U2's album Achtung Baby was reissued for its 20th anniversary just a little over a month ago in a variety of editions, including a ginormous Uber Deluxe set (with a price to match the heft - Amazon originally listed this at $659.04). While I haven't settled on which reissue to get, the original album embodies everything I think music - and even pop culture - should be. Before I explain, it helps to have a (not-so-brief) primer on Achtung Baby and its concepts.
I remember when I first heard the album. I was still in high school, was just beginning to explore music, and still had a cassette Walkman. I bought the tape while I was out with my parents one day and on the ride home, they popped it into the car's stereo. Within a few seconds, the opening track "Zoo Station" starts with a single repeating guitar riff sounding as if it's trying to break through some barrier. After a few bars, industrial drums kick in, an alarm is added low in the mix, followed by a distorted voice:
I'm ready
I'm ready for the laughing gas
I'm ready
I'm ready for what's next
I'm ready to duck, ready to dive, ready to say I'm glad to be alive
This was clearly not the U2 that built the albums with themes of yearning and exploring America as a concept. The music was immediately engaging, unlike previous material that required repeated listens to absorb the material. The next song, "Even Better Than The Real Thing," opens with an equally grabbing circular guitar, maraca shaking, and contains lyrics that are an ode to embracing artificiality. This is music with a danceable groove, a trait rarely seen on rock albums.
Even Achtung Baby's cover indicates a sense of being part of the nightlife scene. And the title itself is playful, coming from Mel Brook's The Producers. The inviting rhythms, effects laden guitars, and too-cool-for-you vocals combine with the album art to create a slick and glossy package. But that's a front: U2 is presenting a playful image and immediately accessible music to hook its audience so the band can reveal the true motivations of the album.
Achtung Baby's brillance is that it weaves stylish songs with a darker personal journey throughout, forming a narrative with a definite beginning, middle, and end. The idea that fuels Acthung is we suffer repercussions when we do harm to people around us. The most well known song on the album, "One" immediately follows the rush of "Zoo Station" and "Even Better..." It's a muted ballad that details a plea to reconcile a greatly damaged relationship. The glossy sounds that start the album are not reprieves from the personal wreckage: they serve to give us a sense of the main character's actions that cause his later torment. "Zoo Station" is announcing an intention to taste a side of life that's outside of the norm. "Even Better..." takes place in the middle of a party where seemingly anything goes. "One" shows the consequences of these actions. Closing out the first half of the album is "So Cruel," which starts with an admission that "we crossed the line" but asks "who pushed who over?" Making matters worse, "it doesn't even matter to you." The second half kicks off with "The Fly", which is as close to hard rock as U2 is likely to approach. But it's not your typical guitar shredding for the sake of guitar shredding. It's been described as "a phone call from hell" by U2's singer. "Mysterious Ways" is next, featuring chunky guitars, congas, and a music video with an Arabic feel that prominently features belly dancing (a live dancer would become a staple of the song's performance on tour). But despite the imagery of the video and bounce in the song, it's not a regression of the character's behavior. It's actually a faithful reassurance that things will work out because of the Holy Spirit. (This is actually a U2 hallmark: disguising spiritual overtones in songs that will only be picked up on if you know what to look for.)
The album closes with a trio of songs that serve as a microcosm of the album's ambitions. "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" is filled with pop sensibilities. The chorus consists of a single line with a simple sentiment: "Baby, baby, baby, light my way." The bridge declares "your love was like a light bulb hanging over my bed." But the song's title reveals a duality: ultraviolet light is invisible. Despite the chorus and bridge, the lyrics clearly reveal that something uneasy lies under the surface:
There is a silence that comes to a house
Where no one can sleep
I guess it's the price of love
I know it's not cheap
The penultimate song "Acrobat" uses a 6/8 time signature, which my guitar teacher told me provides a more relaxed rhythm compared to the 4/4 time that most songs are written in. But in yet another seeming contradiction, the guitar and drums are downright menacing with lyrics that has the main character confronting his own hypocrisy. The album closes with "Love Is Blindness." We find our narrator beaten and battered by the events of the album. He begs for relief and just wants to crawl back into the safety he finds in darkness:
Love is blindness
I don't want to see
Won't you wrap the night around me?
Nothing that I've said here is news for someone familiar with the material or pop culture history. What's crucial is that U2 has made something so immediately accessible that the audience almost has no choice to become hooked. And once that hook has been set, the personal journey of Achtung Baby becomes apparent. The band intentionally used a veneer of style to reveal substance. If the 12 tracks all focused on the darker subject matter, listeners could very easily put it off as too slow or overwhelmingly bleak.
This accessibility is the key to Achtung Baby's success, and the best of our pop culture uses a similar blueprint. Weirdness just to be weird is off-putting. We can find this in Radiohead's music. OK Computer, from 1997, has some strange textures and depicts a dystopian society but it still can grab immediate attention with songs like "Karma Police." It's considered one of the best albums of its time, and possibly ever. But since then, the band's output has become indecipherable. The result: critics love the band but sales have dropped off.
Mainstream entertainment can raise big questions. Are people inherently good? How far can someone be pushed before they mentally break? How do they react to these trials? These are questions about the human condition. Christopher Nolan leveraged the backdrop of Batman vs the Joker to explore these concepts in The Dark Knight. People showed in droves because of Batman and Heath Ledger's Joker performance. People were wowed because of the depth of the storytelling. It's couching the real message in something that's immediately engaging.
This can also expand the audience's palette. An album like Achtung Baby, filled with its club inspirations, primes traditional rock listener's ears for this type of music. Listeners may not have even realized they liked music from the genres Achtung invokes, simply because they were not exposed to it. This effect is seen in other forms of pop culture: The Matrix franchise is best known an action movie trilogy, but it contains many allusions to philosophy and mythology. The TV show Lost similarly started off as a deserted island story, but early in its run revealed its incorporation of literary and philosophical themes. Both The Matrix and Lost inspired their massive audiences to dig into all of the references and explore subjects they may not have otherwise.
This is where pop culture gets short-changed. There is a value to appealing to the mainstream. It's not literature or art-house film or progressive rock, but it doesn't have to be. As long as the material is accessible enough to capture an audience, pop culture is in a unique position to entice people into asking questions and exploring concepts. Achtung Baby, The Dark Knight, The Matrix, and Lost are just a handful of many examples of this. We shouldn't knock pop culture for being cheap, disposable, or unintellectual. It's not just "entertainment."
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Somewhat-timely, spoilerific movie review: Super 8
Release Date: June 10, 2011
Note: Spoilers abound. The tl,dr version of this post is: Super 8 is well made, but lacks the heart and soul of its inspirations.
Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was released less than two months after I was born and is one of the first movies I ever saw, if not the very first. I know this because my parents often recount a story of how I needed to be escorted out of the theater when the titular character first meets Elliott and starts screaming in panic, causing a certain infant to start screaming in panic. Funnily enough, years later, I would jump at the same scene when rewatching the film.
But more than just a story about a homesick alien, his quest to go home, and how a boy helps get him there, E.T. illustrates the emotions of friendship in ways that realistic settings still can't capture. I find it hard to believe that anyone can watch E.T. and not tear up or outright cry in certain scenes (let me know otherwise).
Which brings me to Super 8.
Super 8 is written and directed by J.J. Abrams with Steven Spielberg serving as executive producer. I'm a big fan of both, so I was eager to see it. Spielberg has made the most diverse movies out of any other major director that I can think of. It takes an amazing amount of skill to tackle Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, and Saving Private Ryan and excel at all of them. Abrams has had a hand in TV shows such as Alias, Fringe (my current sci-fi addiction), and Lost (otherwise known as the show I've been obsessed with every day of its existence). In addition, he rebooted the Star Trek films, making it more accessible for a mainstream crowd.
Super 8 has gotten a lot of attention for being a tribute to Spielberg's science fiction films from the late 70s and early 80s, namely E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The plot follows a group of junior high friends attempting to make a zombie film in their small town. While filming a late night scene at a train station, a military train derails releasing...something. The something seems to be malevolent: people disappear and destruction follows in its wake. We don't see it early on and catch only glimpses from the film's midway point until the end, when we get a full reveal. But we do hear it throughout. This is very much like Lost, which took pains to not reveal anything until absolutely necessary (if at all). A word of advice: if you live in the Super 8 town and hear sounds similar to Lost's smoke monster, it's time to run. (I'm sure this is purely coincidental.) The mystery is engaging and effects are great throughout. There is also a sweet adolescent love story.
The kids argue and call each other names, just like E.T. But the similarities don't end there. The something turns out to be an alien. It was captured by the government and escaped. All it wants to do is go back home. Refrigerators get emptied out. There's a government cover-up. It's kids vs adults. The kids rally together to save one of their own. Ultimately, it's the bond between alien and boy that allows the boy to survive dangerous situations and the alien to leave Earth.
The big problem is there are too many plot elements reminiscent of E.T. that it practically begs for comparison, however unfair it may be. E.T. is a beloved classic. It is a story of how two children (E.T and Elliott) come together to forge a relationship that defines both of them. They are outcasts until they meet. Their bond evolves to the point that there is a literal symbiotic relationship. E.T is about the love of friends and how without it, we'll flail about.
Abrams tries to straddle two lines in Super 8. We think the alien is on a murder spree until we find its true motivation and for some inexplicable reason, kills the villains while only incapacitating the good guys. But all it wants to do is rebuild its ship and go home. So ultimately, it is well-intentioned. This is where Super 8 fails: because we spent the vast majority of the movie seeing the devastation of the alien, we can't flip the switch and think the alien is sympathetic (as much as the story reminds us of E.T.). The bond formed between the main character and alien occurs in the equivalent of a Vulcan mind meld, lasting for maybe a minute total. E.T. spends its entire middle section defining the relationship between its alien and human. When E.T. (the character) leaves, we're saddened that Elliott has lost what seems to be his only friend. But there's also a happiness that the friend is moving into a better situation. We don't feel anything when the Super 8 alien leaves Earth, except that the film is over.
So in the end, Super 8 would stand better on its own. If it didn't recall E.T. so consciously at times, we would accept what the film asks of us more easily. But with so much debt owed to E.T., we can't help notice that we haven't connected with the alien or the human character as much as we did with E.T. and Elliott. Instead of reflecting on the adventure that transpired in Super 8, we feel a bit empty and just want to see E.T. again so we can relive the most pure of human emotions. Super 8 is too good of a tribute to Spielberg that it suffers for it.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
tl;dr: Adapting All Writing To Match Social Media?
I've always been a writer. When I was much younger, before my family could afford a computer, I would use a typewriter to create fan fiction. During my final years of grade school, I was on the school paper's staff serving as a movie and game critic. In undergrad, I took an Intro To Writing Fiction class as a pass/fail instead of getting a traditional grade. The reasoning was that in theory I could focus on my other, "more important" classes without worrying too much about writing. In practice, I liked the class so much that I ended up spending most of my semester thinking and working on it. I've often said that in another life, I would have been a writer.
I'm always thinking how to phrase things more clearly or trying to figure out why an author elected to use a particular word choice over other possibilities. Structure is important: how well does the beginning, middle, and end hang together? With these tendencies, it was with great interest that I read this article on ZDNet. The premise is that as we live in an increasingly fast paced world where the tweet or short status update rules and younger people use these tools as a primary form of communication, then we should adjust our writing styles into bite-sized chunks. And to prove the point, the post is written entirely in 140-character or less chunks.
It was an interesting experiment by the ZDNet author, but the writing is very stilted. The comments do rightfully point out that shorter is better in certain environments, such as readouts to management. Short and concise allows something to be more easily digested by extremely busy people. This is a weakness in my own writing: often too many flourishes and small passing phrases (fun fact: I use parenthetical comments...a lot).
But I come from a background of writing narratives or trying to persuade people of something. In both cases, adding or subtracting words is a critical part of keeping the audience engaged. So naturally, after reading this, I wanted to post here and illustrate the value of things like pacing and the rhythm of a piece of writing. It turns out... that I kind of already did. (Talk about tl;dr: I now have two very similar posts. On a side note, less than 10 posts into this new blog, and I'm already in reruns.)
A bigger point is that I don't think we should enable a culture where the ability to focus is the exception rather than the rule. Malcolm Gladwell made famous the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master at something. How can we possibly reach that level if we're constantly switching tasks? As I write this, I've got the TV on and my iOS devices within arm's reach, pausing once in a while to watch political commentary, play a game or check Facebook. I'm also a 10+ year guitar player who's barely moved past the absolute beginner stage, in large part because I can't sit still long enough to sustain a solid practice session. This compulsion to take mini-breaks every few minutes from whatever I'm doing is one of my biggest limitations in realizing my potential. Shortening writing styles until only the main ideas remain is just another way of reinforcing that hurry up and move on to the next thing mentality.
I also fear that we're heading down a path where nuances that add depth and expressiveness are lost. Prose and argumentative writing is not poetry, but vivid language is part of the toolkit that helps convey the author's intent. Someone can write "The city had a single building taller than 50 meters." Someone else can write "The building stretched high into the sky, casting a shadow over everything else in the area." With the style advocated by ZDNet, everything would read like the first example. Which one is better at creating a world?
I'm not advocating that we turn the English language into a static construct. Language does evolve and change over time. High schoolers learn the works of Shakespeare through annotated editions that explain the slang and idioms of his day. I regularly twist and combine words into new variations. But simplifying our writing can lead to a slippery slope. We may end up with a variant on George Orwell's Newspeak - where we lose ideas because the words that express them are extinct. Freedom of expression is a powerful thing and we should hang on to everything to keep that alive.
I'm always thinking how to phrase things more clearly or trying to figure out why an author elected to use a particular word choice over other possibilities. Structure is important: how well does the beginning, middle, and end hang together? With these tendencies, it was with great interest that I read this article on ZDNet. The premise is that as we live in an increasingly fast paced world where the tweet or short status update rules and younger people use these tools as a primary form of communication, then we should adjust our writing styles into bite-sized chunks. And to prove the point, the post is written entirely in 140-character or less chunks.
It was an interesting experiment by the ZDNet author, but the writing is very stilted. The comments do rightfully point out that shorter is better in certain environments, such as readouts to management. Short and concise allows something to be more easily digested by extremely busy people. This is a weakness in my own writing: often too many flourishes and small passing phrases (fun fact: I use parenthetical comments...a lot).
But I come from a background of writing narratives or trying to persuade people of something. In both cases, adding or subtracting words is a critical part of keeping the audience engaged. So naturally, after reading this, I wanted to post here and illustrate the value of things like pacing and the rhythm of a piece of writing. It turns out... that I kind of already did. (Talk about tl;dr: I now have two very similar posts. On a side note, less than 10 posts into this new blog, and I'm already in reruns.)
A bigger point is that I don't think we should enable a culture where the ability to focus is the exception rather than the rule. Malcolm Gladwell made famous the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master at something. How can we possibly reach that level if we're constantly switching tasks? As I write this, I've got the TV on and my iOS devices within arm's reach, pausing once in a while to watch political commentary, play a game or check Facebook. I'm also a 10+ year guitar player who's barely moved past the absolute beginner stage, in large part because I can't sit still long enough to sustain a solid practice session. This compulsion to take mini-breaks every few minutes from whatever I'm doing is one of my biggest limitations in realizing my potential. Shortening writing styles until only the main ideas remain is just another way of reinforcing that hurry up and move on to the next thing mentality.
I also fear that we're heading down a path where nuances that add depth and expressiveness are lost. Prose and argumentative writing is not poetry, but vivid language is part of the toolkit that helps convey the author's intent. Someone can write "The city had a single building taller than 50 meters." Someone else can write "The building stretched high into the sky, casting a shadow over everything else in the area." With the style advocated by ZDNet, everything would read like the first example. Which one is better at creating a world?
I'm not advocating that we turn the English language into a static construct. Language does evolve and change over time. High schoolers learn the works of Shakespeare through annotated editions that explain the slang and idioms of his day. I regularly twist and combine words into new variations. But simplifying our writing can lead to a slippery slope. We may end up with a variant on George Orwell's Newspeak - where we lose ideas because the words that express them are extinct. Freedom of expression is a powerful thing and we should hang on to everything to keep that alive.
Friday, May 20, 2011
The Entitled Millennial?
Labeling personalities is a curious thing. The Western zodiac says that all people born in the same approximate 30-day window has the same general personality. The Chinese zodiac extends the concept into an yearly interval for personality types. In both cases, millions of people form a homogeneous group based on when they were born, completely ignoring the environment they were brought up in and other factors that may shape a person.
(For the record, I'm a former Taurus/current Aries and Dog in the respective systems. The personality change from Taurus to Aries was painful. I woke up one day a lot less loyal and stubborn, which was replaced with a hyper-competitiveness and tendency to tell it like it is. Kidding aside, and despite my skepticism, I have to admit that all three personality archetypes can be combined to describe me in broad strokes pretty well.)
If the nurture part of nature-vs-nurture is ignored in these systems, then what am I to make of labeling generations? We may want to believe that the terms Baby Boomers and Generation X have more authority because this is the purview of sociologists and not palm readers. But the scope is so much grander. The labels imply there is a tendency for people born - not in the same month or year but the same quarter-century (roughly) - to have the same general traits.
The danger of applying labels in this way popped into my mind when I recently went to a workshop on generational differences in the workplace, focusing on Millennials (defined in the workshop as being born in 1980 - 2010). This was of particular interest to me, being a Millennial (albeit born toward the beginning of the timeframe) that works almost exclusively with people older than me. What struck me is some of the traits used to describe Millennials:
(For the record, I'm a former Taurus/current Aries and Dog in the respective systems. The personality change from Taurus to Aries was painful. I woke up one day a lot less loyal and stubborn, which was replaced with a hyper-competitiveness and tendency to tell it like it is. Kidding aside, and despite my skepticism, I have to admit that all three personality archetypes can be combined to describe me in broad strokes pretty well.)
If the nurture part of nature-vs-nurture is ignored in these systems, then what am I to make of labeling generations? We may want to believe that the terms Baby Boomers and Generation X have more authority because this is the purview of sociologists and not palm readers. But the scope is so much grander. The labels imply there is a tendency for people born - not in the same month or year but the same quarter-century (roughly) - to have the same general traits.
The danger of applying labels in this way popped into my mind when I recently went to a workshop on generational differences in the workplace, focusing on Millennials (defined in the workshop as being born in 1980 - 2010). This was of particular interest to me, being a Millennial (albeit born toward the beginning of the timeframe) that works almost exclusively with people older than me. What struck me is some of the traits used to describe Millennials:
- sheltered - parents of Millennials often accompany their children on job interviews or argue grades with professors.
- pressured - Millennials are raised to always be achieving something: get into the right preschool and do well so they can go to the right grammar school and do well, and on and on.
- structured - as kids, Millennials are often shipped from one activity to another often in the same day (e.g. school to soccer practice to piano lessons)
There is a common factor in the traits I listed above: they are all enabled by middle class, white-collar, suburban life. And with that statement, I run the danger of being overly general myself, but allow me to explain. Structuring children's schedules with music and sports involves time and money commitments that aren't always possible with parents punching the clock. In many areas, the quality of education is not generally a choice in a child's early schooling, unless the parents have means to reside in a good school district or are willing to pay for private school.
Generalizing attributes of the well-off to an entire generation may be justified by the workshop's assertion that Millennials are part of the richest generation that the world has ever seen. The workshop essentially implied that the Millennials consist of rich kids, whose parents organize their lives and do much of the legwork for them. It's no wonder that the workshop also stated that Millennials are perceived as having feelings of entitlement.
But let's not forget that income disparity between the highest and lowest earners has been growing for the entire time Millennials were being born. The United States is also becoming more racially diverse, and minorities traditionally have less income. At the same time, college enrollment is at an all-time high, meaning it's likely that many Millennials are the first in their families to go beyond high school. These statistics point a very different picture: many Millennials are overcoming disadvantages to increase their and their children's standard of living.
Do the Millennials who were able to break free of their given situation feel a sense of entitlement? I don't think so. If anything, it always feels like a continuous uphill battle. When you're the first, there is little frame of reference to look to: no one to guide the way and make sense of experiences. Also, when someone goes from a blue-collar background to a white-collar lifestyle, the perception is lots of schooling followed by a cushy desk job and that somehow this work isn't as real as a factory job. But it is possible to take the blue-collar work ethic (nose to the grindstone; do whatever it takes to get the job done) and apply it to white-collar work.
Millennials represent some of the most diverse walks of life that the United States has seen: some are privileged; others are severely disadvantaged; the rest are somewhere in between; some work extremely hard to move up in life; others expect things handed to them. We should expect to see a wide ranging set of personalities, making it extremely difficult to generalize all of these people into a few common traits. Yet, that's exactly what was done. We might as well start publishing horoscopes based on generations.
Generalizing attributes of the well-off to an entire generation may be justified by the workshop's assertion that Millennials are part of the richest generation that the world has ever seen. The workshop essentially implied that the Millennials consist of rich kids, whose parents organize their lives and do much of the legwork for them. It's no wonder that the workshop also stated that Millennials are perceived as having feelings of entitlement.
But let's not forget that income disparity between the highest and lowest earners has been growing for the entire time Millennials were being born. The United States is also becoming more racially diverse, and minorities traditionally have less income. At the same time, college enrollment is at an all-time high, meaning it's likely that many Millennials are the first in their families to go beyond high school. These statistics point a very different picture: many Millennials are overcoming disadvantages to increase their and their children's standard of living.
Do the Millennials who were able to break free of their given situation feel a sense of entitlement? I don't think so. If anything, it always feels like a continuous uphill battle. When you're the first, there is little frame of reference to look to: no one to guide the way and make sense of experiences. Also, when someone goes from a blue-collar background to a white-collar lifestyle, the perception is lots of schooling followed by a cushy desk job and that somehow this work isn't as real as a factory job. But it is possible to take the blue-collar work ethic (nose to the grindstone; do whatever it takes to get the job done) and apply it to white-collar work.
Millennials represent some of the most diverse walks of life that the United States has seen: some are privileged; others are severely disadvantaged; the rest are somewhere in between; some work extremely hard to move up in life; others expect things handed to them. We should expect to see a wide ranging set of personalities, making it extremely difficult to generalize all of these people into a few common traits. Yet, that's exactly what was done. We might as well start publishing horoscopes based on generations.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Belated Movie Review: Unstoppable
Release Date: November 12, 2010
Not all movies have to be thought provoking, revolutionize a new technique, or give us new twists on character archetypes. Sometimes we've seen it all before and in cases like this, it's the execution that matters, which brings us to Unstoppable.
The film is about a train that is...well, unstoppable. A train becomes out of control after a series of human errors and ends up on a collision course with school kids, other trains, and populated areas while carrying a toxic material. It's up to Detective Alonzo Harris and Captain Kirk to save the day. I was vaguely reminded of another movie about a form of mass transportation run amok. I think it was called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down, but I could be wrong.
Besides the concept, the film is filled with familiar tropes: greedy corporations that won't do the responsible thing, tension between generations as long time employees are threatened by a new kid on the block, estranged families whose relationships are restored in times in crisis, and the old standby of grave danger just as one character is about to retire. Heck, even the two lead actors revisit previous roles: Denzel Washington's character finds himself overseeing a coworker's first day on the job while Chris Pine's is unexpectedly thrust into a role bigger than anticipated.
Despite this, the film is tightly constructed and has high production values. It wastes no time in setting up the plot. From there, it's all action sequences, with exposition smack in the middle of them. Some dialog scenes felt like this:
"Tell me about your family."
"Hang on, let me do this thing that may kill us both."
* Executes highly dangerous maneuver *
"I haven't seen my family in a month, due to regrettable actions I did."
* Move on to next set piece *
The editing can be frenetic: shots rarely last longer than a handful of seconds and flip constantly between trains, a sort of mission control of the train company, and the train company's HQ. While in most films, this can get annoying, Unstoppable makes it work. The jumping back and forth ratchets up the tension, which is the film's strongest asset.
Unstoppable takes what is essentially a two-hour chase scene and keeps it from becoming monotonous. The effects are impressive, and it's intense ride from start to finish. The acting does enough to support the story without getting in the way of things. The film doesn't add anything new to action movies, but it doesn't pretend to be do so either. It hits all of its elements so well, it serves as a prime example of paint-by-numbers done right. Highly recommended.
Not all movies have to be thought provoking, revolutionize a new technique, or give us new twists on character archetypes. Sometimes we've seen it all before and in cases like this, it's the execution that matters, which brings us to Unstoppable.
The film is about a train that is...well, unstoppable. A train becomes out of control after a series of human errors and ends up on a collision course with school kids, other trains, and populated areas while carrying a toxic material. It's up to Detective Alonzo Harris and Captain Kirk to save the day. I was vaguely reminded of another movie about a form of mass transportation run amok. I think it was called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down, but I could be wrong.
Besides the concept, the film is filled with familiar tropes: greedy corporations that won't do the responsible thing, tension between generations as long time employees are threatened by a new kid on the block, estranged families whose relationships are restored in times in crisis, and the old standby of grave danger just as one character is about to retire. Heck, even the two lead actors revisit previous roles: Denzel Washington's character finds himself overseeing a coworker's first day on the job while Chris Pine's is unexpectedly thrust into a role bigger than anticipated.
Despite this, the film is tightly constructed and has high production values. It wastes no time in setting up the plot. From there, it's all action sequences, with exposition smack in the middle of them. Some dialog scenes felt like this:
"Tell me about your family."
"Hang on, let me do this thing that may kill us both."
* Executes highly dangerous maneuver *
"I haven't seen my family in a month, due to regrettable actions I did."
* Move on to next set piece *
The editing can be frenetic: shots rarely last longer than a handful of seconds and flip constantly between trains, a sort of mission control of the train company, and the train company's HQ. While in most films, this can get annoying, Unstoppable makes it work. The jumping back and forth ratchets up the tension, which is the film's strongest asset.
Unstoppable takes what is essentially a two-hour chase scene and keeps it from becoming monotonous. The effects are impressive, and it's intense ride from start to finish. The acting does enough to support the story without getting in the way of things. The film doesn't add anything new to action movies, but it doesn't pretend to be do so either. It hits all of its elements so well, it serves as a prime example of paint-by-numbers done right. Highly recommended.
Why should I upgrade my car's CSS?
Imagine spending thousands of dollars on an item that will immediately start losing value the moment you start using it. Or has already lost a substantial portion of its value when you obtain it. You can increase its value by investing additional thousands of dollars into updating it, but this too continuously loses value. And there's a bit of one-upmanship going on: can you put together your declining thousands of dollars better than another person's declining thousands of dollars, while cordially comparing notes?
This is what I see in the world of car modifications. It was reinforced last week when I attended a car meet, where people display their cars and all of the modifications. I didn't go looking to confirm my biases. I went to hang out with my best friend, who I rarely see enough of, and I was genuinely interested to see if I could make sense of why people do it. But it seemed all I heard was: "I'm going to quad-charge my NFTSs and add FPSs so I can run at 7400. Pretty sweet deal at $3K, per fender."
Granted: some of the modified cars do look nice. And I'm not opposed to some embellishments of cars to accent its stock appearance.
But I'm a big believer that things should work right out of the box and need little to no dressing up. I could spend time and effort to root an Android phone to remove carrier installed applications and improve its general performance, or I could...you know. If I'm going to spend $X total on a car, I'd rather not spend a fraction of it at first, get a limited feature set, and then keep spending up to $X to get it the way I want.
The counterargument to that is the cost is spread over time instead of committing to $X right away. True, but that only brings me to my next point: What kinds of jobs do car enthusiasts have? How can they afford this hobby? I'd like to know because I may be in the wrong line of work. It seems like the total amount spent on someone's Civic approaches the price of entry-level luxury cars. And there are people heavily modifying luxury cars.
My biggest issue is not necessarily the money itself, but how little return there is on it. Modifying cars isn't sports where the competition results in health benefits. There's no immersion in some other world and sparking imagination like reading or playing video games. Learning how to play an instrument can have downstream benefits like songwriting. I'm not saying that everything needs to have some underlying deeper purpose. There is room for escapism. But I don't see any of those things here. I see hyper-competitiveness and money spent with little payoff for something that seems ultimately superficial. It's truly something I don't understand. At all. I wish someone would enlighten me and explain the appeal.
This is what I see in the world of car modifications. It was reinforced last week when I attended a car meet, where people display their cars and all of the modifications. I didn't go looking to confirm my biases. I went to hang out with my best friend, who I rarely see enough of, and I was genuinely interested to see if I could make sense of why people do it. But it seemed all I heard was: "I'm going to quad-charge my NFTSs and add FPSs so I can run at 7400. Pretty sweet deal at $3K, per fender."
Granted: some of the modified cars do look nice. And I'm not opposed to some embellishments of cars to accent its stock appearance.
But I'm a big believer that things should work right out of the box and need little to no dressing up. I could spend time and effort to root an Android phone to remove carrier installed applications and improve its general performance, or I could...you know. If I'm going to spend $X total on a car, I'd rather not spend a fraction of it at first, get a limited feature set, and then keep spending up to $X to get it the way I want.
The counterargument to that is the cost is spread over time instead of committing to $X right away. True, but that only brings me to my next point: What kinds of jobs do car enthusiasts have? How can they afford this hobby? I'd like to know because I may be in the wrong line of work. It seems like the total amount spent on someone's Civic approaches the price of entry-level luxury cars. And there are people heavily modifying luxury cars.
My biggest issue is not necessarily the money itself, but how little return there is on it. Modifying cars isn't sports where the competition results in health benefits. There's no immersion in some other world and sparking imagination like reading or playing video games. Learning how to play an instrument can have downstream benefits like songwriting. I'm not saying that everything needs to have some underlying deeper purpose. There is room for escapism. But I don't see any of those things here. I see hyper-competitiveness and money spent with little payoff for something that seems ultimately superficial. It's truly something I don't understand. At all. I wish someone would enlighten me and explain the appeal.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
This Year's Best Music Collaboration (That Will Never See The Light Of Day)
The latest issue (as of when I started writing this post) of Rolling Stone names what to look forward in music this year. Under Best Collaboration, they named U2's "upcoming" album being produced by Danger Mouse (quotations mine - for reasons that will be seen).
Anyone who knows me knows that U2 is my all-time favorite band. And recently, I've become enamored with Danger Mouse: the first Gnarls Barkley album is great; he produced The Black Keys best known song and his influence is heard elsewhere on that album; and I can't seem to get Broken Bells songs out of my head despite listening to their debut album several times a week. So when news broke in October that the world's biggest rock band was working with one of music's most well regarded producers, I was ecstatic.
The thing is: we will never hear it as part of U2's main discography. We'll be lucky if we hear some portions of it in some sort of unreleased material compilation.
U2 is, to put it mildly, self-conscious. At the end of the 80s they went away to dream it all up again (their words), after a bad critical reaction to their last album of the decade. They spent the 90s pushing the boundaries of their music, reinventing and poking fun at themselves and rock cliches. This was the band at their creative peak. At the end of the 90s, again facing criticism, they returned to a more traditional sound and went back to a save the world incarnation.
In 2003, U2 spent a year recording with producer Chris Thomas, only to scrap it and work with someone they have previous extensive experience with. <sarcasm> The resulting album certainly doesn't have any songs that try to recall some of their classics. </sarcasm> Sessions with Rick Rubin in 2006 were similarly tossed, again to work with their go-to people. The album that was released in early 2009, "No Line on the Horizon" was to be more experimental, almost another reinvention. But they pulled back on those ambitions, and delayed the album because they hit a "rich songwriting vein". Many fans read the quote as "We're working on more radio friendly songs."
No Line was to be followed quickly by a companion album filled with more atmospheric and ambient songs left over from the No Line sessions. Two plus years later, with No Line not performing well, it seems unlikely we'll hear its sister. There's word of 3 other projects: the Spider-Man musical soundtrack, an album with songs tailor made for a club, and the Danger Mouse album. All of which sound like they're almost done - and are up in the air, because the band has paralysis by analysis and can't decide what to do.
This is the band that heavily influenced my belief that rock music is more about the journey and not necessarily the destination. It's about pushing yourself into uncharted waters, while retaining some semblance of accessibility. But now, it's about trying to be the biggest band in the world and not ruining their legacy - a legacy that was partly defined by reinvention. They weren't so afraid before, releasing companion albums and non-mainstream music, albeit under a different name.
I have to admit that for me, other bands have eclipsed U2 in terms of excitement during the lead-up to new music being released, namely Arcade Fire, Broken Bells, and Coldplay. This shows what playing it safe has done - the most hardcore fans can't muster the same energy for U2 as they once did. We've seen this all before: the big "This is our best work EVAR!" statements from the band followed by delays and favoring of sounds geared towards more casual fans. Time to regain some courage.
Anyone who knows me knows that U2 is my all-time favorite band. And recently, I've become enamored with Danger Mouse: the first Gnarls Barkley album is great; he produced The Black Keys best known song and his influence is heard elsewhere on that album; and I can't seem to get Broken Bells songs out of my head despite listening to their debut album several times a week. So when news broke in October that the world's biggest rock band was working with one of music's most well regarded producers, I was ecstatic.
The thing is: we will never hear it as part of U2's main discography. We'll be lucky if we hear some portions of it in some sort of unreleased material compilation.
U2 is, to put it mildly, self-conscious. At the end of the 80s they went away to dream it all up again (their words), after a bad critical reaction to their last album of the decade. They spent the 90s pushing the boundaries of their music, reinventing and poking fun at themselves and rock cliches. This was the band at their creative peak. At the end of the 90s, again facing criticism, they returned to a more traditional sound and went back to a save the world incarnation.
In 2003, U2 spent a year recording with producer Chris Thomas, only to scrap it and work with someone they have previous extensive experience with. <sarcasm> The resulting album certainly doesn't have any songs that try to recall some of their classics. </sarcasm> Sessions with Rick Rubin in 2006 were similarly tossed, again to work with their go-to people. The album that was released in early 2009, "No Line on the Horizon" was to be more experimental, almost another reinvention. But they pulled back on those ambitions, and delayed the album because they hit a "rich songwriting vein". Many fans read the quote as "We're working on more radio friendly songs."
No Line was to be followed quickly by a companion album filled with more atmospheric and ambient songs left over from the No Line sessions. Two plus years later, with No Line not performing well, it seems unlikely we'll hear its sister. There's word of 3 other projects: the Spider-Man musical soundtrack, an album with songs tailor made for a club, and the Danger Mouse album. All of which sound like they're almost done - and are up in the air, because the band has paralysis by analysis and can't decide what to do.
This is the band that heavily influenced my belief that rock music is more about the journey and not necessarily the destination. It's about pushing yourself into uncharted waters, while retaining some semblance of accessibility. But now, it's about trying to be the biggest band in the world and not ruining their legacy - a legacy that was partly defined by reinvention. They weren't so afraid before, releasing companion albums and non-mainstream music, albeit under a different name.
I have to admit that for me, other bands have eclipsed U2 in terms of excitement during the lead-up to new music being released, namely Arcade Fire, Broken Bells, and Coldplay. This shows what playing it safe has done - the most hardcore fans can't muster the same energy for U2 as they once did. We've seen this all before: the big "This is our best work EVAR!" statements from the band followed by delays and favoring of sounds geared towards more casual fans. Time to regain some courage.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Heart, Soul And Faith In Unexpected Places: Science Fiction
People like to think of science fiction as a very specific thing: aliens, robots, intergalactic battles with spaceships, etc... Very geeky stuff, devoid of any sort of compassion and soul. If it's not filled with enough explosions, then it's not worth the time.
The thing is: that's a fallacy.
I was reminded of this when Spike TV was airing the original Star Wars trilogy last weekend. It has all of the things I mentioned in my first sentence. The prequels, released 22 years after the first film, included even more of that: bigger battles, more exotic aliens, shoehorned robots, and suddenly the main characters can defy physics!!! A geek's supposed dream. Yet the prequel trilogy is universally considered inferior to the original trilogy. Why is that?
Star Wars didn't become a pop culture landmark because it had cool space battles and lasers. The story famously incorporates elements of the hero's journey, which has been found throughout human history. The central components of Star Wars are themes that we can all relate to: good vs. evil, parent/child relationships, redemption, destiny vs. free will. The science fiction is simply a setting to place these ideas.
The excitement and tension in the action sequences exist because we've thought about the themes ourselves and the stakes are as high for ourselves as the characters. We want to tell ourselves that the fallen can step back into the light. If good doesn't prevail in our entertainment, then what hope do we have in real life? On the other hand, the prequel trilogy tries to explain everything through biological/scientific processes: our destiny is set by organisms in our bloodstream. We're told this directly, leaving no room for us to apply what our hearts/minds tell us. The result: the action's only effect on us is to say "That's cool" (at best).
Speaking of biology, an ongoing battle that is being fiercely played out in society is creationism/intelligent design vs natural selection/evolution. One side routinely accuses the other of having an imaginary friend in the sky, while the other says the generally accepted science is meaningless. The novel, Contact, by Carl Sagan addresses the debate in an intelligent way (much more so than the movie - which is still good). Major spoilers ahead. The story focuses on an astronomer, Ellie Arroway, and how she leads the investigation into a signal picked up outside of this solar system. The signal is decoded into a set of instructions for a vehicle that leads to... well, nobody's sure. Who do we pick as human ambassadors? Ellie wants desperately to go, but is considered not representative of humans because she doesn't believe in a higher power. Circumstances lead to Ellie's selection and on the misson, she encounters a sort of intergalactic subway system and meets an alien taking the form of her father. The alien doesn't know who built the subway, only that some beings before the aliens species did. Ellie comes back to Earth, only to find a skeptical government: all of the recording equipment picked up only static the entire trip. Ellie, a person who always relied on tangible evidence for her own personal beliefs, can't prove what she knows in her heart to be true. There is a later implication that the entire universe has pi woven into its fabric, an indication that an intelligence built everything we know. It's rare to find material that addresses both viewpoints fairly and allows for them to be valid. Again, it's the setting that enables the conversation to play out.
Here's a few other quick examples (again, spoilers):
The thing is: that's a fallacy.
I was reminded of this when Spike TV was airing the original Star Wars trilogy last weekend. It has all of the things I mentioned in my first sentence. The prequels, released 22 years after the first film, included even more of that: bigger battles, more exotic aliens, shoehorned robots, and suddenly the main characters can defy physics!!! A geek's supposed dream. Yet the prequel trilogy is universally considered inferior to the original trilogy. Why is that?
Star Wars didn't become a pop culture landmark because it had cool space battles and lasers. The story famously incorporates elements of the hero's journey, which has been found throughout human history. The central components of Star Wars are themes that we can all relate to: good vs. evil, parent/child relationships, redemption, destiny vs. free will. The science fiction is simply a setting to place these ideas.
The excitement and tension in the action sequences exist because we've thought about the themes ourselves and the stakes are as high for ourselves as the characters. We want to tell ourselves that the fallen can step back into the light. If good doesn't prevail in our entertainment, then what hope do we have in real life? On the other hand, the prequel trilogy tries to explain everything through biological/scientific processes: our destiny is set by organisms in our bloodstream. We're told this directly, leaving no room for us to apply what our hearts/minds tell us. The result: the action's only effect on us is to say "That's cool" (at best).
Speaking of biology, an ongoing battle that is being fiercely played out in society is creationism/intelligent design vs natural selection/evolution. One side routinely accuses the other of having an imaginary friend in the sky, while the other says the generally accepted science is meaningless. The novel, Contact, by Carl Sagan addresses the debate in an intelligent way (much more so than the movie - which is still good). Major spoilers ahead. The story focuses on an astronomer, Ellie Arroway, and how she leads the investigation into a signal picked up outside of this solar system. The signal is decoded into a set of instructions for a vehicle that leads to... well, nobody's sure. Who do we pick as human ambassadors? Ellie wants desperately to go, but is considered not representative of humans because she doesn't believe in a higher power. Circumstances lead to Ellie's selection and on the misson, she encounters a sort of intergalactic subway system and meets an alien taking the form of her father. The alien doesn't know who built the subway, only that some beings before the aliens species did. Ellie comes back to Earth, only to find a skeptical government: all of the recording equipment picked up only static the entire trip. Ellie, a person who always relied on tangible evidence for her own personal beliefs, can't prove what she knows in her heart to be true. There is a later implication that the entire universe has pi woven into its fabric, an indication that an intelligence built everything we know. It's rare to find material that addresses both viewpoints fairly and allows for them to be valid. Again, it's the setting that enables the conversation to play out.
Here's a few other quick examples (again, spoilers):
- Inception has a famously ambiguous ending. But why people care so much if it's just a cool film? It's not the layers of mind-bending action. We care because we want Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to be reunited with his kids in life. We empathize with Cobb because he had good intentions in trying to bring his wife back from insanity and the result was her death. Even the core of the team's plan was an emotional play: reconciliation between father and son.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer is not about a teenager kicking demon butt. It's about growing up and coming to terms with your life. Anyone who's seen the show enough knows that the antagonists are often metaphors for major life milestones.
- Lost had a lot of viewers stick around to find out what's up with polar bears and time traveling. The ending was polarizing for not explaining these things and turning the finale into a class reunion/utopia dreamland. But the core of the show is relationships and character motivations. I admit to tearing up quite a few times throughout the series and the ending was fine for me.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Difference Between Rock And Rawk Music
"Coldplay is rock music for people who don't like rock music."
Apologies to where I picked up that quote for not attributing it properly. It's been a few years since I first came across it and it has stuck with me ever since. The quote is true in a way, if the definition of rock is loud guitars, crashing drums, and yelling vocals (i.e. "rawk"). Coldplay is primarily guitar driven and they have drums, so hey! To the casual listener, they're rock. But it's not real rock: the guitars aren't turned up to 11 and Chris Martin isn't too hoarse to have a conversation by the end of the show. No drum solo: fail. So says the rawk listener.
I've been reminded of this definition of rock over the past few weeks, as the Foo Fighters released a new album today. Having an obsessive fan in the family, I've heard a lot about how this is the Foos' rockiest album in years. They aren't a heavy metal band and don't scream all the time. Yet they invoke the rawk definition with a lot of their mannerisms - particularly front man Dave Grohl. Watch the first minute of this clip for an example of what I mean:
The truth is rock is one of the most versatile music genres. Wikipedia lists over 200 children genres. Yes, it includes rawk: things like blackened doom metal, sure to be filled with unintelligible lyrics and guitars that will cause damage the first time they come in contact with eardrums.
But outside of that extreme, rock in general is accessible to the vast majority of people. It encompasses everything from:
Apologies to where I picked up that quote for not attributing it properly. It's been a few years since I first came across it and it has stuck with me ever since. The quote is true in a way, if the definition of rock is loud guitars, crashing drums, and yelling vocals (i.e. "rawk"). Coldplay is primarily guitar driven and they have drums, so hey! To the casual listener, they're rock. But it's not real rock: the guitars aren't turned up to 11 and Chris Martin isn't too hoarse to have a conversation by the end of the show. No drum solo: fail. So says the rawk listener.
I've been reminded of this definition of rock over the past few weeks, as the Foo Fighters released a new album today. Having an obsessive fan in the family, I've heard a lot about how this is the Foos' rockiest album in years. They aren't a heavy metal band and don't scream all the time. Yet they invoke the rawk definition with a lot of their mannerisms - particularly front man Dave Grohl. Watch the first minute of this clip for an example of what I mean:
The truth is rock is one of the most versatile music genres. Wikipedia lists over 200 children genres. Yes, it includes rawk: things like blackened doom metal, sure to be filled with unintelligible lyrics and guitars that will cause damage the first time they come in contact with eardrums.
But outside of that extreme, rock in general is accessible to the vast majority of people. It encompasses everything from:
- The Beatles' simplest pop songs to Pearl Jam's tidal wave of emotion
- Elvis' mashup of rock's roots to Interpol's moody atmosphere
- And yes: Coldplay's "wuss rock" to Foo Fighters' propulsion.
Rock is more of a sensibility than anything else. Mainly, its an exploration of sounds on a journey where the destination is unknown. Rock is wide-ranging, open to new colors and feelings, and has a sense of discovery. Everything rawk isn't.
Friday, April 8, 2011
I am not an Apple shill, I swear!
I was asked: Does Apple pay me money? Apparently, I'm a member of the Mac cult and will defend Apple to the death. I'm not sure where this perception comes from and I think I've been pretty open on my feelings (decidedly mixed) on the issue. I'm going to try to set the record straight.
I own many Apple devices: iPhone 4, original iPad, MacBook. I haven't used a Windows PC at home in quite a few years. I'm drawn to Apple products primarily for one reason. I've spent a significant part of my life arguing that while technology does a lot of cool and great things, none of it matters unless it's usable and understandable by the non-tech crowd. I'm passionate that software should be polished. Every detail consistent with other details: if something works one way in an application, then other contexts with similar actions should have similar user interfaces and behaviors. There's little argument that is exactly what Apple provides: elegant hardware, intuitive operating system that anyone can operate.
The walled garden is a problem that mostly exists for power users and I think most consumers couldn't care less. Apple owns the end-to-end system because in its words they are unwilling to compromise the user experience. And believe it or not: this is not simply an excuse to dictate power over its users and developers. I've seen the difference between supporting software where everything is under your control and troubleshooting an issue where the cause can be in either your system or an external system. A mixed environment is by far more complex and harder to support, with a lot more time spent just analyzing, trying to figure out what went wrong and where. Not to mention that nearly all of the questions are fielded by one team.
With that out of the way, there are some serious issues I have with Apple:
I own many Apple devices: iPhone 4, original iPad, MacBook. I haven't used a Windows PC at home in quite a few years. I'm drawn to Apple products primarily for one reason. I've spent a significant part of my life arguing that while technology does a lot of cool and great things, none of it matters unless it's usable and understandable by the non-tech crowd. I'm passionate that software should be polished. Every detail consistent with other details: if something works one way in an application, then other contexts with similar actions should have similar user interfaces and behaviors. There's little argument that is exactly what Apple provides: elegant hardware, intuitive operating system that anyone can operate.
The walled garden is a problem that mostly exists for power users and I think most consumers couldn't care less. Apple owns the end-to-end system because in its words they are unwilling to compromise the user experience. And believe it or not: this is not simply an excuse to dictate power over its users and developers. I've seen the difference between supporting software where everything is under your control and troubleshooting an issue where the cause can be in either your system or an external system. A mixed environment is by far more complex and harder to support, with a lot more time spent just analyzing, trying to figure out what went wrong and where. Not to mention that nearly all of the questions are fielded by one team.
With that out of the way, there are some serious issues I have with Apple:
- Steve Jobs is an egomaniacal perfectionist jerk. There isn't a reason to treat people like he does. Leaders should be able to communicate their vision without resorting to intimidation.
- Their recent in-app subscription policy has potential to either drive useful apps out of the app store or raise prices for the non-iWorld, which is bad for all of us. We could see no more native Netflix or Kindle apps.
- No Flash on the iPad is a significant problem. When the device is touted as the best way to browse the Internet, and does not support the most popular video technology, then the experience is compromised. HTML5 is not here yet, and don't expect the entire Flash universe to be converted.
These bother me much more than the amount of space I gave to them indicates. I think it's because they all deal with how an entity (mis)represents themselves and on a basic level, fairness to others.
I'm not a victim of the reality distortion field. I have not and will never wait in line overnight for an Apple product. Apple products will not save the world. I'm in their ecosystem because it meets my needs in that elegant package I mentioned earlier. But it's not a one-size fits all solution. Like anything else, it's all up to the individual. If it doesn't someone's needs, I will gladly tell that person to stay away from Apple. Spoken as a true Apple apologist, right?
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Nobody's Blogging Anymore (Except Me)
It's true. Or so I heard. Not only did I miss that boat, I'm late to the party on another front: the linked article was published four months ago. Typical me.
It seems that this is partially attributable to the fact that technology is enabling shorter attention spans: with an infinite amount of information being delivered to us in bite sized chunks and myriad of tools for us to communicate with those around us (also in bite sized chunks), we may be losing our abilities to focus. There's a reason why tl; dr is frequently used nowadays. Look no further than the rest of this post (to be honest, it's not that long - I think).
But there's something to be said about the written word in a form longer than a tweet or status update, when read at the right pace. There's a rhythm and flow involved in writing that goes two ways. The author organizes and paces their thoughts. If the reader goes too fast, they never make the connection with the author. Read too slow with days/weeks/months separating a return to the material, and even those with great memories lose the thread. But when the pace is just right, we become immersed in the thoughts and ideas of the writer, mentally agreeing or disagreeing with any commentary and coming up with our own arguments. With today's technology, we can communicate directly with the author, creating a dialog between with writer and reader. The role of the author is to simply frame the topic of conversation.
So, yes, this is primarily the umpteenth time I've created an outlet for thoughts I don't really have a forum for. But any and all feedback, comments, and rebuttals are welcome. Let's see where this goes.
It seems that this is partially attributable to the fact that technology is enabling shorter attention spans: with an infinite amount of information being delivered to us in bite sized chunks and myriad of tools for us to communicate with those around us (also in bite sized chunks), we may be losing our abilities to focus. There's a reason why tl; dr is frequently used nowadays. Look no further than the rest of this post (to be honest, it's not that long - I think).
But there's something to be said about the written word in a form longer than a tweet or status update, when read at the right pace. There's a rhythm and flow involved in writing that goes two ways. The author organizes and paces their thoughts. If the reader goes too fast, they never make the connection with the author. Read too slow with days/weeks/months separating a return to the material, and even those with great memories lose the thread. But when the pace is just right, we become immersed in the thoughts and ideas of the writer, mentally agreeing or disagreeing with any commentary and coming up with our own arguments. With today's technology, we can communicate directly with the author, creating a dialog between with writer and reader. The role of the author is to simply frame the topic of conversation.
So, yes, this is primarily the umpteenth time I've created an outlet for thoughts I don't really have a forum for. But any and all feedback, comments, and rebuttals are welcome. Let's see where this goes.
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