Waxitical

Ten years!

elhatcho — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 07:54:16 GMT

Ten years ago ~~today~~ yesterday I started this damn journal and wrote my first entry.

"Journal!!!Eleven!!!
I have a livejournal! wow! now i can express myself online in a manner where i don't sound incoherent! Yay! Thank you to Katie for providing me with code for said livejournal ...

Forgive the layout, it will only be so until i have time to make it good...
Also, forgive the title and content of this post, i'm sort of rushed right now since..."

The "since" led into the next day's post, which was basically that San Diego County was burning down in a huge inferno of doom. Man, ten years goes pretty damn quick.
I was going to post this yesterday to commemorate the whole livejournal thing, and then I forgot.
I apologize to all my many followers who cared.
So much for my bringing livejournal back movement. I eventually stopped caring myself.
I take that back. I still care. Just not enough to... you know... be interesting on a daily basis.
I kind of miss the days when I assumed that I was interesting.
Not that I'd go back and re-read those days. They are my-eyes-only for a reason. I could only get so far before the whole thing would overwhelm me and I would implode.
I would not wish that fate on anyone else.

Anyway, happy ten year anniversary, my livejournal.

Now to reach a checkpoint in Bioshock Infinite so I can go the fuck to sleep.

The Best Feeling

elhatcho — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 10:11:05 GMT

So I defeated another level in the trial that is Fire Emblem: Awakening Hard/Classic mode. It is funny because I spent weeks perfecting a strategy to complete this mission using trial and error, and then yesterday at about 3am an attempt went south and my strategy fell apart and I beat it by pure, dumb luck. It was such a glorious feeling. Really, that is the benefit of doing something challenging, something hard. Because if you try and fail and fail and fail and fail again, that only makes your eventual victory that much sweeter.

Unless you never end up beating that next level and you have just wasted a huge chunk of your time. That would suck.

I so need a job.
Maybe I can juggle geese? I hear people do that.

Regarding the film Prisoners

elhatcho — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 08:50:58 GMT

I have never been so unsettled by photography of tree bark in my life.

I guess the story was pretty good too.

Phobias

elhatcho — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 08:37:28 GMT

My completely irrational fears:

Spiders:
I believe this one explains itself. The funny thing is, I can pretty much destroy any spider I see, and yet I don't. I preserve the objects of my fear. But seriously, these things are creepy, and I blame the movie Arachnophobia for giving me the self-same phobia. Damn film.

Needles:
I hate needles. They suck. This one I have good reason for, but still. Completely irrational.

The Dark:
The funny thing about me being afraid of the dark is that I'm not actually afraid of the dark. I'm actually afraid of somebody slitting my throat while I am traveling through a dark space. Specifically getting my throat slit. Or, like, bitten by a vampire. Yes, seriously.

That last one is what inspired this post, as I feel it is particularly irrational, and yet one of my stronger fear motivators nowadays. Silly phobias.

Algebra

elhatcho — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 07:21:49 GMT

Tonight I experienced a sudden desire to go back in time and re-learn math from the very beginning. Just, like, somehow forget basic arithmetic so that I had to start from scratch and build from there, just to re-experience the ways that my neurons fire as I puzzle out the basic functions of numbers and how they interact with each other.

It's a really dumb idea, but an interesting concept to explore philosophically, especially when talking about the process at a broader level of experiencing something for the first time all over again. I particularly feel that way about movies, about how some movies are just pure magic at the first viewing but lose some of their lustre upon revisitation. So much focus in geekery is about the cultish tendency to watch and rewatch the same movie over and over again, while sometimes good storytelling stems from the freshness of seeing something new or creative. Blah.

My feeling tonight specifically was that I really, really wanted to be in seventh grade learning the initial concepts of algebra. Being ingrained with the idea that x could be a substitute of a value, a value that could possibly be solved. Something about going back to some of the higher level applications of those basic ideas made me nostalgic for the entire process of building a mental structure for understanding math. I don't know. I'd hate being in seventh grade again otherwise, especially if I didn't retain my memories and couldn't change the past. Things weren't all bad back then, but life as a teenager really sucked. Maybe I should revise that to say that I made a really crappy teenager, and that it wasn't the age range's fault but my quality as a person. Given that standard I made a substandard child and atrocious adult as well, and should be chastised for my general performance as a person.

Renamed

elhatcho — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 20:17:38 GMT

After a situation where I was living with another Erin, my friends took to calling me by Hatch, my last name. Now that several years have passed, Hatch has kind of stuck as my primary name among my friends, and I was encouraged yesterday to make that change official. Thus I am making a livejournal declaration that in order to increase my manliness quotient, I am changing my name to Hatchet Rockwell. Hatch for short.

Gargoyles

elhatcho — Fri, 06 Sep 2013 10:12:27 GMT

So how about that there show Gargoyles? Early-to-mid-nineties goodness, that's what I say. I just started rewatching it and the show holds up well for a Disney Afternoon-era title. Now, whether the show will hold up outside the pilot I'll just have to wait and see.

I've actually been watching a lot of TV comparative to other points in my life. Most of it isn't on TV, mind, and even the stuff that is isn't live but DVR'd, so it still isn't the same as the old days... but still. My current list looks something like:
-Copper (BBC America via DVR)
-Broadchurch (BBC America via DVR)
-The Newsroom (HBO via DVR)
-Attack on Titan (Funimation via Hulu)
-House of Cards (Netflix)
-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Netflix)
-Psych (Netflix)
-Burn Notice (Netflix)
-Eureka (Netflix)
-Once Upon a Time (Netflix)

There are probably some more in there (For example: I finished the series of Eden of the East a week or two ago, though I haven't watched the feature length finale yet, and I powered through Orphan Black to write a ComicsOnline review) but those are the ones that are on my docket now. Really, the combination of DVR and Netflix is what really does me in here, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to put up with Hulu much more than I do, and I wouldn't care to track down these series otherwise.

The thing is... most of these series suck.
Ok, well, they don't suck, but they're TV. They're noise. Enjoyable noise but not particularly substantial. Burn Notice and Psych are fun, formulaic detective/spy shows, but I put them on and then write for forty minutes while vaguely enjoying the sounds of the story and glancing at the screen occasionally for context. I spent an episode of Eureka today doing Math homework and was barely distracted. The anime makes it a little harder to multitask, which is and isn't a good thing. Ok, thoughts on the TV stuff: (TAKE THIS, FRIENDS PAGE)
-Copper, Season 2: I wasn't very fair to season 1 of Copper because the premise is extremely enticing and the show didn't live up to my expectations. Actually, it didn't live down to my expectations. I was expecting another formulaic Cop show with a historical bent, and instead they spring this grand drama on me? I was frustrated because the historical cop part is done really well, but the drama aspect just... it doesn't live up to the series' potential as a cop show. The show is literally called Copper. Why are we spending so much time focusing on non-police stuff? Season 2 I'm a little more forgiving. I enjoyed Season 1 enough despite my over-particular expectation, and I am enjoying season 2 more, though I am still frustrated with the commercials for the show which promise grand events that don't actually happen for episodes on end. At least they're doing stuff with the show, and resolving certain plot arcs that were getting frustrating. Also, Copper may just be ok most of the time, but when it is great it is fantastic. I'm thinking one scene in particular where the Doctor's wife decides she wants to chop down the metal lamp post that her brothers were lynched from with an Axe, which starts with her charging the lamp post and uselessly flailing on it and ends with half the street joining in to help her bring the thing down, most of it in a single shot. I was so breathtaken with that moment I had to watch the scene three times to make sure I was interpreting it right. Thank goodness for DVR.
-Broadchurch: I'll admit, I started watching it because of David Tennant. But it's actually interesting, if a little bit slow. I like the drama aspects, but as much as their style sells the emotional content of the show, the resulting glacial pace makes it tough to stomach episode after episode where half as much happens as it should.
-The Newsroom: Season 2 just isn't as good as season 1. There are several reasons for this, and several reasons for people to disagree with me. Essentially, from what I've read, The Newsroom was regularly trashed by journalists during season one for being a preachy, unrealistic take on the subject of journalism featuring hollow, stock characters that spouted out unrealistically clever dialog that were thinly veiled talking points of Aaron Sorkin's ideals for perfect journalism. Essentially, journalists were upset that they were watching an Aaron Sorkin show, not realizing that all of Aaron Sorkin's TV projects ever have been exactly the same, except about life backstage at the White House, or a Comedy show, or whatever. But that was season one, which, yeah, was all those things that journalists hated, but at least it was fun to watch. Season two does two big things wrong: 1) It spends WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY too much time obsessing over a single plot thread that isn't particularly interesting. I mean, yeah, theoretically it would be interesting if they presented it right, but instead they presented it like Aaron Sorkin wanting to present something interesting. This review might make more sense if you were aware of the idiosyncracies of Sorkin's writing style. Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip is essentially a crash course in this. AND 2) None of the characters are doing interesting things anymore. I feel like all of the side plots have just crashed except for Sloan and what's his face having their 'we're totally going to bang but we're putting it off all season because we're coworkers or something.' Anyway, the lesson for Season 2 of the Newsroom is that it doesn't matter what journalists say about the realism of your behind the scenes news show, if I wanted to watch a show about horrible people fucking up the news, I'd just watch actual cable news.
-Attack on Titan: Hooray for bloody action anime! I really fucking hate this show, but I keep watching it for some reason. My real problem is that there really should only be one episode for every three or four episodes aired. I think that if some got the entire series and just cut it down to 1/2 to 1/3 the length it currently is, it would be a much better show. Instead, the writers/directors/editors waste so much time on tortured inner monologues and people screaming at each other, even in the middle of a big fucking battle where other important shit should be going on. Also, they introduce a billion characters, but death is so common here that they kill people off and you don't really know who is alive and who is dead until people come back or don't. Death just happens, and it is cheap and has little emotional pay-off. But then something awesome happens and I commit to watching another couple episodes. Really, I would recommend people wait to watch this until some generous soul comes along and volunteers to do the job that the story editors should have done in the first place, and cut away all the unnecessary emotional baggage that will still be obvious after it is gone.
-House of Cards: Pretty good, I guess. Interesting. It's one of those shows about horrible people doing interesting things. I'm still watching.
-Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: Fullmetal Alchemist was one of the shows that I went crazy over during my big anime phase about ten years ago, and I was eager to hear about the continuation/revisitation of the show in Brotherhood. I tried to watch Brotherhood when it first released, but wasn't able to follow the broadcast schedule well and lost track of things. Now it's on Netflix and can't escape. So far I don't like it. Brotherhood seems to be a retelling of a lot of the same stories told by Fullmetal Alchemist, only the animation isn't as good and the storytelling sucks. I know that eventually it will deviate from the original series, and I hope I hang on long enough to actually see that happen.
-Psych: Detective comedy. Kind of a spin on a Sherlock Holmes formula. It's a lot of fun, but nothing groundbreaking or startlingly original. One of my background shows.
-Burn Notice: Spy show. Fun stuff. I've seen most of it before, at least, of the stuff on Netflix now, but never saw the first season and came in halfway through the second. Now I've watched up to the beginning of the fourth, which I have seen before, though I only have a season or two left before I get to new material again, assuming its on Netflix. Another show that I can put on in the background.
-Eureka: Once upon a time I cursed Eureka for being a sign of the SciFi channel being too scared to do exciting Science fiction, and I admit that I made that judgement call without having seen the show. That said, now that I am watching the show at the recommendation of my friends, I still hate it. There is something innately uninteresting about it. A hollowness. "Oh hey, this whole town is filled with government researchers, making everybody crazy smart except for this handful of average people." But the people don't seem crazy smart, which I guess is a problematic statement because what does crazy smart seem like? Whatever it is, this show doesn't really try to capture it. Oh yeah, everybody is crazy smart. See, that one seventh grader just invented a hovercar. Ha! How crazy smart! The intelligence of the town is stated, it is not demonstrated, and when it IS demonstrated, it is demonstrated offscreen. We see the products of the intelligence, we hear people called intelligent, we hear people speak the language, but we never see people doing science, and when we see them doing math it just feels hollow. (We need an equation to fit in for variable g in this formula for science juice. What can it be? Have you tried the square root of two x minus three? My god, you're a genius! We all are!) I am told it gets good eventually, so I am willing to have it play behind my math homework if I need to. It could be worse.
-Once Upon a Time: The thing is, I wanted to like Once Upon a Time, but I also came into the series thinking that I would not like it. Both of these feelings came from the fact that I like Fables (at least, what I've read of it), and that Once Upon A Time is essentially a huge, Disney-branded Fables rip-off with a little bit of Lost mixed in there. And it blows. I mean it is really bad. But by the time you really really realize how bad it is, it has its hooks in you, and then it starts getting good, and then season one is over. Season 2 was just added to Netflix, so I've just started watching it, and I haven't watched enough for it to get good yet.

This post is horrible and I have to get out while I still can. Best of luck, my livejournal friends. Stay safe.

Fall Awakening

elhatcho — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 07:36:15 GMT

Sorry I missed a day, but life. Still bringing it back!

One thing that has absolutely revolutionized my life in the past few days is the sign of glacial progress in my attempt to tackle Fire Emblem: Awakening. I'm a really big fan of this game, or I would be if I didn't suck so much.
Ok, I don't suck, but I did make the foolish decision to play on Hard difficulty (from the choices of Normal, Hard, and Insane), and the game really is unrelenting in its difficulty. I got past the first three levels fast enough, then got stuck on level four for about five months, and in the past week I completed both level four and a side level, which has left me very impressed with myself.
I am, of course, now thoroughly stuck on level six. It is interesting that I could focus on one game so uselessly while the rest of my catalog yearns for my attention. I could probably have complete a dozen games in the time I have spent trying to beat that one freaking level four.

In other news, Math is fun, and I was reunited with my old TI-83 Plus graphing calculator today. I even remembered the password to my copy of MirageOS. The calculator itself has a huge dark spot in the middle of the screen where the LCD is going bad or something, which is a minor annoyance so long as I maintain a fairly light contrast level. Does anybody else have this trouble with their old TI-83s? My friend's is fine, and it should be about the same age (though less used), but my sister seems to have done this contrast spot thing to TWO of our calculators now.

I went to group today and I felt good about it. I am going to try reading at night to theoretically help me sleep easier.

Tomorrow my registration nightmares end.

Taking It Back

elhatcho — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 10:34:58 GMT

Dear Livejournal-
Happy Labor Day. I went to a gathering. Not quite a party. Still fun. Friends were present!
After yesterday's post I thought about making some kind of snarky comment about bringing livejournal back, and decided that I might as well just do that instead of joking about it. Maybe if I'm still writing these daily journal posts a couple of months from now, then I'll go brag about it and see if I can't start a trend. I just have to keep writing for now.

So... Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame versus Disney's The Lion King. I almost got in this debate earlier, and the central conflict of that debate seems to be some kind of belief that Hunchback is more 'adult' in tone and content, which... I don't particularly see. Or rather, I do see it, but I don't think the elements that make Hunchback more 'adult' actually make it more adult. Thinking about it, those factors mostly involve the fact that the central female character is overtly sensuous and that all the male characters, especially the villain, are attracted to her because of same. And I guess a lot of the characters are jerks. But you see all that stuff and think 'yeah, that's some dark content' and then you turn around and there are talking gargoyles making dumb jokes about pigeons or spitting on people. I think that might be my problem with the 'adult' factors of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame: It isn't particularly consistent in its tone. Yeah, there are some dark moments, but there are a lot of goofy musical numbers as well, including some late in the film where they are incredibly tonally inconsistent with what is going on in the story. Also, I've never read Hunchback of Notre Dame, but having watched the Disney movie and read the Wikipedia (where are the cliffnotes of yesteryear?) account of the events of the book, I'm pretty sure the Disney crew didn't particularly pay close attention to the original either. (Still, better than Disney's Hercules.)
Now Lion King, on the other hand, is essentially Baby's First Hamlet. It's at least similar, and gets the themes of murder and betrayal and grief and revenge right to a certain degree, even if they smooth out the worst of the inappropriate content and play down the horribleness of the situation by making everybody talking animals. But while it is less overtly sexual and gothic, the Lion King fits its revenge tale into a fairly consistent tone. Yeah there are a couple of happy-bouncy songs, mostly front-loaded in the happy-go-lucky early parts of the film. But once things go dark, things go dark. You don't have a goofy gargoyle musical number two thirds of the way into the film, when things should be serious. There are gags here and there, but they all worked contextually. There are formulaic elements of the film, but THEY worked contextually. (Who are the goofy animal sidekicks when everybody is an animal? Timon and Puumba are goofy, but they are goofy for a reason, and serve a purpose in the plot.)
I guess the biggest argument against Lion King is that it has been completely upstaged by the play, which again revises the tone into something more serious and makes it a little harder to take the movie seriously.

This post has gone on for far too long, so... yeah, Hunchback might go to 'darker' places, but it does so less consistently than Lion King, which hides a lot of the darkness but maintains a consistent tone.

When I started this post, it was labor day. Now... not so much.

Livejournal Revisited

elhatcho — Mon, 02 Sep 2013 08:13:02 GMT

You know.
Sometimes, when it is late at night and I've been thinking, I realize I really miss livejournal.
But it is probably just me missing you guys more.
This was the social network for me, I think. This and leaving rambling away messages on AIM. And all of you who were here with me for that were my best internet friends.
(Well... maybe except for one or two since, but you guys are fantastic is what I'm saying.)
I can't do facebook. I just... ugh. It kills me everytime I look at it. Facebook is a soul-killing monster.
Myspace blew. Past tense. Now it blows in a slightly better way because it is completely insignificant and can be easily ignored.
Twitter is horrible. I gave it a chance. It did not deserve that chance.
If there is something newer than Twitter it is even more horrible.
Who can even keep track of blogs anymore?
I hate when this feeling comes on, not just because it makes me mourn that the best ways of interacting online are dying, but because it makes me feel like a whiny old man who can't keep up with technology. I mean, who wants to be that guy that doesn't like twitter?
I don't know.
The internet in general is kind of dead to me lately. Used to be that I would dive into this motherfucker on a daily basis to pry out all the information I could before I overdosed on data and stumbled away, exhausted.
But now... I cut webcomics altogether. I miss the good ones, but I'm relieved to be rid of the bad ones more. I cut video game news sites. Good fucking riddance. It sucks when I don't hear about things until long after the information qualifies as 'news,' but I am better off not reading that poison. I avoid facebook like the plague, which is funny, because if that is the case I would run to the plague every couple of weeks to untag some pictures my friends have posted of me on the plague. I don't do forums anymore either, and thus my source of real world news is gone as well. The internet is always here for me, if I need it, but I don't consume it the way I did last year, or the year before that, or any year prior to that all the way back to when my family first got internet.
Anyway.
None of this is relevant. I was just missing the old days.
Here's to you guys.
Cheers.

Goodbye 2011, Hello Future

elhatcho — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 19:20:22 GMT

So... 2011 has been quite a year. I got through most of my graduate school curriculum this year, lived out on my own for the entire year, and generally acted like an adult, for the most part. Or I tried. A lot of important stuff happened this year, and I feel like I took some significant steps away from my life in the past, and have at least started to come to terms with what my future is going to be like, though 2012 is going to be an important year in that aspect. First off, I am going to have to determine what comes after graduate school, which definitely means a job but also throws into question where and what that job will be. Will I stay in southern California? Orange County or San Diego? Or maybe I will move farther afield. The past two years have been an important transitional period for me, and 2012 is going to be another important year. I just hope that this is the year that I find my place and get my life going.
So... New Year's Resolution for 2012: GET A JOB. Don't see any way of avoiding it this time, so this is kind of a given, but an important objective nevertheless.
Also, I feel like this is going to be one of my last livejournal posts. I know that the community here has been fading out for the last few years, and I have been helping that by only posting a handful of updates a year, so it doesn't make sense to keep pretending like this is going to be a regular thing for me. If anyone out there is reading this, then I hope you have a wonderful 2012, and I will probably stop by this forlorn journal now and then to check in, just in case somebody is still posting.
Otherwise, see you Space Cowboys.
-Erin

Regarding Sucker Punch

elhatcho — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:54:26 GMT

If you are considering a trip to the cinemaplex to see Sucker Punch, don't. I went in with fairly low expectations, and I was still disappointed. I thought it would be dumb fun, but the filmmakers forgot to bring the fun. I know that I can be kind of snooty when it comes to films, but this is not one of those times. This film is genuinely bad, with a near incoherent narrative. The film has interesting concepts behind it, especially in the action scenes, but the execution is poor at every single level. The director over-uses CGI and slow motion, laying his signature style on thick. It becomes obnoxious. Painful.

Sucker Punch would never have been good. The formula is too dependent on smearing the main cast in sex appeal while they go around getting involved in pointless fight scenes that aren't actually real on multiple levels. "Good" was always a stretch. But it could have been entertaining.

It wasn't.

Am I Bi-Polar? I'm Bi-Winning.

elhatcho — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 05:52:42 GMT

I feel no shame in admitting on this very exclusive and generally unread journal that I love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It is so damn good. Ok, maybe part of the appeal comes from the whole "Hee hee I am liking My Little Pony and I am not supposed to on account of being a big manly man," but the writing (well, in terms of dialog, not so much the story...) is so damn smart, the animation style is excellent, the musical numbers are catchy and the characters are all so well developed. And the references! The show is so well informed in terms of cultural content. One of my favorite moments in the show is an extended homage to Putting it Together from Sunday in the Park with George. SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Who watches My Little Pony who could even get that reference?

Me, that is who.

One of my main fascinations with Children's Entertainment is the way that it subtly educates children about the history of art and culture while still maintaining a consistent level of entertainment. I think My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic does this admirably.

Also, the show is so damn cheery that it pretty much single-handedly (with some help from the musical stylings of Charlie Sheen...) lifted me out of the depressive episode that accompanied my previous post.

Unfortunately, I've caught up with the series, so now I have to wait for new episodes. Curses.

Days Gone Bye

elhatcho — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:08:53 GMT

The title of this post was stolen from The Walking Dead which is unfortunately appropriate for the content. A couple of people from my friends list have posted "Wow livejournal is dead" posts lately, which inspired me to go back and start archiving my old posts in a text document on my computer, since I kind of want to keep them for my own perusal at some future point, just in case.

It is fairly freaky going back to the early days of this journal, which were scrawled onto the great tapestry of the internet more than seven years ago. I've changed a lot in that time, and not for the better. I miss the random creativity of 19 year old me, the fact that he didn't particularly care whether or not anybody wanted to read his emotional outbursts or dream descriptions or random internet quizzes or crazy poetry or short stories, and just threw them up here anyway. Maybe the self doubt I discovered in these past seven years is the reason why I just don't post anything on here anymore? Possibly, though it is interesting that my post rate declined sharply as soon as I graduated from college.

Either way, I haven't been feeling too great lately (Grad school is getting me down, among other things) and reading the hemming and hawing of an emotional (dare I say Emo?) young me cheers me up a bit. As does the banter. I used to be so good at banter. We've had some good times, livejournal.

But it is increasingly lonely out here, as friend by friend goes on to other venues for internet socialization. I find it unfortunate that long form internet diatribes like this are a thing of the past as far as social networking is concerned, since this was probably my favorite way of communicating with other people ever. (NOTE: I suck at communicating with other people, especially within a character limit.)

I'm not going anywhere at the moment, even though I don't always seem to be here, due to my own internet silence. But I had to say something after reading some of my old stuff, which hopefully will never be seen by anybody else ever. I've hidden most of the worst stuff, but there are still some real winners out there in the past.

It may be a couple of weeks until my next post, or a couple of months. Or maybe a year or two. But I am still here, still reading anything my friends might want to say.

(NOTE TO FUTURE ERIN: I see you reading this and comparing it to the posts from 19/20 year old Erin that I was reading last night. I see you laughing at it and commenting how nothing ever changes. Just you know I am watching you, future self. I AM ALWAYS WATCHING AND JUDGING YOU. Sincerely, Present/Past Erin)

The Illusionist

elhatcho — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 09:56:34 GMT

I went to see The Illusionist today. Not the Edward Norton magician movie from however long ago, but the French animated film nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the one from the makers of The Triplets of Belleville.

Before I talk about my thoughts on the film, I want to offer a small observation about myself: I cry a lot at the movies. It is not difficult for a filmmaker to manipulate my emotions to the point that I end crying like a baby, or at least get a little misty. In fact, I invest in many movies to the point that I want to open up the waterworks. For example, all three of Pixar's most recent movies evoked tears from me when I saw them. The other two big animated features that I loved from 2010, Disney's Tangled and Dreamworks' How to Train Your Dragon, both got me close to tears in their emotional finales.

My eyes were completely dry throughout The Illusionist, and yet I left the film with more emotional fatigue than I had from most of the other movies combined. See, Tangled, How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 all bring out strong emotions and throw them at their audience at full strength at the appropriate points in otherwise fun films.

"Cue emotional music cue 33a... go." The completely imaginary stage manager says. "And... cue tears, go," I reply.

There are no such emotional cues in The Illusionist. It is the anti-Disney. Instead, the emotions evoked by the film built up in me slowly, coiling me like a spring, especially in the depressing third act. At the climax of the film, that emotional spring snapped, and my body actually, literally slammed into the back of my seat and then bounced forward again. (I was one of two people in the theatre, and managed to be discreet about it, but still... wow.) I'm still depressed, some ten hours after getting out of the theatre. I tried to write this review (or these impressions, more realistically) earlier and was unable to complete it. I was drained. The Illusionist is a devastatingly beautiful film.

This film is not unlike The Triplets of Belleville in several ways: The exaggerated character designs are extremely reminiscent of Sylvain Chomet's earlier film, and, like Triplets (or the excellent first half of Pixar's WALL-E), the film does not rely on dialog to tell the story, using physicality and visual elements to establish each character's personality and thought process, with the only snippets of dialog being so brief as to not require translation. (Also, a lot of the dialog is in simple English anyway due to the setting of the story.) This means the film might be a little slow for some American audiences, and require more of their attention than they might be used to giving to an animated feature film. This is not a film made for popular audiences, and not a film made for children. Also like Triplets and WALL-E, the film contains healthy doses of physical comedy. Unlike Triplets and WALL-E, it is far less manic, and more somber in tone. More like a Chaplin film than a modern animated piece.

The plot. Well, I guess most reviews have a plot summary, so why not? The Illusionist is about an aging magician whose once-popular act has hit hard times, as the vaudeville/music hall scene has been replaced by television in the 50's. After being fired from his long-term gig in France, the titular Illusionist, an elderly man named Tatischeff (after the film's screenwriter, the late French physical comedian Jacques Tati) travels to the United Kingdom for work, bouncing from job to job until he meets a girl working in the bar where he has been hired to perform. After several acts of kindness pass between the two, the girl is convinced that the Illusionist has actual magic powers, and decides to follow him out of her hometown when he leaves for his next gig. I'll leave it there, because from that point on is where the real magic happens.

I've seen several films over the past six weeks or so (I've seen seven of the ten nominees for best picture at the oscars, and with The Illusionist, I've now seen all three of the nominees for best Animated Feature) and this is the first film that I have been compelled to write about. Well, this and City Lights, the Charlie Chaplin film I saw for the first time last week. (It is excellent, probably my favorite Chaplin now...)

Anyway, just talking about The Illusionist has made me feel a little better. I recommend it, although you should probably watch Triplets of Belleville first, if you have the chance. Just so you know what you are getting into.

I don't have anything else to say at the moment. I've said enough for now.

So much for burning out of Grad School

elhatcho — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:35:50 GMT

Somewhere between me writing my various papers and getting my grades back there lies a faulty link, someone or something that is either bullshitting me or completely insane. Because the school computer is saying that I got all A's this semester, and that just isn't possible if my conception of reality is correct.

They are either being very kind to beginner grad students, or there is some kind of computer error up in there.

I'm betting on computer error.

I mean, a four point oh? With that crappy level of work? I might have bought acing one class, but not all three.

Anyway, I'm hoping that the computer error sticks.

This Morning

elhatcho — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:13:20 GMT

-Final class of the semester is at 10am Friday.

Act 1: Thursday Night:
-Stay out Thursday night until midnight helping friend with film shoot. (With a "masterful" performance.)
-Haven't done reading for class.
-Self-Caffeinate.
-Stay up until 3am finishing reading for class. (But I do finish!)
-Still hopped up on caffeine from reading. Stay awake until 4am reading surrealist webcomics.
-Set alarm for 8am.
-Set second alarm for 8:30am, just in case.
-Go to sleep.

Intermission:
Act 2: Friday Morning
-First alarm goes off.
-ZZzzzrmmmm no. (Translation: Shut off first alarm, knowing there is a second.)
-Sleep through second alarm.
-Wake up at 9:30.
-Do double take with phone/clock.
-OMFROFLCOPTERBBQ#$*%*@
-Shower rapidly.
-Dress haphazardly.
-Walk to school. (It was a brisk walk.)
-Get there a couple minutes early.

I'm lucky I live five minutes from school.

December Already

elhatcho — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 06:47:27 GMT

And then the month of November happened.

Was it just me, or was that a really fast month? I seriously feel like no time at all has passed since my midterm paper freak out, which was the last time I posted anything here. Now I am in the midst of my Final Paper freak out. It isn't due for a while, but I have a lot of research yet to do. Technically, the assignment that I am avoiding now isn't related to the final at all... in fact it is the last regular assignment of the semester before I have to knuckle down and WORKWORKWORK.

During that fleeting month of November I spent a good deal of time A)Buried in school books, B) Ferrying myself back and forth from San Diego for various social gatherings/holidays and C) Actually playing video games. Namely I put a lot of time into Fallout 3 (and only two years too late!) and Donkey Kong Country Returns. On Fallout: I love the atmosphere, kind of like the gameplay and think the story could be better. It is very much a Bethesda game, they do big worlds and little encounters better than they do individual dungeons or big stories. I haven't finished the game yet, as I was distracted by schoolwork. Hopefully once I've finished my final papers I can power through it. And maybe by that time Fallout: New Vegas will be patched and I'll have money.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is good. Halfway through the first world I decided that whoever came up with the idea for a new 2d side-scrolling Donkey Kong Country deserved a raise, or a medal. The execution is alright, they got the gameplay mostly right, the level design is fun and it is challenging enough to keep me interested. Also, while it is more of a "collect-a-thon" than Donkey Kong Country, it pares back the collecting they had in 2, 3 or 64, when Rare went collection CRAZY. Maybe that should be Kollection KRAZY since that fits more within Rare's sense of humor. Anyway, Retro Games Studio has done what they do best: Revitalizing a popular franchise that nobody really wanted to touch. DKC Returns isn't a perfect game, but it has been pretty fun so far. I haven't finished it either, DAMN YOU SCHOOL, but it is easier to play in bits and pieces, so I am making some slow headway.

As for other games, I really want to try Epic Mickey, but don't have the cash. I hear it is good in all the Warren Spector-y ways, while failing some basic platforming criteria (especially the camera control, apparently). The game it is compared to most so far is Psychonauts, which makes a lot of sense, but also really gets me excited for the game. Also, I want to play Kirby's Epic Yarn after hearing the wonderful soundtrack for the game, and wouldn't mind giving Sonic Colors a spin... but... money. Maybe later.

Anyway, back to schoolwork.

It's Good To Be Back...

elhatcho — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 11:01:46 GMT

So ~~tomorrow~~ later today I have to turn in my first big paper for Grad School, and I am getting back into the swing of things just fine. That is, I just finished a paper at 4am (kind of, it needs proofreading, but I have until 6pm) and still have to do all my reading for class. I'm hopped up on caffeine, and I have started losing my mind. Well, continued losing my mind. I'm at the "pacing my apartment talking to myself while my hands fidget in every direction at once" phase, or I was until the realization of my situation led me to the "post on livejournal" phase. Writing this paper has been fun. It has destroyed my sanity and ruined my sleep cycle, but it has been fun.

My first draft of this paper, after the basic outline, was a randomly worded thought stream that I slammed into my word processor whole. Upon reformatting it into Word and making it look pretty I realized that it was already eight pages long, the target length for the actual paper. Of course, I couldn't use it since it was a randomly worded thought stream riddled with profanity, and this mid-term is worth 30% of my grade this semester. Anyway, that is when I started having fun.

I should get back to work, but I had to capture the joy of the moment when I realized I actually am back at school after all. Avenue Q's "I Wish I Could Go Back To College" has been running through my head all day, both because you really can't go back to college, but also because I am pretty much as close as I can be to my 21 year old self again. It is like one of those nostalgic moments where I can feel the younger me an inch away in space-time, and long to grab myself through the time difference and swap places. I can almost reach...

Post-Star Trek Post

elhatcho — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 21:47:22 GMT

The Wrath of Khan is actually a pretty good movie, especially for a Star Trek franchise film. The Undiscovered Country isn't half bad either, though the cheesiness is a touch more apparent in the final film of the Original series cast. I didn't appreciate Wrath of Khan very much when I was younger. The tension of a space battle in Star Trek doesn't compare well to the rush of a starfighter dog fight in Star Wars when you are a 12 year old. Like many of the films I've re-watched in (or for) Sci-Fi class, I can really see how much I've grown in the past decade plus. It is strange, as I very much FEEL like the same person I was when I was 15 or 16 most of the time. That is, aside from superficial differences. But then something like this happens and the differences in my thought process are revealed to me and I gawk at how young I had been, and how wrong. I remember so many things and people from that period, especially when I have the assistance of the internet and livejournal and facebook, and I can hardly believe that the Erin that they knew was kind of an immature jerk. What is a little more insulting to me is that the young, immature Erin had more actual, real-life friends than Older and Wiser Erin does, which kind of makes me re-evaluate the value of this whole "older and wiser" thing.

I did not mean to go in this direction when I started this post.

Also, I am now semi-addicted to Minecraft. I am still struggling to catch on to the basics, the game didn't click with me right away, but step by step I am becoming more accustomed to the way the world works. It is very fun in an exploration sense, though I doubt that I will have half the fun of building structures as most players seem to.

Ten/Ten/Ten!

elhatcho — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 22:25:42 GMT

Spent Canadian Thanksgiving weekend going up to a play in LA with my wonderful god-parents. It was called The Busy Day is Hushed, or something like that. It was interesting, a thoughtful peace about religion and family dynamics. The plot had a lot of twists and turns that I hadn't been expecting up until they happened, and it all played out in a tragic and logical way. I guess my biggest criticism would be that the thought provoking aspects of the play did not play out through the plot but through the beliefs of the characters. Really, that is hardly a criticism, it is excellent writing, except for the fact that the ending of the play made a lot of the preceding events seem pointless. That is drama, I guess.

Haven't played much in the way of video games. I think I put in a couple more hours into Dead Space. I'm having more fun with it now, but I'm getting frustrated more easily at the same time. I feel like the game should be ending, and it is not. Also tried Baldur's Gate again, and kind of messed it up, having to restart from scratch three times after my previous run was a non-starter. Finally got somewhere in the game, so if I go back to it again I will be much more prepared. Tried Torchlight for several hours after erstwhile Roommate Alex started playing it, and enjoyed it immensely. I put it down to focus on beating Dead Space or progressing on Baldur's Gate, but I will definitely return to it once I get through my current list of "games to beat." Also, doing good at restraining myself from buying new games. After having expendable income for so long, the urge to purchase the latest and greatest curiosities that cross my path have been difficult to oppose, but it is working thus far. I plan on limiting my (new) gaming purchases to Donkey Kong Country Returns and maybe Fallout: New Vegas, and waiting for any other games that interest me to come down in price.

Now I have to sit down and marathon a few Star Trek movies for my Sci-Fi class. Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country. I haven't seen either since my brief period of being enamored of all things sci-fi back in middle school, when I ran out of Star Wars books to read and turned to Star Trek to fill the void. I wonder how I will appreciate them now...

You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth.

elhatcho — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:23:29 GMT

I've been doing well at film school, keeping up with my studies and everything, although most of my assignments have been in-class presentations so far, and have thus probably ruined my grade already. I'll still pass my Sci-Fi class though, since that is easier than most classes I took at the undergraduate level.
Re Sci-Fi class:
1. I am appreciating a lot of science fiction movies more upon re-viewing them. The two most improved are 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, both of which had been much too slow for my teenage mind to process when I first tried to watch them. I still think that both of them are a little too slow for my taste, and 2001 has major coherence issues around the ending (not to mention the historical inaccuracies) but this time I appreciated them for what they did right. I appreciated Planet of the Apes more as well.

2. Star Wars really is an impressive film, especially on the big screen and with the sound cranked up. Rewatching it in the theatre in class was one of the best movie experiences of my life, despite the fact that the professor showed the special edition. It is too bad that George Lucas can't let his babies go. That said, watching it again left me excited for the 3D rerelease. I mean, it is a horrible, horrible thing that George is going through with it, both for the inevitable changes that the fans will hate and the sliminess of the exploitation of his movies like that. Still, the experience of the film in the theater is remarkable, and I'll probably go see it when it comes out. The Original Trilogy, that is. Good luck on re-releasing the prequels first George. Who would want to go see Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones in theatres again unless he's done something drastic, like totally removing Jar Jar from the films? Well, seven year olds, that's who, and the cultists who will watch anything Lucas puts out. (The seven year olds I really can't blame, since they'll probably end up enjoying the movie, and for good reason. The cultists though...)

Aside from watching movies and reading about movies and thinking about movies and talking about movies I have also found time to play a couple of video games. Now that I can't afford new games I'm going back to whittling down the pile of games that I have accumulated over the years.

1: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (PC): I bought this last year around the release of its sequel, Modern Warfare 2, to see what all the fuss was about. It is an interesting experience, a war FPS with plenty of scripted events to keep the action interesting. Decent story too, for the most part, though nothing spectacular. Really, channeling the development talent engendered by making a series of World War 2 games into the exploitation of the interest in a modern context was an excellent idea, and the fact that the rest of the game doesn't really add up is inconsequential. A blockbuster, all flash and little substance.

2: Dead Space: So disappointing. Four or five hours in and I was ready to sing its accolades to any who would listen. Three hours later and I find it virtually unplayable. What the hell went wrong Dead Space team?
The atmosphere of the game is great, especially the sound design. The graphics are spooky and competently executed, though I wouldn't give the game any art direction awards. Still it ran on my computer at top settings without any problems, so... hooray! Even the concept of the game as a tactical third person shooter/survival horror game was cool, despite the direct theft of the story from Event Horizon. I was having a blast.
The problems with Dead Space started showing up around the fourth chapter. My frustration was piqued when the chapter featured a huge lead-up to a special gameplay sequence, involving a turret based version of Asteroids that felt like it was intended to be climactic but was instead the embodiment of frustration due to the fact that it was absolutely uncontrollable (at least on the PC version). I spent far too long messing with the level, feeling hindered by the controls, attempting the sequence again and again and again, and the intended impact of the moment, a long foreshadowed sequence using unique gameplay and big guns, suddenly fell apart. After almost quitting in frustration, I finally managed to overcome the sequence (by adjusting my mouse sensitivity time and time again) and progress into the later chapters, but the honeymoon was over. I balked at the repetition of earlier levels, which seemed to hint that the end was approaching but actually just served to draw out the game. I raged at the flaws in their survival-horror design, a mish-mash that attempts to combine the strengths of Super Metroid and Resident Evil, only to fail to adapt to increasing difficulty. See, the thing about survival horror is that you are supposed to survive, and certain sequences make that almost impossible to do, what with limited ammo and inescapable enemies. See, if they really had emulated the Metroid or Resident Evil style right they would have included the option to go out of sequence until you found the right gun or ammo or health pack that would allow you to succeed. They would let you run. As it is, the encounters became more difficult to defeat legitimately, and then impossible to surpass at all.
A big part of the problem is that the weapons are mostly useless. The starting gun is the only one that is consistently effective against enemies, and once you have accumulated more weapons the game spends all of its time dropping ammo for the newer, less useful weapons. I countered that by getting rid of my newer weapons, but ammo for the primary gun is still in short supply. I am currently stuck at a point where I am faced with a tough enemy whose defeat requires strict tactics and a bunch of ammo, and I simply don't have the ammo required, and can't backtrack to find more, or find money to buy more, since I've already exhausted my supplies. This is partially my fault, as poor planning on my part has resulted in this impossible situation, but the game's options for me to go back and re-plan the attack are insufficient to allow me victory. My only option seems to be to revert to a previous save, but I really don't feel like playing through the game again. Leading up to the infamous turret sequence felt like I was approaching the endgame, and the fact that it fell flat and the game kept going and going was really discouraging to me. Anyway, I quit last night thinking that I might not go back to it again. I probably will try one more time, but I am still very disappointed overall, since it started out so well.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl: Like Dead Space, I got this one cheap during a Steam sale. I only really started to get interested after hearing a bunch of chatter about it online, and decided to give it a try. So far, the lack of polish is getting to me. It has a very Russian feel about it, both in terms of construction and design. Eastern Europe has established itself as an interesting region for the development of PC games. I feel like the games are less constrained commercially, so they do wild and crazy things with the gameplay, but can't afford the high-profile gloss of major studios. Stalker feels kind of like a Russian version of Fallout 3 without the attempts at bringing RPG mechanics into combat, or the general sense of humor. I'm not sure how I feel about it at this point, I only played the first mission or so, but I died before I got the chance to save, and this game is not generous with checkpoints. Like a lot of older-school PC shooters, you really have to abuse the quicksave function to ensure that you don't lose progress. After losing a full mission due to my inattentiveness, I quit, not wanting to replay the mission immediately. My verdict is still out on this one, I feel like it is an incredibly deep game and I have barely scratched the surface.

Baldur's Gate (...again): More than any other game, Baldur's Gate is a game I want to play but can't. (The only one I have tried and failed to play more is Final Fantasy VII) Or rather, I can play it, but it is a long slow slog that takes a lot of time to get going. I tried picking up where I had left off in my last play through, but I was totally lost in the plot and on the map, on account of the horribly low resolution that the game plays at. I compensated for both of these by restarting from scratch and using user-made mods to run it in the Baldur's Gate 2 engine, then implemented a user-made widescreen patch that finally got it to fit my monitor. I probably overcompensated, as the characters and text are far too small to make out in 1440x900 without pressing my face up against the monitor. I'll try to lower the resolution from there, but the graphics actually really hold up as long as you up the resolution, especially the level graphics, which are beautifully rendered and scale well. A zoom feature would have been appreciated though. I barely started the game before shutting down due to eyestrain, but this time I think I'm going to jump in with a walkthrough and try to actually get through it by whatever means necessary.

Anyway, as you can tell, I have a very exciting life.

Oh yeah, and the new Season of TV: Chuck Season 4 has started out spectacularly after the dreariness and annoyance of season 3. Castle is still consistently excellent, though it doesn't really aim for anything groundbreaking. With a cast as good as theirs you don't really need more to be entertained. Glee has started off slow, continuing the decline from second half of last season, though it still has moments of brilliance. I think the writers are lost in their own formula. Stargate: Universe kind of flopped on its premiere, a disappointing conclusion to the cliffhanger of last season's finale, but it seems like it has the potential to get better from here. Community is still the best comedy on television (Everyone raves about Modern Family, but I can't get into it.) The Office is still going through the motions, despite the inevitable death spiral and decrease in quality. The first episode of the new season had its moments, but the show is old now, and they've exhausted most of their interesting plotlines. And Steve Carell is leaving anyway, so cancellation is inevitable. Why drag it out years longer than you have to? Focus on Parks and Recreation which FINALLY started to live up to its potential last season after a long, slow build up. 30 Rock is still hit and miss, as always. Weird show, 30 Rock. They spend so much of their time being wacky and blatantly unfunny, and then they'll hit comedy grand slams in the most unexpected places. Also I watch House, which is House. Nothing original, nothing unique. A solid show, I guess, sometimes. Decent Time-waster. None of the new shows this season have captured me. Outsourced is rancid. I see what they want to do, but what they are doing isn't funny. Maybe it will improve, like Parks and Rec, or maybe it will get canceled in two weeks. Either way, no loss. No Ordinary Family is basically Heroes only with the Fantastic Four instead of the X-men. Or it is a live action serial adaptation of The Incredibles. I guess it has potential, but I wasn't impressed by what I saw. Maybe I'll follow it. Maybe. Anybody know anything good I should be watching/playing? I probably won't have time (I've been watching most of my TV off Hulu in the middle of the night, since I have class when Chuck, House, Castle, Glee and Stargate: Universe (ie: all my favorite hour-long shows) air. Still, I want to know what is good out there.

LONG POST IS LONG. SORRY GUYS.

Getting Into Things

elhatcho — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 06:03:29 GMT

I went home to San Diego for the holiday weekend, and when I came back, had no internet for three (3!) days.

I almost died.

On the bright side, I have been buried in textbooks reading for school all day and I am actually loving it. Most of the reading is early, early, early (everything pre-1920) film criticism, and everybody is so wrong and so goofy while they are being wrong. I've marked up all my books, which is something I have never done before in scholarly reading, and as I went on my notes became gradually more personal, directed at the authors of the books as if they were close acquaintances who I kind of wanted to punch. One particular poet/theorist amused me endlessly due to his horrible over-extended metaphors, random philosophical optimism and generally antiquated language. Good times.

I also went to a sneak preview of the Aboriginal Australian Musical Bran Nue Dae, which apparently opens tomorrow. It was pretty cheesy, downright silly at parts, but I still enjoyed it. Probably comparable to Mama Mia! except much more interesting on account of the setting and characters. The ending is over-the-top ludicrous and I loved it and didn't see it coming at all, though it really isn't too much of a twist. I'm not sure if I would recommend it to everybody, but if you like musicals it is worth a shot. It is kind of getting pounded in the reviews, but, meh, who trusts reviews anyway? Not me, not after reading some of the poorly written reviews for Scott Pilgrim.

Anyway, almost two weeks down, and the semester is still ramping up. Bring it!

FILM SCHOOL

elhatcho — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:01:55 GMT

After a long and lonely night unpacking my life into a new apartment I now live in Orange County. That was actually a week and a half ago, but I didn't have much else to say at the time, so I kind of let it stew for a bit.

So far my impressions of film school are that I watch a lot of movies, and some of them are good. Here are the films I've watched so far in class:

2001: A Space Odyssey in my Genre Studies: SciFi class.
The first time I saw this movie, I hated it and was completely bored the entire time except for the parts with HAL 9000. Of course, I was twelve or thirteen at the time. This time I was much less bored, and actually liked most of the film, which comes from the fact that 13 or so years have passed. Actually, seeing it on the big screen helped a lot too. The Monkey scenes bored me the first time around, but captivated me when I saw it this week. The second part with the spaceships was actually pretty fun, although it is obvious that Kubrick extends shots WAAAAAAY too long in order to show off his special effect and establish the banality that life in space would become when it was actually possible IN THE YEAR 2000! Otherwise it was good. The HAL scenes are a bit overdrawn, but still excellent, and HAL himself is an amazing character. A partially sympathetic villain with some incredibly funny dialog. And then the final part of the movie is a horrible, slow, mostly-nonsensical acid trip, and while it seems easy to explain what happens, despite it's nonsensicality, it is almost impossible to diagnose what it means. Overall, I liked it, despite the glacial pace, right up until the ending, which was a step too far for me.

The Crowd for my Survey of American Cinema class.
I'd never seen The Crowd before, but it was eminently familiar because the subject matter has been repeated a billion times since this was released in 1928. It is the story of Joe Everyman, except he's been renamed "Johnny Sims," and he is a middle-class man out to take over the world. The problem is that he's absolutely ordinary, and fairly stupid in a mostly sympathetic way. He tries and tries to succeed, but can't escape being ordinary because when push comes to shove he chooses love and his family over his job. The film is actually really fun, intentionally so on some levels, though a lot of the humor also stems from seeing typical romantic comedy shtick done in a silent picture using 1920's vocabulary. The period vocabulary and the archaic film technology enhance the humor somewhat, using the lens of history to emphasize the parody of the 1920's. The directors style of telling the story is also notable, especially because he doesn't even bother trying to be subtle, the technology doesn't allow subtle expressionism. Overall, I really enjoyed it, and feel like some of the gags would be brilliant if yanked out and inserted into a modern comedy, 1920's vibe and all.

Anyway, so far so good. I mean, mostly. It is getting kind of lonely up here. I've already hit the "Talking to myself frequently" phase, and feel like the "Coherent conversations with myself" stage isn't far away. So things will probably get interesting soon, it seems.

Mr. Erin No More

elhatcho — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:20:47 GMT

Today was my last day of work at San Diego Junior Theatre, a company that I have been involved with on and off for sixteen years. In the course of my open sharings I had two meltdowns and one child who decided that he didn't want to say any of his lines once he arrived on stage, and then loudly pronounced his decision to the audience. It was wonderful.

Now I desperately prepare to leave for a place where people will not call me Mr. Erin, but just Erin. Or maybe they'll just say hey you. Or they won't talk to me at all, and I'll spend my long and lonely afternoons missing these days.

Student Quote of the Week, Final Edition:
(After the play, as everyone is going home.)

Student: Mr. Erin?
Mr. Erin: Yes?
Student: When all those other girls were joking and saying that you had peed you pants, I knew that you didn't really pee your pants.
Mr. Erin: Thank you, (insert student name).

That is the part where I started getting choked up about the whole situation.