Ghost, Ghost, in the Graveyard

On my way home from the Ghoulash show at the Upstairs Gallery I took a stroll through a graveyard. It seemed appropriate.

When I was young I was afraid of the night. The darkness. In the summer time the neighborhood kids would play Ghost, Ghost, In The Graveyard which is basically night-time tag meets hide-and-seek. I remember it feeling terribly dangerous and exciting.

It took me awhile to get over my fear of the dark but once I did it was gone completely. Graveyards never scared me, I think because I have always very much believed and wanted to experience something supernatural. They seemed a focal point, a good place for such things.

In high school I would periodically take dates on evening walks through graveyards. Not out of some morbid romanticism but because I felt comfortable there, it felt special.

Once I was driving out of a graveyard, it was probably 11 o'clock at night or maybe later, as I turned out I saw a dark haired woman in a long white dress. It was not Halloween. It took me a moment to process what a saw. When I looked back, she was gone.

I don't know if spirits congregate in graveyards. If I was one I wouldn't. But they may. They seem lonely places to me, not sad or scary, abandoned.

I like to walk through the stones. Visiting both ghosts and memory.

Graffiti 110

"Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there's no escape, there's no excuse, so just suck up and be nice." -Ani DiFranco

"At home I am a nice guy: but I don't want the world to know. Humble people, I've found, don't get very far." -Muhammad Ali

"Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness." -Khalil Gibran

It Is Seldom Enough

Friendship and family and romance.
It is not enough.
Books and bikes and smiles.
It is not enough.
Cool rains and sun through clouds and changing leaves.
It is not enough.
Past loves and present love and future heartbreak.
It is not enough.
New cloths and newer phones and ten course meals.
It is not enough.
More is not more.
It is never enough.

Boys Become Men

Once, when I was a young I played by a creek. I was with my friend Todd who, as I look back, was not much of a friend. There were many ducks and ducklings playing along side us, enjoying the sunshine and the water. Todd picked up a stone and threw it at a duck. He missed and threw more stones. Seeing him I threw stones as well. We missed all our throws. I did not want to hit a duck or hurt a duck. I did it because Todd was doing it and he was the type of friend who would call me wuss or weak or scared or dumb and tell me to go home if I did not do what he wanted me to do. There was also, I am ashamed to admit, a perverse pleasure I found in throwing stones at ducks, the anticipation of one of them being hurt or killed and I would be the one that caused it. Even so I do not think I actually tried to hit the ducks with my stones. Maybe that is selective memory but I do not think so.

Todd and I threw stones for some time. The ducks were not scared away which puzzled me. Eventually, inevitably, one of Todd's stones found it's mark breaking the neck of a large brown female duck. We stopped immediately, asking each other if it was dead. It floated to the shore, neck bent at an impossible angle. We stood over it staring.

Her eyes were glazed and the water running off her feathers made her look as if she wept. She closed then opened her eyes slowly and repeatedly. There was blood, how much I do not know, it mingled with her wet brown feathers. I had no doubt that she would die, I had no doubt she would suffer until her death.

The bottom dropped out of my world and I was sick. I did not feel powerful as part of me, I think, expected. I felt cruel and was disgusted by my cruelty. I turned on Todd berating him for what he had done. Asking him how he could do such a thing, he calmly reminded me of my compliance and I was shamed. We walked home in silence and never spoke of that day or that tortured duck.

Boys can be cruel and often are. They must learn compassion. If they do not they may become cruel men. And cruel men are fearsome things of little use save destruction.

Beanpole

Beanpole and his wife Jen came into Chicago early to have lunch with Nicole and I before their flight back to Denver.

I met Beanpole in 7th grade, he was a part of the cool kids clique and I was the object of a certain amount of antagonism, not his but some of his buddies. We started hanging out in high school but didn't get close until senior year when we both inappropriately took AP Physics. A class built on Calculus fundamentals which neither of us had. I would go over to his house and we'd work late on projects we barely understood, we constructed a "slow roller" which ended up sliding quickly, a failure on both counts. He worked at camp with me for three summers starting after our senior year, we once staged a mock pirate fight for the campers- I was Red Beard the villain and he was simply Beanpole, the hero.

Beanpole is the most kind, sweet, warm, patient, supportive friend I have. The only times I've seen him upset are when he's playing or watching sports. He has been steadfast in his loyalty and friendship to me even though I've, at times, given him reasons not to. He's also got a great sense of humor, during the course of our friendship he has been the butt of numerous jokes, but he takes it in the spirit in which its expressed- brotherly love. He's also been there a lot when I've needed him. From helping put up my families Christmas tree to making posters for different improv teams, he's always ready to do whatever favor I ask if he can.

Last year when I was in very rough shape we were talking on the phone.

Beanpole: I'm sorry man.
Me: Sorry for what?
Beanpole: I'm sorry I can't be there...I'm here in Denver...and you're struggling...I don't know what to say...I just wish there was something I could do...I'm sorry I'm not there.

He apologized to me for not being around when I was the one who could barely return phone calls. He's got a big heart. Even though he lives across the country and we only see each other twice a year we have remained close. His friendship is precious to me and seeing him today made me want to get out to Denver and hike the mountains with him again.

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

'Carrie' A Review

Carrie is a supernatural thriller, a remake of the 1976 classic of the same name, based on the novel by Stephen King. Carrie a sheltered, religious, awkward teen gets her first period in the women's locker room and is ridiculed by her classmates. This event awakens Carrie's latent telekinesis which sets the plot and impending crisis in motion. 

The movie falls flat almost from the get go. What appears to be a scene by scene remake captures none of the terror or camp of the original, and loses most of the sympathy inherent in the story because of its incredible dullness. There is nothing new or fresh about this incarnation of Carrie, which begs the question- why? Presumably the answer, like the majority of remakes, is monetary. The studios bank on a reliable story as well as a new generation being unfamiliar with the source material.

The casting of Chloe Grace Moretz is in appropriate. When the movie was shot she was fifteen, a good decade younger than the actors playing her classmates, three years younger than the eighteen of Carrie White. Maybe because of her natural confidence she is unable to play "awkward" and "outcast" it simply doesn't read, it's obvious contrived. In scenes with her mother she's entirely too poised, too self assured, to courageous. She is not Carrie, she's who Carrie White wishes she could be and Moretz can't cover that up. Julianne Moore as Margaret White pales in comparison to the shadow cast by Piper Laurie and seems lost from beginning to end.

The movie culminates in a perfect storm of terrible CGI and Moretz conducting the carnage with moves lifted straight from Marvel's tired ceaseless superhero movie machine.

Don't See It.

'All Is Lost' A Review

All Is Lost is a survival drama featuring only Robert Redford. The film opens on Redford (billed in the credits as "Our Man") sailing in the middle of the Indian Ocean when a floating shipping container tears a whole in his ship. This starts a series of events that eventually leave Redford stranded on a life raft with no food or water.

There's virtually no dialogue in the film. We know nothing and discover nothing about Redford's character. We watch an old man deal with a series of accidents and unfortunate circumstances on a sailboat in the middle of the ocean. Redford does not express emotion further than surface frustration, anger, and stubbornness. We do not know why he is there, we do not know what drives him, we know nothing, we discover nothing. We simply watch an old man struggle to put his boat back together and survive storms. Redford's performance isn't bad, there is simply not much to it. Any old man in good physical condition could have duplicated the performance because Redford doesn't change in any way, does not reveal anything about who he is, he simply does the physical actions someone in that situation would do.

The film is mildly interesting because of the circumstances and Redford's age making them even more strenuous but it is too oblique for it's own good. The ending, especially, is entirely too precious leaving the audience to decide if "Our Man" has gone to heaven or been rescued.

Robert Redford status as a great actor and living legend is undeniable but watching him sail for two hours does not a great performance make.

Rent It.