food for thought from literature

"God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore out own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that other depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wager; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insendible influence on his character--his life."

-Margaret Hale to Mr. Thornton in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

constant rain

The entire month of June was a grey, soggy mess in Boston. Though the sun peeked through a few times, the days were largely overcast, unseasonably cool and rainy. The ten day forecast shows hope ahead, but I've been jilted by the weather man before. Good weather for the Fourth is all I'm concerned with now. It's a huge holiday here in Boston, and I mean to enjoy it fully. Boston Pops will be playing an outdoor concert, complete with cannons for the 1812 Overture, and a massive fireworks show is set to go off over the Charles River. They do it every year, but this is the only time I'll be here to see it. You can see it too, even if you're not within T distance of the river. The concert will be broadcast on CBS starting at 10/9 central. There's also a preview concert the day before, which is supposed to be much less crowded, so I'm hoping the rain hold off that day too!

-Kim

David Garrett / Carmen Phantasie

Thanks to my friend Christina, I have found a new violinist to follow. PBS aired a concert of his last night, and I instantly fell in love with his style that blends Classical violin pieces and modern rock and pop songs. He can play the Classics pure and still rock out with the modern pieces, as well as blend them together. I guess I know which CD I'll be buying next...

epic fail

Yesterday afternoon I went to the new Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen. I tried to have an open mind going in, because even though the one review I had seen online was absolutely scathing, many of my facebook acquaintances had loved it. And it's generally okay for there to be a summer movie that's all about explosions, as long as it presents itself well.

But this movie was just bad. And not in a low-budget, slapped-together way that's merely not good. Movies that aren't good come out all the time and make their way quietly to the $5 bin at WalMart about a month after the initial DVD release. Then there those campy movies that poke fun at themselves by being intentionally bad. The Librarian springs to mind. I enjoy a movie like that, as long as it's clear that they aren't taking themselves seriously. And in a class all by themselves are those movies that are totally, monumentally bad in every way and are clearly taking themselves far too seriously the entire time. Transformers 2 is that movie. It's the sort of movie that makes me want to sing the opening song from The Producers as I walk out of the theater:

He's done it again
He's done it again
Max Bialystock has done it again!
We can't believe it
You can't conceive it...

How'd he achieve it?

It's the worst show in town!
We sat there sighing
Groaning and crying
There's no denying
It's the worst show in town!

Oh, we wanted to stand up and hiss...

We've seen shit...

But never like this!

Just substitute Michael Bay for Max Bialystock (ooh, ironic name similarities!) and the sentiment is the same.

If I were to detail to you the entirety of the badness of the movie, it would take all day and I would be giving it more time and publicity than it deserves. And I'm not concerned that everything I'm about to write is a major spoiler--if you haven't seen it yet I urge you not to waste your time or money (although, it could be fun to rent some day when you need a good laugh). So here's a short list of the top several reasons this movie fails:

1. Optimus Prime has the most over-dramatic dialogue of all time, and his final line has nothing to do with the movie.

2. Sam's mother is worse than a caricature--no human being could be that pathetically ridiculous. And making her get high off marijuana brownies when they move Sam to college is just in poor taste, although it did almost make me forget her over-the-top crying breakdown as they were packing to leave.

3. Sam's girlfriend Mikaela embodies every female stereotype I've ever heard of, which really shouldn't be possible, since so many of them are conflicting. She is at the same time flighty and clingy, needy and overly assertive, composed "warrior goddess" who takes on decepticons single-handedly and panicky girl who almost gets them killed by screaming. I realize her only real purpose is to distract the male members of the audience enough between explosions so that they don't realize how ridiculous everything is, but seriously, Bay could have at least picked her lines as carefully as he chose her clothing to allow for the maximum amount of boob jiggling without actually falling out.

4. Gratuitious shots of humping dogs are, by definition, gratuitous, and do absolutely nothing for the story. A miniature Decepticon doing the same thing to Mikaela's leg is even worse.

5. The super-hot robot chick is an impossibility unexplained by anything before or after the scene in which she appears and is subsequently killed. How is it that this one Decepticon can hide not as an automobile, but as a college co-ed? If she was that advanced, she should have been harder to kill. I think the only reason she got to be in the movie was so that the director could call for a shot up her skirt and justify it by using the angle to show her robot tail coming out.

6. The giant Decepticon does not need giant wrecking ball testicles. That just isn't funny.

7. You made Agent Simmons move in with his mother and become the random-ultra nerd-turned-hero? What? He wasn't cool enough in the first movie to get that part now, and the underwear shot that scarred me for life is so beyond unnecessary.

8. Sam's commitment issues are not cute. You may think it's resolved at the end, Michael Bay, but you are so wrong.

9. The Tomb of the Primes is two inches behind a 7th Century (maybe later, but certainly not earlier) Christian fresco in a random desert temple, and no one has found it before now? I don't think so. By the story's timeline, the Primes were there since 7000 BC, and I think whoever built the temple and later decorated it would have been rather more observant than that.

10. All the new Autobots are either completely flat characters or ethnic stereotypes. Not cool.

11. Were they trying to make Sam Witwicky into Harry Potter? They've got the teen angst and general outsider tendencies covered, easily. Add in a scene of him dead and talking with wise, departed ancients before returning to save the day, and all he needs to complete the similarity is glasses, a wand, real friends, a soul, a story that is complex and actually makes sense...

12. Optimus' final battle against the Fallen is over in 2 seconds. Really? The fallen is a Prime and can only be defeated by a Prime (hence the waiting on his diabolical plan until Optimus is out of the way), so shouldn't they be evenly matched enough to make a good battle sequence? All Optimus needs to defeat his fallen brother is a resurrection and some rocket boosters? After all the buildup, I expected more. For shame, Michael Bay, wasting a perfectly good opportunity to add more violence to a film that already involved more death, destruction and explosions than I would expect from 2012 (a new movie about the end of the world--the preview was before Transformers).

13. The overly dramatic chopper flyover with muted choir in the midst of battle as Sam "dies" was so overdone I almost burst out laughing. Clearly the director thinks this is a serious action movie with deep philosophical gems buried so deep only explosions of the highest magnitude can bring them forth.

I will admit that Sam's roommate was fun--Leo the conspiracy theory website guy was a good call and made me smile.

But the best part of the whole experience was probably seeing the new Harry Potter trailer. Now that's a movie that should not disappoint!

-Kim

story time

My friends from writing group have been published! Dale and Caleb have both had short stories published in web magazines recently. They received very little money, but it's a start. As writing credits like these build up, more prominent publishers start to take notice. And it's a good sign for the writers group, showing that our efforts to make each other better writers are paying off. You can read their stories online here:

8 Minutes - Caleb Jordan Schulz

Program Orange - Dale Carothers

I'm proud of them for getting their names out and making real progress on getting larger works published and moving toward the elusive goal of someday actually being paid to write. It gives me hope that I will someday be able to do the same. But it also sparks another emotion: guilt.

I haven't really been writing this summer. First, I was decompressing after the semester and wanted some time off before diving into it. Then my excuse became the fact that I was working 2 jobs. Granted, they do keep me running around, but it's not actually any worse than I've had before. So I really have no excuse for my lack of progress.

I've been trying to be better about this lately. I've been blogging more in an effort to at least put some thoughts in writing on a regular basis, even if it isn't very creative or even interesting. And I've been doing a lot of thinking, which is how my writing process always starts. But I think it's time to move beyond the thinking stage and leap into a project again. I'm not ready to go back to the bear story, because I have a few more things to sort out there. Also, I have 2 sequels in my head for that world and keep having trouble concentrating on only one.

So what will I write? I'm going to try a short story again, something I haven't done for a while. I usually don't bother with shorter pieces because I have a tendency to make stories far too complicated. But that's why trying something short could be a good exercise for me--give me a chance to do something different since I'm stalled out on the more traditional project. And it has the added bonus of finishing sooner--the novel will take months, while a short story should only take days (at least, to get a semi-coherent draft to work with). The idea, which I won't expound upon here--in order to keep you all in suspense--was sparked last night at Bible study, and I spent my first free hour at the library jotting down notes and planning out a timeline. I have the last sentence, but not the first (although, since I'm not dictating this piece to a stenographer, that's no excuse for not starting).

The most difficult part of this project will probably be keeping myself focused and motivated, even if it gets difficult to keep things short and moving. And actually starting! Don't think of this post as a delay tactic--read it as me psyching myself up to start. And now you, my dear readers, can all hold me accountable to actually get this done.

Wish me luck!

-Kim