Noir-y A Thing Accomplished

jelewis8 — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 00:57:58 +0000

Unlike Lileks, I don’t feel compelled to explicate on every occurrence during my waking hours. Half of it would be exaggerated with nuances nonexistent and overstated, to make a fanciful story out of a dull, plodding non-event. I think it’s probably a flaw of my character that I prefer a dull and dreary day to one filled with activity and excitement. Today, the only thing of note was the entrance of Tremors actor Fred Ward to my local coffee hangout. He looked at me, and I at him, and then I went back to my world, and he to his. I liked Ward’s work in Tremors; it was inspired, hugely comical, but with grit and a human realness that belied the film’s basic premise, which is as ridiculous as it is funny. Still, he’s just a man, and I’m just another man with a laptop. Ships passing in the night, or something amusingly dramatic like that.
Hit writer’s block again, so I did about an hour’s worth of pattering on the keys, trying to finesse something into being. Sometimes it just isn’t flowing. Maybe the city cut it off because I hadn’t paid the bill. Whatever. Some say the best way around writer’s block is actually to cut through it with a lot of prose. Whether good or bad, it’ll drill through the obstinate silence screaming from your head. With me, it’s not an option to write poorly. I can only write under the illusion that it’s worth writing, or not at all. If I know I’m writing poultry offal, I get depressed, fueling the feeling of inadequacy I already feel. I have to get past it some other way. Usually it’s through taking a break.
So after nothing flowed into nothing, I left, and decided to watch an inspirational detective noir, The Maltese Falcon. It was as amusing as I remembered it, and as well constructed too. A good detective story should illuminate some idea, some truth. As GK Chesterton wrote, it’s imperative that the audience battle not the story, but the author. TMF is one story that pits the audience squarely against the mystery (and by proxy, the author), and the film is an example of a marvelous production with square edges on every turn, a maze of false information and pretenses, giving the illusion of some hidden treasure at the end. When the falcon is revealed as a phony, you realize that the entire time you’ve been labouring under a delicious lie. It is a wonderful feeling to be played the fool in this instance–perhaps the only time in literature or cinema where it’s okay to tease and trick the audience.
Since I’ve written a detective book (actually, still in media res) it was a refreshing look at the genre, and for my upcoming project, is a good and inspiring tale to watch and relive. I will make it my mission to enjoy the weekend’s other, non-writing projects (editing) and let my mind quell its restless emptiness, so by Monday I can resume a semi-reasonable writing schedule.
Thanks for keeping up with my rambling discourses and inconsistent posting this week. See you Monday. Have a great one. Oh yeah, new Fringecast this weekend. Good stuff on the way. So I haven’t completely abandoned you…

Global Warming Alert

jelewis8 — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 21:31:34 +0000

D’you ever notice how warm weather brings out the best and worst in women’s fashions? I’m not talking about runway shows featuring women wearing feathered boas or candy-striped trash cans or leather S&M-wear posing as pajamas…no, I’m referring to every day women’s fashion, the kind that makes some (most) guys turn and look twice and three times, just in case a vital piece of that clothing should suddenly find itself wanting in tensile strength and snap, leaving its wearer the subject of what can only be accurately described as “going to school naked” syndrome…a girl’s worst nightmare, a guy’s best dream, or something else entirely?
No, of course you don’t notice these things. You’re either a woman yourself and somehow unaware that these colorful and nearly nonexistent fabrics fashion designers call (and charge small countries’ GDP’s for) clothes, are actually being used in quantum physics experiments to see just how small particles can be reduced to; or, you are a woman-respecting, sexually-healthy, avert-mine-eyes-oh-Lord kind of guy who appears to be reading a magazine about Luxembourg trade politics when a gaggle (or is it a google?) of college women traipse by in the most skin-baring outfits they can dig out of their fabric-shrinking closets.
Call me enthusiastically bitter, but I can’t help but wonder just what God intended when he gave us sex drives. On the one hand, the experience of seeing 50% of the population in all the glory of their blooming gardens walking about in the radiance of an early Spring sun is enough to cause one to convert from an atheist to a God-thankin’, red-blooded MAN. On the other, you have to worry about the rapid increases in global climate each year. And I’m not talking about the weather.
It may seem odd that I’m writing this on a cold, miserable, grey, and rainy day in April, but my anticipation of the months to come is hardly deniable, not the least of which is due to a pre-screening I was privy to last week, when I made an unscheduled, unintended auto tour of the Virginia Tech campus. I may have written this before, but I have to reiterate my firm belief that God gave man college campuses as universal epicenters for the proliferation of female hotness.
Being not particularly concerned with global warming, I’m completely in favour of current and future advances in both fashion and quantum physics, nor am I worried that the fusion of the two fields has given us a world in which midriffs and thighs are now noticeably more visible than, oh say, that Mack truck that’s about to hit you because you stopped in the middle of the intersection to stare…DRIVE!!!!
Though maybe I should be.
I’m not misogynistic, nor am I a hedonist. I am all in favour of limiting the amount of skin the fairer sex may show in public. After all, public safety is necessary in a civilized society. But there’s always that pressing conflict: aesthetic appreciation versus lust.
At what point in my looking have I stepped over the line from Song of Solomon Romanticism into raging, flesh-obsessed, sex machine? Where does acknowledgement of the beauty of the female form end and the desire to “get it on” begin? Honestly, I have no friggin’ clue.
I’ve prayed about it (being a God-fearin’ but curve-lovin’ guy) and have yet to receive an answer or an indication. So the age-old story begins anew…Mostly though, this was just a way of relieving the agony of enduring yet another cold and rainy day, proving that Blacksburg is one of those places in the world where Winter maintains a stubborn hold.
Me, I’ve got to get to work reading more about the fascinating field of quantum physics. If I look hard enough, I might just find what I’m looking for.

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Noir-y A Thing Accomplished

Global Warming Alert