Faker

Everyone's faking.

That may sound like a broad stroke, but hear me out.

I was feeling frustrated today, after limping home from my run (knee is acting up again) and not feeling like I had accomplished much with the day. At the height of my frustration I was hunched over a tray loaded with paint, staring at the brush I continually fail to properly wash when done painting. As a distraction I was playing the latest episode of the podcast Harmontown, in which Dan Harmon (famously fired by NBC for running the thoroughly fantastic show Community in a manner they saw fit) invited two members onto stage. Dan and cohost/comptroller of Harmontown Jeff Davis talked to the two guests about why they were both feeling terrible. After chasing the varying issues around in their heads for a few minutes, Harmon and Davis realized that everyone on stage at that point was grappling with the idea that they had somehow either made the wrong choice, arrived at their current place by default or failed to act in the best manner. In a sense, they concluded, they all felt like failures and frauds. 

It was incredibly affirming to hear the notion articulated. 

In recent years I've talked with my better half and our mutual friends about a similar idea. We all feel, when sufficiently pressed to reveal it, that we are frauds or that we are somehow faking our way through the day. I read someone's explanation (in a book I can't seem to recall...) that they would get through the day and their head would hit the pillow and they'd think something along the lines of "I'm so glad no one found me out, today!" as though they had pulled some great con over on the world.

That is so much more common than we realize. I felt that reality sink in, in the house I bought with my wife, while painting a room in my free time. I am married. I am a home owner. I choose to work on home improvement projects in my free time. I have a strong 401(k). I was upset that I exercised so much that my knee was failing again. Despite all of these stupid, simple realities I was taking for granted, I still was feeling as though I was slacking or faking my way along. I joke about it with my wife when we come home from somewhere together or when we (guh) have to make yet another run to Home Depot on the weekend (instead of say, going to concerts or bars like when we lived in Uptown) - "Can you beleive some people think we're adults? Why do they trust us with all this? Who said we could buy a house?" 

It's absurd, but there it is - you're an adult. I may not have kids or gray hair or a PhD, but people trust me and think I know what I'm doing. That was what they were affirming in the podcast. You never feel like you're making the right move. You always feel like you're just improvising and constantly averting disaster. That's apparently what life is. You just get older and get more responsibility and if you don't make many mistakes you find yourself accumulating trust. 

Weird how that works.

You never realize it until you step back and look at it. It makes me feel better to have other people come to that same understanding through their own logic. I know I've certainly told it to my better half to calm her down during a crisis. Sometimes you just need to hear it from other people.

We're all fakers, but no one's faking anything.

Proto Man

So I finally saw Prometheus last night.

It was heavily buzzed last spring. I had as high of hopes as anyone else - probably even higher, to be honest. While my initial reaction to the announcement had been low expectations at best, that changed the more I saw. The trailer looked crazy and there was honest to goodness potential in Ridley Scott going back to the well for more of the once-great franchise. They even had Lost-alum (the admittedly divisive) Damon Lindelof on board to re-write the script and build the world a bit more. There was a great cast in line. Everything was lining up to be pretty damn stellar. 

Then the movie came out and the world of nerds on the internet collectively soiled themselves in anger. 

Once the negative feedback started online, I decided not to see it in the theater as I had originally planned. Instead, I waited to consume it in the same fashion I had any other entry in the fading Alien franchise: at home with some junk food and no expectations. So how was it?

Not bad.

While Prometheus was certainly not on the level with the original Alien or other staples of the genre like Blade Runner, it wasn't the cinematic abortion people were claiming it to be. In fact, despite a flawed story with arbitrary motivation and some contrived coincidences, I found it to be a grand and profound science fiction movie the likes of which rarely get made these days. Far from perfect but still enjoyable, there were plenty of moments where the soul of previous success would bleed through. Ridley Scott has had hits and misses, but when he gets on a good streak in a movie it can really build some momentum. Sure, it can be dashed on the rocks of characters who quickly become shouting morons, but there were more than enough entertaining moments to warrant its production.

Additionally, in a bid to stop typing altogether I dictated my thoughts into my phone as I sat in the dark, eating Whoppers and nursing a beer. Below is a full list of my notes, along with the clearer insight of having slept on what I saw in parentheses:


- Even the opening logo is that weird blue tint to it. (Must we do the orange/blue color shift every time?)

- The opening panoramas actually have that the Scott feel. (Pretty grand vistas and sweeping, heavy shots.)

- So is the intro of the movie the crux of the whole plot in a bad way? (Like, was that it? From what I had avoiding spoiling for myself in advance, seeing the first scene made me think 'Yeah, that's probably it, I should turn it off and save myself a couple hours. I was sort of wrong?)

- Even for science-fiction this dream reading business seems bogus. (Immediately forgetting Inception and, you know, space monsters and robots.)

- It's got a good look but the problem is that even the retro looking things clearly are more advanced than what was in Alien. (It's that balancing act of a PREQUEL being made 30 years later. Tech we hadn't thought of could be explained away as better funding by the Weyland Corp. Also, in Alien they were just a mining ship.)

- God awful accent. (Rafe Spall. Seriously.)

- Old make up still looks fake. (No matter how artfully applied and blended with CGI, my first thought was 'OMIGAD YOUNG PERSON IN MAKEUP. Why have Guy Pearce do that? Why not, say, hire an elderly actor?)

- I want the white sweatshirt. (Alright Rafe - I'll forgive the accent if I can have your weird hoodie.)

- There better funded that's what they have better tech. (My hand-waiving the jarring juxtaposition of this movie and Alien. See above.)

- That is one stupid scientist. (Dude. Even I know - DO. NOT. TOUCH. This was apparently establishing a running theme?)

- The geologist is clearly from a lesser film. (Sorry man, but your over the top acting was not due to script problems.)

- The engineer head coming back to my life momentarily is genuinely freaky. (No joke. A disturbing moment. Also? Totally animatronic, I found out.)

- Ask God why do we need robots? (A real BSOD moment for me. Never stopped to think 'Wait, why ARE we making robots in the first place? Simply to serve man? That's a cop out. Still chewing on this.)

- Apple TV remote visible on Shaw's couch. (Nice future tech, you thing I have on my coffee table.)

- That just went from bad to worse. (Blugh, that snake-thing snapping an arm and melting the helmet? That escalated quickly.)

- In the map room the difference between practical effects and CGI is still stark although it's good to see more Geiger. (It's hard to blend them, even all these years after Phantom Menace. Geiger's art is still so distinct and creepy, when used sparingly.)

- That is a slow non-guaranteed way to die and Charlize Theron didn't want to do it. (Seriously, setting him on fire? Probably would suffer for hours from complicated burns. You have guns. Shoot him.)

- I'm obviously not the first person to think Prometheus take place in the same world as Inception. (Cue the linking of that movie's universe, which makes the combined fictional universes Inception, Alien, Blade Runner and Predator.)

- Body horror in the medical pod a glimpse of things to come. (That abortion scene was one of the most disturbing things I've seen on film in a while. The opened cavity? Awful. A horrible look at the wonderful, sterile, male-driven world of medicine yet to come.)

- Arbitrary monster...(...is arbitrary. Shoe horned in for a scare/action scene? Waste of screen time.)

- Idris Elba is the best part of this and maybe David. (Okay, clearly David is the best thing about this movie, but Idris was pretty damn solid.)

- I would've believed it if they killed everybody. (A psych-out that I was willing to accept. If any movie had the stones to go bleak and kill 'em all, this would have been it. But alas, no.)

- Final alien was gratuitous, redundant and poorly designed. (Sorry, just didn't dig it. Even after all the build up. Show, don't tell. It was clearly the same Engineers and world of Alien, do we need to be hit over the head with it?)

So there you have it. Despite the high snark level of some of those comments, I really did enjoy Prometheus and will defend it to fellow nerds. It aspired to be more than it could, but despite a strong pedigree could not overcome some complex script problems.  If you're curious, I highly recommend it.

Still worth waiting to see after all the publicity.

Big Chill

We have got to chill out.

No, I mean for real.

There was a point raised to me by someone I trust and respect in the last year. This point, once it had been planted in my brain, germinated and sprouted. In the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro this idea has grown like a weed. It was, in a way, a spoiler, something that cracks your perspective. Now I find my worldview forever tainted by this simple idea. It's cultivating the urge inside me to just level us out. To play it cool.

Simply put, we need to mellow out on ourselves in Minnesota.

Please, forgive my violation of the Midwestern norms and allow me to explain my offense.

The thing is...we are trying way too hard to run with the big kids. The pervasive "me too!" attitude in the metro area (and I suppose the upper Midwest in general) is becoming grating. If it's this intolerable to a resident who is still quite happy to live here, how unbearable must it be to the rest of the country? We must sound like the youngest kid in your culdesac who tags along and tries to act even tougher than the toughest kid. Sorry, rest of the country.

This must come across as negative and disdainful, but I have to say that it seems to be a frequent occurrence to open the paper or go to the City Pages blog and see another gushing, "aren't we wonderful?" article written on how we're the 'best place to live' or in the top 10 for biking or the best to be young or single or have a band or oh dear lord, can't we just be a city? We're not even that big of one. Again, insufferable humblebragging. I know. But you have to know that other cities don't do this. They don't have to assert their wonderful qualities at a steady, relentless pace. We have to chill out and let our strengths speak for themselves.

Here's what really helped me understand it. The person who broke the concept for me watched a lot of true crime and Cold Case style shows. Typical episodes would start by setting the scene in a short exposition. "New Orleans, city on the the edge" or "New York, the city that never sleeps..." What happened in the Minneapolis episode? We had a pretentious pontificator exposing on how "Minneapolis is a burgeoning city, with a vibrant art scene, a sprawling business district, fabulous restaurants .." and it went on and on. Never had we heard another long winded speech asserting a city's good qualities. It was like a parent espousing the black sheep's fabulous social life or athletic prowess despite going nowhere in life. 

I know, I know. This is pooh-ing where you live, dumping on those that share your space. But we have to mellow out. If it's so wonderful, let's let the wonders speak for themselves. The great secrets may stay a little more secret and the citizens of Chicago may think of us as their hick cousins but you know what? That's okay. That's who we are. No amount of "me too me too! We're great too!" is going to change the fact that we're not Portland or Jo-burg. 

Let's love this place, warts and all. Even with miserly miscreants like myself calling it home. 

Deal?

Map Lines

End of the world, again. 

No, not anything political. Like me, I'm sure you are sick to death of anything even tangentially related to the election. 

Since I've moved into my new home with my better half we've both noticed a strange thing happening in our minds. We drive home from where ever we have been, almost always taking the same way. The other option is less traveled but no less familiar. This more frequent route sees us taking a stretch of highway unworthy of note. It is a number and that is all. There is nothing remarkable beyond it. There are no major cities beyond our exit, no developing suburbs. We come to our exit, take the off ramp and turn down our street into our neighborhood, never looking over the horizon at what is beyond. My better half hit the nail on the head when she explained it to me as "like the edge of a map in a video game."

What lies past that last exit? 

Seemingly, nothing. Not in the sense of goon docks and tall grass. I mean in the sense that we have no preconception of where that highway goes. Think about that - don't you usually have an idea of where a road goes, even if you don't take it? There's a makeshift grid in your mind, an adaptive map that adjusts to where you are, where you've been and where you're going. Rarely do we contemplate the road less traveled. 

So we're left with a highway that stretches off into the ether - overly dramatic, sure, but my mind can't construct what is out there. Eventually one of the Dakota's I suppose...but what's in the vast stretch of mid-west nothing in between? It's just developed enough around the area to suggest small towns or the gradual emergence of another suburb, but I have no frame of reference for it. 

To rectify this we did what we always do - we turned to tech. 

Google Earth, duh. There it was, our highway. Stretching out over the screen, leading to a series of small burgs dotting the western half of the state. Nothing of particular note, just what you'd expect when picking a random point on a map in the flyover states. It didn't really help, though. Maybe not enough frame of reference? 

I found it to be more fun and revelatory when looking at my childhood haunts on Google Earth. Forests that bordered parks spilled out on the other side. Shortcuts were instantly justified. All the odd things about where I grew up fell into an easy to understand and digestible world of North, South, East and West. Yeah, yeah, I had maps as a kid. But never like this. Now I can zip instantly to where I remember things and twist the orientation and see things in real time. Provided the data is fresh enough and the screen is detailed enough, it's like being there. 

It's super dorky, I know, but I love this kind of memory tinkering. This weird, video-game inspired world of mine slowly gives up its secrets with every technological development. Fewer boundaries every day. The world ends somewhere, just not where we think it does.