» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

The Thing About Colorado

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:39:11 +0000

What is it about Colorado that gets me all hot and bothered? Is it the lovely Rocky Mountains and their Alpine jealousy? Is it the squeaky clean John Elway (not to be confused with Elton John) and his once thriving Broncos of Denver? Is it Boulder real estate and the mounds upon mounds of hippie communes that drive housing prices through the roof?
No, it’s none of those, though I could easily say it is. The fact is, Colorado gets me hot and bothered because it’s the one state where you can’t imagine anyone doing anything except skiing. Name any other state, and you have at least gainful employment as a possibility. But Colorado is like the Death Valley of job markets, as evidenced by my friend Evil Rainey’s inability to get a job after being out there a month. He’s an engineer, people, with a degree! That’s gotta be worth some kind of get out of poverty free card. Instead, he’s looking at the upcoming ski season with nary a job in sight.
But somehow, I imagine he’ll find a way to rent a cabin and ski at least four times this winter. No doubt he’ll have a job by then. Though I’m not sure you can consider snow bunny a job. And while he may have the body for it, is it really what an engineer from Virginia Tech should be doing? Have some pride in yourself. Get a real job.
Go freelance.

Blog Down!

jelewis8 — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 17:18:57 +0000

Greg Piper may be back to blogging, but his return has been marred somewhat by the current inability to post anything, which explains his ten day disappearance. He is working on resolving the issue and will be back to posting regular updates on Jessica Alba-monkey pairings and his bitter take on the state of the Union (clue: the coffee sucks in Washington DC, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the nation).

Pinsching Myself Awake

jelewis8 — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 18:46:30 +0000

Do you ever notice in dreams how if you’re running, you can never quite run the way you know you’re capable of running? You’ll be trying to escape from a crazed serial killer, or a giant doberman pinscher, or a crazed serial pincher, and your legs. Just. Won’t. Go. They’re like jello settling into concrete, and inside your dream you’re mentally flagellating yourself for your insipid inability to run.
Then you wake up and discover your arms and legs have lost feeling because you’ve cut off their blood flow in your sleep. At least, that’s what happened to me this morning. It’s a dissatisfying feeling waking up from dreamland inadequacy. It makes facing the day less about getting things done and more about measuring up to mean expectations.
I’m working like gangbusters on several different projects, so I’ll have to keep this short and sweet. Why don’t you visit some of the sites on my sidebar while you wait for me to come back around? Or listen to one of four Fringecast episodes, also to your right. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Silent Is Beauty

jelewis8 — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 13:14:52 +0000

It seems to me that if you’re going to take a kid to a movie, you really should make sure he or she has duct tape over his or her mouth. Granted, duct tape is easily removed, if somewhat painfully, so the next logical step is to tie their hands down to the seat. Not content to leave well enough alone, I propose you then put a ball gag in your own mouth because you obviously can’t keep your big trap shut in the middle of a movie. Granted, it’s a Tony Scott movie, so your attention span has to be equivalent to a bumblebee on heroin for you to really and truly appreciate it. Still, it’s clear you cannot be trusted in a public theatre to allow other patrons to enjoy the film in silence. Your son or daughter has inherited your irritating inability to allow that golden silence to bloom and grow–instead they mimic your brainless chatter. It’s not their fault. But I didn’t pay $7.50 to hear you and your kid discussing the intricacies of a negligible plot point that happened thirty minutes ago.
Was I irritated tonight whilst watching Domino in front of an entire family whose sole purpose in life is to sit right behind serious movie watchers in theatres and jaw their way through the entire feature? Hmmm. Maybe just a little bit. This was the second such occurrence in about a week’s time. The first was a group of giggly teenage girls on whom their parents had forgotten to install volume control. It’s too bad, because they might have been attractive, otherwise. My friend shushed them a few times and they shushed back, petulence embodied in miniskirts and push-up bras, so he brought one of the theatre personnel in. That seemed to work.
This time, I was obliged to turn around and ask the family kindly to be quiet. And really there’s no way that you can’t sound like a total jerk doing it. You can’t ask them to “keep it down”. You can’t ask them if they can speak “a little more softly”. It’s all or nothing in a movie theatre. So I had to say it point blank.
“Would you mind being quiet, please?” I asked. I did use “please”, so as to ease their troubled transition into that foreign country called silence. The father leaned forward and whispered loudly, “WHAT?”
Now, here is the last living brain cell at work. You’re jabbering away in the middle of a movie and someone leans back and whispers something in a firm, forceful manner. Your first instinct is
A) Oh, I’ve been a rude, talkative person and there’s a movie on. I’ll shut my trap.
B) What?
You have to be an idiot, or perhaps even a moron posing as an idiot to wonder just what exactly that irritated young man is whispering to you in the middle of a darkened movie theatre in the middle of a movie. I had to repeat my request, and the father nodded and shushed his kid. No harm, no foul, I thought.
But I found myself gritting my teeth once again later on in the movie. They were at it again. It must be genetic, this inbred rudeness that you typically find haunting, well, most public arenas such as movie theatres, restaurants, clubs, and so on. There’s no other accounting for it. Or it might just be cluelessness, but I’d attribute that one to genetics as well.
So I leaned back again, and this time I addressed both the father and the son. I was far more succinct this time and whispered my urgent request more loudly. Once again, the pea brain dad asked “What?” I couldn’t believe it. So I looked at the son, thinking maybe he’s got better ears.
“Please, stop talking. Thank you.” Ah, that felt good, like a forbidden donut or a pee long held off. They shut up again, and for the rest of the movie they remained relatively quiet, though there was some chatter during the high-octane action sequences. I let it go. Because once you encounter mass idiocy, there’s no combatting it; you can only defer and delay it.
Or shush it in a dark theatre. Sometimes.

On Pain, Music Loops, and Patience

jelewis8 — Tue, 26 Apr 2005 17:25:23 +0000

You get used to the pain after a while. You start to think that maybe, just maybe, you could live with it, but man, that would suck the soul away. You know it will go away, but in the meantime, you just want to lie down and just cry it all away.
I’m on day six of my post-wisdom teeth removal and I think that perhaps, the times, they are a’changin’. Well, Bob Dylan slowed to about a quarter speed my be a more accurate representation of exactly how fast these times are in fact a’changin’, but at least they’re moving in a forward type direction.
The pain medication I’m on helps a little. I’ve taken to popping a pill every 3.5 hours, instead of every 4, which probably will cause brain cancer when I’m 45, but in my extreme inability to think caused by the four additional holes in my head, I could probably be induced to sell my car for three magic beans and think it’d be a great deal. That’s how illogical and anxious the pain makes you.
That’s not the only thing. I’ve noticed I now have an extreme patience for some things I’d normally explode about. Par example: last night, I went to bed early, and lay on my leaning futon attempting to find a position that only caused a quarter percent pain increase in my head, as opposed to a 65% or even 80%, and behind my closed door my roommate’s computer repeated an ambient chill beat loop. Probably a minute aspace, and unbelievably hip, but hearing this loop over and over and over and over and over and over again made me crazy. Part of it was the sexy, sly way it would arc into the main “theme”, a kind of stealthy drone with some flange and wah-wah to give it a retro-vibe, and then slink back to a steady, suffocating syncopation of cloud-like ambience. Whatever that means.
Describing music is hard, I just realized. But I noticed that I used a lot of words beginning with S to describe the sensation of the sound. Probably also to impart my own sensation at hearing it, a glam of hip appreciation and stark psychosis at hearing it repeated.
But back to my enduring patience. Normally, after about five cycles of this particular piece I’d have shot out of bed and calmly asked my roommate to play the next song. Calm exterior. But my heart would be seething. Well, that’s a bit strong.
I instead gritted my teeth and focused on the pain, and then realized immediately why the music was not so bad after all. Puts lots of little occurrences like this into perspective, I think.
At any rate, it’s not forever that I expect to endure the suff’ring, though it sometimes seems that way. A good lesson I’ve learned: never mock solid foods, or put a better way, appreciate what you have. I think in my pre-removal days, halcyon days of youth and intemperence with rash expressions of vanity and cock-walkery, I was prone to express my dissatisfaction with this or that which seemed in some way deficient, or otherwise unexciting.
Sadly, I overestimated soft foods’ appeal, once believing that a diet of milkshakes, jello, pudding, and rice was the life for a king, and that anyone with the privilege of eating such fare on a daily basis was the luckiest person under the sun.
Amazingly, it only took me one day to realize the error of that way of thinking. Best to get it now, whilst I’m still young. My future seems brighter already, knowing the truth now as I do.
See you on the morrow. And excitement of excitements, I’ll post a review of the new and deproved Amityville Horror. I know, you’re just dying to know all about it…