Writing and Living, I guess.

I am now finally settled from the settling. I moved to Seattle. Most people ask me for an explanation, (especially because I don't have a job), and I can't give them one that would satisfy a reasonable, practical response. Sorry.

My unreasonable and impractical response is that I get to live with friends. My dear friend Erin Cooley is going to marry med school next year (she will have a life, but it could be in Seattle, Boston, the Bronx) and I have always wanted to spend a significant amount of time with her.

We eat and sleep and shower in a cave on Ravenna St. Apparently it's in a "yuppie" part of town. I have to rely on map quest to go four feet in any given direction, so I'm just going to trust that that is true.

Die Bierstube is becoming quite the hang out. (I still miss the Bigfoot) Good people and good times to be had for sure. Maybe they are hiring.

I live with another kid named Nick who I met the day I signed the lease. He likes good music, he fixes things like our water purifier, and helped me research my property law rights. I'm a fan. Again, I just trusted that Erin found a stellar third mate. (I was actually the 3rd one to jump on board, but just work with me here.)

Despite the fact that I'm unemployed I always find myself doing things. That is great. I need to be entertained. Just ask Leslie Dugas, Amy Brown or Jon Fox.

I also realized something. A challenge for myself I guess. One of my main goals was, and still is, to find the silliest things to do so I can write about them and share them with you. That will happen simply by default. I can't seem to help getting myself into some sort of trouble. That goal is great, but I think the need to seek silliness derives from some weird fear, I guess. I am afraid that if I'm not doing anything interesting, I have nothing interesting to write about. Fiction is scary to me. I would rather fiddle around with a pre-made template than rely on my own imagination. Maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. Or maybe I am subconsciously self-aware that my writing skills remain within the delight confinements of non-fiction observation. I guess we'll see.

Or maybe I'll be riding the bus one day and come up with a kick ass wizard who has an owl, an invisible cloak, takes on the most evil character who's name can't even be spoken aloud and become richer than the queen of england.

It could happen.

Why Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a Better Movie than Inception

So Rotten Tomatoes gave Inception an 87% on the Tomatometer while it gave Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a 20%. (But it only gave Sex and the City 2 a 16% so how accurate can it be?) I have also become the first of my facebook friends to “Like” TRF. Thanks to RT I thought of like literally like “Like”ing it.

TRF is a better movie than Inception because it better satisfies its intended audience. Transformers: RF is cinematically the most possibly realized dream of a twelve-year-old while Inception is an under-realized movie about dreaming.

When I was a kid I played by myself a lot—Legos, Littlest Pet Shop, Barbies, blocks, dolls, this castle thing that my grandma insisted belonged to my brothers. I’d lie on the floor in my room and imagine different scenes for my toys. I could do that all afternoon. TRF is Amy-as-a-kid’s kind of movie: rapid cuts from scene to scene for the ADD inclined, stunning visuals, a plot fit to the machinations of a fourteen-year-old, and maximum wish fulfillment for the kids who spend time playing on their bellies. It doesn’t fly so well with adults out of their floor-playing prime: critics who want to be surprised or moved or for whom sci-fi aesthetics carry little weight. It’s fine, they’re great people, just not the targeted audience.

Inception is more entertaining than TRF, although it lacks TRF’s aesthetic supreme awesomeness. Inception was also disappointing; it had the potential to do more than entertain. It could have pointed to something outside of itself, stuck with people made them think, reached the level of art. But it ended cheaply, with a gimmick. The movie itself was too sloppy to warrant careful observation (If Leo wanted his kids so bad, why didn’t he just have them come to France?), and the question it finally asked—the idea for the audience to incept—was a boring one. Is this world real? You can think about it for 20 minutes before deciding that there is no way to know and that it ultimately affects your life not at all.

When I was watching the previews for Inception in the theater. Eureka! this idea struck me: what I want most out of life is to be entertained. It depressed me as I went to get popcorn. But at one point—when I spent my time with small plastic animals and toy cars turned into robots—I wanted most to populate my world with characters, with ideas, with friends, and entertainment was more of the by-product than the goal.

I've noticed something unfortunate.

When I was a kid in Sunday school or regular school or at camp, people were rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad. Child rearing was pretty deterministic in its use of positive and negative reinforcement. Kids who were listening quietly would be called on first or would be picked for special things. Kids who were noisy would be glared at, ignored, sent to the hall, or given a good talking to. It set up this precedent that good things came to good, or at least well-behaved, people.

The other day at the Y, a child in the day camp lost a shoe. On his way out he asked the front desk, “Have you seen a shoe that looks like this?” pointing to his one shoe-clad foot. Later his mother came back to the Y. She was livid. Said that the Y owed her a new pair of shoes. She threatened to call the police (?). And started walking all over the building, where as a non-member she was not supposed to be. Two managers, a custodian, and two camp counselors were searching everywhere for the shoe. Everybody just wanted to appease her so she would go away and not further muck up their day.

If she were a child she would be sent to the hall. She would be taught how sometimes children lose things. It’s just what they do, and throwing a fit won’t make it any better. I’d tell her how looking for her son’s shoe is not worth five people’s time.

But because she is an adult, telling her all this would just make her angrier, make the fiasco last longer. She was given special treatment because she was behaving badly.

And that’s how things seem to work in business. If a patron complains about her food (and especially if she starts going berserk) she’s given a free meal. Companies bend rules and give out free things to appease angry people. Adults are rewarded for bad behavior, and good things come to those who are pushy.