1 Comment November 29th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
This is just a simple note to say: “Look, world, for I have updated the look of my blog!” The theme I tried to carry out, and which I think I accomplished was “Less God-Awful than before, but still rather random and God-Awful!” You be the judge, but I’m pretty proud of the work I did toward that end.
Also, I’d like to say hello to the many, many commenters who have visited in recent days and really built the community up. Particularly, I’d like to thank Rodrick Raymond, Teddy Carr, Maryanne Barry and Dee Baxter. Rodrick: when you said “j40clv54paogs90g” - I nearly left marks in my undies. Seriously, dude. You crack me up. And Maryanne was all “0s17g0zhkfxkovyq”. Hahahaha. I know I have a bad habit of just randomly typing hahas because it’s just such an addictive finger motion - but really Mar-Bar - that was too much.
Spam comments, somehow, brings me hope. I am a sad little man. Except I am not little.
All the same, a thought occured to me just now that I will use this post to share:
I will forever remember the day when, in Indianapolis on a Chorale trip in college, epiphanies and wonders descended upon me. It happened like this: Someone asked me to pose for a picture with some other people. And I obliged. At that time, my current “trademark pose” was something I called “The Boy Band”, in which I attempted to emulate the various gestures boy bands always did in their pose, in order to invoke laughter due to the garish juxtaposition of said boy bands with my overweight, already balding at 20, self.
Actually, I probably didn’t think that much about it - it just was something to do.
Anyway, at some point, Danielle Spurgeon, who was taking the picture, looked at it in her digital camera’s view finder, and said unto me something profound, an utterance that forever change my life. She said: “Why do boys do that?”
And, I had to stop and think: Why DID I do that? Why was I posing with a similar gesture in every picture ever? I have no trouble with the group “silly shot” or the “hey - there’s a situation going on in this picture that I am knowingly commenting upon to you, the future viewer, with this look!” type thing - but why, particularly amongst high-school and college-aged boys - is there this need to have some pose that one goes to every time someone says “Picture!”
To answer my own question: the feeling is there because, at some point, people look at pictures of someone else posing, and someone says “ha” or “heh” - and young boys, so desperate to make others laugh, but not yet developed enough in their humor to distinguish between the humorous and the less there than - believe this to be an actual invoked laughter rather than a common courtesy chortle, a chortle designed to make whoever went out on a limb and posed in that picture feel not-stupid. Which, is good natured and kind, and I support.
But, as I thought about it more, I decided: No more posing for me. It’s not funny. It just isn’t. Ok - maybe the dude up above - that pose is funny. But still. 98% of the time you’re much better off just going with a smile - smiles are what pictures are for. The finger gun, the peace sign, the creepy tongue pointing upward out of mouth - these are …maybe funny the first time. But…you saw it somewhere..so probably other folks did too. From that day - I decided I would stop playing this game, and call the patently unfunny by name. Several times in korea, I have fallen under the sway of the omnipresent peace sign - but other than that, I’ve done much better, I think.
I am no king of teeth - but still, a smile is a good time for all involved. What’s more, it doesn’t obligate anyone to chuckle at your botched attempt - and reducing obligation is a noble goal in and of itself.
That is all, I have no snappy way to finish, and I gotta get going to Seoul.
I love you all.
Add a comment November 10th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
“America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known…. We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?”
— Pat Buchanan (TV personality and former US presidential candidate)
1 Comment October 24th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
Greatest song of all time.
I know I’ve said this before about .. like.. some interesting Korean milk commercial. BUt I really mean it this time. come on everybody - I MADE DIS TELISCOP FOR YOU!!!!
2 Comments October 14th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
I read a book on language and the language instinct about a month ago. It was fascinating and incredibly interesting. It wasn’t centered around evolution, only taking a few chapters to discuss the broader scientific background of human development. But that section, in it’s compelling story of what life is, rather destroyed the idea of mystery for me. It left me wondering if perhaps there indeed isn’t much mystery to life - maybe it seems more and more that there is nothing to believe in simply because nothing requires our belief any more - everything is growing increasingly more concrete. Certainly, whatever mystery is left is quickly being destroyed by the ridiculously strong combination of science/modern technology & pop culture.
And that fact is terrible. If I had to sum up everything I hate in the world with one word, I would point to “certainty”. I hate it. I hate its smug arrogance. I hate its refusal to allow for anything outside of itself. I hate how closed off and final it is. I hate that it rebuffs mystery and flexibility and the unknown at every turn.
I hate certainty in whatever form it comes in: In others, in myself, in subjects like math and science, in determinist religion, in partisan politics…in predictable video games, or books that reek of their author’s own conviction that everyone needs to hear his message and he is the only one that can tell it. I hate it. It grates against everything I believe in. I am not prone to anger - but nothing will get me angry quicker than someone assuming they know what I’m thinking, or what I’m doing, or the entirety of who I am.
When my aunt or my grandma or my mother would volunteer me for chores, saying “Oh, Robb will take that trash out for you” I’d nearly want to punch them, and would (at least, when younger and less able to handle it) put on quite a show of grumbling and temper-tantruming…whereas if someone would say “Robb, would you mind taking out that trash?” I would cheerfully and lovingly comply. What I hate is assumption, solidification, and the inevitable. I’m not alone in this, of course, any number of people are motivated most when someone says “Oh, he won’t do that.” It’s not that I want to “prove people wrong” I could care less what they think I can and can’t do. I just want to take their blessed assuredness and shove it down their throats.
On the other hand, what I love is randomness, fluidity, and flexibility. I could sit all day pouring cream into coffee and watching which way it breaks. I can stay glued to the screen for hours randomly flicking my mouse up and down the massive MS Word list of books I want to read, speculating about what i might learn from a random choice out of the now thousands of titles - which is how I normally choose what’s next. Though I often speak against it, inside..I love not having a pre-set career path, or plan of any sort beyond the next two months. This is what I love about life - everything that is not controlled, everything that is not known beforehand - everything that cannot be known.
This is exactly what I find to be dying a slow and painful death, both on a personal level, and culture wide. Technology and science are marching on, and whatever is left behind, the inanity of pop culture is cleaning up. And though they are millennia away from knowing half of what there is to be known - the simple fact that it seems even remotely possible that one day all of it might be known - that such a thought can cross my mind without bringing immediate laughter…is rather cripplingly depressing.
The effect this has had upon my feelings and the way my thoughts have been framed of late is remarkably similar to the feelings Jonathan Franzen describes below upon finding that this global shift away from mystery has all but killed his love, the novel:
Even harder to admit is how depressed I was. As the social stigma of depression dwindles, the aesthetic stigma increases. It’s not just that depression has become fashionable to the point of banality. It’s the sense that we live in a reductively binary culture: you’re either healthy or you’re sick, you either function or you don’t. And if that flattening of the field of possibilities is precisely what’s depressing you, you’re inclined to resist participating in the flattening by calling yourself depressed. You decide that it’s the world that’s sick, and that the resistance of refusing to function in such a world is healthy. You embrace what clinicians call “depressive realism.” It’s what the chorus in Oedipus Rex sings: “Alas, ye gentlemen of men, how mere a shadow do I count your life! Where, where is the mortal who wins more of happiness than just the seeming, and, after the semblance, a falling away?” You are, after all, just protoplasm, and some day you’ll be dead. The invitation to leave your depression behind, whether through medication or therapy or effort of will, seems like an invitation to turn your back on all your dark insights into the corruption and infantilism and self-delusion of the brave new McWorld. Instead of saying I am depressed, you want to say I am right!
It is exactly that binary, flattening way of the world that repulses me, and then I see myself buy into it with my reactions and thoughts and the names which I choose to give to things, and I repulse myself.
Though perhaps certainty is certain, that is, it is inevitable - I think we need to fight against it. Whatever there is that differentiates us from others, that allows us to obtain some level of depth, that makes us human - it is located in whatever uncertainty is left to us. We must find a way to reclaim mystery, whether we call that religion, or whatever.
Add a comment October 13th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them. If we see religion and art as the historically preferred methods of coming to terms with this Ache, then what happens to art when our technological and economic systems and even our commercialized religions become sufficiently sophisticated to make each of us the center of our own universe of choices to make each of us the center of our own universe of choices and gratifications? Fiction’s response to the sting of poor manners, for example, is to render them comic. The reader laughs with the writer, feels less alone with the sting. This is a delicate transaction, and it takes some work. How can it compete with a system - screen your calls; go out by modem; acquire the money to deal exclusively with the privatized world, where workers must be courteous or lose their jobs - that spares you the sting in the first place?
In the long run, the breakdown of communitarianism is likely to have all sorts of nasty consequences. In the short run, however, in this century of amazing prosperity and health, the breakdown takes a heavy toll on the ancient methods of dealing with the Ache. As for the sense of loneliness and pointlessness and loss that social atomization may produce - stuff that can be lumped under the general heading of mystery - it’s already enough to label it a disease. A disease has causes: abnormal brain chemistry, childhood sexual abuse, welfare queens, the patriarchy, social dysfunction. It also has cures: Zoloft, recovered-memory therapy; the Contract with America, multiculturalism, the World Wide Web. A partial cure, or better yet, an endless succession of partial cures, but failing that, even just the consolation of knowing you have a disease - anything is better than mystery. Science attacked religious mystery a long time ago. But it was not until applied science, in the form of technology, changed both the demand for fiction and the social context in which fiction is written that we novelists fully felt its effects.
The Harper’s Essay by Jonathan Franzen (How to be Alone)
Friends - the 5 of you (tops) that regularly read this blog - as readers of fiction - what do you think about this? (I know I’m ridiculously late in pondering this article..it set the literary world on fire 12 years ago…ugh, I am slow to get around on things).
Add a comment September 26th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
look.
I’ve posted videos before.
But this one is special.
It is amazing, on so many levels.
First - it brings memories back of a special time when professional athletes were not the priveliged elite they have become - when you were likely to see them at the bar after the game, and where owners could still, somehow, coax them into dancing horribly and rapping even worse while being filmed.
Second - it has a way of making you wonder if all the ridiculous inuendos really could have possibly been innocent - I mean, this stuff is insanely over the top - even if “ramming it” didn’t necessarily mean then what it means now…surely some of this was done with a knowing chuckle. Right? Surely?
Third - They call Eric Dickerson “dick”. One guy says he gets off the line as quick as he can so that dick doesn’t ram him in the back. Or something similar. I mean….
Look, just watch. I have not been this entranced by a video since the first time I saw the Shockmaster fall down and then continue doing the scary voice.
1 Comment September 10th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
The people have decided to rave.
And they have decided to do so without loud music, and in random spots, wherever they choose. The people demand to rave forth, and so they shall.
Some people take their rave to wherever they choose - they all sync up their MP3 players through magic syncing technology (which is to say, I’m not sure how - whether it is a technical accomplishment, or just all hitting “play” at the same time) (on further looking into this - apparently they sometimes are linked, and sometimes just playing whatever they like) and then they dance and twirl things and wear silly costumes and make strange convulsions by doing which they confirm to themselves that they are cool - and they try to mac on women and they cheer for the song and they are still wearing their strange outfits topped with cat in the hat hats, cause sometimes people in England used to wear those to raves, so now we do too, like how we liked anarchy cause England did, and stuff. - but you are excluded if you “didn’t get the memo.”
The memo usually goes out by the ever so viral internet - the facebooks and the myspaces and the friendsters and the internets and the emails. This is how the memo goes forth. And it infects those around it to come to a public place, to count down, and then to all dance with their MP3 players and their HIGH DEF AUDIO headphones.
And no one around can figure out what is going on, for their dancing is silent, for they are The Silent Rave. Be careful, chillens, wherever you may be - The Silent Rave lurks. The Silent Rave licks:
You think this is stupid, don’t you?
The Silent Rave will not be mocked!
The Silent Rave is planning a coup!
The Silent Rave chews cud bigger than you!
That is all on the Silent Rave front. Keep it real.
3 Comments September 9th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
I jest. Purely jest. See - the acronym above is …. so I have to like post stuff of a similar… eh, forget it. I hope you understand - I like ya’ ladies! I’m a perfect gentleman!
Anyway - it’s time to talk about more music that I’ve come across, and that is always fun! That exclamation point makes it seem like I’m being facetious, like this task is forced upon me. That is not so. Darn you, exclamation point, with your innate power to make any and all sentences to be misconstrued! Darn me for my stubborn unwillingness to simply use the backspace key to fix what you have done to my sentences!
EDIT: I wrote the above, and 3/5s of the below about..like..3 months ago. But see, when you try to reach the highest heavens with your aspirations, God sends lethargy and distractions and lack of caring to make your tower of babel impossible. Thus, when I propose to have all sorts of updates in this feature…you get quarter-yearly at best. Which is sad. I repent of my pride, and also of my lack of follow through.
To the music! Tally Ho!
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Ron Sexsmith - Brandy Alexander
from the album “Exit Strategy of the Soul”
Go get Adobe Flash Player!
So smooth. Ridiculously so. I love Ron Sexsmith’s voice and the way he just flows through the entire song as somewhat unlikely elements are added (are those Patti Labelle’s background singers? Tower of Power’s horns?) but nothing can shake the pure smooth of his vocals.
This song is pure head shake. Not head nod, it’s too sweetly rhythmic for anything like that. It’s remarkably simple - nearly the same guitar line and drums throughout - but the simplicity allows the vocals to completely lead. And they lead with a display of pure mood. Not like…that Enya new age bull crap…another kind of pure moods. Like, a cool kind.
This is the sort of song that someone would have running through their head at some point, and think they should make into a song, but fail to put down in any salvageable form until it had already disappeared.
It almost feels like Sexsmith just sang the melody and someone put everything else around it - not in a detached way at all - quite the opposite - the freeness of the vocals just make you think anything else could be slapped around it and somehow that voice would make it fit. It’s amazingly powerful at creating an atmosphere.
Where it all comes home: PIANO SOLO - short and sweet, but ties it all together.
Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)
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Nik Freitas - Sun Down
from the album “Sun Down”
Go get Adobe Flash Player!
A rambling, easy-going great song for walking or driving with the windows down - it is exactly this sort of song that makes me miss having a car. The Oh-oh-ohhhs are absolutely heartbreaking and one of those moments where you know he just sang it out in the middle of the studio and was giddy for the next hour and a half - it just fits so beautifully and perfectly with the rest of the song.
I love what the bass is doing, and I love that the entire ensemble could just as easily be strolling along the same country road as the vocals. It’s easy to imagine them kicking a rock along the road, passing cattle, being slowly chased by a horse renowned for being unruly. Ok, maybe the last part is only associated in my memory…Bandit chased my sister, my cousins and I for a long while, and eventually even bit Cindy - so..uh yeah - I do think, though, that if we’d all sung this song while walking the savage colt would have been soothed and no one need’ve gotten bitten…
So easy, so free - perfect for a summer day. The bio on Nik Freitas website, which was ever so aptly written by his neighbor, says it perfectly: “These songs inform you exactly how the composer was feeling at the time that he wrote them.”
Where it all comes home: The breath between “sun” and “down” - the song is rambling and rambling, and it’s exactly this little bit of space that infuses that makes the epicness of the “oh ohh ohhhh” smooth and flowing.
Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)
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Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
from the album, “Fleet Foxes”
Go get Adobe Flash Player!
This is really just a quick taste of this incredible album, but somehow its short, 4-part harmony, quasi-round-based structure seems the best way to introduce you all to the best band of the last 6 months.
I say introduce..maybe you guys have already heard of them, I don’t know. I’m definitely a bit behind on this band - but who cares, it’s so beautiful - it’s like the beach boys brought up to date with indie rock sensibilities. And, wisely, they know they’ve hit upon pure melodic gold, and don’t try to do too much with it - perhaps that restraint is the most impressive feat of this song.
Some day, I will get a group of 3 other friends together, and we will wander through the streets of some little town singing this song. This definitely seems like a good direction for indie rock to turn…um, I think I’m going to stop now - the hype machine is in full effect (on the indie scale) with this group, and probably doesn’t need my piddling little addition. I don’t know what else to say… I love this band.
Where it all comes home: The second the 4-part harmony hits, from there it’s just a beautiful coast to the finish that leaves one feeling completely satisfied and compelled to sing along.
Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)
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Gaby Moreno - Song for You
from the album “”Still the Unknown”
Go get Adobe Flash Player!
This song greatly reminds me of The Beatles “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” In fact, the first time I heard it, I started singing “I don’t know why-yyyyy-yyyy…” - but nobody told me, that the song would unfold in a lovely and entirely different way. Gaby is from Guatemala, which makes her Centrally American, and A BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT HOTTIE!!!1, and Guatemalan. A triple threat. Also: In trying to verify my suspicion that Gaby Moreno was attractive (and thus a BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT HOTTIE!!!1), I found a picture of her with Yoko Ono. They’re tight. Thus, I feel like my Beatles reference is even more relevant.
Anyway, I was saying, “Weeps” and this song move at about the same pace, but George Harrison makes the vocal choppy to put some sense of urgency into an otherwise laxidaisical melody, whereas Gaby just lays back and stretches it out to fully give the feeling of ”chilling”. “Song for You” is just incredibly layed back and all connected to make for a lazy, laying-on-the-ground-as-the-clouds-shuffle-above-you type of feel out of essentially the same pieces that The Masters used to make a mournful and urgent song. Even with similar chords and a similarly disjointing key change between verse and chorus, this song manages to have a completely different feeling simply by legato-tizing the vocals and guitar - to great effect and affect.
Where it all comes home: As mentioned, right where the chord suddenly becomes all warm and fuzzy on the “youuuu”…before that it’s just muddy drums and a latin-esque guitar playing american-style slow-pop. After that, it makes you want to sway back with some girl, any girl, while sitting with a picnic basket on the top of a hill. I’m picturing that “very best place in the world for a picnic” that Papa Bear of the Berenstein Bears had in mind but soon found to now have a loud and smelly train passing by it in “The Bears’ Picnic” Were this song ever to be found, years later, to be ruined by a large locomotive, I also would, like Papa Bear, lead my family through all kinds of crappy picnic spots with mosquitos and trash and rain trying to recapture the idyllic beauty of a past experience. I might have read too much into that book.
Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)
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Ane Brun - The Treehouse Song
from the album “”Changing of the Seasons
Go get Adobe Flash Player!
Ane Brun comes from Sweden. She was born in Norway, but has chosen to come from Sweden. You know what also has chosen to come from Sweden: The craziest McDonalds commercial ever. Exhibit Only:
Ane Brun’s music is a little bit like that, in that it’s seemingly just a hippy country song, and just strutting along until suddenly, out of nowhere, she starts singing a bunch of words really fast and talking about making babies in tree houses and stuff. There are no floating amoebas though.
This is really good sweet country music…but the way she manages to fit 30+ words into like..4 measures in the chorus, made me sit up a little more whilst listening. Then, just to flaunt that she didn’t have to do what she just did, she holds ”goooold” for about 8 bars. Tooting one’s own horn is okay in my book. I once met this guy named Bob Johnson at a church. He introduced himself like so: “Hi, I’m Bob “The Honker” Johnson (mouth trumpet:) DOOT DOO DOO DOOOOOOOOOOOO.”
That guy was awesome, because he was not afraid to flaunt his mad mouth trumpet skills. If we all had a little “Honker” Johnson in us, the world would be a better place, with more crazy noise making! I bet Ane Brun makes some crazy Swedish mouth trumpet noises. Her voice reminds me of a female Devandra Banhardt, or some girl with a nice voice sitting on a drying machine. Somehow that’s a good thing. The guitar starts off sounding like Iron & Wine or something…a grooving but still relaxed melody with a tight beat, and then turns more conventional with the bridge before doing something quite different with the verse, keeping everything interesting.
I don’t really know what this song’s about. She’s Norwegian, but has resided in Sweden for a while, so all I hear is ”Bork Bork Bork we were gonna make babies in a treehouse bork bork bork”
Obligatory Swedish Chef Making a Banana Split Embed:
You know, The Muppet Show was probably the best show ever. I remember once watching Gonzo grow a tomato plant to the 1812 Overture. Like, that was the name of his act that show, “Growing a Tomato Plant to the tune of the 1812 Overture.” That sort of random, absurd comedy is sadly underutilized in modern day television. Long live the Swedish Chef.
And with that, long live Ane Brun.
Where It All Comes Home - Probably the first time the mariachi chorus comes running in at the cue of “split”. Nevermind that they have nothing to do with splits. Nor do banana splits come from Mexico. Nor do mariachi lines have anything to do with Sweden, or cooking. It was at that point that I knew I’d spend the next hour watching Swedish Chef clips. And I did.
Myspace (For quick access to more songs)
Review (For a second opinion)
Website (For more information, tour dates, what not)
Wikipedia (For everything else you could possibly want to know)
2 Comments August 18th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
Two quick observations:
One: Lying, in any form, is a terrible, terrible thing. One should not lie on a resume, or to impress others, or to not disappoint others, or to shelter others. It is an easy way out, avoiding conversations that should be had, stagnating relationship as it partitions off sections of a relationship as something that can’t be talked about - and relationships are either wholly open or wholly dead, or leading to a situation where, even if your lies are small time, others don’t know when you are telling the truth, and when you are telling a lie.
I lie all the time. Almost always about small things, and usually for no reason other than the truth is embarassing. I also hear people lie all the time. Everyone I know is constantly lying for one reason or another. I think it needs to stop, and instead, we need to think of other ways in which to verbally deal with these problems in an appropriate manner - that is, when it comes to medium-big sized lies. On the small ones, we just need to practice taking longer before answering, or stopping to immediately correct them once they have fled our mouth.
Two: I really like watching the credits roll at the end of the movie. I used to steal Ben Folds’ line, as featured on his experimental album, “Fear of Pop” - “I payed my money, I’m going to see all the movie.” But, in actuality, it has nothing to do with value, or with giving the hard-working folks who made the movie possible their due. It is merely that stories, especially stories attempting to say something true or meaningful, should be allowed time before being solidified and moved on from. Just a few fleeting moments where they may slosh back and forth around one’s mind before becoming solidified into an opinion, or a point, or a decisive feeling about the quality of the movie, or some witty summation to be made to one’s friends.
In the same way…it just seems wrong, after finishing a great book, to call a friend or play a video game, or do anything other than sit there, maybe eat something…for 20-30 minutes at least…and it most certainly seems wrong to just start in on another book the same day.
So much of life is solid, concrete opinions, feelings and thoughts. I think we should cherish the moments when thoughts are still being born within us, when something is still being learned and is most purely itself, before we adulterate it by the evil necessity of applying it to hundreds of our daily encounters or dilluting it by combining it with other ideas that have come into our head.
There should be allowed a time for ideas to just sort of..sit there, and refuse to be named or articulated, to be at their most pure. I know of no greater time for this than when the screen is finally all but blank, and there is a rolling list of people you’ll never know to keep you in that mesmerized state. A movie is unique in that it is a monologue of ideas - the author isn’t inviting you to discussion, but is instead imparting an idea for you to take away and ponder on your own. To allow them those last few moments where they dominate the room is to show respect enough to their art to not solidify it the instant it is received..to let it be for a few minutes before it becomes something for you to play with, change, modify and make your own (all also good things).
This is why, if the movie was worthy of it, one shouldn’t talk about the movie for at least a little bit…allow it to be itself for a bit before we bandy about its ideas. This is why, with the greatest of apologies to my father and my friends who have often committed this great sin, the worst question one can ask, upon completion of a great movie, is “How was it?” It’s too early to tell. You can’t possibly know until several minutes of silence, or several minutes of walking to your car on a cold night and watching your breath, or after several minutes small talk which doesn’t occupy one’s whole brain, have let the movie reveal itself to you.
This is also why any movie going experience is not complete without going to some late-night dinner afterward. Because, after they’ve been given time, movies should most certainly be discussed. Preferably over pancakes.
3 Comments August 14th, 2008 by Robb "The Little Socializer" Schuneman
Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with forgiveness. By forgiving too easily we can be badly hurt. But if we’ve learned from a mistake and become better for it, shouldn’t we be rewarded for the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?
What if the world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her, “I didn’t mean what I just said.” and she would say, “It’s okay, I understand.” and she would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said that thing? We could remove the damage, but still be wiser for the experience.”
From the introduction to the video game “Braid”…unexpected place, to be sure.
