The Second Mile

After work yesterday I went to the Second Mile, our local thriftshop. We love the Second Mile. It's three storefronts on the same block, next to a dojo, an amazing falafel place, and an equally amazing Ethiopan restaurant. The Second Mile bookstore has been my favorite bookstore since I moved here in 2003. I go every week, and though I don't usually find anything, their stock moves quickly and there's always new books. They recently stopped pricing their books and now sell them all for $1 a pound. I guess it saves them the job of marking up all the books, many of which are completely worthless, and it means that almost all of the softcover books are practically free. I greedily snagged a pile of four little yellow German novels, The Girls Guide to Taking Over the World (a zine comp), and Susie Bright's Full Exposure. I've always like Susie, but haven't read an entire book by her. When I got home, I immediately knew I had something special, perhaps just because of the author's photo on the back cover. I've never fallen in love from a back cover author's photo before, but I know it happens - Truman Capote comes to mind.

I've read probably five pages, and I'm on the verge of discipleship.

Confidences on Tuesday

My marriage
My father
My cleverness
My wife's cleverness
Barack's confidence
Eckhart Tolle
Kate Bush
The Ninth

Fears on Tuesday

Paying for school
Talking to my Dad about money
Going to Connecticut
10-Yr High School Reunion
Having money this week
Ash's health
Pornography
Writing
Going in the wrong direction

Okay, now I'm getting deep into the Ninth. It's not a symphony, it's a black hole. As massive as a Mass.

I've rediscovered the first movement of the Ninth after listening to Leif Inge's 9 Beet stretch, at least the first thirty minutes of the 20+ hours. A wonderful piece that I hope to investigate more very soon.

Also contemplating Einstein's quote "God does not play dice with the universe" - didn't Niels Bohr win this argument? That's always been my understanding. So why would you quote the person who is wrong? I need to research this more.

These are the 20 most successful movies of the last ten years:

Star Wars and the Phantom Menace
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Spider-Man
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Finding Nemo
Shrek 2
Spider-Man 2
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
Spider-Man 3
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Shrek 3
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Batman: The Dark Knight
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I've seen 14 of these movies. Of these, I probably hate 5 and love 0. The HP movies I always try to see. I wouldn't say that I love any of them, but I do honestly really enjoy them, and I see their purpose as illuminating the books, the way that so many of our classic stories have new editions with new illustrations. Perhaps my concept of "movies I love" is too narrow to include movies with this function. Similarly, the LOTR movies I saw in the theater and enjoyed all of them. I think their best feature is that the book series was considered so un-adaptable for so long. Now that they've been made into movies, we know that any book can.

Note that with the exception of Finding Nemo, these are all parts of series. There are no R-rated movies, obviously, and I would even go further and describe all of them as children's movies. Compare them to the biggest blockbuster that immediately precedes this list, Titanic, which is certainly an adult's movie, in fact it was a movie whose success was in large part due to old people. Titanic was made for adults, and I'm not even sure how much children can participate in it. These 20 movies, on the other hand, do not fail to excite adults, but are all made primarily for children. Children will watch them over and over, and moviemakers know this. It would be interesting to see how many of the tickets sold in the last ten years were to these 20 movies. Perhaps my definition of "children's movie" is also too narrow. Surely what people really want are "family movies" and aren't these family movies? Well yes, but is this the only way that a family can watch a movie together? Can families only agree on a movie if it is part of a big-budget comic-book series? Compare also to the biggest blockbusters of the pre-Jaws 70s: The Sting, the Exorcist, and the Godfather. Adult movies one and all.

We know people want expensive movies. And when you spend that much money, you need to guarantee that you will be able to make more than one movie out of it for the investment to be sound. It's also obvious that using pre-existing characters and stories is much safer than investing in something new that a screenwriter created.

I suppose none of these data are really surprising, except for just how homogenous the list is, how similar the movies are to each other. Barring a complete financial collapse of Hollywood, the trend is almost assured to continue. What I see is that Cinema is now interacting with us in profoundly different ways, and responding to much different desires. We want Cinema to revisit our childhood memories, our early hero-myths, to project these on the screen in full painted color. Either our real childhoods or our imagined or perhaps idealized childhoods. The movies of this list that most angered me were usually ones that I felt defiled my childhood, that fucked with it, that covered it in shit/money and then fed it back to me (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Spider-Man).

I want to say it's Infantilized Cinema, and I wonder what the effects will be on those whose Actual Childhood is being formed by this canon.

I believe the writing process is working. Last night, as soon I got into bed, I had a flurry of ideas. I tried to scrawl them on a scrap of paper in the dark, but the ideas kept coming, so I had to go get my notebook from the living room. From now on, the notebook will come with me to bed, and I can only hope to be so fortunate as to need it every night.