Lost Season 6 Ep 1 (not entirely spoiler-free)

The finale of season 5 ended with the burning question, “did it work?”

Last night’s episode answered the question in typically unexpected and brilliant fashion.

Also typical and brilliant were the meaty doses of new information that mostly raise new questions. The smoke monster? The temple? Circles of ash? Richard in chains? The spring???

He wants to go home? Where did he come from, how long has he been there, and did Jacob arrive with him?

Last season Bram told Miles “There’s a war coming.” I assumed there would be two factions, one allied with Jacob and one with his adversary. But it’s looking like all the groups we’ve seen have been brought in by Jacob (except the Dharma Initiative, they’re just new age militants in love with their own psychobabble), and Jacob plays them against each other. Smokey just wants it to end. Or at least get away from it all. Seems like Jacob is the one with the more destructive agenda. Which one is really the bad guy? I’m hoping for another unexpected answer.

Also awesome: Terry O’Quinn’s performance. Any actor who can convince you you’re looking at somebody else deserves high praise.

I Used To Think They Were All Songwriters

I read an article recently about how in the last decade, all of the mega-hit songs have been written by producers.

Surely this is nothing new. Surely producers have always been writing songs, which is why we have the distinction “singer-songwriter.” It was news to me though. I used to think singer-songwriter was the default. All the musicians I listen to write their own songs. I always thought of non-songwriter-singers as a form of cover band. Not until American Idol did I realize that for many (most?) listeners, it doesn’t matter if the singer owns the words. Or rather, the singer takes ownership of the words by singing them. Okay, I can see that, but for me it’s infinitely more meaningful to listen to a performer fully engaged in his/her/their own self-expression.

I’ve never been what you would call “with it,” world-of-music speaking. I’m accustomed to living outside the sphere of hit songs and popular trends. But in the last several years I’ve felt more out to sea then ever. I used to at least know who the major players are, and even enjoy the occasional hit song. Now I’m sure I could listen to a pop station for hours without recognizing a single song or artist.

I’ve been attributing this to age. I’m 38 after all, pop music isn’t suppose to make sense to me. But then, by and large, pop music has never made sense to me, so why should it change now? Because producers are writing all the songs. Meaning that the songs are about nothing, just carefully crafted to be hits. It’s a small relief to know it’s not just me– the Oughts really was the decade of American Idol-style manufactured stars.

Happily, here in the age of splintering subcultures, there is still an abundance of singer-songwriters recording fabulous music. I’m as content to ignore the megahit machine as it is to ignore me.

Spider-Man 4: No Sam or Tobey

Apparently Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have both pulled out of Spider-Man 4. I don’t see this as reason for bewailment. The director did a great job with SM 1 & 2, but 3 was a disaster. (Would it have been better with the Vulture? Anything’s possible I suppose, but  to me, SM 3 just indicated that Raimi doesn’t “get it” after all. And come on, the Vulture? Why not just go with Stilt Man? A Black Cat story line sounds much more interesting.) And Maguire was great–again, 3rd film was painful, but I think that had more to do with the script– but I’m sure he doesn’t want to play Spider-Man for the rest of his life. More power to him.

Changing the cast and crew midway through a movie franchise is nothing new. It’s also not new in comic books. Spider-Man has been written and drawn by hundreds of different people. Why not allow different directors and actors to offer their interpretations? They did it with the Hulk, and what do you know, Ed Norton makes a perfect Bruce Banner. How about giving somebody else a shot at Daredevil?

Balance (another Aikido post)

The other day I was teaching a small class at the dojo. We practiced jiyu waza, essentially a form of sparring. The uke comes at you with whatever attack they want, and you do whatever throw you want. I asked the group not to worry too much about finding a technique, but to concentrate on the basics: keep your own balance, and feel the energetic connection to uke. Not an easy task when someone is attacking you, but more and more I’m convinced those two things are the the key to self defense with Aikido.

That same day, I read this in Thomas Friedman’s column: “We can’t let our country become just The United States of Fighting Terrorism and nothing more. We are the people of July 4th — not Sept. 11th.” The column really spoke to my frustration with what’s happened in America since that terrorist attack. In today’s Oregonian, Joe Conason addressed the issue directly, saying, among other things: “Indeed, right-wing exploitation of terrorism tends to serve the terrorists in several important ways: elevating them from a gang of fanatical criminals to the status of a sovereign power; echoing their worldview of a clash between Islam and modernity; and enhancing their prestige as a mortal threat to civilization.” The anti-hysteria sentiment was also echoed in the letters to the editor, where one writer cited a connection between Michael Chertoff and the manufacturing of full-body scanning machines.

I’m also opposed to full-body scanners. It’s one more in a series of knee-jerk reactions that serve only to impose petty restrictions on our lives. A guy brings a bomb in his shoe, and now we all take off our shoes. That’s letting the enemy dictate our actions. That’s not keeping our balance.

Our single most effective protection against terror is information. All the clues about the underwear bomber’s intentions were out there. We only need to learn how to track the information, how to share it, how to sort it. We don’t need additional, invasive data-mining of every person on the planet. We only need to get our existing law enforcement machinery functioning as its meant to function. We need to act with the judgement of a “confident, politically mature society” (Conason again).

Aikido is my personal solution. Naturally, I feel my personal solution is also the universal solution. I recognize Aikido is not for everyone, but I wish I could say to the DHS and the TSA, keep your balance. Connect with your attacker. Understand the attack, and you’ll be able to meet it without jeopardizing yourself or others.

A side note: our other greatest protection against terror is ourselves. There will never be another plane flown into a building, because the passengers won’t sit back and let it happen. Al Qaeda may have sent our security organizations into a tailspin, but they’ve also put an end forever to the notion of “just go along quietly and we’ll get out of this ok.” If we can act with confidence and clear judgement as individuals and as a society, we’ll have nothing to worry about. Not exactly easy, but simple.

Best Misogi Ever

This might sound weird, but it was especially cool this year, and I figure I should post something other than rants once in awhile.

Every year my dojo does a misogi practice on New Year’s Day. We drive out to a riverbank, greet the dawn with 1000 sword cuts (using boken, wooden practice swords). Then we get in the water, which is really really cold, and visualize how we want the next year to go.

I’ve done it six or seven times. Last year was the rainiest– we got soaked long before getting in the river. This year, the weather was beautiful. We arrived at our riverside spot just as the rainclouds broke up and faded away. A hawk or eagle was flying around and making noise as we got started. A light sprinkle came and went, and when we were done, a full rainbow spanned the sky.

Coincidence??? Or indication of a better year to come????

Winter Blockbusters, 2; Curmudgeon, 0

I’m happy to report that Sherlock Holmes exceeded my expectations. Yeah, they probably over-emphasized the martial arts, but I found it to be a faithful re-imagining of the great detective. No call for curmudgeonly critique.

I also enjoyed Avatar, although it pretty much exactly met my expectations. For my review in comic strip form, click here.

More Thinking is Better

Please join me in propagating Moff’s Law.

Addendum

On the news the other night, those White House gate-crashers were referred to as “reality show hopefuls.” That’s what I meant by Fame is Poison. Eech…

Fame is Poison

The new justification for criminal or abusive behavior: auditioning for a reality show!

People will do anything and everything to be famous. That’s not new. What’s new is the internet, the 24 hour media cycle, and television finding new bottoms to race to. Today’s media rewards the jackasses. For every talented performer on the air, there are a hundred insta-celebs known only for being idiots or assholes or both. The nature of celebrity is changed by their successful soul-selling. They have erected a freak-show tent over the whole enterprise.

I’ve said before, the age of the megastar is over. Michael Jackson is probably the last universally known household name. Was he a victim of the fame-monster of recent years? Arguably, no. His followers were always fans more than sniggering schadenfreudians. His troubles started long before John & Kate. Even so, one could read his life as a map of the cultural trajectory that inverts the idol and pedestal, and turns the pedestal into an upturned bucket of shit.

I always wanted to be famous. But fame has become a plague on society. It makes me question the wisdom of desiring such a thing. It also makes me supremely grateful that we have splintered into subcultures and niche markets. There are different kinds of fame, and the kind I’ve always craved is pretty low key. No hordes of screaming fans, no autographs in the street, just reaching an audience and making a living and demonstrating a certain amount of skill. Today it’s easier than ever to have one kind without the other.

 

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

I first read The Illuminatus! Trilogy as a freshman in college, in 1990. 15 years after its initial publication in 1975, it was dated but felt mostly relevant, especially in hippie-saturated Eugene, OR. I had mixed feeling about the book, and always thought I ought to give it another try before selling it back at Powell’s. I finished re-reading it a few weeks ago, almost 20 years later.

Halfway through the second book, I was getting frustrated. The deliberately dense and incoherent style is hard to follow. I wanted to know where it was going (I remembered next to nothing from my previous reading) but I was getting weary of the style and suspicious of the authors. It seemed like there was an undercurrent of libertarian dogma. Libertarianism sounds great in theory, but have you ever met any libertarians? I certainly would not want to live in their war-of-all-against-all world, thank you very much.

Finally I wikipedia’d the book and the authors to get a better sense of their intentions. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Wilson and Shea were playing games more than pushing ideology. It all started when they posited the question, what if every crazy conspiracy theory was actually true? They deal with that question quite successfully, weaving together all sorts of contradictory ideas in a stew of science fiction, history, and politics. I also went ahead and read the story synopsis on Wikipedia. I sort of regretted spoiling the identity of the 5th Illuminati Primi, but knowing which of the myriad threads were most relevant to the central plot made for a more enjoyable read.

35 years after initial publication it is definitely dated. The attitudes toward sex and drugs and equality that were revolutionary in the early 70s are sadly naive today. The meta-stream-of-consciousness style was surely meant to jolt the reader out of sleepy alignment with the dominant paradigm, but it mostly just gets in the way of absorbing the story. I kept thinking, The Invisibles did it better.

Even so, the book got me wrestling with ideas, mostly about the nature of freedom, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Also, Illuminatus gets right what almost every other conspiracy story gets wrong. That is, if some secret and powerful cabal is running the world, why should they be bothered about the plucky young journalist/lawyer/single mother/crank who has discovered the truth? What’s the stop them from crushing the little rebel like a bug and burying his/her message in the military-industrial-media complex? Nothing, that’s what. Illuminatus is not the story of one conspiracy ruling the world, but several conspiracies competing for influence. Even better, it becomes less and less clear which side is the good guys and bad guys, or even how many sides their really are.

I guess I’ll hang onto it for another 20 years.