A Commercial and an Infomercial

Yesterday, I helped with a commercial, so I’m going to be an extra. 

I mention this, because in our culture, being on tv, even briefly, is still something people are willing to debase themselves to do. American Idol’s first few episodes are full of people willing to destroy their lives belting out off-key versions of Mariah Carey. “I was on tv! Simon Cowell hissed at me. Now I can die knowing I mattered in this cruel cruel world.”  

At the same time as our commercial, I helped out on a Spanish Infomerical at the same car dealership. 

I had one job, and at first, I kind of messed it up. I was supposed to drive used cars up to the presenters who would comment on the vehicle. Being a relic from another era, I didn’t know how these new-fangled vehicles work. To let you know who you’re dealing with, I have to point out that I’m not sure I even know how my phone works, and it is still difficult for me to answer it when it’s ringing. So, as a transplant from a time where vehicles were started with brass and wood clockwork machines, I now live in a Jetson’s future where there are no car keys. I had to ask how that worked, “How do I start this here contraption?” My Amish ignorance irritated the other Infomercial car drivers, who considered me an annoying luddite. 

I don’t speak a word of Spanish, so I drove up to the commentators, paused briefly, and then promptly drove off again. The director raised his hands in the air and made some sounds like the Sand Person who attacks Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. I sheepishly backed the car up, trying to concentrate and not run over the presenters, and they had to do the take again. 

Hating myself, I raced around the dealership, found the next vehicle, and did the process again, but this time hit my marks perfectly. I got the hang of it. Each time, the beautiful girl opened up the car door and there I am smiling for the entire Hispanic community of DFW to see. I politely smiled and subtly nodded in seeming comprehension at what they were saying, and drove off when the director pointed. Each of these times, wondering if the intended audience would consider me a “White Mexican”, like Guillermo Del Toro. This was done over and over.

The Lonely Existentialist Crisis of Super Mario.

Last week, German researchers announced a self-aware Super Mario that made decisions in the game by emotional reasoning. If Mario felt hungry, then he would try to get coins, and Mario could explore his world based on what he wanted to do. I find the idea of this experiment unspeakably cruel. Mario wakes up over and over, sort of like the movie ‘Memento’, and in his world, he jumps on mushrooms and tries to rescue Princess Peach from Koopa. Now imagine telling Mario he isn’t real, neither are his pals and enemies, but just constructions in a computer.

“No! It’s-a-me! Mario! It’s-a-me.”

This is inducing an existentialist crisis in the candy-colored world of Super Mario Brothers. Luigi would suffer a worse fate, as he isn’t even the main character and would have to deal with that.

I don’t like to really think about this, but some theorists have put forth the idea that we, you and I, are in a computer construction. It kind of makes sense. Just like pixels, if you go small enough down on a quantum level, reality itself breaks down as there is nothing for reality to be anymore. The 13.8 billion years universe might really only be a few minutes of time to whoever (or whatever) is playing the game. I suspect they let it run for a few minutes, while they’re stepping away, making a snack. Ask yourself what’s more absurd, the motivations of Donkey Kong, or the motivations of ISIS.

In such a simulation, the observable universe would be like the game Asteroids, in that if you travelled long enough in a straight line, trillions of years later you would wind up in the same spot, or if you like, on the other side of the screen again. If we start seeing repeating star patterns then we would really have to take this idea seriously.

But even if we are in a big Super Mario Brothers game, that doesn’t mean our own lives have to be meaningless. Even if the fabric of reality ripped open and two giant Beavis and Butthead types revealed themselves saying, “Huh huh huh. It’s fun to watch you fight. Huh huh huh.”

“We’re playing a game! Fire! Fire!”

We can still hold our heads high with dignity if we choose to, even in such absurdity.

Children Holding Glass Tablets.

Last night, I was driving slowly through a parking lot, waiting for pedestrians to cross. A child was holding the hand of a parent, and in the darkness I could see that they had a glowing screen under their other arm. Perhaps that’s just the same as carrying a storybook. Perhaps not.

When I was younger, I couldn’t wait for the future to be here. Now that I’m here, I’m discontented at how artificial and simulated everything is. Staring at glass screens every waking moment wasn’t my intention. I long for the earthy rootedness of my childhood, which was one of blazing trails with my bike in empty undeveloped fields. Instead of an intimate knowledge of cyberspace and knowledge of what click-bait ads to avoid, I had firsthand knowledge of the landscape around my neighborhood. I knew where to find crawdads, dirt mounds from constructions projects to ride my bike on, and which neighbor’s yards I could trespass.

Which isn’t to say that my childhood was entirely Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. There was a ton of simulation in front of the television. But if it wasn’t Star Trek, Night Gallery, The Twilight Zone, or monster movies on an UHF station, I don’t recall being that interested. My father was horrified and embarrassed at my lack of interest in sports, or anything else a normal kid was into, and couldn’t understand why I wanted to read so much. I was checked out on a kind of vicarious experience.

I wonder what kind of person I would have evolved into with all the answers given, but without any reflection. I see myself turning into a relic from another era as I experience the present, and I’m no longer excited, but disturbed.

Nightbreed

"Nightbreedposter". Via Wikipedia.

I just saw that next month, they’re finally releasing the restored ‘Nightbreed’ to Blu-Ray. 

I always thought that Nightbreed was the best of Clive Barker’s movies, and even though I’m aware that the ‘suits’ made changes to the theatrical release, and butchered it in editing, I still think it’s a cool creature feature, where the monsters get to be the good guys. Now with the discovery of the missing film footage, we’re going to get the real Nightbreed that Clive Barker wanted. 

I hate to go all full-on horror movie hipster, but I think people who never watched Nightbreed the first time, or rolled their collective eyes at it as being beneath them, should be BANNED from ever getting the chance to watch it. Considering that Nightbreed was something of a flop, that would mean most of you.

Dracula

We’re getting near Halloween, which always reminds me of the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes. I asked my Romanian friend what modern Romanians think of Dracula, and he sounded almost wistfully nostalgic. “He was very tough and protected the country.”

I’m always searching for kooky things to watch on tv, and whenever there’s a show about vampires, the producers of these shows always find someone that claims to be the reincarnation of Vlad Dracula Tepes. Turns out Dracula is alive and well, and in multiple bodies. The form he seems to like the most is “gothic” people in Victorian frocks and top hats.  I don’t know why anyone would want to be Dracula, there doesn’t seem much romantic about him, other than his ferocity.

There is another Eastern European noble, of Transylvanian and Hungarian heritage, who might not have killed as many people as Dracula, but was stone-cold evil, and maybe one of the worst women to ever live. Hungary’s Countess Elizabeth Báthory gets my vote as the closest thing to a “real” vampire the world has ever seen. Through her own records, it is believed she killed well over six hundred girls and bathed in their blood. Before killing them, she did things that are best not discussed. I believe that the similar charges against France’s Gilles De Rais, an ally of Joan of Arc, were all crap. He wasn’t really an evil satanic devil worshipper and child killer, those were confessions under torture. When Countess Báthory was arrested, she was unrepentant. * She felt entitled, in a sort of psychopathic Caligula way, to do whatever she wanted.

*Regarding her behavior on arrest.The source of this is from my own memory of a book I can't name that I read when I was in fourth grade. So don't quote me!

Lemongrab

"Adventure Time cast". Via Wikipedia
Of all the villains in Cartoon Network’s brilliant Adventure Time, Lemongrab might be my favorite. His origin story is very similar to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but where we might feel some sympathy toward Frankenstein’s monster, Lemongrab is so wretchedly awful, that we want only the worst for him. 

Princess Bubblegum, who eschews the common-place magic of the land of Ooo, and instead navigates her world through science, creates sentient candy people in her lab. One of her failed experiments is Lemongrab. Lemongrab is somehow incomplete and different; he has a kind of psychopathy characterized by extreme selfishness and violence, and has to be banished from the realm. In his isolation and alienation, he becomes so despondent, and even weirder, that PB creates a second cloned Lemongrab as a companion. This agrees with Lemongrab’s narcissism. Then things get very awful indeed.

The two Lemongrabs start taking the lifetime of candy that PB has left them and using the formulas of her candy science, they create more lemon people. But they’re not very good at it. The Lemon people that they create are twitching and malformed things, actually scary and uncanny in a Jacob’s Ladder sort of way. Lemongrab's kingdom soon runs out of food. Every one is starving except the original Lemongrab has become morbidly obese with a penchant for cannibalism, and has apparently taken a bite out of the head of the cloned Lemongrab, who also fears him. The kingdom has become a totalitarian prison state, full of starving, unhappy lemon people. As a satire, he is more Kim Jong Un than Ubu Roi.

It is at this point one has to be reminded that this is ostensibly a children’s program.

Lizards at the park

I'm something of a shutterbug, and each weekend, I like to wake up early, go to the nearby Nature Preserve, and take pictures.

The sidewalks at the preserve are the stomping grounds of yuppie joggers and their dogs. I'm self-aware enough to know that I don't belong among them. I wear rumpled khaki cargo shorts that I stuff with spare camera lens. Most everyone else wears expensive workout clothes. I just assume I'm a strange sight, a bespectacled middle aged guy who suddenly appears out of the bushes with a camera. I realize there is something unseemly about that.

I do get the occasional 'good morning' from people. Just today, a woman offered to help me get across a creek. I declined, being the tough guy that I am, and slipped my foot off of a rock and into the water.

Today, I was heading back to where I thought the entrance was --I'm always spending more time there than I intend to, as I can never find the entrance, and I have to endure a brief Blair Witch Project lost in the woods panic-- and I saw a leaf that was turning red. I stopped on the concrete path to fiddle with my camera, and then I saw a snake dart about in the leaves.

I have a irrational, primordial fear of snakes, but this one looked kind of "cute", if a snake can look cute. I tried to get a photo, but I didn't want to reach into the leaves. I was squatting down in my khaki shorts trying to get the best angle. A group of yuppie exercisers were walking my way. A whole family of them.

I said in my best 'Golly Gee! Don't that just beat all' voice, "There's a snake in there." Later while recounting this sad tale, my wife asked, "Did you actually say that in that tone of voice?"

No reaction from the walkers, and they did their best to avoid eye contact with me.

The exercisers walked away holding their water bottles, not even talking to each other. I thought to myself, "Yeah, keep on walking. Better not forget that water bottle. It can sometimes get to 88 degrees this time of the morning, and you're walking so briskly, it could get Lawrence of Arabia on your ass in no time. You might just die without a sip of water after thirty minutes of power walking. I kind of hope you do."

I then imagined them getting home, peeling off their special exercise clothes, calling dibs on the shower. You know, we really worked out hard today. Walking around at a pace above normal. Let's all go get Italian Gelato.

Yay! I'm gonna smear it all over my face and then the table. But Daddy, what was that man doing at the park today?

I don't know. He was probably homeless and lived in the forest. What do we do when we see a homeless person?

Call the police!

That-a-boy Timmy!

My name is Susan.

Whatever.