Gut Rubber

I don’t want to take credit for it, but I think that there’s a decent chance that Runner’s World was more than a little inspired by my spotty, but still ongoing predilection for confessions with their most recent blogpost.

What’s new, you ask?  Well, I’m bartending a little, writing a little (very little, unfortunately), running more (little by little) in preparation for my first marathon, and doing that daily trying-to-keep-shit-together thing I find myself doing when I’m not in school with every moment of the day planned and scheduled for me.

And that’s about it.

Joe P. has been silently challenging me to another list-off for the last month, and it’s high time I rejoined the blog fracas anyhow.  This one will be brief, though.

Here’s how it goes: name five great movies and then five directors whose involvement in the films would have ruined them utterly.

1. Annie Hall as directed by Michael Bay

This is, if not my favorite movie, then at least among the 4-5 films that rotate through the “favorite” slot, depending upon my inebriation and/or level of relationship-depression.  So it would be easy to mess it up.  But it would take Michael Bay to really do the job right.  I imagine he would artificially heighten the stakes of all the scenes with super close-up shots and lots of brow sweat on all the actors.  Undoubtedly, he would turn Allen’s satisfying decrescendo ending into a twenty-minute explosion fest.

The good news: Christopher Walken would probably get a lot more screen time.  The bad news: His fiery car crash would no longer be merely a creepy-ass fantasy.

2. Wild Strawberries as directed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas

I think watching this film for the first time might have been what turned me into an amateur film snob.  Not that I actually know anything about films, but I was totally impressed with the fact that I had stayed awake through a black and white film in Swedish, obtained at least a passable understanding of its significant themes, and, most importantly, recognized Max Von Sydow, whom I knew better as Brewmeister Smith of Elsinore Brewery.  Which is why I think that the perfect way to ruin this movie would be to let the McKenzie brothers into it.

The good news: It would probably re-imagine a Shakespeare tragedy.  The bad news: It would do so really, really badly.

3. Casablanca as directed by Guy Ritchie

I actually like Guy Ritchie movies.  Or rather, I like that one movie he’s been doing in installments for the last ten years.  What’s it called…Lock, Snatch, and Two Smoking Revolvers or something like that.  It’s the Jason Statham biopic.  The scary thing is that Casablanca actually has the kind of plot arc that Ritchie leans on so much - basically the con that goes wrong, looks double-crossed, but turns out well because of the totally unforseen ending.  What’s even scarier is that this hypothetical is probably way closer to reality than I’m comfortable with.

The good news: At least it’s not Michael Bay.  The bad news: Jason Statham as Rick Blaine.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird as directed by John McTiernan

This is not to say that John McTiernen is a bad director.  He isn’t.  At least, I don’t think he is.  I mean, he gave us generation-defining movies like Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt for Red October, but then went on to squeeze out turds like Medicine Man, Last Action Hero, and Rollerball.  The first half of his career was like what Michael Bay aspires to be, but the second half of his career has been like a parody of Michael Bay (can I get another Michael Bay reference, please?).  I expect him to do something similar with this film - the first half rolls along okay, though we don’t understand why Atticus Finch always has something pithy to say through gritted teeth while shit blows up all around him, and then at the 45 minute mark the whole thing derails when Atticus begins to suspect that the whole rape trial is rigged by a shadowy government agency and realizes that he alone can save the planet by exposing the conspiracy through superior firepower and his ability to deliver lines while kneeling beside the tire of a burning car.

The good news: It’s only 90 minutes long. The bad news: It’s 90 whole minutes long.

5. The Big Lebowski as directed by the Wachowski brothers

It seems only fair that we hand off Lebowski from the Coens to another set of brothers.  It is, however, unfortunate that it’s these brothers. I loved The Matrix.  I have a copy of it next to my TV right now.  But then I watched the rest of the trilogy, which is not good.  And then I saw about 10 minutes of Speed Racer, which made me feel like my eyes had been raped by a gumdrop on acid.  With a remake of Lebowski, I expect the Wachowskis to introduce a groundbreaking digital effect every 20 minutes, but to also fill the second half of the film with gaping plot holes.  The movie will end with an extended industrial music video compilation.

The good news: John Goodman is still in it.  The bad news: He’s dressed in a latex bodysuit, a la Trinity.

I was standing in the bathroom earlier tonight, brushing my teeth and looking into the mirror (yeah, I look into it, not merely “at” it), thinking, “well, aren’t you a fetching young man?” when a slight movement over my right shoulder caught my attention. It was my bath towel sliding off of its precarious home draped over the shower curtain rod.

What happened next can only be described as a moment of pure, clarified instinct. Without thought or calculation I whirled blindly, toothbrush clenched tightly between my teeth in full battle mode, and snatched the towel cleanly from the air before even its hem had a chance to touch and be soiled by our tub or floor.*

It. Was. Awesome. I felt like a ninja, or at least the expert practicioner of a different but similarly sweet martial art form, like that Brazilian (one brazillion dollars!) crap from the movie Red Belt.

Don’t you have moments like those any more? They’re pretty rare for me these days, but when I was a kid this happened all the time. I pretty much walked around prepared to be awed by anything. Especially stuff that involved the usually superfluous attention to weaponry or fighting styles. Distant cousin’s wedding? Boring. Overhearing it described as a “shotgun” wedding at the reception? Oh, shit, why didn’t someone tell me about this sooner.

If spelling lists could have had machine gun turrets somehow mounted to them, elementary school would have been a much happier place.

What I mean to say is this: the world is still as cool and full of moments like this as it was when I was a kid, and I want to start noticing more of them again. Don’t you?

*I am bound by marital contract to inform you that not only is our bathroom NOT dirty, except perhaps for those few times when Faith is gone for the weekend and I am left to my own unhygenic devices, but that it is so unblemished that if Jesus himself were in the area and had time for a meal, he would be grateful to eat off a tub and floor as clean as ours.

Confusing

One of the things I spend a lot of time trying to convince my 101 and 102 students of is that the world is not an inherently binary place, that it is much more complicated and fractured, which makes it both a sadder and a more lovely place. I try to help them move beyond the idea that, not only are there two sides to every argument, but that there are probably at least as many sides as there are people within earshot of the conversation, and that these sides are not inherently discreet and separate things, that given a long enough conversation, we inevitably find we both agree and disagree with everyone we meet. I always hope that this understanding begins to take hold and is in turns overwhelming, comforting, liberating, and frustrating.

Usually, I just settle for them remembering what the word “binary” means.

This is the time of year when I find that I have trouble adhering to my own understanding of the world. It becomes really easy to divide my life into compartments. There is the English teacher compartment, the part-time employee at the retail chain compartment, the grad student compartment (which is further subdivided into the fiction, poetry, and Southern literature compartments), the drunk compartment, the friend compartment, and the husband compartment, among others.

Usually, I’m pretty good at letting these compartments melt together and not really be compartments at all. I let poetry inform my fiction, I perform the act of friendship by getting drunk with my wife, and I offer up some free (and probably unsolicited) advice on writing college essays to a fellow part-time retail employee.

And sometimes I’m so good at melting the perimeters of compartments that it gets me in trouble. Like when drunk and student hang out together too long. Or when wife thinks friend is taking away time from husband.

But even when it’s bad, it’s still good.

But right now, I’m having trouble with it. Each day looks like a cafeteria tray of neatly separated versions of myself.

This will pass. It always does.

Not dead yet

Originally uploaded by hensonkid.

Since I’m feeling oddly interested in poker metaphors, I’ll say that Joe has seen my neurosis and raised it by absurd. There is a new list challenge - the 5 best jobs you can get in a nationalist socialist dictatorship besides dictator:

5) Mustache wax dealer

4) Professional bread-line placeholder

3) Theologian/Assassination coordinator

2) Commanding officer at prisoner of war camp populated with zany American GI’s who find no end of amusement at your portly expense

1) Voice instructor with a specialization in intensely violent gutturals

Bonus list - 5 WORST jobs in a nationalist socialist dictatorship:

5) Pianist, apparently

4) Voice of reason

3) Square-dance barker (I would imagine)

2) One of several gaunt extras told to run past the camera in this next shot looking “terrified, like your career depends upon it, people!”

1) Eva Braun

How I spend my time these days

Originally uploaded by hensonkid.

My friend Joe and I make lists. Sometimes entire conversations are comprised of lists and the laborious explanations of each item/person/event/position listed. I don’t know why we do it.

Yes I do. It’s because we cannot stand a lull in conversation, and we’re both at least mildly obsessive.

So here’s the list I’m thinking of right now: Top five situations from which I try my damndest to escape, in spite of the fact that there is no actual *need* for escaping.

5) Grading shitty papers from 101 and 102 students. This never even takes very long. Usually, I start marking a lot of mistakes pretty meticulously, but by page three (if they get that far), I’m already slashing out entire sentences and bracketing entire paragraphs with the comment “LOTS of comma errors.” But instead of indulging in this actually somewhat delightful task, I sometimes (often) deliberately leave these papers in my office at school, just so I can go the entire weekend without the mild temptation to actually do my damn job.

4) Cooling down/stretching after a long or fast run. This is stupid. There is nothing to it. Doing this literally means that I need to jog more slowly than I had been and then sit down and lean in various directions. This can easily be accomplished in front of a television. Or a beer. Or both. Avoiding this activity on a regular basis should qualify me for some kind of discount on public transportation because I am clearly not accepting responsibility for my own ongoing locomotion as an adult should.

3) Answering my phone when I’m in the middle of something only vaguely engaging. Like counting the number of floorboards from my futon to the front door of my apartment. If you try to call me on a regular basis (or used to - Julie, Emily), you know how difficult it can be to get me to answer. Though I sometimes have a legitimate excuse, more often than not, it’s because I don’t want to get up for the phone and risk losing my count.

2) Talking to professors to whom I owe papers. Yes, I know that this one is pretty common, but I think that if anyone should know better than to do this, it’s me. I mean, I am on the other side of this equation most of the time, and I badmouth all of my students (yes, all of them) who whine about not knowing how to “fix” their papers when they haven’t once come to my office for help or emailed me for advice. But I do that all the time too. I walk through different parts of the building when I have a paper due, even one that I’ll probably turn in on time. I think maybe I’m afraid that actually talking to me about what I “think” will ruin the professor’s wafer-thin delusion that I “know” stuff.

1) Blogging, oddly enough. I’m pretty sure that the only reason I’m doing this now is because it is helping me avoid at least three other items on this list.

http://twitpic.com/kjs <- What’s your weekend look like?

When you read "shoulder" as a verb, the road sign "shoulder work ahead" sounds a lot like fortune cookie aphorism.

I don’t even try to negotiate with jiffy lube any more. I just saying no as soon as they walk me into the bay.

Just emailed a prof to ask for an incomplete so I can have time to complete a previous incomplete. Why do I feel like I should be grounded?