Tag Archives: Inception

Return to the Twilight Zone

3 Sep

Am I back?

Who is the president?

What city do I live in?

That was a close one… Somehow I got sucked into some bizarre alternate dimension where smart kind people respected each other, and we all looked forward with hope to a blessed, exciting, and sustainable future. It must have been some kind of dream.  Needless to say, It feels so good to be back inside our mutual reality tunnel of loneliness and cynicism.  Wherever I went was so positive and rejuvenating that I was starting to forget who I really was.

Speaking of multi-layered realities, I find the best way to mess with your own universe is to change up your media stream. Most of us are constantly pulled along by a current of online and cable television experiences.  Even if that isn’t how you roll in particular, any consistent media habit can become psychically confining. Personally, I like to shift into alternate media universes whenever possible. For example, when I moved to Minneapolis and was at my absolute poorest, I could not really afford cable or internet. What I could afford was an unlimited movie pass at the nearest Hollywood Video.  This amazing place had become the repository for the remaining catalogs of numerous and constantly-closing local branches.  While the majority of the country was flipping channels, I was tearing through a near-infinite catalog of forgotten gems.  I watched over 100 titles in the first 30 days alone (much of unemployment is about passing the time).  Everyday, I was digging through a physical world of DVDs when the rest of America was pointing and clicking pointing and clicking. Almost nothing I watched was less than 5 years old (including Ultimate Fighting Championships 25-60).

When I did get out of the house with enough cash to cover two beers and two tips, I would find my perspective in debates and conversations becoming more and more unique.  It is amazing what an alternate media stream will do to ideas about “consensus opinion.”  My unique source list provided me with well-researched ideas that were lost to those swimming in the mainstream soup. Surprisingly, many 20 year old ideas are quite relevant.  Some of them even make status updates and blogs seem like juvenile indicators of the downfall of civilization.  Apparently a life of reading books, talking and thinking could be even more effective than blandly pawing an iPad. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me give an example.

Once I was three months and about 250 titles in (my work/social life was improving), I started watching “The Twilight Zone”.  Don’t know if you have seen it, but it was the foundation for things like “Twin Peaks” and “Lost.” It is the classic dark horse for best television show ever. Still, reliving these old shows was not the most mind-blowing aspect of my viewing experience.  What really took me by surprise were the old public service announcements and commercials at the end of every episode (did TV used to only have 30 seconds of commercials per show?).  What I cannot forget was a PSA-like precursor to “Rock the Vote.” Here is what happens; an animated anthropomorphic spokesthing comes out to a repetitive jingle.  I can’t remember the exact lyrics but it was along the lines of don’t forget to vote for your favorite candidate blah dee blah blah blah. Then the anthropomorphic spokesthing proceeds to the poorly drawn ballot boxes and makes its selection.  The choice of who to vote for was between six potential candidates.  Each fake choice was presented with absolutely equal value.  I sat stunned on the only chair in my sparse apartment.

Six!? Are you kidding me!? 50 years ago a public representation of political choice included 6 motherfucking options. To me, that seems to indicate a 66% drop in personal freedom. Today, we don’t even pretend that we have more than two bullshit choices. Even when that rare third party does make a go of it, they are usually accused of attempting to destroy democracy (see Ralph Nader).  Or, they reconsider and join one of the two mainstream parties even though they barely fit in (see Ron Paul).  I am so sick of the pervasive illusion of choice.  Every election cycle we endure constant news, advertising, and infotainment, and it all boils down to Democrat or Republican, Coke or Pepsi, beef or pork, Bud or Miller, Marlboro or Camel, Viagra or Cialis, Xanax or Zoloft, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

This is what happens when you get out of the mainstream current.  Suddenly ideas that should be obvious seem to bolt down from the heavens.

You realize that constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is basically a lost cause.

You realize that freedom is a battle that must be won again and again (someone that wasn’t me said that).

Your new reality insists that there are not two sides to every story, there are many, and pretending freedom is represented by a simple “one or the other” is pointless and exhausting.  During times like these I want to go back to the Twilight Zone.  I want the world that creator Rod Serling thought was cruel and bizarre.  I can’t imagine what his response would be to this one.  Sometimes the only way to move forward is to take a breath and look back.

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Inception Part II: Why Lebron Intentionally Hurt Cleveland

5 Aug

I can think of at least one major negative, even devastating, everyday reality for a teenage basketball prodigy.  When you are a prodigy, people will attempt to put their dreams inside of you.  Every person a generation ahead thinks,“If only I could combine my experience with your god given gifts. We could really make a difference.” They tell you how you should play and how you should be. “Support this charity, Lebron.” “Care only about winning, Lebron.” “Don’t make mistakes X, Y, and Z like I did.” Most of all, they insist that they truly love the real you.  It doesn’t take a college education to intuit that really, they don’t.

(Bill Haber/Associated Press)

(Former) Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star LeBron James scrapes paint from a window in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans on Feb. 15, 2008. NBA players in town for the All-Star Game took a day to work on community service projects to help with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. (Bill Haber/Associated Press)

It’s not that the people (coaches, mentors, employers, public) don’t love you at all but the love they offer is totally conditional. They love you only if you become that person they want you to be.  They love you only if you take on their dreams as your own.  As any fan of Inception can tell you, this is impossible.  Transferring dreams is like blowing smoke into a soap bubble.  A love-starved prodigy will do whatever it takes to accommodate. He will walk it and talk it as best he can. He will constantly repeat words that reflect a coach’s or mentor’s life experience rather than his own.  He will try to accommodate the dreams of an entire city, but inside his true self will long to fulfill the teenage dreams he has always been told to ignore.  Every time he passes up an opportunity to get drunk or stupid in favor of cutting the ribbon at a youth center the rage will steadily begin to grow.

From the moment he changed from boy to adolescent, Lebron struggled to be the “man” Cleveland wanted him to be.  None of us can imagine the pressure of being “chosen” to save a dying city.  It is cruel to force someone into the role of messiah.  There is no way that a 13-year-old Lebron chose to take on a challenge that the civic leadership was clearly failing to overcome.  How could a 16-year-old Lebron know what was happening to him?  How could 21-year-old Lebron explain he wasn’t basketball Jesus? Even if he did, (perhaps he tried) no one would have listened.  He was now the living breathing embodiment of deeply held hopes and aspirations. They just kept blowing smoke and the walls of the bubble got thinner and thinner.

courtesy of TheFabEmpire.com.

Lebron James Parties it up in D.C.

Eventually, the real Lebron could no longer take it.  He had to end the charade.  More than that, he needed to express his anger. He isn’t a messiah or a man-child.  He is a 25-year-old kid that wants to get laid and party.  He doesn’t have much in the way of genuine life experience.  Maybe after he makes a few mistakes (he has gotten a good start) he can earn enough character to make a real difference in this world.  Uplifting the industrial Midwest is not a realistic goal for an barely grown athlete.  He has another 50 years to make his mark and define his legacy. Real sustainable social/cultural changes takes at least that long and it sure as hell has to come from the heart.  Anyone can give $100k to charity, but it takes a real man to make sure that charity does permanent good. The only way Lebron could get Cleveland to understand was through a rude and childish act of passive aggression (the bubble had to burst). When you have been crowded into a corner of fake philanthropy perhaps the only way out is a spit filled fuck you. He is a kid and he doesn’t know shit… but he has to learn that on his own. Shallowness is his god given right.  For greatness to be real, it must come from within.

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Inception

22 Jul

Caution: The following paragraphs contain cutting-edge embedded, subconscious messaging. If read, the reader will immediately forget the experience and then be completely convinced that the ideas contained within were completely self-generated. What was once an unknown will become woven into the fabric of the reader’s very identity.  Even the most militarized subconscious can and will be penetrated by this universal and undeniable idea virus. Again, please proceed only at your own earnest discretion.

Only assholes sneak food into the theater and then leave it there for the staff to pick up.  Have you ever seen what a theater looks like after the patrons leave and the cleaning lights come on? I have, and I assure you, it is a profound testament to the infinite nature of human insensitivity. To get the theaters presentable before the next round of shows requires every single staff member and manager.  Most of those managers and all of the staff are getting paid less per hour than the price of one ticket.

The only way to psychologically compensate for the ego blow caused by cleaning up after tasteless heathens is to focus on the hard realities of capitalism.  Since the theater itself makes next to nothing on tickets (if it’s a George Lucas film they even pay a little extra juice for the privilege,) the concession stand is the sole provider of a staff member’s paycheck.  At least when they are slipping around in buttery topping grasping for half empty cups of “Vault” (when it’s “Vault” the glass is never half full) they know that these things are responsible for their paycheck.  They know that a few pennies from that $4 dollar pretzel will eventually trickle down to provide two meals from one foot long Subway. They know that every $6.25 popcorn eventually leads to 20 minutes on a pre-paid phone so they can sell a little weed and make enough money for rent. Every box of Nerds hastily swept under the screen eventually pays for that secret bi-weekly indulgence of one extra side of guacamole.  These are the thoughts that keep college students/graduates sane while they study and save their way to a better life.

However, when they are cleaning up your Doritos, your Veggie Booty, your sack of ten White Castles, your Healthy Choice microwave popcorn, your $18 chocolate soufflé, your 40oz. beers, and your 20oz. mochas… they are thinking only two things.

“Fuck” and “You”

When you are putting one over on “the man” don’t forget about “the little guy.”

Lindsay A. Godard, 19, of Saginaw and a cashier at Saginaw 8 in Michigan, scoops up popcorn for a customer at the movie theater on Wednesday afternoon.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

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