Hollywood Hates My Childhood Part 2: The '1' Joke take 1

So, for a while now, I actually thought about researching this particular topic in depth. Maybe I will one day. Truth be told though, I can't remember the first time I saw it, but I want to say it was in the movie "The Mask" starring Jim Carey. There was a villain character, clearly aimed at kids with his goofball antics, getting peed on by a dog for laughs. But I wasn't laughing. Oh sure, it was the next 'logical' step down from the burps and gass passing that had started to crop up, but I have never cared for those either. Now, I know that the first thing a person might think if they are reading this, is that I'm a prude and not with the times are so other stupid, snarky thought. Let me give you a little insight into me briefly.

I grew up watching the "Disney Afternoon," so a chunk of my childhood was made up of the likes of Ducktales, Rescue Rangers, and Talespin. I think occasionally on those shows, either Dale or Baloo would belch noisely, but that was the worst of it. Furthermore, after they burped, one of the other characters would usually chastize them for their lack of decor. So, it wasn't really acceptable to even belch without a quick "excuse me." Now, again, before you might think you're oh so clever variation on the "ha ha you're old," garbage, ask yourself this. How does it help a scene in a kids show or a show that is based a kids show to depict something impolite as a source for laughs? What damage does it do to the people watching it? I think it is horrible for a person to think that the best they can do for laughs is a joke about bodily functions. You should expect more from both show, and from yourself.

To that end, I think the current crop of writers in Hollywood think very little of the average movie goer. Not only that, but when a possible franchise opportunity in the form of a beloved children's show comes across their desk, they think that they have to reach into the same bag of tricks. And it is a very old bag.

Without having seen the movie, I knew that the Smurfs based film would have a few jokes about farting and burping, and this was based on the fact that the movie was coming out. Same with the Inspector Gadget movie, Richie Rich, and others. Why does my childhood need to be ruined by the inclusion of some insipid gag that wasn’t funny the first time, let alone the hundredth or so time it was told? It’s like Hollywood had a memory problem and refuses to believe the public when they say that they are tired of garbage like that. There response seems to be, “No, you are stupid masses, we know that you like this stuff, besides, I think that this show is stupid, so I will kill off franchise potential by making the movie unwatchable.”
Sorry to sound so rant like. I will do better tomorrow. I’m trying to get a good quota of words in, but all I can think about is how tired I am from my monthly blood test followed up by an 8 hour shift. A person doesn’t become a writer simply by saying “I feel too tired to do this tonight.” I would like to do this line of thought a better bit of justice, and I think I could hit upon what I would like to say with a bit more rest and a bit more thought. I will revisit the topic of the gross jokes in kid franchises later.
For now, maybe I should just mention the fact that I am tired of my retail job taking so much from me, both mentally as well as physically. I want to crank out a creative bit of writing soon, but even the shortest shift at work leaves me feeling so drained and so tired that I just want to veg-out and do nothing. I don’t know what I can do to combat this. I keep coming up to this problem.
I think it is showing something though that I’m trying to plow through, even if it isn’t something as profound as I would like. I have to fight for every inch of ground that I gain in the war against my own apathy. It would be so easy just to give up, and not write anything more tonight. I want to quit, but I’ve done that enough already.

Random Movie Thoughts: On Watching Silly Movies

Now, I don’t have what you might call, “guilty pleasure” type of movies. I either like a movie, or I don’t, it’s as simple as that. While I would be the first to admit to you that I have a fair collection of a movies that are just fluff, cinematic candy with no real greatness about them. However, they are fun, and I will argue you to death if you try to tell me why a show that I like is terrible. I know a fair amount of people in my life who act as if indulging in a goofy movie, or even a fun bad one, is such a waste of time that it affronts their senses to think that a person could derive any pleasure from it. Now before I proceed, let me define what I mean by a bad or silly movie.
I don’t mean by fun bad something that has excessive amounts of gore or nudity and sex. That’s just garbage to me. No, what I mean by fun bad is a movie that is Mystery Science Theater 3000 level of bad, or nearly so. A movie that drifts into that “fun bad” territory might have Nick Cage in it, but not always. We’re talking everything from Flash Gordon to Battlefield Earth. These “fun bad” movies, usually don’t lack for moments that just make you wonder what was going through the actors, the producers, the directors, to even the caterers—minds when the movie was in production. Did they know that they had a real dud on their hands? I’d be willing to be that some of them did.
Then there are those silly movies. Not that they are bad necessarily, but that they are the type of movies whose premise alone seems to earn people’s scorn. For example, one of my favorite set of movies is the Tron films. Are they great films? Likely they will only be appreciated by fanboys like myself, but that doesn’t make them terrible. Currently I have Krull playing in the background as I watch this. Was it a fantastic film? Not really. Certainly fun, but not fantastic. Both Tron and Krull were just fluff. Simple, fun movies out there to make you have a good time. They were silly, but not because they were awful or anything like that. It’s just that they had parts in them that either made no sense.
Krull for example, is fun and silly movie. Why do I call it silly? Well, despite the fact that it has some truly great character design in the villains, the dude playing the main hero has a few over-acting moments (such as not being able to cry convincingly.) Furthermore, the “powerful weapon of the true hero” that the hero acquires at the beginning of the film, rarely gets used. However, there are some truly well written moments smattered throughout, and it has a couple of memorable supporting actors who somehow make their smaller roles have more depth than that of the main star. It’s weird like that, but that’s part of the fun to me.
Then there’s the matter of Tron and its sequel, Tron: Legacy. I know people who act like I’m somehow an inferior person simply because I like this film. However, the people who act uppity about the film are so busy bashing it for the premise of a man getting sucked into a computer, that they keep themselves from just taking a break and enjoying the films for a bit of silly, fun entertainment. It’s as if the need to point out how brilliant they are to point out how absurd the premise is dominates their response to the movie. What gives?
Why do people act as if movies such as Krull and Tron are not to be taken at more than face value of what they (the movies) apparently are claiming to be? Yet, I know people who act like Tasmanian devils when it comes to a film like Tron. It’s as if they can’t help but snap, snarl, and gripe about how “Terrible they thought the movie was” or “What a colossal waste of their time” that the show was. I feel like they’ve forgotten how to just sit back and enjoy themselves. Like they purposely go into a film that is of the “Just for fun” variety, so they can be the first to tell you how awful and time wasting it was. That one really gets me, the wasting time one.
You’d think that they were on their way to perform major surgery or negotiate a peace treaty in the Middle East with how they act after having seen a “just for fun” movie. Not that I’m trying to offend people here, just that they need to have a little perspective. I know people who are actually worse net-junkies then me (heard to believe, I know) who complain so loudly about how their time was wasted if they see something that feel wasn’t “important enough” that it takes everything in me to not roll my eyes and pop out a sarcastic remark. I mean really, if you don’t realize that simply sitting there, watching a film is about as passive as it gets, it’s time to take a hard look at yourself.
Yes, movies can be a fantastic medium. It can transport us to far off worlds, fantastical alternate realities, and periods from the past. Movies can also teach us about ourselves, reaffirm our beliefs, or outright attack them (more on that in another post). However, when we watch them, we are just sitting there, so stop pretending like it is something more than that. World hunger won’t be solved by you watching a documentary on it. Your “awareness” of a problem doesn’t make it go away, nor does watching a movie about characters who meaningfully address major issues somehow imbue you with their resolve and strength.
Sorry if I seem to ramble a bit here. It just saddens and frustrates me when people act superior or scoff at my tastes in movies if I want to watch something that just drifts towards the fun side of things.

How to Ruin a House (for only a pocketful of change)

So, this happened shortly after we moved. I must have only been seven or eight at the time, because of several factors. First and foremost, I had only one younger sibling at that time, my baby sister. Right now I have three younger siblings, all of whom are teenage or older. Now, I say this not as a “oh it happened so long ago,” garbage. I hate that kind of talk. Anyway, I think that I say it more in the hopes that it will somehow justify what happened.
So, as I said, I was a bit young, my older brother is only four years older, so at the time he was also a kid by any sense of the word. As I have already mentioned, my sister was a baby at the time. Now, as you might be able to imagine, for my mom, this meant hauling all three of us around with her whenever she had errands to run. As was typical, there was a bit of bribery involved in getting us to be on our best behavior. Sometimes this meant a balloon if we were going near a party shop, a pastry if we were by a bakery, and so on and so forth. To compound the hassle that toting the three of us around must have been, we had just moved to a new house, were getting use to a new area, and sometimes would get a little lost. Not that I know for sure this was a factor, but just that it is a likely guess as to why it was easier for my older brother and I to got more than the usual allotment of bribes to behave.
Now, anyone who tells you that getting kids a couple of candy bars should help keep them settled while grocery shopping either doesn’t have kids or doesn’t have a good grasp on reality. I know for a fact that it took not only a pack of gum or a candy bar, but a pizza and some pop as well. Sometimes though, we didn’t need any of that stuff. On rare occasions, both my brother and I would be satisfied with the simple 50 cent toys from one of those crummy machines that are placed on the opposite side of the checkout specifically made to grab lose change from kids. On one particular day, my mom got my brother and I a pair of “sticky slap hands,” and for a pocketful of change, my brother and I caused a few hundred dollars worth of damage to my parents brand new home.
Like I said, we got these things called “Sticky Slap Hands.” Basically they were these jelly, gummy type hands with a bit of arm that had a sticky film on them so you could smack them on to stuff and pick it up, or have the little hand and arm just hang from a wall. Well, when my brother and I got home, we spent the first hour or so just trying to grab stuff with the little hands, after we had exhausted those options, one of us came up with the bright idea to throw the things against the walls. Now, at this point some of the stickiness had worn off. After all, these were cheap little toys from a turn-style machine, and they weren’t really made to last all that long. So, when we threw them at the walls, the little hands appeared to be climbing down the wall. Great stuff, I think that it sent us into laughing fits the first few times we did it because of how goofy these little arms with hands looked as they climbed down.
An hour or so after this, an unfortunate side effect of those little arms was discovered. The sticky film that gave the toys their name left behind an oily residue wherever they were thrown. So that evening when my dad got home from work, he found that throughout the brand new house were these greasy, oily spots that would not come out with soap and water. I’m pretty sure that my mom was nearly on the verge of tears over wondering how it could have happened. My brother and I were sent to our rooms briefly, but ultimately my parents realized there wasn’t really any way that we could have known what those stupid little play hands would do.
So, the following weekend, my parents went out to the nearest home improvement store and had a can of paint prepared to blot out the spots that we had made. If I recall correctly, it took a few cans of paint before my parents realized that such was the power of those little sticky hands, that the grease bled through single coats. So, they basically had to have entire sections of the new house repainted just to undo the damage that those little toys did. Not exactly my finest and best childhood memory.

Time to Stretch

I don't just mean physically, although I could use a good deal more of that. Yeesh, have you seen my midsection lately? No? Good, it would terrify you, it does me. In any case, that's not the point of this particular post.
What I really need to stretch are those writing muscles. Not just the ones that pertain to the children's novels that I'm writing. Okay, have been writing. For several years in fact. Mainly I keep feeling like I'm just piddling away my God given talents at the current retail job that I work. I'm not trying to boast here, but really want to give God the credit. I've gotten compliments on my writing over the years. I was usually singled out in my writing classes as having a distinct, natural voice, and a talent for making what people read interesting to them. It's hard to think that all that was several years ago. No, this isn't an age thing, I can, and have been writing a several (dozen) page response to the notions that we have concerning aging and getting old and the wisdom that it supposedly brings. In any case, this post is about writing. More specifically the fight to get back into the habit.

Through the countless hours of web research (i.e. web surfing) I've read article after article that talks about how the best writers, the published ones, don't just languish. They don't sit idly by waiting for a big break, they go beating down the door to get one themselves. Yes, this is one of those kind of posts. It's not like me or my wife are strangers to having to do things the hard way. In fact, from being in debt to having to deal with my own catastrophic health issues a couple of years ago, we've been through a lot. She's fantastic for that. But here I am, after years of struggling through health issues and heartache, and I feel like I am starting at square one, whereas other people that I know are where I wish I was. It isn't really a jealousy thing, it's more of a weariness thing. I don't begrudge them, I guess I'm just tired of the long, hard road. But, if this is the life that God has made for me, then so be it. I will keep trying to do what it is that I feel that I am called to do. Be a writer.

However, because I am so weary, I've allowed myself to get out of shape in the writing department. I am surprised to admit this, but even though I love writing, it had started to become a chore not too long ago. I think that is why I've allowed myself to get so "out of shape" with it. The creative structure that I once prided myself on has atrophied. I sit here with lanky mental muscle after after nearly two years of only passing use. Sure, I write a character description here or there, maybe a snippet of something there, but it isn't the same as actually doing the stuff that progresses me towards a goal. Body builders probably have a goal in mind when they exercise, athletes who run marathons make it there goal to get the best time possible. So why haven't I been doing the heavy lifting? I guess that it is a bit of nervousness and anxiety. I think that there is too large a part of me that has allowed my heart to be affected by my current retail job. I mean, sure, millions of people out there just don't ever get the life they want or expect, so why shouldn't I expect more than the rest? I guess it's because it would be the same as having the world's most awesome exercise equipment, and just letting it sit there. I can't let this happen anymore. I know that some people talk about how they don't want to get to their 40's or 50's and wonder what happened. they can't conceive how they got to that age without having done more with their life. Well, I can't do that to myself, to my wife, or to these gifts that I've been given. I can't let another day, let another hour pass without trying harder to stretch out these writing muscles and get myself back in to shape writing wise.

Now, to be clear, I don't expect to be perfect here. I know that there are plenty of times in the past where I've "shown my resolve" and "really wanted to buckle" down, so I don't' want to place unrealistic expectations for an immediate, earth shattering change. Nor do I really want to let this new found enthusiasm simply go to waste.



I have to push myself, have to do the hard fight again.

And that's pretty daunting.