A (Hopefully) Fortunate Series of Events

Last week, it all changed. The ball started rolling when I checked my Gmail Inbox.

--The Initial Tip-Off:

That's a screenshot of my Gmail Inbox. Yes, I understand the disturbing implications of me having daily Google Alerts on anything about the Beastie Boys sent to my inbox. Get over it.

--The What:
--The Details:
Richmond Coliseum, Richmond, VA Tues, Oct 28 2008 7:00PM. I seem to remember Richmond having one of the higher homicide rates in the nation. I hope they've taken care of that by the time I get there. It's a "Get Out and Vote" concert, so I will likely get an earful of political propaganda, but I've endured much worse for much less.

Anyone who wishes to see me scream like a 14-year old girl at a Backstreet Boys concert, tickets may still be on sale at ticketmaster.com.


--The Unknown Variable:
How long is the Beasties' set going to be? How long are we going to have to suffer through listening to these other losers? Correction, "losers" may be a little harsh; Jack Johnson's music has a kicked back, all-I-want-to-do-is-surf-and-smoke-pot charm to it, and Norah Jones is good Sunday music. Aside from being attractive for a 46-year old (a "Diane Lane All-Star Team" member, according to Bill Simmons) and having dated Lance Armstrong at one point, I know nothing about Sheryl Crow. All I'm saying is this mix of artists has me nervous that the Boys are going to pull a George Washington (don't give me this "written in the Constitution" crap. I'm not buying it.) and step down to make room for lesser performers. I would prefer that they pull an FDR.

--The Possible Obstacle:
I'm scheduled to work that day; a 10am-10pm shift. I emailed my supervisors to let me swap shifts with someone for that day, but haven't heard back yet. I realize planning usually goes in the reverse order (ie make sure you can go and THEN buy the tickets), but if tickets got sold out because I was waiting to hear back on work schedules, I'm pretty sure I'd commit seppuku right then and there.

--The Context / Implications:

Until this week, life was an unsatisfying, burdensome, and hollow culmination of "life lessons," schooling, diplomas and degrees, working a real job, and relationships with friends and family.* The reason for this gaping abyss of unfulfillment that likely would have haunted me to my deathbed: I had yet to see the Beastie Boys in concert (see this entry for previous scarring attempts at attending a Beasties' concert), and based on their age, it seemed they would not tour again and my life would remain in the metaphorical toilet. This changes that. It was meant to be.

What I'm saying is as far as destiny and import are concerned, my attendance at this concert ranks somewhere between Frodo destroying the Ring and Luke Skywalker toppling the Emperor and the Dark Side.

Keep your fingers crossed that I can work my schedule out. If I don't, the mere fact that I had tickets at one point might serve as some sort of fulfillment for me.

Maybe.

*Relax, friends and family: I'm going for effect here.

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More From the Beasties

We're all familiar with the term and fashion abomination that is the mullet. I won't delve into why we abhor this haircut, because websites -- as well as books and doctoral dissertations, I'm sure -- have been dedicated to the topic. Needless to say, my simple reasoning is that we don't like ugly, and mullets are ugly. Hence, we don't like mullets.

Anyway, according to an article in the Seattle Times that cites the Oxford English Dictionary, the Beasties made the term "mullet" popular by ripping on the haircut in the 1994 song "Mullet Head" and also penning an article about it in their label's magazine, Grand Royal, called "Mulling Over the Mullet."

I can't speak to the authoritativeness of the Oxford English Dictionary (really, who compiled this thing -- PhDs? "scholars"??), but if they're willing to attribute a modern cultural reference to the Beastie Boys, their credibility goes up in my eyes.

...And my odd fascination with the B-Boys continues...

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My The Dark Knight Anxiety

Let's talk neuroses. And instead of me being a jerk and targeting someone else, let's talk about mine.

The things I'm going to talk about may make me seem more dysfunctional as an individual than the entire Bluth family on "Arrested Development" combined, but it's all good. We all have our eccentricities. Mine just happen to manifest themselves in trivial things like movies and sports.

I'm a movie guy. Love them. But I've experienced so many colossal disappointments when it comes to sequels, usually due to my own elevated expectations being combined with horrible screenwriting (some notable disappointments: The Land Before Time II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3, the aforementioned X-Men 3, etc), that I knew in order to survive my heightened anxiety leading up to the premier of The Dark Knight, I needed to seriously manage expectations. It was the only way I was going to walk out of the movie and not slit my guts open in order to preserve what little honor I would have left.

I've spent multiple blog entries singing the praises of Batman Begins, so I need you to realize that as 18 July 2008 crept closer, I felt like I was doing alternating emotional shots of anxiety and excitement and chasing them down with sleeping pills. I guess so you can empathize with me a bit, try to recall your feelings before each of the following experiences that each of us have:

1. First job interview
2. First public speaking assignment

3. First prison yard fight¹
4. First date

They are all feelings of the "I hope I'm not overwhelmingly humiliated / disappointed after this is over"-variety, right? (I guess with example 3, there is the added "I hope I don't end up with a prison shank in my back" aspect to the feelings. But whatever). Those emotions are what I was feeling about seeing The Dark Knight.

So like I said before, in order to avoid disappointment, I needed to manage expectations. How did I do in the leadup? Well, judge for yourself...

*****

---"I'm going black"---
As I sent out an email to my group of friends, checking on who wanted to go with me on opening night, I ended the email with a request that went something like this: "From here on out, I'm going black.² I ask that no one send me links to reviews, trailers, or anything related to this movie. I'm experiencing some anxiety for the first time in my life and don't need to have unrealistic expectations for how good it's going to be."

That's right. I went on complete radio silence from the media machine that was promoting the movie. Even those stupid Dominoes Pizza commercials warranted me quickly changing the channel. I didn't want to see any of it.

---Inexplicable Hayden Christensen Fear?---
About a week and a half before the movie came out, this crazy fear of mine started to develop that The Dark Knight would open with this sick action scene, the camera would move in on Batman, and then he would take the helmet off to reveal... Hayden Christensen. That's right. The whiny kid from Star Wars who's got that "I listen to Nirvana all day, why the hell do you think I'm always depressed?" face. It's probably because I had seen Jumper earlier this year (the absolute dregs of 2008 cinema), which solidified Christensen's Paul Walker status as a horrible actor. It would have been a perfect way for the movie to be ruined for me.

This fear of a horrible, horrible movie was only perpetuated when, on the night of the 17th, TNT was having a Batman marathon in anticipation of the premiere. Which movie happened to be on? Batman & Robin. It MAY -- and I don't use this classification lightly, so please realize the gravity of what I'm saying here -- have been on the same level as Battlefield Earth. I started thinking to myself: What if Christopher Nolan has gone nuts since Batman Begins, and decided to model The Dark Knight after Batman & Robin?? Did he request nipple-suits for the actors? Did he hire 5-year olds to draft his screenplay?

Needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night.

Again. Me. Crazy.

---"What Are You Doing?"---
I usually don't do too well at work on Fridays. I have a short enough attention span as it is, and when the weekend is almost there, I get antsy. Pile on top of that everything I just rambled about, and I was getting fidgety come Friday afternoon of the 18th. I needed to blow some extra energy so I unwittingly started shadow-boxing in my cubicle.

"What are you doing?" One of my coworkers asked from my cubicle entrance.
"Shadow-boxing."
"Yeah. But why?" He looked at me like I was crazy.
I looked back at him like he was crazy: "Don't you know? The Dark Knight opens tonight."

*****

The good news is that The Dark Knight was amazing, I am going to see it in IMAX soon, and my life has returned to normal.

Bad news is that with college football just around the corner, the anxiety is likely to return.

1 - My agent said I should expand my readership by appealing to a "wider demographic." He suggested I begin with the incarcerated segment of our population.

2 - Anybody on this email chain can easily go back and see that I didn't type "I'm going black," but I wish I had. It just sounds better.

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Franchises Revived

Two weeks ago, I watched Casino Royale and Batman Begins* within a few days of each other. After finishing the movies, lying in a semi-comatose daze, virtually engulfed by my gigantic luv-sac and covered in potato chip crumbs, I had an epiphany about these two seemingly unrelated movies: Does anybody realize what these two movies have done for their respective franchises? If you look at the rapid deterioration of the Bond and Batman franchises in the few movies preceding Royale and Begins (from here on out, R&B), you have to agree that they were beyond absurd -- An invisible car?! Really?? I think Ian Fleming rolled over in his grave -- and were ineptly written / produced / acted / directed / craft serviced / cast. Both franchises were decaying and dead in the water. We all knew it. We just had to treat the dead franchises like Bourne treated the death of his girlfriend in The Bourne Supremacy: Burn all evidence of their existence so you can detach yourself, then track down and kill everyone responsible for the demise. Minus the track down part. And the killing. The point is, we had to move on.

But R&B completely reversed all of our crushed hopes. They both revitalized their franchises. I almost want to term it a comeback, but it was more than that, because these movies were better than any of the franchise movies that had preceded them. They were darker, grittier, and returned to character development. No more failed attempts at humor. No more nipple-suits. No more of me experiencing self-imposed, Arthur Dimmesdale-caliber guilt for having wasted my time watching.

(If anybody reading this is nodding your head in agreement and said / murmured / thought / thought-about-thinking / etc. to yourself "Mm hm. Tokyo Drift. Tokyo Drift did that exact same thing for the Fast & the Furious franchise." We are done. No really, I mean it: Stop reading my blog right now.)

Back to my point: What R&B did is pretty much unprecedented in movie history. They both pulled a freakin Gandalf. You know, when he falls to his death in The Fellowship of the Ring, and all of the characters AND the audience are completely crushed / shocked because they truly believe that Gandalf is dead. Gone. That's it. It's an absolute and final fact that must be accepted before you can move on.

But then in The Two Towers, he reappears, and you just sit there in disbelief (or as my buddy Nartker puts it: "That fool came out of left field when no one expected it"); and not only has he come back, he's got amazing white, conditioned hair and all kinds of crazy new powers. That's the only way for me to describe what Casino Royale and Batman Begins pulled with their franchises. A complete and utter Gandalf: Presumed dead. Revived. Now better than ever.

(Actually, if the other readers will indulge me for a second, I'd like to address you Tokyo Drift fans... I mean, honestly. Did you ever consider Fast & the Furious to be a franchise? Are you waiting for the box set to come out on BluRay?)

Anyway. My point is that R&B are rare gems. Franchises usually start strong and dwindle, then never recover. The best examples I can think of are Episodes 1-3 of Star Wars. Also, the Spiderman and X-Men franchises had strong showings in their first two episodes, then threw up metaphorical goose eggs when it came to their third and final installments.

So I guess I'm encouraging you to watch and appreciate these two revivalist movies the next opportunity you get (Women: if for no other reason, to see Daniel Craig and Christian Bale shirtless).



End note -- Other candidates for (what ended up being) the Gandalf analogy included:
>> The scene in Field of Dreams when the daughter falls of the bleachers and chokes on her hot dog, and the player that eventually becomes a doctor makes the decision to step off the field and revive her;
>> LOST, Season 1, when Charlie has been hanging from a tree for like five minutes and Jack and Kate cut him down, and Jack gives him CPR for like three minutes straight and you're thinking "he's dead, he's dead," but then Jack brings him back to life with the pound-the-chest-with-your-fist thing (the exact same thing from Mission Impossible 3, courtesy of JJ Abrams)

*In preparation for the release of The Dark Knight. The anxiety-laden week leading up to watching this movie on opening day is a story for another entry.

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To a More Powerful Vocabulary

My high school English teacher made us study out of this book called "30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary." It was actually a great book, but not one that you want to get caught reading in public. This entry follows in that vein.

As all the loyal readers recall (HAH!), I make up new verbs based on people's names, by either taking a tendency or a random act of moronic stupidity (whichever works in my favor) of a certain individual and making a verb. In recent days I have conjured up a few. These verbs contain subtle nuances, so you will want to read closely. Apologies for the non-gender neutrality of my examples; if you stick 'she' in there, it works just as well.

• "That guy is a total hypochondriac. He always Hillary's his situation and compares his cold to 'the Black Plague.' " - A certain presidential candidate for a certain political party has gotten desperate and has been making some exaggerated comments about her decision to continue running. (trans. "That guy will say anything to get attention, even to the point of drawing ridiculous and overstated analogies to his situation. What a wuss.")

• "He totally Hugh Grant'ed his front row seats to the NBA Finals for a fake-autographed tennis racket of Maria Sharapova's and a $5 gift card to Bath & Body Works." - No, this is not in reference to Hugh's tendency to play the exact same character in all of his movies, although that is stereotypical Hugh Grant. This refers to when he was dating Elizabeth Hurley, but threw it all away when he was caught cheating on her with a prostitute. (trans. "He had the opportunity that others only dream of, and completely ruined it for something of much much lower quality.)
  

• "Can you believe that?? He completely Pargo'ed my Powerpoint Presentation in front of the new boss." - I don't know if anyone saw Game 7 of the Hornets-Spurs series, but if you watched the last 6 minutes, you may know what I am talking about. Janero Pargo hadn't been effective for the Hornets the entire series and entered the game when his team was down by double digits. With the uncontrollable excitability of a golden retriever playing fetch with an amphetamine-laced stick, Pargo attempted to take over the game, and teammates like Chris Paul (MVP runner-up) and David West (All-Star) didn't touch the ball for a straight 5 minutes. (trans. "I can't believe that guy! We had a game plan all worked out, and then he totally took over my part and ruined it...not to mention he was so excited he wet his drawers.")
  

The best way to retain these is to attempt to use them a real-life situation. See if you can't find the opportunity to incorporate these into your vernacular with a co-worker or fellow student.

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Tagged - Enjoy, Sis

So my sister, Juli, virtual 'tagged' me from her blog, because she was "interested to see where [I'll] take this." I think you're supposed to list five things about yourself and then tag five people, or else you will be cursed with your secret crush not liking you, or the plague, or alcohol addiction...something like that.

Listed below are six -- how's that for taking things somewhere, huh, Juli?!? -- that you might not (and didn't care to) know about me.

1. Talk to me after I wake up - I don't always say everything that's on my mind, but if you want to catch me without a filter, do it after I wake up. I'll say exactly what I'm thinking. Anecdotal illustration: Back at the Y on a Sat morning, some friends I was planning on going to go paintballing with called me at 9am (I had forgotten):

-"Hello?" (italics in this narrative indicate dazed and confused)
-"Josh, hey, are you coming?"
-"Huh?"
-"Paintballing. We're waiting for you."
-I start crawling out of bed in my underwear: "Can I play with no pants?"
-"What? Uh...I guess...you could do that...you know, if you wanted..."

2. I punched a girl once - Casey was our FHE dad back at the Elms. For the activity he brought two pairs of boxing gloves and some slips of paper. We were to write who we wanted to see box each other on the slips. I ended up being pitted in The Octagon against a girl that had broken up with my roommate a few months back. I insisted I didn't want to fight her, but she kept coming at me, and the last time she did she swung with her left, I grabbed it, gave her a little tug to the ground, and gave her a little love tap to the right cheek. When I got home, the roommate asked "How was FHE?" "It was fine. I boxed your ex." slight pause -- "Sounds about right."

3. I clubbed a kid with my lunch pail - We might as well get the violent stuff out of the way. I had a sweet plastic Voltron lunch pail in Kindergarten. This kid on the bus ride home kept bugging me, so I smacked him over the head with it. The bus driver guaranteed me I was getting a ticket. When my stop came, I slid right off the bus. She probably mistook me for the other Asian kid on board.

4. I’m a contrarian – For some reason I like to make conversation difficult for people – but not in a confrontational way. I can’t explain it. Two illustrations:

Illustration 1

Friend: “Josh, you know you don’t always have to be contrarian.”
Me: “Yes I do.”

Illustration 2

Friend: “I ran 10 miles yesterday and I am sore.”
Me: “No you didn’t, and no, you’re not.”
Friend: “I’m pretty sure I know what I did and how I feel.”
Me: “Uh huh”
Friend Reconsidering Friendship: “I can’t believe I’m arguing with you about what I did yesterday.”
Me: “Believe it.”

5. I like baby food – Believe it. When I played in all-day soccer tournaments those little gerber glass jars of fruit puree (not that veggie puree…gross) had tons of nutrients needed to get some quick energy. Maybe that’s why I love those Naked and Odwalla smoothie drinks so much. They taste the exact same and cost about the same per ounce.

6. I make up words - As you all know from my B.E. entry, I make up words. This isn't all that unique, though, because I think a lot of people do. I do, however, specialize in verbs that represent a tendency that someone has, and base it on their name. Some examples:

• "Go ahead, just James Joyce me." JJ is an author famous for employing stream of consciousness. If I'm talking with someone but they keep getting tripped up b/c they can't seem to organize their thoughts, this is the phrase I use. (trans. "Just spew out everything on your mind and we'll sort it out later.")
• "He/she totally Paul Walker'ed that." I use this with actors and movies a lot, mostly with The Fast and the Furious franchise -- correction, let's call it a debacle -- in mind. (trans. "He/she took a movie that already looked horrible based on previews and made it even worse with their horrible acting.")
• "I just got my trash Shigeko'ed." I love my mom. One of the many loving memories I have of my childhood, I remember her always licking her thumb and aggressively scrubbing something off of my face. I didn't like it. (trans. "I was just treated in a rough manner by an otherwise well-intentioned individual.")

And the list goes on.

I break the mold and end the tagging here. I’m more of a reformer than any of the presidential hopefuls claim to be.

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