A Touch of Madness

   For the last month, I’ve been down the rabbit hole.  That is, I got back into acting and did a local performance of Alice in Wonderland for a community theater group.

   Now, it wasn’t Broadway or even Lewis Carroll for that matter.  It’s an adaptation that puts a group of actors on the hunt for a girl to play Alice.  They just ask her to pretend along with them and to Wonderland they go.  For my part, I was the leader of the actors and also The King of Hearts. 

   I haven’t acted on stage in about 10 or 11 years.  I gave it up along with all acting in order to settle down and have a full time job.  I simply couldn’t juggle it, work, and life.  But in light of recent events, I thought it would be nice to do a small show, about 18 rehearsals, and five performances.  I haven’t been this tired in a long time.  Don’t let anyone ever tell you that a kids’ show is easier.   It’s not the case. 

   But somewhere, in all the delirium of exhaustion and lack of sleep, I had a thought.  What if we’re looking at Alice the wrong way?  We all know the story.  Alice, a little girl in England, longs for something unusual to entertain her during her doldrums of lessons and boring life.  She follows a white rabbit into a hole and ends up in Wonderland where nothing makes sense.  All the while, the residents of Wonderland give her exactly what she wants, mostly to her dissatisfaction.    But is it all in her head?  And… who is actually being forced to do something they don’t want?

   So, one of the ideas we, as actors, thought about during the show is how sadistic we really are.  The characters NEED an Alice and when they find one, they don’t exactly ask her to play along.  They kind of rope her into playing their game.   They’re pretty much torture her with nonsense for an hour until she breaks and goes along with it.  Granted, by the end of OUR play she is the one calling the shots, the Queen’s gruff and psychotic demeanor softens as she forgives the Knave for stealing her tarts, and Alice returns to her world which has been there all along as we were all just pretending.  Still, the amount of crap we throw at an unsuspecting Alice all because she “asked” for it is rather sociopathic.   But what if we’re the ones who are being directed?

   By the end of the run, I had developed some pain in my knees from a particular scene where we pretend to be the rabbit hole, swirling about Alice.  Every so often, crouching down for her to deliver a line, we end with “Is she almost there?”   Giving that line I felt like, “Enough is enough, my poor knees can’t take too much more of this.”  The director actually wanted to re block the scene so that I wasn’t in pain.-  She didn’t realize all of my perceived difficulty with that scene was acting.   I hammed it up just for that line to come across as a game changer.     In the next scene, Alice complains about being too large to fit through the door to the garden and starts to cry.  We all look at each other in disgust and roll our eyes at her dramatic crying to which we give her a handkerchief.   Once again, Alice has the power and we are just going through the motions to satisfy her.    Those two moments made me think, “What if we’re all in an asylum and Alice is some sadistic puppeteer forcing us to endlessly pretend to be these characters every day just to appease her psychosis?”    It hearkened back to another show I was familiar with back in college, Marat/Sade, also called The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.  The title alone sounds sadistic, right?  Now, I am not trying to say that the depiction of class struggle and human suffering can be compared to Alice in Wonderland but the idea of a play within a play and the sadistic tendencies of Sade directing inmates to perform for his amusement do.    Think of the little girl who forces a parent into having a tea party all the time, slowly driving them mad like the March Hare or Mad Hatter.

   My thoughts are not entirely original, I’m sure.  Other plays, movies, and television shows have questioned what is real and what is madness?  It’s a trope called Schrödinger's Butterfly.  

• A direct reference is The Matrix where Morpheus uses the red and blue pill to signify Neo’s choice of leaving the fake world for the real one.  
• American McGee’s Alice was a video game released 15 years ago that supposed that Alice was locked up in an asylum after witnessing the death of her family post Through the Looking Glass.  However, the character leaves to return to Wonderland.   
• Total Recall (1990) asks the question, “Are you sure your life is real?”  After visiting a place that sells dreams as reality, Schwarzenegger’s character unlocks a memory of his alternate life.  Now, he can’t tell which is real, his boring life or the one where he’s a spy on the run from evil corporate giants. 
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Normal Again did a stint where Buffy was infected by toxins from a monster that caused her to hallucinate that she was really locked up in an asylum and that her entire career as a Slayer, her friends, and all the supernatural events of six seasons were all in her mind.  She has been in a state of catatonia for six years with a brief period of lucidity right about the time she died in the show’s fifth season finale.  
• Taming of the Shrew is a bit of a Schrödinger's Butterfly where a drunk is put into a performance of a play and is led to believe what he is a part of is real life.
• Revolution used the nanotechnology as a way of convincing certain people that they were living in a Utopian dream world.  The dream would was a way to get them to give up specific information that could help the nano survive. 

   There are plenty more.

   What madness there could be with an idea that our daily lives are the dream and our dreams are our reality?  Or further yet, that someone else is pulling the strings and our lives are the figment of the imagination of someone else, kind of like Taming of the Shrew or St. Elsewhere.

BAMF! POW! SINK ME? A Look at a Literary Comic Book Hero

I had this plan to extol the virtues of being a cinema purist when it came to Superman. I will always see Christopher Reeve as the Man of Steel, no matter who plays him on film.   However, since I haven’t seen the newest take and I am not really a comic book buff, I didn’t feel right drawing comparisons and casting criticisms against anyone.

However, I did want to take a stab at comparing the genre of superheroes and comic books and secret identities.  I found myself unable to sleep last night and thought on early versions of who would be considered falling into the mold of a “superhero” or comic book character.

One of the earliest pieces of literature I have read was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy.  It tells the story of the events that occur during the French Revolution.  This is the stuff everyone thinks about when they aren’t thinking of the plot of Les Miserables.   Basically, the commoners rose up and ousted the monarchy, executing nobles with the guillotine.  While their complaints and anger were not misplaced, the extreme measures were barbaric in nature and probably didn’t score them any points as French heroes, though they were more or less regarded as such.

At the center of the story is a foppish and wealthy baronet by the name of Sir Percy Blakeney.  While he exudes a playboy attitude, caring more about fashion and high class topics than current events across the Channel.   However, it is merely a disguise, a misdirection, that he uses to hide the fact that he is indeed an avenger of the nobility and rescues them in secret from their captors.  As a master of disguise and excellent swordsman he eludes Revolutionaries at every turn, leaving a calling card of a scarlet pimpernel. 

Sound familiar?  Rich, well to do playboy, pretending to be dim, all the while using a secret identity to fight crime.   Yep.  I thought that, too.   Sir Percy is a sort of French Bruce Wayne.  He even has a wife, an actress named Marguerite, who is unaware of his identity.  In fact, it becomes a plot point that he thinks she has betrayed her class by taking revenge against the Marquis de St. Cyr.  He had ordered her brother beaten for being involved with his daughter and Marguerite’s action led to the death or the Marquis and his sons at the hands of the guillotine. 

Soon, Marguerite becomes distant from her husband, thinking more fondly of this dashing and damned elusive Pimpernel, which unbeknownst to her is really her husband.  This is another trope in superhero genre comics and stories where the secret identity is left to watch the person they love more enamored with the hero than the everyday persona they use as a façade.   Think of Superman/Clark Kent and the relationship with  Lois Lane.

Hell, the character’s name is a comic book hero name, The Scarlet Pimpernel.  Color and object combination.  Green Arrow anyone?

Of course, in the end, she learns the truth, in a way that I found to be reminiscent in a lot of films, like the end of The Usual Suspects.   My favorite adaptation was the 1982 miniseries with Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour, where she sees the obvious clues laid in front of her, suddenly connecting all the dots and her now, newly discovered knowledge, deepens her love for her estranged husband and she becomes a pseudo member of "The League of The Scarlet Pimpernel."

 Marguerite Discovers Percy's Secret

 Kujan Puts It All Together

In fact if you watch the 1982 or even the 1934 version with Leslie Howard, you can see a line drawn from the tropes or conventions from those adaptations to movies or stories told today.  The disguises, the switches, the twists are very much present.  The bad guy as a camp foil, his fashion sense mocked even in combat.  AND IT’S MAGNETO HIMSELF!

 But, but, I heard the firing squad shoot you!

 So, if you are a diehard comic book fan, pick up a copy of Orczy’s novel or go find the movie adaptations and see how a 1905 character foreshadows a lot of your modern day hero conventions.  Sink me!

No Show For the Poe Toaster

For the last 60 years a ritual has occurred which rivals that of the annual pilgrimage to Punxsutawney to see if a groundhog will see his shadow. Every January 19th since 1949, a figure known as the Poe Toaster has appeared on the grounds of Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, MD. He or she, disguised in black, makes their way to the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, raises a toast of cognac and then leaves the rest of the bottle along with three roses. It is believed that the roses are meant as a remembrance of Poe, his wife, and her mother who all are interred at the cemetery.

Diehard Poe heads are usually on hand to witness the mysterious event without ever knowing the identity of the toaster. In 1999, a note indicated that the original toaster had died or had at least passed the torch onto a “son” or new toaster. Last year, no note was left, which was odd being that it was the bicentennial of Poe’s birth. Even stranger yet was the no show of the Toaster this year.
Some observers actually cried when the news of no toast had taken place. Some wonder if the toaster had taken ill or had died prior to handing off the torch to another. In any case, the curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum intends to keep a close watch over the site for the next couple of weeks in case the Toaster just happens to show up.
Now, I have a great and profound respect for Edgar Allan Poe. I’ve read several of his stories and poems over the years like Eldorado and The Gold Bug as well as The Masque of the Red Death, The Casque of Amontillado, The Raven, and The Pit and the Pendulum. The one story that has eluded me over the years is the Fall of the House of Usher, but it is definitely on my to do list. Still, this event that has taken place over the last 60 years is something I would definitely get a kick out of attending. Being a native of South Western PA, one would think I would be more up to making the trip out to “Punxsy” as we call it to see Phil’s shadow. Not bloody likely. First of all, I’ve watched the recorded event on cable and it seems like a big drunken party. The observance of the Poe Toaster has that air of macabre being set in a cemetery and the only imbibing to be taking place would be that of cognac or some port wine, which does not come in a box.
To sit in silence and witness such a mysterious event would interest me more than crowd surfing with a bunch of drunken coeds who would rather do a body shot of the groundhog’s belly than to actually be a part of something more steeped in history and culture than a prognosticating Punxsutawney Phil.
But from the looks of this year’s absence of the Poe Toaster, one can only speculate if 200 years after the birth of Poe was a good stopping point. Perhaps a toaster will show up and most likely it will be a copycat trying to keep up the tradition. Given the ravenous fandom of this event, it would be rather humorous but off putting to see multiple Toasters show up at the same time. Perhaps a coordination of members to a secret Poe club can keep the dream alive. After all, It’s hard to think that one will raise a glass to Poe’s memory nevermore.

The Boy Who Read: Part Three

The Boy Who Read Part Three… I promise this is the last one…maybe.

In Parts One and Two I went on at length about my dislike of reading as a child and my newfound addiction in the form of the Harry Potter novels. While I might have made it clear as to why I decided to read the sixth and seventh novels before seeing Half Blood Prince on film. I never really revisited the entire series as subject of debate. I will say that I have spanked that 24 year old that treated the novels and the overall series as childish and unnerving. If anything, J.K. Rowling has relit the pilot light of inspiration in me to continue writing and perhaps make a more concerted effort to finish a piece of work. Of course, commitment to a diet holds about as much weight. With this I offer five things I love about the Harry Potter series and two things I dislike. I won’t go so far as say hate because I went into the books knowing how it ended so a lot of guesswork was taken out of one of the ‘dislikes.’

1. My first ‘love’ associated with the books comes from a background of loving language. I never met a pun or rhyme I didn’t like. Rowling has a firm grasp of etymology and linguistics which really delighted me in her usage throughout the series. The names of characters, locations, and objects such spells have this very soothing shape to them. Whether this can be attributed to her being English or just a lover of good study is beyond me. Looking at Tolkien or Lewis as standards in British Popular Literature, Rowling has earned her spot alongside some of the better writers in her use of language. I always looked at George Lucas’ use of language to create names for characters in the Star Wars universe as my own personal standard of yumminess, being primarily a fan of film and visual media, but Rowling now takes that mantle.
   
2. My second ‘love’ of the books is the way in which she treats the reader. While the books are written in the third person perspective primarily associated with what is happening to Harry, it kind of invites the reader into the story as a first person narrative. I attribute this to an understanding her audience, a kid who can identify with the main characters and the adults who live vicariously through their children or their own childhood. I also believe this to be attributed to her style of writing, specifically her descriptiveness of the action and environment. It is very to imagine the locations and looks of the characters through her descriptions. My biggest hang up with reading is my imagination, which oddly enough is probably more refined than any other trait I possess. I can think of something ten times more horrible under my bed than what could actually be there when I was a kid. Jaws and The Blair Witch Project are favorites because of this acuity of my mind’s eye. Another great thing about how Rowling treats the audience is that she is great at tying things together without letting the reader feel like they’ve tread upon old ground. There are paragraphs and passages in the last books that reference action that took place in the first or second book and it felt like new information when I read it.
   
3. Love number three is the story which is accessible to everyone. Remember, I was a skeptic. I admit, when the books first came out, I was totally against the idea of this school for wizards and witches setting. My gold standard for fantasy or science fiction has been either been based on Star Wars or JRR Tolkien. The idea of trying to fit a story about school and childhood into a medieval style or modern British world made me want to hear nails on chalkboards nonstop as an alternative. The fact that adults were gobbling up the books as much, if not more than, kids was disconcerting to me. Then, as time went by I started to soften a little. I had to admit from a cultural standpoint that this was a positive thing for kids. We were at a point where there was a definite shift from books to more visual media had occurred and then along comes these books that gets kids reading again. Not to mention, families are spending time together reading and discussing the books. It was a small check in the win column for family values. Of course, then the fundamentalist groups get in the way and start shouting “Satanic” and “Occult” and it sours the experience.
   
   As I let the fad, which by now had become a pop culture juggernaut, start to play out and plateau, I picked up the first book and was immediately sucked into it. A friend recently quoted C.S. Lewis to me regarding my change of heart. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” I never realized that I had already boiled down that beautiful quote years ago into, “I may get older, but I’ll never grow up.” I forgot that somewhere along the way. Once I allowed myself to accept the story for what it was, I was able to enjoy it. As the books progressed, the story matured as did the writer, I believe.
   
4. My fourth love of the series is its hero structure and quest motifs. The story plays on the levels of the hero’s quest without relying on the standard convention of allegory on the surface. Yes, there are definite overtones of love vs. hate, family vs. solidarity, and good vs. evil, but it’s the subtext that really drives the action. By all accounts Harry Potter should not have lived until the age of two. Every step of the way he has someone there to help him. His mother’s love shields him and saves him as a baby. Dumbledore provides him with the tools to solve a lot of his problems. His friends sacrifice themselves time and time again for him to succeed.
   
   In all seriousness, Harry Potter hardly takes a stand and fights back until the end of book two and that was after he was given help in the form of the Sorting Hat from which he pulled Gryffindor’s sword. From then on he still has other people doing things to advance his march towards victory until well into the last two books. But what is really going on here, besides the Christ like referencing is that Harry isn’t alone in his quest even though he is pretty much an orphan. Yes, the Dursley’s provide basic food and shelter but he is emotionally on his own for a decade. It’s not only the prophecy, but the willingness by nearly everyone to believe in him that gives him the strength to be victorious. There comes a point in Deathly Hallows when it finally clicks for Harry. Until this point, he’s never asked to be a hero. He’s a mediocre student but he has the potential to be much more, a leader. A great leader is someone who does the job without asking for it. The first hints to this are in Order of the Phoenix when he forms Dumbledore’s Army. But the realization to Harry’s need to be a leader happens when he buries Dobby.
   

   
   Get Not a Horcrux on various items
   From Mongo Angry! Mongo Smash! the store.

   You can say that it happens when Dumbledore entrusts Harry with the task of finding and destroying Horcruxes, but Harry still hasn’t taken on the position of leader. He knows what needs to be done, but he doesn’t understand how to do it. He’s just following orders. You could also point out that when Harry continues to force Dumbledore to drink the potion in the cave to retrieve the locket has taken on the role of leader, but at that point he is still following orders as well. But after he buries Dobby he sees the power of sacrifice in the name of the cause. So much so that he himself has to do it as well in order to save himself and everyone around him. As he stands in the great hall overlooking the dead and wounded, he sees his friends lying there. In his mind, he struggles with the thought that they are there because of him and he accepts his fate and is prepared to die. It’s a leap of faith and he takes it. Yet, he still does not face death alone. He surrounds himself with fallen loved ones and accepts that he needs help from others, especially adults.
   
   The greatest lesson to be taught isn’t just the nature of love and good conquers hate and evil. It’s all about the journey. Voldemort is so obsessed with making things happen in order to become the most powerful, the he neglects to see the fine print. He rushes off into battle without first looking at the playing field. That’s why he loses. Harry only acts once he has enough information to secure his upper hand. This is another milestone for the boy who was willing to go off after Sirius when he thought him a killer and Voldemort when he returned. Over the course of the series, Harry follows in his father’s footsteps of arrogance and entitlement but learns to curb his temper and allow things to take their course. Thus, knowledge and defense become Harry’s greatest weapons over Voldemort. Yes, he was recognized as the master of the Elder Wand but if Voldemort had known that, he would have chose to dispose of Potter in some other fashion. Harry lets Voldemort destroy himself.
   
5. Love Number Five is Rowling’s decision to not play it safe. In children’s literature, much like the upbringing of children these days there has been an inherent decision to not let kids fail. This is my biggest pet peeve against our society as it stands today. My kid falls down a lot and I tell her to get back up. Now, if she’s really hurt, I go get her, but she fails at the age of two. She doesn’t like it but she is starting to understand it. For a story aimed at kids, there is a reluctance to take a chance and push the boundaries in regards to the safety of your characters. Happy endings come with little sacrifice in some stories. But Rowling isn’t afraid to kill her characters, regardless of their popularity or overall goodness. Apart from the killing of Harry’s parents, no other major character shockingly dies until Cedric Diggory in the fourth book. I don’t count the other deaths in between because they are either peripheral or not as intricately tied to an emotional attachment. Having Wormtail kill Cedric, a teenager proves that this is no longer just a children’s story. People die in violent and tragic ways and by the time we reach book seven, the gloves are off in terms of who is safe and who is cursed.

Now, unfortunately, my two dislikes.

1. Number one is Rowling’s use of Deus ex Machina. In the first book, Harry survives the Quirrell’s assault because he was protected by his Mother’s love. Albeit a stylized salvation, to simply end a climax by saying he was burned by love is pretty much phoning it in by my thoughts. In book two, Harry is first saved by Fawkes the phoenix when he blinds the basilisk and delivers the sorting hat which produces Gryffindor’s sword. Then he saves a dying Harry by producing tears that have healing abilities. Here Rowling has built into the early part of the story the significance of Fawkes and his abilities but even so, it still stands to serve as a “Just in time” salvation. As the books progress, the usage lessens or at least is subtle in its application which could account for the maturing tone of the novels over time.
   
2. My other dislike is Rowling’s attention to detail. To say that she is overly descriptive sounds wrong. Her world is fully realized and her intention in moving the story from point A to point B is sound. However, over time you begin to build up an attachment with certain characters who either become important in terms of development of story or just because they accentuate the action in the right spot.
   
   Case in point, Lupin and Tonks. Remus was a childhood friend of James and Sirius. He is an important part of Harry’s life in the third book but he stays out of Goblet of Fire. He comes back as part of books five and six but then only pops in and out of the story at certain moments in book seven to either deliver news or be sent away as a coward by Harry. He is regarded as a master duelist, yet he is hardly referenced at all in the Battle of Hogwarts except for whom he was fighting and that he died. The same goes for Tonks who has the same amount of action and is ultimately killed. Preference over character appearances aside, it’s the assumption of how both characters died that gets me. Both of them are seen sparsely during the battle and they are both killed off page. He get no real explanation other than the assumption that they were killed by their duelers. We get this passage about Fred dying and being placed in an alcove away from battle, but nothing about Lupin or Tonks. And what about Cho Chang and Lavendar Brown, did they survive? Accoding to the book, it's unclear, although Rowling states in an interview that Cho married a muggle. But what about Lavender? She was being attacked by Greyback and then Trewlaney smacked him in the head with a crystal ball. Did she survive? It seemed as if Rowling had too much going on and some to a footnote or explained afterwards. You see a lot of this over saturation of characters in television shows when cast members are continually added to an ensemble, creating a traffic jam of plotlines.
   
   Also, right after they escape the Ministry, there is a lot of story downtime during the search for Horcruxes in book seven. It especially drags after Ron leaves. Now, the one great thing about books over movies is the ability to take a story and shape and progress it without rushing towards the end. Look at Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. He builds and builds up action from the beginning to the end of book three. Then in book four, he stops it all to tell you another story from the past. It’s a kind of bait and switch tactic that works on paper but can drive someone mad if they’ve built up momentum in their reading. You hit that wall and your eyes nearly fly right off the page.
   
   Additionally, her ability to create a romantic development between characters seems to be a weak point. For the life of me I couldn’t resolve Harry’s affection for Ginny. It just seemed forced. Hermione and Ron’s affections are easy because they are rooted in conflict and that is a natural attraction but the payoff happens abruptly in the last chapters of book seven. I guess you can deduce that Ron’s compassion for the House Elves working in the kitchen is what spark the move for Hermione to eat his face off, but it didn’t read very well and it kind of broke my reading momentum. I hate having to go back and reread something once I've got a steady pace going.

For now, though, my head is not burning any longer. I have decided to take a small break in order to attend to other things that have been put on hold while I dive head first into the world of reading. I don’t think I will abandon it all together like I have in the past. I will probably make a more concerted effort to read something other than a magazine article. Just for a little while though, I need to enter a 12 step program and get myself clean. My wife is into book four of the Twilight series and even though she’s clipping along at a good pace, she seems perturbed at things that have happened in the fourth book. She has described in great detail the chemistry between these two characters and it really moves her. However, she is pissed. There is all this build up towards a payoff only to have the consummation of those desires be relegated to being alluded to and mentioned afterwards. It sounds as the author is great at setting the scene but can’t actually commit to writing about the icky stuff. I have my own thoughts on why, but I won’t get into a discussion about it here. I watched the movie and I feel as if I just watched a bad high school production of Into the Woods. My wife says the movie didn’t do the book justice. I think the producers and director went for marketing the film towards the OC and The Hills demographic and disregarded a lot of the text because they couldn’t keep the attention of the audience, otherwise.So, there you have it. I’m done. There is no more left to write. The Boy Who Read has grown up and is looking forward to the next good book. I’ve been given some suggestions and I will take them to heart. For now, the book is closed.

The Boy Who Read Part Two

Part Two

In part one I gave you a preface to my disdain of reading. Part Two specifically tackles a renewed interest thanks to a phenomenon in the popular fiction realm of literature.

In 1999, I worked as a Banquet Captain for a hotel. I worked with a variety of people ranging from high school seniors to senior citizens. It was at this time that I really took notice of the Harry Potter phenomenon. The book series was already a critical success and the third book, The Prisoner of Azkaban had been released with much fanfare. By this time in my life, I had already felt the grumpiness of adulthood settling into my soul. I was living on my own after graduating college. I was in the infancy of a new relationship after suffering an emotional setback in another, the previous August. I was working a job that found me gravitating towards the AARP group of coworkers instead of TRL generation and I generally hated people, especially teens, at this point.

My usual shift saw me working the mornings to mid afternoon. I would usually get to leave and hour or so after the changing of shifts. At that time teeny boppers came flooding in with their bags and belongings cluttering up the department office which had become my imaginary base of operations. Usually, I would get there, set up the morning meetings, making coffee, putting out beverages, and then I would relax behind the big wooden desk for a half hour filling in the USA Today crossword puzzle and reading the Life section. When the afternoon crew had come in, they overtook my serenity along with the available desk space in the office. Between the two, a link was found, Harry Potter. In the mornings as I read the paper, stories, reviews, and graphs charting millions of money made by the books bombarded me as I sifted through the entertainment section of the paper. By the afternoon, the conversations among the kids were about the newest book and even a few copies littered the area.

Within here lies the problem. Was I grumpy because I felt some sort of social detachment from everyone else that shared in this pop cultural saturation or because I inherently felt that this kids book was just that, silly children’s literature? It’s not that I was some kind of literary snob, far from it. It’s just that I couldn’t understand how a fantasy novel about a school for witches and wizards could capture an entire world’s attention. I pushed the thoughts of even becoming slightly intrigued out of my head and went back to my, “Get off my lawn” attitude.

Moving along to 2001. I had changed jobs and was now working with adults my age or older. I was further into my relationship which had progressed towards my engagement in 2003. Also, the first Harry Potter novel, The Philosopher’s Stone just debuted as a movie, directed by Christopher Columbus. My girlfriend had a job that kept her busy on the weekends leaving me with some free time to go to the theater. Having absolutely nothing better to do, I decided to take in a matinee performance of The Sorcerer’s Stone, as it was now called, and had mixed feelings about it.

Ok, I admit, I allowed myself to get caught up in the magic and grandeur of this medieval looking modern day world of wizards and dragons and giants. The acting was pretty good and I was delighted if not surprised at the number of established and well regarded cast members, which for the most part are all British, mind you. What I found a little hard to swallow was the circumstances by which the characters resolve their problems. It’s a sort of convention by which in a novel or story, with children as protagonists, the adults play the fool or refuse to believe the impending danger that is set to besiege them. The kids, feeling abandoned or rebuffed, decide to take on the conflict themselves because only they can complete the task leaving the adults to either still not believe them or feel bewilderment as to how they could have beaten such a foe being only children. I found it a little contrived that all the time the answers would magically appear and only Harry and his friends were able to see the truth and tackle it. In the real world, these dangers would have been near fatal for kids their age, magical or not.

Still, I praised the film for its delivery, not knowing that it had taken some liberties with the arrangement of action in the book as well as some geography of Hogwarts landmarks. However, I wasn’t about to give the series my full attention and relied on letting the films serve as an acceptable version of the novels. While I allowed myself to see the first movie in the theater, I waited until they came to DVD or even cable to watch them.

By 2007 I was married, had a child, and had seen each of the Harry Potter films numerous times on television. ABC Family’s continual airing of all the films over weekends detracts from my getting anything else done around the house. Even worse was when I had HBO for a year and The Order of the Phoenix aired every other day. It had become my favorite, to date, although I did hold a spot for Azkaban in my heart because of the cooler color palate used in the cinematography and the antique style of fade outs used in Harry’s Dementor attacks. My only sticking point with the film was that I had already established a connection with Richard Harris playing the role of Dumbledore. With his passing and the role being recast with Michael Gambon, I initially found it hard to accept him in my mind as the character but I think it plays a lot better as Dumbledore’s role increased with the later books. Not every wise old character can fight like Yoda, CGI or not.

It was at this time I made a conscious decision to try and read the books. Another reason became the ability to read them as pdf versions instead of reading the actual book. Finding some websites that offered them as free downloads; I pilfered the first few books and began reading in what spare time I had. Like The Da Vinci Code the year before, I breezed through the first book and actually enjoyed it. Once again, I already had the voices, looks, and environment added from the films so it was easy to read. When I would sit at night in my room and read, I tried to read at least 20 pages and that was pushing it as far as my attention span was concerned. Now, I could churn through a hundred pages in my lunch hour. Yes, the conversion from book to electronic copy left me with a few misspelled words and head scratching. Was that word supposed to be like that because of the writer or was it a bad translation? After finishing the first book, I allowed myself to realize that reading wasn’t so bad.

I was still a long way from ever picking up Moby Dick or War and Peace, though. Over the next year I read another book, The Zombie Survival Guide. This was actually a really good book and I highly suggest reading it. It's a sort of metaphor for post 9/11 survival tactics during a breakdown of society from zombie outbreaks. I am just about ready to get eyeballs deep into World War Z because the movie is about to be made. However, reading once more took a back seat to other distractions. Playstation 3 and Wii gaming along with creating designs for my CafePress store occupied my free time and I couldn’t push myself to read more books. That was until the release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince movie.

Now, remember in the last post how I mentioned that my love of films prompted me to read both this book and the last one before seeing The Half Blood Prince film? Really, you don’t? Well, click here…I’ll wait. Finished? OK, moving on. I made the decision to read the last two books because I felt I owed it to myself to at least see what I was missing from watching just the films, especially now that the stakes had been raised. I knew that this penultimate Potter book was going to be important to the overall series. It sort of jumps the shark…but in a good way. Until this book, primarily all of the action either happens at Hogwarts, or The Dursley's. In Half Blood Prince we see more of the "muggle" world and a few new locations. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but unless you live in a Utah religious compound, you probably know how it ends. Someone important dies. Someone betrays Hogwarts. This is why I felt the need to read the book first. Now, it is probably a fact that I will be disappointed in the movie. After all, I’ve seen all of the previous films before I read the books. The extra scenes and dialogue, that were left out of the films serve as a sort of director’s cut with deleted scenes for me. I even know how the last book ends, but I didn’t care. I wanted to read this book before the movie came out, even though it was already over two years old. I just didn't look forward to reading over 600 pages.

I read it in two days. Between lunches, and every spare moment I could muster, I read 652 pages in two days. I have never read that many pages in that little time. I immediately downloaded a faithfully converted copy of Deathly Hallows and read that in three. That’s how addictive it became to me. Now, my wife has eclipsed me by reading three of the four Twilight books in less time. She has probably read three books in her life and they were all pregnancy related while she carried our daughter. One of her piano students recommended reading Twilight and she is hooked. She keeps trying to sway me, but I still won’t touch that series. We even borrowed the film to watch it and I protested over watching it Sunday night. We had taken our daughter to the zoo and she was hell bent on wanting to watch it. I told her I would not stay up until 2:00 AM watching that film on a Sunday night.* She agreed to wait.

Reading popular fiction has become a sort of heroin to us this last week. We’ve certainly neglected our daughter’s needs. Even though we are in the same room with her, we have our noses buried in these books as she is left to fend for herself. Although, I will say the effect has rubbed off on her. She has brought me the same ten books every day, asking me to read them to her. Sometimes, we read them twice in one day. We’ve gotten to the point where we have become so engrossed in our own reading that we told her to read her books herself. She’s only two and the other day she sat on the couch, reciting almost word for word, Goodnight Moon. As she turned the pages, she recited the words on them. While it is probable that she has memorized the story, it was still a sight to behold. Perhaps she will be a reader early on and make her old man proud.





*By the way, I stayed up until 1:30 AM Monday morning to finish it, getting only four hours of sleep before work. Hey, a half hour is a half hour.

Next up Part Three.

The Boy Who Read

PART ONE

I hate to read. Let me rephrase that, I loathe reading. This is quite an odd statement from someone who had an insane desire to be a great writer, huh? That being said, I just finished books six and seven in the Harry Potter series in just under a week. Why? Because I love movies.

Now, before your head explodes trying to analyze that statement, let me take you back to the end of the 70s. It’s 1978 and I am only three years old. I cannot recall myself the events that took place in this recount, but I can relay what I have been told by family members. The tale itself has become the stuff of table talk during holiday gatherings among my family. By this time, my brother was at the age of ten and my sister was 13. By requirement, reading literary works was thrust upon us in certain classes by some teachers who were of age during the 60s. One of which made it a point to have his class read JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series as well as The Hobbit.

Now, it was at this time that Ralph Bakshi released an animated version of the first two books in the trilogy under the name of The Lord of the Rings. It was memorable because of its style of using live action battle scenes rotoscoped to produce an animated look. It was also remembered as being only half a film because there was no mention of a Part One anywhere indicating that the movie would be continued later. I remember it…yes I said I remember it…because it was the first movie I ever saw. Let me clarify previous statements made by me saying that Star Wars: A New Hope was the first movie I ever saw. I should say that it was the first movie I ever remembered seeing. Lord of the Rings came out a year before I saw Star Wars in the theater when it was rereleased a second time in 1979. I remembered seeing Lord of the Rings, but did not realize that it had occurred before Star Wars because I did not realize that I saw the later version. Make sense? No? Good, moving on.

Anyway, the reason why this is a story told around the dinner table at Thanksgiving and Christmas is because apparently I explained it to my parents. That’s right; a three year old explained the plot of Tolkien’s story to his parents. Like I said, this is what I have been told by my family. I don’t remember adding commentary to the film. I’ll take their word on it.

Recollections aside, this began a pattern in my upbringing. “Why read the book, when you can watch the film?” I thought. So much time could be saved by spending two hours in front of the television instead of reading hundreds of pages over the course of days. Well, as you all are aware, part of the argument is that filmmakers get it wrong nine times out of ten when it comes to adapting a literary piece of work. They also get it wrong when adapting a video game but that is a tale for another time. The other, more important, half of that argument is that reading taps into that one thing that drives the five senses, the mind. When you read something, your imagination has to fill in the gaps on the page. What does the character and his/her surrounds look like? How does their voice sound? What does the world smell like? Feel like? Taste like? These are things that the reader supplies on the journey from Chapter One to The End and it makes for a much more enriched experience. I never got that at a young age. I was all about, somebody else can do the work of filling up the canvas, I just want the end product. Regardless of what television characters like Jeffrey from Voyagers or Cap’n O.G. Readmore had tried to pound into my brain about going to my local library, I would rather watch the film than read the book. Imagine the scene in Back to School where Sally Kellerman tells Rodney Dangerfield about several books to which he replies, “great film.”

Still, I read for class but never for fun. It was hard to cheat and watch the film in those days because home video was still in its adolescence and not every classic that had been adapted into a film was available as a rental. Sometimes, I just faked it and it showed in my papers for school. I can probably count on one hand how many books I actually read for assignments and how many I bullshitted my way through explaining in a book report. There was a Hardy Boys book that I butchered, piecing together bits of plot and making up the rest. I was supposed to read Brave New World for an Eighth Grade English assignment and instead read parts of Stranger in a Strange Land because I just couldn’t get into the other book. I also figured that perhaps the teacher would know I was lying because she would have boned up on my original title in order to grade my paper. Switching at the last second might have thrown her off her guard. It was still on the reading list but she seemed very perturbed that I shifted gears and didn’t tell her. Of the books I actually read in their entirety, I can list Animal Farm, Johnny Tremain, Call of the Wild and White Fang as the only ones that stuck out.

Sometime in my mid teens I had a slight change of heart. It was around 1988 and Stephen King had come into my world. I had seen Firestarter, Christine, The Running Man, The Shining, Creepshow 1 and 2, Cujo, Children of the Corn, Cat’s Eye, Maximum Overdrive, and Stand By Me by this time and thought…maybe I should try reading one of his books. That book was The Gunslinger. The first part of the Dark Tower series. It had been released six years earlier in print, but this was the first time I had ever seen it when it in paperback. I snatched up a copy and spent my evenings just prior to falling asleep going through this book with as much fervor as I had watching Star Wars growing up. I was sucked into the world King created without even realizing that it was interwoven with all his other stories. In essence, The Dark Tower was the source from which all his material sprang forth into the ‘real world’ if you could it that. I was like a child who had grown up inside a house, content in my surroundings, not realizing that an even bigger space waited on the other side of the door. I soon found myself reading the second and third book as well as Christine, It, The Body, The Running Man, and The Tommyknockers. Then I branched out into other popular fiction writers like Dean R. Koontz and read Phantoms and Watchers.

In high school I hit that same wall I hit before; reading classics for class was boring. The Red Badge of Courage, the Last of the Mohicans, and other required reading was given a cursory glance instead of my full attention causing me to try and pass tests and write papers with minimal knowledge of the subject. It seemed as though I was only interested in 80s and 90s popular fiction, but not classics. After high school, that suffered as I only picked up a few books from which I had already seen the film like Jurassic Park and The Silence of the Lambs. I had even picked up the fourth Dark Tower novel, Wizard and Glass, but to date, have not finished it. Though, I have it and Wolves of the Calla in audio format and have heard most of book four. Required reading in college had put an overall end to my leisurely reading and I had not read another book until 2006.

For someone who prides himself on being a historian on pop culture, full of useless trivia and quotes from film and television, I found myself not jumping on the bandwagon of fads at their onset. Like I had mentioned, The Silence of the Lambs and Jurassic Park were bestsellers when they were released but I didn’t bother to pick them up until years after I had watched the film versions, using them as a primer for envisioning the voices of the characters and their surroundings making for a much quicker read. That was the pseudo basis for my reintroduction to the printed word in 2006 when I began to read The Da Vinci Code. Once again, we are talking popular fiction, not classics. But this time around, I read the book before I saw the movie. Still, I had cheated a little because I could see and hear in my mind the voices and likenesses of Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, and Alfred Molina. I’d say I came a long way in terms of accepting books again into my life. The next year, I found myself revisiting a phenomenon that had began 10 years prior of which I swore I would not belittle myself to reading. And that my dear readers is where Part Two picks up and the aforementioned puzzling statement about reading books because of a love of film will make more sense. Stay tuned.

The Nemesis

Superman and Lex Luthor. Optimus Prime and Megatron. Han Solo and Boba Fett. The Nemesis is a literary technique to create drama and conflict in the world of the Hero. He is usually a polar opposite to the Hero, yet at one time they could have possibly been friends. At some point during their friendship an event occurred that split the two onto separate paths, pitting them against each other in a constant struggle over the balance of power between good and evil. Often, in a series of stories, say a graphic novel, the Hero and the Nemesis are forced to work together against a common foe but as soon as the status quo has returned to normal they are once again on opposite sides of the fight.

Just because comic books are ultimately aimed at kids doesn't mean they are not literature. Comic books or graphic novels are Jungian and Freudian in nature and play on the same character archetypes that are found in mythology and classical literature. Yet, art always imitates life and the Nemesis can be found in everyday life. You may have a Nemesis in your school, on the field, or in your place of work. They are usually someone in direct contrast from your own personality and you can never resolve your issues with them for as much as you are different, you are as alike as two magnets that constantly repel each other.

Growing up, I had a Nemesis through 12 years of school. He lived nearby and while I was chunky with dark hair and glasses, he was skinny and blonde. Where he was a bully and a troublemaker, I was the typical nerd and nice guy. Yet, there were times when for some unknown reason we were friendly towards each other only to turn around and find the proverbial knife in my back. He liked to kick, my Nemesis did. He was known to come to school dressed in work boots on days he intended to cause turmoil. I remember various occasions on which he and another kid, his henchman decided to ambush me at the playground in an attempt to beat me up. In true good vs.. evil fashion, the henchman bumbled his way through the process and at one point attempted to rush me only to have me move at the last moment letting him run headlong into a fire hydrant. I dodged and used my surroundings to gain the upper hand and they left unsatisfied but with the thought that this was not over.

Childhood beatings on the playground seemed scarier than they really were. A lot of it was psychological. If someone can force you to be compliant out of fear, there is never a need to back it up with force. But, if the Nemesis finds that fear is no longer a weapon they must resort to violence and that is where you must hold your ground. They always say that the only way to disarm a bully is to stand up to them. This only works if they can't win in a fight. To beat a bully you have to remove the element of intimidation. You have to show them that you aren't afraid of them and can be their equal. Without that leverage they can't enforce their will over you. Another example would be the moment I beat my Nemesis on his own level. During gym class one day we split up into teams to play a combination of football, hockey, and basketball that required you to get control of a nerf football during a tip off, take only two steps before passing or shooting and place the ball past a goalie for a goal. I was the goalie against my Nemesis' more physical role. He attempted to cherry pick me waiting by my end of the court. His team got control of the ball and launched to him thinking he could score easily on me. What he didn't realize was that I was bigger and took the opportunity to body check him out of the way before the ball got to him. Knocking him to the ground I took his physical weapon away from him. It was like Rocky making Ivan Drago bleed. "He's not a machine." From then on his attempts to physically attacked me consisted of him trying to kick me while vying for control of the ball. Something that he never could get over me. I didn't care whether he kicked, clawed, or bit. I was not letting him have the advantage. At that moment, the Nemesis was defeated and disappeared for the remaining time in high school.

After I graduated and moved onto a new environment, the concept moved with me and my Nemesis became a floor mate in my dorm at college. Again, we were polar opposites. We had different views on women and how to pick them up. I was single and made it a point to be a gentleman. He had a girlfriend back home and made it a point to turn his dorm room into a revolving door bachelor pad, hooking up with as many girls as possible while his girlfriend wait patiently back home for his faithful return.

In essence the rules about the nature of the Nemesis had changed. He was no longer a poster boy for the master race. No, this was not Draco Malfoy by any means. This was the dawn of the new pretty boy. Pre-Metro sexual man wearing Eddie Bauer and sporting perfectly gelled hair with no brains whatsoever. Most girls he picked up were ones that he sought out in his classes to 'tutor' him. That's how he sucked in one of the girls who time and time again would come back to him when he called her. She realized what he was and that he would never leave his girlfriend. She was simply a friend with benefits and he was reaping all of them. She would constantly complain about this vicious cycle but would continue to be used by him.

Now there were times that he and I got along. Other times I was completely at odds at how he operated. I began to wonder if I truly hated him or the fact that I couldn't be like him. He did have one specific trait that completely annoyed me and I find that the same trait exists in a lot of guys with the same type of personality. In fact I just noticed it while watching a reality show a few weeks back. Why is it that there is a need for a guy to hold a baseball bat when there is no need to hold a baseball bat? I mean you are in a conversation with someone in a non sports related setting and there is this guy sitting there clutching a baseball bat over his head for no reason. Is it Freudian, like owning a sports car is a sign that you are compensating for some shortcoming?

Where was I? Oh yes. This conflict of interest between me and my new Nemesis was short lived as I engaged in a relationship the next year and had no need to worry about his behavior. Sorry, but I guess I was indeed just mad because he was successful with women and I wasn't and now that was a non issue. With this issue removed from our path we never felt the need to argue or be at odds. The Nemesis was now a dormant being waiting for the next stage of my journey which took place a couple of years later.

I had graduated and become single again in the next two years. I began working in a job where I was a sort of outsider. Not quite young enough to blend in with the younger high school and college age guys yet not old enough to relate to the older employees in terms of being disenchanted with the organization. Soon, the Nemesis awoke and took the form of the hot shot leader of the guys who had worked there for years. This time I had upset the balance of their environment. I was hired off the street as a bartender but he had worked his way up from bus boy, paying his dues. Perhaps I was a threat to him because of my status. Perhaps he was just pissed that I wouldn't play along with his crap. I was there to work. Granted, he did his fair share but I kept up with him. Again, he did not fit the previous molds of the Nemesis. He had a more 'Black Knight' but I could tell he came from a spoiled life. Yes, he worked for things and was able to make his own way but you could feel that he was used to getting what he wanted in his upbringing, not just what he needed.

We had our battles and again, I was not on the more popular side. The first conflict springs to mind. We had been working late one night when everyone was kind of sitting around the office and not getting much done. In order for us to leave a set of tasks had to be completed. Sometimes the more menial the task the less enthusiasm to get it done. This task was vacuuming a meeting room. It was considered a job to be performed by a girl and at this moment, the female employees were showing their feminist sides and refused to do the task. Not wanting to get into a pissing match I just grabbed a vacuum and went to work. When I got back I tossed the vacuum into its cubby and for some reason, the Nemesis showed himself making comments to my lack of working and I went into attack mode. He was sitting on a stoop and I walked over and told him to shut his mouth. He asked if I was threatening him and I simply yet sternly said "No. I'm just telling you that regardless of what you may think about me, I don't ever want you to hear say I don't work. " For what seemed like minutes passed as he stood up to me nose to nose. I then said that the room was swept and we could go home. The battle lines had been drawn.

From then on it became a test of wills. He was too hot headed to give up and I was too stupid and cranky to give in to his badgering. Being older gave me a sort of ambivalence to his physical advantages over me and I went toe to toe whenever he challenged my ability to keep up with him. Eventually, he left and went to work somewhere else leaving me in the position to be the leader. I was promoted and was given a certain amount of respect by some of the other employees. With the Nemesis gone, I felt a sort of relief that allowed me to concentrate on my work and not worry about resistance. Soon, the Nemesis would return and for once I was ready.

He returned shortly before the start of a new year and while at a Christmas party he felt the need to try and rattle my cage. He said out loud at our table that I must be pretty pissed that he was returning since he would be reinstated at the position he left. Without missing a beat I said, Why worry? I didn't get your job. I surpassed it." He kind of just sat there blinking repeatedly not prepared for my answer. It was a moment summed up in one phrase. Pure ownage. From then until I left that job, I never once had to worry about him being a threat. We became civil towards each other and worked together without incident.

Since then I've had no conflicts with a Nemesis. It appears that he/she is sleeping in the abyss awaiting for the next chance to arise. In all instances I proved that by taking away the one weapon the Nemesis had over me I was able to send them away and coexist peacefully in that environment. Now, that is not to say that the Nemesis is gone for good. I'm sure that one day I will move onto a new stage in life that will present an opportunity for conflict. Perhaps when my child is old enough to attend school or be involved with activities I will find the Nemesis hiding in one of their classmates' parents. The soccer field or a PTA meeting may provide recognition and start the battle all anew. What I do know is that I've learned how to deal with the Nemesis and can strategically find a method to send them away. Frankly, I'm getting too old to fight with anyone. They better just be prepared to deal with the cranky instead of the valiant. The wait is on.