Leaves are Brown

During my incessant webflipping I realized that all the truly interesting sites I go to are blogs, or at least journals or records of some kind, and that none of them are being updated with any regularity or, indeed, have been updated any time of late. I would chastise them for it openly, save for the fact that I realized I am hardly any better. However, to both set and example and in order to avoid becoming that which I despise, there are steps that can be taken.

And, seeing as how this week marks my return to the old alma mater, I've decided to take back up my abandoned creed of scrutinizing my intellectual fare of choice, to the end that it might stimulate me into higher cerebral functioning and success in matters of the mind.

Thusly... a film review.

...

The Brothers Grimm

Gather, my darlings, and harken unto me. I have for you a tale of mystery, a tale of wonder, and a tale of untapped potential.

Once upon time, in a far away kingdom (1969, in England, respectively) there was formed a comedy troupe (as they were referred to in that day) called Monty Python's Flying Circus, and, O, what a troupe they were.

Known for their dry, English wit, their sardonic and often punchline-less humor, and an almost compulsive need to challenge every norm possible in not only their chosen medium, but also their chosen category. Together, the members of this rabble each added their own particular flair that, when combined on the great appliance of the late 20th century (and, later, on the Great American Art Form), became something so powerfully moving, in a humorous context, that the ripples it created can still be seen as the tremors and undulations persisting today in modern culture and everyday life.

There was one of this troupe (as, I said, they were referred to as such) who stood out, however. Yes, every member had their own style, their own specific pecadillos (Eric Idle with his distinctive, unmistakable tambre, Michael Palin with his undeniable charm, adn John Cleese with his... height) , but this one was... unique.

Terry Gilliam was an American, the only one in the troupe (as they were called in those times). He was also rarely in front of the camera, preferring to and, indeed, having been hired to make brief, tangential animations of a variety difficult to categorize. They were original, both in content and form (a Python trait, through and through), and had a biting social commentary to them folded into the Python absurdity that delivered a delightful syncopation to the rest of the troupe's live-action theatrics. The show would end, but the troupe (so they were called) would remain together, trading one screen in for another of grander scale, and finding even more immortality within it.

However, the story of Terry Gilliam is a singular one, and one that goes well beyond his involvement with the Pythoners (which, I suppose... they were also called at one point). He went on to direct some of the most eccentric cult films ever created, and to this...

What? No, that's Terry Jones. Yeah, he's a different Pythoner. He's the short, fat one. Terry Gilliam is a director.

For example, Terry Gilliam is responsible for a surprising canon of cult films, including such immediately-recognizable-to-the-cult-fanatic titles as Brazil, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 12 Monkeys, Time Bandits, the recently notorious Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and, the cult classic to rule them all, one of the twin jewels in the crown of cult cinema next to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail.

Yeah, Jones directed Holy Grail, but so did Gilliam, and then he went on to do other movies, which is what we're talking about, okay?

No, he didn't write any books about fairies. That's Jones too. He's English. Gilliam's American.

Okay?

Okay?

Alright.

Gilliam, as can be seen by his body of work, has a place in his heart for the eccentric, singular, odd, but wholly enjoyable film. Sadly, the bizarre quality of his films renders them somewhat intellectually inaccesible in the immediate sense to the mass market, which has lead, in turns, to their commercial failure and their subseuqent long lives, finding their home in retrospective appreciation and, recently, in DVD sales.

But commercial success is not the tragedy of Terry Gilliam. The tragedy of Terry Gilliam is the studio system, and the essential blacklisting he has experienced simply because of the poor marketing, idiotic reception, and misunderstanding representation he has recieved at the hands of the corporation that is the film industry. Rumors about of shoots being cancelles a week into filming, of essential Hollywood blacklisting in the face of artistic integrity and unconventionalism, but the fact of the matter is that Terry Gilliam doesn't get to make as many films as he'd like to or, indeed, any of us would like him to.

So, when he finally does get to make a film, it's the fucking Brothers Grimm, right?

The film itself gets you, in the end. The teeth on the cogs that seem to drive the machination seem to catch only after about an hour of slipping, and once the film's built up its steam it doesn't stop until the end, but that's hardly enough to save the thing. "It makes up for it" is an admission of failure in some arena, and any abject failure in any arena keeps a film from being truly good, as this one has been kept.

A large complaint I have with the film (which is not a usual complaint for me, so I hope its unusual inclusion shows just how much it affects the film) is its sad reliance on what turns out to be sub-standard digital effects. One scene in particular involves a scarf blowing in the wind with a mind of its own, luring a girl further and further into the forest which, especially considering her eventual destination, smacks of Gilliam, but the poorly rendered and wholly unreal scarf superimposed onto the scene removes you immediately from the film. In a movie largely based in fantasy and surreality, as so many of Gilliam's films are, no slack can be afforded in the creation of realism, and the scarf looked nothing but unreal.

Scarf - bad. Axe - good. Wolf - eh.

It's this peppering of acceptable CGI that takes away from much of the film's immersibility. The film clicked along, the gears eventually pulling me with it, but for a big part of the movie I simply wasn't there.

In his other films, Gilliam has always used effects in completely original ways, and always to move the plot along. He used them as devices, not as gimmicks. Here, it seems as if it was just easier to film the river then put in a scarf, easier to film a scene then include a wolf. Looking back to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, visual effects used for the "melting" of the carpet pattern, and for the visual manifestation of Steadman-like drawings found in the novel (a nice homage to the original work, yes, but also a way of bringing the whole of the work to the front of experience, as the book itself should hardly be separated, in anyone's mind, from Ralphie's illustrations) neither of which could be accomplished, as Gilliam envisioned them within his mind, without the help of computer effects, and it therefore becomes an extremely creative and original usage of the tool. Here, they're simply filling in gaps.

There are saving graces present, a large hunk of which is the snarling, sadistic Peter Stormare, who flings daggers, tortures innocents, and basically charismas his way into the hearts of the audience. After a time, I stopped being interested in the vague familial dissapointments the Bros. Grimm were having with each other, their individual states of ennui no longer being appealing without any reference, and simply waited for Stormare to stalk back onto the screen, being characteristically and dialectically the most interesting thing I could find about the film.

There are some great visuals, as one would expect from Gilliam, and there are good performances (outside of Stormare's loping triumph), and there are plenty of French people, but none of this is enough, in the end, to elevate this movie to the level that one should expect coming from Terry Gilliam. Did we all know the wolf was her father? Yes. Did we all know the coffins were being filled with the children from the village? Probably. Were we all happy when the general finally got spitted? Of course we were, he was foreign and snotty, and as far as any American sensibility is concerned, that's grounds for impalement. Plus, he tried to kill Peter Stormare, and you simply don't do that.

Even Frances McDormand shot for the legs.

And here we are. After years of waiting for the next film to come out, after years of patient hopefulness, we are delivered a weight that drags not only ourselves and the film community down, but Gilliam's respectability. I don't want to hear from anyone that this was a "money" picture. Look at the man's body of work, and you tell me if he's the sort to give a shit about the money. If anyone is going to stand up to Hollywood, big budget or no, and turn the money down for artistic validity, it was going to be Gilliam. Instead, he picked up this film and made it, just made it, without really taking it into himself, without really creating. The Brothers Grimm could have been made by whoever the hell made Van Helsing, and I wouldn't have been surprised or, indeed, able to tell the difference.

The End.

Give Peter Stormare an Oscar, or he will put you in a wood chipper.

Tarantella

You have poisonous fangs. You have eight appendages, which would be enough for most animals, yet you have an additional two for the sole purpose of delivering your prey into your terrifying, oscillating maw. You have a goodly number of eyes, the number of which most likely ends up as odd, and you are capable of building your home most anywhere you see fit, which in turn help you to ensnare your victims as it is the relative tensile strength of high-grade steel. You are covered in bristling "hair," which can lead to severe irritation and even damage of eyes, airways, and other sensitive organs upon contact. You are the largest of the arachnids.

None of this, however, alleviates the fact that your face looks like a butt.



A big hairy butt.

And none of this, none of it, will help you when, after you've pushed Luke Skywalker one too many times, Old Ben Kenobi decides it's time to step in and Yojimbo your sorry ass. Next time, just let it go, that little one wasn't worth the trouble. Grow from your experience. You're not a bad ass. You're an ass-face.

Ass face.

I hate spiders. When I talk to most people about their particular great fears, they can usually tell me an experience that led to their irrational phobia, or at least can hazard a guess as to which experience they think is the most likely candidate. I can't for the life of me remember ever specifically or particularly running afoul of one of these little critters, but I hate them. O, how I hate them so. You don't need that many legs.

But I do like cephalopods, which begs the question if their polypodia is not in fact the reason that I take issue with this disciples of Satan. Perhaps it is the faculty of multiple eyes that I find so repugnant in their visages. My cuddly cuttlefish friends and their relations hitherto have stayed the course of the ocular deuce. I may have unlocked a secret in my own tortured psyche here.

So... I guess... the lesson for the day, kiddles, is to have two eyes and to not piss of Obi Wan Kenobi, because he will chop you the hell in half without a second thought, and all you'll have to show for your false bravado is one less limb and eight-to-nine eyes glistening with tears of pain and loss. Don't fuck with Jedis.

Don't fuck with Jedis.

Defeating a God on God Mode is God Awful.

Congestion, Flatulence, and Cerebro-Vascular Migraines

I start my new job in edu-action today, which is essentially a promotion, a raise, and an excuse to sit around on the internet for shifts at a time, which all in all is a pretty sweet day for me. Normally, a day like that would be enough.

However, things have developed around here.

This weekend we are hosting a science fiction spectacular, where if people wear costumes they are eligible to win a prize, and the staff are all wearing little bobblies on their heads to look like Martiansyestheydolooklikemartians.

But that's not enough. There are stormtroopers.

There is a battalion of stormtroopers wandering the halls. I'm not kidding. The place is thick with stormtroopers, which (apart from being awesome) serves the purpose of allowing me to hear the Mrs. refer to them as "the white thingies that help Darth Vadar."

Or "Vader," depending on your preference.

And, normally, that would be more than enough. I could slake myself on geekdom for days with these goings on, but the Center as deigned to offer me yet more tribute in its utter appreciation for all that I am.

And that tribute... is Boba Fett.

The man who played Boba Fett is here. He's here. He's somewhere here. I can't explain... I mean... he's here.

I used to think we were something of a rink-a-dink organization. Just a little blip on the national science radar. Then we got a moon rock, one of the big chunks of the total twleve ounces that we brought back with us from earth's only natural satellite, and that was pretty impressive. Then I found out Buzz Aldrin is coming here for a book signing, the second man to ever walk on the moon (which my mother actually needed reminding of), and I started to think we were something more than a bit player.

But now, those are merely incidentals. The pope could come here and bless the ground upon which we perform feats of miraculous science, and I wouldn't be more impressed than I am about the fact that Boba-fucking-Fett is in the building. Somewhere.

Hell, he's a new pope anyway. At least the previous one had a couple Beatle names. Now THAT's a rockin' pope.

Or, that's what I thought, at least. I mean, the stuff about the pope holds true, but not the stuff about Boba Fett. Turns out that the Boba Fett that was here (and there was an actor who played Boba Fett here) was the kid who played Baby Fett in Epidsode II... and I was extremely disappointed. Disappointed to a degree I didn't think could previously exist. I was all set to meet Jeremy Bulloch. I was ready for it. Then this lanky teenage New Zealander appears before me, all bad skin and too-much-time-on-the-internet-pallor, and I am taken aback by 1) how much he looks like he did in the film, just older and paler, and b) how much he is NOT JEREMY BULLOCH.

SOMEONE WILL PAY.

But I digress.

The point is... it WAS an awesome weekend. That's right, was. In between this line and the last, an entire week has transpired. I swear, I'm updating this fucking thing less and less. I didn't use to think I'd ever get this busy. I blame my new job, partially, but mostly I blame God Mode in God of War, which is as close to impossible as any game can rationally be, I believe.

Sci Fi Weekend was awesome, though. The trouble is that I have to stay in that room, because there's no one else to leave in charge if I have to leave, say, to go to the bathroom. And that necessity is becoming more and more urgent as I get older.

When I was in junior high, I noticed that shortly after eating my pizza lunch (delicious), I woul be treated to an afternoon of trying not to break wind in a crowded and socially unforgiving classroom full of my peers. I became extremely flatulent, the more time went on, and am now in fact known, in certain circles, by the nickname "Rotten," because that's really the only accurate phrase for my innards upon casual observation. "That of a 50-year-old Man" might be a more appropriate monicker, upon further scrutiny.

It's something of a social crutch. You can have pretty much any other physical condition, paralysis, missing fingers, lazy eyes, and it will be looked over by society. People will try to make you feel good about it, people will look past it as best they can (at least when you're looking back at them). But if it makes a smell, halitosis, smelly feet, or, in my case, extreme high volume of butt-fume, you have a problem. No one is going to cut you any slack for that. You'll be ostracized. You'll be asked to leave rooms. You'll be told you're an animal. Do you have any control over your disease? No. But you are held responsible just the same.

I swear, the next person who brings up my gas better be in pristine health. They'd better be the damn modern-day Adonis, otherwise I am going to take personal offense at whatever their pathetic little frames do not have in a state of utter perfection. Wear glasses? Gross! Go be nearsighted somewhere else! Diabetic? Dude! If you like the sweeties, you get diabetes! Give me a warning if you're going to need insulin, man! JESUS!

The AIDS? COME ON, MAN! NO ONE WANTS TO BE HERE WITH THAT GOING ON!

I guess that last one might be true to some unfair extent... but the point stands firm. My girlfriend even calls me farty-pants. ME! A GOD AMONG MEN!

FARTY PANTS!

Add to this my constant nasal congestion, deep sinus problems, and their subsequent physical manifestation of me hocking large globules of mucus this way and that along my many travails and you get a mother who is at the end of her short and extremely well-groomed rope. If only I could manage to bust a safety and hwark a loogie at the same time... maybe I could get a job at Nickelodeon or something. Don't they have a show where you do that? All the time?

I look at my conditions like little maladies of personality. I like to think that after I'm gone, there will be people in the world who would be delighted to learn that I was prone to flatulence. "Really? He farted a lot?! Oh my God! He doesn't seem like he would!" What the hell does that even mean? What would a farter look like? I mean, does everyone who farts have to be some bald, fat, greasy-wife-beatered Brooklynite scarfing a hoagie and yelling at his wife in the kitchen, pausing only to take sick pleasure in the alarmingly audible trumpeting coming from the space between his ass and his Barca lounger. What about the tragically beleaguered intellectual, forced to find uninhabited sections of the library? To sit all alone in film screenings? To, even after reaching success and vigor in life, spend time crying into his hands on the foot of the bed, an understanding wife caressing his shoulders, telling him everything will be alright, trying not to notice the soft toots that punctuate each tortured sob? WHAT ABOUT HIM???

You fuckers.

So, on top of this... persecution, I found out recently that the blind spots I've been having accompanied by headaches and nausea are what they call in the world of my-goddamn-head "Cerebro (brain) Vascular (blood vessels) Migraine (FUCK!)." Due to stress, a lack of rest, and not enough relaxing, healthy exercise, blood vessels in my head constrict and reduce blood flow, then re-dilate to equal pain. So, partial blindness, then mild agony. Rock on.

It's funny how often this sort of thing befalls me. Considerations I don't even think about, things that I can't imagine would affect me, end up being the exception upon which I am forced to re-define my life by. I now have to chill the hell out, lest I lose my vision and create blind spots while driving. That would suck.

All that I want is to be able to go back to school, watch movies until I fall asleep at night, and be with my girlfriend until I can't breathe anymore. I want to be like Bukowski, I want to be a social martyr. I want, I think, to be misunderstood and outcast. It's easier to be romantically detached and much more eventful when you finally overcome and win the hearts of a people despite your personal or physical flaws, rather than doing so in light of them.

So... let's make that happen, guys. Start the revolution of repugnance.

Should the ratan become saturated, I shall soon forge a falcata.

More Human than Human

I have accepted the fact that I am a flake and, as such, my dedication to any of my given resolutions is subject to rampant and destructive waffling.

Or, I... flake. On things.

It is because of this realization that I no longer feel so bad about, over the course of the summer, not only not watching many films but also no writing a single review for any that I have watched so far, and instead have been content to simply view and appreciate, which has its own quiet dignity to it. Sometimes you don't need to dissect the butterfly to appreciate its beauty.

However, I have also accepted the fact that I am something of a linguiphile, and I find immense satisfaction and, indeed, pleasure in the creative use of language. My cat is named Potato. She's been acting like the mother kitty to our two new baby kitties, so I have been calling her Mama Papa. I find this immensely amusing, probably to an irrational extent. I like listening to rap (mostly my brother and his friends) for the same reason, they just say things sometimes that are beautiful in the simple, elegant, and often horrendously offensive way they're said. t

Finally, I have realized that it would take something like the latter to shock me out of the stupor of the former, and in coming to said realization I have decided to go ahead and get back into the swing of things with writing reviews (also convenient since classes will begin again the 29th), all inspired by coming up with a word last night that I can't wait to use.

Make of that what you will.

So yes, sometimes we shouldn't bother intrusively inspecting these works of art, sometimes the appreciation and witnessing is enough, and these things of beauty should not be scrutinized and, in doing so, destroyed...

But if you're going to gut something, it may as well be something ugly.

The Devil's Rejects

With his inaugural effort House of 1,000 Corpses, Rob Zombie (musician, icon, director, and living-dead guy) convinced pretty much everyone who hadn't been paying attention that he likes dead people. A lot.

And he really didn't spend any time convincing anyone of really anything else. We all left understanding that he really enjoys dead people, and the various states that they find themselves in, and the various ways in which they find their way to those various states. He spent no time telling us about life, love, democracy... just that sometimes people die, and sometimes people kill, and sometimes those things happen in ways that make your eyes scream into the back of your skull with horror (born of disgust, not fear) until the images stop.

Basically, the boy loves those old campy slasher films, for which Texas Chainsaw Sequel serves as the grizzly and circulated crown jewel. Underneath the dazzling carnage of Chainsaw lays an entire lexicon of films for which it serves as only the people-friendly pubic face of what is, in fact, a wholly disturbing genre. Alternately humorous and ghastly, these films are appreciated by the cinematic illiterati for their violence, on-screen brutality, and richter-status cringe factor. Go see pretty much any zombie film made by an Italian. Go see some of the early George Romero. Go see I, Zombie, for God's sake. Texas Chainsaw, while no doubt canonical in its notoriety, is not so through virtue of being the worst of the bunch. If nothing else, the fact that Rob Zombie's tribute to it and its kind outdoes the genre in almost every aspect (outdo, here, being of a separate quantitative value than any other usage may be) shows House of 1,000 Corpses to be the penultimate homage that it is.

This does not, however, mean it's good.

The genre of slasher flicks is peppered with good and bad titles. The quality of films often offset by the publics lack of a stomach for such fare is varied and not easily measured. It is a scattered and inconsistent denomination in terms of artistic vaildity, but it's clear that the quality inherent in this work, when quality is even available to be found, is not the major draw of these works, regardless of its frequency in wandering in and out of these efforts.

The draw is the morbid, grizzly, nihilistic execution of not only plot but very nearly every single character not possessed of a horrendous physical deformity of sneering maniacal grin. The draw, ladies and gentlemen, is the slaughter, and that is obviously the attraction these films held for our Mr. Zombie.

This is the film he created. He made a slasher flick. Probably something that, in the eye of history, will be seen with some degree of quintessentiality, but a slasher flick nonetheless. He did exactly what he set out to do, did a fine job doing it, and made the exact movie that he wanted to make with no concessions, no pretense, just a love of the content and the form.

He made the exact movie he wanted to make. He just wasn't trying to make a good movie.

Indeed, almost by definition (but not quite) a concentrated consolidation of all things slasher-esque is going to come out seemingly void of artistic expression (outside of affected "disturbing" imagery) and completely lacking in any plot structure worth speaking of. Sure, Rob got to have his little homage, and a fine little goregasm it was, but at the end of the day it was a shitty movie, and he can't get around that.

The Devil's Rejects, on the other hand, is Rob's poorly-thought-out Silence of the Lambs meets Deliverance meets Identity-to-a-certain-extent; complete with gory devices that were invented to make you cringe.

In... all those other movies... which Rob loved.

The problem is that this film isn't a tribute. It isn't a consolidation of any kind. Rob legitimately tried to make an actual film, complete with real characters and an actual plot and an arc that can be followed from start to finish as the continuation of his previous film and the inevitable end of these characters we've spent so much time with.

And therein lies his downfall.

Rob doesn't know how to make a movie, guys. Rob barely knows how to breathe anymore, if his stage performances are any indication. Rob knows how to mimic, which he showed he could do quite well when reflecting the likes of Romero and Hooper, but he has no idea how to put anything on the screen other than recycled sprints of brutality which, to be honest with ourselves and our jaded generation, in a world of Museums of Death and live streaming video of beheadings, isn't that brutal.

Am I freaked out by Tiny? No. I saw him in Big Fish, and he was delightful. Am I frightened of the ex-albino who decides to cut off a man's face and wear it? No. Lecter did it better, and for a reason. Hell... I lived through that sweet little atrocity in a comic book, and even that was more graphic than this weak excuse for a Halloween mask. Am I supposed to care that everyone's name after a Groucho Marx character? Because I'm never given a reason to.

And, finally, am I supposed to appreciate the use of the phrase "Tutti-Fuckin'-Fruity" eighteen motherfucking times in a row?

Because I just don't, Rob. You can not make films. Not everyone can. Let me qualify that, most people can, but most people shouldn't. You are among these. Stick with metal, quit smoking while there's still time, give Spyder a call before he completely burns out of your memory, and quit saddling me with strangely foreboding glimpses of your wife's ass. No one cares.

Better yet, I don't care. And I'm the one that matters.

...

This update was so long in the making. No time at all. New job, end of summer, will fill in the appropriate details just as soon as oh who am I kidding no one reads this thing who gives a shit.


I wrote this entire thing just to use the term "goregasm," which I invented. Judge me as you must.

Dreamspiking

I've come upon the realization that I spike my dreams.

It's a well-known fact that if you eat before you go to sleep (or if you drink something other than water, at least) you're going to have bad dreams. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are immune to this phenomenon, I'm sure there are plenty of people who avoid eating before bed for this exact reason, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't even remember their dreams to an extent that would allow them to make the assessment.

I, on the other hand, both intentionally enact eccentric dreams and actively attempt their implementation.

For an instance:

Last night, I ate a twinkie, drank a coke, and had some chips and salsa just before going to bed. Every now and then, with no paticular pattern of foodstuffs evolving, I'll eat something and, in doing so, consciously, assure myself a night of interesting dreams. It's like an extremely involved and absurdist movie.

This particular time I had a dream that I was a part of some bizarre sort of academic decatholon that involved a myriad of strange and dangerous events the participants must go through. My team, as far as I could surmise, consisted of myself, some asian chicks, Strong Bad, and a weird, deformed, cartoonish baby that spoke in gibberish and seemed to be covered in powder burns. The few events I can remember, I remember as being largely circuitous and not necessarily quantitative in any way, making the judging difficult to impossible, I'm sure.

Por example:

The one I remember most vividly involved the team being on a rickety metal box that seemed to constitute an train engine, much in the same way that a box with wheels constitues a car. Strong Bad was inside the box pedaling the car while I was relegated to the outside of the box, along with the blackened child that became somewhat gremlin-like as he appeared and disappeared around the perimeter of the box. Our role, as the teammates outside the box, was chiefly to not be eaten.

Because there was a polar bear chasing us.

So Strong Bad would pedal inside his oven, getting extremely hot and exhausted as he did so, and the young, malformed, charred Tommy Pickles and I would flitter about the surface of the machination attempting to cling onto its awkward shape while positioning ourselves away from the Arctic beast's gaping maw. Or, at least I did. Like I said, the tar-baby took to the sheet metal like a bighorn sheep to a rock face.

Also, come to think of it, the opposing team had someone on it that was a combination of Helga and Angelica, so I suppose a lot of Rugrats imagery was present in the dream, though I tend to lean more towards her being a representation of a more canonical, archetypal "pre-pubescent beeyotch" character that, when you think about it, has really been around even before Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales which contained the epic verse of "Tiffany the 2nd Grade Bully."

At one point Strong Bad was pushed too far, and he simply stopped pedaling, putting us all not only in danger of losing to that man-hating trouser-dyke, but, more immediately, in danger of being eaten by a bear (S.B. himself being safe inside the box, a fact that did not escape me when I chided him concerning his teamwork). I was forced to hop off the train and physically push it over the sawdust which seemed to suddenly cover the track (and impede our progress considerably) while Strong Bad complained from the inside of the box. Luckily, we'd pulled enough ahead of the bear that we were not in danger when I jumped off, but we easily could have been, Strong Bad. We easily could have been. I stand by what I said.

So we pedaled the trains into a tunnel (and it does not escape me, either, that if both trains were on the same track, as they were, then one of them was always in front of the other, and that one of them has a polar bear in front of them as well, making the decision of who won not only difficult but somewhat inconsequential in the process) that led to the next event, which was a low-ceilinged classroom venue peppered with worn and seemingly outdated kiosks featuring riddles, puzzles, and problems for the teams to solve. Before you could take a crack at solving them, however, you first had to dive under an extremely low bar to get to. I got dusty from skidding around on the unattractively patterned tile, and the asian chicks began to really shine as the backbone of our team as they, grouped and giggling, began dismantling the problems with oriental expertise.

At this point, I think Strong Bad had stalked off, demoralized, and the soot-kin evidently had showed itself to be the geist of the box-train that it was, never really having existed on or off the train, but being a part of the contraption in and of itself.

And that's all that I can actively remember. A lot more was going on, I know that, but this is the stuff that is the most lucid for me. Furthermore, in hindsight, I think that what was going on could have been both hellish scholastic meet and everyday life. Yes, a particularly surreal and panicked life, but not under any sort of pressure from judges or coaches or unibrowed, pigtailed nemeses.

If the mood takes me, I may start transcribing my nocturnal visions just for the sheer fright of it. I never used to mind telling my or hearing other people's dreams until I saw an MST3K episode where Joel joked "I hate it when people tell me about their dreams." If it's good enough to be a joke on MST3K, then it must be funny, and if its funny, then it must be a widely accepted social norm. I suppose.

I could be wrong. Have been before.

I must away, now, and teach children things I do not know. I swear, it's like I live in a Carroll poem.

Today, if I'm to get my wish,
Where you find me, you'll find dead fish.