Monthly Archives: July 2022

Love and Thunder

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
― Lao Tzu

The family on the balcony at the Alamo in the Cedars, Dallas, Texas

Lee texted us on Friday – he and some friends were going to see the newest MCU film, Thor’s Love and Thunder at the Alamo in Lakewood and had two extra tickets. I’m sort of Marvel Superhero’d out – but it was a family thing so I said I’d go and was looking forward to it.

Candy and I drove down there and waited (not for very long, they were on time) and was reminded why – as a family – we will not see movies anywhere other that the Alamo chain of theaters. Lee had the tickets on his phone, so we were waiting in the lobby. This was an early showing – so the place was deserted. A single man walked up to the lobby guardian and asked him, “My family is in watching Maverick and I couldn’t make it on time – can I go in?” The guardian checked, saw it had been 20 minutes and said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in this late.” The Alamo has two rules that make going to the movies tolerable.

  • No text, phone use, or talking during the movie (they will throw you out).
  • No getting into the movie after it starts.

The man looked disappointed as he left. I asked the guardian if this happens a lot. “I’m afraid it does. If the movie in only a couple minutes in, I’ll go ahead and say it’s OK – but the film started more than twenty minutes ago.”

The last time I went to a movie not at an Alamo Drafthouse (so long ago, I don’t remember where, when, or what) a bunch of people came in ten minutes after the movie started, stood around in the aisles, talking loudly about what seats (the place was pretty full) they wanted to take and asking people to move to open up spaces so they could sit together.

Never again.

I hadn’t been to the Lake Highlands Alamo before – it’s really nice. They have powered, reclining seats… so comfy. Also, if you go to an Alamo – get there early – they do a great job of putting together little bits of film to get you in the mood. One thing they showed was a Thor Cartoon from the 60’s – I remember seeing that very one when I was a sprout.

So, all this was cool and all – but how was the movie? Uhh, it was Meh. I actually likes Thor Ragnarok – the humor brought by Taika Waititi was a breath of fresh air in the increasingly predictable MCU. I love his style of injecting humor into dead-serious situations (especially Jojo Rabbit). But here is all felt forced and overdone. Not an unentertaining time – but nothing special.

Also, I’m still suffering from withdrawn from Everything Everywhere all at Once (I’m still haunted by my thoughts riding my bike three miles home in the dark after that movie). That was a life-changing film and it isn’t fair to compare any other cinematic experience to that… but it is what it is.

Thor Love and Thunder did put a bit of a bug in my bonnet on the more overblown aspects of the MCU – thinking about the universe and all. Then, later on in the day, I decided, for some reason, to watch Eternals streaming at home.

It was awful.

The movie is about a group of superhuman androids that live, basically forever, protecting humankind from destruction (at least they think they are). There are fascinating concepts – like a superhero that can control minds ending up as a Jim Jones-like cult leader in the Amazon – someone that spends eternity stuck in a pre-pubescent girl’s body, destined never to grow up (her fellow Eternals treat her like a little kid even though she is thousands of years old), – there is a moral quandary between duty and kindness – all these amazing aspects – yet the movie is horribly boring. All the fascinating stuffins are ignored for silly action scenes and interminable stretches of all the Eternals standing around talking about nothing. Why did I bother?

Such a waste of time.

I’d rather watch the Alamo Drafthouse PSAs.

What I learned this week, July 9, 2022

Posted on by Bill Chance
Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

The Remarkable Ways Our Brains Slip Into Synchrony

Many of our most influential experiences are shared with and, according to a growing body of cognitive science research, partly shaped by other people.

Virtual money flowing across the surface of the sculpture. Fountainhead Charles Long Northpark Center Dallas, Texas

How to spend your money for maximum happiness

Years of behavioral and psychological research have given us insight into how to splurge optimally.

Sculpture, East Dallas

5 questions to ask when you need help finding your purpose

If you’re feeling stuck, these questions can help.

Mojo Coffee, Magazine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana (click to enlarge)

Woke Coffee Shop Closes Down After Insane Demands From Even-More-Woke Employees

A coffee shop in Philadelphia known for its LGBTQ brand identity closed its doors after employees revolted against the owners and demanded that they “redistribute” the company.

The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

The Biden Administration Sold 950,000 Barrels of Precious Strategic Petroleum Reserve Oil to a China Firm Which Hunter Biden Just Happens To Own a Huge Stake In.

The Biden administration sold roughly one million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled gas giant that continues to purchase Russian oil, a move the Energy Department said would “support American consumers” and combat “Putin’s price hike.”

Chicago’s holiday weekend death toll was higher than the mass shooting on the 4th and residents wonder why no one cares.

The focus on one shocking act of violence is understandable but the city of Chicago saw many acts of violence over the July 4th weekend. In fact, more people were shot and killed over the 3-day weekend than died in the mass shooting in Highland Park. Local residents wonder why the violence they see every day doesn’t seem to attract much attention or resources.

“Peak Woke?”

America’s Great Awokening produced cottage industries and small fortunes. Consultants and trainers peddled odd academic theories to multinational corporations, earning millions; authors such as Ibram X. Kendi won massive grants and intellectual prizes. On the other side, public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson emerged in part as theorists of what was wrong about woke culture; conservatives like Ben Shapiro and liberals like Dave Rubin grew their audiences with an anti-woke message.

Strange Film

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”

― Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers

Caterpillar
Caterpillar – not so much HDR strangeness.

So… I was lounging around the house, as I am wont to do, feeling a strong lack of ambition and a strangely upset digestive system… so I decided to watch a couple of strange movies. The best scratch to an itch like that is to call up my streaming Criterion Channel. I coursed though the selections, looking for something that looked odd… and there were plenty. So I picked.

The first one was directed by Jon Moritsugu and called Terminal USA.

Here’s the description:

Shot in eyeball-scorching Panavision, TERMINAL USA is underground anarcho-punk auteur Jon Moritsugu’s freak-out magnum opus that shocked America—and prompted a conservative outcry against public funding for the arts—when it was broadcast on television in the midnineties. The director himself plays twins (one a drug-dealing badass, the other a closeted math nerd) in a radically dysfunctional family that completely obliterates the myth of the “model minority.”

I’m sorry, but it wasn’t very good. There is a thin line between weird and bad – but this one landed on the bad side. As I always say – the way to judge a weird film is to think if you care about the characters and care about what happens to them. In this one… I didn’t care. There is something to be said about simple and homemade – but this was beyond amateurish – it wasn’t sophomoric – it wasn’t even freshmanoric.

Since this was a couple hours of my life I won’t get back – I decided to try again – and found a film under an hour long.

This one was directed by Joel Potrykus and had the provocative title Thing from the Factory by the Field.

It’s description:

A band of teenage metalheads get more than they bargained for when they accidentally kill a demon during a satanic ritual.

This one I liked. I can’t say it was good – but it was worth an hour of television streaming. I did care about the kids in the movie – though I don’t really like them. It had an imaginative, unique plot that made up for the wooden acting and ultra-low production values.

When I was a kid, my friends all had these fiberglass bows (my father bought me a laminated wooden one – which was better – but I was jealous of the cool plastic bows) and we would shoot arrows straight up until they disappeared into the sky. Then we would stand as upright and thin as we could – to lessen the chances of getting hit by the invisible, unseen arrows, descending at insane speeds. It was as exciting as it was stupid. The Thing from the Factory by the Field reminded me of this… I hadn’t thought about it for decades.

And the movie had a surprise, jump-scare ending – which is always a good thing for a weird short film.

The French Dispatch

Posted on by Bill Chance

It began as a holiday. Arthur Howitzer Jr., a college freshman, eager to escape a bright future on the Great Plains, convinced his father, proprietor of the Liberty Kansas Evening Sun, to fund his transatlantic passage as an educational opportunity to learn the family business through the production of a series of travelogue columns to be published for local readers in the Sunday Picnic magazine … Over the next ten years, he assembled a team of the best expatriate journalists of his time and transformed Picnic into The French Dispatch, a factual weekly report on … world politics, the arts – high and low – fashion, fancy cuisine, fine drink … He brought the world to Kansas.

—- Narrator, The French Dispatch

The French Dispatch

I had an hour or two free and decided to watch a streaming movie. I have always enjoyed Wes Anderson’s work so I called up The French Dispatch (recently added to HBO max). And it was an enjoyable film.

I didn’t like it as much as Moonrise Kingdom – which I saw in the theaters, but it’s on a par with some of his other more recent work. For me, the judgement of a film like this – one that is obviously very stylized and springs from the unique mind of the director – is if I gave a shit about the characters. I really cared about the folks, especially the young couple, in Moonrise Kingdom. In The French Dispatch… not so much.

Of course, any film I see right now will suffer in comparison to Everything, Everywhere, all at Once – which is still rattling around in my noggin – and I really, really cared about all the characters in that masterpiece.

The movie is a love letter to the New Yorker. A deserving subject, to be sure, but one that is more than a little dry, twee, and removed from the hell of our present lives.

That said, the stories were intriguing, original, surprising, and a lot of fun. It was a fine way to pass the time, but I won’t remember it a year from now. Probably the most enjoyable part is playing “spot the famous actor.” Everybody is in this thing….

Everybody.

Flash Fiction of the day, Play Clothes Patricide, by Valerie Hegarty

Posted on by Bill Chance

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

― Albert Einstein

Lee walking in the surf at Crystal Beach. I checked my old blog entries – this was December 29, 2002.
Lee walking in roughly the same spot, fifteen years later. There was no sun and it was very cold and windy. Same ocean, though.

From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Friday, August 21, 1998

The seduction of luxury

In the weeks since the timely demise of the Piece-of-Crap Mazda I have been spoiled by the luxury of having two decent, running vehicles in our single family unit (The Mazda, though generally running, really couldn’t be considered decent for the last half a decade).

Usually I’m driving the Taurus and I take great pleasure in the electric windows. I’ve never owned a car with electric windows before, I always considered them simply something else to go wrong. I like them, though. So smooth. So quick. So silent. So effortless……

I was typing these silly thoughts up on the PC in the living room, transcribing from a spiral notebook. Candy was at a party. The kids were playing back in Nick’s room with a friend from next door. They said they were “making a movie” – they didn’t have the CamCorder so it must have been all make believe.

My typing was suddenly interrupted by Nick running down the hall, “Lee hurt himself!” I could hear bloody murder screaming from the room.

Lee had been jumping off the top bunk of the bed and stuck his head into the ceiling fan. Nick’s fan is an imitation fighter plane, frozen in a forever dive stuck through the roof. The triple blades are wide, elliptical and heavy. It had really whacked Lee’s noggin a good one.

By the time I had him settled down, there was a huge lump on the right side of his forehead; it looked the size of a golf ball. I put him onto a bed, gave him his favorite blankets and an ice pack and he calmed down, even to the point of looking sleepy.

I was scared. Not sure of what to do, whether to take him to the emergency room or not, I consulted The Book. Every parent, especially nowadays without extended family around to give bad advice, must have a book on emergency procedures handy. Ours is a tome put out by Consumers Guide, edited by Ira J. Chasnoff, M.D.

The book made me feel a lot better. The basic advice was to look for signs of concussion and if there aren’t any, then simply keep the kid quiet, a doctor isn’t necessary. The book says:

Most children suffer one or more blows to the head at some time during childhood. Typical reactions to head injuries are immediate crying, headache, paleness, vomiting once or twice, a lump or cut at the site of injury, and sleepiness for one or two hours. These are not the signs of a concussion – they are usual reactions to a blow on the head.

So I checked for concussion – the kids said he never lost consciousness, he remembered getting hit, he could walk, he wasn’t confused (no more than usual), no fluid or blood, I shined a light in his eyes to check his pupils. I had to shine the light in my eyes to let him see what I was looking for, “Wow, Dad! Those black spots get Really Small when the light hits ’em!”

And he was fine. I sat beside him, holding some ice cubes folded in a washrag against his lump, for a couple hours watching Cartoon Network. ( Space Ghost Coast to Coast is really funny, by the way). By the time Candy came home he was out in the living room, drawing pictures of Scooby Doo.

And today’s flash fiction – Play Clothes Patricide, by Valerie Hegarty

from Flash Fiction Magazine

Valerie Hegarty Artists Page

Valerie Hegarty Twitter

Sunday Snippet, Flash Fiction, Pissing in a Cup by Bill Chance

Posted on by Bill Chance

If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H2O, or mineral water, or saki. Zazen is drinking it.

—-Taisen Deshimaru

Trinity River Bottoms Dallas, Texas

Pissing in a Cup

Craig would start his new job in ten days – today was the day for that new traditional pre-work-related task, the drug test. It was all set up by the Talent Aquisition Department with an appointment at a specialized drug testing clinic in a strip mall in a slightly shady industrial area. Craig drove by a day ahead of time to be sure he could find it. He could leave nothing to chance – he needed this job.

He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to pee on demand, that there wouldn’t be enough to fill the plastic cup. So he avoided the toilet when he woke up and before Craig drove to the clinic he chugged two generous tumblers of ice water – so he could be sure to perform on cue.

Of course they only needed forty-five milliliters, which he easily provided. The drug-test bathroom was a little bizarre, no trash can, only a wooden box and chain-of-custody tape on the toilet. Craig decided not to use that weird toilet because he was planning on going to a big warehouse electronics store afterward to pick up a switch for his new scanner and a couple programming books – a slight celebration for his impending gainful employment. He knew that place had a big bathroom – he had been there many times. It even had a changing table in the men’s room – a rarity. He had changed each of his son’s diapers more than once. That was nice – Craig hated most men’s rooms where he had to lay his infant son – one or the other – down on the floor in a stall. He was no germaphobe… but still.

Unfortunately, when he arrived, the men’s room was being cleaned. A well-mustachioed cleaning lady was dutifully mopping and had a sign propping the door open that said, “Bathroom closed for cleaning, sorry, five minutes.”

Craig started walking around the store. He tried to stop and look at the kiosk of books on sale to pick out the ones he wanted but he couldn’t concentrate. He had to pee so bad by then he had to keep walking.

His only recourse was to continually circle the huge store, going from music CD’s into the washers and driers, cruising through the high definition and projection televisions (they were all showing A Bug’s Life) through the laptop computers, passing down the mouse and video card aisle into the electronic gadgets, finally walking through software and past the bathroom to see if she was still mopping.

It took her a lot longer than the advertised five minutes. Craig couldn’t stand still and had to keep moving. He considered walking out to my car and driving to a nearby fast food place to use their bathroom, but decided it would be probably quicker to simply wait her out.

Finally, on his fifth circuit of the store he saw her putting the mops and buckets back into the janitor’s closet. A herd of men at that point converged and rushed the bathroom; Craig must not have been alone.

Bicycle, Pen, and Notebook

Posted on by Bill Chance

“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.”
― Umberto Eco

Stuff on a picnic table in Huffhines Park, Richardson Texas.

Day two of the rest of my life. I didn’t get up as early as I liked – but I did pack up my bike and hit the road by 8 AM. Today I decided simply to loop around through the square mile of the Duck Creek Neighborhood – and get my five miles in that way.

I stopped five miles in and grabbed a table under the trees in Huffhines Park (not far at all from where I live). After my ride yesterday I added a pair of Bluetooth earbuds, a notebook, reading glasses, and a Kaweco Sport fountain pen – so I could sit, listen to music, drink my thermos of coffee, and write a bit.

It was so nice. A large group was playing cricket in the outfield of the softball diamond. I remembered when I was at a meeting with the Richardson Park Department at the Huffhines Recreational Center (right across the little pond from where I sat today) I recommended the city put in a proper cricket pitch on some vacant parkland across Plano road. They looked at me like I had lost my mind – but I stand by my idea.

I watched a large bug climbing the tree next to me. Huge, black, full of odd angles and jagged bits (I guess to make him look unappealing to predators) he used his surprisingly delicate legs to find his way up the rough park towards the distant leaves.

The squirrels chattered by, one hauling a half of an Osage Orange fruit up a tree.

There is a constant parade of walkers – most with dogs – going by on the jogging trail. A mother with her young daughter strolled by – the daughter was blind, feeling ahead with her white-tipped cane, but with confident strides holding her mother’s hand.

And I finished my coffee – I let the song come to an end and packed it all up. I put in another five miles – I need to drink my coffee sooner – it gave me a burst of energy, I felt faster and the pavement rolled by easier.

Today is the First Day

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

― Rumi

Clarence Street Art Collective, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

I remember back in high school during an assembly when the principal came out – he was an old, clueless, asshole who was gone within a year – stepped up to the microphone and said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” There was an immediate deafening groan. The idiot had read this somewhere and thought he was the first one to discover the saying. He must never have looked at a poster (this was, of course, decades before the internet and tacky posters were the communication method of spreading memes) and ignorant that the phrase he uttered was five years’ worn out. I almost felt sorry for the old fool… no, not really.

But today was, really, the first day of the rest of my life. After almost a half-century of going to work every single day, I retired. I turned in my work phone, my laptop, and my security badge and walked out to my car.

It’s an incredibly strange feeling – like something huge that used to be right there, all the time, and now is gone forever. I woke up this morning and instinctively reached for my work phone to see what disasters had occurred overnight that I would have to deal with… and found the charger empty.

So what was the first thing I did post-work? I’m sure you will not be surprised to read that I crawled out of bed at dawn, made a thermos of fresh ground coffee, and went for a long bike ride. It felt so good not having any time pressure. Even on Saturdays, when I was working, I would feel the pressure of upcoming Monday. And now Monday is just another day.

I stopped at one of my usual places and sat there and leisurely drank my coffee. I think I’ll do this every day. Actually, I thought about putting a list out somewhere with times and places I plan to have coffee, call it “East Richardson morning bike and coffee” or something and see if anyone ever wants to meet me and share a cup of Joe. Is that a good idea? It seems sort of weird, but it would be fun. Have to think about it.

After all, I can do whatever I want.