2012: Halfway Review

God, are we really halfway through 2012? Here are the highlights:

Films (2012 releases)

Moonrise Kingdom
Raid: Redemption
21 Jump Street
Cabin in the Woods
Killer Joe
Eden
The Hunter

Films from other years (I'm slow)

The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover
Waking Life
Naked
Breaking the Waves
Castle in the Sky
Repulsion
Undertow
y tu mama tambien
Kiss Me Deadly
25th Hour
Bronson
Days of Heaven
Chunking Express
The Awful Truth

In general, this has been a phenomenal year for both film watching and filmmaking for me so far. Besides the above, I made it to a full twenty films at SXSW, and many screenings of old classics throughout the year as well.

From a creative perspective, this year has been a bonanza. A short I worked on screened at Cannes Film Festival, and another is about ready for release: it's even better. I've also finished and submitted my Texas screenplay that has consumed the past two years of my anxiety, and cranked out a second script off a concept I've been kicking around for several years as well.

I've been damn lucky to work with people who are way more talented than I am in my attempted forays into the film industry. I hope those forays continue and continue to bear fruit. Every time I see my name up on that screen, I get that little tingle down my spine. You know the one. It's the one that tells you you're still kicking.

My life might be taking a giant leap in a new (old?) direction (more on that later), but don't think for a minute that I'm done here. I've only just begun to fight.

Music (all release dates; I'm not much of a 'this is what just came out' guy)

This has been the year of Bon Iver so far. But it's also been the year of branching into genres and styles that I normally sour towards. Bluegrass, electronica, dance pop, outlaw country, folk: these genres have little in common except that I normally don't particularly care for them, and I've been listening to each with much more frequency this year.

last.fm reports that my most played artists list starts with Bonobo and the Flaming Lips, but I'm well aware that Flaming Lips was left running one weekend on my computer, so I don't think we can count that. Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, M83, Big Gigantic, Radiohead, Cinematic Orchestra, Pretty LIghts, RJD2, Edward Sharpe, Blue Sky Black Death, Matisyahu, Black Joe Lewis, Manu Chao...these are all much more explainable and have definitely provided the soundtrack to 2012 so far.

Of course, these are drawn only from my home spotify account...if we want to expand to my work computer, car, and live music, we can add Aesop Rock, Ennio Morricone, Nicki Minaj, Chromeo, Friendly Fires, Brett Randell, Intersteller Transmissions, Skrillex, Atash, Childish Gambino, Drake, Gotye, Avicii, LMFAO, Kavinsky, Of Monsters and Men, Mayer Hawthorne, Kanye West, and of course the ineffable Ramon Dells to the mix.

I suppose that brings us to concerts, of which there have been many, but perhaps not as many as years past. The stand outs so far have been:

Edward Sharpe (twice!), Mumford and Sons, Big Gigantic, GOBI, Atash, Intersteller Transmissions, Dave Matthews Band, Brett Randell, Michael Franti, Skrillex, Gogol Bordello, King Khan and the Shrines, Randy Newman, Jack White, Lotus, and probably some other shows that I'm completely forgetting I even attended.

Really, as always, it's been a fantastic year for music.

Television

This was the year I finally caught up on both Breaking Bad and Mad Men, which has been a delight. I just wrapped up the first two season of Louie, and of course new seasons of Archer, Community, Parks and Recreation, Game of Thrones, and probably a bunch others that I'm forgetting. Not much can be said about any of these shows that hasn't been said already, so I'll move on.

Video Games

Against my better judgement, I've gotten back into gaming a bit this year, and it's going...ok. I can never deny my love for the artform; my love for the effect it has on my social life and physique is another thing altogether.

THAT BEING SAID, I've played some damn good games this year. Limbo and LA Noir were amazing, and I finally finished Braid. Bastion was a fun little playthrough. But the creme de le creme has been my current maniac blitz through the Mass Effect trilogy. GOD what a great series of games. They've reinvigorated my oldest writing lust: penning my own crazed RPG, and inspired me to outline the basics of the game I will make (someday).

So it hasn't been a total waste of time (I hope).

Literature

I'm trying to read more this year. This is harder, b/c even compared to video games, books are damn time consuming.

That being said, some good ones have gone down. Less Than Zero, American Psycho, Rant, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Abundance. I made game efforts towards The Road and that one thing that everyone raves about...(google says: One Hundred Years of Solitude), but ultimately found both lacking. We'll pick them up at a later time and see what happens.

The futile quest of the year has been my in progress read through of Infinite Jest (hey, that rhymed!) It's a hell of a dense book, but incredibly written. Fucking masterpiece, and probably the most difficult read I've ever attempted. I'm about halfway through; here's hoping I can knock it out by the end of the year. I'm confident. Overconfident? We'll find out.

Events


Lots of fun stuff this year. Some highlights:

1. SXSW
2. Hangout Music Fest
3. Wendelfest
4. Beach Camping
5. Lotus concert
6. Casa Grande Masquerade of Fools
7. Writing Club
8. Film Club
9. UT Film Class Interviews
10. I mean, fucking everything

Personal Progress (My Goals and otherwise)


This has been a *great* year so far for the '25 goals in 25 years' list I set up last fall. It's amazing how effective making that type of concrete list is in effecting change in your life. So far, I've:

*Gone from a pretty embarrassing dancer to a skillfully embarrassing dancer

*Learned to sing! (I mean, I suck, but the sounds coming out of my mouth are on tune and resemble what we've collectively learned to call a 'singing voice')

*Worked on a film that played at the Cannes Film Festival (ok, so this doesn't quite qualify for my 'attend the Cannes Film Festival' goal, but it's damn close!)

*Learned rudimentary Python and Javascript (not quite my goal of Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic, but hey! they're languages, right? And they're sort of related to my 'math major' ambition)

*Written a very filmable screenplay; in fact, I'm going to do what I can to put that thing together this fall. Stay tuned on that.

*Begun a novel! It's likely not going to turn into anything readable, since its sort of 'Infinite Jest' inspired, but good fucking start, right? 25 pages so far; not too shabby at all!

*As mentioned earlier, structured out the basic idea for my JRPG

*Discovered that my somewhat ambitious goal of becoming a 1Dan 'Go' player isn't as insane as I thought. The Internet assures me that progressing from Novice to 1Dan is absolutely possible in as little time as a year with 5 hours a week. Not something I'm thinking about for a long time, but something to think about.

*I didn't start a business, but I have begun contracting, and my current boss started a business, and I'm learning as much as I can via osmosis in the meantime. This is more of a 'legwork for down the road' progress, but that's still important progress!

* I'm kinda contributing to this blog? This needs to improve.

*I picked up the Piano again! Huzzah! This is going to be a point of focus for the second half of 2012.

*On the other hand, travel plans fell through, so South America remains unchecked from my travel list. My physical form has sort of evaporated, so I'm further from the six pack than I was at the start of the year. I definitely haven't climbed Mount Everest or gone into space (though other people in 2012 HAVE been hard at work to make that possible for me down the road; that goal seemed much more absurd when I wrote it down eight months ago), and it's hard to learn to surf in Central Texas. So lots of goals left to tackle.

*One major development that sort of counts as one of my goals but is also a bit of a sidetrack is getting my Ph.D. I'm taking a detour directly away from that by instead making the monumental (and somewhat surprising, still, even to me) decision to go to law school.

It wasn't a light decision, but it was the right decision (I hope). To be 100% honest, despite some of my deeper reservations towards the entire idea of becoming a lawyer, the degree will do nothing but bring me closer to my goals: starting a business, getting funding for filmmaking, connections for publishing the book I write eventually, continuing to develop my fundamental writing skills, and putting the money together to achieve my more financially ambitious goals: these are all things that law will help, not hurt.

So it's not a Ph.D, but it's an equivalent sort of degree. I'm willing to allow it. And it's my list, so I can do that. :)

The sad part of this is the most stunning development of 2012, and the one that I'm struggling to come to terms with the most. To facilitate all this '180 reversal of lifestyle' nonsense, I've realized a return to the homeland (*sigh* again) is...not necessary, exactly, but preferable. So back to Michigan I go for the last 5 months of 2012. These goals will now be tested: how well do unconstrained ambitions and unbridled dream withstand a relentless onslaught of snow and economic decay?

I suppose we'll find out, but I'm optimistic. I've learned that nothing less will do. It's not a matter of ideology, just practicality. It's impossible to achieve goals you don't believe you can achieve.

The sky's the limit in life, and I intend to prove that wrong (goal #25: go into outer space).

See you in the second half, and in 2013 as well! (if we don't all die in a fiery/watery/plague/zombie-infested apocalypse)

May the odds be ever in your favor! (hey, you didn't think we were getting out of here without a Hunger Games reference, did you?)

Oops....

It turns out I have a blog, and I've been very bad about my commitment to posting to it. I have excuses, some are good, some are bad. I might as well list them here, in alternating order. Many of you will find this post excruciating. I don't blame you. There'll be a better one tomorrow. This I promise. Others might find it enlightening, if you similarly find yourself afflicted with occasional bouts of 'nope, just not doing it' syndrome. It's a difficult syndrome to overcome. In fact, sometimes I think it's the hardest.

 Good reason: I've finished a new screenplay. I'm super excited about it. I'm aiming to film it either this fall or next spring, depending on when I can get my financial mess rounded back into shape. It's called 'Gamers' and it follows a young cadre of frustrated nerds in the rural Midwest during the late 90s tech bubble and their frustrations at being so isolated from the world, followed by their coming to terms with the devastation impacts the bubble's collapse has on their small town. Now, since that sounds boring as hell, I'll give you the real tag line: A group of gamer friends are forced to join a regional Starcraft tournament after their douchebag friend took their computer savings fund and used it for the entry fee. With their post-high school life plans on the line, the friends must win the tournament to make enough money to escape their backwards, isolated hometown.

Bad reason: I'm lazy and didn't want to post to it. Yes, I spent a lot of time working on the screenplay, but that didn't preclude me from posting to the blog. In fact, I've gone for a long stretch without working on either.

Good reason: I've been hella busy with social activities, including a nice trip out to Gulf Shores for the Hangout Music Fest.

Bad reason: Sometimes, I get in a funk, and I don't want to do anything. I've gotten progressively better at fighting these, but I let it win for a few weeks between screenplay work and music fest. I'm not letting another one hit me for a while.

Good reason: I've been helping my roommate on his short films, one of which was accepted into the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner! We're super excited about that. The next one, when finished, will be even better. You can watch both the first and the trailer for the second here: http://vimeo.com/matt35mm

Bad reason: Finances. I've let my money supply dwindle, working fewer hours to focus on writing. This has had the net positives of above ^^^^, but the negative of distracting me as I recover from ^^^^^. To be honest, I've always found it much harder to focus any time at all on creative work when I'm money stressed. And even when I can, the product is undeniably worse. Horrible phrases like 'marketability' and 'pitch' and 'high concept' start entering my head while writing, which dooms the project from the start.

Unfortunately, this same instinct doesn't kick in to stop me from doing things like wasting hours I could be writing on reddit, so it's an overall completely useless instinct. I'm sure others face these same problems, these same obstacles to success. I offer you my moral support and conviction that financial anxiety is beatable, and one of these days, we'll both figure it out.

That's all for now. Hopefully I haven't lost all of my readers. I know some of you are out there because I see my traffic numbers. All I can say, mystery readers, is:

Thank You.

See you next time.

Reservoir Dogs Opening Scene: An Analysis

I haven't posted here in a while. I've been busy, which is good. I'm on page 80 of a screenplay I hope to shoot. Super positive happy fun time, that progress is.

In the meantime, I thought I'd take a quick break from that and do a short writeup about one of my favorite scenes, the opening scene in Reservoir Dogs. You can watch it here. I'll wait. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBzj61KvTrk

While this scene is remembered primarily for the awesome dialogue and the unaffected frivolity of it all (an aesthetic hipsters have been failing to achieve since), Tarantino also uses the scene to effectively lay the table for the rest of the film. He uses several very simple camera tricks to achieve this.

We start with dialogue and no visuals, about Madonna's Like A Virgin. We quickly move into a drifting camera shot that pans around the participants at the table. It's a brilliant shot, not just for the energy, but the way it stays tightly framed, keeping us from every seeing the whole table at once. In fact, basically every screen cap to begin is an OTS that frames exactly one person.

It also visually drifts wholly behind the backs of people at the table at times, turning the screen black, giving us only dialogue. This draws us into listening closely: with nothing to watch, it puts the emphasis entirely on the dialogue.

This is all well and good, but it doesn't do much to set up the rest of the film. It's fun, gives us a nice red herring with the Tarantino character, and is a brilliant piece of writing, but all this is a distraction from what really matters in the scene.

We don't stop on a static shot until two minutes in. When we do, it's on Joe, the guy who has been stuttering about Wong and Wang and generally disconnected from the conversation up til this point. This sets up the separation between Joe and the others.

What happens when we stop drifting and focus in on an actual exchange? We jump back and forth between a close up on Joe, an OTS on Mr. White, and a two shot of Mr. White and Mr. Orange, and later we see an OTS on Mr. Blonde. This exchange seems less memorable than most of the rest, but it has our first real confrontation. Mr. White wants Joe to stop rambling on about his address book, steals it from him, and berates him publicly. This is subtle, but immediately establishes Mr. White as a superior, or at least equal, position to Joe. His pissed off demeanor establishes him as the professional at the table. The only person not excited about Madonna's sexual experiences.

It also gives us our first more medium shot of the scene, the two shot of White and Orange, linking those two characters in our minds without drawing any sort of attention to it. This is important, because Mr. Orange will be completely subservient for the rest of the film, until the big reveal towards the end of the movie. It also sets up the climax, which revolves around the audience's willingness to accept that Mr. White would risk his life for Mr. Orange, reenforced by the immediate association of the two together from the very first scene. One other key thing that happens here is Blonde's suggestion of shooting White, placing him as the psychopath of the group. In less than a minute of screen time, we've established baseline relationships and characteristics for the major conflicts of the film: White vs. Joe, White vs Blonde, and eventually White vs Orange.

With the real heavy lifting of the scene finished, Tarantino lets the camera begin to float again as we dive into K Billy's Super Sounds of the Seventies (letting Nice Guy Eddie and Mr. Pink, our two other key characters, launch us into frivolities again, briefing framed in a two shot before we resume our floating OTS close ups). This seems a silly diversion, but it does set up the music for the film as a strange hybrid between a soundtrack designed for the audience, and a natural soundtrack provided by the environment of the film (and giving us the initial justification for the music in both the iconic dramatic walking scene ending the diner sequence AND Mr. Blonde's 'Stuck in the Middle With You' torture dance).

We drift for a bit, until Joe interrupts us (and the camera) again, by standing up and reasserting his dominance over the table (and Mr. White). We then move into static close ups in the tipping conversation, our brilliant set up of Pink (and to a lesser extent, Nice Guy Eddie). We break our string of closeups for another two shot of White and Orange, reenforcing the connection between the two in our minds. While the others have been incredulous about Pink's decision not to tip, White is legitimately angry, and delivers an impassioned monologue in defense of waitresses. Again, it doesn't take long, but we've completely established Mr. White as the protagonist of the film at this point, with only a couple of moments. He only speaks up when things get serious, he stands up to the boss, and he protects the vulnerable. Mr. Orange basically eye fucks him while he defends the waitresses (notice our wire has not had much to say during this entire eight minute sequence, apropos for a mole attempting to blend in and pick up on an entirely foreign set of circumstances). At the same time, Pink establishes himself as the asshole whose still somewhat likable.

The exchange ends with Orange switching sides but quickly getting shot down by Nice Guy Eddie, who for the first time demonstrates that, despite his goofy appearance, he has actual authority at the table. He doesn't ask: he commands, and Orange quickly acquiesces (unlike everyone else at the table, Orange has been utterly subservient in every exchange so far. He immediately changes opinion based on whoever has talked more recently, watches others go at it, and does what he's told as soon as he's told to do so. This pattern of weakness makes it that much more stunning when the reveal that he's the cop comes later in the film: we're set up to think of him as the weakest person in the bunch from the very beginning, and in some ways, he is).

Joe returns, hilariously abuses Orange, then wheels into Pink. (this is done with our first 3 shot, and our first view of the background of the diner, putting Joe, White, and Orange in a well composed row for us). Joe stands for the exchange, reestablishing himself as the most powerful person at the table, a position he justifies by quickly cowing everyone else over the tipping debate. Pink gives up without a fight. This doesn't seem like much, but it reenforces the earlier dynamic between Joe and White: White is so far the only person to even attempt to contradict anything Joe says, even when Joe (jokes?) about having him killed.

When White does the same at the end of the film, it's no surprise then. And we immediately have precedent that their relationship is much more than employer/employee: they have a long enough history that White feels comfortable defying Joe publicly, and Joe is comfortable enough with White that he never takes it fully seriously. When Joe trusts White over the others later in the film, that trust feels immediately justified, not through the subsequent exposition in Joe's office, but through the clear power relationships established at the diner.

We fade into K-Billy as White gives the book back to Joe, who angrily snatches it, and the film cuts to the walking montage. The montage, besides the stylistic awesomeness, is notable for relegating Orange to last, putting him below Blue and Brown in the hierarchy, again distracting us from the much more important role he'll play later on in the film.

What else does this scene do? It introduces us to the silly names without ever putting us on strong footing as far as which name goes with which character. It gives us the faces and personalities of the entire team. And when things immediately begin going to shit, and people are dead, it opens up questions that draw us into the main arc of the film nearly immediately. Which one of those guys was Mr. Blue? Was it the guy in the blue windbreaker? Is he dead? Is someone else dead? How many people were there again? Who else might show up? What happened to the Like A Virgin guy?

When people are dying later on, they don't feel like random, arbitrary faces. They feel like people with whom you've already sat down and held hilarious conversations. In fact, Brown and Blue dominate the first few minutes of the movie, even though they both die off screen immediately afterwards. This only works, though, because in the few moments where the real lead characters take the spotlight, the camera settles on them, and they drop the silly dialogue for legitimate relationship establishment. It's done quickly and efficiently, and the fun, silly parts with the drifting camera pick back up again and become what you remember from the scene, but it's all a red herring to make the important pieces more digestible and less exposition-y.

The opening diner scene exists to cleanly establish every fact you need to know for the rest of the movie. Every major scene is alluded to in some form or another. Once the tip is paid and K-Billy takes you out, you're fully engrossed and grounded in the world of Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.

Quarterly Music Recap

It's the beginning of April, so it's as good a time as any to do a quick recap on the music I've been listening to this year.

This process has been made easier by last.fm keeping detailed listening statistics on my spotify account. Now, this is a little misleading, since a large chunk of the music I've been listening to has been at work and not on spotify. A couple quick examples: I know Pretty Lights, Nicki Minaj, Ennio Moricone, Skrillex, Childish Gambino, and Wick-It the Instigator have been the artists I've listened to the most: that's a rough idea of the heart of the rotation I bounce around at work.

But on the other hand, Spotify is almost exclusively my listening device at home, so the last.fm records are perfectly valid.

One cool stat: since the beginning of the year, I've listened to songs by some where along the lines of 500 unique artists. That's a crazy statistic, and one that only the new world could produce. Remember when you had five CDs in your car that you listened to over and over again? Neither do I. I kinda miss those days, in a lot of ways. In a lot of other ways, I'm thrilled to have so many options available on so many days. Despite the wealth of access, I still feel like I've missed out on most of the important musical developments of the year. Oh well; such is life.

Here are the leading artists that have provided the soundtrack for 2012 so far.

1. Bonobo 306 plays
2. The Flaming Lips 291 plays
3. Radiohead 176
4. The Cinematic Orchestra 114
5. RJD2 82
6. Blue Sky Black Death 71
7. Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears 71
8. Matisyahu 50
9. Dave Matthews Band 46
10. M83 45
11. Weezer 43
12. Kanye West 42
12. King Khan and the Shrines 42
14. tUnE-yArDs 38
15. Jay-Z 36
16. Serj Tankian 30
16. mwithoutYou 30
16. Big Gigantic 30
19. The Dresden Dolls 29
19. Fleet Foxes 29
19. Foster the People 29

Now, this all comes with the enormous caveat that I've probably listened to Hot Like Sauce by Pretty Lights 306 times at work in the past month, so these numbers are likely skewed. Still, not a bad list. Not bad at all. Two things pop out: I don't remember listening to Flaming Lips, Radiohead, or Dave Matthews Band AT ALL, so obviously old favorites can continue to accompany you even when you're not wholly aware. Also, My tastes have skewed pretty heavily indie rock lately, with some jam and electronica and hip hop thrown in for good measures. My days of Zeppelin and Jethro Tull have long passed me by.

For the record, the top tracks:

1. M83 Midnight City 13
2. tUnE-yArDs Bizness 11
3. Bonobo Terrapin 10
3. Frank Ocean Novacane 10
5. RJD2 Ghostwriter 9
5. RJD2 Good Times Roll Pt 2 9
5. Bonobo The Keeper 9
5. Bonobo Kiara 9
5. Bonobo Eyesdown 9
5. Fleet Foxes Helplessness Blues 9
5. Blue Sky Black Death Sleeping Children Are Still Flying 9

And pretty closely related, the top albums:

1. Bonobo Days to Come 65
2. Bonobo Black Sands 59
3. Blue Sky Black Death NOIR 55
4. RJD2 Deadringer: Deluxe 44
5. Dave Matthews Band Central Park Concert 42
6. tUnE-yArDs w h o k i l l 38
7. Bonobo Animal Magic 37
8. Jay Z Watch the Throne 36
9. Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! 35
10. The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots 34
10. Radiohead - Pablo Honey 34

See you on the other side.

Good stuff all around.

Health Care

1. It looks like Obamacare is going to be struck down. *tear*

2. Our country's health care system continues to be a hot mess.

3. Constitutional questions aside, what's disconcerting about the ruling is that it's not very narrow: it seems (from predictions, anyway) to eliminate any question of a mandate, which eliminates functionally protecting people with pre-existing conditions, which means the whole system continues to be fucked.

4. People with health care will continue to foot the bill for people without it.

5. More and more, the incentive seems to be not to get health care at all and take the free ride loophole. While it's unethical, it's basically the only way if you make working class income or not.

6. This whole stupid system has to collapse. Along with the rest of our idiotic current system.

7. Everyone is jumping to blame someone else for that.

8. Europe's looking nice this time of year.

SXSW: The Highlights

What a week.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the annual HOLYFUCK-a-thon that is SXSW, I'm going to do my best to describe it before plunging into my list of my top 11 highlights from the festival (one per day of craziness + a bonus because I just flat ran out of things to cut).

For 10 days, the sleepy little villa of Austin Texas is utterly overwhelmed by an insane conflagration centered on the infamous Sixth Street but extending in every direction into every bar, movie theatre, convention center, park, and restaurant in the city. Basically, the city throws three enormous festivals simultaneously: a top rate film festival that draws hundreds of Hollywood celebrities and premieres dozens of movies, an interactive business conference/festival that is renowned for debuting twitter three years ago, and what has to be the world's largest music festival, with more than 2,000 official performing acts, most of whom play seven or eight shows over the course of the week.

Did I mention that you can attend virtually everything at the festival for free if you know your way around? And that every event is chock full of free drinks, ranging from Texas's ubiquitous Lone Star to fully stocked open bars? And that half the events double up on the free drinks with buffet lines of free food, ranging from simple fare like tacos and ice cream all the way up to full 5 star buffets?

And did I mention that I took the entire week off from work, secured a film badge, and basically spent every hour of all ten days at the festival?

The highlights follow.

#11 The Intersteller Transmissions Bus

My honorable mention, since I never quite ended up on the bus. It was still a nice reminder of the Austin flavor to the festival. One of my favorite bands in town, Intersteller Transmissions, sets up their band on top of a white bus and drives around the city playing music and inviting anyone who'll fit onto the bus. I never hitched a ride (this time), but they brought a smile to my face every time I saw them drive by.

#10 21 Jump Street

A film that turned out way better than I expected. I saw 20 films over the course of the festival, and most of them could be on the list (and several more will follow. 21 Jump Street stood out, however, not just because of the film itself, but because of the raucous crowd, laughing and applauding nearly throughout the film, and the amazing panel that followed, with Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, and Rob Riggle trading jokes with other members of the cast and crew who I'm totally blanking on and feel badly about forgetting.

It also had the best moment of pure overreaction of the festival, when Jonah Hill, clearly giddy from the crowd reaction to a project he had clearly been putting together for a long, long time, burst out, nearly in tears: "No matter what else fucking happens, we'll always have tonight!" to a full auditorium of over 2,000 moviegoers.

#9 The One Panel I Went To

Normally at film festivals, I am all about panels, almost at the expense of the films themselves. Not this time: I only made it into one panel all festival, but it was a particularly good one. (I'm not counting the presentation on new online stock markets that I sat through merely because the fully stocked open bar wouldn't serve drinks until they stopped talking...gin and tonics are so much better when they come from top shelf liquor, don't you agree?)

The panel I *DID* enjoy was one with higher ups from a variety of mid range independent film studios, including the folks behind Drive, Blue Valentine, and Machete. (Or, as the Machete guy put it, the 'Goss' panel). Given that my eventual goal is to make/produce films at that level of production, I found every insight on making the budget vs. payoff of those films work completely fascinating, whether it was how to convince top level stars to take the pay shave or the ins and outs of marketing Henry Winkler to Romania. Ok, this is all about business stuff, and I can already tell you're bored. Let's move on.

#8 The Interactive Trade Floor

I didn't see much of the interactive fest, but the parts I did see I approved of. The highlight was the actual trade floor, where hundreds of hopeful future googles and twitters and netflixes set up booths and plied their hip new websites and services. I can't wait to unsubscribe to all these new services, but in the meantime, it was impressive to see so many awesome ideas in one place. A few that particularly stood out: Squarespace, who will soon be hosting this blog, and a service whose name I forget that allows you to set up any film screening at any theatre if you can get the attendance to 'tip', a la groupon or kickstarter (which, at least 45 people in indiegogo shirts informed me over the course of the week, is a totally inferior service).

#7 March Madness

It was easy to forget in the midst of the madness, the rest of the country was having their own breed of madness: the type that takes place in March as well. In any year, this would be worthy of a mention, but this particular year, my alma mater Michigan State happened to be dominating life. After winning the Big Ten tournament and securing a one seed, the Green and White took care of business, reached the Sweet Sixteen, and got Dre-Dre a second NCAA tourney triple double, a feat only the Big O and another Spartan great, Magic Johnson, have accomplished. Oh, and I almost got into a bar fight in the Third Base bathroom with a guy who was loudly exclaiming Tom Izzo didn't know how to coach. In hindsight, I'm glad that didn't happen because he was at least sixty pounds heavier than me and had a knife tattooed on his forearm, but some things just won't stand.

Oh, and Michigan lost to a #13 seed, which was fucking awesome too.

#6 The Tent by the Paramount

I forget who hosted this amazing extravaganza (so I suppose from their perspective, it failed), but I owe them about $75 dollars for the free beer, ice cream, 100th anniversary oreos, massages, mac&cheese, music, and hammocks they provided me between screenings. If I ever remember their name, I'll at least hop on their website a couple of times. It all balances out, right? (close runners up for this category: the Bing tent, with its open bar, foozeball tables, and free kimchi tacos, and the British Music Embassy, with its also open bar, and lamb and whitefish buffet line, with kick ass bands to boot).

#5 Mumford and Sons + Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros with Big East Express screening

The line for this wrapped around the law center twice, zig zagged through the lawn, and took about forty five minutes to pass through, but it was totally worth it. The tableau: to our left, UT stadium. To our right, a giant inflatable screen showing Big Easy Express, the crazy cross country train tour the above bands took that put the entirety of their third accompaniments, Old Crow Medicine Show, into rehab.

And dead center, with the sun setting behind the UT clock tower as the back drop, a giant festival stage where Edward Sharpe, Mumford and Sons, and the one member of Old Crow who could make it traded off on their sets, with guest appearances from each band on each other's sets. At one point, the entire Austin High marching band joined them on stage to play along. It all wrapped up with a combined cover with everyone on stage of Old Crow's Wagon Wheel, with the vocalist reading the lyrics off his iphone while singing.

Perfect.

#4 Raid: Redemption

Without a doubt, both the best action movie I've ever seen and the best film audience I've ever been a part of. Words fail to convey the transcendent glee that this movie created in me. It's simply the best action film since Die Hard. Except no other argument. The premise is simple: a team of cops attempt to fight their way up a 30 story apartment complex to capture the most notorious crime lord in Indonesia. The catch: every apartment is filled with the scum of the world, allowed to live for free in the complex in exchange for one task: defend the crime lord if and when an army of police start marching up the stairwells. And defend they do, in the most insane series of action sequences I've ever seen. The film elicited at least twelve ovations from the audience, culminating in a final martial arts fight scene between what was just about the last three characters left alive in the entire fucking movie, a fight scene that lasted for over six minutes and drew three separate rounds of applause from the blood frenzied crowd.

See this movie. Just do it.

#3 The people in line

A big part of SXSW is standing in line for things. There was a war going on for what the most impressive and absurd line would be, and though I don't know if anything will ever top the line to pick up the badges, which wrapped around the convention center twice and took nearly two hours to clear, the lines for 21 Jump Street (wrapped all the way around the block, doubled back on itself, and extended down a neighboring street, like a totally doomed later level Snake in that old calculator game) and Mumford and Sons (see above) about did it. The side effect of spending so much time standing in lines is networking happens naturally, and I met all sorts of awesome people while waiting to get in. It was totally natural to reach the theatre and grab seats with whoever you had been standing chatting with for the last hour outside. From film buffs to interactive ceos, directors to writers, actors to producers, bloggers to students, the number of awesome conversations and single serving friends I made were too numerous to be counted. Hell, I even met the coproducer of Tree of Life and got some inside deets on Malick's next film. Turns out seeing Pavilion wasn't a complete waste of time after all.

#2 Silent Disco

One of the most novel party concepts I've ever experience. The set up: a few blocks from my house, one of the most truly creative independent living co ops sits completely innocuously behind a wall of sheet metal fences, at the corner of two major crossroads in South Austin, Lamar and Oltorf. Behind these sheet metal walls, which give off the vibe of a down on the luck trailer park hiding from the world, is a giant forest, with stages, tents, and on this particular night, thousands of partygoers. The Enchanted Forest, as it's called, is a really amazing space, and throughout Southby, it combined with Silent Frisco, an operation out of San Fran (where else?) to throw Silent Discos (hah! it's a pun!).

Basically how it works is this: two DJs set up at a stage in the center of the forest. Everyone who comes in gets a pair of wireless headphones, the really nice $200 kind. The headphones can be tuned to either DJ frequency, and glow either green or blue based on what frequency you're listening to. The result is magical (could I say...enchanted?): no matter where you wander to in the forest, you have full control over the music volume. Want to rage to it? Crank it on full. Chill next to the river or watch a performance dance piece at another stage? Turn it down to low. Talk to your friends? Take them off, and the low murmurs of conversation replace the wild party you were at two seconds ago.

The best part: because the party is silent, it never violates noise regulations. In the heart of a commercial and residential district, the Silent Disco raged throughout the forest until the sun came up. No cops, no problems, full volume.

Technology, art, music, and nature: coming together to innovate how you rock out. If that doesn't scream South-by-Soutwest and Austin Motherfucking Texas, I don't know what does.

#1 Opening Night

Throughout all that (and much, much more), nothing still quite matched up to opening night. The wild crowd for Cabin in the Woods, seeing Joss motherfucking Whedon in person, the amazing midnight screening of Girls Against Boys, the best chicks on a rampage movie since Kill Bill, the first of the opening film teasers which were fucking BRILLIANT this year (and chock full of the talented Mr. Zach Anner), and the full anticipation and excitement of the entire week still sitting in front of you like an unwrapped Christmas present: it's a night I'll likely never forget, the opening stanza to a week that crossed the pale. That feeling, leaving work and knowing I wouldn't be back in a cube until, well, today, where I'm writing this for you right now...that feeling is one that can't quite be replicated by anything by the first day of a vacation you've been anticipating for a full on year.

Except, when you live in Austin, Texas, that vacation is a staycation, one that makes you wonder why you'd ever want to leave.

See y'all next year! I'll try to make it to more concerts this time.

The Wire Grantland Bracket

Wait, so Grantland is doing a Wire tournament?

Hell yes, I'm going to make a full set of predictions!

West Baltimore Bracket

Key players: Omar, Snoop, D'Angelo, Micheal

Dead in the water: Ziggy, Cheese

Winner: Omar (going away)

Most Interesting Matchup: Michael vs. Snoop

We'll start with the least interesting bracket and just get it out of the way quickly. This bracket is basically where they threw everybody who was going to lose to Omar anyway. It feels like an inevitable showdown between Omar and Snoop, but Michael might have something to say about that, just as he did in the show. The Chris/Cutty matchup might be interesting, but only in the sense of finding out whose going to be ground down by the inevitable coronation of Omar.

The Ports

Key Players: Avon, Carcetti, Bunny, Prop Joe

Dead in the Water: Prezbo *tear*, Malatov, Duke, Sobotka

Winner: Avon

Most Interesting Matchup: Avon vs. Carcetti

From the most clear cut to the murkiest. The Ports feels very much in play, if only because it's filled from top to bottom with some of the least compelling characters in their respective seedlines. Nothing against Avon, Prop Joe, and Bunny, but they don't hold up to East Baltimore's power trio of Stringer, Marlo, and Bodie. That being said, even with the weakness at the top, I don't see a lot of upsets because the lower seeds are similarly uninspired. The top four seeds will win in the first round, and once the second round begins, anything can really happen. I'm curious to see if Carcetti can take down Avon, but I imagine Avon will hold on by a healthy margin. As for who'll emerge from the bottom, Prop Joe or Bunny, it's a coin toss. I love both characters, but neither has a lot of clout in the overall roster of the show. At the end of the day, I expect Avon to survive a narrow battle with Carcetti and a somewhat comfortable win over Prop Joe. But nothing here would surprise me.

East Baltimore

Key Players: Stringer, Freamon, Bodie, Marlo, Kima

Dead in the Water: Rawls, Wee-Bey, Herc

Winner: Stringer

Most Interesting Matchups: Stringer vs. Lester, Kima vs Marlo, the championship

This bracket is DEEP. There are five candidates who wouldn't be shocking to see in the title game, and at least three who could win the whole bracket. We all know Stringer Bell is the prohibitive favorite, but there are a lot of giant killers lurking. Lester Freamon has a very passionate fan base, and the Marlo vs Kima matchup should be ferocious. My money's on Kima and Stringer ekeing past Lester, but who knows? And who could have expected we could see Marlo Stanfield, whose name is his name, go down in Round One?

In the end, I think Kima will be no match for Stringer in the championship, but you can never count out the sentimental favorite.

Hamsterdam

Key Players: Bunk, Brother, Wallace, McNulty, Daniels, Davis, Bubbles

Dead in the water: Levy

Eventual Winner: Fuck if I know

Key matchups: All of them

And we get to the brawl. Seven of the eight characters in this bracket are among my absolute favorites in the show, and it's going to be an utter massacre paring them down to just one. First off, who puts McNulty as a 3 seed? What other show in American history could you put the supposed lead that low in a bracket?

This bracket demands a full breakdown.

Bunk vs. Brother

Ok, obvious Bunk's going to win this. But still. Couldn't you see Brother knocking off Avon? Or Davis? Or Prop Joe? The most cartoonish character on the show, sure, but one of the most fun ones.

Davis vs Bubbles

There's no way Bubbles doesn't spring the upset here. How did he end up a 7 seed? Part of what makes this bracket so fun is the insane seeding. Still, before we watch Bubbles beg, borrow, and steal his way through the bracket, let's give a shout out to our favorite slimey politican, Mr. Sheeeeeee-it himself.

McNulty vs Daniels

My heart goes out to you, Lieutenant Daniels. I've come to terms with the fact that my high esteem for Daniels isn't shared by many other Wire viewers, but in my own personal bracket, this matchup is the most heartbreaking first round decision. I'd go Daniels; the world will side McNulty.

Wallace vs Levy

Wallace has this wrapped up; Levy is pretty clearly the weakest character in the bracket. We have to give Wallace at least one sentimental win before Bunk crushes him in the second round.

Bunk vs Wallace

See previous.

Bubbles vs McNulty

I don't even....how do you? I'm going Bubbles here, and I think America will too. His speech at the end....onions man. Fucking onions.

Bunk vs Bubbles

I'm sticking with my main man, Bubbles. He was really the guy I found myself experiencing the show through and pulling for episode after episode, season after season. When he cleaned himself up, it was the most rewarding payoff I've ever experience in television. I know Bunk is more fun, but Bubbles is Bubbles man!

The Final Four:

Omar, Avon, Stringer, Bubbles. Couldn't ask for more. Bubbles's run ends as most do, at the behest of Omar's shotgun, and Stringer finally gets the best of Avon. But at the end of the day, no one's overcoming Omar, and the haunting bars of The Farmer and the Dell hover over all of Baltimore.

All in the game, yo.

Free Association Futureism

I need to write a new blog post. I thought I'd start with some free association thoughts and reflections on the random things I think will happen.

Why should you care what I think? Well, you probably shouldn't. But I do pretty well at this futurism shit. I predicted the economic crash, the housing bubble, Obama's quick approval collapse followed by his slow climb up the ladder, the Nintendo Wii's early dominance, and at one point, six consecutive NCAA national champions.

Of course, I also predicted Rick Perry would dominate the Republican debates. So...

Onto my predictions!

1. If things continue on their current trajectory, Romney will eke it out over Santorum, and Obama will eke it out over Romney.

2. Alternatively, Paul or another media figurine could decide that both parties are weak going into this election and stake a third party bid. If this happens, the elections are going to get messy quickly. This is probably the only way the election result becomes unpredictable, so it will probably happen.

3. Israel and Iran will continue their staring contest, but the next major global brouhaha will come from Pakistan and India. And it'll be the messiest international crisis since the Cold War ended.

4. Peak oil will happen and temporarily destroy the economy...but we'll rebuild it faster than people think. While the US is overreliant on oil, we also waste so much that we could conceivably cut consumption by a fifty percent without even affecting our lifestyle. For example, everyone who owns an SUV could go buy a more fuel efficient car, we could cut the nonstop orgy of business travel, we could stop buying products from halfway around the world and start buying local out of sheer necessity, etc.

5. In fact, peak oil in the long run may *help* the US economy by forcing people to go spend money on more fuel efficient living and buy local products. While this will devastate standard of living in the short term, it'll get people working again in a hurry to facilitate the transition.

6. The next scientific revolution will be biological. We've learned more about biology than anything else over the last ten years, and some of what we've discovered is enormous: the ability to map the genetic code quickly, full activity maps of the human brain (less than ten years ago, high school science taught us we'd *never* know how the brain worked).

7. We'll learn how to 'code' in genetics. DNA comes in two sets of allele pairs that contain the code for every living thing that exists. In a way, this is like 1s and 0s, the backbone of everything we use for computing. Computer science, then, will become a very simple port to biological systems.

8. As we learn how to 'program' in genetic code and better design and build biological structures, bio solutions will rapidly begin to replace manufactured solutions. This will become even more true as oil prices make it more difficult to move physical material around.

9. The energy crisis will be solved when scientists crack the code for photosynthesis. While solar panels have major efficiency limitations, plants seem pretty damn good at converting solar energy to more useful types. And solar has to be the ultimate winner in the renewable war: there's literally an unlimited supply of it (though, as with all other unlimited resources we've had as a species, we'll find a way to use it all eventually).

10. We'll soon be able to grow things that we need more efficiently than manufacture them. By combining genetic code from the millions of sources of life we have, we'll be able to make virtually every product we use today, and improved versions of many of them.

11. While this will start in 'eco-factories', eventually the technology will become portable, and the entire idea of shipping products will fall by the wayside. Instead, our products will be transported as seeds that contain the code for the products we need. Without the shipping and manufacturing costs, these seeds will become virtually free. Industry will, of course, attempt to put a price on them and control their distribution, but hackers and bootleggers will distribute them regardless, like torrents.

12. We'll make the jump to being able to modify our own genetic code as well. While this will have huge medical benefits, it will also be coopted to support enormous genetic modification industries, like plastic surgery and tattoo artists today. Some will use the genetic modifications to achieve a model standard of beauty (like plastic surgery), while others will use it to reject this standard and differentiate themselves from the mainstream crowd (like tattoos and ear gauges).

13. As we get more and more proficient, the types of modifications will become more and more extreme. What starts as skin pigmentation or eye and hair color change will become more and more exotic: horns, scales, fur become available modifications for the counter culture.

14. We'll learn to map the brain and become very knowledgeable in how different parts of the brain create different parts of our reality. Once we know how it works naturally, we'll be able to manipulate it as well. We'll learn to 'adjust' our own experience of the world.

15. This can be as simple as putting a 'skin' over it (like the way you can adapt your computer desktop's visual settings) or as complex as generating a virtual reality that we can escape to and experience as if it were real.

16. We'll use this to create both awesome video games and a new, intensely addictive type of drugs. Some people will spend their entire lives in either type of world, the way a WoW addict lives his life in his bedroom's virtual world or the way a drug addict lives entirely in his drug induced world, slowly modifying his body more and more until outsiders can barely recognize his humanity.

17. We'll also learn how to interface between our virtual, computer worlds and our biological worlds. We'll learn how to download the entirety of wikipedia to our memory banks. We'll be able to 'visit' Minecraft and walk around it as if we were actually there. We'll be able to text and tweet our thoughts directly from brain to brain without the computer interface. In this way, a human hive mind will be created.

18. As these changes evolve, the physical world will gradually become less and less important to more and more people.

19. A few traditionalists will insist on living entirely in the physical world and rejecting the new lifestyle. Nobody under 30 will understand them. Everybody over 30 will envy them.

20. As we learn to communicate directly brain to brain, we'll learn to distribute our art through thought waves as well. Initially, this will be free. But as always, record and film studios will become upset that they're missing out on a profit, and insist that unauthorized mind to mind transfers of copywrited material is a crime. They'll attempt to draft legislation that allows them to sue and jail people for unauthorized thoughts.

21. As always, everybody will ignore these laws and share anyway.

22. Terrorist attacks will become less focused on the physical form and more on this biological hive mind. They'll attempt to create viruses that infect people through their thoughts. An enormous security and defense industry will grow to protect against these types of viruses. Doomsday literature and anxiety will grow about these type of attacks, as they would be literal mutual assured destruction.

23. Just as with nuclear attacks, the suicidal nature of this type of attack will prevent it from happening. The worrying and angst over the possibility will cause more harm to humanity than the threat itself.

24. As we begin to manipulate perception, we'll also begin to manipulate perception of time. We'll be able to grow our experience of nanoseconds out as if they were full minutes or hours or years. As we find ourselves able to do that, we'll also be able to program inhabitable mental environments that take place in 'nanotime'. In this way, humanity will obtain a type of immortality: we'll live whole lifetimes in the seconds between our physical blinks.

25. Many will choose to die regardless.

26. We'll still spend the vast majority of our time thinking about cats in adorable poses.




If you're still reading, damn. Thanks for jumping down this rabbit hole with me. Will it come true? Who knows?

If nothing else, this is a pretty good fucking setup for a kick ass sci-fi novel.

Best Picture Predictions

Soundtrack provided by Wick-it the Instigator


Best Picture

The Artist
The Descendants
The Help
War Horse
Moneyball
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Midnight in Paris
Tree of Life
Hugo

So everything else has been snarky, but I feel like I've snarked each of these films as much as possible. Plus, the Oscars are actually coming up for realsies, so I want to do an actual break down of these films.

First, a caveat: I haven't seen The Descendants, The Help, War Horse, Moneyball, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. From all accounts, they are: beautiful, cloying, surprising, and exploitative, respectively. Of those, I feel bad about not seeing the Descendants. The Help and War Horse I'm fairly apathetic towards. Moneyball I feel like I should be apathetic towards, but I've heard enough good things to spark my curiosity. Extremely Loud I want to see for the same reason I slow down to look at a car accident on the side of the road. I know I shouldn't, but it's just too damn fascinating.

So let's count down the films I've seen.

Midnight in Paris

This was probably the most delightful film of the year. I walked out of the theater beaming, and every 1920s sequence was pitch perfect. Hemmingway was probably my favorite supporting character of the year. I'm not a 1920s aficionado nor a Francophile, but MiP made me think I could become both.

Ultimately, it's a bit light to outpull the other films on this list, but I don't know if I had a more uplifting experience in theaters this year.

Hugo

The Oscars went all in on 1920s Paris this year. Actually, all four of the best picture nominees that I've seen are nostalgia fests. In fact, the only films that take place in the modern world this year seem to involve the apocalypse (Melancholia, Take Shelter, Another Earth). America needs to cheer up, I think.

Nothing explains the existence of Kung Fu Panda 2 better than Hugo's box office returns, and I don't want to listen to anyone talk about how Hollywood has no original ideas ever again. A visual masterpiece, with a rich tapestry of interwoven stories and characters, amazing adventures, deep inner and outer conflict, and even a wonderful bit of cinematic history, I don't know how much more a single film can pack into a train station.

For a while I even considered Hugo for my favorite film of the year, though it did end up sinking a bit down the list when all was said and done.

The Artist

The Artist was my favorite 'accessible' film of the year and likely the Best Picture winner in the real world this year. I put quote around accessible, b/c how accessible really is a black and white silent film?

Well, it turns out very; I didn't know exactly what to expect when I went into The Artist, but crowdpleaser was certainly not high on the list. But what a crowd pleaser it was! I'm going to find it hard talking about this film without gushing; it was absolutely masterful in its execution, and Dujardin and Bejo oozed more charisma and zest in their performances than any film I've seen in years.

We've had far too much nostalgia here: time to get bitter.

Tree of Life

Ok, so I have to preface this by acknowledging that Tree of Life has no chance.

I know that, you know that, the Academy knows that, Terence Malick and Brad Pitt knows that. That being said, it's the only film on this list that will have long term staying power in cinematic history. It was a tour de force, the most ambitious vision I've seen attempted since Synechdoce, New York, and the most emotionally raw, honest, hyper charged film I've seen in a long, long time.

The degree of difficulty here can't be understated. Yes, The Artist had to sell a black and white silent film to a modern audience, but at least it's couched in a traditional narrative structure. Tree of Life is a philosophical riddle wrapped in a pastiche of disconnected scenes with nothing but the audience's imagination and work ethic to hold them together. It's demanding, mercurial, and maddening, willing to drop the story for 20 minutes to show a visually stunning montage of planets forming and dinosaurs. The story, btw, is set in 1950s rural Texas. This is not an easy leap for audiences to make.

At the end of the day, are there some flaws? Sure. I don't care. Nothing this year was even playing on the same field as Tree of Life in cinematic ambition and panache, and it is and will likely remain my favorite film from 2011.

Now, that being said, there's no fucking way Oscar will agree, so I'll settle for a well deserved nomination and cheer The Artist on.

Now on Sunday, when Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close wins, I'm going to print all of these posts out and set them on fire.

Oscars: The Stunning Conclusion

So I've let this dangle almost long enough for the Oscars to actually happen. Let's close it out with more arbitrary goodness, shall we?

Beats Antique is providing the soundtrack.

Directing

The Descendants
The Artist
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Tree of Life

Directing Oscars almost always are tied directly to the Best Picture nominees: it normally goes without saying that Best Picture will win Best Director as well. Well, I think that's bullshit. To say that the direction of a film and the overall quality of the film are exactly mirrored is to discount the contributions of literally thousands of other craftsmen. It's to suggest the writer, actors, editors, craftsmen, and producers contributed literally nothing to making the film happen.

I think that's bullshit. Yes, the director is ultimately responsible to pull all those disparate elements together into a coherent vision, but some films have legitimately more ingredients to work with than others.

I haven't seen The Descendants, but I imagine making George Clooney in Hawaii look good doesn't demand the absolute best from the film head, and anyway, I don't think anyone's suggesting this is Payne's best film.

Midnight in Paris is delightful, but Woody Allen is renowned for his minimalist directing style, and his films are made in the screenplay and acting performances, not in the somewhat workmanlike interpretation he brings to the screen (there, I said it).

Hugo is a masterpiece, and I'm tempted to give it to Scorsese for the excellent use of 3D alone. But this is a story that does not demand the absolute peak out of a director: Disney could have slapped this together, and it would have still been enjoyable, if not nearly as magical, as Scorsese's interpretation.

Tree of Life is a tour de force in some ways, but fundamentally flawed in others. No one but Malick could have brought this story to screen, and the force of his personality shines through. But this is for both better and worse; just ask Sean Penn (plus, who wins an Oscar without Sean Penn's blessing? Nobody; that's who!)

No, this category has to go to Michel Hazah!-navicius for The Artist: simply the most ambitious, risky, and flawlessly executed film of the year. Not only does it take balls to sell a silent film in the 21st century, it takes serious execution: a bad moment on screen, one poorly formulated concept or idea, and the whole spectacle falls apart into silly camp or, worse, pretentious bullshit. I went into this film expecting a cute gimmick and a nostalgia-fest; instead, I got one of the most masterfully executed visions I've seen this decade. This was an extraordinarily difficult film to sell, to create, to execute, and to perfect, and at no point does it even become a question.

There really was no contest here; Hazanavicius takes this category, and it wasn't close.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Berenice Bejo in The Artist
Jessica Chastain in The Help
Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer in Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer in the Help

Whew. That last category got serious. Fortunately, I’ve only seen one of these films, so I can be much more snarky here. In fact, I’m disqualifying the one I did see; Berenice Bejo did was more than support that film, and her placement here is unfair to the rest. Most reasonable heads seem to agree Jessica Chastain’s performance in The Help was her fourth best of THE YEAR, so that’s just nonsense to see her here. Janet McTeer is clearly in the wrong category; she’s obviously playing a man in this film. So we’re down to Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer, and hell. This is the Academy. You know they’re playing the race card.

Octavia Spencer it is.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill in Moneyball
Nick Nolte in Warrior
Christopher Plummer in Beginners
Max von Sydow in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I’m just going to go ahead and say the last three split the old man vote (granted, a substantial Academy demographic) three ways and knocks them all out. So this comes down to Kenneth Branagh and Jonah Hill. I didn’t see either of these movies, so I’m going to quote my firend Tristan’s reaction to this.

“Maybe the dog. He’s certainly better than Jonah Hill. Jonah Hill. Oscar Nominees. Sign of the Apocalypse.”

Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me! Plus, he put on all that weight for the role. Academy loves physical commitment to the performance.

Best Actress
Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis in The Help
Rooney Mara in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn

Did anyone but the Academy see Albert Nobbs? Jesus, I’m running out of snarky cross dressing jokes. Let’s see…what else do we have here? Meryl Streep…yawn. Viola Davis, no we’ve made our affirmative action hire already. Michelle Williams. *swoon* Still, none of this holds up to Rooney Mara, if for no other reason than I never imagined we’d have an Oscar nominated performance that revolved heavily around a dildo rape scene. Sorry Michelle. If you had just convinced the biographer to put in a section about Marilyn Monroe tying down JFK in the Lincoln bedroom and tattooing “I’M A RAPIST” across his chest, I’d have been all over it. Plus, history class would have been more interesting. Double points.

Actor in a Leading Role

Demian Bichir in A Better Life
George Clooney in The Descendants
Jean Dujardin in The Artist
Gary Oldman in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Brad Pitt in Moneyball

Funny to see Dujardin here. I didn’t remember him having any memorable lines. Clooney and Pitt have to split the heart throb vote here. Oldman or Bichir? As usual, I haven’t seen either of these films. IMDB tells me Bichir played Castro in Che. Communist. This is America!

Gary Oldman wins with the patriotism vote…for his role as an Englishman. And I guess he’s English too. So…I don’t know, don’t ask questions. AMERICA!

I know I said this was the last one, but I’m tired of snark. Tune in next week for the final Best Picture reveal, in which I find witty things to say about all 4,381 nominations.

Waking Life

As I imagine anyone pretentious enough to start a blog (which is to say, everyone) feels, I spend much of my time contemplating the nature of what is real.

After all, why write if you don't have a thought on reality? Some writers wouldn't put it in quite those terms, but whether you're writing about cooking or cars or Socretes or finance, you are facing something expressible, something that you perceive not only as real, but in some way primary to your existence. Something that in the confused primordial sea of what we see and feel and hear and smell and taste on a daily basis that strikes us as somewhat MORE REAL than the rest; if not, what about that particular topic arrests us out of the literally millions of sensations demanding our attention?

I read a fascinating fact the other day: every minute, 8 hours of video is uploaded to youtube alone. Every day, eight years are added. It is literally impossible to watch everything: you would need 480 screens streaming simultaneously and updating to the newest content instantly to keep up. If nothing else tells us how much our reality is entirely designed of our own choosing, by what we SELECT to perceive, and more importantly, what we elect to ignore, this fact, the literal kaleidoscoping of time, drives the unfathomiblity of the universe into us like a spike into our frontal lobe.

Eleven years ago, Waking Life, in its own wandering, dreamlike way, gave us the most beautiful elucidation of our weird reality we could ask for. And, driving home the futility in trying to keep up, it has taken me eleven years to catch up and give it the viewing it deserved. This is unacceptable; I've watched The Secret and What the Fuck Do We Know, two films that attempt to sell this philosophy and reality paradigm shamelessly and blatantly, in this time. Where Waking Life ruminates and sheds light and asks questions, those films preach, paradoxically attempting to sell their concrete vision of reality that is based off the impossibility of certainty. And yet, somehow, those made it on my viewing queue before Waking Life. One of the characters in this film tells us "the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are." And in the spirit of this, I accept responsibility for making the choice to define my reality as one that includes The Secret and doesn't include Waking Life.

Until now. And in honor of this beautiful film, I present my favorite quotes from perhaps my favorite existential pondering.

****
****

They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?

The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because if you can do that, you can do anything.

Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.

The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.

It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.

As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.

This is where I think language came from. It came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another.

A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.

The function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them.

There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life and those who suffer from an overabundance of life.

I'm closer to the end of my life than I've ever been, I actually feel more than ever that I have all the time in the world.

The funny thing is our cells are completely regenerating every seven years. We've already become completely different people several times over, and yet we always remains quintessentially ourselves.

We are the authors of ourselves, coauthoring a giant Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns.

Lady Gregory turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. Now, Philip K Dick is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 AD. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question. And that question is, basically, do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven? And we're all saying, No, thank you. Not just yet."

If you can wake up, you should...because someday you won't be able to. So just, um-- But it's easy. Just--just...

Wake up.

The Oscars, Part Deux

There are a lot of categories that not only are relatively irrelevant, but that I personally have seen zero films from. Let’s go through them as fast as possible!

Lightning round!

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

I had the chance to see Bullhead and didn’t, so it couldn’t have been good. The only alternative is that I’m a bad decision maker, and that’s just absurd. A Separation already won; don’t get greedy, Iranians. A Canadian film? Adieu, Monsieur Lazhar. It’s trendy to hate on Israel this year, so you’re out, Footnote.

In Darkness from Edgar Allen Poland it is. Appropriate.

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

The best documentaries are typically about irrelevant things that sound boring as hell (I’m looking at you, Helvetica). Let’s use that logic here. Hell and Back Again and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory both sound like low level horror films. Undefeated is going to suffer its first lost. The Earth Liberation Front bombed my old workplace once, so screw If A Tree Falls. Pina, which is about the tragic death of a dance choreographer. Well, none of those things are irrelevant or boring sounding, but Hell and Back Again sounds a lot like Helvetica. Done.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Christ, more shorts. The Barber of Birmingham sounds so boring and irrelevant, I’m not even going to read the rest of the titles.

FILM EDITING

The best film edit is the edit you didn’t even see, so in that spirit, this category comes down to The Descendants and Moneyball, two films I haven’t watched. It’s also important to leave the boring parts on the cutting room floor, but Moneyball, a film entirely about statistics and baseball, apparently did the exact opposite. Some might call it avant-garde, but this is the Oscars, dammit.

The Descendants it is.

ART DIRECTION

Obviously, The Artist is going to win this category. IT’S IN THE TITLE.

COSTUME DESIGN

This category always goes to the costume designer who recreated a foppish era of England’s past, so in the interest of balance, I’m going to disqualify every film that involves the Brits. Sorry W.E., Jane Eyre, and Anonymous. That leaves The Artist and Hugo, which recreate foppish eras of America and France’s pasts, respectively. I’m going to give the nod to The Artist, mostly for John Goodman’s cigar.

ANIMATED FEATURE

The Pixar Memorial category.

I don’t vote for sequels or ridiculous spinoffs, so Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots are flat out. There are way too many films set in Paris, so sorry Cat in Paris. We’re left with a cowboy lizard and a film I haven’t heard of but appears to prominently involve lead character Rita’s breasts. Unacceptable! This is a kid’s category! I won’t have you corrupting America’s youth with beautiful imagery of the human body!

Rango rides away, and we all can’t wait for Pixar to get back in the game.

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Anyone who knows me knows The Tree of Life won this six months ago, and the rest of the list is there to be polite. What, you wanted a joke? I have to take one of these seriously, and it’s going to be the category led by 1950s Texan tale of childhood angst that prominently involves dinosaurs.

Whoops, those last few were real categories. Oh well. Onto the big 6 next time.

Aaron Picks The Oscars, Part One

It’s that time of year again. No, not Oscars nominations. That happened like an hour ago; nobody cares anymore. No, it’s time for everybody to wildly speculate on who’ll win the somewhat-coveted trophies while maintaining intellectual superiority by declaring “it’s all politics anyway. (do you think George Clooney is due?)”

I’m not going to fall into that trap. Oh, no. I’m not going to be ironically and hilariously smug while descending (eh? eh?) into the same idiotic fervor everybody else does. I’m going to maintain artistic integrity here. I’m not going to predict who wins. I’m going to write a blog post about who I THINK should win, based on the nominations, and my own spotty track record of having watched the nominated films and a healthy dose of my own personal biases. It’ll be exactly like the real Oscars, only I’m the out of touch, elitist Academy who’s shamelessly pandering to mainstream sensibilities.

Without further ado…

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

I’ve seen three of these, which is pretty damn good for what’s about to transpire. Also, I’m not sure why Midnight in Paris, The Artist, and Bridesmaids qualify for this category, since those are all clearly biographies and not original stories at all.

Margin Call is also pretty clearly an account of actual events, but they did stop short of calling the fictional investment firm the “Lame Men Brothers”, so they sneak in.

Still, A Separation, which I believe has something to do with divorce in Islamofascist Communist Iran (I haven’t seen it), clearly sets itself apart. There’s no way it isn’t a made up story because as I understand it, it portrays Iranian citizens as real people with complicated emotions and political beliefs, and at no point do any of the main characters attempt to build a bomb or declare ‘Death to America’ (again, I haven’t seen it…if the end of the movie twist is a suicide bombing, I take this back and give the win to Margin Call). This level of silly imagination shows great creativity, so A Separation is my winner (unless it sucks, b/c again, haven’t seen it).

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

Ah, the real Hollywood writing category. As we all know, Hollywood is generally incompetent except when they can rip somebody else off and not give them credit for it, so this is the real battle.

More typical of this awards season, I’ve only seen one of these movies, so it’s a particularly hard category to judge. Both The Ides of March and The Descendents prominently involve George Clooney, so they split my Clooney vote and knock themselves out of competition. Moneyball is about baseball, and I’ve heard it’s quite good, which means I know a lot of liars because nothing about baseball is good. It’s out for dishonesty.

That leaves Hugo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I loved Hugo, but I didn’t remember the writing being particularly good, plus a lot of it was in French, which meant I had to read it. While some might argue that gives it extra points for a writing category, this is America. And in America, we love the Brits (pip pip!). And TTSS combines four words that have no business going together into a cool sentence, which is all I know about the writing of the film. Good enough for me.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy wins the day.

SOUND EDITING AND MIXING

Now begins my annual Wikipedia research session to relearn the difference between editing and mixing.

Still confused.

Let’s use the scientific method.

HYPOTHESIS: If there’s a difference, it will show up in the nominees. We can then use the what we know about the nominees to extrapolate what that difference is.

OBSERVATION: Since these are two entirely different skills, the lists of movies should differ greatly as well. Let’s see, for sound editing we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Drive. For sound mixing, we have The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Hugo, Transformers, War Horse, and Moneyball.

….

….

ANALYSIS: Clearly, the difference between sound mixing and editing is very precise. It also appears to have something to do with the difference between Drive and Moneyball. Having seen Drive, sound editing, therefore, seems to have something to do with cars and 80s throwback synth tracks. Moneyball has something to do with baseball, so I can only extrapolate from what I know about the film (not much) that Sound Mixing is predominately concerned with sports.

CONCLUSION: Well, Moneyball is clearly the most sports related movie on this list, so we’ll go ahead and award the Sound Mixing Oscar to them.

You might be tempted to say Drive is the most cars related film on the list, but Transformers has even cooler cars, and theirs transform into robots. Plus, there’s a rumor going around that if you put on Pink Floyd at the same time as Transformers and get really stoned, IT TOTALLY SYNCHS UP, so we’re going to give Transformers: Dark of the Moon the Sound Editing Oscar.

VISUAL EFFECTS

Another category where I’ve only seen 2 of 5. Unlike writing, this is a particular handicap, as I can’t get any clues from the titles. So instead, I’m going to go by a google images search.

Harry Potter 2: Ok, so I’ve seen this one. I don’t actually remember anything about the effects, so I’m going to yawn and move on. The poster is very blue, for what it’s worth.

Hugo: That’s a pretty cool clock. It also gets some extra props for landing a visual effects nomination for a film about a 9 year old clock maker in 1920s Paris. Oh yeah, and the 3D stuff is revolutionary. Interesting dark horse.

Real Steel: I liked this movie better when it was a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots commercial. None of these guys are taking Optimus Prime. Sorry.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: The effects on those monkeys are so good they almost look like monkeys.

Transformers Dark of the Moon: If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have sound. Wait, this won sound. If only Michael Bay movies didn’t have…screw it, those robots are f’ing awesome, and nothing about this category says “writing”, “dialogue”, “acting”, “direction”, or “plausibility”. Transformers Dark of the Moon wins a stunning second Oscar (in the fake Benmark Academy). I was stunned.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)

Wait, there’s only 2 contenders? Fuck it, I’m taking The Muppets.

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)

Again, I’ve seen two of these, and I can’t really remember the music from either of them. So The Artist and Hugo: out by default. I can only assume Tintin and War Horse, two John Williams scores for Spielberg movies, are bad ass. But again, the Williams vote is split, leaving us with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Alberto Iglesias takes the trophy. I’m pretty sure he’s some sort of hybrid between a Colombia rebel and a pop icon.

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED AND LIVE ACTION)

I can’t believe they split the category literally nobody’s seen a contender from into two. Someone must have let them know that the Oscars don’t drag on long enough. I’m taking Wild Life as the least hipster sounding contender, and Time Freak as what I can only assume is a film about a time travelling cross dresser who likes to freak on unsuspecting club goers in different centuries, which SOUNDS AWESOME.

MAKE UP

Only three contenders, which means the Academy watched more than three times as many short films as films where they noticed the make up. Here we have the always wonderful wizards and magical creatures of Harry Potter, Meryl Streep transformed before our very eyes into a dignified old lady at the top of her profession, and…

….

….

Oh God.

OH GOD.

IS THAT GLENN CLOSE? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER? YOU…YOU MONSTERS! I CAN’T UNSEE IT. HERE, TAKE YOUR FUCKING OSCAR, YOU HEATHENS.

The Oscar goes to Albert Nobbs.

(editor’s note (yes, I’m my own editor, what of it?): After googling Albert Nobbs, I googled Glenn Close to see what she looks like these days, and maybe it’s not quite as drastic a transformation as I first expected. Or they did such a good job making up her face, they froze it into a hideous, emotionless spectre for all eternity. I like the second theory better, and I’m going to stick with it).

MEOW

I was digging for topics, and so I put up to facebook a request, with the promise that whatever I was given I would proceed to write a blog post about.

Naturally, I got LOLcats. An interesting quandary, because how, exactly, do you talk about something that is, by its very nature, so trivial and meaningless?

LOLcats, have in some strange ways, changed our national narrative on the feline species. When I was young, I remember distinctly (or perhaps it was just me), people divided very solidly into “cats” and “dogs” people. If you liked one, you hated the other. It was like being on two sides of a very dug in football rivalry; it was almost unthinkable to cross the picket line and join the other side. Certainly, I was very much a dog person: I despised cats, considered them evil, and secretly wondered when they might rise up and overthrow the world.

Sometime around the point the Internet started putting cats on everything, that dialogue began to change. These days, it’s not only perfectly acceptable but probably the norm to love cats AND dogs. I was resistant to this change at first, holding out for the unassailable superiority of dogs (DOGS RULE, CATS DROOL), but one hilarious and poorly captioned image after another began to wear down my defenses to the point that I now find cats adorable, fluffy, and hilarious like everybody else.

Of course, there’s an alternate possibility: that the two events were not related at all (correlation does not equal causation and all that jazz). At about the same time, many of the women I dug were very much cat people, and in college setting, where dogs were actively discouraged, cats were the only pet available. As a result, I was around them a lot more. They say you broaden your horizons when you live in a new place and travel; you’re exposed to your deepest stereotypes, and find them breaking down over and over again. Maybe this effect happened in an odd arena: with the classic cats and dogs war.

On the other hand, society in general has grown in many ways much less divisive (our politics aside) and more open to new ideas and alternative lifestyles. Maybe as a result of the general trend to accepting the merits of virtually everything, cats have come along for the ride.

I’m not saying I understand why, but whatever the case, it has certainly become more true. The long standing cats and dogs war has broken down, and cats and dogs (and their owners) have begun to live with each other in harmony and peace.

And with that, you’ll excuse me. I need to look at every single post in r/awww.

AW HE THINKS HE’S PEOPLE!!!!!

Rice Paddies and Oil Fields

Occasionally, I do free writes. Perhaps this isn't the best place for them, and perhaps it is.

This was inspired by a wide array of topics discussed at a potluck I attend at my good friend Matt Scheer's place. It strays on the melancholic side, to be sure, but I'm also in my cubicle, so melancholy is to be expected.

Enjoy.

****

Light flashes in slow, uneven pulses from a corner of your mind’s eye that you can’t quite comprehend.

Water flows rapidly across an uneven staircase, smoothing the sharp edges of the stairs.

Fire heats the inside of a hearth set in the heart of America, in a fireplace in Joplin, Missouri.

Earth moves around on its own volition and a hillside sprouts where flat land once stood.

Arrowheads sit untouched in deep sand dunes. Who will be the first to discover them?

Moss grows on a dying tree engulfing its scrawny white bark with a green fur coat.

What does it mean exactly to mean?

What does it dream exactly to dream?

For what is the price of rice in the afterlands of the soul?

Paddy farmers enter factories, hey o and watch their blissful robes fall to leave them naked on the throne of machinery. Gears and rotors, servos and motors, cranking out tiny iPods and little tiny speakers as they split their fingers and let the blood dry on the hands of the children under their supervision. Don’t take a break, little one. Don’t cry. Make sure you get those glass screens inserted right. The children of the First World Champions demand perfection.

Smooth pottery? Smooth gorilla glass. Craftmanship? No need, when mechanical perfection directed by toddlers who have shadows of their mothers tucked deep in their subconscious is at our hands.

Order now, and get it tomorrow. A hundred countries will work for nothing so that you might feel enlightened and powerful and well informed and indignant.

Oil has found its way into every last crease of the old man as he staggers across a sandswept dune past mastodon bones bleached white by a hard beating sun. The man wonders idly whether the oil he has harvested for the last forty years was once the skin and blood of that mastodon, whether the fuel that flows freely from his taps once flew freely through the veins of the creatures deemed unworthy of the University’s archeologists. He wonders if the ancient warriors who left the arrowheads scattered knew that they would be condensed to black blood used to fuel the pleasure cruises of petulant teenagers in top down convertibles all across America.

Dreams haunt us and tell us of a history that we couldn’t know otherwise. We see death and rebirth, destruction and creation, grotesque deformities somehow sprouted into beauty unforeseeable. A young girl cries as she sees the fate of her friends in the factories where the rice patties once stood. She cries when she sees the arrowheads left with nobody, outlasting the craftsmen who forged them and were later forged into the devil’s dark milk. Finally, the tears are too much, and she drowns in them.

We can instantaneously tell each other how horrible it is that children made the devices we use to decry their working conditions. We can do so in a poem as we turn back to the spreadsheets that have encaptured our souls in their cells.

The key to balancing what seems unbalanceable is to never stop moving. Keep jerking around left and right and up and down until it seems impossible that the pin will ever fall. If anybody ever tells you how silly it looks, ignore them. If you lose focus for a second, the whole world comes tumbling down.

Penile globes. I don’t know how to tie that in yet.

Distant memories of young love haunt us and break us into damp reckonings with our selves. Would we continue the lusts of our youth if we were given the option again?

If we are all resurrected from the past, could we all be the same? Could the young girl I loved be the same girl who cried in terror at the visions she couldn’t explain? Could we all be dreaming the same dream?

One man never stops moving. A river runs until the bed is dry, always moving forward yet constantly stuck in the same place. Near it, an old oak tree has never seen past its roots, and yet the two never seem to separate.

Who is to say whether the mighty oak or the swift river is correct?

When we talk, we make sounds, but we lose the hearing of the world around us. Does anyone listen? Is anyone here? Or am I imagining everybody in front of me? Or is everybody in front of me imagining me? Couldn’t both be true?

I’m brought back to the image of a single grain of rice, floating in the wind, travelling from country to country, down river and river, floating in the ocean, somehow never gobbled up by a stray field mouse. And yet it ends up, after years of travel, back where it began. But where it began is not what it remembers; it’s changed somewhat, and a giant dark building stands menacing over the fields where the rice grain once grew. And a long line of sad people file in and out and in and out and punch a little card to show that they belong. And the grain of rice joins them in their melancholic; for the home it once left no longer stands, and he realizes that he’s alone in the world once more.

Third Party America, Or The Republicans March Off A Cliff

The year 2012 is shaping up to be one of the most monumental years in American history. With the country limping out of the worst economic recession since the big one in the 1930s, apocalyptic chatter filling the airwaves (Mayans!), multiple wars, skyrocketing debt, collapsing health care system, thoroughly disillusioned youth, and two radical political insurgencies (Occupy and the Tea Party) assaulting the established powers from both sides of the political spectrum, it isn’t a stretch to suggest that the American experiment is at its least stable since World War II thrust the United States into the world’s spotlight. In any moment of instability, long held truths are cast in doubt, and previously thought impossibilities burst on the playing field. In this moment of instability, for the first time since Theodore Roosevelt and the Bull Moose party, the United States seems primed for a successful third party candidate. Indeed, given the rapidly transforming political, economic, social, and cultural spectrum, the very survival of the Republican Party may be at stake in the 2012 election.

The collapse of an American political party is not unprecedented, though it has been an extraordinarily long time. When the party system broke into American politics in the late eighteenth century, there were two parties: the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans. The Federalists were the party of finance and the banks; the Democratic Republicans were the party of farmers and rural America. The Federalists quickly faded: their power was built on finance, not a seller in early America. After Adams, they did not win a single election, and the party disappeared completely in 1824. From 1800-1824, the Democratic Republicans won every single Presidential election, and in 1824, with the death of the Federalists, they were the only remaining political party in America. This allowed the Democratic Republicans to essentially pick their own Presidential candidate in the House of Representatives. Much was made about Gore winning the popular vote and losing the election in 2000: in 1824, Andrew Jackson won the electoral vote handedly, but the House of Representatives chose to ignore that fact and ‘elect’ second place finisher John Quincy Adams. Jackson, the candidate of the poor and underprivileged, didn’t sit well with mostly aristocratic Congressional members. They instead chose the son of the last Federalist President.

Jackson, who has always been perhaps best known for his temper, was predictably furious, and his insurgency forced the Democratic Republican party to split into two parties the following election. Jackson, frontrunner of the newly formed Democratic party, won easily. A few elections later, the remains of the Democratic Republican party re-coalesced as the Whigs. While the Whigs successfully won two elections, both their candidates died while in office (including William Henry Harrison’s now infamous speech in the pouring rain and resulting flu death just 24 days into his term), and the Whigs never quite caught on. With the Civil War looming, American politics descended into chaos, with many smaller parties springing up (including the Liberty Party, the Free Soil Party, the Know Nothing Party, the American Party, the Southern Democrat Party, the Constitutional Party, and of course the Republican Party). In the chaos, the unfortunate Whigs fell off the political spectrum, and in 1860, Abraham Lincoln of the newly formed Republican Party became President.

Since that day, the United States has only elected candidates from the two major parties, but other political parties have made their impact. The Populist Party near the turn of the century wielded enough power to influence most Presidential elections, and Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party in 1912 succeeded in getting Taft thrown from office and Woodrow Wilson elected. In 1924, the Progressive Party won several states, and in 1948, Strom Thurmond did the same. George Wallace of the American Independent party made a relatively successful challenge in 1968, and of course Ross Perot briefly led the polls in 1992 before inexplicably dropping out of the race while he was the front runner (he still took down 18% of the vote when he changed his mind again and re-entered late in the election cycle).
So while there is a stronger history of third party participation in the United States, it’s fairly clear that most third party challenges are unsuccessful. Why, then, could a third party be successful this year?

Traditionally, the knock against third parties has been that every third party challenger has succeeded only in swinging the election to the opposite side of the spectrum. For example, if a liberal third party springs up to challenge the Democrats, the liberal vote splits between the third party and the Democrats, and the Republicans walk away with the election. The same process works both directions: when a conservative challenger springs up and challenges the Republicans, it results in an easy win for the Democrats. Because of this long history of futility, these challenges rarely occur in modern America, and most voters are savvy enough to ignore those that do (see Nader, Ralph). Why would this year be different?

For the first time in modern American history, the stances and politics of the two major political parties do NOT even remotely match the typical political beliefs of the American people. The continuing popularity of both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements (and those movements antipathy to the established political parties) is a fairly clear indication of this general malcontent towards the Washington establishment, though it’s hardly the only indicator. One could demonstrate this by looking at Congress’s all time low approval rating (9%, lower than Lindsay Lohan, ‘America going communist’, the Gulf Oil Spill, and herpes), reading any random sampling of posts on reddit, considering the fact that Ron Paul is getting serious consideration as a Presidential candidate, taking a brief, terrifying foray into any talk radio show on any channel, or by simply bringing up politics in conversation with anybody anywhere at any time. While the United States has never seen a serious political challenge to the established power structure in the post World War II era, the modern United States has never experienced general, across the board, anti-Washington rage quite like the last five years has produced.

It’s also important to note that an entire wing of the American political spectrum, conservatives, effectively do not have representation from either of the two political parties. Certainly, the Republicans claim to represent conservative ideals of fiscal restraint and small government, but their track record is exactly the opposite. When given office, Reagan Republicans have spent at an even faster rate than Democrats, pushed the government into more and more people’s lives, and continually supported enormous tax payer giveaways with no oversight to a small number of corporations in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other east coastal. As a result, more and more conservatives are declaring themselves ‘libertarian’ or in some extreme cases, ‘fascist’ out of desperation because whatever the modern Republican Party thinks it represents bears no resemblance to reality. At this point of the primary season, it seems fair to say that Mitt Romney, an East Coast millionaire known for implementing universal health care in liberal stronghold Masschusetts, Newt Gingrich, perhaps the most despicable human being alive, Ron Paul, a crazy person, and Rick Santorum, doing whatever the fuck it is he thinks he’s doing, do not represent your average American conservative, who just wants government to leave him alone and not screw things up too badly.

Of course, the liberals are hardly happy either, but the left is likely stuck with Obama, who is the closest thing to a radical progressive as will ever get elected in predominantly conservative America. And the center I will personify as my Dad, a fairly liberal guy who was raised conservative, who works for a defense contractor but recently married an NPR host, who votes consistently Democrat but always claims up to the day before the election that he’s considering both candidates, who is on the fence on Iraq and not sure about gay marriage. In other words, he’s a typical American, with a mish mash of self contradictory opinions and a weird, cobbled-together spectrum of thoughts and ideas that we continually and absurdly attempt to categorize as ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, or ‘moderate’. His response to the Republican field this year: “what a bunch of jokers. They’ve lost their minds.” His response to the Democrats under Obama: “I can’t keep paying for all this crap. Someone besides the upper middle class needs to start paying taxes.” The moderates in America are caught between Occupiers and Tea Partiers, who want progress but not socialism, who want security but not endless war, who want a strong economy but not crony capitalism, who want an education but not the crippling debt that accompanies it. At the moment, neither party is offering anything remotely close to this ideal. Were America a retailer, we’d be bankrupt by now: our consumers would have found a better deal.

We’re as polarized politically as a country as we’ve ever been, but most of America is united a common disdain towards the current Washington establishment. And as the major political parties pull further and further apart from each other and further and further away from the bulk of Americans, as the Republican party disintegrates into the circus sideshow this year’s debates have been, as the Democrats and Obama continue to falter in fulfilling the promises they made in 2008, for the first time since the Civil War, there is substantial room in the political arena of our nation for a new way of doing things.
Who could rise up and fill that void? That’s a topic for another essay.