JefferyMoulton.com

The Random Thoughts of Jeff

It's 2012. What Will You Live Again?

As New Year is upon us, I can't help but reflect back on Slaughterhouse Five (read my review on GoodReads). The book is, in a word, odd, yet it is also very profound.

It is about a man named Billy who is "unstuck in time." This means that he lives his life out of order, jumping ahead and then jumping back again. A few pivotal moments in his life include: serving in WWII, getting married for money, becoming a successful optometrist, being present as a POW for the bombing of Dresden (one of the worst bombings in terms of civilian casualties of WWII), surviving a plane crash, being kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo, meeting an author, and so on.

That one about aliens is the one I have reflected on the most. The aliens that kidnap him are called Tralfamadorians. They are unique in that they see, not in the limited 3 dimensions that humans see, but in 4, the 4th dimension being time. Because they can see in time, nothing ever really ceases to exist. They can see, and therefore live in, any moment in the past, present, or future. To them, no one ever really dies because they still exist in the past. It also means that they already know how the universe will end because they can see the future (spoiler alert: a Tralfamadorian test pilot working on a new time/space engine pushes a button and that's it for the universe).

From the beginning, I thought that the concept was pretty interesting, even though it pushed too far into fatalism for me, personally. But the concept I liked the most was how the Tralfamadorians accept the terrible things in life. Because they see/live in the 4th dimension, they can live in any moment they want. So, to avoid falling into terrible depression, they choose to live in their best and happiest moments. They don't live in war, for example, they live in peace.

As the New Year approached and this idea of living in the good times has percolated, I've begun to think about the times that I want to relive this year.

The biggest "good time" was probably when I saw Captain America. It wasn't because the movie was particularly great (though I thought it was very good). It was because we saw it in 3D. The 3D itself wasn't necessarily remarkable, but it was the fact that I could see the movie in 3D that blew me away. I didn't realize, until that moment, just how bad my left eye had gotten prior to the corneal transplant I had back in March. I COULD SEE 3D! It was amazing and well-worth living again, despite the pain that was required to have that experience.

I'd also like to relive our trip to Arizona back in July. The first part, Marcus' wedding, and the last part, the 24th in St. Johns with my family, were awesome. But the part I will remember most will be the 2 days we spent in Jerome and at the Grand Canyon. It was so much fun and brought back so many other good memories. I loved sharing those old experiences with my children, and the aches I felt after we hiked a bit down the trail and back again, and the long, seemingly interminable drive, were totally worth it!

If I get a 3rd choice, I'd also relive the recent power outage caused by a big windstorm (see The Answers Are Blowing' in the Wind). Don't get me wrong, it was a terrible experience—and very, very, cold. And we still haven't fully recovered. But the time we spent together huddled around our fireplace reading A Christmas Carol and roasting hot dogs and telling stories and singing and all of that, was so worth it.

Now that I think about it, the Tralfamadorians are wrong. It really isn't possible to relive the good without the bad because the bad inevitably leads to the good. Or, at the very least, it leads to those moments that are most worth reliving.

I saw a commercial the other day about a car. It said something like, "The only thing better than getting what you wished for, is getting more than what you wished for." I don't buy that. I think that one of the many things better than getting what you wished for is finally achieving something that you had to work and sacrifice and suffer and strive for—something that comes a great, personal cost way beyond a dollar amount. Like going through a painful surgery to be able to see things that you missed before without knowing it, or suffering a couple of very cold nights to spend quality time with loved ones, or barely tolerating a long, difficult drive to share some of you best childhood memories with your children.

So rather than reliving just the good times, I want to relive both the good and the bad because, at least for me, they can't be separated.

What times will you relive?

Sometimes I'm a Bit Clueless

When I was in high school, I often had too much time on my hands. Worse, I had a camera to document it! The below movies were the result of a boring Saturday when 2 friends of I were sitting around with nothing to do. Out of the blue one of us said: "Let's make a movie!" So we grabbed a video camera and pretty much started shooting. Fortunately, we had a lot of good friends who joined in when we asked (and did a pretty good job improving everything then and there). They may regret it now.

So, even though our reputations may never recover, I offer you the complete Clueless Detectives, a movie that stands as a a shining example of why you should never give a video camera to 3 high school boys with nothing better to do on a windy day.

Enjoy!

 

 

For the Love of Bad Movies

I have a confession to make, I love big monster movies. Super 8 was probably my favorite film this year, despite (or maybe because of) its cheesy ending. It surpassed Captain America and Source Code and the other few really good films I watched (in all fairness, there haven't been too many outstanding films this year, but still).

A couple of years ago, my favorite film of the year was Cloverfield, which I have watched more than once since its release. I am also a huge fan of the new King Kong and I own (and love to rematch) the extended, 4-hour version of that film, even though admitting that fact is frowned upon in most of the company I keep. Godzilla (the Roland Emmerich one from 1999) is one of my favorite comedies (yes, you read that right) of all time.

I have also been known to watch and rewatch Sy-Fy original movies, including Raptor Island, quite possibly the worst film ever made, and I really enjoyed Splinter, which is about a, well, a splinter, that turns people into evil, zombie-like monsters (despite its ridiculous-sounding premise, Splinter is actually a decent horror flick with surprisingly good acting and a monster that, believe it or not, is actually scary).

I don't know why I love all these films. I know that all of them are flawed and that many of them are, in fact, terrible, but that doesn't seem to matter. I still enjoy them. For me they are almost the best kind of escapist fantasy, carting me away to a place of pure enjoyment. It's like the old "Calgon take me away," commercials, but instead of a bubble bath, it is adventure-celluloid.

The funny thing is that a lot of people I know also love bad movies of their own. My wife is partial to cheesy Disney Channel movies, complete with the bad acting, silly musical numbers, and everything else that goes along with them. Others are into bad romance movies. I know more than a few who love, beyond anything else, the Twilight movies, which, let's face it, are actually about as bad as movies can be.

There is no rational explanation for any of these guilty pleasures. I have searched my memory for some reason why I like big monster movies, why a film like the atrocious Anaconda makes me all giddy inside, and can't think of a single reason. But that is kind of the point, isn't it? There really doesn't have to be a reason for everything we love and enjoy. It is part of being the emotion-driven creatures that we are. And sometimes I think it is good to just let ourselves enjoy it, no matter how bad it is.

So what bad movies do you like?

The Answers are Blowin' in the Wind

Windstorm, 2011
I love the "blustery day" sequence in the old Winnie-the-Pooh movies/books. It is a great sequence and I love how it ends with Pooh rescuing his best friend—albeit, unknowingly. I grew up in a very windy place where local legend says that the founders stopped there to wait out the wind and, since it never stopped, they built a town (as good an explanation as any), so I could relate to a "Windsday" as Pooh calls it.

I remember a particularly bad windstorm where my brother and I watched our neighbor's shed blow across the street into our yard where it crumpled into a mess of thin sheet metal. The next year he bought another one and I got to watch that one take a trip across the street as well. I also remember taking sheets and catching the wind with them so it would drag us along the ground.

The wind would often blow for weeks at a time. People in my hometown would literally go nuts listening to the gale day-in and day-out day-after-day-after-day. Nobody blamed them.
Good times.

So, when the weathermen predicted a bad windstorm for my new hometown last week, I didn't really think much of it. I mean, it's just wind, right?

On Thursday, we woke up to find our big pine tree knocked over by that wind. The tree missed our house, which was a good thing, and no one was hurt, another very good thing, but it did manage to land on our power lines, knock down a telephone pole, and damage the mast where the power connects to our house.

To make a long, very cold story short, we were without power for a few days and had to huddle in front of our fireplace waiting for the electricians and power company to get everything back in shape.

In the end, we weren't really too bad off. Sure, we got pretty cold (the thermostat read "48" when we could turn the heater back on), but we were all safe and we had a fireplace to help keep us warm, a luxury many of our neighbors didn't have (the entire city was out for nearly 24 hours).
The best part is that the insurance is covering pretty much everything, including the tree removal. Home insurance really sucks... until it doesn't.

The days without power were an interesting experience. We got to appreciate what our forebears must have gone through on a day-to-day basis to settle this area. And the kids got the experience of life without TV or video games or computers or even light in the bathroom. Most of the time, it was kind of fun and the kids started looking at it as an adventure. In fact, after it was all over, Joey told us we could count that for our adventure this month. We just may...

But beyond the adventure, there was something I really liked about the experience: Because the rest of the house was an icebox, all of us huddle in the same room and actually spent time together! I read half of A Christmas Carol to the kids (one of my favorites), they played board games on the floor in front of the fire, we roasted hot dogs and made s'mores, and in general, just spent time together. The kids didn't even really fight much! One particularly fun memory was watching the kids sit around the fire telling scary stories to each other. It was almost sick it was so idyllic!

It made me wonder if it was possible to have that same kind of "together time" without a windstorm knocking out the power or another more drastic disaster. Jenna and I have toyed with the idea of dropping the thermostat a few degrees to make the house colder and then building a fire to "encourage" everyone to gather in the front room. We've talked about turning off the TV and reading to each other a bit more, and other things like that. 

The problem with all of our ideas is that they are easy to say, and I can even see us doing them once in a while, but they are hard to do on any kind of consistent basis. I like my house at a comfortable 68-degrees. And we all like watching movies—a lot. So I wonder how often we will actually be able to do it.

Maybe the song is right and "the answers are blowin' in the wind." Maybe we need wind or something like that to help us remember that we actually like being together and like being a family.

Or maybe the wind has just made me crazy. It wouldn't be the first time.