Category Archives: Journal

This is me rambling about me, mostly. Current stuff: home, family, my head’s on fire… that kind of thing. This also includes everything imported from LiveJournal.

Journal, Reviews

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

TheHobbit3If you didn’t enjoy the first two installments in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit franchise, you probably won’t like this one, either, because it doubles down on everything.

If you did enjoy them, this one pretty much sticks the landing. There were bits I didn’t like much (the Sauron/Necromancer “Jefferson Airplane” visual tops that list) but this didn’t feel overblown or too long. It felt huge, and justly so.

Tolkien tells us that there are battles in Middle Earth.  Jackson shows them to us. Tolkien tells us that there are thirteen dwarves in the party. Jackson shows them to us. Tolkien tells us that Laketown gets burnt by a dragon, and the survivors become refugees. Jackson shows us all that. The list goes on–The Hobbit is a short novel (by the standards of epic fantasy) because Tolkien does a lot of telling in between the showing. The Hobbit trilogy of films is a long movie (by the standards of genre-fiction films) because Jackson expands on the tells to give us a big show.

In order to make any of that engaging, we need to be seeing it through people with whom we identify. This is why during previous films we’re introduced to Legolas and Tauriel, Bard’s children, Azog, and the whole host of other named characters.  Each of the dwarves is his own distinct character, and Laketown is full of the faces of human people who look like they could be our neighbors.

I’m down with all of this. In fact, I’d be quite happy to see the trilogy with an additional 90 minutes of footage, because some pieces felt a bit short.

My biggest complaint (aside from the 60’s music-video effect for Sauron) lies in the fact that some of the lines I remember from the book weren’t in the movie. But without the book I wouldn’t have noticed. So, yes, the purists will again be frustrated.

My second-biggest complaint is that I think these films are best appreciated across three nights with the same group of friends and/or family, and that’s not how I saw them. If you haven’t seen any of them yet, renting the first two and then seeing the third might be downright delightful.

I saw the HFR 3D version, and it was gorgeous. No shaky-cam! And Middle Earth looked real enough to walk right into. Also, I don’t want to walk into this part of it. Five is at least four too many armies.

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies clears my Threshold of Awesome, and comes in at #6 for me for the year, just behind Godzilla.

Essays, Journal

The Anxious, Exhausted, Exasperated Imposter

Yesterday afternoon and evening I had some issues.

Each week it falls to me to do the write-up of the Writing Excuses episode that will be airing Sunday night or Monday morning. Usually it falls to me to do this on Sunday, which is not my favorite day for getting work done. It’s also not an activity I love, because listening to myself talk while not being able to correct the stuff I get wrong (now that I’ve had more time to think about it) is painful.

This Sunday I got an email from Producer Jordo explaining that this latest episode (9.52: From the Page to the Stage) had serious source audio problems which took a long time to clean up.  Also, he said that he’d had to pull the episode from our queue for Season 10 because even after our big episode scheduling thread, we’d screwed up, and needed to post 54 episodes during 2014, leaving Season 10’s first quarter two episodes shy of where we thought it was.

Worse still, this particular episode is one in which Brandon was unavailable, so it fell to me to drive the discussion. It’s not a thing I struggle with, but those are still big shoes to fill.

Add to that the fact that I’d had horrible insomnia the night before, and I was having some mental-health moments (my inner spectator is pretty good at telling me when the depression or anxiety is unfounded)  and perhaps you can understand the perfect storm I was caught in.

I was, no lie, AFRAID to listen to episode 9.52 so that I could write a single paragraph, add some categories and tags, and post it. I was tired, anxious, frustrated, and suffering from imposter syndrome thanks to a mixture of external stimuli and bad brain chemistry.

I finally forced myself to do my job, and I could tell that the episode was pretty good. Maybe even great. Jordo’s cleanup on the audio was awesome, and the discussion flowed really well. But in spite of what I could clearly hear as a solid installment in the Writing Excuses franchise, I was still anxious and miserable. I was hanging out as much as possible with my inner spectator, but it’s easier to watch misery than to be it, but only barely.

Bad brain chemistry. Lying in bed an hour or so later I told Sandra that what I really wanted was to be happy so I could get out of the bleachers and ride the happy part instead of hiding up there while misery dominated the playing field. Only when I said it I think I rambled more.

This morning I feel fine. Sleep helps, as does a fresh dose of medication, a good breakfast, and a couple hundred milligrams of caffeine (it should be filed under “medication,” but it’s mixed with the 24 ounces of water I get at breakfast so it’s in its own category.) I look back at last night and am amazed at how poorly I was coping. Why was that so difficult? Was it really that bad?

Answer: Yes. Yes it was. And that’s why I write about these things. I need to remember that the bad brain chemistry days are real things, and while it’s possible that I’ll stop having them altogether, I’m not helping anybody if, while I’m happy, I decide that I don’t actually have a problem.

(Note: Further insight into my mental health can be found in the creative non-fiction piece “No. I’m Fine.” which you can read and share at no charge.)

Essays, Journal

The Price of Mental Health

20141208_140004The soda and the 30-day prescription in the top shelf of the cart cost almost exactly as much as everything else in the cart put together.

This is a nice illustration of the price of mental health.

I’m fortunate. I only see these numbers at the end of the year when I hit the cap on my insurance. Also, I can afford to spend as much on one bottle of pills for one person as I spend on an entire month’s worth of food for one person (not to mention the fact that I can afford to buy luxury items like bulk frozen pizzas and fancy cheese.)

Also, next year there won’t be a cap. The prescription will cost about as much as that box of five dozen eggs.

(Note: The complete contents of the cart, top and bottom, set me back $306. Also note: That particular bottle of pills is only one of the three monthly prescriptions I must fill. It just happens to be the one that put me over the cap.)

Essays, Journal

They Know What To Do, But You Have To Tell Them

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There was a minor medical emergency on Friday night at World Fantasy. I share my account of the events, and my role in the process, because the event pointed up the fact that some people don’t know how to respond to this sort of a problem.

I didn’t do very much, and anybody could have done what I did, but somebody should have done it ten minutes earlier.

I was engaged in a late-night conversation in the lobby bar when one of the bikers with whom we shared the hotel approached our group.

“You guys, man… you guys gotta take better care of your own.”

“I’m sorry, what’s wrong?” I was puzzled. He seemed frustrated and worried.

“One of your girls, she’s sick drunk outside. She needs her friends to take care of her.”

At this point I excused myself from the conversation, and strode quickly out the door and around the hedge to where we’ll-call-her-Jane was sitting slumped against one of the bikers.  A couple of other people from the biker event were standing close trying to wake her up and get her attention.

I read her name tag, leaned in (without touching her) and said “JANE, WAKE UP PLEASE.”

No response.

“I’ll be right back.” I strode into the hotel, marching with purpose to the front desk.

“There’s a woman on the bench outside, and she’s non-responsive. It looks like alcohol overdose.” (Note: I used the word “overdose” because I wanted to make sure they took the problem seriously — not because I have any medical training in the matter.)

That conversation was the point at which my involvement effectively ended. Hotel security arrived within seconds. They DID touch Jane, checking for a pulse, and attempting to roust her by loudly explaining that unless she answered them RIGHT NOW, they were going to have to call an ambulance.

They called an ambulance. Summing up, after an overnight in the hospital Jane was okay, but I didn’t see her back at the event until Sunday night. Apparently the alcohol didn’t agree with one of her medications. (See? Not an overdose. I was wrong!)

Here’s the salient point, the take-away for you, and for any convention-goer who finds themselves in a similar situation: HOTEL SECURITY KNOWS WHAT TO DO, BUT SOMEONE HAS TO TELL THEM THERE IS A PROBLEM.

When I returned to the group I’d been conversing with, they treated me as if I had done something amazing, like I performed CPR, or a field tracheotomy. Guys, I didn’t even call 911. I thought about it, then realized I didn’t know the address of the hotel. All I did was take ownership of the problem for just long enough to hand it off to the folks who knew how to solve it.

To be fair to the bikers, they probably see a lot of friends overdo the consumption, and they take care of those friends on their own. They’re a tight group, and they know each other. Still, the moment one of them realized that Jane was out cold, they should have called hotel security.

I’m an Eagle Scout. I can staunch bleeding, and feel for a pulse. I can do the Heimlich, and though my CPR skills are rusty, if I’m the only guy around who can do it, I’ll do all I can. But the critical skill in this particular situation, and in most of the convention medical emergencies I’m likely to run into, was the ability to speak clearly.

Oh, and the ability to decide to speak.

You can do this.