The Man Who Wasn't There

A movie reaction until I get my media journal working again on me main website. (Reaction is not a review, but it is about as spoily as an average film review, so be careful.)

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The Man who Wasn't There

The last Coen Brothers film I saw, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" quickly collided into the ever-growing mash of tied-for-first movies in my list of of favorite films, and so I was happy to get a second chance to see this one on the big screen, courtesy of the Somerville Theatre, which does the second-run thing. (This also happened to be the first time I would enter that building at all. Dude, it's, like, an entire multiplex in there. The building seems so small from the outside.)

With this one, at some point I leaned over to my friend and said, "It's good to see the Coen brothers returning to their roots." The movie's basically "Fargo" translated through some Hofstadterian algorithm into film noir. Same plot hook, and same eventual outcome for the affected characters: a stunningly average man suddenly needs some fast money, and decides to dip his toe into naughtiness to get it, only to have it reach up and drag him and everyone close to him under the surface, as he rapidly loses control over what seemed like such a simple plan. Like "Fargo", "Wasn't" does a great job juggling gruesome cruelty and bizarre humor, and the whole thing's a delight to watch, with all the trappings of classic noir (here, let me offer you a cigarette, so you can go smoke it while mumbling mopily about the Japs while you stand under that ceiling fan that spins under a harsh bright lightsource) mixed with juuuust a touch of modern cheekiness (such as the unexpected introduction of a side-metaphor about the Roswell UFO crash). "Fargo" had its own celebrated atmosphere of joyously cartoonified Minnesotans, but it also brought a plateful of the most interesting and loveable good guys you'll ever find in any "true crime" story (yes, I know the story wasn't really true). "Wasn't" doesn't have that. Everyone's either despicable or naive, and Billy Bob Thornton's barber is a lot of both, maybe a little moreso of the latter, even though he also gets to narrate the story.

On the other hand, he's really complex, and part of his downfall is that the scheme he traps himself is even more complex. In one of the best scenes of the movie (and one of the most darkly humorous), he confesses what he's done to someone who, in a sane world, would be able to halt everything. But that's not the world the barber lives in. The machine rolls right over them all.

The main characters from "O Brother" seem pretty much the opposite to all this, in retrospect. They've all done their crimes against society years before the story opens, and they spend the length of story questing for atonement (though they're not necessarily wise enough know this). George Clooney's character is the only one who does anything remotely shady during the story's timeline, and consequently has to work to hardest to get back everything he's lost, but he takes the best road when he finds it. That film's a celebration of positivity. I suppose that the morality that rules the "Wasn't" world could be the same -- the main character here also decides to break free and go on a life-changing quest, but the goes about it exactly the wrong way, and pays a horrible price for it.

Todo

I made a long todo list this morning, and checked off all but two items. Some of the stuff I put down are pain-in-kiester tasks I've been putting off for days or weeks, and I got everything done except one social email, and some artwork I wanna make for a local gaming splinter group's website, the creation of hosting of which I've taken charge. The Wasn't review was the last thing I checked off. It's now tomorrow, so I stop now.

This is unusual behavior for me, but it seems to be more common lately, just the same. It definitely feels pretty good, going to bed with proof, proof!, notarized by my sometimes flaky but always honest past selves, that I have done things today. I tell you god's own truth when I say that the pleasure I get in ticking off a task is the same as that I get when I accomplish some task in a computer game that lets me buy the magic sword or gains my Sim a better job or whatever. Can I continue to exploit this? Can I do so indefinitely?

I'll also let you know that am so easy to amuse that I can make myself giggle just by reading my own todo lists aloud, even though I know perfectly well the context of each entry.

The notebook in which the list ended up may hold some tangential interest, though. It has notes to a paper or something I must have written eight years ago or so. Actually, I've come across a fair amount of older writing lately, and much of it is surprisingly opaque to me. Perhaps I shall electronically transcribe bits of it someday, for the amusement of myself and others. Perhaps.

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At some point during the evening, the iBook leapt off my lap in order to chase the cat, and bumped its little head. Now the CD/DVD drive won't close. So I duct-taped it shut. Since I figure I don't want to pay many many dollars to replace a 7-cent snapped latch, the tape is there to stay, and so I went ahead and started customizing, since I've now officially blown it. So all the stickers I got for Epiphany are now stuck to the lid of my computer (except the "FUCK WORK" one which I put on the case's underside). Yes, I made sure they were right-side up. Then I put orders in to Looney Labs and ThinkGeek for more stickers. Yee haw.

Monkeys

This morning I finally got around to making an "I'm still alive -- really" post on my home weblog. Didn't link back here, becuase I'm not so sure that all I've written here would meet the jmac Weblog rule: write nothing that I wouldn't want everyone in the world reading. Or as cthulhia put it better, nothing I wouldn't want everyone in my addressbook reading. In other words, I blog the intersection of all the news I want to tell all my friends, and leave the rest for private communication. I suspect I've actually been keeping that rule even here rather well, but we'll see.

This may be put to the test soon, if Carla gets an LJ account, like I was suggesting to her the other day (before I thought about the consequences on my end). Yep, OK... I can already think of one post that would make her say "grr" at me. Politics.

I think one little thing I will do in the very near future is start up my own little hype machine about The Book. Start small, just with a link on jmac.org, and an image of the nice monkey-encrusted cover.

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The 4-digit cafe's carrot raison muffins are THE BOMB, okay?

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A reporter sent me mail today about ComicsML, asking for a callback. Interesting. Last week another author asked me if he could use ComicsML as a topic in his book about web accessibility. And I got cc:ed on a mail earlier this week on another person's discussion of comics accessibility. When it rains... It's a good rain, though. You bet your brisket that I leveraged ComicsML in my statement of objectives rewrite. I wonder what will happen next.

Speaking of, I contacted Lenny's daughter, who said she put my letter in Jon's mailbox Monday morning. I didn't see it there then, so yesterday I called Erik and asked him to double-check for me, and aye, there it was. Huh? Well, I fetched it and surrendered it to the Lab yesterday. The lady who received it seemed to have no issues with the fact that it was a late component. All is well.

Circle JJ

Attended a poker night at Joe's house. I figured I'd show up just to be social, and maybe mess things up by bringing my copy of Cheapass Games' 'Unexploded Cow', a fine gambling game in its own right. But, after some needling, I bought a dollar's worth of chips, and lost it in three or four hands, along with fifty cents that Joe lent me. My first gambling debt! You all can now say that you were there when prog's downward spiral began. Cut to montage of prog stumbling down a dark street with neon signs, martini glasses, roulette wheels, etc. passing over his shoulder. And we never did play the Cow game.

I was turned off to gambling-for-keeps, even with weenie stakes, early in my career as a gamer, when, in 1994, a friend politely declined to give me back the White Knight card I lost to him as a Magic: The Gathering ante. How uncool, I thought to myself, and never played that way again. (I'd stop playing Magic altogether after a year, anyway, but for different reasons.)

The reason I showed up at all (sacrificing precious BookTime) involved the fact that Joe dangled before my widdle nose the fact that local Perl hackers of high reknown would attend. Since I was thinking earlier today about how conversation I've had with other hackers, even (maybe especially) informal and off-topic ones, have helped me a lot in my book-revision mission so far, I figured The Book would thank me for it. And also I was sick of working on the thing today.

So, I met a bunch of people whose names I won't drop because I hate to sound like I'm name-dropping even though probably nobody who reads this would recognize any of them. (This is a good reason to blog on my home site. So I can not-namedrop where namedropping would matter. Shooah.) But, it was all verra nice. I hit it off with everyone, as is my wont with most people of the non-(insane/boring) persuasion, did in fact talk about the book, and, of course, handed out summore of my silly non-business cards.

Speaking of: I asked Andy today what it takes to make a corporation. From his description, it sounds a lot like registering a domain: confirm that no corporation with this name already exists, pay some lawyer $50, badda-bing, there's your Inc. Now you can do whatever you want with this. Like building a business around it. Or you can just hold onto it and do nothing except have fun making vague plans. Since I'm already doing exactly this with 3 or 4 domain names, why not add a corporation name to the mix? Seriously.