Mark Twain was a man who knew how to advertise. Would that I had access to a TARDIS, I think this lecture would be my first stop.
MAGUIRE'S ACADEMY OF MUSIC
The Sandwich Islands:
The trouble to begin at 8 o'clock...
MARK TWAIN
(Honolulu Correspondent of the Sacremento Union)
Will deliver a lecture on
THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC ON TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 2
In which passing mention will be made of Harris, Bishop Staley, the American missionaries, etc., and the absurd customs and characteristics of the natives duly discussed and described. The great volcano of Kilauea will also receive proper attention.
A SPLENDID ORCHESTRA is in town, but has not been engaged.
Also
A DEN OF FEROCIOUS WILD BEASTS will be on exhibition in the next block.
MAGNIFICENT FIREWORKS were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned.
A GRAND TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION may be expected; in fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever they please.
Dress Circle, $1.00 | Family Circle, 50c.
Doors open at 7 o'clock. The Trouble to begin at 8 o'clock.
"Touch" and the raising of a prophet.
Touch is an intriguing television show.
If you haven't seen it yet, Touch is about a father, Martin Bohm (Keifer Sutherland) with a son, Jake (David Mazouz), who possesses the unique ability to perceive numeric patterns behind everyday events. Jake doesn't speak, and cannot abide physical touch.
The treatment is sentimental, but the themes and the implications of Touch's evolving story, are much deeper than than just a melodrama.
Touch explores humanity and its desire to know and be confidant in its purpose. Through its character's connection to numerology, be it a cognitive ability or a supernatural one, Touch dissects the human experience to expose the core elements which tie us together as a species. The show is actually very refreshing, because instead of going out of its way to be a "gritty drama," it tries to give its audience hope.
As human beings, we want our lives to have purpose. If something happens that we do not (or cannot) understand, we desire to know that even things which are out of our control are not random, cosmic hiccups, but part of a plan. And even if there is no divine plan, can't there at least be a larger purpose? This enduring question, what is the point?, is confronted in different ways by different individuals. Some people surrender to confusion and drown in sorrow or self pity. Others are more constructive, seeking their answers in science and the tangible comfort of empirical evidence. Those with the capacity to place trust in the unseen turn to faith for their answers.
Most television networks restrict their programming to increasingly desperate reinterpretations of legal, medical and police procedurals. But, now and again, a show comes along that attempts something different. However, in just its inaugural season, Touch is investigating the meaning of life itself, exploring themes of hope, cause and effect, chaos theory and the consequences of small actions. It is going so far as to attempt synthesis the answers provided by both faith and science to the deep, unsettling questions surrounding human purpose. I am hard-pressed to imagine any other show, past or present, which would open an episode with a child's voice reciting an opening monologue like this one:
Numbers are constant. Until they’re not. Our inability to influence outcome is the great equalizer. Makes the world fair. Computers generate random numbers in an attempt to glean meaning out of probability. Endless numerical sequences lacking any pattern. But during a cataclysmic global event — Tsunami, earthquake, the attacks of 9/11— these random numbers suddenly stop being random. As our collective consciousness synchronizes, so do the numbers. Science can’t explain the phenomenon, but religion does. It’s called prayer. A collective request sent up in unison. A shared hope. Numbers are constant, until they’re not.
During cataclysmic global events, our collective consciousness synchronizes. So do the numeric sequences created by random number generators. Science can”t explain the phenomenon, but religion does. It’s called prayer. A collective request, sent up in unison. A shared hope, fear relieved, a life spared. Numbers are constant--until they’re not. In times of tragedy, times of collective joy--in these brief moments, it is only this shared emotional experience that makes the world seem less random.
Maybe it’s coincidence. And maybe it’s the answer to our prayers.
- Touch Season 1, Episode 7 - "Noosphere Rising"
In every episode of Touch, Martin Bohm is challenged on his ability to be a "good father" to Jake. His success or failure as a father is questioned because very few people understand what Jake really is, and therefore focus entirely on the wrong thing. Martin's antagonists continually make the faulty assumption that Jake is simply a disabled child with a talent for math, basically equating him with autistic children who excel at music. They further assume that Martin cannot possibly be a good father to Jake, because his responsibilities as a widowed breadwinner preclude him from "providing a suitable environment" for a boy the system has marked off simply as having "special needs." Such naysayers are repeatedly and frustratingly incorrect, because they never even consider Jake's true identity.
Jake Bohm is not a child; he is a fully-formed prophet in a child's body.
Touch is about a man realizing that he is the steward of a prophet.
Martin's primary role in relation to Jake is not to provide a "caring, nurturing environment." In their unique relationship, Jake sets the rules. The pilot episode's entire point was that Martin had to accept Jake's rules if he wanted anything like relationship with him. Jake doesn't "need" Martin in the conventional sense of a son needing father, but Martin's desire to feel connected to his boy helps Jake expedite the delivery of his prophecies.
Martin was responsible for helping to bring Jake into the world, but he has no control over Jake's divine purpose. His conventional duties as a father end at provision. As long as Martin fulfills his voluntary role as mediator between Jake and those who are affected by his numbers, Jake will maintain a relationship with him. But at the end of the day, it is not because Martin is Jake's father, or even special in any other sense; Martin is merely one of few people on the planet who has accepted Jake's authority and is willing to listen.
Furthermore, Jake does not require "therapy;" his intolerance of physical touch is not as quantifiable as an autistic "sensory defensiveness." Touch never shies away from a spiritual reference or metaphor, and in this spirit Jake's refusal to be touched is an echo of the Biblical Nazarites.
In historic Judaism, Nazarites were consecrated individuals, devoted to purity of mind and body. Their identity in modern times has been carried on to a certain extent in the Rastafari practices of uncut hair and a strict, Levitical diet. Many of the famous spokespeople of the Bible, such as Samson, Samuel and John and the Baptist, were Nazarites. Their personal lives were marked by complete abstinence from grapes, grape derivatives and all forms of alcohol. Publicly, they could be identified through their hair, which was to be left uncut for the duration of their vows, which could be as short as thirty days or as long as a lifetime. They were also to have no contact with corpses.
Why do I see a correlation between Nazarites and Jake Bohm? Both crave purity in order to fulfill an ultimate purpose.
Jake exists as a strictly cerebral being. Call it a divine plan, call it the will of the universe, Jake passes on glimpses of some ultimate plan to a fresh group of people every week, helping them understand that everything happens for a reason. Just as the Nazarites sought a closer connection to God by not allowing alcohol to cloud their minds, Jake's intensely focused mind cannot by distracted by touch. His manifestation as a child is inconsequential to his ultimate purpose, which is to provide hope to individuals.
The idea of a prophet requiring purity shouldn't be so unfamiliar. Even James Bond dealt with the subject in Live and Let Die. The character Solitaire loses her ability to read tarot cards after Bond takes her virginity. Again, purity of one form or another is necessary for a prophet to perform his or her function.
Historically and in entertainment, prophets always separate themselves from the rest of the world. It is not a petty declaration of superiority, nor is it an expression of some disability of which second sight is a coincidental side effect. Purity is necessary to a prophet's fulfillment of purpose. This purity requires some kind of separation.
For Jake Bohm, this separation is physical touch. Jake looks like a child, but he is not a child. His abilities simply manifested themselves at an inconvenient time. Jake is a prophet, and a prophet's identity is not constrained by age or appearance. Jake knows his purpose, and as long as he is given the space to work, his purpose manifests itself.
There are so many possibilities for a character like this. There is an unimaginable level of depth to which the show's writers could explore Jake's identity in the context of history, religion and mythology. I wonder if the writers are even aware of this themselves, or if they will take the easy way out and and pause at the lower common denominators of father/son sentimentality and easy explanations.
External Links:
Touch, "Noosphere Rising" - IMDB
Nazarites - JewishEncyclopedia
Live and Let Die - Wikipedia
Solitaire (James Bond Character) - Wikipedia
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBshqWuaAWM]
Bob Dylan
"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez And it's Eastertime too And your gravity fails And negativity don't pull you through Don't put on any airs When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue They got some hungry women there And they really make a mess outa you.
Now if you see Saint Annie Please tell her thanks a lot I cannot move My fingers are all in a knot I don't have the strength To get up and take another shot And my best friend, my doctor Won't even say what it is I've got.
Sweet Melinda The peasants call her the goddess of gloom She speaks good English And she invites you up into her room And you're so kind And careful not to go to her too soon And she takes your voice And leaves you howling at the moon.
Up on Housing Project Hill It's either fortune or fame You must pick up one or the other Though neither of them are to be what they claim If you're lookin' to get silly You better go back to from where you came Because the cops don't need you And man they expect the same. Now all the authorities They just stand around and boast How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms Into leaving his post And picking up Angel who Just arrived here from the coast Who looked so fine at first But left looking just like a ghost.
I started out on burgundy But soon hit the harder stuff Everybody said they'd stand behind me When the game got rough But the joke was on me There was nobody even there to bluff I'm going back to New York City I do believe I've had enough.
The Superhuman50!
If you haven't done so yet, now is the time to head over to LivingSuperhuman and get started with the first Superhuman50 Challenge! Run by Andrew and Anthony Frezza, the Superhuman50 Challenge is a chance to jumpstart your fitness and health goals alongside many others, under the constructive and encouraging coaching provided by the Frezza brothers. I've been following their site for a while now, and I can vouch for them without reservation. I'm looking forward to getting started.
I went through a very dramatic personal transformation over the past year. Last summer was when it hit me that I had let myself go. I could feel my stomach moving at odds with the rest of my body when I walked. Running was impossible. I could still crank out a decent number of calisthenics, but I would be out of breathe for several minutes after each set.
I made the decision to overhaul my entire life via the Primal Blueprint, and have been transitioning toward a stricter, paleo approach to eating. I eat heartily of real, whole foods (including plenty of red meat and butter!), and exercise a few times a week. This is the transformation:
I'm actually reluctant to post the transformation photo; I've enjoyed some relief in the anonymity provided by my change in appearance...
The status quo I mentioned above has been enough to maintain my new, healthy weight. Another plus has been that by eliminating grains from my diet, I no longer have seasonal allergies to boot.
But it's time to take it to the next level. I look damn scrawny in the latest photo. I can do pushups all day and run a 5k any time, but I want better body composition. It is my goal, with the encouragement of the Superhuman50, to burn through that last bit of subcutaneous fat around my middle and build up my upper body's lean mass. I want to have well-defined musculature. I want to be Captain America, goshdarnit!
In fifty days, I will post another photo and we'll see what I will accomplish.
Everyone who participates in the Superhuman50 fills out their own personal goal sheet, including their goals, foods to avoid, and foods to include more of in daily intake. Mine looks like this:
The note about sitting might seem odd, but now that I'm about of school and catching up on a lot of personal written projects, I can easily get lost in a train of thought (seewhatididthere?) and go hours at a time without budging from my desk. Sitting isn't good for the body, and I need to spend more time working upright when possible. And yes, that is what she said.
What I love about LivingSuperhuman, and why I encourage everyone to check out their website, is that the Frezzas are incredibly encouraging in their advice and approach to overall health. They espouse paleo nutrition 99% of the time, but they also freely acknowledge that indulgences are not something to be criticized and posted on some sort of scorecard. A "cheat day" now and again is necessary to stay sane, and on that point alone they rise high above some of the more dogmatic health and nutrition writers. They want all their readers to embrace life to the fullest at every level of existence, from the physical to the emotional. I'm excited to participate in this latest project.
So, will you join the Superhuman50? Don't wait another second!
External Links:
The Superhuman50 Goal Sheet - LivingSuperhuman
Standing Desk: Its Benefits and History - Art of Manliness
"Dark Shadows" and the need for a moral center.
A few nights ago, I went with my sister to see the latest Tim Burton/Johnny Depp film, Dark Shadows. I am completely unfamiliar with the television show which inspired the movie, but as a film it was watchable enough. However, there was one serious drawback which prevented it from being a movie in which I could truly feel engaged: the main character was totally devoid of a moral center.
The word "moral" is a problematic one to use in an entertainment critique, because virtually every reader will have his or her own personal meaning attached to it. For the purposes of this post, when I say moral, I am not restricting the paradigm to a set of religious precepts, i.e., "that's immoral," I am talking more about the code of ethics ascribed to by the characters within the film.
Screenplays are constructed out of several ubiquitous elements: story, scenes, characters, themes, etcetera. Characters are established and they play out a story. The nuances of a story move from scene to scene along the plot. The quality of a screenplay is judged on how effectively its story and the concomitant plot provide motivation for the characters to behave the way they do. Well-written screenplays are built on foundational themes which the plot deals with in a meaningful way. The completed story is the cumulative result of characters' actions and interactions as dictated by the plot.
For a story to "work," the characters need a personal journey within the broader scope of the story: an arc. This could be a villain's transformation into a hero (or vice versa), or a character's discovery of just who murdered his parents in the dark alley all those years ago. It is much easier to sympathize with principle characters when the audience makes discoveries about the world of the film with them. That allows for sympathy (and on a subliminal level, trust) to be established between the audience and the protagonist.
Naturally, the plot is greatly strengthened when characters' actions make sense. When a character's actions contradict the arc established for them in the eyes of the audience, it creates aggravating dissonance. Some screenplays can introduce dissonance and resolve it by the time the credits roll, using it to effectively maintain audience interest. This is not the case with Dark Shadows.
The story's setup is straightforward. The principal character of this film is Barnabas Collins. He is played by Johnny Depp with all of the familiar quirks and tics which characterize a Depp performance under Tim Burton's direction. Barnabas has a tryst with a maid named Angelique (Eva Green), but falls in "true love" with Josette Du Pres (Bella Heathcote). Sadly for Barnabas, Angelique moonlights as a witch, and through her dark arts she kills both Josette and Barnabas's parents, and condemns Barnabas to eternal damnation as a vampire. Two hundred years later, ("197, to be exact"), Barnabas is unearthed and released from his chain-wrapped coffin by a construction crew. He sucks them all dry of sangre, seeks out his descendants, resurrects the family business and adjusts to life in the oh-so-groovy 1970s. As the film's antagonist, Angelique also preserved herself until the present day, keeping her lipstick fresh and her smile inviting should Barnabas return.
These plot points set up Dark Shadows to revolve around themes which are easily digestible for anyone who has seen one or more vampire films. Dark Shadows references lost love, enduring love, conflicted love and the double-edged sword of immortality. The "fish out of water" concept is thrown in for comedic relief as the Georgian Barnabas confronts modern elements from hippies to a lava lamp. But once the introductions and fun moments have been exhausted, the screenplay is lacking in several critical areas.
The largest flaw in the screenplay is in the characterization of Barnabas himself. Barnabas is the protagonist; the audience needs to sympathize with him and are given cues to do so by several of his character traits. He is lovelorn and spiritually damned, but he avoids self-pity and is committed to helping his family. After revitalizing the family business, he even manages to score Alice Cooper as the entertainment for a town-wide soiree. His characterization as a sympathetic figure is almost compelling, except for one thing.
Barnabas is an amoral sociopath.
While Barnabas' relationship to his family is noble and his relationship to the modern world humorous, his charisma ends there. Whether out of an unclear character study on the part of the screenwriter or a misguided subservience to more prevalent vampire lore, Barnabas is never fully developed into a quirky Burton protagonist. Too often, his persona collapses into yet another interpretation of Dracula (or even Count Orlok). In just the events shown onscreen, Barnabas commits at least two acts of mass murder, murders a principle character and dumps the body in the ocean, and uninhibitedly hypnotizes friend and foe alike to get what he wants.
Dark Shadows pays homage to a long-standing theme of all vampire films and literature, which is the vampire's attempt to reclaim a lost lover by winning the heart of their modern reincarnation. In this case, Josette is reincarnated as the modern-day Victoria Winters, the Collins' family governess. But before pursuing her, his self-proclaimed "true love," Barnabas soullessly and senseless engages in another night of loveless passion with Angelique. Their lovemaking scene is a masterpiece of wire-fu stuntwork, but is simply at odds with literally everything else which is said about the love triangle between Barnabas, Angelique and Victoria/Josette. A scene of this nature, thus unmotivated, cheapens all of Barnabas's further expressions of love toward Victoria, including the film's final scene.
To complete his lack of ethics, Barnabas speaks constantly of vampirism as a curse, even going so far as to attempt a cure. But this is undermined by his total lack of remorse for any and all of his conscienceless actions. Most of the time, no matter what he might say, he seems to take great pleasure in the abilities and mores germane to vampires.
For a film to work, the audience needs to care about the protagonist. But for an audience to care, they need to understand. Barnabas cannot be understood, because his actions condemn his dialog to being a string of non sequiturs.
Efforts to humanize Barnabas through comedic foibles and bursts of filial devotion are undercut by the fact that, at his core, Barnabas is a very selfish individual with no true convictions. If one takes into account that he dabbled in the occult himself before being made a vampire, there is little or no difference between Barnabas and Angelique, only in their respective goals.
When too many similarities exist between the protagonist and antagonist in a story, a writer or director has to dispel them for clarity or explore them for drama. Neither happens in Dark Shadows. In the end, the audience is left with a mildly entertaining film containing scattered moments of comedic dexterity and comfortable retreads of familiar Tim Burton motifs. But the story fails on a structural level.
Instead of laughing and crying along with a compelling and quirky character, like Barnabas Collins could have and should have been, I found myself watching his numerous illogical decisions with impassive detachment.
Film is a visual medium, and the old adage "actions speak louder than words" is never more true than in cinema.
External Links:
Writing with Hitchcock: Plot vs. Story in Alfred Hitchcock'sVertigo - YouTube