Brian Vs. The Internet

Layover

2011-10-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

A story of mine has been posted on RockandSling.com. Check it out if you're bored.

http://rockandsling.com/2011/10/27/layover/

Just Let the Pretty People Explain It to You

2011-06-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

For the past month I’ve been living the dream. Well, I’ve been living a dream. I’ve been sleeping on couches. If anyone is friendly or gullible enough, I jump all over their hospitality like, let’s be honest, a hobo. I haven’t always been selfish and manipulative, so this has taken some getting used to. I’ve tried to treat my situation like an anthropological survey. I’ve become the passive observer. I ask people to go about their normal lives, just with me following them around. This grand experiment has taught me two things:
1. Everyone hates indecisive, unemployed guys stalking them. Not just women.
2. I watch far less TV than the average person.

And so I have been plunged headfirst into television. Unlike sleeping in, this has not been an easy transition to make. Nobody else watches Doctor Who. Glee makes me feel too old. Family Guy makes me feel too smart. And reality TV has given me the most trouble. As far as I can tell, there are three types of reality shows:
1. It’s sort of like a game show, except it’s about beautiful people acting strangely. And when the win, they can date someone.
2. It’s kind of a talent show, but everyone is way too into it.
3. Cameras follow around people I’ve never heard of who are famous for no apparent reason.

The first type of show makes me feel cynical. I can’t relax and enjoy the verisimilitude like I’m intended to. These shows star a house full of nearly identical male models who all fall in love with a woman they met two days ago. This woman proceeds to date each man and eliminate them from the competition one at a time. At the end, after she picks one person, we are supposed to believe true love is found. I have a hard time embracing this narrative as having any basis in reality. This may be because I can’t imagine any of these statuesque people existing in the real world. Or it may be because I’ve never survived a “rose ceremony” in my own love life.

The second type of show makes me feel lazy. People spend their entire lives training, then fly across the country to sing or dance or cook or god knows what else. Anyone who walks into that audition has a story about how crocheting reminds them of their grandmother or dancing saved them from drug abuse, and everyone has at least one scene of them crying and saying, “I’ve never wanted anything more than (whatever).” I can’t think of anything I care about half as much as these people. Am I the weird one? No. No, it’s those freaks with the ambitions.

The last type of show might be the most troubling of all. They are saturated with the familiar elements of stardom, but why is that? I don’t buy the excuse of celebrity being grandfathered in through family fortune or wild party habits. America is full of boozing old widows and Midwestern frat boys, but they don’t have cameras following them around. I can’t understand being famous for being famous. It’s like a snake eating its own tail, but suggestively edited with a shocking cliffhanger before each commercial break.

And what about the people who watch these shows? What could they possibly gain from letting their eyes glaze over while pretty people tell them how to feel? What is a TV addiction doing to their own aspirations? And what type of loser would possibly enjoy passively following around average people and observing their lives?

Food: The Final Frontier

2011-04-01T13:38:00.000-07:00

Fried chicken is delicious, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a dirty liar.

I can’t drive past a KFC billboard without recalling decades-old family dinners. The four of us would gather around a steaming bucket of chicken while Home Improvement reruns provided the soundtrack. My mom would take a wing and a leg, my dad would take a breast and a leg, my brother would take a wing and a leg, and I would take two legs. These occasional KFC evenings went on for years before poultry economics occurred to me. If everyone was eating legs, the best part, where was the rest of the chicken? Was there a massive scrap bucket, filled with hearts and heads and other inedible things that popped up in McNuggets, or was there a laboratory somewhere in Kentucky filled with multi-legged chicken hydras? These were troubling thoughts. I wanted to trust something so delicious, but the math just didn’t add up.

Years later I tried tofu and, surprisingly, I liked it. My chicken calculations vanished and I enjoyed something I could not explain. Tofu simply was. There is no free-range tofu, no 4H kids inspecting it or government agency giving it a stamp of approval. For all I know, tofu falls to Earth in a meteor. I couldn’t pick “soy” out of a line-up. I have sincere doubts that “field roast” is roasted, and I take on faith that it comes from a field in the first place. These Vegan near-meats are an enigma.

I want to eat tofu in the same way I want my car to fold up into a suitcase, or fold out into a giant battle-robot, or to travel through time when it hits eighty-eight miles per hour. I’ll eat soy-anything the same way I’ll use my cell phone and pretend it’s a communicator.

Budget-futurists always portray food of the future as tofu – bland, jiggling cubes of a mysterious substance completely unrelated to anything traditionally defined as food. In space, nobody eats fried chicken. Astronauts and Space Marines eat whatever is synthesized in the wall compartments of their cafeteria. They eat this mystery non-meat and then they battle Cylons or Cyber-Men or Chronus.

I may not be able to live in that sort of world, but at least I can eat like it. Bring on the tofu. Now if only they would bread and deep-fry it…

Both preachy and nerdy? I have a gift.

2010-10-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

The other day I watched an old episode of Doctor Who called “The Mark of the Rani”. In it, the sixth incarnation of the Doctor (the one with the blonde afro and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat) traveled back to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and discovered that the fanatical Luddite movement was caused by alien brain-tampering. It’s a fun thing to think about – those paranoid, small-minded people were only standing in the way of a fantastic social advancement because of some supernatural interference. They weren’t bad people. They were only misguided.

The inherent optimism in science-fiction used to encourage me, but lately it has just become depressing. It is difficult to reconcile a positive view of mankind with the world around us. With every day’s news updates, it becomes harder and harder to imagine everything straightening out once the Vulcans arrive for First Contact.

In Star Trek canon, Earth was even more war-torn and divided by this point in history. (This is mostly due to the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s, but we can ignore that bit.) Things are just about as bad as they can be… and then the aliens show up. A logical, helpful race of extraterrestrials land and everything gets better. Almost overnight, humanity sets aside wars and conflict to focus on science and equality and world peace.

This is the best possible outcome for our future, and it is completely impossible. And not just because of the alien stuff. If Americans can’t let Mexicans into our country without assuming they’re part of a drug cartel who’ll steal their jobs, I doubt we’d let the Vulcans give us advice. Then again, the Vulcans do look more Caucasian…

It would be nice to have a peaceful, intellectual future in store for us that doesn’t require alien intervention. I’ve heard the theory that things will get better once all the terrified, middle-aged white people die off, so the current generation can dance on their graves by legalizing gay marriage. I like this theory. But still, it’s much more fun to imagine that nobody is ever really bad. Just brainwashed.

Bellingham Review

2010-10-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

My first blog for the Bellingham Review is online. It's a review of Benjamin Percy's new novel, The Wilding.

http://bhamreview.blogspot.com/

Would You Please Be Quiet, Please?

2010-09-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

Okay. I’m back online.

That magical time of the year when my laptop craps out on me has come and gone. I have returned from the other side, but with noticeably fewer pictures and MP3s. In my absence, I see I’ve missed the dawning of the latest trend on Facebook – bugging your friends to list albums and movies and everything else. There doesn’t appear to be any specific reason for these lists and, frankly, this just makes me miss the lists and questionnaires from MySpace which never felt like an obligation.

So, here are my lists. Now shut up.

Fifteen Movies (in no particular order)
1. Reign of Fire
2. Robocop
3. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
4. Inception
5. Solaris
6. Army of Darkness
7. Wonder Boys
8. Piranha 3D
9. Dawn of the Dead (remake)
10. Superman Returns
11. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
12. The Fountain
13. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
14. Tropic Thunder
15. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Fifteen Albums (in no particular order)
1. “Reconstruction Site” by The Weakerthans
2. “Costello Music” by The Fratellis
3. “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand” by Franz Ferdinand
4. “Pinkerton” by Weezer
5. “King James Version” by Harvey Danger
6. “We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes” by Death Cab for Cutie
7. “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” by David Bowie
8. “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner” by Ben Folds Five
9. “The Hazards of Love” by The Decemberists
10. “Davy” by Coconut Records
11. “This Gigantic Robot Kills” by MC Lars
12. “Buried in Your Black Heart” by Burden Brothers
13. “Tah-Dah” by Scissor Sisters
14. “The Black and White Album” by The Hives
15. “Sam’s Town” by The Killers

Fifteen books (in no particular order)
1. “How the Hula Girl Sings” by Joe Meno
2. “As She Climbed Across the Table” by Jonathan Lethem
3. “Wonder Boys” by Michael Chabon
4. “Fargo Rock City” by Chuck Klosterman
5. “Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World” by Haruki Murakami
6. “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut
7. “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” by David Sedaris
8. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver
9. “Porcelain Life Raft” by Jacob Bruggman
10. “Pastoralia” by George Saunders
11. “33 1/3: Court and Spark” by Sean Nelson
12. “The Zero” by Jess Walter
13. “Willful Creatures” by Aimee Bender
14. “Stranger Things Happen” by Kelly Link
15. “Refresh, Refresh” by Benjamin Percy

Fifteen things about me (in a very particular order)
1. I am a legally certified minister.
2. I own a bottle of Robocop bubble bath.
3. I feel naked when I wear a shirt without a collar.
4. I’ve never found a type of wine I enjoy.
5. I’ve never found a type of vodka I don’t enjoy.
6. My favorite incarnation of Doctor Who was played by Paul McGann.
7. My favorite incarnation of James Bond was played by Daniel Craig.
8. My favorite incarnation of Obi-Wan Kenobi was played by Alec Guinness.
9. My favorite incarnation of James T. Kirk was played by William Shatner.
10. My favorite incarnation of Batman was played by Kevin Conroy.
11. Poor grammar in text messages bothers me.
12. I don’t understand the appeal of Nascar.
13. I dislike bumper stickers.
14. I hate wearing sandals.
15. I love seeing girls wearing glasses.

Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll

2010-08-10T14:26:00.000-07:00

“Hey! Look at me! I’m in an indie rock band!

“Maybe you’ve heard of us. Our band name is a quote from a cult movie. We sound like everything that came out in the 1980s, but without the charm. Just lots and lots of annoying synthesizers. We play ironic cover songs. Our singer likes to use a bad falsetto at strange moments. The titles of our songs are so very, very clever because we’re all so very, very smart. We spend a lot of money to look like we don’t care what we look like. No, we’re not actually independent of anything.”

…

I made a decision to break out of my norm and try new things and, by Crom, I’m going to stick to it. I’ve been reading different books, trying different TV shows, and yes, listening to different music. My friend Glenn provided me with the last two years’ worth of those monthly indie rock playlists that float around semi-legal torrent websites. I’ve been working my way through them over the past few weeks.

To my surprise, I’ve been using that “next track” button less than I thought I would. I may have a preconceived notion about the pretentious laziness of indie rock bands, but not all of them are like that. Okay, about half of them are like that. And okay, I don’t always hate it.

Sometimes synthesizers sound cool. And sometimes I enjoy the clever little song titles. Sometimes I recognize a band’s name as originally belonging to a race of people in the movie Willow, or the villainous family from The Goonies. Enjoying any song that features a drum machine fills me with that special kind of shame that only someone raised Catholic can really understand.

I was hoping trying new things would make me realize something about the inherent goodness of the world around me, something that would show me the error in prejudging things and people. But instead, I learned something special about myself: I am a giant hipster douche-bag who loves crappy music.

Yes, I really am this bitter.

2010-08-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

It was a Saturday morning in a strange city, and I was hung over. Portland was beautiful and quirky and, despite all the money I was spending on alcohol, it was just the sort of trip I needed. My brother, his friends, and I were waiting for a table to open up inside a small restaurant best known for appearing on a Food Network show (you know, the one where the fat guy eats an irresponsible amount of food).

There were a few metal chairs out front, which we had claimed several minutes before. There was a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a man I had previously assumed was homeless (almost everyone looks homeless in that city).

“How about showing a little of that famous Portland hospitality and giving your chair up?” he asked, pointing out a few middle-aged women waiting in line behind us.

All I could think of saying in return was, “I’m not from Portland.”

Spokane, Washington, is not exactly a hive of courtesy. There is no unspoken code of ethics between people in front of diners. We don’t consider the feelings of others because we tend not to acknowledge them in the slightest. That weekend, I was a stranger in a strange land.

Despite coming from a reasonably small town, I had taken to Spokane’s lifestyle fairly quickly. It was easy to ignore neighbors and laugh at hipsters. I walked the grubby streets with my eyes on the ground and a “Sorry, I don’t have any change” loaded on my lips. It was easy to assume every city was like that.

Portland was very, very different. There were interesting things to look at. The streets were clean. People were friendly and the homeless were quiet and well behaved (unlike their Spokane counterparts, who carried themselves with the sort of boundless enthusiasm generally reserved for students of musical theater). But it was a two-way street. The price of living in a cool city is living its lifestyle. I could stay in Portland, but then I’d have to act like a Portlander.

For as long as I’ve been in Spokane I’ve assumed I was destined to live in a bigger, cleaner, cooler city. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I enjoy hating people too much.

The Hook

2010-07-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

Boobs.

See how I grabbed your attention like that? The first sentence of a story or essay or anything else is pivotal, as important as the title or voice or subject matter. It is one of the first things I figure out before I allow myself to start writing something, and sometimes it’s just as far as I get. Some stories just can’t live up to their opening lines.

I’ve decided to post some of my favorite first sentences from abandoned blogs, complete with notes and commentary, just like all those DVD special features I never actually watch.

Karaoke has taught me that just about everything is done better by gay men.
This was intended to be the start of something like those annoying “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” posters. I would be looking far too deeply into trivial things to find some bigger meaning. A big problem with this idea is that I don’t have any interests or hobbies that could provide more than one or two “life lessons.” I considered creating a hodgepodge of thoughts from various topics, but that felt like cheating. Also, these sorts of essays are really annoying.

I like vodka.
I was going to use this statement to springboard into a comparison between getting drunk on beer and drunk on hard alcohol. Even for a blog, this would’ve been remarkably self-absorbed and pointless. I’ve decided to save these musings for a future piece of fiction where I can attribute them to a protagonist who is much more interesting than me.

I have no strong feelings one way or the other about the band Vampire Weekend.
It’s true. They are completely forgettable. I was going to craft a statement of identity from a list of my likes and dislikes, but I quickly realized how little passion I have. Almost every sentence turned out as apathetic as the first, such as “Most of the time I think Michael Chabon’s novels are okay” or “These shoes are fine, I guess”. Another fundamental problem is that none of these observations actually say that much about me as a person.

I like these sentences, and I certainly don’t blame them for the failures they led to. In the end, these essays were just very, very boring for me to write. I don’t write a blog to become bored. I write a blog to bore everyone else.

Helpful Hints for Panhandling

2010-06-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

Attention all hobos, drifters, tramps, transients and vagabonds! Put down those handkerchief-knapsacks and cans of baked beans. Gather ‘round. I think this will be worth your time.

Have you ever sat back on that park bench and wondered what you could be doing differently? How things could be better? No, I’m not talking about getting a job. I’m talking about pulling yourself up by those Army Surplus boots and becoming the best damn panhandler you can possibly be. Just follow these few simple steps and it can all be yours…

Step one, be older than me. I have a hard time believing this is the first back-up plan of someone in their twenties. So you’re mad at your dad because he wouldn’t let you go to that Insane Clown Posse concert? Try growing a beard. That might convince a passer-by.

Step two is all about appearances. If you’re homeless, dress the part. You don’t need a tinfoil hat or anything, but a quick browse through Value Village should give you some ideas for your outfit. Again, teenagers, leave the skateboards at home. Those things are expensive and they undermine your credibility.

Step three is where we get into the real meat of the issue: building a character. What kind of homeless person are you? The crazy kind? The quiet kind? Disabled veteran? Desperate runaway? Are you just trying to make it through, or are you trying to provide for a family you probably don’t really have? These are the questions you should be asking yourself. Once you think you’re ready, the real test is to take a MySpace survey while in that mindset. Try to find out which Twilight character your hobo is. You might be surprised.

And don’t be afraid of props. Borrow a wheelchair. Crayon up a cardboard sign. I’d recommend learning an instrument. Playing music on the street might bring in some new clientele. Most people don’t give out money to the homeless but are very supportive of “struggling musicians”. (I must’ve given, like, twenty bucks to that old blind lady with the accordion…)

I’d warn against bringing a dog. I know you’d think it could bring in some sympathy or cuteness points, but it mostly just raises questions in strangers. Questions like, “Why does that guy have a dog?” or “Why doesn’t he just eat the dog?”

The last thing to keep in mind is to show some restraint. Nobody likes an overbearing hobo. If you’re dressing homeless, you don’t have to look like Alan Moore. If you have a story about just getting out of the hospital, don’t show off a scar. It helps to put yourself in the shoes of a prospective client. Take a long, hard look in the mirror every morning and ask yourself, “Would I give this poor bastard a dollar?”

Nathan Fillion vs. David Tennet

2010-06-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

The best piece of writing advice I’ve ever received is to simply embrace the writing lifestyle. Write all the time, and when you’re not writing, think about writing. Anytime you’re not writing, you are making a conscious decision to value something over writing, which is supposed to be the most important thing in your life. This advice is a bit over-the-top, but it’s effective. (I should probably thank Rachel Toor for that, but I’ll attribute it to Mur Lafferty.)

What I like about this mindset is the way it colors the world around me. Everything is either black or white, a help or a hindrance. I can draw a line down the middle of my interests into things that make me want to write, or things that are keeping me from writing. Some of these things are more obvious than others; my day job keeps me from writing, but reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union inspires me. I don’t watch much TV anymore, but I’ve begun to categorize my favorite shows.

Doctor Who is probably my favorite TV show but it is far from encouraging. The show establishes a wide open universe when anything, on any planet, in any time, is possible. At first, I thought this expanse of possibilities help program my brain to think outside the box and really cut loose. It’s not that simple. In over forty-five years worth of episodes, TV movies, books, comics, stage plays, and radio dramas, Doctor Who has managed to do just about everything imaginable at least once. After every installment I can do nothing but shrug at its inventiveness.

Castle is different. Ostensibly a mystery-comedy-slash-police-procedural (Psych meets Law and Order) with plenty of romantic tension (the parts of The X-Files I didn’t care for), this show becomes truly enjoyable for me when Nathan Fillion corrects drug dealers’ grammar. At the end of each episode, Richard Castle has solved a crime and returns home to crank out another few hundred words of the next Nikki Heat novel. While I doubt I would enjoy the schlocky detective books Fillion’s character writes, and while I don’t always care for the writing on the show itself, watching someone sit down to practice their craft seems to remind me to do the same.

Tomorrow is Yesterday … Which is Actually Today

2010-06-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw a man wearing a familiar hat. It took me a moment to realize it was the exact same plastic-neon-tie-dye baseball cap Michael J. Fox wears in Back To The Future Part Two. The future has arrived, my friends.

It didn’t take me long to notice that the not-too-distant future portrayed in movies always seems to end up looking like the 1980s. This not just something that happens in movies made during the 80s, either. Sure, this prediction in the 70s it was technically accurate, but in the 90s it was just stale. In this new century, it’s more confusing.

Something about that era of humiliating exaggerated fashion and baffling social trends must’ve been ahead of its time. The armchair futurists in Hollywood have always envisioned the future as something they could never understand, so it is always depicted as something the modern viewer will simply shrug and go along with. You’re never more futuristic than when you’re doing something you don’t understand, and the world has never been more nonsensical than it was in the 80s.

And just as the thinkers in Hollywood are lazy, so is the progression of fashion cyclical. From legwarmers to synthesizers to those plastic sunglasses with the slits cut out, the 80s are back in a big way. That means, as far as I can tell, we’ve arrived. This is the future.

It’s a little disappointing. I was hoping there would be more sex-robots.

Yet Another Cry for Help

2010-05-26T11:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I spoke with a friend about how hard it is to do, well, anything. Once the necessities of the day are finished, we agreed it often seems impossible to muster the energy to do the things we actually enjoy. She told me that she does more drawing when it is just for her. When she is enjoying herself and nobody is waiting for her she gets more done.

This is not the case with me. If I don’t have the looming shadow of a deadline hanging over me, or the threat of a look of disappointment from someone, I’d never do much of anything. In other words, I can’t do the things that I enjoy unless all of the fun has been sucked away and replaced with chilly void of responsibility.

Have I mentioned I was raised Catholic?

Like most of my neuroses, I can blame my writing method on Jesus. Writing has become just as interesting as my 9-5 data entry job without the perks of paychecks or hot temps. However, while the presence of managers and bosses keeps me rushing into work early every day, writing at home is simply too fun and consequence-free to ever happen. It seems the Catholic sense of duty falls somewhere between a Protestant Work Ethic and Jewish Guilt. I get plenty of things done, but it’s never good enough. At this point, however, I’d much rather get some writing done than be happy about it.

I need a boss; I suppose is what I’m getting at. A boss for my personal life. Someone to strip away my child-like wonderment and grind me into sad submission with a nice pair of boots. It would be nice to get paid for the privilege of someone else taking the fun out of my life, but I’d settle for a hot temp or two.

Alan Moore: 1, Attention Span: 0

2010-05-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been buying every comic book that looks slightly appealing. My “to read” pile is getting bigger, and I am rushing home from work every day to read nothing but back-issues of 52 and Gravity. Meanwhile, my unread novels collect dust.

I may have lost my passion for literature, and it may be Alan Moore’s fault.

At the Emerald City Comic Convention a few months ago, I was surprised at the offerings at the Top Shelf booth. This small, esoteric comic company had published their first literary novel: a forgotten work of prose by comic book genius/crazy person Alan Moore.

In the early 1990s, Moore had published Voice of the Fire, a novel-in-stories through a small press in his native England. It didn’t make much of an impact at the time, and continued to slide into obscurity before Top Shelf bought the rights. The reprint is gorgeous, with French folds and heavy, slick paper stock and a thoughtful forward by Neil Gaiman. The text itself is challenging to say the least.

The novelty of reading from the point-of-view of a retarded caveman wears off after the first few pages, but it continues for another sixty after that. If it wasn’t for Gaiman’s glowing (and spoiler-heavy) review in the forward, I would’ve had no idea what was happening. I powered through.

The second story is set hundreds of years later, and the narrative is much easier to follow. Somehow it manages to be even less engaging. As I approached the hundred page mark, my interest was dwindling. My eyes began to gloss over when I tried to read it. I used every excuse to not read Voice of the Fire at work. I left it at the office.

I found this entire situation troubling, since this tends to be the exact opposite reaction I have to Moore’s comic book writing. Titles like Watchmen or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen tend to reinvigorate my interest in comics, but Moore seems to lose his power when stripped of the artwork of Dave Gibbons or J.H. Williams III. Whenever his writing gets too heavy, I can’t just focus on the pretty pictures. There’s just words. I used to like words.

Yesterday I finally gave up. I removed the bookmark and retired Voice of the Fire to my bookshelf. I have plenty more 52 to read for now, but soon I hope to be able to stomach something without word balloons again.

I Am Hitler

2010-03-19T16:24:00.000-07:00

I was walking through the clean streets of the tallest, shiniest city I’ve ever seen when I was stopped by a quartet of shapely people in matching uniforms. “Sir,” one said, “would you like to help save the world?”

This was a question I had always wanted to hear. At times I’d actually been training for such a scenario. Would they need me to defuse a bomb? Would I get a uniform, too? How about a cape? I could totally make a cape work.

And then I noticed they were carrying pamphlets, not adamantium shields. Embroidered on each polo were the words “Green Peace”. I wasn’t being invited to join the Justice League. I was being hassled by environmentalists.

I had to look those selfless, statuesque people in the eye and say no, I had no interest in saving the world. The fact that I was in the city for a comic book convention raised the irony to a staggering level. My favorite type of fiction is dedicated to the idea of rescuing the planet, but I wouldn’t even accept their brochure.

There is nothing more interesting than saving the world with an ultimate nullifier or, say, Randy Quaid’s fighter plane. When it comes to something more real, like really saving the real world, the option is much less appealing. I don’t want to chain myself to a tree. Recycling is a bitch. Sure, paradise was cool, but I needed somewhere to park my car.

I suppose this incident was a little reassuring. I would much rather read a comic book about someone in a ridiculous outfit saving the world than join those people in ridiculous outfits and save the world. But I don’t have to. The good news is someone else is already doing that for me.

Blimey!

2010-03-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Recently a friend told me that we, as Americans, secretly wish we were British. I can’t speak to any broad generalizations like that. I can only speak for myself. And I secretly wish I was British.

It’s hard to track down when this first began. I have vague recollections of seeing old Tom Baker Doctor Who serials on PBS as child, and much more vivid memories of watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus anytime it came on BBC America. I think the appeal of British culture comes down to the tiny differences. Watching TV that comes from “over the pond” is like a glimpse into a parallel universe filled with social tolerance, highbrow humor, and inexplicable turns of phrase. It’s like America with class.

Soon enough, I started drinking tea. I would catch myself slipping an extra “u” into words like “armor” or saying things like “Bob’s your uncle.” I was worried I would wake up one day with a full-fledged accent, and I would have to tell everyone no, I did not have a stroke; I just listened to too many BBC audio dramas.

This was not helped by the email I received several weeks ago telling me a story I wrote would be included in a British micro-fiction anthology called “Exposure”. Not available in America. This was as British as it gets. If I wanted to purchase extra copies, I would have to pay in pounds sterling.

When I was asked to provide a brief bio, my first impulse was to try to disguise myself. My first few attempts started out like, “Brian C. Baer was a lowly stable boy when he pulled Excalibur out of the stone…” or “When not traveling through space and time in his TARDIS, Brian C. Baer…” That’s when I realized that, despite all of my obsessions, I don’t have any idea what British people are actually like. I am the cultural equivalent of the drunken girl who throws herself at anyone with an accent.

I hung my head in shame and wrote, “Brian C. Baer lives in America.”

Time to Blog

2010-03-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

“Let me guess,” the dull-eyed teenager said from behind the counter. “A large number one, to go, with two tacos and a thing of tarter sauce.” I blinked. “You come in here enough,” the kid continued. “We know it by now.”

That really put things in perspective.

I’ve always been a creature of habit, and I am more than aware of it. It has been brought to my attention by enough friends and girlfriends. I’ve all but posted my agenda on the little white board on my refrigerator door:
6:00 AM: Get out of bed
7:00 AM: Get to the office
9:00 AM: First soda of the day
12:00 PM: Go to the gym
1:00 PM: Et cetera

My natural inclination towards scheduling was something I battled when I was young enough to smell like fry grease and make snarky comments to regular customers. After all, routines are something for adults. What the young man with no sense of pride in his Jack in the Box t-shirt/uniform reminded me of is that I am, in fact, an adult now. I haven’t spiked my hair in years. I don’t understand the appeal of “reality TV”. I don’t understand how my computer works.

This should probably scare me more than it does. But I suppose aging is nothing more than when you stop pretending to be something you’re not. My schedule comforts me in a way that is hard to describe.

Wait. No it isn’t. My schedule just means I don’t have to think about anything. Thinking is for teenagers. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?

Proving Myself to Myself

2010-02-24T16:26:00.000-08:00

George Clooney may have killed Batman, but his voice sounds like the manliest piece of velvet dipped in milk chocolate. I’ve seen plenty of his films, but I had forgotten this fact until recently watching Up in the Air. In it, before his character learns his lesson, Clooney gives lectures about the freedom of living without attachments to people, places and things. I caught myself nodding in agreement, but I’m not sure it had anything to do with his argument. I would probably do the same thing if he was reading the phone book.

When considering moving, I can think of nothing except how difficult the process of packing and shipping will be. This leads me spring clean with the strength of three grandmothers. If I can even imagine myself becoming bored of something eventually, it has to go. I argue with myself about whether or not I need to own more than two pairs of jeans. I give away DVDs and throw away cherished keepsakes. Whenever my apartment lease is nearing, nothing is safe. About once a year, I wonder if my friends think I am planning to kill myself and enter the afterlife with my possessions equally distributed.

This possession-anorexia comes into conflict with my interests. I have drawer boxes full of comic books, and shelves full of movies and books I could never part with. I try to fit everything I own into a couple imaginary cardboard boxes, but there are so many things I could never stand to get rid of. Even if I will never again read Me Talk Pretty One Day, or never again watch American Beauty, these are the things I have to hold on to. I’ve learned to make compromises, and I tell myself I wouldn’t mind too much if these things are destroyed in a fire.

Just after Christmas, after its second birthday, my laptop screen died. I had previously loaded my one gig flash drive with my Microsoft Word documents, which I had considered the most important things. I viewed this as my big test to really prove myself as a packrat’s nightmare. My unreadable laptop carried year’s worth of pictures, music, audio books, and pirated film editing software. In my hand, I carried my resume and a few crappy short stories. If I waited around and dealt with some hassles, I could move over everything to a new hard drive. If I didn’t, I could start again with reasonably blank slate.

As I carried my dearly departed computer down to the dumpster, I told myself to stay strong. Even if I had missed the point of his movie, George Clooney would be proud of me.

This Is As Deep As I Get

2010-02-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

At the end of each day, I can boil down all of the culture I have absorbed into two categories. Each of these seems diametrically opposed, yet connected on such a primal level that I am unable to ignore the similarities. Whether I seek out these art forms or they are thrust upon me, they are the very minutia my day is built upon. They are the electrons that fire in my brain. Of all the brilliant cosmos flaring in the heavens…

Sorry. That got away from me. What I’m trying to say is my gym plays bad dance music, and I have also begun reading Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon.

At first glance, these two could not seem more different. Wonder Boys is good, and dance music is bad. Case closed, right? It was, until I made a connection I wish I could forget. When you think about it, both of these are almost sickening meta-textual. Wonder Boys is a book about writing, and all dance music is about either music or dancing.

Weird, right?

I’ve found I am able to accept this self-reflexivity from a book more than music. A book requires more from the reader than music does from the listener. You can’t ignore half of the content of a book and simply enjoy the beat. A book asks you to create something for yourself in your mind, so imagining the people who imagine the things they write for you to read isn’t much of a stretch. With music about music, it just feels simplistic and, from an artistic standpoint, lazy.

It could be argued that music is about the music more than the lyrics. It could also be argued that dance music is just not for me. What I have learned is that I should start taking a book to the gym.

Scene Missing

2010-02-03T07:26:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading The Zero by Jess Walter. The Zero tells the story of Brian Remy, a 9/11 era New York cop who suffers from memory gaps. He is unable to account for more than half of his life, finding himself in the middle of a vast conspiracy he is completely unaware of. It was pretty good.

I bring this up because I had a similar experience last weekend. Friday night, I spent about eight hours drinking. Eight hours. That’s a job. I was drunk for seven of them. I can remember about four of them. If I had not just finished reading The Zero, I would’ve probably considered this time traveling.

The rest of the weekend, as I hydrated, I was regaled with stories from my missing time. This is where the similarities to The Zero become more eerie. Throughout the novel, the reader becomes fascinated with putting together the events in the white space. When Remy is not aware of himself, he is like a completely different person. Drunken Brian carried on detailed conversations and shared anecdotes. Drunken Brian was charming. Drunken Brian was confident. At more than one point, Drunken Brian actually said, “Trust me. I know what I’m doing.” At least, I am told I said that.

I am not saying that I always want to be like Drunken Brian. However, if I notice I am unable to account for an hour or two every once in a while, I don’t think I’ll mind.

The Ethics of Moon Bloodgood's Breasts

2010-01-12T12:45:00.000-08:00

When I wasn’t looking, Blu-Ray snuck in and became an accepted means of watching movies. I hadn’t thought much about of the platform since its epic duel with HD-DVDs a while ago. Since the dust had cleared, Blu-Ray had arisen triumphant, but was still too expensive for casual movie watching. In fact, the last time I checked, the cheapest Blu-Ray player available was on a $700 Playstation 3.

That is what surprised me about an emerging trend in film releases. For example, the theatrical cut of Terminator Salvation came out on DVD, but the director’s cut was only available on Blu-Ray. “When did this happen?” I thought. “Do they think we’re made of money? Moon Bloodgood’s topless scene is only in the director’s cut! With a name that cool, I can’t even imagine her breasts!”

In order to show those Hollywood fat cats, I decided to send a message by illegally downloading the director’s cut. And then I got a Blu-Ray player for Christmas. Apparently, the price has come down and they have become more readily available.

This did not stop me from torrenting the movie. Blu-Ray discs are more expensive, but not expensive enough to warrant sending Hollywood fat cats a message. All pretensions aside, I simply didn’t care enough about Terminator Salvation to spend money to watch it. In the end, I got exactly what I paid for.

The best thing about Moon Bloodgood is her name.

Facebook-Off (Starring Nic Cage)

2009-12-24T12:59:00.000-08:00

I started my Facebook page over three years ago, and quickly abandoned it. This morning, I decided to give it another try.

Nothing much has changed. I still find the format counterintuitive and difficult to navigate. I still don’t understand the appeal of it as a social network. It operates like bigger, more exaggerated brother of MySpace, where stranger-friending and inane minigames are not just common, they are insisted upon. It is like Twitter, but without the enforced brevity. It’s like a blog, except people actually read it. It’s like real life, but… well, actually it’s nothing like real life.

I had forgotten my password, so I had to create a new one. Then, it took me nearly an hour to clear through over a hundred requests for various things, usually revolving around hypothetical farms or mafia wars. I had an inbox that was full of messages from friends, then angry messages asking why I’ve been ignoring previous messages. After that, I assume they just called me.

People have been telling me to get back on Facebook since I first washed my hands of it. They’ve told me MySpace is dying a slow, painful death. I’d come to the same conclusion, but I was hesitant to jump back to Facebook. I’d already started a Twitter account, wasn’t that enough?

Ultimately, it was a choice to either rejoin Facebook or actually interact with people on a face-to-face level. Once I looked at it in those terms, it was a much easier decision.

I Am The God Of Whatever It Is I Do

2009-12-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

Today it came to my attention that a high school girl has been suspended for plagiarizing some of my blogs in her writing assignments. Her teacher, perhaps impressed with this girl’s knowledge of Star Trek, did a Google search and came across my original writing. The girl has been suspended.

Obviously, I am thrilled by this.

It’s always nice to know that somebody is reading. Both this girl and her teacher like me enough to scour the internet for my writing. Maybe her teacher will be impressed enough to follow my blog now. Maybe this girl is currently shaking her fist at the heavens and saying, “Why? Why is Brian C. Baer so talented? His skill has tainted my permanent record!”

If I were interested in looking at this matter any further, I would remember the type of people I copied from in high school. Oh, what nerds! They had given up all hope of social acceptance, and they knew the only way to gain my love was to keep their test as close to the edge of their desk as possible. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Colin Roach.)

Things were more desperate in college. The nerds had all been accepted to better schools, so I was stuck cheating off B-students and whichever underage girl in the “running start” program had a crush on me. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Meghan Whatever-Your-Name-Was.)

Fortunately, I am not interested in looking into this matter any further. Whether it is compliments or the answers in AP English, I’ll take whatever I can get.

To Jesus, Thanks For Everything! Brian C. Baer

2009-11-17T11:00:00.000-08:00

I kept my head down as I unlocked my car door, hoping the old man would walk past and enter the apartment building without saying something.

“Well, hi there!”

I exhaled before looking up with the polite expression I’d been practicing. “Hello.”

The old man shambled closer. “Do you go to school around here?” he asked.

“No. I’ve graduated.”

“Really? Where from?”

“Eastern,” I said, hoping that would be the extent of our conversation.

“Oh.” This seemed to throw him off. The wrinkled brow beneath his baseball cap wrinkled further. “Well, where did you go to high school? Did you go to Prep?” he asked, referring to the expensive Christian high school a few blocks over. It was across the street from the expensive Christian college.

“I went to DeSales,” I answered, “in Walla Walla.”

His expression brightened again. “Oh, that’s a great school! You know, I could tell you had a good Catholic education.”

“Yeah?” I could feel my fake enthusiasm slipping.

“Oh, yes. You Catholic kids carry yourselves much better than the others. You dress better and have more respect. Good, solid education. It makes for good, solid people.”

This was clearly a compliment in the old man’s eyes, but I had no idea how to respond. “That’s what they’re hoping for, I guess.”

He ignored me and carried on. He talked about his own experiences in Christian schools. He told me about other Christian students he had approached in his apartment building’s parking lot. He named people I’d never heard of. His voice was dry and leathery, as if he had yelled it out at a pro-life rally and never regained it.

After several minutes of this I realized there would be no natural break in the conversation, so I had to interrupt him to excuse myself. He waved goodbye as I climbed into my car and drove away. I'd had this exact same conversation with the old man at least twice before. I had been parking illegally in that lot for months. Appearances can be deceiving.

To Blistering Hell with Any Such Critic!

2009-10-27T16:29:00.000-07:00

In an effort to make all of my creative writing professors cry, I’ve just finished reading the novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. No, not the hip new reboot from this summer. The stuffy, awkward one from the 1970s. This book has the distinction of being adapted into prose by series creator Gene Roddenberry, and it is actually the most involved he has even been with the franchise.

Make no mistakes, this book is awful. However, it’s that special, fascinating kind of awful, like a literary Plan 9 from Outer Space. This is not because of the script it is based on, or even Mr. Roddenberry’s writing abilities. It is mostly because it is approached from a mindset that feels absolutely nothing like the Star Trek its audience is accustomed to.

For starters, there is a lot of sex. The sexual tension between nearly every crew member seems to underscore every scene, and it is described in agonizing detail. For a PG movie, a lot of people are apparently having sex off-camera.

Littering the book are footnotes specifying stardates, and personal observations written in character by “James T. Kirk”. This is the sort of thing a crazy person writes.

The novel’s forward, also by “James T. Kirk”, explains that in the time of Star Trek* a large peace movement was taking place on Earth. Its members were called new humans (always in italics). These new humans are universally thinking, accepting all alien cultures and customs. New humans consider other humans backwards-thinking barbarians, but new humans are not ideal for space travel. Their refusal to filter what they encounter through traditional human beliefs works against them in alien environments for some reason. Instead of these smart, cultured new humans, Star Fleet instead turns to the humans with lower test scores to trust with billion-dollar** spaceships and the responsibility of representing not only humanity, but often the entire Federation of Planets. This forward, by “James T. Kirk”, is essentially grandstanding for the dumb kids.

This viewpoint was puzzling for me, and a little disappointing. For one thing, I had always found the professionalism and intelligence of the humans on the USS Enterprise impressive.*** Also, I had hoped that idiots were all killed off by that point in the future. According to Gene Roddenberry, the idiots are still in control in the future. But then again, what has Gene Roddenberry ever understood about Star Trek?

* The mid-2270s.
** Actually, they use credits. Except in Star Trek IV, when Kirk says they don’t have any form of money in the future, but I’ve always suspected he was just saying that to get out of buying dinner. I mean, a world without money? That’s just dumb.
*** Well, at least from the ones who don’t wear red.

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from Shitty Mike Myers Movies

2009-10-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

There's a scene in the first Wayne's World film where Mike Myers has learned Cantonese to impress Tia Carrere. His face contorts and he makes a series of strange noises which are translated at the bottom of the screen. He tells her she is very pretty. Ms. Carrere responds, telling him he is a very handsome man. Myers shrugs, looking modest, and says, “Slowly. I am still learning.”

Growing up, I always laughed at this line. I laughed not only because it struck me as a witty, unconventional way to disarm a compliment, but also because I could relate to it. I am also not a handsome man, but I'd like to think I am learning how to be.

I have always viewed myself as a work in progress. Self-improvement is a worthy cause for anyone to have. I think it is important to have an idea of the type of person one wants to be (such as someone Tia Carrere would find attractive), and to actively make strides towards making that a reality. Every time I walk through a book store, I am more interested in the day I can tell people, “Oh, Barrel Fever? It's all right. Not his best work.” Whenever I walk into the gym, I imagine the conversations I'm bound to have. “Why yes,” I'll say. “You can grate cheese on my abs. Feel free.”

I came across Wayne's World on TV not long ago, and I was excited to watch my favorite scene again. As it turns out, I had remembered it wrong. The learning Mike Myers was referring to was his knowledge of Carrere's native language. He was not making any pithy comments on self-improvement, he was just asking her to not speak so quickly.

I dedicated years of my life to a philosophy I had invented from a misunderstood off-hand remark in a 90's comedy based on a Saturday Night Live skit, and I have absolutely no idea what that says about me.

Billy Mays (1958-2009): Rot in Hell, You Son of a Bitch

2009-06-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

The other night I watched an old movie called “I Bury the Living.” Like all B-movies from the 1950s, the film itself barely lived up to the promise of its title, poster, and tag line. The story revolved around the owner of a cemetery who discovers he controls the power of life and death through his paperwork. If he lists a living person as dead, they die.

This comes to mind because of the recent holocaust of has-been celebrities. David Caradine, Michael Jackson, and many others have met their slightly-overdue end lately, but this never really struck me personally. And then Billy Mays died. This is noteworthy because he is one of the few people I have ever actively wanted to die.

Billy Mays, the commercial pitchman, caught on like the bubonic plague, slowly spreading across the airwaves. Back in high school he was an unfortunate occurrence, popping up during sitcom intermissions to attack my eardrums. That’s when I started cursing his name in a variety of creative ways. Slightly later, I began pressing the mute button before the commercial break even started, but cursing nonetheless. By then it was too late. He had been spreading for years, endorsing more shoddily-made products for lazy idiots and yelling the rest of us into submission. Billy Mays’ voice haunts me like a concentration camp loudspeaker. It was impossibly loud, booming through static and across living rooms. It was condescending, accusatory, and just a little bit whiny. This was not a naturally occurring sound. Billy Mays must have stared into the mirror for hours, daring his beard to grow thicker and blacker, yelling at himself until he achieved the perfect voice to best gain attention. Selling things was secondary to being heard.

In my life, I’ve been around for more than a few celebrity deaths. Family members have died on me. Pets. Even a friend or two. But Billy Mays changes everything. This has taught me to control myself and this ungodly power I wield. The next time someone cuts me off on the freeway, or the next time I see an interview with Zak Penn or Michael Bay, I’ll know to relax before I do something I might regret. Even though it will probably make the world a better place.

Another way to waste everyone's time

2009-06-22T11:02:00.001-07:00

Once again I have proved to myself what I have proved to every school teacher, Catholic abstinence pledge, and weight lifting partner I’ve ever had – I possess absolutely no willpower. ‘What is it this time?’ you ask. ‘Too many Bagel Bites? $50 bar tabs? Fancy salads you’ll never eat?’ All of this and more, my good friend. I joined Twitter.

In my need to express myself without any actual effort (for further examples, see this very blog), I opened the account over the weekend and managed to do… very little with it. Twittering is harder than I expected, if for no reason other than I am attempting to operate my account with common decency and my ever present sense of shame. Before each post, while spell-checking, I ask myself how necessary what I am about to say is. It is a wonder I’ve written anything.

Twitter is not a site for necessity. It’s not even a site for vanity. Twitter exists to celebrate the everyday minutia I generally prefer to ignore. If I’m going to the store, I can talk about it. Cooking dinner? I can write about it. Blogging? You get the idea.

This is not to say it is completely useless. People like Jon Faveau and Chuck Klosterman are actually trying to do something interesting with their ‘microblogs’, and that’s what gives me hope. Maybe, if I keep at it, I can find my niche, my voice, my clever little excuse to force my life on the barely-interested. How hard could it be to live an internet life full of dignity?

And now, to completely fail myself once again, I’m going to Twitter about this blog about Twittering. Don’t judge me.

Spin-off 2: The Beginning

2009-05-20T12:59:00.000-07:00

God damn George Lucas.

I’m fairly certain that the word “prequel” didn’t exist before 1999 birthed the monstrosity known as The Phantom Menace. That weekend, collective filmgoers groaned so loudly that I’m fairly certain the noise is still echoing throughout the galaxy. The movie did, however, make a ridiculous amount of money. Hollywood, being what it is, latched onto the idea so completely that we have had dozens of prequels in the past decade.

They’re still not doing it right.

A prequel is intended to be the first chapter of a film series, introducing the viewers to characters or showing events that were alluded to or implied in the earlier films (which were set afterwards). It is supposed to be the beginning. The Phantom Menace is supposed to come before A New Hope. You’re supposed to watch Wolverine before you watch X-Men. Tremors 4 happens before Tremors 1-3. This, in theory, sounds interesting and not at all frustrating for the viewer. However, as I just said, they’re not doing it right.

As far as Hollywood is concerned, “prequel” means “spin-off without the burden of continuity”. Viewers are expected to walk in with complete knowledge of the other parts of the story, which pretty much destroys the idea of making it a “first chapter”. I have genuine pity for someone who attempts to watch Star Wars for the first time from Episode I to Episode VI. Lucas’s prequel trilogy doesn’t even attempt to explain the universe, or who people are, or why anything happens. You’d be about eight hours into the series before someone on screen finally tells you what the hell a Jedi is. X-Men Origins: Wolverine does not utter the word “mutant” until over an hour into the movie. These sorts of things are kind of important to the plot.

J.J. Abram’s Star Trek (that’s Star Trek XI, for those of you keeping track) still breaks the prequel rule while, at the same time, it doesn’t. Utilizing time travel in a way that doesn’t involve whales, the movie is simultaneously a prequel, and a sequel. Despite the whole “parallel universe” thing, the movie takes place before the Original Series, which makes it a prequel. This gives the movie an opportunity to expand on the origins of James T. Kirk and Mister Spock, something fans have always wanted to see in canon. While Star Trek reintroduces these characters, some important tropes (such as phasers, tri-corders, and the Vulcan Nerve Pinch) are never explained. But that’s okay. It’s also a sequel.

More analogies to sex

2009-04-27T13:05:00.000-07:00

Upon first glance, the waiting room made me feel like I had just entered a gentleman’s club. And not the kind where everyone wears silly hats and does community service. The kind of club where everything is so fancy to divert attention from the fact that something illegal is happening. Let me start over. Upon first glance, the waiting room made me feel like I had just entered a bordello.

I had been driving for a while Sunday morning looking for a barber shop. Every one I happened across was closed for at least several more hours. All the way across town, I finally found a Weldon’s barber shop. Needless to say, it was not what I expected.

To me, barber shops have always been a necessary inconvenience, in the fact I have to trust myself instead to a group of irritating girls who claim hairstyling is just for paying their way through college. A traditional barber shop, or something cheap like Super Cuts, is much more like a strip club. It’s not the best by far, but least they’re getting the job done.

I must’ve looked nervous as the woman led me into the back.

“I’ve never been in a place like this before,” I stammered. She nodded, understanding.

“Do you have a wife?” she asked as she sat me down and prepared her tools. “Girlfriend? Kids?”

“Please,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about that. I’m just here for my haircut.”

“So how do you want to do this?” she asked.

“Um, well, I’m not sure. Do what you think would work. You’re the professional.”

She leaned me back and got to work. I can’t lie; it was amazing. I never knew a haircut could be like that. I was never comfortable, however. I could never relax. With every hot towel, with every scalp massage, I sat tense, trying to calculate how much more each perk would cost.

I, Disgruntled

2009-04-22T12:24:00.000-07:00

Word is spreading that once again, a comic book that has yet to see print has been optioned for a big-budget movie. Every movie is based on a book, or comic, or another movie, or video game. Everything is based on something. I’ve decided to let this sort of thing bother me less and less, after realizing that all of the best movies are based on books, whether we are aware of it or not.

“I, Frankenstein,” as the comic/movie will be called whenever it comes out, has a completely bitchin’ name. I can’t argue with that. The premise, however, gives me pause. It attempts to set the classic Universal Monsters in a classic noir story. Frankenstein’s monster is a hard-boiled detective, Dracula is a mob boss, etc, etc. My problem with stories like this is the laziness that comes attached with it. If you write any kind of story, you have to work to make the reader interested, to like or dislike the characters, and give them a hook to keep their attention. “I, Frankenstein” comes with all of these things built-in. By letting well-known (and public domain) characters do all of the heavy lifting, you simply have to fill in the blanks with clichés from a Chandler novel to wrap up a narrative. But that’s not story-telling. That’s a mad-lib.

Even in the far-flung year of 2009, it is not impossible to write an original story. It’s not even impossible to write an original monster movie. I mean, at least “Van Helsing” bothered to reinterpret the monsters a little.

…

It has just occurred to me that I have defended “Van Helsing”. I'd better stop writing.

Drabbletastic

2009-04-14T06:28:00.000-07:00

This following story wasn't good enough for the Drabblecast. Sure, I could probably send it somewhere else, but what's the fun in that? This is a drabble, which means it is exactly one hundred words.

"Night Terrors"

It is after 3 a.m. when Liz jumps out of bed, her eyes wide, her finger pointing at the darkened corner of our bedroom. “There’s a giant spider over there!” she hisses.

“No,” I say. “Those don’t exist, sweetheart. There’s no such thing.”

She is unsure for a moment, but reluctantly climbs back in bed. She trusts me.

I’ve been staring at that corner since before Liz woke up. A thousand tiny eyes gleam in the darkness, and I can almost make out its eight thick, furry legs. I can only pray that I’m right, that we’re both just dreaming.

Unconventional

2009-04-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

“Wonder Woman doesn’t wear a cape,” I would utter over the dull roar of the line every time the girls came close. The line into the Emerald City Comic Con snaked back and forth so we passed the same people over and over before we were allowed past the man in the Wookie costume to enter the Con floor. First we would pass the man far too old to be dressed as Ash from Pokemon. Then we would pass the woman who appeared to be grimacing at everything, though her face may have been rendered that way through a terrible accident. And then, again and again, we would shuffle past the three girls in the costumes.

People dressing in costumes at a comic book convention are nothing rare, but these girls stood out. That was kind of the point. They appeared to be part-time models or low-grade porn stars, just three college-age girls dressed as DC superheroines. But not quite. At first glance, the differences were not noticeable, but these girls were not here to not get seconds glances. No, these three had grabbed cheap, plasticky Halloween costumes off the rack at a K-Mart and paraded into the convention, trying not to look down their noses at the roomful of people who could spot the sort of lazy inconsistencies.

“Wonder Woman doesn’t wear a cape,” I repeated as we slowly moved by them again.

“I think she needs the cape to hold up that sign,” Tori offered. She pointed at the plain printer paper taped to the fabric, which proclaimed something along the lines of “Get in line to take pictures with real women, you hopeless nerds! Only $10!”

I read their signs. And then I got madder.

* * *

Hours and autographs later, we all sat in the little food court between the Magic: The Gathering tournament and the group of Stormtroopers. I had been enjoying myself. Things were going well. Then we spotted them.

From that distance, I could admit that the Supergirl looked decent enough. For a brunette. It was the costume from the 80s, but that was probably more recognizable. Wonder Woman still wore a cape and, I could now see, a skirt. With them stood… I guess that was supposed to be Batgirl, but it didn’t look like any costume Barbara Gordon or Cassandra Cain would ever wear.

More distressing, however, was their company. A small gaggle of boys and men had been lured away from the half-priced graphic novels to stand around them, each waiting their turn to stand close to them (but not with them), or have them pretend to kiss their cheek (but not get too close). I watched them all dig for their wallets.

It was depressing as hell. A comic book convention is a place for like-minded people who respect each others’ interests to gather and share their loves. I had assumed the righteous indignation I felt at the money-lenders in my temple was shared by everyone else there. But it wasn’t.

Beautiful, unattainable women transcend every boundary.

Busyness

2009-03-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, sure, I’ve been busy. I was sick for that week, so that was a good excuse to not write. The past month or so has been dedicated to fumbling around bootlegged software to make my fanedit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVo-_Geu1_A). Truth be told, I even took a pause when it came to reading. Sure, I tore through the Invincible graphic novels I pick up from the Comic Book Shop, but my copy of Girl In The Flammable Skirt sits dejected on my desk at work. Its bookmark has barely moved in weeks. But I’ve been busy.

Then, a funny thing happened the other day. Via a MySpace message to a friend, I spent 500 words defending Captain Kirk’s role as leader and diplomat in the original Star Trek episodes. This took me almost an hour. I researched on Wikipedia (“What was the name of the woman Kirk fell in love with when he traveled back to the 1930s?” (It was Edith Keeler)). I dug through my DVD collection (“Which season was ‘Journey to Babel’ on?” (It was Season Two)). I examined his unique strategic style (He won an accommodation for original thinking back in Star Fleet Academy). I poured my heart into those words, dissecting the psyche and motivations of James Tiberius Kirk. I felt drained, but so very fulfilled when I had finished. And then I punched myself in the genitals.

How could I spend so much time and put so much effort into something so pointless? (J.R. will never accept the Original Series as the greatest of Trek.) Why would I avoid my usual writing process if I was going to write something anyways? It’s not as if 500 words on the greatness of Captain Kirk would be incredibly out of place on my blog.

I guess the inevitable has happened. I took a self-imposed hiatus from writing just so the urge could build back up and overflow in a useless, though very convincing, way. I guess there are no more excuses. Back to writing, starting right now.

…

Hmm. Well, this is probably enough for today.

Whitesploitation

2009-02-02T18:10:00.000-08:00

When people ask me if the film Gran Torino was any good, I have difficulty responding. If one were to look at the script, acting, themes, most of the directing, and overall production value, it is pretty terrible. Not the worst movie I’ve ever seen (Troy), but nowhere near the best (Robocop). But those are never the first words out of my mouth. Gran Torino isn’t about any of that stuff. Gran Torino is about a nearly eighty-year-old Clint Eastwood kicking the shit out of inner city teenagers, a sight everyone over the age of fifteen has wanted to see, whether they were aware of it or not. Gran Torino delivers on that unspoken promise, and is quite enjoyable.

What makes it stand out to me is that it can be included in my favorite genre (or, more likely, subgenre) of movies: Whitesploitation.

Think of it as blacksploitation, but with white people. It was its beginnings around the same time as blacksploitation with 1974’s Death Wish, starring the infamous Charles Bronson. Most whitesploitation films follow the Death Wish formula: a white-collar family man, either inexperienced in combat or very out of practice, becomes fed up with the violence in urban America and decides to fight back. Things get bloody and darkly humorous, seeing as every character in it is a complete and insulting stereotype.

Again like blacksploitation, you can say it is really about raising awareness of the state of Modern America and blah blah blah, but we all know what Whitesploitation is really about: laughing as a nearly eighty-year-old Clint Eastwood kicks the shit out of inner city teenagers. And that’s why I love it.

Recommended Whitesploitation Viewing List:
- Death Wish (1974) or any of its four sequels
- Taxi Driver (1976), the classiest of the genre
- The Punisher (1989), just look for Dolph Lundgren on the cover
- Falling Down (1993), my personal favorite
- Death Sentence (2007), starring Kevin Bacon. Need I say more?
- Gran Torino (2008), of course

Cattiness

2009-01-27T16:59:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to the sound of a cat yowling, shrieking its head off, one floor below my bedroom window. This cat was soon joined by all of its friends, each one trying to scream louder than the others. It was 5 a.m.

They sounded like children, but not quite. Something was unnatural in their voices, something sinister and nerve-wracking. I thought of folklore, classic horror stories about sirens or other mystical beings calling out in the night. And then I thought of Disney movies.

Tori and I have been watching all the old Disney movies we can through our Netflix account lately, and the noise called to mind a scene from "Lady and the Tramp." In the film, Lady, the sort of naïve rich girl Billy Joel would write a song about, finds herself in the dog pound and across the cell from her, a gaggle of dogs (including a tall Russian dog who calls their human captors “Cossacks” like a furry little Ensign Chekov) harmonize in a sad song I clearly remember moving five-year-old Brian to tears.

The cats outside sounded like that. Except they were not singing an actual song composed by human beings with a sense of melody. And even if it was, they weren’t singing it very well at all.

Actually, they sounded more like if Axl Rose had cloned himself several times and formed an all Axl Rose barbershop quartet.

At about that point, I gave up and got out of bed. It wasn’t too much longer before my alarm was supposed to be going off. After all, I’m an adult now.

Choosiness.

2009-01-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

Downtown Spokane is laced together by a spider web of skywalks, which both makes travel convenient and allows me to call myself a “skywalker.” Walking over Riverside last week, I saw a young couple walking their dog, who had just stopped to take a dump in the middle of the walkway. This did not faze the couple, of course. They continued on with their conversation, laughing, enjoying themselves, as they produced an old Safeway plastic bag from inside one of their backpacks.
I hated them for that. Nothing bothered them, oh, not the hip, freewheeling couple with everything to prove. Who cares if their animal they are walking inside, traveling from one indoors to another indoors, relieved himself on carpet belonging to someone else? And who cares if their half-assed clean-up attempt only grinds it deeper into the carpet, but not so deep that it doesn’t attach itself to some passerby’s shoes? Who cares about all that? Not them, those bastards.

A few days later, Tori and I sat down to a nice, reasonably priced meal at the Olive Garden. I had never eaten at one before, so I was giving it the benefit of the doubt. We were seated by an impossibly short hostess right next to what appeared to be a makeshift daycare.
Every toddler in a five block radius had convened on the floor around a large table to push toy cars through the carpet, make loud noises, and occasionally shriek as if stabbed by a child-sized katana. There were tantrums, sobbing, and screams of every variety. If I closed my eyes, I felt as if I was sitting in the middle of a Chuck E Cheese's ball pit. And behind them, leaning against the wall, their mothers talked on their cell phones. This continued for the bulk of our time in the restaurant.

It made me think of an interesting statistic I recently became aware of. Apparently, in larger cities, kids don’t exist. You can wander the streets like an extra in Children of Men and never once happen across some screeching brat with no awareness of the world outside of itself. I almost drooled in my potatoes at the mere thought of it.
In San Francisco, dogs outnumber people under eighteen years of age. But what kind of a trade-off would that be? They are both tiny and often ill-behaved. Both seem to live to bark and crap. For all the companionship they give their owners, both are more of a burden on the outside world.
After much deliberation, I would rather live in a city of dogs. At least you can whack them on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper when they make noise.

Blogging.

2009-01-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

So, I’ve been published a few times now. And that’s cool. But with the validation comes a bit of responsibility. If writing is something I am going to take seriously, I should probably, you know, do it more.
That means no more waiting for inspiration. No more all-day Star Trek marathons (unless I want my stories to start turning into fanfic). Daily naps… can stay for now. I’m still only human.
That also means trying to update this blog regularly. I give this address out quite a bit now. You never know when someone will actually look it up.
So, blog topics. Go time. Just let it come out. You can do this, Brian…

I guess Spokane has officially received about 60 inches of snow so far this Winter. Sixty. That’s five feet. Midgets could be buried in that, and we’d never know until Spring (which will probably come no sooner than May). Crazy stuff.
This sort of thing really makes me want to fight my fear of change and move somewhere. Seattle still gets snow, but only an inch or two at a time. Plus, that blows their minds. They abandon their cars on the freeways and call in the National Guard.
A friend of mine visited South America on some kind of mission trip lately, and everyone in their group returned to the United States with some kind of stomach parasite after the natives served them a meal of semi-cooked guinea pigs. This story makes me want to continue to never leave this country, because it confirms that food in every other country anywhere is reminiscent of that banquet scene in Temple of Doom.
I do have to wonder if I am missing out, though. My old college roommate recently joined the Navy (where he can sail the seven seas), and has already visited countries I’ve never even heard of. For all I know, he discovered them. I get the impression his five-year mission is to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and to teach alien chicks to love while enforcing the Prime Directive.
No word if any of those weird new countries eat rodents or experience snow.

The Robot Whisperer

2008-12-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

A short story of mine has been published in an online speculative fiction magazine. Check it out.

The Robot Whisperer

Lunch Nazis

2008-12-03T07:02:00.000-08:00

I still remember waiting on the end of those collapsible tables in my grade school’s gym (though, for an hour at noon, we were to call it the “cafeteria”). I wouldn’t say I’m haunted by this memory. Haunted is a strong word. It does, however, float above my head at night, whispering dark thoughts and daring me to open my eyes.

I sat at the end of one of the collapsible tables in the cafe-gym every day, waiting until enough children had gone that they would let me go too. I had finished my soggy pizza. I had drank every ounce of that cheap chocolate milk that tasted like the paper carton it came in. I didn’t care if they wouldn’t let me out to recess yet. I was going to be goddamned if I ate those green beans.

The wilted olive lengths sat neglected in their small compartment on the tray. They rested on a small pool of green bean water putting off a green bean smell. Imitation bacon bits were strewn about them like once-delicious casualties of war. I wept for them. I fought the same war.

Fifth-graders marched back and forth through the aisles. They decided who could go and who could stay. Clean trays were considered best. If there was anything left, such as green beans, you must stay and finish them. Once about forty-five minutes had gone by, they would relent and let you go since everyone else had finished by then.

A fifth-grader walked past, peering back and forth. I pretended to stab at my left-overs, merely stirring them around. I glanced at the clock. This was important. This was a revolution, and I was Rosa-fuckin’-Parks.

Soon I would be set free. Outside there would be no green-bean smell, there would be games and friends and girls. I would be out there soon. I would see the sun.

Attractivism

2008-11-21T18:00:00.000-08:00

In accordance with the wishes of President-elect Barack Obama, I have decided to sit down and ponder, doing some serious soul-searching to uncover my inner-most fears, fascinations, and prejudices. It has taken some time (most of which occurred at work, where I am paid to do so), but I have finally discovered one shocking revelation. It appears that I, Brian Baer, am an attractivist.

That’s right. An attractivist.

Not only do I hold a deep reverence for the beautiful, bestowing upon them rights and privileges undreamt of by commoners, I also find myself pitying those, well, less aesthetically gifted. The homely. The unfortunate-looking. The fatties. “Those poor darlings,” I think. “How cruel fate is, for them at least.”

In my defense, this is not always a negative viewpoint to be coming from. If anything, as I am pitying, I am also assuming more positive things about them. “Those beautiful, shallow people have every right to be jerks,” I think. “All through their life, they have been given the best of everything, as well they deserve. But these ugly people are different. Surely someone so tragic in appearance leads a rich inner life, and are likely quite nice. If I could stomach looking at them long enough to have a brief conversation, I’m sure it would be very enjoyable. You know, like the Elephant Man.”

As I hope I have demonstrated, attractivism is not necessarily a bad thing. I choose to look on my outlook as positive one. I like to think by making assumptions about people I choose to ignore, I am making the world a better place.

Faithfulness

2008-08-06T16:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve known for some time that I could never be in a horror movie, if for no reason other than (what I consider) common sense. For instance, if I saw my grandmother crawling from her grave and attacking some kids at make-out point, you would never hear me utter the words, “There has to be a logical explanation for this.” Instead, you could see me standing calmly and in control, saying something more along the lines of, “Well, obviously, a space probe from Venus has returned to Earth and carried with it an extraterrestrial virus capable of reanimating the recently deceased. They are thoughtless shells of our loved ones and they hunger for our flesh. They can only be killed by destroying their brains or severing their spinal columns. So, we’d better arm ourselves with shotguns and chainsaws and head for the safety of the nearest shopping mall.”

Zombies have never actually risen around me, and I’m fairly certain that is because I am too well-prepared. I have guidebooks and emergency plans for just such an occasion. Zombies only attack those high school archetypes who would rather question the validity of what is happening to them than remember the last Bruce Campbell movie they saw.

That is what is so unfair about the world. Only rednecks with no interests outside of pick-up trucks and honky tonks are abducted by aliens. Only lifelong skeptics are shown signs of a benevolent God. The Sasquatch only appears to dumb-luck campers with unsteady camera hands. Ghosts only visit newly-wed couples with creepy children.

I, on the other hand, believe in lake monsters. I believe in ghosts, vampires, zombies, missing links, aliens, and God. And as a reward for my faith I have to settle for my imagination and Sci-Fi original movies. Maybe there isn’t a God after all…

Fictionness (for Scott)

2008-06-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

She picked up the framed picture of the two of them and smashed it against the wall. She dropped it on the floor in a pile of broken glass and paper shards.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he sighed, less upset than she had hoped for. “Look, it’s not that big of a deal. We can still, you know, hang out. Nothing is really changing here.”

Her jaw was clenched tight. She pushed his alarm clock behind the dresser with a backhand that stung her knuckles, then picked up an ashtray she had given him. He ducked as it cracked into the wall behind his head.

“What the hell?” he shouted. She threw a book, a lamp, an old shoe, bouncing off his defensive arms and denting his walls. She moved to the large fish tank next to his bed.

“No,” he said, his eyes growing wide. “Why would you… don’t do it. Okay? They’re…”

“Important?” she asked, gripping her keys through her fingers, the ring and lucky rabbit’s foot in her palm. Her eyes swelled but she blinked away tears. “I hope these are the most important thing in the world to you. I hope these make you happy, and take up all your time and energy. I hope you love them.”

She slammed her fist into the glass, ignoring the pain and not even looking at the tank crumple into itself and spilling its contents at her feet. Her feet were soaked and the yellow and white fish bounced and agonized. She tried to smile.

“Because you are never going to get them back.”

Musingness

2008-06-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

“Cunt” must be the Aquaman of swear words. “Fuck” is much more versatile and better respected. It is swearing’s Superman. While Superman can do just about anything anywhere, Aquaman is only needed in very specific situations. Out of its element, Aquaman is just the wrong superhero. But when you have the right moment for it, it is so perfect it will blow your mind.

Also, I would feel comfortable using a Superman or two around my parents. Aquaman? Forget about it.

As far as I can tell, being a child must be exactly like being drunk. Firstly, everything is about you. Nobody else factors in. The volume of noises you produce can never offend anyone, and you can tell anyone anything any number of times. You can eat anything. You are continually awkward and off-balance, still learning your center of gravity. Boobs are also very, very important.

... Just a few things to think about today.

Luckiness

2008-06-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

This morning I put on a pair of pants (as I often do) and found four dollars in one of the pockets (which is almost unheard of). Thusly, I consider today a good day. It is a good day because it is a medium day. Four dollars isn’t all that lucky; it can’t even buy me lunch. If I had found enough money to buy myself lunch, it would have been a good day, and because of its goodness, it would then become a bad day. (Just stick with me on this one.)

I have never once had a day that started out good and kept it up until I went to bed. It just doesn’t work that way. What I generally have instead is a handful of very, very good hours in the morning before something happens and the rest of the day turns to shit. The rest of these days are generally so bad that I now realize that the goodness at the beginning is merely karma attempting to balance out the inevitable.

In grade school I began to smell these things coming and would attempt to sully my day early, standing close to a roadside mud puddle, hitting my forehead on cabinet doors, anything to start the day off bad quickly so the badness would have more time to be spaced out throughout the entire day. I can tolerate most anything in moderation. This never seemed to work, though. Fate would pick its moment and not sway.

This has taught me to appreciate the average. I am perfectly happy with mediocre days with minimal highs and shallow lows. I don’t want anything more than that, because I know what will happen next.

I hope I never win the lottery. I’d probably get AIDS.

Wildness

2008-06-16T17:15:00.001-07:00

Perhaps as part of a self-toughening ritual so complex even I am not aware of the reasoning behind it, last night I voluntarily subjected myself to watching Wild Wild West, something I had not attempted since it was debuting in theaters in 1999. Even at (roughly) fourteen years age, at the time I was still very aware of how terrible that movie was. Of course, I was not yet the illustrious film snob I am now, so I was unable to put my finger on exactly what was so wrong with it.

Nearly a decade later, I learned more about myself through this viewing than I did about the problems of the film itself. Namely, I discovered what an enormous nerd I am, and not in the sense that I could determine that George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic did the special effects before the closing credits rolled (though I did get that right, too). I was painfully aware of the inept attempts at forcing humor and the remarkably sizable plot holes, but what struck me the most was the curious lionization of President Ulysses S. Grant.

From a purely presentist perspective, Grant was not considered a great president. He’s generally thought of as somewhere near the bottom of the middle, a better general than politician though never having done anything really wrong in office. At the time, however, his presidency was seen as weak and corrupt, marred by post-war economic struggles such as the Panic of 1873. And yet there he is in Wild Wild West portrayed as a hardcore, take-no-shit leader more along the lines of Captain America or Harrison Ford in Air Force One.

Hollywood is strange.

…

Well, let’s see in The Incredible Hulk is any better.

Untitledness

2008-06-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

I have fallen from grace, tricked by convincing coworkers into tasting the forbidden fruit. There is no going back. I am now unable to function without coffee. And not the black, manly kind that comes from old pots in faded novelty mugs. I am addicted to Starbucks™. The girlier the better.

I have also spent the last few weeks making this forbidden rendezvous without understanding how to do it properly. I fumble through the motions like an inexperienced high school kid. I blush with shame when seasoned baristas nod at me, knowing my innocence. They have to guess what I am trying to order. They have to correct me, translate my layman expressions into the correct terminology. To an outsider, the goings-on of a coffee shop are shrouded in mystery, candy-coated in tradition and deep-fried in a thick crispy mask of the unknown.

I have recently learned this is completely as true as I assumed. Starbucks™ actually publishes a translation guide. It is as small and serious as a standard traveler’s translation book, full of helpful phrases to know and the proper verb tenses to construct a sentence in their strange, gibberish language. For a person wanting nothing more than to satisfy the caffinelust now running through my veins like an Amtrak, I need to study up and do my homework.

Why would an addiction make you learn?

Reunioness

2008-06-12T18:19:00.000-07:00

Oh, sweet baby internet, how I’ve missed you. The strangest thing happened in your absence. As far as I can tell, I just stopped doing things. From the tiniest deeds to the grandest accomplishments, I can’t help but feel I’ve done absolutely nothing. I’ve sat still, staring blankly at a wall for two weeks (including at work, where they pay me for doing such).

This, of course, is not true. In our new apartment, even now that the internet is back on, Tori and I are still bereft of any TV stations. While this gives me much more free time, it does not make me feel as lacking as the lack of internet. If anything, it encourages me to get more done. Logically, the same should have been true when we had to internet. If I strained hard enough, which I rarely do, I might even be able to think of something I did since we moved in. I must have done something. But nothing comes to mind.

What does come to mind, however, is how I look at accomplishments. Apparently, if given a choice between curing cancer and telling people I’ve cured cancer, I would choose the latter. What I have done is insignificant next to the power of communication. I have a desperation is brag. And, internet, now that you’re back, maybe once again I’ll feel like I’ve done something after I get done writing about it.

Sleepiness

2008-05-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

This is going to be short and unliterary because, frankly, I’m way too sleepy to try to sound smart or cool or talented right now.

Between my teenaged love of midnight movies and my grown-up job, I got about three hours worth of sleep last night. I’ve been chugging coffee just to get enough energy to balance out to a normal level of alertness to finish my busy work. It’s a losing battle. I can understand why housewives do speed.

I hate coffee. I hate the taste, I hate the dependency it demands, and I hate the pretentiousness involved with it. I do my best not to drink it normally, and I can account that to the fact that I am not an adrenaline junkie. I don’t seek thrills or attempt to push the limits of my caffeine tolerance. I don’t want to be hyper. I do love the smell, though.

I am feeling a bit like Harrison Ford in this last Indy flick, mostly in the sense I’m too old for this sort of thing. For midnight movies, I mean. I’m back at that topic. I never stayed up late writing papers like in the horror stories I hear from people who took real classes, and whenever I’d go to a late showing of a movie I’d just sleep until noon the next day. I used to sleep a lot. But no more, I guess. At least I’m getting paid now.

Workshop last night went really well (for me, at least). I got some pretty good criticism and a surprising amount of praise. I’m trying not to let it go to my head.

So Indy 4 wasn’t bad, I’m feeling better about this whole writing thing, I’m moving in with Tori Saturday, and I’m pretty sure Chris asked me out last night. All in all, things are going alright.

Wordiness (90% Nonfiction)

2008-05-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

Tori had brought a Lunchable again. I don’t know how she could eat that stuff. We sat in the mall food court eating much less expensive food. A disheveled man behind me was twitching and muttering to himself, sitting alone and staring out the window.

“I didn’t blog last night,” I said.

“Yeah, I noticed,” she said, making a tiny sandwich of processed meat and cheese. “I checked this morning, too.”

“I had something in mind, but I couldn’t really make it work,” I continued. “It was going to be about bumper stickers.”

She nodded, taking a bite.

“I was stuck behind some asshole yesterday in some crappy old SUV, and his bumper sticker said, ‘Don’t let my car fool you, my real treasure is in heaven.’”

“You’re kidding.”

The guy behind me mumbled louder, then quieted down.

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, what a dick. Is that sort of thing supposed to convert tailgaters?”

“I doubt it,” Tori laughed, cheap crackers crumbling in her hand.

“What kind of idiot gets that bumper sticker? Or 'Keep honking, I’m reloading,' or anything else for that matter? That’s the problem. What do you say to the type of person who has something like that?”

“Shut the fuck up!” the man behind us screamed. “Shut the fuck up! Just… fucking… shut up!”

We sat in silence for a moment. I mouthed, “Was he talking to me?” Tori smirked and shook her head no.

The twitchy man stood up and walked past our table. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you,” he said, but continued walking before we could stammer an answer.

“That guy was the nicest crazy person I’ve ever met,” Tori said once he was out of earshot.

He certainly was. I envied his way with words.

Cruiseiness

2008-05-17T15:21:00.000-07:00

I can remember going to the movie theater with my parents to see the Mission Impossible film adaptation when I was a child. It was unlike anything I had seen before. It was a sprawling storyline, moving from continent to continent as fugitive spy Ethan Hunt fought to prove his innocence. There were adventures and clandestine meetings, shootouts, chase scenes, and explosions, though the plot never overwhelmed the characters. I saw it twice more on the big screen, then bought the VHS, and later the DVD. I had seen Tom Cruise before in movies like Top Gun, but this one really seemed to stick out to me. He became one of my favorite actors.

So am dismayed with the gay rumors which never quite seem to go away? No. Did I shake my head in disgust when he jumped on Oprah’s couch? Not really. Will I swear off his films due to his personal life? Of course not.

I find it strange that in every other form of art, bizarre activities and eccentricities are almost necessary. When it comes to people we see on TV or in movies, however, the media becomes predators, waiting for the slightest hint of weakness before swooping in for the kill. The public waits for these signs to look down on celebrities and find a way to cast judgment.

After the now-infamous couch-jumping incident, Tom Cruise has been mocked, parodied, slandered, and, worst of all, had his box office receipts drop. Mission Impossible 3 was the first movie to be released after the event, and though it was not bad, it nearly bombed. Lions for Lambs, a Robert Redford political thriller that came out the next year, was mostly ignored. The press surrounding next year’s Valkarie, the Bryan Singer-helmed historical film in which Cruise will star, has all been negative. For the most part, these have all been due to the public response to his personal life. Because of what he does in his spare time, whether it be his sexual preference, religion, or anything else, most people want nothing to do with him anymore.

We want our writers, painters, and directors to be crazy – a skewed sense of perspective makes them become “visionaries.” But an actor, a person who’s lifestyle has much less to do with the art they make, cannot be anything short of what we see them doing on the screen. It is not difficult at all to separate a person from their craft. As an actor, he is paid to pretend, to be in character, to make us forget he’s Tom Cruise, the Scientologist who jumps on couches. And he does a pretty damn good job.

Fattiness

2008-05-17T01:52:00.000-07:00

Ladies, you must understand I have nothing against you. I do not oppose the “fatty empowerment” craze which pops up sporadically. I saw Hairspray. This is not an attack on your people, nor is it an attempt to disrupt your way of life. I am not the Taliban of fatties. I am merely a concerned citizen who sees a great wrong being done and who wishes to do his part to set things right.

Please stop using Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 hit “Baby Got Back” as your anthem, as you appear to be misinterpreting its lyrics and overall message. It is not a song about you. It is a song about different girls. In it, Sir Mix-A-Lot repeatedly says “little in the middle, but you got much back.” You aren’t little in the middle, are you? Just because you’re big in the back does not mean this song applies to you. You’re big everywhere, and nobody seems to be celebrating that, at least in song form. Sir Mix-A-Lot claims to love his women “like Flo-Jo,” a track and field athlete who still holds two World Records. You’re no Flo-Jo, are you?

You’re allowed to have your theme song. Everyone is entitled to that right (for example, White People’s theme song is “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees). It is all a matter of finding something that fits you just right. And come on, you know how difficult that can be.

Repostfulness

2008-05-15T06:28:00.001-07:00

I know my last few blogs have been a bit lazy, internet. So, as a bonus, I'm going to repost a blog I put on my MySpace page a few months back.

Sweeny Todd Flashbacks

I was certain the thin cloth she threw over my body was blood-proof. My gooey innards would slide off like it was a high-priced couch when the time came. She was gliding about behind me, sophisticated death utensils in her hands. Sure, I could see her in the mirror in front of us, but I did my best not to trust something so simple. She moved in ways I couldn’t fathom. She was like an aproned ghost.

She talked loudly to a coworker across the room as her strong fingers grabbed and pulled at my hair. I could hear the sharp snipping noises as she cut the air with a pair of shiny scissors.

“It wasn’t that I threw a real glass at him or anything,” she was clarifying over the din of electric razors. “It was one of those big plastic ones Taco Bell gave out for the last Batman movie.” Out of my view in the mirror, her friend seemed to agree that this was, in fact, the only logical course of action.

She tugged harder and I felt the cold steel blade against my scalp. Snip, snip. “He keeps pushing the wedding date back,” she continued to her phantom listener. “Whenever he tries to think of a day, I can’t do it because of work. Whenever I name one, it doesn’t work with his mom’s schedule. His mom. Can you believe that?” She sighed hard and sliced at the air again as if it was her boyfriend’s throat. “I mean, what the hell is wrong with him?”

I slumped down in the chair, away from her angry cutting, and tried to look like I wasn’t listening. I hoped it wasn’t that he was a bad tipper.

Vaderness

2008-05-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24604338/?GT1=43001

I have been told this is something I might do, were I drunk enough. And in Britain. And supporting the Galactic Empire.

Thankfulness

2008-05-13T06:06:00.001-07:00

Dear internet,
I would like to thank you for reminding me how fortunate I am to live in America. Compared to most other countries, our porn is wholesome and character-driven. And I'm okay with that. I enjoy a little mystery. I don't know what "Two Girls, One Cup" is, and that's alright with me.

Feelinglessness

2008-05-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

Roughly ninety percent of what I do at work is stuffing envelopes. It’s true. I crunched the numbers during the other ten percent today. This, by all rationality, should be just boring enough to make me beg for the sweet embrace of death. This is also true. However, there are brief, shining moments.

The machine that prints up the names and addresses for these envelopes is a bit glichy and tends to cut out important information or add some that is completely unnecessary. (And just think, instead they could’ve hired a Creative Writing major or two for just enough money to buy Top Ramen and used Vonnegut paperbacks.) The other day I came across one that read a man’s name and then, “A Single Man.” My laughter bounced off the walls of my cubicle. Is there anything worse than being judged by the cold, Times New Roman of a machine? How would this man feel about himself upon seeing this?

Later, it was impossible not to empathize. I had nothing else to do. It must be awful to be so exposed, so critiqued by something so unfeeling. How would I feel to open the mailbox one day and see “Brian Baer, Chronic Masturbator”, or “Brian Baer, Listens to Fall Out Boy”?

I should try to stop reading through the lists for typos or funny names. I should remember that those names belong to real people. It’s hard, though. From eight to five, five days a week, I’m just a machine, too.

Animalness

2008-05-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve often heard the theory that people are comparable to animals. For example, animism was a big feature of Native American mythology, werewolves are cool, and the Mortal Kombat games have a finishing move when your character turns into an animal and kills your opponent. I think that’s called a “beastiality,” or something.

A game for my friends has been to try to decide which animal a person is, based either on their personality or a very obvious physical characteristic. Tori is gangly and awkward, so she a giraffe. Jon Grubb is fickle, drifting between people who will pay attention to him, so he is a puppy. A chain-smoker I dated briefly decided that I was a deer.

Yes, a deer. Like Bambi. Those things that jump in front of cars, and whose fancy head-accessories decorate bars and small town barber shops. Those things people shoot for fun a few months out of year, and then turn their flesh into sub-par jerky. A deer. She claimed it was because I was often reserved, sitting back, watching everything and everyone closely before I said or did anything.

I listened. I watched her moves, learned her sense of humor, and found common ground. I really got to know her and became comfortable. Then I dumped her ass.

McIdiotness

2008-05-11T22:31:00.001-07:00

So, I’ve begun listening to “This American Life.”

In an effort to break away from TV even a little bit, I’ve subscribed to their podcast and listen to it at work. National Public Radio has always had a bit of a stigma about it, that it is elitist and so self-important that is polarizing its listeners from the great unwashed Red State masses. It is rumored that even one listening can turn an average American into a bongo-banging, neo-hippie, coffee shop hipster douchebag. This, of course, is completely true. However, it is also very, very funny.

More importantly, I can’t help but feel programs like “This American Life” are necessary. These are troubled times. Comedian/genius David Cross has defined this generation as one "…in a state of vague American values and anti-intellectual pride." This could not be more true. If you are unswayed, internet, simply turn on your TV and look for the newest McDonalds commercial. They sell lattes now, which is far too trendy to look down upon. The marketing is the problem. McDonalds paints itself as a great liberator, allowing people to drink a marketable beverage without having to enter a place of any culture or, God forbid, open a book. I can only estimate the company will gross a ka-jillion dollars from this latest commercial alone.

So, internet, take a stand! Preferably, take my stand. Listen to NPR.

I can’t help but feel this would be more convincing if I actually drank coffee.

Adultness

2008-05-09T07:02:00.001-07:00

Remember that scene from Temple of Doom when the little Asian kid has blocks tied to his shoes so he can reach the gas pedal and drive a car? That is kind of how I feel every day. I just hope no one at the office notices.

I have been trying my best, though. I always get there early. I’ve learned how to operate a necktie. I make small talk with the middle-aged women in the cubicles surrounding me. I try to look busy.

It’s amazing how quickly it is sinking in. I catch myself becoming grumpy if I’m up past ten. I find myself scowling at teenagers. I watch the news now. I plan to vote.

Openness

2008-05-08T22:28:00.000-07:00

Listen up, internet. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. You’re a fickle bitch-goddess, and you know exactly how deep your claws have dug into me. You’ve reached the bones, the creamy nougat, the very soul. For you, I pay any price. For you, I pace back and forth, impatient, when we’re just not connecting like we used to. I call help lines for advice. I ask my friends how we can better work together. Everyone responds the same – “She does what she wants, Brian. Just hang on loosely and enjoy the ride.”

But this is an unexpected level of intimacy, don’t you think? Honesty is a big deal. You and me, well, we’ve never been on steady ground, but now I’m supposed to just open up to you? Share some secrets? Recommend a recipe? Tell a joke or two? And just what do you do in return? Hmm?

I’m sick to death of doing all the work here, internet. I’ll share when I feel like you’ve begun doing your part as well. I’ll be waiting.