you know what word I hate? "arguably" Two nights ago I was watching the nfl draft, and every player was arguably something. Arguably the fastest, strongest, best prospect, whatever. Every time anybody has an opinion these days, they feel like they have to qualify it. I think its part of a larger problem of political correctness. People are so afraid of conflict and disagreement, they make sure there's zero possibility of offending anyone. Grow up people. Rational adults can have differing opinions without anybody being wrong. Stop pussyfooting around and say what you think.

Man, every time I promise myself I'll really try to be good about blogging..... this happens. I turn on the comp and realize its been close to a month. So let's see, what's happened since then? I took third in a national-level wrestling tournament, which was cool. Not one of the big ones, with people who have a shot at the national team, but still. I know I don't have a future in wrestling, as a competitor anyways, beyond next year. Might as well enjoy it while I can. Other than that, I sold a short story for an anthology from a major publishing house (details to come when its officially announced). Its not the novel, but at least I've got a foot in the door. The important thing is to establish a professional relationship with these people and impress the hell out of them, enough so that they're interested in a long future together. One of the hardest things to figure out is how much I should push them. I'm a punk kid, just starting out in the writing world, which means that most people dismiss me automatically. I honestly believe I have talent, and know I have the dedication, but both of those are useless if nobody will let me show it. Ah well. The nice part about being 22 is that I can whine about this stuff without any real consequences....

Christ its been a while since I posted here. I went into high burn on a couple of writing projects, plus school and spring break, so its probably not something to whine about. Ah well, I like bitching. I've mentioned here a couple of times that I'm an aspiring writer. I've had about a dozen short stories published, and I'm working on my first novel with some interest from a major publishing house. It doesn't pay the bills, by a long shot, but there's a chance it could turn into a career someday. That's the dream anyways.
      My first short story was published in a small magazine and read by family and basically no one else. The second, which was approaching novella length, was actually in an anthology, from a publisher some of you have probably heard of. It got slammed by every critic. Badly. Like "Who the hell is this kid and who did he bribe to get this crap in a book?" Reading reviews like that hurt, a lot. But for every review, I tracked down the critic and did my best to send a thankyou email. Just thanked them for taking the time to read and promised to improve with my next piece. Its' amazing how far courtesy can take you, in this and every other business.
      All of this is preamble to the following link, which I saw on Neal Gaiman 's twitter feed a couple days ago (he's a great read).   http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html#comments     Read it and weep. I've honestly never seen anyone ruin their career so quickly.
      When I sent emails to the people who'd reviewed my story, the response was so positive I nearly cried reading it. Even the guy who wrote the single harshest review replied in a day, told me it was nothing personal and that he admired my passion and professionalism. Most importantly, he told me to send links to anything I got published in the future, and that he'd read everything and only write about it if he had good things to say. Since then, he's written enthusiastic reviews of three of my stories, and introduced me to the editor who could be publishing my first novel next year (I'm praying). Point is, keep your temper under control and show people some respect. Good things happen.

As a followup to my post a few days ago, about the lack of creativity plaguing the film industry, I present this article from the AV Club

http://www.avclub.com/articles/guillermo-del-toro-loses-at-the-mountains-of-madne,52919/

So despite having what is by all reports a great script, Del Toro attached to direct, Tom Cruise to star, and James f-ing Cameron to make sure the 3D is good quality, they still can't risk making the film. Meanwhile, we get to look forward to "Battleship" polluting our theaters in 2012......

moderation

I love college. For all the obvious reasons, and some weird ones. Yesterday, I spent most of the afternoon watching basketball courtside, went to the gym, took my girlfriend to a nice dinner, and spent the rest of the night with her at a mardi gras party. Its not a bad life.
     But at that party, similar to many others, I couldn't help noticing the number of people staggering around, slumped over in corners, and generally acting like idiots. I'm certainly not a saint. My girlfriend was making fun of me this morning for emptying a punchbowl by myself (she's exaggerating. probably). The thing is, I remember everything I did last night, and none of it is particularly embarrassing. Well, my dancing might be, but thats a different problem.
       Part of this is from experience. I'm 22, and I've been to my share of booze parties. Going out just to drink is fun the first few times, but only the first few. The morning after tends to dampen whatever memories you have of the night anyways. Maybe I'm getting old, but staying out dancing with a stunning girl until dawn seems way more fun then passing out in a corner before midnight.
     I don't know if this is just my perception, but it seems like the kids who drink to excess are often the ones who lived at home during highschool. Its not so much the alcohol they're after as the thrill of doing something new and adult. Let's face it, getting seriously smashed isn't actually that much fun. The problem is that sheltered kids sometimes don't know that. They see their parents drinking at dinner and parties, and think that more is always better. I'm not trying to say that parents should let their underage children go wild, but forbidding something completely is the best way to make sure kids will overindulge as soon as they get it.
      I actually met my girlfriend at a party three years ago, right as I was transitioning away from the drink-everything-in-sight phase that ruined so many of my sundays. She was dancing with a couple of friends, when a guy who'd clearly been there for a while came up and tried to join in (can't fault his taste). He was a pretty belligerent drunk, and didn't take it well when they asked him to leave. Guys grinding on girls without an invitation is a serious pet peeve of mine, so I went up and persuaded him to go. Have to admit, I'd also been trying to think of a way to talk to her for the last hour. We did get to talking after that, then exchanging numbers, then leaving to walk along the charles and talk more.... You get the idea. Life lessons, gotta love them.
       Old saying I hear a lot when discussing college life: "Moderation in all things, including moderation." This is wisdom. Its' just a pity people ignore the first clause.

greed

First, go read this article by Bill Simmons of espn

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/110304

Done? Good. I'm a football fan, have been since my brother bounced a nerfball off my head 20 years ago. I know very little about the economic of sports, and I don't really care. All that matter is the patriots on tv every week. What I do know is this: the NFL has never been richer. Revenues are in the tens of billions every year. Half the owners are independent billionaires. Now let's go through some other facts.
      Roger Goodell claims to be concerned about player safety. He's made a giant show out of concussion awareness programs, new helmet technology etc. Yet one of the issues in the mess of a cba negotiation is the owner's desire for an 18 game season. Two more games, with greater ticket sales and increased revenues. Which they want the players to accept, even as their slice of the revenue pie goes down by one billion dollars. Two extra games of 300 pound men running into each other flat out, every hit carving a few more days off their lives.
      I'm not trying to write a sob story for professional athletes. They know what they're getting into, and are paid well for the physical risks. Rational adults can do what they want. I simply don't understand how the owners sleep at night. People had to watch the Superbowl in crowded basements because Jerry Jones tried to install more seats than his shiny new stadium could hold. This man and thirty of his ultra-rich pals are about to lock players out for more money. What the hell is wrong with the world?

a case for creativity

Every year, hollywood spends more money than I'll ever earn trying to figure out what audiences want. They conduct surveys, analyze market data, hold focus groups, and generally try to figure out how to fit square pegs in round holes. Over the last.... well, I was going to say few years, but let's be realistic here.... over the last few decades, the movie big-wigs have decided that the American public wants more of the same. This year, 2011, will see the highest number ever of remakes and sequels invading our theaters. Basically, studios have concluded that the public is too stupid to tolerate any kind of innovation or newness, and so are repeating themselves over and over. In a related story, the studios are full of idiots.

       Hollywood, let me do you a favor. If a movie looks like it sucks, people won't see it. If a movie looks awesome, people will see it. Analysis complete. 

       Best example- Inception, last summer. For people who don't spend as much time reading film blogs and such as I do, here's a little background. Inception was a giant passion project for Christopher Nolan, who you've probably heard of. The studio let him make it, on their dime, as a reward for the absurdly lucrative Batman movies, and as an enticement to make more. The industry thought it would be a flop, by being too complex, hard to follow, and not based on something that spawned ten crappy sequels since the 80's. (see: Halloween remakes) Instead, Inception was a huge critical hit, made tons of money, and has given Nolan a do-whatever-he-wants license for the next 20 years.

         The point here is this: audiences like being treated as if they have an iq over 50. Inception is incredibly complex. Its' also visually stunning, beautifully acted, and completely original. Knight and Day, which was thought to be much more commercially appealing, was a complete flop because audiences figured out quickly that it was a paint-by-numbers piece of crap.

        Obviously, not everything I'm saying here is always true. Some bad movies do make tons of money. But even in those cases, there's usually something artistically redeeming about the hits. Take the transformers movies, which feature the worst writing since.... since whatever Michael Bay did before that, I suppose. I'm not saying those are good films. But Bay is one hell of a visual director, and watching fifty foot robots toss each other around a forest still put goosebumps on my spine. Please, Hollywood, wake up. There are so many talented, creative people who can put your money to good use. And I think you'll find that true creativity is more profitable than endless regurgitation. 

ultra endurance

Most people haven't heard of Dean Karnazes. Ultra-running, the crazy uncle of marathoning and running clubs, is such a niche sport nobody can find it without looking. If you have time, google his name and take a look at what he's done. I won't recap it here, but suffice it to say the man's resume involves a lot of 100 mile runs. Personally, I'm not a runner. My sport, wrestling, involves maximum effort for six minutes. I've never run longer than an hour, and even that hurt like hell. The whole idea of staying on my feet. moving, for 24 hours is utterly incomprehensible. That's why I find ultra-running so fascinating. The human body is so much more capable than anyone realizes. Karnazes, one of the kings of his tiny sport, is preparing to run across the country in 75 days. That's 40-50 miles each day. Maybe seven hours, with nothing but music pulsing from earbuds and the road creeping up in front. The physical challenge is insane. The mental fatigue must be worse. It makes me wonder what else we're capable of. Everything's impossible until someone does it.

people stuck in the nineteenth century

I've been wrestling a long time. My brother, who is older than me by five years, was a seriously good high-school wrestler until he had to stop with a broken elbow. When I was nine, I let him convince me to try out for the middle-school team. I sucked. The first year my only success was in redefining the amount of noise takedown dummies could make while being tossed around by older kids. But I loved the sport, and knew I wanted to get good at it. That was thirteen years ago. In high-school I won four league titles, four new england titles, and was national prep champion twice. So far in college I'm a two time all american, and going for my first national title in a couple of weeks. I'm not trying to brag by listing this out, simply establish that I have the credentials to say certain things about the sport.
        Over the past few days one of the larger stories in sports media has concerned a young wrestler in Iowa, who defaulted from his first match in the state tournament rather than face a girl. See this column, by Rick Reilly of espn, for the background. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=6136707
A few things strike me about this situation. First, the girl in question achieved a 20-13 record in Iowa, and qualified for the tournament under her own power. Iowa high-school wrestling is legendary for its' brutality and technical excellence. Great wrestlers from Dan Gable down to the Leclere brothers can attest to this. Look at the roster of the Iowa Hawkeyes, the best college program in the nation, if you don't believe me. Some of their finest athletes have better records in college then they did in high-school. I've never met this girl or seen one of her matches, but I know that anyone who qualifies for that tournament needs protection from nothing. The other side of this has to do with the boy, who threw away a shot at his dream for what he claims was religious belief. Leaving aside the fact that Iowa state champions never have to buy a drink in their lives, his outdated attitude towards women is deeply disturbing.
          Every Christmas vacation I stop by to help with a couple weeks of practices at my old middle-school, under the same coach who taught me the sport a decade ago. It's a lot of fun, and an easy way to give back to a program I love. This past winter, for the first time, there were three girls on the team. Three friends, who'd all been interested in trying it for about a year and had decided to sign up together. I'd seen girls wrestle before, and had even competed against a few before I outgrew the smaller weight classes. But coaching them was different. After all, I'm a 22 year old man, and coaching does involve a good deal of physical contact. What I came to notice, over the fifteen or so practices I attended, was that the girls were only uncomfortable when I treated them differently from their teammates. So I sucked it up, got on the mat with them, and never had a single problem. My last day, all three approached me after practice to thank me for working with them. I should also say, the three girls outworked every guy on the team, were always first to practice, and never complained about anything. One day as I was leaving, I caught sight of the three of them, running sprints relay fashion on the school's indoor track.
         The point here is this: if a girl decides to participate in a sport, then she deserves to be treated with the same respect as every other competitor. That means, instead of bowing out from some twisted notion that women are delicate flowers, all the guys need to stop whining and strap on their headgear. Yes, its a little awkward. But not nearly as awkward as a girl must feel, her first day in the wrestling room surrounded by guys. That girl in Iowa didn't want to be the first female match winner in state history because of a default. She wanted to compete and find out if she was the best. Based on her record, it might just have happened.

Been a while since I wrote anything here. Its funny how quickly weeks pass while I'm at school. This is especially weird since I sleep way less here than I do on vacation. Time flies when you're writing philosophy papers.... What's sad is that I know the way I live now, with more caffeine then blood in my body, really isn't sustainable. I basically burn myself out every semester. Last Christmas, after an especially intense run through exam week, I went home and slept for fifteen straight hours. Probably shouldn't have driven that night..... In about fifteen months, I'll graduate from college and get a real grown up job. What I don't know is whether I'll be able to work the way I do now. Part of the problem is the number of obligations I give myself. Currently, I'm taking five classes, playing a DI sport, working at the school newspaper, and writing a book. It won't be this bad in the real world. But the balance is that I might go crazy if I actually do slow down. Boredom is worse then death. Ah well, ten thousand miles to go before I sleep....

twilight

This is embarrassing. I watched part of a twilight movie last night. Not the whole thing, only about half an hour. Yes, there was a girl involved. And we did turn it off to do something more interesting, which makes me vaguely less humiliated. The stuff I'll sink to.....
     Anyway, while I was wasting thirty minutes of my life on that film, a question kept coming up in my mind. Has anyone involved in that movie read Dracula? The reason I ask is because Bram Stoker wrote the book that got people interested in vampires to begin with. I read it for school a couple years ago, as part of a class on early British fiction. Dracula is not actually a novel, it's structured as a collection of letters and diary entries from the various characters. It's also insanely violent. I'm talking graphic, detailed depictions of extremely unpleasant thing happening to a lot of bodies.
      If you think about it, vampires can be a seriously powerful fictional device. There are obvious sexual aspects to it, with the ideas of nighttime visits, penetration, etc etc. Also the plague, which was a major concern in England at the time Stoker was writing. A distortion of nature caused by contact between bodily fluids. The same thing can be tweaked and used for foreign invasion. In any case, lots of options.
      I don't particularly care if filmmakers want to take someone else's creation and use it for a different purpose. I didn't even hate the twilight movie. It seemed like a fairly harmless teen romance kind of thing. Definitely not something i'd watch by choice, but it's existence doesn't harm the world. What really bothered me was seeing Stoker's dark, brutal, fairly brilliant creation sparkling in the sun. Adaptation is one thing, but at least preserve the essence of what you're ripping off.

The great sage, Ferris Bueller, tells us that life move's pretty fast. most of the time i appreciate this. my worst fear is sitting still for too long. but somewhere near the end of a third consecutive eighteen hour day, anybody would want a vacation. don't get me wrong, i love college. the fact is that the world i've chosen to live in demands results, regardless of what I have to do for them. between five classes, a job, a varsity sport,  and some other side projects i'll be writing about in more detail soon, i haven't seen the inside of my dorm room for more than twenty minutes in any of the last few days. i'm probably just ranting from fatigue and general pissedoffness, but sometimes you wonder if sitting still and a treadmill to nowhere aren't really the same thing.

contextualising thought

Thought never happens in a vacuum. Descartes wrote the famous phrase "cogito ergo sum" or, "I think therefore I am." Am what? Descartes was child of France, a polymath whose contributions to geometry (cartesian coordinate system) are better known than his philosophy, which was influential. Many significant philosophers are trained in other things, generally physical sciences. The most influential philosopher of science, Galileo, also invented the modern telescope and is primarily known as a hugely influential astronomer. This starts to get circular, the scientist inspired to write about science. The issue is, Galileo never could have produced his philosophy without first being trained as a scientist. At the very least, the discipline of thought learned in astronomy allowed him to write as beautifully as he did. To return to the universal, even the most supposedly objective thoughts arise out of the experiences of the thinker.
      But thought, as particular as it is in some respects, can still be universal. Recently I've been reading the works of Kant and Hegel, as I prepare to write an article on the philosophy of knowledge. Both of these men have been dead for many years. They never saw things like cellphones and the internet, all our modern devices that make the communication of information so rapid and so shallow. The context has changed. Yet I still found myself nodding in agreement as I went through Kant's passages on the categories of understanding. Knowledge is always individual, but that does not mean we cannot learn from each other.

film vs prose

I had an interesting conversation with a professor today about the Godfather, both novel and film. Most people haven't read the novel, which is no great loss. it's a thoroughly mediocre potboiler kind of thing. what I find more interesting is the larger question, of which of the two media is more effective. Personally, I love both. I read more or less constantly, and have for probably fifteen years. I also see at least one movie a week, and have studied film fairly extensively. Part of this interest came out of my parents telling me that novels tend to be much better than the films adapted from them.
      Often, this is correct. Original works tend to be superior to the derivative. There are exceptions, of course. Mystic River, which Clint Eastwood adapted into an extraordinary film, comes out of a well written but not especially distinguished Dennis Lehane thriller. What people fail to understand in most cases is that the weakness of the derivation process obscures the fact that books and films really are different media, with different strengths.
      Reading doesn't make a lot of sense as a human activity. Our brains are are not wired to make anything in particular out of black marks on white paper. Seeing, the act of interpreting visual data, is wired into our brains at a very basic, primitive level. At the first motion picture show in Germany, audience members screamed at flinched at the image of a train hurtling towards them. Remember, this was early twentieth century, and the picture wouldn't have been convincing. That visual stimulus accessed the audience's primitive brain. There are some film makers, like Eastwood, Scorsese, James Cameron and Christopher Nolan, who still know how to create that effect. I love books and the act of reading, but I'll be the first to admit that books don't hit me the same way.

sports excellence

I love sports, always have and always will. I started wrestling at age nine, and continued ever since, with about a year break when I shredded my shoulder a while back. Yesterday, one of the youngest kids on the wrestling team i volunteer coach, which is a mix of middle-school and high-school, was almost in tears because of the allegations that lance armstrong used steroids. The father of the boy is a professional cyclist, and armstrong is a family acquaintance. I've heard the argument that sports serve society by providing examples of excellence. To a certain extent, this is true. We all know about Armstrong surviving cancer, and about Bernard Hopkins leaving a Philadelphia jail to become one of the best boxers ever. What we need to remember is that these people do what they do for money.
      I'm not saying that athletes are bad people. I just think it's strange that they become so widely celebrated for being good at their jobs. By all means, draw inspiration from sports, but let's save our reverence for the people who truly deserve it.

 after the tragedy in arizona, we saw all kinds of responses from all kinds of people. Personally, I think that's as it should be. we live in a country with the right of free speech, and anyone who doesn't care enough to weigh in on an issue might as well give up the right to vote. what I object to is taking an event like the shootings in Tucson, and attempting to spin them for a political agenda. I'm deliberately not using names, as i think that would just lead to bickering.
   innocent people lost their lives, and there are some who have attempted to gain from that event. political maneuvering, like free speech, is a part of our national identity. that's simply part of the way democracy functions.   let's just remember that there is a time for politics, and a time for simply grieving.

kids online

My cousin is at trinity college in hartford, ct. yesterday she and about a hundred of her classmates were forced to sit through a seminar on finding jobs in the current market. don't get me wrong, I applaud the school for having the program. one of the final presenters was a so-called young entrepreneur. he goes by @kidcriticusa on twitter. he happens to be thirteen. again, i don't have a thing against this kid. my cousin emailed me a video of his talk and, from what i saw, he is both very smart and completely dedicated. also incredibly mature for someone that age. but he still had no business talking to a bunch of college kids about the job market. 

       parents- look up a recent article in the wallstreet journal titled "why chinese mothers are superior." if you happen to have a smart, unusually mature child, then i congratulate you. encourage their ambitions, tell them how proud you are, give them every opportunity to succeed. what I find absurd is when a child is pushed by blind parents into something they are simply not ready for. this particular kid is going to turn out well, i don't doubt that. but let's not pretend that a thirteen year old with solid computer skills is suited to be an "social media consultant," as he is apparently introduced. 

I can't tell if I hate the internet. It changes. So many opinions, all floating around in pixelland. And yes, they really are like a$$holes. So I'm not sure if adding mine to the pool is good, or a sign i need the men in white coats. We'll see. I'm going to give this a try for a couple months, and figure it out then.
    A little about me- I'm 22, and a junior at college in new england.  I read a lot, watch lots of movies. Part of this is academic, since I'm an english major. Which might be another mark against my sanity. Basically, I'm an academic/athlete/musician/aspiring writer, and I'm going to post about all of it.
P.S. if you see something you like, please comment.