Apple marketing team must have said, "Hey! Let's hype it up like the arrival of Jesus. Let's posture it like the ushering in of the glorified state of ultimate human evolution." It's all about getting the next parcel of money from dizzy consumers fawning over the plastic and silicon marvel.

While the fools rush in, none pauses to think what the consequences of wholesale worship of computing gadgetry may be.

For one thing, the advent of the ipad will replace the Kindle, furthering the demise of reading and publishing. On one hand, ipad offers more features than the Kindle - wireless downloading of books, mall kiosks to printout and bind paper copies, bookmarking capabilities, resume your spot from office computer or cell phone while riding the bus, markup, highlighting, footnoting, on and on. But readers who would be content to read on a screen are arguably not really readers.

And all with the mysterious hype that Apple alone is able to generate. Bordering on religious. Or perhaps beyond that border.

So, as the publishing industry collapses (supposedly), we may be entering a phase where books become passe'. Then those of us with personal libraries will go underground. And in a generation, paper books will arise as the nostalgia, the new "retro" thing. It will be a flash of dying hype and corporate opportunism as literacy as we know it fades into the horizon. And people will be able to read only headlines, blurbs, logos, brandnames. And the mass of consumers will become puppets of corporate greed, working their pathetic jobs to produce money for corporations, like bodies in The Matrix, unable to think, only to feel and desire, only to lust for the latest product, kept alive as money-making batteries for the corporate elite, who can now arrange to have their officials elected to office, thanks to the recent Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance.

Those of us who still think, who still read books, we happy few, the dusty timeless band, we will be dismissed at least by the masses as Luddites. We will have our personal home libraries, which will be coveted by a new younger generation when we are old. When technology reaches its physical limits, and people get bored with the latest and greatest, and Steve Jobs is no more. Maybe then the renaissance will occur.