Theme Week: Responsibility

This is an experimental theme week, which is to say it is slightly more experimental than usual. For a single week only, we are going to try to post on a set schedule, each of us falling into place behind the last like the gears on a jewel-encrusted cog.

If, somehow, we find ourselves taking a liking to this alien conceit of scheduling, we may continue it in the future. That is not a promise.

What does it mean to be responsible, and why are a bunch of young internet hooligans like ourselves trying it on for size?

Well, we aren't, really. I mean, our last theme week was Hedonism Week, and it stretched on for a decade, during which we frequently forgot to write anything at all for years at a time.

So maybe this is responsibility week because it's time for a bit of a change. Maybe this is responsibility week because we've tried nearly everything else. And maybe, just maybe, this is responsibility week because we're out of better ideas, or because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

That is more or less our motto.

But I would hold that we are no more irresponsible than the average citizen of this benighted world. We may take up amusing affectations, don curious clothing and spend far too much time reading, listening to music and thinking, but I find nothing inherently irresponsible in these acts. We are not betraying our country or the world by devoting ourselves to intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. One must appreciate beauty in order to create it.

The day before yesterday I was interviewing protesters in Pittsburgh, when I suddenly found myself the target of interview myself, by a freelancing journalist. Asked to comment, I found myself spewing forth an incredibly optimistic rant about internet communities becoming involved in real-world politics, and how I felt this was a positive sign of the times. The bemused journalist found herself struggling to keep up, and after a moment or two I found myself feeling foolish as I recited back a few of the more sensical sentences to her.

The urge to run my mouth has apparently not subsided. I'll probably be speaking to you again tomorrow about the protest itself. There are pictures to be shown and tales to be told, and I get to look somewhat dashing, or at least silly, in my Goggles of Truth.

Roaring Brilliant Stupidity

So, in a mere three days, it would have been a full month since an update had been posted. This is unacceptable, and entirely my fault.

Four dollar monthly hosting fee, you will not be in vain. I will not allow it.

It has occured to me lately how much I love things that are... aware of exactly what they are without being awkwardly self-conscious, and doing whatever it is they do all the harder because of it. When I wrote this sentence, I was thinking of storytelling, but now that I consider it in a bit more detail, it also reminds me of some of my favorite people, and one of my room-mates, Jordan. He has come closer than any man I know to that mythical goal of catching them all.

(Well, closer than any man since the cruel lies of time, profits and formula multiplied the level of difficulty of collecting pocket monsters to a region usually reserved for the sorts of adventurers who steal fire from the gods.)

In any case, to return to my original point: I love One Piece. Also Peter Jackson's King Kong, which I watched for the first time tonight, probably because I live in a cave. It is, as Alex the Bear remarked, not really a modern film. It is also not a film about subtlety, restraint or taste. If films which critics heap praise upon are well-balanced meals prepared by master chefs and portioned carefully for maximum pleasure and presentation, King Kong is more like an all-you-can-eat buffet at a restaurant with excellent food, served by a cook who would be sad if you ate less than fifteen plates. This is to say that it may leave you without the desire to eat for a week, you may want to take a break somewhere in the middle, and it is best enjoyed with (intellectually) hungry friends.

It also helps to have a huge appreciation for pulp stereotypes and random outbreaks of heroism, along with a healthy desire to see a giant monkey beat seven kinds of hell out of three tyrannosaurs at once while juggling a tiny screaming woman who has charmed him with her vaudeville ways.

(Tyrannosaurs have no respect for vaudeville. No, seriously, I don't want to derail this as far as this is going to take to explain in detail, but... King Kong all but puts on a monocle in his attempts to introduce them to culture, but the scaly buffoons continue to insist that his valued performer companion is a snack. Some people have no class.)

I don't really want to summarize the entire plot and make a terrifying list of everything I love about the movie (for example: best multi-dino pileup physics ever) so suffice it to say I love it. And I love it because it is stupid in places, and knows it's stupid, and loves itself anyway.

And so should everyone else.

But seriously: the joy that pervades every aspect of the movie, and the cleverness that exists in the way that the elements have been chosen and woven together, is immense. It feels like there must have been trickery involved in its making, like Peter Jackson must have known that after Lord of the Rings, they'd let him get away with anything, just this once. And so he decided to remake his favorite childhood movie, as hard as he possibly could.

This fills me with joy, and with any luck it will fill you with joy as well. James says that the movie didn't interest him. I don't understand how a man can fail to be interested in a movie about a giant ape beating the hell out of saurians, especially not when it brims with cliver references, trickery and metacommentary like this one does. It's a betrayal of mamallian loyalties, not to mention a failing of taste.

I suppose I will have to put up with him. After all, he does a much better job of keeping this place alive than I do.

One Piece will, I think, have to wait until another time, but rest assured, I love it for about the same reasons I love King Kong: brilliant stupidity, spectacular action and heart-wrenching, ante-upping emotional moments, along with a sense of whimsy and a complete lack of mercy or restraint.

Sometimes, you need to send in that third tyrannosaurus in a surprise ambush from behind, or have your characters straight out state one of the themes, or have one of your characters not only be reading a book your scene or movie references, but also have an extended conversation with another character about said book, which is incredibly relevant to their situation.  Sometimes, the only proper way to write a scene is to go for the throat as hard and as fast as you possibly can, and never let go.

Sometime, you need viking pirates who are also giants that have been fighting a duel of honor for a hundred years, and you need them to fight a sea monster as big as the ocean because friendship and honor demand it.

And sometimes, you just have to punch a dinosaur in the face.

This has, I hope, been one of those times. I apologize for my extended abscence, and with any luck I'll be revisiting this subject, and giving One Piece its proper due, within the next few days.