Category: Uncategorized

Superhero movies used to be fun for me, and had an element of “Wow, they found a way to film the impossible…” but being that everything is a superhero movie… it has lost its magic as far as I’m concerned. They aren’t special, but now the expected norm.

And it feels like I am being force fed this steady film diet of blow up more stuff and violet conflict is the only answer.

Is this the American philosophy post 9/11?

That we can’t take care of ourselves and that someone or something with super powers, god like beings, are the only thing out there that can save us? There is something that doesn’t sit right with me as an American watching these movies. That what seems to make someone a great American is that we are all normal people from all over this world who band together to confront problems and solve them.

At least that’s my thought…

It reminds me of the use of the Western in movies. I feel almost all Westerns are about bring order to the world, either moral authority or physical dominance. The west was tamed, or the good guy wins, or what makes someone the good guy. It was the metaphor for a burgeoning nation that lacked a moral mythical foundation story, that has to exist after the Civil War, as that was the war that “solved” the original sin of the foundation of the country. And all of these stories are about normal people.

The Western came out of fashion by the 70’s and think was replaced by the super hero, but super heroes didn’t truly catch on till after 9/11.

What does that say about us?

There was a school shooting today…

Ten people have been killed as of writing this…

It has happened again in America…

And this only happens in America…

Over and over again…

I truly fear that we will soon become a society where everyone will know someone who has been affected by gun violence…

We are becoming desensitized to gun violence…

Not by movies, or tv, or video games, but because real people, humans we know in our daily lives, are being killed in our schools, streets, offices, and homes…

All using guns…

When I was high school, I had a humanities teacher, who passed on an insight that has stuck with me;

A true artist doesn’t create great work, a true artist is always creating work.

This idea is always bouncing around the back of my head. The older I get, and the more I learn about the artist that I respect, I find that all of them, pretty much, fall into the guidelines of the insight. True artists are always making something. Either it is a compulsion to create things, or like Tom Wolfe, who wrote 10 pages a day, no matter what. They create.

So… I have to create all the time then.

I have been trying to get better, not that I think I am in the “true artist” group, but I feel more artist than not…

Which gets me to this old debate that I have been having with myself, and other, since high school, what is an artist? And can I consider myself one?

“No one should call themselves an artist unless they are paid for it.” – I think that’s how the line goes in KAFKA.

I do think it is like acting, such as the hardest part is just committing to character, and leaving all pretense of yourself behind. If you want to call yourself an artist, then you just have to own it, right?

I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I think I’m giving a pep talk to myself now…

I read a heartbreaking blog this morning about a mother finding out that her little son has stopped liking things because the other boys at his school teased him about it. The mother spoke about how she cried for 10 minutes because the world of peer pressure has started for her son, and the unseen machine of societal control has started its march of shaping her boy into a different person.

It stung me, coz I was that little boy. I can still feel the looks from the other kids when I talked about liking learning and school, and reading, and musicals, and an endless list of things I loved but was made to feel inferior for liking them. It happens to everyone, and the pressure does take a toll. Somethings I fought to keep, others I discarded in shame… It happens to everyone.

I just don’t want it to happen to my daughter.

And that is never going to happen.

But I don’t want her to react the way I did. Folding, and not standing up for myself. That is the trick as a parent; making our children stronger than we were.

I can grow one of the worst beards. Hands down, it’s just awful. Sparse in places, patchy, gray/brown and blond hair all mixed together… My face has a calico cat feature to it. Only in the last 10 years have I felt the urge to grow a beard. Before that, I was a fan of the goatee, as I was a 90’s kid. I could grow a nice version of that, and when it got to the point that it required some maintenance, then I would shave it off. It was a nice pattern to have with facial hair.

The beard came about when it dawned on me that working in New York City, no one cared if you looked scraggly at work. So, I would start growing one on Thanksgiving, and let it go through New Year’s. Then on New Year’s Day, I would shave it all off save for a moustache, which I would keep to the Super Bowl.  There wasn’t much thought put into it and the dates seemed right.

And not that I did this every year. Sometimes I would have a performance gig that I needed to be clean shaven for, or we would travel home to see family, and I wanted to look nice in family photos, and not homeless.

In 2016, I grew a Cubs rally beard for the post season, and they did win the World Series, so clearly, the beard as the key.

Currently, I have a too lazy to shave in the morning beard. I really need to get rid of it before it gets hot for the Summer… But that feels like too much work.