It's Going to be a Stepford Kind of Christmas

Merry Christmas, kidlets! I'm here down in California, visiting with my sister in Marin County. Last night we watched a fun little movie that is definitely one of my guilty pleasures now...the remake of the Stepford Wives, with Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick. They did the right thing with this movie, by playing up the camp and having a great script. It's funny as hell, and the beginning scene is a take piss take on the reality show phenomenon. The acting is better than it has any right to be, and it certainly seems like the leads are enjoying the chance to rip apart the original version.

Stepford is lighter than helium, but just as fun as a deep hit off a birthday balloon. Rent it, get comfortable on the couch, and enjoy.

Bunker Black Thoughts

Today I had to talk to one of the temp agencies about why I am unemployed. Nothing sucks worse than this for me right now - going over the hideous events that left me looking for work. All the anger, frustration and surreal situations that I couldn't overcome from working for _____. It gets you twice - one moment for the recollection, and another for the despair of having to hash through What Comes Next. Plus, the woman who asked me all of this was being silly with her phone and called my house asking for my former supervisor, which is unprofessionalism at it's finest hour. I shouldn't have to know that. But now I do, and I'm livid again. I can't shake the feeling that the people you turn to at these agencies need to be shepherded or supervised by their own clients. I shouldn't have to doubt things this much. Is so-and-so at No Pilot Light, Inc. going to call me when she said she would? Should I be worried that I know too much about what's actually happening with my file? Is making sure that my rep does what she says she will some sort of hidden job audition to prove I have follow-through skills?

It sickens me and it's nearly as bad as working for ___________. Of course, what sickens me worse is the crushing fact that I'm leading a career where I have to entertain this nonsense in the hopes of being hired on somewhere. I wish I could just hop a jet and go to another country for a month. Wish this all away while I sat itching contentedly in a rough fabric coach seat high above the Northwestern skyline.

I can't control my anger anymore at all of it. It's ridiculous and sloppy and stupid to deal with day after day. What am I telling myself that I have brought this into my life? What is worse than this that I'm avoiding? If I'm barrelling over a cliff, why can't I think "nice view" instead of "CLIFFCLIFFCLIFFCLIFF?"

It's exhausting. And I'm proving absolutely nothing to anyone by doing it again. Where is the new path? I need to put temp agencies behind me, admin jobs behind me, everything I've known or done for money and stability into a little black box that gets pulverized by some monster machine out at the dump and pecked into dust by circling gulls. That's what it's worth to me now.

When My Eternal Salvation Comes, It will Sound Like This...

Zip a Rooty, Sez A Magaloo!

(btw, this site is the alternate for the previous Magical and Wonderful Place on the Internet, as the first MWPI has sadly been attacked by a Webworm and isn't functioning at present. A nation mourns...)

The Kindergarten Pudding Feeling and A Fine Place to Visit

Kidlets! Stop what you're doing and follow my good graces to a magical and wonderful place right here on the Internet.

A Magical and Wonderful Place Right Here on the Internet

Devour it like warm pudding from kindergarten. You know the kind - round little plastic cups of goo that warmed your soul and made you believe that the sweetness in life was doled out in ten ounce servings by a plastic spoon.

Actually, the Kindergarten Pudding Feeling (KPF) was never sated. We all wanted more. We scraped at the sides and the lid of our KPF until we were too dizzy to stand. We would trade much more nutritious and valuable objects for it. Marbles and trading cards and ham sandwiches made with care in the early morning by our mothers. We would eat ten at at time and then jabber like monkeys in the play corner and knock each other in the knees with the wooden blocks. "Time Outs" were a pending certainty.

My favorite was Vanilla. Chocolate was too biological, at least at that age. We all knew one kid who made a type of human pudding, and he would be shunned or misunderstood, preferably transferred out to the safety of homeschooling. One less combatant when the blocks were dispersed - that much was certain. We hastily remade the maps, and rewrote all the passwords to the recess pit.

How did we ever find our way out ? The room was enormous, everyone knew that. Subdivided as it was into little zones of activity that were like islands, and we couldn't man the boats until told to do so by the enormous woman who loomed above us like lightning over a dead tree.

We were all hermetically sealed until 3pm, when the light that framed the doorway shot into our eyes and we were free. We huddled in the back seats of our parent's cars and became quicksilver, sliding down against the upholstery, unable to speak.

"How was school?"
Who knew? School was already now just a dim memory redolent of crayons, peanut butter and paste. All the gaily-colored pictures that were meant to instruct only served to launch us against each other like frenzied atoms vying for the heart of an unseen molecule. No one knew why the addition symbol was being introduced, but Dakota was the new kid and he wore corduroy and that in itself meant something had to be done, and quickly.

Our days were arranged around sudden tantrums and the burlap cots to which we buoyed our dreams while the sun grew bright outside. We had spent so much charting our course, consulting the maps (which were already under revision as the new value of the Red Tonka Truck and the peach-colored construction paper needed to be accounted for).

At home, during supper, we ruled the dining table as eager lions. Our lopsided teeth tearing into the fresh carrion brought down on the veldt - meatloaf casserole. Our place was secure here - no codes, no maps, just the feast in full. And so to bed.

It Only Feels Like It's Burning

Watching your child being reeled into a boat is every mother's nightmare.

Cute guys and blood, yum! Do you realize just how hot I am right now?

I will punch your face! I will destroy your soul!

In the caves behind my house, I found a softer world....

Movie Review: Frailty (warning: spoilers)

Don't you hate it when a superlatively scary movie, a real creep-a-thon goes south in the third act? Don't you hate it that right when your heart is slick against the walls of your ribcage from the cold sweat of sheer dread, something dumb happens? Don't see Frailty then. It's got a doozy of a third act that will leave you throwing whatever is handy at the screen. If it doesn't, then I'm throwing whatever's handy at you.

Frailty is a movie directed by actor Bill Paxton (who also stars). It's about a faithful man in Texas who, one night, starts seeing things. Big things. Like angels telling him to go and kill demons masquerading as people. Now, this father is a good egg, a salt of the earth type with two growing boys and no wife around to round things out. He's got some issues, but is a loving guy and then one night he sees angels telling him that his family is now going to go out and seek retribution for God's sake on the sinners of the world. This will be accomplished by God sending him three weapons: an axe (the nasty kind, big with double edges), a thick lead pipe, and workman's gloves to keep his hands away from the flesh of the demons.

Now, in another director's hands, this could be played for camp. However, Frailty plays it straight up (minus an overzealous atmospheric score which turns some scenes into drive-in level drama). At this level, Frailty is absolutely one of the all-time creepiest, keep-the-radio-on-when-you-go-to-bed type movies out there. Bill Paxton (the vision-seeing Dad) enlists the help of his two sons in defeating the demons. This includes pitching in with the dismemberment and burial of the corpses, the building of a below-ground dungeon, etc. Truly horrific stuff, because at no time does Paxton act nuts - just a man who believes he's been trusted with a higher meaning in life. Compare it to the level of belief a soldier has in going to war for his country and you're in the right ballpark. He still calls his kids "buddy" and "champ", while instructing them that they have to empty the body parts out of the big garbage bag first into the gravesite, not just heave the whole sack in at once.
At this point in the movie, Frailty is skin-crawlingly effective. All the unpleasantness is told by Matthew McConaghey in flashback as he's sitting in the FBI Office telling them he knows who someone named the God's Hands Killer is that they have been investigating.

But then, the third act starts and everything goes to shit. Turns out that old Dad said that he could see the sins of the demons when he took the workgloves off and touched his victims prior to dismembering them. One of his sons says he can as well. The movie plays this as if it was a symptom of insanity in the father, and a symptom of a boy's need for his father's attention in the son. But the third act throws in the surprise that it's actually true. There's a long sequence where the audience gets to see all the sins of the people who have been killed thusfar. And in one stupendously irritating and ridiculous scene, the FBI agent himself is a demon, as the boy (McConaghey) is grown up and, having lured the agent out to the burial site, lays hands on him and finds out the agent actually killed HIS OWN mother with a big knife while she was doing laundry out in the yard!

At this point, the movie is useless. Utterly simplistic and moronic. It plays out the string, now with the audience having this unsettling feeling that they're rooting for a serial-murdering family. The FBI agent is done in, buried and in the next and final scene, Matthew McConaghey is somehow now a sheriff in a town where the FBI agent's partner is investigating his sidekick's sudden disappearance. We are left with Sheriff McC's final pronouncement that "God's Will Has Been Done", while he stands on the street holding hands with his pregnant wife (all the while with silly choir-laden drive-in scary music playing in the background for atmosphere).

They took a great idea in this film (what might a regular, God-fearing Joe do when he's visited in the night by the Angel of Death with a mission for him, and has two young kids sleeping in the next room), plays that idea out in graphic, unsettling form as seriously as can be done, and then sabotages it utterly with goofy, "it's all true, see?" melodrama.

If you like good, freaky, Oh -God-not-THAT type movies, rent this and then stop watching after the agent and McConaghey get to the Rose Garden. You'll be left with a tight chest and shivers for days. If you like silly and pandering horror movies, keep watching and get ready to laugh. This turkey does a massive bellyflop into the Baby Ruth end of the Movie Pool and leaves you pissed off and totally cheated. Kidlets, you have been warned.

Lemony Snicket Review: Shaddup and Let the Kids Play!

The new Lemony Snicket movie is a classic case of a great story with obvious love behind it being unable to avoid the screaming Hollywood Bullet Train. There are times when the fantastic dour mood of the film is dimmed or blacked out entirely by overacting, bad editing and quick cameos by famous stars that wreck the continuity.

Case in point: Jim Carrey as Count Olaf is a wise casting choice, but there are several moments in this film where his hamming literally stops the show. One very glaring example is about halfway through the movie, when the Baudelaire orphans are facing a Moment of Great Peril (no spoilers here - you'll definitely know it when it happens.) So, Olaf enters the scene at the highest point of tension and the Moment of Great Peril grinds to an abrupt halt, and we are treated to about three minutes of Jim Carrey mugging his fool head off at the expense of the rest of the film.

But when he's on, he's fantastic. A role like Count Olaf is perfect for someone like Carrey, who can squeeze a million different reactions out of a script. But considering this is a tale of Poe-like woe about orphaned kids, we don't need a million. We need a select few to buoy up the younger actors, who are good but not great. Their reaction scenes need help a lot of the time.
However, the three kids doing the Lead Orphaning are exactly what you'd expect if you're familiar with the Lemony Snicket books.

The other thing that didn't help this movie at all is the insistence of famous actors doing bit roles that do nothing for the movie and reek of "my point percentage and take from this part will be?" Dustin Hoffman, Cedric the Entertainer (radically miscast as a constable of all things) and Catherine O'Hara are all in this movie and all do nothing whatsoever. The kids who are fueling the Snicket marketing scheme couldn't care less who they are, and the parents will say, "hey, there's Dustin Hoffman!" but forget about what's going on in the movie.

Lemony Snicket could have been a marvelous film, like the first Harry Potter was. No suspension of disbelief - just pure fun, awe and wonder. Instead, we're dropped in and out of Snicketland because of bad editing, hamfisted scenes that grind everything to a halt, and the inclusion of famous cameos that don't serve the story.

That all said, definitely go see the movie - behind all of the noise there's a fantastic story going on.

Pay for Meryl Streep and Billy Connolly as the caretakers of the orphans.
Pay for the jaw-dropping way the movie looks - the cinematography and sets are wickedly fun. Pay for having Jim Carrey crack you up the way Jim Carrey always cracks you up.

And, if you're like me and tend to stay through the credits, you'll be rewarded then also - there's a nifty little animated chase scene happening throughout that is a delight as well.

***
Also, today I was overwhelmed by the outright commercialism and ludicrous tie-in merchandising that goes on in the name of entertainment. For example, Regal Cinemas is now selling these outsized jumbo deals with Seinfeld episodes attached. What the hell do old Seinfeld reruns have to do with popcorn or anything playing at your local multiplex? What knucklehead got that one of a conference room on two legs? It was absolutely surreal seeing the Seinfeld gang smiling away on the side of a 3-gallon size tub of popcorn this afternoon.

Not to mention that there are now drinks waiting for you at the Cineplex that have names like Lavafruit Avalanche. What the hell is a Lavafruit Avalanche supposed to be? I could understand paying 5 bucks for a 16-ounce gulp of Berry Blast or Strawberry-Kiwi Kamikaze or whatever, but Lavafruit Avalanche? Maybe the guy who came up with the Seinfeld tie-in was force-fed this stuff by his supervisor, had some kind of synthetic liquid vision, and that's how it all started.

I guess I'm just getting old or something. I still go out to the movies like it's an adventure, a magic ritual almost. I enjoy it tremendously - but I despair now that most movie houses are built with airport level interior design, and by all this random merchandising. I feel like I'm taking part in some sort of deep-cortex sensory challenge - "how much of your surroundings can you ignore in order for your inner child to come out and play?"

I just wish the movies, even the big blockbuster movies like Lemony Snicket had the chance to speak for themselves.

Fiddlestone Buckrat and His Many Misadventures

Today I want to be a small, intrepid mouse. A gritty, urban version of Stuart Little. My name would be Fiddlestone Buckrat and I could navigate the sewers of TakeYourPick Metropolis on a dessicated leaf, using a bent, spent Q-Tip as an oar. An ear oar. An either oar.

Yet instead, I lay fallow for most of the day, my dog Fado and I sighing and shifting our weight around the house as the hours passed. I took some tests for another temp agency online today, which constitutes progress of a sort. Time was when you had to physically go into their offices and sit there like a Ficus and use their computers to do the MS Office Suite Dog-and-Pony show, but now they're sending them to you at your home. Which rocks, because my keyboard and I are soul brothers, and I can fly like Icarus without the sunburn while taking the typing test. Plus, having a sleeping Wonderpooch underneath you as you take an Excel exam is worth everything. You won't find that out at Temp O' The Day, Inc. No, sir.

One of the jobs I applied for today was to be a concierge at a local, well-known Bed and Breakfast place in Seattle. They only pay 10 an hour, but I had to. Gee, should I sit in a cubicle and wait for my puppetstrings to untangle, or be the kindly face of the best Inn in Seattle, guiding folks around town and getting them settled in on their vacations?

Fiddlestone Buckrat would be an excellent concierge. He'd park his leaf up against the broken curb right outside of Pike Place Market and escort visiting mouse dignitaries down the gutter currents through Belltown or out to Elliott Bay Books. A slumming Mouse Princess could sigh and lift her petticoats away from styrofoam icebergs as old Fiddlestone bent his muscled paws against the current. She'd lie there in the leaf, eating select cheeses purloined from the back stalls of the Italian Delicatessen, and Fiddlestone would tilt the front leafedge to catch a glimpse of her finery from the water's reflection.

Man, I'm telling you, that's the life.

"So, Steve, what kind of work are you looking for now?"
"Well, I'd like to get on with a creative firm doing project work, but failing that, I'd like to become a Leaf-Sailing Tour Guide Mouse."
"....."

Temp Job Hibiscus

Today I worked. I worked for the first time since Hell came to my doorstep and demanded entry. Today, as then, I told Hell to piss off and did what a man does in time of dire crisis - namely, sweat. I spent 6 and a half hours today cataloguing computer equipment for a bank.

I wrote the following terms in longhand for over two pages:
CPU/Ser. #: ___________/Compaq/Desktop Pro

Or perhaps this:
DSU/Ser. #: ___________/ADX Kenflox/Satellite 651

I carted servers and routers, monitors and CPU's from one small corner of a tiny office to the other. I swivelled equipment with an expert's verve, locating the infinitesimally small type that would grant me the magical combination of letters and digits known as the serial number.
Then I wrote that there number on my sheet and continued on.

I fell into a Zen-like absorption with the process. My fingers slid down the rough texture of the plastic beige cabinetry of each piece of equipment as if they were examining ancient artifacts from a dead land. I stacked DSU's and Switches into tiny symmetrical rows and marvelled at their tidiness on the foldout table underneath the window.

And lo, just when I was about to snap, to say to myself "Why, lord, why so many tiny pieces of equipment to sort?", something magical happened. One of the people working in the department offered to take me to lunch.

Yes, that's right - he extended the olive branch between worker and temp and said the words that all temps long to hear - "You like authentic Mexican?" His name was Rick, and Rick rocked.

Turns out Rick was the fulcrum of the day. Rick was a former theologian in the Southern Baptist tradition, and had come from ministerial stock for three generations. Bible thumpers all. But Rick found that the evangelical tradition couldn't take him where he needed to go, and he became a different man. An Episcopalian, indeed, even a former Unitarian with a taste for the likes of Chesterton and who can blame him? Regardless of your religious bailiwick, G.K. Chesterton is a marvelous man.

So there we were, plopped down in the El Rinconcito Taqueria (which means Piglet Taco House in Espanol, for those of you keeping score), yakking away about religion, about the need for your own doubt, and all sorts of mad things. Rick saved me from the abyss.

Out of nowhere (okay, out of the IT Dept. but still, when you're surrounded by beige plastic objects in a beige building with beige walls, Nowhere seems apt), this man took it upon himself to make a connection with me. If this type of thing could happen every day for the rest of my life, I could stop eating and simply subsist on the energy of profound fortune until I irradiated into a beam of pure light and left the stratosphere.

The Strength of Fear

Recently we had a friend stay with us who is going through a rough patch - namely, housing issues, "What am I doing with my life?" issues, and she also as of Wednesday had a big car wreck that left her truck totalled and her head nicely stapled together by the fine folks at Evergreen Hospital. Now, this woman is not living a high life by any means - she's a caregiver making small cash for a bedridden person, and she owns a menagerie of dogs which makes it difficult for her to find decent housing. So this accident left her in the dust in many ways - no car, little money for vet bills (half of said menagerie was riding shotgun with her at the time of the accident), and in a great deal of pain. However, in the course of her recuperation with us, we began talking about a good deal of things - marriage, relationships, what we wanted out of life. And the one thing that stuck with me is just how old we all can get while still not addressing these issues.

You can spend decades avoiding the strengths of your desires in this world. Grow to a ripe old age treating what drives your soul as if it were a silly prank played on you while the real world ran the show. What keeps us from confronting our dreams and caring for them? We raise children, pets, plants with such adoring compassion, but for ourselves it's as if we're avoiding a veering drunk barreling down on us late at night. As if our passions in this world were bigger than we were, bullying us somehow instead of reminding us of our vitality.

Why is it that simply saying "I am this." is so daunting? I used to feel abject fear in front of people I knew were viable artists - writers, actors, painters. Told myself numerous times that they were dangerous or too clever or even subversive (which of course, they all were and so am I). But when I began taking the stage for myself, I realized just the opposite - that these people were my compatriots and equals and deepest friends. Rounding off my edges made me invisible to myself, and those who knew I had more to offer the world left me behind, having given up on encouraging me to be a bigger person.

As I drove back down south from our friend's house after she had mended, I told myself more strongly than ever that I wasn't going to flinch anymore. Your life is the total effect of your own power and choice to assume greatness. If you allow the world to decide your days, it will decide much more than that and leave you nervous and shivering inside your own soul. The reality is that the thing you most fear will not manifest itself the way you think it will - we build our anxieties into such frightful towers and then lock ourselves inside.

Your fears can drive you into a sickly inertia that will destroy you. Taken in the right light, what you fear is just a sudden road sign telling you to take action in your life, open yourself up and choose to confront reality as it is. We need to either step into the light or shuffle along in the dust of our own darkness.

But the real point is that no one else cares as much as you do about what you're doing in life.. Don't abrogate your life to others - once done you'll find yourself living as a convenient tool someone else is using to get what they need.

Saying "I don't know what I want " is no different than saying " I don't know who I am." We all wait for others to make our decisions for us, to take our responsbilities away and leave us enough room to feel independent of sudden, simple change.

For Those of You Who Loved the old WyW5...

I'm including in this post a button that will magically transport you back to the old WyW5 site on livejournal.com so you can see where it came from originally.

It is just easier for me to smoosh this button into a post than transpost verbatim the old site entries. Heck, I'm fond of 'em - aren't you?

Fado subduing a malcontent.

The WyW5 offices are frequently broken into by lesser citizens who seek the answers only WyW5 can give to a confused and desperate populace. Fado the WP will stand on the neck of anyone who enters the building without the requisite triplicate paperwork signed with all pertinent acronymic designations.

Fado the Wonderpooch

Official Mascot for WyW5

Every civic organization has a mascot, and WyW5 is no exception.

Fado the Wonderpooch was 5 weeks old at the time this picture was taken at the Wonderpooch Training Facility in Seattle.

The WTF raises newborn pups to pursue covert government work, act as sidekicks for blind superheroes, and also "go deep" into households all across this great land of ours. Fado the WP has siblings operating in New York, Kentucky and several in the Northwest alone.

Contact WyW5 for further details on the WTF and how to prepare your household to contain such a highly-trained, ballistic canine.

Late Night Starveling

Quote of the day:
“The whole purpose of the journey was to make this concert for the penguins.”
- artist Pierre Huyghe

another from M. Huyghe:
“We’re going to go to this no-knowledge zone where things have no names, and we’re going to do things down there.”

Who is this Pierre Huyghe?

This evening I watched a film entitled George Washington, about a group of young Southern kids going about their days. It was a strange, almost feverish type of movie. Not feverish in the way of weird camera angles and intentional strangeness, but feverish in a kind of hyperreal style.

It evidently won several film festivals a few years ago (2000), but it never caught on with me. Interesting director, though. He was only 25 at the time the film was made. I got it from Netflix, home to my nearly 500-title obsession (aka The Queue). I thought it was similar to another movie that I didn't enjoy AT ALL - Gummo. Harmony Korine, the director of Gummo, should be force-fed office memos from Fortune 500 companies until he's immobile - only he'd like it and film it. George Washington is a much gentler film to watch, but still has that hyperreal, almost sweaty feel to it that makes me very uncomfortable.

***

I'm trying to get to the point where my days can be captured here with some clarity and some depth. It's the whole reason I started to blog in the first place - to capture my memories, react to what transpires, have a storehouse for my life. It's so easy to just lay flat and go about the week with a lazy detachment to events, to thoughts themselves. It's this disturbing notion that half of your life is waiting for you outside of yourself, made up of other people around you, random chance, whatever.

I stay up in my head so much that it's almost as if I'm sleepwalking through my waking hours. Always thinking, thinking, thinking and then feeling the slack of the thoughts leave with nothing remaining but the sound of my shoes on the pavement. I try and stuff my mind full of books, movies, sounds - toward what end? Who I am supposed to become from all this input? I have this strange idea that by constantly barraging myself with new ideas that something interior will stick and turn me towards the light. But the light only seems to come from another open door as I leave for more media exposure.

Insatiable curiosity. Without form or function - just exposure.

First Post

Welcome to When You Were 5's new home on Blogger. I think that WyW5 will be much happier here, as God knows I am. It's simply easier to use and much more interesting a host site than livejournal.com ever was.

I'm hoping that I can get a real style going here, something bedrock instead of reactionary. But perhaps that isn't the point - the point is to post come hell or high water. Which, if both were to simultaneously occur, would make the mother of all weather reports.

I'm stalling here. Today has been another vague progression of hours spent on the 'net and in the library. I made off with the Survivor's Guide to Work, the memoirs of Nelson Rockefeller and re-upped my lease on the People's History of the United States. Kind of a cool trifecta, really. From oil-baron wealth to Chomsky, with a little tongue-in-cheek manual on cubicle survival thrown in the middle. In a dusty, rust-bitten filing cabinet stored somewhere in the back of my head is this notion that I'm going to put a stranglehold on my freefalling career and reach nirvana. Preferably before rent is due.

Going to the new, ultra-modern Seattle Public Library always leaves me cold, if not irritated. The place was supposed to be this amazing new architectural addition to the Seattle skyline, but the overall effect, at least for me, is having to browse for books in a combination airport/penitentiary. It's nothing but rivets and metal and sharp edges, held together by eye-burn bright plastic and ultramodern flash. What gets me the worst though, is the fact that the most basic premises of architecture seemed to have been brushed aside. Such as ease of navigation, putting the spotlight on the books themselves, etc.

The SPL is to libraries what Versace is to clothing: garish, overly complex, and very costly to manufacture. But you've got the link - go see for yourselves.