Author: Matthew Groff

  • The Fanboys and Movies

    Fanboys have broken me.

    I was watching the Star Wars Final Trailer, and it was fine, and made me a little excited to see the movie, too. I will be taking my daughter to see it at Christmas time, and for that reason alone, I know I will have a great time with the movie.

    And then the thought of the fanboys came into my head, and the continuous shitting on the movie that will happen the second the movie starts playing. It’s just draining to hear constant nitpicking.

    I am fully aware I can ignore people, but sadly, I am good friends with some fanboys, though they figured out they are fanboys.

    What bothers me is that fanboy culture has changed the way we now think about criticizing movies. I know this is an event movie that lots of stuff will ‘slpode in. But whatever inconstancy or error that some fanboy discovers will then be blown up into the greatest of all transgressions, and thus the movie is shit, and you are shit for liking it.

    The outrage! “How could they do this to us, they most loyal of loyal fans! We deserve better!”

    How did we get here, again?

    Sure, you can blame the internet for creating an arms race of outrage and offense that must be expressed to the highest degree…

    But the other side of it, that some of these movies really are very good, but there is no context for constructive criticism.

    I think this was a part of the point that Scorsese and Coppola were trying to make; Star Wars and Marvel movies right now are just telling the same story repeatedly. With all these two-dimensional characters that are tumbling towards a third act in the movie where everything will explode, and the heroes are protected by plot armor, and in the back of your mind, you know that in six months you are about to do this same thing all over again, just with a different cast and setting.

    This is what the fanboy beast wants to be fed, and the billions of dollars prove that right now, its still a winning formula. And that outrage is also part of that formula now.

  • Still Posting

    It’s getting late in the day, but damn it, I’m posting something.

    This will be one of the worst things I have written and put up on the internet, but I promised myself that I would blog once a day for this whole week.

    And I have too often made a promise to myself, and then when things got tough, or annoying, or something good was on tv, that I just gave up, and gave in to the easy way of things. The easy way out.

    Not today, Satan. Not today.

    I will just put up about 250 words trying to gin up my resolve to get write, something, anything, right now.

    I need to make some time for my journal, and I d have a short story I want to keep working on, but as the hours are drawing to a close, I must make some choices.

    And I choose this blog!

    And the 35 readers that I have for it.

    Yes, you.

    One of the points of doing this blog was to get back to the idea that I was writing for an audience, and that I was free to try different tactics to reach that audience.

    This will go up as one of the new approaches.

    I feel like the guy that crawled across the finish line of a race. Wow, what a terrible showing, but he finished the race. I followed through, and I am trying to make this mean a bit more than it might.

  • Sweaters with Age

    I wanted to write about politics today, but my heart really isn’t into it. I think I am having Trump/Impeachment/Syria fatigue. Just so much bad stuff that I feel like I need a break.

    Which is why I would like to complain about the weather just like a very old and bitter man.

    In the North Bay today, it’s almost 90 degrees. And it’s October 21st. AND I don’t live in Texas. AND have I mentioned that I hate the heat.

    There is something so deep in my core, one of the truths of being that I hold on to, which tells me that when I get to late October, I get to wear sweaters because it’s cool a outside. Not hot.

    There should be no more hot weather.

    Yet, here I am with a full week of 90 degrees, when just two days ago it was 68.

    And this is when I know that I have flipped some sort of aging switch, or crossed some line that has placed me smack dab into middle age: I want to be comfortable all the time, and if I’m not, I’m going to complain about it until I make someone as annoyed as I feel right now.

    This is where I am now; It’s hot and someone listen to me!

    I guess it’s kind’a funny.

    But when me and my friends get together, and we kid about getting older and changing, yes the random aches and pains make moments of shared anguish… But what really is the worst part is that I know feel my stupid entitled complaints are not subjectively personal, but now they objective truths!

    Which they aren’t.

    I just want to wear a sweater, and really, in the big picture of the universe, no one cares.

    In five days I’ll be back to normal.

  • How Quickly I Got Off My Game

    I think I was making real progress when it comes to writing, over the past month. And then this week hit, and I just ground to a halt. I am aware that the anniversary of my mother’s passing on Monday has been weighing on my mind, and I know that’s normal, and it should happen. I guess what I hoped I would do would be to channel those feelings into something creative.

    Part of this process, the grieving process, is learning to forgive, and accept yourself. Grieving is individual and creates feeling of anger and guilt. I am trying to just let myself feel what this is like. Not force it into something that seems to be the reaction I should have. Somedays, I honestly feel like I should be having a deeper reaction to her passing, and other, I feel smothered in a blanket of sadness and loss.

    I guess I thought I was ready to start using these emotions in my creative process, but I think I’m not there yet. I did say to myself that I wanted a year to go by before I put anything on paper, or attempted to share this publicly. Maybe this is what the start of this process feels like?

  • How Do I Feel

    A long time ago, back when I was a sophomore in high school, I had been writing stories for about a year, and I decided that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. The day I decided this was October 14th, 1992, and I have always used that date as the first day of my writing season. The point that I could look back and see what I accomplished.

    For about 9 years, I was solidly creating written work that I could collect year by, and look back and see how I was improving, or what was still being work on. Then in 2001, I took a play writing class, and that pretty much set my on the theatre path, and the writing started to dwindle, to the point that I had many years where I didn’t write anything. I was still journaling, nut the date would come and go, and I really didn’t give it more than a glancing thought, like, “Oh, that thing I used to do.”

    Last year on this day, my mother passed away. Leading up to today, I was filled with some anxiety and an all around feeling of just being unsettled. I wasn’t sure how I should feel about today. When her birthday came and went, I felt depressed. With the Holidays, it was a general feeling of sadness. But getting to today, the day she died, was filled with dread. I kept seeing it on the calendar, knowing that I would have a full day of being reminded of her passing, and thinking about what the day like today used to mean to me.

    This was a day where I would reflect on what I had creatively accomplished in a year. The thoughts I had tried, or the ideas that just never worked out. It was a day for what I had created, and now, it’s a day to think about what I have lost.

    These feelings are mixed together, and its melancholy. I’m not depressed, just sad. Other than that, I’m not sure how to feel.