lovehatethings

An audio interpretation of alternativereel.com's Top Ten Most Outrageous Opening Lines in Literature. Combined, I hope to create The Most Outrageous Opening Chapter in audio form.

I'm certainly not the only waiting for the Watchmen movie to come out in March '09. There have been plans to make this film for almost two decades and all reports, even with the liberties Zack Snyder has apparently taken with the ending, are that the film is the best anyone could expect from a feature-length Hollywood production. Why is it that the "Hollywood production" is what scares me the most when ever I hear a story is being adapted? Could it be that the same studios responsible for every Eddie Murphy film of the last 15 years, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, and the gelding of Vince Vaughan and Will Ferrell have put me off of most major studio efforts?

The reason I'm so eagerly anticipating the Watchmen film is, of course, due to the comic book series and subsequent graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Gibbons. The thing that impressed me so much upon first reading the series was the scope and scale the story took. Moore and Gibbons didn't only create a world, but they inhabited it with hyperreal characters and landscapes and I daresay, more than any other comic at that time and since, enveloped readers in it.

Such a method of grand scale doesn't always work, and rarely in comics, especially only given the 12 issue run. I remember reading Frank Herbert's Dune series and really struggling as a teen trying to get through at least half of the first book just to feel like I had a grasp on the setting. I'm not saying the effort was not worth it. And, to be sure, I admired the first five or six of the Dune novels... I didn't really keep up after that. Yet there was an example of grand scale gone wrong when it came to David Lynch's film effort. I enjoyed the film enough when it came out, but realized that even I (after reading four books at the time) was having trouble following some of the history and practices from scene to scene. The friend I went with was completely lost. He told me that after about 45 minutes he pretty much just gave up on the story and settled back to watch it as a psychedelic tryptich. Therein lay the problems and pitfalls of trying to contain scope and scale and setting in a Hollywood production.

Don't get me wrong, Hollywood can present scope, scale and setting through a well-crafted screenplay incredibly effectively. Give me a sweeping crane shot here, an flourishing orchestral score there, a supporting cast of thousands in period costume and weve got the makings of grandiose epic. But the transition of book print to a film print always loses something in translation precisely becuase the film tries to remain faithful. I would suggest the very reason that Stephen King's The Shining and Stanley Kubrick's adapted film were both great is precisely because, just as King concentrated on writing the best novel he could without thinking of how it would end up on film, Kubrick concentrated on making the best film he could make without concerning himself with remaining completely true to text.

I appeciate the desire of Hollywood to start with a product that has been at least successful in one venue or another. Such is the reason that every novel that makes a popular list gets optioned by some producer or studio these days. I'll further concede that the stories presented in a novel must look far more rich when placed side by side with a screenplay. Actors clamor to delve into a well-developed character that verges away from stereotypes and while novels can paint broad two-dimesional stroke when the want to, they do have much more canvas to experiment with. The successful novel will always be a popular catalyst for a film, and, more often, comics are providing that incentive as well because let's face it, some of them have years and decades to explore a character and, quite frankly, they need it. The development in any given character within one comic book issue is miniscule at best. Let's face it, superheroes are often two dimensional at best and the only depth we ascribe to them is buried in the decades long history they encompass.

And so we come back to the Watchmen. Depth of multiple characters, plot and setting in 12 issues was near unheard of in a comic book era that birthed the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I understand why Alan Moore has become forever hesitant to watch any of his stories brought to film. In the same way we create imaginary worlds when reading novels, try to conceive of the scope and scale in Moore's mind upon creating the Watchmen world. How much did he conceive of that he couldn't even fit into the books? When we feel things are missing as readers, I can only imagine the process of seeing a film adaption is deathly uninspiring to the orginal writer.

I hope for the success of the film. I hope it inspires millions to go and read the original. I hope that Zack Snyder gets lauded for the attempt even if not the execution. I know that if I can line up at midnight on 03/06/09, the answer to "who watches the Watchmen?" will be me and a horde of fanboys.

I've always been a sucker for nostalgia. Never has any period in time so inspired me to reveries of childhood bliss as thinking back on 70s Saturday mornings. I spent my formative years engrossed by the idiot box to become a pre-pubescent afficionado of cartoons. From Bugs Bunny to Hong Kong Phooey to the Superfriends to the Flintstones and the Jetsons to Scooby Doo, the Laff-a-lympics and Yogi Bear and Roger Ramjet for good measure, there was never a cartoon that didn't fit into a Saturday morning. And there was never a morning that wasn't supplemented by cereal. From as early an age as I can remember, cereal WAS breakfast. But that's to be expected when I woke up an hour before everyone else in the house to catch the last five minutes of the pre-dawn Agriculture USA before pouring some milk and watching Bugs Bunny and Friends.

Fatigue leads to stretching for anything new. It's why the Fonz jumped the shark. It's why we cringe every time a new kid gets thrown into our tried and trusted sitcoms. It's why writers, instead of coming up with fresh beginnings, start to resort to beginning with the end.

I can appreciate how television writers and filmmakers hate being stuck to linear plot lines but I think I had just about enough of screenplays that have me sit through a big dramatic scene in the first five minutes only to be subjected to a FTB followed by some new-fangled font chromakey of "24 hours earlier". The technique has been done over and over again. I'm tired of sitting through it, especially when its a show I generally enjoy and want to keep up on the story arc. If a television pilot started with this technique, I would probably give it up ASAP.

Why does the conspiracy theorist in me think that there is one director who makes a living off of this stuff. The producers think... "You know what? We really need one of them time shifty episodes to really mix things up! Call in that guy we worked with for the time shifty episodes on the other 12 series we've done." And the cycle continues.

When one thinks of a movie like Memento, it's easy to see that playing with timelines can be done in a unique way that is not only central to the plot, but also to the theme, characters, and atmosphere of the piece. When it's simply used as a cool plot devicem it's boring, it's meandering, and, more often than not, just plain sucks. I'm craving well told linear stories. When I see reruns of All in the Family and watch 10 minutes of an unbroken scene that takes place in a living room, I don't condemn the pace and crave the music video phrenetic cuts of most of today's action films. I enjoy the teleplay, the acting, the ability to tell a story that takes place in one place at one time.

For years of teaching drama students it would be the biggest challenge to get them to construct a 3 minute scene that took place in a single location. The idea would arise that the scene would be about a bank robbery (because a 14 year old can't do a scene that doesn't have guns or violence) and the planning would start that would (in three minutes mind you) take you from 15 seconds about not having money, to a 10 second decision to rob a bank, to a 30 second exercise about planning the hold up, 20 seconds of the actual bank job, 1 minute of mindless shootout, and the final half minute of one or more crooks getting away. Have we lost our ability to follow a story in (while maybe not real time) something at least close to it?

We have one hour action television shows that tell a story that rambles over days, weeks, or months. Even the show 24, which tries to build the illusion of being in real time suffers implausible plot holes of characters getting from place to place in totally unrealistic timeframes. The film Timecode, by Mike Figgis, tried to solve the impatient audience dilemma by showing four real time stories at once... probably because he knew that audiences were quite unwilling to sit through a single linear story.

Sure, I applaud creators playing around with plot. Not every story can, or should, be linear, but the redundant use of television and film time shift gimmicks has been over done. It's jumped the shark or nuked the fridge, when it really should join Luca Brasi's slumber. To play with time in a television show or film should be done only when the story demands it to be told effectively and not in order to make a boring story more interesting. Can't you imagine a writing team sitting around a table saying "Dude... this script is really not that good, and we shoot tomorrow. What'll we do?" "I know... let's throw the scenes up in the air and let the sheets fall where they may. That will be the new order." And, after all this reassembly, when they put the scenes together in their new found chaos and find the story STILL sucks... "Well, let's at least put the big climax scene at the beginning. That's the best scene anyway and we'll be able to show it twice and save ourselves 3 minutes."

I'm not saying the job of a television writer is easy; after all how many times can find a unique way to explore the stoic Grissom in CSI, or the cranky Dr. House, or the dysfunctional Desperate Housewives, or the high horse riding Jack McCoy? Maybe we need to borrow a page from the Brits. We need to allow show creators to say "I think I've got about enough for a dozen good episodes here, maybe a season at best." We need studios to buy into the fact that a show, once noble when it first started, will more often than not slip down the ratings not when the audience gets tired, but when the writers do. And fatigue leads to stretching for anything new. It's why the Fonz jumped the shark. It's why we cringe every time a new kid gets thrown into our tried and trusted sitcoms. It's why writers, instead of coming up with fresh beginnings, start to resort to beginning with the end.

I have always been an advocate of the idea that art did not matter as much as the artistic process. I believed that while it was almost impossible to determine the difference between art and craft, the realization of the difference could become clear by understanding the process that went into creation. After all, how is that some people could claim that the ready-made movement of the early twentieth century was art when the process was perceived to be simply dumping a toilet bowl in an art gallery... pardon the vulgar double entendre. That the interpretation of a toilet bowl in a gallery could be scoffed at by some as meaningless and some as brilliant, by some as a waste of time and others as a masterpiece, shows the true subjectivity of the qualification of "art".

I maintain that the "art" in any piece is the direct result of the process which results in a work's existence in a specific time and place. I cannot agree that a Crane 31138 Economiser Bigfoot is a piece of art when it comes off the line although the design contains artistic elements. I have to deny the "art" qualifier on this piece not because of the way it looks, but because, in the same way I'm ready to accept a building or bridge as "artistic" but not "art", the form is encumbered by function. If the bridge or toilet designer was allowed to create without concern for function, I would be fully willing to accept a fire hydrant or a blender as a masterpiece. This said, the artistic process that places a coffee cup inside a blender that's mounted on top of a recliner, has the potential to be, in some people's minds, a masterpiece, but, in my mind (at the very least) art.

It's becoming clearly evident that the older I get, the more willing I am to accept the unusual in the art that I view, listen to, or otherwise consume. Actually, I'm hoping for unusual these days. It's with this view that I revel in the unexpected. From Samuel L. Jackson "biting it" in Deep Blue Sea to the school bus take out in Mean Girls, I almost want to get up and cheer when the truly unique happens. And sure, I'll admit that just going weird for its own sake can come across as contrived, and going persistently weird for its own sake gives you the name of David Lynch.

One of the things I've hated for years was songs that fade out. That artists can persistently allow producers to rob them of the ability to find creative endings to songs is deplorable. I get the fact that being "radio-friendly" demands a no-nonsense way for even the most inattentive DJs to figure out when to start turntable number two, but the fade is quite simply the most uninventive and banal way to finish a song. I'll concede that there may be rare times that a fade can be used as a thematic device, but certainly not on 90% of every song recorded since the 50s. In fact, the first recorded fade was used in "Neptune, part of the orchestral suite, The Planets, by Gustav Holst.  Holst stipulate[d] that the women's choruses [were] "to be placed in an adjoining room, the door of which [was] to be left open until the last bar of the piece, when it [was] to be slowly and silently closed", and that the final bar (scored for choruses alone) [was] to be repeated until the sound [was] lost in the distance." Apparently the thought of the fade didn't cross Holst's mind as a way to provide a smooth segue into the Eye in the Sky traffic report during afternoon drive time.

But there's a strange corollary for every song that I wish could be wrapped up and finished, and for every photograph and painting that has neither beginning nor end, and every television show or series that ends unsatisfyingly derivative. I want the musician to complete the thought, even though the ending may be abrupt or odd. I want the director and screenwriter to complete a vision that suits theirs and not my sensibility. No one questions the painter for taking a slice of life and allowing the viewer to interpret the story before and after. So why does mainstream "art" have to be wrapped up in a neat little packages to be acceptable. Must we demand from our art and entertainment a sense of completion that does away with the snippet of real life that film or television represents?

Beckett explored the the existential reaches of redundancy with Waiting for Godot and is celebrated 50 years later. Joyce completed an esoteric wraparound in Finnegan's Wake with a final sentence that "riverran" flawlessly into the opening sentence. Bob Ezrin contructed Pink Floyd's The Wall with a soft voice that began the disc with "...we came in?" and finished it with "Isn't this where...." The Coen's adaptation of No Country for Old Men had a brilliant understated conclusion that surely pissed some people off, but in its open-ending was more satisfying and thematically-pleasing than any contrivance that might have made for a happy audience.

After all, such neat little wrap-ups are the essence of Shakespearean comedy and children's stories. The evil get screwed, the good get rewarded, the fools get their ass kicked and run away, and the true lovers get married. Beyond this genre, I fail to see why we should have any right to expect any specific ending for a story or a song. The concept of poetic justice has trained our collective media minds to expect the bad to get punished, the good to triumph and all loose ends to be wrapped up - but this is not reflective of life. If art is supposed to be a reflection of life, let's allow for art to include the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected, the flawed and the needlessly tragic. If we can't find beauty in representations of ALL aspects of life, we are shortchanging ourselves some of the greatest stories that can be told... or, more realistically, that can be bankrolled in order to be told.

Concerning the first strobing xmas lights of death in my neighborhood.

My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-67ab6a9e061857d4dfcfbcb0bbacd974}

This lovehate comes on the heels of the recent death of a 15 year old boy near Barrie, Ontario who ran away from home because his father took away his copy of Call of Duty 4 for the last time. The teen had been spending every waking hour with online friends playing the game and, after hearing his father's threat, left his family only to be found two weeks later. The event is tragic. The family's loss is indescribable. And when people look for the scapegoat, we all know what it's going to be - video games.

I don't know enough to say the behavior of either side in this specific case was flawed or not, but let's look at the facts. A boy spends countless hours engaged in an activity that has become completely normal for millions of teens around the world. The only X factor in the equation is the time spent. And if the only line crossed is that of time, why blame the game?

The push to censorship or restricting personal freedoms is never so at risk as when a child dies. While the tragedy is real, there should never be any occasion to blame a song, songwriter, singer, band, book, author, video game or website. Society has to stop blaming the painting done in dog feces at the modern art gallery for the gallery goer's discontent, blaming the Judas Priest song for the teen suicide, blaming the internet for the death of social intercourse. Society needs to take a strong look at itself and realize that redefinitions of cultural standards have been ever-evolving.

While parents and grandparents hearken back to a day when children would play stickball in the local sandlot or save up their money for a couple of grape kneehighs at the weekly box social, they have to remember that the social free time children have had over the past 150 years in Western culture were not the norm before that. We are not that far, historically-speaking from children working the land 16 hours a day in the summer and 8 hours a day while going to school. We are not that far from free time being a luxury only enjoyed by a small upper class. We are not that far from a child's worst indiscretion being a late night, blanket tent read of D.H. Lawrence. I daresay that if I had a child that wanted to spend their free time reading D.H. Lawrence today, I'd be a proud parent.

Indiscretions and social taboos are not static or sacrosanct. What does scare me, on a regular basis, is lobby groups that seek to ban, restrict or change things because users are too oblivious, obsessed or stupid to treat a hobby as enjoyment instead of entertainment.

Maybe, with the example of network gaming as our guide, instead of bemoaning the death childrens' relationships, we simply need to redefine them. Is there really something more pure to a 15 year old egging a house or sneaking a joint behind a local strip mall than using strategy in an online battle simulation? Is there an advantage to having teens bored out on stoops and corners looking for shit to disturb? Are there any real reasons teens are retreating to online relationships instead of braving the great outdoors? And lastly, are we getting close to that line where we can stop talking about "online" relationships and simply consider them relationships?

While I can't say that I love everything about moving all relationships to the constraints of broadband, I'm certainly not going to fight the future. Mail, games, music, movies, banking, shopping, and even work is done online from home, yet we are loathe to allow for this advancement with our children?

Sure, there are lines that should not be crossed with any technology or tool. Addiction, of any sort, is a real problem and something parents and all of us should be aware of, but the times are a-changin' folks. I foresee the teens of today maintaining over 90% of the relationships in their life though online networks. Teach them how to embrace technology, not fear it. Teach them restraint but not revulsion. Allow for your past to be YOUR past and their futures to be THEIR futures. And, above all, don't blame the technology based on its users.

I know that huge chunks of urban society spend their days in torturous labor in order to have the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For many, that pot of gold ends up being the weekend. And the pot only takes two days to get through... then you have to fill it again. When the shining moments arise that the two day escape can turn to three, four, or a week or two, thoughts run rampant in the heads of urban dwellers as the word "vacation" swirls through their brains.

Invariably, in my Canada, the strongest proclivity for any vacation choice that has to be painstakingly planned is somewhere with more heat, less snow and abundant shopping. For the shorter jaunts that don't require planning, the constant pull is to head north. You see, heading north in Southern Ontario means heading for a cottage or campground with trees, lakes and more trees. It is a place of lush greens, cerullean blues, crisp air and cloudless nights. It is this 2-4 hour drive into "nature" that appeals to so many, and makes Ontarians, nay, Canadians, the envy of many cultures. For me, however, getting back to nature is just not as attractive a concept as it should be.

When examining the word "nature" in it's psychological and sociological sense, I hope most people can appreciate that it's simply not in my "nature" to be in "nature". I was born, raised and will probably die in a city. And for all the people who bemoan a lost state of being that would have us running around in animal skins and tapping maple trees, I say, where's the drive-thru? The simple truth of the matter is that I don't think concrete is ugly.

I would rather see a skyscraper that reaches towards the stratosphere than look up at trees in an arboreal forest. I would rather see bridges and tunnels that span expanses rather than the untouched expanses themselves. I would rather people didn't try to plant flowers down islands in the middle of the road. Allow me to clarify - I'm not for unfettered urban expansion in an unflinching grasp to usurp all wildlife and plants. I simply love the city.

There is something to be said for intent. I love the fact that a mind could conceive of a plan. That the plan could be adopted by a group. That the group could labor to achieve. And that the achievement stands for all to see. I love the spirit of creation that city embodies from the shiny financial district to row of theatres. From the local college or university to the new strip mall. From the rent-controlled housing to the five star hotel. Everything that stands was once water and cement. Thought, intent, and labor created and endured.

I wish I could say that each of these plans was well executed and that every building was a work of art that remained essential, untouched and vital. There are bound to be misteps. Such is the nature of creation. If creativity could never offer up gaffes and mistakes the exercise would hardly be rewarding when striking and magnificent come to fruition.

I have been to Las Vegas close to a dozen times. My parents live in Arizona. I have not once gone to see the Grand Canyon. And it's not that I don't think it would be an awe-inspiring vista of natural happenstance, but, quite simply, while happenstance may hold a place of awe, creativity and intent holds a place of wonder. Creativity and intent can be aspired to. Happenstance just... well... it just happens. When I look down the Las Vegas Strip and see the long and bending road with neon turning night into day and thousands of people circulating in their own crapulence... I bask in its purple moontan's majesty.

Don't begrudge the traffic for the birdsong. Don't give up on the music wafting from the patio bar down the street for the sound of wind in the trees. Don't buy into the romantic notion that your natural state is a hunter/gatherer who fights off frostbite in the brush every winter. Nature will exist without you; the city will not. If the natural state of earth is evolution, we are part of that evolution. We will batter and bruise the earth just like children slipping and skinning their knees and, in the end, we may or may not endure, and our decaying civilizations may be the iodine that disinfects, but the planet will endure long after we've given up this mortal coil.

Go ahead. Pack your campers. Fire up the Coleman stoves. Light up the mosquito coils... because, after all, we don't love everything about nature. Fill your coolers with ice. Roast your marshmallows on the fire and try not to think of Monday. I support your backwoods endeavors. If you want to know what I'm doing, however, pick up your cell phone and I'll try and talk to you over the din of the CD jukebox, my friends at the table, the clinking of pint glasses and the souped-up Z28 that's cruising by, windows rattling with some indiscrimate bass line. And with all of the noise, both aural and visual, and the sewers that smell like shit, and the empty paper coffee cups, I'll take the concrete. I'll take the streets. I'll take the city. It's my nature.

Really? No, I'm seriously sitting in awe here.

I get that people are pumped up for this US election, and while I swore I wouldn't do another lovehate rant on elections, this is not so much on the elections as what people are doing while the election is happening: twittering... REALLY?

Are we so starved for social intercourse that we are willing to snippet snipe about red state/blue state maps and exit polls? Sure there's reason for commentary about several things to do with an election. Discuss the results and potential impact of how the country has once again been split down the middle and wax electoral about policy shifts and the economy. Engage in dialectic and diatribe about how pundits and media have sullied the political process. Deride Wolf Blitzer, Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann. Criticize the networks for declaring winners based on exit polls before everyone has even voted. Type insight. Type observation. Be bold and above all, complete your thoughts, because while I encourage all bloggers to express themselves, I wish they would do so with well-developed ideas that went on for longer than 140 characters.

While I obviously have an affection for Twitter, and appreciate the role microblogging has occupied in the social networking community, I can honestly not think of one of the many great people I follow that would prompt me to spend the night in front of a browser window watching pithy comments like "Wow, how about that Ohio map!" I'm more interested in hearing about what Ramen noodle seasoning people are using while channel surfing.

All respect to the power bloggers and Web 2.0 gurus who's followers will hang on every word of their Twitter, Laconi.ca, Plurk, or Pownce election coverage. If you've got followers that want to know what you think on a minute by minute basis, you've done a hell of a job in consolidating a loyal following who will hang on your every word. and, for bloggers, followers are currency. You've established a community that hears your opinions on tech or media or gadgets and integrates your subjectivity into their own. Kudos for that. I would have it no other way. I don't have time to keep up on every new media advancement and I heartily appreciate the podcasters and bloggers that parse down daily and weekly events in tech for me in compartmentalized segments.

Am I really missing the boat on the online ocean that makes it hip to engage in blurb ineractions about something that, by sitting in front of your computer, you're doing less to participate in than a person standing in line with their registration card? I honestly don't begrudge someone who gets a kick out of spending their election night (or any night for that matter) lost in a sea of millions of tweets if they honestly get a kick out of such things. Really, you could be doing far worse things like... oh, I don't know... watching network coverage of the election with pundits in formation like a line up of gargoyles sitting behind a desk that looks like it came off of page 63 of the Ikea catalogue.

If you really look forward to being part of tweet ocean during a big event. Have at it. Curse my idiocy and create yourself a special avatar for the night. But, if you're like me, who generally respects the input of the people whose tweets you follow, ignore the flood of shock and blah that accompanies the event. Take two shots of NyQuil, pop on a live version of Mandrake Root by Deep Purple, and wake up in the morning where the results of what happened the night before will not have changed... actually, just go to election.twitter.com and watch it for ten minutes - you'll achieve the same effect as the drugs and the music.