Past the Margins

hustle and airbend

brad — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 11:37:00 +0000

I'm going to make a movie. It's based on a beloved animated series whose storyline, cast of characters, and quotes have been adored and memorized by children and lovable nerds across the world. But I got a big ego, so I'm going to remove critical plot elements, strip down the heroic battle scenes fans remember, and mangle the pronunciation of all of the characters' names because market research says fans love when you mess up a good thing.¹

Let's say the blurb would read something like this: "it's an epic, featuring an awesome, sword-wielding cat, Leon-O, his band of brothers, and his leading lady, Chetura, in their good fight against evil." I want people to come and see it, though, so I'm going to use the title of the original series as a draw, despite how much I've deviated. World, meet a Jersey kid's ThunderCats.

Violently disappointed yet? No? Fine. I'll also insist on the movie only being shown in theaters near you in cornea-tearing, migraine-inducing 3-D, even though there's only one actual scene of the movie in 3-D. And I'll charge you $15.

Sadly, this is almost exactly what happened Saturday night. Over the course of the last few weeks, Miss Bianca and I raced through three seasons - we even put The Wire on hold² - and about thirty-five hours of Avatar: The Last Airbender, to get ready for its big-screen debut this past weekend. We rounded up some good people whose Airbender-fandom is of legend and bought tickets early in the week, only to watch each day up until Saturday arrive with a set of reviews more horrible than the last.

Airbender, the M. Night Shyamalan way, is pretty much the worst adaptation since Angels & Demons (which was the worst retelling of anything since some indie film studio in Rome let Mel Gibson direct The Passion of the Christ). There were butchered pronunciations, materially-altered scenes, and CGI that made the effects in Last Action Hero look Oscar-worthy.

My movie opinions (outside of anything animated-Disney) probably can't be trusted. That I watched-and-didn't-hate Gigli - yes, that Gigli - thought Soul Plane was hilarious, and have been bored to sleep by Oceans 11 three times are probably pretty good evidence that momma did raise a fool.

But we got hustled on this one, kids. Hustled. M. Night Shyamalan took our lunch money and then made us sit and watch him eat what he bought with it for almost two hours.

¹Read: my ego says I can get away with it.
²Yes, we're eight years behind.

short, cryptic, and probably obnoxious

brad — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 14:21:00 +0000

I loved Forrest Gump when I saw it in a theater in 1994. Great music, epic storyline. But life is decidedly not like a box of chocolates.

Life, instead - to throw out an analogy I probably won't believe myself by the end of the day - is much more like the alphabet. ....

bang. pop.

brad — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:37:00 +0000

I've been listening to the debut album by Free Energy, Stuck on Nothing, for a little more than a week now. A couple of tracks, especially the one below, remind me of something that could've worked on the soundtrack for Dazed and Confused. Kind of makes me feel like I need to grow a horrible stache just to fully appreciate it. ....

how to make it in America

brad — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:00:00 +0000

Step three, as I've learned from all of my favorite superheroes, is rediscovering my power source. And that's music. So here's some of what I've been listening to lately that I thought you might like. ....

and then it happened.

brad — Mon, 31 May 2010 23:06:00 +0000

In any life, there are measures - milestones, markers; treadmarks, if you will, on the tighty-whities that are life. There are moments when you take a thorough overview of your situation, notice you've done a poor job of being aware of the mess you're sitting in, and doubt your ability to make it anywhere in life that doesn't require a ride on a short-bus. ....

matters of size

brad — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:47:00 +0000

We're infantile. Compared to most of the rest of the world, whose collective of histories has periods and eras, our country's entire history is 234 years. If we took the lives of three 78-year olds, and stretched them out consecutively, they would span our entire history. America is only three lives long. ....

baggage claim

brad — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 17:08:00 +0000

For what feels like hours, I watch the baggage carousel lurch and spin. It's like an assembly line: other passengers pluck pieces from the line, ready to put things back together again. And just as my frustration that, of course, my bag is the only bag not to make the rounds rises, I realize I never even checked a bag....

ten things you hate about them

brad — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:00:19 +0000

Passive aggressive tweets are a problem that won't go away. Where "you" is not necessarily you, and "they" are people just trying to live, the problem goes a little something like this....

-

brad — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 12:52:00 +0000

My brother and I were good kids. All we ever wanted our dad to do was to appreciate that the way we imagined dads should: with urgency, passion, and the willingness to fight beside us when our knees buckled under the weight of the battles we faced. But, eventually, when that moment didn't come, we both let go. We gave up on waiting for his world to change and focused on building the lives we deserve. Neither of us has talked to him in a year.

We've heard, through the grapevine, that one of his brothers died Monday and that the funeral is today. We know what we should do. We just wish he had earned it.

let's give 'em something to talk about

brad — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 13:02:00 +0000

How about microaggressions? I know they're not exactly what Bonnie Raitt had in mind. "Microaggressions" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue the same way "love" does. But Bonnie could only be offended if she read this, which, I'm sure, she won't. ....